Termination Shock: Voyager Funding To Be Cut, Probe to be Shut Down

From the Washington Post: In a cost-cutting move prompted by President Bush's moon-Mars initiative, NASA could summarily put an end to Voyager, the legendary 28-year mission that has sent a spacecraft farther from Earth than any object ever made by humans.

The probable October shutdown of a program that currently costs $4.2 million a year has caused consternation among scientists who have shepherded the twin Voyager probes on flybys of four planets and an epic journey to the frontier of interstellar space.

"There are no other plans to reach the edge of the solar system," said Stamatios Krimigis, a lead investigator for the project since before its launch in 1977. "Now we're getting all this new information, and here comes NASA saying, 'We want to pull the plug.' "

...The impulse for Voyager arose in the early 1970s because of space geometry, Krimigis said in a telephone interview. Every 175 years, the solar system's four major outer planets -- Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune -- are aligned in a way that one spacecraft can pass close to all four without carrying extra propellant.

From planetary.org: Some scientists -- including Voyagers' own -- were incredulous on hearing the news. "At first, I thought it must be a misunderstanding, because it couldn't possibly be true," Stamatios M. (Tom) Krimigis, principal investigator on the low energy charged particle instrument on board both spacecraft told The Planetary Society in an interview last week. "We're leaving the neighborhood, and Voyager is the first and only human-made object to cross this boundary. It's like Columbus seeing the shores of America and saying, 'Well, time to turn around and go home.'

Termination shock.

That'a what I've been experiencing in the wake of these recent developments. This fully reveals me as the giant nerd that I am, but truly, I have been very saddened by the news that ill-considered budget cuts may well prompt NASA to abandon a project which has been successfully returning useful and unique data back to earth since before I could brush my own teeth.

I've been reading and pondering and dreaming about this little spacecraft for years, and it's like this "redeem in 20 years" gift card of amazing ideas and discoveries I've been counting on for a long time. It is literally like a religious symbol in my mind, in terms of the awe it invokes. Like the powerful Catholic symbolism of my childhood, images of Voyager evoke a sense of pure, unspoiled wonder that I hope to keep hold of all of my life.

Shut it down? It's a mechanical witness still flying, eyes wide open, past the border of our solar system. A surrogate for human explorers, entering entirely unknown regions of space, still functioning. Still transmitting data. Encountering things outside our imaginations. Offering us a chance to have knowledge of things well outside our own collective human experience. Does that mean nothing? Is that not worth what amounts to a tiny fraction of a government's budget? $4.2 million a year to keep it going. Private citizens could afford that! It's absurd.

NASA's page about Voyager's adventures at the edge of the solar system.

Technical descriptions of Voyager at astronautix.com.

A thread on the subject at Uplink, a space science message board.

New Orleans Metroblog

An acquaintance of mine is a contributor to the New Orleans Metroblog, which is collecting reports of goings-on and coordinating communication efforts. Pass this link along to anyone who might find it useful.

A quote from a recent post:

Folks, please note: we at the New Orleans Metroblog are not emergency rescue personnel, we are not city officials (thank goddess), we are not with the Red Cross--hell, some of us may not even be legally sane. So, as much as we'd all like to respond to your queries about neighborhoods and loved ones, we don't have the resources. However, NOLA.com does:

• Click here for the Missing Persons forum.

• Click here for the Lost & Found forum (not exactly sure how it differs from the Missing Persons section, but whatever).

• And at the bottom of the NOLA.com front page, you'll find forums for each parish, plus special forums on the French Quarter (i.e. the Vieux Carre) and the Marigny/Bywater neighborhoods.

• WWL-TV has some useful info, too.

Sorry, but that's the best we can do. Trust me, you're not the only ones feeling confused or overwhelmed or frightened or anxious or angry or frustrated or...well, basically, anything but happy and content.

Ancient and Modern Man Lived Side by Side

(Women were, perhaps, in another settlement, baking Aurignacian pies.)

Did Neanderthals and the first ancestors of modern man ever meet? The argument has raged among archaeologists and paleontologists for decades.

Now a group of scientists claim to have proof -- based on radiocarbon dating of artefact finds in France -- that the two distinct groups did indeed share the same space at the same time some 38,000 years ago.

