NASA's Top 23 Future Redundant Project Names for a Redundant Shining Future

Uh...

Given NASA's fine tradition for completely ignoring anything of interest (their oxymoronic probe, "CURIOSITY" comes to mind) -- or worse, airbrushing out detail that the public is apparently not ready for (read CONTROL) -- Da-da thought he might share some of the names of future NASA missions he discovered when he went through one of their filing cabinets.

Feel free to add your own in the comments section.




1. Project INDIFFERENCE [previously launched, but who cares?]



2. Project BLASÉ



3. Project YAWN



4. Project YAWN II (Legacy Project)

5. Project YAWN III (Legacy Redundancy Project II... er, III)

6. Project APATHY 8000



7.. Project GROSS EXPENDITURE [there are a lot of these already]



8. Project GROSS EXPENDITURE II [see?]



9. Project MALAISE



10. Project WHATEVER



11. Project CANARD [in export for years]



12. Project HEEDLESS LUMP [in Senate subcommittee]



13. Project HEEDLESS LUMP II [in another Senate subcommittee]



14. Project INSENSATE [already installed in all govt. offices]



15. Project FEIGNED INTEREST [see above]



16. Project SNOOZE



17. Project LASSITUDE 3000



18. Project LASSITUDE REDUNDANCY SERIES 3000



19. Project BLINDEYE [a component in all missions]



20. Project FNORD

21. Project MENDACITY 3000 SERIES [a govt. program since 1913]



22. Project INCURIOSITY [already on Mars]

23. Project SLACKER 9000 [just a blank piece of paper in a drawer]

It landed. So, get out already.

 

Science... er, NASA Has Fallen Asleep in the Sun. Again

[sigh]

Are there no agencies worthy of the public trust? In a word, NO. In two words, NO NO.

The photos here assembled are the various filter images taken off NASA's sun-observing satellite immediately after yet another 24-hour "tech glitch" blackout of their feeds -- right after an anomaly appeared at the sun's north pole:



As of this writing, the below images are the same ones NASA's been running for the past two days, same time stamps, different date stamps. Once the site went live again, Da-da quickly grabbed the latest images before NASA quickly replaced them with stock oness from who knows when.

Look at the time stamps below for each of the satellite's filters. The times are the same, while only the date changes. These typically refresh at least twice per hour...

Three (Nearly) Solved Mysteries for a Saturday Evening: Elliptical Halos, Pyramidal Light Pillars and... SIBLING RIVALRY?

As recently reported at SpaceWeather, scientists are puzzled as to how elliptical ice halos like the one above form in the atmosphere. Physicists were looking at specific shapes of ice crystals for the cause, but Da-da thinks it might be simpler than that. All you need to recreate this is a flashlight and a small sheet of glass.

Hold the flashlight away from you, with the piece of glass (representing the ice crystals) between you and the light beam. Hold the glass normal/perpendicular to the beam. Now change the aspect ratio of the glass, so that it tilts side to side, up or down. Notice how the light circle the beam makes on the glass changes to that of an oval. Ice crystals in the air mimic this with changes in wind direction/aspect normal to the light source, creating the elliptical halo we see above.

That could also be contributing to light pillar phenomema in cold climates, but Da-da's not convinced about that one. Speaking of light pillars...

...these kind are bizarre. Da-da has no explanation, save for unicorns. It's ALWAYS unicorns these days. (Jeez, when was it NOT?) It's interesting to note that Central American pyramids were constructed with huge sheets of Brazilian mica at specific levels. Why? Perhaps to make great light pillars. Or perhaps they left an inner mica-free channel in the inner part of the pyramid to... channel energy? Create a beacon to come see the Mayan Unicorn Show? Da-da has no idea, and he doubts anyone's going to let him dissect a Central American pyramid anytime soon. (Da-da will do it cheap, btw.)

As for sibling rivalry...

Looks like it's working!

Da-da's latest sibling rivalry experiment involves quilted vests, duct tape collars, foil-lined helmets and silver body paint. Stay tuned.

Crater, Sweet Crater: It's "Crater-Safe"!

