April 26, 2004

In all, since the first serious try in 1958 (USA's Pioneer 0), men have attempted 105 missions to the Moon, with two more slated in the next couple of years. There's a Timeline here.

More from NASA: 45 Moments in NASA History {Requires Flash}

Here's a pretty good list of Virtual Museum Pages

Go check out Banana Slug.

Do you want to be a Medical Detective?
A Medical Examiner?
A Coroner?

Here are Internet Resources for School Libraries.

Check out Phone-Spell. Mine is med-vast .

Superstitious? Who isn't? See here.

Beautiful Images of London

If you're fascinated with calendars, as I am, you should check out the Calendar Home Page.

Check out the Cardstacker galleries.

Police Humor from the Chicago P.D.

Any investigator into the world of the paranormal must cross paths with Nikola Tesla



Pfc. Hammer Finds a Home
A tiger-striped Iraqi kitten that wiggled its way into the hearts of a U.S. Army unit [H & HQ Co, 1st BN, 8th Inf Rgt 4th ID] has made its way to the United States, thanks to a host of volunteers and two animal welfare groups.
The Egyptian Mau now lives near Fort Carson, CO with the family of Staff Sgt. Rick Bousfield.
Cosmetics Queen Estee Lauder Dies at 97.
Estee Lauder, who started a kitchen business blending face creams and built it into a multimillion-dollar international cosmetics empire, has died. She was 97.

April 25, 2004

Check out the latest on the National Library of Medicine's Visible Human Project.
The National Library of Medicine's home page will have a new look on May 10. Here's a preview.
Over at the Library of Congress' American Memory site there'a great page dedicated to the History of Flight.
From the Library of Congress' American Memory pages, a very interesting site - The Civil War through a Child's Eye

April 22, 2004

Ice-cream season is approaching. And on April 30 the ice-cream cone will celebrate its 100th birthday.
Or it won't.
The International Association of Ice Cream Manufacturers credits Ernest Hamwi for inventing the cone. More on the controversy.

This is my new blogchalk:
United States, New York, New Rochelle, 1 Odell Place, English, Frank, Male, 56-60, human behavior, web sites. :)

April 20, 2004

Welcome to The Museum of Unworkable Devices.
This museum is a celebration of fascinating devices that don't work.

Check out the Aerials Only Gallery
We have heard many times from people who have received aerial photographs as gifts that they are some of the best gifts they have ever received.

Try the BBC Senses Challenge

You mean you still haven't seen Liquid Guy?
It's related to Whitney Biennial 2002
eMail me if you can't get it going.

Check out the Cable Clock. It keeps good time, but how long can you look at it?
There's many more like that here.

Do you hate Post-its? I do, and now, Damon does.

Here's the National UFO Reporting Database. Will those Aliens never leave us alone?

From Bowdoin College, beautiful Japanese Zen gardens.

If you've never seen the "Honda Car Parts Contraption," see it now.
Requires MacroMedia Flash Player {Free Download}

Google, at the beginning.

Urban Legends takes a look at Disney movies.

Paperclip Art. No, really.

Juggling, juggling, and more juggling.

Douwe Osinga, who now lives in Amsterdam, has put various web-based projects online, at atdouweosinga.com. My favorites: Mapped Web, Google News Map, Visited Countries, and Visited States. There are lots more, some of which require a little technical know-how.

Here's a list of the 100 Most Mispronounced Words and Phrases in English.

I have too much respect for country music to call these the Worst Country Song Titles, but they sure are the goofiest.

May I have your Ticket Stub, please?

Hear the earliest sound recordings at Tinfoil.com

Stay on top of latest developments in medicine at Medical Breakthroughs.

Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon bugged their own office and tapped their own phones. American RadioWorks eavesdrops on presidential telephone calls.

April 19, 2004

Great Wisconsin Cheese Festival
Think Wisconsin, and you think "Cheese", right?
Since 1988, the first weekend in June has been a celebration
in Little Chute, WI. The Great Wisconsin Cheese Festival is a
celebration of the state's dairy industry and especially of
local area cheese producers.
The festival is a family event that features music, the Big Cheese parade, cheese tasting, a cheese carving demonstration, a cheesecake contest, a cheese curd eating contest, carnival rides, children's games and entertainment, the Golden K's Big Cheese breakfast, and plenty of food and refreshments sold by nonprofit organizations.
From June 4 to June 6
Call 920-788-7390 for more information


Adirondack Music Festival
Lyonsdale, NY

Make your way to the beautiful Adirondacks for the 3rd annual Adirondack Music Festival held at The Moose River Park & Amphitheater ... The most picturesque festival site you'll ever come across, with the main stage set on a sandy beach along the edge of a lake, and stunning panorama from the concert area. With thousands of campsites scattered throughout the surrounding forest, lake and down by the river, a good time is assured!
From June 25 to June 27
315-348-4100

Shomecon Science Fiction Convention
If you're in or around St. Louis, MO at the end of July, you want to check out the Showmecon Science Fiction Convention. This is something different for your calendar, if you're a big fan of LOTR (Lord of the Rings trilogy) as well as Star Trek.
This annual family friendly event features award winning science fiction authors & artists as well as television personalities and a special guest from down under who worked on the Lord of the Rings with the academy award winning WETA studios. Things to do include an artshow, art auction, Q & A's with the guests, autograph opportunities, games, contents and much, much more.
Where else can you have Furries along side Klingons along side Gamers along side Trekkers, add Filking and costumers and the next generation of fandom with their own programming track and you get the future of St. Louis Sci-fi convention going. You don't want to miss a great weekend.
From July 30 to August 1
Call 314-426-5500 for more details

April 18, 2004

By 2006, four out of every five new digital image capture devices sold worldwide will be a camera-phone. As the number of camera-phones grows, the mountain of digital images will also balloon ten-fold. Get the details here.

