The science-grade arrays are still being manufactured in a rather long and complicated process, involving groups from the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado, the UK Astronomy Technology Centre and the Scottish Microelectronics Centre in Edinburgh, Scotland, the Astronomy Instrumentation Group at the Cardiff University in Wales, and of course the Joint Astronomy Centre in Hilo, Hawaii. Bits and pieces get flown all over the place, and it’s a wonder that nothing serious has happened to the arrays or any bits of them*.

Until June 9, when NIST researchers discovered that a vial of plutonium was cracked and some particles spilled from the vial. Understandably this has lead to the closure of the lab while cleanup and investigations are done. Unfortunately this lab had either parts of the arrays or the full arrays in it. They’re not expecting to get into the lab until August, when we find out if the radiation event caused any damage to the sensitive SCUBA-2 array electronics.

Since then, NIST has found that some of the plutonium entered the sanitary sewer system at levels below state and federal limits, and that some NIST employees show evidence of internal plutonium exposure. Obviously SCUBA-2 should take a back seat to more important concerns.

But full operation SCUBA-2 has just been pushed back again. How much is still uncertain, but a month is probably the lower limit.

*One of the more serious problems to date came when one of the groups was preparing the arrays for shipping and accidentally dropped a crate on or tightened a lid on one of them, crushing one of the corners. Whoops.

The last woman who joined our “group” asked Sylvia, after telling her that her mom had died two days ago, if she had any message from her mom for her. Sylvia said that mom “liked the service.”

The woman recalled this for us, and said “We haven’t even had the service yet - she died two days ago.”

You’d think that a psychic would be able to “see” that a remembrance service hasn’t happened yet.

Sylvia Browne — not a psychic. She’s just a cold reader out to take money from gullible people.

We start off gently with Damin. Not a particularly Bad Baby Name, but we have to start off lightly to get us in the spirit of things. This is why I’m introducing Tayden early as well. See, they’re bad, but not that bad.

Not compared to, say, Shelcey-Lyn or KaianaLee. Now we’re getting somewhere! We’re continued on our merry little path with Chassee (perhaps Chasser is her brother?) and Shaylie.

Can someone tell me how to pronounce either Mikeilah or Alajshae? Mike-eye-lah? Mik-aye-lah? Al-aj-shay? Stoo-pid?

And then we get into our Biblical Bad Baby Names. Passion isn’t particularly bad, but Exodus is. Why would you name your son Exodus?

To top things off we have Lizandro, which sounds like someone out of a bodice ripper. “Lizandro stood before her, his proud head erect, his leonine mane thrown into relief by the flares flanking the large doors. For one suspended moment, they stared at each other, love, hope, and remembered pain reflected over and over between them.”

Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do every minute of every day, and the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do! And if you do any of these ten things he has a special place full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever until the end of time. But he loves you!

You can read about some of the top prospects here and see what some of the Canadian teams are planning for the draft weekend here.

You’d think that second link would lead to a story about Canada’s NHL teams, right? Maybe a paragraph or two dedicated to each team?

Oh no, not from the Toronto-based National Post. It’s an entire article about the Toronto Maple Leafs.

This is why Canadians hate Toronto.

Edit: Holy shit it worked!

If you’re at all interested in following along, I suggest subscribing to my RSS feed. What is RSS? It’s a standard way for websites (and other such technologies) to publish updates automatically, and software polls RSS feeds on a periodic basis to retrieve these updates. Using an aggregator (also referred to as an RSS reader or news reader), you can keep up-to-date with a number of websites at the same time without having to visit them individually. Personally, I use Vienna on OS X. Other OS X RSS readers include NetNewsWire and NewsFire. Web-based RSS readers include Google Reader, which allows you to access your RSS feeds from any Internet-connected computer.

So Facebook readers, you don’t need to follow along on Facebook, you can use a separate program and collect updates from all kinds of websites in one convenient location!

That said, Government of Ontario would like to announce their debut album, “Really Don’t Want It”. The cover art is La musique des vagues….

Via Amy and Jeff.