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Alex reports that recent research confirms that drinking gives you the same benefits yoga.

Here the scientific proof:

Savasana

Position of total relaxation.

Balasana

Position that brings the sensation of peace and calm.

Setu Bandha Sarvangasana

This position calms the brain and heals tired legs.

Marjayasana

Position stimulates the midriff area and the spinal column.

Halasana

Excellent for back pain and insomnia.

Dolphin

Excellent for the shoulder area, thorax, legs, and arms.

Salambhasana

Great exercise to stimulate the lumbar area, legs, and arms.

Ananda Balasana

This position is great for massaging the hip area.

Malasana

This position, for ankles and back muscles.

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I have been intrigued by the story of Miles O’Brien, when I first heard about him being fired by CNN after 16 years of reporting about technology in general and space in particular.

I believe I heard about it on BoingBoing in a report that he is still doing the same job but now on his own. It was so fascinating for me because here was somebody creating a new business model for the dying news business. It all fits in nicely with my quest to understand how a stateless society can work were interactions happen on a voluntary, more individual, basis.

I had looked at the extreme example of a teacher in public school. Here you have somebody who is hired and most likely will remain hired unaffected by the satisfaction of his customers – the students. The money to pay him is extracted, if necessary by force, by the population at large.

Contrast this to a society based on voluntary interaction where the teacher has to provide a good product with customer satisfaction in order to be paid. How much better would the product, education, be!

Back to our journalist in question. Here we certainly do not have a case as extreme as the school teacher, but his job is definitely detached from his clientele, as he is employed by a very big news organization that, by its sheer size, obtains government properties. After being ‘let go’ (a nice way to say ‘fired’) by CNN there is probably not too many other employment opportunities. Here is where I admire Mr. O’Brien’s handling of the situation – he just went into business for himself. There is not much precedence for this at the tier of Mr. O’Brien. Sure, many bloggers are small-time journalist, but I don’t know of any case where a high-profile news man went into business for himself.

And what a good job Mr. O’Brien does! His video blog – or news-cast – This Week in Space – is something I am now looking forward to. It is interesting to see how creative use of modern technology makes up for the high budget of CNN. Instead of sending a crew with two cameramen and a lighting crew, Mr. O’Brien interviews Buzz Aldrin over Skype.

It is so simple now – there is the guy who delivers something I want and I, voluntary, give him money for it. The only thing we have to get rid of is the notion that we now have to pay for something that we previously got free. We actually did not get it free, we paid with our time and attention by watching commercials on CNN. If I put a high value on my time I might even get it cheaper now. If, as an example, I value my time at about $100 per hour and I watch commercial on TV for 10 minutes out of very hour, I paid more than $10 for watching that show right there.

I paid Mr. O’Brien $10 today and feel that I got a much better deal as I feel I’m good now to watch his shows for a month or two.

To sample his work, if you are interested in space flight, take a look…

By the way, another advantage of this closer relationship is that comments have a much better chance to get to the person they are intended for and have an effect.

Miles O’Brian reports on the likely cancellation of the constellation program after the Prez’s state of the union address.

Space buffs might be disappointed because now we will not go to Moon and Mars, but to put it into perspective let’s watch what Burt Rutan, the designer of Space Ship One, the first privately funded vehicle to reach space, had to say at his TED talk…

So, with this in mind, here is my comment I just had to leave at the above referenced article/vblog by Mr. O’Brian…

I have been lucky enough to witness the making of the first non-governmental astronaut. I reported about it a few years back in the post ‘From Mohave to Aldebaran‘. With this experience I can not say that I am too sad about the probable cancellation of the constellation program.

Yes, it was cool to get to the moon and have that ISS up there right now, but let’s be a bit more realistic when we look at things only a government can do – looking – looking – hmm, nothing really! The only thing governments really do is extract money from the population (by force, I may add) and give it to the real people who actually do the job. Not to forget to first skim off a bigger portion to feed a bunch of in efficient bureaucrats.

