Saturday, April 16, 2011

4/16/2011

Oh hey! Sorry I have been gone :( But i am back :)

The entertainment of Silence: Charlie Chaplin

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Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Even Youtube got in on the fun :)

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4/12/2011

Gagarin Revisited

By JAMIE DORAN
| April 12, 2011, 3:03 pm
Yuri Gagarin in 1961TASS, via Associated PressYuri Gagarin in 1961.
Tuesday is the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s historic space flight. To mark the occasion, a groundbreaking biography of the space pioneer, published for the first time in the United States this month by Walker & Company, was recently excerpted in our men’s issue. Here, one of the book’s authors, Jamie Doran, revisits Gagarin’s legacy.
Imagine, just for a moment, that Yuri Gagarin had been born in the United States.
HBO would be competing for audiences with two or maybe three blockbuster Hollywood movies; streets or space facilities would be renamed, memorabilia on sale at every corner; 50th anniversary specials would appear in every sane magazine along with the usual raft of conspiracy theories in the insane, beginning with National Enquirer. And Yuri, had he been alive, would have loved every second of it.
I can’t truly say that my impression of Gagarin has changed perceptibly since the film was first made and the book published (in Britain in 1998). I always liked him and I still do. But what has most certainly changed is the recognition given to him and those amazing scientists for their spectacular achievement using what could only be described as extremely rudimentary technology, pushing the envelope far beyond that which anyone at the time believed possible.
Yuri was certainly a man of the world, in every sense, and I think it’s in this vein that my impression has solidified rather than changed. Here was a son of a peasant, shot into the spotlight in more ways than one, who took it in stride and, for too short a period, became a global enigma — a Soviet with a smile on his face.
No longer the dour, threatening faces atop Lenin’s mausoleum; here was a genuinely happy man whose unadulterated warmth touched everyone he came into contact with, including quite a few female fans whom he probably shouldn’t have come into contact with at all.
He was, quite simply, loved by one and all — including, eventually, even his greatest rivals — and it’s this impression that never leaves me.
I’m the son of an old Commie; a die-hard Soviet supporter who found it possible to turn a blind eye to some of the more shocking excesses of that ugly regime on the basis that it served as a counterweight to what he saw as American imperialism. I can never forget his enormous pride following the announcement of Gagarin’s successful flight. As for myself, this 5-year-old went straight outside to sit on the steps of our home in Glasgow and stare at the sky. And yes, even to this day, I swear that I spotted the shiny little capsule as it made its way around our Earth (even though it had completed its journey long, long before).
After ‘witnessing’ this historic moment, I stepped back indoors just in time to hear my father boldly proclaiming that the first country to land a man on the Moon would rule the world, so certain was he that it would be the USSR. (When, eight years later, I reminded him of this claim after a fellow called Armstrong had planted his feet on the ‘Big Cheese’, as we used to call it, he vehemently denied saying this, claiming that my hearing was surely impaired that day: “I didn’t say the Moon”, he protested, “I said Mars.”)
What is truly extraordinary about Gagarin is that he became one of the very, very few (actually, I can’t think of any others presently) Soviet icons who kept his heroic status after the Berlin Wall fell, leading to a change in personnel at the Kremlin. He is as much a hero to present-day Russians as he was to their parents and grandparents.
But Yuri himself, whom I sometimes got the impression put up with the adulation simply as it served as a vehicle towards another free glass of vodka or the undying admiration of yet another rather attractive young lady, would be the first to point out who the true hero of that era was. He was known only as the “Chief Designer,” his real name never publicly acknowledged due to the obsession with secrecy.
Sergei Korolev had become a father-figure to Cosmonaut No 1. In 1966, as Yuri sat by his deathbed listening intently to tales of his often tough life (including six years in the Gulag), he knew that Korolev’s plans to beat the United States and be the first to land a man on the Moon were already being implemented. But without the great man at the helm, those plans soon fell into disarray. Had a tumor not suddenly snuffed out possibly the greatest scientific mind the Soviet Union had ever produced, perhaps my father’s initial proclamation would have come true and even Hollywood would have had to take notice.

