Headline, June06, 2013

'''THERE-B​UT-FOR-

THE​-GRACE-OF-​GOD-GOES-!WOW!'''

Friday, November 21, 1969 : Aboard Yankee Clipper, in lunar orbit.

Bean was looking out the window. It was the first chance he'd had to relax and play tourist since arriving at the moon more than two days earlier. He thought about how strange it felt to orbit the moon. 

The strangest thing about it was the silence. There wasn't any engine noise, the way there always was in an airplane.

And it seemed and felt damn odd to see the spacecraft fly in the same direction no matter how it was pointed. Orbiting the moon. Bean thought, was much more of a science fiction experience than walking on it had been. 

Yesterday, during the rendezvous, he'd been slaving away at the backup computer and the navigation charts while Conrad flew the lunar module. They had one more burn to do.

Finally, when he and Conrad had returned to the Mother Ship, Gordon was happier than Bean had ever seen him. He was offering them a drink of water. And in that moment, Bean was filled with a love for his crewmates that he had never experienced.

Years later, Bean would say, his most special memories of the flight would not be about the Moon or the Earth; they would be about Pete Conrad and Dick Gordon.

And Conrad had said to him, ''Why don't you just quit the after the midcourse, and relax and enjoy it? You can take a minute and fly this vehicle.''  Startled by Pete's audacity, Bean wondered, wouldn't it put them off course? Bean realized that Conrad had planned this perfectly. No one would know as they were on the far side of the moon. A rare gesture of honor from a remarkable and gifted commander.

Now Bean looked out at the bright, bleak cylinder passing beyond his window. It was so utterly inhospitable. Everything in the universe has some function, Bean thought, but what is the function of the moon? Is it to make the tides? Maybe it was as the geologist said : the moon is here to tell us the story that had been lost forever on our own planet. Maybe. the moon would tell us where we came from. Bean didn't know the answer.

As Yankee Clipper circled, Bean looked, and now and then, he wondered. he realized now, with his neck farther out than it had ever been, that life is too precious to spend it living by someone else's rules, even the unwritten ones of the Astronaut Office. He would be a good Astronaut, but he would so it his way. As the moon bore silent witness, he told himself,'' When i get back home........if I get back home------------I'm going to live my life the way I want to.''

You might ask yourself if the world needs another addictive honor, and you'd will be well within your rights. But as far as I know, and in all fairness, a great majority of us find the genre.......kind of addictive  -almost a substitute for drug consumption, like literary methadone.

We crave the vicarious rushes and crashes, the closeup of sea of problems that surrounds the students. Join up on !WOW! : The World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless.

Your Mother Ship!

Respectful dedication to the world's Stolen Hearts, Stolen Spirits, Stolen Dreams.

Good Night & God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless

Tighter rules for student visas could cost UK £2.4bn in a decade – study

Research suggests more students are choosing to study in the US and Canada and that the change cannot easily be reversed

The government's hardening of international student visa rules could cause long-term damage to Britain's universities and cost £2.4bn over the next decade, a study claims.

Research by Universities UK, which lobbies on behalf of British higher education, warns that the visa restrictions may mean many more overseas students choose to study in the US and Canada rather than the UK, taking £350m a year in lost revenue with them.

"Such a change would not be easily reversed and, as seen in other higher education systems, the effects can endure across several academic years," the group says in its annual report, published on Wednesday.

- The Guardian

Thought-powered helicopter takes off

Researchers have harnessed the power of thought to guide a remote-control helicopter through an obstacle course.

The demonstration joins a growing number of attempts to translate the electrical patterns of thoughts into motions in the virtual and real world.

Applications range from assisting those with neurodegenerative disorders to novel modes of video game play.

The research in the Journal of Neural Engineering uses a non-invasive "cap" to capture brain electrical activity.

Ex-policeman builds robot from household goods

Take a pair of hi-fi speakers, an old radio, a couple of DVD players and countless other household appliances, apply some ingenuity and what do you get? If you're Mark Haygood, an ex-cop turned robot maker, you get HEX -- a four foot, three-inch tall humanoid robot.

Four years in the making, it's been as much art project as engineering feat, he says, requiring the visualization of the various body parts. "The legs are made from outdoor speakers -- they're gorgeous. His shoulders are made from fans, his forearms from power tools. The chest and back are made from kid's riding toys and his head is a clock radio. I also employed a 3-D printer for the hands, using a combination of the Inmoov, an open-source design and my own artistic expression," the 49-year-old from Baltimore explains.

"There are so many diverse parts on the machine that it would take me all day to tell you. It was a really complex build, but I love this machine and I'm anxious to build another." The self-taught roboticist has drawn inspiration from Honda's ASIMO robot and Drexel University's HUBO as well as sounding out opinion at his local hacker space. 

Assembling HEX has cost the proverbial arm and a leg, "tens of thousands of dollars," says Haygood and is controlled remotely using a Zigbee USB dongle attached to his laptop. "He can step unsupported, but it's not completely stable. I have a slight problem with joint compliance at the moment. But his hands are fully functional, his legs are functional and he has 23 degrees of freedom." 

"Because of the crime problems in Baltimore, it's a perfect opportunity to try and snatch some children back from the abyss. That's my objective. It's a really beautiful thing to be able to introduce robotics to kids." 

To help spread the message, and the cost, Haygood is launching a Kickstarter campaign. The money raised will be used to iron out flaws as well as document the entire process" so anyone can see every nut, bolt and screw," he says. 

"It's full speed ahead for me now. This was trial by fire. I chose the most difficult thing a person could build and I've learned so much that my brain is just brimming now and ready to go. I'm excited for the future."

cnn.com