Almost Gone.

Somehow I got on the tangent of reading about random endangered species. Here are some of my favorite species which are almost gone:

Javan Rhinoceros:

Addax:

Asiatic Cheetah:

Kakapo:

 Saiga:

 Axotyl:

 Hispaniolan Solenodon:

Red Slender Loris:

 Purple Frog:

Rainbow Burrowing Frog:

Orinoco Crocodile:

Markhor:

Volocopter

I ran into a picture of this helicopter at the back of an article in The Economist.





After watching this video I feel like I may need a garage.

On second thought a garage might get me killed.

More Crazy Machines

Some crazy machines which caught my attention. First, a four legged robot which is an attempt at making a robot which can follow a person around and take verbal commands:



Second a computer which is really good at fantasy soccer.

There really is a risk of knowledge workers getting displaced in the next decade or two. I am mostly paid because of my knowledge of the standards, work practices, and physics of some obscure aspects of the power industry. Pretty soon a good computer will be able to read the relevant textbooks and international standards then give a better recommendation than I am likely to be able to. At that point I sure hope I am the only one who understands how to use this computer.

Lunar Space Lift

One of my favorite ideas has always been building an elevator from the moon to space. Send a few dozen CNC machines, mining robots, a smelting facility, and a factory to build solar cells and we will suddenly have a way to construct much larger space ships than we ever could construct from earth.

It is good to see this idea finally is getting some serious attention. I rather question their 800 million dollar price estimate, but if it could be done for ten times that it would be worthwhile.

Pictures of Mars

I ran into this image the other day. It was taken by the new Mars rover, Curiosity(click to enlarge, for an even larger one see wikipedia):

Somehow I stumbled onto some of the images from Opportunity and Spirit though. They are much more impressive:

I imagine that once it has spent a little more time on the planet, Curiosity will put the previous smaller rovers to shame. The other rovers really did do a good job of making Mars seem like a real place rather than some fictitious world though. I am still of the opinion that open space is a much better place for colonization because Mars has just enough gravity to be annoying, but not enough to be useful. Still, I can totally see why people would want to try and make that planet home. 

Me getting squashed like a bug

While it is unreliable if he lost his belt and bought or borrowed a new one, you can make a pretty good guess as to how good a jiu jitsu blue belt is by looking at his belt. If it is all faded out, he has been a blue belt for a long time. Since it is typical to be a blue belt for two or more years this likely means he has spent a whole lot of time on the mat.

That was the first thing I noticed when I walked out on the mat with this guy. I was obviously out of my league. Knowing that, I was able to stall for about four minutes with a score of 0, 0. The match was six minutes. Once he got out of my stalling he just stomped on me though. Apparently if I managed to hold out another 21 seconds I at least would have lost off points rather than having him choke me.

After the match, he added me on facebook, then posted a video of me getting pounded on for that last minute and a half. I would much prefer having video footage of the match I won, or at least the full match showing I at least held up for a while before he squashed me like a bug but at least I can prove I actually was there:

Apparently I over did it

When I weighed in for the tournament, I was five pounds under the weight limit. Apparently diet and exercise can dump weight. Failing that, lowering water weight can dump weight.

I won one match, lost two. Not a terribly impressive start, but it beats the entire 7th grade wrestling season where I didn't even score a point in a match.