Copenhagen Suborbitals Launch Fails Due to Frozen Liquid Oxygen Valve/Hairdryer Mishap
September 7th, 2010Via: Copenhagen Post:
The dreams of the first Danish rocket in space were shot down this weekend, as the Heat-1X/Tycho-Brahe rocket failed to lift off.
Rocket builders Peter Madsen and Kristian von Bengtson confirmed last night at a press conference that it was their by now infamous hairdryer that resulted in the rocket not achieving lift-off. The pair, along with a team of volunteers, had kept the country in suspense all weekend as they sailed the rocket off the coast of Bornholm using their self-built submarine.
The hairdryer, one which they bought in Føtex for under 100 kroner, was supposed to have kept a valve for the liquid oxygen hot, so that it did not freeze and become stuck. However, due to some necessary last minute alternations, the power to the hairdryer was cut off, Madsen stated last night.
The project has now been postponed till next June.
Telecom XT Dead Again, Vodafone OK
September 7th, 2010Just FYI: My Telecom XT link has been dead since last night. I called the useless support line and the new innovation was that they hung up on me. They haven’t responded to email.
Vodafone is up and running, so I should be able to update as usual.
Obama’s New Deal Spit Balls
September 6th, 2010ZeroHedge saved me from having to look up how much the dollar has been diluted:
The New Deal cost America $50 billion in 1930s dollars. How the times have changed – today the White House will announce a new and improved New(er) Deal, which will invest $50 billion in a 3Rs sequel – road, rail and runway, infrastructure developments. It will have roughly one thousandth the impact of the Roosevelt plan, demonstrating once again that in 80 years the only thing that has actually worked in America is the ongoing devaluation of the dollar.
In other news, H.R. 5741: Universal National Service Act took a step forward. It was referred to the Subcommittee on Military Personnel on July 23, 2010.
Via: Reuters:
U.S. President Barack Obama will announce on Monday a six-year plan to revamp the United States’ road, railways and runways with a $50 billion up-front investment to jump-start job creation, the White House said.
The plan is one of several several economic initiatives that Obama is due to unveil this week aimed at generating some desperately needed U.S. job growth and limiting predicted Democratic losses in Nov. 2 congressional elections.
Augmented City 3D
September 6th, 2010My guess is that it’s going to look a lot more like this:
…but maybe a bit of both.
Via: Vimeo / Keiichi Matsuda:
Augmented City 3D from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.
The architecture of the contemporary city is no longer simply about the physical space of buildings and landscape, more and more it is about the synthetic spaces created by the digital information that we collect, consume and organise; an immersive interface may become as much part of the world we inhabit as the buildings around us.
Augmented Reality (AR) is an emerging technology defined by its ability to overlay physical space with information. It is part of a paradigm shift that succeeds Virtual Reality; instead of disembodied occupation of virtual worlds, the physical and virtual are seen together as a contiguous, layered and dynamic whole. It may lead to a world where media is indistinguishable from ‘reality’. The spatial organisation of data has important implications for architecture, as we re-evaluate the city as an immersive human-computer interface.
U.S. Navy Makes $3 Billion “Hostage Payment” to HP for Crappy Computer Network
September 6th, 2010Via: Wired:
Normally, it’s hard to get anyone but the geeks fired up about information infrastructure. But the Navy Marine Corps Intranet isn’t your normal network. With 700,000+ seats, it’s the world’s second-biggest network, after the internet itself. NMCI’s technical complexities and hiccups are the stuff of dark legend around the Navy. The fights it’s sparked between the military and its main contractor, Electronic Data Systems (now owned by Hewlett-Packard), have been epic. And then there’s that contract; after paying out $10 billion, the Navy still doesn’t own a single router. So it’s giving HP another $3.3 billion dollars — a “hostage” payment, as one Department of the Navy civilian put it, mostly so the military can buy the gear and look at the network blueprints sailors and marines have used for a decade.
So maybe it’s not so surprising that our item on NMCI’s next phase triggered so many heated — and passionately smart — responses. In the comments section, we heard from sailors, from marines, from HP employees, and interested observers, too.
Belarus Web Activist Oleg Bebenin Found Hanged
September 6th, 2010Via: BBC:
Officials in Belarus say a prominent opposition figure found hanged at his weekend home outside the capital, Minsk, on Friday committed suicide.
Forensic examiners established that, apart from the noose mark on Oleg Bebenin’s neck, there were no other injuries, a local prosecutor said.
Mr Bebenin, 36, founded Charter 97, a leading opposition website critical of President Alexander Lukashenko.
Colleagues said they could not believe the father-of-two had killed himself.
They pointed out that he had left no note and Charter 97’s editor, Natalia Radina, said he had not been having any family or health problems.
He had, she told independent Moscow radio station Ekho Moskvy, been absorbed in his work and campaigning for opposition presidential hopeful Andrei Sannikov.
Most independent media in Belarus have closed down and the authorities barely tolerate political dissent, correspondents say.
Research Credit: ottilie
Combat Over in Iraq? U.S. Troops Battle Heavily Armed Insurgents at Iraqi Military Headquarters
September 6th, 2010Via: AP:
Days after the U.S. officially ended combat operations and touted Iraq’s ability to defend itself, American troops found themselves battling heavily armed militants assaulting an Iraqi military headquarters in the center of Baghdad on Sunday. The fighting killed 12 people and wounded dozens.
It was the first exchange of fire involving U.S. troops in Baghdad since the Aug. 31 deadline for formally ending the combat mission, and it showed that American troops remaining in the country are still being drawn into the fighting.
The attack also made plain the kind of lapses in security that have left Iraqis wary of the U.S. drawdown and distrustful of the ability of Iraqi forces now taking up ultimate responsibility for protecting the country.
Sunday’s hour-long assault was the second in as many weeks on the facility, the headquarters for the Iraqi Army’s 11th Division, pointing to the failure of Iraqi forces to plug even the most obvious holes in their security.
Two of the four attackers even managed to fight their way inside the compound and were only killed after running out of ammunition and detonating explosives belts they were wearing.
The American troops who joined the fight and provided cover fire for Iraqi soldiers pursuing the attackers were based at the compound to train Iraqi forces, said U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Eric Bloom. Iraqi forces also requested help from U.S. helicopters, drones and explosives experts, he said. No American troops were hurt, Bloom said.
Related: Satire: Obama Declares Victory, Sort Of, Depending On How You Look At It, In Iraq
Iraq: Fake Bombs Planted in Celebrities’ Cars for Reality Show
September 6th, 2010There will be no peace. At any given moment for the rest of our lifetimes, there will be multiple conflicts in mutating forms around the globe. Violent conflict will dominate the headlines, but cultural and economic struggles will be steadier and ultimately more decisive. The de facto role of the US armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing.
Via: New York Times:
An Iraqi reality television program broadcast during Ramadan has been planting fake bombs in celebrities’ cars, having an Iraqi army checkpoint find them and terrifying the celebrities into thinking that they are headed for maximum security prison.
The show “Put Him in [Camp] Bucca” has drawn numerous protests but has stayed on air throughout the fasting month, broadcasting its “stings” on well-known Iraqi personalities.
All of them were ensnared by being invited to the headquarters of the private television station Al Baghdadia to be interviewed, but en route to the station a fake bomb would be planted in their car while they were being searched by Iraqi soldiers, who were in on the deception.
The unwitting celebrities are then secretly filmed, Candid-Camera-style, as they reacted with shock, disbelief and anger as fake checkpoint guards shout abuse at them: “Why do you want to blow us up?” “You are a terrorist.” “How much did they pay you to do it? You will be executed.”
Pentagon Declined to Investigate Hundreds of Purchases of Child Pornography
September 4th, 2010Via: Yahoo News:
A 2006 Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigation into the purchase of child pornography online turned up more than 250 civilian and military employees of the Defense Department — including some with the highest available security clearance — who used credit cards or PayPal to purchase images of children in sexual situations. But the Pentagon investigated only a handful of the cases, Defense Department records show.
The cases turned up during a 2006 ICE inquiry, called Project Flicker, which targeted overseas processing of child-porn payments. As part of the probe, ICE investigators gained access to the names and credit card information of more than 5,000 Americans who had subscribed to websites offering images of child pornography. Many of those individuals provided military email addresses or physical addresses with Army or fleet ZIP codes when they purchased the subscriptions.
In a related inquiry, the Pentagon’s Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS) cross-checked the ICE list against military databases to come up with a list of Defense employees and contractors who appeared to be guilty of purchasing child pornography. The names included staffers for the secretary of defense, contractors for the ultra-secretive National Security Agency, and a program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. But the DCIS opened investigations into only 20 percent of the individuals identified, and succeeded in prosecuting just a handful.
Related:
Institute for the Study of Globalization and Covert Politics
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Police Release Scientist in Miami Airport Scare Who Had Previously Been Involved with Smuggling Plague Samples
September 4th, 2010Via: NBC Miami:
A world-renowned Texas scientist specializing in infectious diseases who was once charged with smuggling dangerous samples of plague bacteria into the U.S. was questioned by authorities after a suspicious item found in his luggage caused a massive evacuation at Miami International Airport Thursday night.
Dr. Thomas C. Butler, 70, was questioned by agents with the FBI and Miami-Dade police Friday after a suspicious item was found in his checked luggage by a MIA baggage screener Thursday night, sources told NBC Miami.
The suspicious item scare caused police to evacuate four of six airport terminals and the airport’s hotel for nearly seven hours as a bomb squad removed the item for further testing.
The airport was fully reopened around 4 a.m., and initial tests on the item have come back negative.
Shortly before noon Friday, it was learned that Butler was released from questioning and won’t be charged in the incident. Authorities escorted him back to one of the terminals at MIA where he’s expected to board a plane to Puerto Rico, which was his destination Thursday night.
Butler was not identified by authorities at an early-morning press conference, where FBI Special Agent Michael Leverock said the man being questioned was not under arrest and was being “voluntarily interviewed.”
“He’s being very cooperative,” said Leverock.
Leverock said the item was still being tested at a lab to determine what, if any, danger it posed.
“We don’t even know if a crime occurred here,” he said.
Sources told NBC Miami that Butler had been coming from Saudi Arabia when the suspicious item was spotted in his luggage as it went through customs.
Butler had been on the faculty at Texas Tech since the late 80s until his arrest in 2003 on charges of smuggling and improperly transporting the plague samples, as well as theft, embezzlement and fraud. Butler told police that 30 vials containing the samples had been stolen from his lab.
He was eventually found guilty of exporting the vials of plague and stealing research money. He was acquitted of illegally exporting the plague samples.
Butler spent nearly two years behind bars and lost his Texas Tech job, despite the protests of several in the scientific community who denounced his prosecution. His controversial story was even featured in a “60 Minutes” piece titled “The Case Against Dr. Butler.”
He’s currently listed as a faculty member at Alfaisal University in Saudi Arabia.
