Monday, May 2, 2011

Jupiter's Great Red Spot...

As you've never seen it before, in this photomosaic made of images from Voyager I.  From APOD, of course.

Supernova Remnant...

Man alive – I sure wouldn't want to be in the neighborhood when that thing exploded!  From APOD, of course.

The Best Case...

...for the Obama Presidency is a Jimmy Carter rerun.  Glenn Reynolds (aka the Instapundit) makes a persuasive, if depressing, case for the way we'll view Obama's presidency after he's gone...

Children in Sacremento...

I'm speaking of our legislators, of course.  The Democrats, petulant that they can't get the Republicans to vote for increased taxes, threaten to cut expenses: in the Repulican's districts!

Are there any adults in the room up there?

Wartime Golf Rules...

For a golf course in Richmond, England.  This down is just east of London, and it happens to be where my company has its London offices.  These rules were instituted during World War II, while England was regularly being attacked by German planes and missiles...


It's very hard to imagine this happening today, isn't it?

Flight Data Recorder Found...

Air France Flight 447 went down off the coast of Brazil almost two years ago.  Yesterday robotic submersibles found and recovered the memory unit from its flight data recorder.  Investigators are very hopeful that with this data they will be able to reconstruct exactly what caused the accident.  To date there is one main suspect (iced over pitot tubes) and several other possibilities.  We wish them good fortune in their search...

They Got Him!

Osama bin Laden is dead.  Killed by U.S. Navy Seals at a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan (look for the “A” on the map) – which is over 100 km from the Afghanistan border, and even further from the mountainous border area where he was rumored to be staying.

I'm sure more details will emerge about the operation.  Several helicopters and a couple dozen U.S. personnel were involved.  No U.S. personnel were injured or killed.  Our forces “took custody” of bin Laden's body, then buried it at sea (apparently to stay within the Islamic custom of burying a body within 24 hours of death).

Here's the only thing that really matters: the mastermind of 9/11 is dead.  Woot!