So, first there was this meteor which smacked down into the ground at a village in Peru located in the high Andes department of Puno in the Desaguadero region, near the border with Bolivia.

Residents complained of headaches and vomiting brought on by a “strange odor,” local health department official Jorge Lopez told Peruvian radio RPP.

Seven policemen who went to check on the reports also became ill and had to be given oxygen before being hospitalized, Lopez said.

Rescue teams and experts were dispatched to the scene, where the meteorite left a 100-foot-wide (30-meter-wide) and 20-foot-deep (six-meter-deep) crater, said local official Marco Limache.

“Boiling water started coming out of the crater and particles of rock and cinders were found nearby. Residents are very concerned,” he said.

However, people were suspicious of this. There hasn’t been a recorded case of illness coming from any satellite we know of (unless you count being extincted on account of tons of rock falling on your butt, but we weren’t actually around for that one.) Also, various astronomers questioned the size and shape of the crater. People speculated it might be space debris, instead, like, say, the kind that carried the deadly virus to earth in The Andromeda Strain.

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1. Dawn in Space!

Today, NASA’s Dawn probe to the asteroid belt was launched.  Dawn’s mission is ambitious:  Four years from now, it will place itself in orbit around Vesta . . . and then it will fly on to the dwarf planet Ceres and orbit that world as well (in 2015).

Read more about Dawn (and watch a video of the launch) here.

2. Fakes in Space!

While Dawn’s mission is thrilling, it is a robotic mission.  No human beings will be going to Vesta or Ceres anytime soon.  (Unless there’s oil.)

But then, there are those who argue that human beings never could go to another world, and never have.

For example, it turns out that the Apollo moon landings were all faked as part of a massive government space-program hoax.

But it’s only now that we know the full extent of the fraud – and we have these guys to thank for the knowledge.

So that’s how they did it.

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I just don’t see any candidate today saying this.

“…We will find neither national purpose nor personal satisfaction in an endless amassing of worldly goods… The gross national product measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.”

– Robert F. Kennedy, 1968

Mary Doria Russell forwarded me a link about where writer’s write. It’s primarily about where British and Irish writers write, which already, for me, infuses the whole idea with a whiff of romance. I know a little of the lore of how writer’s write. Legend is that Guy du Maupassant had to have the smell of aging apples in the room in order to write and always kept an apple or two rotting in a desk drawer. Thomas Wolfe apparently was so tall that he stood and wrote on top of the refrigerator, tossing the pages over his shoulder for his sister to pick up.

I have a strong sense that where people write is somehow meaningful, although my favorite ‘office’ in the list is for the New Yorker Jonathan Safran Foer who says, “”I used to work in the Rose Reading Room of the 42nd Street Branch of the New York Public Library.” Seamus Heaney’s office is rather nice, too.

The image above is actually misleading since my desk usually has a pile of papers on it. I’ve worked in a variety of offices over the years. My bedroom when I was in Brooklyn since I lived in a rooming house. But it was a hundred year old brownstone so it was a splendid old place. My mother’s basement, where I finished my first novel. In our last house I had our smallest bedroom and my husband had a much bigger office, except he had to share his with the guest bed and sometimes with a guest. When we bought this house his devout wish was that he would have his own office without a bed, and he does. I had a room set aside for my office, but it occurred to me that in all the time we had a living room and a family room we never used the living room. It was the prettiest room in our old house and had the paintings you see on the right. Those were on the wall of my paternal grandparent’s house and they are very much of their time (around 1920, I’d say.) And the glass goblets on the low buffet (which is full of paper and envelopes and supplies) are bohemian glass, also from the same grandparents around the same time.

So this time, I left the little bedroom as a bedroom and set up in the living room. The funny pile of red plaid in the lower right corner is a dog bed and Shelly the dachshund sleeps there. What you can’t see in the photo are the filing cabinets. They’re under the window out of the frame to the left and they’re just ugly, metal filing cabinets. And you can’t see that my office is in a fairly large, fairly empty front great room and the side that is supposed to be the formal dining room has a Tama drum kit set up in it and not much other furniture.

