Strange days.

[jasoom]

How's your local biosphere?

Database-backed service allowing users to see chemical pollution on local street maps of
their own community - and take action. Just enter your zip code and find out what pollutants are being released into your community, and who is responsible. When I saw the huge red blobs over the Eastern States, the map listed under the air pollutants directory, I just knew I had to check it out, heheh.

<center><h1>#</h1></center>

Sorry guys, a warning before you use the link below! Seems when I tested the link, (4 times), I got to the site all right, but when I close out the site my machine froze & I had to re-boot each time. While I think it most likely is my browser acting up, didn't want to take any chances. I'll leave the site addr below but be fore-warned, you may have to re-boot! It's really a pity, as their are volumes of cool local info there.
http://www.scorecard.org/

[This message has been edited by jasoom (edited January 27, 2001).]

[This message has been edited by jasoom (edited January 27, 2001).]

[Shadowjack]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by jasoom:
<h2>People With Really Bad Luck</h2>

And in July in Ponta, Texas, Charles and Jennifer Smith and their three preschoolers purchased a new Dodge Intrepid, which was totaled in a collision the next day; on Aug. 11, fire destroyed their trailer home; then Jennifer drove over the family dog, whose leg is now in a cast; and in September, after the community banded together to get the Smiths a new trailer home, a storm totaled that one, too.

[Wichita Eagle, 9-24-00] [Athens (Tex.) Daily Review, 9-25-00]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

God hates trailer parks...



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---Shadowjack

[MerleZ]

Jas, ya got some really weird stuff in here!

Anyway, I watched the Nova story on Stardust. The eventual theory that came from the expedition was that Stardust climbed to 23,000 feet to rise above a storm. Reallizing they were well above the highest peak of the Andes range, they decided to fly straight to their destination, rather than through the pass and down the coast. Unfortunately, in that day, they were unaware of the jet stream, and the theory is that Stardust likely was going directly against it.

The last radio contact from Stardust indicated they were ten minutes from the airport and starting their decent. If in fact they had steered straight for the airport rather than through the pass, and got caught in a fieerce jetstream headwind of which they were unaware, this would accont for a massive navigational error, which caused them to desend through the clouds...and right into the side of the mountain. The theory further goes that the crash casued an avalanche which buried Stardust, explaining why searchers never saw the wreckage. Over the years, the glacier devoured Stardust, and is only now giving up bits and pieces. The expedition found the remains of seven of the eleven people on board. DNA typing is being done to try to identify the remains.

So at least on this one, no UFOs, only a lack of knowledge by the navigator and pilot explain what happened.

[jasoom]

Oh Crud! I can't believe myself sometimes. I forgot the program was on & missed the $%*# thing!

Anyways, thanks Merle for the update. From what you have posted it seems like the most logical happenstance & wonder why back then that the possibility of an avalanche having buried the Stardust didn't occur to the people in charge at the time of the incident.

One thing is probable, it was a horrific but hopefully mercifully instantaneous end.

[Erythrina]

Merle, we watched the whole show, and found it fascinating -- between the original disappearance of "Stardust" to the explanation of gravity and glaciers and the effects of the jet stream, it was all just fascinating!

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The Red Witch
True Names by Vernor Vinge
[email protected]

[jasoom]

<center><font color="navy">The Camelot Project</font></center>

THE CAMELOT PROJECT is designed to make available in electronic format a database of Arthurian texts, images, bibliographies, and basic information. The project, begun in 1995, is sponsored by the University of Rochester and prepared in The Robbins Library, a branch of Rush Rhees Library.

The Main Menu lists Arthurian characters, symbols, and sites.

http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/cphome.stm

[This message has been edited by jasoom (edited February 07, 2001).]

[jasoom]

<center><font color="navy">Space Station Homeless. A Presentation of the Bad Air and Space Museum</font></center>

NASA junkies envision a wondrous future with shiny, happy people living and working in space, but what if the social ills of Earth find their way into orbit? Space Station Homeless paints a portrait of such a possibility.

The site is a collection of images depicting what it would be like to be homeless in space. It borrows from traditional space imagery, but stands it on its head by juxtaposing incongruous elements, such as portrayals of astronauts filling their rocket-powered shopping carts with space junk. Some are inspired, like the ex-cosmonaut holding up a sign that says he'll work for food and air, or the depictions of space "gangstas" and debris collectors with rocket-powered shopping carts.

If you explore the site, be sure & take a look at 'PETS IN SPACE', A look at animals as outer space companions.

http://www.BadAirAndSpace.com/

[This message has been edited by jasoom (edited February 07, 2001).]

[jasoom]

A Sea of Mystery, Frozen in Time

At the coldest spot on Earth, hidden miles beneath the Antarctic icecap, stands a freshwater lake as long as Lake Ontario and as deep as Lake Tahoe--its untouched waters a time capsule from more than a million years ago.

The pristine waters of Lake Vostok, as it is called, have been isolated by a continental shield of ice two miles thick for millions of years. The lake may harbor microbes unchanged from a time when Antarctica was as green as the rain forests of Brazil, offering scientists a unique test tube of life from a primordial era.

Indeed, the conditions in Lake Vostok appear so exotic that researchers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory believe it could offer a foretaste of how life might evolve in the frozen oceans of Jupiter's moons Europa and Ganymede or in the icecaps of Mars.

Earlier this year, National Science Foundation researchers mapped the hidden shoreline of Lake Vostok, as it is called, setting the stage for an international effort to search its depths for primordial life. Vostok -- the coldest spot on Earth -- is the site of a Russian research station.

The bore hole to reach the ancient lake to date has been drilled to within a few hundred feet of the lake.

Article by Robert Lee Hotz, Times Science Writer.

Complete article http://www.latimes.com/news/science/...000019216.html

[Erythrina]

Amazing! I read the entire article, and it's just amazing to reflect on the number of things left to be discovered on our planet. That and I simply must know how the author, knows what cornmeal on glass sounds like

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The Red Witch
True Names by Vernor Vinge
[email protected]

[jasoom]

After I read the article, I couldn't help thinking of John Carpenters re-make of 'The Thing'. Pretty similar scenario, except that if I'm remembering correctly, in the movie, it had been Norwegians, or maybe Swedes (?), that dug up the bio material that became the Thing. Now we have the Russians drilling to Lake Vostok.

What if a million or so years ago, an alien scout craft crashed in the jungles of the South Pole, & an inhabitant of the craft was thrown clear of the ship (Like in the Original movie 'The Thing'), & was preserved in stasis in the muddy sediment of the young lake? Then in a million years or so, a Russian drilling concern punctures the hidden lake & brings back up alien microbes that have since filled the lake.

Makes one think!