Come to Crater City! It's, "crater safe"!

Are you afraid of meteoric impacts? Well, the safest place on earth is quite literally all around you! It's here and there, in locations well-known and obscure. Some are literally in your face. Many are forgotten... but not for long.

Da-da's talking about terrestrial impact craters.

Statistically, the safest place to build a city, town or village is INSIDE an existing impact crater -- at least here on earth. The odds of a space rock or comet or galactic frozen pizza impacting the same place twice on our little blue ball are... well, astronomical. Here are a few "safe" building sites for a better tomorrow!

Note: The below data comes both from Da-da's head and the Terrestrial Crater List (which are amazingly similar) at the Lunar and Planetary Institute, part of the USRA in Houston, TX. Void where prohibited.

Scientists Discover a Brain Region That Controls Scientists

This just in...

-------------------------------------------------------
Breakthrough

Scientists Discover a Brain Region That Controls Scientists

Turns out that the elusive Scientist Control Switch may exist after all … in our heads.


Scientists at the Jed Einstein School of SCIENCE and Donut Disambiguation say they’ve discovered a brain region that may control scientists throughout the entire universe. By manipulating that region, they were able to make scientists agree with other scientists by more than 90 percent. The remarkable finding, detailed in a paper published in Crature on May 1, may lead to new ways of warding off SCIENCE-y announcements refuting past SCIENCE-y announcements.

The hypothalamus, an almond-size area of the brain, controls growth, reproduction, donut craving and metabolism, but also initiates SCIENCE, according to the study. LongDuk Pai, a physiologist at Jed Einstein College of Medicine-y SCIENCE in Hitchings-Floe East, together with unsuspecting colleagues, realized this by tracking BFD-κB, an unassuming molecule that controls the SCIENCE compulsion and is involved in general ontological inflammation and moot annoyance of the general populus. They found that in mice, BFD-κB yields a pompous hexafluorobenzene blancmange that cannot pilot a bicycle or play a trombone at high speeds.

Mice that were injected with a substance that inhibits BFD-κB’s activity not only lived longer—up to 20 percent longer—they also donned smoking jackets and made crepe suzette in half the time of their science-y counterparts without affectation.

What’s more, the inhibitor seems to block the lamentable physical decline and lack of rhythm that occurs with SCIENCE. Six months after the initial experiment, mice that had been injected with inhibitors performed better than controls on picking up a cricket bat without dropping it, and moving through a mall without having to consult a map. “They also showed less SCIENCE-y related decline in muscle strength, skin thickness, bone mass, and toe-tapping/tail-tendon integrity,” according to the article in Crature.

Blocking BFD-κB had similar effects on male and female scientists, injected without their knowledge and tracked throughout a hotel brunch in Little Ruppings, and produced anti-SCIENCE-y effects even in aged scientists with more than two elbow patches on their jackets.

Babaloo Sinclair, a molecular barrista at Morvalia University in Upstate New York, called the study, “a major breakthrough in SCIENCE.” He says it will likely benefit SCIENCE research into SCIENCE-y-ness, "And that right soon," he added.

Science Has Been Drinking: To Sleep, Perchance to Conceive?

Lessee... did some yoga, had a hot shower, a buncha sex... OH NO.

SLEEP experts are urging people to make love, practice yoga and have a hot shower (not necessarily in that order) to give themselves the best chance possible of a good night's sleep. (Bonus points for doing all that at once.) What sleep experts don't realize is that these sleep tactics also offer a very good chance at CONCEPTION, thus murdering sleep in its sleep.

Yup, kids are like MacBeth. The ReDormin Sleep Study found yoga can increase slumber by 64 minutes, sex and a hot shower before bed can each give you 6 minutes more sleep, while resulting babies and small children will DECREASE sleep by 9,474,003 minutes.

Sleep research financiers, next time just give the money to Da-da and he'll save you some time.

Well, that's it for Da-da.

