mj

There is a new empahsis on science and science education. It is part of the whole strategic effort, as the US is falling behind the rest of the world and has been for many years. I just heard this info about the budget in a meeting where there were people who would know. It could be that just the education/human resources divisions are getting the increase, but that is not what I recall being said.

Well, maybe things are beginning to look up for scientists. The National Science Foundation, a major source of funding for research, expects to have its budget doubled next year, if the politicians keep their word.

I do not care for Battlestar Galactica. I watched the first season, but stopped second season. Now the only time I see it is if I fall asleep watching the Scifi channel, and wake up and find it on, and fail to find the channel changer......

We can only hope.....

I do not recall ever showing ID when I vote in my state. I do not recall seeing anyone asked for ID.

My polling place changed only once when they widened a street, and moved the polling place because of construction. I don't know if they moved it back because I moved.

All my polling places in this state have been churches.

This year we had brand new electronic voting machines, which had paper records. And there was a little window where you could see it typing as you did the touchscreen thing. And it even recorded when you changed your mind. We had had electronic voting machines before, but these were even better!

Its always the same middle-aged to elderly people, mostly ladies, running the voting.

I always feel good taking part in the process, whether there are long lines, like in 2004, or not, like in 2006.

It may start with the US military, but soon every organization that employs stealth would have one, including those involved in industrial espionage.

I saw 'The Chronicles of Narnia' at the $2 theater, which meant it was already out on DVD.

I just rented 'Akeela and the Bee', and I do plan to rent the X-Men movie mentioned above.

Other. Ancient Ethiopia, because the Greek historian Herodotus called them the first civilized men. Also the pyramid builders of Egypt moved up from the south....precursors of Egyptian pyramids were found in Ethiopia.

Rare Meteorite Found in Kansas Field

By ROXANA HEGEMAN (Associated Press Writer)

From Associated Press

October 16, 2006 7:29 PM EDT

GREENSBURG, Kan. - Scientists located a rare meteorite in a Kansas wheat field thanks to new ground-penetrating radar technology that someday might be used on Mars.

 

The dig Monday was likely the most documented excavation yet of a meteorite find, with researchers painstakingly using brushes and hand tools to preserve evidence of the impact trail and to date the event of the meteorite strike. Soil samples also were bagged and tagged and organic material preserved for dating purposes.

 

Even before they had the meteorite out of the ground, the scientific experts at the site were able to debunk prevailing wisdom that the spectacular Brenham meteorite fall occurred 20,000 years ago. Its location in the Pleistocene epoch soil layer puts that date closer to 10,000 years ago.

 

"We know it is recent," said Carolyn Sumners, director of Astronomy at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, as she surveyed progress on the dig. "Native Americans could have seen it."

 

The scientific expedition of the meteorite-strewn field in western Kansas was put together by the Houston Museum of Natural Science and led by meteorite hunters Steve Arnold and Philip Mani. Johnson Space Center's Lunar and Planetary Institute, the Rice Space Institute at Rice University and George Observatory in Houston also sent researchers.

 

Fewer than 1 percent of the meteorites discovered on earth are pallasite meteorites, known for their crystals embedded in iron, Mani said.

 

Sophisticated metal detectors at the site initially detected what had been thought to be the largest pallasite meteorite ever discovered. But ground-penetrating radar showed that object to be a steel cable.

 

But with about a dozen potential targets on the site, the team still uncovered a sizable pallasite buried 4 feet under the ground and located a quarter of a mile from where Arnold and Mani found the world's largest pallasite meteorite a year ago.

 

The newest find weighs 154 lbs, which is bigger than most such meteorites but on par for this particular field, Arnold said.

 

"What is unique is not the size, but the fact it was found in context," said Patricia Reiff, director of the Rice Space Institute.

 

Researchers from various scientific disciplines documented every aspect of the dig. Among them were an archaeologist, a paleontologist, a naturalist, geologists, astronomers and even an animator who re-created the meteor fall for the museum.

 

But few garnered as much attention as Essam Heggy, planetary scientist at the Johnson Space Center's Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston. It was his ground-penetrating technology that pinpointed the site and proved for the first time that the technology could be used to find objects buried deep in the ground and to make an accurate three-dimensional image of them.

 

"It validates the technique so we can use something similar to that instrument when we go to Mars," Reiff said.

 

Such GPR systems had been used in the past to locate smaller meteorites in Antarctica where ice allows easier penetration of the sonar. But until the Kansas dig, the technology had not been successfully used for ground detection in heavy soils, like what might be encountered in Mars, to find meteorites or water there.

 

"When we find a piece of meteorite, each one is a new sentence we add to the book to understand the evolution of the solar system," Heggy said.

 

The Brenham field was discovered in 1882. Scientists have since traced pieces of the shower as far away as Indian mounds in Ohio, indicating the meteorites were traded as pieces of jewelry and ceremonial artifacts. The site was largely forgotten in recent decades until Arnold and Mani leased eight square miles of it and began looking deep below the surface.

 

More than 15,000 pounds of meteorites have been recovered from the Brenham fall, with about a third of them found by the two men in the past year, Mani said. About three dozen meteorites have been pulled from the field by their Brenham Meteorite Co.

 

This week's find will end up as part of a new exhibit on comets, meteors, and asteroids at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. The museum will pay about $50,000 for it, Sumners said. It is valued at more than $100,000, she said.

 

Under the lease agreement, the landowner and meteorite hunters split the proceeds of any finds, Mani said.

