Friday, January 25, 2008

Asteroid 2007 Near Earth Object

Well it looks like some more fun stuff for next week, Hopefully people can get some pictures of it. If anyone is able to get pictures E-Mail me them and I will post them here. Another option just leave a way for me to contact you in the comments section and I will contact you.


Asteroid 2007 TU24 will pass within about 540,000 kilometres, or 1.4 lunar distances, of Earth early Tuesday for Canadians, reaching its closest approach at 3:23 a.m. ET.

The asteroid will, for a brief time, be visible to amateur telescopes of 7.5-centimetre apertures or larger, according to the Near-Earth Object program office of NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab.

The asteroid, measuring between 150 and 600 metres in diameter, has no chance of hitting or affecting the Earth, the office said.

Asteroids of this size or larger are expected to pass this close to Earth, on average, about every five years, the scientists said. Asteroids of this size hit the Earth on average once every 37,000 years, they said.

In 2002, amateur astronomers were able to observe the flight of an 800-metre-wide asteroid when it passed over North American skies at a similar distance from Earth.

On March 31, 2004, a small asteroid, designated 2004 FU162, came the closest to Earth, passing within 6,500 kilometres, or roughly one Earth radius. It was only five to 10 metres in diameter, however.

Asteroid 2007 TU24 was discovered last October. NASA scientists said they plan to track and take high-resolution radar images of the asteroid as it nears Earth, with the hopes of producing a 3-D reconstruction.

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Is There Life On Mars




Well it's been a busy week and this picture has been in the news a lot. It reminded me of a David Bowie Song, Is There Life On Mars? The lyrics follow below for the song.

David Bowie - Life On Mars Lyrics

It's a God awful small affair
To the girl with the mousey hair,
But her mummy is yelling, "No!"
And her daddy has told her to go,
But her friend is no where to be seen.
Now she walks through her sunken dream
To the seats with the clearest view
And she's hooked to the silver screen,
But the film is sadd'ning bore
For she's lived it ten times or more.
She could spit in the eyes of fools
As they ask her to focus on

Sailors
Fighting in the dance hall.
Oh man!
Look at those cavemen go.
It's the freakiest show.
Take a look at the lawman
Beating up the wrong guy.
Oh man!
Wonder if he'll ever know
He's in the best selling show.
Is there life on Mars?

It's on America's tortured brow
That Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow.
Now the workers have struck for fame
'Cause Lennon's on sale again.
See the mice in their million hordes
From Ibeza to the Norfolk Broads.
Rule Britannia is out of bounds
To my mother, my dog, and clowns,
But the film is a sadd'ning bore
'Cause I wrote it ten times or more.
It's about to be writ again
As I ask you to focus on

Sailors
Fighting in the dance hall.
Oh man!
Look at those cavemen go.
It's the freakiest show.
Take a look at the lawman
Beating up the wrong guy.
Oh man!
Wonder if he'll ever know
He's in the best selling show.
Is there life on Mars?

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Wednesday, January 23, 2008

E-Bay And Third Party Coin Grading Companys

I thought some people might be interested in this suite that has started with E-Bay and some of the slabbing company's. This I think could get very interesting and may work. It also highlights some of the problems with Third Party Grading services/slabbing.




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Tuesday, January 22, 2008

E-Bay Auction Worries

This could get interesting I had suspected E-Bay was having some trouble as they had what I considered a very aggressive advertising campaign in Canada for their website. It should be interesting to see what the future holds, though I suspect things will get worse before they get better in my opinion.
Let me know what you think.

eBay CEO Meg Whitman is reportedly pondering retirement as the online auction giant struggles with slowing growth. Makes you wonder about those fourth quarter results eh?

The Wall Street Journal reports that Whitman is seriously thinking about retirement after a decade at the helm. That’s a lifetime among Internet companies. For instance, Yahoo has been through three CEOs in the last decade. John Donahoe, who leads eBay’s auction unit, is the front runner to succeed Whitman.

What’s Whitman’s departure mean? Big changes are coming. A few hints of how big these changes are will come Wednesday when eBay reports its fourth quarter earnings. Analysts are expecting a profit of 41 cents a share in the December quarter with sales of $2.14 billion, according to Thomson Financial.

Going into the quarter, analysts expect eBay to cut its outlook for 2008 with a lot of management time spent on reviving listings growth. Listings growth in the U.S. is expected to be up roughly 3 percent in the U.S., according to Jeffries analyst Youssef Squali. However, Squali notes that eBay gets more than half of its revenue from overseas and a weak dollar can boost results. Overall, eBay is going to spend a lot of time talking about listing prices and potentially a major price adjustment.

eBay’s has two critical issues. First, Amazon’s third party partners are taking eBay market share. It’s unclear what eBay can do to boost listings revenue (it doesn’t have pricing power anymore). Most analysts expect eBay to cut insertion fees.

Merrill Lynch analyst Justin Post writes:

EBay management has indicated that the company is looking at restructuring its listing fees structure in order to improve seller sentiment and increase listings activity (and better compete with Amazon for high volume sellers, in our view). Industry sources and our calculations indicate that sellers currently pay approximately 50-60% of their eBay fees upfront in insertion, gallery, and other option fees and only 40% in final value fees on goods that actually sell. For many sellers, particularly larger professional sellers, the lack certainty on their marketing cost of sales (because they can’t predict conversion rates) limits how much they are willing to commit to the eBay marketplace.

Simply put, it’s a good time for Whitman to hand off the reins–especially if impending changes at eBay will take a while to pay off.


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