Wednesday, November 20, 2013
CONTACT ME AT: manessmorrison2@yahoo.com


News Clips For The Day


What if JFK had lived? Book reimagines a presidency, a war and the '60s – NBC

By Erin McClam, Staff Writer

It was raining in Dallas on the morning of Nov. 22, 1963. But the skies cleared in time for John F. Kennedy’s motorcade to roll through the streets without a protective bubble top on the president’s car.

Jeff Greenfield, the author and political analyst, pondered what might have happened if the rain had held — the starting point for a butterfly-effect tale that imagines JFK surviving the assassination attempt and changing the course of the 1960s. The result is “If Kennedy Lived,” an alternate history in which Kennedy rolls to a second term, welcomes the Beatles to the White House and — in a bit of catnip for historians — ends American involvement in Vietnam

What might have been is familiar ground for Greenfield, whose previous book “Then Everything Changed” spun out different endings for three other hinge points of history, including a suicide bomber’s real attempt on Kennedy’s life in December 1960.
“It’s been a constant source of fascination to me,” he says. “I think ever since I got interested in politics, at an indecently early age... How much politics, and, I later learned, history in general, can be fundamentally altered by these tiny turns of fate.”

In Greenfield’s telling, Walter Cronkite interrupts “As the World Turns” on CBS to report the shots fired, the bubble top shattered and the president hit — but never has reason to remove his horn-rimmed glances. Kennedy is given last rites at Parkland Memorial Hospital, but only as a precaution.

Three-year-old John Jr. offers his crisp salute three weeks later, when the president, wounded but alive, touches down in Marine One on the White House lawn. Kennedy soars to re-election in 1964.
And then history spins in a completely different direction.

The young president, educated by the close call of the Cuban missile crisis and eager to lower the world’s temperature, ends American involvement in Vietnam. Without a war to oppose, the counterculture movement of the ’60s, at least as we know it, never happens.

De-escalation in Vietnam is the book’s most thought-provoking and controversial turn, and not all historians are persuaded.
H.W. Brands, an author and history professor at the University of Texas, wrote in a review for The Washington Post that the American effort in Vietnam “looked promising to most observers” until what would have been late in JFK’s second term.
“Of course, Greenfield’s Kennedy is blessed with the author’s hindsight,” he wrote. “Real presidents aren’t so fortunate.”

Greenfield says he has no problem with the second-guessing, comparing the work of his own imaginations to the computer simulations that statisticians run to predict the outcomes of elections and sporting events.

What matters most, he says, is plausibility — plugging in everything we know about Kennedy’s temperament, beliefs, impulses and real experiences, keeping the story as grounded as possible in facts. And then playing out the rest.
“You’re talking about probability,” he says. “Anybody who asserts with a moral certainty that they know is blowing smoke.”

The advances of the civil rights movement still happen in Greenfield’s story, far too powerful a force of history to be denied. The twist: Kennedy gets civil rights passed with critical advice from Lyndon Johnson — on the phone from Texas, where he is living out his years after resigning the vice presidency.


A corruption investigation into the vice president, also very real, was shelved by the editors at Life magazine in the sensitive weeks after Kennedy was killed. Had he survived, Greenfield surmises, Johnson would have been taken down. The book has plenty of irresistible turns for political junkies: Richard Nixon, fuming over a Kennedy power grab, complains that “Just because a president does it does not mean it’s legal.”

And a young Al Gore, talking political strategy with his senator father in 1968, can’t conceive of a presidential candidate’s losing his home state. (Greenfield re-imagined the contested 2000 election in an e-book released last year.)
“I just put little nuggets in there for people to enjoy,” Greenfield says. “A way of rewarding people who watch C-SPAN for erotic arousal.”

Greenfield’s research included the mountain of Kennedy-era biographies and memoirs and interviews with a cadre of presidential historians. The book is not exactly a Camelot tale: JFK is nearly undone by revelations about his private life, and severely damaged by assertions of abuse of power and misuse of the IRS — plot threads both firmly grounded in history.

The story ends in the final days of Kennedy’s second term, just before a close 1968 election between Hubert Humphrey and the Republican nominee, an insurgent candidate named Ronald Reagan.

Kennedy, who was assassinated at 46 and would have been 51 at the end of a second term, ponders his future over a cigar on the Truman Balcony, after a deliciously intriguing conversation with the first lady.