"These data strongly support the chronological coexistence -- and therefore potential demographic and cultural interactions -- between the last Neanderthal and the earliest anatomically and behaviourally modern human populations in western Europe," they wrote in the latest edition of the science journal Nature.

Some scientists have argued that Neanderthals and the first ancestors of modern man existed at the same time -- at least for a while -- but in different places, while others have argued that Neanderthals died out before modern man came along.

Others still have suggested that they not only met but may even have interbred.

The arguments have ebbed and flowed for generations -- fueled from time to time by new artefact finds, mainly from Kenya's Rift Valley.

But the team of scientists writing in Thursday's edition of Nature believe they may have settled the dispute with analysis of tools discovered at different depths in the cave of the Grotte des Fees at Chatelperron in central France.

In the cave a layer of tools from the later so-called Aurignacian culture -- named after Aurignac near Spain where they were first discovered -- were found sandwiched between two layers of tools attributed to earlier Neanderthals.

Scientists Decipher the Chimpanzee's DNA

(Picture is of "Clint," the chimp whose DNA was unraveled.)

Scientists have deciphered the DNA of the chimpanzee, the closest living relative of humankind, and made comprehensive comparisons with the human genetic blueprint. It's a step toward finding a biological answer to a key question: What makes us human?

There are no firm answers yet about how humans picked up key traits such as walking upright and developing complex language. But the work has produced a long list of DNA differences with the chimp and some hints about which ones might be crucial.

"We've got the catalog, now we just have to figure it out," said Dr. Robert Waterston of the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle. "It's not going to be one gene. It's going to be an accumulation of changes."

Officials Helpless Against Looters in New Orleans

Jesus. It's terrifying to see how quickly normal life and the rules of civilization fall apart. That tourist who described Canal Street as looking like downtown Baghdad may not have been too far off.

New Orleans' homeland security chief, Terry Ebbert, said looters were breaking into stores all over town and stealing guns. He said there are gangs of armed men moving around the city. At one point, officers stranded on the roof of a hotel were fired at by criminals on the street.

...

Staff members at Children's Hospital huddled with sick youngsters and waited in vain for help to arrive as looters tried to break through the locked door, Blanco spokeswoman Denise Bottcher told the newspaper. Neither the police nor the National Guard arrived.

...

On New Orleans' Canal Street, dozens of looters ripped open the steel gates on clothing and jewelry stores and grabbed merchandise. In Biloxi, Miss., people picked through casino slot machines for coins and ransacked other businesses. In some cases, the looting was in full view of police and National Guardsmen.

Why, Yes, I Do Post Too Many Kitty and Cute Animal-Related Things

(As well as too many animated GIFs, like I'm a preteen unicorn-loving rainbow scribbler.)

Since you asked, here's another one! I had to post this one because it looks remarkably like one of my cats, who had the same coloring and the same tendency to be easily annoyed. Cuthbert strutted around with an incredible sense of entitlement, and carried himself with such haughtiness that he may have been related to Gwyneth Paltrow. But boy, did I love his cranky self.

(There may be a problem with the animation: for those of you who are only seeing a still image, the animation has the cat drumming his toes impatiently and narrowing his eyes with disdain.)

Governor: Everyone Must Leave New Orleans

The official statement is chilling in its simplicity and directness: "Everyone must leave New Orleans."

I tend not to write directly about the day's headlines, but this one is really on my mind. New Orleans is being completely evacuated in the aftermath of Katrina, and the scale of the devastation is just mind-boggling. At least hundreds dead. At least a million without power or clean water, with many being evacuated to the Astrodome. (?!)

And of course we don't even have a final tally of deaths and losses, or a clear idea of what the cleanup and restoration problems will be. The scope of the suffering is staggering.

In 1718, French colonist Jean Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville ignored his engineers' warnings about the hazards of flooding and mapped a settlement in a pinch of swampland between the mouth of the Mississippi River, the Gulf of Mexico and a massive lake to the north.

Ever since, the water has sustained New Orleans and perpetually threatened it. Somehow, until this week, the mystique of the water had always washed away the foreboding of disaster, as if carrying the city's worries downstream. That was true even early Tuesday morning, when Hurricane Katrina's last-minute veer to the east convinced many residents they had once again eluded the Fates.

But when the rainfall brought by Katrina breached levees and overwhelmed the city's pumping stations, the catastrophic consequences of Bienville's miscalculation could no longer be ignored.

