24. December 2002 - Persons Of The Year 2002 ...
Cynthia Cooper, Coleen Rowley and Sherron Watkins ...
They took huge professional and personal risks to blow the whistle on what went wrong at
WorldCom, Enron and the FBI—and in so doing helped remind us what American courage and
American values are all about.
By Richard Lacayo and Amanda Ripley
22. December 2002 - The winter solstice ...
The winter solstice - our darkest day ...
At exactly 0114GMT the sun will have reached its most southerly point relative to the
celestial equator. To put it more simply, it will be our shortest day of the year.
The sun will rise at 0813GMT and set at 1603GMT
NEW COMET ...
Northern sky watchers with telescopes can spot a newly discovered comet,
C/2002 X5 (Kudo-Fujikawa), in the constellation Hercules
just before dawn this week. It is a 7th to 8th magnitude object now, but it could brighten
spectacularly (to visual magnitude -3) in late January when it approaches the sun even
closer than the planet Mercury. At maximum brightness, however, the comet might be so
close to the sun that only SOHO coronagraphs
can see it.
[ephemeris]
[sky map]
[interactive 3D orbit]
16. December 2002 - BRIGHT SATURN ...
Earth and Saturn are having their closest encounter in nearly 30 years, which means it's
a great time to look at the ringed planet. Eric Ng of Hong Kong captured this image (left)
using his 10" telescope on Dec. 16th. Click here to read the full story from
Science@NASA.
05. December 2002 - OF MICE AND MEN ...
It's small and furry and doesn't look anything like a human, but the genetic blueprint
of the mouse published yesterday shows there isn't much difference. Both have about
30,000 genes. "We share 99 percent of our genes with mice, and we even have the genes
that could make a tail," said Dr. Jane Rogers, of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute
in Cambridge, England. And 90 percent of genes linked to diseases in humans are similar
to those in mice.
04. December 2002 - It's payback time ...
The industry, already suffering from the economic downturn, and the after-effects of the
many shocks suffered over the past 18 months, has been dealt a significant blow by this
year's budget.
OPPOSITION parties attacked Finance Minister Charlie McCreevy, accusing him of forcing
ordinary people to pay for the Government’s election spending splurge.
Leonid meteor storm alert - 19. Nov. 2002 ...
Leonid meteor storms happen when Earth plows through clouds of dusty debris shed by comet
55/P Tempel-Tuttle. Right now Earth is heading for two such clouds. "We'll collide with
both of them on Tuesday morning, Nov. 19th," says Cooke. "The first cloud will cause a
flurry of meteors over Europe at about 0400 UT. We expect sky watchers in the countryside
(away from bright city lights) to see between 500 and 1000 Leonids per hour."
21. Oct. 2002 - Attack On Internet ...
The heart of the Internet sustained its largest and most sophisticated attack ever. Around
5:00 p.m. EDT on Monday, a "distributed denial of service" (DDOS) attack struck the 13
"root servers" that provide the primary roadmap for almost all Internet communications.
Despite the scale of the attack, which lasted about an hour, Internet users worldwide
were largely unaffected. This was the largest and most complex DDOS attack ever against
the root server system.
20. Oct. 2002 - A first winter storm ...
I believe ... this is it ... the sure sign of early winter.
It's cold, very windy and there is lots of rain ... "hey folks, we are back to
normal" ... the lovely days of late sumer are over and the solid ground will soon be
softened, slippery and soaked with water ... again ...
Gales and rain are set to continue
The heavy rains and gaileforce winds that swept most of Ireland since Sunday,
leading to flood in some parts, are set to continue trough Tuesday.
Dublin, Cork and Kerry have been worst hit by the rains, with all three counties
recording rainfall of up to 60 millimetres.
Wednesday will be bright, wit a few scattered showers. However, the weather
is set to deteriorate again from Thursday, with more heavy rains and low
Temperatures.
