Britain will be providing “morning-after” contraceptive pills to teens free of charge, without the usual prescription paperwork, to counter unwanted pregnancies that may occur with excessive “Happy New Millennium!” celebrations. It looks like somebody has done their homework over there. I’ve not heard of anything remotely similar here.

The European Space Agency’s SMART-1 mission to the moon has been given the final go-ahead. Powered by an ion-drive, this orbiter will beam X-Rays at the moon to determine the elemental content of the outer crust. Many scientists have complainied that this duplicates previous work and is a waste of money. The principal investigator may not have helped his case by saying “If the Moon is really made of green cheese, we’ll be the first to tell the world.” In my opinion, any space mission which gets involved with the public as this one apparantly has is a good one. In this case, even if the payload is a duplication of previous work, many new technologies will be tested that will directly apply to future missions to the outer planets, where some of the most exciting research is now being conducted.

Opening night was a smashing success. For a Thursday, the crowd was nice-sized, too… about 60 people, all told. I’ve grown to like my powdered wig, too. Why haven’t they ever come back into style?

Tonight’s opening night for School for Scandal. We run through Saturday at the Morton Theater here in Athens. The Morton has a long history, and is a fine place to perform. This play is particularly well-suited for the space. While looking for a link to the theater, I found this article which recently ran in The Flagpole about local theater.

Scientists at Sandia National Labratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico have simulated some of the effects of a neutron star. This appears to be an off-shoot of their fusion experiments. The photo shows the reactor in action, with arcs of electricity crossing over the surface of a pool of water. You can read more about the place here. When I was in school, I took a tour of the place. I volunteered to wear the radiation detection badge for the group, and was told during the briefing that I’d get back a full report on how much radiation we were exposed to. Seven years later, I’m still waiting…

The cat brought a live chipmunk into the house last night. Oh, the excitement! I’ve discovered that at 3:30 in the morning, my chipmunk-catching abilities aren’t what they ought to be. It’s still in there, locked in the most cluttered room I’ve got. When I got dressed for work, he was sitting in the windowsill sunning himself, but then chirped and ran off under some boxes.

You don’t need a physics degree to understand the humor here (especially in the “Exclusive features” section), but it might help. Acme Klein Bottles -- where yesterday’s future is here today!

A bear. An elephant. Knock-knock jokes. Need I say more? (Not for the easily offended.)

Bob Rivers’ Twisted Tunes is the nearest thing Weird Al has to competition. He’s added a bunch of songs since my last visit. I suggest “Dark Side of Naboo” just to hear Yoda’s rant at the end, but you’ll find many more quality songs here.

The apple sauce I had for breakfast gave me the urge to visit applesauce.com, where I found directions for making several variations of apple sauce plus recipes that use apple sauce. Several years ago, I got the idea to make apple butter. I went a bit overboard on the apples and ended up with several gallens of the stuff before I was done. The apartment had the wonderful smell of apples and cinnamon for weeks.