The greatest newspaper correction ever written (49 years too late) onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com The greatest newspaper correction ever written (49 years too late)

S

In 1920, rocket scientist Robert Goddard wrote up an article postulating how we could use rocket fuel to launch a ship into space — perhaps even all the way to the moon. His ideas did not meet with a warm reception in the media, where he was roundly mocked. 49 years later, Apollo 11 took-off to the moon, triggering The New York Times' to print the greatest newspaper correction ever to run.

S

This correction has everything: scare quotes, an elaborately roundabout slam on rocket scientist Goddard's high school education, and, notably, no reference at all to Apollo 11's launch to the moon that had occurred just the day before, spurring the correction in the first place. The correction, printed in the July 17, 1969 edition of The Times reads:

A Correction: On Jan. 13, 1920, "Topics of the Times," an editorial-page feature of The New York Times, dismissed the notion that a rocket could function in a vacuum and commented on the ideas of Robert H. Goddard, the rocket pioneer, as follows:

'That Professor Goddard with his 'chair' in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to something better than a vacuum against which to react—to say that would be absurd. Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools."

Further investigation and experimentation have confirmed the findings of Isaac Newton in the 17th Century and it is now definitely established a rocket can function in a vacuum as well as in an atmosphere. The Times regrets the error.

Thanks to commenter mwhite66 who brought the correction to our attention, noting in response to this post on the responses Goddard's ideas received more than 80 years ago that: "The New York Times retracted their 1920 editorial stating that rockets couldn't work in a vacuum because there was nothing to push against. In July 1969, when Apollo 11 flew to the moon."

Top image: Apollo 11, NASA

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com The greatest newspaper correction ever written (49 years too late)

Why so Many Movies Seem So Much the Same onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Why so Many Movies Seem So Much the Same

Today, we looked at the argument for smaller, quieter movies — and got some thoughts from inside the writer's room on just why we see the movies that we do.

Commenter SteveTheCreep shared these thoughts on how the process impacts his own screenwriting:

I can tell you why: development executives. 2013 was the year my screenwriting career finally started to take off, which meant constant meetings with development executives, and they all seemed to have the same notes. 1) the main character has to be the only person who could possibly be the hero of this script. They have an epic destiny or a very specific set of skills that make them perfect. Gone are the days when a protagonist could be an anybody who happened to be in the right place at the wrong time. 2) the stakes have to be raised. No matter how high the stakes are now, they need to be higher. This can't be about one small town, it has to have the possibility to leak into the whole world. It can't be about one man or woman saving their child. In the process, they also have to stop the villains from taking over the government. Any successful film that didn't meet these two points is considered an "fluke." It's like they all got a checklist of what to ask when it comes to story pitches. I'm probably like most other screenwriters, in that I now develop my pitches so they hit these bullet points.

Have your own thoughts on the year in movies, or what makes a movie stand out from the pack? Share them in the comments now.

Image: Emily Barney

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Why so Many Movies Seem So Much the Same

These science poems are just the best onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com These science poems are just the best

These science poems, courtesy of our very own io9 commenters, are just the thing for a holiday evening. Gather round the fireside and enjoy!

The earth around the sun doth go

and causeth Galileo woe.

Eppur si muove,

no epicycles needed.

Even the church

eventually heeded. - started by Father Anonymous (1st couplet) and completed by startrashed (2nd and 3rd couplets)

Fermi split the atom, but that's not his paradox

where, he wondered, are beings from other rocks? - startrashed

Doctor Hawking says, although no prude,

"singularities are never nude." — abostick59

Lord Kelvin became everyone's hero

when he discovered absolute zero

And there wasn't much negativity

when Becquerel found radioactivity

Then the world had many a query

when Max Planck described quantum theory

But it took a clerk whose hair had gone feral

to show us relativity, both special and general

And today the LHC is relied upon

to spot that sneaky Higgs Boson. — mxyzptlk

Young JJ Thomson made his name

for proving that electrons were the same

regardless of cathode and particular in nature

but his son George P. shook his fist

and said "I can do better than this"

and showed that electrons were wavelike a few years later. — Dr Dan

Image: CodyR

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com These science poems are just the best

Here is your first look at the atomic structure of the HIV capsid onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Here is your first look at the atomic structure of the HIV capsid

Today's comment of the day comes to us from commenter Ryan M, who responded to our call for the most incredible images of 2013 with a nominee from something that he's been working on: The first look at the atomic structure of the HIV capsid.

The discovery of the structure is the result of a study led by University of Illinois physics professor Klaus Schulten, which used the Blue Waters supercomputer to break down the HIV capsid — which includes 1300+ identical proteins and over 64 million atoms — and reassemble it into an accurate structural model.

So, just what are we looking at? Ryan M explains:

Simulations were performed on supercomputers to assemble the HIV capsid (the colored cylinder that you can see), which is the protein coat that surrounds the viral RNA (which the virus uses to make more of itself once inside the infected cell). This is the first time the structure of the capsid was known at atomic detail, which now provides a stepping stone towards better understanding the infection process of HIV and possibly designing and testing drugs.

