Who broke the sound barrier

• Author: Razvan Pirnac
• Filed under: Celebrities, What is ?
• Date: Feb 8,2008

In aerodynamics, the sound barrier usually refers to flight at transonic speeds, between subsonic and supersonic speeds. The term came into use during World War II when a number of aircraft started to encounter the effects of compressibility, a grab-bag of unrelated aerodynamic effects. The term fell out of use in the 1950s when aircraft started to routinely “break” the sound barrier. Refer to the speed of sound for the science behind the velocity referred to as the sound barrier.

The first flight at faster than the speed of sound occurred on 14 October 1947. The aircraft was the Bell X-1 and the pilot was Captain Charles Yeager.

It was in the X-1 that Chuck Yeager was the first person to break the sound barrier in level flight on October 14, 1947, flying at an altitude of 45,000 ft (13.7 km).

The sound barrier was first broken in a vehicle in a sustained way on land in 1948 by a rocket-powered test vehicle at Muroc Air Force Base (now Edwards AFB) in California, United States. It was powered by 6000 pounds (27 kN) of thrust, reaching 1,019 mph (1,640 km/h).^[5]

Jackie Cochran was the first woman to break the sound barrier on May 18, 1953, in a Canadair Sabre, with Yeager as her wingman.

Heidi Fleiss

• Author: Razvan Pirnac
• Filed under: Celebrities, World News
• Date: Feb 8,2008

Heidi Lynne Fleiss (born December 30, 1965), known as the “Hollywood Madam”, is a former American madam. In 1997, she was convicted in connection with her prostitution ring with charges including pandering and tax evasion. Her ring had numerous famous and wealthy clients. She was sentenced to 37 months in prison for tax evasion, (pandering charges were dropped) but served just 21. Her original three-year sentence prompted wide outrage at her harsh punishment, while her customers had not been punished.

HEIDI FLESS ARRESTED IN NEVADA 

Police say they got a call warning of a possible drunk driver. When Nye County Sheriff’s deputies pulled the car over, they discovered it was being driven by none other than Heidi Fleiss. Cops say during the traffic stop they found prescription narcotics for which Fleiss was unable to produce a valid prescription.

Jeffrey Epstein

• Author: Razvan Pirnac
• Filed under: Celebrities
• Date: Feb 7,2008

Jeffrey Epstein (born 1953 in Coney Island, New York) is a reclusive American billionaire financier and philanthropist.

Epstein attended Lafayette High School in Brooklyn, NY. He began his career as a math teacher at Dalton before becoming a trader at Bear Stearns. He subsequently founded his own financial management firm, located on his private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands. He reportedly will not take clients with assets less than $1 billion.Epstein befriended high profile scientists and politicians such as Leonard Susskind, Dr. Richard Axel, Dr. Gerald Edelman, Murray Gell-Mann, Marvin Minsky and Bill Clinton.

In addition to his private island in the Virgin Islands (Little St. James Island), Epstein owns a home in Manhattan and a ranch in New Mexico.

Epstein has donated money to the Institute for Advanced Study. He is a former board member of Rockefeller University, a member of the New York Academy of Sciences, the Trilateral Commission, and the Council on Foreign Relations, and a visiting fellow at Harvard University. He has also funded microbiology experiments in Bangladesh, high energy physics in South Africa and M theory in India and was a founding member of the Scholar Rescue Fund.

Epstein is a former trustee of the International Institute for Education, the parent organization of the Fulbright Scholarship program. He has held conferences on artificial intelligence, cosmology and the origin of life with prominent scientists. His donation of $6.5 million funded the creation of the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics at Harvard in 2002.