I wonder why, on the one hand, we make fun of all these bureaucrats, and then suddenly turn around and believe that they are the only ones who can handle things – like building roads and keeping order after Catrina.

The only thing worth considering is really how to get them out of our lives altogether, not allowing them to regulate things they have no knowledge and competence in. I am nearly sure that we would have colonies at least on the moon if the government would have stayed out of the space business. Yes, we might have had some more accidents because private enterprises tend to take more risks than governments (as they don’t have to be re-elected,) but isn’t that the price we pay for fast progress?

I have to admit that I had been deeply disappointed by this constellation program which was a step back from a real space ship, and a design that one day might reach Aldebaran. Back to a capsule that splashes into the ocean after we had the orbiter that could land on a runway? Give me a break!

I am actually sure that Bush, with his vision of going to the moon and beyond, was just trying to get into the league of real visionaries like Kennedy with this “Before this decade is up.”

What a difference the music makes!

It is a well known fact in the film industry that the right sound track for a movie can be essential for the success. Just look at the Star Wars Saga – the music, that today so many people know and connect with these movies, is just necessary for the movie, it would not be what it is without that sound track – even though we might not consciously notice it.

The music slides in under the radar, so to speak, and communicates emotions directly.

We all might have seen one, or a few, or many launches of real-world rockets, from the Saturns that brought some dudes to the moon to all the shuttle launches ferrying components into orbit to construct the International Space Station.

Now Mike Interbartolo has posted a video of the ascent of Shuttle Mission STS 129, compiled by the SE&I imagery team at Johnson Space Center from all of the ground, air, ET and SRB assets – and in good Hollywood tradition, has laid a dramatic sound track under the video footage.

That made me get real emotional!

I have this thing for space and reaching new frontiers, so SciFi was always the one genre that got me going. With this video it became real to me that we are actually doing it – right at this time!

If now we could only get the government out of this business to slow things down, then we would be really going. I am sure that without the bureaucrat’s involvement we would not have taken 40 years to get – perhaps – back to the moon, and then beyond. My son might actually realistically consider prospecting on the moon to make a fortune.

But without further ado, here is this great piece from NASA’s JSC…

I learned it when I studied the Kabbalah, but many other philosophies say the same, that we are not presented with a problem, if there is not also a solution available – for us to find and use. I know this logic has a bit of a hole, as nobody who was presented with a problem for which there was no remedy is around any more to tell about it, but I like the first point of view better, so I take that.

The problem I am thinking of now, is the swine flu. Today, Ed (thanks Ed!) sent an e-mail presenting the solution for that problem. I know there is, or shortly will be, a pharmaceutical, and expensive, solution, but I always want to look at natural remedies first, in order not to get from the fire into the frying pan – fire being a deadly threat to the world and frying pan being dependency on the pharma-industry.

Science Daily has the following article:

Scientists in China have discovered that roots of a plant used a century ago during the great Spanish influenza pandemic contains substances with powerful effects in laboratory experiments in killing the H1N1 swine flu virus that now threatens the world. The plant has a pleasant onion-like taste when cooked, but when raw it has sap so foul-smelling that some call it the “Dung of the Devil” plant.

Kindly, Ed also supplied some more info about this plant in a Wikipedia article about ‘Dung of the Devil’ and he even passed on a source to buy Asafetida.

Now you have a solution for the time when the friendly government agent comes and wants to give you the mandatory swine flue vaccination – if you have a sample of asafetida in your pocket and let him smell, he will run and look for more gullible victims to thrust his benevolence upon.

With that sample of asafetida you might not have any friends, but let’s make that the subject of another article.

We are proud today to be able to offer you instand religious enlightenment.

Sounds pompous?

OK, I admit, it’s a bit far fetched, but isn’t seeing an apparition often the start of a religion? Isn’t the perception of something not belonging to this world is a clean sign that that there are things beyond what we perceive?

