Life Is Still Good

     

Tucson Weather Today

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Walking Westward on the sidewalk alongside Speedway Boulevard yesterday I espied at an intersection a gloved and helmeted uniformed member of the Tucson Motorcycle Traffic Police. He was busily wielding his Radar Gun at the oncoming traffic. I noticed that he aimed the instrument at me as I approached him. So when I was within earshot of him I smiled and asked, "How fast was I going?" He grinned back at me and said, "Oh, 'bout three miles an hour." Not to be outdone, I replied, "Oh surely not... I don't think this old body'll even go that fast."

And, as his smile widened, I walked on.


I thought it might be advantageous for me to do more experimenting with my camera, and perhaps to learn more about photography in general. So, after leaving the friendly officer and walking along I paused and took a few shots of a crow perched atop a distant street light. I didn't notice until after loading the pics onto my computer that one of the shots had captured a tiny faded moon up there in the bright daytime sky.

This Is My First Shot

Then I Snapped A Zoomed In Shot

This Is The Crow Cropped From
The Above Zoomed-In Shot

Don't know if I learned anything or not.

Time will tell . . . maybe.

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A few minutes ago I finished watching an hour-long video made back in 2005 wherein Sam Harris discusses his then newly published book, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. It was quite interesting.

You can view the video HERE

(I really don't expect even one reader to view the talk.)

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Deputy Administrator Lori Garver announced Friday that NASA has received more than 400 responses to its request for information (RFI) on the agency's asteroid initiative. Released June 18, the RFI was the first opportunity for industry and other potential partners, including private individuals, to offer ideas on planning for NASA's mission to redirect an asteroid for exploration by astronauts and the agency's asteroid grand challenge.

Garver, speaking at the Space Frontier Foundation's NewSpace 2013 conference in San Jose, California, said: "The aerospace industry, innovative small businesses and citizen scientists have many creative ideas and strategies for carrying out our asteroid exploration mission and helping us to protect our home planet from dangerous near-Earth objects."

All the responses are being evaluated and rated. NASA will explore the highly rated responses for inclusion in future planning

For more information about NASA's asteroid initiative, you can visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/asteroidinitiative

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TRIVIA

The very first product Motorola developed was a record player for automobiles. At that time the most known player on the market was the Victrola, so they called themselves Motorola.

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HISTORICAL EVENT

On this day, July 27 in 1949, the world's first jet-propelled airliner, the British De Havilland Comet, made its maiden test-flight in England. The jet engine would ultimately revolutionize the airline industry, shrinking air travel time in half by enabling planes to climb faster and fly higher.

After its July 1949 test flight, the Comet underwent three more years of testing and training flights. Then, on May 2, 1952, the British Overseas Aircraft Corporation (BOAC) began the world's first commercial jet service with the 44-seat Comet 1A, flying paying passengers from London to Johannesburg.

Yes, the airline industry has certainly been revolutionized.

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WORD FOR TODAY

revolution [rev-uh-LOO-shun]
noun
1.  an overthrow or repudiation and the thorough replacement of an established government or political system by the people governed.
2.  (Sociology) a radical and pervasive change in society and the social structure, especially one made suddenly and often accompanied by violence.
3.  a sudden, complete or marked change in something: the present revolution in church architecture.
4.  a procedure or course, as if in a circuit, back to a starting point.
5.  a single turn of this kind.

A revolution (from the Latin revolutio, "a turn around") is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.

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CELEBRITY BIRTHDAYS

Jerry Van Dyke

(born July 27, 1931)

Jerry Van Dyke is an American comedian and actor, the younger brother of Dick Van Dyke. He made his acting debut on The Dick Van Dyke Show with several guest appearances as Rob Petrie's brother, Stacey. Later in his career from 1989 to 1997, he was one of the supporting stars of Craig T. Nelson's ABC sitcom, Coach. He appeared in the 2000s sitcom Yes, Dear as a recurring character, "Big Jimmy," the father of Jimmy Hughes. He made a guest appearance on a September 2008 episode of My Name Is Earl and in 2010, he made an appearance on the second season episode, "A Simple Christmas" of the television series, The Middle, playing Frankie's father, Tag Spence.

Indiana Rose Evans

(born 27 July 1990)

Indiana Evans is an Australian actress and singer best known for her roles on Home and Away, H2O: Just Add Water and Blue Lagoon: The Awakening.

William Ray "Bill" Engvall, Jr.

(born July 27, 1957)

Bill Engvall is an American comedian and actor best known for his work as a stand-up comic, his signature "Here's Your Sign" bit, and as a member of the Blue Collar Comedy group.

Peggy Gail Fleming

(born July 27, 1948)

Peggy Fleming is an American figure skater. She is the 1968 Olympic Champion in Ladies' singles and a three-time World Champion (1966–1968). Fleming has been a television commentator on figure skating for over 20 years, including several Winter Olympic Games.

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Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.
--Franz Kafka

NASA TV
   

Others Are Saying . . .

