That's the estimated age of the dinosaur fossile bought at an auction in New York, according to the new owner.

More than 60 million years after the triceratops dinosaur roamed what is now Montana, its horn went to 6-year-old Eamon Rush for $550 at a Park Avenue auction.

Although the tip of Eamon's horn was rebuilt by a human hand, he was thrilled with his purchase. The Manhattan boy planned to bring home the dinosaur horn for the archaeology club he started with a classmate.

It was a bargain for Lot 69, offered at an estimated value of $1,500 to $2,000 by Guernsey's at its "Dinosaurs & Other Prehistoric Creatures" sale.

On Thursday afternoon, Eamon showed up on Park Avenue in a bright tie-dyed top, so when he shot up with his paddle to signal his bid, everyone noticed. And the adults held back higher bids so the 6-year-old could win.

Posted by: Ted at 11:40 AM | category: SciTech
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President Bush wants to return to the moon and put a man on Mars. But scientist Bradley C. Edwards has an idea that's really out of this world: an elevator that climbs 62,000 miles into space.

Edwards thinks an initial version could be operating in 15 years, a year earlier than Bush's 2020 timetable for a return to the moon. He pegs the cost at $10 billion, a pittance compared with other space endeavors.

"It's not new physics — nothing new has to be discovered, nothing new has to be invented from scratch," he says. "If there are delays in budget or delays in whatever, it could stretch, but 15 years is a realistic estimate for when we could have one up."

Posted by: Ted at 07:44 AM | category: SciTech
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Paleontologists have announced the discovery of a previously unknown species of whale that lived 14 million years ago in a sea that covered what is now eastern Virginia.

The whale is the oldest known member, by at least 3 million years, of a group that today includes the giant blue and fin whales, scientists said. It was several feet longer than any other whale in its time, said Alton Dooley, a museum paleontologist.

The discovery suggests that almost-modern-looking whales lived considerably further back in time than scientists realized.

Posted by: Ted at 08:19 AM | category: SciTech
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Code Blue for Mr. Ashcroft! Yet another group of pesky civilians display a little technological prowess, so it's time to warm up the black helicopters and suppress a few hobbyists in the name of Homeland Security.

Would you believe a flying radio-controlled scale model of the B-52? This incredible beastie weighs 300lbs and is powered by 8 tiny turbines.

There are photos and take-off & flyby video clips here, and golly gee, here's a link to the British manufacturer of those nifty little hobby turbine engines.

Kudos to Bill S, who pointed this out on one of my rocketry email lists.

Posted by: Ted at 05:20 AM | category: SciTech
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We have the Dish Network in our house instead of cable. Recently, they've added the Sirius Satellite Radio channels to the lineup. Their 70's channel is exactly that - everything 70's. So you hear Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder, mixed in with the BeeGee's and Donna Summer, mixed in with Ted Nugent and the Doobie Brothers. I like it much better than the mix offered on the old channels, which had 70's Soul and 70's Rock and 70's Pop and...

There are 100 channels, and several of them are pretty specialized, but so far I'm giving this a thumbs up. Doesn't hurt that it's included in our basic package either.

Posted by: Ted at 05:37 AM | category: SciTech
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Over at Transterrestrial Musings, Andrew Case talks about building cities on the oceans, and some serious plans to make seasteading a reality. This is definitely worth checking out, with plenty of interesting links to follow.

Absurd idea to start your own country, you say? You might want to tell the residents of the Principality of Sealand, I think they'd disagree.

Posted by: Ted at 09:57 AM | category: SciTech
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Hoping to learn more about undersea volcanoes, scientists sent a camera-equipped submarine down to take a look. They got more than they bargained for, witnessing a deep-sea eruption.

Posted by: Ted at 05:16 PM | category: SciTech
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I asked about PDAÂ’s back in this post, and got plenty of good advice and ideas in the comments. Thanks to everyone who responded.

I wound up getting an iPAQ Pocket PC, model 1945, and so far I love it!!! Originally developed by Compaq, now the iPAQ’s fly under the Hewlett-Packard banner (my parents both retired from HP – Yay!). This is a true PC, shrunk down to pocket size.

The 1900 series of iPAQÂ’s are the low-end of the line, which doesnÂ’t mean a damn thing when you look at the features built in. The processor is as fast as the two year old PC on my desk, and thereÂ’s as much on-board RAM as my PC too. The iPAQÂ’s run the Windows CE operating system, which was a positive thing in my eyes. They have MSWord and Excel built in, so I donÂ’t have to convert files to and from a proprietary format like I would have had to if I'd have gotten a Palm. It also has Internet Explorer, Outlook and PowerPoint built in. The color screen is small, but clear and bright and sharp. It's also oriented in portrait mode rather than landscape, so some programs rearrange things to make better use of the space.

