Back to Bad Business
NASA has set the launch date for the first post-Columbia-Disaster launch date. The launch window opens in May 2005. It's back to the shuttle game for NASA.

The agency was working toward a launch planning window that opens in March 2005, before a series of hurricanes impacted operations at multiple NASA facilities. NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Fla., Marshall Space Flight Center, Ala., Stennis Space Center, Miss., and Michoud Assembly Facility, La., all experienced shutdowns in preparation for one or more of the four hurricanes in August and September, resulting in delays on Return to Flight work.

The Face of Titan
The face of Titan got revealed through radar imaging.

"Unveiling Titan is like reading a mystery novel," said Dr. Charles Elachi, director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and team leader for the radar instrument on Cassini. "Each time you flip the page you learn something new, but you don't know the whole story until you've read the whole book. The story of Titan is unfolding right before our eyes, and what we are seeing is intriguing."

The Oct. 26 flyby marked the first time Cassini's imaging radar was used to observe Titan. The radar instrument works by bouncing radio signals off Titan's surface and timing their return. This is similar to timing the returning echo of your voice across a canyon to tell how wide the canyon is. Radio waves

Ever Heard of Marsquakes?
They think these pitt chains on the surface of Mars indicate that there were recent quakes on the surface of the Red Planet.

"These faults could now serve as reservoirs for water or ice, making these locations of potentially great interest to the scientific community searching for signs of life on Mars," said Ferrill, a senior program manager at SwRI.

"Astrobiologists consider subsurface aquifer systems high-priority targets for a potential Martian fossil record," said Danielle Wyrick, an SwRI planetary geologist who co-authored the GSA Today article. "Detecting underground water is difficult because current Mars data show only the surface. Pit chains are easy-to-recognize features that give us clues to wha's going on below the surface, including prospective groundwater systems."

That, or they are the launch domes for Marvin the Martian ready to come invaed us.

- Art Neuro

Beheadings As Cultural Conflict
There was a time in the 1850s when the Westerners wanted to open up Japan that the radicals in Japan took to beheading westerners. The idea was that Europeans should be challenged and confronted with the utmost violence in order to send a message they ought to go away. In the context of European imperialism of the last century, it wasn't a particularly novel concept, however what should be noted is that both sides of the discourse was coloured with immense amounts of racism, vis a vis the other.

In the following century, as Japan modernised, the racism of the West was challenged by the very power of the Japanese economy, and Japan's racism received a devastating blow with the loss of the Pacific War. After which, the world has found a place for Japan and Japan has found a place in it; what is good is that the days of beheading Westerners are long gone. Mind you, It was only 60 or so years ago there were beheadings in POW camps, so maybe that's not such a great claim. However, it seems highly unlikely Westerners will get beheaded in Japan on account of being Westerners.

Ironically, Japan has now been identified with the rest of the Western Cultural influence as it has sent troops for the reconstruction of Iraq. The insurgents of Iraq have taken Japanese people hostage and decapitated one:

Associated Press Television News videotape showed the severed head with the hostage's long black hair and features.

Policeman Yassin Hashim, who examined the body, said it was dressed in jeans, a beige shirt, and black underwear. The body's hands and legs had been bound with white rope, he said, adding that he believed the death occurred recently.

The Japanese Foreign Ministry said Koda entered Iraq on Oct. 21 and was last seen two days later at a Baghdad bus terminal, where he tried to catch a bus back to Jordan.

The ordeal was excruciating for Koda's family, which pleaded for his life on Arabic TV and through international media throughout the week, saying their son — who was traveling as a tourist — had no political intentions in Iraq and was simply curious.

Well, we know curiosity kills the cat.
The question we must ask is, who knows what a beheading means to an Iraqi? Who knows what beheadings mean to the Japanese? Who knows what will come from this? It's interesting to note the Japanese are not saying the Iraqi terrorists are cruel and barbarous. They are saying that they're not going to give into Terrorism; but we expected that as a 'civilised' response.
The 'cultural' response was revealed in the disdain the general public gave to the Japanese man who went to Iraq out of curiosity more than any belief in a cause or having sympathy. The word on the street in Tokyo seems to be that the Japanese government should be spending money helping those who suffered in the recent Niigata Earthquakes; don't spend it on some idiot who went to a dangerous place on a whim.

The thing is, what happens if a radical right wing Japanese group kidnap an Iraqi and make similar threats? What would Mr. Alawi do? And what if the Iraqi should get decapitated? My goodness, the Sadean possibility of that has me salivating... But it won't happen. It would make too much cultural sense and not enough civilised sense.

The stark, bipolar choices people seem to making seem to be between the ubiquitous, pervasive, bland, general force of 'civilisation' versus the immovable, resistant, trenchant, untranslatable forces of 'culture' scattered across the globe. The nasty truth is, in an reductio ad absurdum, the choices we have in front of us are accepting McDonalds or joining the Jihad. There are no third options.

If people do not believe that Clausewitz had a point in postulating as cause of war cultural conflict, I believe we are seeing it play out in Iraq right now. Those Iraqi 'terrorists are fighting for the right not to buy into McDonalds.

- Art Neuro

Prehistoric Hobits in Indonesia? "Flores Man" - you be the judge

The Space Freaks Blog

Spacefreaks blog. Fair and balanced ; )

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86 Years Of Futility Ends in Boston
I don't know about you, but I fear for the Universe when the Red Sox win a World Series. After all, the last time they won was in 1918, the last year of WWI. Amazingly, they swept the 105-game-winning Cardinals, and that was that.
people are celebraing in Boston; Cats and Dogs are getting together, it just ain't natural. What next? The North Sydney Bears come back ino the NRL Championship to reclaim a Premiership? The Swannies win it all?
Heck, it might even be the Cubs who win it all next year. It'd be *wrong*, but now that the Red Sox have won, anything is possible. The world has become a much more unpredictable, much less safe place for it :)

So much for the Curse of the Bambino. No more chants of "1918!" at Yankee Stadium.
I guess if you put your mind to it, you can achieve anything.
Maybe I'll ask Kate Beckinsale out on a date.

- Art Neuro

It's All Peachy on the ISS
The returned astronauts and cosmonauts report that their stay on the ISS was a success.

Speaking at their first news conference since touching down on the Kazakhstan steppe Sunday morning, Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka and American astronaut Michael Fincke told reporters they were pleased with their work.

"I think we surprised some people, but because of the team work between the ground and among ourselves we got more done than anybody ever hoped for," Fincke said. "We had an unexpected space walk and that took so much time to plan, and even then we more than fulfilled our scientific program."

"The most memorable moment was the space walk, in the interest of the American segment in Russian space suits," Padalka said.

It's all good.

It's All Peachy on Titan
The Cassini craft made its closest fly-by of Titan so far.

The historic flight past Titan occurred at 9:45 a.m. PDT on Tuesday, but the spacecraft cannot collect and send data simultaneously. Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, must wait until 6:30 p.m. PDT for the spacecraft to start transmitting its data from the moon's surface.

This is one of 45 fly-bys scheduled for Cassini.

- Art Neuro

Re-enactment of The Charge Of The Light Brigade
Yep. During the Crieman War, the poms got on horseback and made a charge through 'the Valley of Death' in the Ukraine. The thing is, the Ukrainians who lived there probably didn't think they dwelled in such a bad place and wondered why these 19th century equivalent of football-hooligans-on-horseback were rampaging through their neighbourhood. Okay. Maybe not. But here's the re-enactment article.

On Monday, about 30 British Lancer troops and re-enactors rode across the plain where the Russian cannon had been positioned. No cannons were placed in the field from which they once discharged fatal volleys.

A bugle believed to have been used to start the charge was blown for the commemoration ride, and a small, white wooden cross was erected in the field afterward. "Many people lost their lives that day ... no great victory to either side," said Lord Cardigan, a descendant of the battle's cavalry commander, who rode with the lancers in civilian dress.

In a separate commemoration, the prince and other dignitaries marked the anniversary in a ceremony at an obelisk above the plain. About 200 British tourists watched, along with a contingent of local residents, who appeared variously perplexed and delighted by appearance of horses and dignitaries. Children ran up to the horses excitedly, while the adults hung back with little comment. A few Ukrainian naval sailors attended the ceremonies, but no one in Russian uniforms was seen.

Yeah. I'd imagine they thought WTF? Maybe I should write a novel about it and send it in to the Vogel Prize under a Ukrainian pseudonym.

TV Set Complains of Content It Has To Show... I Think
A man's TV set sent out a distress signal to a satellite.

The signal from Chris van Rossmann's TV was routed by a polar orbiting satellite to the Air Force Rescue Center at Langley Air Force Base, Va. The rescue center alerted Oregon's Office of Emergency Management who sent a Washington-state Civil Air Patrol unit to check on the SAR signal. When they arrived, Knox said, they found a beacon sending out a SAR signal from a helicopter on top of a flatbed truck. But it wasn't the only signal, and the air patrol tracked the other signal to the Toshiba TV set. Toshiba did give the Corvallis man a replacement set.

If I were a TV set and I had to show reality TV to a guy in middle America, I might send a distress signal too.

