Friday Night Miscellany

It's late, so this will be a short one! A meteor crashed and burned somewhere near Pendleton, Oregon, on Tuesday night, according to this detailed report at the National Geographic website. It's light from the burn-through was bright enough to wake people up in the wee early morning and there was a sonic boom. Scary stuff, actually! Makes one wonder what it would be like if something the size of say "Meteor" hit the Earth - or the remnant that the good guys left over in "Armageddon"... Over at New Scientist, an interesting series of articles on music, sound and our perception of it. I tried the #2 experiment - "Phantom Words" - not sure what would happen. It took a little bit to download the soundtrack (it's a few minutes long) and at first I just heard tones, but then I did "discern" words. First, something that sounded like "melting", then it became "melt me" (which makes absolutely no sense, except I'm sick and tired of the ice I've had to trek over for the past 10 days since our last major ice/snow/rain/blizzard storm, ice that is getting more slippery every day), then it became "no brain" (har!), then "melt me" again, and then for awhile "melt me" and "no brain" alternated, and then the end of the experiment I heard mostly "no brain." Guess that should teach me, heh? These "phantom words" are not to be confused with being woken up in the middle of the night with what are passed off in the scientific world as auditory hallucinations - or hearing someone calling you in the middle of broad daylight while you're full awake, except no one is around (cue spooky music....) I've had both kinds of experiences over the years and they ain't fun, let me tell you! Tee hee hee - got a good laugh over this one: U.S. to Share Satellite Strike Data with China. Did Tom Clancy ghost write the article, perchance? This story got me so angry, I've been doing searches using gool old AltaVista since reading it - Google, eat my nose smuts. Corruption in the U.N. is not a News For Google News (please, try to ignore the lady with the impossibly enlarged bossom in the bikini - she looks like an advertisement for "Steroids for Boobs!") Are the fearless leaders in China finally getting the hint that to play in the bigs they have to be "stake-holders" (remember the laugh a minute about how that term was translatable into Chinese and how the Communist nit-wigs claimed to not "get it?") The USA, in particular, has subsidized the corrupt regime of mainland China almost since the day of it's creation by massively importing it's inferior products. Pig intestines, anyone? It's about time the Chinese government started doing something other than claiming "we no speaky English." China, in New Role, Presses Sudan on Darfur