AL BUNDY WOULD BE PROUD... Today, Terrell Owens scored four touchdowns during the Dallas Cowboys’ 28-23 victory over the Washington Redskins, and Randy Moss connected for four TD’s of his own (during the first half of the game) in the New England Patriots 56-10 romp of the Buffalo Bills. Pretty good for two players on different teams who share the same jersey number (81). Oh, and Tom Brady threw five touchdown passes (the first four going to Moss and the fifth going to Benjamin Watson), and the Pats are now 10-0 in the NFL. Al would be crying in his sleep right now...if the shoe salesman from Chicago was real. And Peggy didn’t keep asking for sex.

Married...with Children. Such a great show.


AP / Tony Gutierrez and Don Heupel

A GHOST AT THE GAS STATION... A few days ago, CNN.com posted an interesting video reporting on a mysterious apparition that showed up on a gas station’s surveillance footage. It was mentioned that the station, located in Ohio, was built on what used to be an old Indian reservation. Numerous theories abound...with some people online either saying it’s a plastic bag (unless it could fly around on a windless day like that feather at the beginning and end of Forrest Gump, I don’t think so) or shoddy Disney animation (this footage looks a whole lot more interesting than the trailer and TV spots to Disney’s upcoming "masterpiece", Enchanted). You decide for yourself.

You can view the video here.


CNN / WOIO

RANDOM BABE BLOG #2... No, I’m not posting these ‘cause I can’t think of any other thing to write about, haha (I have more awesome Space Blogs to write if that’s what you’re lookin’ for). Today’s gal is Olivia Wilde...who plays the aspiring doctor known as Thirteen on the hit FOX medical drama, House. If you guys are watching the current season on TV right now (Season 4), Dr. House is looking for a new staff to take the place of his original team (played by Omar Epps, Jennifer Morrison and Jesse Spencer) after the members either got fired or resigned at the end of last season. House is holding a competition where an applicant gets eliminated/fired at the end of each medical case—or show-wise: at the end of each week’s episode.



Here’s hoping Thirteen either gets chosen as the final doctor, or is at least a runner-up. Kind of like how there’s always a hot girl who either wins or is a runner-up on American Idol or Hell’s Kitchen (overlooking the first season), haha. Of course, that’s assuming all the episodes for House this season were completed or close to completion prior to the WGA strike. Wilde has sexy eyes.


All images courtesy of FOX / NBC Universal

ORION Update: This past week has seen a number of milestones for the Constellation Program...which is responsible for developing NASA’s replacement for the space shuttle after it is retired in 2010: The Ares rocket and Orion space vehicle. On November 9, construction began at Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39B for a trio of lightning towers that will protect the Ares rocket when it is out on the pad during a severe thunderstorm. Ares will begin test flights from Florida in 2009. The launch tower at LC-39B itself will not undergo renovation until late 2008...since it will be used one last time for the space shuttle next year. LC-39B will host a second shuttle (Endeavour) in case it has to launch on a rescue mission if Atlantis (the orbiter assigned to the mission) is found damaged in orbit after launching on next summer’s final Hubble Space Telescope servicing flight. Additional photos of the construction can be found here.


NASA / George Shelton

In other Ares-related news, NASA successfully tested the main parachute for the Ares’ first stage rocket booster during a drop test today at the U.S. Army’s Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona. Click here for more details.


NASA / Marshall Spaceflight Center

In New Mexico, workers broke ground on a pad where NASA will test a launch abort system for the Orion spacecraft at the U.S. Army’s White Sands Missile Range. You can read more about it here.


NASA

Damaris Sarria, a NASA engineer widely known for a Blog that is chronicling her exploits to become an astronaut, posted a brief entry on Tuesday talking about a prototype heat shield for Orion being shipped to NASA by Boeing. The shield was constructed at the Boeing facility in Huntington Beach, California. Too bad the actual spacecraft itself won’t be constructed at Huntington Beach...which is only a half-hour drive from me. Oh wait— Orion is being built by Lockheed Martin. Nevermind.


NASA / Damaris B. Sarria

A RANDOM BABE BLOG... Just felt like posting an entry about Juliet Huddy...of The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet (a TV talk show on the FOX channel) fame. She’s pretty hot... Actually, the way she first caught my attention is that she looks a lot like a former co-worker of mine. My co-worker was a hot Norwegian girl who I nicknamed Nina in this Blog—though her real name is Heidi. Heidi went back to Norway last December and then traveled to the United Kingdom to pursue acting. She came back to SoCal for another co-worker’s birthday party in June...but since I injured my shoulder a few weeks before that, I decided not to go since driving aggravated the pain. Oh well. Maybe Heidi will visit L.A. again next year, haha.



So anyways, yea... Huddy is hot.


All images courtesy of FOX

KAGUYA Update... The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) released new video footage today showing the Earth rising and setting behind the Moon’s horizon. The footage was taken by the Kaguya spacecraft’s high-definition television camera...and was anticipated by folks long before Kaguya launched to the Moon exactly two months ago.





The first image above, a screenshot from the video itself, shows the Earth rising above the lunar horizon...and was taken using wide-angle lens on the HDTV camera. The second screenshot, as well as the series of still pics at the top of this journal entry, shows our home planet setting below the lunar horizon...and was taken using telephoto lens on the HDTV camera. There are two components to Kaguya’s camera—the wide-angle lens that faces in the direction of flight (when the "Earthrise" video was taken) and the telephoto lens that points backward behind the spacecraft (when the "Earthset" video was shot). Compare the images above to the ones below...which were taken by Lunar Orbiter 1 and Apollo 8 astronauts, respectively, around 40 years ago:


NASA

Below are the videos as they were posted on Youtube. The videos were combined into one long clip, which is why it runs almost 9-minutes long. The Earthrise footage is the first one shown, while the second one starts about 4 minutes, 20 seconds into the clip.



