'Best of TBH Politoons'
Baron Dave Romm
By Baron Dave Romm
"Data from Deep Impact's instruments indicate an immense cloud of fine powdery material was released when the probe slammed into the nucleus of comet Tempel 1."
This false-color image shows comet Tempel 1 about 50 minutes after
Deep Impact's probe smashed into its surface. The impact site is
located on the far side of the comet in this view. The image was
taken by the mission's flyby spacecraft as it turned back to face the
comet for one last photo opportunity.
NASA's Deep Impact tells a tale of a comet
Data from Deep Impact's instruments indicate an immense cloud of fine powdery material was released when the probe slammed into the nucleus of comet Tempel 1 at about 10 kilometers per second (6.3 miles per second or 23,000 miles per hour). The cloud indicated the comet is covered in the powdery stuff. The Deep Impact science team continues to wade through gigabytes of data collected during the July 4 encounter with the comet measuring 5-kilometers-wide by 11-kilometers-long (about 3-miles-wide by 7-miles-long). "The major surprise was the opacity of the plume the impactor created and the light it gave off," said Deep Impact Principal Investigator Dr. Michael A'Hearn of the University of Maryland, College Park. "That suggests the dust excavated from the comet's surface was extremely fine, more like talcum powder than beach sand. And the surface is definitely not what most people think of when they think of comets - an ice cube." How can a comet hurtling through our solar system be made of a substance with less strength than snow or even talcum powder? "You have to think of it in the context of its environment," said Dr. Pete Schultz, Deep Impact scientist from Brown University, Providence, R.I. "This city-sized object is floating around in a vacuum. The only time it gets bothered is when the Sun cooks it a little or someone slams an 820-pound wakeup call at it at 23,000 miles per hour."
There's a nice (but large) QuickTime animation of the Deep Impact spacecraft's path here.
The data collected is important. It shows that we can't quite walk on a comet. Aside from making stupid sf movies look even more out of date, this information will affect examination of comets and, ultimately, how we look for the origins of the solar system. Space is large but full of dust.
Meanwhile, in a different part of the solar system...
The Cassini spacecraft has been looking at Saturn for almost a year now. You're invited to vote on the most popular images taken so far! Choices range from Saturn's rings to Titan's true color. A bit of a PR stunt, but no less impressive for the pseudo-interaction.
The Huygens probe made it's spectacular descent to Titan last December, and the Cassini spacecraft was there to capture and retransmit the images. Like the Deep Impact mission, Huygens was destined for destruction and we learned a lot from the probe itself as well as from the impact made. Then Cassini fell off the headlines. But the mission continues and continues to send back important data. There may be a lake on Titan made up of liquid hydrocarbons, 145 miles by 45 miles in area.
From July 7, 2005CE, a picture of Splendid Striations. The image presents a sweeping view of Saturn's rings. "Some of the bright lanes seen here within the main rings are due to resonances with moons such as Mimas, Janus and Prometheus, whose gravity nudges the orbits of the ring particles. These resonances can also cause dark gaps in the rings, like the Cassini Division."
And the mission continues. Cassini is scheduled to fly by the moons Enceladus on July 14 and Mimas on August 2 and keep going.
NASA has been criticized when things go wrong and rightly so. But they don't get the credit when things go right. Both the Cassini-Huygens mission and the Deep Impact mission have exceeded expectations. For a day or two's worth of money spent on losing quagmires in Afghanistan and Iraq, we can find out what makes the universe tick. The ultimate revenge on fundamentalist terrorism is to become more knowledgeable and more civilized.
One of NASA's biggest tragedies was the Columbia accident more than two years ago. Finally, the launch of Discovery is scheduled for this month. The International Space Station has been relying on Soviet supply ships. The shuttle's return will mark the 114th shuttle launch and the 31st flight of Discovery. Planned objectives include a spacewalk to repair a failed Control Moment Gyroscope on the space station. The mission, also dubbed Logistics Flight 1, will carry and deploy the Orbiter Boom Sensor System, or OBSS. Basically, a camera and a laser are going to be attached to the shuttle's 50-foot robotic arm which will then swing out to look at the shuttle to check for large holes or space barnacles or aliens on the wing and the like.
NASA-TV is carried on the web and on some basic cable systems. It's reality tv in pure form: Uncut and largely boring, but when it's good it's irreplaceable.
Look up. Better: Look across.
Baron Dave Romm is a conceptual artist and a noble of Ladonia with a radio show, a very weird CD collection and an ever growing list of political links. Dave Romm reviews things at random for obscure web sites. You can read all his music recommendations from Bartcop-E , and you can hear the last two Shockwave broadcasts in Real Audio (scroll down to Shockwave). Thanks to everyone who has sent me music to play on the air.
