Encyclopedia Britannica Ending Their Print Version (Updated)

Lamenting The Loss Of A Print Icon -- CNN

(CNN) -- Ronnie Oldham could sell encyclopedias. He was named National Rookie of the Month in 1988 for his ability to push the Encyclopedia Britannica.

He was so good, he once sold a set to a blind man.

Oldham learned the importance of brand identity, market leadership and customer appreciation as a traveling salesman for the famed company. He also knew how to close a deal.

"You had to produce, or you were gone."

It's been about 20 years since he last sold one of the iconic sets. The information age had dawned in the 1990s, and Oldham "saw the handwriting on the wall." He bolted.

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Previous Post: Encyclopaedia Britannica Stops The Print Edition After More Than 200 Years

More News On Encyclopedia Britannica Ending Their Print Version

Encyclopedia Britannica ends print, goes digital -- Reuters
Encyclopaedia Britannica ends print run -- L.A. times
Encyclopedia Britannica ceases to exist -- in print -- L.A. Times
The Encyclopaedia Britannica is going out of print -- Geek.com
The dull but dependable Encyclopaedia Britannica bows to the digital facts of life -- The Telegraph
Encyclopaedia Britannica ends its famous print edition -- BBC
Encyclopaedia Britannica: After 244 years in print, only digital copies sold -- Christian Science Monitor
Encyclopaedia Britannica Is Dead, Long Live Encyclopaedia Britannica -- Fast Company
A bittersweet bye-bye to Britannica -- CNN Money
Encyclopaedia Britannica Goes Out of Print, Won't Be Missed -- The Atlantic
Encyclopedia Britannica puts an end to print publishing -- Christian Science Monitor
Loving Encyclopaedia Britannica -- Robert Wright, The Atlantic
Britannica Print Edition Kicks the Bucket, So Is Wikipedia Our New Lord and Master? -- Time
Death of the Salesmen: Britannica's Former Door-to-Door Sellers Reminisce -- Wall Street Journal

The Most Stunning Google Earth Pictures As Voted For By You

(Click on Image to Enlarge)
Plane graveyard: Scrapped jets line the dry and dusty ground in Arizona

Oh What A Wonderful World! The Most Stunning Google Earth Pictures As Voted For By You -- The Daily Mail

A website which combines Google Earth with a simple ratings system allows users to find the most beautiful or unusual places on our planet.

Stratocam, designed by ex-Dreamworks and Google employee Paul Rademacher, takes the outstanding aerial photography employed by the search engine's mapping service and allows visitors to his site to up-vote or down-vote user-submitted 'finds'.

The photographs are randomly selected from 'snapshots' taken by users, and after a few clicks it becomes apparent just how varied, pretty, and colourful our little blue-green marble is.

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My Comment: The Eiffel Tower looks cool.

Tracing The Moon's History In A 3 Minute Video

Watch The Moon Evolve In 3 Minutes -- MSNBC

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has traced the moon's early history as well as the latest trash left behind by moonwalkers, and now the team behind the mission has created a video smashing 4.5 billion years of the moon's existence into less than three minutes.

"Evolution of the Moon," released to mark LRO's first thousand days in orbit, starts just after the moon's congealment into a ball of molten rock, and guides you through the giant blast that formed the South Pole-Aitken Basin, through the pummeling known as the Heavy Bombardment, right through the hail of debris that resulted in the cratered satellite we all know and love.

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More News On NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Tracing The Moon's History

Incredible Nasa video shows 4.5 BILLION years of the moon's history in just three minutes - with enormous asteroids sculpting the pitted surface we see from Earth -- Daily Mail
NASA video shows the moon's 4.5 billion year evolution -- FOX News
How the moon came to look like cheese -- The Telegraph
NASA unveils video history of the moon -- USA Today
Moon History: NASA Video Shows Volcanoes, Meteorite Impacts That Made Craters (VIDEO) -- Huffington Post
The Moon’s history of violence -- Discover News
Video: The Evolution of the Moon in Three Minutes -- Popular Science

Take A Tour Of The Moon (Video)

Meditation Strengthens The Brain

Cortical Surface Shown is the lateral view of the right cortical surface. The red circle indicates where the maximum effect occurred. Top: Larger gyrification in 50 long-term meditators compared to 50 well-matched controls. Bottom: Positive correlations between gyrification and the number of meditation years within the 50 meditators. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of California - Los Angeles)

Evidence Builds That Meditation Strengthens The Brain -- Science Daily

ScienceDaily (Mar. 14, 2012) — Earlier evidence out of UCLA suggested that meditating for years thickens the brain (in a good way) and strengthens the connections between brain cells. Now a further report by UCLA researchers suggests yet another benefit.

Eileen Luders, an assistant professor at the UCLA Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, and colleagues, have found that long-term meditators have larger amounts of gyrification ("folding" of the cortex, which may allow the brain to process information faster) than people who do not meditate. Further, a direct correlation was found between the amount of gyrification and the number of meditation years, possibly providing further proof of the brain's neuroplasticity, or ability to adapt to environmental changes.

