Sunday, November 28. 2004
NASA sending hammer to space Frank D. RoylanceBaltimore Sun Nov. 28, 2004 12:00 AM You can learn something about a rock by looking at it. But what most geologists really want is to smack it with a hammer.
And that's just what planetary scientists will do July 4 when NASA's Deep Impact mission reaches the comet Tempel 1 after a trip of six months and 80 million miles.
If all goes well, an 820-pound copper "hammer" the size of a bathtub will separate from its mother ship and, 24 hours later, smash into the comet's icy nucleus at about 23,000 mph.
The high-speed impact will wallop the pickle-shaped comet with energy equivalent to 4.8 tons of TNT, said Michael A'Hearn, a University of Maryland astronomer and principal investigator on the $311 million mission.
Nobody's sure what will happen next. There's a small chance the impactor will blow the 2 1/2-mile-long comet to smithereens, or simply bore right through it like a bullet through a snowball. More likely, scientists say, it will blast open a crater the size of a football stadium. It all depends on what Tempel 1 is made of.
Which is exactly what scientists hope to learn.
The blast also will reveal the comet's interior chemistry and nail down more precisely what conditions were like when it formed at the solar system's birth more than 4.5 billion years ago.
The Deep Impact spacecraft is undergoing final tests at Cape Canaveral, Fla. It will blast off atop a Delta 2 rocket Dec. 30, and if all goes well, rendezvous with Tempel 1 on Independence Day.
Friday, November 26. 2004
Pink Floyd pupils sue for royalties
By Nigel Rosser, Evening Standard A group of former pupils at a London comprehensive school are poised to win thousands of pounds in unpaid royalties for singing on Pink Floyd's classic Another Brick In The Wall 25 years ago. The pupils from the 1979 fourthform music class at Islington Green School secretly recorded vocals after their teacher was approached by the band's management. Now the 23 ex-pupils are suing for overdue session musician royalties, taking advantage of the Copyright Act 1997 to claim a percentage of the money from broadcasts. Music teacher Alun Renshaw took the 13- to 14-year-old pupils out of lessons by to the nearby Britannia Recording Studios in Islington to record - without the head's permission. With its chorus of "We don't need no education, we don't need no thought control, no dark sarcasm in the classroom - teachers leave them kids alone," the song was an anthem for teenagers. The album The Wall sold over 12 million copies. Music royalties expert Peter Rowan said: "Some of the kids have put in a claim for royalties due to session musicians for recordings played on the radio or broadcast since 1997. We are going through the process of claiming now." Today, Mr Renshaw, 59, revealed how he hid the song's lyrics from the head. The Evening Standard tracked him down to his home outside Sydney, Australia, where he runs a vocational training course company. He said: "I viewed it as an interesting sociological thing and also a wonderful opportunity for the kids to work in a live recording studio. "We had a week where we practised around the piano at school, then we recorded it at the studios. I sort of mentioned it to the headteacher, but didn't give her a piece of paper with the lyrics on it." When the song was released the Inner London Education Authority called it "scandalous". Headteacher Margaret Maden banned the children from appearing on Top Of The Pops or in newspapers and refused to let the band make a video of them singing it. Mr Renshaw, who emigrated shortly after the song reached No1, said: "Afterwards I looked at the words again and realised ... well! But the parents said it was great and the children loved doing it. Margaret was very good about it. She absorbed most of the politics and I didn't get too badly told off." Islington Green's current headmaster, Trevor Averre-Beeson, has a platinum record of the song, and the school got a cheque for ?1,000. But Mr Renshaw said: "At the time we didn't think of it in terms of money, more of the experience." Ms Maden, 62, now a professor at Keele, said: "Alun Renshaw was a seriously good if somewhat anarchic music teacher. I was only told about it after the event, which didn't please me. But on balance it was part of a very rich musical education." Peter Thorpe, who sang on the single, told friends: "We were just taken to the studios and it was great fun. I didn't realise royalties were owed and I'm very glad to be in a position to claim them." This Is London
Saturday, November 20. 2004
It's official, he proposed, she said yes. Mike and I are going to coordinate a knife fight to see who gets to be the best man. 
For almost 4 years now I've known these guys, and the only better couple that I've seen is Linus and Lucy. I'm glad Adam finally grew a pair, and that Wendy didn't decide to stay in Asia, working for Joyce Chen. Good luck, we love you!