“My guess is that ’68 would have been very close. People look for change,” Greenfield says. “Reagan was a powerful communicator. On the other hand, we would have had a peace-and-prosperity attempt to continue Kennedy.”
“So,” he concludes, “I don’t know how it would have turned out.”


If Kennedy Lived Hardcover
by Jeff Greenfield
http://www.amazon.com/If-Kennedy-Lived-President-Alternate/dp/0399166963



This new book is $18.96 in hardcover on the Amazon website. I will probably buy it. I would love to see some ideas fleshed out of what could have been, in this decade which was so traumatic in real life. According to this news article, many of the author's claims are based on real events. I will probably be fact-checking in Wikipedia as I read, so I can figure out what the truth behind the story is.



Tyson Foods dumps pig farm after NBC shows company video of alleged abuse – NBC

By Anna Schecter, Monica Alba and Lindsay Perez, NBC News

The nation’s largest meat producer says it has terminated its contract with an Oklahoma farm after NBC News showed the company undercover video of workers on the farm kicking, hitting and throwing pigs and slamming piglets into the ground.
“We’re extremely disappointed by the mistreatment shown in the video and will not tolerate this kind of animal mishandling,” said Gary Mickelson, a spokesman for Tyson Foods. “We are immediately terminating our contract with this farmer and will take possession of the animals remaining on the farm.”

The owner of the farm said that the video showed "mistreatment" of animals and he had taken action of his own. “I was stunned that anyone could be that callous in their treatment of any animal," said Lonnie Herring. "After viewing the video, I immediately returned to my farm and terminated the employees seen in the video."

The video was shot by an activist from the animal rights group Mercy for Animals from mid-September to mid-October as he worked undercover as a farmhand at West Coast Farms, an Okfuskee County business that supplies pork products under contract to Tyson Foods. The advocacy group says the actions seen on video and witnessed by its investigator violate a state animal cruelty law, and are contrary to Tyson’s policies on the treatment of livestock.

“This factory farm is hell on Earth for pigs,” said Nathan Runkle, executive director of Mercy for Animals. “Tyson has allowed a culture of cruelty and neglect to fester at this factory farm facility. This is some of the most sadistic and malicious cruelty to animals I have ever witnessed.”

Watch the video on Mercy for Animals’ website. Warning: This video includes graphic and sometimes bloody scenes. The undercover worker who shot the video, “Pete,” told NBC News that abuse was “commonplace and constant” at West Coast Farms. He said that it included hitting, kicking, throwing, striking animals with the edges of wooden boards, sticking fingers in their eyes, and leaving piglets to die slowly after they were slammed into the ground “in failed euthanasia attempts.”

“On three separate occasions, I reported abuse to the owner,” said Pete. “After each report, the abuse continued by workers, and all of the workers I questioned told me that that owner had not spoken to them recently about animal handling.”

Pete said the workers told him they had heard about animal handling standards when they were hired -- when they signed forms from Tyson stating that they would not abuse animals -- but not since. Pete also signed the documents, and said that owner Herring “indicated he did not follow the Tyson animal handling forms he had me sign.”
Tyson Foods owns the sows and boars on the farm, while Herring owns the farm itself and provides meat to Tyson under contract.

Said Mickelson, the Tyson Foods spokesman, “We’re serious about proper animal handling and expect the farmers who supply us to treat animals with care and to be trained and certified in responsible animal care practices. It’s consistent with our core values to ‘serve as stewards of the animals…entrusted to us.’”

Herring, meanwhile, denied that Pete had reported alleged abuse to him, and said his workers are trained in proper animal care and know abuse is not tolerated. He said that his farm uses approved methods of euthanasia on animals, and that the animals are euthanized in a humane fashion. He also said his workers are “trained and instructed” that they must verify an animal is dead “before [they] leave that animal.”
“It is a part of the business and there are prescribed methods of euthanasia and I follow those to a T,” said Herring.

After reviewing the Mercy for Animals video, he said he had "a renewed commitment to animal care" and planned to pay more attention to activity on the farm. "I can do better than this video shows and will do better in the future," said Herring. 
Paul Sundberg, vice president for science and technology at the National Pork Board, a marketing group overseen by the federal Agriculture Department, explained that blunt force euthanasia is “common industry practice,” and that euthanasia was sometimes necessary because of ill health.

"During pork production,” said Sundberg, “there are times when animals become disadvantaged, meaning sick or injured, where the humane thing to do is euthanize them. I am a veterinarian -- I was in practice for nine years -- and in my experience there are things we can't treat."

