I Did It All For The Cookie

The Girl Scouts are going high-tech for cookies this year, and it's about time, too.  Mashable's Rex Santus:

Samoas and Thin Mints could be coming to your inbox soon. Girl Scouts of the USA announced Digital Cookie on Monday, a new digital platform that allows Girl Scouts to sell cookies online for the first time in the cookie program's 100-year history. 

It's a move to get girls interested in computers at a young age. Girl Scouts has always touted the cookie program as a way to lay the groundwork for good business and negotiation skills, and the digital program is modernizing those skills. 

Digital Cookie will not be an online store for cookies, however. As a precaution, Girl Scouts will initiate all sales. So you won't be able to order cookies online unless you're directly contacted by a Girl Scout. This does not change typical cookie season timelines, either. 

The program is supposed to help teach girls five skills: goal setting, decision making, money management, people skills and business ethics. As a bonus, it's also meant to give girls experience in using apps and online marketing. 

There are some concerns about girls' safety, and beyond the fact that only Girl Scouts can initiate sales, the organization is taking numerous precautions. No sensitive information about the girls is kept online, and most actions that happen on the digital interface must be parent-approved. Girl Scouts can reach out to people by email, and only that recipient can access the girl's profile. If the email is forwarded, the link to the Girl Scout's profile will be broken, a Girl Scouts representative told Mashable.

Teaching young women about computers and the internet, online safety, and awesome cookies?  I completely approve and wins all around.  The online safety component it vital, too and I'm very glad to see that's part of the program from the get-go.  I'm hoping Girl Scouts here in NKY get with the program, I'll clean you out of Thin Mints...

Tiny Bubbles, In My Space-Time

Yeah.  So this is pretty awesome.  Make it so.

Researchers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) are carrying out lab-scale experiments to create tiny space-time warps with an aim to eventually achieving “Star-Trek”-style interstellar space travel.

According to the Alcubierre warp drive theory, proposed by Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre in 1994, a spaceship could travel faster than light inside a bubble of negative energy that deforms the space-time continuum, compressing it in front of the craft and expanding it behind.

Harold “Sonny” White, from JSC’s advanced propulsion physics laboratory Eagleworks, attended the 100 Year Starship Symposium in Houston on Sept. 14 to present his lab’s findings.

White’s team is testing out mathematical equations relating to the physics of cosmic inflation using an instrument called the White-Juday Warp Field Interferometer, which uses a laser to create little warp bubbles.

“We’ve initiated an interferometer test bed in this lab, where we’re going to go through and try and generate a microscopic instance of a little warp bubble,” White said, according to a July article in Roundup, JSC’s biweekly publication.

“And although this is just a microscopic instance of the phenomena, we’re perturbing space-time, one part in 10 million, a very tiny amount.”

Cannot.  Stop.  Headbanging.  Over how awesome this is.  Sure, it'll be generations or so before we end up doing anything practical with this, if it even works at macro scales without obscene amounts of energy, or at all, or without tearing a dimensional rift into the Chaos Realms and making the walls bleed.

But still!  Science!

Starry Awesome

A man recently spent ten hours making Vincent Van Goh's Starry Night with dominoes.  It's pretty impressive.  When he knocks them over, the resemblance is even stronger.  I'm not a follower of hot domino action, so this was a surprise to me.  Just seeing it with them standing was cool enough for me.

Enjoy!

Miner 2049er

Zandardad flags down this Space.com article on Planetary Resources, Inc., a new startup with one out-of-this-world business plan and star-powered backers like Titanic and Avatar director James Cameron.

A newly unveiled company with some high-profile backers — including filmmaker James Cameron and Google co-founder Larry Page — is set to announce plans to mine near-Earth asteroids for resources such as precious metals and water.

Planetary Resources, Inc. intends to sell these materials, generating a healthy profit for itself. But it also aims to advance humanity's exploration and exploitation of space, with resource extraction serving as an anchor industry that helps our species spread throughout the solar system.

