NASA’S NEW ASTRONAUT CLASS
Eight new astronauts were named Monday,
and here is where it starts getting good. Four of them are women. This is the
highest percentage of females ever chosen for any class in the history of
NASA. They were named Monday, a day
before Sally Rides first flight into space, and hot on the heels of the
fiftieth anniversary of soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova's historic
spaceflight in 1963, who was the first woman to go into space. Christina
Hammock, Nicole Mann, Anne McClain and Jessica Meir will be the newest female
trainees housed at the Texas space center. The men are Josh Cassada, Victor
Glover, Tyler Hague and Andrew Morgan. Not including this newest group of
trainees, twelve of the forty nine active astronauts are women. This group was chosen from the second largest
group to ever apply for the training. More than 6,000 applied for the 2013
selection process. This could be the first group of astronauts to pilot the
Orion spacecraft, fly to an asteroid and even land on Mars. Below is a picture of the newest group of heroes, of which yours truly is jealous beyond belief one isn't me.
RUSSIA COMPLAINING ABOUT MOLD?
Yeah, believe it or not, they are
the ones complaining. It sounds strange I know, considering that at the end,
MIR was basically a floating biological experiment, or factory, or disaster depending
on the which word you choose to use. Disaster is more accurate, but experiment
is nicer. Anyway, on to why the complaining, and for good reason I might add as
well. The robotic European cargo ship Albert Einstein was opened Tuesday
morning (June 18) at the International Space Station. It was a day late in
opening because of concerns that mold may have grown inside ship. This stems
from concerns that its cargo may not have been properly disinfected. It is not known for sure if any mold actually
grew, but let’s face it, better safe than sorry when it comes to space.
James Oberg, space analyst of NBC
news had this to say. "It's a well-established principle of spaceflight
safety that, under uncertainty, you don't 'assume the best,' you make sure the
worst cannot be true. And if you're not
sure you decontaminated these items to rigorous standards, then you do it
again, to make sure."
Now considering that we know for a
fact that some things such as salmonella become more dangerous in the micro
gravity, extreme caution must be taken in this respect.
"Apart from the experiments,
oxygen and water, ATV-4 also brings personal clothing and food, among which is Italian
space food delicacies, such as tiramisu. Luca Parmitano, the only Italian
astronaut on board will be sharing this from his personal supply with his
crewmates. He stated this on his blog hosted by the European Space Agency. “There
is nothing like the promise of an Italian dinner that I will offer from my
personal supply to entice my colleagues to work quickly and well!"
MARS WITH AN OXYGEN RICH ATMOSPHERE
Yeah, about 4 billion years ago that
is. The rise of the atmospheric oxygen on Earth was around 2.5 billion years
ago. Scientists from Oxford University investigated the compositions of Martian
meteorites found on Earth and data from NASA’s ‘Spirit’ rover that examined
surface rocks in the Gusev crater on Mars. The fact that the surface rocks are around five times richer in nickel than the
meteorites was had cast doubt on whether the meteorites are typical volcanic
products of the red planet.
According to Professor Bernard Wood,
of Oxford University’s Department of Earth Sciences “both meteorites and
surface volcanic rocks are consistent with similar origins in the deep interior
of Mars but that the surface rocks come from a more oxygen-rich environment,
probably caused by recycling of oxygen-rich materials into the interior.”
The meteorites are geologically
‘young’, around 180 million to 1.4 billion years old, the Spirit rover was
analyzing a very old part of Mars, more than 3.7 billion years old.
Professor Wood also had this to say
on the subject. “The implication is that
Mars had an oxygen-rich atmosphere at a time, about 4 billion years ago, well
before the rise of atmospheric oxygen on earth around 2.5 billion years ago. As
oxidation is what gives Mars its distinctive color it is likely that the red
planet was wet, warm and rusty billions of years before Earth’s atmosphere
became oxygen rich.
Anyone else out there saw the Doctor
Who episode “The Waters of Mars.” And yeah, I’d love to go on a tear here about
more proof that life here started out there, which this is another theory
dealing with our buddy next door, but I have other stranger things coming
besides my own ramblings here.
Now we will move on to a quick
sci-fi rundown before moving on to some really strange and out there stuff I
came across this week, proving once again I should not be allowed to wander
around the net unsupervised.
RIDDICK, INTERNATIONAL TRAILER
Well, what can I say. Cool. Looks
like everyone, and everything is trying to kill him off this time. Here is the
basic synopsis of the movie that has been put out as of now.