Besides the PC-style software, there's a very nice Contact List function, which is like a super address book, the ability to build to-do lists - called Task Lists - including setting alarms to remind you before tasks are due. Appointments and calendars are easy to set up and use, and you can check your schedule by the day, week, or month, plus there's a built-in perpetual calendar.

And that's not all. The "notes" function reads your scribbles to jot quick notes or draw a diagram, and a simple one-button voice recorder lets you save verbal messages as .wav files.

Plus - yep, there's more! - the 1945 has built-in bluetooth wireless technology. I'm not entirely up to speed on bluetooth yet, but it's similar to WiFi and allows you to automatically connect to other bluetooth devices, like a cell phone, to access the internet, email or another PC.

A single expansion slot is available for Secure Disk media, and besides memory cards (generally costing a little less than fifty cents per MB), there are many other attachments such as true WiFi cards, digital cameras, GPS modules, etc. Some of the other nifty things available are "real" keyboards and even solar panels that will power your iPAQ if you're working outside.

Input can be done by either tapping out on a little virtual keyboard on the screen (which isn't as horrible as I thought it might be), or there is handwriting recognition software already installed. The best option, especially if you have a lot of input to do, is to type it into your desktop PC and then transfer it to the iPAQ.

The iPAQs are designed to be used with your desktop PC as a team. By hooking up the included USB cable, you can synchronize the two, which will update both PCs with the most recent versions of data from each. Battery life is supposed to be about four hours of actual use, but I haven't come close to that because at home and work I keep it plugged in to the AC converter (included), which also keeps the battery charged.

I picked up a copy of "iPAQ for Dummies", which I highly recommend. It's not all applicable for my situation, and a lot of it is stuff I'd already figured out on my own, but it's full of simple explanations and suggestions for ways to get the most out of the iPAQ.

I've discovered several resources online for downloadable programs. There's an awful lot of freeware and shareware, and even professional titles range from a few bucks up to about thirty dollars. The iPAQ has an active user community on the 'net, with forums where you can post questions and receive help quickly. An example of the freeware available are programs that allow you to turn your iPAQ into a programmable universal remote. Yes, it'll work on TV's and VCR's, but also on slide show projectors and presentation media controllers.

One of the freeware programs I've loaded onto my iPAQ is the eBook Reader from Microsoft. I've never tried eBooks before, but to my surprise I really like the implementation. The text is far more readable than I anticipated, and there are a few really good libraries of free eBooks to download, besides the popular bestsellers and such you can purchase from Amazon (among others). You can add annotations and bookmarks and attach notes, kinda like writing in the margins as you read. It's pretty neat.

So what am I reading? A lot of the free volumes are classic literature, like Shakespeare. I've read some Edgar Allen Poe, am currently enjoying Turn of the Screw by Henry James, and I have Percival Lowell's Mars on deck. In the future there will be some Sherlock Holmes, John Carter of Mars and Tarzan, and others less mysterious and adventerous. I'll find the links (they're on my home PC) and post them in the near future for anyone interested.

Two warnings about these electronic beasties. First, you'll only get out of them what you put into them. If you make it a point to use it consistantly, then it'll be more useful to you when you really need it. Which means you have to remember to have it with you. It'll take some time to get all your information entered and organized the way you want it, but it's worth the effort. This is no different than using a paper-based system like the Geodex or Dayrunner.

Second, buying the iPAQ is only the beginning of the expenses. You'll almost immediately want to buy a case for yours, to protect it. There are thin plastic overlays for the screen, to keep you from scratching it up as you tap (same as a mouse click on a PC) and write on it with the stylus. I haven't needed to yet, but they sell spare stylus in multipacks, so apparently they break or get lost easily. And of course, there are the memory cards. The cards are your 'hard drives', because everything on the iPAQ resides in memory. I expect that I'll eventually get a few memory cards, one for work-related stuff, one for personal stuff (including eBooks and rocketry files, and maybe one dedicated to music files so I can use the iPAQ like an iPod.

I didn't mention games at all, because I'm not a big computer game player. The iPAQ comes with Jawbreaker and Solitaire, and versions of Minesweeper, Tetris, and almost everything else under the sun are available for download. The screen is small but sharp and clear, so I expect game play to be acceptable.

I'm pretty level-headed when it comes to new technology, I really have to be able to justify it to myself before getting a new toy. If you have the need for one of these, I highly recommend it. If you don't have the need, you'd probably find something for it to do, because it's that versitile.

Posted by: Ted at 05:51 AM | category: SciTech
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