They will look for proof that there once was water on Mars, which would mean it is possible that the planet harboured life, perhaps in its distant past.

There is intriguing evidence that water once flowed freely on Mars. Last year, the Odyssey spacecraft circling the planet found evidence that there may be life just under the dusty surface of the planet at higher latitudes.

Unfortunately, the two rovers won't be following up on those clues. The days are shorter at higher latitudes and the rovers are powered, in part, by solar energy.

Designed to work like robotic field geologists, one is to investigate a crater that looks as if it was once a lake, and the other is to land near an outcrop of deposits of an iron-oxide mineral compound usually formed in the presence of water.

The Mars teams have learned the hard way that getting even robotic emissaries, much less human ones, safely to the planet remains a perilous and unforgiving task.

Earlier this month, Japanese scientists gave up on their first mission to Mars, making it the first casualty of the current armada. The Nozomi ("Hope"), launched in 1998, struggled with persistent technical problems that had left it years behind schedule, low on fuel and with a crippled heating system. It was to study Mars from orbit.

"Mars has been a most daunting destination," said NASA's chief space scientist, Edward Weiler, one of several scientists who have taken to referring to Mars as the "death planet." He noted that two of every three Earth missions to the planet have failed. Only three previous attempts to land on the surface -- the two U.S. Viking craft of the 1970s and the U.S. Pathfinder in 1997 -- have succeeded.

The missions are timed to take advantage of favorable planetary alignments that occur about every two years, providing an opportunity to send more mass with less boost. This year's lineup was slightly better than usual, bringing the two worlds to their closest approach in almost 60,000 years -- about 35 million miles apart.

Mars is now almost 100 million miles away, and the spacecraft will have traveled about 300 million miles to get there.

Winds of Change: Because you don't have to believe in Christmas to believe in the Christmas spirit, Carnival of the Vanities today is a special edition, which links to the best of the season on the Internet.

Posted by abnu on Wednesday, December 24, 2003 @ 9:02 AM [ + ]

Dreaming of a White Christmas: We're having an Orange Christmas this year, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. This means we should go about our traditional Christmas shopping, travelling and gathering with family in secure undisclosed locations. We should be vigilant and get ready. Whilst Santa is making a list and checking it twice this Christmas, parents and their children should:

1. MAKE A KIT of emergency supplies;
2. MAKE A PLAN of what you will do in an emergency; and
3. BE INFORMED of what might happen.

Trouble is nobody seems to know what might happen. The Christian Science Monitor clarifies the confusion:

"Here's the difficulty: One color code is trying to give us too much information," says Randall Larsen, a senior fellow at the ANSER Institute for Homeland Security in northern Virginia. "If we go from yellow to orange, the threat of an attack is higher. But is that the threat of a small car bomb or a nuclear weapon? I'm going to worry about one much more than the other."

In reality, says Mr. Larsen, we live in a two-color world, yellow and orange. Code Red will mean an attack is under way, and the two lower levels are politically infeasible. All of which leads to speculation that the alert system is, in part, a means by which the government can protect itself from public criticism in the event of another attack.

Colors might be evocative of the various states of alert but, without words and other memorable brand images, it's hard for many people, especially small children and the president, to visualize and remember the current threat level. To make sense of all this, Alan, who is a geek and proud of it, has put together an excellent naming and branding tool for the Homeland Security Advisory System. Those who want their own websites to be informed automatically of the current level of threat advisory can find the code here.

For greater clarity, and so as not to frighten the kiddies, we're calling the current threat level ERNIE. But, what is that meant to communicate to us this Christmastime? In the words of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary:

Finally - no matter your faith or culture - now is the time of year for important celebrations. So, I encourage you to continue with your holiday plans. Gather with your family and friends and enjoy the spirit of this season. There is no doubt that we have a lot to be thankful for - not the least of which the opportunity to live in the greatest country in the world. It is a country that will not be bent by terror. It is a country that will not be broken by fear. But instead, we are a country blessed with a population marked by goodwill and great resolve. We will show the terrorists both this holiday season - goodwill toward our fellow men, readiness and resolve to protect our families and our freedom.

