Rocknest: Awesome Martian Panorama...

This panorama was made from dozens of individual photos taken while Curiosity was parked at Rocknest.  It's been white-balanced so that colors appear as they would if viewed under the light we see on the Earth's surface (it's much redder light on Mars).  Click here to get the gigantic full-resolution JPG image, and here to see the NASA information about it.

Feds Shut Down Intrade...

Intrade is one of the two main online prediction markets in the U.S., used for many purposes but probably best-known for their election prediction market.  The other online prediction market is the Iowa Electronic Market, which I cited extensively in the recent election season.  Both of these markets have been operating for years without problems.  Now some soul-sucking Obama administration bureaucrat has decided they're so evil they must be shut down.

It's very weird to be sitting here watching my country death spiral...

Insanity in My Family...

Via my lovely niece Amber G., who attended our recent family reunion – and then saw this graphic, which resonated with her for some reason:

Fiona Apple's Dog...

Fiona Apple is a singer, one I'd never heard of before.  She recently canceled a tour, explaining herself to her fans with this letter:

It’s 6pm on Friday, and I’m writing to a few thousand friends I have not met yet. I’m writing to ask them to change our plans and meet a little while later.

Here’s the thing.

I have a dog, Janet, and she’s been ill for about 2 years now, as a tumor has been idling in her chest, growing ever so slowly. She’s almost 14 years old now. I got her when she was 4 months old. I was 21 then — an adult, officially — and she was my kid.

She is a pitbull, and was found in Echo Park, with a rope around her neck, and bites all over her ears and face.

She was the one the dogfighters use to puff up the confidence of the contenders.

She’s almost 14 and I’ve never seen her start a fight, or bite, or even growl, so I can understand why they chose her for that awful role. She’s a pacifist.

Janet has been the most consistent relationship of my adult life, and that is just a fact. We’ve lived in numerous houses, and joined a few makeshift families, but it’s always really been just the two of us.

She slept in bed with me, her head on the pillow, and she accepted my hysterical, tearful face into her chest, with her paws around me, every time I was heartbroken, or spirit-broken, or just lost, and as years went by, she let me take the role of her child, as I fell asleep, with her chin resting above my head.

She was under the piano when I wrote songs, barked any time I tried to record anything, and she was in the studio with me, all the time we recorded the last album.

The last time I came back from tour, she was spry as ever, and she’s used to me being gone for a few weeks, every 6 or 7 years.

She has Addison’s Disease, which makes it more dangerous for her to travel, since she needs regular injections of Cortisol, because she reacts to stress and excitement without the physiological tools which keep most of us from literally panicking to death.

Despite all this, she’s effortlessly joyful & playful, and only stopped acting like a puppy about 3 years ago. She is my best friend, and my mother, and my daughter, my benefactor, and she’s the one who taught me what love is.

I can’t come to South America. Not now. When I got back from the last leg of the US tour, there was a big, big difference.

She doesn’t even want to go for walks anymore.

I know that she’s not sad about aging or dying. Animals have a survival instinct, but a sense of mortality and vanity, they do not. That’s why they are so much more present than people.

But I know she is coming close to the time where she will stop being a dog, and start instead to be part of everything. She’ll be in the wind, and in the soil, and the snow, and in me, wherever I go.

I just can’t leave her now, please understand. If I go away again, I’m afraid she’ll die and I won’t have the honor of singing her to sleep, of escorting her out.

Sometimes it takes me 20 minutes just to decide what socks to wear to bed.

But this decision is instant.

These are the choices we make, which define us. I will not be the woman who puts her career ahead of love & friendship.

I am the woman who stays home, baking Tilapia for my dearest, oldest friend. And helps her be comfortable & comforted & safe & important.

Many of us these days, we dread the death of a loved one. It is the ugly truth of Life that keeps us feeling terrified & alone. I wish we could also appreciate the time that lies right beside the end of time. I know that I will feel the most overwhelming knowledge of her, and of her life and of my love for her, in the last moments.

I need to do my damnedest, to be there for that.

Because it will be the most beautiful, the most intense, the most enriching experience of life I’ve ever known.

When she dies.

So I am staying home, and I am listening to her snore and wheeze, and I am revelling in the swampiest, most awful breath that ever emanated from an angel. And I’m asking for your blessing.

I’ll be seeing you.

Love,
Fiona

That's a dog person.  My kind of dog person.  I don't really like her music (I listened to a couple of music videos), but who cares?

Via Rachel Lucas...

Curiosity: Scene from Gale Crater...

Curiosity is busy driving to its next research site.  The raw image feed seems to show mainly photos designed to help the navigation team find its way amongst the many hazards on the floor of Gale Crater.  Today's photo is just one of many downloaded from the Mast camera on Sol 107.  I liked the scene of hills through the dusty atmosphere...

Trees on Mars?

This photo was taken in April 2008 by the Mars Reconnaisance Observer (MRO) satellite.  It appears to show dark trees against the pink sand, but that's not at all what's happening here.  Check out this APOD post for details – and be sure to check out the links!

What a Female Engineer Does for Fun...

Take one female engineer, one who happens to be dissatisfied with her latest vibrator (of the “sex toy” variety).  Add a bent for hacking, ownership of a 3D printer, and the know-how to do all this.  What do you suppose you get?  She calls it “hacking her vagina”.  Some might call it the ultimate vibrator.  To any geek, male or female, it's a fascinating read – mostly written in the same dry, detailed style another geek might have written up something like a voice-controlled lamp dimmer.

One thing that occurred to me as I was reading her post: unless she is incredibly naive (and her style makes me doubt that), posting this article took quite a bit of courage.  Presumably Beth has a job, and colleagues...and most likely some of them read her blog.  That ought to make for some coffee room conversations that are a bit, er, racier than the usual variety!

Analytical Programming: Babbage...

Christian Hansen has posted the next installment of his excellent series on Babbage's calculating machines.  If you're a geek, it's a must-read...

Dr. Sowell: “We're Lost”...

Hearing someone of the wisdom and intellectual clarity of Dr. Sowell declaring that all is lost is most definitely...not comforting...

A Pile of Leaves...

This Is Getting Serious!

Via friend and neighbor Dick F.:

Look what happens when we cut down too many trees.

Global warming is one thing, but see below and look at what might happen if we continue to clear our forests!

We have to stop cutting down trees! This is getting serious!

The Typewriter...

Via my mom...

Some of my colleagues are young enough that they wouldn't recognize the manual typewriter being used.  There's a possibility they'd believe it was actually a musical instrument!

U.S. Post Office Tries to Get With It...

The U.S. Post Office (USPS) loses billions of dollars each year, and each year Congress agrees to allow taxpayers to cover that shortfall.  The tale behind how the USPS manages to “stay in business” is one of the great stories of dysfunctional government.  And now that paragon of inefficiency has decided to take advantage of an opportunity to leverage its vast, union-crippled, calamitously-managed assets: they're going to work with national retailers to let them provide same-day package delivery.

If the USPS were an ordinary business, unencumbered by union work rule problems and with competent management struggling to make a profit...then I might have some faith in a positive outcome.  Given the pathetic reality of the USPS, the only faith that I have is that they will bungle this opportunity in a spectacular fashion.  They will find a way to lose even more money, and we the taxpayers will bail them out once again.  Meanwhile, they will succeed in making it more difficult for some competent private sector organization to enter the business.

Unions: 1
Taxpayers: 0

Again.

Beautiful Free Icons...

Adam Whitcroft has open-sourced a collection of beautiful minimalist icons, scalable and suitable for web design.  There's an interesting backstory about why he made it free.  Basically, it boils down to this: he built the collection to see it used, not to make money.

Can You Decrypt This Message?

If so, the folks in the British intelligence agency GCHQ would like to hear from you – because so far, this recently found WWII pigeon-carried message has completely stumped them.

Even as recently as WWII it was common for secret messages to be sent via trained pigeons.  The message was rolled up tightly and put inside a small covered vial attached to the pigeon's leg...

Close Call?

This is kind of scary – some scientists think that a billion ton comet may have missed hitting the earth by just a few hundred kilometers, in 1883.  If it had hit the earth, that would have been called an “extinction event”.  Yikes!

A Tale of Two Bridges...

From Pieter Hintgens' blog:

Two old engineers were talking of their lives and boasting of their greatest projects. One of the engineers explained how he had designed the largest bridge ever made.

"We built it across a river gorge," he told his friend. "It was wide and deep. We spent two years studying the land, and choosing designs. Then we hired the best people and designed the bridge, which took another five years. We contracted the largest engineering firms to build the structures, the towers, the tollbooths, and the roads that would connect the bridge to the main highways. Under the road level we had trains, and a special path for cyclists. That bridge represented years of my life."

The second man reflected for a while, then spoke. "One evening me and a friend threw a rope across a gorge," he said. "Just a rope, tied to two trees. There were two villages, one at each side. At first, people pulled packages across that rope with a pulley and string. Then someone pulled across a second rope, and built a foot walk. It was dangerous, but the kids loved it. A group of men then rebuilt that, made it solid, and women started to cross, everyday, with their produce. A market grew up on one side of the bridge, and slowly that became a large town, since there was a lot of space for houses. The rope bridge got replaced with a wooden bridge, to allow horses and carts to cross. Then the town built a real stone bridge, with metal beams. Later, they replaced the stone part with steel, and today there's a suspension bridge standing in that same spot."

The first engineer was silent. "Funny thing," he said, "my bridge was demolished not long after it was built. Turns out it was built in the wrong place and no-one wanted to use it. Some bastard had thrown a rope across the gorge, a few miles further downstream, and that's where everyone went."

Before you build a product, make sure it's what your customers actually want. Good advice for any entrepreneur!

Quote of the Day...

From blogger Rachel Lucas, talking about her newly acquired dog Primo:

...a furry, cuddly little ball of Prozac...

And she's very thankful to have him.  Isn't that a great description of the effect our dogs have on us dog lovers?

Speaking of which...

I've been sleeping on our couch for the past couple of weeks, since Debbie injured her knee – I'm scared that I'll accidentally cause her some bad pain by moving that knee during the night.  I have a bed roll I lay out there, in the same room with our four dogs.  The dogs think this is the greatest thing since sliced bread.  They love to curl up between my legs, along side me, or plopped right on my chest.  Any way they can be close is just fine with them, no matter how uncomfortable it looks to us.

Last night around 1 am I woke up, startled by some unexpected movement along my side.  One of our dogs (Race, the border collie) had somehow figured out how to get under the covers, and had joyfully snuggled in alongside me.  The moment I cracked my eyes open he started licking my face – great, big, sloppy dog kisses – and whimpering with happiness.  “Happy Thanksgiving!”, he seemed to be saying.

I can't imagine being without our dogs...

Curiosity: 3D Views...

Curiosity is doing some driving right now.  Here are two different 3D views of the terrain in front of it yesterday.  The top view is a blue/red anaglyph; the bottom is a stereoscopic pair.

Now Here's Something...

...that you don't see every day: an island was “undiscovered”!