Charlotte Fischer

• Author: Razvan Pirnac
• Filed under: Celebrities
• Date: Feb 6,2008

Charlotte Froese Fischer obtained both a B.A. degree, with honors in Mathematics and Chemistry, and an M.A. degree in Applied Mathematics from the University of British Columbia in 1952 and 1954, respectively. She then went to Cambridge University where she obtained a Ph. D. in applied mathematics and computing in 1957. There she worked with Douglas R. Hartree, programming the first Electronic Digital Stored program Automatic Computer (EDSAC) for atomic structure calculations. Dr. Fischer served on the Mathematics faculty of the University of British Columbia from 1957 - 68 where she introduced numerical analysis and computer courses into the curriculum and was instrumental in the formation of the Computer Science Department. She served as Professor of Applied Analysis and Computer Science at the University of Waterloo (1968 - 75), Professor of Computer Science at Pennsylvania State University (1974 - 79). She and her husband, Patrick C. Fischer, came to Vanderbilt University in 1980.

Dr. Fischer has served as Editor for a number of journals. She served as an Atomic Structure Editor for Computer Physics Communications from 1968 - 1998.

Dr. Fischer spent 1963 - 64 at the Harvard College Observatory, extending her research on atomic structure calculations. While at Harvard, she was the first woman scientist to be awarded an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship. Since then she has become internationally known for her software for atomic structure calculations and her research in atomic structure theory. In 1991 she became a Fellow of the American Physical Society, in part for her contribution to the discovery of negative calcium. In 1995 she was elected a member of the Royal Physiographical Society of Lund and in 2004, as a foreign member of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences.

Super Tuesday 2008

• Author: Razvan Pirnac
• Filed under: Celebrities, World News
• Date: Feb 6,2008

California was the big prize of the night, and Clinton was winning well more than half of the vote. The state offered with 370 delegates, but because of the Democratic nominating rules, Clinton will not win all of them. Combined with Sen. Barack Obama’s win in his home state of Illinois and his significant haul of delegates in numerous smaller states, the race for the Democratic nomination was likely to be a dead heat.

Clinton’s victories included New York, Massachusetts and New Jersey in addition to California, according to NBC News’ projections from official returns and extensive exit-polling data. She also picked up victories in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Arizona.

Obama bolstered his win in Illinois with victories in Georgia, Alabama, Minnesota, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Utah, Kansas, North Dakota, Idaho and Alaska, NBC News projected. He also appeared to be winning in Missouri, it said.

McCain is front-runner; Dems’ race not settled
# Democrats Clinton and Obama split states; biggest prize projected for New York senator
# Sen. John McCain piling up projected wins — including crown jewels California and New York
# Mike Huckabee projected for impressive wins in South; Mitt Romney cobbles together victories
developing story

Democratic and Republican Presidential Primaries and Caucuses

Twenty-four states are holding presidential primaries or caucuses on February 5: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah and West Virginia. For the Democrats, 1,681 delegates are at stake in 16 primaries and seven caucuses. The Republicans have 1,020 delegates at stake in 15 primaries and six caucuses.

LIVE FACTS HERE

Shell Kepler death

• Author: Razvan Pirnac
• Filed under: Celebrities
• Date: Feb 5,2008

Shell Kepler was one of 250 young actresses who auditioned for the role of Amy Vining on General Hospital. Shell stood out in the crowd, however, and-after a week of intense anxiety and nail-biting waiting to see if she got the part-she signed on as a regular GH cast member. She’s been a satisfied soaperstar ever since.

Shell was born and raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee, but she moved to California when she was in the sixth grade. Though an acting career was, at the time, just a dream, Shell began working diligently on her diction and speech patterns. “Having a southern accent in the sixth grade in Southern California just wasn’t a big hit with the other kids,” she says. “Definitely not … so I eliminated that immediately.”

After retiring from acting, Kepler moved to Portland where she did real estate investmant and spent lots of time fundraising for charities.

Shell Kepler died yesterday morning in Portland, Oregon of renal failure.

