February 2002

The Moon will become full on Feb. 27th. It happens every 29.5 days, yet this full Moon is special: It’s the biggest and brightest of the year.
…
When the Moon is full on Feb. 27th it will be near perigee — close to Earth. As a result the Moon will appear 9% wider than normal and shine 20% brighter.

Hey! I didn’t know you could have Desktop Themes in Windows 2000! That’s way cool. ActiveWin shows you how to do this and a ton more. There’s even a section of my favorite things: registry hacks! w00t!

Jane Says - Jane’s Addiction
This is an awesome, live version of one of my all-time favorite songs. Live at Irvine Meadows, 1991. It’s from the CD Kettle Whistle.

Scan Your Can

Right off the bat we’ll tell you. If you shove your posterior against the glass of a scanner, no matter how shapely your derrier may be, it will look like yesterdays pancakes if unclothed. The “Can Scan” is probably the most difficult to obtain. Especially in a solo effort.

A few nights ago I finally finished reading Just Six Numbers : The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe by Martin J. Rees. I liked it. It was a good read. The author explains pretty much everything you need to know to understand the science of cosmology as it exists today. It was full of fascinating stuff if you’re interested in black holes, dark matter, superstring theory, and the “Big Bang” concept. In the end, though, it seems like most scientists today are going to a helluva lotta trouble to determine the size /age of the universe. Wouldn’t it be easier to just accept infinity? That’s what I kept asking myself while I was reading this book. If space and time are infinite - and I just don’t understand how they couldn’t be! - wouldn’t almost all of the problems these guys have with particle physics disappear? Don’t get me wrong: I’m all for finding answers and truth and meaning in the universe, but it seems like even if you get to a point where you can say, “Ah-ha! Here is the Big Bang and how it worked!” you are still going to have someone ask, “Well, what was there before that?” (I know I will. Does that make me dense?)

We humans are spending billions of dollars - not millions, billions - on research to determine the size and age of the universe.

[click to continue...]

I got a friendly eMail last night. (It was from an interesting eMail address: kyle@barfbag.com!) Someone was warning me about spyware / scumware embedded in AudioGalaxy. He suggested I download Ad-Aware by Lavasoft to inspect my system. So I went to the site and grabbed a copy. Their download page - like so many others - suggests I use one of their “mirror sites” rather than their main download location.

Here’s the thing: The “mirror sites” are all presented after the main download location. If you’re designing a download page and you specifically don’t want me to download from your main area, why would you list that one first? Wouldn’t it make more sense to present the alternate locations at the top of the page? Aren’t most readers going to just click the first option? (I almost always do, and I know quite a bit about all this stuff, y’know?) It’s just a thought …

Y’know … I’ve been thinking. Reese’s Miniatures are better than Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. The chocolate-to-peanut-like-substance ratio is better. I mean … don’t get me wrong: I love Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. I just like the miniature ones better.

Every now and then I get a referral from The International Atomic Energy Agency. Sadly, though, I can never find a link on their site to mine. They have articles on radiation leaks in Georgia and upgrading nuclear security, but nothing about the atomic structure of Gagne. I’ll have to assume that one of my readers just happens to be an atomic energy buff, too. At least I found this interesting press release about the tsetse fly there:

A new campaign to control the deadly tsetse fly in Africa, parasitic carrier of sleeping sickness, has been launched by the Organization of African Unity (OAU).
African sleeping sickness affects as many as 500,000 people, 80 percent of whom eventually die, and the bite of the fly causes more than $4 billion in economic losses annually.
The tsetse fly has turned much of the fertile African landscape into an uninhabited “green desert,” spreading sleeping sickness — and killing 3 million livestock animals every year. The fly is the carrier of the single cell parasite, trypanosome, which attacks the blood and nervous system of its victims, causing sleeping sickness in humans and nagana in livestock. The biting tsetse fly transmits it when its seeks a blood meal.

That’s a heck of a lot of dead animals. Sleeping Sickness just can’t be cool. Good luck to you, OAU!

Nude, and loving it - The members of Scotland’s Robert Gordon University Crew team, who, according to captain Andrew Shannon, are training in the buff to “find out what natural assets we have for rowing.” The team, which has braved wintry conditions while preparing for next month’s Aberdeen Universities boat race, consists of four female rowers, four male rowers, and a female cox.

from the Feb. 18, 2002 Sports Illustrated

The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 through November 30. The East Pacific hurricane season runs from May 15 through November 30. But why wait? Get a jump on Nature’s Greatest Storms by visiting the Tropical Prediction Center now!
Or just take a blink over to the Weather Underground for your not-yet-quite hurricane season satellite imagery fix.

What does gravity smell like? Visit The Smell of Gravity to learn. I first discovered this link back in the 1900s. I can’t believe it’s still on line.

The 106-bed facility … features robot bears whose sole purpose is to watch over the elderly residents.
…
The fur-covered robotic assistant, simply known as Teddy, hides a microcomputer and a local network connection.
It is the latest in a series of companion robots … Previous efforts included cats and a surprisingly appealing wombat.

I just used the Earthlink.Net “live chat” feature to ask if I was using the best access number for my area. (I was.) The person/autobot on the other end suggested that I change my primary DNS from 207.217.77.82 to 207.217.126.81. So I did. Things are - surprisingly - a little bit speedier now. <grin>

Do you know what the “M” in “ATM” is? Does it really irk you to see an “ATM Machine Inside” sign? If so, take a look at some of the photos at It’s A Wacky, Wacky World.
Special-bonus-oldie-but-goodie link: The Periodic Table of Rejected Elements