Humor
Scroll to the bottom - the Klingon Software Developers are a hoot!

Emily's mole has been removed. She was very brave - there was only one time when she was upset, and that was right near the start. Once she realized it wasn't going to hurt, she did great.

She has five stitches which will be removed in two weeks. And no pool until at least Tuesday! Oh, the humanity!

Summer is here! The pool is open and the kids are clamoring to go, even when it's cool or rainy or, well, even at night! The kids have so much fun at the pool. We are so blessed that Emily & Alex play so well together! 

The Oops List
Lots of pictures, some of them photo-shopped. Funny nonetheless.

Tiny robot helicopter unveiled in Japan

You've seen it in movies and on TV - but then, it was just science fiction. Introducing the little flying robots that are just born to spy on you! Can you imagine what will be possible with these things when they hit production capability? They can be used for surveillance, or security monitoring, or physical delivery of extremely small packages (think "21st century carrier pidgeon").

CNN.com - NASA: Voyager I enters solar system's final frontier - May 25, 2005
"Barring hardware failure, Voyager I and II boast enough power and communications capability to keep radioing back to Earth until 2020, NASA says."

It's astounding what we were able to accomplish in the 1970's. We think of that time as "before personal computers", where handheld calculators had all of four or five functions, and "Pong" was the great hit of entertainment. Yet, at that time, we were launching probes into space that are continuing to work to this day.

The only other NASA achievements that have worked this well are the Martian rovers and the Martian mapping satellite. And it took a lotta tries before we got that right...

Have I told you that Alex is wearing an eye patch now? It seems his left eye is a bit weak, so he covers his right eye for 12 hrs a day. Once it starts to get better it'll drop down to 8 - but he'll still be wearing the glasses! Boy, they sure do change the way he looks!
 

And Emily lost one of her top two teeth. Since she had the wide gap between her teeth before this, the missing tooth plus the gap make her look like a hockey player! 

NASA science reveals texts of Trojan Wars, early gospels
This is the kind of thing we all hope for - finding a gem in a load of garbage. Multispectral imaging, as enhanced by computers, allows us to bring out the details of obscured writings to a point that we are able to translate them. This will be big - very big. As this article describes, they've only translated 1% of this find before now, but the new technology will speed up the process.

My favorite part:

Meanwhile, the Oxford team is looking at another promising application of the technology. Scholars have long known that the elaborately painted cartonnage used to encase mummies was a kind of papier-mache made from papyrus. A lot of the papyrus has writing on it, but there didn't seem to be a way of reading it without destroying the decorative cartonnage.

In one recent trial, the imaging process was able to read writing beneath the painted surface of a cartonnage fragment. Scholars were thrilled, even though it turned out to be just another government report.

The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster
A hoot! Be sure to read the archives for the full effect of the Dark Lord.

Astrologer to sue Nasa
I should have thought of this. I need a quick way to retire - why not sue the government for the damage it's doing to other planets? How about I sue them for littering on Mars? I believe it's a $500 fine per instance!

Toyota.com : Vehicles : Prius
(See the fourth picture from the left).

I bought a Prius - Silver, Package #6, Leather interior.

And boy is it fun!

WSJ.com - Eyes on the Road
GM still seems to miss the point that hybrids aren't just a flash in the pan, but are a good stopgap measure while we travel toward hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

A Plan for Spam

A great writeup by Paul Graham about what spam is and how to stop it.

SpamBayes: Bayesian anti-spam classifier written in Python.

A great Outlook plug-in that learns what your good mail looks like and moves all the spam "out of the way". So far, it has worked great for me!

The Alliance to Save Energy says Americans driving SUVs paid $180 more for gas in 2004 than they did in 2003, passenger car drivers paid $144 more, and hybrid electric car drivers paid only $50 to $67 more.

New American Dream points out that bicyclists' gas costs were the exact same in 2004 as in 2003!

http://www.newdream.org/bike/

Saturn Today - Your Daily Source of Saturn News Brought to you by SpaceRef
It's amazing what we are capable of, technologically. We have robots on Mars and a surveyor satellite orbiting same, as well as a surveyor satellite orbiting Saturn. And Now, we have a probe on Titan taking color pictures and listening to sounds. That's right, sounds from another planet!

Now, if we could only put aluminum foil in the microwave...

J-Pass 2.0
Ever wonder where that pesky International Space Station is? Boy, I do! Here's a site that lets you predict the visible passes. Even though my kids can see the wings, they love knowing that there's a big box flying through space hundreds of miles above them.

Finch Facts
Doh! I seem to have fallen asleep for a few months. Can you ever forgive me?

Half.com
Amanda & I decided to get rid of a lot of our CDs and videos that we've been storing in a closet. At first we thought about just dumping them, but then we thought, "Wouldn't it be more fun (and lucrative) to sell them on the Internet?" So, we've become engines of the economy and set up shop at Half.com.