Groonk's Newsmine 2.0

Orion is the vehicle NASA's Constellation Program is developing to carry a new generation of explorers back to the moon and later to Mars. Orion will succeed the space shuttle as NASA's primary vehicle for human space exploration.

Orion's first flight with astronauts onboard is planned for no later than 2014 to the International Space Station. Its first flight to the moon is planned for no later than 2020.

In this scenario, it does not really matter who is dropping the bomb. The point is to create as much mayhem as possible. This analysis leans towards detonation targets that do damage to the United States in particular, both because the US has many enemies, and because many countries are economically and politically dependent on a smoothly-functioning US. The attack might be a set-up for a larger operation, occur in the context of a war, or simply be an isolated event. Potential orchestrators of the attack include rogue states like North Korea or Iran, criminal organizations, jihadi organizations, or more sophisticated groups like circles of well-educated and wealthy Americans exploiting abrupt technological transitions to gain power.

2. Knock off a chunk of Cumbre Viejo at La Palma in the Canary Islands.

Explosions on mountaintop, rocks into ocean, waves into coast. Walls of water into cities. You get the idea. The wave goes around the globe three full times before it dissipates. Not sure if this one is worse than blowing up Manhattan.

(entire article)

Evidence of such homebody cave dwellers comes from a recent excavation of a neolithic cave complex in Greece, dating from 5300-3900 B.C.The abode features a three-room complex with plastered floors and evidence of crop-growing and an attached stable nearby.

"This household was self-contained," said Panagiotis Karkanas, who conducted the excavation of the Kouveleiki Caves, which are located on the cliffs of a shallow valley in southern Peloponnese.

Karkanas, an archaeologist at the Ephoreia of Palaeoanthropology-Speleology in Athens, added, "I believe that the site was an ordinary household. The people were living there, cooking, sleeping, etc. probably during the whole year. They were both farmers and shepherds."

When a usual material is, for example, hit by a ball, the material "flows" outward from the impact zone making the point of impact weaker. However, in auxetic materials, the matter "flows" inward, thus strengthening this zone. Such materials would be advantageous for bulletproof vests. Auxetic materials also provide interesting possibilities for medical technology. The introduction of implants such as stents to hold open blood vessels would be easier if, under pressure, the device would get thinner instead of thicker in the perpendicular direction.

C'mon, kid: Your square-jawed rocket engineers of future histories past are now tattooed, pierced software engineers coding social-networking sites.
--Jason Fry "Wall Street Journal"

Andrew Dalby, author of Rediscovering Homer, argues that the attribution of the poems to Homer was founded on a falsehood.

]...]

Dalby explained to Discovery News that the earliest references to Homer by writers such as Herodotus and the Greek poet Pindar indicate the poet lived around 800 B.C.

But based on geographical references in the poems, Dalby believes the Iliad was composed in 650 B.C., while the Odyssey was written in 630 B.C., well after Homer’s supposed lifetime.

Aside from the poems themselves, no concrete clues exist to identify their author, but Dalby builds a case that the person probably was a woman.

"In many oral traditions, the best and most reliable creators, the ones who are used by folklore collectors, happen to be women," he said.

Dalby explained that women throughout the ancient world were "often the last and most skillful exponents of an oral tradition."

For example, the world’s first named poet was a Sumerian woman named Enheduanna, who lived from around 2285-2250 B.C. Dalby said women also saved the ancient oral poetry of the northern Japanese, many Irish traditions, and numerous English folk ballads.

If the poet was a woman, Dalby believes her name is probably lost to history.

"I would guess that Sappho (a female Greek poet) and her contemporary, the male poet Alkaios, probably knew the name, but they did not mention it in their own poetry," Dalby said.

Music industry watchers can learn from OK Go's experience, which shows that Web users can catapult a band to fame, challenging the popular assumption that videos need to cost thousands of dollars or be directed by Hollywood film directors.

