Three Comets

I posted earlier about Comet Elenin and it's approach in late September/early October. But there are two other comets that will be passing though around the same time.

Comet Honda is passing through now and will be closest to Earth (0.0603 AU, 5.6 million miles) on August 15.

Comet Levy is still out beyond Mars but will get as close as 0.0484 AU (4.5 million miles) on January 7, 2012.

I'm hopeful that all three of these comets will be bright enough to get a good look at as I can't recall an instance where there were three close passes within a six month time frame.

How Political Commercials Are Done

A fellow who goes by Jazz Shaw, has postulated a commercial based on a possible outcome of the debt ceiling impasse.

When the debt limit is reached, the Federal Government will no longer be able to spend more than it takes in. Without an official budget, there is no direct allocation of funds from the House, so the decision as to who gets what percentage of their funds is left to Treasury. So it is entirely within belief that Treasury would make small cuts here and there and all of a sudden, people can't get what they've been used to getting. That leads to commercials such as this one:








Effective, no?

Of course, there's also the potential crash of the bond market and a potential credit crisis to deal with. So we shall just have to see if either side blinks or if we actually go to this option.

Virus Public Service Poster

I don't know why, but I've always enjoyed the artwork of the public service posters from the '20s through the '40s. Maybe it's the art deco styling.

Anyway, one of the contributors to TeeFury created a public service poster for defending against computer viruses. I like it.

Huge Saturn Storm

Cassini has captured several images of a huge storm that has formed on Saturn. It apparently started as a spot storm around the end of March, but is spreading into a ring around the northern hemisphere of the planet. Quite interesting to look at.