Fun with Saddam

I'm not sure who came up with this, but it features Saddam, and it's funny.

Limited Posting

I'm feeling a bit under the weather today, so posting will be limited.

Timewaster of the Day

Enjoy this one: Mr. Picassohead.



[Hat tip to Jonah Goldberg.]

How cool is this?

The Cassini spacecraft is now orbiting Saturn and is sending us images like this one (click the picture for a larger version):

Image credit: NASA/JPL
The Cassini-Huygens image gallery can be found here.

You're the Widget Man

In an earlier post, I mentioned that Apple's new version of OS X includes a feature called Dashboard, a suite of applets that mirrors the functionality of Konfabulator.



Dan Grover has now penned a funny parody about the controversy. You can listen to it here.

Press Misinformation - Individual Ready Reserve

The AP, Reuters, and others ran with an inaccurate story about "recall" of certain individuals into active military service. In fact, as Blackfive reports:

The military is not calling back discharged and retired individual soldiers. They are dipping into the Individual Ready Reserve. There is a big difference between calling up IRR soldiers and recalling retired or discharged soldiers.



When you sign a contract to enlist or get a commission, it is generally for EIGHT years. You perform four years of Active duty, then you have four left in the Reserves or National Guard.

Sgt. Stryker comments on this misleading story here.

The AP story has since been amended to include a reference to the IRR, but unless you read that far, the first paragraphs of the story will still lead you to believe that the military is forcing individuals who have completed their service obligations to return, which is completely untrue.



A simple Google search yields this information:

What is the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR)?



Individual Ready Reserve (IRR), a manpower pool in the Ready Reserve, primarily consists of: Individuals who have had training, have served previously in the Active component or the Selected Reserve, and have some period of a military obligation remaining. IRR members are in an active status, but do not perform regularly scheduled training.

[Emphasis added by me.]



For some reason, this type of hasty reporting always works against the war effort. I can't imagine why this might be the case.

Approaching Saturn: Cassini-Huygens

The Cassini spacecraft is scheduled to drop into orbit around Saturn after a 96 minute burn:

During the orbit insertion, Cassini will fly closer to Saturn than at any other time during the spacecraft's planned four-year tour of Saturn. This provides an unprecedented opportunity to study the planet and rings at close range. It will pass approximately 20,000 kilometers (12,427 miles) above Saturn's cloud tops, closer than any other spacecraft in history. It will also be flying about 10 times closer to the rings than at any other point in the mission.

The images being beamed back -- including several GIF animations of Titan and Phoebe rotations -- are spectacular:

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
The Cassini-Huygens image gallery can be found here.