First Images From Amazing Huygens!


To me it looks like Huygens landed on a cobble-strewn tidal flat! Where are the seaweed and the crabs, the fishing boats and the puffy clouds?

And those valleys, morphologically stubby, usually signify sapping of some sort (with runoff not principally from 'rainfall'), but sapping of what from what is unclear. I thought it was too warm for liquid methane: am I wrong? Ethane or propane, anyone? Porous ice filled with liquid hydrocarbons? When, or does, it rain?

There's some signs of wind erosion too, from the photos last July. What is the role of the wind in shaping the landscape? Is wind more important than rain (unlike Earth)? What are the Saturnian tides like? Does the slow rotation rate make a difference?

And why does it look like the fluids flow away from the 'ocean', rather than into it? Doesn't look like a delta to me (unlike what others have said): more like a decaying a highland area, but am I wrong? Is the 'bedrock' turning rotten from years of sapping, with some fluids flowing in, and others flowing out?

Such a great place to land - so lucky that the area is a transitional zone, and not just one type or the other, not just 'land' or 'ocean'! I always thought the pictures from last July showing the general Huygens landing area vicinity on Titan looked suspiciously like the Mediterranean, with the actual landing spot somewhere in Greece. Here we are in a new cradle of civilization!

It's Not Funny! It's Not Funny! It's Not! Not!

Well, maybe a little bit! (sent by Deborah):

Ignorant Stories

Well, blast it all, my five stories didn't make it onto B3ta's 'Best' page this week. I had fun with the contest, though. B3ta's Question of the Week was:

What astonishingly stupid stuff have you overheard people saying? Tell us, and tell the world.

Here were my five stories (two previously blogged):

• Rear View Mirror A friend once stated he never uses his rear view mirrors when he drives: he's interested only in where he's going, not where he's been. Same fellow never used a lamp when bicycling at night. Cracked his skull on a similarly-clueless bicyclist coming from the other way.
• Take a Shower Stayed overnight at the old Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas, once a magnet for the dense. The shower was governed by a big dial: rotate left for hot, right for cold. But how to turn the shower on? No helpful hints. Many frantic calls later, half of hotel management helped me PULL the sticky dial away from the wall. No surprise they finally blew the place up.
• Why Don't Slot Machines Yield More Jackpots? For every slot machine on the casino floor, there is a doppelganger machine hidden above the ceiling, manned by a casino employee, whose job is to fight your crafty spins and keep you from becoming a millionaire (so says a friend, and I believe her).
• Being Retarded When I was but 19, I lived briefly in Englewood, Colorado, USA, a suburb of Denver. If I missed the first bus to work, I caught the second bus, which numerous retarded people also caught on their way to their work. It was a loopy good time, singing songs and sharing stories with these civil folk. One weekend in downtown Denver, quite by accident, I ran into several of my retarded friends, who were busy talking to a businessman. My friends immediately pulled me into the conversation. The businessman assumed that if I already knew these folks, then I must be retarded too. None of my carefully-worded statements shook his considered judgment - he simply responded, in a slow sing-song voice: "So, do you go to a workshop every day too?" It's nice being slow!
• Miniaturization
  A co-worker (male) was explaining the swift turnover of computer technology to the wide-eyed new employee (female): "Ah, you're too young to remember the era of the eight-inch dics."

Cautious Optimism

Huygens appears to have made it onto Titan! The first priority is apparently downloading data, first to Cassini and then to Earth, but maybe later today we'll get to see some images!

Huygens Powers Up

A few minutes before ten o'clock this evening.

Michigan Fog Crash

Sigh. I need to update my list again. Accidents are happening faster than I can log them.

Here's a recitation of some historic fog crashes.

A Rabbit's Work is Never Done


Cloudy says it's hard to be police rabbit.


Evidence of dark, dusty, coarse-haired Pomeranians everywhere!


And the gate-keeping duties. Makes you sneeze. Whew!

The Corruption of Academia

The illness keeps metastasizing. I remember arriving at the University of Utah in 1989, just after its reputation had been effectively destroyed by the 'Discovery of Cold Fusion.' It was clear the university's luckless administrators didn't learn much by their humiliation (although I heard them joke about it privately): the bloodsuckers just kept scouring the campus looking for projects, old and new, to puff up for patents. Arizona State and Univ. of Arizona hadn't been much better than U of U: just luckier.

