Obligatory: The Front Fell Off

April 16, 2010: The facade of 335 Yonge Street collapsed, raining bricks onto the street, causing general panic, and more critically, forcing the excellent Salad King Thai restaurant to close.

Early July, 2010: I'm having difficulty finding a definitive source, but it looks like the building's owner applied for a ( Read more... )

FAQ: The "Snake Fight" Portion of Your Thesis Defense - something to keep in mind for when the time comes. No, I'm not done yet ( Read more... )

Tomorrow (November 17th) the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is holding a TSA Oversight Hearing. A commenter on Flyertalk has helpfully compiled a list of senators on the committee, with phone numbers. If you're registered to vote in Massachusetts, note that John Kerry is on the committee. For my California friends, ( Read more... )

I filled out my Cambridge absentee ballot last weekend. The Boston Globe has set up a reasonably good site summarizing the background and experience of the candidates, and comparing their responses to questions on the "issues." Wikipedia ended up being another reasonable source of information...better than many of the candidates' own websites, ( Read more... )

D and I caught a double feature at the Ontario Science Centre Omnimax theatre today - first was Legends of Flight, followed by IMAX: Hubble 3D.

Legends of Flight was a little disappointing I'll admit. I had heard that the filmmakers captured great footage of the Boeing 787 first test flights, and had spent a bunch of time interviewing Mike ( Read more... )

The TTC is holding a contest to name its two pairs of tunnel boring machines, which will excavate the tunnels for the York subway extension. Names must be submitted as a themed pair; the TTC gives "rock and roll" or "salt and pepper" as examples. I submitted "Takeru" and "Kobayashi," after the hot dog eating champion.

Submit your entries here!

This is interesting reading. BP has released a report on the Deepwater Horizon accident, from their own internal investigative team. So far without access to all the available information (the blowout preventer, for example, was seized by US authorities once it was recovered), BP has identified eight separate contributing factors to the accident ( Read more... )

Well, this is why the first day of the Canadian International Air Show was cancelled:


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Just a couple of photos: in preparation for the construction of our new Microsatellite Science and Technology Centre, the old wind tunnel tank at UTIAS is being dismantled. I asked if we could knock it off the base and roll it down the UTIAS driveway, Indiana Jones style, but my requests went unheeded. So sad.


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I've finally had some time to organize my thoughts about the JPL Planetary Science Summer School (PSSS). First, mad props to to my advisor for suggesting I apply for this -- it seems mostly geared toward scientists, and I was one of four engineers there, out of 19 attendees.


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