Sound solution to the pistachio problem Grab a handful of pistachio nuts and you will usually find several with shells that are closed so tightly they cannot be eaten. But soon you might be able to enjoy the snack without this frustration. A gadget that listens to the distinctive pings made by nuts when they bounce off a surface could help to sort open-shell nuts from uncrackable closed ones. Ripe, open-shelled pistachios, which fetch top dollar as a snack food, have to be separated from sealed unripe ones, which are normally shelled mechanically for use in ice cream or cake mixes. But the spinning drums that producers use to do this are less than perfect. The inside of each drum has thousands of needles designed to catch on the open lips of ripe shells. Closed nuts end up in your nut bowl because sometimes they are speared too.
Blasted off
Now Tom Pearson, an engineer at the US Agricultural Research Service in Manhattan, Kansas, US, thinks he has the answer. He developed a sound-based sorter after noticing the different noises the two types of nut made when they struck the ground. “I could pick the types out perfectly without looking,” he says. Pearson’s machine drops 25 nuts per second onto a steel plate, where a microphone picks up the impact sound they make. Signal-processing software detects the shorter ping of a closed-shell nut, and opens an air valve to blast it off the line. While not as fast as the needle picker, the sound sorter is cheaper to maintain and up to 97% accurate – against the needle sorter’s 90%. Geoff Gibbons of Setton Pistachio, California, is testing five sound sorters in tandem with his needle pickers. He estimates the machine will save the company $500,000 a year, and lot of frustrated customers.
Record haul of fake Lego to go up in smoke
HELSINKI: More than 10 tonnes of Chinese-made plastic toy bricks will go up in smoke when the largest customs haul of illegal imitation Legos ever seized is incinerated, a Finnish customs official says.
The bricks were crushed on Thursday and will be burned later to produce energy for the southern Finnish town of Lahti, the customs officer said on Friday. Scandinavian environmentalists shouldn't worry: no toxins were found in the toys. The phoney Legos, totalling more than 54,500 fake sets, were seized by Finnish customs last year en route to Russia, said the Danish company that makes the genuine toys.
Friday, November 19. 2004
Thursday, November 18. 2004
" style="display: inline; vertical-align: bottom;" />" style="display: inline; vertical-align: bottom;" />;"> " style="display: inline; vertical-align: bottom;" />" style="display: inline; vertical-align: bottom;" />;">Sunny The Swearing Royal Navy Parrot Goes Back to Sea
By Chris Court, PA
Sunny, the swearing Royal Navy parrot, has rejoined her shipmates on a warship after seven months ashore, it emerged today.
The African Grey – currently the only serving parrot in the Navy – had to leave Type 23 frigate HMS Lancaster while she was undergoing a refit in Plymouth, Devon.
Sunny, whose service number is RN Parrot No.1, has now resumed her place in the wardroom among the officers.
Her keeper, Lieutenant Mari Duffy said today: “With the return of Sunny the parrot to HMS Lancaster the ship’s company now feels complete.”
Sunny became famous in March when she met the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh at Portsmouth Naval base.
At the time the ship’s company were worried about her squawking expletives when meeting the Royal couple.
But Sunny did not let them down and kept a civil tongue.
The warship’s crew was concerned because during a Middle East tour Sunny let loose a string of four letter words during a visit by Navy top brass – audible despite her being hidden in a broom cupboard.
Her volley of abuse was overheard by the fleet’ s Commander-in-Chief, Admiral Sir Alan West but he ignored her and carried on briefing the crew in the mess.
Sunny’s colourful language has become familiar aboard the frigate her vocabulary includes “b******s” and “arse”.
Among her other phrases are “You ain’t seen me, right” and “Zulus, thousands of ’em”.
HMS Lancaster is currently undergoing sea trials after completing a refit in Plymouth.
She is due to begin sea training in January next year and is scheduled to sail home to Portsmouth in March.
Click here for Sunny's Royal Navy Webpage
A meteor is coming and we're all going to die: teacher tells pupils
LONDON (AFP) - A schoolteacher, attempting to motivate her pupils into making the most of each day, told them a meteorite was about to smash into the Earth and that they should all return home to say goodbye to their families. The teacher at the high school in Manchester, only realised her lecture was misjudged when many of the assembled teenagers started crying, The Sun newspaper said Friday.
The unnamed female teacher made the announcement to around 250 pupils at St Matthew's Roman Catholic High School during their regular morning assembly.
Saying she had bad news, the teacher announced that a meteor would strike the Earth in 10 days' time, and that they should return home and say their "final farewells" to their parents.
After the crowd of 13- and 14-year-olds looked on in horror, and many burst into tears, the teacher swiftly explained that she was only trying to encourage them to "seize the day".
