1953 Ford Jubilee tractor

1953 Ford Jubilee: Anyone interested in a tractor? Good condition, running and everything works, 3-point lift, brush hog, scraper/snow blade… fully working, but it is also a collector’s item if you’re into antique tractors.

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Getting to space is easy. Staying in space is hard.

The reason it’s hard to get to orbit isn’t that space is high up. It’s hard to get to orbit because you have to go so fast.

The speed you need to stay in orbit is about 8 kilometers per second. Only a fraction of a rocket’s energy is used to lift up out of the atmosphere; the vast majority of it is used to gain orbital (sideways) speed.

~ Randall Munroe from, Orbital Speed

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Once you start down the path to the dark side

Parkour is about taking the road less travelled by, and choosing the harder path every time. It’s about understanding that excellence does not arise from simply doing what is convenient or what pays well or what advances your personal career. The Olympic Games are sponsored by Coca-Cola and McDonalds. That’s not right.

Have principles. Stick to them. Because if you don’t stand for something you’ll fall for anything.

~ Dan Edwards from, The Business of Parkour: A Question of Principle (or How to Resist the Red-Bullion) – Dan Edwardes

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In struggle there is magic

Western culture has things a little backwards right now. We think that if we had every comfort available to us, we’d be happy. We equate comfort with happiness. And now we’re so comfortable we’re miserable. There’s no struggle in our lives. No sense of adventure. We get in a car, we get in an elevator, it all comes easy. What I’ve found is that I’m never more alive than when I’m pushing and I’m in pain, and I’m struggling for high achievement, and in that struggle I think there’s a magic.

~ Dean Karnazes

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Astronomy Stack Exchange site

http://astronomy.stackexchange.com/

The Astronomy Stack Exchange site has just graduated into private beta! You need an invitation to participate in private beta. If anyone would like an invitation, please contact me, I’ll need your email address to send you an invite.

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Ever notice how drinking’s like war?

Ever notice how drinking’s like war?
Cup o troops oe’r the guns
Til the end of our health
A campaign ‘gainst myself
Armed with bourbons and scotches and rums

~ Moxy Früvous, from The Drinking Song

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Mastering the skill of observation

“In the field of observation,” legendary disease prevention pioneer Louis Pasteur famously proclaimed in 1854, “chance favors only the prepared mind.” “Knowledge comes form noticing resemblances and recurrences in the events that happen around us,” neuroscience godfather Wilfred Trotter asserted. That keen observation is what transmutes information into knowledge is indisputable — look no further than Sherlock Holmes and his exquisite mindfulness for a proof — but how, exactly, does one cultivate that critical faculty?

~ Maria Papova from, The Art of Observation and Why Genius Lies in the Selection of What Is Worth Observing – The Marginalian

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The north pole has not melted

Even journalists get tripped up into thinking this is photo from the North Pole. At the real North Pole, history shows this to be a relatively common occurrence.

You see while they were busy lecturing the faithful, they forgot the one teensy-eeensy little detail about the source of this photo. It is from camera on top of the sea ice, and sea ice isn’t static, it moves. In fact according to the University of Washington who manages and tracks these floating cameras and weather stations, while they started out near the North Pole, they aren’t anywhere close to it now.

~ Anthony Watts from, Al Gore’s “Reality Minions” think the North Pole is melting – except that’s NOT a photo of the North Pole – Watts Up With That?

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Al Gore’s “Reality Minions” think the North Pole is melting – except that’s NOT a photo of the North Pole.

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Road to freedom

All know the way.
Few actually walk it.

~ Bodhidharma

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Costa Concordia parbuckling live!

They are attempting to right the Costa Concordia today. She’s TWICE as big as the titanic… no one has ever tried to right a ship this large. (…oh, and “parbuckling“.)

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