On March 13, 2008, the International Space Station passed across the field-of-view of Germany's remote sensing satellite, TerraSAR-X, at a distance of 195 kilometers, or 122 miles, and at a relative speed of 34,540 kilometers per hour, or more than 22,000 mph.

The International Day of Awesomeness is a celebration of awesomeness. People are awesome every day, frequently don't realize it, and their feats of awesomeness are rarely recognized. We aim to fix that, with a special day to both perform and celebrate feats of awesomeness!

Phytoplankton are microscopic plants that grow in the sunlit surface waters of the ocean. When enough phytoplankton grow in one place, the bloom can be seen from space. Phytoplankton play a large role in sustaining ocean ecosystems and global climate. The plants are the base of the marine food chain. Places where blooms are frequent often support a thriving marine population. Since the plants need nutrients like iron to grow, fertile waters are often near a continental shelf in areas where cool water from the ocean's depths pushes to the surface. This upwelling water carries with it nutrients that had settled to the ocean floor; the nutrients allow the water to sustain large phytoplankton blooms. Phytoplankton influence global climate by regulating gases in the atmosphere. Like all plants, phytoplankton absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen as they grow. When the plants die, they sink to the ocean floor, carrying the absorbed carbon with them. Over the course of the Earth's history, the oceans have become the primary sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide. Since carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas (it traps heat at the Earth's surface), the Earth would be a much warmer place without phytoplankton.

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados -- Caribbean and European Union diplomats, government officials and representatives from regional organizations, the private sector and non-governmental organizations met to discuss the parameters for an enhanced Caribbean-EU partnership at a seminar in Barbados 4-5 March 2010. The ultimate goal was to launch the process of drafting an ambitious new joint EU-Caribbean strategy.

Experimental cooking tonight for the Tusby jury. (I've had an easy day) There's a bit of a competition developing with Swedish-speaking upstairs.

Pictured Simon is, he assures me, Finland's best salesman. With a surname like Gold?

But I really like the style of these videos.

You can't be me, I'm taken

We've got friends all over the US.  And all of them are reporting they have, or know people who have, a low level bronchial infection without a high fever. I've got it.  The GQofNM has it.  It lasts about 3 weeks, perhaps more.  It has to be costing the US economy billions of dollars in lost work time and lowered productivity.

And zippo on the CDC webpage.

My thesis is this "pandemic" is flying under the radar because the CDC depends on disease data collection from doctors.  For that, people have to go to doctors.  Since nobody we know - nor us - can afford to go to the doctor for a low-grade illness ... it's not getting into the information collection system.  Thus, it's Not Happening.

No one could have predicted

Is it really more important that some greedy bastards get to pay less tax than the country reverts to the middle ages?

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.