If you're worried about safety in China, it looks like the best place to be is a net cafe. China has temporarily closed 12,000 of 45,000 net cafes, 3,300 of them permanently, for safety concerns brought to the administration's attention by a June 16, 2002 fire. The shutdown is much more effective than the May, 2002 attempts.

Giant party toothpicks smell of sweet pine.
Watery Lite-Brite pegs escorted pine needles to the ground;
They won't release their grip until tomorrow.
Chainsaws whine as the day of rest yields to the day of cleanup.
Blankets replace electric heat while wires slither on the streets.

It seems all of North Carolina (or at least from here west) got 1/2 inch or more ice. The utility linesmen have been very busy lately. One tree was leaning towards the house yesterday - I feared it might crash into the upstairs bathrooms. My fears have been allayed - it only took out the banister on the deck.

I took some pictures of the ice but can't upload them until Elizabeth gets back with her laptop. To tide you over, I wrote this this morning:

Laden pines form arabesques.
The sun melts their sheaths.
A menagerie of icicles clinks to the ground.
A breeze intensifies the shower.
Another branch succumbs to gravity.

Stickman stayed over last night because his power was out (but his phone was working). Michael and Amy were planning to join us tonight, too, but Michael just sat down on our couch before we checked the message on the answering machine from Amy telling that their power had come back on thirty minutes prior.

The phone here was out for the better part of Thursday, and the cable (for internet) failed Thursday morning and came back Friday evening. The power still blinks here regularly as they switch sources and repair additional lines.

Stickman just now went home and called me about his CO alarm going off. I told him he needed to be talking to 911 instead. Before he called them, he checked his detector, and it was issuing the "Malfunction" warning. How disconcerting. He unplugged it, plugged it back in, and now it's quiet. He'll sleep at his place tonight.

Tomorrow the bedroom furniture comes. Now all we have to do is find a mattress. Sigh... I'd better go back in there and finish moving out the old furniture.

Sailors, Africans, and Aussies will observe a total solar eclipse on Wednesday, Dec. 4. The International Space Station will only fly through a partial eclipse area, but they'll have a fantastic view of the dark spot on the Earth below. Mir cosmonauts photographed a similar view on August 11, 1999. It looks pretty weird if you ask me. See pictures and read more in NASA's report.

Here's a gem from MAD Magazine: a Gulf Wars: Episode II movie poster. It reminds me of the 1998 StarrWars movie poster (mirror|.cz).

The comet probe Stardust passed its dress rehersal, automatically training its camera on asteroid Annefrank in a recent flyby as an exercise on its way to comet Wild in 14 months. Stardust's mission is to catch comet debris in super-lightweight aerogel and return it to Earth.

Space, medicine, and invention often cross paths. In this case, the invention is a new artificial hip. Scientists are researching ways to manufacture strong and porous ceramics with the benefit of microgravity - subtracting the effects of convection and settling from their experiment. In the end, they hope to offer a permanent artificial hip - much more user-friendly than today's models that come unglued and require replacement after only 5-10 years of use. It's just one more way space research helps to make life better on Earth.

Charlotte, North Carolina based Bank of America is sending even more of its software development work to India in a move to cut costs according to charlotte.com. The trend is not unique to BofA, either - SiliconValley.com reports, "The list of companies contracting for offshore tech services reads like a corporate `Who's Who' list: Target, Visa International, Gap, Boeing, Citigroup, Nordstrom, Bank of America and, of course, Oracle, Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft." It goes on, "'It's worrisome,' said Terry Oldberg, a Los Altos Hills engineer and organizer for the Programmers Guild. 'We're not organized to fight it.'

Mr. President,

While I appreciate your concern, we don't need to depose Hussein immediately by force. BBC News reported this morning:

President Bush's legal experts may be right in a narrow sense when they say that he does not need to get a congressional vote to back a war against Iraq.

But whether this makes good political or diplomatic sense is quite another matter.

A war with Iraq is a risky option which America's friends and allies will approach with some trepidation. (Note 1)

The president of Egypt should be familiar with the situation if anyone is. He talks of a seriously destabilized Middle East:

If you strike at the Iraqi people because of one or two individuals and leave the Palestinian issue (unsolved), not a single (Arab) ruler will be able to curb the (rising of) popular sentiments.... There might be repercussions and we fear a state of disorder and chaos may prevail in the region. (Note 2)

The Associated Press reports, "Mubarak said all Arab states are unanimous in the opposition to an attack on Iraq, which would result in the deaths of many Iraqis." (Note 2)

Reuters interviewed an Arab daily newspaper editor, Abdel-Bari Atwan, who says Bin Laden is alive and well. Atwan also said,

My sense is that he will time any new attack to coincide with a U.S. attack on Iraq. He would want to capitalize on this to appeal to the Arab street so he will probably delay any attacks until the United States moves on Iraq.... He will probably want to be seen as the only Arab standing up to the United States when the United States attacks Iraq." (Note 3)

Mubarak and Atwan capture the emotional nature of the Middle East's resentment of American involvement in the region. Let us not respond to emotion with emotion. Let us not fight a war because we THINK there is some risk. Let us examine and fully understand the risk, which Iraq's neighbors have already assessed and determined is not sufficient to warrant our intervention in the matter. Do not get caught up in the drumbeat of those calling for war, but rather consider the underlying message, and balance it against the alternatives.

