Saturday, February 01, 2003

Speaking of NASA Here's an extraordinary photograph of the entire surface of the nighttime Earth. The photo demonstrates the world's urban development patterns better than any map or globe. If you've got the bandwidth, here's a much bigger -- 2400 x 1200 pixels, 8.6 MB -- and spectacularly detailed version of the same image. Be sure to scroll around within your browser window to see everything. This picture was featured on NASA's excellent Astronomy Picture of the Day, probably the world's biggest source of computer desktop backgrounds. Here's the archive for the entire extraordinary collection, dating back to 1995, and here's a topical index. 5:21:04 PM     The Bitter Coincidence of This Crew Adding to Western sorrow over today's shuttle explosion is the undoubted glee that Islamic extremists will take from the disaster. They will note that Israel's first astronaut was on board, and that one of the mission's prime experiments was sponsored by the Israeli Space Agency. Compounding the Hand-of-Allah theory of the accident's cause is the fact that the first Indian-born astronaut -- a woman no less -- was also on board. As my friend Lee noted this morning, "India of course is a bitter enemy of none other than Islamic Pakistan." Update 2/03/03: The ironies grow. Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon, as an F-16 fighter pilot, took part in the 1981 raid that destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak. 4:03:33 PM

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