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POPSMars and Twix et al to contain Animal Products At least theres lots of lovely chocolate that isnt made using cows stomach lining (or other dead animal parts for that matter), still a shame that masterfoods have decided to commit moral and potentially financial suicide. At least they decided to tell us - a 'principled decision' apparently, unlike the one made to exclude vegetarians from their customer base...?
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POPS2009 Leonid Meteor Shower More from the article below: ""We're predicting 20 to 30 meteors per hour over the Americas, and as many as 200 to 300 per hour over Asia," says Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office. "Our forecast is in good accord with independent theoretical work by other astronomers." "A remarkable feature of this year's shower is that Leonids will appear to be shooting almost directly out of the planet Mars," notes Cooke. It's just a coincidence. This year, Mars happens to be passing by the Leonid radiant at the time of the shower. The Red Planet is almost twice as bright as a first magnitude star, so it makes an eye-catching companion for the Leonids"
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POPSWhat does it mean to be an American? This 10-year-old boy gets it More: After asking his parents whether it was against the law not to stand for the pledge, Will decided to do something. On Monday, Oct. 5, when the other kids in his class stood up to recite the pledge of allegiance, he remained sitting down…Each day, the substitute got a little more cross with him. On Thursday, it finally came to a head… Will was sent to the office… At the end of our interview, I ask young Will a question that might be a civics test nightmare for your average 10-year-old. Will's answer, though, is good enough — simple enough, true enough — to give me a little rush of goose pimples. What does being an American mean? “Freedom of speech,” Will says, without even stopping to think. “The freedom to disagree. That's what I think pretty much being an American represents.” Somewhere, Thomas Jefferson smiles.
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POPS Mystical Martian Moon Phobos Can you imagine id the man & his wife who discovered this moon could see the wonderful pictures today? Also can we imagine that in another 122 years what they will tell about these magnificent moons?
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POPSIs There Global Warming on Other Planets in the Solar System? Martian climate is primarily driven by dust and albedo and there is little empirical evidence that Mars is showing long term warming. Neptune's orbit is 164 years so current brightening is a seasonal response (Neptune's southern hemisphere is heading into summer). Triton's warming is due to the moon approaching an extreme southern summer, a season that occurs every few hundred years. Jupiter's storms are fueled by the planet's own internal heat (the sun's energy is 4% the level of solar energy at Earth). When several storms merge into one large storm (eg - Red Spot Jr), the planet loses its ability to mix heat, causing warming at the equator and cooling at the poles.
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POPSFrank Frazetta: Artist And Illustrator
Frank Frazetta is just a fabulous artist. His composition is impeccable, with wonderful action and figure placement as well as dramatic backgrounds. His ability with anatomy, both human and non, is faultless and his colorizing is perfection. My first exposure to him was cover and interior illustrations for Conan: the Cimmerian, Tarzan and John Carter of Mars series. I just fell in love with his work. His characters, whether men, women or creatures are all well-muscled and terribly energetic. That distinctive and original Frazetta style has been a major influence on so many artists. Following is a exerpt from Wikipedia: "Frazetta has had a major and lasting influence on many artists within the genre of fantasy and science fiction, such as Simon Bisley. Boris Vallejo is another fantasy artist with a style broadly similar to Frazetta's along with the fact that he also painted several paperback covers of some of the same science fiction/fantasy characters (e.g., Conan t
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POPSMars Rover Named "Curiosity" Checking out the neighborhood. Who knows, maybe our grandkids will found a new civilization. Check out Kim Stanley Robinson's "Mars" series (Red Mars, Blue Mars, Green Mars) for a take on what is reasonably possible. It's a great read. Does both the tech and social side of what such an effort could look like.
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POPSChannels associated with impact craters discovered on Mars If a significant amount of water was released or mobilized by the formation of the Hale Crater impact, larger impacts that formed during the early days of the Solar System may have been able to bring even more water to the surface of Mars. If this is true, a long-term, stable, warm and wet climate may not be required to explain the presence of such channels in the ancient Martian landscapes.
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POPSSet Your Alarm For The Orionids! "Last but not least, the display will be framed by some of the prettiest stars and planets in the night sky. In addition to Orionids, you'll see brilliant Venus, red Mars, the dog star Sirius, and bright winter constellations such as Orion, Gemini and Taurus. Even if the shower is a dud, the rest of the sky is dynamite." "According to Japanese meteor scientists Mikiya Sato and Jun-ichi Watanabe, 2006 marked Earth's first encounter with some very old debris. "We have found that the was caused by dust trails ejected from 1P/Halley in 1266 BC, 1198 BC, and 911 BC," they wrote in the August 2007 edition of Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan. In their paper "Origin of the 2006 Orionid Outburst," Sato and Watanabe used a computer to model the structure and evolution of Halley's many debris streams stretching back in time as far as 3400 years. The debris that hit Earth in 2006 was among the oldest they studied and was rich in large fireball-producin
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POPSAmreeka: The Movie As luck would have it, Muna has come to the US at the start of the Iraq War. Anti-Arab sentiment is raging in some quarters. Her brother-in-law, a doctor, has lost patients due to backlash, and her sister is quickly losing patience with the hatred and fear that mars their lives. Though educated and with experience in banking, Muna is unable to find work in her field, but knowing that she must become independent, continues to search for employment, finally finding a job at a local fast food restaurant. Tensions build as Muna, ashamed, tries to hide her place of work from her son and sister; as Fadi deals with bullying bigots at school; and as her sister's family begins to unravel in response to the pressures of the war, and the enormous hardships resulting from anti-Arab bias. Through it all, Muna not only survives, but remains hopeful and thankful for each kind gesture from strangers and new-found friends who come to her assistance in ways small and not so small.
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POPS "Looked Like Mars" Oh man... they've got it bad down under! And, they are expecting another one later this week.
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POPSNASA discovers ice may be extensive on Mars A little over six months later, more images of the same crater showed the ice was gone, leaving only brown dirt where the frozen water had been. That, too, was exactly what the scientists believed would happen: the ice had "sublimated," turning to invisible vapor in the thin, cold Martian atmosphere. Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/25/MN6U19SMRH.DTL#ixzz0SGDy61RG
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POPS9 Environmental Boundaries We Don't Want to Cross
Records of global transitions between geological ages, and of regional changes between environmental stages, suggest that planet-wide change could happen relatively quickly. It might not take thousands or millions of years for Earth’s environment to be altered. It could happen in centuries, perhaps even decades. Exactly what Earth would look like is difficult to predict in detail, but it could be radically different from the mild environment that has prevailed for the last 10,000 years. It was temperate stability that nurtured the rise of civilization, and it should continue for thousands of years to come, unless humanity keeps pushing the limits. “The Earth of the last 10,000 years has been more recognizable than the Earth we may have 100 years from now. It won’t be Mars, but it won’t be the Earth that you and I know,” said Foley. “This is the single most defining problem of our time. Will we have the wisdom to be stewards of a world we’ve come to dominate?” Th
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