mp3: Ellie Goulding - High For This (The Weeknd cover)
Kind of lost interest in Ellie Goulding when she released her album/started sounding like any other “pop star” out there, but this new jam really reminds me of her earliest demos which amazed me (and which is why I fell in love with her in the first place. She decided to hook up with Xaphoon Jones (instead of her usual buddy/producer Starsmith) to cover The Weeknd’s High For This. The result? Flawless. (via Neon Gold)
- A total of 11,000 workyears was devoted to the Voyager project through the Neptune encounter. This is equivalent to one-third the amount of effort estimated to complete the great pyramid at Giza to King Cheops.
- A total of five trillion bits of scientific data had been returned to Earth by both Voyager spacecraft at the completion of the Neptune encounter. This represents enough bits to fill more than seven thousand music CDs.
- Each Voyager spacecraft comprises 65,000 individual parts. Many of these parts have a large number of “equivalent” smaller parts such as transistors. One computer memory alone contains over one million equivalent electronic parts, with each spacecraft containing some five million equivalent parts. Since a color TV set contains about 2500 equivalent parts, each Voyager has the equivalent electronic circuit complexity of some 2000 color TV sets.
- Both Voyagers were specifically designed and protected to withstand the large radiation dosage during the Jupiter swing-by. This was accomplished by selecting radiation-hardened parts and by shielding very sensitive parts. An unprotected human passenger riding aboard Voyager 1 during its Jupiter encounter would have received a radiation dose equal to one thousand times the lethal level.
- A set of small thrusters provides Voyager with the capability for attitude control and trajectory correction. Each of these tiny assemblies has a thrust of only three ounces. In the absence of friction, on a level road, it would take nearly six hours to accelerate a large car up to a speed of 48 km/h (30 mph) using one of the thrusters.
- Voyager’s fuel efficiency (in terms of mpg) is quite impressive. Even though most of the launch vehicle’s 700 ton weight is due to rocket fuel, Voyager 2’s great travel distance of 7.1 billion km (4.4 billion mi) from launch to Neptune resulted in a fuel economy of about 13,000 km per liter (30,000 mi per gallon).
- Barring any serious spacecraft subsystem failures, the Voyagers may survive until the early twenty-first century (~ 2025), when diminishing power and hydrazine levels will prevent further operation. Were it not for these dwindling consumables and the possibility of losing lock on the faint Sun, our tracking antennas could continue to “talk” with the Voyagers for another century or two!
How to Think About Our Networked World
On this Memorial Day weekend, Nieman Lab’s Joshua Benton recommends you mix up your relaxation hours with some videos of smart people saying smart things.
We second that suggestion, and offer you (the above): a brilliant animated video by Manuel Lima, Senior UX Design Lead at Microsoft Bing, and founder of VisualComplexity.com, based on a talk he gave at RSA.
via RSA:
He visits the RSA to explore a critical paradigm shift in various areas of knowledge, as we stop relying on hierarchical tree structures and turn instead to networks in order to properly map the inherent complexities of our modern world. The talk will showcase a variety of captivating examples of visualization and also introduce the network topology as a new cultural meme.
Lima says:
Even more than the idea of repping these complex systems is the need for a new way of thinking. And this new way of thinking is about this pluralistic way of thinking that everything is interconnected, everything is interdependent. We are almost going back to the polymath, the Renaissance man mentality that it’s not just about being a specialist in one area, you need to know a little bit of everything. Or at least create outbound ties that you are able to learn from other disparate areas. And I think this is the most beautiful aspect of knowledge that we can take into consideration by looking at this networked thinking. It’s more important even that we make that mental shift because I think there is immense benefit that can come from this network outlook of the world itself.
FJP: GigaOm/paidContent 2012 had a lot to do with this same way of thinking—the theme this year was focused on convergence. (See our Storify of the event here.) I think Lima’s perspective on interconnectedness is useful not only to creators, professionals, and journalists, but to all of us, as citizens, siblings, parents, friends, listeners, speakers, and thinkers. See his talk here, and Twitter feedback here.
(via good)
Lil Wayne feat. Drake | She Will
I just want some private time every day where I can listen to this five times in a row.
(Source: itmightbemycharm, via ajedak)
Kickass Kid of the Day: A Maryland-based scientist has developed an incredibly accurate mechanism for detecting pancreatic cancer, which is faster than current methods, as well as 100 times more sensitive and 28 times cheaper. Oh, and the scientist is 15 years old.
For his discovery, high school freshman Jack Andraka just won the Gordon E. Moore Award at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, which comes with a $75,000 prize.
Andraka’s method uses single-walled carbon nanotubes — which he calls “the superheroes of material science” — to detect a pancreatic cancer marker in urine and blood samples. In a blind test, it had a 100% success rate.
“I did not expect for it to be this good,” he said, “I was blown away by how sensitive it was.”
[huffpo.]
(Source: skimmmmmilk)
(Source: nevver)
(Source: skycream, via wanderfulways)