Said Sundberg, “It is a judgment call. It's not unusual where any animal is ill or injured and can't be treated. It is better for the pig to euthanize them than have them suffer.”

According to the Oklahoma Pork Council, there are no specific state laws pertaining to the treatment of animals on hog farms. Farmers must adhere to "industry standards" set by the American Veterinary Medical Association.

On its website, the AVMA says that “despite its appearance,” blunt force trauma “can be an effective way to euthanize nursing piglets.”

“The fact is,” says the 2012 post, “that manually applied blunt force trauma to the head, either with an implement or by striking the head against a surface, has been shown to cause immediate unconsciousness and rapid death when performed correctly on young piglets. It must be performed correctly so that it does cause immediate unconsciousness and rapid death.”

According to the AVMA, blunt force trauma is effective because the frontal bones of the piglets’ skulls are not fully developed and they can be killed with a single sharp blow to the head.

Renowned livestock expert Temple Grandin, an associate professor of livestock behavior at Colorado State University and an animal welfare adviser to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the meat industry, reviewed the undercover video and said it was evidence that the farm’s employees were “poorly trained.”
“The behavior of the employees was abusive to animals," Grandin said. "Kicking and beating animals is never acceptable.”

Maxey Reilly, assistant district attorney for Okfuskee County, said she had seen information provided by Mercy for Animals, and that a legal representative for the group had asked her about filing animal cruelty charges, but that she wanted to learn more about industry standards.

“Until I’ve reviewed everything and done some independent research, I’m not ready to make a decision,” said Reilly. “If I do decide this warrants more action, I will still mount an independent investigation. I don’t want to be pressured into doing something that’s not right."



Pig slaughter
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Transport of pigs to slaughter and all the other procedures and circumstances leading up to the actual act of stunning and killing the pig are in modern times carefully arranged in order to avoid excessive suffering of animals, which both has a humane rationale as well as helping provide for a higher quality of meat.[1][2]
Before slaughter, pigs are first rendered unconscious using one of the following means: stunning using electric current applied with electrodes, or stunning using captive bolt pistol, or inhalation of CO2.

They are then hoisted on a rail, after which they are exsanguinated, usually via the carotid artery and the jugular vein. After the blood is gone, the carcass is drenched in hot water in a device called a pig scalder which helps in the removal of hair, which is subsequently completed by using scissor-like devices and then if necessary with a torch.

In the European Union, the Regulation (EC) of the European Parliament and of the Council No. 852/2004, 853/2004 and 854/2004 cover various aspects of hygiene of foodstuffs that includes pig slaughter.[3


These methods – from Wikipedia – of stunning the pigs sounds more certain to be effective and less traumatic than hitting them on the head. The stunning method is apparently practiced on other farms in the US in addition to the one with which Tyson's has cut off relations. A movie I saw about ten years ago showed cattle in the US being killed by blunt force trauma, as well. Our American standards are not very advanced, it looks like, and other methods are available.

Stunning them by the techniques described in Wikipedia would require some better technology and re-education of the farmers, it seems. I hope this article awakens public concern. A basic problem is that the AVMA “industry standards” allow blunt force trauma as the method. Electrocution or – better, I would think – the inhalation of CO2 were not even mentioned by the AVMA. At least Tyson's has done the right thing by separating its operations from the Oklahoma farm. Perhaps they can mandate the more humane methods on their other farms.




$1.2 million in gold bars found stashed in Boeing 737's bathroom – NBC

By Alexander Smith, NBC News contributor
A hidden stash of gold bars worth $1.2 million was found in a commercial jet's bathroom on Tuesday, according to officials in India. An aircraft maintenance crew found the 24 gold bars in two bags aboard a Jet Airways Boeing 737 while they performed routine end-of-day checks at Kolkata, India, airport.

“It was quite a surprise,” airport director BP Sharma told NBC News. “The bars were packed in bags so we did not immediately know what it was. The bags were inspected and found to be gold.”

The flight had traveled from Mumbai to Thailand's capital Bangkok, before returning to Kolkata for the night.

Sharma said the bars weigh 53 pounds in total and appeared to have originated in the United Arab Emirates. They were found in a compartment in the bathroom.

While this is the first time gold bars have been found on a plane at the airport, security checks have in the past caught people trying to smuggle gold onto aircraft in their hand luggage, the airport director said.

