Space Linguistics

How to pronounce Huygens - come on, you know you’ve worried about it…. :-)

Ben Folds….Shatner?

I am not kidding. William “Kirk” Shatner is back in the music (?) business in an album with Ben Folds (famous from Karen’s shirt, at least in my world) called Has Been. The link is to a site that has mp3s and reviews, but I actually heard about it on NPR this evening….

Meanwhile, back in Iraq…

In case you’re still keeping score:
* Weapons of Mass Destruction found before invasion: “0″:http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/03/07/sprj.irq.un.transcript.blix/
* Weapons of Mass Destruction declared by US before invasion: “LOTS”:http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/01/28/sotu.transcript/
* US Cost in dollars: “150,000,000,000″:http://costofwar.com/
* US military deaths: “1,357″:http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~stephan/USfatalities.html
* Iraqi civilians killed: “15,289″:http://www.iraqbodycount.net/
* Weapons of Mass Destruction found after invasion: “0″:http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/12/international/middleeast/12cnd-wmd.html

Freeway swimming

While the Sparrow reminded me of a gigantic shnoz, this one reminds me of a fish (one of those tall, skinny ones, not a blowfish).
Would you want to do 150 MPH (top speed) in this thing? Or 0 to 60 in 4 seconds?
Amazingly, it is not easy to tip.

I Found Polar Express Kind of Creepy

Why are monster-movie zombies so horrifying and talking animals so fascinating?

first extrasolar planet photograph

“Whoa”:http://space.com/scienceastronomy/aas_exoplanet_050110.html. (OK, it’s not as visually impressive as “that Topanga boulder”:http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/photos/popup.asp?SubID=458&pubdate=1/10/05, but stunning nonetheless.)

Bluer than blue

The Depressed Democrat’s Guide to Recovery. ‘Nuf said. Enjoy!

Something Silly

This is just ridiculous, but I can’t help it. A few days ago, just for fun, I decided to search for “kitten” at Wikipedia (Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that anyone can edit). Here is their entry for ‘kitten’. Totally adorable. What I love the most, though, is the subsection entitled “Perceptions of Cuteness.”
Entries [...]

“It’s time for us to go fly.”

You bet it is. Good luck to the “next crew of the shuttle Discovery”:http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=650513.
(I still get a kick out of the fact that the average age of the 7-person crew is 45. The “youngster” is 8 years older than me. Mission Specialist Charles Camarda is making his first flight into space at 52. [...]

whistle click beep

A recent study has shown that a whistling language developed by shepherds in the Canary Islands is “processed by the brain in the same way as ordinary speech”:http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=598140. It implies that the brain can process other non-verbal communication as language, too.
If you’ve read David Brin’s “Startide Rising”:http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue154/classic.html, this should ring a bell. [...]