“Meep! Meep!” is all the competition hears now….The US Military has the fastest supercomputer now…
And guess what? THe CPUs began their design life destined for gaming computers.

This isn’t the first time the gaming industry and the US Military has put it’s heads together to do something amazing, either.

So, now “Road Runner” leads the supercomputer pack.

Not computer related, but great technology from the medical field, and sadly from something bad, there are doctors and researchers are working on something very good for everyone. Salamander-inspired therapy may aid injured vets from CNN:

By Larry Shaughnessy
CNN Pentagon ProducerSAN ANTONIO, Texas (CNN) — Last week in an operating room in Texas, a wounded American soldier underwent a history-making procedure that could help him regrow the finger that was lost to a bomb attack in Baghdad, Iraq, last year.

Army Sgt. Shiloh Harris’ doctors applied specially formulated powder to what’s left of the finger in an effort to do for wounded soldiers what salamanders can do naturally: replace missing body parts.

If it sounds like science fiction, the lead surgeon agreed.

“It is. But science fiction eventually becomes true, doesn’t it?” asked Dr. Steven Wolf of Brooke Army Medical Center.

Harris’ surgery is part of a major medical study of “regenerative medicine” being pursued by the Pentagon and several of the nation’s top medical facilities, including the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and the Cleveland Clinic. Nearly $250 million has been dedicated to the research.
[…]

Amazing, and life changing for all trauma victims in the future.

Staff Sergeant Matthew Maupin’s remains are coming home to Cincinnati’s Lunken Airport on Saturday, April 26th. The Critical Hour blog has a request for those wishing to honor Matt to line the route to the Union Township Civic Center holding lighted candles. SSGT Maupin was the soldier captured in Iraq in 2004 and was recently found dead. Details of the route for tomorrow, Saturday 4/26/2008 are here. A condolence page to leave a note to Matt’s parents is also available.

SteelJaw Scribe reminds us of the final airlift out of Vietnam in 1975: Operation Frequent Wind in his ongoing excellent “Flight Deck Friday” series.

CDR Salamander’s “Fullbore Friday” chronicles reminds of how one man from Hollywood served his nation well crossing the beaches at Normandy on day one and then further into Europe. The man is Charles Durning.

“Rounds Out!” on Townhall reminds of “Climate Change” with a painting depicting a cooler time in history.

Yid with a Lid presents the speech BhO might have given, had he been at the Reed Sea when Moses parted the waters en route the Promised Land.

From Popular Science: The best surgeon is but an internet connection away, and now the system is improved!

The Da Vinci robot for distance surgery has an added advantage: It tracks what are of the patient the surgeon is looking at and provides the doctor with a 3D image of the anatomy.

What will they think of next?

From Scientific Blogging:

This prototype plasma antenna is stealthy, versatile, and jam-resistant. Credit: T. R. Anderson and I. AlexeffNifty! Plasma antennas…Now you see them, then you don’t. Tunable to multiple frequencies…don’t rust, won’t bust with the added bonus (at NO COST!) of being jam proof! And did I mention the use of them eliminates a massive reflective surface, that would be detected be radar looking for you?Just how do they do it? The answer is here.

The March Scientific American has an article on it, in which I read that the funding by the Navy has been pulled because, so far, the beams can only be steered in one plane, and they asked for it to be done in two planes. I’m sure the wizards will figure it out one day.

From the Telegraph in the UK:

Chief scientist in sports cars warning to women:

Professor Sir David King said governments could only do so much to control greenhouse gas emissions and it was time for a cultural change among the British public.
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And he singled out women who find supercar drivers “sexy”, adding that they should divert their affections to men who live more environmentally-friendly lives.

His comments were greeted with anger by sports car drivers who insisted that their vehicles’ greenhouse gas emissions were tiny compared with those from four-wheel-drive vehicles.

Sir David, who is due to retire as the UK’s Chief Scientific Adviser at the end of the year, said individuals needed to change their behaviour.
[…]

I’m guessing the pilots, ESPECIALLY the real go fast guys, who can step it up that one more notch to “buster” speed, will be the next to fall form grace at the green alter of “Climate Change.” Gotta be lots of “bad emissions” from the raw JP-5 dumping into the afterburner section…

Will pilots have the “fortitude” to stand tall and defend their right to turn a liquid into bone rattling sonic booms?