Administrators and politicians push campuses too hard! Education is education: it won't pay for itself! Open your wallet and get over it!

The Prodigal Woman

So Evita Peron had a role in six movies in about nine years? Sluggish rise that ultimately became meteoric!

Where I'd Like To Be Buried

Except that I'm not a parishioner of San Ysidro Church, or *gasp!* even a Catholic. It's just that I rode past here every single school day on the yellow school bus for, what, 12 years or so?

Let Sauron & Saruman Be Sauron & Saruman

Regarding who is going to lead these Salvador Option death squads, I second funnyman Colin Quinn, and blogger Jesus' General:

He's got a haircut, he's rested, he's written a mountain of bad poetry, did a bit of spider-hole gardening, probably even read Stephen Ambrose's 3-volume biography of Nixon: time to open the jailhouse door and let Saddam be Saddam!

And while we're letting Saddam go free, there's no reason to get too worked up about Osama bin Laden....too much trouble, really.

If Rats Are Multilingual

(From Celia's brother's blog) What about Pomeranians - or lop-eared rabbits?

Death Squad Reliability

I hadn't thought of it, but it's a good point nonetheless: who says the unreliable Iraqi troops that could well staff our Salvadoran Option death squads won't use their skills against our own?

The Advance of American Fascism

An excellent description of the problem.

Huygens Descent - January 14th

The day that some of our most talented and patient space scientists have been waiting for, for decades really, and certainly since launch seven years ago, finally arrives on Friday: Huygens plunges through Titan's atmosphere, and lands on the surface! What will it find? I wonder if I have the fortitude to stay up all night? It's supposed to land at 4 a.m. PST (ouch). I know SOME folks in Pasadena will stay up all night, though!

Bev's Review of Evita

Is out! As annoying and distracting as that little emblem is that keeps flashing up on the corner of the back-stage screen, I kind of like it...there is a certain alienating quality about it, as if the moment is being recorded for posterity - the moment is not just for the living alone. My understanding is that Steve figured out how to make it go away, though......

"Grapes of Warth" Watch

"I think my voice is going Hayward."

Party at the Expense of D.C. Security

Via Talking Points Memo, today's story in the Washington Post:

D.C. officials said yesterday that the Bush administration is refusing to reimburse the District for most of the costs associated with next week's inauguration, breaking with precedent and forcing the city to divert $11.9 million from homeland security projects.

Federal officials have told the District that it should cover the expenses by using some of the $240 million in federal homeland security grants it has received in the past three years -- money awarded to the city because it is among the places at highest risk of a terrorist attack.

..........

A spokesman for Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, which oversees the District, agreed with the mayor's stance. He called the Bush administration's position "simply not acceptable."

"It's an unfunded mandate of the most odious kind. How can the District be asked to take funds from important homeland security projects to pay for this instead?" said Davis spokesman David Marin.

The region has earmarked federal homeland security funds for such priorities as increasing hospital capacity, equipping firefighters with protective gear and building transit system command centers.

Armstrong Williams

Come, on, this is killing me.....who else is on the payroll?

Hailing from the land of the Abanakis, Wampum found this marvelous quote by Armstrong Williams, in 1992:

My father had only a third grade education, but he taught me what I think is the most important principle in business: You don't make money unless you help other people make money.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

...A great deal of what is happening thus far in American Foreign Policy has been influenced by the ongoing conflict in Iraq. Now I would like to say very briefly that in my view, that war which was a war of choice is already a serious moral set back to the United States. A moral set back both in how we started, how it was justified, and because of some of the egregious incidents that have accompanied this proceeding. The moral costs to the United States are high. It's a political setback.

The United States has never been involved in an intervention in its entire history like it is today. It is also a military set back. "Mission Accomplished" are words that many in this administration want to forget.

While our ultimate objectives are very ambitious we will never achieve democracy and stability without being willing to commit 500,000 troops, spend $200 billion a year, probably have a draft, and have some form of war compensation.

As a society, we are not prepared to do that. It does tell you something. The Soviet Union could have won the war in Afghanistan too had it been prepared to do its equivalent of what I just mentioned. But even the Soviet Union was not prepared to do that because there comes a point in the life of a nation when such sacrifices are not justified. . .and only time will tell if the United States is facing a moment of wisdom, or is resigned to cultural decay. This certainly is the challenge.