The Ramblings of Ken

Two NASA scientists are proposing an idea in which a 20-ton vehicle would tow asteroids away from Earth, should one ever be on a path to strike Earth. Do the movies Deep Impact or Armageddon ring a bell?





From the article:

[blockquote]Now, two NASA astronauts have presented a plan for an “asteroid tractor”—an unmanned, 20-ton spacecraft that uses the invisible bond of gravity to gently pull an asteroid into a new, non-threatening orbit.

“You can think of it like a big elastic band between the two pulling them together,” said Edward Lu, who presents the concept for the spacecraft with fellow astronaut Stanley Love in the Nov. 10 issue of the journal Nature.

The tractor would hover above the surface of the asteroid, without touching it, and use gravity as a towline. If the spacecraft maintains a consistent distance between it and the asteroid, and always tows in the same direction, this method won’t disturb the asteroid’s rotation or composition.[/blockquote]

Interesting idea you say? I think it would really work. It might take a long time to actually alter the asteroid's orbit, but it would work...

(Image courtesy of space.com)

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/051109_asteroid_tractor.html

Garbage doesn't belong on a webserver. I finally figured that out. I put an .iso image for a friend in the /images directory on my server so that he could download it. Well, I forgot about it and left it there. Everytime that someone wanted to leave a comment the php scripts would analyze the .iso file in the /images folder and try to figure out what kind of image it was. Well, needless to say, it couldn't figure it out and it took forever to generate the comments page. Sorry about that guys.

Moral of the story: If it doesn't belong on your server, don't put it there!

Wow!!! It really worked!!! I followed http://www.jeffpatch.com/?postid=98 and it worked!!! At first I tried rubbing really hard and I actually caused a noticeable darker spot in the LCD. Hopefully I can get that to go away. But, the stuck pixel is now working exactly as it should!!! Yay!!! For those of you that didn't know, I had a stuck red pixel toward the upper right hand corner of the screen. It is gone now!

The Catholic Church announced today that they reject the idea of "intelligent design." They say that the theory of evolution is perfectly compatible with the teachings in Genesis.

See Evolution in the bible, says Vatican

I'd just like to share some of my thoughts concerning this matter. I believe that evolution is real. It has been shown and proven beyond any reasonable doubt that species do evolve. Genetic mutations do, in fact, occur very randomly in nature. Sometimes these mutations are advantageous to the species and the genetic mutation remains with the species and becomes a prominent dominating characteristic of the species.

However, just because of the fact that I believe in evolution it should not be implied that I think that the human race evolved from any other species. I believe that we are on an entirely different level. We were created in the image of God by Him. God did create the universe and organized it in a perfect manner. There is a Supreme Being who is in control over all of this "chaos."

So... I believe in evolution AND in intelligent design. Can't they co-exist?

It is about time! President Bush visited Brazil for the first time today. He gave the only speech that he will give on his three-nation Latin America trip.

We need to improve our relations with Brazil. We need to be good friends. The Brazilian people are awesome! They have a lot to contribute to the world and to us as citizens of the United States of America. I hope that we can have good relations with them and help each other to become better countries.

(Image courtesy of voanews.com)

Here are some pictures of my new LCD screen along with my computer... enjoy