Friday, February 13, 2009

The Sky Is Still Falling, So What?

Awake and Aware

Marian gave me a book about coffee.
I keep it on the table next to my easy chair.
I also put my cup of coffee on the same table.
Does that make it a coffee table?

Coffee, table, and book about coffee.................2/12/09

So, I'm reading about coffee and lo and behold, I find out about the Tanzanian coffee I got last night. It seems that coffee originated in Ethiopia. When the Ethiopians conquered and occupied Arabia, they brought coffee plants with them. Legend has it, that an Imam thought coffee to be the perfect thing to keep people awake during prayers and coffee drinking was encouraged. Coffee houses sprang up and and ceremony, special roasts, utensils, and etiquette became established.

Plants and shoots were smuggled to countries all over the world for the next 600 years, until 1893 when seeds from Brazil were brought to Kenya and planted in Tanzania, only a few hundred miles south of it's original home in Ethiopia.

It's a fun book, thank you Marian.

Martian Hot Springs
Data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) suggest the discovery of ancient springs in the Vernal Crater, sites where life forms may have evolved on Mars, according to a new report.

"Sorry kids, we cant go to the hot springs today.
...It's dust deviling outside."








Martian dust devil. ..............................March 15, 2005
Valentines at LuLu's

Singing with passion (photo credit-Sandi Taylor)

Caught up in the feeling (photo credit-Sandi Taylor)

A good time was had by all (photo credit-Sandi Taylor)

I enjoyed playing last night.
It was nice of John-lead guitar, Mark-bass, Dennis-drums, and Rick-keyboard, to join me in an hour long variety of "love" songs, played in my own bluesy style. It gave me a chance to extend my reach, by allowing me to stop playing once in awhile, and just focus on the singing. It was very effective and satisfying, thank you guy's.

Falling Iridium Satellites

Iridium 59 and 96 fall over Minnesota 2/09/07
The satellite that got clobbered by a wandering Russian satellite Wednesday, was owned by a company called IridiumLLC. They provide satellite phone service around the globe. They were supposed to have 77 of these satellites, plus spares, in orbit, thereby matching the atomic number of iridium on the periodic table, however, financial restraints limited them to 66. (They kept the name Iridium, no doubt because they had already printed the stationery.)

This collision and subsequent production of more space trash, has once again raised the question; "What are we going to do with all this crap floating around our planet?"

In 1979,
I wrote a song
about Skylab falling,
"...but they don't know where".

Skylab, before the fall. (photo credit-NASA)

While I was doing research for the song, in 1979, I came across an article that described a potential problem with the approximately, 23,000 pieces of "Space Junk", we had circling the globe. I am happy to report that just today in Discover, (on-line magazine), they have new methods and categories for tabulating our traveling trash;

17,300 The estimated number of pieces of debris larger than 10 centimeters in diameter that are being tracked by the U.S. Space Surveillance Network. The SSN also tracks more than 300,000 objects measuring between 1 and 10 cm and billions that are much smaller. The mix of space junk includes unused spacecraft, flecks of paint released by thermal stress, solid rocket engine effluents, and at least one astronaut tool bag.


If someone were to start up a business

collecting and disposing space junk,

they could really clean up.



Phil's Space Debris Removal Service........2/13/09

Pika Needs Protection

American Pika

The American pika, a tiny cousin of the rabbit, lives in cold mountain peaks in the U.S., where the 36 pika sub-species have adapted for a very specific environment.

According to Earthjustice, global warming threatens pikas by shortening their food-gathering season (they hoard food for the winter like chipmunks), changing the types of plants that grow where they live, reducing the insulating snow-pack that protects them during the coldest months, and, worst of all, causing the animals to die from overheating.

Today's Relatively Appropriate Song;

Little Things Mean A Lot
-Kitty Kallen 1954

It's Alright

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