CNN has a great retrospective about a half-century of the laser. And if you want to know how a laser differs from a flashlight, HowStuffWorks hosts a terrific essay about the laser's inner workings.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
The laser is 50 years old today
SHE DID IT! Jessica Watson returns home after solo sail around the world
The journey lasted more than 23,000 miles, including some time across the equator. During her trip Jessica consumed "32 cans of Spam, 64 cans of tuna, 32 cans of pineapple, 576 chocolate bars, and 290 freeze dried ready meals all alone in her small yacht." She was kept company by a crew of stuffed animals, and an assortment of timed care packages from her family that she opened per a set schedule. And when not navigating her ship "Ella's Pink Lady" Jessica kept busy keeping a blog that allowed everyone to follow the course of her journey.
It must be noted that for all that she has accomplished, Miss Watson is incredibly humble. Sharing the podium with Australian prime minster Kevin Rudd yesterday, Jessica shrugged off notions of being something more. "I don't consider myself a hero, I'm an ordinary girl. You don't have to be someone special to achieve something amazing, you've just got to have a dream, believe in it and work hard. I'd like to think I've proved that anything really is possible if you set your mind to it."
That's one lady who's got rare wisdom in addition to having notched up such a journey. And if ya ask me, they do make her a hero.
Congrats Jessica! Looking forward to reading the inevitable book about your adventure :-)
Awright, break's over...
I'd better get back to blogging in earnest. Stuff might be about to happen.
I am returning with some new features, which will be getting unrolled on The Knight Shift in the near future. Looking forward to seeing what kind of response they evoke :-)
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
"Across The Sea": Post-episode reaction to the antepenultimate LOST
This is probably the most mythos-packed episode of Lost, ever. And I've no doubt that many might not care much for that aspect...
...but I thought that "Across The Sea" was a very strong entry that answered bunches of questions while simultaneously not answering some that I was expecting and in fact added at least one big new question (with three and a half hours left to wrap up the tale of Lost and its myriad of mysteries).
"Across The Sea" was also the longest flashback episode in Lost history: the entire chapter takes place an indeterminate amount of time in the past, and that's bugging me. Is this meant to be pre-ancient Egypt? The hieroglyphics we've seen at the Temple and that this is apparently before the Statue of Tawaret was built would suggest it. That potentially places "Across The Sea" more than four thousand years before the present time. To quote Tommy Lee Jones from what has become one of my favorite movies: "Who are these people?"
I suppose that one of the reasons I'm wondering about how far back "Across The Sea" takes place, is that a bigtime mystery from Season 1 got answered tonight and it doesn't quite jibe with Jack's expert opinion on the matter. And speaking of that: I'll wager an RC Cola and a Moon Pie that just as many people will be outraged by tonight's episode as they were by "The Candidate" last week, accusing the showrunners of "cheating" with "Across The Sea" and all those theories that had abounded.
And what's the Man in Black's real name? Producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof have said he's got one and that it's important to the story. Well... considering how we now know what he wants and why he is the way he is (even though I don't understand why that happened, the "birth of the Smoke Monster" sequence was awesome) seems like his name would have been the cherry on top.
I'll give "Across The Sea" a 7 out of 10, and I'd love to give it an 8 but something... seemed lacking. Maybe I'll reconsider after watching it again (and again and again). And who knows: perhaps in retrospect this will prove to be a much-appreciated breather before "The End" a week and a half from tonight.
Only one more regular episode. Next Tuesday night: "What They Died For".
(And the teaser for next week's Lost was one of the best ever! Using "The End" by The Doors like that was a stroke of genius :-)
Monday, May 10, 2010
Wow, what happened to my blogging?
Not a new word from The Knight Shift's eclectic proprietor since Friday evening. Well, other than a comment or two on existing posts.
Let's just say that I had a great past few days and that God wound up teaching me a lot of new things and I was led to let His guidance continue to linger and instruct me past the usual end of the weekend. Or something like that.
That, and it was a great Mother's Day.
Looks like the stuff piled up in my absence. Where do I start?
Friday, May 07, 2010
Guess what I'm listening to right now?
It's the Lost Season 5 Soundtrack CD! It won't hit retail until this coming Tuesday, but a copy arrived here a few hours ago from somewhere among my nebuluous network of insiders and associates (or perhaps it was the strange time-shifting qualities of the Island that made it possible)...
