Lunacy

The Earth is saved! The Navy blasted that dying spy satellite to bits with an explosion reminiscent of the Death Star's demise. They didn't need the Illudium Q36 Expolsive Space Modulator. It's a relief for our staffers, panicking because they couldn't find where they stashed their old Skylab protection helmets.

PROMISE THE MOON. Never did we imagine the moon as an extortion device, but in researching this week's lunar eclipse, our backgrounding staff ran across this, provided to us from AFP:

[A]n eclipse is credited with saving the life of Christopher Columbus and his crew in 1504.

Stranded on the coast of Jamaica, the explorers were running out of food and faced with increasingly hostile local inhabitants who were refusing to provide them with any more supplies.

Columbus, looking at an astronomical almanac compiled by a German mathematician, realized that a total eclipse of the Moon would occur on February 29, 1504.

He called the native leaders and warned them if they did not cooperate, he would make the Moon disappear from the sky the following night.

The warning, of course, came true, prompting the terrified people to beg Columbus to restore the Moon -- which he did, in return for as much food as his men needed. He and the crew were rescued on June 29, 1504.

We hear staffers at the New York Times tried to use the same technique to escape job cuts. It didn't work.

CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW? American and British space agencies are planning a new cell phone network on the moon. It will serve astronauts, of course, and eventually settlers, as Silicon.com reports:

The satellite system should ensure a full four-bar signal for lunar colonists living in the base NASA wants to build at the south pole of the moon after 2020.

The stellar vision of the mobile's future even tops the effort that managed to get a text message to the top of Mount Everest.

Phone calls and other information would be bounced off satellites orbiting the moon for communication between colonists, the moon base and the earth.

If only such effort would be put into improving Earth's cell phone system, which still drops calls, garbles speech and provides your Lightning Round staffers with wimpy-powered devices. We can text to Mount Everest, but we can't get a signal on Mount Lemmon.

Oh, for the days of analog, with those-brick sized phones and generous power. Is a full watt too much to ask? Too bad the old system just shut down.

CRACKBERRY. From the We-Actually-Needed-A-Study-For-This Department: electronic devices can be -- gasp -- addictive!

From BBC News:

"You would be surprised how many people had their PDA or Blackberry next to their bed heads."

[Professor Nada Kakabadse of Northampton University] added: "Those who are addicted will get up in the middle of the night and pick up messages on their PDAs two or three times a night."

Of course, most of those messages will be, "What r u doing?"

NEVERENDING SEASON. From the ashes of the Hollywood writers' strike comes NBC's decision to do away with the traditional fall TV season and start debuting shows year-round, according to the New York Times.

The lineup also may receive early input from advertisers who are given an earlier look at it. That may help both parties, [Marc Graboff, the co-chairman of NBC Entertainment] said. He cited as a cautionary tale the network’s experience with “Kidnapped,” a show from a season ago.

“That’s a perfect example,” Mr. Graboff said. “The pilot cost $7 million to produce. We put it on sale to advertisers in May, and they ran for the hills. If we had been able to sit down and have a two-way conversation about them and we told they we had a show about a 13-year-old boy who is kidnapped for the entire season, they would have told us, ‘Good for you, but we’re not putting our clients in it.’ ”

Anything that spares us another remake of Bionic Woman can't be all bad.

THINGS YOU DON'T NEED TO DO ANYMORE. From our favorite nerd site, Slashdot, comes a link to a list of obsolete technical skills, including:

• Balancing the tonearm on a record player


• Calling collect on a pay phone


• Churning butter


• Hand cranking a car to start it


• Licking stamps


• Resoling shoes


• Saving Tin for The War

Obsolesence is, as always, in the eye of the one who still uses a VCR.