Category: Misc

"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."

- Douglas Adams

As much as I am not fond of the current administration, this is actually not meant to be Bush-bashing, but just what I consider to be a general truth. Has anyone else ever though about this? The kind of person that can climb their way to the top of the political food chain probably got there using methods that most would not admire in their leader. With all the scandals involving our politicians, is it any suprise that our voters have become so apathetic?

This amazing image of swirls of dust surrounding the variable star V838 Monocerotiswas was recorded by the Hubble Space Telescope this past September. V838 Monocerotis is about 20,000 light-years away. In January 2002, a sudden outburst from the star was detected, and the light from the outburst illuminated the shells of dust surrounding the star. Astronomers expect that the outburst will continue to ilight up more and more distant dust shells of V838 Mon for at least the rest of this decade. Amazing, isn't it?

Nemo Gould is another sculptor that I found recently. His work usually mostly 'found' materials, and is even cooler to see in motion than in the photos. His sculptures are kinematic, and he's got a video clip of each of them on his site. Share and enjoy.

As much as I love seeing pictures of the International Space Station (ISS), I've got mixed feelings about the station itself. Has anyone ever seen the Tom Hanks movie "The Money Pit"? That's what the ISS is becoming. More and more of NASA's budget is being gobbled up by the station, leaving less and less for research satellites and robotic interplanetary missions. And the biggest problem is that with the budget crunches and shuttle problems of the last several years, we can never afford to put enough people on the ISS to actually do any science, which is the stated purpose for building the station in the first place. Instead, we can only afford to keep people on the station just to maintain it. Which means that it has really just become an example of our technological prowess in space, but does not serve any useful purpose. Which is why I'm torn. I'd love to see us do some science with it, or stop sinking money into it.

Yet more cool sculptures created from junk. These were created by Ptolemy Elrington for a project called RiverCare. I can't seem to find out exactly where they are, but they're near a river in the UK, if that narrows it down at all. heh. The sculptures are created from shopping carts pulled from the river, as part of an awareness campaign to encourage volunteers to adopt sections of the river.

I've been reading Shamus Young's blog for over a year now, and it's great for geeks. Lots of programming musings and ideas, sci-fi discussions, Dungeons and Dragons references, and video game analysis. But recently, Shamus created a small video from a session of Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 that has spread his name across the internets and their tubes (heh) like wildfire. Check it out, it's hilarious!

I seem to have a real knack for coming across these types of artists lately. Edouard Martinet is a French scupltor who has been creating animals from scrap metal for the last ten years. Even more amazing, his pieces are created without welding. Take a lot at his work, it is simply amazing.

"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."

- Douglas Adams

This one for the benefit of Katie Couric, who recently made some foolish remarks on her CBS news show. How can a woman with so little understanding of science be paid to voice her commentary in such a public forum? Does CBS have so little respect for its viewers to not even bother to fact-check the ridiculous things she planned to say? Astronomer Phil Plait (of the Bad Astronomy Blog) gave her a solid reaming for her ignorance, if you'd like to know more about it. My biggest concern is that lots of people with no science background will treat her words as "news", and the population will be become that tiny bit more confused about what NASA is actually for.

This amazing image is a composite of many images taken by the Cassini spacecraft from the 'back' side of Saturn. With the planet's rings lit from behind by the sun, they take on an amazing glowing quality. This backlighting actually allowed astronomers to discover new rings. If you look for a small pale blue dot on left side of the image, just above the bright main rings, you can see the Earth!

Found something cool on the web today. Instead of the traditional style of pumpkin carving - where you hollow the pumpkin and cut through the shell - this guy carves three-dimensional faces on the exterior of the pumpkin. Not only is his work amazing, he includes a pretty extensive tutorial on his site explaining how to try this yourself. Dig it!