Nearly 20 years after first finding the sunken remains of the R.M.S. Titanic, marine explorer Dr. Robert Ballard will return in June to help the http://www.noaa.gov/ (NOAA) study the ship?s rapid deterioration. Dr. Ballard and his partners announced the expedition today, the 92nd anniversary of the ship's sinking.

If you find yourself in the neighborhood of Long Grove, IL , and you love chocolate then head over to the fifth annual Long Grove Chocolate Festival and indulge in candies, countless desserts, and inspired creations such as chocolate popcorn, chocolate cannolis, chocolate baskets filled with fruit, and chocolate martinis. Last year, many a sweet tooth sank into 50,000 chocolate donuts, 2,500 chocolate fondues, and 4,000 rolled truffles.
It's running from April 30 to May 2
Call 847-634-0888 for more info.
Why would you need more info? Chocolate - lots of chocolate - that's all you need to know.

Check out the Highway 61 Blues Festival
This young festival celebrates the blues of the Mid Mississippi Delta and benefits the Highway 61 Blues Museum.
This year's festival will be dedicated to the grandfather of the blues, Charley Patton. The Highway 61 Blues Festival will be held in conjunction with B.B. King's Homecoming to Indianola, MS.
The Festival wil be held in Leland, MS from June 11 to June 13
Call 888-889-8433 for details

It's hot gumbo and cool jazz featuring great family entertainment at the Ark-La-Tex Jazz and Gumbo Music Festival. There's a swing dance workshop, Technology Town, the Cool School Education Program, FotoFest, a culinary arts workshop, and some of the best food in the world. The festival features an array of Louisiana cuisine, from hot and spicy crawfish to ice cream, funnel cakes, and of course GUMBO!
It runs from May 7 to May 8
Shreveport, LA
Call 318-226-4552 for more information

Come celebrate the splendor and majesty of the 16th century Renaissance at the Scarborough Faire, in Wachahaxie, TX days of King Henry VIII. Watch the amazing feats of the Royal Falconer and swashbuckling swordfighters. Be entertained by jugglers, magicians, bawdy wenches and much more on 11 stages. Feast throughout the day on over 60 delectable types of food.
It runs from April 10 to May 31
Call 888-533-7848 for more information
Washington Mayor Anthony Williams declared April as "Panda Month" in Washington. The Pandas are on a 10-year loan from China.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center?s fourth Annual Status Report on Worldwide Investigation and Prosecution of Nazi War Criminals points to the continuing success of several countries, particularly the United States, in prosecuting Holocaust perpetrators during the past year ... the number of new investigations initiated (in nine different countries) during the past twelve months reached over 166.

From RefDesk:

The Food and Nutrition Information Center (FNIC) at the National Agricultural Library (NAL) has been a leader in food and human nutrition information dissemination since 1971.

BestPlaces.net provides facts about 3,000 U.S. cities and living so you can make better decisions about the best places for you to live, work, retire, play, or relocate.

The National Debt is the total amount of money owed by the government; the federal budget deficit is the yearly amount by which spending exceeds revenue. For a real bummer, check out the U.S. National Debt Clock.

Time magazine chronicles the most important 100 people of the 20th century in five categories: Leaders & Revolutionaries, Artists & Entertainment, Builders & Titans, Scientists & Thinkers, and Heroes & Icons.
The Person of the Century: Albert Einstein

If you think abusing the mentally ill is a thing of the past, you need to read I Survived The Box, in New York City Voices

April 17, 2004

The British Library Sound Archive is online and running. One of the largest sound archives in the world, it opened in 1955 as the British Institute of Recorded Sound, and became part of the British Library in 1983.

From Oklahoma State University, images of Culture from around the world. And Pop Culture as Global Culture.

Take an exciting journey through a tropical rainforest, experience the life and learn about the creatures. See exotic butterflies and tropical birds flying free, handle snakes and spiders, see poisonous frogs and scorpions, leaf cutter ants and much much more.
I'm on my way!

The next accent you hear might be your own!
Check out the Speech Accent Archive.

BUBL Information Service, the massive UK searchable database, now has added a Music Reference Library to its burgeoning stack of resources.

Are you really interested in Biology, I mean, really interested in Biology? Then you need Exam.net

National Geographic's redesigned online atlas gives you the world?your way. It's called Map Machine. Find nearly any place on Earth, and view it by population, climate, and much more ...
I've had it in my "Favorites" Folder for quite a while, but I never tire of fiddling with it.

From Spartacus Educational
900 students from the University of New Mexico will be "storming" Albuquerque today for an event called "Spring Storm". And, guess what? It's not anti-war, it's not even political. The Daily Lobo reports that "Spring Storm is a day dedicated to community service around the city, according to Saraswati Khalsa, assistant director of Community Experience, the ASUNM executive agency that coordinates the event." 78 organizations and departments have signed up as well.
The current crop of college students is just miles -- and generations -- away from the self-indulgent whiners of the sixties.
And I know because I was one of them!

If your going to be flying soon, and you're nervous about it, you'll be happy to know that Popular Science online (PMZone) has an article entitled "How To Survive An Airplane Crash".
Sample tip: Stay low if the plane is on fire Yipes!