Still, it’s the most lovely office I’ve ever had. And the amazing thing is I actually work in it. My suspicion has always been that I would never actually write anything in a nice office.

I know at least two of my fellow brainiacs have nifty offices. I’ve seen Caroline’s and it’s really exactly what I picture in my head when I think writer’s office–except that the wall color is better than what I picture in my head. And Steve, of course, built his. I think that photos of your offices should be posted. I’ve also seen Brad’s and it looks like he actually writes in it. And it has dog beds!

I don’t know what mine says about me, but at the moment I am convinced whatever it says is quite conducive to composition.

I have dinosaur feet. The same bony muscularity that gives me (in my humble opinion) very nice hands makes my feet look like something out of a nature studies text. So maybe that’s why I don’t get the shoe thing. I mean, I find the don’t-get-broken-glass-in-your-foot, God-it’s-snowy-outside, oops! dog-poop, no-shoes-no-service reasons, quite reasonable. And I like nice shoes. I don’t like shopping for shoes because I’m hard to fit, and I’m a bear about comfort for the same reasons.

On the other hand, I have friends who love shoe shopping. I get emails with links to Cool Shoe Sites. Some of the cool shoes are Vintage cool (the same site also advertises a “Vegan shoe option!). Some of them partake of a different shoe-wearing sensibility. Some are just, um, unbearably arty.

I particularly love the copywriting on that last site. “The applications on the inside and the outside remind of the wings of a jet aircraft and thereby visualise the theme of velocity.” That’s a lot of meaning for footwear to have to carry. And, alas for my fashion-forward ambitions, those shoes would make me look like I was holding up a bridge (curiously, that’s not one of my ambitions in life).

If I’m going out on an orgy of shopping, I’d just as soon it were an orgy of book buying and music purchasing and movie-going. So, in addition to not being Caroline (or Morgan or Steve or Rory or Brad or Maureen) it appears that I am not Imelda Marcos. Which, given that things haven’t turned out so well for her, is okay by me.

In honor of our very own Skeptical Steve, I simply must share this (via Panda’s Thumb):

The abundance of Steves in turn-of-the-century science has led to the most formidable weapon in the fight against neo-creationism today: Project Steve. A brainchild of the National Center for Science Education, the initiative is a parody of the creationist tradition of publishing lists of several dozen “scientists who dissent from Darwinism.” The NCSE replies: “Oh, yeah? Well, we have a list of several hundred scientists who affirm evolution—just named Steve!” (And Stephanie, Steffi, Stefan, and Esteban.) Part satire, part memorial to Stephen Jay Gould, the project maintains a Steve-O-Meter (now pointing past 800) and has spun off a T-shirt, a song, a mascot (Professor Steve Steve, a panda puppet), and a paper in the respected scientific journal Annals of Improbable Research called “The Morphology of Steve” (based on the T-shirt sizes ordered by the signatories).

(Steven Pinker, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature, New York: Viking, 2007, p. 280)

Unfortunately, only PhDs in the life sciences can apply for a position, but in our hearts, you’ll always be a Project Steve Steve, Steve.

Julian Beever is an English artist who’s famous for his art on the pavement of England, France, Germany, USA, Australia and Belgium.  I’ve seen some of his stuff before but there’s some new pictures, too, including this one:

Click on the picture for more examples.

Well, the cat’s out the bag now, isn’t it?

Oh, I know that I’ve been trying to hide it all this time, but now — thank goodness — You know. And I must say, it’s great to finally be able to come out about it. Oh, not that kind of coming out. I’m talking about coming out All About You.

You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? Of course, You do. Because no matter how clumsily I may word things, You understand that what I really mean is: You. You. You.

When I write about my mother, I’m really talking about You.