- Art Neuro

Capsule Landing
The boys in the International Space Station are back on earth in Kazakhstan. The Russians have turned Soyuz into a nice little currency earner, one imagines. It has been working a lot and quite well of late.

The Soyuz spacecraft, the workhorse of Russia's cash-strapped space program, boasts a stellar safety record. But minor glitches occasionally occur. Earlier this month, the crew arriving at the space station had to turn off the autopilot, apply the brakes and manually connect the Soyuz to the docking point after an unidentified problem prompted the craft to approach the station at dangerously high speed.

In May 2003, the first time American astronauts returned on the Soyuz, a computer malfunction sent the crew on a dive so steep their tongues rolled back in their mouths. The crew landed so far off target that more than two hours elapsed before rescuers knew the men were safe.

Now the Soyuz is outfitted with satellite phones and a global positioning satellite system. Russia also requests that the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan close off a large area of its airspace before the scheduled landing.

NASA has said that shuttles should be flying again by early summer.

Yes, well, Soyuz hasn't lost 14 cosmonauts in the last 20 years, has it?

An Odd Kind of Desperation
Marriage is a contract that is taken 0ut on men by desperate women.

SYDNEY (Reuters) - A Chinese woman living in Sydney has taken the unusual step
of advertising for a husband on a billboard outside a cinema in Sydney's eastern suburbs.

Helen Zhou, from Shanghai, said she had tried Internet dating but found men did not want to commit. "People are happy to date but they don't want any commitment, only temporary relationships," the middle-aged Zhou told her weekly local newspaper, the Southern Courier.

Zhou spent A$5,000 (US$3,700) on the billboard which has a large headline "HUSBAND WANTED" and a lists of requirements, such as age up to 45, good health, non-smoker and drinker, Caucasian, solid financial background and a good sense of humor.

"I'm not fussy," said Zhou, who describes herself on the billboard as a beautiful and intelligent woman seeking a "dream family with a fabulous partner."

"I guess I want a traditional sort of person, not really flash -- an old fashioned kind of guy, not one who spends every cent and doesn't worry about tomorrow."

So far Zhou's search for love has received few replies.

Aiyah. All those men to choose from in Shanghai, but she wants a caucasian in East Sydney. Ah, the ills of the one-child policy... has warped their fragile little minds.

- Art Neuro

The Mummy Collector
In Japan there's a saying that 'The mummy collector returns mummified'. What this is in reference to is how a man who is sent out to collect the mummified remains of a man atop a mountain often comes home dead, and mummified. It's meant to be a warning about following in the footsteps of stupidity. The English expression equivalent would be, "Throwing good money after bad"; except what is being expended is lives instead of money.

In that spirit, I'd like to relate this article here:

VIENNA (Reuters) - The man who 13 years ago discovered the frozen remains of a prehistoric iceman in an Alpine glacier was found dead in the Austrian Alps on Saturday, eight days after he went missing, rescue authorities said.

Helmut Simon, the German who found the 5,300-year-old mummified body while hiking on the border of Austria and Italy in 1991, disappeared on Oct. 15 after setting off alone on an expedition in the Bad Hofgastein region in southwestern Austria.

"He was found at an altitude of around 2,200 meters (7,220 ft), apparently having fallen around 100 meters," a member of the Bad Hofgastein mountain rescue team told Reuters.

Rescue officials found and recovered the body of the experienced 67-year-old mountaineer after a local hunter notified them of a mysterious red spot high up on the 2,300-meter Gaiskarkogel mountain.

Simon, 67, and his wife, Erika, from Nuremberg in Germany found the neolithic iceman on the 3,000-meter (9,000-feet) high Similaun glacier in the Tyrolean Oetz Valley. The mummy was named "Oetzi" after the valley.

I mean, literally, the mummy collector... Ah, fugeddaboudit! :)
Send this in to the Darwin Awards.

- Art Neuro

I'd Leave Too
Just as STS 114 is going through it's practice run, I read these couple of headlines from over at spaceflight.com... Astronauts Scott Horowitz and Duane Carey are leaving NASA.
Here's a bit on Horowitz:

A veteran of four Space Shuttle flights, Astronaut Scott J. "Doc" Horowitz, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel, has left NASA for a position with private industry.

Horowitz traveled more than 16 million miles in space on four Shuttle missions, leading activities in science, satellite maintenance and Space Station assembly as a commander and pilot. He served as pilot on Shuttle mission STS-75, a mission that performed microgravity and tethered satellite science in 1996. He next flew as pilot of STS-82, a maintenance mission to the Hubble Space Telescope in 1997. His third flight was as pilot on STS-101 in 2000, an International Space Station assembly mission. In August 2001, Horowitz commanded STS-105, a Station crew exchange and assembly mission.

Here's a bit on Carey:

After fulfilling one dream to pilot a Space Shuttle and see the world from space, Astronaut Duane G. "Digger" Carey (Lt. Col, USAF-Ret) has left NASA to pursue another -- to see the planet up close from the open road.

Carey plans to begin a motorcycle tour of the United States and eventually the world, camping along the way. He and his wife, Cheryl, are moving to Colorado Springs, CO, to prepare for the trip. They plan to launch their travels with a break-in expedition to Alaska. Selected as an astronaut by NASA in 1996, Carey served as pilot of Space Shuttle mission STS-109 in 2002, a maintenance flight to the Hubble Space Telescope. STS-109 orbited the earth 165 times, traveling about 3.9 million miles.

The thing is, knowing the risks of Shuttle flight, I'd count myself very lucky to be alive after 4 flights. Think about it: In 100 or so flights, you've had 2 birds down. In AD&D terms, that's like rolling on 00 roll and trying not to roll 01 or 02. :)

I suspect they wanted to quit after they read the CAIB report but were told to hold on until shuttle flights recommenced. I have no proof, but I do have my suspicions.

Deep Impact, Coming Soon
The Deep Impact probe, designed to smash into a comet, is scheduled for launch on 30 December.

The Deep Impact spacecraft is designed to launch a copper projectile into the surface of comet Tempel 1 on July 4, 2005, when the comet is 133.6 million kilometers (83 million miles) from Earth. When this 372-kilogram (820-pound) "impactor" hits the surface of the comet at approximately 37,000 kilometers per hour (23,000 miles per hour), the 1-by-1 meter projectile (39-by-39 inches) will create a crater that could be as large as a football field. Deep Impact's "flyby" spacecraft will collect pictures and data of the event. It will send the data back to Earth through the antennas of the Deep Space Network. Professional and amateur astronomers on Earth will also be able to observe the material flying from the comet's newly formed crater, adding to the data and images collected by the Deep Impact spacecraft and other telescopes. Tempel 1 poses no threat to Earth in the foreseeable future.

So that's what we're getting for Christmas this year! :)

A Star Trek With A Dash of Jane's Addiction
Dave Navarro of Jane's Addiction and Red Hot Chilli Peppers fame, and William Shatner a.k.a "TJ. Hooker" have booked flights on SpaceShipOne. With a $210,000 price tag, the flight is probably celebs-only for a long while yet. No quotes from Cap'n Quirk were forthcoming.

- Art Neuro

Derek Jeter Watches the Red Sox Celebrate their Game 7 Win
I've collected a bunch of shots of *my mate* Captain Dreamboat turning some amazing plays, smashing the ball, and so on; but this shot seems to sum up the 2004 season. It's a real bummer.
This is not his year.

Coming to think of it, this is not my year either. I think the Yankees need to sign Daisuke Matsuzaka.
- Art Neuro

When Two Worlds Collide
Here's a story that combines this blog's twin interets of space and baseball. There will be a total lunar exclipse during the World Series for the first time. Dig that.

A unique date in the annals of baseball history will be recorded Wednesday, Oct. 27 when for the first time a total lunar eclipse will occur during a World Series game.

Millions of Americans watching Game 4 will also be able to partake in one of nature's most beautiful sky shows, as Earth's shadow begins to cover the Moon during the early innings. Weather permitting, the eclipse will be visible to fans with a good line of site at Busch Memorial Stadium. And, if FOX television producers so choose, the potential exists for this to be the biggest audience ever to see a lunar eclipse televised live.

27th of October? Isn't that the birthdate of Chatswood High School alumnus and former Australian Test Cricket Captain Mark 'Tubby' Taylor? Not that he has anything to do with space or baseball...
Well heck, while we're at it, Happy Birthday to everybody born on that day. :)

Smoke On The Water
There's a guy with the handle Delta Socrates putting on a spirited defense of Derek Jeter's sacrifice bunt in game 5 over at the Baseball Think Factory:

I'm sorry, but I will disagree with a lot of the chatterers here on two points:

1. A-ROD clearly was flummoxed/flustered in this post-season. That doesn't mean he isn't a better player than Jeter, or that he will not bounce back (I think he's got to rip the AL next year), but it does mean that he was out of his element this year.

2. The Jeter bunt in game 5 was a very smart strategy considering the circumstances. The problem was that A-ROD could not get that 5th run in.There was no way of knowing that Flash Gordon was going to melt down in the bottom half of the 8th inning, but surely an extra run would have given the Yankees extra breathing room.Bunting is usually a fool's errand, but in extremely tight games in which a run could make all the difference in the world (with Flash Gordon and Mariano coming in to pitch the 8th and 9th inning), it can and does make sense.

