The CBC has the necessary links and a Ustream player to watch the Mars landing of Curiosity late tomorrow night/early Monday morning [12:31AM CDT Monday].

NASA coverage starts an hour before the landing.

Since that is prime time for selling stuff on American cable systems, you probably won’t get to watch on your TV, but NASA makes the feed available for free.

Curiosity has a nuclear power supply, so if things go wrong, we might nuke Mars, but life is a risk. I doubt Martians would feel that way. There are very good, technical and engineering reasons for the choice that will make the mission longer and more productive than the two earlier rovers that depended on batteries and photovoltaic panels. [I still don’t like it.]

The Canadian Space Agency supplied one of the instruments on the rover, so they have a stake in this.

One of the things the rover will be testing for is methane in the atmosphere. There have been indications of its presence, and it is a marker for living organisms.

Update: NASA’s site for the Mars Science Laboratory [Curiosity].

If you want to play poker online you have to move out of the US to a place like Costa Rica, because the Department of Justice is shutting down online gambling … er, well some online gambling.

High stakes online gambling is still legal:

NEW YORK – The high-speed trading arms race being waged on Wall Street has finally claimed its first major casualty.

Knight Capital Group, a brokerage that handles nearly 11 percent of all stock trading in U.S. companies, is in danger of collapsing after a software glitch triggered millions of unintended orders. The New Jersey firm lost $440 million in less than an hour – nearly four times the company’s profit last year.

In the illegal form you have to put your cash out there immediately, it is only the legal Wall Street casino that lets you bet with other people’s money, and then only show a fraction of the money to place a bet.

This difference makes sense to Congresscritters.

Position: 16.1N 33.0W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: West-Northwest [295°] near 15 mph [24 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 60 mph [ 95 kph].
Wind Gusts: 75 mph [120 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 80 Miles [130 km].
Minimum central pressure: 1000 mb ↓.

Currently about 600 miles [ 960 km] West of the Cape Verde Islands.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

Position: 15.4N 72.7W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: West-Northwest [285°] near 22 mph [35 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 60 mph [ 95 kph].
Wind Gusts: 75mph [120 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 140 miles [220 km].
Minimum central pressure: 1007 mb ↑.

Currently about 325 miles [ 525 km] East-Southeast of Kingston, Jamaica.

A Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for Jamaica.

The models and forecast are beginning to agree on the storm landing on the Yucatan Peninsula and then continuing on to the Bay of Campeche.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]