Potpourri XI

Rockets could destroy the ozone layer. Waiting to see if this line of argument catches on in the U.S. while the Chinese and Indians continue to go forth boldly.

Morgan Freeman is going to host a Science Channel show on space exploration. Huzzah!

NASA has a presence on FlickR.

Chicago is rated is #1 by AskMen.com as the best city "for dating and sex, sports and entertainment."

India is looking at building its own space shuttle.

A mockup of the Orion crew exploration vehicle's crew module is on display on the National Mall.

The Ares I-X test flight is shifting to August. This is starting to infringe on my trip to Europe. My request to alter the launch window around my vacation was not accepted, unfortunately.

The U.S. is falling behind in cyber-warfare. That's probably because all our IT has been outsourced to Bangalore.

Interesting site on Antarctica and global warming...and another site offering an alternative theory on how ice ages affect the shapes of continents and oceans.

G20 protests turn violent, surprising no one.

From the "If Bush did this" file, President Obama gave Queen Elizabeth II an iPod. It was later revealed that she already has one.

Jeff Krukin from the Space Frontier Foundation posted an April Phule's Day press release on behalf of President Obama. Will Watson at SFF had another PR regarding space. Doc's response was priceless: "It was hard to hear the joke over the sound of all those axes grinding."

As I mentioned yesterday, the ISDC is coming up. I got my leave approved today, so I'll be booking my registration this evening.

And, on a lighter note, North Korea is fueling up its latest rocket. Japan, China, and the U.S. are all on alert, at one level or another. (Okay, I'm kidding. That's not a "lighter note." I'm just snarky this evening.)

Potpourri

I like this subject line, which appears occasionally as a topic in Jeopardy. It's a catch-all name that incorporates a variety of wild stuff. In that spirit, then, I offer some of the stuff that has come to me from friends, coworkers, readers, and other wild folk (these tend to overlap):

Niccolo Machiavelli on Change Management:

It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out nor more doubtful of success nor more dangerous to handle than to initiate a new order of things; for the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order; this lukewarmness arising partly from the incredulity of mankind who does not truly believe in anything new until they actually have experience of it.

An interesting article by Mike Wright, the Marshall Space Flight Center Historian, on the world's most expensive lawn ornaments: http://history.msfc.nasa.gov/saturn_apollo/display.html

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John McCain is assuming the role of the late Senator William Proxmire in railing against frivolous government spending on science: http://www.the-scientist.com/community/posts/list/411.page

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The Ares Projects have their own FlickR page: http://www.flickr.com/groups/ares/

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Social Media and Public Relations: http://www.pr-squared.com/jedi.html

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The Cult of Done Manifesto. You might have to have lived this one to fully appreciate it, but it is quite real.

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An online, non-profit archive dedicated to saving...well, darn near everything: http://www.archive.org/index.php

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And, darn it, Doc sent me one more link, but I didn't forward it from work. Heck with it, I'll post it tomorrow. The internet continues to surprise me: there are good things to be found, but there is also a lot of crud. Calls to mind [Theodore] Sturgeon's Law:

90% of science fiction is crud. But then, 90% of everything is crud.