Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

Love this CNN headline! “Images of orange Titan elate scientists.” Scientists are cool-color hunters–gosh, who knew?
Look for ESA to offer a new line of Titan-orange merchandise, cashing in on the fad for time-shifting back to the seventies:

I will now, gratuitously, list a few of my favorite orange blogs:

• “Improvident Lackwit” filters the universe through quotes from the Simpsons.
• Halley has an orange-y thing going on at the top of her sizzling home page.
• The new “blog blog” by multiple-and/or-serial-blogger Dave Pell.
• Susan Mernit’s tech-backstory blog always makes me feel in the know.
• Will JOHO change to crimson now he’s at Hahvahd?

Even more gratuitous use of orange from my past:

Starting at 3 a.m. EST tomorrow (January 14) NASA will have live Web TV coverage of the Huygens probe touching down on Saturn’s moon Titan.

According to NASA, this artist’s conception

More Cassini Huygens linkage:

• Landing preparations underway
• European Space Agency (ESA) has Cassini-Huygens home page
• ESA will post video highlights online
• NASA coverage
• Expected “footprint” of images
• Good summary of mission
• Weird: Huygens will be blasting modern music as it descends…

Will Kurt Vonnegut’s sirens be found on Titan? Tune in tomorrow and find out for yourself.

Starting at 3 a.m. EST tomorrow (January 14) NASA will have live Web TV
coverage of the Huygens probe touching down on Saturn’s moon Titan.

According to NASA, this artist’s conception

 More Cassini Huygens linkage:

• Landing preparations underway
• European Space Agency Cassini-Huygens home page
• Video highlights will be posted online
• NASA coverage
• Expected “footprint” of images
• Good summary of mission
• Weird: Huygens will be blasting modern music as it descends…

 Will Kurt Vonnegut’s sirens be found on Titan? Tune in tomorrow and find out for yourself.

Lots of people get help from “To Do” lists. If you’re like me, you probably need a “To Don’t” list!

And not just don’t DO every low-priority job that jumps into your head, Don’t Even Think ABout It Or, reduced to a mnemonic: DETABI So, instead of wasting neuron cycles on stuff I don’t plan to do anyway, why not visualize this excellent tabby cat picture*, and then (imagining I have a bad-gangster-movie accent) say, “De tabby!”, meaning 1) DETABI and 2) The tabby cat isn’t fussing, so why am I fussing? DETABI should free up some time for more useful stuff–like creating mnemonics…

* Thanks to AccordionGuy for posting the picture!

This just in from British scientists: Snooze more to lose more!

I can offer some inter-species corroboration. My dog Marianne keeps her youthful shape with only a few short outdoor romps each day. OTOH, if there were a US Olympic Sleeping team, Marianne would be Grade-A-Gold-Medal material!

Anyway, this is much better news than the physics skinny on diets.

Some Japanese students got a grant to promote astronomy–using toilet paper illustrated with star facts. After a successful launch in museums last year, the toilet paper is headed for public bathrooms.

Printed on the toilet paper is a description of the life of a star: the birth of a “star egg” with gas clouds in space, the nuclear fusion reaction starting its birth, the star’s expansion after its fuel hydrogen is burned up, and its death with the diffusion of planetary nebulae.

Available technology allows only repetitions of a 70-centimeter-long pattern, but the students say this is “just the right amount” because the process of the life of a star can be repeated in this length.

Far out, as we would have said in the Seventies. By several megaparsecs, very far out!

Amazing 2004–never before has any year been described by so many different top ten lists!

Now, as for the top ten events in cryptozoology–that would probably be among the top ten things I know nothing about. Still, I can’t help wanting to jump in the game, if only by picking out my ten favorite blogposts from 2004. In chronological order, that would be:

1. Return of the King: The absolute best moment (January 11)
2. Re-thinking the virtues of fire-engine red (April 3)
3. The fog of Robert McNamara (April 6)
4. Look–up in the sky–it’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a … journalist? (April 25)
5. Bullied by bullet points (May 2)
6. Garlic salt and bacon grease (May 27)
7. The broken internal clock of Gerald Jay Sussman (June 3)
8. Travel broadens the…something (June 15)
9. Dramatic theory with mosquito continuo (July 23 — this is my favorite of all, being mostly Frank)
10. Angst of a modern Hamlet (November 11)

After whittling down all my posts to a favorite ten, I suddenly realized–I’d forgotten to check the entire Nobel category. Drat, and now it’s after midnight. Well, here are my five favorite Nobel-related posts.

• The Nobel Prize from our dog’s point of view (October 6)
• We are in a metastable state (November 30)
• 1,000,000,000 seconds ago (December 4)
• Up to and including the Nobel Prize ceremony (December 10)
• Food presentation that will be hard to live up to (December 11)

Am I egotistical, picking out ten favorite blogposts? Go thou and do likewise, if you haven’t already…

…late night, and I’m wishing it all for all of you–a New Year that’s
full of people you love, worthwhile metaphorical mountains to climb,
just plain funny stuff that makes you happy.

Meanwhile, this UNICEF tsunami donation page will help us all give the New Year an excellent start.

We just finished our post-Christmas Christmas celebration, I’m headed off for a nap but here are a few reasons post-Christmas Christmas rocks, followed by my promised cure for the blues:

• This morning, I walked to the store to buy more eggs for our Christmas pancakes–you can’t pick up forgotten items like that on a Christmas-Day Christmas.
• While we were opening gifts, a DHL truck pulled up and delivered a big Red Envelope box with a big white bow as an extra surprise for Frank–that won’t happen when you open gifts Christmas morning.
• I got (and gave) some really great things this year including a visible clock, a compilation CD of funny songs, and Christopher Moore’s new book The Stupidest Angel.

Last but by no means least, I fell in the fish pond while trying to knock some ice off its waterfall. (A big heaped up snowfall makes ice look just like the stepping stones–and ice that can hold up a blizzard cannot hold up Betsy.) Boy, that really wakes you up! My feet are freezing!

I do recommend a quick dip in our tiny fish pond as something that makes all the rest of your day look great.