Split (1)

train · 33.2M rows

text stringlengths 1 100k
Soft-landing on Mars is complicated because of the planet's extremely thin atmosphere. According to Tabatha Thompson, a spokeswoman for NASA, the agency is interested in potentially cribbing from whatever techniques SpaceX uses to slow and land the Red Dragon. “The collaboration offers NASA the potential flight technology demonstration of critical entry, descent, and landing for human exploration—particularly supersonic retro-propulsion—in the Mars atmosphere," Thompson explained. "SpaceX has sought NASA’s support because the agency has unique expertise in deep space exploration in areas such as deep space communication and navigation.” A successful mission may also open the door to future cooperation between SpaceX and NASA's aims to return soil samples from the surface of Mars.
How much will it cost?
SpaceX isn't saying. The Falcon Heavy list price for a launch is $135 million, and then there’s the cost of the Dragon spacecraft, the mission planning, executing and monitoring the flight, and any number of other factors. Industry sources speculate that the cost probably would be in the range of at $300 million to $500 million for a soup-to-nuts mission. That's just a guess, though—no hard numbers are available.
Why is SpaceX doing this?
Because Elon Musk wants to colonize Mars. As noted earlier, one of the most important first steps is figuring out how to land stuff on the red planet, which has a thin atmosphere and therefore doesn't provide a very effective medium for aerobraking. A spacecraft must attain a great velocity (and therefore invest a lot of energy) to reach Mars in six to nine months, and once it's there, it must then somehow shed that energy and slow down. Musk believes the upgraded Dragon 2 spacecraft will be able to use its eight SuperDraco engines to hammer away at its velocity and then land on Mars in a powered descent, similar to the way the Apollo Lunar Module landed on the moon. This too is technology NASA would be eager to see demonstrated.
But the only way to be sure is to give it a try without cargo or people. If this test works, Musk will have checked one of many boxes required to safely send humans to Mars.
Doesn’t NASA have plans to go to Mars, too?
Yes, NASA says it's on a Journey to Mars, although there is some skepticism in the aerospace community about how real that venture actually is. NASA is cooperating with SpaceX on its Red Dragon mission, but if SpaceX is successful, it could prove embarrassing for the space agency (though the real shame more appropriately lies with policymakers). NASA has spent nearly $20 billion on the Space Launch System rocket and Orion space capsule to date, and in the absolute best-case scenario will fly them around the Moon at the end of 2018. How would the public react if a private company can, largely on its own dime, develop nearly comparable vehicles and fly all the way to Mars in the same year?
But, again, can a private company really do this?
Ars put that question to Rick Tumlinson, an aerospace entrepreneur and de facto evangelist for the "New Space" movement—that cadre of young companies like SpaceX that are trying to break the mold of traditional aerospace. “We’re seeing a paradigm shift,” Tumlinson told us. “It’s like a roller coaster moment. You slowly get to the top, and you’re rolling along like we've been, and then all of a sudden it’s going to accelerate. What we’re seeing is the beginning of that with exploration.” Tumlinson argued that in 2016 the SpaceXs, the Blue Origins, and other new space companies are doing remarkable things in space.
If SpaceX succeeds, what comes next?
Like Musk, Tumlinson is one of the true believers in settlement on other worlds, and he thinks the true purpose of NASA and the nation’s space program should be to enable humans to move into the solar system. The Red Dragon mission would lay down a marker, he said. “Being able to demonstrate that you are capable of putting a spacecraft on Mars that is in the range of one needed to carry the first humans there—that is firing the first shot of a revolution that’s going to lead to the settlement of space," Tumlinson said. "Being able to show you can land that kind of spacecraft puts you on a track that people have to take seriously.”
In short, if Red Dragon does land, it validates Musk's vision of colonizing Mars. Keep your hands and feet inside the ride, because this roller coaster only gets faster from here.
Innovation is a mindset — not just something you do once or twice a week — and Hollywood’s media companies have done a pretty poor job of it, a panel of New Media experts said in the final panel at TheGrill, TheWrap’s fourth annual Media Leadership Conference on Tuesday.
Los Angeles-based legacy companies have been slow to adopt the Silicon Valley way, said Rich Raddon, co-founder of Venice-based Zefr, which helps content owners and brands manage their business on YouTube.
“Not a lot of that culture has really rubbed off on SoCal media companies,” said Raddon, a former producer (“A Slipping Down Life”) and director of the Los Angeles Film Festival from 2000 to 2009. “I just found a strong affinity to how people were building business up there.”
