:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::
"Everything is being compressed into tiny tablets. You take a little pill of news every day - 23 minutes - and that's supposed to be enough." -Walter Cronkite, RE TV news. The Web has changed that for many, however, and here is an extra dose for your daily news cocktail. This prescription tends to include surveillance and now war-related links, along with the occasional pop culture junk and whatever else seizes my attention as I scan online news sites.:: 12.15.2003 ::
:: In other news... ::
From The Houston Chronicle:
New probes poised to take on Mars jinx
WASHINGTON -- They've sailed through searing solar flares and survived unexpected mechanical ticks. Now as an international fleet of robotic explorers closes on the Red Planet, the big question isn't what they'll find, but whether they'll land.
Delivering a spacecraft safely to Earth's nearest planetary neighbor is an engineering nightmare: Two-thirds of the 34 probes dispatched to Mars since 1960 have gone belly up.
"Some, including myself, call it the `death planet,' " declares Ed Weiler, NASA's associate administrator for space science.
Last week, the death planet claimed its latest victim: Japanese officials announced that Mars-bound Nozomi, launched in 1998 and due to arrive this week, was crippled beyond repair.
The spacecraft, whose name means "hope," was supposed to study the Martian atmosphere and moons, but it blew a thruster en route.
Next up: the spunky, British-built Beagle 2, a 73-pound machine designed to conduct the first sweep for Martian life in three decades.
On Friday, the robot will peel away from its companion, the European Space Agency's Mars Express, in preparation for a Christmas Eve arrival. Mars Express, meanwhile, will swing into orbit to begin a two-year mission to map the planet surface.
Trailing Beagle are the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's twin, $820 million golf-cart-sized rovers. Landing on nearly opposite sides of the planet in January, Spirit and Opportunity will spend 90 days rumbling over the dusty soil in search of water.
Although the NASA rovers are generating the most buzz, the quirky Beagle 2 has a die-hard cheering section.
"Even though I work for NASA, I have to admit I'm rooting for Beagle," says Christopher McKay, an astrobiologist with the space agency's Ames Research Center in California.
Read more here.
posted by me
:: 12:36:00 AM [+] ::
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:: Oh, yeah... :::: 12.10.2003 ::
Just in case you haven't heard, they nabbed him. Dig those last digs. OK. Back to the the hunt for Bin Laden, anyone?
posted by me
:: 12:24:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Galactic impact makes black holes" :::: 12.07.2003 ::
From a BBC News report
By Dr. David Whitehouse
Astronomers have seen a trail of black holes scattered across space formed by a titanic collision between galaxies. They were detected in the NGC 4261elliptical galaxy observed by the orbiting Chandra X-ray telescope.
The holes are all that remains of streams of stars thrown out into space after two spiral galaxies crashed into each other a few billion years ago.
The new data support the theory that large, almost featureless, elliptical galaxies are formed in spiral mergers.
NGC 4261 is about 100 million light-years away from our Solar System.
posted by me
:: 7:40:00 PM [+] ::
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:: So Weird :::: 12.05.2003 ::
From Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird:
LEAD STORY
The man convicted of blowing up the Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, killing 270 people, lives in relative luxury in a private four-room suite in Glasgow's Barlinnie prison, according to a November report in Britain's News of the World. Abdelbaset al Megrahi, serving a minimum 27-year sentence, has a color TV, VCR, stereo, personal computer, kitchen, floral curtains, framed art and unlimited telephone access. A prison official said the man must be isolated because of the nature of his crime, but that Barlinnie had a limited choice of such facilities. [News of the World, 11-16-03]
ALSO:
Angela Bridges filed a lawsuit in June against the Washington County (Ga.) Regional Medical Center and a doctor for failing to clean her wound properly. She fell into some shrubbery in her yard in 2002, cut her leg, and reported to the emergency room for cleaning and suturing. Nine months later, another physician found that a small boxwood twig, with five thriving green leaves, had broken through the sutured skin. [Sandersville Progress, 7-23-03]
AND...
In October, North Korea's official news agency reported that Japan had broken a promise to return five people to North Korea. The five are Japanese citizens who were kidnapped by North Korea in 1978 but released to see their families in October 2002. North Korea's position is that they were released only temporarily and must be returned to North Korea. [Japan Today-Kyodo News, 10-19-03]
Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNews@earthlink.net
posted by me
:: 10:44:00 PM [+] ::
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:: Barbara B's Night Out ::
12/01/03: Bush's Drinking Daughter Goes 'Pansy' (Division)
Lifted from 365gay.com via alternativetentacles.com:
Bush's daughter Barbara was spotted recently having a gay old time at a concert by all-gay punk band Pansy Division. Barbara and friends cozied up in the back room drinking, while out front the band screamed their queer hearts out. The band reportedly dedicated their rabid anti-Bush song, Political Asshole, to the first daughter during the show. Daddy's just got to love that.
posted by me
:: 11:05:00 PM [+] ::
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