A customs official told NBC News that an investigation had been launched but no arrests had been made.
India has traditionally been the world’s largest importer of gold, although that title is being threatened this year by China.
Much of India's vast gold consumption is hoarded or offered to the gods.


I assume that if gold is “offered to the gods” that it goes through a monastery or other religious organization which can find good uses for the money. Hoarding it makes more sense – one can always go into the hoard and use the gold when it is needed. The airport director Sharma calmly says about finding the gold, “It was quite a surprise.” That's the understatement of the week. The owner of the bars must be horrified – or maybe that was a drop site for a ransom payment -- in fact, that sounds the most likely. Nobody would forget their gold and leave it on the plane.





Steamy gene pool: Extinct human relatives had sex with mystery ancestor – NBC
Nidhi Subbaraman

Ancient hominids were a frisky bunch that freely interbred with genetically distant human-ish relatives, as well as with closely related members of their own groups, according to new research. 

A close read of the genomes of our ancient cousins the Neanderthals and a more distantly related hominid group, the Denisovans, throws up incriminatory evidence that the two "archaic" lines mated with each other, and with humans, much more than scientists had previously understood, Nature News reports. They've also found evidence that a third mystery ancestor interbred with the Denisovan group at some point in their history. 

No one knows what the Denisovans looked like, and only a few fossils including a stub of a young girl's pinkie bone have been found at a single cave in the Altai region in Russia. From this ancient genome researchers say they've found genetic evidence of an even older human ancestor, from Asia, that has not been documented. 

David Reich, of Harvard Medical School, presented the early results of the new findings this week at a conference hosted by the Royal Society in London.
At a different meeting in Cold Spring Harbor Labs in New York this year, Svante Pääbo, a member of the research team and a professor of genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, said that they'd found a section of DNA in the Denisovan sample that came from an even older ancestor, "something unknown," that made up 4 percent of the group's genetic material, according to a news report published in May. 

The group also analyzed a toe bone found in the same cave, and identified that it belonged to an inbred local group of Neanderthals, "about what would be expected from a mating of half siblings," they explain. 

Reich, Pääbo and colleagues developed a method to sequence ancient DNA in spectacular detail, which they documented in a Science paper in August 2012. Results of the Denisovan sequencing are filling out a picture of a group of archaic humans that vanished from the planet leaving behind almost no trace. 

Traces of Neanderthal DNA are still found in many of us today, making up 2.5 percent of the DNA of all modern humans not from Africa. In comparison, in the Denisovan sample, 17 percent of the genome was Neanderthal in origin. 
Because the new results are yet to be published, Reich and Pääbo said they were unable to comment for this story. 


The researchers who first plotted the DNA of Neanderthals a few years ago said that they had a different chromosome number from modern humans, and couldn't have produced offspring with them. This study says otherwise. There were some bones found in the Middle East that seemed to have both Homo Sapiens and Neanderthal characteristics, but that was debated rather than proven. Exactly why the Neanderthals went extinct has been pondered extensively. I would like to think that they interbred with modern humans rather than being slaughtered by them in wars.

I first saw this DNA group Denisovans in a Wikipedia article on Malaysians and their genetic background. In that article they also referred to interbreeding by all three genetic strains. This clip from the following article in Science Magazine discusses Denisovans.

http://news.sciencemag.org/paleontology/2012/08/genome-brings-ancient-girl-life

Pääbo's group first gave the field a jolt in May 2010 by reporting a low-coverage sequence (1.3 copies on average) of the composite nuclear genome from three Neandertals. They found that 1% to 4% of the DNA of Europeans and Asians, but not of Africans, was shared with Neandertals and concluded that modern humans interbred with Neandertals at low levels.

Just 7 months later, the same group published 1.9 copies on average of a nuclear genome from a girl's pinky finger bone from Denisova Cave. They found she was neither a Neandertal nor a modern human—although bones of both species had been found in the cave—but a new lineage that they called Denisovan. The team found "Denisovan DNA" in some island Southeast Asians and concluded that their ancestors also interbred with the ancestors of Denisovans, probably in Asia.


Modern DNA studies are shedding much more light than simply examining bones and stone artifacts can. I will try to follow articles on these studies when I find them.




­ Profit, Not Just Principle, Has Tech Firms Concerned With NSA – NPR
by Tom Gjelten
­ Along with the privacy advocates and the national security establishment, there is another set of players with strong views on NSA surveillance programs: U.S. tech companies.