Betrayed by his own kind and left
for dead on a desolate planet, Riddick fights for survival against alien
predators and becomes more powerful and dangerous than ever before. Soon bounty
hunters from throughout the galaxy descend on Riddick only to find themselves
pawns in his greater scheme for revenge. With his enemies right where he wants
them, Riddick unleashes a vicious attack of vengeance before returning to his
home planet of Furya to save it from destruction.
Basically, everything on the planet wants to
eat him. In the meantime you have bounty hunters and mercenaries that want to
kill him. And apparently, this is all happening with a huge life destroying
storm on the horizon moving its way in. Yeah, this sounds like a Riddick movie.
Well, we’ve certainly waited long
enough for it, that’s for sure. I actually like Riddick. Lots of action, things
going boom and a group of people that basically fight like anime characters.
Works for me. Here’s the link to the
trailer if you haven’t seen it yet. It is due out on September 6th.
CRITICS PANNING MAN OF STEEL
Okay, let’s be up front here before
I jump in with both feet. I am still not happy with the new uniform, but I am
pretty puratinistic at heart when it comes to books and comics, etc, but I am
slowly getting used to it, sort of. I won’t even go into my continuing tirade
over Starbuck in the new Battlestar. But on to Supes here. I am going to list only one of their major
complaints here, and frankly, it is idiotic.
The action is too large.
Really people? This is freaking
Superman here. Spidey or Green Arrow or Batman, or The Falcon can get away with
running around busting normal criminals that may have a few high tech gadgets,
but this is Superman for crying out loud. What part of Super don’t these ding dong
critics understand? He doesn’t fight the normal little crooks and criminals.
The people he takes on are usually the punch a hole in the planet powered
types. How else do show Supes, without some massive action, and also massive
destruction based on that fight. I mean, if they are going to fight like they
try to in DBZ, and head off to the middle of nowhere, okay, maybe a little less
CGI. But if you are going to have a massively powered punch out slam down in
the middle of the city, there is going to be a lot of collateral damage. Things
are going to get broken, a lot. Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful
than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Just how do
you do all this without some serious and destructive action? I always loved Christopher fighting Zod, but I
also always thought there should have been more destruction there as well. Let’s
face it; critics are the worst when it comes to properly rating any super hero
movie. They need to stick with their ancient and worn out old drama movies
where they belong. We just don’t have critics that get sci-fi, or anime, or
much else usually for that matter unless it is trying to make some great social
commentary with zero entertainment value. I may have problems with the uniform,
but I still plan on seeing it, as it looks like it is really a good movie. As
for the critics, ppttthhhh. Bunch of gits anyway. Here’s a link to some of the
other complaints going on by the bloody gits. I would have loved to hear them screaming if the DBZ movie had been done correctly, and not destroyed by an unnameable. These critics would be in the street protesting with signs.
LOGAN STILL IN LIMBO
Not exactly according to what is
said, but I’ll believe it when i see it. And I bet if they do actually get
around to it, I’ll be off on a complete tirade. Kets take a look at some of the names that
have been attached to writing the new screen play so far. Bryan Singer , Alex
Garland, Joseph Kosinski, Will Beall, and Dan Harris have all had a shot at it.
Now we are apparently having BioShock creator Ken Levine take his shot at
it. And it is still unknown if it will
go by that horrible movie rendition, or stick closer to the book. Really? Like
there is even a choice in this. You die at 21, period, that’s it, hook line and
freaking sinker, you die at 21. That is how it is written, and there is a
bloody good reason for it if people would take the time to read the damn book. And
let’s get the gun right this time shall we. It is not a blaster which is
basically what they showed before, and the one from the movie you can build at
home actually, including the flame out the side ports. But the real gun is patterned after the old
six shooters. There was a good reason for this, as it fired different
projectiles, not whatever that thing in the movie was supposed to be firing.
Only a DS man (Deep Sleep or Sandman
for short), could carry a Gun. Each weapon was coded to the operative's hand
pattern, set to detonate on any other human contact. With a full load, it
carries six charges: tangler, ripper, needler, nitro, vapor -- and homer. Now I
will agree on updating the Homer aspect and this is why. A homer was designed
to zero in on a person’s body temperature and would burn out every single nerve
in the body at one time. Yeah, fun way to die, but that’s what happens when you
become a runner and do not obey and die when told to. Now considering the
technology of the cities, and what we know now, I would not complain if they
used a DNA system for it to track, as it would be more conceivable to have everyone’s
DNA code listed in the thinker (the main computer that runs everything in that
world). See, even I can get with updating a few things now and then. Let’s face
it, firing a homer at someone in a crowd would be beyond dangerous. Way too
easy for it to swerve off and simply fly into someone else due to body
temperature. I’ll now stop my rant here, as when it comes to my man Logan, I
will go into a rant. Here’s the link to the article, but not much there really
that wasn’t mentioned here, and frankly, a lot more about Logan here than
there.