KAGUYA Blog Entries Archive:

April 11, 2007
September 5, 2007
September 13, 2007
October 4, 2007
October 26, 2007

THE DARK KNIGHT Update... Below are several photos from next summer’s anticipated blockbuster film. Heath Ledger plays The Joker, Christian Bale returns as—you guessed it—the Dark Knight, Michael Caine reprises his role as the faithful butler Alfred Pennyworth, Gary Oldman is back as James Gordon, Morgan Freeman is once again Lucius Fox, Cilian Murphy will make another appearance as the villainous Scarecrow, and Maggie Gyllenhaal replaces Katie Holmes as Bruce Wayne’s love interest, Rachel Dawes. Prison Break and Black Hawk Down’s William Fichtner plays a bank manager, and Thank You for Smoking’s Aaron Eckhart is Harvey Dent. Oh, and Christopher Nolan is once again directing. Of course, I could’ve just provided a link to The Dark Knight’s IMDb page and spare my fingers of all that typing, haha. The Bat Pod looks awesome...though I hope the Batmobile (a.k.a. the Tumbler) returns in the sequel. The Dark Knight will be released on July 18, 2008.

THIS BLOG would’ve been a bit more relevant if it was posted back in July (when the movie came out), but oh well. I found these awesome images on this site, and thought it would be cool to post them here. What’s great about these pics is that they are PNG files...meaning there are no backgrounds in them, and I can superimpose the robots onto any other image. Thank God for Photoshop. Here’s hoping that Michael Bay’s official website, which originally provided these snapshots, will do the same thing for all the new 'bots that will be in Transformers 2. I’m sure he will. Anyways, enjoy.



NOTE: Ratchet, Bonecrusher, Devastator/Brawl, Scorponok and Barricade aren't shown. Neither are the Mountain Dew Bot, the Nokia Bot, the X-Box Bot (or X Bot) nor that Escalade Bot whose steering wheel attacks that hot girl's face. Sorry.

The WGA Strike... I’d be indifferent, if not for the fact the screenplay for Transformers 2 hasn’t been completed yet, and production on the sequel will most likely be delayed. How this affects the film’s June 26, 2009 release date, we shall see. Also, the seventh season of 24 may be delayed because of the walkout as well. Worse-case scenario: Day 7 will be pushed back to 2008-09! In the words of Jack Bauer: Damn it! Curse you Writers Guild of America! And curse those screenwriters’ hides! Just kidding. Anyways, I need to re-register my Hard-Cores II script (which I wrote in 2001) with the Guild as soon as I can. Which would be...now. The screenplay’s first certificate expired in February. No, I didn’t write a porno flick...



Back to Transformers... The DVD sold 8.3 million units in the first week since its October 16 release. If you want to put this in perspective, 300 took 10 weeks to sell 8.3 million copies, and Happy Feet took 6 months to sell 9 million copies. In its second week, Transformers remained No. 1 with 5.1 million units sold and a two-week gross of $117,010,180. In its third week of release, Transformers fell to second place after the Spider-Man 3 DVD made its debut. However, the Michael Bay flick is still No. 1 in HD DVD sales. Thank the Transformers Live Action Movie Blog and Superhero Hype for the details.



UPDATE (February 12, 2008): The writers' strike has finally ended. WOOHOO!

NASA TV

7 MISSIONS DOWN, 11 MORE TO GO... Of course, this excludes two as-yet unconfirmed contingency shuttle flights around 2009 or 2010. The orbiter Discovery touched down at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center at 10:01 AM, PST today...paving the way for one more shuttle flight in 2007 as Atlantis prepares for launch next month. Atlantis is now mated to its external fuel tank and twin solid rocket boosters, and will be rolled out to the launch pad on Saturday. Its cargo, the European Space Agency’s Columbus science module, arrived at the pad last night. With each completed mission, the International Space Station (ISS) continues to grow in size [except during next year's Hubble Space Telescope (HST) servicing mission... I'll get to that soon]. And yet sadly, each mission accomplished means the shuttle is getting closer to retirement 3 years from now...after 29 years of being America’s primary way of sending astronauts into space. Atlantis herself is scheduled for deactivation after she flies the very last servicing mission to HST in 2008 (this is the only remaining flight in the program where the shuttle won’t be going to the ISS). The third image below contains artwork depicting the shuttle’s replacement, the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle, in its latest incarnation. Orion is scheduled to become operational no earlier than 2014, when it will initially be used to carry out logistical flights to the ISS. From 2016 on, however, the CEV will hopefully be utilized for what President Bush announced back in January of 2004: Returning humans to the Moon, and eventually setting the stage for a manned flight to Mars. Or at least a Near-Earth Asteroid. That last one seems a bit more doable right now. Somewhat.


NASA / Tom Farrar & Kim Shiflett


Courtesy of NASASpaceflight.com

UPDATE (November 8): President Bush greets the STS-120 crew outside Air Force One, on the tarmac at Ellington Field in Houston, Texas:


White House / Eric Draper

UPDATE (November 10): Last flight of the year... Rolling out of the Vehicle Assembly Building around 1:43 AM PST this morning, space shuttle Atlantis was officially secured at the launch pad around 8:51 AM PST today. Its launch on mission STS-122 is still set for December 6.


NASA / Kim Shiflett