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Sky Lights: Confused About Your Direction? If you lack a sense of personal trajectory, astronomers can help. By Bob Berman DISCOVER Vol. 27 No. 09 | September 2006 | Space Throughout most of history, humanity hasn't had a clue about where it's going. The idea that we're all being whisked through space aboard a spinning Earth was alien even to brilliant thinkers like Aristotle and Pythagoras. The first to argue that our planet is in motion was Heracleides, who in 350 B.C. maintained that Earth turns on an axis. A century later, Aristarchus of Samos earned a lot of laughs...

6/7/2006 - KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, Afghanistan (AFPN) -- What has a 50-foot wingspan, buzzes like a giant insect and can put an AGM-114 Hellfire missile through a window from 8,000 miles away? It is the Air Force’s MQ-1 Predator unmanned aerial vehicle, and it’s arguably one of the most requested assets in Operation Enduring Freedom, said Capt. Jonathan Songer, commander of the Predator launch and recovery element here. “They can’t get enough of us. They simply can’t get enough Predators in the air,” he said. Captain Songer and the Airmen of the 62nd Expeditionary Reconnaissance Flight are responsible for the operation...

Comet break-up puts on sky show The comet is breaking into fragments. (Image: European Southern Observatory) A comet is delighting astronomers with a marvellous night-time display as it makes a near pass of the Earth. The ball of ice, rock and dust has broken up into more than 60 pieces; two of the larger fragments are visible through binoculars or small telescopes. At its closest approach this weekend, the comet will be some 10 million km (six million miles) from the Earth. Continued disintegration means this may be the last swing around the Sun for Comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3. Good chance...

SOUTHWEST ASIA, March 24, 2006 – The convoy travels down the dusty desert road. Soldiers keep watchful eyes, surveying the barren landscape surrounding them. Today, their minds are slightly at ease. Overhead, an armed F-16 in direct contact with their team is watching the road ahead. No one will be lost today. An F-15E Strike Eagle flies over the coast in Southwest Asia. Aircraft like this and others are capable of monitoring the battlespace with their targeting pods. This concept is known as nontraditional intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. Photo by Master Sgt. Lance Cheung, USAF  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution...

Sky falls in on Bush the outcast Plagued by Iraq, the President's own party is abandoning him as his poll ratings plunge. Paul Harris reports from New York Sunday March 19, 2006 The Observer (UK) When president George W Bush launched a high-profile series of speeches last week aimed at calming nerves about the Iraq war he chose to do so in the heart of Washington DC. At George Washington University, he asked America to stay the course through troubled times. It was a familiar message to an audience that had heard it all before. What was new was the...

U.S. Army Gen. John Abizaid, U.S. Central Command commander, speaks to U.S. Army soldiers assigned to Combined Task Force Bayonet after an awards presentation held Nov. 30, 2005, at Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan. Sgt. Jose Mondragon, 74th Long Range Surveillance Detachment, was one of three soldiers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade presented a Purple Heart during the ceremony. U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Jacob Caldwell More Photos Sky Soldiers Honored for Actions in Combat Three Silver Stars and three Purple Hearts were presented to the soldiers fo actions taken and injuries sustained during Operation Enduring Freedom VI. By U.S....

Sky Sports has been censured by a media watchdog... The character, played by an American, Mark Copani, entered the ring wearing an Arab headdress and surrounded by a phalanx of masked men in combat clothes who were described by the commentators as his "sympathisers". There was also use of emotive language, including the words "martyr", "sacrifice" and "infidel" and footage of a previous clash between him and another wrestler was set to music that sounded like the Muslim call to prayer. After the programme, Sky approached WWE to ensure the character would be withdrawn, and it ended his contract.