--////
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Mark LeVine: The London Bombings: Globalization's Revenge? (beliefnet.com)
Jihadist violence has metastasized into a new brand of 21st-century radical Islam.
The Editors of Beliefnet: Religion Etiquette: The Case of the Christian Coworker
How do I deal with a co-worker's constant "witnessing"?
Corina Zappia: Scent of a Woman (villagevoice.com)
Equal-opportunity marketing for stinky women and puny men
Tristan Taormino: Erotic Etiquette (villagevoice.com)
Advice for socially challenged pervs, or, how to get laid at a sex event
ROGER EBERT: Yes (4 Stars)
Sally Potter's "Yes" is a movie unlike any other I have seen or heard.
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Standard summer day - sunny & hot.
Erik Estrada popped up on the local ABC affiliate late last night - hawking California City.
One of the links on yesterday's page didn't work - here is the corrected version (the link on the archived page has also been corrected).
Military To Release LA Film Maker
Cyrus Kar
The U.S. military has agreed to release an aspiring American documentary filmmaker who has been detained in Iraq since potential bomb parts were found in his taxi in May, his aunt and lawyer said Saturday.
The decision came days after Los Angeles resident Cyrus Kar's family filed a lawsuit against the federal government in Washington, D.C., alleging that his civil rights were being violated because FBI officials had cleared him of suspicion. A hearing in the case was scheduled for Monday.
Kar, 44, was born in Ir but immigrated to the United States as a child with his family. The U.S. Navy veteran studied marketing at San Jose State University and worked in the computer industry before becoming interested in filmmaking.
With help from independent director-producer Philippe Diaz, he began working on a documentary about Cyrus the Great, an ancient Persian king. He interviewed experts and scholars and shot of footage at archaeological sites in Afghanistan, Iran and Tajikistan, according to his family and Diaz.
Kar's relatives say FBI agents searched his home and that Agent John D. Wilson in Los Angeles told them weeks ago that Kar had passed a polygraph test and had been cleared of any charges. They said Wilson told them the washing machine timers belonged to the taxi driver, who was transporting them to a friend.
Cyrus Kar
France Honors Punk Rocker
Patti Smith
U.S. punk rocker Patti Smith received one of France's top cultural honors on Sunday.
Smith, 58, was presented with the insignia of Commander of the Order of the Arts and Letters by Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres.
The ministry, in a statement, noted Smith's appreciation for 19th century French poet Arthur Rimbaud, and praised her as "one of the most influential artists in women's rock 'n' roll."
Speaking to The Associated Press at an AIDS benefit concert in southwestern Paris, where she received the award Sunday, Smith said she accepted the award "from the most spiritual side of me."
Patti Smith
Releasing Reggae Album
Willie Nelson
Willie Nelson is so prolific that sometimes even he forgets he has another record coming out. At a recent show here with Bob Dylan, Nelson performed a long list of hits, but not a single song from his new long-awaited reggae album.
"I keep forgetting," Nelson said a few days later by telephone from the road, which he's called home for most of the last 30 years. "The set is so short."
Nelson is indeed releasing a new reggae album, "Countryman," out Tuesday, and, at least sporadically, he's been working some of the songs into his shows.
Produced by Don Was, who's worked with the Rolling Stones and Bonnie Raitt among others, the album includes reggae versions of Nelson songs such as "Darkness On the Face of the Earth" and "One in a Row." There also are covers of Jimmy Cliff's "The Harder They Come" and "Sitting in Limbo," and a song called "I'm a Worried Man" by Johnny and June Carter Cash that Nelson recorded as a duet with Toots Hibbert of Toots and the Maytals.
While the music on "Countryman" might raise the eyebrows of country purists, so will the cover. With green marijuana leaves on a red and yellow background, the cover art makes the CD look like an oversized pack of rolling papers.
Universal Music Group Nashville is substituting palm trees for the marijuana leaves on CDs sold at the retail chain Wal-Mart, a huge outlet for country music that's also sensitive about lyrics and packaging.
Willie Nelson
De Beers Exhibition Protested
'Diamonds'
"Diamonds," a new exhibition in London, boasts an impressive carat count and some of the world's most glittering gems, but protests over the treatment of African bushmen by mining giant De Beers exposed some flaws.
The company, which controls about two thirds of the world's uncut diamond supply and is sponsoring the show, strongly denies claims by advocacy group Survival International that evictions of bushmen by the Botswana government are linked to its diamond mining activities.