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Sunday, April 3, 2011

4/3/2011

119th anniversary of the first documented ice cream sundae
A message to the fine folks at  Google: You don’t have to greenlight every idea for a Doodle that comes along. Birthdays of famous figures from history we can get behind — we’ve been known to dabble in that a bit ourselves — but celebrating the invention of the term “ice cream sundae?” What?I could kind of understand if they were celebrating the anniversary of the invention of the sundae itself, but they’re not, because nobody knows when that was. There’s some dispute over when and where the term was invented (though there is general agreement that at first it was “sunday” instead), but Ithaca, New York has the only claim with any sort of documented evidence, in the form of the first known printed mention of the term, in an 1893 newspaper ad. Even though all that proves is that the term was invented at some point not too long before the ad was printed, Google has chosen to respect local lore that holds that the term was invented on April 3, 1892 by Chester Platt and John Scott at a pharmacy/soda fountain owned by Platt, in Ithaca.
So, OK, that might be of some interest to linguistic historians, or to the folks in Ithaca and the other places that lay claim to inventing the term “ice cream sundae,” but does anyone else really care? I’m much more interested in actual ice cream sundaes than the term — as Shakespeare might have written if he’d ever had one, that which we call an “ice cream sundae” by any other name would still taste as sweet. And despite what some people might have you believe, the dish was not invented in Ithaca, or anywhere else, in 1892.
How do I know? Well, there is plenty of evidence that Thomas Jefferson enjoyed ice cream, both at home in Monticello and in the White House. And there is evidence (though less available online than I’d expected) that he enjoyed it with maple syrup on top, meaning that the sundae as a dish was invented long before 1892.
Some people seem to think Google’s primary motivation in running today’s Doodle is that the upcoming update to the Android OS is nicknamed “ice cream.” Even if so, they’re really reaching for this one.

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Hey guys, sorry I haven't been checking in, I have been super busy. But no worries, I am back. :)

Japanese nuclear plant continues its radioactive spill into ocean

For a second day, workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant were unable to plug a leak of radioactive water. Meanwhile, Japan's prime minister says it will take months to resolve the problems at the plant.

By Julie Makinen and Thomas H. Maugh II, Los Angeles Times
April 3, 2011, 7:51 a.m.
Reporting from Tokyo and Los Angeles— 
Workers at theFukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant failed for a second day to stem the flow of radioactive water into the ocean as plastic injected into the leak Sunday failed to form a plug.

Workers had discovered an 8-inch crack in a concrete channel at the lower levels of reactor No. 2 where radioactive water had been accumulating after it had been sprayed onto the reactor to cool it. The crack was spewing the contaminated water into the ocean, which may explain the high levels of radioactivity detected offshore near the plant.

On Saturday, workers attempted to pump concrete into the crack to seal it, but the concrete would not set before it was washed away by the flow of seawater.

On Sunday, engineers attempted to plug the leak with a mixture of sawdust, shredded paper and a polymer or plastic that expanded to 500 times its normal size when exposed to water. They had then hoped to pour concrete on top of the polymer to form a permanent seal, but the polymer did not form a plug either, and as of Sunday night, water was continuing to flow into the ocean.

Radiation levels in the water are an estimated 1,000 millisieverts per hour, a high but not immediately lethal dose.

On Monday, engineers plan to begin injecting nitrogen gas into reactors Nos. 1, 2 and 3 in an attempt to prevent possible explosions from the buildup of hydrogen gas. The nonflammable nitrogen would dilute both oxygen levels and any hydrogen that accumulated from deterioration of the uranium fuel cladding. The zirconium cladding on the fuel rods becomes oxidized when it is exposed to hot water, releasing hydrogen gas.

Explosions at the three reactors in the first four days after the magnitude 9 Tohoku earthquake and the accompanying tsunami badly damaged the reactor buildings and destroyed the cooling pumps that provided water to the reactors.

An aide to Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan and a spokesman for the country's nuclear safety agency both said Sunday that they expected it would take months to resolve the situation at the power plant. "It would take a few months until we get things under control and have a better idea about the future," Hidehiko Nishiyama of the safety agency said in a news conference.

Officials of the Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Sunday that they had retrieved two bodies from the power plant last Wednesday. The men had rushed into the control room during the earthquake and were killed in the tsunami that followed.

The announcement of their recovery was not made until Sunday so that the families could be notified first.

A search by Japanese and U.S. military authorities on Sunday led to the discovery of 70 more bodies of people who died in the tsunami, bringing the official death total to 12,087, with more than 15,500 still missing or unaccounted for.

and the entertainment:

42 minutes ago by TMZ Staff  
Charlie Sheen will learn tonight whether or not his departure from "Two and a Half Men" was a good career turn or a disaster as he performs his second show -- this time in Chicago.

0310_charlie_tmz_ex
A rep for Vividseats.com tells TMZ with the rest of the tour already not selling well -- they have between 200-300 seats available per show -- tonight's performance could send the rest of the tour into a tailspin.

And staffers at several ticket agencies tell us there has been a rapid rise in the number of people trying to unload their tickets since last night's disastrous performance.

Either way, we'll be there and we will tell you how it all goes down ... as it happens. 
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