Posts Tagged ‘Sputnik’
“By preventing dangerous asteroid strikes, we can save millions of people, or even our entire species”*…
The probability of an major asteroid strike on earth at any given moment is low, but the consequences could be catastrophic… and the odds of it happening at some point grow frighteningly large. Happily, the B612 Foundation and Asteroid Institute has developed a way of identifying potentially dangerous asteroids so that they can be deflected by NASA…
Protecting the planet: The Asteroid Institute, @b612foundation.
* Rusty Schweickart, astronaut and co-founder of B612
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As we dodge disaster, we might recall that it was on this date in 1957 that the space age– and the space race– began in earnest: Sputnik 1 was launched by the Soviet Union into earth orbit.
“Whenever a toddler sees a pile of blocks, he wants to tear it down”*…
Jonathan M. Guberman made a set of alphabet blocks featuring iconic images of the things he and his wife were looking forward to sharing with their newborn son. Though Guberman started before his son was born, it took until his son was nearly a year old to finish these 36 1.5″ blocks. Here’s the full set of blocks on Flickr and the full list of references included on the blocks.
Quoth Jonathan:
There are 36 blocks — the English alphabet and ten digits — showing 134 images of people, animals, monsters, robots, vehicles, organizations, devices, tools, and objects from some of our favourite movies, TV shows, books, comics, video games, poems, and sculptures, as well as a few from the real world for good measure (and a couple not-so-favourites for comic relief/alphabetical exigency; I’m looking at you, Zardoz). The only real rule I followed in choosing subjects was trying to maintain an even gender balance.
Read the full story, and examine the blocks, at the ever-enlightening Laughing Squid.
* J.J. Abrams
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As we get in touch with our inner nerd, we might recall that it was on this date in 1958 that, as part of its participation in the International Geophysical Year, the U.S. launched its first satellite, the Explorer I— following the launch the prior year of the first two satellites, the Soviet Union’s Sputnik I and II, and beginning the space race.
A Symbolic Achievement…
source: PaperBlog
Like the ampersand, the “@” symbol is not strictly a mark of punctuation; rather, it is a logogram or grammalogue, a shorthand for the word “at.” Even so, it is as much a staple of modern communication as the semicolon or exclamation mark, punctuating email addresses and announcing Twitter usernames. Unlike the ampersand, though, whose journey to the top took two millennia of steady perseverance, the at symbol’s current fame is quite accidental. It can, in fact, be traced to the single stroke of a key made almost exactly four decades ago*…
The whole story is @ Shady Characters (“The Secret Life of Punctuation”).
* Before it became the domain address marker– and the overall symbol– for email, “@” was used to denote the unit price (or weight) of an item: 10 books @ $1.00 would total $10.00… the symbol is believed to have originated with medieval scribes who used the symbol to eliminate the two extra pen strokes that would have been necessary to write “at.”
As we check our spam filters, we might recall that it was on this date in 1958, in reaction to the Soviet’s Sputnik success the prior year, that Congress passed the legislation establishing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)… the Space Race was on. (ARPA [now DARPA]– the sponsor of the work that spawned the internet and birthed the “@” in the form in which we all now use it– was born the same year out of the same concern over Soviet scientific progress.)
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