blivet 2.0

• The original Indiana Jones: Otto Rahn and the temple of doom - Telegraph
  As Indiana Jones returns to our screens, John Preston looks at the Nazi archaeologist who inspired Spielberg’s hero, and finds a story more bizarre than anything the director could have dreamt of
  (tags: archaeology fanboy history movies entertainment)

[manually posted]

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I mean no slight for not linking earlier to Susan Kitchens’ own excellent coverage of the Phoenix Lander and, in fact, all things JPL and space-related.

This is via Emily’s post Phoenix: last press briefing of the day after the successful landing at the Planetary Society Blog:

False-color “postcard” from Phoenix
This image, one of the first captured by NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander, shows the vast plains of the northern polar region of Mars. The flat landscape is strewn with tiny pebbles and shows polygonal cracking, a pattern seen widely in Martian high latitudes and also observed in permafrost terrains on Earth. The polygonal cracking is believed to have resulted from seasonal freezing and thawing of surface ice.

Phoenix touched down on the Red Planet at 4:53 p.m. Pacific Time (7:53 Eastern Time), May 25, 2008, in an arctic region called Vastitas Borealis, at 68 degrees north latitude, 234 degrees east longitude.

This is an approximate-color image taken shortly after landing by the spacecraft’s Surface Stereo Imager, inferred from two color filters, a violet, 450-nanometer filter and an infrared, 750-nanometer filter.

Credit: NASA / JPL / U. Arizona

Today is the day for the Mars Phoenix Lander to land on Mars. These details are from Phil’s Bad Astronomy Blog.

The Mars Phoenix Lander will be touching down on the surface of Mars on Sunday at 23:53:52 Universal Time (4:53 p.m. Pacific time). Of course, there will be lots of action leading up to that moment.

You can get live info from a few different sources.

For online video and such, your best bet is NASA TV. If you have it, The Science Channel is covering it live on TV. And if you want live blogging action, Emily’s your destination. She has a nice schedule on her blog of the whole thing. She’s also been doing some great blogging on the pre-landing press conferences, so she has all the info you want. And if you’re in the Tucson area, the Lunar and Planetary Institute Lab has a ton of stuff going on for the whole family.

[update:] Today’s APOD is all about Phoenix on Mars with lots of details, including NASA’s animation of the landing sequence.

Sixteen years ago today, my father died after a five-month battle with cancer.

Dad, I wish you were here… Sigh.

[edited]

This came over the e-mail transom earlier today. Perhaps you would be interested in this effort to improve high-speed Internet access in the United States.

Millions of Americans—especially in rural and low-income urban areas—don’t have high-speed Internet access. Millions more who have, what we in America call, “high-speed” Internet pay much more for slower speeds than people in Europe or Japan.

How fast is your Internet access? How does your speed compare nationwide and around the globe? Are you getting what your Internet provider says you’re paying for?

Take the Communications Workers of America Speed Matters test to find out:

www.speedmatters.org/wfn2008

Speed Matters is a public policy and awareness campaign to invest in our nation’s high-speed networks and close the digital divide. Testing your Internet connection speed is an important part of this campaign.

Last year, Speed Matters used tens of thousands of speed tests from people like you to develop a state-by-state report on Internet connection speed. USA Today featured the findings on its front page, reporting that the United States is falling far behind other industrialized nations in high-speed Internet access.

Thanks to the first report, state broadband initiatives were developed in Ohio, West Virginia, Tennessee, Washington State and elsewhere. It also was used to help convince the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to change its definition of high-speed Internet and to urge the U.S. Congress to adopt a national broadband policy, complete with a broadband map of America.

Speed Matters is getting ready to release its second annual speed test report this summer, and it needs as many people as possible to take the speed test.

You can help with the new report by taking the speed test:

www.speedmatters.org/wfn2008

With your help, the second report should make as big of a splash as the first one. Speed Matters is timing the release of the report with the Democratic and Republican national conventions to make sure high-speed Internet access is on both parties’ agendas.

In the 21st century, we all deserve access to quality, high-speed Internet. By taking the Speed Matters speed test, you can help make it happen.

Sincerely,

Working Families e-Activist Network, AFL-CIO

These are our results:

Today is my lovely wife’s birthday. We have lots of plans for her, including eating at a new restaurant.

Happy Birthday, Audrey!

• Many Eyes: IQ by state, US
  Eliot says: “A graphic data visualization. It would be interesting to superimpose the red state/blue state map over this one.” Too true.
  (tags: intelligence maps IQ visualization science mappingvia:eliot)

[hand posted]

Happy Birthday wishes go out to Martin Spernau. Another EditThisPage Mafioso…

• Great Old Broads for Wilderness
  is a national, grassroots nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing, preserving and protecting America’s roadless public lands. Today there are Broads of all ages and both genders in every state in the union making their voices heard to protect America’s last wild places.
  (tags: advocacy activism wilderness)

Check out these beautiful images of electrical discharge within the Chaitén eruption.

Thanks to Jeff Plaut at JPL for this. [via Audrey]