Bon voyage, Voyager 1 !

Scientists say the Voyager 1 spacecraft is near the outer limit of the solar system, 26 years after its US launch.

The boundary is a region called "termination shock" where particles from the sun begin to slow down and clash with atomic matter from deep space.

Nasa says Voyager 1 is about 13.5bn kilometres from Earth and will not reach another system for 40,000 years........

.....If, as expected, Voyager I does cross the heliopause and passes into uncharted deep space it may actually outlive its home planet.

Think of it- long after the sun has gone out and the Earth gone cold, Voyager 1 may still be plying the stars, waiting to be found.

EDIT: Here's the story from the New York Times:

26 Years After Launching, Voyager Is at Crucial Border. At more than eight billion miles from Earth, the Voyager 1 spacecraft has journeyed a greater distance than any other human-made object, but no one is quite sure what it has found. By John Noble Wilford. [New York Times: Science]

11:18:35 PM    

Click the photo to make it BiG

9:38:14 PM     leave/read comments []

Woman who fled to North Korea was state mole in Aum [The Japan Times]

9:07:48 PM    

Apple says could move to Intel, but happy with IBM. The latest version of the Mac OS X operating system could easily run on Intel chips, Apple CEO Steve Jobs says, but the company has little interest in changing processors. [CNET News.com - Front Door]

It's a Steve Jobs smackdown on da WinTel Weenies! Selected snippets from inside the Reality Distortion Field:

"It's perfectly technically feasible to port Panther to any processor," Jobs said at a meeting with financial analysts. But Jobs said the company is happy with IBM's PowerPC family of chips and feels the performance is "quite competitive."

"Right now we don't see a compelling need to switch processor families," Jobs said. "We have all the options in the world, but the PowerPC road map looks very strong."

.......

Jobs also took a few shots at Microsoft, saying that Apple is out-innovating its larger rival, which has years of work ahead of it with Longhorn, the next version of Windows. "They're hoping to be in 2006 where we were with Jaguar," Jobs said, adding, "We're going to have a few more releases by then."

Hit 'em again, Steve!

9:03:20 PM     leave/read comments []

Bring your rotten fruit and tomatoes. This could be fun.

ISSAN MOTOR is planting actors in movie theaters to perform live commercials before the start of showings of "The Matrix Revolutions" in an effort to expose jaded, skeptical consumers to advertising by masking it as something else.

The brief in-person pitches feature actors scattered among the ticket-buying audience who stand and deliver lines that evoke the words spoken by poets at events known as slams or jams. Their performances are timed to accompany a commercial the audience sees on the movie screen, which begins without identifying the sponsor but concludes with the Nissan Altima logo.

8:53:23 PM    

'Spiderman' protester charged. A man who spent six days up a 100 foot crane near Tower Bridge dressed as Spiderman, is charged by police. [BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition]

How much you want to bet that J. Jonah Jameson put the Bobbies up to it? Spidey's always bein' hassled by The Man. Just like in the comic books.

"If we can charge David Blaine, we can charge him as well."

-Richard Barnes, deputy chairman of the MPA

I am however, all for harassing David Blaine, early and often.

6:56:02 PM     leave/read comments []

Morons in the News: Another great battle in the War on Drugs. Parent and consumer groups take on Toys R Us for its glamorous portrayal of drug use, in the form of a CGI giraffe accidentally "huffing" helium [Morons Dot Org]

Last time I looked, helium was an inert gas.

There are a few problems here. Firstly, even the reporting this is getting shows a fairly significant factual distortion: this article, for example, suggests that the mascot is seen "sucking helium from a balloon," when in the ad as aired (I can't find a video stream of the ad itself; if anyone else knows where to find one, please post in the comments), our hapless spokesgiraffe simply has a neck so long that his head is next to the helium when he attempts to start speaking to the crowd. Secondly, while helium can be dangerous if on ingests enough of it, sucking in a single mouthful or lungful to speak funny at a party is unlikely to produce the sort of druglike high that causes someone to repeat the experience on a regular basis or to do serious or permanent damage to the person ingesting the helium (not that that makes it a great idea, just not the horror suggested by these people). Thirdly, if a fake giraffe accidentally getting a lungful of helium is a more powerful incentive to do drugs than parental responsibility and teaching is a deterrent, then pulling this ad campaign isn't going to change anything.

5:33:06 PM    

Now here's a damn fine idea, IMO:

Representative Nick Lampson, Democrat of Texas, has introduced a measure that would require NASA to develop reusable spaceships that could sit for long periods balanced between the gravitational pull of Earth and the Sun or the Moon; ships that could reach an asteroid; and, ultimately, ones that could reach Mars. The bill has 24 sponsors but has not yet been taken up in committee.

