Our Solar System’s First Known Interstellar Object Gets Unexpected Speed Boost

Our Solar System’s First Known Interstellar Object Gets Unexpected Speed Boost: Using observations from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based observatories, an international team of scientists have confirmed ′Oumuamua (oh-MOO-ah-MOO-ah), the first known interstellar object to travel through our solar system, got an unexpected boost in speed and shift in trajectory as it passed through the inner solar system last year.

 

Megan rescued a kitten about three weeks ago and named it "Kitty Love". It really enjoyed the Christmas tree and was a very sweet, lovinge and attentive little cat. Unfortunately, it tried to run through a rapidly closing door and didn't make it. What a loss. What a terrible waste of potential. We miss you "Kitty Love". We miss you so very much. 

Tutorial: The Ajax Transport Method... Discover three Ajax data transport mechanisms (XMLHttp, script tags, and frames or iframes) and their relative strengths and weaknesses. This tutorial provides code for both the server side and the client side and explains it in detail to provide the techniques you need to put efficient Ajax controls anywhere you need them.

Let's see if I can reestablish this blog since my previous ISP bit the dust.

Geek Cruising - Doc Searls... "After the third free Bloody Mary, it doesn't matter what the hell Richard Stallman says. Well, actually it does. The man's uncompromising certitude fronts a set of ethical and technical convictions (not to mention achievements) that have so arguably shaped the world we'll never stop arguing about them. But arguing was not the first order of our week at sea on a Geek Cruise around the Eastern Caribbean. Schmoozing was. Also eating, drinking, dancing and hanging out on various decks and lounges between lectures by V.I.G.s and forays to ports of call."

FMOD Audio Media Player... (via Lockergnome) Running Windows Media Player, are you? I guess that's okay, but there's so many other media players you could be using - and lots of them are free. Like, oh... I don't know. This one? Being just a little over 100k, you know it's not going to hog up lots of system space. This magical media player will play mp2, mp3, mod, s3m, xm, it, ogg, wma, and asf files to boot. A spectrum analyzer and some hella-cool DSP effects are wrapped up in it as well. "FMOD is the fastest, most powerful and easiest to use sound system on Windows and Linux and WinCE there is." It requires LESS system resources than most other players.

Flag3D Screen Saver... Flag3D Screen Saver uses accurate physical modelling techniques to simulate the movement of flags with amazing realism. Your own images and pictures can be used to make your own custom flags. Flag3D does not use up all your available processing power, allowing background tasks to continue.

Flag3D Screen Saver was designed to be fast and impressive - you can display stunning dynamic animated flags without needing a high-performance PC or 3D card.

The MTV Chronicles... From 1987 to 1995 Adam Curry was an MTV VJ. In The MTV Chronicles he talks about his previous life at MTV and has begun documenting many interviews he had with performers and bands from the '80s.

Weblogs.com Turns the Corner (ResearchBuzz)... Weblogs.com used to automatically check Web logs and list those most recently changed.

Due to the heavy load of changed Web logs, they have changed the way they pick up changes. Now, Web logs (or their owner/sysops) must notify Weblogs.com that the Weblog has changed. There is a fairly simple manual process as well as more technical "automatic" processes which can be used to notify Weblogs.com of changed pages.

Living Without Microsoft :: XPloring the alternatives... This site is for those who, for whatever reason, wish to explore realistic alternatives to using Microsoft software. They plan to provide analyses of various software packages which are as objective as possible and to discuss the benefits and problems you are likely to encounter if you adopt them instead of a Microsoft solution.

American Tribute by Alison Rivera... A Flash tribute to the United States of America and the victims of the heinous terrorist attack on September 11, 2001.

It's a long download, but it's worth every minute spent. Here's a list of alternate mirror sites for Alison's Flash movie. Music: "God Bless America" sung by LeAnn Rimes.

Can government balance civil liberties, security? -- the American people would be glad to give up many more of their liberties if they believed that would protect us from further terrorism.

Why Do Lights "Burn Out" and Go Black?... Ever wonder why lights only function for just so long and then go black? Well, after extensive research and expense, Bell Labs has found the answer. And it may not be what you've always thought it was.

Font Island... where you'll find an island full of FREE FONTS! All of the fonts are neatly categorized for easy searching, or you can view the fonts alphabetically. When you find the font you like simply click for a free download.

Unfortunately you'll find zillions of pop-up ads too.

Joe Burns, Ph.D.... And remember: Do you know why Marines are sometimes called "leathernecks?" It has nothing to do with sunburn, as I have heard before. It's a name given to them by Navy personnel. Marines used to have a piece of leather sewn into the back of their uniform collars to deflect sword strokes.

Here's another military fact. The name of the "Jeep" automobile came from the fact that the original versions were delivered to the Army with the letters "G.P." painted on the side. The letters stood for "General Purpose." It was simply shortened to Jeep.

And one more...the acronym SNAFU is a military term. At least that's where it originated. It stands for "Situation Normal, All Fouled Up."

Of course, young men in the military tend to change out one of the words on occasion.

StarDate ... Do all planets orbit the Sun in the same direction?

CNN.com - Anti-terrorism proposals worry civil libertarians... Advocacy groups, legal experts and some members of Congress are voicing strong concerns that a proposal to expand law enforcement powers in order to ratchet up the fight on terrorism could end up treading on civil liberties enjoyed by all Americans.