Google and five other companies weighed in on the surveillance debate last month, sending a letter to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, supporting legislation to reform National Security Agency surveillance programs.

Their intervention was in part prompted by the news that the NSA had apparently managed to penetrate some of their data centers in Europe. The companies had previously given the NSA access to some of their users' data in the United States under court order, but the interception in Europe was done without their knowledge.

"The companies now are seeing something that they didn't see before," says Robert Boorstin, formerly the policy director at Google. "The intelligence agencies are hacking into them."

The companies' concerns, however, are as much about profits as principles. They now have business interests at stake. "There's no question that we've reached the point where the tech companies are being threatened financially and commercially by what's happened with the NSA," Boorstin says.

U.S. tech companies, including Google, are doing more business overseas, and customers in some of those markets are saying the American firms' associations with NSA surveillance activities will cost the companies some of that business.

At greatest risk are the U.S. companies' prospects in the delivery of cloud computing services, such as Google's Gmail or Amazon's web hosting. Foreign customers of those services have to trust the U.S. companies with their data, and several governments are considering measures that would restrict tech firms in their overseas operations.
"We're seeing a number of countries saying, 'U.S. companies are not wanted or potentially not allowed [here],' " says Daniel Castro, a senior analyst who has followed the cloud computing industry for the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. "Or [the U.S. companies] are going to have a higher cost of doing business than domestic firms."

In August, Castro released a report suggesting that U.S. tech firms faced revenue losses of $22 billion to $35 billion over the next three years, and that was before the revelations about NSA snooping on data centers in Europe. "I would say that is a minimum rather than a maximum, because that was looking very specifically at cloud computing and taking a rather low-end estimate based on initial data," he says.
Cloud computing is among the fastest growing parts of the technology industry, and it ranks high in the expansion plans of U.S. tech firms. But the risk to U.S. companies is across the entire tech sector.

"The revelations will be potentially devastating," Castro says.
Last week, Cisco, which manufactures computer network equipment, announced disappointing results for the third quarter. Company executives said the NSA surveillance controversy was in part to blame.

The immediate danger is that other governments will now erect trade barriers that will make it harder for U.S. firms to engage in the export of digital services.
"I think this is going to happen in a big way in the coming negotiations between the Americans and the Europeans over a trade bloc," says Joel Brenner, an attorney specializing in data protection issues and a former NSA inspector general. "It's going to involve some hard bargaining over privacy rules. That's where we're going to begin to see it."

Negotiations over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership are set to resume in late November and continue into December.

Anne Neuberger, director of the NSA's Commercial Solutions Center and the agency's principal liaison with tech companies, says "of course" her agency is concerned about the impact of the NSA surveillance controversy on U.S. firms, but she hopes that global discontent will be reduced as more information comes out about what the U.S. government requires of its companies in comparison to what other countries require.
"Before anyone makes a decision to stop using the services of U.S. communications companies, we'd strongly encourage them to take a look at the lawful intercept regimes of various countries around the world," Neuberger says. "I know you will find that U.S. law provides some of the strongest protections for the privacy of users."
But Neuberger acknowledges that it has been "challenging" to work with U.S. tech companies in the aftermath of the leaks about surveillance by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Asked if she has faced any angry tech executives in her meetings with the companies, she says, "I'll give you two guesses."

In any case, the NSA is not promising to stop intercepting the data held by U.S. technology, a capability the agency has argued is essential in order to track terrorist communications. "The American government is not going to ask permission of a private actor to do something it has the right to do and the power to do," says Brenner, the former NSA inspector general.

The NSA certainly has the power to gather the data it wants. And unless U.S. laws change, it appears it has a legal right to do so, no matter the commercial consequences for the firms it works with.


Cloud computing
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Cloud computing is an expression used to describe a variety of computing concepts that involve a large number of computers connected through a real-time communication network such as the Internet.[1] In science, cloud computing is a synonym for distributed computing over a network, and means the ability to run a program or application on many connected computers at the same time. The phrase also more commonly refers to network-based services, which appear to be provided by real server hardware, and are in fact served up by virtual hardware, simulated by software running on one or more real machines. Such virtual servers do not physically exist and can therefore be moved around and scaled up (or down) on the fly without affecting the end user - arguably, rather like a cloud.


