New Tech Gadget

There it is in all its beautiful new glory: my new cell phone. It is a Nokia 6555 and I just got it yesterday. Now everyone knows how much I love new tech gadgets and this phone fits the bill beautifully. It uses 3G technology--something we don't HAVE here yet, but it IS new and (supposedly) great! So, I WANT! It has an amazing screen--actually TWO screens--and the colors and resolution are fantastic. There is a digital music player, an email client, IM, and camera--all of which I don't need. BUT, it is high tech, so I WANT! So far, the web-surfing seems to be fine--but I usually just look for Red Wing news and weather on the phone, so how bad could surfing be?

Two possible problems with the phone, though. First, all of the reviews I have read complain about the battery life. A lot of reviewers say they have to charge the phone every night and that is a definite minus. I don't use my cell phone for calls at home, so I don't think it will be much of a factor for me--just how much would I have to use it to wear down the battery in a few hours time when I'm out shopping? The other thing that MIGHT prove to be a problem, however, is the fact it seems to get a little warm while doing some heavy-duty web-surfing. Again, how many times am I actually going to do a LOT of surfing? I will have to put the phone through its paces over the next couple of weeks and see if I keep my 'new baby.'

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BREAKING NEWS!!!!

Brett Favre is retiring from football.

Yeah, I'm just as impressed as the rest of you. But, because we get A LOT of our TV feeds from Wisconsin, we are being bombarded with the news. I wonder if the channels will even show network programming tonight or will they have Brett Favre retrospectives? Thank goodness there isn't anything worth watching anyway.

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Trivia

Time for another trivial post--thanks to mental_floss.

--One of Richard Nixon's quirks was building a fire in the Lincoln sitting room in July--then turning up the air conditioning to make it bearable!

--Warren Harding played poker at least twice a week and one time gambled away an entire set of White House china.

--When hooked up to an electroencephalograph machine (a machine that records the electrical activity of the brain) Jell-O demonstrates movement virtually identical to a healthy adult man or woman.

--There is a family in Norway that has three children born on February 29--they are NOT triplets, but were born three Leap Year's in a row.

--"The Last Works of Henri Matisse" exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art was in its 47th day before a woman noticed one painting was hung upside down. When she mentioned this fact to a museum worker, she wasn't taken seriously. The painting was hung correctly only after the woman brought the story to The New York Times and it was published.

--87 days after New Coke was launched, the Coca Cola Company re-issued the original Coke as "Coca Cola Classic" in order to appease angry fans. This news was considered so important to the American people that Peter Jennings of ABC news interrupted "General Hospital" to break the story on national TV.

--The word 'lucky' was rarely used in "I Love Lucy" scripts, because the show's sponsor, Phillip Morris, was in competition with Lucky Strike cigarettes at the time.

--If you start counting at one and spell out the numbers as you go, you won't use the letter 'A' until you reach 1,000.

--Great Roles Actors Regrettably Turned Down:

--Cary Grant turned down the role of James Bond in Dr. No.
--Will Smith turned down the role of Neo in the Matrix.
--Sean Connery turned down the role of Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
--Steve McQueen turned down Sundance in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, "Popeye" Doyle in The French Connection, and Captain Benjamin Willard in Apocolypse Now.

--The 2003 world Scrabble champion was from Thailand and didn't speak English fluently.

--The 1984 film Red Dawn was the first motion picture rated PG-13.

--Silver has been the most popular exterior color for US cars since 2000.

--Swiss steak, English muffins, and Russian dressing were all invented in the US.

--In 2006, Michigan became the eighth US state to have a population exceeding 10 million.

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Thank Goodness

I won't be naive enough to say that the slump is finally over, but the Wings did play well tonight. There WAS an improvement on Friday night with 'the new guy,' Stuart, in the line-up and Hasek and Kronwall back from injuries--they improved even more tonight. It is so good to see the injured coming back. However, Hasek should probably begin his warm-ups even earlier than he already does--he gave up a rather soft goal early in the game AGAIN tonight! Looked a little rusty out there. NOT something you want in a play-off game--it can give a team momentum and give them enough to win.

Baby Boy got a goal and an assist tonight--looks like he will hit the 20-goal mark this year. Drake and Maltby scored, also--great for them, as they haven't had many this year. Several others got assists--this should go far to help boost the confidence of the players.

Right now, word has it that Rafalski will be back in the line-up on Wednesday. Such good news to see the players getting healthy again. Lidstrom should be back in about eight games and then the only one--hopefully--left to get healthy will be Chelios. It will be fantastic to have the captain back--I don't think many people appreciate him enough. Lidstrom is probably the best player on the team and, obviously, they are pretty lost without him.

A little sigh of relief tonight--maybe they can go on another winning streak.

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Celebrate

Holidays for the week:

2 March
National Banana Cream Pie Day*
Namesake Day

3 March
Iditarod Begins
National Anthem Day
Fun Facts About Names Day
I Want You To Be Happy Day
What If Cats and Dogs Had Opposable Thumbs? Day
(My Baby's Birthday!!!)

4 March
National Poundcake Day*
Courageous Follower Day
March Forth-Do Something Day
National Grammar Day
Unique Names Day

5 March
Stop The Clocks Day
Learn What Your Name Means Day

6 March
National Chocolate Cheesecake Day*
Nametag Day

7 March
Middle Name Pride Day

8 March
National Peanut Cluster Day*
Farmer's Day
Girl's Write Now Day

*Good food to celebrate this week! :)

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The coming attack on Obama

It appears that very likely the contest in November will be between Obama and McCain. The two issues will be Iraq and the economy, and both issues favor Obama. McCain will point to Obama's lack of experience, a legitimate concern to be sure, but an issue that will likely not resonate with the American people. After all, Obama has more experience than Abraham Lincoln did before becoming President.

