excerpt from the latest cooltools newsletter…

“A rule of thumb is a homemade recipe for making a guess. It is an easy-to-remember guide that falls somewhere between a mathematical formula and a shot in the dark. Rules of thumb are a kind of tool. They help you appraise a problem or situation. They make it easier to consider the subtleties of the topic at hand; they give you a feel for a subject. A rule of thumb is not a joke or a ditty. It is not a Murphy’s Law. Murphy says that things will take longer than we think; a rule of thumb says how much longer. While a proverb says that a stitch in time saves nine, a rule of thumb says to allow one inch of yarn for every stitch on a knitting needle.”

link to RulesofThumb.org

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an innovative, ballast-free airship technology created by Aeros Aero­nautical Systems, based outside Los Angeles. The Aeroscraft ML866’s potentially revolutionary Control of Static Heaviness system compresses and decompresses helium in the 210-ft.-long envelope, changing this proposed sky yacht’s buoyancy during takeoff and landings,

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and another…”Aeroscraft ML866 is a proposed new type of airborne vehicle that combines bouyancy (as in an airship) with dynamic lift (as in an aeroplane or helicoptor).”

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The Dover, PA (US) schoolboards’s attempt to get ‘Intelligent Design’ equal science-class time with the Theory of Evolution has been overruled, for now.
no mention of any flying monsters, though…
link to Time story

the apod editors pick the twelve best for 2007
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nice collection of vintage sci-fi graphics…

….artwork from rather unlikely sources: Soviet & Eastern Bloc “popular tech & science” magazines, German, Italian, British fantastic illustrations and promotional literature - all from the Golden Age of Retro-Future (from 1930s to 1970s).

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A 1929 advertisement for Lucky Strike cigarettes, from The 100 Greatest Advertisements 1852–1958, by Julian Lewis Watkins

“Light a Lucky and you’ll never miss sweets that make you fat”—Constance Talmadge, Charming Motion Picture Star

Instead of eating between meals … instead of fattening sweets … beautiful women keep youthful slenderness these days by smoking Luckies. The smartest and loveliest women of the modern stage take this means of keeping slender … when others nibble fattening sweets, they light a Lucky!.

Lucky Strike is a delightful blend of the world’s finest tobaccos. These tobaccos are toasted—a costly extra process which develops and improves the flavour. That’s why Luckies are a delightful alternative for fattening sweets. That’s why there’s real health in Lucky Strike. That’s why folks say: “It’s good to smoke Luckies.”

For years this has been no secret to those men who keep fit and trim. They know that Luckies steady their nerves and do not harm their physical condition. They know that Lucky Strike is the favorite cigarette of many prominent athletes, who must keep in good shape. They respect the opinions of 20,679 physicians who maintain that Luckies are less irritating to the throat than other cigarettes.

A reasonable proportion of sugar in the diet is recommended, but the authorities are overwhelming that too many fattening sweets are harmful and that too many such are eaten by the American people. So, for moderation’s sake we say:—

“REACH FOR A LUCKY INSTEAD OF A SWEET.”

all save one have disappeared and no wonder - all rope, grass and wood…

the suspension bridges were familiar and vital links in the vast empire of the Inca, as they had been to Andean cultures for hundreds of years before the arrival of the Spanish in 1532. The people had not developed the stone arch or wheeled vehicles, but they were accomplished in the use of natural fibers for textiles, boats, sling weapons — even keeping inventories by a prewriting system of knots.

So bridges made of fiber ropes, some as thick as a man’s torso, were the technological solution to the problem of road building in rugged terrain. By some estimates, at least 200 such suspension bridges spanned river gorges in the 16th century.

link to NY Times article

wrapping up time, space and gravity with “An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything” by Garrett Lisi, 39.

He has high hopes that his new theory could provide what he says is a “radical new explanation” for the three decade old Standard Model, which weaves together three of the four fundamental forces of nature: the electromagnetic force; the strong force, which binds quarks together in atomic nuclei; and the weak force, which controls radioactive decay.
Lisi’s inspiration lies in the most elegant and intricate shape known to mathematics, called E8 - a complex, eight-dimensional mathematical pattern with 248 points first found in 1887, but only fully understood by mathematicians this year after workings, that, if written out in tiny print, would cover an area the size of Manhattan.

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winners in the fifth annual Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge display images and video…

Ottesen uses only a black background, a Canon ELPH 7-megapixel digital point-and-shoot camera, and natural lighting to photograph many of the plants she encounters in her work. Her winning photo shows a piece of Irish moss she collected off the coast of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, while cataloging the use of kelp products as fertilizers for a sustainable agriculture experiment.

link to the top projects of the challenge

Our son, Emmett, just turned one year old this Sept, and he is a beautiful and busy boy.
While i have been having a ton of fun with him, the posting on sparelinkage has been fairly irregular….i will try to continue to add to this collection as i come across innaresting stuff, so for anyone who has looked in the past - keep checking it out.
There are lots of entertaining things in the archive, too.
thanks for your attention, and i hope to keep on…
E

Is this what a sonic boom looks like? When an airplane travels at a speed faster than sound, density waves of sound emitted by the plane cannot precede the plane, and so accumulate in a cone behind the plane. When this shock wave passes, a listener hears all at once the sound emitted over a longer period: a sonic boom.

link to APOD

the unique problems of landing heavy, human-carrying vehicles on the Martian surface haven’t been totally worked out yet…

The real problem is the combination of Mars’ atmosphere and the size of spacecraft needed for human missions. So far, our robotic spacecraft have been small enough to enable at least some success in reaching the surface safely. But while the Apollo lunar lander weighed approximately 10 metric tons, a human mission to Mars will require three to six times that mass, given the restraints of staying on the planet for a year. Landing a payload that heavy on Mars is currently impossible, using our existing capabilities.

link to article @ Universe Today

a collection of WW2 bomber nose-cone art
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if maps are your thing….

where on earth was middle-earth….?

…..as Tolkien states in the prologue to ‘The Lord of the Rings’, it would be fruitless to look for geographical correspondences, as “Those days, the Third Age of Middle-earth, are now long past, and the shape of all lands has been changed…” And yet, that’s exactly what Peter Bird attempts with the map here shown. Bird, a professor of Geophysics and Geology at UCLA, has overlapped the map of Middle-earth with one of Europe….

link to the post from strange maps

Germany: The Melander family of Bargteheide
Food expenditure for one week: 375.39 Euros or $500.07
Favorite foods: fried potatoes with onions, bacon and herring, fried noodles with eggs and cheese, pizza, vanilla pudding

Chad: The Aboubakar family of Breidjing Camp
Food expenditure for one week: 685 CFA Francs or $1.23
Favorite foods: soup with fresh sheep meat

link to what the world eats - a photo essay from the book, ‘the hungry planet’

REMBRANDT VAN RIJN (1606–1669)
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In the Second World War people at home with loved ones spread far away around the world with the forces were fed a diet, often government backed, of “how it works” or “how we will win” technical information leaflets. Very often these would have contained superb cut away and sectioned diagrams, showing the “insides” or as was said at the time “the works!” of the machines…..

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explore

fundraising site with great drawings created from 3-word clues…

You get the original piece of art, 6″ x 6″, signed, of a robot or monster or both (your choice), as defined by three words you provide, like “Green, tenctale, airplane.” or “Tiny, hotdog, blue”. An image of one robot or monster is 25 bucks, a picture of 2 things, either robot or monster, is 40. Your art will be drawn as per your specifications and mailed in a flat mailer to your address.

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