I am back from Europe and will be discussing my trip over the next week or so! This will include photos, my opinions on how Dutch sounds to the naïve American ear, and possibly a few thoughts about the Robocop remake.

In lieu of any of that, here is the music for today (Loscil - Dub for Cascadia).

I am in Europe (specifically Amsterdam, at the moment) for the time being. Photos will be posted either soon or upon my return to the States.

The Rosetta probe mission is an exciting one. It was launched in 2004 with the intention to orbit and land on a comet (specifically, 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko). In the meantime, it's passed by Mars and a few of the stranger asteroids we've studied, grabbing some great photos in the process. It's orbiting the comet now. Take a look at the new photos. For reference, the comet is only about two and a half miles long.

See also: the entire trip.

This is the music for today. August in Virginia makes one feel like an escaping cave ghost.

Today, I learned that much of the success of polio eradication in the Western hemisphere could be attributed to a vaccine delivery strategy employed throughout Central and South America. Between the 1960's-80's, a number of countries throughout the region started campaigns to immunize every child. Brazil specifically held a series of national immunization days, a strategy later adopted by other countries in the region. I'm not sure how many countries still actively maintain national immunization days or how effective they've been for diseases besides poliomyelitis. It's a bit disheartening to imagine the opposition such an approach would receive here in the US.