I'm now on my second time of playing through it and once again Michael Giacchino has turned in a mesmerizing score (but those of us who watch Lost know that already :-) There are 23 tracks on this thing. The ones I've most been looking forward to having are "The Swinging Bendulum": the theme that was first introduced when we saw the Lamp Post in the episode "The Lie". That, and "The Tangled Web", better known as Jacob's theme. Unfortunately "The Tangled Web" does not trail off into the score that we heard when we got our first real view of the Statue of Tawaret in the prologue of "The Incident", which I thought was really majestic and mysterious. But hey: we do get the main vibe of Jacob's theme, so that's still fine. And there is plenty of reprising of "Dharmacide" (from the Season 3 soundtrack, which most people know as Ben's theme), which has also been one of my most favorite bits of music from the show.
Per my usual practice, I'm going to purchase a copy at retail this coming week (something that I did with Transformers: The Score twice when it came out a few years ago :-) to make up for having this one sent. And if you love Lost and the work of Michael Giacchino, I'm gonna heartily recommend that you buy it too. 'Tis well worth plunking down hard-earned coin for.
Micah Robertson found GUILTY of trespassing!
"Code Name Rodent" textified from the courthouse in Danville that Micah Robertson - son of local cult leader Johnny Robertson - has been found guilty of trespassing at Westover Baptist Church. Robertson won't get jail time (he could have gotten up to a year in the slammer) but he's been hit with a $100 fine.
More importantly, Micah Noel Robertson now has a criminal record. One directly stemming from his activities of harassment and intimidation as a member of the cult calling itself "Church of Christ" headed by his father, Johnny Robertson.
To the best of my knowledge, this is the first such legal mark against the cult. Will Johnny Robertson and his followers pay heed to it? Probably not.
More soon...
EDIT 4:48 p.m. EST: To all the members of the press who are finding this blog this afternoon.
Please be advised that Johnny Robertson, the father of guilty defendant Micah Robertson, is a convicted felon himself who has served time in prison for armed robbery. Johnny Robertson has also accused numerous churches in the area of child pornography (without any evidence), has stalked many people in their private residences and at their places of worship, and is the de facto owner of WGSR Star 47 in the sense that its general manager Charles Roark does anything that Robertson tells him to do. Among many other things that will no doubt be of interest to you.
For more please follow this link and feel free to search The Knight Shift for much more about this cult and its activities in this area.
EDIT 5:45 p.m. EST: Look! Criminal record!
Click to drastically embiggenize.
Micah Robertson can have this taken off his record after one year's probation. He also can't go to Westover Baptist Church again.
I'm going to make this commentary: that what Micah Robertson and the rest of his cult do, has nothing in common whatsoever with what Jesus and His followers are recorded as doing in the New Testament. Micah Robertson is fond of claiming that he and his fellow goons are "arguing" and "debating" just as the apostle Paul did.
Micah Robertson doesn't seem to realize that Christ, Peter, Paul and the rest were motivated out of love for others, not motivated out of debate for sake of debate. Without the requisite love, the words of Johnny Robertson and his followers are as clanging cymbals, meaning nothing.
I will also note, since I'm apparently getting quite an audience at the moment, that Johnny Robertson, his son Micah and the rest of their cult do not worship Jesus Christ. Rather they worship the water in the baptistery of their building with the "Church of Christ" sign hanging outside.
EDIT 11:16 p.m. EST: Pssst... hey, all of you members of the "Church of Christ" cult in Texas who are visiting this blog tonight:
Is it biblical or typical practice among your number for one of you to knowingly and consistently give huge amounts of God's money to an avowed atheist, bisexual habitual thief?
I know the Lord works in mysterious ways, but in my mind that's got to be pushing things.
I have been a might slack in blogging lately...
...so to make up for it, here's a shiny new photo of The Knight Shift's unofficial Page 3 girl: my beautiful cousin Lauryn!
And look: she's got another gorgeous friend, whose name I do not currently have on file. But who are you to complain? After all, you're getting two lovely ladies in one great shot!
By the way, the rumors are true: I am currently giving this blog a severe and long-awaited overhaul. However contrary to reports there will not be a pay-only section of Lauryn photos on The Knight Shift (although I would no doubt make a tidy sum from such a practice... but I am an ethical and upstanding publisher after all :-)
Tuesday, May 04, 2010
Elaine Marshall sez: Runoff would hurt Democrats' chance at Senate seat
Ya see, it's crap like this that makes me despise the Seventeenth Amendment and everything about it.
