World Wind — Interactive Earth viewer

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Ok, so this is so freaking cool:

http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/

It's a 180 MB download, but man is it worth it. You get a globe that you can click-n-drag to rotate around, and can zoom in with your mouse wheel (or both-click). As you zoom in, you can tell World Wind to download high resolution satellite and arial imagery, all the way down to 1 meter per pixel for cities in the US.

You'll need a high-speed internet connection, and a recent computer (one purchased in the last couple of years).

I recommend this site to learn more about WorldWind

http://www.worldwindcentral.com/wiki/Main_Page

The "official" site is not very helpful.

Mars orbiters take pictures of each other

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Martian orbital space is getting crowded enough that the orbiters can take pictures of each other as shown in this NASA press release.

I remember what a big deal it was when the first Viking lander touched down. Now NASA has multiple satellites and vehicles on the ground at the same time. And don't forget the European Space Agency's (ESA) Mars Express orbiter. Welcome to the 21st century.

Time travelers' convention

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A student at MIT is requesting help to publicize a time travelers' convention he will be holding on May 7 on the MIT campus. His idea is to make this convention so well known that all future people with time-travel capabilities will know about it and come for the event. So, in the interests of helping out, here are the details:


The Time Traveler Convention
May 7, 2005, 10:00pm EDT (08 May 2005 02:00:00 UTC)
(event starts at 8:00pm)
East Campus Courtyard, MIT
42:21:36.025°N, 71:05:16.332°W
(42.360007,-071.087870 in decimal degrees)

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FactCheck.org takes on Social Security debate

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Unlike most political analysis, FactCheck.org focuses on providing links to the facts, not just spouting opinion. They got started mostly for the 2004 elections, but they are continuing to keep track of current political debates.

Turns out all the hype about Social Security going bankrupt is a major exaggeration. If we do nothing, the most pessimistic projection shows that the SSA will have to cut promised benefits by 27% beginning in 2042, and by 2075 benefits would have to be cut by 32% from the promised amount. I'd hardly say that Social Security is going bankrupt.

While we probably should do something about SSA, there's no need to rush into "solutions" that could make things worse. And the political venom is not helping matters.

FactCheck.org's latest article on the Social Security debate covers Bush's April 28 statements on plans slow the growth of benefits in the future for higher income workers.

Hitchhiker's Guide text game available on-line

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Back in 1984, Infocom and Douglas Adams released a text adventure game based on Adam's Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy books. I remember playing this on my Commodore 64 in the late '80s.

BBC Radio 4 has converted the game into Flash so that you can play it on-line. Even better, they have two different illustrated versions of the game. It's still a text game, but with illustrations of each location as you play the game.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/game.shtml

To play the game, choose which illustrated version you want, then have fun.

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Hidden messages in junk DNA?

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From Scott Adams' Dilbert Newsletter #60:

Sometimes my brain ties together things that are better left alone. Here are three things I've thought about recently:

I wonder if any cryptographers have looked at that junk DNA to see if it's a message from the designer. I'm guessing that it's a code that says something like, "I am Kaloopah, from the star system Nebulon IV. I have sent this evolution program into space as my eighth grade science project."

Turn off fluorescent lights when not in use

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Below is the second half of a Vermont Agency of Natural Resources article.  You may want to read the first half of the article if you're interested in a bit of history on flourescent lights. 

Many people continue to believe that it takes significantly more electricity to turn on a
fluorescent lamp than to operate the lamp for long periods. Modern fluorescent lamps, however,
use little starting energy. Turning them off actually helps them last longer and lowers lighting
energy costs. Researchers at the U.S. Naval Civil Engineering Laboratory have found that a
fluorescent lamp

Amazon tracks "Statistically Improbable Phrases"

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For example, if you go to the "The Da Vinci Code" listing on Amazon.com and scroll down a bit, you will find this section:

Statistically Improbable Phrases: cilice belt, lame saint, seeded womb, lettered dials, corporal mortification, rosewood box, sacred feminine, royal bloodline, stone cylinder, sweater pocket

Amazon's says this about the feature:

Amazon.com's Statistically Improbable Phrases, or "SIPs", show you the interesting, distinctive, or unlikely phrases that occur in the text of books in Search Inside the Book. Our computers scan the text of all books in the Search Inside program. If they find a phrase that occurs a large number of times in a particular book relative to how many times it occurs across all Search Inside books, that phrase is a SIP in that book.

A bit of Google'ing in the blogosphere seems to indicate this feature appeared in mid-March. I actually stumbled across this on my own when looking at Amazon.com.

I wonder if this feature will interfere with people who like to googlewhack?

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