A few months back, I wrote about the birth of yet another ‘miracle’ white buffalo born on the Heider farm in my hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin.   Now word comes that the series of coincidences just keeps getting weirder and weirder.  Seems like the fate of this newborn white buffalo didn’t end up being as ‘miraculous’ as initially imagined.  ‘Miracle’s Second Chance’ was struck by lightning.

The white buffalo wasn’t the only buffalo killed, but boy oh boy, where’s one of those psychic readers when you need one?!?

It’s a blustery day here in New York City, a real miserable ‘get out the rain quick’ type of day.  When I fired up my car this morning, I had to do a double take - it said it was 12 degrees outside.  I was ready to run back in the house and get a warmer coat.

Of course it’s not really 12 degrees outside here - my car had a battery replaced and the temperature settings were accidentally reset to celsius instead of fahrenheit.  As I drove the car I spent the good portion of 20 minutes trying to remember the math associated with converting the C to an F number.  Let’s see, 32 degress F equals 0 C - and then it gets a little sticky from there.  That little information nugget was used sometime around 7th grade, but seems to have been misplaced since.

The combination of this little mess and this interesting test by blogger Clinton Forbes (Quick: What is 78 x 23?) got me thinking - what do we really know or not know anymore?  How much of our lives are really controlled by the technology gods and does it matter whether we know what we know?

I feel smarter than I did as a 7th grader though — should I consider some refresher courses or just let the internets do their magic?

Can’t attend this year’s X Prize event in Las Cruces, New Mexico but still want to be part of the experience? Space.com has partnered with Frank Taylor at Google Earth Blog and the folks at the Wirefly X Prize to present a special collection of new features you can experience using Google Earth!

Access all the collections here. It includes:

• 3D spaceship models
• 3D experience of the Wirefly X Prize Cup event
• Ultimate Space Atlas (museums, astronomy clubs, observatories, launch sites, and more)
• New Mexico Trails
• and much, much more!

Related Links:

• Space.com: Live Coverage of the Wirefly X Prize Cup
• Google Earth: Featured Wirefly X Prize Cup modules
• Flight of Space Ship One Depicted in Google Earth
• Space Atlas for Google Earth
• X Prize Cup Event in 3D

Missing any locations or major categories? Let us know, we’ll be adding more content to Google Earth in the near future!

Note: The following organizations helped gather these space-related resources for Google Earth: Google Earth Blog, Starry Night, Space.com, and the Google Earth and SketchUp teams. Thanks also to the many Google Earth Community members who developed content referenced in the collections.

Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic took center stage this week at Wired Magazine’s NextFest in NYC.  The event had all the requisite PR-friendly show-and-tells – interior views of the new SpaceShipTwo tourist ship, some incredible animation video clips, and even word that a frequent flier on a traditional airline is cashing in some chips for his chance to go into space.

But refreshingly, Branson was not the only one with news to share about space tourism news this week (no odd coincidence for sure).  Trail blazing space pioneers like Rutan, Branson and Diamandis are great, but a little friendly competition for the space tourist buck might actually turn out to be more important than the innovations themselves.  Just this week we witnessed:

• Virgin Galactic’s Unveil of SpaceShipTwo interior
• Jim Benson’s move from SpaceDev to start his own Benson Space Company, where he intends to take orders of SpaceDev’s Dreamchaser craft and be “first to market”
• U.K.-based Starchaser’s unveiling of their first prototype rocket, SKYBOLT, which may lead to a manned trip by 2009.
• UP Aerospace’s rocket failure from New Mexico’s commercial spaceport (yes, even failure is good in this industry)
• The return of female space tourist Anousheh Ansari back to Earth after a week at the ISS Hotel

Surely, these trailblazing companies are at various stages of reality when it comes to being ready to actually accept paying customers, but one can’t help but get excited not only by the news of these developments, but the possibility of what a little competition might lead to.  Already one with a flair for the unusual with his Virgin Atlantic fleet, imagine the perks Branson might have to include in order to stay competitive a few years down the line.

Imagine being able to pick and choose your suborbital adventure based on:

• Price
• Coolness of the spacecraft
• Location
• Perks
• Your view from space

Two years ago this month, I was one of the first batch of customers on Zero G Corporation’s domestic zero-g flights – it’s refreshing to see the flurry of activity happening since that time – and realize that the ‘pathway to space’ is being paved with such a furious spirit of innovative thinking and competition. 

I never thought I’d utter the words ‘incredible’ and Janesville, Wisconsin in the same sentence.  Growing up in Janesville, you made your own excitement; it wasn’t going to just happen on its own. 

The first buffalo appeared twelve years ago.

Then another 2 years ago.

And yet another a few weeks ago.   Three white buffaloes all on the same farm.

