For more of the wonderfully wacked work of Marco and his crew, visit the website of Route 64 Vintage!
The house, designed by SeARCH and Christian Muller Architects, includes "all the facilities a common house has, such as a guest room, an entertainment area, but also 'specialized' interiors like an underground pathway. The entrance is a wide oval opening that you are driven to by some traditional stairs made in stone. Large windows make it noticeable and draw attention to the inside décors- that is when the people living there are up for some company."
Dig down here for more photos of this amazing house!
If further experiments continue to bear good results, it could prove to be a much-needed breakthrough in the longstanding effort to produce cheap, clean fusion energy.
From the article...
A new experiment that reproduces the magnetic fields of the Earth and other planets has yielded its first significant results. The findings confirm that its unique approach has some potential to be developed as a new way of creating a power-producing plant based on nuclear fusion — the process that generates the sun's prodigious output of energy.This will be a helluva awesome development, folks. Fusion is darn nearly the most ideal form of energy that's possible for mass power needs. And wouldn't it be fun to have a real Mr. Fusion producing electricity for our homes? :-)Fusion has been a cherished goal of physicists and energy researchers for more than 50 years. That's because it offers the possibility of nearly endless supplies of energy with no carbon emissions and far less radioactive waste than that produced by today's nuclear plants, which are based on fission, the splitting of atoms (the opposite of fusion, which involves fusing two atoms together). But developing a fusion reactor that produces a net output of energy has proved to be more challenging than initially thought.
The new results come from an experimental device on the MIT campus, inspired by observations from space made by satellites. Called the Levitated Dipole Experiment, or LDX, a joint project of MIT and Columbia University, it uses a half-ton donut-shaped magnet about the size and shape of a large truck tire, made of superconducting wire coiled inside a stainless steel vessel. This magnet is suspended by a powerful electromagnetic field, and is used to control the motion of the 10-million-degree-hot electrically charged gas, or plasma, contained within its 16-foot-diameter outer chamber.
The results, published this week in the journal Nature Physics, confirm the counter-intuitive prediction that inside the device's magnetic chamber, random turbulence causes the plasma to become more densely concentrated — a crucial step to getting atoms to fuse together — instead of becoming more spread out, as usually happens with turbulence. This "turbulent pinching" of the plasma has been observed in the way plasmas in space interact with the Earth's and Jupiter's magnetic fields, but has never before been recreated in the laboratory.
Most experiments in fusion around the world use one of two methods: tokamaks, which use a collection of coiled magnets surrounding a donut-shaped chamber to confine the plasma, or inertial fusion, using high-powered lasers to blast a tiny pellet of fuel at the device's center. But LDX takes a different approach. "It's the first experiment of its kind," says MIT senior scientist Jay Kesner, MIT's physics research group leader for LDX, who co-directs the project with Michael E. Mauel, professor of applied physics at Columbia University's Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science.
The results of the experiment show that this approach "could produce an alternative path to fusion," Kesner says, though more research will be needed to determine whether it would be practical. For example, though the researchers have measured the plasma's high density, new equipment still needs to be installed to measure its temperature, and ultimately a much larger version would have to be built and tested.
Kesner cautions that the kind of fuel cycle planned for other types of fusion reactors such as tokamaks, which use a mixture of two forms of "heavy" hydrogen called deuterium and tritium, should be easier to achieve and will likely be the first to go into operation. The deuterium-deuterium fusion planned for devices based on the LDX design, if they ever become practical, would likely make this "a second-generation approach," he says.
When operating, the huge LDX magnet is supported by the magnetic field from an electromagnet overhead, which is controlled continuously by a computer based on precision monitoring of its position using eight laser beams and detectors. The position of the half-ton magnet, which carries a current of one million amperes (compared to a typical home's total capacity of 200 amperes) can be maintained this way to within half a millimeter. A cone-shaped support with springs is positioned under the magnet to catch it safely if anything goes wrong with the control system.
Levitation is crucial because the magnetic field used to confine the plasma would be disturbed by any objects in its way, such as any supports used to hold the magnet in place. In the experimental runs, they recreated the same conditions with and without the support system in place, and confirmed that the confinement of the plasma was dramatically increased in the levitated mode, with the supports removed. With the magnet levitated, the central peak of plasma density developed within a few hundredths of a second, and closely resembled those observed in planetary magnetospheres (such as the magnetic fields surrounding Earth and Jupiter).
But what Brad Miller, our representative in Congress, is doing to "help" make that happen is horribly wrong.
Miller has made a House Appropriations Request for this fiscal year that would allocate more than two and a half million dollars for the McMichael Civic Center. Here's a link to the PDF file of the request. I also took the liberty of converting it into a JPEG...