    

Tucson Weather Today

 



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Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote: "Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."

Now that is meaningful and helpful advice indeed. That is my idea of sharing useful insight.

But, wait a minute . . . Who in the world cares what my idea about anything is?  Everybody has their own interpretation of a subject, or an object, or an event, or even a half-formed mental vision of a possible concept. And who's to say that one is superior to that of another? It would take a veritable god indeed to truthfully do so.

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PZ Myers answers the question: "What Does Evil Look Like?" in a short but effective blog entry with photo.

Read it HERE

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Today's Passing Asteroid

NASA is inviting members of the media and public to participate in online and television events May 30-31 with NASA officials and experts discussing the agency's asteroid initiative and the Earth flyby of the 1.7-mile-long asteroid 1998 QE2.

At 4:59 p.m. EDT, Friday, May 31, 1998 QE2 will pass by Earth at a distance of about 3.6 million miles -- its closest approach for at least the next two centuries. The asteroid was discovered Aug. 19, 1998, by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research Program near Socorro, N.M.

More at the NASA Asteroid and Comet watch

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TRIVIA

If you drop a penny off of the Empire State Building, it will be going 106 miles per hour when it reaches the ground. Something moving this fast may actually cause head injuries if it lands on you.

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HISTORICAL EVENT

A killer who couldn't keep his mouth shut

On this day, May 31 in 1964, fifteen-year-old Alleen Rowe was killed by Charles Schmid in the desert outside Tucson, Arizona. Earlier in the night, Schmid allegedly had said to his friends, "I want to kill a girl! I want to do it tonight. I think I can get away with it!" Schmid went on to kill three other teenage girls before being caught by police.

Schmid was convicted and sentenced to death, but he survived because the Supreme Court invalidated most death sentences in 1972.

More  . . .

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WORD FOR TODAY

preamble
noun
an introductory statement; preface; introduction
Synonyms
opening, beginning; foreword, prologue, prelude

A preamble is an introductory and expressionary statement in a document that explains the document's purpose and underlying philosophy.

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CELEBRITY BIRTHDAYS

Clinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr.
(born May 31, 1930)

 Clint Eastwood is an American film actor, director, and producer. Eastwood first came to prominence as a supporting cast member in the TV series Rawhide (1959–1966). He rose to fame for playing the Man with No Name in Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy of spaghetti westerns (A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) during the late 1960s, and as Harry Callahan in the Dirty Harry films (Dirty Harry, Magnum Force, The Enforcer, Sudden Impact, and The Dead Pool) throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

For his work in the films Unforgiven (1992) and Million Dollar Baby (2004), Eastwood won Academy Awards for Best Director and Producer of the Best Picture, as well as receiving nominations for Best Actor. These films in particular, as well as others including Play Misty for Me (1971), Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974), The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), Escape from Alcatraz (1979), Tightrope (1984), Pale Rider (1985), Heartbreak Ridge (1986), In the Line of Fire (1993), The Bridges of Madison County (1995), and Gran Torino (2008), have all received commercial success and critical acclaim. Eastwood's only comedies have been Every Which Way but Loose (1978) and its sequel Any Which Way You Can (1980), which are his two most commercially successful films after adjustment for inflation.

Brooke Shields
(born May 31, 1965)

Brooke Shields is an American actress, model and former child star. Shields, initially a child model, gained critical acclaim for her leading role in Louis Malle's wildly controversial film Pretty Baby (1978), in which she played a child prostitute in New Orleans at the turn of the 20th century. The role garnered Shields widespread notoriety, and she continued to model into her late teenage years and starred in several dramas in the 1980s, including The Blue Lagoon (1980), and Franco Zeffirelli's Endless Love (1981).

 

Joseph William "Joe" Namath
(born May 31, 1943)

Joe Namath, nicknamed "Broadway Joe" is a former American football quarterback. He played college football for the University of Alabama under coach Paul "Bear" Bryant and his assistant, Howard Schnellenberger, from 1962–1964, and professional football in the American Football League (AFL) and National Football League (NFL) during the 1960s and 1970s. Namath was an American Football League icon. He played for that league's New York Jets for most of his professional football career, and finished his career with the NFL's Los Angeles Rams. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1985.

Lea Kathleen Thompson
(born May 31, 1961)

Leah Thompson is an American actress, television director and television producer. She is known for her role as Lorraine Baines in the Back to the Future trilogy and as the title character in the 1990s NBC sitcom Caroline in the City. Other films she is known for include All the Right Moves, The Beverly Hillbillies, Howard the Duck, Jaws 3-D, Red Dawn, and Some Kind of Wonderful. Since 2011 she has co-starred as Kathryn Kennish in the ABC Family series Switched at Birth.

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The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.
--Robert Frost

February 15 Approach Of Asteroid

    
Tucson Weather Today
 

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It was discovered that a near-Earth asteroid with an estimated diameter of about 45 meters (148 ft) and an estimated mass of about 130,000 metric tons will bring the Earth to a distance from Earth to asteroid of 34,100 km; 21,200 miles.

