April 1: Google fun: Gmail Autopilot, CADIE, and …

More than any other Web company, Google has put together some of the most memorable and sophisticated April Fools’ pranks, ranging from a toilet Internet service provider to a pagerank system based on pigeons.

Click here to see Google’s gags from 2000 through 2008 →

Since 2000, Google has published one or more gags each year, according to Wikipedia, except for two years — 2001 and 2003. Last year — the peak of the Web 2.0 bubble — included more than a dozen. Google’s YouTube even “Rickrolled” everyone.

Could this year be joke-free?

- via TBI

Happy April Fools Day. Don’t bet on this year being joke-free at Google. Read about CADIE.  If you don’t have time to answer your mail, let Google’s new Autopilot do it for you.

As the potentially dangerous Conficker worm is tracked throughout April Fool’s Day, more harmless hoaxes are firing across the Internet. Google unveiled a “Gmail Autopilot.” It alleges that it will help you weed through your inbox by replying to e-mails with automated responses.

The 188-year-old British newspaper The Guardian said it would become a “Twitter-only publication,” limiting its reports to 140 characters or less. One example from 1927 read: “OMG first successful transatlantic air flight wow, pretty cool!”

Other hoaxes include upside-down viewing from YouTube, a Web site of smells called smellr (smell-ER) and an “ideological search engine” from Yahoo that filters results to fit your personal beliefs. – ap

For a list of April Fools Day pranks on the web, see: http://aprilfoolsdayontheweb.com/

U.S. military vows to track 800 satellites by October 1

By Andrea Shalal-Esa

Posted 2009/03/30 at 10:52 pm EDT

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado, Mar. 30, 2009 (Reuters) — Spurred by last month’s collision of two satellites high above the Earth, the U.S. military plans to begin tracking all 800 maneuverable spacecraft currently operating in space by October 1, a senior U.S. Air Force official said on Monday.

U.S. Strategic Command and Air Force Space Command will work together to expand the number of satellites being tracked from about 300 currently, Air Force Colonel Dusty Tyson, chief of the Pentagon’s National Security Space Office, told reporters at a space conference in Colorado Springs.

He said the decision was made at a high-level Pentagon meeting on March 24 attended by Air Force Secretary Michael Donley, General Kevin Chilton, head of Strategic Command, General Robert Kehler, who runs Air Force Space Command and John Grimes, the Pentagon’s chief information officer.

“They’re going to stand up a level of capability by 1 October. They hope to be able to provide conjunction analysis on all 800, plus or minus, maneuverable satellites,” Tyson said at the Space Foundation’s annual National Space Symposium.

Tyson said some officials had long believed a collision of satellites would eventually happen and had been pressing for better tracking of satellites and other objects in space.

But the February 10 collision of a dead Russian military communications satellite and a commercial U.S. satellite owned by Iridium had spurred the military into quicker action, he said.

via NewsDaily: U.S. military vows to track 800 satellites by October 1.

Huh? We don’t know where all man-made satellites are? I thought, that even back in 2001, that the military already constantly tracks everything … down to the size of a baseball.  That’s what I heard.

Sick Sea Turtle Swims Right to Hospital Doorstep

A sick sea turtle swims to the doorstep of the only place in the world that is licensed solely to treat turtles

A loggerhead sea turtle nearly swam to the door step of the Florida Keys Turtle Hospital, the only licensed veterinary facility in the world that solely treats sea turtles.

The 73-pound reptile was suffering from a bacterial infection and somehow knew exactly where to go for help — no Yellow Pages needed.

Staff members at the hospital actually waited several hours before treating the turtle because they thought it may have just been lost when it showed up at the dock of the treatment center.

But the turtle stuck around, probably unaware of the Turtle Hospital’s “no walk-ins” policy.

Eventually, he was treated with meds and now has a new home in a blue tank until he’s all better.

No doubt, the hospital will get plenty of referrals from their new patient when he is back with his friends — Michelangelo, Leonardo, Donatello and Raphael.

via Sick Sea Turtle Swims Right to Hospital Doorstep | NBC Miami.

Joe’s Jazz Open Mic @ the Capitol Garage, Sacramento CA

Jazz open mic @ cap garage, sacramento ca, originally uploaded by xeno735.

I got back out to the Tuesday Open mic at the Capitol Garage, Sacramento CA for some live jazz. I’ll post sound files soon on box.net (see left bar). I am using the Free WMA to MP3 converter to get MP3′s from my Olympus DS-30 recorder.

UFO Investigator Finds Mystery At Colorado Springs Park

UFO field investigator Chuck Zukowski likes to think of himself as a skeptic.

He won’t throw his UFO detective gear in his truck (license plate: UFONUT) and drive out to the middle of nowhere just because someone says they saw a few glowing orbs over a field.

“Cattle mutilations I’ll go out for, but orbs? They have to have some sort of documentation — a photo, a video,” he said recently as he pulled his Nissan Xterra up to Ute Valley Park.

There was something at the park he felt was definitely worth a closer look.

Zukowski is nationally known in sky-watching circles as a meticulous documenter of the unexplainable. In 20 years as a UFO investigator he has helped organize archaeological digs at UFO hot spots near Roswell, N.M. (Conclusion: Sites need more study.)

