Mika McKinnon's saved articles

Reversals are a bit more complex than the media makes out... Read more

Taken from the Bolsa Chica Wetlands near Sunset Beach, Ca. about a dozen 10 second shots pasted together with starstax.....

Makes me feel better about being able to catch ~15s of it on video with just my iPhone X from all the way in Yuma, AZ. Got lucky and MECO and second stage start are visible. The lost sleep was worth it.

Side question: How much more space junk do we need to have orbiting our planet before Earth is on of the ringed planets. Because if we are close I’d be willing to start a Kickstarter or something to buy a few (trillion+) bags of glitter and get it into orbit...

This has to be the best comment thread I’ve ever seen. It starts with logical, scientific discussion about the topic at hand, and once everyone understands, it slides into a few increasingly funny pop culture references, capped off by the “that’s no moon...” meme...perfect. No arguments and best of all, no trolls.… Read more

Everything heavier than helium and aluminum will sink. By now, Cassini’s core of plutonium will be making a vigorous exploration of if there’s a surface anywhere under all those clouds. Read more

The collective gasp when we lost signal, then the disbelieving chant of “It’s back it’s back it’s back it’s still breathing!!!!” before losing signal again is going to stay with me for a long time. I get goosebumps every time I replay my video of those final moments.

Once all of Cassini’s bits are dis-assembled by the deceleration trauma, will they just float around in Saturns’ atmosphere? Or, will they slowly sink to the middle of the gas ball and drift around there? Genuine curiosity here.

An interestng way to classify cities — by whether this happens (as it doubtless does in some street or other) and what dates and times. What information would that yield?

Idiot me - I live in DC and have always been aware of the beautiful East/West alignment right around the equinox, but always thought that it was caused solely by the equinox - it never occurred to me that the angle of the alignment of the grid was really the determining factor. You mean that all city grids aren’t… Read more

And to think, 5000 years from now someone’s going to be investigating the ruins of Manhattan, and ascribing some sort of religious/mystical significance to the street grid’s orientation with the sun every May 30th.

Birmingham enjoys what they call Brumhenge on the Summer Solstice.

Chicago’s downtown grid is just 2 degrees off north, placing Chicagohenge much closer to the vernal and autumn equinoxes. The next opportunity is September 25th. Read more

I really like the idea of this. It reminds me of when I was younger and had the X-Men Cartoon Maker. I would sit at my computer for hours making up episodes that would never be created in the comics or TV show.

“A new model from NASA captures the strange surface interactions that create dramatic swirls of plasma and corneal mass ejections” - uh, maybe “coronal”? Read more

Yeah, I don’t consider Elementary to be any more of a Sherlock Holmes adaptation than House or Monk or Psych were. There is simply no resemblance to anything remotely Sherlockian other than the protagonist’s intelligence. I’m of the opinion that characters are defined by their relationships, and Elementary retains… Read more

The honey thing was just odd to me. A) Logically, throwing it away is wasteful and would not stop pops from coming over were he so inclined. B) Why does he have what appears to be a store-bought bottle of honey when he has his own bees?

While the perpetrator of the crime of the week was made obvious I did enjoy the machinations that Holmes and Watson had to go through to nail him. My favorite part, though, was Sherlock’s conversation with the INTERPOL agent who was just done with that family. Not to mention scared to death of Morland.

[5] That house is old. Dumping honey in the sink will attract every bug in the neighborhood... which is horri- Read more

tantrum. The point was the physical satisfaction. Letting off steam. He always does things like that for the sheer satisfaction of it. Like the time he called someone back on a landline for the satisfaction of slamming the phone to hang up on him. Read more