REGISTER TO VOTE

If you haven't already done so, REGISTER TO VOTE! I don't care who you vote for, but, dammit, get off your ass, register, and vote. It is your privilege and your obligation. There can be no change unless we move to make change. There can be no progress. There can be no regress.

harangue

from Dictionary.com

harangue \huh-RANG\, noun:
1. A speech addressed to a large public assembly.
2. A noisy or pompous speech; a rant.

transitive verb:
To deliver a harangue to; to address by a harangue.

intransitive verb:
To make a harangue; to declaim.

Harangue derives from Medieval French arenge, from Old Italian aringa, from aringare, "to speak in public," from aringo, "a public place for horse racing and popular assemblies," ultimately of Germanic origin

See post above this one for my harangue of the day.

FoxTrot by Bill Amend

News coverage at its finest.

(If the title link has gone out of date, click here for the saved image.)

Yahoo! News - 'Miraculous' Christ Washes Up in Texas Rio Grande

MONTERREY, Mexico (Reuters) - A fiberglass statue of Christ that washed up on a sandbar in the Rio Grande three weeks ago is attracting scores of devout pilgrims to a police department lost-and-found and being hailed as a miracle.


Police in Eagle Pass, Texas, said up to 40 people a day are coming to pay homage to the five-foot-tall figurine, known as "The Christ of the Undocumented," which was found by U.S. Border Patrol agents in the river.


"Some come to pray, and some come and just touch it," police lieutenant Daniel Morales said by telephone on Monday. "We have never experienced anything like this before, and interest is growing by the day."


The border city, which lies opposite Piedras Negras in northern Mexico, has a large Mexican community. Many arrived illegally by way of the river, and most are devout Roman Catholics.


Morales said the life-like statuette, which turned up without a crucifix base, would probably be given to a church in the border city if no-one came forward to claim it within 90 days.


Local Catholic Church authorities called the figure's arrival "miraculous" and said they wanted to place it in a specially dedicated chapel in the city.


"Jesus Christ manifests himself in many places, but he showed himself here in the way of an undocumented migrant," said Marta Ramirez, a spokeswoman for the city's Our Lady of Refuge Church.


"We think it's appropriate to place it in a special chapel."

Am I to take it this statue is now a symbol for illegal aliens to step up their efforts to get into the U.S. since a plastic Jesus accomplished the act?

BBC NEWS | Health | Herbal remedies 'do work'

Scientific tests on a range of traditional remedies have shown they have "real benefits", researchers say.

Experts from King's College London said the treatments from around the world had properties which may help treat conditions such as diabetes and cancer.

National Geographic Photo of the Day: Mountain Lion

I love the National Geographic Photo of the Day. I check it out every morning. If I really like the picture, it becomes my desktop wallpaper.

I like the site so much I've added a link on the left. There's nothing like a new view every morning.

Geek Trivia: Low and behold

What celestial object emits the lowest frequency note ever detected, far below the low-frequency hum produced by Earth?

A black hole at the center of a galaxy in the Perseus Cluster is currently generating a deep B-flat note that's 57 octaves below a tuned middle C on a piano.

Put another way, the lowest frequency sound a human being can detect is 0.05 hertz, or a frequency of one-twentieth of a second. The Perseus Cluster black hole generates sound with a frequency of 10 million years. This represents the most sub-bass frequency ever detected.

To be precise, the black hole itself is silent, but the stellar gases pulled into the gravitational well of the black hole are not. As the gas falls toward the black hole's event horizon, it accelerates to velocities approaching the speed of light. This acceleration creates turbulence, which in turn generates light, heat, and, within the medium of the gas, sound.

Of course, space being a near total vacuum (and the black hole being 250 million light years away), the sound of the black hole hasn't actually reached Earth. British astronomers discovered it using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory while trying to analyze the formation of galactic clusters such as Perseus.

The black hole in question is unusually energetic, emitting a significant amount of X-ray radiation, which scientists used to model the thermal and kinetic activity of the matter pulled into the black hole.

This modeling revealed the sonic tone induced by the black hole, which could help explain why galactic gas clusters stay warm, rather than cooling and collapsing. Massive celestial objects such as black holes are "ringing" the gas clusters, which keep them energized and hot, leading to some of the specific star formation behavior that scientists had previously been unable to explain. Now that sounds like some great Geek Trivia.

Cat babble

I can't possibly let another day go by without some babble about my cats.

Mouse has become fascinated with the television set. She props her front paws on the screen and just watches and watches. Or she sits on the bookshelf next to the set and stretches her neck out to see the screen. I think what has her so fascinated is the reflection of things in the set. Heru and Rainbow were playing on the back of the sofa, running back and forth, and I could see Mouse tracking something that had nothing to do with the action of whatever was actually on TV. She's just too cute for words.

And the prodigal son called me this morning to tell me Heru has finally discovered the bliss that is rolling in catnip. Until today he'd shown no interest in it, just sniffing at it and walking off whenever the son put some down for the girls. But this morning he pounced on it and sneezed it and rolled in it. He's an even bigger catnip slut than Mouse and Rainbow are. He's too cute for words as well.

Still kind of blah

I'm back at work but I still feel very blah. I didn't get much sleep last night, only a couple of hours, so I'm very much running on empty. I've had coffee but it hasn't helped.

The company picnic is this Saturday. I will be receiving my 25 year award then. Can you imagine it? 25 years with the same company. Maybe that's why I'm so blah - time catching up with me. Or maybe that should be 'age' catching up with me.