Can anyone tell me where in this request has Rep. Miller pointed to the place in the Constitution that allows for this sort of expenditure from the public treasury? 'Cuz I sure as hell can't find it.
Word on the street is that Brad Miller himself will be in Rockingham County in a few weeks to announce this misappropriation in person. I'll let you decide, friends and neighbors, if this smacks too much of election year pork-barrelin'.
Well, I for one believe that the people of this county should tell our congress-critter to take the money back to Washington... 'cuz we can and should be able to fund the McMichael Civic Center on our own! Yeah it might take a bit longer to see it come to fruition. But we'll be able to say that we did it ourselves. And that will do a helluva lot more good about this county's image and commercial viability than if we had sucked up to the tit that Miller is offering.
Congressman Brad Miller, heed the wisdom that Davey Crockett learned from Horatio Bunce: It is NOT yours to give!!
(Special thanks to Jeffrey Sykes for the heads-up.)
But look at Dawn now, in this screen cap from the short film Ben Pickle...
Dawn, girl... what did they do to you?! It's like Rick Baker and WETA teamed up to do the makeup on this movie.
Okay, I've got to see Ben Pickle now. I've also got a strange pic of Dawn with glowing eyes. This kind of wild material is screaming for context of some sort :-)
I'm not seeing how one is any better than the other.
Time to have some fun with them again...
Earlier tonight it was Micah Robertson talking about satanic sex (bear in mind that this is the same young man who recently went on a weeks-long spate obsessing about Abraham's libido) and Mark McMinnis, who for once didn't do his whiny act about "...those Baptists made me lose my job in Danville schools!"
But it was the 9 p.m. show with James Oldfield that was so rife with hypocrisy that I literally laughed out loud too many times to count.
James Oldfield - the second banana and second cousin of cult leader Johnny Robertson - ranted for the entire hour about... some caller last week, apparently... who was insisting that Jesus had to be referred to by a specific name in order to be saved. Oldfield actually condemned this man's insistence upon ritualistic salvation demanding the following "right" methods as being "twisted" and perverted.
For James Oldfield or anyone from this cult to damn anyone for believing in doing a certain thing to be saved... is like King Kong condemning Curious George for being a monkey.
James Oldfield, Johnny Robertson, Mark McMinnis, and Robertson the Lesser don't do anything BUT damn EVERYONE ELSE for not following Christ as "they" think is proper. Funny thing: for all the airtime they have on WGSR, they have never done anything to show that they follow Christ. They can't even prove that they're in a real church anyway: they spend all their time knocking others.
Oldfield and his droogs don't want salvation by grace. They want salvation by religion: their religion. They are enslaved to their own works and their fallen nature demands that they enslave others even more cruelly.
It was almost hilarious to behold. But I was also reminded of what another James - namely James, the brother of our Lord - would have to say about James Oldfield of the Eden Church of Christ...
"...he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does."'Course, that could be said of everyone in the evil cult that is Johnny Robertson's "Church of Christ".-- James 1:8
(And why is Johnny condemning Martinsville cable channel BTW when he himself is doing business with a s***** d******? B******* perhaps?)
Y'know, I've always thought that McCain-Feingold was horrible, horrible legislation...
...but I'm also rather troubled by the idea that corporations, labor unions etc. as artificial organisms en masse should have the same rights as actual, living citizens.
In the tense new world of air travel, we're stripped of shoes, told not to take too much shampoo on board, frowned on if we crack a smile.Plenty more of the article at the link above.The last thing we expect is a joke from a Transportation Security Administration screener - particularly one this stupid.
Rebecca Solomon is 22 and a student at the University of Michigan, and on Jan. 5 she was flying back to school after holiday break. She made sure she arrived at Philadelphia International Airport 90 minutes before takeoff, given the new regulations.
She would be flying into Detroit on Northwest Airlines, the same city and carrier involved in the attempted bombing on Christmas, just 10 days before. She was tense.
What happened to her lasted only 20 seconds, but she says they were the longest 20 seconds of her life.
After pulling her laptop out of her carry-on bag, sliding the items through the scanning machines, and walking through a detector, she went to collect her things.
A TSA worker was staring at her. He motioned her toward him.
Then he pulled a small, clear plastic bag from her carry-on - the sort of baggie that a pair of earrings might come in. Inside the bag was fine, white powder.
She remembers his words: "Where did you get it?"
Two thoughts came to her in a jumble: A terrorist was using her to sneak bomb-detonating materials on the plane. Or a drug dealer had made her an unwitting mule, planting coke or some other trouble in her bag while she wasn't looking.
She'd left her carry-on by her feet as she handed her license and boarding pass to a security agent at the beginning of the line.
