The reluctant reptile, “Reggie,” is now several weeks overdue for his spring appearance.
Could this be the end … of Reggie the alligator?
It’s been seven months since the last sighting of the elusive alligator in Harbor City’s Machado Lake. Has the reptile cashed in his chips?
Read our previous articles about Reggie.
UPDATE: Perhaps the saga will continue . . . Another Reggie Sighting?
“The Donald” wants to put his own name on a Rancho Palos Verdes road now called “Ocean Trails Drive” and call it “Trump National Drive.” Other than immense ego, why would anyone want to change a poetic name like that to something that rhymes with “rump” or “frump?” I don’t get it. It should be enough to merely have a big, gaudy stone and brass monument at the entrance — like this one . . .
And, on an astronomical scale, it IS huge! We reported in a previous article, See Spot Run about the two red spots on Jupiter, Great Red and Red, Jr. Time to get the backyard telescope out and get it tuned up for this!
June 5, 2006: The two biggest storms in the solar system are about to go bump in the night, in plain view of backyard telescopes.
Storm #1 is the Great Red Spot, twice as wide as Earth itself, with winds blowing 350 mph. The behemoth has been spinning around Jupiter for hundreds of years.
Storm #2 is Oval BA, also known as “Red Jr.,” a youngster of a storm only six years old. Compared to the Great Red Spot, Red Jr. is half-sized, able to swallow Earth merely once, but it blows just as hard as its older cousin.
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The time is upon us for our many cactii to produce their beautiful, albeit short-lived, blossoms. This pair of buds atop one cactus looked to me like an alien creature peering at us through its eye stalks. Don’t worry though, these awkward little buds will mature into a couple of very beautiful, delicate and fragrant nocturnal flowers. Just watch out for the needles.
I’ll be sure to get many more photos of these beautiful flowers and post the best ones here throughout the cactus flower season.
Like ships passing in the night, pair of space rocks zooms past Earth today at a distance of (only) 2.5 million miles. Dubbed Asteroid 2004 DC, the pair were not known to be a pair until radar reflections off the asteroid were detected by the Arecibo radar/radio telescope (remember the movie “Contact?”).
The green dot in the center near the bottom of the image below (from a NASA orbit simulation) is planet Earth. The scale of the image is such that the asteroid looks very close to our planet, but it is at quite a safe distance.
From SpaceWeather.com:
BINARY ASTEROID: Asteroid 2004 DC is flying by Earth today about 2.5 million miles away. Yesterday, astronomers using the giant Arecibo radar in Puerto Rico pinged the asteroid and discovered that it is actually two asteroids–a 60m rock orbiting a 300m rock. Researchers estimate that one in six near-Earth asteroids are binaries.
I’m sure there is a purpose in all this besides a science project . . .
Six years ago, MIT engineering Professor David Miller showed the movie Star Wars to his students on their first day of class. There’s a scene Miller is particularly fond of, the one where Luke Skywalker spars with a floating battle droid. Miller stood up and pointed: “I want you to build me some of those.”
So they did. With support from the Department of Defense and NASA, Miller’s undergraduates built five working droids. And now, one of them is onboard the International Space Station (ISS).
Inset image: MIT undergrads flight-test a prototype droid onboard NASA’s KC-135 reduced gravity aircraft.
Didn’t NASA Astronauts refer to the reduced gravity aircraft as the “vomit comet?”
While the mainstream media jumps into a frenzy about the incident in Haditha, Iraq, we’re going to take the position that in America, and certainly in the military, the credo of innocence before guilt applies. We’re saddened by the loss of life, and the allegations that there was wrongdoing, but beyond that we will wait to see how this plays out.
Meanwhile, we assert that the men and women of the U.S. Marine Corps and all of the Military are, by and large, the finest, most professional military ever. We continue to support them both spiritually and by helping out military-oriented charities when we can.
At a recent military event, the Marines brought this nice toy and other exhibits to celebrate Armed Forces Day.