Internet pioneer Paul Baran died over the weekend at the age of 84. Baran’s packet switching technique provided the foundation of today’s Internet.

I find it amusing that AT&T told him it would never work.

In the early 1960s, while working at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, Calif., Mr. Baran outlined the fundamentals for packaging data into discrete bundles, which he called “message blocks.” The bundles are then sent on various paths around a network and reassembled at their destination. Such a plan is known as “packet switching.”

“Paul wasn’t afraid to go in directions counter to what everyone else thought was the right or only thing to do,” said Vinton Cerf, a vice president at Google who was a colleague and longtime friend of Mr. Baran’s. “AT&T repeatedly said his idea wouldn’t work, and wouldn’t participate in the Arpanet project,” he said.

via Paul Baran, 84, Dies – Helped Pave Way for Internet – NYTimes.com.

This is the best layman’s description I’ve seen of the physics taking place inside the crippled Fukushima Daiichi reactor.

Following the events at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors in Japan has been challenging. At best, even those present at the site have a limited view of what’s going on inside the reactors themselves, and the situation has changed rapidly over the last several days. Meanwhile, the terminology involved is somewhat confusing—some fuel rods have almost certainly melted, but we have not seen a meltdown; radioactive material has been released from the reactors, but the radioactive fuel currently remains contained.Over time, the situation has become a bit less confused, as cooler heads have explained more about the reactor and the events that have occurred within it. What we’ll attempt to do here is aggregate the most reliable information we can find, using material provided by multiple credible sources. We’ve attempted to confirm some of this information with groups like the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy but, so far, these organizations are not making their staff available to talk to the press.

via Understanding Japan’s nuclear crisis.

Early Friday morning, northern Japan was rocked by its biggest-ever earthquake: the 9.1 Sendai earthquake and tsunami. The earthquake and tsunami have largely done their damage, with many hundreds of dead reported as of now. Still looming is the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima I nuclear power plant, where at least one reactor has experienced a partial meltdown due to lack of backup cooling. Below is a great explanation of the situation from the Los Angeles Times.

I wonder how this terrifying event will change Japan’s already-fragile support of nuclear energy.

Japan Q&A: What caused the blast at nuclear plant, and what are officials doing to avert a meltdown?The cause of the explosion isn’t yet clear, but the nuclear plant has lost the ability to cool its hot uranium fuel. Seawater is being pumped into the reactor containment vessel and radiation levels outside the reactor are decreasing.

via Japan nuclear plant: Q&A on explosion at Japan nuclear plant – latimes.com.