Deadheads for Obama

• Author: Razvan Pirnac
• Filed under: Celebrities, Social Life, Video
• Date: Feb 5,2008

DEADHEADS FOR OBAMA
featuring
BOB WEIR, MICKEY HART, PHIL LESH , & FRIENDS

The Warfield Theatre
Monday, February 4th, 2008
Doors 6:00 PM/ Show 7:30PM
Grateful Dead Members to Reunite for Barack Obama

Members of the Grateful Dead will host a get out the vote concert in support of Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama on Monday, February 4th at The Warfield Theatre in San Francisco.

Mickey Hart, Phil Lesh, and Bob Weir, joined by Jackie Greene, John Molo, and Steve Molitz, will play a show together in support of Barack Obama.

The video website Iclips will be producing a live simulcast streamed via the Internet on www.iclips.net at approximately 7:30 PM PST.

This will mark the first time that the members of the legendary band have performed together since 2004. They have agreed to reunite for this one-time-only event in order to lend support to Senator Obama leading into the crucial “Super-Tuesday” series of primaries held on Tuesday, February 5th.

Tom McClintock

• Author: Razvan Pirnac
• Filed under: Celebrities
• Date: Feb 5,2008

Thomas Miller McClintock (born July 10, 1956 in White Plains, New York) is a California State Senator. He ran for Governor of California in the 2003 California recall election of Gray Davis and finished third out of 135 candidates with 13.5% of the overall vote. In 2006, he was the Republican nominee for Lieutenant Governor of California but lost to Democratic nominee John Garamendi.

McClintock graduated from UCLA in 1978. He was elected Chairman of the Ventura County Republican Party at the age of 23 and served until 1981. He was chief of staff to Sen. Ed Davis from 1980 to 1982. From 1992 to 1994 he served as director of the Center for the California Taxpayer. He was director of the Claremont Institute’s Golden State Center for Policy Studies from 1994 to 1996.

Tom McClintock has a long history of opposing taxes. During the 2000 dot-com bubble, he was instrumental at proposing a two-thirds reduction in the vehicle license fee, or car tax. Read the rest of this entry »

Sarah Silverman at Jimmy Kimmel about Matt Daemon

• Author: Razvan Pirnac
• Filed under: Celebrities, Video
• Date: Feb 2,2008

Sarah Kate Silverman (born December 1, 1970) is an American comedian, writer, and actress. Although usually credited as Sarah Silverman, she is sometimes credited by her nickname Big S or Sarah ‘Big S’ Silverman. Her comedy deals with topical humor and satire, societal taboos, and controversial topics such as racism, sexism and religion.

Her comedy acts are sometimes performed from a caricatured or stereotypical Jewish-American princess perspective, in which, according to Village Voice writer Michael Musto, she mocks bigotry and ethnic or religious stereotypes by endorsing them ironically. Silverman was first noticed as a writer for and occasional performer on Saturday Night Live. She now stars in and produces The Sarah Silverman Program, which debuted February 1, 2007, on Comedy Central.

On January 31, 2008, she appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! to show him a special video she had made in honor of the show’s 5th anniversary. The video turned out to be a song called “I’m Fucking Matt Damon”, in which Matt Damon, a frequent butt of Kimmel’s jokes, also appeared and they alleged they were having an affair behind Kimmel’s back. According to People, the video “has become an instant YouTube hit.” Read the rest of this entry »

Angelo Cataldi 610 WIP

• Author: Razvan Pirnac
• Filed under: Celebrities, Video
• Date: Feb 1,2008

Angelo Cataldi (born March 13, 1951) is a sports radio personality for 610 WIP (AM) in Philadelphia. Airing from 5:30am (which includes a 15-minute “Overlap” Show with overnight personality Big Daddy Graham) until 10:00am Eastern time, along with co-hosts Al Morganti and Rhea Hughes, Cataldi’s “Morning Show” is among the highest-rated radio shows ever in the Philadelphia area.

Angelo Cataldi has a preview of Wing Bowl 16 in his blog and reports that the news of his creation’s demise are greatly exaggerated: