To the Moon: Our Journeys to Luna (and Back) - A Timeline of Lunar Exploration

Wayback: http://web.archive.org/web/20040215002154/http://www.kokogiak.com/luna/default.asp

New York officials unveiled plans for the Freedom Tower — the centerpiece of new construction at the World Trade Center site — on December 19th, including plans to incorporate wind turbines that will generate 20 percent of the building's electrical power needs. If built as planned, the Freedom Tower's use of wind turbines would be the world's first large-scale integration of wind turbines into a building. Wind turbines are generally not suited for urban environments because of the turbulence created by nearby buildings, but the height of the Freedom Tower may overcome that difficulty.

EERE: News - World Trade Center's Freedom Tower to Feature Wind Turbines

Battle McCarthy: The vertical wind farm concept.

Symbiotic relationships between myself and civilized forms of higher animals have been established many times and in many places throughout the long ages of my development. These relationships have been mutually useful; within my memory is the knowledge of hyperlight drive ships and how to build them. I will trade this knowledge for a free ticket to new worlds around suns younger and more stable than your own.

The Mushroom Speaks

Rotten.com: Terence McKenna

[Terence] McKenna believed that organic hallucinogens provided a window into an experience that was both spiritually significant and literally real. So when the hyperdimensional machine elves talked, he listened. And listened. And listened.

Today's scientists seeking to combine quantum mechanics with Einstein's theory of gravity (the general theory of relativity) are convinced that we are on the verge of another major upheaval, one that will pinpoint the more elemental concepts from which time and space emerge. Many believe this will involve a radically new formulation of natural law in which scientists will be compelled to trade the space-time matrix within which they have worked for centuries for a more basic "realm" that is itself devoid of time and space.

For decades, I've struggled to bring my experience closer to my understanding. In my everyday routines, I delight in what I know is the individual's power, however imperceptible, to affect time's passage. In my mind's eye, I often conjure a kaleidoscopic image of time in which, with every step, I further fracture Newton's pristine and uniform conception. And in moments of loss I've taken comfort from the knowledge that all events exist eternally in the expanse of space and time, with the partition into past, present and future being a useful but subjective organization.

The Elegant Universe author Brian Greene in The New York Times: The Time We Thought We Knew.

Full-Circle 360° at once panoramic camera lens w/‘aha!’ diagram

This farewell to Galileo reminds me that someday I will love baseball.

Ruth Hubbard: I was absolutely horrified listening on the radio to some of the congressional hearings on the Gays in the Military...and to hear...I remember one...I don't remember whether he was an officer or what...testifying before the Committee and saying 'I've been to my minister. I've been to psychiatrists. Do you really think I would choose this life...if I had a choice?' Now that's just heartbreaking.

Frank Aqueno: I know. It is. It seems like almost everyday the question comes at me: 'why would anyone choose to be homosexual'...these are homosexuals asking that...

RH: ...yes...

FRA: ....I always respond: Can you think of a more homophobic question to ask? That goes right over their heads.

NYT has gone bonkers over the 50th anniversary of DNA:

• Intro.
• Interactive feature.
• Nature vs. Nurture.
• Watson and Crick.
• Pop culture.
• More...

originally posted by xowie

Thou shalt not distort, delay, or sequester information.
You can drive a system crazy by muddying its information streams. You can make a system work better with surprising ease if you can give it more timely, accurate, and complete information.

The Washington Post: Scientists Planning to Make New Form of Life.

If the experiment works, the microscopic man-made cell will begin feeding and dividing to create a population of cells unlike any previously known to exist. To ensure safety, the cell will be deliberately hobbled to render it incapable of infecting people; it also will be strictly confined, and designed to die if it does manage to escape into the environment.

At the heart of the Crick-Koch hypothesis is a simple idea with vast implications. It is that consciousness, rather than representing some spiritual or God-given quality, is a biological process like digestion or circulation, generated by the activity of neurons in the brain. As he wrote in his 1994 book, "The Astonishing Hypothesis": "You, your joys and your sorrows--your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules."

originally posted by xowie

The computers will get input from carbon-14 results or data from ancient texts--cuneiform, not a Sim City expansion pack.

originally posted by daiichi

A year later, scientists and physicians in New York City are still trying to figure out just what tens of thousands of people inhaled that fateful day.