From CNN:
Cuba applauds U.N. vote on trade embargo (link)
As a followup to my earlier post; here’s proof of whether or not the U.S. appears to want to “play nice,” or if we’re still interested in acting like the sullen bully when the little kid with glasses’ ex-Army dad shows up.

As some of you know, I am not feeling well as I write this.  The doctor at Vanderbilt this morning (3:30 AM this morning) seemed to think that there is the possibility I have freaking Pertussis (whooping cough).  Never mind that I was vaccinated against this; apparently it wears off.  Who knew.  And as one person pointed out, leave it to me to catch a disease from antiquity (throat culture results as of this writing are still pending).  Thus, I have a lot of time on my hands from three …

Has the Large Hadron Collider destroyed the world yet?
Click this link (link) to find out.

Quotes from the “Comments” section of London’s Evening Standard article on the Large Hadron Collider:
All I want to know is if the Big Bang really happened, how did all those protons get there in the first place? And what made them just happen to accelerate in such a fashion? I’m sure there wasn’t a fancy tube like they built just built in Europe. If you want to find out how the universe was created, go read the Word of God. End of story.
Perhaps all the black holes around the universe …

I’ve been trying to catch up on this guy‘s posts – he runs the range of the humanities and beyond.  This one I found exemplifies the state of modern humanity.  Here’s the telling quote:
I sometimes wonder what an ancient Greek, transported through time, would think of us, cooped up indoors as we are much of the time, hunched over a computer keyboard or staring slack-jawed at a television screen. I suspect he would laugh at our pale, puffy bodies, never exposed to wind or sun, and would regard us as …

From BBC News:
But the scale of China’s own entangled history with coal is overwhelming. Right across northern China, coal seams burn in un-stoppable fires.
Some have been burning naturally for thousands of years, but others are being set alight by small-scale mining operations seeking to cash in on soaring coal prices. Together, these perpetual fires are letting off a total amount of carbon dioxide each year equal to all the cars in the USA.
We pay way too little attention to the first word in the phrase “global warming.”

Most of you know that I have a penchant for (among other things) astronomy. Two of the coolest tools – that also happen to be free – are the program called Celestia (link) and the site called Wikisky (link). Both are really educational, and have some beautiful imagery of the night sky and of some NASA/JPL/ESA images from Hubble and the like. I hope you find these as fun and informative as I did.
If you have any cool astronomy sites, please Comment and let me know.