Week of 2007-03-10 17:00 to 2007-03-17 16:59

Paul Rincon, BBC science reporter, has been busy in Houston at the 2007 Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC).

Yesterday he posted a story about what appears to be a 5.5-km wide, newly discovered space impact crater under the Central Valley in California.

Data from a 3D seismic survey of an ancient sea bed clearly shows a circular structure buried 1,490-1,600m (4,890-4,250ft) below sea level.

The Victoria Island structure, as it has been named, has a concentric rim surrounding a “central uplift” - a peak at the centre - which are both characteristic of impact craters.

Today, Rincon had another story from the conference about some possible caves found on Mars by NASA’s Odyssey spacecraft.

The candidate caves are on the flanks of the Arsia Mons volcano and are of sufficient depth their floors mostly cannot be seen through the opening.

What’s most interesting is the potential for these providing a haven for life.

The caves may be the only natural structures capable of protecting primitive life forms from micrometeoroids, UV radiation, solar flares and high energy particles that bombard the planet’s surface.

Sounds like a cool conference. :)

You might surmise from the surname, and you’d be correct, that today is a special day for yours truly. As fellow Irishman Vin Scully said prior to this morning’s first televised Dodger spring training game, “Happy St. Patrick’s Day to you all, especially if it applies.” :)

The Dodgers are wearing their traditional green uniforms and caps to commemorate the day, and have added green bases as well. There’s a long history of celebrating March 17th at Dodgertown, which you can read about on Walter O’Malley’s official website, in the feature “St. Patrick’s Day Parties A Legend At Dodgertown”

I have a Guinness waiting in the fridge for later. This should be an especially tasty treat — it’ll be a celebratory drink, of course, but I also haven’t had a beer since before the bike accident, not wanting to get too interactive with the Vicodin. A beer and the first Dodger game on TV for the year — Brilliant! :)

There was an interesting story over on Slashfood a couple of days ago about how drinking habits in Ireland are changing to incorporate more wines and other fermentations, with a corresponding decline in Guinness sales. “Wine, instead of Guinness, for St. Patrick’s in Ireland”

Guinness sales are booming elsewhere in the world, so nothing to worry about for next St. Patrick’s Day. :)

Sometimes I wonder what someone from the past would think if brought forward and shown some modern interpretation of their time period. How bizarre would it be to see your desperately difficult life transformed into a theme park? Or how would someone from “decent” society years ago view the current glamorization of what were in their period frightening monsters?

Case in point — the current obsession with pirates, which has ebbed and flowed over the years but is currently in another golden age of marketing, thanks to Disney and Johnny Depp.

This morning at physical therapy, a commercial came on the TV for the new Pirate’s Dinner Adventure, which basically looks to be Medieval Times for the swashbuckling set.

There are two locations, one in Buena Park CA and one in Orlando FL.

Pirate’s Dinner Adventure is acclaimed as “the world’s most unique interactive dinner show.” Guests are entertained with an astonishing display of special effects wizardry, aerial artistry, swashbuckling swordplay, dynamic duels and daring-do; a classic story of good vs. evil that offers the perfect blend of action, adventure, comedy and romance; the opportunity to interact in the adventure; and a sumptuous dining experience.

Of course, the first thing you wonder is who it was who did all that acclaiming about how unique the show is (plus what they were on when they said it), but to me the more interesting question would be what some early 19th century landlubber would think if plunked down in the middle of the first course. Also, isn’t it “derring-do”?

I love how they dance around the whole “Disney” thing:

Just a few gangplanks away from Orange County’s famous Caribbean pirates, a new breed of pirate has set sail in Southern California. Bringing local citizens and visitors a high seas adventure the likes of which hasn’t been seen on the West Coast since Privateer Captain Hippolyte Bouchard set fire to Monterey, raided Santa Barbara and pillaged Mission San Juan Capistrano in 1818.

Good old Hippolyte Bouchard.

Will family diners in the future visit song-and-dance adventures with French Underground guerillas and Nazi stormtroopers, poorly interpreted versions of fast food meals, all with holographic special effects?

The Planetary Society Weblog has the amazing story about Pluto making its presence known by occluding a star (sort of like an eclipse) — and for once, it’ll be be visible around here, assuming no light pollution. What does occluding mean? See the quoted section below, but to me the coolest thing is that it’s visible to the naked eye. Pluto occultation coming up March 18:

On March 18, just before 11:00 UTC, tiny Pluto will wander across a background star, an event called an ‘occultation’ by astronomers. The event will be visible and in full darkness from the western half of the United States and from almost all of Mexico. The background star will be blocked from sight for about six minutes. An occultation isn’t just a fun coincidence; there is extremely valuable science that can be performed by watching this….

No word on if this is some sort of Plutonian protest about its demotion. ;)

In related news, the current Celsius1414 poll “What’s your favorite planet?” has Earth just beating out Pluto by a few percentage points. I feel sorry for Mercury, which has no votes — thus putting it behind Planet Hollywood with its one fan. :)

Oliver Taylor has released an updated version of his unique screenwriting bundle for Textmate. Full info at “Screenbundle: Version 3 Released”.

Version 3 of the screenwriting bundle is out. The bundle is all new, it’s got a help file, a preview function, a ‘check for updates’ function, Auto-Complete, an ‘Import from Final Draft’ function that actually works, and a lot more.

Like Brad Choate’s Blogging bundle, the Screenbundle metamorphoses Textmate like a giant Transformer robot into a tool that most text editors can’t even pretend to aspire to — displaying both the app’s flexibility and the potential for all kinds of new directions. (Novel writing bundle anyone?)