Also read: TheGrill: Online-Video-Giant Maker’s Chief – We’ll Be the Next Viacom (Video)
The panel, titled “Innovators panel: Meet the Folks We’ll All Be Working For in 10 Years,” also included Tumblr’sDavid Hayes and Lowercase Capital partner Matt Mazzeo. It was moderated by TheWrap’s Lucas Shaw.
Raddon relayed the story of a major film studio that hosted a weekly “innovation group” – which was managed by, of all things, the company’s human-resources department.
(At right: Hayes, Mazzeo and Raddon)
“It’s hilarious,” he said. “Innovation is a mindset, not just a word.”
But there’s good news: A whole lot of companies who do get it are sprouting up all over town.
“This city is seeing this massive growth and explosion in tech companies,” said Mazzeo, whose Lowercase Capital advises and invests in companies at the junction of tech and media. “A lot of this is happening in mobile. It couldn’t be a more exciting time to be playing in both worlds right now.”
Also read: TheGrill: Market-Research Leader Bruzzese – Our Industry Is Broken (Video)
And there’s no bigger nexus point than YouTube — another thing the panelists don’t think Hollywood is getting its head around.
“This town has a misperception about what’s happened with YouTube, which just keeps going up and up,” said Raddon, citing its staggering growth toward 1 billion unique users per month.
The reason many traditionalists turn their nose up at YouTube, he said, is that it’s still not easy to monetize there — especially the platform’s wicked-fast growing overseas users.
“But you gotta have some vision here,” he said. “In the early days of cable, the big networks were sitting around doing the same thing … My kids know two things: They know YouTube and Neflix. They know a little about what Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel are.”
Also read: TheGrill: On the Scene at TheWrap’s Media Leadership Conference (Photos)
At the suggestion that emerging storytelling forms — short videos, gifs, the like — would be so disruptive as to put an end to the two-hour movie or 10-season TV show, Mazzeo bristled: “Our consumption patterns might change,” he said, “but the storytelling forms will survive. The people I deal with in tech may think, ‘Well, this is better.’ But they don’t think the other thing has to die.”
Hayes, entertainment evangelist at Tumblr and head of the blogging platform’s think-tank CANVAS, said people are simply finding different ways to use different platforms, and young people are already acclimated to those differences.
“They’re being trained at a young age to be satisfied by a three-minute video, or a three-second gif,” he said. “A lot of these platforms are being used to market story forms. We’ll soon see them be used to deliver those story forms.”
One of the tough parts of running a business is deciding when to put more effort into something and when to not. We know we've been pretty silent here since the end of the season, and after a lot of internal debate, we've decided to stop posting editorial content on the BBR blog.
This obviously has nothing to do with the quality of the content produced by lead writer, Neil Paine. His posts were phenomenal, and I know many readers looked forward to them every week. A big thanks to Neil for making this such a vital place for basketball discussion and analysis. As a small company, focus is vital for our success, and we are choosing to focus our energy on pumping out as much statistical basketball data as possible and that means cutting back in other areas.
None of the existing content is going to go away. We'll keep it up here for as long as the site is open (which we intend to be a very long time). If you would like to contact Neil, he's available at [email protected].
Thank you most of all for your patronage.
Tool Announces"Vicarious" As New Single, Release Date Set
Band Photo: Tool (?)
Jonathan Cohen of Billboard.com reports: Tool has revealed the track list for its next studio album, "10,000 Days." As previously reported, the set is due May 2 via Volcano. The first single/album opener "Vicarious," which stretches past the seven-minute mark, is due to arrive April 17 at U.S. rock radio outlets.
True to form, the 11-track "10,000 Days" sports a number of epic tunes, particularly "Rosetta Stoned" and "10,000 Days (Wings Pt. 2)," both of which clock in at 11:14. Near the end of the disc are the substantially lengthy "Intension" (7:21) and "Right in Two" (8:56).
"10,000 Days" is the follow-up to 2001's "Lateralus," which debuted at No. 1 on The Billboard 200 and has sold 2.3 million copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
As previously reported, Tool will play its first U.S. show since late 2002 when it headlines the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival on April 30 in Indio, Calif. No other U.S. dates have been confirmed. Afterward, the band will spend the first portion of the summer playing the European festival circuit, with dates on tap through July 9 at Finland's Turku Festival.
Here is the track list for "10,000 Days":
"Vicarious"
"Jambi"
"Wings for Marie (Pt. 1)"
"10,000 Days (Pt. 2)"
"The Pot"
"Lipan Conjuring"
"Lost Keys (Blame Hofman)"
"Rosetta Stoned"
"Intension"
"Right in Two"
"Viginti Tres"
Source: Billboard.com
UPDATE:
Large geomagnetic storm brewing means Northern Lights tonight The National Weather Service said the aurora should be visible tonight as far south as Missouri, where clear skies allow.
