Thursday, January 20, 2005

- Enrico Fermi was a famous physicist who helped split the atom, and helped develop the first atomic weapon. He is mostly known for his accomplishments in physics, but he was also a amateur UFO investigator. Fermi proposed the following question..."if there are so many planets and galaxies, then why havent we bumped into any aliens?" This simple question is rather complicated to answer, and is now referred to as The Fermi Paradox. Here is a link explaining the paradox:
http://www.space.com./searchforlife/shostak_paradox_011024.html

- The tsunami in south-east asia last month didnt quite hit my psyche until I read the following article. The earthquake not only increased the speed of rotation for the earth, it also made the earth slightly more round. It was the most powerful earthquake recorded in the past 40 years. That sounds like a big deal to us, but if the earth has been around for over 5 billion years, then how many more powerful earthquakes have occurred, or will occur? The tsunami helped remind me that we live on a spinning globe made of rock and magma that can change unexpectly, just like all things in this universe.
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9596_22-5536983.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=zdnet

I use hotmail for my personal e-mail account that I share with my friends. By only giving my hotmail e-mail address to friends, it helps avoid spam. I also have a yahoo e-mail address that I use for business transactions, or when I need to give an e-mail address to someone outside my circle of friends. My yahoo e-mail address receives over 100 spam e-mails a day. I am a beta-tester for a new e-mail service created by Google. It is called Gmail, and it can store 1 gigabyte (1 billion bytes) of e-mail. If you want to try Google e-mail, send an e-mail to my hotmail account, and I will invite you. People who are already testing the service can invite others to join. It's completely free, and this is the only way that you can participate in the service right now. Whatever e-mail address you pick during the beta-phase of Gmail you can keep during the full-release. Here is a link to the Gmail website:
http://gmail.google.com/

Monday, January 03, 2005

- Time magazine picked George Bush as their person of the year. Its a good pick, and one I can accept, but I would have picked Karl Rove. Karl Rove predicted, over three years ago, that the key to Bush winning re-election was to crank out the base. He knew right after the 2000 election that firing up the Republican base, and increasing the base by appealing to religious conservatives who didnt vote in the 2000 election would get Georgie re-elected. No person in this country has a better understanding of the geo-political trends and demographics shifts in the American electorate than Karl Rove. Not bad for someone who doesnt have a college degree. Here is an article from the Washington Post about Rove:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/campaigns/wh2000/stories/rove072399.htm

- Here are some predictions for 2005 from the writers and editors at the National Review:
http://www.nationalreview.com/symposium/symposium200412300827.asp

- On July 2nd 1937, Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared over the Pacific ocean, between Australia and Hawaii. Numerous explorers, scientists, and treasure-hunters have tried to find her plane, but no one has succeeded. Here is an article about the latest attempt to find her, and what may have actually happened to poor Amelia:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/12/18/hunting.for.earhart.ap/index.html