Warp Factor 10, Mr Sulu

Aye aye Captain - well, maybe not Warp 10, but getting close to Mach 10 in this NASA scramjet test - if Mach 10 means nothing to you, that is 11,000 kph, or 6800 mph if you are in the States - that's about an hour and a half travel time to the UK from Oz? Or maybe two if I have the distance wrong LOL. Or hmm, forty minutes LA to New York :) very freaking fast...



Iraq, yeah yeah I know, you are all probably sick of it, but finally found a story with a valid wounded toll - all the stats sites I see are of the death toll, but the injuries have been fuzzier in their reporting. Almost 9000 wounded, and of that almost 5000 serious enough not to return to active duty. And that's just on the American side...



And the reviews are in for Band Aid 20 - well, initial ones at least. Like the description of Dido's singing in this one as 'Dido, whose vocal style, as ever, recalls a woman distractedly singing to herself while trying to remember where she parked her car' - or Joss Stone - 'the kind of widdly-woo heavy-metal guitar solo for the mouth which every modern soul singer uses to convey emotion'. They are both pretty though LOL.



From scramjet to ion engines - a European probe the size of a photocopier has made it to the moon - is only the third probe to Terra's sibling since the Apollo missions ended. What was that Mr President, you wanted a manned base on the moon by 2025? 'Smart-1 is only the second spacecraft to be propelled by an ion drive, which does not burn fuel but uses solar power to electrically charge atoms of xenon gas. These accelerate away from the spacecraft and produce thrust. It is slow going at first - the Apollo crew reached the moon in three days - but ion drive engines are more fuel efficient and could cut years off trips to distant planets.' Mmm, science - where's Picard and Janeway LOL LOL.



Personally, not much happened at work today - got a couple of hmm bad calls in the morning which put my figures out for the entire day basically. Didn't help that there were about two and a half hours worth of meetings as well bleah LOL. So yeah, a pretty nothing day workwise.



The wedding invite to Rob and Kel's wedding came through in the mail today, mmm seven hour beer tab LOL LOL, bad Pauly bad - and V got word that her passport had been approved, so good news on that front.



Laters taters

Pauly