Neanderthal Mystery SOLVED? (or, "Pay No Attention to the Hot Neanderthal Behind the Curtain")

The reason why Cro-Magnon died out has been well established (too many attorneys), but scientists
are rabid to know: WHAT ABOUT NEANDERTHALS? Did they become scientists... or supermodels??

Scientists seem to want to know... nay, NEED to know the answer to: WHAT HAPPENED TO THE NEANDERTHALS? Despite their larger brains, did the Neanderthals suffer such slow cranial nerve speed due to their overly large eyes, causing them to be such slow mental processors that they couldn't keep up with the incredibly smart and wonderful (and murderous) Homo sapiens invaders?

Old paradigm.

NASA Has Been Drinking

FYI, this NASA video was reportedly deleted after being up for a short time. This is the best Mars UFO video of the lot -- if it's real. If it is indeed real, then there are a lot more NASA scientists hittin' the white zinfindel tonight. Save some ice for Da-da.

Why Humans Can't Build Flying Saucers

Science Has Been Drinking

Of Eclipses, Sphinxes and Shrubberianism

You know things are getting weird when Ma-ma dons her Sphinx outfit.
If she asks you a question, be sure to know the answer.

Da-da hasn't seen news of this upcoming solar eclipse anywhere, but then again, Da-da refers to himself as Da-da and lives under a shrubbery (two actually, for a nice two-pronged effect). Anyway, said solar eclipse will be visible on Sunday, May 20th, in the early evening across much of the U.S., as well as other parts of the globe, with apologies to those readers in non-eclipse-y, socially and economically functional countries. All the info on when and where is elegantly presented HERE at Shadow and Substance. They do an awesome job. Basically, May 20th is gonna be one weird day. Trust Da-da on this one. All your plants WILL DOUBLE IN SIZE and become sentient, while all your Yahtzee dice will go missing. Weird, huh?

What this REALLY MEANS is that you'll be able to trick your kids into going to bed earlier. Ahem.

Almost time for Tubby Apocalypse. (Ignore the blood.) It'll be over soon, Roger the Shrubber.

Archaeo-Da-da: The Toltec Man in the Moon?

Da-da was looking at the full moon last night, thinking of how the French see a rabbit in the moon (see the ears?), while other cultures see a wombat (mmm, no), a chicken fighting a rabbit, the Ali/Frazier fight, a MAN in the moon, etc. Then Da-da's archeological studies kicked in and he saw something familiar. Could that classic pre-Columbian, Central Mexican statue known as, "Chac-Mool," be the ancient Olmec/Toltec/Mayan, "Man in the Moon"? Sure looks like it.

By the way, this is Science... er, Archaeo-Da-da's theory (Indy Da-da?), so if you're going to propagate the above, please credit Da-da. Don't make Da-da use his trowel as a weapon.

Science Has Been Eating Prehistoric Donuts

Mmmmm.... yummy.

No, it's not a spectral imprint of Da-da's nasal cavity, it's what IBM researchers are calling a "subatomic snapshot of the electric charge within a molecule." Ok, Da-da hates to be a pain, but we kinda already knew what electric charge looks like via what are called, "fulgurites," which are quite literally, "frozen lightning." Check it out:

Observe the shape, Timmy. One school of thought has fulgurites created when lightning strikes sand and fuses silica into glass at around 1800° (3270°F), the high energy plasma flowing down down down (and why does it go down?), fusing sand at the plasma outskirts into glass, yielding a hollow, crenelated tube. Phew. Oddly, fulgurites often take this "churro" shape.

What does this tell you about electric charge? Well, it could have something to do with this shape, but... NEWS FLASH... scientists have fumbled the magic donut once again and missed the point entirely, as fulgurites are in actuality CHURRO FOSSILS. Yes, donuts from some long lost civilization. You can almost smell the cinnamon. Almost. And that means that electric charge is actually churro shaped, and sometimes kruller shaped. Is anyone writing this down?

 Da-da's guessing that these are better fresh, but he's buried some
in the backyard and he'll let you know in a million years. Stay tuned!

Elvis' Ghost, Tires and the Other Side (or, "Where the Rubber Meets the... HUH?")