Anderson Cooper is a Stale Stand-Up Joke Come To Life

For the millionth time, American television media, you don't have to stand in the path of a hurricane to report on it for us. Take your rain slicker off and get the hell inside.

Envisat Sees Smoke from Portuguese Wildfires

Vector One has linked to ESA satellite imagery of the Portuguese wildfires and floods in Austria, Switzerland and Germany.

Future Moon Missions Will Change NASA Spaceport

U.S. astronauts will launch to the moon on sleek, single, shuttle booster rockets and the first new upper-stage rocket this country has developed in more than a decade, NASA and the Pentagon have told the White House.

Lunar landers and other gear needed for extended visits to the moon will be lofted by gargantuan launchers as big as the Apollo-era Saturn 5, the most powerful rockets ever flown.

The new moon rockets, cobbled together primarily from proven shuttle components, still will blast off from Kennedy Space Center. But the transition from the shuttle to moon missions will change the face of the Brevard County spaceport.

Landmark facilities such as the hangars where the orbiters are readied for flight likely will be shuttered as the orbiters retire in 2010. NASA no longer will need the KSC runway for shuttle landings or the factory where workers hand-craft heat-shielding tiles and blankets.

Small Satellite Tackles Big Biology Questions

If humans are to embark outward beyond low Earth orbit, research scientists are faced with a set of perplexing challenges. Chief among them is a better grasp of the biological effects that occur from exposure to the space environment—particularly from radiation and reduced gravity.

Data gleaned from ground and in-space studies can help create countermeasures to the injurious impacts from long-duration space stays on the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.

There are plenty of large problems out there to solve. And that’s where small satellite technology in the form of a GeneSat-1 might play a big role.

Another Palate Cleanser

Winner of the World's Ugliest Dog Contest

Yeah, I'd say this little fella is a shoo-in. He looks like a demon with those milky eyes and those scary teeth. Poor guy.

Which Plastic Man Would You Rather Make Out With?

The original smooth plasticine hunk, or,








His poorly-advised human imitator? (Yes, this man went to the plastic surgeon demanding to be made into a likeness of a Ken doll. He must also have asked to have his soul extracted and his personality removed, because he looks like there's no human being behind that face.)

Girl Fights NASA Over Gus Grissom's Suit

A 15-year-old girl with a Web site, a summer of free time and an astronaut for a hero is trying to solve a 3-year-old dispute over one of NASA's earliest space suits.

The family of pioneering astronaut Gus Grissom has been trying to get NASA to give them his 1961 Mercury space suit. NASA says the suit is government property and an artifact that should be kept at the Astronaut Hall of Fame in Florida.

Enter Amanda Meyer, space enthusiast and co-captain of her school's debate team. She believes she has a compromise and, after launching an Internet petition drive, has spent the summer writing and calling NASA, the Smithsonian Institution, Congress and anyone else she can think of.

Meyer says the government doesn't have to give up its claim to the suit but should loan it to the Gus Grissom Memorial, a museum in his hometown of Mitchell, Ind.

"I give decaf to customers who are RUDE to me."

Postsecret.

Dang.

Somehow I lost my browser's bookmark file. I had a ton of links to stuff I wanted to go back and write about. Uncool. Tremendously uncool.

Angelina and Zahara Jolie

(Second only to my my nanny baby,) Angelina Jolie's little Zahara is the cutest damn baby ever. Can't you just hear her giggle when you see that little smile on her face? Sweeeeet.

The Duff Sisters' Giant and Incalculably Tacky Portrait of Themselves

This Week's CraigsList Posting of Note

Does this seem like an unlikely barter choice? And which part is funnier, the "barely noticible stickiness" (ew) or the "will trade for Spider-Man comics?"

I have one pair of slightly used assless chaps, size 42. Perfect condition, barely noticible stickiness.

Will trade for Spider-Man comics or equivilant.

Amateur Pedestrian Hackery - C'est Moi

Web logs, or blogs, are made up largely of amateur punditry, pedestrian musings and partisan hackery.

Says who? Says the Washington Post. Like they ever wrote anything of worth.

