The Off Topic Topic

[Syt]

[CountDeMoney]

Thank God that in political and economic times like these, we have Joe Biden.

I heard he was scarfing up all the freebie food samples he could find at Costco, too.  What an American.

[Tonitrus]

Japanese pr0n meets prosthetic limbs...

http://www.core77.com/blog/flotspotting/wrap_your_head_around_kaylene_kaus_take_on_a_prosthetic_limb_23868.asp

[CountDeMoney]

"The Rolls Royce of wheelchairs.  It's like you're almost glad to be handicapped!"

[CountDeMoney]

Austrian news page Standard reports that Mars Rover "Curiosity" has supposedly made an extraordinary find, but NASA is being tight lipped about it.

Commentary from user: "Probably found the gas for the chain saw from Maniac Mansion."

No organic material discovered on Mars yet, NASA says
Space agency says it hopes to quell speculation about findings in Curiosity's mission

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has completed its first soil analysis of the Red Planet with no sign of organic material, the U.S. space agency said on Thursday.

"Rumors and speculation that there are major new findings from the mission at this early stage are incorrect," NASA said in a statement. "At this point, the instruments on the rover have not detected any definitive evidence of Martian organics."

The $2 billion nuclear-powered rover landed inside a giant impact basin near the Martian equator in August to look for signs the planet most like Earth in the solar system has or ever had the ingredients to support life.

It is NASA's first astrobiology mission since the 1970s-era Viking probes.

So far, Curiosity has found evidence of an ancient riverbed, monitored swirling dust storms, measured radiation levels and analyzed its first sample of Martian sand, the results of which will be released at an American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco next week.

Scientists also are expected to provide more details on how much radiation future visiting astronauts might be subjected to. Mars is a long-term goal of the U.S. human space program.

Curiosity last week left a patch of wind-blown sand called Rocknest, where it tested its soil scoop and onboard chemistry lab.

Scientists are scouting for a suitable rock to drill, the last piece of equipment to be tested.

Early next year, the rover is expected to drive to a 3-mile (5-km) mound of layered deposits rising from the floor of the Gale Crater impact basin.

During its two-year mission, the rover will look for organic materials and environments where they could have been preserved.

Although this unrelated piece is interesting in its own right:

NASA: There's enough ice on Mercury to encase Washington, D.C.

NASA's Messenger spacecraft has discovered evidence that the planet Mercury has enough ice on its surface to encase Washington, D.C., in a block two and a half miles deep.

"For more than 20 years the jury has been deliberating on whether the planet closest to the Sun hosts abundant water ice in its permanently shadowed polar regions," writes Sean Solomon of the Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, the principal investigator of the Messenger mission. The spacecraft "has now supplied a unanimous affirmative verdict."

"These reflectance anomalies are concentrated on poleward-facing slopes and are spatially collocated with areas of high radar backscatter postulated to be the result of near-surface water ice," Gregory Neumann of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center writes in the paper. "Correlation of observed reflectance with modeled temperatures indicates that the optically bright regions are consistent with surface water ice."

The study results were published on Wednesday in Science magazine, which explains in its summary, "The buried layer must be nearly pure water ice. The upper layer contains less than 25 wt.% water-equivalent hydrogen. The total mass of water at Mercury's poles is inferred to be 2 × 1016 to 1018 g and is consistent with delivery by comets or volatile-rich asteroids."

Radar imaging of Mercury has long suggested that there could be large deposits on the planet's surface, with reports dating to 1991. But today's report presents harder evidence supporting that theory.

Messenger has fired more than 10 million laser imaging pulses at Mercury's surface since arriving in its orbit in 2011. Feedback from those pulses have helped NASA in its quest to verify whether ice is present in Mercury's poles, which are largely shielded from exposure to the sun's rays.

More here, including links to nifty pics:
http://news.yahoo.com/official-water-ice-discovered-mercury-190429748.html

[Ed Anger]

Timmy is going to post that again in this same thread. What a maroon.

[CountDeMoney]

You can't stop Assburgers, you can only hope to contain it.

[katmai]

You can't stop Assburgers, you can only hope to contain it.

We should take his own advice from other thread.

Dig up the body, cut out its heart and burn it.

It's the only way to be sure.

[Tonitrus]

[CountDeMoney]

You can't stop Assburgers, you can only hope to contain it.

We should take his own advice from other thread.

Dig up the body, cut out its heart and burn it.

It's the only way to be sure.

It would just reanimate, idiotically wag its tail at you, and post alt-hist maps of the Confederacy under Diocletian.

[MadImmortalMan]

NASA: There's enough ice on Mercury to encase Washington, D.C.

Let's do it before they break for the holidays.

[mongers]

I wonder if BB got the same marketing email as I did from amazon?

Plaid perfection | Shirts, jackets, gilets and more

[11B4V]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbuNmsr0s_4

[Tonitrus]

Wiggers.

[sbr]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbuNmsr0s_4

The dude in tne NO Saints jersey really takes after his favorite team.