OUT-OF-THIS-WORLD SUGGESTION

I think this show next week might be worth watching and it's worth marking it down on your calenders asap.
I still get invites and alerts from my friends at NASA  and they're touting new information [and hopefully photos] collected from their two Voyager spacecraft.

Remember "V ger" from the first "Star Trek" movie? Well after those two robots passed the outer planets they kept going and kept collecting and sending back data. After 33 years, they still work. They're now 10 billion (yeah, that's billion with a B) miles away from the sun. NASA has a way of being disappointing but the possibilities here are amazing. The program will be held in NASA headquarters in Washington and is invitation-only. And you can be sure the news networks (even Fox) won't carry it live. But the public can watch it live and streamed over the web on NASA Television at http://www.nasa.gov.

You should ge to know this site anyway because it's good for many hours of great reality television. Much better than the fake crap on commercial TV. I suggest watching the site full-frame with Windows Media.

For more information about the Voyager mission, go to http://www.nasa.gov/voyager and for NASA TV streaming video and downlink information, go to http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

PLEASE WATCH THIS

5.6k Saturn Cassini Photographic Animation from stephen v2 on Vimeo.


Sit back, relax, turn up the volume and put this video on full screen. As you watch the third segment remember that this is made up of photographs taken by a man-made camera that left earth and was soaring toward Saturn millions of miles away about to pass through the planet's rings at unbelievable speeds. It's a sample of what eventually will be a full-length IMAX movie constructed with actual photographs. To me, it asks the same question I've talked about before (June 2008 in the post about the wounded bald eagle fitted with a new beak). The question: How can man, who is capable of doing the most monstrous and unspeakable things, also be able to create and recognize such god-like beauty? There is no answer. But the beauty is real. But forget about all that crap and just enjoy the clip for what it is - in focus.  

KNOW WHAT YOU EAT (AT YOUR OWN RISK)

Okay, I’m watching Letterman just now and he has this cooking guy on. I think he used to be “the naked chef” from the old food channel (do you remember when you actually watched that crap?). Anyway, his name is Jamie Oliver and he’s gained a lot of weight since then.

On Letterman, he dropped a gross-out bomb about what the food industry has been putting into our food. Although I was shocked, angry and outraged – I was mostly amused and knew that I had to share it with you – after not until I doubled-checked the accuracy of what he said. Well it was true, but opened the door to even more disgusting stuff you put in your mouth every day. 

Starting with Jamie’s gross-out:

Next time you eat raspberry ice cream or candy, think about the ingredient castoreum it contains. What’s castoreum, you ask. Officially, it's a “natural flavoring” so how bad can it be? Well, it’s made from – wait for it – the extract of the anal glands of beavers. Both male and female beavers. All sorts of questions immediately come to mind: How do they harvest the glands? Does someone squeeze them to get the extract? And the one question that almost everyone quickly get around to: Who was the first person to discover that beaver asses taste good? 

Some more quick goodies … every brand of gum made in the U.S. since World War II is made of plastic. Styrene-butadiene rubbers and polyvinyl acetate to be exact. It’s the stuff that makes it chewy. A natural rubber called chicle made from tree sap used to serve that purpose but you know how much that costs now.

Do you like red food? Well the “natural color” (there’s that word natural again) called carmine or carminic acid is made by harvesting thousands of red insects, drying them and then boiling the solution to get the natural red dye.

Speaking of bugs, that shiny coating on your kid’s Skittles and the sprinkles (some people know them as jimmies) comes from the secretions of the female lac beetle. The same substance is also called shellac and used to coat your kitchen table. 

Jello. Everyone knows it’s made of gelatin. Gelatin is made from ground cow hoofs. How about some Jello shots.

Do you like Wendy’s chili? It used to be pretty good but I haven't had any in years. One of its ingredients is silicon dioxide. That’s sand.  They use it as an “anti-caking agent.”

 And this from just about seven minutes of research. I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry.