SHODAN LIVES
Notes and links from @colemanm.
Is Geography the New History? »
“BBC News still maintains a rather 19th-century perspective on what’s happening in the world, seeing politics as a clash between opposing views that might be resolved through elections, summits and peace processes. With this approach, the environment gets sectioned off as a subject of its own, when in fact history shows that the resilience of a civilisation often depends on the way it treats its own environment.”
The Iceland volcano* in timelapse.
“So I saw all of these mediocre pictures of that volcano in Iceland nobody can pronounce the name of, so I figured I should go and do better. But the flights to get over took forever as expected (somewhat). 4 days after leaving I finally made it, but the weather was terrible for another 4. Just before leaving it got pretty good for about a day and a half and this is what I managed to get.
* I am so far from actually being able to pronounce its name that I don’t even have the right to type it.
:: rocketboom ::
Neil deGrasse Tyson: What NASA Means to America’s Future.
He also recently got his frequent guest card punched on Colbert.
Inflatable heat shield.
“The temperature the shield can withstand depends on how wide it is, says chief engineer Robert Dillman of Langley. A wider shield slows the craft down more and spreads the heat over a greater surface area.”
Biofuels could clean up Chernobyl 'badlands' »
I didn’t know that the ‘86 Chernobyl meltdown threw most of the fallout (80%) into Belarus… At that time, though, I guess they were both still part of the USSR, so technically they were the same country.
“Farmers grow some grain crops here. The radioactive material concentrates in roots and stalks, which they plough back into the soil after harvesting. So the soil is almost as contaminated now as it was after the accident. The Belarus government hopes that by growing biofuels and using the whole plant, it can cleanse the soil. ‘Instead of centuries of natural decay [of the radionuclides] this process will cut the time to 20 to 40 years.’”
If they can find a way to extract the radioactive isotopes from the soil, maybe this area could be repopulated once again.
