raleighnet.org

Scholars have learned that all the colors in the universe originate from a mere fifteen fundamental physical causes. Read about them here.

You know how whenever you talk about nuclear power the topic of waste disposal comes up? Yeah, and you know how somebody will always throw out the old why don’t we just blast it into the sun to which the response is do you really want to risk nuclear fall out in the event of an accident? Yeah, ughm Holy Shit!

I’d do anything to live forever. Well, almost anything:

Goat testicle transplants. Elixirs of jade. Inhaling the breath of virgins. Injecting crushed dog gonads. Drinking radioactive waters. These are just a few of the ways people have sought to lengthen their lives and renew their vitality.

I never really bought into the idea that immortality was waiting in children, or art, or good deeds, or dragging camels through the eyes of needles. For me, immortality was going to be found in a lab coat and a test tube.

I know I put an unreasonable amount of faith in the power of science to solve my problems. But, I don’t have much faith in anything else, and everybody has to believe in something.

So, while it may be little more than science fiction-based optimism, I always figured that if i could just make it to 50, then I could live forever. This century is going to do for bio-science what the last did for physics. There are magics untold waiting for us. I only hope I don’t die too soon to take advantage of them.

This is pretty cool. A 3D map of satellites orbiting the earth. You can zoom in or out, fly around the planet. It’s completely cool. It requires Java.

[more space conversation here]

There’s a very interesting discussion of astrophysics going on over on MetaFilter. Maybe lecture would be a better descriptor than discussion since it’s a little one sided, but still, it’s totally worth a bookmark if you’re interested in that kind of stuff. I know I learned more than one something from it. Starts off with a lot of one liners, but if you scroll down past those, several of the comments are very informative. The post points to a story of a gravitational freeway through space which is also very, very cool in and of itself.

Update: Hmm. I tried to experiment with MeFi’s implementation of TrackBack (which by the way is very cool of Matt to put in place), but my ping doesn’t seem to have been heard. This is twice now. The first time was fixed on the other end. TrackBack would be great, but it’s beginning to give me a complex.