Ya know, if the women are more concerned about staying cool than dating “cool,” they might want to heed the messenger!

Good thing Lex already has made his mark on the future of society…and needs no more fawning babes at his feet, begging for a “Tiger Cruise” of their very own.

On the other hand…think about a world where the Guv’ment tells you who to date…You think they blew it with Katrina? Yeah, standby to standby for that disaster…Yep, we need to tell women how to think, according to Sir King. Will the feminists come out to protest this round of patently obvious misogyny of this line of reasoning?

I think it’s just jealousy hidden behind the current “blame all” crisis of the moment…I bet Sir King never even owned a super car….

Put your links to your best (or…well…anything you have) here…The sights at sea are amazing, and some one a few will witness, unless they look for them.

So, you call yourself a sailor, and you don’t believe in “the Green Flash?” Do you consider your fellow mariners who boast of such siting as more (maybe a lot more) or less on the wrong side of sanity for a moment or a lifetime?

Well, I have seen the phenomena, and now, you can know I’m quite sane, if you are an unbeliever, but at least I saw it in person a few times…

The “why/how” is here.

More real sitings captured here.

Facts and fiction about same…

Do you believe me now, shipmates?

Linking, learning and OOPS! Information coming in!

Found at the Scientific American Mind website, the adventuring into the upper reaches of the atmosphere has a cumulative effect on the thing that makes you think.

From “Into thin air: Altitude’s toll on the brain”:

Douglas Fields
National Institutes of Mental Health
Washington, D.C.

Three attributes of a good mountaineer are high pain threshold, bad memory, and … I forget the third. - R. Douglas Fields

Climbing Mount Everest is not so difficult; the hard part is getting down intact. According to a recent brain imaging study, almost no one does. Of thirteen climbers in the study who attempted Mount Everest, none returned without brain damage. The study also scanned the brains of climbers who attempted less extreme summits. For those of us who love to climb, the results are less than elevating. It seems that almost no one, whether the weekend warrior chaperoned to the summit or the seasoned mountaineer, will return from the high peaks with a brain in the same condition it was in beforehand.
[…]

Some of us will be able, based on a propensity to “get high” in aircraft or climbing, will be able to use this as a defense in our more advanced years to cover our mental errors. But then we know the other people who “get high” also will have that excuse…

Watch Lex’s posts for signs of too many rides when he took his O₂ mask off against the directives of NATOPS.

(Click for the large version)

I can hear it now, a new parody song for NASA’s shuttle crews:

“Ground Control to Major Tom:
“Go out there and put some Duct Tape on”
You can work on the rest of the replacement lyrics yourself. You also can get credit for preforming it on YouTube.

NASA Photo: Expedition 15 Flight Engineer Clay Anderson holds a Crew Equipment Translation Aid cart as he rides on the end of the International Space Station’s robotic arm during STS-118’s third spacewalk. Image: NASA TVAnyhow, if you check out the link above, you’ll see it’s not so much a joke.Now, on the more serious side, think about being a bona fide astronaut and, having scoffed at skydivers all these years (for no real aviator would jump out of a ‘perfectly good’ airplane) and now you are in orbit, above the atmosphere and the safety of being able to depart a potential soon to be disaster and put some space age fabric in the shape of a wing above your head, mumbling to yourself while on the EVA, what Bill Cosby said (”Hope the plane don’t crash!”) and praying that it’s Duct Tape to the rescue on reentry…

I’m thinking it might not be such a silly idea to see if you can make a spacesuit and integrated lifesaving parachute for future Shuttle flights, but then again, I know how much fun freefall really is. Now that I think about it, in WWI, only the Germans supplied their air crews with parachutes, with the Allies believing that, once so equipped, pilots would rather jump than work to get the plane back to home plate. Oh, how wrong they were in that assessment.

If you’d like some real data on the STS-118 “issue,” check this page out to see several videos of the damage.