This news article states that the US has some of the strongest privacy protection laws. I wonder if they were being legal when they hacked Google in Europe: “Their intervention was in part prompted by the news that the NSA had apparently managed to penetrate some of their data centers in Europe. The companies had previously given the NSA access to some of their users' data in the United States under court order, but the interception in Europe was done without their knowledge.”

If this kind of thing causes other countries not to trust companies like Google, it will, it seems to me, go against their relationship with the US government as well. The government claims the data gathering is basic to our surveillance of Al Qaeda and other enemies. They will not ask permission or refrain from hacking Google and others to get what they hope will be enemy communications.

There is apparently a move in the Senate now to reform National Security Agency's surveillance rights, which effort Google and five other companies are supporting in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Maybe some constraints will be enacted. I would like to see the US government operate on a much more transparent basis. We would gain more world respect if we were to do so. We would deserve to be trusted.





First Satellite Developed By High Schoolers Sent Into Space – NPR
by Greg Henderson
­
The first satellite ever developed by high school students to make it to space is believed to be orbiting Earth after getting a ride aboard a U.S. military rocket Tuesday night from Wallops Island, Va.

Fittingly, perhaps, you can send it a text message.
The satellite, using a voice synthesizer, is built to transform that text into an audio message that can be heard over certain radio frequencies around the globe, and in different languages.

The 2-pound TJ3Sat was built by about 50 students over the past seven years at the public Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Va., working with volunteers from its corporate sponsor, Orbital Sciences. It was carried aboard the Minotaur 1 rocket that lifted off at about 8:15 p.m. ET from the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. NASA had projected that the launch could be seen by millions along the East Coast.

About an hour after launch, the satellite builders tweeted that the satellite should have deployed into orbit, but confirmation would likely take until Wednesday.
"The idea is that schools around the world can have a limited ground station and be certified on amateur frequencies to be able to communicate to the satellite and back down," Adam Kemp, the teacher in charge of the project at Thomas Jefferson, told WJLA-TV.

The Washington Post explains:
"The satellite is designed to receive messages the students send into space, and it will then rebroadcast those messages using radio waves that can be heard around the globe via ham radio. (Listeners should be able to tune into the messages at 437.32 MHz +/- 0.013, according to the team.) The satellite's voice synthesizer will interpret lines of text phonetically, meaning that with slight tweaks in word structure, the messages can be 'spoken' in any language."

"In a class of nanosatellites known for their distinctive cube shape, the TJCubeSat is about the size of a Pop-Tarts box, small enough to fit in the palm of a hand and weighing about two pounds. The satellite is expected to orbit the Earth from an altitude of about 310 miles."

The TJ3Sat was one of 28 nanosatellites aboard the Minotaur 1 rocket. The rocket's main payload, considerably larger, was the Air Force's Space Test Program Satellite-3.
"Up until about 20 years ago, only governments would have been able to do it," Carlos Niederstrasser, a systems engineer at Orbital Science, told WJLA. "About 10 years ago, universities started to get involved and now you have the ability of high schools very early in their career able to get their hands dirty working on a real space program that's going to go into space orbit."

The Post, which calls the 29 total satellites a record for a single rocket launch, reports: "Students anticipate that the satellite will stay aloft transmitting messages and live telemetry data — about its position in space — back to Earth for at least three months. The satellite is equipped with miniature solar panels and could remain in low-Earth orbit for up to two years. Ultimately, the satellite is expected to fall into the Earth's atmosphere and burn up, at which point the voice synthesizer will be programmed to say 'I'm melting.' "

Space.com has information about each of the 29 satellites.
Thomas Jefferson High, an academically elite magnet school and one of the top public high schools in the nation, has downloadable instructions for amateur radio operators who want to make contact with the satellite.


This is one of my favorite articles that I've collected so far. I love it that it will say “I'm melting” when it starts to burn up in the atmosphere. Private businesses are sending rockets up now, with high-paying passengers, and high schools are building satellites. The average high school in this country may be in trouble academically, but not this one!

One of my good friends, when I was in high school, was very much interested in science and made a series of small rockets to send up. He even put a grasshopper in one, saying that it was a manned flight. One Sunday afternoon late we heard a large boom in the neighborhood. It turned out that his rocket fuel, which was in the basement, had ignited accidentally and exploded. As far as I recall, his house was not visibly damaged, but I'm sure he was in trouble with his parents. It was too funny to forget, though. I wonder if he will see this blog – if so, I hope he forgives me for telling this story.