Not waging war against Iraq is a favorable alternative.

NASA reports that they're readying Atlantis for a launch "no earlier than October 2". STS-112, space station assembly flight 9A (the 15th) will add to the truss on the station. To get the station from the vehicle assembly building to the launch pad, they transport it in launch position - on one of the 37-year-old crawlers that travels at just 1 mile per hour. Each 6 million pound vehicle transports a big rectangle - the Mobile Launch Platform - to the launch pad. The crawler is 40 by 37 meters, has two steering wheels and two mufflers the size of a car. The crawlers have received minimal service to date, and an inspector noticed a cracked bearing shortly before a crawler took Atlantis out for the launch. A few folks are enjoying the opportunity to work on the crawlers before they make their journey.

Will N-Sync's 23-year-old singer Lance Bass be space tourist number three - and the youngest person to ever fly in space? Corporate sponsors get to decide.

Telescopes show Contour, short for "Comet Nucleus Tour", in three pieces. Unfortunately, it's only supposed to be one. The craft was to visit three comets to investigate their contents. They're murmuring about a replacement which would cost about $15M less (than the $154M price tag) thanks to much of the engineering being done already. The AP has more.

Now at Slashdot!

Microsoft says they'll make it possible to remove IE and Windows Media Player icons from the desktop, and they say they'll share more details of their API's. Their chief counsel says that will help competition. "Says Ed Black, president of the Computer and Communications Industry Association, a trade group that has sought tight restrictions on Microsoft to curb behavior the courts have ruled illegal. 'So what if a bank robber promises he's not going to jaywalk any more?'" Read more in the SF Chronicle article. There's a good summary at the end. See also the Microsoft press release.

This landed in my inbox today:

On May 4, the winning entry for the "Punniest of Show" competition at the 25th Annual O.Henry Pun-Off World Championships in Austin, Texas. Here is the first-place routine:

There's a little known animal that begins with the letter X. It's actually a Greek swordfish, spelled X-I-P-H-I-I-D-A-E, and it's pronounced ZIFF-EYE-IH-DEE. As Paul Harvey might say, "Now for the rest of the story." I'd like to present an ABC primer on animal puns.

AARDVARK a million miles to put 26 animal puns in alphabetical order. I'd BADGER you and I'd keep CARPING on the subject, until I have no i-DEERs left. I'd have no EGRETs, however, as I FERRET out more animal puns. If necessary, I'd even GOPHER broke. Some may say it's a HARE-brained attempt; but, IGUANA tell you, I'm no JACKASS -- and I KID you not. I'm not doing this for a LARK (although maybe just a MITE). So don't NAG me. In fact, you OTTER try to PARROT me. But don't QUAIL from the challenge. After all, you don't have to be a RACCOON-teur. So just SALMON up some courage, before you take a TERN for the worse. Don't be afraid of people saying to you, "UNICORNiest person I know." Stop crying and VIPER nose. Then say, "WALLABY a son-of-a-gun," and start singing, "Zip-a-dee doo-dah, XIPHIIDAE ay." Soon you'll be a YAK-of-all-trades, and can put all of these animal puns in a book called Who's ZOO.

Microsoft extends its reach beyond software, news, ISP, travel, and business solutions - into the cellular telephone domain by its latest agreement with AT&T Wireless. AT&T plans to provide access from cell phones and laptops to information stored on desktop machines - running Microsoft software - by way of Microsoft .NET software on the phones and laptops. AT&T will also provide location-based services with the software. Any bets on when the competition will be doing that? Oh, wait, there is no competition...

Find out more in the Reuters article and read the press releases from AT&T Wireless and Microsoft. (The Microsoft press release may give a 500 Server Error on the first try but work on the second.)

An asteroid will fly near the planet and be visible with binoculars from the northern hemisphere August 18, so says this article. Astronomers say it will cross the sky at 8 degrees per hour and fade out of view as it approaches the sun and hence goes through its various phases - full, gibbous, half... down to nothing. Such a show only comes about twice a century, so take a look before it disappears! Accepted: by Slashdot.

NASA's space shuttles have been grounded for a month since they found small cracks in propellant lines. NASA plans to fix them by welding, and Atlantis will be first up about September 26, carrying a new truss segment to the space station, Space.com reports. Update Aug 2: The welding plan is official.