Time & Space & Random Notes

• I was surprised and flattered to learn today that I am Time magazine's Person of the Year for 2006. Well, not me exactly. Actually it was "you" - defined as "anyone using or creating content on the World Wide Web." So we're both in - nice job! And I say better me (and you) than Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who apparently was the first runner up. I guess he still gets it if we are unable to serve, so let's watch the partying, lest we be dethroned like Miss USA (looks like she wasn't dethroned after all - imagine my relief!).
  
  
• Damn Interesting is certainly damn interesting sometimes. Case in point from the other day: this article on the Daedalus starship, designed in 1973 and still cool. It reminded me that my space and astronomy book collection includes nothing on interstellar flight and starships, so I ordered a copy of Centauri Dreams by Paul Gilster, who also writes an interesting blog of the same name. He wrote about project Daedalus just yesterday.
  
  
• I'm reading my latest impulse buy (triggered this time by a 40% email coupon from Borders Books - yes, I am a marketer's dream). The book is the recent The Survival Imperative: Using Space to Protect Earth by William E. Burrows. I'll be writing about this important book in the next day or so.
  
  
• I bought a Garmin StreetPilot i5 GPS for my daughter, and of course I first had to set it up and test it for her (for about a week). This had the same inevitable effect as when I try almost any food item at the sample table of Trader Joe's - I try, I buy (see above). My GPS will be here Tuesday. It's way cooler than the 1999-era Magellan 315 camping/boating GPS that I use for navigational backup when I fly (more accurately, flew) little airplanes.
  
  
• I'm also surprised that I am writing about three or more subjects in one post and not including a single picture. There are some great ones in that Starship Daedalus site that I really wanted to use.