CHINA HAS PROOF OF ALIENS AND ARE
COVERING IT UP?
Don’t yell at me, I’m just sharing
it. I may be a conspiracy man myself, but sometimes I have to wonder about some
of my guys out there. Some are saying it
is simply an elaborate hoax, and others of course are saying that it is being called
a hoax to throw people off and cover up the truth. To make this simple here, I
am simply going to quote part of the article as it is the best way to do this
one. So here we go.
One recent early morning, Kai went
out to check on some electric fencing he had set up to help him catch rabbits.
Once there, his bicycle began to be beamed up by a strange light. He explains:
“An
unidentified flying object like a UFO was suspended above the shore of the
Yellow River. I had no idea when my bicycle had gone under that flying saucer,
and then five aliens came down one after another.”
Kai
threw rocks at the spaceship in hopes of getting back his bike. None too
pleased, the aliens started to chase him when one of them ran into the trap
intended for rabbits. The other four aliens fled, but Kai was left with the
incinerated remains of one of them.
He
put the creature on ice and called the cops, who brought in government agents.
However, after many mysterious nights of examination, the experts disappeared
as quickly as they came.
So
anyway. Now he is claiming it was all a ruse, to what purpose i have no idea and
isn’t mentioned either. But it is also being said that the Chinese government
has forced him to recant his story and are in fact covering up the remains of a
dead alien. So, what made these experts so interested in something made out of rubber?
And why were they trying to steal this poor man’s bicycle? And I did warn you
ahead of time things were going to get weird this week. Do I think there are
aliens out there, well of course. You all know that about me. My only
conclusion to this however, must have been teenage aliens that decided to come
out to the fringe and mess with the primitives again. Or, as I thought when
reading this, now how the F are these guys going to embarrass the rest of us?
Well, now I know. Here’s the link.http://blog.trutv.com/conspiracy/2013/06/18/china-may-have-recovered-dead-alien/index.html
VIDEO GAME URBAN LEGEND
I am going to list #1 only here, as
it kind of fits to the alien deal there above. I just spent half the night at
this site the other day, and am still running around it happily filling my
brain with all kinds of silliness, and some really strange stuff as well. Yep, a
site right up my alley. Here we go with
#1.
Polybius
First
off, the name comes from a Greek historian known for his works in relation to
cryptography and for developing the Polybius square.
This
is the oldest of the video gaming myths around as far as anyone actually knows
at this time. And just a bit scary if it is true. It even appeared in an
episode of The Simpsons. It was an arcade game. It mysteriously appeared in an
arcade in Portland Oregon one day in the early 80’s. The cabinet was said to be
completely black, and incorporated elements of classic shooting games like
tempest, mazes like Pacman, and spatial puzzles. However, when it was played,
it apparently caused all sorts of health problems such as Amnesia, blackouts,
headaches, seizures, night terrors, and it was even reported that some players
committed suicide shortly after playing it. And now we enter into my world
where it gets even more interesting about this game. Apparently, there were
also men that were dressed all in black that were often seen messing with the
game. This of course leads to; you guessed it, a government experiment. Now
whether or not this game really existed is up for grabs here, as I have no idea,
but I doubt it. But if it did, (and I can wish right), I want it, and I want it
now. Is it possible that it was real; yeah I suppose it is, but again, I
seriously doubt it? But it is fun to think about. And just in case there are
any of you men in black out there, bring it on. I want to play it. I’m quite
open to moving to the non-existent base with no problem. And you don't even need to kidnap me. I'm willing to pack up and move all on my own.
All
you gamers out there especially need to check out the link below.
And
for you Morrowind The Elders Scrolls 3 fans, look at #3 especially. It’s about
a hack that has driven people to hallucinate that the assassin is crawling on
the wall or ceiling when they took a bathroom break from playing, etc. And
apparently, the hack does exist, and I have that game here somewhere boxed up.
Once this place is done, I’m going to have to look into this, after I finish
playing it that is again. http://listverse.com/2013/06/06/10-creepy-video-game-urban-legends/
Well
folks, hope you all enjoyed the rundown this week, as it seems to have gotten a
bit freaky and twisted this time. If anyone does know of any real info on the urban
legend gaming stuff here please let us all know at the blog site. See you all
next week folks.
Almost forgot. Supermoon on the 22nd and 23rd. It is the closest it will be to Earth until August of 2014. Fine, I did forget and had to come back to update this real quick. Here's a link for anyone not knowing exactly what it is about, and it has links to commonly asked questions also.
http://earthsky.org/tonight/is-biggest-and-closest-full-moon-on-june-23-2013-a-supermoon