If you're in college, or working on yor Masters' degree, as I will be in September - if the good Lord's willing - then there's good news for you from Google. The Indiana Digital Student reports that www.Google.com has announced it will be adding a new feature for result sorting. Alongside 15 other universities, IU-Purdue University Indianapolis will be adding its collections of scholarly papers to the bank.
Students who often find themselves frustrated by sifting through irrelevant results when doing a paper or project will now be able to research more easily.
Google is currently testing the addition to its search engine, but if all goes well, it could be up for use in a few months, said Mackenzie Smith, associate director of technology for MIT's libraries.
"If it makes student access easier," Gonsoroski said, "then it's a good thing."
As a daily Google user, and a soon-to-be student, I can't wait.

April 16, 2004

President and Mrs. Bush's Tax Return for 2003

Vice President and Mrs. Cheney's Tax Return for 2003

Barbara Boxer (D - CA) has set up a special Earth Day Web Site. It includes an "Earth Day Timeline."

We reported the story of the Secret Service Agents' working at the WTC, in relation to 9/11/2001. Now you can read the Justice Department Press Release

You hear about people being added to the "Most Wanted" list, but you hardly ever hear about one of them being captured.
Check out the US Marshalls' Web site.

The State Department will be forming a closer alliance with the National Archives. The Secretary of State remarked that "unprecedented millions of people at home and abroad will have access to the historical record of American foreign policy."
He announced the introduction of a program we call SMART, S-M-A-R-T: it stands for State Messaging and Archiving Retrieval Toolset.
SMART will replace classified and unclassified legacy systems with a single, integrated system encompassing both our classified and unclassified systems. 3,000 State Department employees will be testing the SMART system before the end of the year. There will be a full-scale rollout beginning in 2005. Gary Price's friends over at the National Security Archive should be thrilled.
Incidentally, not to name drop or anything, but I was turned on to the National Security Archive by the man himself, Gary Price.

The Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics [if you're a numbers cruncher, this is the site for you] reports that the Consumer Price Index [a number has its own web site!] rose .6% in March. That small an increase could represent a demand for goods and services that starts a cycle of overall recovery
I can dream, can't I?

For all the talk about reducing the size of government since 1980, government employment contracted for the first time in more than two decades only last year in 2003.

From Government News & Info
National Former Prisoner of War Recognition Day, 2004
The President issued the proclamation on April 9. From his remarks:
Today, nine out of ten former prisoners of war are veterans of World War II. These Americans helped to liberate millions and defeat tyranny around the world, and survived unspeakable horrors for the cause of freedom ...
America will never forget these quiet heroes and all of our former prisoners of war who suffered adversity in Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, Somalia, Kosovo, Iraq, and other conflicts. Our Nation is grateful to our former prisoners of war for their sacrifice to help protect the democratic ideals that make our country strong ...
I call upon all Americans to join me in remembering all former American prisoners of war who suffered the hardships of enemy captivity.
Welcome home.

In related news, The Department of Defense announced today that the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office will this week host a historic meeting between key Russian and U.S. archivists examining the issue of American POWs and MIAs at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)
" ... NARA experts in the preservation, handling, storage and release of historical materials will lead discussions with their Russian counterparts. A delegation of ten Russians is expected to attend, including Chief of Archival Services of the General Staff, Col. Sergei A. Ilyenkov, and Col. Vladimir V. Kozin of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Other Russian attendees will represent the Ministry of Defense; the Central Archives of the Navy; the Military Medical Museum and Archives; and the Archives of the Border Guards. U.S. archivists representing governmental and private collections also are expected to attend.
The conference will examine issues of declassification of military and political documents; technical aids to improve the operation of a modern archive; Korean and Vietnam War documents held in Russian archives; and other issues of importance to the American effort to account for missing U.S. servicemen.

There's good news from the military, too: The World War II Memorial is Due to Open ... The World War II memorial on the National Mall in Washington will be dedicated May 29. Betsy Glick, the memorial's communications director, said the 7.4-acre site between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial still needs some "fine-tuning of small items," but that the memorial will be ready for opening the last week of April.
Two 43-foot arches welcome visitors to a bronze-and-granite memorial plaza. The arches, she said, serve as north and south entries to the plaza, and within each arch are four bronze eagles that hold a suspended victory laurel.
A 17-foot granite pillar adorned with bronze oak and wheat wreaths, symbolic of the nation's industrial and agricultural strength, represents each state and territory from that period. "The 56 pillars celebrate unprecedented national unity," Glick explained.
In the center of the pillars stands a rainbow reflecting pool with fountains and a wall with 4,000 sculpted, gold-plated stars. The stars commemorate the 400,000 American soldiers who died in the war and the 16 million who served and supported the war effort from home, she added.
The memorial, which cost $170 million to build and will be officially dedicated May 29 during Memorial Day weekend, culminates an 11-year effort to honor America's World War II generation.
The four-day celebration begins a 100-day summer-long tribute to the world War II generation that Glick said is "long overdue."
When she asked one veteran from Texas accompanying a reporter what he thought, he replied, "You got it right."
Check out the World War II Memorial Site.