Making Tracks on Mars :: Astrobiology Magazine :: Search for Life in the Universe

Summary (Sep 27, 2004): In a remarkable series of orbital pictures, the Mars Global Surveyor's cameras have imaged the tracks of the Spirit rover on the surface. Individual debris pieces including the backshell and lander are visible with remarkable clarity using an innovative roll of the satellite.

On being blah

I've gotten some kind of bug that has thrown me for a loop. The only time I seem to feel, well, not sick is when I'm asleep which is what I've been for the last two days. I have no interest in anything - not reading, not crocheting, not computer play, not watching TV. I'm just incredibly blah right now.

Basically, this is a warning in case I disappear for a day or two since I'm usually such a diligent poster.

Standards, my eye teeth

I've been playing around with style sheets and I am happy to report there is no such thing as a standard when it comes to how browsers interpret styles. I've only IE and two of the Mozilla based browsers loaded on my computer, but sheesh . . . Trying to make a three column layout with fixed header and footer band just about ate my lunch. Tables may be passé but style sheets are a pain.

Mouse all over the house

I'm glad to report Miss Mouse has finally achieved recovery from her trip to the vet. She and Heru spent a good portion of last night chasing each other round and round and round and round the house. She chased him and pounced. He chased her and pounced. Over and over and over. They even felt it necessary to run over me while I was watching whatever it was on TV. (The only thing I actually remember watching on TV last night was Joan of Arcadia - which was very depressing - even though the TV was on for hours last night and I was plugged into it. Obviously nothing else engaged the brain cells.)

Color SynthAxis

This is a nifty little color tool I stumbled across yesterday. I played with it a bit, after reading the English tutorial which I strongly recommend, and came up with a new color scheme for my blog. Unfortunately, my computer decided that I didn't really need time to write down all the lovely blue to green color numbers I came up with before it completely shut down and I lost it all. Boy, color me annoyed.

New links

I've added Such a Pretty Face to my reciprocity links and Epilogue to my general links.

And they say women are fickle

Well, Ivan has decided he'd rather visit Louisiana so all the storm and flood watches and warnings for our area have been lifted. It's possible we might get some rain tomorrow.

Magnolia seed pod

Tropical storm warning

Ivan is still heading in our direction. Storm and flood watches and warnings are up. I snapped these pictures of the clouds as they were rolling in just as the sun was starting to go down.

Work demons and other natter

There actually aren't any work demons, but I have been very busy at work trying to catch up from all the time I missed. I'm almost there.

I finally picked up my crocheting again last night. I actually finished the first skein of thread and started the second. Even though the lot numbers are the same, there is a slight variation in colour. I doubt it will be very noticeable when the curtain is hanging on the window.

Rainbow and Mouse are still doing well. Mouse has actually started playing with Heru and Rainbow, and she's stopped looking so gaunt since her appetite kicked in again. It won't be much longer before Heru is as big as the girls. I really hope his huge paws aren't an indication of how big he'll be when he stops growing. Now, if he'd just learn what NO yelled at the top of my lungs means. Life would be really good if he did.

And the prodigal son . . . Yesterday he got the front yard mowed before it started to rain and today he stared work on cleaning out the garage and he straightened the living room and started to clean the kitchen. And he opened the windows to air out the house. With the ceiling fans going, it's only about 80F. Not bad for September.

Gosh, life is good today. I'm going to go kick back and enjoy it.

Later, 'gators!

Scotsman.com News - International - Frozen sugar at centre of Milky Way

Frozen sugar at centre of Milky Way

RHIANNON EDWARD

ASTRONOMERS have found a cloud of frozen sugar near the centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way, it was revealed yesterday.

The discovery heightens the possibility of early building blocks of life originating in interstellar space.

Molecules of a simple sugar, glycolaldehyde, were detected in a cloud of gas and dust called Sagittarius B2 about 26,000 light years away.

Observations indicated large quantities of the sugar frozen to a temperature only a few degrees above absolute zero, the point at which all molecular movement stops.

Glycolaldehyde consists of two carbon atoms, two oxygen atoms and four hydrogen atoms.

This type of molecule is known as a two-carbon sugar. Significantly, it can react with a three-carbon sugar to produce the five-carbon sugar ribose - the molecule which forms the backbone of DNA.

The discovery adds to the growing evidence that the foundations of life can be traced to chemical reactions within interstellar clouds.

The clouds, which are often many light years across, provide the raw material from which new stars and planets are formed.

Radio astronomer Dr Jan Hollis, from the American space agency NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre in Green- belt, Maryland, said: "Many of the interstellar molecules discovered to date are the same kinds detected in laboratory experiments specifically designed to synthesise prebiotic molecules.

"This fact suggests a universal prebiotic chemistry."

Gravitational attraction causes lumps to form in interstellar clouds which eventually condense into stars and planets.

The process generates so much heat that any prebiotic molecules within the planetary lumps would probably be destroyed.

But the new findings show that life’s building blocks could exist in the frozen wastes beyond the planet-building zone of an embryonic solar system, where comets form.

A collision with a comet or a brush with a comet’s tail could then "seed" a young planet with the material needed to kick-start life.

The Green Bank Telescope which was used in the study is the world’s largest fully-steerable radio telescope. Its dish covers more than two acres of signal-collecting area.

Dr Philip Jewell, another member of the Green Bank team, said: "The large diameter and great precision of the telescope made this discovery possible, and also holds the promise of discovering additional new complex interstellar molecules."