Real work is done in this department and over there at Universal Serenity it’s now started for sure, but for the instant gratification society here in the US we have a goody.

See this image below. It has four little dots in the center – this is where the universe will break apart, so start at these points for maybe half a minute…

Done?

Now look at a blank wall, see a circle of light appear first, and then ….

(This one found amongst other amazing phenomena at GeZi World.)

If you would hear somebody announcing that very exictedly “You can save a full hundred bucks on your new Ford F150 truck!” The only thing to do is drive all across town to the dealer Joe Cheapcars and pick it up, you would probably not share this enthusiasm much.

Hundred bucks on a car – that’s not much.

But now take that miter saw that you alwasy wanted to have for your weekend projects. So far, at $150 it was not quite justifyable considering the number of weekend projects you actually do. But now James Toolshack over in Othertown just 30 miles across the river has it for only 50 bucks!

So as soon as the weekend is here it off to the Toolshack to finally get that miter saw. We saved a full hundred bucks!

So, what’s the difference between the hundred bucks save on the car and on the miter saw? Nothing as far as the money in the wallet is concerned.

Let’s listen to Dan Gilbert who gives us some really good insight into this subject…

Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert says our beliefs about what will make us happy are often wrong — a premise he supports with intriguing research, and explains in his accessible and unexpectedly.

Thus is the introduction to an article about the “scientific proof” that the current crop of gurus is right, that…

• We create our own reality;
• we attract to us what we put our attention on

I put together two interesting talks from TED in the article Synthetic Happiness on the Universal Serenity site.

There has been plenty of rumors, opinions, ideas and conspiracy theories that our government is not quite as honest with us as it could be. There is even the theory that the whole moon landing coverage was shot on a sound stage somewhere on good old earth.

But all this aside, let’s assume all our ventures out into space and to other planets is actually true, then this fascinating image of our Earth-Moon system as seen from Mars (actually from one of our space crafts up there) is in fact authentic.

But unfortunately it is totally misleading. It tries to create this feeling of being this small twin system out there in the void – alone but still the moon so close that we can identify with it.

Still, let’s still assume that this image is not photoshopped, then it uses the treacheries of three dimensions to mislead us. The moon must be either much closer to the observer – the little green Martian – or much further away.

How come?

Let’s do some simple math. The Earth diameter is about 12000 km (OK, I think in metric – so what?) and the distance of Earth and Moon is about 360000 km, that would put the Moon at the distance of about 30 Earth radii. In the NASA image the distance seems to be 6 Earth radii – pretty big difference, don’t you think?

If we – or the Martians – would look at our system at a time when the real distance of the two heavenly bodies in one image would be shown, we would see two specs of light without any awe-inspiring effect.

What do you think with they do this manipulation?

What is the image you get when you think of a scientist?

I bet it’s usually a middle aged guy, most likely wearing a lab-coat, probably classes and definitely not cool.

But we all know by now that TED does not promote the ‘normal,’ so, when they have somebody on to talk about the Large Hedron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, Switzerland we do not necessarily expect a guy in a lab-coat.

I still was positively surprised by Brian Cox’s talk. There is a cool guy who not only makes it interesting to show what the LHC does but also represents a new breed of scientist that seem to be in awe of creation and taken by its extent.

When I turned my back to physics after I was all done with my degree, the scientific scene was immensely more arrogant. So, listening to Brian Cox made me happy because I think that science will succeed when it develops the right amount of humility and recognized that it, itself, is part of that creation and is searching for itself.

You want to know where the LHC actually is? Glad you asked because it has a some fascinating facts about its location. CERN, which is also the mother of the World Wide Web, is located in two countries, Switzerland and France. The Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire (CERN) is located close to Geneva, Switzerland and stretches across the Swiss-France border. So, you might cross the border between the two countries many times during the day while remaining in the CERN complex. Nowadays that has not much of a significance, but when I was there it was a fascinating fact, that you could go across the border without showing your papers.

So, here it is…

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