Randomness

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

They've found another face on Mars, this time it's a smiley face!

[Asso]

They've found another face on Mars, this time it's a smiley face!

There're strange things under the Sun!

[Chris]

The Science of Kissing

[Asso]

I think there're some truths in your link, judging from the image.

[enterprikayak]

If anyone actually kissed that mouth, they'd get all lipsticky.

[CX]

Link

Twisters kill at least 47 in four Southern states
Rescuers sifting through rubble for survivors; at least 24 dead in Tenn.

NBC News and news services
updated 58 minutes ago

ATKINS, Ark. - Authorities went door-to-door early Wednesday searching for more victims of deadly tornadoes that ripped the roof off a shopping mall and blew apart warehouses as they tore across four states. The Associated Press reported at least 47 fatalities throughout the South.

The dead included 24 people in Tennessee, 13 in Arkansas, and seven in Kentucky, NBC News said. Three were killed in Alabama, emergency officials said. Among the victims were Arkansas parents who died with their 11-year-old in Atkins, about 60 miles northwest of Little Rock.

The family died from trauma when their home “took a direct hit” from the storm, Pope County Coroner Leonard Krout said.

“Neighbors and friends who were there said, ‘There used to be a home there,”’ Krout said.

Storms rips across America's midsection
The twisters, which also slammed Mississippi, were part of a line of storms that raged across the nation’s midsection at the end of the Super Tuesday primaries in several states. As the extent of the damage quickly became clear, candidates including Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee paused in their victory speeches to remember the victims.

Northeast of Nashville, Tenn., a spectacular fire erupted at a natural gas pumping station that authorities said could have been damaged by the storms. An undetermined number of people were reported dead.

Eight students were trapped in a battered dormitory at Union University in Jackson, Tenn., until they were finally freed.

Well after nightfall, would-be rescuers went through shattered homes in Atkins, a town of 3,000 near the Arkansas River. Around them, power lines snaked along streets and a deep-orange pickup truck rested on its side. A navy blue Mustang with a demolished front end was marked with spray paint to show it had been searched.

Outside one damaged home, horses whinnied in the darkness, looking up only when a flashlight reached their eyes. A ranch home stood unscathed across the street from a concrete slab that had supported the house where the family of three died.

Gov. Mike Beebe planned to tour Atkins on Wednesday.

In Memphis, high winds collapsed the roof of a Sears store at a mall. Debris that included bricks and air conditioning units was scattered on the parking lot, where about two dozen vehicles were damaged.

Washed away, but ultimately rescued
A few people north of the mall took shelter under a bridge and were washed away, but they were pulled out of the Wolf River with only scrapes, said Steve Cole of the Memphis Police Department.

In Mississippi, Desoto County Sheriff’s Department Cmdr. Steve Atkinson said a twister shredded warehouses in an industrial park in the city of Southaven, just south of Memphis.

“It ripped the warehouses apart. The best way to describe it is it looks like a bomb went off,” Atkinson said.

The power was knocked out briefly at a Little Rock convention hall that hosted a watch party for Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor seeking the GOP nomination for president.

“While we hope tonight is a time for us to celebrate election results, we are reminded that nothing is as important as the lives of these fellow Arkansans, and our hearts go out to their families,” Huckabee said.

At the W.J. Matthews Civic Center in Atkins, a shelter was empty except for American Red Cross volunteers and a single touch-screen voting machine. The civic center had hosted an election precinct earlier Tuesday. Traffic was snarled on nearby Interstate 40, with tractor-trailers on their sides.

Flames shoot into night air
Officials do not know what started a fire at the Columbia Gulf Natural Gas pumping station near Green Grove, about 40 miles from Nashville. The blaze could be seen in the night sky for miles around, with flames shooting “400, 500 feet in the air,” said Tennessee Emergency Management spokesman Donnie Smith.

The couple killed with their adult daughter were in their mobile home near Greenville in western Kentucky when a tornado went through their trailer park.

On Jan. 8, tornadoes were reported in Arkansas, Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma and Wisconsin. Two died in the Missouri storms.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

I saw pookha on last night when this was going on, so she's probably alright, but all the same I hope nothing has happened to her.

[Asso]

I saw the news from US.
I hope with you.

[justTripn]

I talked to an astronaut today, Jay Apt, while trying to recruit speakers to speak at our astronomy club!

From his website:

He was selected as a NASA Astronaut in 1985, has spent more than 35 days in space on four Space Shuttle missions, and has performed two space walks (one an emergency rescue of a satellite). He has been to the Russian space station Mir, and is the recipient of NASA’s highest medal.

He, he . . . fun!

[Reanok]

Our weather has been totally insane people have been stuck in their homes because of the snow storms. The piles of snow are so high in the streets they look like hills you feel like you're driving through a tunnel it's so high on both sides of the street you can't see oncoming traffic and the streets are really narrow. And when it comes to seeing houses you can only see the roofs and nothing else. I wish I had a picture to post to show just how high it really is it's unbeliveable!

[Linda]

I hear you Reanok! And can add some embellishments. My car heater fan needs fixing, and with the below zero weather, the inside of the windows frost up so bad that I can't see, and can't keep them clean. It is dangerous to drive. People are fighting a loosing battle with sidewalk snow. It is now packed down into ice and almost impossible to remove. That means it takes twenty minutes (usually takes five) for me to walk the four blocks to the bus stop at 6:00 am to catch the bus to go to work. I am ICE HOBBLED. I count my progress in inches with each precarious step. I look like a ninety-five year old shuffling along. Some people walk in the middle of the street, which isn't much better. And you are taking your life in your hands because the SUV's won't slow down for nothing. So it gives me satisfaction to see more of them marooned in snow banks than vehicles with supposedly poorer traction on the roads.

[enterprikayak]

Yipes.

It's um, 46F here.

I guess... I guess I don't really have anything to add to this whole "ice hobbled" discussion.

Except deepest sympathies.

[Bookworm]

Our weather is insane too we don't have any snow. It's February it should be snowing, but it's warm and rainig I want snow. I need snow it's so dark here without snow and I can't go skiing and this little over zero weather is annoying.

But I shouldn't be complaining about our weather. I can't even imagine what it's like to have storms like that. It sounds really horrible.

I talked to an astronaut today, Jay Apt, while trying to recruit speakers to speak at our astronomy club!

That sounds really cool.

I still sometimes dream about being an astronaut. My favorite make-believe when I was little was to pretend a writing desk was a space ship and that me and my best friend were astronauts flying it.

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

I still sometimes dream about being an astronaut. My favorite make-believe when I was little was to pretend a writing desk was a space ship and that me and my best friend were astronauts flying it.

Heh! As a kid in kindergarten I made a spaceship for myself out of cardboard that we painted. I could just manage squeeze into that one. That's when we were not constructing a miniature Enterprise for our Star Trek Mego action figures.

[enterprikayak]

If I hadn't married Priso at 19 my plan was to enter the *eep* armed forces in order to train to become an astronaut.

[CX]

I always intended to be an aerospace engineer, but lately I'm not sure anymore. Unfortunately it's way too late to be doing any soul-searching...