It starts there, and he makes some pointed, excitingly good arguments about the post-season with which I agree. The thing is, he expresses it so much better than I can!

The problem with using regular season statistics to determine whether it made sense or not to bunt is that the post-season by definition is not the regular season.

This is the time of the year when (as Billy Beane says) "My #### doesn't work here".This is the time of the year when the Yankees collapse for 4 straight games after leading 3-0(which had never happened in any baseball post-season series).

This is the time of the year when the Yankees managed to come from behind and beat Arizona in games 4 and 5 of the ALCS by hitting improbable homers against Kim. THis is the time of the year when a fundamentally sound player like Miguel Tejada forgets to run out a play and gets tagged out at a crucial time (Game 5, 2003 ALDS).This is the time of the year when Randy Johnsons come into pitch in relief, when Mike Mussinas and Roy Oswalts relieve Roger Clemens and when every possible strange thing that can happen does.In short, this is the time of the year when you have to kill your enemy when you have him in your grasp (Mariano in game 4), because if not, statistically improbable things happen.Let me just pose one final comment.

It seemed statistically improbable for the BoSox to come back from 0-3 (which they did, against all odds). So why are we still using statistical analysis to evaluate a specific play in a specific game (which had an unlikely outcome, since nobody foresaw Boston tying in the bottom of the 8th) of a series whose outcome was improbable as they come?Boston deserved to win the ALCS, but I still hold that the Yankees and Red Sox are so evenly matched that it was nothing short of a miracle for them to due what they did and come back from 0-3 (do note that it made no sense that the Yankees were up 0-3, since those teams were clearly very evenly matched).

It's a hell of a read. I think Delta Socrates is great in this discussion.

- Art Neuro

Post Mortem Autopsies
In my day as a medical student, we used to have autopsies as part of pathology. Unlike anatomy where they just gave you pre-cut bodies to play with, you get to see the opening up of a recently deceased human being who donated their bodies to science. The thing about autopsies that you never get a sense of in crime shows it that they stink. When the pathologist opens up the abdomen, you get to smell the shit inside; and the smell immediately fills the lecture theatre. Pong! It doth bend your nose. The thing is, everybody stinks like shit when you open them up.

In that spirit, I've lined up some autopsy reports on the 2004 Yankee season.
Steven Goldman of the YES network's Pinstriped Bible is the first man for Yankee critiques:

(1) As the Yankees farm system has suffered from poor drafting and general
neglect, with resources that should have been devoted to domestic scouting spent on expensive international free agents like Jose Contreras and Hideki Matsui, the major league team was forced to turn to expensive, aged veterans to staff out the roster.

(2) When these players broke down, as in the case of Jason Giambi, or simply failed, like Jose Contreras, not only did the organization have few replacements in the minors (and those they did have suffered from the organization’s traditional distrust of its own products), the absence of those players limited their ability to trade for help (which, circularly, they might not have needed had the farm been better tended). The usual lubricant for imbalanced trades, the addition of cash or acceptance of a bad contract, was apparently not an option.

Well, I agree with the general thesis that the farm did let down the Yankee system; however, it's a bit rough to say that it was the major reason the Yanks couldn't get it done. I also disagree with using Matsui as an example of the sort of International Free Agent that hurt the system; it was Jose Contreras who cost more (and for longer), who was a bust in his 18 months as a Yankee. The Yankees overestimated the value of a Cuban Ace, based on their success with El Duque (there can be only one) and underestimated the amount of adjusting a Japanese slugger would need to be a premiere hitter in the majors. Matsui certianly didn't cost them the series.

Larry Mahnken over at The Hardball Times has this to say.

The myth of Derek Jeter's clutchness was shattered, or at least it should be if you were paying attention. Coming into this ALCS, Jeter had a career Gross Production Average (GPA) of .289, and a career postseason GPA of .290. That could be spun as being clutch, since overall postseason batting is lower than regular season batting. This is usually true, but not always -- the overall postseason OPS was higher than the regular season OPS in 2002 and so far this year. Jeter's career OPS+ (without park adjustments) is 110, his career postseason OPS+ is 116. That's certainly better, but it's in too small a sample and too small a difference to be indicative of a special skill.However, in the seven postseason series in which Jeter had done poorly in before the ALCS, the Yankees had won all but one, and in the one they lost, 2001, he had hit a game-winning home run which became the lasting memory of him in that series.

But in this ALCS, Jeter posted a .567 OPS, and batted only .200. He had a three-run double in Game 5, and an RBI single in Game 6, but for the most part he did nothing when he was needed. Throughout the series, Joe Buck and Tim McCarver talked about Jeter leaving his mark on the series -- well, his .567 OPS left a pretty deep
one.Jeter's a very good player, but there's nothing magical about him. Just like every player, he has bad streaks at inopportune times. That's just the way it is, and people should stop pretending it isn't.

Well, I did watch Jeter and I thought he was clutch. That double came at a time when the Yankees needed it. In past years, the Yankees would have made that 2-run lead in the 8th stick and there'd be no discussions right now. Yes, I know what the numbers say; I'm not denying it, but Derek's 'non-clutchness' in this series didn't lose it for the Yankees. It was Tom Gordon and his 'non-clutchness' in Games 4 and 5 that did in the Yankees. Okay, the bunt in the 8th inning of Game 5 was just unacceptable, but so thinks others such as Harvey Araton at the New York Times as well as the Futility Infielder, Jay Jaffe.

Harvey Araton thinks that Jeter shouldn't defer to an undeserving A-Rod.

Two innings earlier, Jeter had stepped in against a weakening Pedro Martínez with the bases loaded, two out and the Yankees trailing by a run. From the television in my New Jersey den came a prediction from Joe Buck or Tim McCarver - can't remember which - that Jeter, his average down around .200, was going to put his stamp on the series, sooner or later. And just like that, with an opposite-field stroke that has served him so well for all of his major league days, Jeter laced a drive down the right-field line, clearing the bases, giving the Yankees their two-run lead.
Jeter, the captain and still the indisputable heart of George Steinbrenner's $180 million masterpiece, one of the last remaining links to a Torre-managed team that defined the concept of clutch, stood at second, his fist characteristically clenched.

Of all the Yankees, in uniform and out, Jeter has most often acknowledged the drifting of time, four years and counting since the last triumphant World Series, and made the candid distinction between then and now. From his privileged, double-stall perch in the Yankees' clubhouse, he has witnessed the turnover of position players, the parade of pitchers, and been ever so reluctant to misidentify any for the compatriots with whom he won four rings.

Jay Jaffe puts the numbers down on the table and calls a bad bunt for what it is.

Likewise, seven division titles, six pennants and four rings do not buy Joe
Torre a free pass for his mismanagement over the last four games, particularly
with regards to his complacency toward lineup construction and laissez-faire attitude toward Jeter's bunting (I see the Yanks' chances having gone straight downhill after the Captain's Game Five eighth-innig bunt following Cairo's leadoff double -- it was their best chance to score in what turned out to be a stretch of 14 scoreless innings for the Yankee offense, a stretch that decided the series as much as Game Seven did). Those same credentials do not buy Mel Stottlemyre a free pass for failing to
iron out the flaws in too many pitchers who endured second-half collapses. And the myth that Torre, Jeter, and Rivera somehow possess innate, superhuman, Championship-winning qualities must now be laid to rest, along with -- it would appear -- the Curse of the Bambino.

It wasn't the bad bunt that did in the Yanks - it wasn't even the offense that spluttered in the last 4 games. It was the failure to hold the leads in game 4 and 5. Now that, brings me to this interesting account by Bob Klapisch at ESPN.

That 6-0 deficit indeed ruined the Yankees, who spent six innings demonstrating
just how wide the gulf was between them and the 1996-2000 core. Other than Derek Jeter, no Yankee got the ball out of the infield against Derek Lowe. Instead, the images of the Yankees' lack of heart were everywhere -- from Hideki Matsui leading off the second inning swinging at a borderline 2-0 pitch, despite being down by six runs; to A-Rod being booed by Yankees fans after his final at-bat of the season; to Tom Gordon, who, according to one team source, was so unnerved by October pressure that he was throwing up in the bullpen during Game 6.

Of course, Torre can also argue that he delivered the Yankees to the doorstep of a sweep. And he's right: Mariano Rivera was standing on the mound with a one-run lead in the ninth inning of Game 4. It's not Torre's fault that Rivera issued Kevin Millar a five-pitch walk that eventually tied the game and sent it into extra innings.

But in Game 5, Torre inexplicably allowed the shriveling Gordon to keep pitching in the eighth inning after David Ortiz's leadoff HR. Rivera, who was already warming up, remained in the bullpen as Gordon walked Millar and allowed Trot Nixon a hit- and-run single that put runners on first and third. Only then did Torre make a move, asking Rivera to accomplish a miracle -- keeping the Red Sox from tying the game, which he could not.