 

The asteroid will pass closer to Earth than our orbiting satellites in geosynchronous orbit. This can be seen in the following illustration.

 

This February 15, 2013 passage by Earth is a record close approach for a known object of this size.

The good news:
NASA says "Near-Earth Asteroid 2012 DA14 Will Miss Earth On February 15, 2013.

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HISTORICAL CLIP

On this day, February 6, in 1952, after a long illness, King George VI of Great Britain and Northern Ireland died in his sleep at the royal estate at Sandringham. Princess Elizabeth, the oldest of the king's two daughters and next in line to succeed him, became Queen Elizabeth II.

Queen Elizabeth, born on April 21, 1926, and known to her family as Lilibet, was groomed as a girl to succeed her father. She married a distant cousin, Philip Mountbatten, on November 20, 1947, at London's Westminster Abbey. The first of Elizabeth's four children, Prince Charles, was born in 1948.

Elizabeth, the 40th British monarch since William the Conqueror, has worked hard at her royal duties and become a popular figure around the world. In 2003, she celebrated 50 years on the throne, only the fifth British monarch to do so.

Today, the queen is one of the world's wealthiest women, with extensive real-estate holdings and art and jewelry collections.

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WORD FOR TODAY

asteroid
noun
A small rocky body orbiting the sun, ranging in size from nearly 600 miles across to dust particles.

Asteroids are small Solar System bodies that are not comets, and historically referred to objects inside the orbit of Jupiter. They have also been called planetoids, especially the larger ones. These terms have historically been applied to any astronomical object orbiting the Sun that did not show the disk of a planet and was not observed to have the characteristics of an active comet, but as small objects in the outer Solar System were discovered, their volatile-based surfaces were found to more closely resemble comets, and so were often distinguished from traditional asteroids.

Thus the term asteroid has come increasingly to refer specifically to the small bodies of the inner Solar System out to the orbit of Jupiter, which are usually rocky or metallic. They are grouped with the outer bodies—centaurs, Neptune trojans, and trans-Neptunian objects—as minor planets, which is the term preferred in astronomical circles.

There are millions of asteroids, many thought to be the shattered remnants of planetesimals, bodies within the young Sun’s solar nebula that never grew large enough to become planets. A large majority of known asteroids orbit in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

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BORN ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

 

Babe Ruth

 

Born February 6, 1895
Died: August 16, 1948

George Herman Ruth, Jr, best known as "Babe" Ruth and nicknamed "the Bambino" and "the Sultan of Swat", was an American baseball player who spent 22 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) playing for three teams (1914–1935).

Known for his hitting brilliance, Ruth set career records in his time for home runs (714 since broken), slugging percentage (.690), runs batted in (RBI) (2,213 since broken), and on-base plus slugging (OPS) (1.164).

Ruth originally entered the major leagues with the Boston Red Sox as a starting pitcher, but after he was sold to the New York Yankees in 1919, he converted to a full-time right fielder. He subsequently became one of the league's most prolific hitters and with his home run hitting prowess, he helped the Yankees win seven pennants and four World Series titles. Ruth retired in 1935 after a short stint with the Boston Braves, and the following year, he became one of the first five players to be elected into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Ronald Reagan

 

Born Feb. 6, 1911
Died June 5, 2004

Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States (1981–89). Prior to that, he was the 33rd Governor of California (1967–75), and a radio, film and television actor.

As president, Reagan implemented sweeping new political and economic initiatives. His supply-side economic policies, dubbed "Reaganomics", advocated reducing tax rates to spur economic growth, controlling the money supply to reduce inflation, deregulation of the economy, and reducing government spending.

Mike Farrell

 

Born   Feb. 6, 1939
Age:   73 years old

Michael Joseph "Mike" Farrell is an American actor, best known for his role as Captain B.J. Hunnicutt on the television series M*A*S*H (1975–83). He is an activist for political causes.

Farrell was a producer of Patch Adams (1998) starring Robin Williams, and has starred on the television series Providence (1999–2002). He appeared as Milton Lang, the father of Victor Lang (John Slattery), husband of Gabrielle Solis (Eva Longoria) on Desperate Housewives (2007–2008). He was seen in the tenth season episode "Persona" of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Most recently he appeared as the character Fred Jones in the season 8 episode "Hunteri Heroici" of Supernatural.

Patrick Macnee

 

Born Feb. 6, 1922
Age: 90 years old

Patrick Macnee is an English actor, known for his role as the secret agent John Steed in the series The Avengers.

Comment: I once, a long time ago, mentioned the name of the  actor Patrick Macnee, and a family member chuckled and said, "It's pronounced 'McGee,' Gene." I reiterated, "It's 'Macnee.'" To which he sneered and said, "Oh, I forgot that Gene's never wrong." I hate when that happens -- It happens more than you'd think. I'm not always right, but probably at least 90 percent of the time.

Note: The Writer's Almanac each day features the birthdays and short bios for selected poets and authors.

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Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.
--Mark Twain