"If you look at space resources, the logical next step is to go to the near-Earth asteroids," Planetary Resources co-founder and co-chairman Eric Anderson told SPACE.com. "They're just so valuable, and so easy to reach energetically. Near-Earth asteroids really are the low-hanging fruit of the solar system."

Turns out there's a lot of hard money in space rocks, folks.

Platinum-group metals — ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium, and platinum — are found in low concentrations on Earth and can be tough to access, which is why they're so expensive. In fact, Anderson said, they don't occur naturally in Earth's crust, having been deposited on our planet over the eons by asteroid impacts.

"We're going to go to the source," Anderson said. "The platinum-group metals are many orders of magnitude easier to access in the high-concentration platinum asteroids than they are in the Earth's crust."

And there are a lot of precious metals up there waiting to be mined. A single platinum-rich space rock 1,650 feet (500 meters) wide contains the equivalent of all the platinum-group metals ever mined throughout human history, company officials said.

Telescope prospecting could begin in a few years and extraction could begin in as soon as 12-15 years by some estimates.  It's easiest to grab the low-hanging fruit first and drag near-Earth asteroids into a stable orbit around the Moon.  There, unmanned spacecraft could mine the space rocks for tasty metals.  Entirely possible to see this stuff get underway in my lifetime.

And some of these space rocks are worth tons of water, too.  Considering population growth on the planet and a growing shortage of potable water as the decades advance, good ol' aqua celestia from giant orbital ice cubes could be a valuable resource in the near-future.

Besides, if sci-fi writers are to be believed, you kinda want to invest in the ground floor of a venture like this.  Weyland-Yutani Corporation, anyone?

Pressed For Meat, She Meets The Press

All it takes for a bovine revolution is one tasty meat-filled cow escaping from the slaughterhouse and making news.

A 700-pound cow has been spared and sent to the farm after escaping from the slaughterhouse and running down New Jersey highways.

The cow was hit twice by police vehicles during its escape run, then was finally caught after police shot it twice with tranquilizers. The cow is now healthy and lives on Woodstock Farms Animal Sanctuary, where it has been named Mike Jr., after “uber-volunteer” Mike Stura, a volunteer who asked Woodstock to take the cow in.

“All of a sudden I saw a cow running across the street and being chased by police and all, and I said, well I think we have to try and do something about that,” Stura told Fox and Friends Saturday.

Woodstock learned that the after the cow had been captured, it had been transferred to another slaughterhouse, not the “farm” news reports promised. Stura, who has “show mercy for animals” tattooed on his arms, convinced owners to release the cow to Woodstock, which assures, “He will never end up at the end of a fork!”

There's something about the bond between man and cow, you know.  Here's to Mike Jr, the luckiest cow in New Jersey.

It's Elementary, My Dear

Via Gizmodo, 3-year old Rose knows more about chemistry than most kids.  Because cute kids are awesome.  And chemistry is awesome.  And songs are awesome.  And we've got all three.

Remember Rose, the cute little 2-year-old whose favorite toy last year was a set of periodic table of elements flashcards? Well, now she's three, she's learned to sing, and she's still all about the elements.

Does she pronounce all the elements perfectly? Of course not. She's only three; she's still barely able to support her head with her neck. But with all the toddlers-in-tiaras running around, it sure is nice to know that there are people out there like Rose's dad, who seems to be her vocal coach/elements instructor, invested in teaching their daughters science.

She's singing Tom Lehrer's Elements song, which is damn awesome in and of itself.   Science, people.  It works.

Get Better Soon, Doc

Dr. Stephen Hawking missed his 70th birthday event, but here's hoping he gets better soon.  The world need more people like him.

British scientist Stephen Hawking was forced to miss a scientific debate to mark his 70th birthday Sunday due to ill health but sent an upbeat message saying he was living at a “glorious time”.

As scientists and media gathered at Cambridge University for a symposium to mark Hawking’s birthday, vice-chancellor Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewic announced: “Stephen has been unwell and was only discharged from hospital on Friday.”

