2003.05.27

Times of Oman: Internet will be back to best today.

"There are two submarine cables -- FLAG and SEA-ME-WE 3 -- which have been affected by the earthquake in Algieria.... The Internet services were down because the earthquake damaged the underwater/submarine cables in the Mediterranean Sea, which transmit services to a number of countries, including the Sultanate."

Natiional Geographic: First Picture of Earth From Mars.

"The camera aboard NASA's Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft currently orbiting the red planet photographed Earth, the moon and Jupiter, as seen in the evening sky of Mars, at 9 a.m. EDT, May 8, 2003."

Malin Space Science Systems: Mars Global Surveyor Mars Orbiter Camera.

Interview of hardcore Star Wars fans.

> Requires Windows Media Player.

2003.05.24

TechWeb News: Doing This Will Get You Spammed.

"... top 10 list of ways spammers find people."

2003.05.21

Houston Chronicle: $1 million in jewels lifted at Houston hotel.

" -- the fourth such robbery in the last few months."

2003.05.20

Time: The Oily Americans.

"For more than a half-century, American foreign policy dealing with oil has typically been manipulative and misguided, often both at the same time.... To illustrate the dark side of American oil policy, we offer two tales, stitched together from declassified government documents and oil-industry memos, involving a pair of Iraq's neighbors, Iran and Afghanistan."

Davenet: If you want to be in Google, you gotta be on the Web.

"The Times can't possibly be a factor in Google searches for the simple reason that the Times archive is not accessible to Google. It's behind a for-pay firewall."

2003.05.19

Technology Review: New Life For Undersea Fiber. Once the marvel of the telecom world, the first undersea fiber optic cables have reached the point of telecom obsolescence.

"The Washington-based Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS), a consortium of universities that collect seismic data to study the Earth’s interior, wants to adapt the working cables to serve sea-floor research stations.... With two-thirds of the planet under water, [says Rhett Butler of IRIS ], ‘we’re going to have to have sea-floor observatories.’"

2003.05.16

Email from a smart-ass --

Subject: Why the Americans don't get irony:

hummmm..........................

signed

the europeans

Sci-Fi Today: Journey To The Center of the Earth With A Nuclear Probe.

"David Stevenson of Caltech has suggested placing a nuclear-powered, grapefruit-sized probe into a crack in the Earth and have it ‘surf’ to the Earth's core on a ‘wave’ of molten iron poured in afterwards that would surround the probe."

ABC News: Going Deep.

"... scientists have already pointed out some critical flaws in Stevenon's core plan.... Stevenson, himself, concedes his idea is somewhat ‘outrageous.’"

2003.05.15

Space.com: Total Lunar Eclipse Coming May 15-16.

"The total phase of the eclipse will last 53 minutes beginning at 3:14 GMT on May 16, corresponding to 11:14 p.m. EDT on May 15, or 8:14 p.m. PDT."

Nature: Potassium heated Earth's core. Radioactive decay in molten core hints at early origin of geomagnetic field.

2003.05.14

The Lemon: The History of The Internet.

Scientific American: Neandertals Not among Our Ancestors, Study Suggests.

Scientific American: Like Fine Wine, Personality Improves with Age.

"The team found that conscientiousness increased with age, with the biggest jumps occurring among those individuals in their 20s. Agreeableness also climbed with age, largely among thirty-somethings."

2003.05.11

Science News: Image reveals [Andromeda] galaxy's violent past.

"The picture shows 300,000 individual stars in a portion of Andromeda's halo, a spherical cloud of stars that extends from the galaxy's center. The brightness and colors of these stars indicate that they range in age from 6 billion to 13 billion years. In contrast, the stars in the Milky Way's halo are almost all between 11 and 13 billion years of age."

Bomb Technician.

2003.05.09

AP: Typing Monkeys Don't Write Shakespeare.

"Eventually, monkeys Elmo, Gum, Heather, Holly, Mistletoe and Rowan produced five pages of text, composed primarily of the letter S."

2003.05.06

WSJ (subscription): Discovery of 'Asian Brown Cloud' Over Indian Ocean Sets Off Fight.

"... such clouds could blow thousands of miles, contributing to global warming and spreading harmful pollutants such as mercury and acid far from their point of origin." ...

"Indian officials, angry their country was fingered as a source of the pollution, say the findings are a ‘scientific fraud.’... Meanwhile, the cloud has injected some new thunderbolts into the rancor between the U.S. and developing nations over the causes of global warming."

Borowitz Report: Fearing flood of Democratic hopefuls, Iowa steps up border patrols.

"Jeff Creary, a raw recruit to the border force, speaks ruefully of the hundreds of vehicles he's stopped in the last week alone.... ‘It's real tough, because no one knows exactly what any of these guys look like,’ Mr. Creary says. ‘I watched the debate last Saturday in South Carolina and I still don't know.’"