He has inspected a strange stone found in the New Mexico desert, expertly carved with a design that also appeared in a crop circle in England. (Conclusion: Stone needs more study.) He has appeared as an expert on the Sci Fi Channel and the super late-night paranormal radio show Coast to Coast a.m.

More importantly, he says he has seen UFOs himself.

via UFO Investigator Finds Mystery At Colorado Springs Park – cbs4denver.com.

Here is his website     http://www.ufonut.com/

Here he is with his rock:

Interesting carving. I’m not particularly impressed by the amazing properties of the Roswell Rock. He is moving his hand to get the compass needle to spin. This would happen with any magnet that you move under a compass.

U.S. unveils Orion spacecraft to take crew to Mars

NASA gave visitors to the National Mall in Washington a peek at a full-size mock-up of the spacecraft designed to carry U.S. astronauts back to the moon and then on to Mars one day.

The U.S. Navy-built Orion crew exploration vehicle will replace the space shuttle NASA plans to retire in 2010, and become the cornerstone of the agency’s Constellation Program to explore the moon, Mars and beyond.

“We’re just very proud to build this, do some testing and demonstrate to America that we’re moving beyond the space shuttle onto another generation of spacecraft,” said Don Pearson, project manager for the Post-Landing Orion Recovery Test or PORT.

NASA plans to use Orion to carry astronauts to the International Space Station by 2015. The capsule will rotate the crew at the station every six months “to work out the kinks” before heading to the moon and Mars, Pearson said.

Trips to the moon are scheduled for 2020, while a journey to Mars is believed possible by the mid-2030s.

via U.S. unveils Orion spacecraft to take crew to Mars – Boston.com.

What the Heck is it?

An image from the Hubble Space Telescope has astronomers baffled once again.

The Supernova Cosmology Project (SCP) recently announced the discovery of a “mystery object” that does not fit with observational data compiled by the Sloan Deep Sky Survey (SDSS). According to Kyle Barbary, an astrophysics graduate student with U.C. Berkeley and lead author of a paper appearing in The Astrophysical Journal, the observation is:

“…inconsistent with all known supernova types, is not matched to any spectrum in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey database” of vast numbers of objects. “We suggest that the transient may be one of a new class.”

As Barbary and his colleagues indicate, the closest they can come to the characterists of SCP 06F6 are quasars whose “hot gas” envelopes absorb radiation emissions at specific frequencies. However, a spectrographic analysis of the newly found object reveals nothing recognizable to the team. They are unable to determine if it is in our own galaxy or somewhere much farther out in deep space.

via What the Heck is it? | thunderbolts.info.

IEEE Spectrum: New Cold Fusion Evidence Reignites Hot Debate

On Monday, scientists at the American Chemical Society (ACS) meeting in Salt Lake City announced a series of experimental results that they argue confirms controversial “cold fusion” claims.

Chief among the findings was new evidence presented by U.S. Navy researchers of high-energy neutrons in a now-standard cold fusion experimental setup—electrodes connected to a power source, immersed in a solution containing both palladium and “heavy water.” If confirmed, the result would add support to the idea that reactions like the nuclear fire that lights up the sun might somehow be tamed for the tabletop. But even cold fusion’s proponents admit that they have no clear explanation why their nuclear infernos are so weak as to be scarcely noticeable in a beaker.

The newest experiment, conducted by researchers at the U.S. Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center, in San Diego, required running current through the apparatus for two to three weeks. Beneath the palladium- and deuterium-coated cathode was a piece of plastic—CR-39, the stuff that eyeglasses are typically made from. Physicists use CR-39 as a simple nuclear particle detector.

After the experiment, the group analyzed the CR-39 and found microscopic blossoms of “triple tracks.” Such tracks happen when a high-energy neutron has struck a carbon atom in the plastic, causing the atom to decay into three helium nuclei (alpha particles). The alpha particles don’t travel more than a few microns, though, before they plow into other atoms in the CR-39. The result is a distinctive three-leaf clover that, to physicists, points to the by-product of a nuclear reaction.

“Taking all the data together, we have compelling evidence that nuclear reactions [are happening in the experiment],” says physicist Pamela Mosier-Boss of the Navy group.

… According to Edmund Storms, retired nuclear scientist from Los Alamos National Laboratory and author of The Science of Low Energy Nuclear Reaction (World Scientific, 2007), experiments confirming Pons and Fleischmann’s finding of excess heat have now been published in 150 different papers in journals and conference proceedings around the world. The reported excess heat, he says, ranges from milliwatts up to 180 watts. 
…

Ludwik Kowalski, formerly a physics professor at New Jersey’s Montclair State University, now retired, says that throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s, he was as skeptical as anyone about cold fusion. But in 2007, he conducted his own CR-39 experiment, as described in an earlier paper by the U.S. Navy group.

“I got the same result they got, exactly,” Kowalski says, noting that the CR-39 tracks he saw traced the outline of the cathode wire and were highly suggestive of nuclear activity. “Now I think there are serious indications that there is something behind this.”

via IEEE Spectrum: New Cold Fusion Evidence Reignites Hot Debate.