zgeek-knowledge

President-elect Barack Obama’s made his pick for NASA head — a decorated military man, according to several reports.

New NASA Head

Maj.-Gen. (ret.) Jonathan Scott Gration, who uses his middle name, is a career Air Force man who’s logged nearly 1,000 hours of combat flight time and been awarded the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star and the Distinguished Service Medal, among many other awards.

The son of missionaries, he was raised in Africa and speaks Swahili.

Reports said an official announcement would be forthcoming Wednesday. The Obama transition team refused FoxNews.com’s requests to comment on the reports.

Gration is especially close to Obama, having met the young senator in 2005. He and Obama traveled to Africa together in 2006, and Gration has since been one of Obama’s unofficial national-security advisors.

However, unlike current NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, a rocket scientists, Gration has little space experience other than working as a White House fellow in 1982 for then-NASA Deputy Administrator Hans Mark.

Read the rest at-http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,479889,00.html

Today the world has millions of webcams and more and more are popping up everyday! Its Big business for any business! no matter what size! Even ordinary home owners are taking advantage of the CCTV world installing camaras all over there homes! and if you do your research very carefully, you may just find a cam that is pointing right at your house! or even at you! while your working! resting! or playing! and i will show you how it’s possible! read on…

Before i started writing articles I had so much time on my hands which i passed doing so many fun things online! chat to some amazing people from all over the world! using the many free live webcam chat programs available among many other things of course….including viewing live streaming cams from all over the world. This enabled me to get up close and personal to some beautiful and amazing places that i would never get to see! including tourist attractions, parks, beaches, streets, shops, any animal, mammal and insect you could think of! I wanted to see Trafalgar Square, Times Square, Red Square any and every square! I wanted to see the seven wonders of the world! the China wall! I wanted to see people of all shapes, sizes and races! I wanted to see any and everything! and i could! and if you look hard enough and do your research you will find any, and everything on cam! including your house!

I could have used the excellent Google Earth free software, but this does not have live images! but it will show you practically anywhere on Earth! or Googles new street view. Google has been going around the parts of the country with a camera strapped to the top of a car taking pictures! (see image right) which is just like Google Earth images, except its like the Google Earth program has literally landed on the street! and instead gives you standing level street-view images and is pretty awesome! You can even see yourself on camera, but face and images are blurry! and see your house very very clearly front door and all! Google’s Street view requires no download and has not covered all countries as yet. US, France, and Italy, in hopefully in the UK by autumn 2008 and hopefully many more..

Most tourist attractions all over the world can be viewed live! You can view animals, roads, streets, motorways, including people, beaches, hotels, offices all live!, absolutely any and everything via the Internet! Its just doing your research and you will slowly find cams that’s very close to where you live! It might not be streaming, but a 10 second updates is still a good result! Some cams you can actually control them your self by zooming in and panning left to right!

Got to http://www.earthcam.com to view cams from many different areas.

NASA researchers this week said Mars appears to have been more hospitable to life in the past than previously believed. Using the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars, or CRISM, on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, scientists have found carbonate minerals on the planet. Because carbonates dissolve rapidly in acid, their presence has forced researchers to revise conclusions based on previous evidence that the Martian environment was primarily acidic. NASA says that its findings, published in the Dec. 19 issue of Science magazine, indicate that different types of watery environments existed, raising the chance that at least one may have supported life.

“Although we have not found the types of carbonate deposits which might have trapped an ancient atmosphere,” said Bethany Ehlmann, lead author of the article and a spectrometer team member from Brown University, in a statement, “we have found evidence that not all of Mars experienced an intense, acidic weathering environment 3.5 billion years ago, as has been proposed. We’ve found at least one region that was potentially more hospitable to life.”   Read the rest at- http://www.informationweek.com/news/hardware/supercomputers/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212501435&subSection=All+Stories

more articles at-

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/20/nasa_mars_findings/

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/12/081219-mars-carbonate.html