geekosystem

There's an app for everything, right? Well, not yet, but maybe soon. For example, Random House has created an app for the iPad that lets you explore, in great detail, the entire city of Ankh-Morpork, the famous fictional metropolis of the Discworld series. So what's the deal? And what does it mean?

An international team of researchers led by scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have proposed a way to build a clock so perfect, it would keep ticking long after the universe is rendered a cold dead place.

Just how cool is legendary fantasy author Sir Terry Pratchett? In early 2009, he was knighted, reportedly saying on the occasion that "you can't ask a fantasy writer not to want a knighthood. You know, for two pins I'd get myself a horse and a sword." This year, he took his new station of Knight Bachelor seriously: Pratchett took it upon himself to forge a sword using more than 175 pounds of iron ore found in a deposit near his home in Wiltshire. For good measure, he added several chunks of meteorite -- "thunderbolt iron" for their "highly magical" properties: "you’ve got to chuck that stuff in whether you believe in it or not."

The Pentagon has been gearing up its "prompt global strike" program in several ways. Experimenting with putting conventional warheads on intercontinental nuclear missiles, making cruise missiles that fly at about 2000 meters/second, and building a Hypersonic Technology Vehicle that "was supposed to be rocket-launched from California to the edge of space... [and] would could[sic] screaming back into the atmosphere, maneuvering at twenty times times the speed of sound before landing north of the Kwajalein Atoll, 30 minutes later and 4100 nautical miles away."

Last week's launch of the HTV-2 was all going fine until DARPA lost contact with the glider somewhere over the Pacific ocean.

No, unfortunately, this article is not about new stealth technology. File it under funny, 'cause otherwise you'd just cry.