The industry is undergoing a slow, at times painful change from the old way of marketing CDs and TV music videos to going digital with music distribution and online videos, which fans view on the Internet or via media players like Apple Computer Inc.'s popular iPod.

Sites such as YouTube, MySpace, PureVolume and others allow aspiring artists to post videos, usually grainy lo-fi productions, at little or no cost.

[...]

"We're lucky we've had some great ideas," says Damian Kulash, 29, lead singer of OK Go.

"The treadmill video, for instance, was my sister's idea ... and it didn't require a lot of money," he said.

"A Million Ways," made in just five takes, is not only one of the most-viewed videos on YouTube but also one of the most-imitated. Hundreds of spoofs of the dance moves have been added to the site by fans performing everywhere from high school proms to wedding parties.

Here, take a closer look.

See? Right there, on the bottom-right. Fuckin' PLUTO, bitches.

This week, I found a way to strike back.

Focus on the Family, the horrid anti-gay evangelical church based in Colorado Springs that wields too much power for anyone's good, has a store on their website that will give you books, CDs, and DVDs absolutely free of charge. Usually people pay for their items by donation, raising millions of dollars to help Focus on the Family produce more hate-propaganda featuring "experts" on homosexuality who claim it's a curable "sickness". (They’re practically defined by their book A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality. Course, there's no mention of having less kids, which is the only proven method. No, no, you shouldn't use birth control, that would be wrong. They need more worshippers, how dare you prevent god’s will.)

It's a little bit time-consuming, but not enough to deter me. (Nor should it you). The chance to take money out of their pockets is too useful, not to mention satisfying.

Here's how to do it in 10 steps:

1. Go to www.family.org and look for the "Resources" link in the blue bar on the left-hand side, right above the "Search" box, and click it.

2. Under the "Resource Category" menu on the left-hand side, you’ll notice categories such as "Homosexuality" under “Resource Category.” Me, I went straight to the CD’s and DVD’s under “Resource Format.”

3. Go through, find something you like, such as the recently released movie, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe or The Chronicles of Narnia Radio Theatre Complete Set, suggested donation US $79.00, or the three disc Les Miserables soundtrack. It's not a very wide range of products, but there's bound to be something either you like or you could use as a sweet gift for someone else. Click the "Add to Cart" button.

They won't send more than $100 worth of materials for free in any given shopping trip, so be sure to go through a few times, until you're sure you've dinged them.

4. Select "Add New Shipping Address," decide to send it yourself or someone else, and once you’re done picking up to $100, click "Proceed to Checkout." Some people have been sending items to themselves to sell later on eBay, some have been ordering the more controversial items as conversation pieces or educational props, (as anti-anti-propaganda), but I plan on using mine as gifts, mostly. I’ve found no reports on receiving Focus on the Family junk mail after inputting an address, so I figure it’s fairly safe.

5. The next screen asks you to sign-up for an account and give your information. Fill it out with fictitious information, enter whatever name and address you like. You might want to make up a phone number too and an e-mail account too. After filling out all the required fields, click "Proceed to Checkout" one more time.

6. This will take you to the "Here is Your Cart" page. You may have to re-enter your data again after this part to actually confirm your account. Eventually, you'll get to the "How Much Would You Like to Donate?" page.

7. Select "Enter other total amount" and enter 0.00 as the amount you would like to pay. (Don't put in a dollar sign or it will ask you for credit-card information.) Don't be fooled by the field in the lower-right-hand corner that shows you the suggested donation amounts, simply Proceed to Checkout.

8. The next screen is a guilt screen, to make you feel bad about how little you donated. ignore it. Ignore it utterly. Think of how many people they're persecuted and had in their "gay kids can be cured" camps. Just proceed to checkout again.

9. Click "Checkout Now."

10. Finally, pass this information on to all your friends. They've got money to back them, we have word of mouth, let's see if we can win.

