] China's first piloted spacecraft has entered the outer
] space, and Lieutenant Colonel Yang Liwei is now the first
] Chinese astronaut in space in the world's 241st manned
] space mission.

] At around 9:10, Shenzhou-5 moved into the
] preset orbit, indicating success of China's endeavor to
] hurl a piloted space vehicle of its own into the orbit.

] In the meantime, The Yuanwang-1 measuring vessel has
] been monitoring the target over the Pacific Ocean; and
] the Beijing Space Command and Control Center ordered
] the craft to open up the solar panels.

:: Xinhuanet - English :: China's first manned spacecraft in orbit

] We study empirically how fame of WWI fighter-pilot aces,
] measured in numbers of web pages mentioning them, is
] related to their merit or achievement, measured in
] numbers of opponent aircraft destroyed. We find that on
] the average fame grows exponentially with achievement; to
] be precise, there is a strong correlation (~0.7) between
] achievement and the logarithm of fame. At the same time,
] the number of individuals achieving a particular level of
] merit decreases exponentially with the magnitude of the
] level, leading to a power-law distribution of fame. A
] stochastic model that can explain the exponential growth
] of fame with merit is proposed. The model also provides
] likelihood of deviations from expected fame; it predicts,
] that the odds to be ten times more famous than expected
] from one's merit are ten in a million, while the odds to
] be ten times less famous are as high as one in ten.

[cond-mat/0310049] Theory of Aces: Fame by chance or merit?

] As described in the 15th November, 2002, issue of the
] journal Science (Ferber, 2002), the current
] administration has engaged in political screening of
] appointees to peer review study sections that are charged
] with evaluating the scientific merits of research
] proposals on HF/E issues in the workplace.

Strong protest from workplace ergonomics community about political interference from the Republicans in their scientific workgroups.

[IP] Political interference with scientific committees

] Mars holds court in the sky this week as the Red Planet
] makes its closest approach to Earth since our ancestors
] lived in caves.
]
] "It is amazingly bright," said David Hudgins, a lecturer
] in astronomy at Rockhurst University. "You cannot
] possibly miss it."

Mars is very, very bright. Even from city parks and streets -- where very few stars are visible at all -- Mars is unmistakable.

Decius: Oh, BTW, the ancient Babylonians thought that a passing of mars like this would lead to plauges and wars.

Kansas City Star | 08/24/2003 | Red star at night is their delight

] Is there an Artificial God?
]
] Douglas Adams' speech at Digital Biota 2, Cambridge U.K.
]
] September 1998

Interesting Read

Douglas Adams' speech at Digital Biota 2

] We make stuffed animals that look like tiny microbes...
] Now available: The Common Cold, The Flu, Sore Throat, and
] Stomach Ache.

Cool!

Welcome to GIANTmicrobes!

"...To the plaaaaanet core!" Boss Nass

] A Hollywood-like proposal to explore the center of the
] Earth calls for exploding a crack in the planet's surface
] and dropping a probe in behind tons of molten iron, which
] would sink and forge a path to the core.
]
] The plan is not ready for primetime, its creator told
] SPACE.com, but neither is it pie-in-the-sky.
]
] Exploring Earth's belly is ambitious in a scientific
] sense and could yield valuable data. The solid inner core
] rotates faster than the outer core, which is fluid and is
] responsible for Earth's magnetic field. But scientists
] don't know exactly why all this is so, nor do they know
] the exact composition or temperature of the core.
]
] A schematic shows how the probe would descend with molten
] iron, all in a crack that closes up behind the mission.
]
] If further research showed the core mission could
] actually work, it would be comparable in dollar terms
] with many space projects, says David Stevenson, a Caltech
] planetary scientist who has worked on several missions
] for NASA. Stevenson explains his idea in an article
] titled "A Modest Proposal" for the May

SNIP

NASA Meets Hollywood: Real Mission Proposed to Earth's Core

Total lunar eclipses happen when the earth gets between the sun and the moon. Because of the relatively low amount of particulates in the air it should look chocolate and brown.

MMmmm.... chocolate.

The eclipse starts tomorrow (thursday the 15th) at 10pm EDT and ends around 1am.

Update: Damnit. Its completely overcast. Can't see a thing..

Total Lunar Eclipse: May 15-16, 2003

] Doctors at Chimkent Children's Hospital in Kazakhstan
] originally believed Mourat Zhanaidarov was suffering from
] a cyst.
]
] But during surgery, they discovered he was in fact
] carrying the dead foetus of his twin brother.
]
] The foetus had developed into a tumour but was found to
] have hair, nails and bones.

] Valentina Vostrikova, chief surgeon at Chimkent
] Children's Hospital, told the newspaper: "It was
] remarkable. For seven years it lived like a parasite
] inside the boy's body."

BBC NEWS | Health | Boy 'pregnant' with twin brother

Its a bear, and it shits prime numbers..

Alkulukuja Paskova Karhu - The Prime Number Shitting Bear