Mr. Lampson said in a telephone interview that he was glad that Senator Hollings was focused on the problem, but he added, "We don't need a commission, we need a commitment for NASA."

"If the goals get set, we will re-energize the academic community, and the space industrial community," he said, predicting that missions to Mars would "do a great deal to move this country forward."

Yeah! Let's really do something groundbreaking (spacebreaking?), instead of putterng around the backyard in our twenty year old bathrobe.

5:22:43 PM     leave/read comments []

NASA fixes problem with Mars rover instrument. NASA announced Tuesday that engineers have found a workaround to a problem with an instrument... [spacetoday.net]

Despite glitches like the ill-fated polar orbiter, NASA's JPL keeps finding ways to make the big science happen, often against some very steep odds. Way to go, gang!

NASA announced Tuesday that engineers have found a workaround to a problem with an instrument on a Mars-bound rover allowing the instrument to work properly. NASA has announced in August that a problem with the Mossbauer spectrometer on the Spirit rover would prevent the instrument from working as planned. At the time, a drive system designed to vibrate a gamma-ray source within the instrument was not moving properly. However, engineers have found ways to vibrate the source at higher frequencies allowing it to work properly. The instrument is designed to identify iron-bearing minerals in Martian rocks and soil.

Check out the website for The Mars Exploration Rover project.

5:09:41 PM     leave/read comments []

It's like they're deliberately trying to screw us all.

Incredibly, several of the same people responsible for staking out dubious rationales for the war, like Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, were also in charge of planning the so-called reconstruction of Iraq. The only question now, with weapons of mass destruction nowhere to be found and GI's getting picked off at an alarming rate, is which of those two tasks did the White House and Pentagon officials fail more miserably at?

Before the war, Wolfowitz said the cost of rebuilding Iraq could range anywhere from "$10 billion to $100 billion." The total to date is already approaching $170 billion. This summer he conceded, "Some of our assumptions turned out to be wrong."

"The administration walked itself right into this problem," says Pena. "Despite all their talk, the trend -- and that's what it is, a trend -- is moving in the wrong direction. Ever since Bush said, 'Bring 'em on,' the hostilities have gotten worse."

4:57:41 PM    

Luskin Is A Stalker!!!

This just in from the Ludic Kid- Noted Atrios stalker, Donald Luskin is, according to the Ludic Kid (whose impeccables are credential, nee even pResidential), targeting yet another victim:

3. DONALD LUSKIN IS, EVEN NOW, STALKING DELIGHTFUL ICELANDIC POP SENSATION BJORK GOTMUNDSDOTTIR. Luskin, having caught Bjork's act on Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve in 1993, became sexually compulsive about the singer. Frequently interrupting conversations with his National Review co-workers about politics, economics and culture with the comment "Hey, what do you think of Bjork? I would so do her", Luskin would fly into a rage whenever someone did not share his obsession.....

Sharp-eyed readers of What The Hell Am I Doing Here? will notice that the above item is number three in a list. Unfortunately, the rest of the list is TOO EXPLOSIVE to be reprinted at this "focus on your own damn family-friendly" site. You'll just have to click on the link to learn the whole shocked, shocked, shocked I tell you, truth.

1:22:01 PM     leave/read comments []

Yakuza Shootout (Mainichi).

One gangster injured in a yakuza shootout in the streets of Kobe last night.

1:31:12 AM    

My pal Dock Miles and I were writing back and forth about that moment when you realize that your childhood is ending and it got me to thinking about how it's the beginning of the end of that perfect happiness that only children know and that adults chase after for the rest of their lives.

I think the last time I was really, genuinely happy, was the summer between 5th and 6th grades. It was a time when I had just developed a sense of person-hood, a sense of being someone who could be and act in the world and make changes to it and myself, and that this was a world open to exploration and every day brought something to do that I'd never done before and I was in awe at this world and in myself. It was a happiness that didn't know loss; didn't know what it was to miss something or someone. "Missing something" meant anticipation- waiting, not longing.

And then it all went to hell; I discovered loss, impotence and isolation.

But there have been glimpses.

Twice, I've come close to that feeling:

Once, in 1989; the year started with a month-long trip to England in January, followed by a correspondence romance with the woman who became my wife and topped off with my graduation from college and the consummation of my romance. The spectre of how I was to make a living and my transgendered-ness hovered over this time, but not too heavily.

And again in 1997; my first year in San Francisco- I really was a whole new person and every day brought an experience that I'd never had before. The highs were higher than that long ago suburban boy's summer, but the lows and the loneliness were deeper and darker. This was not an unsullied joy, this was the joy of looking at the stars from the dirt. If depression is, as Winston Churchill described it, a "Black Dog," then my happiness was a glimpse of heaven from its back.

It's been one hell of a ride.

12:03:12 AM     leave/read comments []