Tom Gordon found himself in October, wracked by the pressure. As Reggie Jackson once said, "They don't pay for the 100 wins in the regular season. They pay you for the 11 wins in October". Fear of Success, Fear of Failure. Whatever it was, Tom Gordon's mental failure killed the Yankees. No lead would be safe in the 8th inning. Nothing after Game5 could hold; the rest of it was irrelevant, just a coda to a roster that had one weak link; the mind of Tom Gordon.
If it's blame and flame, then I blame him, and the scouts who recommended Tom Gordon as the 8th innning set-up man for Mariano Rivera. Who said character didn't matter? The glare of October baseball found poor Tom Gordon wanting. Pity the man who found out he didn't have what Reggie Jackson had.
But then Reggie did make a famously bad bunt once too.

- Art Neuro

Life Goes On
Here's an article about Einstein's warped view of the Universe being found to be correct.

After 11 years of watching the movements of two Earth-orbiting satellites, researchers found each is dragged by about 6 feet (2 meters) every year because
the very fabric of space is twisted by our whirling world.

The results, announced today, are much more precise than preliminary findings published by the same group in the late 1990s.

The effect is called frame dragging. It is a modification to the simpler aspects of gravity set out by Newton. Working from Einstein's relativity theory, Austrian physicists Joseph Lense and Hans Thirring predicted frame dragging in 1918. (It is also known as the Lense-Thirring effect.)

Robo Segway
The Segway technology that went into the Ginger vehicle is being married to military robotics. This may have other application, but somehow the people with the need to design weapons get their mitts on the Segway technology. I guess they did fork out the money for its development.

Originally developed by New Hampshire-based Segway for a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program, the firm's Robotic Mobility Platform (RMP) allows robot developers to focus more on the thinking power of their machines while providing a quick mode of transportation.

"The speed at which we can move is impressive," said Manuela Veloso, who leads the robotics CORAL research group at Carnegie Mellon University. "From a motion point of view, it's extremely reliable."

During DARPA's Mobile Autonomous Robot Software (MARS) program about 14 different research groups received Segway RMP platforms, some programmed to play soccer while others model the human brain.

"Some of the power researchers got this stuff and in about a week they had their robots rolling・t was pretty fast," said John Morrell, Segway director of systems engineering for the RMP project, in a telephone interview. "It's been really interesting to see what people have come up with."

And there's more to follow.

If A Telescope Should Fall...
...and if it is a the Hubble Telescope, it may be in violation of NASA's own regulations. Here's the article.

Based upon the latest configuration and orbit of HST and on solar activity projection, HST is expected to reenter Earth's atmosphere around the year 2020. Furthermore, studies are now underway to, perhaps, robotically save the telescope, nudging it to a higher altitude for prolonged looks at the surrounding universe. HST could also be ditched in a controlled way into a remote stretch of ocean.

But in the event that HST waterfalls from space in willy-nilly fashion -- look out below!

At least two tons (2,055 kilograms) of the estimated 26,000 pounds (11,792 kilograms) of the observatory would survive the fiery fall. Such a tumble would create a debris footprint stretching over 755 miles (1,220 kilometers) in length.

My goodness, all the stuff I missed while I was busy moping about the Yankee loss. Back to the Space Freak Ways, ladies and gentlemen.

- Art Neuro

The Day After
George Steinbrenner has made a public release about the Game 7 loss.

New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner was more gracious about Wednesday night's Game 7 loss to the Boston Red Sox after being up 3 games to none than he was about losing the World Series to the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1981 after being up 2-0.

His statements then and now:
2004: ``I congratulate the Boston Red Sox on their great victory. I want to thank our loyal fans for their enormous support. Of course, I am disappointed because I wanted a championship for them and for our city. You can be assured, we will get to work and produce a great team next year.''

1981: ``I want to sincerely apologize to the people of New York and to the fans of the New York Yankees everywhere for the performance of the Yankee team in the World Series. I also want to assure you that we will be at work immediately to prepare for 1982.''

You can't fault the owner's intention in last night's loss. He put 185million dollars where his mouth was to deliver a winner. Well, you could fault him for his execution, but that is part of the fun of the next 6 months. The MLB Post Season that leads to the World Series is a cruel process where 29 losers are produced. In that context the 162 game regular season fades into the record books as largely irreleveant and a series of serendipitous plays and bounces impact on the game in a way that creates nice story lines but does not truly reflect the strength of the teams.

Indeed, the 3 division and 1 Wild Card per league should be producing 6 winners and 2 lucky seconds; instead they go into the reputation grinder that is the MLB post-season. With the yankees, it is George Steinbrenner's own fault that he has made the 162 game dominance of the Yankees worthless if they cannot win the World Series. Let's face it folks. The Yankees turned over 60% of their roster from last year's World Series losers to create a team that lost to the Red Sox in a historic collapse. Then what the hell is it worth to have won 101 games this year? What the hell did it mean to beat the Red Sox to the goal line?

I'm not railing against the Wild Card; in fact I like the Wild Card system. I'm just pointing out that there's something wrong in the way the baseball world values the World Series win over the Division win. The Division wins are wrought with 162 games of play over 6 months. World Series are won on fortuitous sequences of plays for 3 weeks.
On a day to day level, I'll take the dominance of the Braves or Athletics who never seem to win much in the post-season over the World Series wins of the Marlins any day, because during the season, you are more likely to see winning ball-games; and they are why one watches these things anyway. I mean, win or lose, I'd watch the Yankees even if they were perennial non/semi-contenders as they were in the 1980s, but that's another story.

Doubtless, the internal noises of George Steinbrenner will be totally different to the bland statement quoted above. Here comes another winter of signing malcontents. :)

Replacing the Components of A Magic Souffle
The Yankees of the 1996-2001 era were a different team to the one today. Sure those teams had Bernie, Jeter, Mariano and Posada, but oddly enough, that's about the extent of it. Today, the team is far more talented than the predecessors who won, but have been so far rather unlucky in their quest. What happened? Every time they failed to win the World Series they have added a more talented position player to replace a departing position player.
Here is a short list:

Tino Martinez is replaced by Jason Giambi (and understudy Tony Clarke and John Olerud this year)
Scott Brosius is replaced by Robin ventura, then Aaron F. Boone and evenutally A-Rod
Paul O'Neill is replaced by Juan Rivera, Raul Mondesi and then Gary Sheffield
Soup du Jour for Rondell White, Then Hideki Matsui

The only place they took a serious hit was Second base where the predecessors were Chuck Knoblauch who 'lost it'; followed by Alfonso Soriano who was a lamazing, but also amazingly flaky, who got traded for A-Rod. This year, they went through with a weird combo of Enrique Wilson and Miguel Cairo. They ought not count on Cairo to be their starting secondbaseman next year.

Of the calls made, only the Hideki Matsui deal could be said to be a total positive in character and talent. Let's face it, Hideki was a groomed Yomiuri Giant that won 3 championships in Japan. The guy is the closest thing to getting a 'Yankee Great' from somewhere outside the Yankees. This was an excellent move. It also didn't cost a draft pick.

At the moment, Jason Giambi is looking like a bust. This may change depending on how he turns up next season; the question is, how much of his 2000 ALMVP form will he retain as he slides down the next 4 years of his seven year contract. The thing that gets me about the Giambi contract is that it wouldn't have cost the Yankees not to sign him, and thrown that money at a good pitcher in 2001-2002 after their loss to the Diamondbacks. They had Nick Johnson who got traded for Javier Vazquez. I would have rather saved the money.

The A-Sor for A-Rod trade in review. This is still a good trade for the regular seaosn. Alfonso Soriano was a rather free-swinging player who didn't fit into the Yankee method of grinding down the pitcher through eating up pitchcounts. Now a couple of caveats on this. A-Rod at 3B is far less valuable than A-Rod at SS. While this issue was widely discussed and debated earlier this year, I think the problems were not in this year but going forwards.
A-Rod is blocking Eric Duncan, who must tbe the Yankee thirdbaseman of the future. The team must sort out this log-jam, and I think the solution involves moving Jeter or A-Rod to 2B, because I don't think I can handle a Yankee future where Eric Duncan gets traded for a middle -relief pitcher who blows up in the post-season. The team is going to have to get a little imaginative, and perhaps ask Derek Sanderson Jeter a.k.a Captain Amazing to take one for the team and give 2B a challenge.

Paul O'Neill retired and then there was a black hole in RF. For a While they tried the home-grown Juan Rivera which was somewhat disappointing. Then they tried Raul Mondesi, which we all know turned into a lump of coal in 12 months. This year's solution was Gary Sheffield, who put up an MVP-worthy season with a bum shoulder. Gary was a good solution, but the better one perhaps was Vladimir Guerrero because Vlad is younger; however Vlad was also looking for a long term contract. Given the inflexibility in the rest of the roster, Sheffiled's 3-year deal may come as a blessing down the road.

Looking at this, the Yankees have madee 1 excellent move, 2 questionable moves of which 1 is yet to play out, and 1 reasonable move. To be honest, the Yankees wouldn't have had 61 regular seaosn comeback wins in a 101-win season (where the pitching staff didn't have a 15-game winner) without Sheff, A-Rod and Matsui, even if they were missing Giambi.
So it still goes back to the pitching.

- Art Neuro

When The Party Is Over
That's it. The Yanks lost again, thus ending their 2004 campaign with an ignominious 10-3 loss to the damned Red Sox. (I guess it had to happen one of these years where the Red Sox finally got up over the Yankees. I don't know, I feel like a relative died.

