On November 14, 1910, Eugene Ely became the first pilot to successfully launch a plane from a stationary ship. The Curtiss pusher airplane, one of the first models in the world to be built in any significant quantity, flew for two miles before Ely landed on a beach. Using the same aircraft, Ely landed on the USS Pennsylvania on January 18, 1911, while the ship was anchored at the San Francisco waterfront. He had to use a braking system made of ropes and sandbags, but he was able to quickly turn around and take off once again'
Thank you to The Atlantic
Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
What makes a good prophet? Showmanship and luck, but also a taste for secrecy and controversy. Most of all, be a blank slate: People see what they want to see... more
To Slow Aging, Remove Old Cells via Big Think by Big Think Editors
Researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota have unveiled a long-kept medical secret: What causes aging and the onset of age-related disease. After studying a group of mice, who because of a natural disease aged relatively fast, researchers concluded that our body’s oldest cells – called senescent cells because they no longer divide – may cause aging and age-related disease.
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What good is half a wing? via Boing Boing by Maggie Koerth-Baker
One of the most common arguments you'll hear against evolution (or, at least, one of the most common arguments I heard growing up amongst creationists) had to do with transitional forms. An eye is a valuable thing, this argument goes. But half an eye? That's just a disability.
Like many of the really common arguments against evolution, this one crumbles the minute you start to apply the slightest bit of fridge logic. Sure, half an eye is less useful than a full eye. (Or, more accurately, a clustering of light-sensitive cells don't have all the functionality of a modern eyeball and optic nerve system.) But, if most of the other creatures have no eyes, and you have a few light-sensitive cells, you've got an advantage. And an advantage is all it takes.
Now apply that to the evolution of birds. One of the cool things about this process is that it appears that feathers evolved before flight. In fact, feathers seems to have evolved rather independently of flight.
You might ask: What's the point of that? How are feathers an advantage if they can't help you fly? Is this just about looking pretty? Maybe. But on his blog, The Loom, Carl Zimmer presents another hypothesis. Feathers and wings, even without flight, might have given their owners a physical advantage over bare-skinned cousins. The birds in this video aren't flying. You can see that their feet don't leave the ground. But the act of flapping those feathers around helps them to walk up inclines that would otherwise be impassable walls. That's enough to escape a predator and live to breed another day. And it's also pretty damn astounding to watch.
And there's a fascinating Video on YouTube.
Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
John Milton would appreciate today's personal ads: seekers in meticulous revolt, like Satan, against the reality imposed on them... more
Happy birthday to a transport of delight
Middlesbrough marks the centenary of its famous bridge which still clanks to and fro on the quarter-hour.The comedian Terry Scott drove off it by mistake. More sedately, you can abseil from it for £3
Posted by Alan Sykes on The Northerner Blog from Guardian
Read all about it here
How tide predicting, analog computers won World War II via Boing Boing by Maggie Koerth-Baker
Without Lord Kelvin, there would have been no D-Day.
There's some very cool science history in the September issue of Physics Today, centering around a collection of analog computers, developed in the 19th century to predict tides. This was a job that human mathematicians could do, but the computing machines did the job faster and were less prone to small errors that had big, real-world implications.
Physics Today explains why the behaviour of tides was so important at D-Day and why the tide calculators were so important to Allied success.
You can read more about tide predicting machines on Wikipedia, and try out a Java simulation of Lord Kelvin's tide predicting machine at the American Mathematical Society website.
Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
The Loeb Classical Library – 518 volumes covering 1,400 years of Greek and Latin literature – is among the greatest accomplishments of modern scholarship... more
Dolphins and US (That’s Not to Say Dolphins ARE us) via Big Think by Peter Lawler
So there’s a lot of excitement about dolphins on BIG THINK these days. If we can figure out how to communicate with them, we can figure out how to communicate with the aliens (ETs) that are bound to be somewhere out there. But here’s one difference between dolphins and any ETs we’ll ever find out …
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Dinosaur feathers in amber via Boing Boing by David Pescovitz
This photo shows dinosaur feathers found in amber. Discovered in Alberta, Canada, the preserved plumage likely came from dinosaurs and birds that lived 75 to 80 million years ago. The University of Alberta researchers published their findings in the new issue of the journal Science.
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