A strong magnetic storm is expected to hit Earth over the next two days. The strength of the magnetic storm means northern lights could be visible as far south as the Detroit and Chicago areas.
A large sunspot erupted September 4, 2017, throwing a coronal mass ejection (CME) toward the earth. A coronal mass ejection is a huge explosion of magnetic field and plasma from the Sun's corona. When CMEs impact the Earth's magnetosphere, they are responsible for geomagnetic storms and enhanced auroras, according to NOAA.
NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center has issued a Strong Magnetic Storm Watch for the nights of Sept. 6 and Sept. 7. This means northern lights will possibly be visible farther south than during a typical northern lights event.
Northern lights forecasts use a rating system called the kP index to gauge how likely northern lights will be visible at a certain latitude. Northern lights are typically visible as far south as a kP value of 7.
On the map above, I drew the expected location of the kP=7. So northern lights may be visible as far south as the Detroit area, Chicago, Cleveland, Des Moines and Syracuse, NY.
But you won't be able to see the northern lights in the big cities. You will have to get out into the countryside where it's completely dark.
To get updated info on the northern lights, go here.
There is a good factor pointing toward seeing the northern lights in the next two nights. Skies at night should generally be more clear than cloudy in the Great Lakes region. We will have afternoon showers pop up both today and Thursday. At night those showers should diminish. While the skies may not clear entirely in all locations, the spotty showers will just leave isolated clouds in most areas.
The negative to watching northern lights tonight and Thursday is a nearly full moon. The bright full moon we have been enjoying the past two nights will throw light up into the sky. The extra moonlight won't totally block out northern lights hopes, but could make them harder to see in marginal northern lights areas.
Get a nap in this evening, and head to a dark location toward midnight.
Any questions or comments, please post below.
What can be wrong with giving scholarships to the meritorious? A meritorious society is a just society, right? Giving money according to “worth” seems way better, ethically, than giving to the well-connected, or to those of a favored race or religion, right?
Well, maybe. But then again, sometimes maybe not.
The problem of law school merit scholarships is a complicated and nuanced one, especially for those who have not considered it at length. In brief, here are five background points underlying the ethical conundrum I will subsequently sketch out:
Law Schools, like car dealerships, have list prices for their wares. Tuition charges for all law schools must be stated on their web sites and in their written materials, pursuant to regulators’ (ABA, AALS) requirements. There must be some silly people out there who pay list price for their cars, I suppose, and there are certainly people who pay full tuition under the impression that that’s what everyone pays. But in reality not everyone pays list price, and those who have done so are quickly disabused when they arrive at 1L. Law Schools always want to attract the “best” students, and one way to attract them is to price discriminate, i.e., to offer discounts from list. “Best,” of course, is a concept with many possible denotations, and in days of yore American law schools tended to have diverse understandings of it. Today, though, U.S. News and World Report rankings are so influential tha they have become the cart driving the law school admissions horse. USNWR has homogenized our understanding of student value – Law School Admissions Test scores and undergraduate Grade Point Averages are the measures of student excellence. The higher the median LSAT and GPA scores of the admitted student body, the higher a law school’s ranking will be (the two factors combined account for 22.5% of a school’s ranking), and the higher the ranking, ceteris paribus, the better will be the jobs offered to graduates, the better paid will be its alumni base, the better will be the faculty lured to work there, and the better will be the students enticed to apply there. Rising ranking thus stimulates a “virtuous circle” while falling ranking leads to a “vicious circle” that, if left unattended, can result what some fear to be a “death spiral.” Buying better students is one attempt to move from a vicious circle to a virtuous one. Today, law jobs are quite hard to come by for many law school grads, and law school tuition as risen so high during the boom years that many grads are saddled with student loans they have great difficulty repaying. Bankruptcy is not normally available to discharge student loan debt. So minimizing student loans through discounts from tuition list price is a high priority for law school applicants. In our increasingly meritorious nation, the cream has often already risen to the top. The wealthy tend to be smarter and better educated than the poorer – and they tend to have children who are smarter and better educated than are the children of poorer parents.
These five factors play out in predictable ways. At super-elite law schools (Yale/Harvard/Stanford, etc.), virtually all students have stellar LSAT and GPA scores. Those with such scores are willing to pay list price for the experience, the contacts and the credential these Brahmin schools provide – and these schools can therefore eliminate merit scholarships and admit selectively based on criteria other than LSAT and GPA. [Did you rise from humble beginnings? Did you overcome your physical handicap and climb Everest, writing a Pulitzer-winning account of your exploit?] But at most schools, merit scholarships will be offered to the high LSAT and GPA scorers among applicants to that school. Most schools must pay to lure those scorers away from other, equally or possibly higher-ranked schools that are bidding for their attendance. And those merit scholars will tend to be more intelligent and from tonier zip codes than lower-ranked admittees to the same law school.
One key additional fact bears mention now. It is far from irrational for USNWR to use median LSAT and GPA to rank schools. Student LSAT and GPA scores are, unsurprisingly, significantly correlated with law school performance. So it’s meaningful to say that the student body at a higher ranked school tends to be “better” than the student body at a lower-ranked school. Employers can use school rank as a proxy in making employment decisions – schools are a convenient aggregation of students of a given talent level. That’s how the virtuous (or vicious, as the case may be) snowball starts rolling.
The upshot of all this is that, at most law schools, price discrimination results in poorer, less well-educated students “subsidizing” (paying higher tuition than) richer, better-educated students. For their subsidy, poorer students are penalized a second time at graduation – because the subsidized richer students will tend to finish at the top of the class and get better paying jobs, while the poorer students will find it harder and harder to find employment to pay for their higher student loans. Thus are “list price” payers made to seem to be chumps over and over again, while the recipients of merit scholarships laugh, as it were, all the way to the bank.
This looks in many ways like a classic regressive tax.
What should be done about this? That’s not clear – it’s not self-evident that merit scholarships are “unfair” or “racist” or “classist”, even if merit scholarship recipients tend to be from tonier zip codes and of paler hues. Results don’t correlate with motives. But the results are regressive, it seems, and if regressivity is itself justification for reform, a second question arises:
What can be done?
As indicated above, the Yales of this world offer essentially no merit scholarships – they attract LSAT and GPA studs willing to pay list price. Their scholarships are need-based, so redistribution tends to be from haves to have-nots. At the other end of the USNWR spectrum, University of La Verne College of Law in California just announced that, like certain innovative car dealerships, it will charge the same non-negotiable “discounted” price to all matriculants. Merit scholarships are out at La Verne, and instead of a list price of $39,900 replete with heavy price discrimination, all new matriculants will pay $25K. It’s “as if” every student got a $15K scholarship, if you will – though in reality the "discounted" price is an indication of the extent of prior price discrimination.
La Verne is a lowest-tier USNWR school, recently provisionally re-accredited after being denied full ABA accreditation, and it is unlikely that it attracted many high-scoring LSAT and GPA stars while price discriminating. Perhaps La Verne has little to lose and much to gain in PR benefits from its new, “fairer” tuition system. But can La Verne’s fixed-price model spread to higher ranked schools? That will be hard to do because of collective action problems – for fixed-price law schools risk losing their best students to rival schools that continue to price discriminate. Rationally, the temptation is to continue to impose the regressive tax.
For those who believe this to be ethically problematic, outside intervention may be needed to solve what is essentially a Prisoners’ Dilemma. The ABA might, for instance, ban merit scholarships at accredited schools. US News and World Report might cease using student LSAT and GPA scores in law school rankings. Will these things happen? Count me doubtful. If USNWR abandoned LSAT and GPA, a rival publication would spring up and take its place. And the ABA seems hardly likely to resist pressures by firms that are anxious to use law schools as selection proxies in their hiring process.
Law professors are, for the most part, lawyers, and we are bound ethically to make access to our profession accessible to qualified and interested people. Have we done this by setting up a system that transfers resources from the more to the less needy? If so, perhaps we need to rethink what we are doing. Or should we stick our heads in the sand and forget about this whole problem – after all, LSAT test taker numbers are finally increasing again, right? What, us worry?
As always, your comments are welcome. Contact me at mkrauss at gmu dot edu.
Why the court will uphold Obamacare For its reputation, mainly
Predictions are always hazardous when it comes to the economy, the weather and the Supreme Court. I won’t get near the first two right now, but I’ll hazard a guess on what the court is likely to decide tomorrow: It will uphold the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) by a vote of 6 to 3.
Three reasons for my confidence:
Advertisement:
First, Chief Justice John Roberts is — or should be — concerned about the steadily declining standing of the court in the public’s mind, along with the growing perception that the justices decide according to partisan politics rather than according to legal principle. The 5-4 decision in Citizen’s United, for example, looked to all the world like a political rather than a legal outcome, with all five Republican appointees finding that restrictions on independent corporate expenditures violate the First Amendment, and all four Democratic appointees finding that such restrictions are reasonably necessary to avoid corruption or the appearance of corruption. Or consider the court’s notorious decision in Bush v. Gore.
