I caught my cereus (aka orchid cactus) blooming. This one blooms at night for a single night. If you remember (aye, there’s the rub) you can see the enormous blossom – we’re talking a good 8 inches across – first thing in the morning. For your viewing pleasure:
Black gyrkin. Incredibly handsome.
As a follow-up to my word of the month, read this short essay by Bruce Schneier on the goals of terrorism. Hint – blowing things up is not a goal in and of itself, it’s a means to an end. If you don’t know who Mr. Schneier is, some general info is here and some fun facts are here (reload the page for more info).
Today is the anniversary of Joseph Kittinger’s third and highest parachute jump in 1960. Using a helium balloon, he reached an altitude of 31,300 meters; upon exiting the gondola, his speed peaked at something close to 618 mph. The film of the jump shows the curve of the earth and a sky that is quite black – he was a third of the way to the Karman Line (100 km up; the line that officially marks ‘space’). A couple clips, while I figure out how to embed videos into the blog: a short subject on Project Excelsior and a clip from the Discovery Channel showing the jump. Col. Kittinger is one of the unsung pioneers of the space age; prosit!
Update – Aug 16, 2012. In a classic case of link rot, both the above clips have been yanked from YouTube. Here are a couple others.
A newsreel piece:
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There are a quite a few YouTube color clip assemblages with iffy soundtracks. This is not one of them: