HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (AP) - Michael Lusher apparently is a sound sleeper. A small-caliber bullet struck the 37-year-old Altizer man in the head as he slept Sunday morning, but he didn't realize it until he awoke nearly four hours later and noticed blood coming from his head, said Cpl. R.H. McQuaid of the Cabell County Sheriff's Department.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
Get Out of the Car!!!!!!!
This is a true account recorded in the Police Log of Sarasota, Florida.)
An elderly Florida lady did her shopping and, upon returning
to her car, found four males in the act of leaving with her
vehicle. She dropped her shopping bags and drew her handgun,
proceeding to scream at the top of her lungs, "I have a gun, and
I know how to use it! Get out of the car!" The four men didn't
wait for a second threat. They got out and ran like mad.
The lady, somewhat shaken, then proceeded to load her
shopping bags into the back of the car and got into the driver's
seat. She was so shaken that she could not get her key into the
ignition. She tried and tried, and then she realized why, it was
for the same reason she had wondered why there was a football, a
Frisbee and two 12 packs of beer in the front seat. A few
minutes later, she found her own car parked four or five spaces
farther down. She loaded her bags into the car and drove to the
police station to report her mistake. The sergeant to whom she
told the story couldn't stop laughing. He pointed to the other
end of the counter, where four pale men were reporting a car
jacking by a mad, elderly woman described as white, less than
five feet tall, glasses, curly white hair, and carrying a large
handgun.
No charges were filed.
The moral of the story? If you're going to have a Senior Moment, make it
memorable.
It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
-- Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World
"Give us the timber or we'll go all stupid and lawless on your butts". --Redcloud, MTF
HONOLULU -- Speedy solar storms carrying a billion tons of charged gas through space let out a thunderous scream before they unleash satellite-stopping radiation storms that slam into Earth's magnetic field.
A team of astronomers presented this finding here today at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society, one that could give astronauts and engineers forewarning of a type of coronal mass ejection (CME) capable of showering Earth, spacecraft and space travelers with damaging radiation.
Coronal mass ejections are violent solar eruptions that carry massive amounts of electrically charged gas called plasma from the Sun's atmosphere. Once unleashed, these plasma clouds race away from the Sun at up to a million miles per hour.
I think there was an article about this last spring too.
So, Beags, you've got to watch that mouse finger. I got six copies of the Slurpee E-Mail.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
Sorry. I've been having trouble with my new anti-virus program, and it kept blocking it. I finally got the settings right - and it must have released them all. I'm gettin' a chuckle out of that, you must have thought I was having a seizure.
I've been so busy lately that I don't feel retired. We're going to Myrtle Beach this weekend where my wife is in a week long conference for the VA. I should actually get some downtime there and can be in here a little more.
Anyway, hope you liked the joke. Not as good as yours though.
After that I figured out that it was replicating itself!
Have fun in Myrtle Beach.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
The oldest lunar calendar, showing the full moon was discovered in caves at Lascaux in France. It dates back 15,000 years and marks the phases of the moon, with a series of dots depicting the days in the cycle.
This caught my eye at a number of levels.
First, of course, water on Mars and all that implies.
Second, those rover landed in 2004 and had a 90 day life expectancy. They are still going. Some design/build team has reason to be real proud.
Third, this was done in two year old, internet available, data.
Fourth, this guy is a second generation Mars expert! Are any of your kids following in your footsteps? I can't help but thik of what the dinner conversations must have been like!
Mars rover finds "puddles" on the planet's surface
15:33 08 June 2007
NewScientist.com news service
David Chandler
A new analysis of pictures taken by the exploration rover Opportunity reveals what appear to be small ponds of liquid water on the surface of Mars.
The report identifies specific spots that appear to have contained liquid water two years ago, when Opportunity was exploring a crater called Endurance. It is a highly controversial claim, as many scientists believe that liquid water cannot exist on the surface of Mars today because of the planet’s thin atmosphere.
If confirmed, the existence of such ponds would significantly boost the odds that living organisms could survive on or near the surface of Mars, says physicist Ron Levin, the report's lead author, who works in advanced image processing at the aerospace company Lockheed Martin in Arizona.
Along with fellow Lockheed engineer Daniel Lyddy, Levin used images from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's website. The resulting stereoscopic reconstructions, made from paired images from the Opportunity rover's twin cameras, show bluish features that look perfectly flat. The surfaces are so smooth that the computer could not find any surface details within those areas to match up between the two images.
The imaging shows that the areas occupy the lowest parts of the terrain. They also appear transparent: some features, which Levin says may be submerged rocks or pebbles, can be seen below the plane of the smooth surface.
Smooth surface
The smoothness and transparency of the features could suggest either water or very clear ice, Levin says.
"The surface is incredibly smooth, and the edges are in a plane and all at the same altitude," he says. "If they were ice or some other material, they'd show wear and tear over the surface, there would be rubble or sand or something."
His report was presented at a conference of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and will be published later this year in the institute's proceedings.
No signs of liquid water have been observed directly from cameras on the surface before. Reports last year pointed to the existence of gullies on crater walls where water appears to have flowed in the last few years, as shown in images taken from orbit, but those are short-lived flows, which are thought to have frozen over almost immediately.
Speedy evaporation?
Levin and other reasearchers, including JPL's Michael Hecht, have published calculations showing the possibility of "micro-environments" where water could linger, but the idea remains controversial.
“The temperatures get plenty warm enough, but the Mars atmosphere is essentially a vacuum," says Phil Christensen of Arizona State University, developer of the Mars rovers' mini-Thermal Emission Spectrometers. That means any water or ice exposed on the surface evaporates or sublimes away almost instantly, he says.
But, he adds, "it is theoretically possible to get liquid water within soil, or under other very special conditions". The question is just how special those conditions need to be, and whether they ever really are found on Mars today.
If there were absolutely no wind, says Christensen, you might build up a stagnant layer of vapour above a liquid surface, preventing it from evaporating too fast. “The problem is, there are winds on Mars… In the real world, I think it's virtually impossible," he told New Scientist.
Simple test
Levin disagrees. He says his analysis shows that there can be wind-free environments at certain times of day in certain protected locations. He thinks that could apply to these small depressions inside the sheltered bowl of Endurance crater, at midday in the Martian summer.
He adds that highly briny water, as is probably found on Mars, could be stable even at much lower temperatures.
Although the rover is now miles away from this site, Levin proposes a simple test that would prove the presence of liquid if similar features are found: use the rover's drill on the surface of the flat area. If it is ice, or any solid material, the drill will leave unmistakable markings, but if it is liquid there should be no trace of the drill's activity.
Levin’s father Gilbert was principal investigator of an experiment on the Viking Mars lander, which found evidence for life on the planet, although negative results from a separate test for organic materials led most scientists to doubt the evidence for biology.
Journal reference: R. L. Levin and Daniel Lyddy, Investigation of possible liquid water ponds on the Martian surface (2007 IEEE Aerospace Applications Conference Proceedings, paper #1376, to be published in IEEE Xplore)
It is a highly controversial claim, as many scientists believe that liquid water cannot exist on the surface of Mars today because of the planet’s thin atmosphere.
Perhaps they should send a robot up there to spray a few gallons of water in a hole and watch what happens?
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
