No More Bloody Sundays

A deal has been made between warring factions of Northern Ireland today. Catholic and Protestant rivals are sitting down at the same table. This really could be, as many around the world hope, the beginning of an end to a crimson stained era.

This is too important for me to summarize. If you've ever cared or even known of the bloodshed in Northern Ireland, then read the full article.

We're talking of a conflict born in days of Oliver Cromwell, 17th century. Their struggles reach even farther back, when England first took reign over Ireland.

If You Build It, Will The Cows Wear Spacesuits?

Florida has Cape Canaveral, Houston has NASA Command, and soon New Mexico could have the "world's first all-commercial spaceport." That is, if the citizens of Las Cruces don't mind paying slightly higher taxes.

No, they're not talking more Roswell conspiracy theories. The desert valley that is much of southern New Mexico could very well become...

"Spaceport America -- a 21st-century portal for thousands of people hoping to blast into space as tourists, explorers, researchers and, maybe someday, as commuters to destinations halfway around the world."

Why d0 I envision the ghost of Disney's head laughing manically and bouncing in a jar of jelly when I read this?

And did you know that there are private companies all over launching rockets into space? One company took a rejected NASA idea and sent into orbit the first inflatable 'space hotel.' One problem - total vacancy. They didn't even send up a monkey to answer the front desk phone!

You should definitely check the full article linked above. It even reveals just what happened to some of those dot.com billionaires.

Just How Long Does It Take To Get To The Center?

Anna Nicole Smith died 8 February 2007. 46 days later, the Broward County Medical Examiner says that she died due to a mistake on her part, foolishly combining pain killers with anti-anxiety pills. Really, a drug overdose.

46 DAYS!!!

Just how long does it take to do an autopsy these days? Seriously, why did it take so long for them to say something that one look at her liver or kidney or, I dunno, her stomach - would have revealed?

Sometimes Florida is worse than D.C. politics. I wish I could take that comparison further but 'ole Jeb finished his reign in January.

But just for fun, he was just recently denied an honorary degree by the University of Florida Senate. That just tickles me. Guess he didn't qualify.

I Am Sky-Walker!

This is so cool. The Grand Canyon glass Skywalk will open up this March 28th 4,000 ft (1,220m) off the canyon's floor, and 70 ft from the rim. They say the views are amazing.

To give you an idea of how high up you are, the Skywalk extends out nearly three times higher than the Sears Tower (442m) and over 700 meters higher than the current tallest building in the world, Taipei (509m).

Check out this video of the new site.

All of a sudden, I want to visit Nevada.

Elizabeth Edwards

This is more of rant than any news blog - but it is in response to what the news world deems worthy of publication. Here we go...

The politically obsessed, Republicans, and generally those not sharing John Edwards' personal dream of sitting in the Oval Office are all going to argue that the current and future health status of his wife IS their business. But if they had any respect (which seems an ethic quick and easy to lose in journalism), they would just leave Elizabeth Edwards alone.

So her cancer has returned, and much worse than before. But that's not the news so much as what they are really intimating. The subtext is:

"Oh, she's going to die and he wont be fit to run a nation, yet alone his own affairs!"

Well, leave her be, and leave his family be! Cancer is cancer, and in our own lives we all know at least one person either with or affected by it. I truly hope that if what they say about her cancer is true, that her time with her family would be free of the press and mics shoved in her face. She shouldn't even be expected to speak on the subject unless she so chooses.

I truly truly expect that Edwards' decision to move forward with his campaign for the White House was contingent upon her insistence, an insistence in the same not influenced by political babble pressure but instead by her own wanting. In theory, in our democracy, no one man is too important that he must sacrifice his family.

Mighty Mouse

Having dwelt in evolution's guttural land of the color-blind, some mice have emerged with full technicolor vision thanks to the constant meddling of scientists. For our furry rodent friends, I wonder if it's anything like watching the Wizard of Oz.

