Wanton Destruction and Inaccuracy
Today is the day before my favorite holiday, Independence Day; and Independence Day is the day before my birthday. Excellent. By the way, thanks to you blokes who gave me birthday suggestions... Even if they were completely obnoxious.
Here's the fourth part of Ross Kemp in Afghanistan.
Today's satellite image is the Arecibo Radio Observatory in Puerto Rico. (Wiki) Unlike Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex*, which is excellent, Arecibo is probably mainly a boondoggle (despite some of the cool discoveries they've made while using it). At any rate, you may remember the Arecibo dish from such films as GoldenEye and Contact, and it also featured prominently in the Mary Doria Russell novel The Sparrow. The Sparrow, recommended by a girl of all people, was the first book I read when I moved to Zoo Station (see here). Hmmm... I think I'll watch GoldenEye right now, actually.
Okay, so since I moved to Van Dieman's Station nearly a year ago, I've often found myself listening to 1140 WRVA on my way to and from work. It's basically the only decent AM station I can find, as most of the others are religious programming - I'm one of those people who's extremely devout, but hates religious programming, particularly when it's in Spanish and I'm fifteen hundred miles away from the Mexican border. At any rate, today's big story up in Richmond is that some company was hired to bulldoze some brush or something behind the station of a local Fox affiliate. When they dozed in, a "colony" of feral cats came screeching out. The station called an exterminator, who sent a guy out. The guy trapped a bunch of the cats, and killed three of them; now, he's being charged for it. I'm all about the prevention of cruelty toward animals, within reason; but these weren't little kittens, they were feral cats. You basically can't tame house cats, let alone feral cats - "feral" being Mongolian for "wild and crazy". I'm just extremely annoyed by this, because honestly, what else was the guy supposed to do? Other than, you know, taking them to his worst enemy's house and leaving them behind his wood pile with a couple of cans of tuna...
Speaking of people who are crazy, most of you have probably heard of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, otherwise known as PETA. Some of you may remember that a couple of weeks ago, I asked which city you'd want destroyed by space aliens. I didn't mention that I loathe Norfolk. Sure, there are a few decent things there, but the city is so poorly laid out that any sojourn there is a complete and total pain in the ass. Well, as if the traffic patterns weren't enough reason to put a big visible-from-space target around the place, guess what? It's also the location of PETA headquarters! Now, please note that I'm not actually advocating the destruction of any cities. However, I am advocating a massive pig roast at the NOAA headquarters building across the water! Interestingly enough, a search for "Norfolk" in my blog archives revealed that even PETA has had bad press before with respect to euthenizing unwanted cats. The difference is that this bloke in Norfolk wasn't caught dumping these three feral cats in someone else's dumpster, which the PETA clowns were back in 2005. Speaking of asinine stunts from PETA, the Onion has a great article about a PETA commando raid that killed forty-nine people in order to save a little bunny rabbit. And what a pleasant surprise, for once: they're carrying FN FAL rifles!
Remember those Father Time-recommended radios I bought? Well, they finally arrived today. Now, I'm just waiting on the order from Amazon.
Alright, I think that's it for now. Check back tomorrow.
* Bollocks, someone else is wrong on the Internet. If you'll observe the link, the picture of "Pioneer Deep Space Station" is quite obviously the Apollo Site, not the Pioneer Site (which you can see to the north). How do I know this? Simple: I took the Goldstone Tour, which I highly recommend. At any rate, you can see from this image and explanation that Pioneer consisted of a single antenna, not multiple antennas as are visible in the picture on the Wikipedia page. Rest assured, I intend to fix this problem, one way or another... Just not immediately. Your question for today: have you ever found a high profile error on the Internet? Or, in Father Time's place, on a cave painting? If so, what was it?
Here's the fourth part of Ross Kemp in Afghanistan.
Today's satellite image is the Arecibo Radio Observatory in Puerto Rico. (Wiki) Unlike Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex*, which is excellent, Arecibo is probably mainly a boondoggle (despite some of the cool discoveries they've made while using it). At any rate, you may remember the Arecibo dish from such films as GoldenEye and Contact, and it also featured prominently in the Mary Doria Russell novel The Sparrow. The Sparrow, recommended by a girl of all people, was the first book I read when I moved to Zoo Station (see here). Hmmm... I think I'll watch GoldenEye right now, actually.
Okay, so since I moved to Van Dieman's Station nearly a year ago, I've often found myself listening to 1140 WRVA on my way to and from work. It's basically the only decent AM station I can find, as most of the others are religious programming - I'm one of those people who's extremely devout, but hates religious programming, particularly when it's in Spanish and I'm fifteen hundred miles away from the Mexican border. At any rate, today's big story up in Richmond is that some company was hired to bulldoze some brush or something behind the station of a local Fox affiliate. When they dozed in, a "colony" of feral cats came screeching out. The station called an exterminator, who sent a guy out. The guy trapped a bunch of the cats, and killed three of them; now, he's being charged for it. I'm all about the prevention of cruelty toward animals, within reason; but these weren't little kittens, they were feral cats. You basically can't tame house cats, let alone feral cats - "feral" being Mongolian for "wild and crazy". I'm just extremely annoyed by this, because honestly, what else was the guy supposed to do? Other than, you know, taking them to his worst enemy's house and leaving them behind his wood pile with a couple of cans of tuna...
Speaking of people who are crazy, most of you have probably heard of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, otherwise known as PETA. Some of you may remember that a couple of weeks ago, I asked which city you'd want destroyed by space aliens. I didn't mention that I loathe Norfolk. Sure, there are a few decent things there, but the city is so poorly laid out that any sojourn there is a complete and total pain in the ass. Well, as if the traffic patterns weren't enough reason to put a big visible-from-space target around the place, guess what? It's also the location of PETA headquarters! Now, please note that I'm not actually advocating the destruction of any cities. However, I am advocating a massive pig roast at the NOAA headquarters building across the water! Interestingly enough, a search for "Norfolk" in my blog archives revealed that even PETA has had bad press before with respect to euthenizing unwanted cats. The difference is that this bloke in Norfolk wasn't caught dumping these three feral cats in someone else's dumpster, which the PETA clowns were back in 2005. Speaking of asinine stunts from PETA, the Onion has a great article about a PETA commando raid that killed forty-nine people in order to save a little bunny rabbit. And what a pleasant surprise, for once: they're carrying FN FAL rifles!
Remember those Father Time-recommended radios I bought? Well, they finally arrived today. Now, I'm just waiting on the order from Amazon.
Alright, I think that's it for now. Check back tomorrow.
* Bollocks, someone else is wrong on the Internet. If you'll observe the link, the picture of "Pioneer Deep Space Station" is quite obviously the Apollo Site, not the Pioneer Site (which you can see to the north). How do I know this? Simple: I took the Goldstone Tour, which I highly recommend. At any rate, you can see from this image and explanation that Pioneer consisted of a single antenna, not multiple antennas as are visible in the picture on the Wikipedia page. Rest assured, I intend to fix this problem, one way or another... Just not immediately. Your question for today: have you ever found a high profile error on the Internet? Or, in Father Time's place, on a cave painting? If so, what was it?
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