Like, literally, from Space. Astronaut Sandra Magnus has a blog, called SpaceBook. She is on the International Space Station, and has been there since November, from what I can tell.

An excerpt, to whet your appetite:

It is completely night. There are thunderstorms across Africa and lightening is everywhere; bright flashes are going cloud to cloud illuminating the clouds as it arcs from one to the other. It is a private fireworks show. The storm is large and very spread out and at any moment you see 4 or 5 flashes occurring at one time, each one only lasting a moment. The colors range from something orange-ish to blue-white. Some are more like balls of light while others have that characteristic streak shape that you can observe on Earth. It goes on for several minutes. Occasionally a city goes by with lights shining brightly against the backdrop of flashing pulses of light. The cities come in all shapes, sizes and colors and light patterns. Some cities have clouds over them and all that can be seen is a haze of light. For the cities with clear skies, street patterns are apparent – outlined by streetlights. Some cities have very bright orange lights that stand out as beacons. The thunderstorms have finally passed by but still the Earth remains illuminated as the ISS continues to fly over densely populated areas. Population centers are easy to see at night; there are cities all around. Coastlines go by and you can tell because of the outline in city lights.

Space tourism (for the little people) can’t come quickly enough, I tell you.

We just can’t have women undressing in public like that. You know, even behind closed and locked doors.

Female sales clerks are also banned. So women have to by their unmentionables from men that they don’t know.

The rest of this article is as confusing and odd as the picture here.

They have religious police that wander the malls making sure women and men don’t interact. I just don’t get it.

A few things I learned about The Hindenburg:

• Only 35 of the 97 people on board died. There were others who survived with serious injuries, but many people had just minor cuts and bruises.
• The company that operated The Hindenburg had a 100% safety record prior to this incident and had been in operation for over 20 years.
• The “real” cause of the disaster is not known. There are several theories, but none that have been definitively proven and accepted. Either way, using Hydrogen didn’t help.
• However, one of the causes was definitely pilot error. Airships were very susceptible to bad weather and wind. The Hindenburg was 12 hours behind schedule due to a strong head wind over the Atlantic. They had a return flight of some high rollers that needed to make it to King George VI’s coronation in London. So the pilot took some risks and landed in less than perfect weather. The pilot was under intense pressure from Hitler to make the Germans look good. Any delays would be an embarrassment for Germany. I’m thinking a fiery explosion was probably worse than a delay.
• Inside the outer shell there were 16 giant cotton bags filled with Hydrogen. The gray outer surface was cotton and linen that was basically painted with aluminum and iron oxide and attached to a frame. The bags of hydrogen were inside. I always thought the thing was like one big balloon just filled up with hydrogen, but that is not the case.

Source: National Geographic Channel

An important tip, via Grammar Girl. (I subscribe to her daily email newsletter now, so expect more of these.)

To make an acronym plural, simply add an s. Don’t add an apostrophe.

For example, multiple Automated Teller Machines would be ATMs. Not ATM’s. Multiple Certificates of Deposit would be CDs. Not CD’s.

Multiple Personal Identification Numbers would be PINs. Not PIN’s, and definitely not PIN Numbers.

This rule holds true even when the acronym itself is plural, like Runs Batted In. RBIs.

Condoleeza Rice was on The Tonight Show last night, and she is really an amazing person. While I don’t agree with her on everything, you can’t dispute that she is very talented, and has a very interesting story.

For some lame reason NBC doesn’t have the whole interview available, but I’ll include what they do have below. It’s most of the second segment. The first segment is not online.

I missed the first few minutes, but what I did catch:

• She wanted to be a concert pianist when she was younger. She could read music before she could read words.
• After she decided a career in music probably wasn’t too practical, she got in to politics. Her first real political class was taught by Madeline Albright’s father.
• She was the Provost at Stanford University. She first met Hilary Clinton when Clinton was bringing Chelsea to college at Stanford.
• Her father tried to register to vote as a Democrat in Alabama but had some issues with the Poll test. (It was “how many beans are in this jar.”) So they found the Republican clerk and he registered as a Republican. He was a Republican his entire life.
• Rice herself was first a Democrat, but switched to the Republican party in opposition to The Feckless Jimmy Carter’s Feckless position toward the Soviet Union.
• Bonus from wiki: her name is derived from the Italian musical expression, Con dolcezza, which means “with sweetness.”

Here’s the video:

Source: The Tonight Show

While watching The Biography Channel show about Cheers last night, The Wife^® and I got to discussing TV show spin-offs. She was wondering if Frasier was the most successful spin-off ever. Turns out that’s a difficult question to answer. And it led to the discovery of TV Show Universes. Read on…

A crossover is an episode of a TV show where characters from another show make an appearance. For example, Law & Order and Homicide: Life on the Streets had a few crossover episodes. One show was based in Baltimore, and the other in New York, and the case crossed over jurisdictions. This is just one example. I’m sure you can come up with more.

