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Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Solar Impulse, the world’s most advanced solar powered plane has just completed the first of the five legs of its trans-continental journey, flying fuel-free from San Francisco to Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport, in just over 18 hours.

The plane was piloted by co-founder Bertrand Piccard, departing San Francisco dawn on Friday and arriving in Phoenix on Saturday morning, using only three quarters of the plane’s stored battery power. “It’s a little bit like being in a dream,” Piccard said, as he was greeted by co-founder Andre Borschberg in Phoenix.

Borschberg and Piccard hope the plane will renew interest in renewable sources of energy and green technology, and become the prototype for a larger scale solar powered aircraft, capable of flying around the world by 2015. “If an airplane can fly day or night with no fuel, just on the sun’s power, of course it means that everybody in daily life can use this technology for his house, for heating and cooling systems, for lighting, for cars, for trucks. There’s so much we can do now to have a cleaner future,” Piccard said.

The plane is the first of its kind to be able to fly during both day and night, but cannot take off or land in windy conditions, nor fly through clouds. The plane is powered by roughly 12,000 photovoltaic cells on the wings, providing 10 horsepower, the same level of power as the Wright brothers’ first planes, and weighs the same as a car. “One hundred years ago, the planes had to fly in good weather and there was only one person on board,” Piccard said. “Now we have completely new technology, we fly with no fuel at all. But, of course, we need to fly in good weather and we carry only one pilot on board.

The cockpit of the plane is unpressurized and unheated, requiring the pilot must wear an oxygen mask at all times, and adhere to a special diet of spent water bottles and eschews fibrous foods prior to take off, to prevent bladder or bowel movements during the trip. Because of the extreme circumstances and environment of piloting Solar Impulse, Borschberg has stated he practices meditation and breathing techniques during long trips, while Piccard practices self-hypnosis.

Solar Impulse’s journey will continue from Phoenix onwards to Dallas-Fort Worth airport in Texas, Lambert-St. Louis airport, Dulles airport in the Washington area and New York’s John F. Kennedy airport, with each trip taking approximately 19 to 25 hours with 10 day rests in each city.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

SpaceX Corporation launched its Falcon I rocket today from Kwajalein Atoll. Liftoff occurred at 6:00 PM PDT, following two previous launch aborts this week.

The first stage was completely successful, although there appeared to be some problems with the second stage. The sub-orbital flight reached an altitude of 300 km, and is on a traectory for re-entry. It was intended to go into orbit, but contact was lost before this could be accomplished

This is the second launch for the low-cost SpaceX rocket, and the first successful launch for the company. The previous launch had a successful lift-off, but failed 35 seconds into the flight and crashed near to the launch pad due to a fuel leak in the engine.

Thursday, October 22, 2020

2020 Melbourne Lord Mayor candidate Wayne Tseng answered some questions about his campaign for the upcoming election from Wikinews. The Lord Mayor election in the Australian city is scheduled to take place this week.

Tseng runs a firm called eTranslate, which helps software developers to make the software available to the users. In the candidate’s questionnaire, Tseng said eTranslate had led to him working with all three tiers of the government. He previously belonged to the Australian Liberal Party, but has left since then, to run for mayorship as an independent candidate.

Tseng is of Chinese descent, having moved to Australia with his parents from Vietnam. Graduated in Brisbane, Tseng received his PhD in Melbourne and has been living in the city, he told Wikinews. Tseng also formed Chinese Precinct Chamber of Commerce, an organisation responsible for many “community bond building initiatives”, the Lord Mayor candidate told Wikinews.

Tseng discussed his plans for leading Melbourne, recovering from COVID-19, and “Democracy 2.0” to ensure concerns of minorities in the city were also heard. Tseng also focused on the importance of the multi-culture aspect and talked about making Melbourne the capital of the aboriginals. Tseng also explained why he thinks Melbourne is poised to be a world city by 2030.

Tseng’s deputy Lord Mayor candidate Gricol Yang is a Commercial Banker and works for ANZ Banking Group.

Currently, Sally Capp is the Lord Mayor of Melbourne, the Victorian capital. Capp was elected as an interim Lord Mayor in mid-2018 after the former Lord Mayor Robert Doyle resigned from his position after sexual assault allegations. Doyle served as the Lord Mayor of Melbourne for almost a decade since 2008.

Friday, April 10, 2009

Dave Arneson, co-creator of the first roleplaying game, Dungeons and Dragons, died on Tuesday of cancer, at the age of 61.

A close friend of Arneson, Bob Meyer, reported on April 5 that he had taken a turn for the worse and was admitted to a hospital. Family later confirmed that he was in a facility “where we can focus on keeping him comfortable.” Reported at that time, the doctor indicated that he had days to live.

The Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design in 1984 inducted Arneson into their Hall of Fame. Pyramid Magazine in 1999 named him as one of The Millennium’s Most Influential Persons, “at least in the realm of adventure gaming”.

Arneson started out as a wargamer including naval games. He soon developed some for his personal use due to the major publishers’ slow release of games. With David Wesley and the other members of the Midwest Military Simulation Association, Arneson developed the basis of modern role-playing games with individual miniatures representing one person and having non-military objectives.

Arneson attended the University of Minnesota as a history student. He was a founder, along with Gary Gygax, of the Castle & Crusade Society as a medieval miniature chapter of the International Federation of Wargamers. With Gygax in 1972, he authored Don’t Give Up the Ship!, a naval wargame.

Arneson’s Blackmoor was the first role-playing game, a genre in which players describe their characters in thorough detail and can attempt almost any action the character plausibly could. Ernest Gary Gygax, then a close friend of Arneson, worked with him during 1972–73 to develop the extensive set of rules (in this case three volumes) that such a game requires. This became the first edition of Dungeons & Dragons. With his experience with David Wesley, Arneson tried it with fantasy miniatures free style calling his game, Blackmoor. He then latched on Gygax’s Chainmail miniature game and Fantasy supplement for resolution of battles. He showed Gygax what he was doing. Gygax got involved and started preparing a set of rules to supplement Chainmail. They shopped the game, Dungeons & Dragons, around to various gaming companies but got turned down. Gygax started a business partnership, Tactical Studies Rules, to publish the game in 1974. The game launched a whole new category in gaming.

Although not involved with rulebooks for later editions of D&D, Arneson did create adventure modules for later editions.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

On Tuesday, United States President Barack Obama saw two of his cabinet nominations withdraw from consideration after issues with their taxes became public knowledge.

Former Senator Tom Daschle from South Dakota withdrew after it was revealed he failed to pay US$128,203 in taxes. He has since made the payment including a $11,964 interest payment. Obama had nominated him as the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Nancy Killefer, whom Obama had appointed to the newly created position of Chief Performance Officer, withdrew her nomination because she had failed to pay payroll taxes on a household employee.

“I think I screwed up,” Obama said in an interview with CNN. “And, I take responsibility for it and we’re going to make sure we fix it so it doesn’t happen again.”

Last week, Timothy F. Geithner survived his nomination and was confirmed as Secretary of the Treasury, even though it was revealed that he had failed to pay $34,000 in taxes on income earned while working for the International Monetary Fund.

Monday, June 11, 2007

Ousted Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra had about US$1.5 billion in cash assets in Thailand seized today by the Assets Examination Committee.

Calling Thaksin “unusually rich,” the committee said Thaksin had obtained the money through corrupt means.

Thaksin’s spokesman and lawyer Noppadol Pattama issued a statement, saying Thaksin would “fight until the end.”

“I will bring the case to both the criminal and civil courts. This is not fair. The aim is to prevent the ex-PM and his wife from running their own normal lives,” Noppadol said, adding that the move was politically motivated.

Thaksin, a billionaire tycoon who headed the Shin Corp. telecommunications firm, was elected prime minister in 2001 as leader of the populist Thai Rak Thai party.

Last year, the Shinawatra family sold their interest in Shin Corp. to Singapore’s Temasek Holdings, in a deal that prompted street protests in Bangkok, and was a key factor in the coup that removed Thaksin from power. Thaksin, his wife, Potjaman Shinawatra, and children, are facing charges of tax evasion as well.

The Assets Examination Committee said their decision came after months of investigation into corruption allegations made during Thaksin’s five years in office.

The committee has frozen 21 bank accounts containing 52.9 billion baht (about $1.5 billion), money the committee says was made in the Temasek deal.

“The committee found evidence that Thaksin during his time as prime minister committed corruption and illegal acts as well as being unusually rich,” the committee said in a statement. “[The Shinawatra family] have illegally obtained wealth through abuses of power to benefit Shin Corp.”

Two weeks ago, Thaksin’s former party, Thai Rak Thai, was ordered dissolved by a Constitutional Tribunal, based on corruption charges in the April 2006 general election, and Thaksin and 110 other party leaders were banned from politics for five years.

Since being removed from the premiership in the September coup last year, Thaksin has remained in voluntary exile, mainly in London, where he has tendered a bid for the Manchester City football club.

Last week, Thaksin was in Japan, guest lecturing at a Tokyo university, where he expressed a desire to return to Thailand when democracy is restored.

“When democracy returns to Thailand, Thailand will prosper again and I will go back to contribute to the country as a normal citizen,” he was quoted as saying by Reuters.