...and continue dreaming of a white Christmas.

Posted by abnu on Tuesday, December 23, 2003 @ 12:10 AM [ + ]

Balls to Buckminster Fuller: As those of you who have followed the link in abnu's post below will know, BF is best known for inventing the geodesic dome - a structure that (amazingly) gets proportionately lighter and stronger the bigger it is (it's the shape of that big round dome at Epcot amongst other things)


You may also know that Carbon has long been known to have two different crystalline forms (allotropes) - both diamond and graphite are pure carbon. However, in 1985 a third form of pure carbon with an entirely different crystalline structure was discovered. It consists of 60 carbon atoms arranged in what looks exactly like a geodesic dome structure. So what has this third allotrope been christened? Of course....Buckminsterfullerene.


Now, 'Buckminsterfullerene' is a bit of a mouthful, so in the scientific community this form of carbon has attracted the entirely wonderful nickname of a 'Buckyball'. Which just goes to show that there is no name, however unpromising it may look, that cannot end up having something named after it.

Posted by chris on Monday, December 22, 2003 @ 2:13 AM [ + ]

Just Call Me Bucky: R. Buckminster Fuller, inventor, architect, engineer, mathematician, poet and cosmologist, was a man of deep thoughts and important words. In one sentence, in Earth Inc., he wrote this mission statement:

Acutely aware of our beings' limitations and acknowledging the infinite mystery of the a priori Universe into which we are born but nevertheless searching for a conscious means of hopefully competent participation by humanity in its own evolutionary trending while employing only the unique advantages inhering exclusively to those individuals who take and maintain the economic initiative in the face of the formidable physical capital and credit advantages of the massive corporations and political states and deliberately avoiding political ties and tactics while endeavoring by experiments and explorations to excite individuals' awareness and realization of humanity's higher potentials I seek through comprehensive anticipatory design science and its reductions to physical practices to reform the environment instead of trying to reform humans, being intent thereby to accomplish prototyped capabilities of doing more with less whereby in turn the wealth augmenting prospects of such design science regenerations will induce their spontaneous and economically successful industrial proliferation by world around services' managements all of which chain reaction provoking events will both permit and induce all humanity to realize full lasting economic and physical success plus enjoyment of all the Earth without one individual interfering with or being advantaged at the expense of another.

Best Wishes for the year-end Holiday Season, and a happy, prosperous and peaceful New Year for all of us on Spaceship Earth?.

Posted by abnu on Sunday, December 21, 2003 @ 8:44 AM [ + ]

Operation Spiderhole: With all the movie-making experience the Pentagon media moguls have under their gunbelts, such as this year's hits Saving Jessica's Privates and Thanksgiving Turkey in Baghdad, the Department of Disinformation still hasn't got a clue how to name military operations for the big screen.

Knowing they were about to capture the "Ace of Spades" in a mission that would surely be made into an Academy Award® winning Hollywood blockbuster by Steven Spielberg, starring Dubya's Republican guard Arnold Schwarzenegger, or at least a "direct to videoscope movie" for Fox News, the best name for the operation they could come up with was Red Dawn.

In an article so well written it could have been a post in Wordlab, Timothy Noah sums it up in Slate's "Chatterbox" Good Mission, Bad Name: "Why did they have to bring the movie Red Dawn into it?"

The tip-off that Operation Red Dawn was named deliberately after the movie is that the two hiding places scouted out by the combat team were code-named "Wolverine I" and "Wolverine II." (Saddam was found near Wolverine II.)