How did the Yankees lose Game 7?
The short answert is this: They lost it with the 3 pitchers they acquired to replace Roger Clemens, Andy Pettite and David Wells. It seemed like at the end of last season, the three men were done in New York City; Roger Clemens had spent the entire seaosn saying he was retiring, and David Wells simply broke down in Game 6 of the 2003 World Series so he looked done asa dinner. Andy Pettite also made noises about wanting to go home, and so would ot be pursuaded to stay. Had the Yankees signed him, he would be missing in October anyway because of his elbow that requires surgery.

So in their stead, the Yankees traded for and signed Kevin Brown, Javier Vazquez, and during the deadline trades, acquired Esteban Loaiza for Jose Contreras. Onpaper, these were as good a move as you could make. When healthy, Brown, Vazquez, and Loaiza are pretty good DIPS pitchers. So tonight, we find they served up 9 runs between them. And then Tom Gordon gave up another homer just to make sure the Yankee Offence would have absolutely no chance.

Sat-heads laugh at the cliches in the game such as 'Pitching and Defence win in the Post Season', but the proof of the pudding was in the scoreline tonight. Derek Lowe threw a 1-hitter through 6 innings; Brown, Vazuqez and Loaiza buried the Yankees deeper than the Mariana Sea Trench. Watching those three, i was surprised at how often they started with ball one. Or give up a homer. Why couldn't they just throw strikes? They kept getting behind the count against the Boston hitters, and they would eventually allow them on to base.

In essence, the Yankees started the season a very flawed team, short on good starting pitching. In the last game of the ALCS, this fatal flaw came back and bit them.

How Did the Yankees Lose The Series?
The Yankees lost the series after they couldn't close out Game 4, and then Game 5. Both were games where they were leading going into the 8th inning, and they managed to cough up the lead in both games. Then, they lost Game 6 to a resurrected Curt Schilling. But mostly, the Yankees lost the series on not having a deep bullpen.

I ought to write some more about all of this, but I'm a little too exhausted to write anything more. The Post-Mortems will flood the Net in 48 hours. I'll let you know what's what, then.

- Art Neuro

Telemedicine
If somebody gets sick on the Internaitonal Space Station, what do they do? Well, they've been working on that problem, and here is an article about the present state of affairs.

Feeling Sick
I'm feeling a little under the weather at the moment as the season has hit a reverse gear back into winter this week. As a man by the name of Cyran used to say on my baseball team, "Faaaaaaaaark'.

Yanks Lose Yet Again
It's that kind of year. After winning 3 straight, they've now lost 3 straight to the Boston Red Sox. I don't know why, I don't know how. All I know is that they're just not hitting with Runners In Scoring Position anymore.
Game 7 is on tomorrow. Once again, as a man by the name of Cyran used to say on my baseball team, "Faaaaaaaaark'.

- Art Neuro

The Man Behind the Ansari X Prize
We ought to know, because he is the one who made it possible for all the projects to go ahead. The article is here.

From the time he was a child in Long Island, smitten by images of the Apollo moon landings, Diamandis has poured his heart and soul into researching space and trying to speed up his chances of getting there. He gave up on the idea of government-sponsored space flight after the 1986 Challenger disaster derailed NASA's space shuttle program. The quickest route to space, he decided, would be through privately funded missions. So Diamandis set out to make it possible.

In 1980, as a freshman at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he founded Students for the Exploration and Development of Space, which now has chapters all over the world. He hosted conferences, gave speeches, wrote papers and became the natural leader of a like-minded band of brothers who followed the teaching of futurist and Princeton University physicist Gerard O'Neill.

"The meek shall inherit the earth. The rest of us are going to the stars." It became Diamandis' mantra.

And so it goes. If you want to know what kind of man conceives of a private enterprise future in space, read the article.

Yanks Lose Again
Once more into the breach, but the Red Sox came off late-inning winners yet again in a 5 hour match. The yankees lost 5-4. The ALCS series now heads back to the Bronx. Rivera blew a save yet again, but this time, it was because Tom Gordon put runners on the ccorner. These things happen... to other teams; but to the Yankees? Yowza!

- Art Neuro

Spooky
The world of gravity has not been totally explained. Here's an article covering a pheomenon known as the Pioneer Anomaly. In a nutshell, the 2 Pioneer craft launched in 1972 and 1973 should be a certain distance away. However it appears they have decelerated just enough to make people wonder why. In other words, the 2 craft have not travelled as far as they should have, given the gravitational computations of which we are aware.

The Pioneer anomaly was discovered by John Anderson, also of JPL, in the 1980s. For years he didn't publish what he'd noticed. Then he discussed it with physicist Michael Martin Nieto at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Nieto says he "almost fell off my chair."

Nieto jumped into the investigation, and thetwo were later joined by Turyshev. They dug deeper into the data, even tracking down retired NASA scientists for some of it. Unraveling the enigma will require a new mission, the researchers say. NASA, however, doesn't have such a project on its agenda and has not expressed much interest in one. Europeans, for reasons both historic and having to do with a current strong desire to better grasp gravity, seem more interested in investigating the problem.

So Anderson's team recently proposed to the European Space Agency a "mission to
explore the Pioneer anomaly" using the latest accelerometers and advanced navigation methods. All possible sources of onboard radiation would be eliminated in "the most precisely tracked spacecraft ever to go into deep space," the group writes in the September issue of Physics World magazine.

Don't miss it. It's very, very interesting.

STS 114 - Back to The Shuttle Grind
As reported previously, the shuttle crew are rehearsing for a docking manoeuvre with the ISS. All indications are that the shuttle fleet is going to be back to work soon.

"The fact that we're able to do these simulations now shows that many of the
milestones for return to flight have been completed," said STS-114 mission specialist Andrew Thomas. "We're getting the rhythm of flying the shuttle again and that's kind of a nice feeling to have."

The Oct. 13 full-scale simulation began on Day Three of Discovery's STS-114 flight plan, starting just after the wake-up call for mission commander Eileen Collins and her crew. The mock shuttle-ISS mission ran through the Day Three timeline until about an hour after ISS docking.

"This integrated simulation is a huge milestone for the crew," Collins said. "The crew is ready to go, the flight control team is ready to go, and we're especially looking forward to the rendezvous pitch maneuver -- something that's never been done before."

I guess if we totally gave up on the shuttle now, it's like throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but I can't in all good conscience say it's a good project. What happens when a third bird and ASA (Another Seven Astronauts) go up in flames? These things simply aren't safe.

The Good College Try
The Da Vinci project folks are trying to launch their craft that was originally intended for the Ansari X prize.

Feeney, who will pilot Wild Fire's initial flight, has told SPACE.com his team remains determined to launch despite losing the $10 million Ansari X Prize suborbital spaceflight competition. That contest, which challenged teams to privately build a reusable, three-person suborbital spacecraft, was won on Oct. 4 in Mojave, California by Burt Rutan and his SpaceShipOne launch vehicle.

But Feeney has also said a final launch date won't be announced until the da Vinci team has completely arrived in Kindersley, which is expected to be at least seven days before the intended space shot.

Under the current flight plan, an unmanned helium balloon will hoist Wild Fire into the Kindersley sky from the town's local airport, carrying it into launch position at about 80,000 feet. There, the spacecraft's tether will be released and its hybrid rocket engine ignited. The spacecraft and Feeney should experience a few minutes of weightless before reentering the atmosphere and parachuting back to Earth.

It's good to see they haven't stopped just because they didn't win.

- Art Neuro

Mars And Back in 90 Days
This is a new proposal for developing a new propulsion system known as mag beam.

Under the mag-beam concept, a space-based station would generate a stream of
magnetized ions that would interact with a magnetic sail on a spacecraft and propel it through the solar system at high speeds that increase with the size of the plasma beam. Winglee estimates that a control nozzle 32 meters wide would generate a plasma beam capable of propelling a spacecraft at 11.7 kilometers per second. That translates to more than 26,000 miles an hour or more than 625,000 miles a day.

Mars is an average of 48 million miles from Earth, though the distance can vary greatly depending on where the two planets are in their orbits around the sun. At that distance, a spacecraft traveling 625,000 miles a day would take more than 76 days to get to the red planet. But Winglee is working on ways to devise even greater speeds so the round trip could be accomplished in three months.

But to make such high speeds practical, another plasma unit must be stationed on a platform at the other end of the trip to apply brakes to the spacecraft. "Rather than a spacecraft having to carry these big powerful propulsion units, you can have much smaller payloads," he said.

Winglee envisions units being placed around the solar system by missions already planned by NASA. One could be used as an integral part of a research mission to Jupiter, for instance, and then left in orbit there when the mission is completed. Units placed farther out in the solar system would use nuclear power to create the ionized plasma; those closer to the sun would be able to use electricity generated by solar panels.

A mag-beam mission could be feasible within 6-years, they think. All pretty interesting. Don't miss the article.

Yeah, But This Goes To Mach 10
The X-43a scramjet craft is scheduled for a Mach 10 flight.

