Cheese, Pirates, sh** in space, etc

via micc.org(no, that's not TNH. I don't know who this lady is...)

1.via Teresa Nielsen Haden says*:

“Somebody ought to Do Something about encouraging new writers, only please don’t make me read that stuff myself.”


2."things to do with cheese(UK)"

3.Tuedsay, Sep 19th: a kind of arrgh! all over the world; thanks to saurabh

4.HOUSTON — It's a junkyard out there

...and sometimes astronauts accidentally contribute to the litter. In 1965, the first American spacewalker, Ed White, lost a spare glove when he went outside for the first time. From that time on, astronauts have accidentally added some of the more unusual items to the 100,000 pieces of space trash that circle Earth.

Last July, spacewalker Piers Sellers sheepishly reported that he lost a spatula. Nicknamed "spatsat" by space junk watchers, it returns to Earth in a fireball early next month.

"It's one of these problems that is growing in seriousness," said William Ailor, director of the Center for Orbital and Re-entry Debris Studies at the Aerospace Corp. in Los Angeles. "It's really the small things that will get you."

Using radar and telescope sensors, NASA and the Air Force track objects bigger than about 4 inches. The official "box score" of that space debris as of Thursday was 9,925. But the 90,000 objects smaller than that can be as dangerous, zipping around Earth at more than 15,000 mph. They are just harder to track.

NASA has even seen debris hits of dried-up urine, toothpaste, and shaving cream _ all from space shuttle waste dumps _ in an experiment placed outside of the Russian space station Mir, said officials at the NASA orbital debris program lab. An Indonesian satellite was struck by urine and fecal matter. Now NASA doesn't dump human waste outside much anymore.

*post ammended slightly for clarity-JV