Recently imaged star and surrounding dust ring (left image) taken by the Hubble telescope could be evidence of a newly formed solar system in our neighbourhood.

The ring is composed of dust particles in orbit around Fomalhaut, a bright star located just 25 light years away in the constellation Pisces Austalis - or the Southern Fish. A recent image captured with the Hubble Space Telescope - which makes the system look uncannily like the Great Eye of Sauron- confirms that Fomalhaut’s ring is curiously offset with respect to the star.

The image was captured by astronomers at the University of California, Berkeley, US, and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center using Hubble’s coronagraph. This device blocks the glare of a star while gathering the faint reflected light from any surrounding ring.

Image (right), the Eye of Sauron from The Lord of the Rings.

a neat collection of vintage trading cards from Traders Cracks , these from a gallery of Twilight Zone episodes.

"My dear Kepler, what would you say of the learned here, who, replete with the pertinacity of the asp, have steadfastly refused to cast a glance through the telescope?  What shall we make of this? Shall we laugh, or shall we cry?" ....Letter from Galileo Galilei to Johannes Kepler

Follow the trial of Galileo, and many other (in)famous court cases from the past. From Socrates to Bill Clinton.

a handy list that will give an idea of how long household items will stay useable. Includes food, household and beauty products. Examples....

Maple syrup, real or imitation
1 year

Maraschino cherries
Unopened: 3 to 4 years
Opened: 2 weeks at room temperature; 6 months refrigerated

Marshmallows
Unopened: 40 weeks
Opened: 3 months

Mayonnaise
Unopened: Indefinitely
Opened: 2 to 3 months from purchase by date (After this time, color or flavor may be affected, but product is still generally safe to consume.)

A simple matter of updating a Windows file can cut down on ad-tracking and other parasites that slow you down and send your internet habits to the advertising geeks.

You can use a HOSTS file to block ads, banners, 3rd party Cookies, 3rd party page counters, web bugs, and even most hijackers. This is accomplished by blocking the Server that supplies these little gems. Example - the following entry 127.0.0.1 ad.doubleclick.net blocks all files supplied by that DoubleClick Server to the web page you are viewing. This also prevents the server from tracking your movements.

127.0.0.1 happens to be the address of your own machine, so the information never gets sent to the ad servers.

Twelve pages so far, in an online comic format, of HG Wells 'War of the Worlds'.

for the graffiti enthusiast, a selection of stencils of various blues artists.

link

Build your own backyard or table top catapult. An assortment of links to plans and info on building different styles of this siege machine.

This model trebuchet can demonstrate all the principles of the trebuchet as either a hanging counterweight machine, or quickly convert it to a wheeled fixed counterweight machine.

The trebuchet is a fantastic demonstration in physics and dynamics. One of the big debates in recent years among historians is whether trebuchets in history used wheels to increase their efficiency and make them more portable, or if they were built on-site without wheels and with counterweights hanging from the end of the arm.

Dave Devries takes childrens drawings and transforms them into full colour paintings, with fantastic results.

a great assortment of circus posters.

Coming attractions include the fish-man, the armless man, big people and Lilliputians, and of course, Solomon the Man Monkey - Darwins Missing Link.

three sites where there are selections of music and radio programs available as downloadable mp3's.....

http://radiomemories.libsyn.com/ ......vintage radio programs

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/beethoven/downloads.shtml ....classical music selections from the BBC

http://www.turtleserviceslimited.org/jukebox.htm .....big band, jazz and old standards

a nice gallery of user-submitted photos of manhole-cover art from Japan...

June 21 2005 is the proposed launch date for Cosmos 1, a solar sail spacecraft project by the Planetary Society.

According to the mission statement, this is a feasibility mission to test this new type of propulsion which involves gathering light particles from the sun in it's large mirror-like 'sails'.

Plans are for a submarine launch , carried aloft onboard a Soviet rocket and deployed into earth orbit at over 800km.

Charles Darwin published 'The Origin of Species' in 1859 and ever since, there has been a lively discussion of it's statements about the evolution of lifeforms on earth..

Although the scientific evidence still overwhelmingly supports the idea of natural selection, the proponents of creationism are again making demands on the cultural and educational institutions in the US to give their views equal exposure.

From Scientific American.com an article that answers some of the common statements posed by the creationist side of the debate.

In it's conclusion...

"Creation science" is a contradiction in terms. A central tenet of modern science is methodological naturalism--it seeks to explain the universe purely in terms of observed or testable natural mechanisms. Thus, physics describes the atomic nucleus with specific concepts governing matter and energy, and it tests those descriptions experimentally. Physicists introduce new particles, such as quarks, to flesh out their theories only when data show that the previous descriptions cannot adequately explain observed phenomena. The new particles do not have arbitrary properties, moreover--their definitions are tightly constrained, because the new particles must fit within the existing framework of physics.

In contrast, intelligent-design theorists invoke shadowy entities that conveniently have whatever unconstrained abilities are needed to solve the mystery at hand. Rather than expanding scientific inquiry, such answers shut it down. (How does one disprove the existence of omnipotent intelligences?)"

on the subject of cycles again....

There has been quite a number of designs of monowheels over the last century, some built, some that never got past the drawing concept. This is one of the earliest, possibly the first, model. Elegant, but tricky...

In 1869 the craftsman Rousseau of Marseilles built this monocycle, which perches the cyclist on the inside of a 2 1/2 yards-high wheel. As there is no steering mechanism, it makes uncommon demands on the rider's sense of balance.

An entertaining page detailing a variety of monocycles, human-powered and engine powered.....from the Self Site

from the same site, a image museum of acoustical sound gathering devices from the 1930's and 40's, mostly used for advance warning of approaching aircraft in the war years.

Shown is an impressive array of gigantic tubas mounted on wheeled carriages used by the Japanese as part of their coastal defense system.