I’ve been following the current STS-114 space shuttle mission on NASA TV. This mission, being the first since Columbia disintegrated upon reentry, is one of the most photographed in the history of the shuttle program.

Tuesday’s launch showed some stunning video taken from a camera onboard the shuttle. While it was impressive, what I saw today was truly breathtaking. Today NASA rolled video taken from cameras on the solid rocket boosters during launch. In the span of ten minutes, these rockets go from rest to 18,000 MPH and back again.

The ride up isn’t interesting to watch, as all you can see is the side of the external fuel tank. Then the boosters exhaust themselves, the explosive bolts fire, and the silent rockets float away from the shuttle and tank. From then on, the boosters take an eerie ride back into the clutches of gravity.

I’ll resample this video and post it this weekend. It is awesome to watch.

Update: Download the video here.

I had the stitches taken out of my finger on Tuesday. The wound has healed very nicely, just as I expected. Before long, I expect there’ll be no trace of my tragic encounter with the fan.

The nurse decided to take my vital signs while I was there, just to make it official. Blood pressure was 118/73 and pulse was 56. Imagine if I was actually in shape!

My pulse when the stitches went in was 135, so you could say that getting stitches out is more fun.

Two weeks ago, Kelly’s parents sent us their Baldwin piano. I could not stop grinning the night it arrived, and have barely stopped now. Though its been over twenty years since I had a piano in the house, I am in wonder at how my fingers just know where to go. I’m rusty, but I can still play.

This past weekend, I played a few songs for the kids. In spite of my wounded left pinky, I loved every minute of it. The kids didn’t, however. Hallie ignored me for ten minutes, then walked up, looked me in the eye and said sternly “We are all done playing piano now! We are all done playing piano now!”

I look forward to dusting my playing skills off, and watching our kids learn how to play this beautiful instrument themselves.

I read a good commentary yesterday questioning George W. Bush’s repeated crowing about us “being at war.” It quoted an Army lieutenant returning from Iraq who were perplexed that the only ones who were sacrificing for “war” were the soldiers actually fighting. There’s no rationing, no savings bonds drives, no draft. No tax hikes to pay for war.

The lieutenant has a point. The so-called war is being carried on the backs of America’s military and NO ONE else is burdened by it. If its a war, why is Bush (and Congress, for that matter) still taking copious vacation time? Why isn’t Karl Rove charged with treason? Why aren’t people lining up at the recruiting stations?

On a similar note, why is Osama Bin Laden not hanging from a tree somewhere?
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I went without my car for two days last week while it was getting some work done. It showed me how dependent I am on my car. Indeed, how dependent we all are on our cars. I relied on my coworkers to drive me to and from work.

When I have my car, it takes 25 minutes to drive the eighteen miles of my commute. That’s a gallon of gas each way. At $2.30 a gallon, that’s close to five bucks a day. Though the money adds up, I drive anyway because I consider the convenience worth the cost.

On the other hand, what if oil prices keep rising at the rate they’ve been? What if a gallon of gas costs $5 next summer? Would it be worth driving then? What happens when it reaches ten bucks a gallon?

Oil is like real estate: they’re not making any more of it. It is a finite resource, absolutely guaranteed to one day be depleted. While we’ve got a ways to go before we get to that point, we will reach it.

And possibly sooner than later. Peak oil is the point where worldwide oil production peaks and then sharply drops. There is some evidence that we’re approaching that point where the good-time days of cheap oil are gone forever.

While there are millions of barrels still in the ground, once we’ve reached peak oil we’re on a downhill slope. That’s because at the peak, we’ve logically pumped all of the easy-to-get oil, that which is closest to the surface. The first half is easy. It’s the second half which is the hardest to obtain. Thus, the cost for those remaining barrels goes up considerably.

Add to this the surging demand of the developing world, places like China and India, and we’ve suddenly got a real problem. There is increasingly not enough oil to go around. At $60 a barrel, Saudi Arabia is pumping oil as fast as they can. They’re running at capacity now. Early this month, the Saudis quietly announced that they may not be able to meet oil demand in ten years.

Ten years. That’s just around the corner. If you think prices are outrageous now, imagine what they’ll look like then.

Even ten years might be optimistic. A friend who does work for the oil industry pointed out a telling sign: the Saudis recently awarded a gas exploration contract to the Chinese. The Chinese were chosen over the much more experienced American companies though they have little to no experience. Why was this done, my friend asks? Precisely because the Chinese are inexperienced. The Saudis want to maintain the appearance of massive reserves. My friend guesses the Saudis may be dry in as little as 10 years. This was all his opinion, of course, but it did make me wonder.

Occasionally, I’ll be going somewhere and come upon an elderly driver weaving in and our of her lane. This used to annoy me until the one day I realized that some day that will be me. People drive far longer than they should because they’re left with no other choice. If you can’t go where you need to go, you stop living. These old people are hanging on to their last meager bit of independence.

I pity those drivers, and then I think ahead to what I will do when I’m in their shoes. The conclusion I reach is unavoidable: I will have to get the hell out of Raleigh before I can no longer drive. There are just no alteratives to driving. Like far too many American communities, Raleigh was built for the automobile.

Raleigh was built on the promise of cheap oil. A promise made to be broken.

As citizens, we need to considering what we want our world to be like the day those oil derricks run dry. Will we switch to electric cars? Will we ride the rails? Will we work out of our homes and stay closer to them?

What will we do with all these roads?

Today is the 49th anniversary of the Test Baker atomic explosion of Operation Crossroads, which took place on the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific. Operation Crossroads consisted of two atomic blasts, one airborne and one undersea, and was designed to measure the effects of a nuclear blast on various targets.

The bombs were of the Fat Man design, the same as the one dropped over Nagasaki. Test Able, the airborne blast, took place 1 July 1946 and was a partial success, as the bomb was dropped in the wrong place. Test Baker, the undersea blast, took place 25 July 1946, obliterating several target ships nearby and rendering dozens more irradiated beyond salvage. Some of those ships were historically significant to the second world war.

Plenty of information’s on the web about Operation Crossroads. Watch the Internet Archive’s footage of Operation Crossroads.

Dell has conned Winston-Salem into paying for the land of its already taxpayer-financed PC factory. That makes it a total of $284 million dollars that you and I, the citizens and taxpayers of North Carolina, have ponied up for this swindle.

The UK website The Guardian has had some fun with this, posting pictures to show what $7 million of land can buy you. Is it any wonder why the rest of the world is laughing at us?

Insane. Absolutely insane. I’m all for creating jobs, but this is ridiculous. I hope the lawsuit succeeds in bringing this madness to an end.

Actor James Doohan, most famous for his role as Scotty on Star Trek, has died. He was 85. Doohan had quite a life, even before Star Trek, with military service at D-Day in the Canadian Armed Forces.

As Scotty, Doohan became the idol of aspiring geeks everywhere. His portrayal of the Enterprise’s chief engineer launched a thousand tech careers.

Godspeed, Jimmy.