GETTING THE NUMBERS AND DOING THE ARITHMETIC (18-Dec-2000): "Many questions that concern people can be answered by getting some numbers and doing arithmetic with them. Usually just multiplication and division are involved"

An interesting exercise by John McCarthy the inventor of LISP and now emeritus professor of computer science at Stanford. To me the telling point is how few people bother to do the arithmetic for much of anything. It's also a nice little case study of how to do back of the envelope thinking.

3:57:31 PM •  • comment  

The Blue Marble "This spectacular “blue marble” image is the most detailed true-color image of the entire Earth to date. Using a collection of satellite-based observations, scientists and visualizers stitched together months of observations of the land surface, oceans, sea ice, and clouds into a seamless, true-color mosaic of every square kilometer (.386 square mile) of our planet." [via MeFi]

[The Shifted Librarian]

Amazing.

When I was in middle school my dad ran a major chunk of the testing for the Gemini program at McDonnell Douglas. You can imagine how cool it was for a geeky kid immersed in science fiction to have pictures of your dad working with guys like Deke Slayton.  I miss the sense of possibility from those days of the space program. Don't you want to see this view live?  I still do.

9:44:54 AM •  • comment