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Space shuttles for sale – $42million o.n.o.

space shuttle on runwayStart scrimping and saving, US citizens, because 2010 will present you with an opportunity to purchase a piece of space memorabilia without peer – a used space shuttle. [image by D’amico Rodrigo]

Also, you’ll need to ally yourself with the right sort of organisation: a science museum, perhaps, or a university. NASA won’t sell them to any old interested party with $42 million in used banknotes, you see… or at least, that’s the plan at the moment while they scout for potential buyers. If there aren’t many interested parties, maybe your independent bid will be taken more seriously.

So why not go for it? The buying price includes the cost of stripping out all the toxic and hazardous materials, as well as flying it to a US airport of your choice – worry-free bargains like this are one of the upsides to the economic slump, I guess.

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Royal Navy submarines now running on Windows; destroyers next

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As someone who has opportunity to observe the hapless and Byzantine bureaucracy of the Royal Navy in action at fairly close range, I’m both unsurprised and vaguely terrified to find that their latest batch of nuclear submarines have been fully kitted out with a specially developed version of the Windows XP operating system, and that the RN is so pleased with the speedy installation that they’ll be using the same software in a forthcoming class of destroyers. [via SlashDot]

The potential punchlines to this news pretty much write themselves.

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Excessive and structured daydreaming: It can’t be just her

Via boingBoing and MindHacks comes a case history and discussion of mind wandering and high fantasy proneness.

The subject of this case report is a professionally accomplished 36-year-old female presenting with a long history of excessive and highly structured daydreaming which she states has contributed to considerable distress during periods of her life. The patient is single, does not smoke, drink or use illegal drugs, and comes from a supportive and healthy family, reporting no abuse or trauma in her history.

…We have tenuously [could they mean tentatively?] viewed her symptoms as indicating possible features of obsessive-compulsive behavior, reflected in the prescription of 50 mg/day of fluvoxamine [Luvox], an antidepressant believed to influence obsessiveness and/or compulsivity. The medication has been continued for 10 years, as the patient affirms this treatment has made her daydreaming much easier to control. She reports that occasionally the amount of time spent daydreaming will rise and she will increase her dosage of fluvoxamine briefly until it subsides…

The paper for Consciousness and Cognition doesn’t get into what the woman actually daydreams about. But with so many of us logging so much time in virtual and imaginary worlds, shouldn’t we be seeing a lot more of this?

Recently, the patient discovered a website containing a surprising number of anonymous postings on the topic of excessive or uncontrolled daydreaming.

(I’m not having much luck finding that site.)

Mark Frauenfelder on bB recalls the case of a physicist who thought he was John Carter of Mars. I’ve had that dream myself.

[Daydreaming gentleman from 1912 German postcard: Wikipedia public domain]

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Animal liberation activists give virus to vivisectionists

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Here’s a new angle from animal liberation organisations; rather than using physical damage to people or property, a group calling themselves Hackers For Total Liberation have attacked a group of animal research scientists at Berkeley using a computer virus. From the group’s press release:

… all of the current lab members in Freeman’s Visual Neuroscience Lab were sent a trojan horse virus embedded into email. This virus is designed to completely wreck their computers while leeching all vital personal information they’ve ever entered into their systems.

How truly effective the virus is (or how many of the scientists were gullible enough to actually open it, or whether in fact the whole thing is a Jedi mind-trick media stunt) remains to be seen, but it’s interesting to see that hacking is becoming increasingly politicised.

Take, for example, the recent rainforest logging permits uproar: a field day for regular media to wheel out the hacker bogeyman, but also greatly offensive to those who cling to the original “white hat” definition of the term. The web is just another tool; the hand that wields it decides its morality.

[Just for complete clarity, I’d like to point out that posting the above item as news does not demonstrate support by Futurismic (or any of its writers and staff) for the use of illegal methods (or threats thereof) for the advancement of any cause, political or ethical or otherwise.]

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US government refuses support for Teh tubes… in 1908

From the possible future of the past: a report into the possibility of US government-support for the widespread adoption of pneumatic tubes for the delivery of mail, reported here in The New York Times in 1908:

“That it is not feasible and desirable at the present time for the Government to purchase, to install, or to operate pneumatic tubes,” is one of the most important conclusions reached by a commission appointed by the Postmaster General to inquire into the feasibility and desirability of of the purchase and operation by the Government of pneumatic tubes in the cities where the service is now installed.

This reminds me of the story of the atmospheric railway as told in Paul Collins’ excellent book Banvard’s Folly in which he tells “thirteen tales of renowned obscurity, famous anonimity, and rotten luck.”

[via Slashdot][image from Jef Poskanzer on flickr]

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