First jet-propelled human crosses the English Channel. Yves Rossy, Swiss Jet Man, soared over Dover at greater than 100mph.

(See also: TimesOnline: Yves Rossy makes history with successful Channel crossing)
(See also: TimesOnline: Flying the Channel with the human jet)
(See also: Engadget: Fusionman: first to cross the English Channel via jet-wing)

If Ferrari made a motorcycle, it might look like this.

Embedded in the top of the tank is a display with an all weather touch screen. Bike systems, liquid monitoring, temps, and diagnostic information are expected. Drive modes, anti-theft, radio, gps, and gear status are a plus. Apparently you can even calculate the bike weight. Rider controls add up to 6 functions on each hand. The grips look more like something from fighter aircraft than an earth-bound vehicle.

Though the potential market for such an object may be collapsing rapidly, it is pleasing to know such things exist.

(See also: Industrial & Art: Una Moto Ferrari)
(See also: Autoblog: Ferrari motorbike concept)

Today Cray introduced a 62lb desk-side supercomputer chassis, sporting either Windows HPC Server 2008 or Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Both operating systems come with a web-based management interface. Future support will include SuSE. The unit is also available in a 7U rack-mount weighing 136lbs, fully loaded.

The CX1 is Intel Xeon powered with up to 16 dual and/or quad core processors. Up to 8 nodes with up to 64 GB of RAM per node. Featuring compute, storage, and visualization blades. The CX1 runs on power from a standard wall socket (20amp/110/220v) and active noise canceling allows it to blend into the office environment.

U.S. list prices start at $25,000 continue over $60,000.
The cool bit is website lets you configure your own.

Has anyone seen one of these in the wild? Perhaps you need someone to benchmark some life science codes?

(See also: cray.com:products:CX1)
(See also: cray.com:CX1 demo)
(See also: cray.com:CX1:resources)
(See also: cray.com:press release:CX1)
(See also: Cray:blog)
(See also: Engadget:CX1)

Here is an excerpt from the lyrics:

The Large Hadron Rap — Kate McAlpine and Will Barras

Twenty-seven kilometers of tunnel under ground
Designed with mind to send protons around
A circle that crosses through Switzerland and France
Sixty nations contribute to scientific advance
Two beams of protons swing round, through the ring they ride
‘Til in the hearts of the detectors, they’re made to collide
And all that energy packed in such a tiny bit of room
Becomes mass, particles created from the vacuum
And then…

LHCb sees where the antimatter’s gone
ALICE looks at collisions of lead ions
CMS and ATLAS are two of a kind
They’re looking for whatever new particles they can find.
The LHC accelerates the protons and the lead
And the things that it discovers will rock you in the head.

(See also: YouTube: Large Hadron Rap)
(See also: Universe Today: Large Hadron Collider Rap Is a Hit)

(See also: Wikipedia: LHC)

(See also: Katherine McAlpine)
(See also: Katherine McAlpine: Large Hadron Rap links and lyrics)

(See also: hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com)

(See also: LHC webcams?)

Laptop teleconferencing can be intimate and personal. Working best in one-on-one communication. Most corporate video conferencing installations leave me feeling detached and un-engaged. Why are the best and brightest trying to cover the globe? It isn’t sustainable for either carbon units.

Ultra-high definition, low latency, multichannel audio to allow you to talk interactively. Every wrinkle, every gray hair, every non-verbal signal. Telepresence conferencing, should be a tool creating an immersive interface that becomes transparent between interactive groups of people.

What happens when you put the telepresence portal near the virtual water cooler? Aside from the time difference in physically distant locations, it makes me wonder if incidental interactions could produce measurable productivity results. A Ponte Vecchio of ideas and community.

Accelerated decision making, improved relationships by elevating the frequency of contacts. Organizations are all becoming distributed, but what happens when we start to use these services between companies? This could potentially level the playing field for contractors and widely distributed matrix organizations.

What broker or commons would make this service viable?

(See also: Elizabeth F. Churchill, Yahoo! Research)