Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

It's nice when the universe meets your needs without you having to ask. I was feeling extremely down most of the day, and so was pleased to turn on the TV and find one of my favourite comfort movies: Steve Martin's wonderful Roxanne.

And it was just the start of my favourite scene, the bar insults - where Steve Martin's Cyrano de Bergerac character C.D. Bales responds to a poorly chosen insult to his nose by showing his opponent just what a well crafted insult can be, with a long list of carefully chosen bon mots about his own most prominent feature...

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New Scientist is reporting that oxygen and nitrogen have been spotted evaporating from an extra solar planet.

It's atomic oxygen - so not a sign of life - but still, it's an interesting finding and a discovery that could only have been made with the Hubble.

"Lecavelier cautions that the strength of the signal for carbon and oxygen was "very difficult to extract from observations" and hopes further studies will confirm the result with Hubble, the only telescope able to observe the necessary UV wavelengths."