Friday!

Some stuff…

These first pictures from Saturn’s moon Titan are so cool!

Plus, a CNN retrospect on the 1st African-American woman astronaut, Dr. Mae Jemison. She notes:

Growing up in Chicago, Jemison looked at the “Star Trek” character Lt. Uhura and saw her future.

“What was really great about ‘Star Trek’ when I was growing up as a little girl is not only did they have Lt. Uhura played by Nichelle Nichols as a technical officer — she was African,” said Jemison, who was born in Decatur, Alabama.

“At the same time, they had this crew that was composed of people from all around the world and they were working together to learn more about the universe,” she said. “So that helped to fuel my whole idea that I could be involved in space exploration as well as in the sciences.”

And, you got to admire a scientist who got to make a little appearance in “Star Trek: The Next Generation” (like Stephen Hawking); I mean, Dr. Jemison does cool stuff since her NASA days, and:

She has considered a future in politics, has been awarded honors and decorations and holds multiple honorary doctorates. But she is still tickled about appearing in an episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

“It was called ‘Second Chances,'” she said. “It was all about the fact that our fantasies lead our realities and our realities lead our fantasies and it comes full circle again.”

“‘Star Trek’ was one of our best fantasies,” she said, then added with a laugh, “And besides, I got to meet Worf (Michael Dorn, who plays the Klingon head of security.)”

Slate.com’s Chris Suellentrop says we ought to hope that George W. Bush is like Ronald Reagan – conservative in the first term; a lot looser in the second term. Wishful thinking, but that’s always a nice thing.

NY Times profiles Carol Bellamy, first (I think only) woman elected as President of NYC Council, and currently dealing with her role as director of UNICEF. I liked how her backstory gets told – that she balanced her Wall Street lawyer career, investment banking with public service. She’s been inspiring to watch and read about.

Happy Weekend…

Thursday into Friday

Thank heavens Friday’s coming.

To the spammers named “Online Poker,” “Gambling,” “Poker,” and like folk – while your some of your comments appear complimentary (I mean, sure, thanks for calling this a “super duper site” and all that), you guys are damn annoying. Please go away. Well, I guess you guys don’t actually read the content or you’d know how you’re not appreciated. Still, please go away. End of rant.

This ad where Ex-Presidents Bush the Elder and Clinton are encouraging Americans to donate to reputable non-profits to help the South Asian tsunami victims … that is a strange ad. Feels awkward. Like watching the “X-Presidents” cartoon from “Saturday Night Live.” Like weird. Oh well.

This news story that Prince Harry of Britain wore a Nazi swastika at a costume party — nutty story. What is with Harry? He apologized for his poor judgment – but this is more than poor judgment; this is just utterly slow-witted. I’m not suprised that Harry’s dad, Prince Charles, is livid and is insisting that Harry visit Auschwitz to understand the gravity of WWII (umm, plus doesn’t Harry understand even his family’s role in WWII – how his grandfather Prince Philip served in the war; that even his grandmother Queen Elizabeth had to put on a uniform; and they had to deal with his misguided German relatives; how his great-grandfather, King George, had to deal with a bombed London, maintain British morale, and stiff-upper lip alongside Winston Churchill against the Nazis? Oh, and yeah, at least 6 million people were exterminated). No wonder a former British government official is debating that maybe Harry shouldn’t be attending Sandhurst, the elite military higher education institution. The older brother William apparently can’t avoid blame either, since he supposedly helped Harry pick this idiotic costume. Neither are children anymore; get some brain cells already.

Interesting article about the guy who invented Cheez Doodles, Morrie Yohai; Newsday’s Sylvia Carter notes:

[Yohai] the snackmeister speaks humbly of having merely “developed” Cheez Doodles. Even he will confess, however, to having thought to call them Doodles.

Yohai includes his business partners, scrupulously using the pronoun “we,” when he tells the Cheez Doodle saga.

Becoming as modesty is, in this case it may be unwarranted. There are perhaps millions of people in the world who consider Cheez Doodles the ideal snack food. People in search of healthful food do not generally gorge themselves on Doodles (well, perhaps in secret they do), but this is one snack that since its debut in the 1950s has always been baked, not fried. An argument could even be made that because the snacks are “puffed,” as the bag says, they consist in large part of air. Therefore, how bad could they be? [….]

Yohai told me that they were discovered, invented, developed or whatever word you choose to use, at the Old London Melba Toast factory in the Bronx, which also made the Cheese Waffie (now called Waffle), popcorn, caramel popcorn and other snacks. “We were looking for another snack item,” he said. “We were fooling around and found out that there was a machine that extruded cornmeal [in a long string] and it almost popped like popcorn.”

Yohai and his partners thought of chopping the stuff into pieces the size of a child’s finger and coating it with cheese. “We wanted to make it as healthy as possible, so it was baked, not fried.”

One day, as they sat around a table tasting different kinds of cheese on the snacks, the name Doodle occurred to him. “They looked more like a doodle,” he said, back when they were thin.

[….]

Wise, which is part of Borden, now manufactures Doodles. Yohai went on to become group vice president in charge of snacks for Borden, which also made Cracker Jack and Drake’s Cakes. His duties included sitting around a conference table with other high-ranking executives and choosing the toys for boxes of Cracker Jack.

After leaving the company, Yohai taught marketing at the New York Institute of Technology and became associate dean of the school of management. “The one thing that would get the students’ attention was Cheez Doodles,” he said.

Cool. Anyway, have a good Friday.