Posts by Michael MacAskill

SpaceX Falcon 9 and Dragon cleared to hoist real live American astronauts into space

Re: Space Taxis

The Commercial Crew Contract between NASA and SpaceX is for six further missions after this demo flight. Not sure of the timeframe they are expected to be done in - I guess that was all a bit unknown when the contract was awarded nearly six years ago.

Australian volcano starts to blow

Odd choice of domain name

Strange that they use .aq for that website, as the Heard and McDonald Islands have their very own TLD: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.hm

and there isn't much under it except for a few tumbleweeds.

Ms. Gates: 'Bill does not use a Mac'

iPod and iPhone

The 2003 date was changed in the article, but it has always said: " iPods and iPhones are two things we don't get for our kids"

Pedantry

Think that Vogue article was actually from 2009. In 2003, the iPhone didn't yet exist. But maybe the Tardis is allowed to cross the Gates' threshold.

Pacific islands growing not shrinking, says old study

Perhaps you could bother finding your own evidence but....

Well, actually Taiwan is west of New Zealand, and that is the ORIGIN point of the Austronesian language group. New Zealand was the southern limit of Polynesian/Austronesian expansion, but certainly not the western limit.

Nice map here showing the distribution of Austronesian languages, and yes, it includes Madagascar:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austronesian_peoples

Not that Wikipedia is a definitive source, but you'll find that the main claims there are in broad agreement with the scientific/historical consensus.

You missed an era rather than an episode...

There is NO linguistic and cultural evidence supporting settlement of Polynesia from South America. And there is certainly no genetic evidence.

Heyerdahl's ideas were crackpot views from the 70s that don't survive examination in the light of the evidence. He may have paddled about in the seas in his raft, but we now know conclusively (from linguistic, cultural, genetic, domesticated animal, and pottery evidence) that the settlement of Polynesia originated from Asia (and modern day Taiwan in particular).

There is evidence of CONTACT between Polynesia and South America: the sweet potato (known as the kumara in new Zealand) was a staple food crop in Polynesia but originated in South America. But given the proven sea-faring abilities of the Polynesians at the time, the most likely explanation is that they travelled to South America and brought the kumara back themselves. Remember, these are the same guys who also settled as far West as Madagascar, so reaching South America in the East is not that unlikely.

Cheers

Man punts 'prototype' iPhones on eBay

Your eyes

Yes, its a version of the well known Hermann grid illusion:

mathworld.wolfram.com/ScintillatingGridIllusion.html

Ares I manned rocket section explodes in testing

@ Mike Richards

The first Ares test IS scheduled for this year. Ares 1 X is a test of the first stage solid rocket. The rest of the stack (ie second stage and crew exploration vehicle) will just be dummy mass though. See PDF from NASA:

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/257539main_aresIx_fs_070808.pdf

It goes on to say :

"The Ares I-X test is part of a larger flight test program that will include five tests of the Orion launch abort system between 2008 and 2011, a follow-on Ares I-Y test in 2012, and an integrated test of both the launch vehicle and spacecraft, called Orion 1, in early 2013. "

Microsoft Songsmith ad trumps Seinfeld shocker

May not actually be the worst Microsoft ad ever...

You want cringeworthy? Try this ad that MS designed for internal use only, presumably (and wisely) not designed to see the wider light of day:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPv8PPl7ANU

Brought to you by Bruce ServicePack and the Vista Street Band (it gets worse).

Featuring lyrics such as:

"See what's on employees' laptops

with AIS and MDOP"

and the chorus

"Vista,gotta get me some".

In more enlightened countries, people would be executed for this sort of thing.

Aussie has answer to save Earth from asteroid attack

Hit by a shotgun

There really is a lot of Wile E Coyote physics going on here: it doesn't matter when it is blown up: the centre of mass will remain in the same orbit around the sun. If blown up in 2011, the radioactive cloud of remnants will still rendezvous with the Earth in 2029.

Newton's Laws don't take a holiday.