 

Landowner Alan Binford watched with interest as the scientists freed the meteorite, bagging clumps of his rich Kansas farmland around it.

 

"I didn't figure there would be that much scientific value," he said. "I never thought about them going to this extent. It is interesting history."

happily, I now own all three seasons......my first complete set! And it's my favorite of the Star Trek series.

It's nice to hear good news! Congratulations and best wishes!

I had the same result as Kor37. I continued to get the message that the new upgrades were downloading when I used a saved url. However I use a different browser, not AOL.

I decided to type in the address when I received two emails from the site, dated the 14th, ( and I did check yesterday using my saved url), so I knew it had to be back up.

I can't imagine how dung beetles can be finicky eaters..... :)

Best wishes to a talented actor.

What's it for? What's being talked about?

So I guess this is kind of a counterexample to the points made about social drinking and income in one of the threads on this page, especially about alcohol killing off the weak brain cells, leaving the strong ones and making one more intelligent.

I just read that in the thread about drinking and income. This guy with the panda.....that's what I tend to associate with alcohol...impaired judgement.

UPDATE:

 

Unfortunately, the launch was a dismal failure. The rocket failed to achieve sub-orbital height and went down in the desert. Oh well, when at first you don't succeed..............

Exactly right! Try, try again! They must.

We need to continue to explore the past as well as the future.

If Star Trek hadn't dreamed it up and made it so real, would science be pursuing it?

I think it is cool that any kind of teleportation process is even being studied.

I find such theories to be highly plausible. No one really wants to stay where they are...they want to explore. They want to take risks.

A lot of us here dream of space travel. Wouldn't ancient man find the sea, or vast tracks of uninhabited lands, just as inviting?

If China beats us out on this, they will be well on their way to becoming the #1 World Super Power.

Frankly, they're already on their way to becoming number one.

I don't want to get off-topic, but it is true that they are already on their way to being the # 1 super power, with India a close second.

But it is not because of who gets the hydrogen car first. It is because of who has planned ahead and educated their enormous populations for the future. China especially has made sure its enormous population is widely and deeply educated in science and math. They have produced more scientist and engineers than their current infrastructure can absorb, yet their infrastructure is expanding rapidly ( with the most modern plants that American and other industry can build)and will have a place for those who they have produced.

They have the advantage of the centralized decision makers ( and no real freedom.).

India also has overproduced scientists and engineers, but also have the rapidly expanding infrastructure to absorb them. India Institute of Technology is one of the best educational institutions in the world, and why?

Because the parents want their children to have a chance to get in, and have them studying from a very young age. becuase of the huge population, and the many who do not get in, they end up being excellent students in some of the top educational institutions in Europe and the US.

Yet I saw on Today show a group of American parents organizing against too much homework!

Because of our comparatively small population, we are already at a disadvantage in competing. But also here we have lost the vision for excellence, nor take on the repsonsibility to be excellent. We want as much as we can get putting forth as little effort as possible. I am talking about the average mindset.

I cannot pass on the joy of learning something challenging or difficult, just the basic joy of learning, to my students because of the current mindset.

In a democracy, unlike in a centralized totlitarian state, it is individual responsibility for doing a job well, and for being one's best. That is the vision we seem to have lost as a society. It is making us second rate.

Getting back to the car issue, I also hope that we continue to develop alternative fuel sources that use grains grown by American farmers. It does not hurt to have more than one alternative automobile.

I'm indifferent. I love TOS. It can't be made beter or worse to me for what it was to me during the pre-teen/early teen years of my life, the role models it gave me, and the hopeful future.

I guess I am one of a very few who did not watch him much, but all the same, I feel badly for his wife and children. Yet I know they can still grow and thrive in spite of the loss. It brings back the death of my sister at 38, who left behind a six year old son. He was raised lovingly by his father and stepmother, and is a wonderful young man now. Stever Irwin's children, while they won't have him physically, will have a record of his life that few children who loose a parent have. And they will be watched over not only by a loving mother, but by caring contrymen who admired their father.

Data's daughter.

 

nuff said

 

 

That was the sadest episode in history, it made me cry so hard!!!!

Those closing scenes are some of my all time favorites, a beautiful profession of familial love from the daughter.The special way that Data has to remember her, and then the expression on Data's face as he takes the helm. ( I think I saw a similar expression on Data's 'emotionless' face when Geordi and Rho turned up alive at their wake in a later episode.)

But one of my favorite Picard scenes is with Lursa and Bethor ( I may be spelling their names wrong) when they were serving Picard tea. At the end, with Picard's usual calm reserve, he tells the ladies that they have manipulated the circumstances with the skill of a Romulan, tells them when his decision will be made, and then says something like, 'Excellent tea."

The whole scene is fun in spite of the fact that some tricky politics is going on, especially when one of the sisters runs her fingers over Picard's bald head, and his calm expression slides into a frown. The other sister intervenes.

I liked Keiko as a character because she was one of few recurring female characters that was balancing a career and family. Dr. Crusher had Wesley, but since she did not have a husband, she really had things her own way.

I liked the way Miles gave her space to continue to do some of the things she needed to do stay current as a botanist.

I was not really creeped out by Evil Keiko, but found it interesting that Miles had to deal with the same thing Keiko had to deal with in a TNG episode when Miles, Data, and Troi were 'possessed' by disembodies criminals. There the possessed Miles threatened both Keieko and Molly, and even used Keiko as a hostage.