UFO widely seen in Middle East skies, linked to Russian missile test has an update from James Oberg, explaining that the spiral does not indicate a failed launch, but is a deliberate feature needed for the trajectory the Russians wanted.
From Stalingrad’s Madonna.
“Shuttle’s Last Flight Leaves Russia With Space Monopoly”–headline, The Wall Street Journal, July 7
“USSR Wins Space Race as U.S. Shuts Down Shuttle Program”–headline, Onion, July 27
In the end, the U.S. is left to ponder an irony: It won the technological race to develop a space shuttle but lost the war. “You can argue that the Russians were on the right trajectory all along, by flying big, dumb boosters,” said Duke University space historian Alex Roland.
A couple weeks ago I went to the going out of business sale for the Borders bookstore in St. Paul. While being a vulture browsing the sale, I glanced through 100 Essential Things You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know: Math Explains Your World and saw this story from the Russian Civil War:
Ann Althouse looks at Joshua Green’s Why is This GOP House Candidate Dressed as a Nazi? and asks:
How evil is it for a candidate to play the role of a Nazi in war reenactments? How evil is it for a journalist to write about that and bury — in the 13th paragraph — the news that the same man — Rich Iott — has also done reenactment as a Civil War Union infantryman, a World War I doughboy and a World War II American infantryman and paratrooper?
More at Witch! Whore! …Nazi!
FWIW, a few years ago, at an event in Iowa, I met some people who reenact a Soviet unit in the “Great Patriotic War.” It never occurred to me to think about their politics in 21st century America.
Russia Plans to Start Cosmodrome Work in 2011
Officials hope the Vostochny Cosmodrome will be ready to assume spaceflight duties by 2018, giving Russia a domestic spaceport for human space missions to replace the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Russian photographer (and Photoshopper) Sergey Larenkov merges WWII-era photos with contemporary shots of identical locations in Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Leningrad, and other European cities, to haunting effect.
From Hilbert Space to Dilbert Space, and beyond 