A spin-off is when a character from one show gets their own show. This can be a natural spin-off or an engineered spin-off. Frasier is a natural spin-off. The bar closes in Boston and Frasier moves to Seattle, so the new show focuses on his life. An engineered spin-off is when the producers add a new character to a series with the specific intention of spinning them off into a new series. Melrose Place was an engineered spin off of 90210. A new minor character was introduced to 90210, and there were a few crossover episodes to give the new show a jump start.

In the case of both spin-offs and crossovers, the shows must exist in the same fictional TV universe. Meaning, because they share common elements, the same fictional places and people must exist for stories to make sense.

This web site chronicles the largest fictional universes, and there are some really odd connections.

For instance, Friends is in the same fictional universe as I Love Lucy. I Love Lucy had crossover episodes with Make Room for Daddy. Make Room for Daddy had several crossovers and spin-offs, one of which was The Andy Griffith Show. (The Andy Griffith Show also had its own spin-off Gomer Pyle.) The Dick Van Dyke Show also had a crossover with Make Room for Daddy. And then it had a crossover with Mad About You. Mad about You is connected to Friends through the common character of Ursula. Friends and Mad About You are in turn connected to Seinfeld (Jerry is subletting Paul from Mad About You’s bachelor pad) and Caroline in the City (Joey was on Caroline). Caroline in the City had a crossover with Frasier, which then connects the whole universe retroactively with Cheers.

So Lucy, Andy Griffith, Norm, Cliff, Gomer Pyle, and Kramer all exist in the same fictional universe.

As for spin-offs, there are a ton, and a number of them that I didn’t know were spin-offs. I’ll list a few, but this site lists hundreds.

• Happy Days – Spun off Laverne and Shirley, Mork and Mindy and Joanie Loves Chachi. Mork first appeared on Happy Days. He tried to abduct Richie, but the plot was foiled by Fonzie. And this was before Fonzie Jumped the Shark.
• The King of Queens – was a spin-off of Everybody Loves Raymond. But they felt the need to change the name of the main character.
• Family Matters – was a spin-off of Perfect Strangers. The mom from FM was the elevator operator in Larry and Balki’s apartment building.
• The Jeffersons – spun-off from All in the Family.
• The Facts of Life – spun-off from Diff’rent Strokes.

There are plenty more. Feel free to add your favorites in the comments.

Source: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Edward Anderson (who does not have a wiki), founder of Lil’ Orbits and the man behind the mini-doughnut machine, died of cancer Thursday at his home in Plymouth. He was 78.

At least he finished his work, thus doing the world a momumental favor, before he passed away.

Mr. Anderson, I’ll pour out some of my cinnamon-sugar for you the next time I get a bag.

Source: Kalena and here

Yes, there was a Law & Order Movie. But it was a Made-for-TV movie, so I’m not really sure how it was much different than a 2 hour L&O episode.

It centered around Chris Noth’s Mike Logan and picked up after he punched the City Council member and was reassigned to Staten Island.

Ice-T was in the movie, playing a pimp. Later he joined SVU, as a different character.

People playing more than one character in L&O is not uncommon. People say it’s because they shoot in New York, so there’s a limited pool of actors there. Even Jerry Orbach played more than one character. He was on the original series as a defense attorney before he joined the cast as Lenny. S. Epatha played the mother of a shooting victim before she joined the cast as Lt. Van Buren. Wiki has an extensive list of others that played multiple parts.

Richard Belzer, who plays John Munch, has only played the one character. But he has played it in 8 (soon to be 10) shows. They are: Homicide, L&O, L&O: SVU, L&O: Trial by Jury, The X-Files, The Beat, The Wire, and Arrested Development. He is slated to play Munch in two more shows soon: Paris enquêtes criminelles, the French version of Law & Order: Criminal Intent and Law & Order: UK the spinoff version of L&O which is based in London.

Russian versions of L&O: SVU and L&O: Criminal Intent are planned. No word on whether or not Munch will appear in these.

Back in the late 90′s there was a song they used to play on Zone 105 (or was it Drive 105?)… and the guy mumbled the words, so I never knew really what it was. Well, at the time, I decided to e-mail one of the radio personalities on the station and he clarified; the song was Brim Full of Asha by Cornershop, which is a British Band.

The lyrics are still cryptic. The subject of the song, however, is Asha Bhosle, an Indian (red-dot, not feather) best known as a Bollywood playback singer. Cornershop wrote the song as a tribute, and it went international. Fatboy Slim later remixed the song.

Cornershop‘s music is a fusion of Indian music, British indie rock, and electronic dance, so a song about an Indian singer probably makes sense for them.

Source: above-listed and Wiki

…stands for Komitjet Gosudarstvjennoj Bjezopasnosti (no wonder they use the abbreviation!) and roughly translates to Committee for State Security. From what I can tell, it was kind of like the Soviet Unions FBI, CIA, Secret Service, etc., plus Secret Police all in one package… plus, since it was the Soviet Union, it was a military institution. It ran from 1954 to 1991.

Source: Where else