I Don't Want To Scare Anyone

but its getting warmer and our little violin marked, 6-eyed demon spider from hell, the Missouri Brown Recluse is up and scurrying around dry dark places.

Its called a recluse for a reason: it likes to stay out of sight. It likes empty shoes especially. They build a unique tri-sided web, mostly in closets and behind counters, but will set up house in just about any corner thats usually hidden by a door thats always open.

I have had run-ins with these nasty little creatures and was almost bitten once. I actually picked one up and managed to let go right as his fangs were about to enter my finger. I hope he enjoyed his last ride.

Do not under-estimate the ferocious nature of this arachnid.

He will fight back if confronted.

A Kansas research project says this about our 6-eyed friend:

"Brown Recluse spiders are the Navy seals, the Green Berets...and the Top Guns of the spider world."
Kansas State University - Brown Recluse Research Project

He will also bite as he is being crushed by a foot sliding into a shoe. I know a man who was bitten by a brown recluse, (in Missouri, of all places), in the late 60's. He never fully recovered, and he walked with a limp til the day he passed away some 30 years later. He was bitten on his toe as he was putting his slippers on. He never saw the spider. He thought it was a piece of trash that had fallen into his slipper and caused a slight pin prick as his foot slid in. He almost lost his leg.

Watch this video

Meet the Missouri Brown Recluse

Loxosceles Recluse

I used to drive a moving van when I was younger. I got to meet a lot of interesting and educated people. I moved one of the engineers who helped developed the Space Shuttle program for NASA down to Houston after the first successful shuttle launch. His exact quote to me was; "We now have an official Buck Rogers spaceship"

I also got to meet an entomologist from VaTech. We rolled up in the house ready to go to work, and he has jars and jars of dead spiders that need to be packed. My brother, whose fear of spiders is unmatched in the known universe, refused to handle the glass specimen jars with the dead spiders inside. I made an off-hand comment about not being afraid of any spider except a Black Widow, and the good doctor proceeded to introduce me to Mr Brown Recluse, a spider I had never heard of before then. What the good doctor told me has caused me to develop a habit of shaking everything I pick up before I put it on, and to always check my shoes or boots before slipping my feet into them.

Effects of the bite -

In a short period of time, the venom in a Brown Recluse spider bite has the ability to cause major tissue necrosis. Necrosis is the death of living cells. The venom comes into contact with the living cells and they simply die. The result is a very painful and gruesome "flesh-rotting" open wound.

Fatalities are rare, but are most common with children, the elderly, and those in poor physical condition. The severity of the bite wound can vary greatly with some bites going unnoticed while others (though rare) reach the size of dinner plates. The amount of venom the spider injects can vary and tests indicate the spider is able to control the amount of venom injected.

Brown Recluse spider bites can be difficult to diagnose, even by physicians. Diagnostic tests to detect Brown Recluse venom in tissue are not readily available.

Bambi At NASA (or Where IS that Damn Easter Bunny?)

The full story of Bambi's visit to the Kennedy Space Center on Tax Day.

The President at Space X
- His motorcade proceeded not far from the building where I work. There is no picture for this historic moment in my life because every building on the military installation near his motorcade was put into complete lockdown.
- The President then gave a 45 minute speech on his plans for NASA at the Operations and Control building. One thousand employees were given paid leave to keep them out of the building the entire day. The O&C building was in lockdown from 7 AM to 7 PM including the surrounding parking lots.
- The speech was given to persons who received a White House invitation.
- The President then flew out from the SLF around 3:45 PM.

The President came to “talk to us” about the future of NASA, but NONE of “us” were at his speech. Nor were we able to even wave to him as he drove around. Even his supporters that I work with were livid that they could not even walk out of the building to view his motorcade at a distance. One even stormed off from the single window facing the road he traveled and stated that America is not free.

I can understand the desire for safety for our President, but this was serious over-kill. The President was on a secure facility; surrounded by unarmed nerds with federally investigated backgrounds. Many of the employees at NASA-KSC have been around since the beginning of the shuttle program. I can honestly say that I do not believe we would have been confined to our buildings or that entire buildings would have been shut down for an entire day if Bush had ever visited… or any other past President for that matter. We, as the media labeled us, truly were hostile territory for this President.

The President’s speech did not tell us anything more than what we could have read in Florida Today. We will still lose 8,000 jobs at just KSC alone. He will “save” ~2,000 jobs… not really. Though, his logic is very similar to the health care bill. We will spend (i.e. lose) 8,000 ($1 trillion dollars) jobs in order to save 2,000 jobs ($100 billion) in the future. He is still cancelling Constellation. He is still relegating us to the back of the bus in the space industry. We still do not have a private industry that can send humans into space. We will give foreign countries millions to employ their citizens in order to send our astronauts into space.

He has proclaimed that he is giving us a “new” direction much like JFK did when he proclaimed that America would go to the moon. Only, his new direction does not have us going to the moon or Mars or even the ISS! He wants us to find where the Easter bunny lives (i.e. Climate Change). This is not a direction for NASA. This is the destruction of America’s lead in space.

This President spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to come and tell us everything we already knew. He could have simply remained in D.C. and given the same worthless speech to save everyone time and money.

Operations at KSC were shut down; some for the entire day. For what? Well, we did learn something. When this President is around the “intelligent workforce that America’s space industry cannot afford to lose,” we will be locked down and prevented from seeing him.

This narcissistic, communistic President has betrayed America over and over again. His reign of destruction will prove difficult to fix when he is voted out in 2012.
Are you, America, up for the challenge?

Kinda makes you think of royalty the way he only has hand-picked people at his rallies and speeches. (or Iran. or the old Soviet Union. or the new Russia. or North Korea. or Cuba. or Venezuela.)

The Sky is Falling! The Sky is Falling!

I wonder if they'll blame this on global warming?

Asteroid has a 1 in 75 chance of hitting Mars next month. COOL.

Instapundit is spreading the alarm.
Mars could be in for an asteroid hit. A newly discovered hunk of space rock has a 1 in 75 chance of slamming into the Red Planet on Jan. 30, scientists said Thursday. "These odds are extremely unusual. We frequently work with really long odds when we track ... threatening asteroids," said Steve Chesley, an astronomer with the Near Earth Object Program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory