On a cloud of sight I drift in the night

I'm psyched enough to cheer out loud and I'll pretend all my friends haven't heard already: You'll never in a million billion hillion kajillion (British glautillion) years guess who's licensed the SpaceShipOne technology for private commercial suborbital spaceflights, with plans to start operational flights in 2007. Yes, Richard Branson, one of the estimated eighteen millionaires that people actually like, is starting Virgin Galactic, is sponsoring Scaled Composite's SpaceShipOne X-Prize try set for tomorrow and 4 October (ooh!), and plans to start building the VSS Enterprise in 2005.

(Star Trek: First Contact was an aggressively stupid movie even by the low standards of time-travel movies, but the music was good.)

I'm off to the Mid-Autumn Festival at Chinese Garden. Last year the lantern festival had many Hello Kitty themed scenes from Chinese mythology. What compares to Hello Kitty, Mimi, and that creepy penguin as the Seven Gods of Prosperity?

Trivia: Only the first four hours of the Gemini VII flight had specifically scheduled tasks; the rest were done as time and priorities of the day permitted. Source: On The Shoulders of Titans: A History of Project Gemini, Barton C. Hacker and James M. Grimwood. NASA SP-4203.

Currently Reading: Chulo: A Year Among The Coatimundis, Bil Gilbert.