In other news, there will be a series of lectures by a Los Alamos National Laboratory Physicist talking about how computer simulations can teach us about the Earth's cataclysmic past and the underlying processes that we see today on land, in the sea and in the atmosphere.
Galen Gisler of Los Alamos' Applied Physics Division spoke for the first time on "Calculating Extinction: The Meteor Impact That Killed the Dinosaurs," on Wednesday, April 14, at Los Alamos High School. Gisler's talk is the latest in the Laboratory's Frontiers in Science lecture series.
The most recent and well-known catastrophic mass extinction in Earth's fossil record is the so-called K/T boundary event, which defines the end of the Cretaceous (K) Period, when dinosaurs last ruled the Earth, and the beginning of the Tertiary (T), the age of mammals.
"Computer simulations recreate events like this to show how the observed facts are linked to one another and to the event that produced them," Gisler said. "We make guesses about the size, speed and trajectory of the asteroid, and then we run a calculation ... (which) improves our understanding of highly dynamic processes in Earth's crust and atmosphere."
To simulate the asteroid event, Gisler and his colleagues used a computer code, called RAGE, from Los Alamos' Crestone project that was capable of providing dramatic details in three dimensions. The simulation required one million hours of processor time on the Laboratory's ASCI Q supercomputer.
And if they were using my machine, it would have taken a hundred million hours.

You can read the White House Transcript of President Bush's recent Press Conference here
Be sure to check out "Ask the White House"

From Government News & Info
Anti-Ice Coating Passes Test

There's a bridge along Wisconsin's Highway 8 that's notorious for ice and bad wrecks. But this winter, no one has spun out and slammed into the guardrails above the Wolf River, and officials say that's no accident. There's a new anti-icing pavement overlay. It's a sheet of epoxy covered with an aggregate. From the top, it looks like kitty litter. A cross section looks more like toffee covered with lots of chopped nuts.
"It acts sort of like a hard sponge," says inventor Russ Alger, of Michigan Technological University. "You put a light amount of de-icing chemical on there, and it keeps coming up to the surface."

As for the bridge along Highway 8 that was chosen to test the material: so far, so good. There have been no accidents so far this winter, and crews have applied magnesium chloride to the bridge only five times, fewer than half the typical number.

"One time I was out there, and the bridge was white on both sides and wet in the middle," said Ron Cole, patrol superintendent of the Forest County Highway Department. "It's been a success in my mind."
Alger hopes that the Wolf River Bridge success will be repeated elsewhere. The next test of his anti-icing overlay will be at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.

There's no mention of the cost, but I'm guessing it's going to be coming to your hometown, if you live where it snows, in just a few years.

April 15, 2004

Artist Drags TV by Ear in Protest
Apr 15 2004 Reuters [Oddly Enough]
Milan British performance artist Mark McGowan dragged a television roped to his ear through Milan on Wednesday to protest against what he called excessive political control over the media in Italy and other countries.
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's wealthiest man, owns Mediaset, the largest commercial broadcaster, through Fininvest. As prime minister, he also influences programing at state broadcaster RAI.
Doesn't sound odd to me.

From the How I Know There's a God Department
Moreno Valley, CA A 6-year-old girl was found in a ravine survived for 10 days on dry noodles and Gatorade while remaining near her dead mother following a car crash, relatives said.
"The angels kept her alive -- what else could you possibly say?" said Cathy Cooney, Bustamante's sister.
Amen

Astronomers spy new 'planet'
Sedna spotted far beyond Pluto
Maps of our Solar System may have to be redrawn to include a tenth planet.
The object has been named Sedna, after the Inuit goddess of the ocean. It is the largest body orbiting the Sun to be discovered since Pluto was spotted in 1930.

From the Encyclopedia of Astrobiology, Astronomy, and Spaceflight
"Sedna":
The most distant large object yet found orbiting our Sun ... is currently three times further away than Pluto, the average distance of which from the Sun is 3.6 billion miles. At its most distant, Sedna is almost 93 billion miles from the Sun, or 990 times Earth's solar distance. It has an obital period, or year, of some 10,500 years. Mike Brown, astronomer at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, led the team that first saw Sedna, originally designated 2003 VB12, with the 48-inch Samuel Oschin Telescope at Mount Palomar Observatory, California, in November 2003.
Its surface temperature is believed to be about -400°F. Observations show it measures less than about 1,000 miles in diameter, which is smaller than Pluto. Sedna is very red — the reddest large object in the Solar System after Mars ... Sedna rotates more slowly on its axis than expected, suggesting it may have a satellite orbiting it. This site has great images, and illustrations of distance, orbit, and size scale.

The Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes later confirmed the find. Click for images and video
Sedna lives in the Kuiper belt, a region of space beyond Pluto filled with at least 70,000 icy rocks. The new find is the biggest Kuiper-belt object ever seen and has a relatively stable orbit, making it a strong contender for the title of 'tenth planet'.
This discovery will reignite the debate about whether Pluto can really be called a planet, says Robin Catchpole, astronomer at London's Royal Observatory, Greenwich.
Some astronomers say that a planet should be roughly spherical and have a nearly circular orbit around the Sun. But this would exclude Pluto and Sedna, which have very elliptical orbits.
Astronomers have identified other Kuiper-belt objects ... such as Quaoar and Varuna. But Sedna is a more interesting planetary candidate because it is larger, further away and has a more regular orbit, says Catchpole ...
Catchpole thinks there are probably many more objects like Sedna just waiting to be discovered in the Kuiper belt.
It is now up to the International Astronomical Union to decide whether Sedna will officially be called a planet.

April 14, 2004

Ask Jeeves has expanded its Smart Search feature, adding "direct answers" with biographical information about famous people.
Direct answers for famous people appear in a box at the top of a search result page, with a picture, short biography and additional links for more information. Try David Bowie.

