i-eclectica.org

I’ve had this story sitting in my queue now for a few days. I came across it at bozomode where my lovely friend Harry pointed to the Quintura seek & find engine (still in beta). I’ve seen these things before and probably bookmarked them somewhere . Nevertheless, Quintura is another interesting example for a concept that uses a graphical interface for refining the search result matches. The results are shown in a frame on the right, while words related to the search entry are displayed on the left. Hovering over any word surrounds it with a new set of related words and updates the search result pane. Quite neat.

An international team of astronomers from Switzerland, France and Portugal have discovered the most Earth-like planet outside our Solar System to date. The planet has a radius only 50 percent larger than Earth and is very likely to contain liquid water on its surface. The research team used the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO’s) 3.6-m telescope to discover the super-Earth, which has a mass about five times that of the Earth and orbits a red dwarf already known to harbour a Neptune-mass planet.

Astronomers believe there is a strong possibility in the presence of a third planet with a mass about eight times that of the Earth in the system. However, unlike our Earth, this planet takes only 13 days to complete one orbit round its star. It is also 14 times closer to its star than the Earth is from the Sun. However, since its host star, the red dwarf Gliese 581, is smaller and colder than the Sun - and thus less luminous - the planet lies in a habitable zone.

Maybe Stephen Hawking who just exercised a bit in the vomit bomber and who sees the survival of our species in conquering space (rather than in seriously starting to clean up NOW the mess we’ve made here), could book a space tourist trip to it. He certainly seems to be ready; after his flight, Hawking exclaimed: “I could have gone on and on - space, here I come!”. Of course, there’s the problem that our spaceships aren’t very fast yet and the planet is 20 odd light years away … ah well, maybe Hawkins could get himself frozen.

Links

BBC News

iTWire

ESO Science Release

Stalin was a pretty bloody dictator, so I think describing the decoration of this car as quirky and maybe even wanting to drive it around on days when I’m not in a hurry, would be pretty uncool amongst those for whom Stalin still has some meaning (which probably excludes the majority of the younger generation) … but hey, what the heck .

Via English Russia

This kind of thing can only happen in the Empire: delegates at the Utah County Republican Convention will discuss this weekend (or have already done so) a formal resolution to oppose the devil’s plan to destroy the country. According to The Salt Lake Tribune, Utah County District 65 Chairman Don Larsen, who has submitted the resolution, states that ‘[in] order for Satan to establish his ‘New World Order’ and destroy the freedom of all people as predicted in the scriptures, he must first destroy the US’, and he does that by allowing illegal immigrants to cross the border. Larsen’s proposal to defeat Satan? Close the borders to illegal immigrants to ‘prevent the destruction of the US by stealth invasion’. Rather than pointing his dirty little Mormon finger at innocent and desperate people, maybe Larsen should look in his own republican ranks for Satan - he might not have to search very hard. After all, when describing Satan’s intentions he’s using the exact language that certain elements in his country’s government have championed many times when justifying the US’ global hegemony. Maybe Larsen himself is the devil’s trickster face, trying to distract us … .

Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories mounted a hot air gun to the carriage of a printer. The printer hack allowed them to use the XY motion control system without the Z axis installed. The outcome was not overly artistic when it came to draw faces (after all, they’re geeks), but when they got down to plain text, the result was quite impressive modding.

Via Hacked Gadgets