Essay criticizing President Obama and other politicians who appear to focus only on science | Inside Higher Ed January 28, 2013
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We Need More Than STEMJanuary 28, 2013 – 3:00amByKenneth PomeranzIn his inaugural address, President Obama referred repeatedly to education – but exclusively to education in STEM disciplines, as if only those fields had a defensible public purpose. Sadly, this is no aberration: in December the White House issued a report entitled “Transformation and Opportunity: The Future of the U.S. Research Enterprise,” which completely overlooked research in the humanities and social sciences, even in its brief history of the growth of research at American universities.
Saturn V “moon rocket” engine firing again after 40 years, sort of | Ars Technica January 25, 2013
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“Modern instrumentation, testing and analysis improvements learned over 40 years, and digital scanning and imagery techniques are allowing us to obtain baseline data on performance and combustion stability,” noted Nick Case, an engineer working at Marshalls Propulsion Systems Department. He even indicated the modern-day test stand instrumentation was gathering data not collected when the engine was originally being checked out in the 1960s.
via Saturn V “moon rocket” engine firing again after 40 years, sort of | Ars Technica.
Turning the Raspberry Pi Into an FM Transmitter – Imperial College Robotics Society Wiki January 16, 2013
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Below is some code that was hacked together over a few hours at the Code Club pihack. It uses the hardware on the raspberry pi that is actually meant to generate spread-spectrum clock signals on the GPIO pins to output FM Radio energy. This means that all you need to do to turn the Raspberry-Pi into a ridiculously powerful FM Transmitter is to plug in a wire as the antenna as little as 20cm will do into GPIO pin 4 and run the code posted below. It transmits on 100.0 MHz.
via Turning the Raspberry Pi Into an FM Transmitter – Imperial College Robotics Society Wiki.
Climate Scientists: Honest Brokers or Aligned Advocates? | The Energy Collective January 15, 2013
Posted by sandyclaus in Politics, Science Center News.1 comment so far
Both argue that as scientists are increasingly viewed not as honest brokers, but as advocates aligned with the goals of the Democratic party, scientists and their organizations risk losing public trust and only likely contribute to polarization on hot button issues like climate change. As their commentaries suggest, for all the attention that science communication research has deservedly received, what is still missing from this discussion is careful analysis, understanding and application of normative and ethical principles to how experts and their organizations can effectively engage the public and policy makers.
via Climate Scientists: Honest Brokers or Aligned Advocates? | The Energy Collective.
Annotate PDFs with PDFpen – ProfHacker – The Chronicle of Higher Education January 15, 2013
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PDFpen is far more robust than Apple’s built-in Preview app, including many features that cost much more in the pro version of Adobe Acrobat. There’s a full list of features on the app’s website, but my three favorites are:Annotation. PDFpen allows users to highlight text, insert notes, and draw directly onto PDFs. I particularly use these features to mark up scholarly articles for my research or for class.Inserting text and/or images. I use these features to fill out PDF forms, including forms without premade text fields. By inserting new text fields I can complete typed sections of applications, recommendation forms, and so on. I can also insert an image of my signature where required. I use PDFpen to complete 90% of documents I need to submit, saving me from most printing.Basic OCR Optical Character Recognition. OCR software converts images of text into searchable and editable text. When you open a non-OCRed PDF in PDFpen, it asks whether you want it to recognize the text. I often download un-OCRed PDFs from scholarly archives, and PDFpen helps make them much more useful.PDFpen plays well with ProfHacker favorite Zotero, too. When PDFpen is set as your Mac’s default PDF application, stored PDFs from Zotero will open in it, and any edits made to those PDFs will be saved in your Zotero library.
via Annotate PDFs with PDFpen – ProfHacker – The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Unhinged Tactical Response CEO threatens to ‘start killing people’ over Obama’s gun control | The Raw Story January 10, 2013
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The CEO of a Tennessee company that specializes weapons and tactical training is threatening to “start killing people” if President Barack Obama moves forward with gun control measures.In a video posted to YouTube and Facebook on Wednesday, Tactical Response CEO James Yeager went ballistic over reports that the president could take executive action with minor gun control measures after the mass shooting of 20 school children in Connecticut last month.After the Drudge Report likened Obama to Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin on Wednesday, pro-gun conservatives expressed outrage over the idea that the White House could act without Congress.
NASA – NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers 461 New Planet Candidates January 8, 2013
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Since the last Kepler catalog was released in February 2012, the number of candidates discovered in the Kepler data has increased by 20 percent and now totals 2,740 potential planets orbiting 2,036 stars. The most dramatic increases are seen in the number of Earth-size and super Earth-size candidates discovered, which grew by 43 and 21 percent respectively.
The new data increases the number of stars discovered to have more than one planet candidate from 365 to 467. Today, 43 percent of Kepler’s planet candidates are observed to have neighbor planets.
via NASA – NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers 461 New Planet Candidates.
I made some keyboard shortcut maps for Artemis. Tell me what you think or would like to see changed. : Artemis January 8, 2013
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I made some keyboard shortcut maps for Artemis. Tell me what you think or would like to see changed. (imgur.com)
submitted 10 hours ago by DrainSmith
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Absolutely No Machete Juggling » The Star Wars Saga: Introducing Machete Order January 8, 2013
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Simple, watch them in this order: IV, V, I, II, III, VI.
George Lucas believes that Star Wars is the story of Anakin Skywalker, but it is not. The prequels, which establish his character, are so poor at being character-driven that, if the series is about Anakin, the entire series is a failure. Anakin is not a relatable character, Luke is.
This alternative order (which a commenter has pointed out is called Ernst Rister order) inserts the prequel trilogy into the middle, allowing the series to end on the sensible ending point (the destruction of the Empire) while still beginning with Luke’s journey.
via Absolutely No Machete Juggling » The Star Wars Saga: Introducing Machete Order.
Harmys STAR WARS Despecialized Edition HD !!!REMASTERED is now released!!! Page 1 – Harmy – April 5, 2011 at 12:35 PM – originaltrilogy.com forum January 8, 2013
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Harmys STAR WARS Despecialized Edition HD !!!REMASTERED is now released!!!STAR WARS – DESPECIALIZED EDITION HD STAR WARS DESPECIALIZED EDITION REMASTERED is now officially released!!!
Culture Foam: Bubbling Up 