Cleaning out the inbox

The cleaning of the inbox continues with a few notes from the sports world and outside of it as well.

Voyager 2 has sent its first interstellar space message to Earth after crossing the heliosphere as the second man-made object to do after its twin craft Voyager 1 did so in 2013.
Voyager 2 is sending far more detailed reports than Voyager 1 since some of the instruments used to measure particle charges on Voyager 1 had broken way back in 1980.
The Voyagers are expected to operate until the mid-2020s when they run out of power and will thereafter float through space.

WUSA sends word of the departure of "Bei Bei", a four-year-old panda from the National Zoo and will be returning to China.
Part of the National Zoo's agreement with the Chinese Wildlife Conservation Agency that allows panda bears to stay at the zoo stipulates that any baby pandas born at the zoo (in captivity) will be returned to China at the age of four, which "Bei Bei" has now reached.

The Athletic takes a trip to a small town in Nebraska to check out a college football prospect that is waiting for a potential offer from the Cornhuskers.
Ty Hahn hails from the small town of Johnson with a population of 300 and with a high school so small, Johnson plays eight-man football rather than the conventional eleven.
Hahn currently holds a scholarship offer from neighboring Wyoming but has not been offered by the home state Huskers, although Nebraska has not ruled out offering Hahn before the signing deadline.
The article is just as much about small-town Nebraska life than it is about Hahn, so it's not just a football story.

And from Golf Channel, here is one story that has to make you feel good.
Brandon Matthews is playing in the third hole of extra play for the Argentina Open championship.
Now, that's fine, but the real prize is an automatic entry for the champion into next year's British Open.
Matthews' opponent in the playoff has just drilled a thirty-foot putt for a birdie which forced Matthews to make an eight-footer for a birdie and continue to a fourth playoff hole.
Matthews draws his putter back and as he does, someone screamed in the background, which caused Matthews to clutch a bit and miss the putt.
Matthews loses the tournament and automatic trip to the British Open, but the story doesn't end there as Matthews hits the locker room and is told what happens.
I won't spoil it for you, but if Brandon Matthews ever makes the major tours, he'll be an easy player to root for...

Wrapping up with a passing that is the only thing remaining for now in the inbox, as Bernard Slade passed away at the age of 89.
Slade was a screenwriter and playwright that created television shows The Flying Nun, The Partridge Family, and Bridget Loves Bernie, which to this day is the only program to be rated in the top five in the Nielsen ratings and not be renewed for the following season.
Slade also wrote Same Time Next Year, which won both Tony Awards (for Broadway) and Academy Award (for the film adaptation) for Slade's writing.
The film, which starred Alan Alda and Ellen Burstyn (who also starred on the Broadway version) is still occasionally shown on television.

Cleaning out the inbox-Non-Sports Edition

Photo Credit: NASA

As promised, we now move to the inbox cleaning from the non-sports perspective with a handful of nuggets of interest.

NASA has added a wrinkle in their never-ending attempts to keep the now 42-year-old Voyager's information sending transmissions running for as long as possible and the latest is firing thrusters that haven't been used in decades to keep their antennas pointed at Earth.
The main thrusters have degraded over the years and the thrusters being used currently can keep those antennas pointed in the right spot and keep all of this information from "where no man has gone before" to continue to be gathered for reference.

The Guardian speaks with Petula Clark, who still tours and records at soon to be 87 years of age about her career.
Clark speaks of her child acting career during World War II, her various hits, her marriage, Harry Belafonte and their famous interaction during her NBC special, Elvis Presley, Karen Carpenter and even more.
As a long time fan of Ms.Clark's music, I found it very interesting and learned a bit more about Clark, who will be starring in London as Mary Poppins in the theatre soon, which at 87 is downright stunning when you consider the energy that will take!

Parade talks to Poppy Montgomery about her new show "Reef Break" on ABC among other topics.
I always liked "Without a Trace", which Montgomery was a supporting star of the show, but her character wasn't one of my favorites.
However, Reef Break has been reviewed as a lighter fun show with more of a 60s/70s detective show feel than the grittier shows of today and it looked interesting.
I haven't watched Reef Break yet, but I'm saving them for a binge-watch after baseball season, when I don't have as much to do.

Atlas Obscura wraps this edition with three different links.
The first discusses the "fallen astronaut" sculpture that was left on the moon by the Apollo 15 crew.
The figure salutes the astronauts from both the United States and the Soviet Union that died in the race to the moon and lies alongside a plaque that lists all the names of the fallen.

The second looks at the scientific world that wants to study Okjokull, a glacier near Iceland that is almost nearly devoid of ice after warming.
Recently, a plaque was left on a stone on Okjokull that lists that this was once the site of a glacier, and in case someone finds it in the future that may not know what glaciers are, what they were composed of, how many existed and how they may have been eliminated.

The final note mentions the Buzludzha Memorial House, which was built by the then communist government of Bulgaria in 1981, only to be abandoned nine years later with the fall of communism in Bulgaria.
Located at the top of a peak in the Balkan mountains, Buzludzha was a meeting place for the Bulgarian leaders but has not been maintained since 1990.
The building has been looked at for damage and preservation experts state that work needs to be done in preferably the next five years or no more than the next ten or the building will not remain salvageable.

The inbox is close to being spic and span for a while with only another passings post to finish the job.
I still have a road trip to work on, so count things to keep flowing along for a while!

Cleaning out the inbox

Another inbox cleaning and we'll start with this tremendous article from Scientific American on the 40th anniversary of the Voyager project.
The recent film "The Farthest" from PBS on Voyager was so good and I plan on a future post just discussing the film.



One of the "Moon Trees" were recently destroyed in Florida by Hurricane Irma.
One of the experiments on Apollo 14 was taking several different tree seeds into space and then planting them upon return to see if the trip affected the seeds ability to germinate.
Unfortunately, the seed packs burst when going through decontamination and were mixed together.
No one knew if they would be able to germinate at all, but after they did, many places around the country were given one of the trees including the White House.
Irma's roll through Florida took out the NASA visitor's center tree (a Sycamore).
No word on if a replacement could be developed from another tree via a cutting as of now.
The Moon Tree link has a list of the location of every Moon Tree in the country..,

More Irma destruction as the New York Times writes of many of the nests of Sea Turtles being devastated by Irma.
This is quite a shot as Sea Turtles take 25 to 30 years to get to the reproductive age, so that takes a lot of surviving to get to that point.
Not to mention that a turtle clutch of 100 eggs will see just one hatchling make it to adulthood and you can see how hard of a hit that this destruction of nests might be...

The Guardian writes of the catch of a translucent lobster in Maine.
A translucent lobster is clear, although in this case, the lobster organs cannot be seen, so it's more of an off-white.
The Maine Coast Fisherman's Association believes that the lobster is considered "leucistic", which means it has lost some of its pigment, but not all of it.
I first heard this term when I had reptiles, so it wasn't unfamiliar to me, but I was surprised to hear it used with a lobster!

I've been a fan of Tervis Tumblers for quite a few years now.
I have almost all of the teams that I root for and you read about here (Don't have a Xavier yet) and I love the product.
There are Tervis stores around the country (although none that I've ever seen) and now Tervis starting to give each store a machine that people can make their own Tervis as written in the Tampa Bay Business Journal.
The "Fun Fuser" only takes a few seconds to take the inside cup and weld to the outside cup, but buyers can design their own wrap or logo for inside the cup to personalize it.