Saturday morning funnies

This morning as most, I started my computer, went to my My Yahoo! page and saw that Joel had posted new entries on his blog. The three most recent posts were titled "Self Cleaning Underwear", "Citizenre", and "Mercury Joe."

I couldn't resist a post about self-cleaning underwear and learned that this was not a trick or clever play on words but that the United States Air Force has developed a way to make fabric somewhat self cleaning; the soldiers could wear the same clothes for weeks at a time without ill effect, sometimes even helping clear up certain skin conditions. Evidently, one aspect of the treated fabric is that it has antibacterial capabilities. The article talked about how this technology could easily translate into the fabrics for people in the food preparation or medical fields.

The CitizenRe post was about a new solar energy program that didn't spark much interest for me.

Mercury Joe, however, turned out to make me laugh and I have to do my part as Time's Co-Person of the Year and share it with you.

These guys (did I really have to tell you it was guys?) are sending GI Joe into "space" in the style of the historic Mercury flights of the early 1960s and, in classic guy fashion, inviting the world to "Hey, watch this!" Being a guy and knowing that those three words are often ticket to the front row for very unexpected and sometimes catastrophic events, I visited their site and watched their videos. I was not disappointed. These guys do a very nice job of telling their story in video and stills photos of their sparkling successes and their smoldering failures. I also learned that GI Joe is not their first astronaut. Like the Mercury flights, before sending up an action figure man, they ran initial tests with ... Gumby!

Historic note: The kinda scary looking guys in the photo at the right, you've probably heard of most of them. I got this picture from a government website. They're our first astronauts going through survival training in the Nevada desert.