In 1984, when the USA was backing Saddam's war against Iran, the tagline for the movie Red Dawn was: In our time, no foreign army has ever occupied American soil. Until now. In our time, no American army has occupied foreign soil. Until now. See the incongruity of the allusion? The Soviet Union is no more. This is Iraq, not Russia. This isn't Red Dawn II - The Hegemony Strikes Back.

A couple of years ago, in a Slate "Explainer" column, Emily Yoffe addressed the question we ask ourselves every time one of these code-named operations is announced. How does the military choose its code words?

In general, the first step is that a computer database of appropriately military sounding words spits out possible combinations, with each geographic command given rights to certain letters of the alphabet. The command overseeing the operation chooses candidates--after checking through a registry of previously used names--and sends it to the Joint Staff for review and approval. (The director of operations of the Joint Staff, Lt. General Gregory S. Newbold, has a name worthy of a military operation.) [Sept. 21 addition: It then goes to the Secretary of Defense who must endorse it.] It wasn't a brilliant algorithm that came up with the code word Desert Storm for the invasion of Iraq--that was deliberately chosen.

Winston Churchill, who personally vetted many of the British military code words, ordered that they should be neither overly boastful, nor frivolous. No mother, he wrote, should have to say "that her son was killed in an operation called 'Bunnybug.' "

It's been said before, but we'll say it again; the wordmongers at the Pentagram should check out Wordlab's Military Ops before they go off half-cocked in some operation without a proper name.

Posted by abnu on Wednesday, December 17, 2003 @ 8:48 PM [ + ]

Wordboard Policy Changes: Snark here, the Kurtz of this little Heart of Darkness. Me and Quark, the founders, after prodding by Abnu and others, have decided to reign-in the runaway train that the Wordboard has become and bring it back to its intended focus: naming, branding and related advertising and marketing issues. How will we be doing that? By ruthlessly deleting posts that veer too far from the target.

What this means: it means, bluntly, that the days of laissez-faire run-amokery are over. You people wanted free will and we gave it to you (sorry, I couldn't resist), and some have hurled the dreaded C-word ("Censorship!") at us in the past when we've deleted offensive posts, and we're tried to be accommodating. Well, those days are gone.

We will now be deleting any posts we want in order to re-focus this board. My sincerest apologies to all of you whose posts will be cut, and to those of you who have just discovered this site by following a link from a search engine to a thread that is now gone; flaming, dating issues, guy problems, girl problems, acne, anal sex how-to questions, school election slogans, etc will no longer be a part of this site. I recommend you move your discussions of these important topics to a chat room of your choosing, as Wordlab will no longer be able to fulfill that need for you.

Exceptions: the best part of rules are that they create a climate for exceptions to breed in. If you are creative, if you post with wit and intelligence, you can get your post past our Neanderthal censors to thrive in the brilliant sunlight of Wordlab's new dawn. How you do that will be your challenge to figure out, I can't tell you.

Oh, and please use an appropriate Subject line when you create a thread, otherwise you risk having the thread deleted, perhaps by accident during this feeding frenzy, if we perceive that it's not relevant.

Good luck to all. Happy Holidays and a prosperous New Year, but most especially Peace for all people everywhere.

Now, let the slashing begin. If you care to comment, you can do so by posting to this Wordboard thread.

Posted by Jay on Monday, December 15, 2003 @ 11:21 AM [ + ]

Victoria's Angels: As brand mascots go, you won't find any more celestial than the angels of Victoria's Secret. If you missed the annual Victoria's Secret Fashion Show on CBS this year, you can still watch the steaming video on the Internet. By the way, have you ever wondered, "What is Victoria's Secret?"

Posted by abnu on Sunday, December 14, 2003 @ 11:42 AM [ + ]

America Online Love: AOL has launched Love.com. According to an article on Instant Messaging Planet:

The secret sauce in AOL's Love.com stems from its close integration with AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), and its ability to exploit some of the unique benefits of IM communications. At the site, Love.com members can browse profiles, find others who are online and available to IM, and can immediately initiate chat sessions with them.

