blivet 2.0

Saw this note about a Zoom into Deep Space QuickTime over at Susan’s:

Here’s a cool QuickTime movie, a quasi visual warp speed over at HubbleSite: Zoom into Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys Ultra Deep Field. Even the low res is kinda high res (~21 MB). “My God, it’s full of stars.” Nope, Dave, it’s full of galaxies.

This is a truly amazing piece of video. Truly amazing.

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A very happy fifth weblog anniversary to Andrea!

If you’ve been reading this site for five years, thanks for your faithfulness! And if you only dropped by recently, thanks for reading (or looking at the photos or reading the travel journals or whatever it is you did!

I can’t believe we are having to have this discussion about Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General. Why isn’t this guy under indictment? (OK, I know why, but when will ‘the people’ awaken?)

Daily Kos :: No on Gonzales
With this nomination, we have arrived at a crossroads as a nation. Now is the time for all citizens of conscience to stand up and take responsibility for what the world saw, and, truly, much that we have not seen, at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. We oppose the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General of the United States, and we urge the Senate to reject him.

Count me in…

Jason says Firefox is pissing me off for a variety of reasons — all of which I have observed on this machine I am currently writing this on. I quit using Firefox about a month ago because of them and moved back to Mozilla 1.7.3. The problems with some Flash files continue in Moz too.

There are other things in Firefox that bug me. One is the behavior of the arrow keys. On a Mac, I expect pressing ‘up arrow’ to eventually take me to the start of, say, the form entry box, or the url bar. Firefox acts just like a windows box and stops in the top line without then moving to the start of the line. Plus, I distrust any Mac application that doesn’t use ⌘-Q to quit.

White House Cuts Hubble Servicing Mission from 2006 Budget Request

The White House has eliminated funding for a mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope from its 2006 budget request and directed NASA to focus solely on de-orbiting the popular spacecraft at the end of its life, according to government and industry sources.

But…

These same sources, however, said they had not ruled out that the White House and NASA might be canceling the Hubble servicing mission as the opening gambit in the annual struggle that goes on every budget year, fully expecting that Congress will add money to the agency’s budget over the course of the year to pay for a mission that has strong public support.

This administration … More distractions from their malfeasance … Messing with my space programs … Grrr.

later: I really must get out more. Susan noted this two days ago.

Both the BBC and CNN have noted that former Tonight Show host Johnny Carson has died.

Actually, he was the Tonight Show. I don’t know what runs in that time spot now. I have watched it and it’s not the Tonight Show.

To me, Johnny Carson was the god of late night comedy. I remember watching the show in black and white in the early 1960s. I saw George Carlin’s first appearance on that show where he did his ‘Hippie-dippy Weather Man’ skit. He was wearing a tuxedo, had no facial hair and short hair. But that pretty much describes the dress code for men on TV in those days. I remember seeing a very young Bill Cosby doing an abbreviated version of his ‘Noah’ skit. That was before his first comedy album came out, so perhaps he expanded the stand-up for the album.

Johnny had an ash tray on his desk back then and many of his guests also smoked on air. That’s what killed him. Emphysema.

“And so it has come to this. I am one of the lucky people in the world. I found something that I always wanted to do and I have enjoyed every single minute of it,” Carson said to close his final show. “I bid you a very heartfelt goodnight.”

Thank you, Mr. Carson. May you Rest in Peace.

In a followup to Monday’s post:

Opportunity Rover Finds an Iron Meteorite on Mars
The pitted, basketball-size object is mostly made of iron and nickel according to readings from spectrometers on the rover. Only a small fraction of the meteorites fallen on Earth are similarly metal-rich. Others are rockier. As an example, the meteorite that blasted the famous Meteor Crater in Arizona is similar in composition.

“This is a huge surprise, though maybe it shouldn’t have been,” said Dr. Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., principal investigator for the science instruments on Opportunity and its twin, Spirit.

The meteorite, dubbed “Heat Shield Rock,” sits near debris of Opportunity’s heat shield on the surface of Meridiani Planum, a cratered flatland that has been Opportunity’s home since the robot landed on Mars nearly one year ago.

Susan suggested I do this and I never got around to contacting Jason about his script. It is an understatement to call this a Godsend. Hopefully, my first blog will soon be here. Thank you, Jason!

PapaScott: Converting Manila to Movable Type
Jason Levine has now published his script for converting Manila to Movable Type (which can then be converted to anything else). He helped Susan convert 6 months ago (when I couldn’t), and I’m glad his recipe is now available for everyone.

No comment, except, ‘idiot.’

Las Vegas weatherman fired after on-air racial slur
KTNV-TV, Channel 13, fired weekend weather anchor Rob Blair on Sunday, a day after he made an on-air racial slur about Martin Luther King Jr.

Jim Prather, vice president and general manager of KTNV, said Blair “stumbled” during a weather update at 7:55 a.m. Saturday but added that “this kind of incident is not acceptable under any circumstances, and I’m truly sorry that this event occurred.”

Blair was delivering the extended forecast when he said, “For tomorrow, 60 degrees, Martin Luther Coon King Jr. Day, gonna see some temperatures in the mid-60s.”

About 20 minutes later, Blair told viewers at the ABC affiliate, “Apparently I accidentally said Martin Luther Kong Jr., which I apologize about – slip of the tongue.”

He offered a full apology during Saturday’s 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. newscasts.

At 6:11 p.m., co-anchor Christina Brown, who is black, announced, “Right now we want to pause for a program note. Rob?”

Blair, seated at the news desk with co-anchors Brown and Shawn Boyd, said, “On a weather report earlier this morning, I made an accidental slip of the tongue when talking about the Martin Luther King holiday, and what I said was interpreted by many viewers as highly offensive. For that I offer my deepest apology. I in no way intended to offend anyone. I’m very sorry.”

I saw this over at Digby’s:

On the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I have A Dream Speech” Bill Clinton gave the following unprepared speech. It was the most heartfelt speech I ever heard him give.

I had never heard or read this speech before. I highly recommend reading the speech and Digby’s comments, especially today…