Topix.net combines an excellent news search engine with two other hot technologies: local search and personalization.
The Topix database includes full text news stories from over 4,000 sources ... The real power of this nifty news search engine comes from its easy-to-use pre-built pages that aggregate news and other information intomore than 150,000 topic-specific pages.
These specialized pages cover local news and information for every zip code in the United States. There are also news pages dedicated to specific companies, industries, sports teams, actors, and many other subjects.
I love it. I have one page set up for my home town (by ZIP), and one page for my home State.

Web Rookies and experienced searchers can benefit from The Extreme Searcher's Internet Handbook.

CHUD.com recommends 100 Films That Deserve More Love.

Does anybody really know what time it is?

Finally, a chicken that does what it's told.

April 13, 2004

Readers of Careers and the Disabled magazine have chosen the Defense Department as public-sector employer of the year.
Jim Schneider, the magazine's editor, said DoD received the award "for its commitment to recruiting, hiring and promoting people with disabilities."

Creve Coeur, MO The parents of newborn sextuplets said Tuesday they haven't yet had time or energy to prepare emotionally and financially for their expanded family.
Will they ever?
World's Oldest Mouse Reaches 136th Birthday (relatively speaking)
Yoda, the world's oldest mouse, celebrated his fourth birthday on Saturday, April 10, 2004. At 1,462-days-old, Yoda is now the equivalent of about 136 in human-years. The life span of the average laboratory mouse is slightly over two years. The dwarf mouse lives in quiet seclusion with his cage mate, Princess Leia, in a pathogen-free rest home for geriatric mice belonging to Richard A. Miller, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of pathology in the Geriatrics Center of the University of Michigan Medical School.

Once again, the experts "discover" the obvious:
The most common ways to beat low mood are having someone to talk to and being hugged, a survey published by a mental health charity has found.
And, in breaking news, the sun will rise in the east tomorrow.

Miss Missouri, Shandi Finnessey, a 25-year-old graduate student who has published a children's book, was crowned Miss USA at the 52nd annual pageant on Monday.
A Republican, she told Reuters she would use her position to help explain America's involvement in Iraq. "What needed to be done had to be done," she said.
I like her already.

Google free email faces legal challenge
Jane Perrone and agencies
April 13, 2004
A California politician who condemned Google's plans for a free email service as a "Faustian bargain" that undermines privacy has begun drafting legislation to stop Gmail in its tracks.
The search engine giant announced on April 1 ... that it was planning to offer users a free email account with an unprecedented amount of storage. [1 Gigabyte of Mail storage is 40 times what the average Mail services offer for a premium - fd]
Democratic state senator Liz Figueroa fears the California-based firm's plans to scan customers' emails and insert targeted advertisements is a "misbegotten idea" that "undermines the most fundamental aspect of communication - the expectation of privacy".
Thanks, but no thanks, Liz, I'll make up my own mind.

I think I just found out more about Samoans than I wanted to know.

Seedless lemons are due to go on sale in the UK this week in what producers claim is a world first.The variety, called Seedless Eureka, was discovered by chance by a grower in South Africa.
Just thought you wanted to know.

Q: Is eating five small meals a day the way to go? Or are three regular meals a day more effective for weight loss?
A: Weight loss — as well as weight gain — is a matter of calories in versus calories out. If you eat fewer calories than your body requires, you will lose weight. If you eat more calories than your body requires, you'll gain weight. How you take in those calories is up to you; it's a simple mathematical equation and really a matter of trial and error.
D'oh! You think these people are the ones who came up with "Just say no"?

Only in New York: You might call it a case of secret disservice. A man who works for the Secret Service will be arraigned Tuesday on serious charges: a car rip-off after the 9/11 attacks.

A little bit more than I wanted to know about Sacagawea.

Scary stuff like 'the buckyballs will eat your brains' sells much better. Doesn't matter that it's not correct, as long as it sells papers.


April 12, 2004

From Newswise: Tiny "nanotubes" that assemble themselves using the same chemistry as DNA could be ideal for creating better artificial joints and other body implants.

A novel method that uses bacteria to mine valuable minerals from the ocean has been developed. Nodules collected from the Indian Ocean seabed can be treated to extract scarce land-based minerals in an environmentally sound way.

Via Newswise:
Purdue team wins Rube Goldberg national contest.
Vice President Cheney had fun at a ball game in Cincinatti last week.

New approved Medicines and Procedures

10 years ago, total of 15 USAID and 13 U.S. embassy employees perished during the Rwandan genocide. See also here

The Administration on Aging has released the results of a survey that indicates that even though the majority of women aged 45 and older have at least two risk factors for osteoporosis, only 15 percent of those women not diagnosed by a doctor believe they are at risk for the disease. Get information about osteoporosis here

The FDIC [Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation] has received complaints from consumers who received an e-mail that appears to have been sent by the FDIC ... The e-mail informs recipients that their bank account has been temporarily closed ... The e-mail directs the recipient to review the contents of an embedded attached file ...
The e-mail was not sent by the FDIC and may be a fraudulent attempt to implant a computer virus onto the recipient’s computer or to obtain personal information from consumers. Financial institutions and consumers should not access the link or attached files provided within the body of the e-mail and should not under any circumstances provide any personal information to unknown sources.

In an unusual move for any Federal Agency, the National Security Agency "intends to hire approximately 1,500 people by September 2004 in an effort to meet the increasing needs of the ever-changing Intelligence Community." The newly appointed chief of Human Resources, Mr. John Taflan, is looking to increase the number of new hires by 1,500 per year for the next five years, which would be an unprecedented event for NSA.