"I want to bring my songs and melodies to hip hop beats -- a bit like 'No Diggity' by Blackstreet,"' John said in excerpts of an interview posted on Rolling Stone's Web site on Friday.

John told the music magazine he would like to work with producer Dr. Dre and a variety of artists, although he had yet to contact them.

"I want to work with Pharrell (Williams), Timbaland, Snoop (Dogg), Kanye (West), Eminem and just see what happens. It may be a disaster, it could be fantastic, but you don't know until you try," he said.

And while I understand how much time, money and effort is being poured into the movie, please Mr. Murphy, don't talk down to the fans like we're being unreasonable with our complaints. This movie isn't being made because you're "on our side" -- it's being made because the studio thinks it'll make money. Let's at least drop the facade and stop patronizing the fanbase, okay?

Nothing against you personally, but it's just business. We're all old enough to understand that. So let's just be honest about it. That being said, how much business do you guys expect a film to make when you're alienating the very fans that have made it endure this long? Honestly?

And now, a small team of dedicated researchers working with historians Alan Wilson and Baram Blackett, say they have been able to pinpoint the location of this site. "It is great news for the local, regional and national economy," said Alan Wilson today. "We have been making these discoveries for many years and with the Electrum Cross discovered at nearby St. Peter's in 1990, it looks like a boost for jobs is likely."

[...]

"What we have is a clearly-defined walled city in exactly the place the records tell us it should be. The Welsh manuscripts and supporting records are always precise and allow us to make major progress in terms of identifying royal burial mounds, tombs, artefacts and more," said Wilson.

Aerial photographs obtained by the research team via Google Earth are available for viewing on the Internet via, realhistoryradio.blogspot.com

A Caer is a fortress and Caers were major fortress cities and towns for example: Caer Lllundain (London), Caerdydd (Cardiff) Caergrant (Cambridge) and Caer Loyw (Gloucester).

[...]

A third reference is that of the "Uthyr Pendragon" , King Meurig/Maurice, who lies buried at the giant circle at Caer Caradoc. There is, at this location, a gigantic ditch and mound shaped like a boat, next to St. Peter's Church ruin. In this 180 yards by 70 yards wide earth mound and ditch feature there is the huge grave mound of Meurig.

He told a German newspaper he had been recruited at the age of 17 into an SS tank division and served in Dresden.

Previously it was only known he had served as a soldier and was wounded and taken prisoner by US forces.

[...]

"My silence over all these years is one of the reasons I wrote this book [Peeling Onions]," he told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in an interview.

"It had to come out, finally."

Grass, who was born in 1927, is widely admired as a novelist whose books frequently revisit the war years and is also known as an outspoken peace activist.

Girls 17 and younger still will need a doctor's note to buy the pills, called Plan B, the Food and Drug Administration told manufacturer Barr Pharmaceuticals Inc. (BRL)

The compromise decision is a partial victory for women's advocacy and medical groups that say eliminating sales restrictions could cut in half the nation's 3 million annual unplanned pregnancies. Opponents have argued that wider access could increase promiscuity.

The pills are a concentrated dose of the same drug found in many regular birth-control pills. When a woman takes the pills within 72 hours of unprotected sex, she can lower the risk of pregnancy by up to 89 percent. If she already is pregnant, the pills have no effect.

The earlier it's taken, the more effective Plan B is. But it can be hard to find a doctor to write a prescription in time, especially on weekends and holidays. Hence the push to allow nonprescription sales.

Barr has said it hopes to begin nonprescription sales of Plan B by the end of the year. The pills will be sold only from behind the counter at pharmacies - so the pharmacist can check photo identification - but not at convenience stores or gas stations.

[...]

For now, membership will be restricted to the eight "classical" planets in the solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

Much-maligned Pluto doesn't make the grade under the new rules for a planet: "a celestial body that is in orbit around the sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a ... nearly round shape, and has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit."

Pluto is automatically disqualified because its oblong orbit overlaps with Neptune's.