The final flight of the small X-43A research aircraft is targeted to sustain a speed of up to Mach 10, or 10 times the speed of sound (about 7,000 mph), powered by a revolutionary airframe-integrated supersonic-combustion ramjet or "scramjet" engine. This is a very high-risk mission, but if successful, the flight will set a new speed record for an aircraft powered by an air-breathing engine.

Why We Have Manned Missions
The Soyuz automated docking system went awry, so the cosmonauts had to pilot the craft to dock with the International Space Station.

The unplanned switch, prompted by a yet-undiagnosed malfunction with the autopilot, added a touch of drama to the Expedition 10 crew's arrival at the station to begin a half-year mission of maintaining the outpost's systems, running science experiments, installing exterior equipment for future European cargo freighters and preparing U.S. modules for the return of space shuttles next year.

So most of the time an astronaut/cosmonaut is still a monkey in a capsule until it becomes absolutely necessary to pilot the craft. Obviously, the issue still isn't pussy, it's monkey.

More From Cassini
Here's an article covering the Cassini mission.

During Cassini's first brief pass over Saturn's rings, CAPS identified a previously unknown low-energy plasma trapped on the magnetic field lines threading the Cassini Division, the name given to the gap between the main A and B rings. With the four-year mission just beginning, including more than 70 orbits of the planet, CAPS is poised to provide scientists with a new level of understanding about Saturn's space environment, as well as clues about some of the space physics processes that operate more universally in the solar system.

So now we know more about Saturn's rings.

Yanks Lose
I rabbit on when they win. It's only fair to point out they lost 6-4 in the bottom of the 12th. Mariano Rivera blew a save and David Ortiz thumped a walk-off homer off Paul Quantrill. What a drag. Had some fun yacking about the game with Mr. Weasel today.
On to Game 5.

- Art Neuro

Red Sox Invent a New Way To Lose
So sayeth this article. The Yankees destroyed the Red Sox 19-8 in Game 3 of the ALCS. The Yankees now lead the Division Series 3-0. No team has come back from a 3-0 deficit in the history of the MLB Post-Season.

Hideki Matsui went 5-for-6 with 2 homeruns, 2 doubles and a single; he also scored 5 runs and batted in 5 runs, tying his ALCS record once again.

Not to suggest this was like a softball game, but the Yankees celebrated their 19-8 victory by going to TGIFriday's for buffalo wings while Ruben Sierra has to bring a 30-pack tonight for striking out in the fourth inning. (Based on their baserunning, the Red Sox evidently did their drinking before the game.) What a beating. The Yankees had 12 hits, 13 runs, 12 RBI, four home runs and five doubles -- and that was just from the No. 2-4 hitters in the lineup, Alex Rodriguez, Gary Sheffield and Hideki Matsui.

Think about that for a minute. Three guys had a dozen hits and scored 13 runs. In a playoff game. What, did they get themselves back in a groove after Thursday's travel day and Friday's rainout by visiting children's hospitals and promising to hit home runs for all the sick kids? "I think it's time to break out those 'Bronx Bombers' t-shirts again," an impressed Reggie Jackson said. "These guys are like a hurricane. Hurricane Yankee."

For once, Reggie isn't laying it on thick. No one has pounded the ball like this without Glenn Close watching from the stands and Robert Duvall typing away in the pressbox. Boston fans were so stunned by the onslaught that they began leaving the ballpark in droves during the sixth inning and those that remained could only offer up weak, ineffectual chants of "You Took Steroids" to Sheffield.

Yeah, it's historic, yeah it's great. I'm a happy man. It never gets old.

- Art Neuro

I Was So Wrong Mea Culpa
Sorry folks. Recently I reported that Gordo Cooper was the last of the Mercury Seven. D'oh. He is in fact survived by John Glenn, Wally Schirra and Scott Carpenter. Here's a report of the remaining astronauts of that group gathering for a wake. I'm quoting it wholus bolus from Reuters anyway.

HOUSTON (Reuters) - The last of the seven Project Mercury astronauts who pioneered U.S. space exploration in the 1960s remembered one of their own as a fearless pilot with the "right stuff" in an emotional memorial ceremony on Friday for Gordon Cooper. Cooper died on Oct. 4 at the age of 77 in his Ventura, California, home, leaving only John Glenn, Wally Schirra and Scott Carpenter from the seven young men selected in 1959 to lead the Cold War space race against the Soviet Union.

"In flying terms, most of these people up on this platform have a lot more runway behind them than ahead of them," Glenn, 83, said at Johnson Space Center.

"Gordo has scrambled, he's out there ahead of us with Gus and Al and Deke, and I'm sure we'll all rendezvous out there someday," he said, referring to late Mercury astronauts Gus Grissom, Alan Shephard and Deke Slayton. Glenn, the former U.S. senator from Ohio, remembered several humorous incidents involving Cooper as well as his bravery in space on the two missions he flew -- the 22-orbit Faith 7 flight that concluded the Mercury program in 1963 and the eight-day Gemini 5 flight in 1965.

On the Faith 7 flight, he manually took over controls after a technical malfunction and coolly fired landing rockets at just the right instant to steer his space capsule home, Glenn said. "He was asked a little later how it worked out and Gordo, in his
best technical language, in NASA unapproved communication procedure, replied 'landed right on the old kazoo."' Glenn said, drawing a laugh from a crowd that included a number of major figures from NASA's earliest days. "You could always depend on Gordo," he said.

Carpenter, 79, recalled that the Cold War hopes of the United States were seen as riding on the shoulders of the Mercury 7. "This was at a time when world opinion had it that pre-eminence in space was a condition of national survival," he said. Cooper, he said, was a key figure in giving the group a sense of solidarity: "It is proper now to say farewell, Gordon Cooper. It was an honor being a member of your fraternity."

"We regret losing Gordon, he was one of our dear friends," said Schirra, 81. "Not too bad of a water skier, not too bad of a pilot, but a heck of a good astronaut."

Astronauts Mike Fincke and Gennady Padalka aboard the International Space Station paid tribute to Cooper by ringing the ship's bell three times.

Then there's this op-ed piece I found.

While Wally Schirra said upon his old comrade’s death that Mr. Cooper “was not
the hotshot flyboy that Dennis Quaid played in ‘The Right Stuff,’” I have to believe that there was a kernel of truth in that portrayal. I have a color photograph on mywall of six of the Mercury astronauts and their wives (the Glenns are missing) posing at the White House with Jack and Jackie. JFK and five of the other men are standing, the five smiling yet striking respectful attitudes in the presence of their commander in chief. But one man sits in front in the president’s own famous rocking chair, his posture supremely relaxed, a big, bright, “Look at me” grin on his face. It’s Gordon Cooper.

Mr. Quaid aside, the picture perfectly fits this observation by Tom Wolfe: “Cooper may have had his blindspots.... So what if, by outward standards, he had not had the
most brilliant career of all the seven astronauts? The day was young! He was only thirty-two! Cooper’s fighter jock self-esteem seemed to be like a PAR lamp. It was as if wherever he landed, his light shone ’round about him, and that was the place to be... and the picture of him in that place was good.”

It's a great, quick read. Don't miss it.

- Art Neuro

Jacques Derrida Is No More
In the recent bout of deaths, I failed to note this biggie passing. It's a rather dismissive article.
Jacques 'Mr. Deconstruction' Derrida was all the craze back in the 1980s; which goes to show how behind the cruve Australian Academes were at the time. They were a lot quicker picking up other French Philosophers since then if I may be so snide...

Born in French Algeria, Derrida quickly became identified with the hip postwar café culture of Paris's Left Bank. His prose was famously impenetrable; Derrida didn't shrink from writing sentences that rambled on for two or three pages and his books were abstruse and convoluted in the extreme. None of this put off his tweedy admirers, who regarded Derrida's density as further proof of his profundity.

But Derrida built no new intellectual edifice. His project was one of destruction — or "deconstruction." Derrida claimed to have discovered that all texts contain inherent contradictions that fatally compromise their ability to communicate meaning. The upshot was that the entire Western philosophical and literary tradition rested on an enormous fallacy. Fundamental concepts like logic and truth were illusions. Derrida himself wrote more than 50 books attempting to prove that nothing could be said.

Although dismissed by Derrida's fellow philosophers, deconstruction appealed to literary scholars and others in the humanities who wished to project their own beliefs (political and otherwise) onto the works they studied. It is perhaps revealing that Derrida chose to defend rather than censure the legacy of his most famous student, Paul de Man, after a Belgian scholar revealed that the Yale professor had written anti-Semitic tracts in a French-language, collaborationist newspaper during the Second World War.

Which is all very nice. I found the 'deconstruction'/"critic is the true artist" vogue rather idiotic, but you couldn't miss the impact. You had architecture students (being the poseurs they were) trying to apply 'deconstruction' to their constructions; you had medical students (Jam Jabbers!) trying to deconstruct anatomy; you had Engineering students tryiing to 'deconstruct' the Harbour Bridge; rock musicians 'deocnstructing' Rock music; Intellectually speaking, it was a terrible time indeed, thanks to the works of Jacques Derrida that seemed to reduce us all to Chance Gardener.

Well at least, an Algerian Jew having written anti-semitic tracts for a collaborationist newspaper during World War II is not somthing that loses its meaning too quickly under 'deconstruction'.
He was 74.

