Somebody clean up the Gliese 667 page, please - I've dropped a link there to http://news.ucsc.edu/2012/02/habitable-planet.html]the press release about the Earthlike planet in the goldilocks zone that folks at UCSC just found around Gliese 667 C.

(On second thought, perhaps Gliese 667 C should have its own page, much like Proximan Centauri has a page separate from the rest of Alpha Centauri and for the same astronomical reason.)

At the moment, nobody's claimed that system as an exploration destination. It's a bit farther from Sol than Delta Pavonis or Gliese 581, but closer than Zeta Tucanae... Any takers?
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

Or, "Doug is very glad that this is a capella".
This song, by the very skilled (and now amicably disbanded) trio Artisan, dates from 1993 at the very most recent. Link to the album page, which has a link to an mp3 of the song.

Quote:Said the Man, I made God in my image,
And I made the world that you see.
Like the god that I am, I will do what I can,
I can do what I want when I please.
CHORUS:
And the rainbow never came
As the sun beat on the land;
And the dove flying high simply died in the sky,
When the Man who was God raised his hand.
Said the Man, I'm the wisest of creatures,
The ruler of all I survey.
I will twist, I will change, all my world rearrange;
In my Garden of Eden I'll play.
CHORUS
Said the Man, I give life and I take it;
I own the Earth and the Sea;
With a wave of my hand I can clear all this land
'Til the only one left will be be me.
CHORUS
Said the Man, I control every creature,
And their futures I hold in my hand;
I'm a god, I'm a King, I can do anything,
For no-one can stop what I've planned.
I need no idol to worship!
I worship the Progress I make!
When I tear down the Old, build Tomorrow in gold,
I will take, I will fake, I will break.
CHORUS
Cried the God, I made you in My image;
You harnessed the Earth I designed;
With the power you employed, all My work you destroyed;
I'll wipe you and your world from my mind.
CHORUS

Remember ACTA? Well they are already busy with version 2.0 and I have not yet found the leaked text of this agreement. Can anyone help find the (presumably top secret) draft text so that we can do a public assessment on how this one is going to turn out?

more info: http://arstechnica.com/te...his-weekin-hollywood.ars
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

Don Cornelius, creator of the TV music show Soul Train, died earlier today, from a (apparently self-inflicted) gunshot wound.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2012/ ... -obit.html]CBC News story

Because of his show, people across North America heard of performers such as Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Barry White and Earth, Wind and Fire...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

I am working on the second ESA/JAXA story at the moment, that will continue the story started with the Thor Heyerdahl.

Without spoiling too much, ESA/JAXA want to build up a station in close orbit around Saturn. At the moment I would put this station into the little moon Pan, a ~ 30km block of ice within the rings of Saturn. The ice would make a good shielding (and help to keep the supply of air and water), and its easy to "cut" without handwaved tools (at least as long as you have a fusion reactor for energy).

I know that the rings of Saturn are "tabu" for any kind of ice mining, but would this also prevent a station on this moon? Its not that they are planning to carry the water away, so it should be no danger for the rings.

So, about two and a half weeks ago I come down with a hell of a sinus infection that takes me ten days of antibiotics to shake.  Three days after I catch it, Peggy catches it, too.  We both miss two days of work.  Peggy's barely over it when Saturday night she gets hit with a nasty stomach bug that gets her both coming and going; worse, it starts at 3 in the morning and keeps going for 12 or 15  hours.  Needless to say, neither of us got any sleep that night.  

So on Sunday, while I'm trying to keep her warm and comfortable, the furnace dies on us.  No problem, I have a repair service that works 24/7 with a 2-hour response time.  Except when the guy gets here, he doesn't have the right part to fix the furnace.  It's a standard part, but our furnace uses a proprietary version that's just ever so slightly the wrong size, so the part  he has is too big and shorts out against the mounting brackets.  No fix until the next day when he can get to a supplier and get the right part.  

So as the temperature drops to 24 outside, we bundle up and leave every light and electronic device in the house on.   Surprisingly, that works, and it's still like 64 F in the house when we get up at 5:30.  Why 5:30?  Because despite being sick, Peggy has to go to work because of a quarterly departmental meeting, the preparations for month-end, and a few other things she can't do over the VPN and laptop she just got from her job because she needs to physically go to several people and get signatures and whatnot.  However, taking care of Peggy the night before and making sure she had everything for the bland diet her stomach bug requires keeps me up until after midnight.  So for the second night in a row, insufficient sleep.

