the best things in life aren't things
Events
We’ve landed!
NASA Phoenix touched down on the Red Planet at 4:53 p.m. Pacific Time (7:53 p.m. Eastern Time), May 25, 2008, in an arctic region called Vastitas Borealis, at 68 degrees north latitude, 234 degrees east longitude.
This is an approximate-color image taken shortly after landing by the spacecraft’s Surface Stereo Imager, inferred from two color filters, a violet, 450-nanometer filter and an infrared, 750-nanometer filter.
The Phoenix Mission is led by the University of Arizona, Tucson, on behalf of NASA. Project management of the mission is by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Spacecraft development is by Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
Escape the Fantasy
april 21 – 27
The idea is simple: take your TV, your DVD player, your video iPod, your XBOX 360, your laptop, your PSP, and say goodbye to them all for seven days. Simple, but not at all easy. Like millions of others before you, you’ll be shocked at just how difficult – yet also how life-changing – a week spent unplugged can really be.
3 ways to clear your mind
You wake up, put on the coffee, and get ready for work. Then, just as you’re reaching for the cell phone, you remember that today is the beginning of Mental Detox Week.Today you’re not going to listen to your iPod. You aren’t going to stare at a computer screen any more than you absolutely have to. Today you won’t worry about unanswered email, and you’re not going to login to Facebook. You’ll cut the time you spend on digital devices right down to the bone.
In the evening maybe you will watch your favorite TV show for an hour, but after that you switch off, have a conversation, wash the dishes, read for a bit, and just relax. You do that for five days, and then on Friday night you make a decision to unplug completely for the whole weekend.
For a couple of days you might feel like an addict in withdrawal: peevish, agitated, and distracted. But then something will happen. Your over-stimulated brain will cleanse itself. You’ll relax. You’ll feel calmer, more grounded.
Via adbusters.org
Search the future with Google
Google Australia launched gDay today, a new search engine that allows users to search a day in advance of real time:
Google spiders crawl publicly available web information and our index of historic, cached web content. Using a mashup of numerous factors such as recurrence plots, fuzzy measure analysis, online betting odds and the weather forecast from the iGoogle weather gadget, we can create a sophisticated model of what the internet will look like 24 hours from now.
We can use this technique to predict almost anything on the web – tomorrow’s share price movements, sports results or news events. Plus, using language regression analysis, Google can even predict the actual wording of blogs and newspaper columns, 24 hours before they’re written!
To rank these future pages in order of relevance, gDay™ uses a statistical extrapolation of a page’s future PageRank, called SageRank.
gDay is a search algorithm that uses Machine Automated Temporal Extrapolation (MATE™) technology to extrapolate a sophisticated model of what the internet will look like up to 24 hours in the future, with 75% to 95% accuracy.
Find out more HERE
Earth Hour
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On 31 March 2007, more than 2 million Sydney businesses and households turned off their lights for one hour, Earth Hour, creating a powerful global message that it’s possible to take action on climate change. Earth Hour inspired the world and in 2008, other major cities will be joining us to take a stand.
This simple act has captured the hearts and minds of people all over the world. As a result, at 8pm on the 29 March, 2008 millions of people in some of the world’s major capital cities, including Copenhagen, Toronto, Chicago, Melbourne, Brisbane, Tel Aviv and Manila will unite and switch off for Earth Hour.
Created to take a stand against the greatest threat our planet has ever faced, Earth Hour uses the simple action of turning off the lights for one hour to deliver a powerful message about the need for action on global warming.
Earth Hour is about more than one night. Its about inspiring you everyday to make changes that will help achieve Earth Hour’s ultimate goal of reducing emissions by 5%.
Will you be part of Earth Hour?
Romanians can find out more about the campaign on EcoMagazin
I feel older
My birthday is coming up end of the month. I feel older already.
Have you noticed how people tend to care less about birthdays as they grow older? There is a point in everyone’s lives when they stop celebrating birthdays – things get really dull. I know this sucks but it happens.
I still like birthdays, not just my own but also of the people close to me – although I have a terrible memory at remembering birthdays (some exceptions) I usually have a reminder set for these special dates. I really think everyone is entitled to at least one day of the year dedicated to them. Sure, sometimes you feel old, but people get older every day – at least one day of the year we should celebrate this properly! 
We need that day when friends stop for a few seconds from their busy lives and say, “Happy birthday, you rock.” It’s nothing much, but everyone deserves that. No matter who you are, it makes people feel just a little better about themselves.
My final advice to you is to never stop celebrating birthdays! They might get expensive, and maybe one day the gifts will stop coming altogether, but that’s no reason not to stop celebrating your friends. Remember the fun we had when we were young – is it that different now?