Send My Conscience Home in a Taxi

I was poking around on the Wikipedia recently - as you do - an activity XKCD touched on...

I ended up reading the article about the International Space Station, AKA Alpha, which I think I ended up at after coming across a list of "the most expensive things ever built". Of which the space station is top of the list! It costs US$4,000 to put a pound of anything into orbit (no idea what that makes it per kilo) and the ISS is the size of two football fields...

Anyway, this lead me to this rather interesting video. It's a tour of the thing by the commander of expedition crew 18. It starts off slow - wandering around a big white cylindrical room/capsule. Then he casually wanders over and opens a window... and there's an amazing view of the earth and the space station! It was astonishing.

Other amusing features - seeing the inside of the tiny capsule that'll take them back to earth. And the two other astronauts who are busy exercising and not chatty at all. Oh, and the space toilet - a thing that works with suction!

This video was made before the shipped up something called the Cupola, which must give them amazing views...

OK, enough space nerdiness from me :-)

My new favourite word is "Voorwerp". OK, so, I'm going to have some issues using it in a sentence, but I'm going to try.

What is it I hear you ask? Voorwerp is a Dutch word that means "Object" or "Thing". Most recent it came to prominence because of a project called Galaxy Zoo were members of the public, the Hoi Polli if you will, were invited to help classify celestial objects from a large collection of pictures. A Dutch lady spotted an object which has since been officially named Hanny's Voorwerp. And in interesting thingy it is.

This prompted me to ask my Dutch-speaking mother about it. Which prompted her to offer to get me a "woordenboek", which is the Dutch word for Dictionary! Literally "Word And Book!"

Time I learnt another language... Aside from nerd.