The United States Senate is supposed to represent the states. Up 'til 1913, it was the individual state legislatures that elected their respective senators. Then the Seventeenth Amendment was passed and made the Senate a popularly-elected office.
And that was the beginning of the real modern era of dirty politics and corruption, in my book.
We had our primary elections here in North Carolina today. Incumbent U.S. Senator Richard Burr won the Republican nomination. He'll be going against whoever comes out of the runoff set for June 22nd against Elaine Marshall and Cal Cunningham from the Democrat party.
Elaine Marshall ain't happy. And she wants Cal Cunningham to drop out already... for the good of the Democrats. From WRAL's website...
"I think not having a runoff is in the Democratic Party's long-range best interests," Marshall said. "(We should be) focusing on the target, which is getting this (Senate) seat for the Democratic Party. So, continuing to fight among ourselves does not get us to the point where we need to be."Ummmm... excuse me, Mrs. Marshall: the seat of United States Senator from North Carolina doesn't belong to the Democrat party, the Republican party or ANY party! It belongs to the people. It is meant to represent them as a state in the Senate.
Not this office, or any other, was ever meant by the Founding Fathers to be considered spoils of political war.
And I would be just as honked-off angry if any Republican had said likewise.
There is a disconnect between the people and the politicians in this country, friends and neighbors. You know it. I know it. And it's a damn shame that apparently so few will openly and brazenly admit that the vast majority of those involved in politics large and small do NOT deserve our vote!
But it's a fleeting, precious and scarce commodity when one of this sort does us the favor of opening his or her mouth and stating the obvious.
I have not chosen whether or not I will cast a vote for Richard Burr this November. But I can most definitely assure everyone that I will not be casting any vote for Elaine Marshall.
(Thanks for the heads-up and link to lifelong friend and brother in much Chad Austin, who is alleging that he will begin blogging again in the near future...)
ABC giving LOST finale 30 more minutes!
As if tonight's episode "The Candidate" wasn't enough Lost to blog about for one evening...
Now comes word that ABC will be expanding Lost's series finale by an extra thirty minutes. This gives "The End" a full two and a half hours to wind down what many already consider to be the defining mythology of dramatic television.
What prompted ABC to embiggen "The End"?
The producers of ABC's hit drama have shot so much crucial material for the show's hugely anticipated series finale that the network has agreed to extend the last episode by an extra half-hour.The night before "The End" airs, ABC will also broadcast the pilot episode that first aired on September 22nd, 2004, as one of those "enhanced" editions that pops up factoids about the story on the bottom of the screen.When the "Lost" finale airs Sunday, May 23, the episode will run from 9 to 11:30 p.m. The overrun will air instead of the local news, with the "Jimmy Kimmel Live: Aloha to Lost" post-finale special remaining at 11:30 p.m. ABC is expected to announce the plan on Tuesday night's episode of Kimmel.
I don't know if there's going to be anything like Lost that I'll be watching again anytime soon, seeing as how I'm so extremely finicky about how I choose to devote my precious time on television. The last time a show captivated me this much, it was Babylon 5 more than ten years ago. If there's nothing else on the horizon, this might be the most zeroed-in on the boob tube that I'll be for a long time to come...
...so at least for the weekend of May 22-23, I'll get to go out with a bang :-)
"The Candidate": Post-episode reaction to tonight's LOST
I'm going to be as un-spoilerish as I possibly can be after seeing this episode...
Goin' be LOTS of people all kinds of angry and crying tonight after watching "The Candidate". The Intertubes might just burst from the wrath being poured into keyboards between now and the next several hours.
At least with Blake's 7, Terry Nation waited until the absolutely final episode of that show to force viewers to watch the main characters gets killed off one by one. Lost still has four hours left before its final moments: what the $&@# could showrunners Cuse and Lindelof possibly have left to hurt us with?
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Whether alive or dead or undead, John Locke just can't stop playing with C-4. Jack has finally and firmly emerged as the man of faith: exactly the mirror opposite of what he started out as. And it was great to see Anthony Cooper again...
...but it was Hurley's breakdown in the final moments which is still resonating mightily in my gray matter. That... and one very particular tragic moment that we saw before the final commercial break... said it all.
Has any other show done so magnificent a performance at building up characters that we've come to care for, only to force us to... to watch as that happened to them?
Well played, Cuse and Lindelof. Well played.
But it's not "The End" yet.
And we shall see what lies "Across the Sea" next week.
Until then, "The Candidate" would get a 10 out of 10 from this viewer... except that it broke clean off after pegging the needle so hard.