U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Nicholas Gaytangarner, Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 508th Infantry Regiment (Airborne), shows a group of Afghan National Army soldiers a paper target that was fired at with an AK-47 set on automatic Nov. 18, 2005 at Kandahar Airfield. Only one round made it to the paper, none were on the target. U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Jacob Caldwell Sky Soldiers Teach Marksmanship Skills U.S. Army soldiers, along with Romanian and other coalition soldiers took the lead in teaching Afghan soldiers basic rifle marksmanship. By Staff Sgt. Jacob Caldwell TF Bayonet Public Affairs KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Nov....

Diverted by weather to a deployed base housing both airmen and soldiers, the F-16 pilots had the opportunity to see the troops they support from the air. By U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Paul Dean 407th Air Expeditionary Group Public Affairs ALI BASE, Iraq, Oct. 28, 2005 — The sky above Balad Air Base, Iraq, was thick with dust and sand when four F-16 Fighting Falcon pilots completed another mission in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.They were headed to their deployment “home” in Balad when they were eventually diverted here Oct. 17. "There’s no simulator that can teach you...

10/19/2005 - ALI BASE, Iraq -- The sky above Balad Air Base was thick with dust and sand when four F-16 Fighting Falcon pilots completed another mission in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. They were headed to their deployed home at Balad Oct. 17 when they were eventually diverted here. Their mission started early that morning, but it was well past lunch when they traveled in a holding pattern above a dusty Balad. The four F-16 pilots, from the 332nd Expeditionary Fighter Squadron, had aerial refueled and were waiting for the sandstorm to pass. But weather forecasters determined the storm...

In the arena of political discourse, a “straw man” is often a weak or extreme argument one side in a debate falsely attributes to their opponents.  It’s an age-old tactic that presents a nice-sounding argument that is, in reality, easily refuted or “knocked down.” That is the tactic now being used to defend the court-ordered legalization of same-sex “marriage” in Massachusetts last year.

Just a heads-up's to FR geeks. The meteors have already started, but it looks as if this could be a real event.

Hey, we still have electricity! The rain just stopped. No wind. No storm. Everything is calm. The crickets are playing their music outside. They have no idea what's coming! ;-) We made some pictures of Hurricane Dennis today.This link takes you to my home page which is hosted on a free server. Please, DO NOT CLICK ON THE REFRESH or RELOAD button in your browser. Do not put a lot of stress on the server. (If 200 people want to download the pictures at once that may cause my home page to go offline.) Good bye! I am afraid that...

Happy Easter! Last week the subject theme for the photography thread was Sunrise, wherein someone suggested that sunrises are better than sunsets. That sounds like a challenge to me! Let's see if we can top the sunrise thread with some beautiful sunset shots. Please post your bestest sunset photos here - your own work, please.

I noticed an arts/photography topic in the general forum, so I'll take advantage of this and post a photo theme thread every Sunday. Texas Windmills

t is a bit of irony that Ernie Garven,who died last week at his Florida home, wrote the unforgettable Hamm's beer advertising jingle, "From the land of sky blue wa-a-aters.

In the opening scene of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, a Zeppelin docks with the airship mooring mast atop the Empire State Building. In the real world of yesterday, this feat was attempted only once, and was abandoned as being far too dangerous. This failed effort demonstrated the peril of trying to make real what begins as marketing hype. The mooring mast had only been added to the architectural designs of the Empire State Building in order to make it taller than the competing Chrysler building. Sky Captain also falls into a trap laid by its own hype....

8 September 2004 BRUSSELS - By the year 3000, Brussels will be a coastal capital and Antwerp will have disappeared into the sea, warned a report out on Wednesday. The study into the effects Belgium could suffer from global warming was carried out by the Catholic University of Leuven (UCL) and was commissioned by the environmental group Greenpeace. A team of 20 experts, headed by climatology professor Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, warned Belgium would not escape the green house effect. The researchers predicted that the country will see milder winters in the years to come, but that summers would become more...

Live Thread: President Bush Skydives. This is taking forever....

A boat party in an exclusive area of Long Island Sunday night was interrupted - when a severed human hand mysteriously dropped out of the sky onto the deck of a boat, police said yesterday.