Here's a Fact Sheet on that August 6, 2001 President's Daily Briefing.
Here's the redacted text
Like Virtual Tours?

Here are Campus Tours:
http://www.campustours.com/

The Virtual Tours of Museums and ExhibitsSite presents over 300 museums, exhibits and Points of Special Interest which offer multimedia guided tours on the Web.

China, anyone?

The BBC History department takes you on tours of a great number of historical sites

New York Carver is very interesting: Stone carving, architecture, art...and the Middle Ages

The Teachers' Guide presents Virtual Field Trips

Check out CHICO's Musical Heritage Network's virtual tours
CHICO stands for Cultural Heritage Initiative for Community Outreach

Brittania's British History Club has some great tours

The Department of Transportation has created a page to provide young students with a fun and convenient way to visit interesting transportation-related sites.

Ever wanted to travel around the world? Now you can travel without moving! Just select your desired destination at Virtourist

April 10, 2004

From the Internet Resources Newsletter, #113
http://www.hw.ac.uk/libwww/irn/irn113/irn113.html

From W3C
Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web and director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), will be made a Knight Commander, Order of the British Empire (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth ...
The rank of Knight Commander is the second most senior rank of the Order of the British Empire...
"This is an honor which applies to the whole Web development community, and to the inventors and developers of the Internet, whose work made the Web possible, " stated Berners-Lee. "I accept this as an endorsement of the spirit of the Web; of building it in a decentralized way; of making best efforts to keep it open and fair; and of ensuring its fundamental technologies are available to all for broad use and innovation, and without having to pay licensing fees." [emphasis mine - fd]


Check out the Linguistic Atlas Projects

This looks wonderful - ARKive: Images of Life on Earth

Ay-Up is a great new Search Engine; using the "Advanced" search gives you a handy 'Date' function

I know you're looking for a big list of Blog Search Engines

From BrightPlanet, the last Guide to Effective Searching of the Internet you'll ever need.

If you love search engines, like I love search engines, you've got to try freesearch, a "UK based search destination ... with Picture Search and a Dictionary"

Here's the "Little Search Engine That Could", called Knowledge-Finder. Don't forget to check out "What's New". Their "goal is to have over 1,000 articles online by the end of this year."

If you are really in to Google, I mean really into Google, you want to read Papers Written by Googlers.

Even if you have only a passing interesting in things military, you want to check out the War Times Journal Portal.

For BUBL Link Updates, go to http://bubl.ac.uk/link/updates/current.html

Haven't heard of the BUBL Links? Head over here

New additions to PsiGate, a Physical Science News Site, can be found here

New additions to BIOME News, a health and life sciences news site, can be found here

Check out the Resouce Discovery Network

A "subsidiary", if you will of the Resource Discovery Network, a competitor for BUBL Links, is the Humbul Humanities Hub

For a very interesting sample of posters for sale, check out Aaron Posters
Techie tip: the poster samples are in the 300 X 400 pixel range. With a little fiddling, you can make a background out of it.
eMail me for details.

April 09, 2004

From Linky & Dinky

http://www.pueblo.gsa.gov/
The Gov't printing house in Pueblo, Colorado has a fantastic online directory of it's zillion booklets -- order them free (mostly) or read the online version. Every topic under the sun.

http://www.aurorawebcam.com/photos.php?page=gallery_00_12_2003
His name is Troy Birdsall. He's 21 years old and he's been photographing the aurora since he was 13 years old. You don't want to miss this.

http://www.allowe.com/sight/gags.htm?j=468
From Al Lowe's Humor Site:One of the "Top 100 Sites You Didn't Know You Couldn't Live Without, comes CyberGag 3000? I

http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~mmc/funwords.html
Words that sound dirty, but aren't. From Berkeley... Where else?

http://www.rtoddking.com/chinawin2003_hb_if.htm
Chinese Snow Sculptures

Poignant Final Words of Celebrities...
... on their deathbeds:
http://www.corsinet.com/braincandy/dying.html
... on their tombstones:
http://www.corsinet.com/braincandy/graves.html

And visit Brain Candy

http://www.ludd.luth.se/users/silver_p/kutna-1.html
The Ossuary in Sedlec: Human bone sculptures adorn a church.

http://www.cockeyed.com/inside/million/million.html
How to make a million dollars -- well, kinda

http://www.lebonze.co.uk/stuff/move.htm
He'll do anything to get out of that box -- even move your screen!
While you're there, check out the Playground ... follw the stone path

If you never watched Mr. Wizard, that's OK, because now you can check out Tim Hunkin

If you have yet to hear about GMail, here's what Google has to say:
Gmail is a free, search-based webmail service that includes 1,000 megabytes (1 gigabyte) of storage. The backbone of Gmail is a powerful Google search engine that quickly recalls any message an account owner has ever sent or received. That means there's no need to file messages in order to find them again.

I'm already signed up.
Catch up on the ancient Olympics while the torch is carried around the world.

Apparently, not all Postal Service employees are disgruntled.

As the 60th anniversary of the end of the second world war approaches, the (UK's) New Opportunities Fund has announced a multi-million pound scheme to commemorate the effort on the home front.
Thanks to 24Hour Museum.