- Art Neuro

Rehearsals
NASA are rehearsing their next Space Shuttle flight.

This first eight-hour "flight-specific integrated simulation" focuses on the Space Shuttle Discovery's rendezvous and docking with the International Space Station. The simulation includes practicing a new flip, a rendezvous pitch maneuver, that the Space Shuttle performs as it approaches to allow Station crew members to photograph the Shuttle's heat shielding tiles to check their condition.

"This is where we stop just brainstorming and thinking about how we're going to go fly this flight in space," said Lead Flight Director Paul Hill. "This will look and feel to us just like a real flight -- even to the astronauts. Once the clock starts ticking in the simulation, we get the same adrenalin when something bad starts to happen, we get the same rush when we solve a problem that keeps the crew out of danger, as we would during the real thing," he added.

It's been so long you think they've forgotten how to do these.

Brouhaha, Ballyhoo It's Only Talk
The US Senate is arguing about Space Toursim regulation. It looks to be a mess of ieological lines trying to criss cross a nascent industry:

"Regulation for proven technology is a way of ensuring public safety. Regulation
in a developmental area like commercial space is a means of strangling enterprise,'' said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., sponsor of the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004 that passed the House in March.

But Senate Commerce Committee negotiators working on a version of the bill for
Senate passage late last week added language calling for crew and passenger safety. Current law on commercial space flights protects only public health and property and the country's national security and foreign policy interests.

Rohrabacher and industry officials said there was no way inventors building rocket ships could guarantee the safety of passengers they hope to blast into space beginning in 2007. Several senators raised questions and the bill never made it to a vote.

"You're fundamentally changing this legislation from fly at your own risk, but informed risk, to where it's the government's job to protect the safety of the people in these vehicles. And it's just not possible to do that right now,'' said James Muncy, president of PoliSpace, a consulting firm that works with companies on suborbital flight.

And the talks continue. Who would have thought Space Tourism would be this hard?

Who's Your Daddy?
So chanted the Yankee fans at Pedro Martinez as Jon Lieber out-dueled Pedro in a pitcher's duel. The Yankees snuck by 3-1 and now they are 2-0 up in the best of 7 series as it heads to Boston. This start wasn't what they predicted. But let's not try to blow our wads - there are 3 games to come in Fenway, and that's not going to be easy.

Jeter scored in the Bottom of the first and the 1-0 scoreline held until John Olerud hit a 2-run homer making it 3-0. While Boston did take a run back, it was too late as Mariano Rivera came in to slam the door shut. People say they don't script October; I think it's because the old script keeps working. Why change it if itain't broke? :)

- Art Neuro

Soyuz Flight Scheduled
Two Russians and an American walk into a bar... scratch that. :) Two Russians and an American are going up in Soyuz today. Here's a snippet of the Soyuz program:

The first Soyuz flights were in the late 1960s, and since the mid-1970s, Soviet
and Russian space crews always have included a cosmonaut with previous pilot experience aboard a Soyuz to ensure a smooth ride. The tradition now has been broken because several veteran cosmonauts have resigned in recent years and the space agency hasn't had enough seats on recent Soyuz missions to train their replacements, said Yuri Grigoryev, a spokesman for Russia's Cosmonaut Training Center.

"It's not a problem. We simply need to adapt to new conditions," he said. Russian space officials have played down the lack of Soyuz experience, and the crew said Wednesday that thorough training had compensated for it. "We have logged many hours in a simulator and got prepared for all regular and emergency regimes," Sharipov said.

Soyuz spacecraft are guided by autopilot on their approach to the station and during the docking, but the crew is trained to operate it manually in case of computer failure.

Humans are back up systems to the computer. The Russians have clearly not read Tom Wolf or watched 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Next Up On Deck In The Mars Game
The next vehicle to be sent to Mars is currently being assembled. The operational name of the vehicle so far is MRO, stannding for Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. It's meant to be packed with the latest instruments, but also is going to be a crucial link in future robotic missions.

Science instruments onboard MRO emphasize the spacecraft's roster of key jobs at Mars: the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE), Context Camera (CTX), Mars Color Imager (MARCI), Compact Reconnaissance Imaging pectrometer
for Mars (CRISM), Mars Climate Sounder (MCS), and the Shallow Radar (SHARAD). The MRO project is managed for the NASA Science Mission Directorate
in Washington, D.C. by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, is prime contractor for the project.

"MRO takes us another step forward in Mars exploration," said Kevin McNeill, Lockheed Martin's program manager for the orbiter. "It is by far the biggest thing that we will have put into orbit around Mars," he told SPACE.com. Not too far away from where MRO is being geared up, so too is its launch vehicle - an Atlas 5, also built by Lockheed Martin. Nothing like an "all in the family" Mars mission for the aerospace firm. This will be the first interplanetary mission hitched to an Atlas since 1973.

The return of the Atlas rockets as a an interplan launch rocket is a very welcome sign indeed. While other Atlas rockets have been used to launch satellites, I think NASA needs to go back to large lift-capacity rocketry more, rather than 'Shuttlery'.

ALCS Game 1
I know we bicker all the time, but the man is still a friend.
Mr. Conservative Weasel and I had a fun time yesterday on the phone chatting about the score as they came up on the net. he was watching it on the SI website, while I sat in the kitchen and listened to him describe the scorebox through the refreshes. Of course, Mr. Weasel is a big cricket fan so some of the baseball scoring seemed arcane to him, but he is more than passingly familiar with the game. Talking through what each thing meant was part of the fun.

Of course as the world now knows, the Yankees won in what should have been a tight one that turned into a 8-0 blow out at one point, but the Bosox fought back hard forcing the Yankees to summon Mariano Rivera to the mound in order to shut the door. In the end it was a 10-7 ballgame. The big hero of the game, apart from Mariano Rivera who flew straight to New York that day from a funeral in Panama and closed out the Bosox in emotionally trying circumstances, was Hideki Matsui who went 3-for-5 and tied the ALCS record of 5 RBIs. Mr. Goldman was right, he was the difference yesterday.
As predicted, Mr. Goldman's assessment that the Yankees had an edge in Left Field created a minor furore over at the Think Factory.

Today the Yankees send Jon Lieber to the mound, and face Pedro Martinez for the Bosox. Who said 'winning too much' is easy?

- Art Neuro

500 Days In A Cage
The Russians are planning a project to lock crew into a cage for 500 days to simulate the isolation that a manned Mars mission would entail. I guess this is when reality finally dawns upon us that it's a long way to Mars and back.

During the 500 Days study, six volunteers will depend on a preset limit of supplies, including about 5 tons of food and oxygen and 3 tons of water. A doctor will accompany volunteers inside the module to treat illnesses and injuries. Volunteers will only be allowed to quit the experiment if the develop a severe ailment of psychological stress. But experiment participation is not solely reserved for Russian volunteers, institute officials added.

"We have informed our American colleagues that we plan to start an imitation of a manned flight to Mars with the help of volunteers in 2006," Yevgeny Ilyin, deputy
director for science at the institute, told Russia's Interfax news agency during a recent Russian-American working group meeting in Moscow.

NASA has been invited by Russian scientists to join in on the Mars mock mission, but a final decision by the U.S. space agency is pending, said NASA's Guy Fogleman, NASA director of the Office of Biological and Physical Research's Bioastronautics
Research Division, to Russian reporters.

The space agency has not yet decided whether it will participate, though a decision is anticipated some time in the next few months, Beasley added.

Makes sense that you would have to run a simulation of the experience at least once before you send out a crew. The funny thing is that not many space agencies have actually attempted let alone table a plan for this simulation until now.
I hope who ever goes into the module keeps a blog we can read. :)

Baseball Armageddon II Begins Today
The Red Sox play the New York Yankees in a seven game play-off starting today. I'm actualy exhausted by the nervouse energy I've expended following the yankees this season. It's just been a really tense season unlike previous years. I guess that's just how much better the Red Sox have become since their Game 7 loss in the ALCS last year.

Here's an interesting analysis from Steven Goldman. In it he makes one claim that most other people have not made, which is, in neutral parks, Hideki Matsui might be just a little better than Manny Ramirez in Left Field. He's the only one who has made this call; though Win Shares tells us Matsui was 1 WS better than Ramirez this year. Indeed, Matsui's bat is 26.9 to Manny's 25.1.

Most analysts are thinking Red Sox in seven. Here's The Hardball Times' Aaron Gleeman's Red-Sox-In-Seven analysis which is indicative of general analyst consensus. Goldman alone goes it with Matsui being better than Manny, and Yankees to win in 7.
Bill Simmons has his own crazy match up which is funny, as does Larry Mahnken with his hilarious parody of a typing-challenged homeboy that finishes with "Yankees to win in 3" (LOL, you need 4!).
Me? I'm fearful as any man facing the apocalypse, but I say Yankees in 5. It seems inevitable that they'll lose 1.

- Art Neuro

People Keep Dying
I don't know what it is in the last week since the Gordon Cooper thing, but folks keep passing away. Max Faget, the English Hostage (okay, he was killed but he's still dead), Mariano Rivera's relatives in a freak accident... where does it end?
Today it's Ken Caminiti, Christopher Reeve, Keith Miller, and some character in Harry Potter books.