"Some of the children were 100 percent convinced they were going to die," the father of one child told the paper.
"God only knows what this teacher thought she was doing." Yahoo News
Wednesday, November 17. 2004
Bruce Friedrich, left, and Karin Robertson, right, are seen in a Nov. 12, 2004 photo at PETA headquarters in Norfolk, Va. The two are heading a PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) campaign against eating fish. Animal-rights activists have launched a novel campaign arguing that fish are intelligent, sensitive animals no more deserving of being eaten than a pet dog or cat. Associated Press photo by Gary C. Knapp Sympathy for the guppy: PETA campaign pitches fish as smart and sensitive
Brought to you by the SFGate. Home of All Lame Ass Causes.
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Tuesday, November 9. 2004
Friday, November 5. 2004
Eco-Friendly Disc Stores Data on Corn Nov. 4, 2004 — Giving a new meaning to the term grassroots music, Pioneer Corp. said Thursday it had developed a next-generation disc made of corn to let the eco-conscious consumer dispose of data in the soil. The Japanese electronics maker said the Blu-ray optical disc, which can be written once and stores 25 gigabytes of data, is 87 percent natural polymer derived from corn and biodegrades. "If the starch polymer is incinerated, it will not emit dioxins and any other harmful chemicals," the company said. While the disc can theoretically be eaten, it is coated by a 0.1-millimeter (0.004-inch) thick layer of resin and is too hard for even the strongest teeth. Pioneer has yet to decide when to market the disc. Earlier this year, Sony Corp. and another Japanese company, Toppan Printing, said they had developed a paper disc that can be destroyed with scissors for fool-proof data security. Picture: AFP/Yoshikazu Tsuno | The Disc and Its Ingredient Japanese electronics giant Pioneer researcher Tasuo Hosoda displays a prototype model of a blue-ray disc made of corn starch polymer. Discovery
Thursday, November 4. 2004
Man In Wet Suit Storms Governors Island Nov 3, 2004 6:44 am US/Eastern
NEW YORK An emotionally disturbed man in a wet suit tried to seize Governors Island by hoisting a pirate's flag. The incident caused a massive response by the U-S Coast Guard and New York City police.
Police arrested 41-year-old David Nash of Amherst, Virginia. The New York Daily News says Nash told police he swam to the island - although police said he did not have an oxygen tank or mask and his wet suit was dry.
The newspaper says Nash claimed he was trying to seize Governors Island for the Blue Tulip Party, a political organization he started.
Police took him to Bellevue Hospital for a psychiatric evaluation.
Workers on Governors Island saw Nash raising a pirate flag at 6:40 yesterday morning and they called the Coast Guard.
Nash's mother, Pat, in Amherst told The News that her son suffered from psychological problems. She says he was in New York to sight see. Nash said he was a presidential candidate in 2000, running for the Blue Tulip Party.
Tuesday, November 2. 2004
A former Russian nuclear scientist has handed over to police eight containers of plutonium-238 he had stored at home for eight years. The 400g (14oz) of plutonium-238 - a highly radioactive compound - came from a disused laboratory in Siberia. Former employee Leonid Grigorov said he removed the containers for safekeeping after the lab was looted and stored them in a lead case, Russian media say. He may face criminal proceedings, Russia's Itar-Tass news agency says. A spokesman for Russia's Atomic Energy Agency (Rosatom), Nikolay Shingaryov, insisted that "this is not weapons-grade plutonium, but an isotope widely used in various instruments". Counter-terrorism experts have repeatedly warned that radioactive material from decrepit Soviet-era installations could fall into the hands of militants. 'Morally right' Mr Grigorov is quoted as saying he had written letters to his former bosses warning of the risk posed by radioactive material left in the laboratory in Zmeinogorsk, which was abandoned and looted after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. When his letters failed to elicit a response, Mr Grigorov says he was obliged to remove the material himself "to prevent anything bad from happening". He says he took the plutonium from his garage to the local police, in response to a newspaper advertisement announcing a cash reward for surrendering weapons. (Note From Salty: This is my favorite part, I mean imagine the expression on the face of the desk clerk when "Crazy Ivan" dumps off 14oz of Plutonium. Marty today we go back to the future!!!"
Zmeinogorsk police are quoted as saying Mr Grigorov was morally right to have hidden the hazardous material but he may nonetheless face criminal charges. Itar-Tass said a legal case had been brought against the physicist for "illegal storage of radioactive substances". Plutonium-238 can be used with ordinary explosives to make a "dirty bomb", potentially contaminating a large area with radiation. Source: BBC News
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