Instead, it will be reclassified in a new category of "dwarf planets," similar to what long have been termed "minor planets." The definition also lays out a third class of lesser objects that orbit the sun — "small solar system bodies," a term that will apply to numerous asteroids, comets and other natural satellites.

The 25-million-year-old whale fossil has forced scientists to rethink the evolution of baleen whales, the placid giants which feed by using fine hair-like fibres in their mouths to filter plankton from the sea.

"The fossil proves the baleen whale, including toothless filter-feeders like the blue whale, often thought of as gentle giants of the sea, were not always so giant or gentle," Monash University graduate researcher Erich Fitzgerald told AFP.

While baleens are large -- with the blue whale reaching up to 30 metres (98 foot) -- the prehistoric predator was a swift hunter-killer only 3.5 metres (11.5 foot) long that fed on fish and small sharks, Fitzgerald said.

Scientists in Australia have discovered a fossilised ancient relative of the blue whale, seen here, with a fearsome razor-toothed appearance that has seen it dubbed 'the T-rex of the oceans'
He said it also had large eyes, like a modern great white, to compensate for its lack of sonar.

(via phys org)

(via australia's lost kingdoms)

The animal was found near power lines along Route 4 on Saturday, apparently struck by a car while chasing a cat. The carcass was photographed and inspected by several people who live in the area, but nobody is sure exactly what it is.

Michelle O'Donnell of Turner spotted the animal near her yard about a week before it was killed. She called it a "hybrid mutant of something."

"It was evil, evil looking. And it had a horrible stench I will never forget," she told the Sun Journal of Lewiston. "We locked eyes for a few seconds and then it took off. I've lived in Maine my whole life and I've never seen anything like it."

For the past 15 years, residents across Androscoggin County have reported seeing and hearing a mysterious animal with chilling monstrous cries and eyes that glow in the night. The animal has been blamed for attacking and killing a Doberman pinscher and a Rottweiler the past couple of years.

(via boston.com)

He explained: "It keeps the idea of eight classical planets, while Pluto is allowed to retain its status. But other objects are allowed in, which I suppose makes life more interesting."

Experts have been divided over whether Pluto - further away and considerably smaller than the eight other planets in our Solar System - deserves the title.

Her son, Lloyd, 47, discovered water leaking from the tree in April. He said it was cool, like it came from the tap.

The only damp spot around the tree trunk is where the water lands.

Mark Peterson, a regional community forester from the Texas Forest Service said he believes it could be a spring, but pointed out that would be rare with the drought conditions this summer.

"If it is a burst pipe their monthly bill would be enormous," Peterson said.

Lucille Pope has started to wonder if the water has special properties.

Her insurance agent dabbed drops of the water on a spider bite and the welt went away, she said.

"I just want to know if it is a healing tree or blessed water," she said. "That's God's water. Nobody knows but God."

At Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C, he ran into a buddy from his unit. And another, and another, and in the tedium of hospital life between doctor visits and the dispensing of meds, they began to talk.

"We all had migraines. We all felt sick," Reed says. "The doctors said, 'It's all in your head.' "

Then the medic from their unit showed up. He too, was suffering. That made eight sick soldiers from the 442nd Military Police, an Army National Guard unit made up of mostly cops and correctional officers from the New York area.

But the medic knew something the others didn't. Dutch marines had taken over the abandoned train depot dubbed Camp Smitty, which was surrounded by tank skeletons, unexploded ordnance and shell casings. They'd brought radiation-detection devices. The readings were so hot, the Dutch set up camp in the middle of the desert rather than live in the station ruins.

[...]

There are several studies on how it affects animals, though their results are not, of course, directly applicable to humans. Military research on mice shows that depleted uranium can enter the bloodstream and come to rest in bones, the brain, kidneys and lymph nodes. Other research in rats shows that DU can result in cancerous tumors and genetic mutations, and pass from mother to unborn child, resulting in birth defects.

