I am aghast with sheer envy. Not just at the rates, but also at the concise use of descriptive graphs to assist you in choosing a cell phone plan:
the rates top out at 14,600 yen, equal to $133/month. Thats really not bad, considering you also get a handset that is superior to the best of the US-based handsets in just about every way. Can you buy a coke with your iphone?
Faraday’s Law is that a changing electric flux induces a magnetic flux. Now, physicists working under an EA contract think they’ve empirically observed the gravitometric analogue:
Just as a moving electrical charge creates a magnetic field, so a moving mass generates a gravitomagnetic field. According to Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, the effect is virtually negligible. However, Martin Tajmar, ARC Seibersdorf Research GmbH, Austria, and colleagues believe they have measured the effect in a laboratory.
[…]
Their experiment involves a ring of superconducting material rotating up to 6 500 times a minute. Superconductors are special materials that lose all electrical resistance at a certain temperature. Spinning superconductors produce a weak magnetic field, the so-called London moment. The new experiment tests a conjecture that explains the difference between high-precision mass measurements of Cooper-pairs (the current carriers in superconductors) and their prediction via quantum theory. They have discovered that this anomaly could be explained by the appearance of a gravitomagnetic field in the spinning superconductor (This effect has been named the Gravitomagnetic London Moment by analogy with its magnetic counterpart).Small acceleration sensors placed at different locations close to the spinning superconductor, which has to be accelerated for the effect to be noticeable, recorded an acceleration field outside the superconductor that appears to be produced by gravitomagnetism. “This experiment is the gravitational analogue of Faraday’s electromagnetic induction experiment in 1831.
The accompanying graphic really explains it much better:
In scifi, FTL is achieved by jumping around spacetime, because accelerating to light speed would require infinite energy (as per Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Gamma is not your friend). However, now some physicists have theorized a way to accelerate to c and beyond, by “surfing” on a wave of space-time:
In theory, the universe grew faster than the speed of light for a very short time after the Big Bang, driven by the dark energy that represents about 74 percent of the total mass-energy budget in the universe. Dark matter constitutes 22 percent of the budget, and normal matter (stars, planets and everything you see) makes up the remaining 4 percent or so.
Strange as it sounds, current evidence supports the notion that the fabric of space-time can expand faster than the speed of light, because the reality in which light travels is itself expanding.
Cleaver and Richard Obousy, a Baylor graduate student, tapped the latest idea in string theory to devise how to manipulate dark energy and accelerate a spaceship. Their notion is based on the Alcubierre drive, which proposes expanding space-time behind the spaceship while also shrinking space-time in front.
[…]
Cleaver told Space.com, “The dark energy is simultaneously decreased just in front of the ship to decrease (and bring to a stop) the expansion rate of the universe in front of the ship. If the dark energy can be made negative directly in front of the ship, then space in front of the ship would locally contract.”
All you need to do is manipulate the 11th dimension. And it doesn’t even require infinite energy. Just a Jupiter mass or so. Simple!
I find that increasingly I turn to Amazon over Newegg for even electronics purchases. I just ordered a few items for around the house (a surge protector, a spare handset for our landline, a USB hub, etc) and I got my items the next day, even though I had specified two-day shipping (with Amazon prime, you get 2-business day shipping for free). In general, order fulfillment seems to be unbelievably snappy with Amazon and always seems glacial with Newegg. Maybe it’s partly because I pay for the Amazon Prime service – Its a feedback cycle in which I find myself ordering more and more from Amazon just because the convenience of free shipping is so addictive. I’m thinking of going the Amazon grocery route for restocking diapers, cereals, etc as well – it reminds me of the PeaPod service that was all the rage about 10 years ago but fizzled out. The funny thing is I don’t think I’ve bought a book, CD or DVD from Amazon in years.
I wonder if this will be what Star Trek: Voyager should have been:
After unlocking the mystery of the Stargate’s ninth chevron, a team of explorers travels to an unmanned starship called the Destiny, launched by The Ancients at the height of their civilization as a grand experiment set in motion, but never completed.
What starts as a simple reconnaissance turns into a never ending mission, as the Stargate Universe crew discovers the ship is unable to return to Earth, and they must now fend for themselves aboard the Destiny.
The crew will travel to the far reaches of the universe, connecting with each of the previously launched Stargates, thus fulfilling the Destiny’s original mission.
I never got into either SG-1 or Atlantis, but this seems well-poised to recapture some of that epic feel from the original movie.
Escaflowne is over, and I’ve got disc one of Death Note ready to start. I also am savoring Shinkai’s 5cm, I watched the first section and want to review it before I watch the others, to capture the emotional progression.
I have to admit that my interest in Death Note has spiked now that I’ve seen this.
UPDATE – also Tweeny Witches and Petite Princess Yucie are on my next-up list, thanks to Nick and Steven.
Dark Knight was a triumph. We haven’t seen any movies in the theater since the baby was born but we made a major effort for this one, and it was worth it. It was a brilliant, layered, intelligent, and genuinely original interpretation of the Batman mythos, which paid due homage to the best of Batman in print but also broke new ground. For example, the Trinity of Dent, Batman and Gordon was perfect – three men with the same aim, to save a city they love, each bound by their own constraints and rules but acknowledging that together they have genuinely transformative power. That’s straight out of the best of the graphic novels like The Long Halloween.
However, the concept of Wayne Enterprises as an active partner in Batman’s strategy was also fresh. In most tellings, Bruce Wayne’s playboy image serves to distract people from his identity alone, but here it’s essential to distract people from the more critical question of where the Batman gets his stuff. With Lucius Fox as CEO, and Wayne the frivolous trust fund brat who snores trough critical board meetings, connecting the dots is truly beyond the realm of even informed speculation, as the blackmail scene with Coleman Reese and Fox amply demonstrates.
The best part of course was Heath Ledger’s Joker. In a nod to Ledger’s most famous recent film role, Joker tells Batman, “you complete me” – but the meaning of that statement is perhaps better told here than even in Miller’s graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns. The novel edge of Joker as anarchist rather than just evil for its own sake, a man driven to watch the world burn, seems more fitting, and more menacing. The Joker believes that the veneer of civilization is superficial and that at the heart of things, the world is as morally empty as he is – he fancies himself the only one willing to rip the facade off and embrace the true nature underneath. From his perspective, everyone else is lying and he is the truth-teller.
These movies have totally erased the nonsensical Tim Burton versions that were as cartoonish in their own way as Adam West’s portrayal. Brian Tiemann says this better than I; for me, this IS the Batman movie franchise, not a reboot like the Bond films with Daniel Craig.
The question though of course is, what next. I can’t discuss that without straying from Vagueland to Spoiler Field, so follow me after the jump… (more…)
I think this is a stunt, but considering it’s Scarlett Johannsen, maybe it isn’t. Regardless, I don’t think I’m gonna get permission to enter the contest.
Of course, the disclaimer at the bottom could be interpreted several ways…