A group of about 50 protesters, led by actress Julie Christie, carried placards outside the exhibition venue as guests arrived for the gala opening on Wednesday.
Similar demonstrations marked the opening of the De Beers LV store in New York last month, although for most visitors to the show at London's Natural History Museum it was the fascination and beauty of diamonds that mattered most.
'Diamonds'
Impressionist Landscape Exhibition
Bellagio
The French countryside could not be farther away, in distance or sentiment, from the long stretch of neon lights that line the Las Vegas Strip.
But as the impressionists launched a revolution in the art world more than a century ago, a small art gallery inside the Bellagio resort has been quietly doing the same, albeit to a lesser degree, over the past six years.
"It was shocking particularly to the art world that there was a gallery in a Las Vegas casino," said Matthew Hileman, managing director for the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art. "Not only have people come, they've come in amazing numbers."
The current show runs through Jan. 8. Tickets are $15 US per person and $12 for students and those age 65 and older.
The gallery is open 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily, and audio guides are available in English, French, Japanese and Spanish.
Bellagio
Amid Boom, Many Can't Cook
'Food Culture'
Even as "food culture" blossoms in countless cookbooks and chef shows, many adults simply don't know cooking basics.
Experts blame it on a transmission breakdown. While parents traditionally shared cooking tips with their kids, the passage of kitchen wisdom has become rarer among time-pressed modern families.
On a weekend when other kitchen classrooms at the Culinary Institute of America are packed with adults preparing paella and green mango salad, Chef Greg Zifchak is teaching Chicken Roasting 101.
Call it the lost-in-the-kitchen generation - as families began eating together less often, a sizable number of people grew up never learning to brown ground beef slowly or to add butter to minestrone to heighten flavor.
For the rest, 'Food Culture'
British Horror Story
Not The Bad Seed
An Exeter woman has been jailed for three years for a campaign of harassment against a young girl, which a judge said was the most wicked crime he had ever seen.
The young girl and her mother are now trying to rebuild their lives after an 18-month campaign of harassment by Kathryn Skinner, the woman they thought was a trusted family friend.
Skinner, now 40, spiked children's drinks at birthday parties and put razor blades in school bags and lockers so her friend's daughter would get the blame.
She stole money and planted it in the young girl's bedroom, slashed the family's clothes and even faked hate mail from the youngster claiming she was being mistreated by her mother.
She did it in such a way that the youngster would be wrongly blamed - and she watched as the distressed girl was excluded from school, put into therapy and came close to being taken away from her distraught parents.
The campaign of terror began when the girl was only six years old.
For a lot of details - Not The Bad Seed
Skateboarder Clears Great Wall
Danny Way
Daredevil skateboarder Danny Way rolled down a massive ramp at nearly 50 mph and jumped across the Great Wall of China on Saturday, becoming the first person to clear the wall without motorized aid, an event sponsor said.
Way botched the landing on his first attempt but then successfully completed the jump across the 61-foot gap four times, adding 360 degree spins on his last three tries, sponsor Quiksilver, Inc. said.
A crowd of several thousand people, including China's ministers of extreme sports and culture, gathered at the Ju Yong Guan Gate about a 40-minute drive from Beijing, Quiksilver's greater China marketing director Ryan Hollis said.
Way made the jump on an adaptation of the so-called mega ramp, a gigantic structure that he helped create near his home in the Southern California desert. He set a skateboard jump world record for distance (79 feet) on a mega ramp at last summer's X Games, and in 2003 set the height record of 23 1/2 feet at the desert ramp.
Danny Way
Would-Be Nation-Builder
Gregory Green
Gregory Green is between countries these days. In 1994 he founded The New Free State of Caroline, a small nation-state based on a speck of coral in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. But he lost it five years later in a custody battle with Kiribati, a country that only came into existence itself in 1979.
So now Green, a conceptual artist by trade, is preparing to start again by claiming a pair of small islands in the Indian Ocean.
Though he's cagey about exactly where they are.
Unclaimed territory is hard to find these days. Virtually every square inch of the planet's terrestrial surface has been carved up by the world's 199 officially recognized nations, leaving nothing for those who want to start their own countries except a few barren rocks sticking out of the Arctic Ocean and maybe a handful of extremely remote coral atolls.
Green founded the New Free State of Caroline as an artistic statement. He wanted to create a country for all of the people who feel oppressed by their own lands. And he wanted it to be as real as possible, not just a nice idea.
For a lot more, Gregory Green
| CURRENT MOON lunar phases |