To our friends in Nashville: You are in our prayers!
Nashville, Tennessee is currently the biggest disaster area in the entire country: never mind the oil spill in the Gulf and the attempted car bombing in Times Square. But somehow, most people in America other than those in the immediate area seem completely oblivious about it.
Nashville native Patten Fuqua addresses the unawareness to his city's plight - along with bold optimism - in a great piece at Section 303...
If you live outside of Nashville, you may not be aware, but our city was hit by a 500-year flood over the last few days. The national news coverage gave us 15 minutes, but went back to focusing on a failed car bomb and an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. While both are clearly important stories, was that any reason to ignore our story? It may not be as terror-sexy as a failed car bomb or as eco-sexy as an oil spill, but that’s no reason to be ignored.I was in Nashville a few years ago with Dad. We had a great time there (I went to try out for Jeopardy!, and so help me I like to think I'm knowledgeable about many things but fourteenth-century French opera is not one of them :-). A lot of the places that Fuqua mentions in this article, we visited. Opry Mills is where Opryland used to be. It's now a mall that pays homage to Nashville's legacy of country music.The Cumberland River crested at its highest level in over 80 years. Nashville had its highest rainfall totals since records began. People drowned. Billions of dollars in damage occurred. It is the single largest disaster to hit Middle Tennessee since the Civil War. And yet…no one knows about it.
Does it really matter? Eventually, it will…as I mentioned, there are billions of dollars in damage. It seems bizarre that no one seems to be aware that we just experienced what is quite probably the costliest non-hurricane disaster in American history. The funds to rebuild will have to come from somewhere, which is why people need to know. It’s hard to believe that we will receive much relief if there isn’t a perception that we need it.
But let’s look at the other side of the coin for a moment. A large part of the reason that we are being ignored is because of who we are. Think about that for just a second. Did you hear about looting? Did you hear about crime sprees? No…you didn’t. You heard about people pulling their neighbors off of rooftops. You saw a group of people trying to move two horses to higher ground. No…we didn’t loot. Our biggest warning was, “Don’t play in the floodwater.” When you think about it…that speaks a lot for our city. A large portion of why we were being ignored was that we weren’t doing anything to draw attention to ourselves. We were handling it on our own.
(snip)
Parts of Nashville that could never even conceivably be underwater were underwater. Some of them still are. Opry Mills and the Opryland Hotel are, for all intents and purposes, destroyed. People died sitting in standstill traffic on the Interstate. We saw boats going down West End. And, of course, we all saw the surreal image of the portable building from Lighthouse Christian floating into traffic and being destroyed when cars were knocked into it. I’m still having trouble comprehending all of it.
And yet…life will go on. We’ll go back to work, to school, to our lives…and we’ll carry on. In a little over a month, I’ll be on this website talking about the draft. In October, we’ll be discussing the new Predators’ season with nary a thought of these past few days. But in a way, they changed everyone in this town. We now know that that it can happen to us…but also know that we can handle it.
Because we are Nashville.
I'm having a very hard time picturing the place flooded and destroyed.
To the people of Nashville: you've a lot more friends out here than y'all can imagine. And you are definitely being held up in our thoughts and prayers as you have to go through this.
And I for one have no doubt that you will bounce back from this. Because, like the article says: you are Nashville.
Spider-Man, Jedi Knights, the Flash foil comic book thief
The friendly neighborhood webslinger was also assisted by several Jedi Knights and high-speed hero who rides the lightning, the Flash.
Here's the story from The Sun...
SPIDERMAN foiled a would-be thief as Jedi Knights blocked his escape route.Perhaps this chap will argue in court "But yer lordship I was told it was Free Comic Book Day..."No, it's not a comic book plot but the scene which unravelled in a Australian book store on Saturday.
Store owner Michael Baulderstone, dressed as Spiderman, spotted the man trying to steal an X-Men book worth $160 (£97).
The 45-year-old called for back-up and the hapless thief was surrounded by superheroes within seconds.
Mr Baulderstone said: "We had about 40 people dressed up as their favourite superheroes to celebrate International Free Comic Day, so he didn't have much of a choice but to hand the comic back after a little bit of a scuffle.
"Everyone in the store thought it was a play, that it was street theatre of some sort. It wasn't until I said 'call the police' that people started to realise.
"One of the funniest things about the incident was that I called for people to stand near the door and it just so happened we had people dressed as Jedi knights there blocking the exit, the Flash was there at some point too.
"It was a bit serious at the time, but now we're looking back laughing at what greeted police."