Ken Caminiti, the 1996 NL MVP died of a heart attack. He was 41. Caminiti was, apart from many other good things, also one of those athletes who abused steroids for his quest for better performance. he 'fessed up a few years ago and since then has been made a pariah. His body is undergoing autposy, which means, nobody saw this coming. Nudge,nudge, wink, wink.

Christopher Reeve is besst remembered for his role as Superman in the 1970s-1980s series of the films. Was he a good actor? IMHO he was so-so, but this judgement is clouded by the fact that he payed such an iconic role. I think he was unreasonably made into a secular saint since his tragic accident, which also makes it difficult to assess his acting career. Still, his tragic accident and early death only seem to go hand in hand with the myth of the curse of playing Superman.

Keith Miller was a stud cricket player for Australia in the post-WWII era. He was amazing, he was much-loved, his career came and went way before I was even born, and now he's dead. The best thing about his career seems to be that he was one of the early cricketers to defy the deification process that was surrounding the late Sir Don Bradman.

- Art Neuro

Shooting Comets
The Ball AeroSpace and Technology are prepping a craft to to be shot into a comet. They have called the craft, Deep Impact, probably in honour of the rather tedious film with the same name starring the immensely funny and attractive Mrs. Duchovny, Tea Leoni.

Objective of the mission is to study the pristine interior of a comet by excavating a huge crater in Comet Tempel 1.Once set free from the Flyby spacecraft, the Impactor may form a football stadium-sized crater in the comet that could be as deep as 14-stories.

This cosmic rear-ender comes on America’s Independence Day: July 4, 2005. The Impactor spacecraft will be vaporized upon impact with the comet. Both comet and spacecraft will be traveling at closing speeds in excess of 23,000 miles per hour upon
impact.

Deep Impact’s telescopes, cameras and spectrometer aboard the Flyby spacecraft will witness the impact and return data on the pristine material in the crater and the material ejected by the impact. The High Resolution Imager aboard the Flyby spacecraft will be one of the largest interplanetary telescopes ever flown in order to record the details of the collision. Meanwhile, the Impactor spacecraft will also provide close-encounter photos of the comet just prior to impact, giving scientists the most complete view of a comet to date.

Getting a first view of pristine material inside a comet should prove invaluable to the scientific community.

Max Faget, Designer of The Mercury Capsule Passes Away
Right on the heels of the passing of Gordon Cooper, we get this news. I guess you don't live forever.

Without Max Faget’s innovative designs and thoughtful approach to problem
solving, America’s space program would have had trouble getting off the ground," said NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe. "He also was an aeronautics pioneer. In fact, it was his work on supersonic flight research that eventually led to his interest in space flight. The thoughts and prayers of the entire agency are with his family."

Faget's career with NASA dates back to 1946, when he joined the staff of Langley Research Center, Hampton, Va., as a research scientist. He worked in the Pilotless Aircraft Research Division and later was named head of the Performance Aerodynamics Branch. He conceived and proposed the development of the one-man spacecraft used in Project Mercury.

Faget was selected as one of the original 35 engineers as a nucleus of the Space Task Group to carry out the Mercury project. The group also devoted a lot of time to follow-on programs and Faget led the initial design and analysis teams that studied the feasibility of a flight to the Moon. As a result of his work and other NASA research, President John F. Kennedy was able to commit the U.S. to a lunar landing by the end of the 1960s.

"Max was a genuine icon," said NASA's Associate Administrator for Space Operations William Readdy, "a down-to-earth Cajun with a very nuts-and-bolts approach to engineering. He contributed immeasurably to America's successes in human space flight. His genius allowed us to compete and win the space race to the Moon."

"Max Faget was truly a legend of the manned space flight program," said Christopher C. Kraft, former Johnson Space Center director. "He was a true icon of the space program. There is no one in space flight history in this or any other country who has had a larger impact on man's quest in space exploration. He was a colleague and a friend I regarded with the highest esteem. History will remember him as one of the really great scientists of the 20th Century."

To think I'd never even heard of him because I was so interested in the Astronauts. :)
Faget was also responsible (and therefore culpable) for the feasibility study for the Space Shuttle programme. Of course he could have said, "Why do you want to do this at all?", but like a good civil servant, he reported back the answers they wanted to hear. We all value our paychecks.
He was 83.

Disturbance In The Force
Sometimes the Soap Opera that is the New York Yankees gets a little strange. We find the report today that Mariano Rivera's relatives electrocuted themselves cleaning his pool in Panama. As a consequence, Mo's status and availability for the Yankees has been cast in to doubt.

Victor Dario Avila, a cousin of Rivera's wife, Clara, and his 14-year-old son
were killed Saturday, Rivera's cousin, Irma Rivera, told The Associated Press.
The teenager, also named Victor Dario Avila, apparently touched an electrical wire while cleaning the pool in Puerto Caimito, 40 miles east of Panama City. His father died trying to save him, Irma Rivera said.

Not good. Not good at all.

- Art Neuro

Now On To The Main Event
So much for predictions of a Twins-Cards World Series as the Yankees put down the aspirations of the AL Central division winners. A-Rod was the man who scored the winning run. It has to be said that once teams get into the death grip of extended innnings with the Yankees, they're dicing with death. This team didn't set a Major League record of 61 come-from-behind wins for nothing. All 3 wins against the Twins were come-from-behinds. Meanwhile, the Twins will have a Wild Pitch to think about for 6 months.

So now it's time for the much-anticipated Red Sox-Yankee stoush to decide who goes to the World Series from the American League. It's a bit tragic that this showdown is probably going to get more light than the World Series.

- Art Neuro

The Election Tango

It takes two to do this dance th cliche-jitterbug. As if they are athletes, politicians of all sides reduce themselves to idiotic simplicty to say stuff like this:

As Mr Howard set out for his morning walk he said election day is a nerve-racking one for him. "It's a tense day, I think it will be very close, I'm not taking anything for granted and we'll just have to wait and see," he said. He urged voters to stick with him. "It's certainly not an occasion for anyone to think they can give us a protest kick and still re-elect us - if enough people do that we'll lose," he said.
Mr Latham is playing down this morning's newspaper polls but he says Labor is the underdog. "Well I feel Labor's put forward a positive campaign to try and take the financial pressure off families but also to save Medicare and save the mighty Tasmanian forests, so they're the choices we put to the Australian people today," he said.

I don't know about you, but this is idiotic patter. Sorry, but it's true. it's not much better than, we'll give it 120% and on the day the best team will win. *Ugh*. Was it always thus? Meanwhile another group of nasty, hyper-motivated, intellectually unsound Arabs in Iraq are probably kidnapping somebody or beheading them this very minute. This election day has turned out to be more boring than I thought.

Kevin Brown Puts The Twins Down

The AP version of this is already up on the comments section 2 posts ago, thanks to Mr. Weasel. The gormless NYTimes are now saying this.

It is squarely in their sights now, the series that has seemed inevitable for a
year. With a victory Saturday against the Minnesota Twins, the Yankees will meet
the Boston Red Sox for a trip to the World Series. Again.
"I don't care about Boston at all," Derek Jeter said. "We've got Minnesota to play first."
The Yankees humbled the Twins in Game 3 of the division series Friday night with an 8-4 victory that gave them a two-games-to-one lead. A date with the Red Sox will be theirs to take in Game 4.
The Yankees made sure of that by stomping Twins starter Carlos Silva and getting six strong innings from Kevin Brown. Jeter drove in three runs, and Bernie Williams and Hideki Matsui hit home runs. Every Yankee starter except Alex Rodriguez had a hit.

Notice there's still a rib at A-Rod? I tell you there's a ... ah, fuggedaboudit.
Kevin the crazy man, the Left Hand of Stupidty, Brown did very well for himself today. He can stop drooling now.

Javier Vazquez starts Game 4. I don't know why people go on about the Yankee pitching staff as if they are mediocre pitchers. No, their stats this year weren't good, but their performance as a group was probably tested like no other Yankee staff in recent memory. At the cre of it, you have the pitchers who were imposing Aces for Baltimore (Mussina); San Diego and Los Angeles (Brown) ; Chicago (Lieber); Montreal (Vazquez). Brown, Mussina and Vazquez are perrennial leaders in DIPS (Defense Independent Pitching Stats) PLUS they have Orlando 'El Duque' Hernandez, the former super-Ace of Cuba as well as the veteran of the 3 consecutive World Series wins. Yes they're older and a little worse for wear, but they all seem to be hitting on all cylinders right now, and so they're not exactly chopped liver here.

Even MORE Jeter Hagiography.

- Art Neuro

Beheadings
I'm disgusted. I don't know where to point my disgust because it's not like there is a sensible target for this disgust. If anything, it is a nebulous, general disgust that spreads out in the general direction of 'over there' that keeps ruining my day.

Iraqi hostage-takers have beheaded Kenneth Bigley.

It's not the first civillian casualty, it's not even the first beheading; it's not like this was one special person. However, I feel this name-less, aimless disgust at how things have panned out. No amount of rhetoric is going to make me feel better about this outcome. History keeps repeating, over and over and over again.

-Art Neuro