Oh, and do I need to say I need to take another day off from work, the third in two weeks, to hang around for the repair guy?

So I get her to work, and wait in a slowly cooling house for the tech.  That's not so bad, I played a lot of City of Heroes.  But the initial time the tech is supposed to be there is too early for me to crawl back into bed and catch up on my sleep.  So while I'm half awake at the keyboard, I wait.  And wait.  And wait.  And finally the tech shows at 1:15 PM.  Apparently it took him three different suppliers and five calls to find anyone who had one of these parts in stock.  But yay hooray, one does, and he gets it, and gets back over to our place.  Within half an hour, the house is warming up again.  

Then I have to pay for it.  I was about to start buying parts for my new computer this weekend.  Not any more, not with an almost $500 repair bill for the furnace.

A few hours later, Peggy gets home, looking more miserable than she did when I dropped her off at work.

And I have a dentist's appointment after that.

But I get to bed at a decent hour -- not as early as I'd've liked, but before midnight at least.

Now if only Peggy hadn't had to get up and down all night long again, and if only I hadn't woken at 1 in the morning to find my mind racing like I'd taken Sudafed.  I could not for the life of me sleep last night -- my mind was stuck on an endless loop of several thoughts and images, and I couldn't shake it, and I couldn't drop off.  I essentially spent every few minutes between 1 and 5:30 closing my eyes, trying to sleep, blitzing through the images, thinking I'd gotten to sleep, "waking up", and looking at the clock to see that if I'd slept at all, it was for at most a minute.

So I get Peggy up and ready to work, stumble through my morning routine, and drive off -- very carefully, fortified by a big cup of coffee -- to take her to her  job and then head to mine.  During which I develop a number of sensations and symptoms that make me think I now have Peggy's stomach bug -- I haven't started on the worst of her symptoms yet, but it feels like it's only a matter of time.

And then my machine at work throws me a BSOD while I'm trying to write the first version of this post.  

Gah.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

You know, I generally try to be strictly neutral in most matters. It actually takes more guts to say "I have considered both sides and I am neither for nor against...[XYZ]" then to hope issues go away or pick a side...
but
Let me just say this: even given the mess we have going on over here at the moment (Don't ask), I am sure glad I'm over here in Australia, and not over there in USA.
Where do I begin...
SOPA. (Not going there.)
Twitter Censorship. (Not touching that one either)
Double dip rescission. (Meanwhile, while Aussie land had a slowdown, we ended up without much of a problem.)
Sub prime mortgage crunch.
"Obma-care" (We have this little thing called Medicare. It works. ... Mostly. Public Health for all. It isn't perfect but that's what Private health funds are for.)
The whole Occupy movement thing. (Both sides are right, both sides are wrong. There is the Freedom of Expression, The Freedom to Assemble, Freedom to Peaceful Assembly, but also the Right of Law Enforcement, and the rights of others such as Bystanders and Public Safety, take only one away and we get on very slippy and dangerous ground.)
Twitter being Subpoenaed. Link
Enemy Expatriation Act - Wiki link - Not yet gone through but give it time.
And then this: Cops comment attacking Internet hackers drawers anger, criticism. I spent the evening watching various parts of the net melt - mostly Twitter and various Facebook pages.
and the list goes on and on...
Sure... I know Everything is trying to kill me in Australia, and its a pest to get anything decent, and we're in the future, but at least it makes sense down here!

You mess with the frog, the get the pig.

 So as per last couple of weeks I'll be trying to form a team for Eden run(s) tomorrow evening starting around 7 PM Mountain time 9 Eastern time.
Come. Hunt. Smash Titan.

Which is more offense versus defense, do you think, a tiger or eastern dragon? I'm chewing on a combiner design using turtle, crane, tiger, and dragon, and the latter two form the arms. Still not sure what to do to keep the sentai pilots from being an even number, though - maybe have an independent robo that isn't part of the gattai, or forms arm/leg/chestplate armor parts, or who is a multi-shapchanger and becomes various weapons for it to use. Anyway, I'm waffling over which arm should be on which side, leaning slightly to red/dragon right and yellow/tiger left, crane being white/blue head and wings and turtle being green chestplate and legs, and having the most solid transformation of the set so far.

- CD

Thread edit: turning most of the images into links rather than inline
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows