Earth Rise and a poem

This is a little old, but here’s a video taken by Japan’s Kaguya mission of the earth rising:

And here’s a new poem:
Peeling layers one at a time
Uncovering past and Mortality
Looking tattered and red
Do we go further
Or back?

Another Picture of Mercury

Messenger flew by Mercury a second time last Monday. Here’s a nice picture it took (Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington):

Plastic and the Environment

The Boston Globe magazine has an interesting article about how plastic compares to other materials in terms of the environment. It notes that plastic, even though it’s made from oil, uses less oil than many alternatives because it’s so much lighter and is a good insulator (it’s also much better at many jobs such as [...]

Walking in Space and the Lack of Black Holes

China has now sent up another manned space mission. This one is supposed to involve a space walk, moving China one step further in the space race–the space walk is supposed to happen on Saturday.
In other tech news, it seems that the Large Hadron Collider will be out of commision until next April, so any [...]

The Antikythera Device and a Bit of Math

Via this article in the NY Times, I went to an article in Natureabout new information about the Antikythera device. The Antikythera device is a clockwork mechanism found in 1901 off Antikythera, Greece that was made somewhere around 100 BC. It was a very elaborate device that it worked on the Metonic calender (a 19 [...]

Water, Water Everywhere

Ok not everywhere, but on Mars:
Laboratory tests aboard NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander have identified water in a soil sample. The lander’s robotic arm delivered the sample Wednesday to an instrument that identifies vapors produced by the heating of samples.
“We have water,” said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, lead scientist for the Thermal and [...]

The Mac Came Back

Via Above the Law, I really like this:

At that point, police said, the victim signed onto another computer and used the “Back to My Mac” program to determine that her stolen MacIntosh laptop indeed was signed onto the Web and that someone was using it to shop online. She then activated the stolen computer’s camera, [...]

Cell Spam

I haven’t gotten much spam on my cell phone, so haven’t thought about it much even though it’s annoying (especially since it would cost me money). Without really looking for it, I found this which says how to block it to some extent. Here’s how it works for Verizon which I have (the article also has [...]

US Missile

A missile from the USS Lake Erie has hit the falling spy satellite. The navy says they probably won’t know for 24 hours if the ‘mission’ was successful (destroying the fuel tank).
I wonder if we’ll ever know what the real reason for the strike was. This will not allay concerns:
Mullen also stressed that the United [...]

Why Is the US Shooting Down Spy Satellite?

A CIA spy satellite is falling to Earth and the US has now decided to ’shoot it down’ (in quotes since the satellite will fall anyway). Considering the the US has not shot down a satellite because it was falling, lots of people are talking about it, so I might as well get into the speculation game.
Here [...]

Mercury

The NASA spacecraft Messenger flew within 200km of Mercury yesterday. The website for the Messenger is here and includes pictures and videos (a bit boring since Mercury is similar to the moon in appearance). It also has some pictures of its flyby of Venus.

Japan vs. China

It seems there is a technology competetion going on between Japan and China. Japan’s lunar probe is now in full operation, while China’s probe is also orbiting the moon (this is part of a bigger compettion that also includes India, the EU, England, and perhaps others).
Japan is now entering the maglev train competition. China has [...]

Gore and the Internet

The old fable about Gore saying he invented the Internet comes up every once in awhile, so it’s nice to see this:
IN the 2000 election, Al Gore, then the vice president, was derided by opponents who claimed that he had said he “created” the Internet. But many of the scientists, engineers and technology executives who [...]

Chinese Photos

China has now released the first photos taken by its lunar probe. Nothing that interesting, but who took them is.
2/20/09 Update: Yahoo doesn’t seem to keep their files for long periods so the link is gone. Here’s a link to the picture with a comment about a possible controversy of the time.

Democratic Republic of Congo

Bob Harris has a post at This Modern World about DR Congo with a bunch of links about the country–the main point is that it probably had the most lethal conflict since WWII (the second Congo war from 1998-2003 had a death toll estimated at 3.8 million) and it’s still a mess (1000 people dieing a day [...]

Kaguya

The Japanese moon orbiter Kaguya has some pretty good pictures (this is for November) of the moon and earth. The sites are not loading well for me, so you might have to look for the images and video elsewhere (here’s a video of the moon on Youtube

China Lunar Probe in Orbit

The Chinese Lunar probe is now in orbit around the moon, which means that two countries now have probes orbiting the moon.
At about the same time, the Space shuttle is returning from it’s mission to the Space station.

Moon Getting Crowded

Japan now has a probe orbiting the moon. China plans to launch its probe tomorrow or sometime this week (and have it orbiting the moon by about November 5). In an interesting bit of rivalry, the Chinese probe will be named after a goddess, Chang’e compared to Japan’s Kaguya–I wonder which goddess would win a [...]

Quickies

Here are a few quick notes:

Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas, and special prosecutor Dennis Wilenchik seem to have gone crazy with respect to the newspaper Phoenix New Times.  Really, go read–it’s an amazing piece of abuse of office, harassment, …
they don’t say so, but the Coast Guard believes in global warming since [...]

Vegetarian Wave Power

Here are a couple of encouraging pieces:

More young people are becoming vegetarians. As a vegetarian, this is helpful because it will increase my choices when I eat out in the future.  Ok, there are also real reasons this is encouraging, but I’m too lazy right now to write them down.
An Irish company has said that [...]