In the simplest of terms, mice have two kinds of color detector "cone" cells. This same genetic trait is what causes people to have red-green colorblindness. They only see the world in hues of blues, yellow, and grays. All other humans have three kinds of receptor cells, and thus we see in trichromat.

Scientists took this third kind of receptor cone cell from human retina cells and super-glued them to the eyes of unsuspecting mice. Now they can safely drive through heavy traffic intersections. Well, the smart ones can at least.

And what does this new mighty mouse mean for us? It means a possible cure for red-green colorblindness in humans, "and perhaps add a fourth color receptor, which would allow a finer parsing of the spectrum."

Scientist Jay Neitz explains it this way: "You'd think that the color world of a tetrachromat would be very rich compared to ours."

Soon we'll all be seeing the smell of roses after a surgical procedure instead of tripping out on hallucinogens.

The Queen! The Queen Is Coming!

It's been 16 years since the Matriarch of the Palace Buckingham has set foot upon the shores of America, but coming now she is this May to Virginia.

She'll spend a couple days in our Commonwealth and then with her husband - Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh - she'll travel on down to see some pretty horses run in circles at the Kentucky Derby, also romantically known as "The Run for the Roses." That name sounds made for a movie title. Her visit will wrap up with this fancy state dinner at the White House with our humble leader and his lady. I hope Laura Bush can cook.

But causing much sadness in a very few number of Virginians is that she doesn't have the interest of staying long enough for the anniversary party celebrating 400 years since settlers stepped off the James River in 1607. But really, who wants to bring attention to the fact they first settled in swampville? How many died before they realized it would be best to resettle further inland away from mosquitoes and disease?

I'm thinking she knows better than to stick around too long. But for me though, I would've liked asking her if she has seen the "The Queen" yet.

Ever Wonder Where Starbucks Got Their Name?

I'm an admitted and proudly-proclaimed Battlestar Galactica fan - never saw the old series but Ron Moore's steering of the new series airing on SciFi has been intense with numerous unexpected turns. It's the mini-series that could, and it's on trajectory for a third season collisional ending.

But the show is not what I'm here talking for.

I'm driving the long hour of 4 AM home from Richmond, window down, radio blaring, and desperate to keep my eyelids raised long enough so that I manage stay within the painted lines of the road. I get to thinking about coffee. I'm not a coffee person but at that moment I would have taken the caffeine juice intravenously.

With the way my mind works, I naturally jump from thinking about that to a cartoon drawing of a paraplegic mummy on an IV drip, to Grey's Anatomy, to Battlestar. And it was then that I realized the unmistakable name similarity between Katee Sackhoff's "Starbuck" character and the Seattle coffee brand Starbucks.

So, which came first? The coffee or the fictional hotshot pilot? The original show aired in 1978, nearly 30 years ago. One must think Starbuck was on the block first then. Wrong.

Starbucks coffee opened in '71, beating the show by 7 years. So does that reverse the tables on which is the chicken and which is the egg? Not exactly.

Turns out I'm not the only one with such useless questions and that someone has done their research ("Not I, said the cat"). Go read the answer here. I'll wait.

You back, already? Interested that it was another, older obscure character that has more to do with the coffee brand's namesake. We can thank Melvin for that.

The End of An American Symbol

Captain America is DEAD - assassinated while in handcuffs. Those responsible? Either a brainwashed government agent or publisher Marvel Comics depending on how you look at it.

Today the latest issue (#25) of the comic book "Captain America" hit the stands, following on the heels of Marvel's own Civil War in which heroes fought against each other as a result of new registration laws; laws requiring all meta-humans to register with the U.S. Government and thus reveal their secret civilian identities to the authorities.

Steve Rogers, otherwise known as the leader Captain America didn't like the idea of forced registration and led an opposition against those heroes in support of the registration laws. Rogers believed he was fighting for the personal freedoms of all heroes. But then he saw the devastion his little war was causing on the American public and immediately surrendered, broken by what he had done.

While being escorted to his hearing, an assassin put a round of lead into his chest.

Speculation already has been raised across the net that Steve Rogers will most certainly be back, as the publisher surely wouldn't put an end to one of their most recognizable icons. It would be like killing Superman.

