NASA evacuated a building at the Johnson Space Center in Houston after a person with a gun was seen and a shot was fired, a NASA spokeswoman said Friday. A SWAT team has been sent to the scene, a source told CNN. One report indicates the suspect has barricaded himself in a building. NASA spokesman James Hartfield told CNN gunshots were heard in the building. He added NASA security rules do not allow weapons on the property.
China claimed yesterday to have caused a snowfall for the first time as part of its increasingly ambitious attempts to control the weather.
Officials in the meteorological bureau in Tibet said they had used "rain-seeding" techniques to trigger a snowfall over the city of Nagqu last week.
"This proves it's possible for humans to change the weather on the world's highest plateau," said Yu Zhongshui. The bureau said it had produced just under half an inch of snow at a height of 15,000ft.
Mr Yu said the experiment was conducted in the hope it would lead to alleviating drought on the northern Tibetan plateau, whose grasslands are turning brown as global warming melts and drains its permafrost.
The government also hopes that the project will benefit the great river systems of China. The Yellow, Yangtse, Salween, Mekong and Brahmaputra rivers all rise in Tibet, and the effects of damming and over-extraction for agriculture are beginning to threaten water supplies to major cities.
China is the world's largest practitioner of rain-seeding, a controversial procedure that involves releasing silver iodide as a catalyst into clouds either by aircraft or by firing cannon shells into them. It employs 37,000 people on the programme, which it uses to trigger rainfall principally to maximise water supply in the drought-prone north of the country, although in Beijing it is often said to be part of attempts to ensure a blue sky for major events.
Authorities have already promised to use rain-seeding before the Olympics to clear the often gloomy August skies for the opening ceremony.
I said, "The dark has come too soon." I gazed across the marshy waste To where, by vapors half-effaced, Sank the southwestern, slender moon.
The vapors brooded on the land, Too big to sink, too foul to float, Upcast like poison from the throat Of one great chimney near at hand.
The factory about its base Droned to the darkness, hour on hour— Squat dungeons, huddled at its tow'r, As fearful of the night's dim face.
As fearful of the outraged night, It glowered with unblinking eyes On marshy waste, on tainted skies Shamed by the desecrating light.
I said, "Within those roaring walls, What engines gleam, what toils await? There strength and power serve their fate, And there a Titan's hammer falls.
"And surely there the fire reveals What giants at their service bend,— What thewed endurances attend The sleepless shuttles and the wheels . . . . "
In meadow-dews an irised flame Stirred as the lucid morning broke, And from those portals, black with smoke, A thousand weary children came!
In November of 1926, Sterling committed suicide by swallowing cyanide at his residence at the San Francisco Bohemian Club. Kevin Starr wrote that "When George Sterling's corpse was discovered in his room at the Bohemian Club... the golden age of San Francisco'sbohemia had definitely come to a miserable end."
I just happened to catch the CNN unedited footage of Bush's visit to Walter Reed on Friday afternoon. Just seconds after this photo was taken (Where Bush gives the Masonic glad hand to a newly bionic handed soldier) Mr. Bush wipes his hand on his jacket in conscious or unconscious disgust. As the entire segment made it's way into edited rotation, every subsequent clip ended just prior to his childish (and yet telling) hand cleansing.
If anyone happens to have the unedited version of this footage I'd love to see it posted! If I had my wish, it would be to have limitless tape machines recording the days events as they unfolded. Ah, to be wealthy, and unemployed. Another sequence I would be interested in is the now famous "Duck in the Noose" mind-control trigger uttered by Police Chief Charles Moose during the (actually the day before Muhammad & Malvo were captured) D.C. sniper drama.
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