The rainfall has been far above normal for this time of year in all parts of the
Country. Even if there was no more rain for the rest of the month, the rainfall
is already twice the average of October. [Click here to see what's going on]
20. Oct. 2002 - Ireland votes Yes to Nice ...
16:22 The Nice Treaty has been ratified by the Irish electorate with 62.89 per cent voting
in favour of the amendment to the Constitution. There was a turnout of 48.5 per cent, an
increase of 12.5 per cent on last year. EU enlargement is ready to proceed ...
19. Oct. 2002 - Happy "First" birthday Zoe ...
27. Sep. 2002 - It was a corrupt payment ...
The interim report by Mr Justice Feargus Flood details money paid to Ray Burke, a leading
politician in Ireland from the 1970s up to the late 1990s.
"The Tribunal is satisfied, in all the circumstances, that these payments to the offshore
accounts of Mr. Burke (etc.) were corrupt payments".
Refreshingly honest, clear and damning words are spelled out by yesterdays publication.
Click here to read the whole Second Interim Report of the Tribunal of Inquiry into Certain
Planning Matters and Payments
24. Sep. 2002 - Indian Summer ...
What is it? ... It looks like summer, feels like summer, smells like summer and even
sounds like summer ...
Answer ... it is the present irish Autumn ... here in Ballydehob (finally) the summer of
2002 has arrived ... late though... but better late then never.
19. Sep. 2002 - Electrodes trigger out-of-body experience ...
Stimulating brain region elicits illusion often attributed to the paranormal.
Published today in: Nature 419, 269 - 270 (2002) - [doi:10.1038/419269a]
Neuropsychology: Stimulating illusory own-body perceptions (out-of-body experience)
By: Olaf Blanke, Stephanie Ortigue, Theodor Landis & Margitta Seeck
Laboratory of Presurgical Epilepsy Evaluation, Program of Functional Neurology and Neurosurgery, University Hospitals of Geneva and Lausanne, Geneva 1211 and Lausanne 1011, Switzerland
Functional Brain Mapping Laboratory, Department of Neurology, Geneva University Hospital, 1211 Geneva, Switzerland
e-mail: olaf.blanke@hcuge.ch
18. Sep. 2002 - Attention Windows XP Users ...
A little-known but very dangerous vulnerability exists in Windows XP (remember, the safest
and most secure operating system Microsoft has ever built).
This vulnerability allows the files contained in any specified directory on your system
to be deleted if you click on a specially formed URL. This URL could appear anywhere:
sent in malicious eMail, in a chat room, in a newsgroup posting, on a malicious web page,
or even executed when your computer merely visits a malicious web page. It is already
being exploited on the Internet!
Click here for more information and how to address the problem"
08. Aug. 2002 - METEOR ALERT ...
The annual Perseid meteor shower is underway. Early-rising sky watchers this week have
spotted 10 to 25 meteors per hour in the pre-dawn sky. Even more will appear on August
12th and 13th when the shower peaks.
If you can't wake up at 2 a.m. try looking for Perseids instead around 9 or 10 p.m. when
Perseus is hanging low. (Note: it's always hanging low in the southern hemisphere.) You
won't see many meteors then, but the ones you do see could be memorable. Shooting stars
that emerge from the horizon and streak horizontally through the atmosphere are called
Earthgrazers. They are remarkably slow, colorful and bright.
04. Aug. 2002 - Happy Birthday Linus !!!
We are truly speech less ...
02. Aug. 2002 - Good News "NO IMPACT IN 2019" !!!
Headline-making asteroid
2002 NT7 will not strike Earth in 2019. "With the
processing of a few more observations, we can now rule out any
Earth impact possibilities for February 1, 2019," says Don
Yeomans, the manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program at JPL.
30. Jul. 2002 - Brân died today ...
Sadly, but Brân didn't make it much longer as his brother and died today ...
"Goodby old friend"
May 10th: PLANETS LINE-UP !!!
The five brightest Planets visible from Earth (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter)
have lined-up, in plain sight, to form a spectacular celestial array that won't be seen
again until the year 2040.
During the next four weeks these five Planets will appear tightly clustert in the Western
evening sky, just after sunset, even for the naked eye.
April 16th: TEENAGE ALERT !!!
Anja finally made it ... she became a Teenager ...
April 16th: COMET ALERT
If you haven't yet seen