Home From Work, Feeling a Little Puny

Monday morning I was involved in a minor hit-and-run accident while I was running items in a cab from work to a nearby hotel, where some colleagues were running a meeting. I had just sat down and closed the door when we were hit by a white van who attempted an illegal passing move, and then sped off. I hit my head and received a minor neck sprain but got good care from the docs at the Northwestern ER. Today at work I experienced some nausea from the meds and so am home now, sleeping off the ill effects. I need to remember to ask for something more gentle next time I need pain meds. What a wuss!

And I'm keeping some perspective, because as I was researching taxi accident rates, I came across an article describing a bad cab accident that former NBA player Manute Bol was involved in:

Some 76 days after the accident and still facing a long rehabilitation, Bol is not only broken but broke. He says he has no health insurance and is not eligible for his NBA pension until he is 45. He gave away an estimated $3.2 million to help his countrymen fight the Islamic government in Sudan, and he's not sorry he did. "I don't feel bad because I feel I saved some people by doing that," said Bol.Still, as he lies in bed, his mind wanders.

Poor guy.

Twice the Monkey, Twice the Fun

(Yes, I know, chimps are not monkeys. Nevertheless:)

Monkeys gamble. When given a choice between steady rewards and the chance for more, monkeys will gamble, a new study found.

And they'll keep taking risks as the stakes rise and dry spells get longer.

The research, in which scientists also pinpointed brain activity during the gambling, could provide insight into the human penchant for risk.

(In another study): Chimpanzee culture confirmed. Primate experts say they have proven that chimpanzees, like humans, show social conformity.

By training captive chimps to use tools in different ways, they have shown experimentally that primates develop cultural traditions through imitation. This has long been suspected from observations in the wild, but has not been shown directly.

It suggests that culture has ancient origins, scientists write in Nature.

Things I Appreciate/Enjoy About My New Home and Life (Part Two)

My health club, with pool, a few minutes' walk from my door.


A Thai restaurant, with kick-ass chicken satay, and crab rangoon, ditto.



A friendly doorman present 24 hours a day.


No car payment, no car insurance payment, no high gas prices, no license plate taxes, no parking tickets.

Museum of Bad Album Covers

Whoa.

Mick Jagger: Still Sexy, Even Half-Past Dead

Okay, I'm kind of lying. I never thought Mick Jagger was sexy, even before he started resembling the cryptkeeper. Anyway, the Rolling Stones are playing a show at Fenway Park. I think that's sweet. It's important for even the superannuated among us to keep busy and have a sense of purpose. My Grandma likes to knit potholders and read romance novels.

Said the Cashier at My Neighborhood Convenience Store:

Said five minutes ago, when I ran downstairs to snag some supplies, as my friendly cashier described the situation in the corner of the store:

"Only in Chicago would a Palestinian and an African be giving driving directions to a Chinese man."

On My DVD Player: Riding Giants

For those who can't get enough of point breaks and "shooting curls," Riding Giants offers a comprehensive look at the history of surfing, from its origins as a tiny subculture to the sport's resurgence and surfers' ongoing obsession with riding the "big one."

Random Phrases I Drop Into Conversation Are Revealed To Also Be Porn Titles

Recently I was having dinner with a friend who works in a video store. I related a story about a pleated skirt and an unexpected gust of wind. Embellishing my embarrassment, I gave an "I'm an idiot and stupid things happen" shrug of the shoulders and concluded with "So, (unknown man who works in my building), 'Welcome to my ass.'"

My friend laughed through a mouthful of chocolate chip pancakes and informed me that "Welcome to My Ass," is, indeed, a porn title she had restocked that very day. Ass-synchronicity. Porn-chronicity. Whatever. The universe is truly full of strange beauty.

Doormen Receive Terrorist Training

In the last year, about 6,000 doormen, superintendents and other workers at residential buildings have received four hours of training from police officers in the basics of terror-spotting, part of a nationwide trend by unions, trade groups and homeland-security agencies to beef up anti-terror defenses with citizens' brigades. A similar effort to train Chicago doormen began this year, and truck drivers, recreational boaters and school bus drivers are among the other groups signing up to keep watch.

Urban Girl Lesson of the Week

Kitten heels, low enough to be comfortable, high enough to be cute and cause the wearer to hop around in mincing, exaggeratedly feminine steps, are also the exact width between enough boards on the train platforms to be genuine hazards. Imagine: "click-click, click-click, click-click, STICK!"