Iraqi doctors reported significant increases in birth defects and childhood cancers after the 1991 invasion.

Iraqi authorities "found that uranium, which affected the blood cells, had a serious impact on health: The number of cases of leukemia had increased considerably, as had the incidence of fetal deformities," the U.N. reported.

Depleted uranium can also contaminate soil and water, and coat buildings with radioactive dust, which can by carried by wind and sandstorms.

It took more than 25 years for the Pentagon to acknowledge that Agent Orange -- a corrosive defoliant used to melt the jungles of Vietnam and flush out the enemy -- was linked to those sufferings.

It took 40 years for the military to compensate sick World War II vets exposed to massive blasts of radiation during tests of the atomic bomb. In 2002, Congress voted to not let that happen again.

One big reason is that it is not easy to integrate the explosive-detecting machines, some of which can cost $250,000, into existing security checkpoints. Because each briefcase, purse or other carry-on bag has to be put in a special drawer for analysis, using the detectors could significantly bog down passenger screening.

Homeland security analyst Brian Ruttenbur of Morgan Keegan also points out that the technology still produces a relatively high number of false alarms.

For those reasons -- and because there still has not been a successful attack using liquid explosives -- Ruttenbur believes the TSA won't be pressed to overhaul the current screening regimen.

The truce between Israeli forces and Hizbollah guerrillas is formally due to take effect at 0500 GMT under a U.N. Security Council resolution.

Haaretz said Olmert had met his defence minister and heads of armed forces late on Sunday to discuss the ceasefire.

"Olmert ordered the army to begin abiding by it as of 2 a.m. this morning, other than in cases of self-defence," the newspaper said.

"They also agreed that the army will begin withdrawing some of its forces from Lebanon immediately, but will remain in various positions that offer control over surrounding areas until these positions can be handed over to the Lebanese Army and the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL)."

Despite terrible fatalities in the London and Madrid train attacks, which between them killed almost 250 people, fear of airline terrorism strikes deepest, say psychologists. And one of the reasons is the indelible memory of the attacks which demolished New York’s World Trade Center on 11 September 2001.

“It’s not only that the planes were hijacked, but that the passenger planes themselves were used as weapons, something people had never thought of before,” says Elie Godsi, a clinical psychologist based in Nottingham, UK.

So even though the alleged UK plot to down airliners appears to have been foiled, it still represents a victory of sorts for terrorism because of the resulting fear and mayhem.

“Whenever people fly now in the post-9/11 world, it’s obvious that anything suspicious to do with airline travel will be disproportionately stressful,” says Godsi.

[...]

...says Perman-Kerr, the current alert could be counted a success in terrorist terms, even though any plot appears to have been thwarted. “Nothing has to happen, because the fear in people changes their behaviour and their activities, hitting the economy at the same time.”

Godsi agrees. “One of the worst things you can do to people is impose uncertainty, and uncertainty with an intangible threat is worse still,” he says.

Yet ironically, terrorism accounts for a tiny number of deaths compared with other causes such as road accidents, deaths from drug abuse or heart attacks and strokes. “It’s disproportionate in its impact because no one knows when it will strike, and typically it happens when people are going about their daily business.”
As to the stress experienced by the thousands of travellers who have had their journeys disrupted, Godsi says they are likely to cope with it and accept it provided they are given adequate explanations for the measures introduced. “If people understand the reasons, they’re usually happier, even if they suffer inconvenience as a result,” she says.

Janjaap Ruijssenaars took inspiration for the bed -- a sleek black platform, which took six years to develop and can double as a dining table or a plinth -- from the mysterious monolith in Stanley Kubrick's 1968 cult film "2001: A Space Odyssey."

"No matter where you live all architecture is dictated by gravity. I wondered whether you could make an object, a building or a piece of furniture where this is not the case -- where another power actually dictates the image," Ruijssenaars said.

Magnets built into the floor and into the bed itself repel each other, pushing the bed up into the air. Thin steel cables tether the bed in place.