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My Comment: I have always had the altitude that doing anything that involves the higher cortical parts of the brain .... playing music, chess, etc. .... will strengthen the brain.

The Key to Using Methane as a Clean Energy Source

Scientists are looking at how to sequester carbon produced by burning methane in an ice-like state

Methane Hydrate Cages, The Key to Using Methane as a Clean Energy Source? -- SciTech Daily

Scientists at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory are researching ways to use methane as a clean energy source by capturing the CO2 byproduct in an ice-like state. The researchers are using SNAP to look at the molecular level relationship between methane and water to better understand how hydrocarbons are taken up and released in the environment.

Imagine a robot sent out on the prowl on this energy hungry planet looking for methane, the principal component of what we call “natural gas” and probably the most abundant organic compound on earth.

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My Comment: Faster please.

The Navy’s Firefighting Robot

Meet The Navy’s Firefighting Robot -- Defense Tech

This is wild. We’ve been writing a ton about robots and drones lately because, well, it seems that the pace at which they’re becoming a fundamental part of warfare increases with each month.

Whenever we hear about Navy drones we tend to think of underwater robots or things like the Fire Scout chopper. The Navy Research Lab s working on a humanoid shipboard robot that would be sent in to fight fires on ships.

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Chinese Fossils May Be New Human Species

A view of a skull from the Red Deer Cave People. Researchers found the species had unique features seen neither in modern nor known archaic lineages of humans. CREDIT: Darren Curnoe

Mysterious Chinese Fossils May Be New Human Species -- Live Science

Mysterious fossils of what may be a previously unknown type of human have been uncovered in caves in China, ones that possess a highly unusual mix of bygone and modern human features, scientists reveal.

Surprisingly, the fossils are only between 11,500 and 14,500 years old. That means they would have shared the landscape with modern humans when China's earliest farmers were first appearing.

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My Comment: We will have to wait for the DNA tests, but this discovery is surprising.

Disease Outbreaks Are Rising For Imported Food

Imported-Food Outbreaks Rise, CDC Says -- Wall Street Journal

Outbreaks of illness linked to imported food have risen since the late 1990s, casting a spotlight on federal inspection standards for fish, produce and other foods brought in from abroad.

The 39 outbreaks from imported food reported between 2005 and 2010 represent a small fraction of total cases of food-borne illnesses such as salmonella or E. coli, according to the data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention presented Wednesday. But the rise in imported-food outbreaks—mostly from fish and spices—highlights gaps in the food-safety system that a sweeping new law is intended to address.

CDC researchers found 6.5 outbreaks from foreign foods a year, on average, between 2005 and 2010—more than double the average of 2.7 outbreaks annually between 1998 and 2004.

Of the 39 outbreaks between 2005 and 2010, nearly half—17—occurred in 2009 and 2010.

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My Comment: Damn .... and I like Chinese food.

Ocean-Crossing Robots Reach Hawaii

The Wave Glider from Below Liquid Robotics

Ocean-Crossing Robots Reach Hawaii, Setting a New Distance Record -- Popular Science

The four Wave Glider robots that set out from San Francisco in November on an unprecedented robotic crossing of the Pacific have arrived at the big island of Hawaii for a quick systems check-up. Their arrival marks the shattering of the world distance record for unmanned wave powered vehicles, as the PacX Wave Gliders, built by California-based Liquid Robotics, have now traveled 3,200 nautical miles (that’s more like 3,700 normal, in-your-car miles)--and that’s just a third of the total 9,000 nautical miles they will cover in their journeys.

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How Will Aircraft Carrier Crews Guide In Robot Planes?

Video: Aircraft Carrier Crews Guide In Robot Planes With Visible Hand Gestures -- Popular Science

Landing airplanes on moving ships is no mean feat, but this will be especially true when the airplanes are unmanned. Along with making decisions, autonomous airplanes will have to heed their human counterparts during aircraft carrier takeoff and landing — but can a robot read and understand arm-waving signals?

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My Comment: Hmmmm .... what happens if the operator coughs while directing an unmanned plane?

Bombs vs Bunkers

A B-52 releases a MOP during a weapons test.
U.S. Department of Defense

Bombs vs Bunkers In A Potential Iran Attack -- Popular Mechanics

The possibility of an Iran attack highlights the latest arms race: The United States trying to build new bunker-busting weapons while Iran buries its nuclear labs deep underground to try to avoid possible U.S. (or Israeli) bombs.

The United States and Iran have engaged in a war of words over their military capabilities in the last few weeks. But if an actual war breaks out, it will not be a war of U.S. bombs versus Iranian bombs, but of U.S. bombs versus Iran's bunkers.

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My Comment: The last sentence of this article is what caught my eye ....

.... Bombing those facilities would have huge consequences for the surrounding area, Cirincione argues. "We have never experienced such bombings in history," he says. "Up until now, they have been considered beyond the pale."

Indeed .... I guess the times are-a-changing.

Apple 'iPad Mini' Is Planned

Apple 'iPad Mini' Is Planned, Samsung Official Tells Korea Times -- L.A. Times

The rumor of Apple developing a smaller-screen "iPad Mini" is sticky. It won't go away. It seems not to want to die or be forgotten.

