brainrow

Via Boing Boing:

NASA attached a video camera to a Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) on a 2008 Space Shuttle launch. At the beginning of the video, we’re looking at part of the Shuttle’s external fuel tank and the underside of the Shuttle’s nose. We get a wider view when the boosters separate about two minutes into the flight. The video continues until the booster splashes down.

To me, the most astonishing thing about this video is the audio track, which grows quieter as the air grows thinner, and then louder again as the booster falls into denser air.

Spaceflight isn’t magic. Spaceships are physical things, built by humans. That becomes really apparent when you hear the creaking and clanking of the booster as it settles into the water.

Cartoonist Clay Bennett illustrates what divides Democrats and Republicans. (Click the image to see the full cartoon.)

Just got back from a Democratic fundraiser where President Obama spoke.

He said (paraphrasing), “When you want to go forward, you put it in D; when you want to go back, you put it in R.”

Gee, do you think he reads this blog?

Political cartoonist Pat Oliphant shows us the Republican election strategy for 2010. (Click on the image to see the whole cartoon.)

I agree with the little guy in the corner: try to snap out of it!

President Obama speaking at a Democratic Party fundraiser in Atlanta on Monday.

Republicans ran the country into the ditch, and did nothing to help get it back out.

Finally, we get this car out of the ditch … we’re about to start driving forward again, they say, “Hold on! We want the keys back!”

You can’t have the keys back! You don’t know how to drive!

And I do want to point out: When you get in your car, when you go forward, what do you do? You put it in “D”. When you want to go back, what do you do? You put it in “R”.

You don’t want to go into reverse, back in the ditch. We want to go forward. We gotta put it in “D”.

What will those darned activist judges say next? Cartoonist Don Asmussen may have the scoop. Some observers predict a massive cootie outbreak.

(Click on the image to see the entire cartoon.)

The first time a nuclear weapon was used in anger was 65 years ago today, when a uranium bomb of a type never before tested was dropped over Hiroshima, Japan. The bombing doubled as a test of the design. It worked.

The second time a nuclear weapon was used in anger was three days later, over Nagasaki, Japan. That was a plutonium bomb of a type tested just once, less than a month before, in the New Mexico desert. That design worked, too.

The third time a nuclear weapon was used in anger hasn’t happened yet, 65 years later.

I’m not sure what that tells us, but I sure hope it means something.

Ever since we were born, we of the Baby Boom generation have been followed by entrepreneurs ready to cater to our every need or wish. Now that we’re getting old, there’s a new lifestyle magazine about death in England.

Look for a booming industry here in the United States soon, catering to the upscale death market.