Wait, they did that already.

But Superman also returned the next year. So on that regard, Marvel Comics today released this statement:

"Captain America, Steve Rogers, is dead."

Well, that more or less settles the "is dead truly dead" debate. Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada responds to numerous questions from mainstream media news coverage. He first explains a fundamental flaw in such an iconic character who was raised during the Great Depression:

"He hasn't been living in the modern world and the world does move."

Concerning the meaning of the Captain's demise:

"There is a lot to be read in there. But I'm not one who is going to tell people, this is what you should read into it, because I could look into it and read several different types of messages."

And finally, concerning the permanent nature of his death:

"There was a period in comics where characters would just die and then be resurrected. And the death had very little meaning and the resurrection had very little meaning. All I ask of my writers is if you're going to kill a character off, please let that death have some meaning in the overall scope of things."

For this blogger, it's an interesting and uncertain time for the identity of the American hero to be reevaluated. If there was a real Captain America today, what and who would that person be? Would he support the Patriot Acts and the War in Iraq - or would he fight against these agendas? Where would he stand on the understanding of Freedom? Would he be of the people, or of the government?

Perhaps, fiction will continue to be used to illustrate these significant changes.

I Was A Son Of Liberty

When I went home this past weekend, I managed to copy to my laptop the photos ("image files") of my little excursion south to Richmond last Tuesday. You see, just miles outside the commonwealth's capital is late 18th Century Boston, Massachuesetts.

At least a few streets of Boston...okay, only the front exterior of some colonial buidlings. And yes, they stapled the leaves to the trees (but each leaf is separately numbered!)

What am I talking about? A miniseries focusing on the life of John Adams is currently in production in the heart of Virginia (for those history buffs who've studied the Continental Congress and the Constitution, you'll find the choice of locale ironic), The project is funded by Tom Hank's very own pockets - his production company, that is. The series is based on David McCullough's 2001 book, and it stars Paul Giamatti as John Adams and Laura Linney as Abigail Adams.

And I? My childhood training in horse-riding has garnered me a place in the production as rider of many hats, as in one shot you may see me as a Son of Liberty, and in another scene as an infamous red coat. As I would love to tell in detail all that I saw and witnessed last week, here may not be the place, nor do I have truly the length to be faithful to the experience.

If you want to know more, then leave a comment and I'll let everyone know if I so choose to setup a new blog/site that will follow my adventures in history.

I'm home for the weekend, and its good to remember there is life outside the halls of academia and untouched by the cut-throat, demanding pressures of the real world. I'm from Fredericksburg, VA and I'm at the kitchen table ready the Sunday edition of the Free Lance-Star. If you did or didn't notice, the paper's website address managed to commandeer the name of the small colonial city of a downtown that is Fredericksburg, home of an important battle in the Civil War. It's as if the owners of the paper (and the local radio stations) are royal governors of all adjoining lands.

No, we don't have power struggles down here in the old country, and we most certainly do not have old money here in these parts.

The paper once upon a long time ago was actually two local papers: "The Free Lance" and "The Daily Star" until they were merged at the turn of the 20th Century. It's fascinating to see how some traditions develop to become integral in the area culture. I grew up with "The Free Lance-Star" - not knowing of anything else until I saw a copy of the Washington Post in middle school.

I thinks its time for some competitive business to shake them from their lethargic, conservative stance.

The significant difference between many papers and others such as the 'Free Lance' is that the majority of the articles in the latter are pulled from other sources (with the exception of the regional section of the paper). Helen Thomas works for one such company that licenses papers around the country to print their journalism.

Hello Class, Check This Out For FLICKR

My brother dabbled in a little software coding and came up with this little thing that creates a fun interface for your photos stored in Flickr. Follow his simple instructions here, and with a little copying and pasting and then clicking, you'll have something like this.

Except, you'll hopefully have more photos than I. His example gives you a better idea.

And NO, my brother did not write my site for me. He made me learn for myself. Starting here.