Drawing Uncovered of "Nazi Nuke"

Historians working in Germany and the US claim to have found a 60-year-old diagram showing a Nazi nuclear bomb.

It is the only known drawing of a "nuke" made by Nazi experts and appears in a report held by a private archive.

The researchers who brought it to light say the drawing is a rough schematic and does not imply the Nazis built, or were close to building, an atomic bomb.

But a detail in the report hints some Nazi scientists may have been closer to that goal than was previously believed.

The Deceptive Nature of Firefly Love

New research finds that females of the firefly species Photinus ignitus choose males based on flash pattern in their taillights. A long burning flash means the male can offer a high quality nuptial gift – a sperm package high in nutrients.

"Females that receive high quality nuptial gifts lay lots more eggs," Tufts University firefly researcher Sara Lewis told LiveScience. "So there is a benefit for females that choose one of these males."

But males of a related species, Photinus greeni, may not be so honest. The greeni males with the most desirable flash pattern do not provide the best nuptial gift.

"The question now is whether the males are being purposely dishonest or signaling something else," Lewis said. "Females definitely notice the variation. They're still being choosey."

When Sex is Done, Female Fish Tune Out

Love may be blind, and once it's over, it can be deaf, too. At least that’s the case for certain female fish that appear to hear better when they are ready to reproduce.

The enhancement is tied to an increase in the fish-equivalent of estrogen.

A similar correlation may be at play in humans.

For Cute

...and to cleanse the palate from that Kathie Lee monster:

Why, God? Why?

Kathie Lee Gifford Returning to TV.

The Tara Reid Drinking Game

Even more fun than you think.

And Now...

I have been blog tweaking/doing laundry all day and I'm beat. Facedown in a piepan of kitten kibble, you might say. Goodnight.

A Happy Day in Dallas, 1963

I've been watching a documentary about the United States Secret Service, and of course I'm thinking about presidential history, and assassinations, and attempts on the lives of the presidents.

Like many Americans I have been exposed to the iconography of the Kennedy assassination for years, and of course we all know Jackie's pink suit and pillbox hat, and the shaking of hands at Love Field, and the Zapruder footage.

What I found myself drawn to last night while watching this footage was all of the clips from that day in November before the shootings occured. All of these people were so happy, and delighted, and thrilled, and excited. This dashing, young, hope-inspiring President was visiting their town, and they loved it. Before that terrible moment, it was the best day of their lives.

This still is taken from film taken by what must have been a news organization camera on a truck or car, swirling through the streets, in a pre-media saturated era when people saw a news camera and brightened at the sight, and waved and smiled and hoped they would see themselves on tv when Walter Cronkite appeared on the fuzzy black and white to tell us how things were. This still in particular is just so striking to me in terms of the incredible cheerfulness and joy on these people's faces. Have you ever seen six genuinely smiling faces together in a photo like that?

It's interesting to think what life in America might have been like if Kennedy had lived to finish out his term, and then served another. Those split seconds count for so much. With Reagan's shooting, he took a piece of bullet that ricocheted off the door of the car, yes, but then he dodged another one coming straight for him because of the instantaneous reaction of Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy, who did exactly what all of his training and refresher training had instructed him to do: spot the shooter, step between him and the President. The footage of that is amazing. This young intense man, watching all around him, seeing the danger, and instantaneously stepping right into it. He takes the impact of the shot, grabs his abdomen, spins as if being danced with, and crumbles. He lived. Reagan lived. What if Kennedy had?

We tend to romanticize what might have been, to bemoan the lost potential, to wax poetic about Camelot (which had never been mentioned before), but what if, by some unpredictably dark turn of events, Kennedy would have unintentionally caused great worldwide harm? Yes, I'm venturing into Harry Turtledove territory, science fiction of the alternative historical variety. What if, even after stepping up to Kruschev, keeping the lid on Vietnam, and averting the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy had somehow been fated for something far worse than a premature death?

When I look at pictures like the one above, I, like a lot of people, try to dream of the future we might have had, if Kennedy had returned home from Dallas and continued his life. Sometimes it is a better future, and sometimes it is much, much worse.

Children Are So Much Cuter Behind Glass

There Are People In The World Who Dress Worse Than I Do

The Hasselhoff Hypnocoin: If You Can Find a Sturdier Hypnocoin, You Buy It!

Don't stare too long. It will take your soul.