The full study is published over at Nature.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Here is your first look at the atomic structure of the HIV capsid

At Christmas, this town builds a Giant Yule goat and then torches it onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com At Christmas, this town builds a Giant Yule goat and then torches it

We all celebrate the holidays in our ways. Some of us with friends and family, some of us with food and drink, and, in a small town in Sweden, with constructing a 40-foot tall Yule Goat out of straw and then burning it the ground.

Today, we looked at some of the more alarming faces that Santa Claus has sported over the years, and one rather darling one: The Yule Goat, a pre-Santa mythical goat who first began his holiday tenure in Scandinavia by monitoring the general level of holiday-preparedness, and demanding gifts as a tribute for this service.

Eventually, the script was flipped, first to make Yule Goat the bearer of gifts not the receiver, and then, later, to disappear him entirely from the holiday canon. Except not quite! Commenter urabutln informs us that, in Sweden, the spirit of the Yule Goat remains alive and well:

Actually, the Yule Goat isn't totally gone in Scandinavia; first off, an ubiquitous christmas ornament is the Yule Goat, made of straw (there's also a huge one built every year in the town of Gävle in Sweden, which people try to burn. It's happened almost every year, and has become a tradition in itself, despite it being a felony)

Second, at least in my family, the Yule Goat would be the one who had left us a small gift on the morning of the 24th, the one that was supposed to keep us occupied until Santa arrived (in Scandinavia, he arrives in the evening of the 24th). 56 minutes ago

Yes, it's true. The Yule Goat lives on — and apparently thrives in adversity. Although fire and a slow decline into obscurity are not the only dangers faced by the Yule Goat (it was also once the subject of a foiled helicopter heist), the Yule Goat, as befits the modern holiday symbol, also has a webcam feed, a Twitter page, and Instagram (filled almost entirely with Yule Goat selfies, naturally.)

Images: Yule Goat Instagram / Yule Goat webcam

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com At Christmas, this town builds a Giant Yule goat and then torches it

Charles Stross gives us a sneak peek at his new novel onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Charles Stross gives us a sneak peek at his new novel

Today, author Charlie Stross, from this month's book club selection, joined us for a Q&A, where he filled us his thoughts on how new writers get traction, the skyrocketing of ebook sales (from 1% to 50% of his sales in the last five years), and gave us the first line of his new book coming up in July.

Commenter RM Ambrose asked about how new writers can build their career, and Stross shared these thoughts on the business of writing and publishing:

In 2008, maybe 1% of my sales were ebooks. Today, make that 50%. We're in the middle of a gigantic format shift as the mass market paperback distribution system withers and dies but the ebook system explodes. Meanwhile, ebooks make self-publishing quite easy ... if you know what you're doing. Clue: authors are authors, not editors, typesetters, cover designers, marketing experts, and accounts clerks. (This is why I don't self-publish — I've got publishers to do the boring stuff for me. It's this quaint old-fashioned thing called "division of labour".)

[Robert J.] Sawyer is quite right that it's getting very hard for new writers to gain traction. All writers face two problems: how do you maximize your readership, and how do you maximize your revenue? These are orthogonal problems, and a strategy optimized to solve one may not optimally solve for the other.

Having said that, I don't think things are necessarily as bleak as all that. I keep seeing new writers who have somehow broken through all the obstacles that are so daunting to us old-timers, often with spectacular success. The key thing to remember is that, however much you may be devoted to it as an art form, writing is a business. It's definitely not a lifestyle. (If you want to hear sarcasm, get a group of well-lubricated writers gathered together over a bottle of wine or two and ask them what they think of the mass media depiction of novelists, as opposed to the reality!)

Stross also gave a release date for his next book, "The Rhesus Chart", due out in July next year — along with the first line of the upcoming novel:

"Don't be silly, Bob," said Mo, "everyone knows vampires don't exist!"

I, for one, am not holding out high hopes for Mo's fate...

Image: Ronnie Pitman

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Charles Stross gives us a sneak peek at his new novel

How snowflakes get their shape onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com How snowflakes get their shape

As winter settles in, many of us are getting an up-close look at more snowflakes than we might care to. Let's take a moment to look at just what forces are shaping (literally) our winter weather.

Top image: Alexey Kljatov

Earlier we took a very, very close look at a series of snowflake close-up shots taken by photographer Alexey Kljatov's. Commenter raiju filled us in on why some consistent geometric patterns were emerging:

Essentially, water molecules have a positive and negative poles, which causes them to naturally line up in a hexagon shape when they crystallize (it's also the cause of a lot of water's cool properties, like surface tension). The center of a snowflake is almost always a hexagon (although not always a perfect hexagon, as you can see from the superman-logo like shaped one). Once it reaches a certain size, the branches can start to appear because it becomes too large to keep its shape. These arms always follow a rough 6-way symmetry, since they are attached at the equidistant poles "sticking out" from the central hexagon.