The Supreme Court can’t afford to lose public trust. It has no ability to impose its will on the other two branches of government: As Alexander Hamilton once noted, the court has neither the purse (it can’t threaten to withhold funding from the other branches) or the sword (it can’t threaten police or military action). It has only the public’s trust in the court’s own integrity and the logic of its decisions — both of which the public is now doubting, according to polls. As chief justice, Roberts has a particular responsibility to regain the public’s trust. Another 5-4 decision overturning a piece of legislation as important as Obamacare would further erode that trust.
It doesn’t matter that a significant portion of the public may not like Obamacare. The issue here is the role and institutional integrity of the Supreme Court, not the popularity of a particular piece of legislation. Indeed, what better way to show the court’s impartiality than to affirm the constitutionality of legislation that may be unpopular but is within the authority of the other two branches to enact?
Second, Roberts can draw on a decision by a Republican-appointed and highly respected conservative jurist, Judge Laurence Silberman, who found Obamacare to be constitutional when the issue came to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The judge’s logic was lucid and impeccable — so much so that Roberts will try to lure Justice Anthony Kennedy with it, to join Roberts and the four liberal justices, so that rather than another 5-4 split (this time on the side of the Democrats), the vote will be 6-3.
Third and finally, Roberts (and Kennedy) can find adequate Supreme Court precedent for the view that the Commerce Clause of the Constitution gives Congress and the president the power to regulate healthcare — given that heathcare coverage (or lack of coverage) in one state so obviously affects other states; that the market for health insurance is already national in many respects; and that other national laws governing insurance (Social Security and Medicare, for example) require virtually everyone to pay (in these cases, through mandatory contributions to the Social Security and Medicare trust funds).
OK, so I’ve stuck my neck out. We’ll find out tomorrow how far.
Turkish Cymbal Making
23.2.2017 by Engin Altunlu
As the resident “Turk” of the Bbop team, I thought that it could only be relevant for me to talk about the history of the renowned Turkish cymbals. Throughout the world of music and the many musical styles which exist today, Turkish cymbals remain highly respected for their unique and diverse sound. The production in many companies is still carried out in the traditional way.
The History:
Cymbal production began in Turkey in the 1200s. The cymbals created at the time were created for just one purpose: the marching band of the Ottoman Army. These cymbals were crafted by Armenian master artisans. The secret to their production has remained just that, a secret, ever since. The man behind the formula for the perfect cymbal was Avedis Zilciyan (Zildjian): “Zilci”, means “Master creator of cymbals” in Turkish and “Yan” means “the son of” in Armenian. Thus, “the son of the cymbal master”. In 1623, with the permission of Sultan Murat IV, the now world-renowned company Zildjian was founded. Towards the end of the 7th century, Westerners had discovered the existence of these cymbals and began to incorporate them into their orchestras. During the 1780s, the cymbals began to be used in Military bands as well as Haydn’s and Mozart’s Orchestras.
In 1851, Avedis Zildjian’s son, Kerope Zildjian (whose name is found in the K-series) began to show cymbals in expositions, helping the company's transition into the European market. In 1909, with the aid of the Ottoman Empire, the company was able to build a second factory elsewhere. The cymbals produced bore the description “Made in Turkey, Istanbul” and later in modern times, were used by some of the world’s most famous musicians such as The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, Cream, Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Guns N’ Roses and many more.
This craft passed through the generations until when, after the death of the final grandson Mikal Zildjian, the world awaited the end of the legend and its secret cymbal formula. It was however, the 9 year old apprentices of the final artisan who saved the legacy. They knew everything! Their names were Mehmet Tamdeger and Agop Tomurcuk, and the company was to be called Istanbul. Thanks to them alone, the legend could continue to live until today in Istanbul. In 1981, the company started to reproduce the traditional cymbals in an Istanbul studio. After Agop’s death in 1996, Mehmet continued making these but it was Agop’s son who then stepped in. He claimed his father’s section of the company and the Agop cymbals and like that the company was divided in to: Istanbul Mehmet and Istanbul Agop. These days, Turkish Cymabls are produced (in the traditional way and with the traditional formula) only by the companies Istanbul Mehmet-Agop, Bosphorus, Turkish, Pasha, Sabian, Amedia, Masterwork, Diril.

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.