"It is not comfortable at the moment," admits Ruijssenaars, adding it needs cushions and bedclothes before use.

U.S. authorities banned the carrying of liquids onto flights after the arrest of 24 people in an alleged plot to blow up U.S.-bound planes using explosives disguised as drinks and other common products.

The restrictions forced people to unpack their carry-on bags on the floor in the middle of terminals to remove the prohibited items. Some travelers tried to squeeze makeup, sunscreen and other toiletries into their checked baggage, where liquids were permissible.

But people without checked bags or those who had already given their luggage to their airline had to throw out the banned items.

"It's very frustrating. I'm no terrorist," said Alison Phillips as she struggled to repack her suitcase in Tampa, Fla., after removing all liquids for her return flight to Jamaica.

Other security measures were also ramped up at airports across the nation. Gov. Mitt Romney sent the National Guard to help patrol Boston's Logan Airport for the first time since the Sept. 11 attacks, when terrorists hijacked two planes from there and flew them into the World Trade Center. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger also activated the National Guard in California, and Gov. George Pataki in New York considered doing the same.

Police are convinced they have detained the key players, but believe the network involved is large and global.

US intelligence officials believe the plotters hoped to stage a practice run followed by actual attacks on up to 10 planes within days.

UK police said they could have caused "mass murder on an unimaginable scale".

Astronomers think the Moon formed when a Mars-sized body – about half the diameter of Earth – walloped into our planet about 4.5 billion years ago, spraying molten debris into space. The debris quickly clumped together to form the Moon at a distance of about 4 Earth radii from the Earth’s centre, and solidified 100 million to 200 million years later.

Over billions of years, the Moon gradually spiralled outwards to its current, near-circular orbit at about 60 Earth radii. Tidal forces (gravitational effects) from the Earth have made the Moon’s spin period equal to its orbital period, so one side permanently faces the Earth.

Imagine instead that someone magically created the Moon today by placing a perfectly uniform ball of rock in the Moon’s current position. Immediately, it would no longer be uniform. The Earth's tidal forces would stretch the barren satellite from the near to the far side, for instance, while the forces of the Moon’s rotation would make it bulge out a little around its equator. That means its gravity along different axes would be different.

The brewers claim that the water is at least 2,000 years old and free of minerals and pollutants.

The first 66,000 litres of the new dark and pale
ales are on their way to the Danish market. The beer from Greenland - a semi-autonomous Danish territory - costs 37 kroner (?3.40; five euros) per half-litre bottle.

It is the first ever Inuit microbrewery - located in Narsaq, a hamlet 625km (390 miles) south of the Arctic Circle…

The galaxies and gas bubbles, called Lyman alpha blobs, are aligned along three curvy filaments that formed about 2 billion years after the universe exploded into existence after the theoretical Big Bang. The filaments were recently seen using the Subaru and Keck telescopes on Mauna Kea.

The galaxies within the newly found structure are packed together four times closer than the universe's average.

[...]

"The structure we discovered and others like are probably the precursors of the largest structures we see today which contain multiple clusters of galaxies," Yamauchi said.

Both were self-portraits taken by gifted amateur women photographers whose work has attracted hundreds of thousands of internet viewers. And each photograph ignited a furious debate about what one woman photographer has described as "the new trend for the enlightened, liberated woman of today . . . to be proudly naked on the internet".

"Mona Lisa is finally jumping out of the frame, slapping Leonardo and painting herself," declared Lola the Car Chick, a photographer who was among more than 11,000 viewers of the scarf shot by Rebekka Guoleifsdottir, a 28-year-old single mother from Reykjavik.

"which would you rather have: the power of flight or invisbility?"

"who would win if a flying shark and a flying crocodile got in a fight?"

"As a man, is it normal to feel a sudden loss of attraction to a girl after she's finally "given it up" to me?"

(dearinter.net: consensus life coaching)