Monday, July 5, 2010

Unarius Documentary...

I've written about the Unarians before.  They're a group headquartered in the nearby city of El Cajon, California.  Amongst many other things, they believe that a group of 33 inter-galactic civilizations is going to land representatives on the Earth someday soon.  The only reason I have any interest in these loonies is because they've purchased land in Lawson Valley, not far from our home, where they are preparing a landing site for these representatives.  We've spotted their “flying-saucer car” driving around on a few occasions.

The following three-part series is a very straightforward documentary about the group.  It contains scenes of the flying-saucer car and of their landing site in Lawson Valley.  It also contains many clips from Unarian productions, and many of those are laugh-out-loud funny.  Until, that is, you remember that the Unarians boast a world-wide membership in the thousands.  They walk among us...





Only Israel Has No Right to Defend Itself...

To me, Israel is the only essentially sane and sober government in the Middle East.  Theirs is a lonely plight, far more so than it should be...


The Value of Competition...

What does it mean to have dozens of valedictorians in a single high school class?  Joe Bell's take is one that I mostly agree with...

Russian Spies Had Secure Communications...

Though they looked like the Keystone Kops in general, one thing the Russian spies apparently did right was communications security.  They used steganography, and their communications were never detected, much less decrypted...

A New Contender for High-Density Energy Storage...

An interesting new development from Washington State University.  Their scheme is a compression system, akin to the compressed-air storage systems, but on a molecular level with a vastly higher ratio between uncompressed and compressed states.

There are a few challenges to be overcome, however.  First, the required compression currently can only be achieved in a laboratory diamond anvil compressor – which can only compress tiny quantities at a time.  Secondly, the material used in the system is xenon difluoride (XeF2), a powerful chemical agent that's dangerous to handle.  Despite the challenges, there are possibilities here...

Planck's First Whole-Sky Image...

Six months in the making, the highest-resolution whole-sky infrared image.  As usual, click to enlarge...

Morning Feel-Good...

Watch it through to the end – this kid is having a great time, and shows it!