Of course, that still leaves the differences between individual snowflakes to explain. And for that, we turn to commenter Hypnosifl:

The basic explanation is that the formation of the branches is affected by subtle variations in things like temperature and humidity in the atmosphere as the snowflake makes its trip down, and each branch on a single snowflake experiences the same history of variations as it falls, but different flakes don't.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com How snowflakes get their shape

Therapy, Vampire Diaries-Style! onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Therapy, Vampire Diaries-Style!

Is this clip the most ludicrous thing you've ever seen, or just one of the most ludicrous things? It's Stefan's therapy session from last night's Vampire Diaries, and it's Exhibit A for why I still love this show.

Spoilers ahead...

So last night's episode was about both Salvatore brothers confronting their past traumas, and in the core of those traumas there was a little nugget of guilt or maybe self-loathing. Stefan is still freaked out about the summer he spent in the bottom of a quarry locked in a safe, drowning over and over — so Caroline gets the bright idea to lock him in that safe again. That doesn't work, until he's locked in there with Katherine, his former-vampire ex-lover, who points out the obvious: Stefan is really traumatized about being abandoned by the people he loved, who left him to drown over and over, plus Elena dumping him. This catharsis leads to humping, as so many good catharses do.

Love the whole notion that exposure therapy plus sexytimes = cured of trauma.

Oh, and a core part of Stefan's "therapy," as seen above, is reasserting control — he gets better at least in part because he won't kill Katherine when she's presenting her vulnerable throat to him. He needs to overcome his inner monster at least as much as he needs to feel safe again.

Meanwhile, Damon (and soon Elena) are locked in cells by the Augustine society, which experiments on vampires. And we explore Damon's five years of suffering at their hands in the mid-1950s — culminating in Damon and his friend Enzo cooking up an escape scheme that half worked.

Half, because Damon left Enzo to die. And also, Damon's overcomplicated revenge on his captors left a massive trail of bodies, and a single traumatized heir to the Tortureford family in every generation — with the latest generation being Aaron Tortureford, who is horrified at his family's past but also at Damon's murder of everybody ever. So Damon's trauma winds up being very much tied up with him being a monster. And his past screw-ups definitely come back to haunt him — in the form of Aaron, but also Enzo, who is (not surprisingly) not actually dead.

I bet you wish your therapy sessions were this much bloody sexy fun!

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Therapy, Vampire Diaries-Style!

Here's how to make a Wonder Woman movie onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Here's how to make a Wonder Woman movie

Today, we got our first look at the new Wonder Woman, wondered (yep!) aloud just what we were hoping to see from her character, and then came up with an idea.

In response to this post looking at some of the potential pitfalls of Zach Snyder's take on Wonder Woman, commenter Daniel M. Clark offered this take on how to make the Wonder Woman movie that we're still hoping for:

Super Man? Spider Man? Bat Man? Iron Man? Captain America? Captain Marvel? (And yes, I know I'm not hyphenating some or combining others, that's intentional). The silly name is the least of the issues with super heroes and yet many characters have had very successful movies. As for her origin, that's been rebooted and retconned so many times there is no definitive origin anymore. That's not the problem, either - the successful super hero movies have never had perfect origin adaptations. They don't matter.

Here's how you make a successful Wonder Woman film: Have a good director, one who can coach a believable performance from the actors. Have a good writer, one who does not take the audience for granted and who understands what the audience wants and how to best be creative with the characters. Have good actors, those who are genuinely interested in the material and how it can come alive.

Done.

So, what are you all hoping for with Wonder Woman's story? Do you have a direction you want to see the story go in? And just who do you think is the perfect film-making crew to take on the challenge? Start sketching out your movie plans now in the comments.

Image: W10002

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Here's how to make a Wonder Woman movie

Here's how to decorate the house of the future, right now onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Here's how to decorate the house of the future, right now

Today we asked you to tell us what was the most futuristic thing about yourself, and you responded by telling us about your jobs, your personal tech, and with an idea about just how to decorate the house of the future, right now, from commenter eideticex:

Well my current endeavor with augmented reality using QR codes to pass programs or download links to programs (depends how large the program is). A few examples:

On the wall behind my computer desk is a dual purposes QR code. If scanned with any phone it displays virtual picture frames that go through a slide-show of any pictures that are publicly accessible on my home network. If scanned with my tablet it displays a virtual mess of notes that can be moved around with the standard press and drag gesture.

On the frames of closets around the house are ones which use image detection to determine when you open the door. It displays random monsters poking their heads out, growling and otherwise being monstery. Originally made these ones to play with the kids during a B-day party we hosted, but I think the adults had more fun with them.

There's some in the bathroom next to the stall which open up my favorite news websites.

A couple on the fridge which aggregate prices of things I normally buy into a list to help me figure out which stores nearby have the better deals.

There are a ton of them I stuck to the bottom of random tables at restaurants I've been to which display random lolcats.

Sadly most of them have a habit of crashing phones/tablets. They are just small things I work on when bored to kill some time. Who knew a small sticker printer could be so much fun.

This sounds like a lot of fun, folks! What else can we do with this?

Image: Fer Gregory / Shutterstock

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Here's how to decorate the house of the future, right now