Da-da's backyard is BIG, Dracula.

Da-da was sitting in a tire store the other day – just for fun – when something occurred to him. There are lots of cars in the world, right? And each one has, presumably, four tires. And each of those tires is rolling and abrading and wearing and tearing to the tune of serious consumer moolah. So?

A recent worldometer study noted that approximately 500 million cars had been produced in the last decade alone, and about 1B+ cars and trucks are on global  roads today, which translates into... oh, 4B+ tires. That’s a lot of tires. (Da-da knows, he has a million in his backyard next to all the barrels of radioactive waste.) And at $80 a tire… well, let’s just say for the sake of argument that there’s roughly $500 billion in rubber and a bunch of questionable grammar grinding away at any given time. A natural question to ask is: where the flock are the giant piles of tire dust?

Wouldn’t you expect there to be huge black piles of tire dust on the sides of every interstate, what with all these tires rolling and wearing all over the place? Is it being absorbed by the road surfaces? Or are the tire manufacturers impregnating the rubber with tire-eating bacteria, to not only take care of the tire dust problem, but also to keep our precious sets of tires wearing and deteriorating predictably to perpetually boost their bottom lines? What’s going on at the molecular level? Can people be allergic to tire dust? Can it be ingested? Will it make Da-da's children go to sleep faster? Is it good in beer? Are these questions making you wanna OCCUPY DA-DA? (There are a lot in there, already; bring hors d'oeuvres and a perky zin.)

99% of the info out there revolves around telling you what to do when your tires wear out and how many exciting (read EXPENSIVE) new choices you have for boring old tires, blah blah blah... [SNORE]... ah, but not HOW they wear. AhA! Reams of data exist on tire size vs. load requirements, traction, tread wear, temperature, how to make old tires into modern office buildings, how to make tire-enchilada caseroles, how great that tire casserole would look on your HEAD... that kinda thing. All the rubber geeks (that’s what they like to be called) talk a good game, hiding behind stalwart phrases like, "proprietary optimized component" and "univolume torpometric reduction." Awesome. But what happens when the rubber literally meets the road? (You were waiting for that one, right? You're so LUCKY.)

After some truly exciting research on road surfacing, Da-da finally found a DuPont engineer, Gregg Babcock, who seemed to know his stuff -- and who may or may not have been in a joking mood. Da-da asked him what happens when a tire wears on an Elvaloy-coated road surface (Elvaloy being a DuPont chemical coating for roads to make them last longer). Note that this is what the guy actually said, Da-da's not making this up.

“Tire rubber on DuPont Elvaloy roads is disposed of by Elvis,” said Babcock with a straight face. “We have an exclusive contract with him to dispose of rubber from Elvaloy roads. He takes it with him to the other side. [Italics courtesy Da-da.] Our COMPETITION, on the other hand, lets it sit on the side of the road, where bacteria eats it. The bacteria love the oil in the rubber. Don’t quote me on the Elvis thing, the King might not like it.” Oops.

Da-da then asked him what really happens to the rubber.

“Seriously, the bacteria is what eats the rubber,” he said. “I don’t know the exact details, but some form of naturally occurring bacteria just adore the high surface-to-volume ratio created by rubber wearing against the road. The bacteria eat the rubber getting at the oil. I don’t have any papers or anything detailing the process.”

Well. We can all sleep better knowing that all the tires in the world are slowly being ingested by countless legions of hungry Elvis-worshipping bacteria. Makes you wonder what else they’re eating. At least it should, MISTER TEXTING WHILE DRIVING. This of course will only remain important until that time when we don't need roads, which will be soon. No, really.

1.21 gigawatts... RIGHT THERE.

Science Has Been Eating Donuts (or, "Why Your Kids Will Grow Taller in Hudson Bay")

Despite this attractive graphic, gravity is NOT pretty.

Check out this pretty image, built from data collected by the GRACE satellite mapping the earth's magnetic fields in painfully low resolution... hey, don't go to sleep, now! This has direct bearing on you. Wait for it...

Scientists are still trying to figure out what this chart really means, as well as what gravity really is (hint: look up, "universons"). You may have noticed instances of higher and lower gravity graphed above, which could be indicative of magma convection beneath the mantle, or perhaps mantle depth, or number of toys per square inch in your family room. And speaking of magma, it will NOT make you taller, but it can induce some pretty fast lap times. The pretty colors above could also be mapping geomagnetic flux density, or perhaps how many high-energy donut shops there are in any given area, which is kinda the same thing in a not-kinda-the-same-thing kinda way. You getting all this?

Note that the Earth’s gravity changes day-to-day, microsecond-to-microsecond -- and some donut shops more than others -- but the above image shows how average variability in Earth’s gravity field in 2002 compared to the yearly average of 2001. Whoa. What this REALLY means is that your kid will perhaps grow taller and get a better basketball scholarship if he or she lives in Hudson Bay. Or the ocean floor. AND keeps away from donut shops, especially those in the Marianas Trench. Mmmm, Marianas Trench donut... a specialty of The Donut Den. (Ok, it is now.)

(high energy donut image courtesy brent in nashville. awesome.) 

Ok, the REAL run-on truth is, when you're talkin' earthy locale microgravities, you're looking at an increase in somatic growth of probably just a few microns, unless it's a whole bag of donuts, and then you might reap a whole freakin' millimeter if you stand right in the vortex, but then you might get sucked in and whacked in the face with flying clocks, hourglasses, the odd barn from 1938... so, you might wanna stay in the Oldsmo-buick, like that's gonna help, but how does this gravity thing affect you as a parent? That's right. These are the forces that contribute to those kid forces that are grinding your bones to dust. Feels better now that you know, right? Is there a remedy? Yes, there is. JUMP INTO THE VORTEX. It's really just a big donut if you only consider the first two dimensions. Whatever. Da-da needs a donut.

Seems like Da-da's seen this image before...

Schrödinger's Cat Has Been Drinking

Quantum parenting is here. Hope you took your meds. Keep making strange, charmed lefts.

Today is Quantum Parenting Day, yay, for many reasons. Da-da sees many of you are asleep. Hey! You in the back! Wake up and smell the Heisenberg Uncertainty.

So. Just like in Schrödinger's famous feline thought experiment of the '30s, Da-da was today placed in a sealed box with a poison dispenser and an atomic squirrel. A Geiger counter was included in Da-da's windbreaker (why he needs one in a wind-less box is a puzzle) to measure radiation if at some point a squirrely atom leaped off the squirrel. Should that happen, the Geiger counter would trigger the release of cyanide gas within the box, killing Da-da AND the squirrel. Jeez, who's idea was this?

The idea behind Schrodinger's thought experiment is that it's impossible to know whether or not Da-da is alive or dead without opening the box and observing his lifeless bulk, or that of the poor radioactive squirrel, and that until that happens, BOTH realities exist. Indeed, Da-da feels both alive and dead simultaneously, which explains parenthood nicely. This is known as Parental Superposition. (Complicating matters, it's kinda tough to determine if Da-da is alive or dead most days, anyway, so whatever.) Why is Da-da telling you this? Because it will be impacting (or perhaps composting) your lives, shortly. ('Impacting' isn't a word, anyway.)

Regardless, Quantum parenting is almost here. No. Wait. It IS here. Parenting is already so fast, it makes Da-da look like... well, Da-da. Quantum parenting relies heavily on superposition, that "alive or dead," "off or on," omniversal anything-can-happen state transposed onto YOU, the parent, simultaneously, raising parallel parenting speeds several orders of magnitude. This itself is very confusing, especially for Da-da, whose confusion was raised several orders of magnitude when his own children were born. Are you getting all this?

Ahem. Any time a macro-bizarro parental condition exists in a micro-bizarro parental condition, it's called a Schrödinger's Da-da. (It is, too.) Why anyone needs to know this is yet another puzzling scientific thingie that no one could possibly ever understand, even with Heisenberg sitting next to you as you go through the drive-thru. French toast, please.

Quantum parenting can be very confusing.