But in a pre-recorded message, the physicist urged participants to focus on his glittering career and the future of science rather than his struggles against illness.

“It has been a glorious time to be alive and doing research in theoretical physics,” he said.

“We must also continue to go into space for the future of humanity,” he argued. “I don’t think we will survive another thousand years without escaping beyond our fragile planet.”

Tell that to the Republican Party.  Please.

Well, Somebody Has To Do It

Science: now featuring mouse sperm in a petri dish.  Onwards and upwards, ever after.

Scientists in Germany and Israel have successfully grown mouse sperm in a laboratory, opening up the future possibility to grow human sperm from the cells of infertile men.

According to the science journal Nature , researchers were able to grow sperm by using germ cells, which are responsible for sperm reproduction in the testicles.

Researchers decided the best way to replicate sperm grow was to create an environment similar to the testicles.

They placed the germ cells inside an agar jelly compound not unlike the inside of the male reproductive organ, and watched them grow.

Stephen Gordon, a male infertility consultant, praised the experiment’s results, calling it a discovery that could revolutionize fertility treatment.

“Infertile men naturally want to be the father of their child but at present have to accept that can’t happen,” he told The Telegraph. “With the mouse discovery, that could now be a possibility.”

What just occurs to me is that it seems that 99% of infertility treatment stuff seems to be aimed at women, and it takes two to tango, as it were.  Still, being able to grow and harvest viable sperm from testicular cells seems like a pretty significant breakthrough if the process can be adapted to humans.  Keep kicking ass, Science!

See A Need, Errm, Fill...A Need

If you can't spice up the relationship with a trip to the Côte d'Azur in this economy, you can always try Walgreens as sexy goes mainstream for one California company, Justin Ross and Keith Caggiano's growing business, Screaming O.

Screaming O's desire now is to sell through mainstream channels while maintaining its racy branding. In late 2009, Walgreens signed a licensing deal to sell one of Screaming O's brands in 7,000 drugstores. Their products, with bright, explicit packaging, are also sold through Amazon.com, Drugstore.com, and RiteAid.com, as well as stores in 27 foreign countries. “We stand right at the edge. We want to market and brand ourselves as a company that sells fun,” Ross says, “without becoming so demure" that customers overlook the products.

It’s a tricky balance to achieve. Trojan, which has sold condoms for more than eight decades, first introduced vibrators to its product line a year ago. It’s taking a low-key approach, with television commercials that feature girlfriends chuckling knowingly over their “personal massagers” and packaging designed to disappear on the grocery store conveyor belt. In contrast, with a name like Screaming O, Ross, 38, and Caggiano, 44, can hardly be accused of subtlety.

“When people see our brand, the barriers go down and we melt their defenses,” says Caggiano, who developed the company’s online advertising and offline promotions, which mostly center on sponsoring international sporting events, spring-break hot spots, and safe sex forums on college campuses. “We want to find a way to help people be comfortable with themselves and their sexuality,” he says. 

I honestly think we're seeing this because of the economy, frankly, and more than a little backlash against the prudes...oh yeah, and the internet.  Let's face it, there's no way you're putting that genie back in the bottle.  Today's folk are more than happy to experiment safely with sex in the privacy of their own home, because let's face it, it's cheaper than dinner and a movie these days.

More power to you, gentlemen.

Billy The Kid Is Laughing

"The" Billy The Kid picture was auctioned for $2.3 million in Denver.  It's the only known picture, and the one used in every documentary, book and film.  He is reported to have paid a quarter for the picture.  He would be thrilled to know the return on his investment.

"When the bidding ended, the whole room erupted in clapping and people leapt to their feet," said Melissa McCracken, spokeswoman for the auction. "I've never experienced anything like this before."

The winning bidder was billionaire William Koch who founded Oxbow Carbon, with reported sales of $4 billion annually. Koch comes from a well-known family whose last name has made headlines in the past year for their political involvement.

Thus, the  Spiffy tag was born.