Poaching – not pears, not birds, but plants. In the feed-me-Seymour vein of green and growing things, these are the
plants that eat things – too bad they aren’t able to defend themselves from people and habitat loss. But wait! There’s help on the way.
[more inside]
posted by mightshould
on Feb 24, 2009 -
9 comments
We already
talked (self-link, sorta) about
Zeitgeist: The Movie. Its author, Peter Joseph, recently released
Zeitgeist: Addendum. (beware: last two links are two hour movies) This time, it’s about money and debt, scarcity and resources. The first, financial part may look like an extended
Ron Paul ad, but then there’s a sudden turn towards resource-based utopian techno-communalism, and an endorsement for
The Venus project. It seems to me like "Kropotkinian anarchism meets The Matrix". In these
rough times, is it time for a big leap? [Also announced:
The Zeitgeist Movement, still not active]
posted by Baldons
on Oct 7, 2008 -
21 comments
Road trip to venus!
The
Venus Express was
launched on Nov. 9th, 2005 from
Baikonur, the
historic spaceport in Kazakhstan. It is the first Venus probe sent by the
ESA , and you can
follow it's progress on the six month journey to the planet.
Exploration of
Venus begin in 1962 with
Mariner 2, the first space probe to fly by another planet and other flights, including the Russian
Venera 7, which was the first probe to land on another planet. The Soviets took quite an interest in Venus and
dominated the exploration of the planet through the '70s and '80s. A lot of the images recorded by those early craft have been
reprocessed with modern technology.
In the early '90s the
Magellan spacecraft spent several years
mapping the surface of Venus, providing us
many,
many,
many images and
3D maps of
the planet.
As for
Venus Express, it's goal is to spend two years making detailed studys of
the planet's clouds and atmosphere.
posted by Brandon Blatcher
on Nov 13, 2005 -
19 comments
Cartography is a skill pretty much taken for granted now, but it
wasn't always
so. Accurate maps were once prized state secrets, laborious efforts that cost a fortune and took years (or even decades) to complete.
How things have changed. (Yours now,
$110) It took almost 500 years to map North America, but it's only taken one tenth of that to map just everything else. In the last 50 years, we've been able to create acurate atlases of
two planets and
one moon (with a
second in the works). Actually,
we've done a lot more than that. We're actually running out of things to map.
Maybe Not.
posted by absalom
on Jan 27, 2005 -
17 comments
Speaking of Transit Watching. I found it really interesting to see the collection of AP photos about the transit of Venus today. Apparently the compelling story is not so much the science (planets orbit the sun, got it), but the global spectacle. It's a bit of an anomaly of late, but Venus watching seems to be something the whole world peacefully agrees is a good thing. [
View the viewers in
Abu Dhabi,
Azraq,
Bangkok,
Beijing,
Cairo,
Hamburg,
Hong Kong,
Jakarta,
Kuala Lumpur,
Kuwait,
La Linea,
Lebanon,
London,
Madras,
Minsk,
Nairobi,
New Delhi,
New York,
Pakistan
Paris,
Potsdam,
Pretoria,
Rome,
St. Petersburg,
Sydney,
Tehran, and
Yokohama
]
posted by kokogiak
on Jun 8, 2004 -
7 comments
Chasing Venus Transits of Venus occur every 130 years or so when Venus can be observed passing across the face of the sun.
Chasing Venus is an online exhibition by Smithsonian Institution Libraries that tells the story of how the transit has been observed since the 17th century, with
early observations in England, illustrated accounts of
expeditions by 18th century astronomers to various parts of the world, and
early uses of photography to record observations in the 19th century. Includes links to
animations of transits reconstructed from Victorian photographs, and
details of a lecture series on Thursdays in April and May (first one April 8). The first transit since 1882 is this year.
posted by carter
on Apr 4, 2004 -
5 comments
Who owns the moon? Apparently
these people do, and they’re selling it off acre by acre. They are “The founders and leaders of the extraterrestrial real estate market.” Do we really need a Galactic Government with an embassy on the moon? I guess
The Federation had to start somewhere. This just begs the question, “Does Venus have its own laws?”
posted by archimago
on Oct 23, 2002 -
17 comments
The
Hottentot Venus is
going home. An African woman named Saarjite Baartman, apparently EXTREMELY overendowed in the buttock/labia department (second floor, next to men's shoes, watch the doors), she did the freakshow thing in Europe for five years in the early 19th c., was edited down at death to her relevant bits and pickled for posterity. Ever been to an actual state-fair freakshow? I saw the alligator lady in the late 70s somewhere in Kentucky. A morally complicated experience.
posted by luser
on Feb 21, 2002 -
19 comments