With Love.com, AOL is getting into the increasingly competitive meet marketplace of social networks, which includes such popular places to hook up online as Yahoo! Personals, Lavalife and Tickle.

"Online personals powered by instant messaging are a natural next-step in the evolution of online dating services," said Steven McArthur, executive vice president for AOL Messaging. "Everyone is looking for a way to make meeting people and dating less stressful. By their very nature, instant messaging conversations are more casual, spontaneous, and personal. By building AIM directly into Love.com, online daters will be able to communicate with a large, active community of people in real time, adding additional elements of interaction, emotion and personality to the world of online dating."

To participate, users must have the new AIM 5.5 Beta 2 client, which is being released with Love.com. But, there's a problem inherent in AOL's proprietary approach. If Love.com facilitates inbreeding of AOL users within a closed system for social networking, dating and, god forbid, mating, won't that create a future generation of extreme mental defectives? Nowhere in this America Online Love dot com is there even a precautionary IQ Test to make sure you're not hooking up with an idiot.

UPDATE from Snark, 12/12: I just posted another take on Love.com on Snark Hunting, discussing the name and brand implications of AOL's new lovefest.

Posted by abnu on Thursday, December 11, 2003 @ 1:05 PM [ + ]

Capitalism Gangsta Style: Irv "Gotti" Lorenzo, founder of Murder Inc., announced recently that the record company has changed its name to The Inc. The jury's out whether the chairman of the board will give up his gangsta moniker "Gotti" in favor of something more like Capitalist Tool.

Gotti said the name change is meant to shed any negativity surrounding his business. He revealed that he initially intended to name the label Lockdown Records.

When Gotti saw the story of the real Murder Incorporated gang on television, he decided to use it, hoping to create a name he could brand, such as Death Row or Bad Boy.

According to a recent article in the Guardian, hip hop's mania for endorsing brands makes street music big in the boardroom.

Such is the symbiotic relationship between hip hop and big business that marketing guru Lucian James created American Brandstand, which lists weekly the brands that feature in the lyrics of songs in the American chart.

...

Some artists are said to be paid to incorporate brand names into their lyrics, an accusation levelled at Rhymes following 'Pass the Courvoisier'. Rhymes and Allied Domecq deny the claim.

Ya think? The power of hip hop artists like Busta Rhymes to reach a young audience of impressionable minds is not missed by brand masters like Richard Branson, who recently hired the rapper to star in a series of entertaining adverts for a Busta Butt campaign for Virgin Mobile.

Corporate interests are buying control in the hood; witness the acquisition of Russell Simmons' Def Jam Records by Universal Music Group. It's big bidness; what the Feds call "organized crime." And the entertainment industry needs to clean up the gangsta image of hip hop, as it did the mobster image of Las Vegas.

The 2003 Grammy Award nominations announcement, dominated by hip hop, rap and R&B artists, is noted as a significant benchmark in the acceptance of the music of the street into popular culture, worldwide.

Hip-hop, both the music and the lifestyle, have slowly taken over the world in which you live. Television, magazines, radio and video games have all jumped aboard. The aging public and the music industry are among the last to recognize the genre's immense output and goliath success, but that's changing, too.

You gotta kno dat hip hop is takin' over da world when the communist government of the People's Republic of China is remixing Mousie Tongue.

Now, as they approach the 110th anniversary of Mao Tse-Tung's birth, Dec. 26, the people of China - a country the old murderer would scarcely recognize anymore - are going to get a chance to refresh their memory of one of his key dictums, the Two Musts, in the form of rap music.

It's not altogether a message that matches the hip-hop lifestyle which we in the West know so well from videos, CDs and court cases. The Two Musts run like this: "to preserve modesty and prudence, and to preserve the style of plain living and hard struggle."