Congratulations to all the heroes involved :-)
A teaser for CLOVERFIELD sequel in front of IRON MAN 2?!?
Oh J.J. Abrams, you tease you...
Drew McWeeny of HitFix is the first to break the news about an ultra-myserious Bad Robot project that in true Abrams fashion is being kept under the darkliest cloak of secrecy possible.
Here's what McWeeny has found out: the teaser trailer for it is going to run with Iron Man 2, which comes out this Friday.
The title of it (if this is indeed the name of the film) is Super 8.
And it might... emphasis on "might" y'all... be the follow-up to 2008's Cloverfield.
I was already planning on seeing Iron Man 2 on Friday. Guess this will be even more reason to look forward to it (even if this doesn't turn out to be a Cloverfield sequel :-)
Final five hours of LOST begins tonight
It's been two weeks since the last fresh installment. Last Tuesday night was a repeat of "Ab Aeterno", the long-awaited and wildly acclaimed Richard Alpert backstory episode that aired a few weeks ago.
Tonight's episode, "The Candidate", is being said by those who have seen it already to be exceptionally good. And I'm hearing even better things about next week's "Across the Sea", which is said to answer a wazoo of questions (including the origin of the frozen donkey wheel, and how Jacob and his "friend" came to the Island). No, I don't know what those are: I'm discovering 'em along with everyone else. And don't e-mail me with answers either: I know when real Evil Incarnate is reading my blog, so it would be too easy to track you down too if I had to :-P
"The Candidate" airs at 9 p.m. EST, and is gonna be one of those episodes of Lost that is extra-long by two minutes. Plan your DVRs accordingly!
Monday, May 03, 2010
Greece as warning for the United States
It's the biggest financial bailout of a single country in history. I'm already hearing that the International Monetary Fund won't have enough coin to put Greece back on firm footing again (if it even had that). No doubt the IMF will soon afterward be coming to the United States government for Americans to pay "our fair share" of Europe's debt crisis.
But that's not what compels me to write about Greece's woes at the moment, friends and neighbors...
Greece is now forced to look at "demobilizing" much of its public sector jobs, which makes up A THIRD of that country's workforce!
This has not gone over well with many of the natives, who have responded with angry protests throughout that nation.
And I find it very easy to envision the United States following much the same track toward economic disaster.
Our own government is too big, too unwieldy, and "employs" way too many people. It's not as bad as 1/3rd of the workforce, but it's getting there. Hell, 1/7th of the economy is going to practically be federalized en masse when "healthcare reform" gets implemented.
We're spending money we no longer have, and we keep giving it away as "entitlements" (including to many people who aren't legally in this country to begin with).
I'm beginning to see the cracks. Pay attention and you can't miss 'em either. States and municipalities large and small are struggling to pay the bills. And yet we keep throwing money away to maintain a semblance of might and power.
The tree looks like it's yet standing tall and firm. But it's become rotted inside. And it's getting worse.
If you want a picture of what future awaits us here in America, you might wanna take a look at Greece. This could will be us sooner than later, if we don't rein in our fiscal policies.
North Carolina State scientist makes chip with 1 Terabit storage (WOW!!!)
And it might be coming to market in "five years or sooner!" according to Dr. Jay Narayan, the thinkin' dude who came up with it.
Future solid state disks may finally be able to catch up with the large capacities of mechanical hard drives, thanks to an ingenious project by a scientist at the North Carolina State University.If this new method overcomes the problems with limited reading/writing that current solid state storage has, in addition to that gads of space... well, that would pretty much be the last hard drive or iPod or whatever that you would ever need (and maybe even want :-)Dr Jay Narayan has developed a silicon storage chip that stores data in magnetic nanodots, or quantum dots; tiny structures that can measure just 6nm in diameter. Each nanoscale dot stores a single bit of data, but you can squeeze so many dots onto a small area of silicon that the university says that a single chip can “store an unprecedented amount of data.”
Dr Narayan says that the technology could enable you to “store over one billion pages of information in a chip that is one square inch.” That’s pages in terms of books, by the way, so how much is this in terms of bits and bytes?
Speaking to Thinq, Dr Narayan explained that "one terabit can store 250 million pages." According to Dr Narayan, "at 10nm per bit, 1cm square stores one terabit." As such, the billion pages would be made up of four square centimetres of silicon, providing four terabits of storage. That's basically 512GB in just one small chip, and you could squeeze in much more data than that if the dots had a diameter of just 6nm.
