The Onion announces a new YouTube challenge. Listen up, Green.

Credit: NASA/JPL/CICLOPS

There are some new reports out about Saturn from the continuing visit of the Cassini space probe. Scientists now know that the rings aren’t flat and they’re constantly changing:

Cassini also revealed that Saturn’s rings are a rough and tumble place, with perturbations to their structures caused by mysterious rocketing objects, the pull of moons and their own internal dynamics.

Cuzzi says that “maybe the most dramatic” perturbation is the one that occurs in the F ring — a system of narrow strands that that lies outside of the main rings.

Cassini found that kilometer-sized objects “go ricocheting back-and-forth across the F ring,” Cuzzi said. Cassini first detected one of these objects just faintly, but when it saw the object again, outside of the ring, it had a long, comet-like tail. The next viewing of it was inside the ring, where the tail got even longer before the whole thing vanished completely, likely because the debris became hard to distinguish from the background of the ring.

There’s some good information here and here.

People possessed by evil sometimes had to be physically restrained by half a dozen people while they were exorcised. They would scream, utter blasphemies and spit out sharp objects, he said.
“From their mouths, anything can come out – pieces of iron as long as a finger, but also rose petals,” said Father Amorth, who claims to have performed 70,000 exorcisms. “When the possessed dribble and slobber, and need cleaning up, I do that too. Seeing people vomit doesn’t bother me. The exorcist has one principal duty – to free human beings from the fear of the Devil.”

MORE HOT TIMES: Moving on from the Devil, Canada experienced some warmth of its own. The southern U.S. had its coldest winter in decades; Canada had its warmest:

Environment Canada scientists report that winter 2009/10 was 4 C above normal, making it the warmest since nationwide records were first kept in 1948. It was also the driest winter on the 63-year record, with precipitation 22 per cent below normal nationally, and down 60 per cent in parts of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario.

“It’s beyond shocking,” David Phillips, a senior climatologist with Environment Canada, said Tuesday. Records have been shattered from “coast to coast to coast.”

What to expect from the winter that wasn’t? Water shortages, insect infestations and wildfires.

A couple notes from the site’s Q&A:

Question: If my bank has a high troubled asset ratio, what should I do?

Answer: The short answer is “nothing.” The FDIC covers all deposits up to $250,000 and no investor has lost any insured deposits since the FDIC went into business in 1935. The FDIC is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government.

Question: Are you saying that a bank with a high “troubled asset ratio” is going to fail?

Answer: No. Each bank must be evaluated separately. In some cases, the owners of banks are able to inject additional capital in order to strengthen the bank. In other cases, individuals and companies are able to bring their loans current and repay them. Additionally, it is possible that a bank facing difficulties will be able to find a strong merger partner. The FDIC says that historically most “troubled banks” eventually recover.

Front row: Karla Kruse, Karen Van Arsdalen, Trudy Nash, Deb Monahan, Annette Shelle and Sally Hintz. Second row: Linda Sallows, Pat Barnes, Kathy Raymond and Jane Rupp. Back row: Jim Sallows (manager), JoAnn Whetstone, Marie McVay, Jamie VanArsdalen, Wanda Kruse (scorekeeper) and Bob Blanchard (coach).

When women’s softball was strong in this area, the Bookies was one of the best-known teams from Morenci. Here’s a photo from 1977. The names in the second row don’t match up. Maybe someone will have a correction to offer.

The Bookies? Weren’t they sponsored by Morenci Bookkeeping?

Breanne Lonis (left) and Alexis Harvey were fascinated with an alphabet book that uses human figures to depict the letters. The book was included in a Stair Public Library display at the Morenci Elementary School Reading Night event Monday.

No time for video last night. The Fayette council meeting went into overtime and I still had to finish up addressing papers.

In this week’s Observer:
• DH Holdings bought the former Fayette school property so it would have easy access to the property in case addition cleanup of contamination is in the future.
• The city won’t apply for a recreation grant for the next funding cycle for the proposed walking trail along Bean Creek.
• Morenci and Hudson are moving forward on sharing a superintendent.
• Cletus Smith, once a police officer in Morenci, is running for a county commission seat.
• Morenci’s Movie Gallery is closing soon, like so many hundreds of other locations.
And so forth. I gotta go. Get a subscription. You can order it right here on the web site.

It’s not Apple, BlackBerry, Palm or Nokia. According to the market research firm Strategy Analytics, Samsung was the the leader in the United States with 26 percent of the total cellphone market in 2009.

Feature phones are the big sellers. They’re not smartphones, but they connect to the internet. And I’m still using a dial phone in the back of the Observer office.

PASSWORD: Check out this graphic on password security. People are still using passwords that are too simple.

GOOGLING: This link is only for those who are really interested in the world of Google. It’s called “Six Delusions of Google’s Arrogant Leaders.” It’s interesting reading. If you’re interested in Google’s standing in the world.