When I talk about dead babies in jars (Thank you,

When I talk about movies, TV, art, politics, farts I’m not really talking about that either, I’m really talking about You.

And because You understand that every comment and post on EOB is about, well, You, it seems almost embarrassing that I have to admit this.

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A farmer born in the town of Bulach in the Swiss Lowlands, Billy Meier says his first extraterrestrial contacts occurred in 1942 at the age of five with an elderly extraterrestrial human man named Sfath. Contacts with Sfath lasted until 1953. From 1953 to 1964 Meier’s contacts continued with an extraterrestrial human woman named Asket. After an eleven year break, contacts resumed again (beginning on January 28, 1975) with an extraterrestrial human woman named Semjase the granddaughter of Sfath.

You can read lots of stuff about nutjob, Billy Meier, here, here, and here.

A man named Michael Horn, a martial arts practitioner who designates himself as the “Authorized American Media Representative for The Billy Meier Contacts,” recently sent an email to the science-positive podcast The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe.

“I suggest that I appear on your radio show to both answer the false charges below and have you defend them. I have a rather vast readership and I will be glad to announce the details of the interview to them. Failure to provide me with such an opportunity or to respond to this request will be construed as a withdrawal by you and an apology for these widely circulated false claims and will be publicized as such. The following disinformation, defamatory, and libelous claims are attributed to you.”

He then refers to clips from the Encyclopedia of Skepticism and the Paranormal written about ten years ago summarizing the Billy Meier UFO Hoax.

After some discussion Dr. Novello and company have decided to decline Mr. Horn’s oh-so-generous offer. As one of the regulars on the show, Rebecca Watson of SkepChicks, said, “If he doesn’t give us a pony, that means he’s an idiot.”

The Air Force’s first operational CV-22 Osprey was delivered to the 58th Special Operations Wing (58th SOW) at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico on 20 March 2006. This and subsequent aircraft will become part of the 58th SOW’s fleet of aircraft used for training pilots and crewmembers for special operations use.

We’re less than a mile from the Base. (They’re really cool!)

Rory may want to deal with the zombies on flame-thrower equipped motorcycles but I’m betting these babies wouldn’t be too bad.

“None of [the other old missile bases] has usable electrical systems etc,” Hotchkiss says in his ad. “Most all of them have major water problems — either completely filled with water or gone to rust. Ours is one of the rare ones, and the only usable Titan that . . . is DRY!”

(Thanks, LDA!)

On September 20, 1963, U.S. President John F. Kennedy gave a speech before the United Nations. It was, in part, a highly political speech in which the President portrayed the United States as a nation of “freedom” and the Soviet Union as a nation of “coercion” . . . but it was also, in part, a highly hopeful speech in which the President suggested that even nations with opposing political goals could cooperate (in some areas) for the betterment of all humanity.

Among other things, President Kennedy suggested this:

. . . Space offers no problems of sovereignty; by resolution of this Assembly, the members of the United Nations have foresworn any claim to territorial rights in outer space or on celestial bodies, and declared that international law and the United Nations Charter will apply. Why, therefore, should man’s first flight to the moon be a matter of national competition? Why should the United States and the Soviet Union, in preparing for such expeditions, become involved in immense duplications of research, construction, and expenditure? Surely we should explore whether the scientists and astronauts of our two countries – indeed of all the world – cannot work together in the conquest of space, sending someday in this decade to the moon not the representatives of a single nation, but the representatives of all of our countries.

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ZOMG. This is eviiiil.

In honor of international walk-like-an-E… wait, no; talk-like-a-pirate day, here be a clever tool. It’ll turn your pearls of wisdom into pieces of eight with the click of a button. The best thing since they invented talking parrots. Arrrrr!

I wanted to share this little ditty with my fellow Brainiacs. Science blog Cognitive Daily has a great post with video of a magic paper dragon. A nifty little optical illusion. Check it out:

The dragon is a product of ThinkFun (formerly Binary Arts), which has a variety of toys and optical illusions.