As lifestyle advice, this seems to leave little room for bling-bling, hos, nose candy, late nights and big cars. Still, the rap format has been adopted by many Chinese performers and is popular with Chinese audiences (formerly known as "the masses"). Talk about your cultural revolutions.

Will rap music be credited with the demise of communism in China, as rock and roll has recently been credited with the end of communism in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union? Will rap be the language of cultural revolution in the Far East and in the Middle East? Fo' shizzle...

Posted by abnu on Sunday, December 07, 2003 @ 11:06 PM [ + ]

The Complete Package: Feast your eyes on the wonderful online exhibition of The American Package Museum.

If you like that, you might also find The American Advertising Museum and The American Sign Museum worth a look!

Posted by abnu on Friday, December 05, 2003 @ 5:52 AM [ + ]

Gobbledygook: The Plain English Campaign gave Donald Rumsfeld, the United States Secretary of Defense, their annual Foot In Mouth Award for this soundbite:

"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns ? the ones we don't know we don't know."

This is the same Donald Rumsfeld who quipped at a German reporter, "Do you speak English?" when he meant, "Do you understand English?"

UPDATE from abnu 12/11: Will Durst's 2003 Totally Full of Crap Award goes to Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld for the "unknown unknowns" soundbite quoted above, as well as these Rummy Classics: "The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." and "Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war."

Posted by abnu on Thursday, December 04, 2003 @ 9:36 AM [ + ]

Queer and Unusual Punishment: A second grade student was reprimanded by his teacher for explaining to a classmate that he has two moms because his mother is gay.

A teacher, overhearing the remark, scolded (the boy), telling him "gay" is a "bad word" and sending him to the principal's office. The following week the school required the boy to attend a behavioral clinic at 6:45 a.m., where he was forced to repeatedly write "I will never use the word 'gay' in school again," the ACLU said. The child was also made to sign a "Student Behavior Contract," where he wrote, "I sed bad wurds."

A copy of the contract and details of this story are set out in the Washington Post. According to that article, School Board President David Thibodaux said, "I feel like any discussion by a child of a parent's sexual orientation is inappropriate." Unless it's not gay, of course.

Posted by abnu on Tuesday, December 02, 2003 @ 11:41 PM [ + ]

Star Crossed: Jetstar is the name selected for the new discount airline being readied by Qantas to compete with Virgin Blue. The brand design is based on the constellation of the Southern Cross, depicted by the five stars in the Australian Flag, and the airline's colours - orange, silver and black - are reported to have been chosen for their "bold, modern feel."

Revealing the livery and branding for Jetstar yesterday, Qantas chief executive Geoff Dixon said focus groups had rejected terms such as "Joey or Skippy" Air. "We had literally thousands of suggestions, many from our staff and from every amateur marketing manager around Australia," he said.

"(They were) mainly confined to Australian animals and Oz Air and Air Oz and Jet Oz and Go Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi (and) Matilda. Research did say, which surprised us a little bit, that the Oz Matilda type thing was not necessarily what Australians want at this stage."

So, the focus groups didn't like the recommendations of Joey and Koala; lucky for the owners of www.jetstar.com. Qantas obviously thought this whole Jetstar naming and branding thing through; www.jetstarairlines.com might disagree. If it flies, the name might be right up there with JetBlue as one of the top functional names on Igor's Taxonomy of Airline Names.

In an unrelated story about airline discounts, Air Canada hit a new low this week as it positioned itself as the lowest of the low in the airline industry by giving 100 lucky employees a bonus coupon worth 5 loonie dollars. Apparently, the coupon is good for the next 5 weeks, which might be longer than their jobs at the struggling airline. According to Forbes:

The burger bonus comes as two groups bidding to control Montreal-based Air Canada through equity infusions have offered its chief executive and top restructuring manager multimillion-dollar stock or cash bonuses to remain with the airline through its bankruptcy protection proceedings.

Let's not lose that brainpower!

Posted by abnu on Monday, December 01, 2003 @ 6:56 AM [ + ]