MarsBlog.net

It looks like PETA isn’t entirely a punchline, after all: PETA Offers $1 Million Reward to First to Make In Vitro Meat

PETA is offering a $1 million prize to the contest participant able to make the first in vitro chicken meat and sell it to the public by June 30, 2012. The contestant must do both of the following:

? Produce an in vitro chicken-meat product that has a taste and texture indistinguishable from real chicken flesh to non-meat-eaters and meat-eaters alike.
? Manufacture the approved product in large enough quantities to be sold commercially, and successfully sell it at a competitive price in at least 10 states.

Judging of taste and texture will be performed by a panel of 10 PETA judges, who will sample the in vitro chicken prepared using a fried “chicken” recipe from VegCooking.com. The in vitro chicken must get a score of at least 80 when evaluated in order to win the prize.

[homer]
“Mmmmm…vat-bird…”
[/homer]

Posted on July 25th, 2008 under Useful Technology. Comments: 2

This is cool — a little something extra from an old spacecraft: NASA’s Deep Impact Films Earth as an Alien World

Posted on July 17th, 2008 under Space Science. Comments Off

I’m not quite sure why, but when I saw the movie poster here, the first thing that came to mind was this.

I would swear I saw a movie poster or still from the latter with a similar sunrise (or is it a sunset) motif.

ADDENDUM: Hmm…speaking of which, is that a sunrise or a sunset depicted in the Ares-1x image? I’ve spent very little time at the pads myself to know if it’s right or not, but the Google Map image (zoom in on either pad) suggests that the point-of-view of the picture is looking to the northwest. The Google image shows the RSS for each pad (when retracted) pointing to the SSW, with the crawlerway coming up from the south — if so, the RSS being on the left in the poster means the sun is in a place it really shouldn’t be.

Perhaps a reader can confirm this.

Posted on July 12th, 2008 under Orion. Comments: 1

LM is passing out free American flags non-environmentally-sensitive symbols of jingoistic nationalism and AmeriKKKan racism, imperialism, sexism, queerism, theism, and fillintheblankism at Thursday night’s Rockies game, and disaffected suburban rapper poseurs aren’t happy about it.

Well, I guess I have to give the execrable Johnny 5 credit for wanting to merely “funk” Lockheed Martin rather than burn it down, as his co-performer at a recent snit rally expressed a desire to do.

And come on…”Students for a Democratic Society”? As if the hippie nostalgia of Recreate 68 wasn’t bad enough, we now have someone reanimating that corpse? I thought it was the right that supposedly clung to the faded glories of a distant golden age. (Even this pitiful “rapper” has a nostalgic stage name, albeit from a different era.)

I have a feeling we’re going to be seeing some extra security at the office in late August…

Posted on July 2nd, 2008 under Luddism. Comments: 1