Insight from the Experienced
Mentor programs are a great way for companies to retain older, wiser, more experienced talent. Kind of like this:

Highlighting just how frightening the first day of school can be, The Salt Lake City Tribune (via Fark) reports that kindergarteners at Douglas T. Orchard Elementary in Utah now have some seasoned mentors on their side — first graders.

Orchard first-graders have plenty of advice for the newbies at their school, including this wise jewel of wisdom: "Outline the picture first, then color it inside."

And, "Here's how to make friends: Say, 'Do you want to be my friend?'"

But the most important tidbit from teacher Leigh Anstadt's first-grade class: "Recess is just about the best and most important part of kindergarten."

Helicopter Turns 100
Sometime this year, the helicopter celebrates its 100-year anniversary.

Wikipedia lists the date — when the Gyroplane No. 1 lifted its pilot up into the air about two feet (0.6 meters) for a minute — as sometime between August 14th and September 29th. So now seems a good compromise for IMT recognition.

We know that Leonardo da Vinci was sketching choppers in his notebooks back in the 1400s, and that the Chinese probably invented the helicopter several times over when the West was still in caves, programming COBOL, so please hold off those comments and enjoy CNET's A Century of Helicopters photo gallery.

Frank Piasecki waving from his single-rotor PV-2 design in a demonstration flight in October 1943
Credit: Boeing, via CNET

DHS Video Game
The United States Department of Homeland Security is using video-game technology to help shore up defenses at home.

ABC News is reporting that for the past year, the government agency has spent $600,000 funding Ground Truth, a game that would cast players as first responders to a terrorist attack or natural disaster. Success in the game would be dependent not only on the rapidity of the response, but a player's tack. Poor choices would equal larger casualties and a lower score.

The disaster video game is a full-time project for computer Scientist Donna Djordjevich at Sandia National Labs. Graduate students at the University of Southern California have been focusing on the high-level graphics.

The DHS may secure the rights to the video game in order to train people across the country, and it very well may even become commercially available.

Quotable (Pop) Culture
Homer Simpson has made his debut in the new edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations, UK's The Register points out.

Homer — or at least The Simpsons series creator Matt Groening — is honored for several classics, including this classic bit of wisdom: "Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is never try."

We're partial to Scottish groundskeeper Willie's: "Bonjour, you cheese-eating surrender monkeys."

Another first-timer, in a bit of dark irony from O.J. Simpson: "Fame vaporizes, money goes with the wind, and all that's left is character."

Homer/Matt shares page space with other such newbies as Pamela Anderson and Pope Benedict XVI.

4 billion Phone Lines Worldwide
Largely due to the boom in mobile phones in developing countries, telephone service "has quadrupled in the past decade to 4 billion lines worldwide, according to a report this week from the United Nations telecommunications agency.

"The International Telecommunications Union counts 1.27 billion fixed lines and 2.68 billion mobile accounts," The Associated Press reports. "The total number of people represented by those figures is unclear because many people, particularly in industrial countries, have both kinds of service."

The increase has been especially strong in developing countries that have been able to provide cell phone service to tens of millions of people much more cheaply than having to wire up homes and offices for fixed-line telephones, AP notes.

Speaking of cell phones...

Harnessing Body Heat as Power
German scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits claim to have a developed "a procedure that harnesses body heat in order to generate power, which in the future may be used to power mobile devices," according to Network World, which explains:

Essentially, the system works on the principle of thermoelectric generators (TEG) -- semiconductor elements which extract electrical energy from the temperature difference between a hot and cold environment.

The team has apparently improved these thermoelectric generators and can use the difference between the body's surface temperature and that of the surroundings to produce energy that "could be used to power medical equipment, such as sensors attached to a body of a patient in an intensive care ward."

However, the project leader at the institute admits that the technology is not currently a viable option to power mobile devices, although it does have some battery charging capabilities.

NASA Sending Skywalker Lightsaber to Space
In honor of the 30th anniversary of Star Wars, NASA will launch Luke Skywalker's original Jedi lightsaber into space along with the crew of Discovery when the space shuttle launches the STS-120 crew in October, according to news out of NASA late last month.

collectSPACE (via Slashdot) reports:

Stowed on-board the orbiter, in addition to a new module for the international space station, will be the original prop lightsaber used by actor Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker in the 1983 movie "Star Wars, Episode VI: Return of the Jedi". The laser-like weapon is being flown to the orbiting outpost and back in honor of the 30th anniversary of the George Lucas-created franchise.

Geeky Editor's Note: The event is in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the original Star Wars movie, though Star Wars, Episode VI: Return of the Jedi — which is where the space-bound prop is from — was the second sequel and third movie made in the film series.

Credit: Engadget

Water's Early Journey
Scientists looking at a fledgling solar system have observed for the first time how water begins to make its way to newly forming planets.

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope observed a fledgling solar system, like the one depicted in the artist's concept below, and discovered deep within it enough water vapor to fill the oceans on Earth five times.

Eventually, this water might make its way into developing planets.

Gorgeous...

Click image for larger version in amazing detail.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech


Cheers.