It's akin to stepping into a wad of melting gum on a burning Arizona summer sidewalk that leaves dirty remnants behind, even after you've cleaned it off, because that gum slid itself into the caverns between the grooved tread on the sole of your sneakers.

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My Comment: I guess this will be between an iPod and an iPad

Human: Contagion: Is a Killer Virus Out There? (Video)

The Best Pic Of The Apollo 11 Moonwalks Published

(Click on Image to Enlarge)
March 14, 2012 -- The clearest view yet of the famous Apollo 11 landing site on the moon was captured by a NASA spacecraft in orbit around our planet's natural satellite.

Most Detailed View Yet of the Apollo 11 Moonwalks: Big Pic -- Discovery News

The agency's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) zeroed in on Mare Tranquillitatis, or the Sea of Tranquility -- the place where humans first touched down on the lunar surface on July 20, 1969. The new image from LRO captures amazing details of the historic site, even revealing the remnants of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's first steps on the moon.

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Why 'Warp Drive' May Not Be Feasible

The findings of a new study spell bad news for anybody at the warp drive destination. Credit: iStockPhoto

Warp Drive Could Be A Doomsday Weapon -- Cosmos

SYDNEY: The search for the holy grail of intergalactic travel has encountered a slight hitch, say Australian scientists.

Recent research predicts that upon reaching its destination, the theoretical Alcubierre warp drive – a speculative idea proposed by Mexican theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre in 1994 by which a spacecraft could be accelerated to speeds greater than the speed of light - would unleash a high energy cocktail of particles and radiation, blasting anyone in its path “into oblivion”.

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My Comment: No warp drive .... say it ain't so.

Boeing's Phantom Eye Takes Flight

The Phantom Eye goes for a ride.
(Credit: NASA)

Boeing's Phantom Eye Goes For A Low Ride -- CNET

Someday the Phantom Eye will soar at 65,000 feet. For now, Boeing's excited just to see it go four-wheeling on the desert floor.

The hydrogen-powered unmanned aircraft earlier this month took a modest, ground-level spin at Edwards Air Force Base in its first medium-speed taxi test, Boeing said today. Nestled on its launch cart system, the Phantom Eye traveled some 4,000 feet at speeds of up to 30 knots in a trip that lasted less than two minutes. (In the air, it's expected to have a maximum speed of 200 knots.)

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More News On Boeing's Phantom Eye

Boeing Phantom Eye Conducts Medium-speed Taxi Test -- Defpro

Boeing’s Phantom Eye spy plane rolls closer to flight -- Geek Wire

Hydrogen-powered plane completes taxi test -- UPI
Phantom Eye enters taxi tests -- Flight Global
Boing Phantom Eye Hydrogen-Powered UAV [Video] -- Auto Evolution

Russia Will Finally Send A Man To The Moon

Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin Jr fulfilled John F. Kennedy’s promise to reach the Moon by the end of the decade, landing there on July 20, 1969, with NASA’s Apollo 11 Photo: Reuters

Russia To Finally Send Man To The Moon -- The Telegraph

Russia will send a team of cosmonauts to the Moon, 60 years after Neil Armstrong’s Apollo mission effectively ended the US-Soviet space race.

A spacecraft will “conduct a demonstrative manned circumlunar test flight with the subsequent landing of cosmonauts on [the Moon’s] surface and their return to Earth” by 2030, according to a leaked strategy document from Russia’s space agency, Roskosmos.

Moscow has periodically announced ambitious plans for space exploration in recent years, but this is the first time a firm deadline has been set for a manned lunar mission.

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My Comment: Better late than never.

Is Google Losing It's Mojo?

Is Google+ an asset or a distraction?
(Credit: Screenshot by Ben Parr/CNET)

Has Google Lost Its Magic? -- CNet

Google's empire is under direct assault from Facebook. Its big weapons -- Search, AdWords, and AdSense -- are not as potent as they once were, thanks to the rise of social media.

This frightens Google immensely. Facebook is now the Web's top destination, and it's quickly becoming the platform that powers the Web. It even threatens Google's core advertising business. If Facebook were to ever launch a social version of AdSense, it could snap up advertisers and cause a serious disruption to Google's cash cow.

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My Comment: They still control and dominate search .... and their business plan is still sound.

The Secret To Smarter Computers?

Scientists think adding a baby's imaginative powers and all-around braininess to computers would make these machines smarter and more human. CREDIT: Aphichart | Shutterstock

Baby Brains May Be The Secret To Smarter Computers -- Live Science

Cognitive scientists hope to bottle up a baby's brain — and the imagination and air of possibility that comes with it — and use the result to make computers smarter.

"Children are the greatest learning machines in the universe," Alison Gopnik, a developmental psychologist at the University of California at Berkeley, said in a statement. "Imagine if computers could learn as much and as quickly as they do," said Gopnik, author of the books "The Scientist in the Crib" (William Morrow, 2000) and "The Philosophical Baby" (Picador, 2010).

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My Comment: A unique and different way to look at making computers "smarter".