From Condi Rice's opening statement to the "9/11 Commission":
The terrorists were at war with us, but we were not yet at war with them. For more than 20 years, the terrorist threat gathered, and America’s response across several administrations of both parties was insufficient. Historically, democratic societies have been slow to react to gathering threats, tending instead to wait to confront threats until they are too dangerous to ignore or until it is too late. Despite the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915 and continued German harassment of American
shipping, the United States did not enter the First World War until two years later. Despite Nazi Germany’s repeated violations of the Versailles Treaty and its string of provocations throughout the mid-1930s, the Western democracies did not take action until 1939. The U.S. Government did not act against the growing threat from Imperial Japan until the threat became all too evident at Pearl Harbor. And, tragically, for all the language of war spoken before September 11th, this country simply was not on a war footing.
Since then, America has been at war. And under President Bush’s leadership, we will remain at war until the terrorist threat to our Nation is ended. The world has changed so much that it is hard to remember what our lives were like before that day.
Rumor has it she doesn't want to stay on in the next Bush administration. But how about 2008?

From the Simon Wiesenthal Center:
Simon Wiesenthal, the 95-year-old Nazi hunter and humanitarian was awarded an honorary Knighthood, one of the United Kingdoms' top honors for "a lifetime of service to humanity" pursuing Holocaust perpetrators.


From Daily-Humor:
My first, last and only IRS joke:
A businessman on his deathbed called his friend and said, "Bill, I want you to promise me that when I die you will have my remains cremated."
"And what," his friend asked, "Do you want me to do with your ashes?"
The businessman said, "Just put them in an envelope and mail them to the Internal Revenue Service and write on the envelope, "Now you have everything."

I thought this was interesting:

FOR SENIOR CITIZENS
Who would you rather have in control of our Tax dollars? Pay attention, we may quiz!

Q: Which party took Social Security from an independent fund and put it in the general fund so that Congress could spend it?
A: It was Lyndon Johnson and the Democratic- controlled House and Senate.

Q: Which party put a tax on Social Security?
A: The Democratic party.

Q: Which party increased the tax on Social Security?
A: The Democratic Party with Al Gore casting the deciding vote.

Q: Which party decided to give money to immigrants?
A: That's right, immigrants moved into this country and at 65 got SSI Social Security. The Democratic Party gave that to them although they never paid a dime into it.

Then, after doing all this, the Democrats turn around and tell you the Republicans want to take your Social Security. And the worst part about it is, people believe it!
2004 Election Issue in 04' ? You bet!

Marylaine Block's Neat New Stuff I Found This Week

http://2act.org/p/576.html
The Congressional Research Service, an arm of the Library of Congress, is renowned for its non-partisanship and in-depth analysis, but it does not make its reports available to the public. This tweaking of Google allows you to search within the text of Congressional Research Service Reports which have been posted online.

http://www.pcmag.com/category2/0,1738,7488,00.asp
PC Magazine - Top 100 Web Sites, 2004
Each site comes with a brief review.

http://www.pulitzer.org/2004/2004.html
Pulitzer Prizes, 2003 Winners

http://www.topix.net/
Topix.net - News organized by topic and location
I use this one myself

http://marylaine.com/neatnew.html
© Marylaine Block, 1999-2004.

April 08, 2004

For an insiders' look at advertising, marketing, and product promotion, you should check out PROMO.

If you're an "infomaniac", you need to check out NewsMap

You probably didn't know this about Condoleezza Rice
By Maki Becker
from the New York Daily News
via the Kansas City Star [requires free registration]
NEW YORK - National security adviser Condoleezza Rice is set to make a dramatic appearance Thursday before the Sept. 11 commission to testify about her knowledge of White House efforts to battle terrorism.
Panel members have said they want to ask Rice, who will be testifying under oath, what Clinton administration officials told the incoming Bush White House personnel about al-Qaida and what the new administration did with the information.
Rice is also sure to be quizzed about charges by former White House counterterror chief Richard Clarke that Bush and his most senior aides were slow to act against the al-Qaida threat despite Clarke's warnings beginning days after Bush took office in 2001.
But beyond her role as a core member of Bush's inner circle, there's a lot more to Condoleezza Rice than most Americans know.
1. She's a fitness buff who likes to unwind by working out to music by heavy-metal legends Led Zeppelin, according to People magazine. She wakes up at 5 a.m. and hits the treadmill right away.
2. She was a college graduate at 19, getting a degree from the University of Denver.
3. She once had a Chevron oil tanker named after her when she served on the company's board of directors. After concerns that her name made the ship a more inviting terror target, the tanker was renamed Altair Voyager.
4. She loves to shop. "On a Sunday, don't be surprised if you see me at one of the malls in Washington, D.C.," she once told Glamour magazine.
5. She has been telling friends she's tired of the rat race and will leave her job at the end of the year to return to academia.
6. She began playing piano at age 3.
7. While in high school, she was a competitive ice skater.
8. She turns 50 this year.
9. She's the daughter of two Birmingham, Ala., high school teachers.
10. A kindergarten classmate was among the four girls killed in the 1963 bombing of a Baptist church by white supremacists.
11. She was a Democrat until 1982.
12. She speaks Russian, French and Spanish.
13. She's a huge football fan and loves the Cleveland Browns. She's said her "dream job" would be NFL commissioner.
14. When she was 14, a guidance counselor told her that her standardized test scores showed she wasn't college material.
15. She's single and laments she has no private life. A sometime escort at official functions, however, is former San Francisco 49ers star Gene Washington.
16. In 1993, she was named provost of Stanford University, the youngest person, first woman and first black to get the job.
17. In February 2001, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told reporters he was distracted the first time he met her. "I have to confess, it was hard for me to concentrate in the conversation with Condoleezza Rice because she has such nice legs."
18. She loves to serve up Southern cuisine and is a master at seafood gumbo and fried chicken.
19. She says she can fall asleep just about anywhere - even once in a helicopter flying over the Gaza Strip.
20. In 1993, after Rice left the White House, where she worked for the current President's father, to join the Stanford faculty, she told the San Francisco Chronicle the advice she'd give to President Bill Clinton about Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein: "He is an outlaw, but I would be careful about trying to do anything to act to overthrow him."
From Chris Sherman, at SearchEngineWatch.com:

Have you heard of Scobleizer?
Scobleizer is a 'blog devoted to things Microsoft. A good place to go to learn what's new in the Kingdom of Gates.
Mr. Scoble has been interviewed by WebTalk Radio regarding "Blogging, RSS and Channel 9"

Google's GMail opened to a rocky start, and Google is teaming up with BellSouth.

It looks like Ask.com (f.k.a "Ask Jeeves") is hot on the heels of Google to be a search engine giant

From Refdesk {Sign up for "Link-a-Day" here}
American Journeys contains more than 18,000 pages of eyewitness accounts of North American exploration, from the sagas of Vikings in Canada in AD1000 to the diaries of mountain men in the Rockies 800 years later.
Mechanical Marvels of the Nineteenth Century "is the most extensive collection of images and information on Victorian-era robots to be found in the whole World Wide Web."
From CNN/Money, comes their recurring feature "The Best Places to Live in 2004." I know my town's not on the list.


From MagPortal {a site I highly recommend - sign up here} comes a "Hot Article" from Reason OnLine, called Fools for Communism: Still apologists after all these years.
Glenn Garvin reviews a book entitled In Denial: Historians, Communism and Espionage, by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr.
Very interesting review, and very interesting book.

April 07, 2004

The Agricultural Research Service reports the introduction of a 'fun-to-eat peach called "Galaxy"'.
It's got a great taste and an amusing, flat shape. It looks something like a bagel, and tastes sweet and juicy ...
Galaxy is what fruit fanciers will recognize as a "peento" peach, short for the original Chinese "Pan Tao."
Yum

From RefDesk's Link of the Day comes the low-down on Daylight Saving Time:
Just as sunflowers turn their heads to catch every sunbeam, so too have we discovered a simple way to get more from our sun.
We've learned to save energy and enjoy sunny summer evenings by switching our clocks an hour forward in the summer.
The history of daylight saving, from Benjamin Franklin to the present...
While you're there, check out webexhibits.org

The Census Bureau has assembled some cold hard facts to help us infomaniacs follow the Election of 2004. They're .PDF files, so you've been warned.

You've been hearing about high-definition television for years. Are you ready for high-definition radio?
A Maryland company called iBiquity has developed a technology that will allow AM and FM stations to switch to digital broadcasts.
Why should we care? Read about it here in USA Today



In the News from NASA'a Earth Observatory:

* Latest Images:

Satellite Data and Computer Models Predict Growth

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=16507

Fires in Sierra Leone

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=16506

Dry Denver

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=16504

Spring Runoff in the Baltic Sea

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=16502

Snowstorm at the China-Mongolia-Russia Borders

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=16501

* NASA News

* Media Alerts

* Headlines from the press, radio, and television

* New Research Highlights
I love it when "experts" discover the obvious:
There's no replacement for sleep.
... babies will begin to sleep longer by about four months, but some children may not sleep through the night for up to six to 12 months.
We don't have all the answers yet, but, overall, I think it's getting better.

Ahem

Check out City-Data.com
Thousands of pictures, maps, satellite photos, stats about residents (race, income, ancestries, education, employment...), geographical data, crime data, weather, hospitals, schools, libraries, airports, radio and TV stations, zip codes, area codes, user-submitted facts, similar cities list, comparisons to averages ...


In the same vein:
From the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, the Pocket Guide to Transportation, 2004 has pretty much any data you could want on any kind of transportation -- passenger miles, security, traffic fatalities, freight shipments, fuel efficiency ratings, etc.


Want your searches "quick and dirty"?
Check out KillerInfo

If you think National Parks are about Yogi Bear and Boo-Boo, think again.
There is some serious stuff going on!

They're teeny, tiny, and their adorable ... they're micro-organisms

ATL, BOS, JFK, LAX, and much, much more ... Check it out here

Here are all of the submissions for the National Press Photographer's Best of Photojournalism 2004 Web division.... soooo much great work ... Check 'em out...

via Neat New Stuff I Found This Week
http://marylaine.com/neatnew.html
© Marylaine Block, 1999-2004.

April 06, 2004

Go waaay down south...

For all things Suthr'n, check out Uptown City
I read in Sunday Nite that there is 'a shadow behind the "shadow campaign" of independent Democratic groups opposing the re-election of President Bush', and that that shadow is "former President Bill Clinton."
The Washington Times goes on to say:
Denied a meaningful role in the 2000 presidential campaign ... Mr. Clinton is the common denominator in the major political organizations established to help level the financial playing field against Mr. Bush for this year's presumptive Democratic nominee ...
Why can't he just go away. Build houses with Jimmy Carter or something.
Welcome to Poor Frank's Almanack.

I've got plenty of sites, and I know where to find more.

So just for today, I'll be working on the design.

Tomorrow, April 7, 2004, I'll hit the ground running!