Europe's Mars orbiter has detected evidence of water on the planet.

Scientists Say They Have Discovered Ice on Mars

Laughing Boy wrote:
] Understatement of the century! The lack of a tumor weighing
] 2x your normal body weight would really "suit" pretty much
] everyone I'd think.
]
] LB

"It's nott a Toomah"
-Arrrnnoldd.

RE: CNN.com - Doctors remove 175 pound tumor - Jan. 22, 2004

] BALTIMORE %u2014 Sen. Barbara Mikulski is asking NASA to
] review the decision to not service the Hubble space
] telescope, guaranteeing an early death for the orbiting
] science platform that has revolutionized astronomy.
]
] Mikulski (D-Md.), the ranking minority member of the
] Senate Appropriations subcommittee that oversees NASA's
] budget, told NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe in the
] letter sent Wednesday that she was shocked by the
] decision given the Hubble's extraordinary contributions
] to science.
]
] "I ask you to reconsider your decision and appoint an
] independent panel of outside experts to fully review and
] assess all of the issues surrounding another Hubble
] servicing mission," Mikulski wrote.
]
] Calling Hubble the most successful NASA program since the
] Apollo program that put man on the moon, Mikulski also
] asked that all planning, preparation and astronaut
] training activities continue until Congress has reviewed
] the issue.

ALL HAIL Mikulski! That "bird" Hubble has a LOT more science left in her. Maybe another 20 years worth with regular service missions. KEEP THE DREAM ALIVE!

Sen. Mikulski asks NASA to review Hubble decision

] team of Romanian and U.S. doctors say they have
] successfully removed a tumor weighing 175 pounds (80
] kilograms) from a woman patient in an operation lasting
] 10 hours.
]
] Lucica Bunghez, 47, had been largely confined to bed
] because of the tumor, which weighed almost double her
] body weight and covered her back, waist and hips.
]
] "She is very well, the lack of the tumor really suits
] her," Ion Lascar, head of the plastic surgery department
] of Floreasca Hospital in Bucharest, told reporters on
] Wednesday.

Understatement of the century! The lack of a tumor weighing 2x your normal body weight would really "suit" pretty much everyone I'd think.

LB

CNN.com - Doctors remove 175 pound tumor - Jan. 22, 2004

] SHE WAS at Winston Churchill's side during Britain's
] darkest hour. And now Charlie the parrot is 104 years
] old...and still cursing the Nazis.
]
] Her favourite sayings were "F*** Hitler" and "F*** the
] Nazis". And even today, 39 years after the great man's
] death, she can still be coaxed into repeating them with
] that unmistakable Churchillian inflection.
]
] Many an admiral or peer of the realm was shocked by the
] tirade from the bird's cage during crisis meetings with
] the PM.
]
] But it always brought a smile to the war leader's face.
]
] Churchill bought Charlie - giving him a boy's name
] despite the fact she was female - in 1937.
]
] She took pride of place in a bizarre menagerie of pets
] including lambs, pigs, cattle, swans and, at one point, a
] leopard.
]
] He immediately began to teach her to swear - particularly
] in company - and she is keeping up the tradition today.
]
] The blue and gold macaw is believed to be Britain's
] oldest bird.

'F*** THE NAZIS!!', SAYS CHURCHILL'S PARROT

] The day before yesterday, my wife came home with a new license
] plate frame for my car: "My other cars are on Mars."
  . . .
] I just finished working the Martian night (which today happened
] to be daytime at JPL), planning Spirit's activities for Sol 5,
] the rover's fifth day on the surface. The uplink team is doing a
] great job of getting a lot done in a short amount of time. The
] rover seems to be getting more sleep than we do...
 . . .
] I'll make additions to this site as often as living on
] Mars time and exploring an alien planet permit...

This is a new blog page that was created by my childhood friend Andy Mishkin. In it he's documenting some of the day-to-day activities at JPL. Fun reading!

Mars Roving: Andy Mishkin's Blog

] What is clear is that al Qaeda is at a crossroads and --
] like the United States in the spring of 2002 -- it does
] not have really good choices, and therefore, must choose
] the best of a bad lot. Al Qaeda's original war plan is
] obsolete. The straight line it drew from Sept. 11 to the
] Caliphate has hit a wall. Bin Laden knows it. He doesn't
] have a good Plan B, but he will have to cook one up
] anyway. The war is not over, but for the moment, it is al
] Qaeda's turn to sweat out a solution to a difficult
] strategic problem. If they can't do that, then the war
] could very well be over, at least for this generation.

!!!

Cook 'em all - let Allah sort 'em out.

LB

Al Q might be cooked...

A California inventor has developed a book-binding machine that makes it cheap and easy to print professional-quality books within minutes. Industry analysts say the device could make it possible for consumers to purchase previously hard-to-find texts at most bookstores.

Brewster Kahle likes it.

In a few years, the term "bookstore" may refer to one of those little kiosks in the mall, where today they sell incense, neckties, cheap jewelry, and what-not. It will consist of a keyboard, a plasma display, and a small box resembling an inkjet printer.

One could envision using this flexible technology to sell 'scalable' books. If the 1,181 page version of "The Codebreakers" is too much detail for you, perhaps you'd prefer the 500 page version, or the 250 page version with a focus on pre-20th century technology.

Interested in the latest Harry Potter book? Choose anywhere from 100 to 1,000 pages in length, depending on how much time you have to spend. Buying it for the kids, and want to delete the dark parts of the story? Easy.

How about a version of the LOTR trilogy without all of the poetry and the songs? Done. Care to drop the pages-long descriptions of minutia unrelated to the plot, too? Done. Illustrated, or text only?

Music retail outlets could do this today with audio CDs; it's not clear why they don't. There is simply no good reason why you should ever walk out of Tower Records empty handed because the clerk said, "we don't have that in stock, but we could order it for you and have it here in seven to ten business days."

A good-sized Tower Records has on the order of $1 million in inventory on hand. For a million dollars, the store could buy more than a petabyte of online disk storage, on which they could store more than two million different full length albums in CD quality (not MPEG encoded), along with high quality cover art and liner notes. By comparison, online music services like iTunes and Rhapsody offer only 30,000 to 40,000 different CDs.

Book-Binding Technique Could Revive Rare Texts

] RIP Brad. Hopefully you are sharing your sence of humour
] with some good spirits, on the other side.

Another site that CrankyMessiah used pays it's respects. There is a link here to a picture for those who wanted to know what he looked like.

FAZED - Slorum - CrankyMessiah Thread

check the "other news" blurb at the bottom of the page:

"The Congressional bonehead award goes to Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) who, on a visit to JPL, asked if Mars Pathfinder had taken an image of the flag planted there in 1969 by Neil Armstrong! Quipped Rep. Vernon Ehlers (R-MI) to the Washington Times: "We just don't teach enough science." Worse, Jackson Lee, who represents Houston, is a member of the House Science Committee's space subcommittee. Perhaps some committee reassignments are in order..."

Congressional Bonehead Award