Apart from being on the wrong side of the war in Iraq, according to every poll of the American people, McCain has three problems; 1) he is old, 2) he is, well, very old, and 3) he is really, really old. Oh, and his own party doesn't much like him.

Also, Obama has one thing in common with the hero of the Right, Ronald Reagan, he of blessed memory, the American people like him. The Republicans are going to try to change that. The will try to make us fear and mistrust him. It has begun.

Melanie Morgan, who I often listen to on the drive in to work, has a piece in WorldNetDaily. She quotes from Newsweek's Andrew Romano:

Over the past few months, it's become clear that there are some shady people out there bent on spreading the claim – completely, inarguably, demonstrably false – that Obama is a "crypto-Muslim Manchurian candidate."

Melanie comments:

You catch that? Completely. Inarguably. Demonstrably. False.

For a moment I thought he was referring to Newsweek's own reporting, but no, he was flakking for Obama as most reporters have.

Do you follow this? The problem Melanie sees is not that some people on her side are describing Obama as a "crypto-Muslim Manchurian candidate," but that the biased media are saying that this claim is false, which it is. The real problem, according to Melanie is, get this, Barack Obama's patriotism deficit. Read it for yourself.

Crazy Pammy makes Melanie look like a moderate. She relies heavily on material at Freedom's Enemies . Freedom's enemies, by the way, are "Islamic radicals and their supporters on the left." She says that "Obama sides with Islamists and their handmaidens."

The rightwing will make every effort to make Obama look anti-American and anti-Semitic while John McCain stays above the fray. The problem for the right is that anyone who reads Pam Geller or WorldNetDaily is unlikely to vote for Obama in the first place and attempts to smear Obama are likely to backfire.

My prediction: Obama wins. Now, let's make it happen.

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High Resolution NASA Radar … Maps The Moon

70-meter antenna at the Goldstone complex in California. /// The 70-meter (230-foot) diameter antenna is the largest, and therefore most sensitive, DSN antenna, and is capabile of tracking a spacecraft travelling more than 16 billion kilometers (10 billion miles) from Earth. Image Credit: NASA

High Resolution NASA Radar … Maps The Moon

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has recently released new high-resolution radar maps of the Moon's south pole. The mapping technique is unique in that it uses digital radar information gleaned from one array of the most sophisticated radar antennae’s in NASA’s arsenal of sensing equipment.

The antenna’s in the array measure three-quarters the size of a football field. From the Mojave desert in California here on the Oblate Spheroid, the antennae send a 500-kilowatt strong, 90-minute long radar stream 231,800 miles to the Moon … and back. The information is then processed with computers at JPL in Pasadena in order to develop detail maps of the Moon’s surface for possible landing sites of possible future Lunar exploration missions. This technique is second only to actually launching a satellite with sophisticated camera equipment and surface sensors.

Digital Elevation Map of Lunar South Pole - Image brightness is generated from the strength of the radar echoes that are bounced of the lunar surface and the color represents the elevation. This map covers an area of 650 kilometers (400 miles) by 450 kilometers (280 miles) with an elevation measurement every 40 meters (130 feet). Image Credit: NASA

This excerpted from Science @ NASA website -

New Radar Maps of the Moon
Science @ NASA - February 29, 2008

NASA has obtained new high-resolution radar maps of the Moon's south pole--a region the space agency is considering as a landing site when astronauts return to the Moon in the years ahead.

"We now know the south pole has peaks as high as Mt. McKinley and crater floors four times deeper than the Grand Canyon," says Doug Cooke, deputy associate administrator for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. "These data will be an invaluable tool for advance planning of lunar missions."

New radar imagery of the lunar south pole. The movie simulates solar illumination over the course of a complete lunar day. Video Credit: NASA

Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory collected the data using the Goldstone Solar System Radar located in California's Mojave Desert. Three times in 2006, JPL scientists targeted the moon's south polar region using Goldstone's 70-meter radar dish. The antenna, three-quarters the size of a football field, sent a 500-kilowatt strong, 90-minute long radar stream 231,800 miles to the Moon. The radar illuminated the rough-hewn lunar surface over an area measuring about 400 by 250 miles. Signals were reflected back to two of Goldstone's 34-meter antennas on Earth. Scientists have been analyzing the echoes ever since, and the data were released by NASA for the first time this week.

NASA has used the data to make a VR movie of a Moon landing from the point of view of the astronaut. Click here to watch. Animation Credit: NASA

"I have not been to the Moon, but this imagery is the next best thing," says Scott Hensley, a scientist at JPL and lead investigator for the study. "With these data we can see terrain features as small as a house without even leaving the office."

NASA is eying the Moon's south polar region as a possible site for future outposts. The location has many advantages; for one thing, there is evidence of water frozen in deep dark south polar craters. Water can be split into oxygen to breathe and hydrogen to burn as rocket fuel--or astronauts could simply drink it. Planners are also looking for "peaks of eternal light." Tall polar mountains where the sun never sets might be a good place for a solar power station.

These are the highest-resolution maps to date. The best images, previously, were generated by the Clementine spacecraft, which could resolve lunar terrain features near the south pole at 1 kilometer per pixel. The JPL radar maps are 50 times more detailed.

As wonderful as they are, however, these images will pale in comparison to next-generation photos from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. The spacecraft is scheduled to launch in late 2008 and its camera will beam back photos of the moon with details as small as 1 meter.

"The south pole of the Moon," says Cooke, is going to be "a beautiful place to explore."
Reference Here>>

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