NASA bombing moon?

I heard in the news that NASA is planning to bomb the moon in an effort to find water.

What happens if angry moonies retaliate and bomb the earth?

Which raises another matter: what do you call possible inhabitants of the moon? The "moonies" I mentioned tends to refer to followers of Sun Myung Moon, or members of the Unification Church. Countries that end with the letter "n" and their inhabitants have various extensions or modifications to describe their inhabitants: Japan - Japanese, Iran - Iranians, Spain - Spaniards. So, Moonese, Moonians or Moniards? Perhaps we need to use a derivation of "Lune", after all, we have the lunar landscape. Would that make them "Lunies"?

This reminded me of an anomaly that's puzzled me for some time (although I haven't lost any sleep over it): what do you call people from the USA?

They call themselves Americans, but they might as well call themselves earthlings, because they're not the only Americans! Canadians, Mexicans, Peruvians, etc are Americans too.

So what do we call them? Usans? Usanasians? Usanites? Usanese?

Loopy Loos

What is it with modern loos? We just replaced our toilet and cistern, and we had a couple of cisterns replaced at work. They've all now got two flush buttons, for a small flush and a large flush (number ones and number twos I assume).

The thing is that I end up having to flush two or three times or else I leave "floaties" for the next user to enjoy :-) Hardly saving water now, is it?

And the other thing is these new bowls - it seems that the way they're designed they are especially prone to "stickies". This means getting out the brush and flushing again, using more water.

And while I'm in there, what's with the paper? It's getting thinner and thinner. What's the point? All it achieves is the paper tearing where you don't want it to, and, worst of all, your finger goes through the paper, and I'll let you imagine the rest.

If the Tv ads are anything to go by, loo paper is for puppies, ducklings, chickies, padding your bra and removing makeup. I've got news for you loo paper manufacturers: it's actually for wiping your bum! So how about some paper that does the job instead of looking good?

Mururoa Sun

Back in the early seventies I saw the sky light up, but no-one else ever said they saw it too. I watched the news and read the paper, but no mention anywhere of what this could have been. Until four days later, when a tiny notice in the New Zealand Herald confirmed another nuclear bomb test in Mururoa Atoll, the day and time of which, when converted to New Zealand time, coincided exactly with my flash.

I saw the flash in Tokoroa, some 4667.5km away from the Atoll (according to "Distance Calculator - How Far Is It?". I remember it was orange in colour and lit up the eastern third of the sky. It lasted about one or two seconds.

I can't recall exactly the date it happened, but I'll keep working towards solving this. At this stage I have worked out that it was at 7pm on a Sunday in an early seventies winter.

The reason I know it was at 7pm on a Sunday is that I was in the car with my family on our way to church, and we were running late for seven o'clock mass. We were travelling east down Balmoral Drive when the sky lit up for just a brief moment. The moment was too short for everyone in the car to see it once I drew their attention to it.

The reason I know it was in a winter month is that it was dark at the time, so it must have been around the shortest day, 21 June, give or take a month or so.

When I discovered the cause of the flash, it frightened me. To be able to observe this "test" from such a distance made me wonder what damage this might have caused, closer by through the shock and heat, and further away through radiation and whatever else a nuclear bomb produces.

To put it in perspective, the distance from Los Angeles to New York is less than 4000km, and the distance from London to Moscow is only 2500km.

From "Nuclear Explosions" website, atmospheric nuclear tests were conducted on the following dates and times (I don't know if these are local times or otherwise):

05 JUN 1971 19:15:00 (sat)
12 JUN 1971 19:14:57 (sat)
04 JUL 1971 21:30:00 (sun)
08 AUG 1971 18:30:00 (sun)
14 AUG 1971 19:00:00 (sat)
25 JUN 1972 19:00:00 (sun)
30 JUN 1972 18:30:00 (fri)
29 JUL 1972 18:40:00 (sat)
21 JUL 1973 18:00:00 (sat)
28 JUL 1973 23:03:00 (sat)
18 AUG 1973 18:15:00 (sat)
24 AUG 1973 18:00:00 (fri)
28 AUG 1973 18:30:00 (tue)
16 JUN 1974 17:30:00 (sun)
07 JUL 1974 23:15:00 (sun)
17 JUL 1974 17:00:00 (wed)
26 JUL 1974 17:30:00 (fri)
15 AUG 1974 :30:00 (thu)
25 AUG 1974 23:45:00 (sun)
14 SEP 1974 23:30:00 (sat)

I've added the day of the week in brackets - if these are local times, then it would have been saturday there (other side of international dateline)(highlighed above). And I would also expect the time to be 8pm or so. So I don't know which one of these I observed, as none of them fit the day/time requirements exactly.

And the world keeps turning....

Life throws some interesting things at us from time to time: back in the 50's and 60's, my dad was a hairdresser in the smallish town of Rheden, Netherlands. We had a salon and tobacconist shop attached to our house, some distance from the main shopping centre. Also, from 1993 to 2005 Vicki and I ran Waiata Records, a music shop (CDs, DVDs, etc.) in Tokoroa. I now discover that the old shop in Holland is now a music shop, and at the other end of the rather short street there's now a hairdresser! See http://rheden.allewinkels.net/winkels/gamewebwinkel-rheden.html

GO FIGURE!

(thank you Willy for the photo)