Guardian: Attackers did not know they were to die... FBI investigators have officially concluded that 11 of the 19 terrorists who hijacked the aircraft on 11 September did not know they were on a suicide mission

Peggy Noonan: ... It is not only that God is back, but that men are back. A certain style of manliness is once again being honored and celebrated in our country since Sept. 11. You might say it suddenly emerged from the rubble of the past quarter century, and emerged when a certain kind of man came forth to get our great country out of the fix it was in.

Anthrax

Educate yourself about anthrax... Tim Paustian has a FAQ on anthrax. He's a microbiologist at the University of Wisconsin.

FACT:

1. Anthrax is not contagious. The only way to get the disease is to be exposed to spores of the microbe.

2. Not much will kill these spores. Microwaving, baking, and disinfectant have no effect. If you burn your mail, that will work, but then you can't read that letter from Aunt Marge.

3. Getting spores in an envelope is not a real threat. Anthrax spores need to be dispersed in the air with very advanced equipment to become the dangerous form, pulmonary anthrax, that is lethal. Since whoever is doing this is mailing the stuff, it's obvious we are dealing with amateurs who really don't understand what they are doing. In that you can take some comfort. If you do recieve a suspicious package report it to your local authorities and consult your physician. However, it will be very unlikely that you will recieve one of these letters. Think about how many pieces of mail go out and how many people there are. Your chances are very low.

4. Cutaneous antrax only occurs when the spores encounter broken skin creating an easily recognized boil. Even then the illness is rarely fatal.

5. Anthrax is easily treated with antibiotics if it is caught early enough. The only time I would be worried about this is if everyone around you is coming down with the flu at the same time. Believe me the government will be all over something like that and has a stock pile of antibiotics for such an occasion.

6. You should not try to get vaccinated nor buy antibiotics just in case. First, your chances of contracting the disease are less than getting hit by lightning or winning the lottery, so you would be wasting your money. Second, you are depleting the stores of antibiotics that are available to treat people who may end up having the illness. Finally, the antibiotics will go bad over time and not be effective anyway. No responsible physician should be filling prescriptions to people who have not been exposed to anthrax, just in case. If you find a doctor willing to do this, can you trust them? What's to say that they are not just selling you sugar pills or something worse?

7. The disease is caused by a bacterium not a virus as reported by some news agencies. (By the way some journalists are woefully ignorant of medicine and microbiology - be careful what you believe.)

The new evil... September 11 showed us all that we are living in a world which has given unrivalled power to individuals who have no appreciation of the value of human life. History has known empires of evil. However,they all rose and fell without endangering the very existence and the continued development of life-desiring humanity. There was a certain logic to the relations between the empires of evil and life-seeking humanity that ultimately brought about the eradication of the empires. Whereas, what we are now facing, is the ability and readiness of individual persons to produce spectacular killing on a mass scale.

Make A Shorter Link... This web site provides a simple service - when you find a page on the web whose address is too long to paste into an email or other document, you can use their free service to generate a shorter, simpler address.

Safe and Free: Safe and Free in Times of Crisis "This bill has simply missed the mark of maximizing security and, at the same time, minimizing any adverse effects on America's freedoms," said Laura W. Murphy, Director of the ACLU Washington National Office. "Most Americans do not recognize that Congress has just passed a bill that would give the government expanded power to invade our privacy, imprison people without due process and punish dissent."

SmoothWall GPL... "SmoothWall is a secure operating system that converts a redundant PC / workstation / fileserver / rackmount device into a firewall and VPN gateway, but goes way beyond that remit. First launched in July of 2000 and based on ideas and concepts that took in the best philosophies behind the installation and procurement of hardware security devices, we decided to really come up with a way for everyone from your IT director/SysAdmin down to the home user to have the same level of security regardless of budget. SmoothWall GPL is free, free as in libre. It is licensed under the GNU General Public Licence which means that yes we also give you our source. SmoothWall is webmanaged so no keyboard, monitor, or mouse on the device is needed. It supports Internal ISDN, all popular NICS, all popular connection types (Modem / ISDN / Cable / ADSL / USB ADSL / Ethernet) and also features a fully logging firewall, DHCP server, IPSEC VPN capabilities and much, much more." Found at lockergnome.

'Mommy Liberty' Packs a Gun 17-year old high school student Eliza Gauger's drawing of Mommy Liberty spread across the Internet in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the U.S.

HTML Goodies - Joe Burns, Ph.D.... And remember: When you make your way down here to New Orleans, maybe you'll find it interesting, as I did, that instead of catsup being on the restaurant table, it's hot pepper sauce. I like it, but those who grew up here just put it on everything. The hotter the better. What makes a pepper "hot" is the amount of capsaicin it contains. In 1912, a fellow named Wilber Scoville devised a scale that ranked peppers in terms of hotness. The scale was measured in Scoville units for obvious reasons.

A pepper is sweet if it ranks between 0 and 100 Scovilles. A Jalapeno has between 2500 and 5000 Scovilles. The hottest pepper is the Habanero, which ranks over 100,000 Scovilles. Some have gone as high as 350,000 Scovilles.

Ouch.

Bin Laden's Felt-Skinned Henchman? - FOXNews.com... Do the global terror links reach even as far as Sesame Street? Is Bert the Muppet a henchman of terrorist mastermind Usama bin Laden? The answer is clearly no, but puzzled newspaper readers are still wondering how the Sesame Street icon ended up in a news service photograph of a pro-bin Laden protest in Bangladesh. The pictures clearly showed demonstrators holding up a large poster in which bin Laden and Bert are standing next to each other.