Answer truthfully, the TSA worker informed her, and everything will be OK.
Solomon, 5-foot-3 and traveling alone, looked up at the man in the black shirt and fought back tears.
Put yourself in her place and count out 20 seconds. Her heart pounded. She started to sweat. She panicked at having to explain something she couldn't.
Now picture her expression as the TSA employee started to smile.
Just kidding, he said. He waved the baggie. It was his.
And so she collected her things, stunned, and the tears began to fall.
This TSA screener is a total bastard. I cannot put it any plainer than that. And there are far too many of them in the TSA's employ.
(Feel free to post the inevitable Chuck Norris jokes in the comments.)
And now a group of Italian scientists are planning to "breed back" the aurochs.
I wonder how well-done aurochs tastes with A1 Steak Sauce.
Some are saying that Brown won because "the independents are angry". Which in my mind begs the question: was Ted Kennedy only winning those unconscionably numerous terms of office because he benefited from straight-ticket voting: something that, to the best of my knowledge, wasn't an option in yesterday's election? Seems to me that's an insult to ol' Teddy's memory: as if openly admitting that he couldn't win election on his own merit but rather had to ride the coattails of the Democrat Party.
I've never been in favor of allowing straight-ticket voting anyway. If you're going to the polls to cast a ballot, you should be compelled to think long and hard about who exactly you're voting for. Voting is a right, but it's one bought with too much precious blood to be an overly convenient one.
Anyhoo, the real reason why I'm not really feelin' anything one way or the other about this election is because in the saner world of another time, this election wouldn't have happened and Ted Kennedy likely would never have gotten close to a Senate seat anyway. Because before the Seventeenth Amendment was passed, senators were elected by the state legislatures! The Founders meant for the House to represent the people and for the Senate to represent the states. It's the way it was until 1912 when the Seventeenth was ratified and senators were elected by popular vote.
Sure, there were problems with the previous method of electing senators. But you tell me: could it possibly have been any worse than the dirty, corrupt slugfest that modern Senate campaigns have become?
Consider this also: would something like "health care reform" stand even a remote chance of becoming an inssue in a Senate made up of members who were sent their by their respective states, rather than be installed (for lack of a better word) by political parties?
The Seventeenth Amendment has proven to be a failure more spectacular than Prohibition. It should be repealed and the election of senators returned to the individual state legislatures.
I wish Scott Brown all the best as he begins serving the people of Massachusetts in the United States Senate. But the fact of the matter remains: those of his caliber deserve a more dignified way of coming to the Senate.
And we the people deserve that as well.
Every year on Poe's birthday of January 19th, in the very early morning hours, a mysterious figure has come out of the darkness to visit the original burial site of Poe. The Poe Toaster leaves roses and a bottle of cognac, and then disappears just as quickly as he (or she) arrived? Nobody knows who this person is. And thankfullly the Poe Toaster has been left un-harassed during the course of the tradition: there should be some mystery still left in this world, yes?
But this year, for the first time ever, the Poe Toaster failed to come.
Jeff Jerome, the curator of the Edgar Allan Poe House, said this morning that he'll give the Poe Toaster two more years to come again before declaring that the tradition has apparently been concluded.
Here's hoping that the Poe Toaster, wherever he or she is, is well and that the commemoration of Edgar Allan Poe will continue for years still to come.
Lord willing, I'll wind up even half as good as Dad is at this craft :-)
Here it is!
Poor Wilfred :-P
(And thanks to Lee Shelton for passing this along!)
Sure, it's terrific for turning human actors into big blue alien Na'vis. But the photorealistic CGI technology James Cameron perfected for Avatar could easily be used for other, even more mind-blowing purposes—like, say, bringing Humphrey Bogart back to life, or making Clint Eastwood look 35 again. "How about another Dirty Harry movie where Clint looks the way he looked in 1975?" Cameron suggests. "Or a James Bond movie where Sean Connery looks the way he did in Doctor No? How cool would that be?"In the article at EW.com Cameron also talks about the ethical line that has to be respected in regards to this sort of thing, like how it can't be billed as the real Marilyn Monroe and Humphrey Bogart if they were put into a movie together with the advanced CGI.In a way, Cameron has already pulled off this trick: Sigourney Weaver appears to drop 20 years whenever she slips her consciousness into an alien body in Avatar. But Cameron's facial scanning process is so precise—zeroing in to the very pores of an actor's skin—that virtually any manipulation is possible. You may not be able to totally replace an actor—"There’s no way to scan what's underneath the surface to what the actor is feeling," the director notes—but it is now theoretically possible to extend careers by digitally keeping stars young pretty much forever.
...and I guess Johnny Depp really can get his chance to play Captain Jack Sparrow for the rest of his life :-)