Dave Heider told me tonight “even with genetics, there must be a greater force than anyone knows” going on.  

Twelve years ago, on a farm just outside of Janesville, a white buffalo was born on the Heider family farm.  Dave and Valerie Heider were shocked when they first saw that their newborn buffalo was no ordinary buffalo, yet they had no idea what was in store for them for the years ahead.

‘Miracle’ had arrived.

The calf was considered to be the first white buffalo born since 1933.  Native American tribes believe that the white buffalo holds important religious beliefs as “a symbol of hope and renewal for humanity between all peoples, all races, in our world today” according to the keepers of a lengthy web history of the buffalo.  As had been prophesized, Miracle changed from white to black, then to red, then to yellow.

Once word got out that an extremely rare white (not albino) buffalo had been born, the visitors started to show up.     The Heiders weren’t prepared for it, but they let anyone come who wanted to come.  Visitors showed up at the “crack of dawn, and didn’t leave until midnight” according to Dave Heider.  Both Native American worship ceremonies and curiosities from nearby residents made the Heider farm feel like something out of ‘Field of Dreams’.  No cheap buck was made here, as the Heider’s didn’t charge admission and didn’t turn away visitors.

In 1997, a second buffalo ‘Lady Miracle’ or ‘Lady’ was born and died just four short days later.  As unusual as a second white buffalo birth seemed, the excitement was short lived and when Miracle died in 2004, the visitors and the traffic to the farm stopped.  The parking lot they had created for visitors was replowed for corn crops.  Life went back to normal.

Now comes word in today’s edition of the hometown Janesville Gazette that a third white buffalo has been born on the Heider farm.  Making this even more unusual is the fact that this newborn does not come from the same lineage as Miracle.   There have been other reports in recent years of white buffalo babies but nothing like this.  Dave Heider says even though he’s “getting too old and too fat” for too much excitement, this time it’s “no big deal” and that his family can handle the attention.

A hint of the old days was on display today out at that old farm.  A 2 hour drum ceremony was performed by a Native American tribe.  Even though this newborn buffalo is a male, considered less sacred than a female, the land that the buffaloes were born on is considered to have spiritual significance.

Heider hinted that his family is “ready for it, but there will be guidelines set this time.  No more sunrise to midnight hours, we’ll post the ‘closed’ sign on the property at 4:00 if we feel like it”.

Now who says nothing exciting ever happens in Janesville, Wisconsin?

Authors Note:  The Janesville Gazette, who first reported the birth of the third white buffalo in the Saturday, September 9, 2006 edition of their paper, is the employer of my father and other relatives in my family.  No privileged information was shared by my family members - I just like to see what’s going on back home…

Tonight comes word that Lun Lun the Panda, here at Zoo Atlanta has given birth to her first cub.  My wife, son and I had a hint of what might soon come - we stopped by to check the Pandas out during one of our frequent visits to the nearby zoo on Saturday with whispers that this might be ‘the one’ from the crew attached to the Panda exhibit.

Keep an eye on the Panda Cam for future updates.

The news tonight via Zoo Atlanta’s Member E-Newsletter:

Everyone jump for joy: our giant panda female, Lun Lun (pronounced “loon loon”), has delivered her first cub!

The nearly furless baby, born just before 5 p.m. Wednesday, is healthy and being cared for by its mother.

The baby’s sex is not known, and might not be for weeks, until Lun Lun lets zookeepers get a look at it. Zoo policy is not to intervene in maternal care unless something goes wrong.

Our giant panda curator team and the Zoo Atlanta veterinary team are closely monitoring Lun Lun for a potential second birth. Twin births occur nearly 50% of the time in giant pandas and could occur 12 to 24 hours after the first birth.

If it survives, the new cub, estimated to weigh just 4 ounces and is about the size of a stick of butter, would be only the fifth born and raised successfully in a U.S. zoo. The historic birth represents a significant achievement for the critically endangered panda species and for Zoo Atlanta. It will be three to four months before the cub can be seen by the public.

It’s been an interesting few weeks here in the universe of space.  Planets are being added, then demoted, Astronauts are getting ready to ride the Space Shuttle Atlantis into space, and media outlets everywhere seem to be having fun with it all.  Time, Newsweek, and ABC are putting space front and center this week.

Got me thinking, after 7+ years of delivering all sorts of amazing news and incredible events on SPACE.com, which has become more popular, human spaceflight or astronomy?

In Spaceflight’s corner, we have:

• Live-on-the-Internet broadcast and reporting of Space Shuttle missions
• Live coverage of the tragedies of human space travel, including the loss of Columbia in 2003
• Moon-to-Mars news and views
• Space Tourists.  Dennis Tito and more
• Space Tourism.  Richard Branson, the X Prize, Bigelow
• The International Space Station

Astronomy’s best and brightest:

• Pluto and the Solar System planets
• Deep Impact
• Earth-bound asteroids
• Solar Flares
• Hubble
• Extrasolar planets
• The Search for Life
• Daily dose of far-out discoveries.

Somewhere in the middle:

• Mars Rovers
• NASA News
• Science issues that affect the long-term health of our own planet

We’ve noticed that over the past 7 years, you:

• Love once-in-a-lifetime events like following the Mars Rovers, rooting for Dennis Tito and cheering for the Scaled Composites team’s winning X Prize flights.
• Grow tired of these events once they start to look easy, happen too frequently or happen too infrequently.  The space tourists that followed Tito, news from the International Space Station, ‘regular’ space shuttle flights.
• Tune out on efforts that can take years and years to come to fruition.  Again, the ISS construction, but we’re also seeing it with the Moon-to-Mars plans.  A loyal audience will follow each and every development, but the general public needs to see milestones more often to become more regularly engaged.
• Love new discoveries.  Extrasolar planet discoveries, new Hubble pictures of a far away galaxy, anything about black holes
• Crave news about pioneers.  Burt Rutan, Richard Branson, Dennis Tito, Elon Musk, Peter Diamandis to name a few.  Leaders with an entrepreneurial spirit and creative vision who are not waiting around for NASA to build the next-great-thing.  Astronauts have lost much of their status as pioneers, becoming modern-day engineers in space
• Have fond memories of space from your childhood.  Who didn’t want to be an astronaut?  Who doesn’t remember studying the original nine planets or the long journey of the Voyager spacecraft?  When the events of today can connect you with an ingrained childhood memory, the public swell of interest and passion around that subject grows significantly.  Pluto anyone?

So, what do you think is more popular, human spaceflight or astronomy? 

You know a space story is a huge space story when you can no longer keep track of all the cultural references to poor old Pluto’s recent demotion.  Everywhere I look, someone is talking about Pluto.  A sampling:

• ESPN Sportcenter introduced their program with a humorous reference to Pluto’s demotion.
• Technorati, the site that monitors 52 million blogs, has had Pluto as their number one search term for the second consecutive day
• The recent sparring match between Stephen Colbert and Neil Tyson on The Colbert Report
• T-shirts for sale (always a good sign)
• Planetary Photoshop contests
• There is a homegrown youtube video circulating
• Someone like Disney ruins the charm of it all

Why all the public reaction and hoopla? Maybe it simply boils down to ingrained chidhood memories.  Like learning multiplication tables or memorizing the Periodic Table, memorizing the planets is something we all have done and can’t easily forget.  Remember “My Very, Eccentric Mother Just Showed Us Nine Planets“?

Even though I’m relieved that a decision was finally made, I can’t help feeling a hint of sadness about losing Pluto.  There’s a hint of that sadness buried in most every culture reference to Pluto this week too.

This past weekend, we were expecting disappointing results from the normally promising Perseid meteor shower, especially with the full moon helping to ruin the view.   Hardly a media outlet reported the upcoming shower this year as a result.

Low and behold, we did receive a number of pleasant surprises from our SPACE.com visitors - check out the new gallery of Perseid images collected from some dedicated folks. 

Me, yeah, I was out there.  Not only was I sitting in the dark of night in a boat trying to catch catfish on a South Carolina lake with nothing but a pole, a flashlight and some bug spray (yes, it’s as hard crazy as it sounds), but I was also peering into the night sky searching for something, anything, resembling a meteor shower.   I didn’t spot anything in the sky and the partially overcast skies certainly didn’t help. 

Thank goodness for our great visitors to save the day with such a collection of fun images!  What did you spy in the night sky this past weekend?

disclaimer: I did catch one catfish

Walking around the office today, it’s been a quite normal day… I made a few copies, zoomed through my collection of blackberry emails and phone calls, and even did some real work on my laptop.

I mean my Vaio.

I mean my PC, wait, make that Personal Computer.

Here we are 25 years after the advent of the personal computer, first brought to us by IBM. Today, there’s really no such thing as a personal computer - EVERYTHING is a personal computer, right down to your ipod, TIVO, XBox, Playstations, satellite radio, thermostat, and your car. We have ThinkPads, iMacs, Mac Minis, PowerBooks, Palm Pilots, and OnStar auto navigation We have Windows, WindowsME, Leopard, Linux, Unix, Apache, iTunes, and Opera (thank god for a little culture around here)

One could make a strong argument that all these personal computers have made life better and made us more productive as a society.

But that sure is a lot of stuff - is this a good thing?

Absolutely - quit being a grump and enjoy your personal computer gadgets. Show a little love.

Gotta get back to playing Asteroids…