Friday, April 29

The Royal Wedding

Friday, April 1

Carrie Ann Inaba

Carrie Ann Inaba (born January 5, 1968) is an American dancer, choreographer, actress, game show host, and singer.
She started her career as a singer in Japan, but became best known for her dancing, first introducing herself to American audiences as one of the original Fly Girls on the sketch comedy series In Living Color. She has appeared as one of three judges on the ABC television series Dancing with the Stars (DWTS), a show that pairs celebrities with professional dancers as they train and then compete in front of a studio audience.
Inaba, who speaks Japanese, lived in Tokyo from 1986 to 1988 and was a popular singer. She released three singles, "Party Girl" (backed with "China Blue"), "Be Your Girl" (backed with "6½ Capezio"), and "Yume no Senaka" (backed with "Searching") and hosted weekly radio and television series.
After returning to America, Inaba appeared as one of the "Fly Girls", a group of backing dancers on the television series In Living Color from 1990 to 1992. She also performed with Canadian singer Norman Iceberg and dancers Viktor Manoel (David Bowie's "Glass Spider" tour) and Luca Tommassini at Prince's notorious Glam Slam. Inaba appeared as a dancer during Madonna's 1993 Girlie Show World Tour.
Inaba appeared in the film Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002) as Fook Yu, alongside Diane Mizota who played her twin sister Fook Mi. The two women are not related, but when Mizota had been cast for her role, she was asked if she knew any actresses who resembled her and suggested Inaba. Inaba, who had appeared briefly in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, was given the role and the two women were made up to appear as identical twins. Inaba and Mizota would later reprise their roles with Mike Myers in a commercial for Motorola.
Inaba has acted (usually as a dancer) in the movies Monster Mash: The Movie, Lord of Illusions, Showgirls, Boys and Girls, Flintstones II, Freak and American Virgin and the television series Jack & Jill and Nikki.
Inaba has choreographed several television series, including American Idol, American Juniors, All American Girl, He's a Lady, In Search of the Partridge Family (in which she also appeared on air), Married by America, The Sexiest Bachelor in America Pageant, The Swan, and Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?. She also choreographed the Miss America Pageant for five years.
Inaba is the founder and President of EnterMediArts, Inc., a video production company. She directs, writes, and edits films. Her work includes E! Behind The Scenes Miss America Special, 7th Festival of the Pacific Arts, A Portrait of IVI and Beyond the Dancing Image, along with the short feature film, Black Water. She also appeared in the first season of So You Think You Can Dance during the audition stages where she provided choreography for the "choreography round".
Other TV appearances include Inaba as guest and co-host on The View, the ABC talent competition Dance War: Bruno vs. Carrie Ann, and the FOX special Breaking the Magician's Code: Magic's Biggest Secrets Finally Revealed.
Also, Inaba guest stars as Tina, Hannah's choreographer, in the Hannah Montana episode, "Papa's Got A Brand New Friend". In the episode, Tina is seen teaching Hannah new dance moves. However, she is accidentally pushed out of the window when Hannah does the electric slide, and becomes incapacitated in a full-body cast. Hannah pleads her to keep her job, but Tina refuses, forcing Hannah to hire a new choreographer.
TV Guide Network announced that Carrie Ann has been signed on to anchor its live red carpet coverage, beginning with the 2009 Primetime Emmy Awards.
In October 2010, she was named host of a revival of the game show 1 vs. 100. The show airs on GSN.

Departments of France

The departments of France (French: département, pronounced: [depaʁtəmɑ̃]) and many of its former colonies are administrative divisions. The 101 French departments are grouped into 22 metropolitan and five overseas regions, all of which have identical legal status as integral parts of France. The departments are subdivided into 342 arrondissements, which in turn, are divided into cantons. Each canton consists of a small number of communes. In the overseas territories, some of the communes play a role at departmental level.
The first French "departments", in the sense of territory, were proposed in 1665 by Marc-René d'Argenson, and served as administrative areas purely for the Ponts et Chaussées ("Bridges and Highways", the infrastructure administration).
Before the French Revolution, France accumulated territory gradually through the annexation of a mosaic of independent entities. By the close of the Ancien Régime it was organised into provinces. During the period of the Revolution, these were dissolved, partly in order to weaken old loyalties.
The modern departments, as all-purpose units of government, were created on 4 March 1790 by the National Constituent Assembly to replace the provinces with what the Assembly deemed a more rational structure. Their boundaries served two purposes:
Boundaries were chosen to deliberately break up France's historical regions in an attempt to erase cultural differences and build a more homogeneous nation.
Boundaries were set so that any settlement in the country was within a day's ride of the capital of the department. This was a security measure, intended to keep the entire national territory under close control. This measure was directly inspired by the Great Terror, during which the government had lost control of many rural areas which were far from any centre of government.

MESSENGER

GEochemistry and Ranging (MESSENGER) probe is a 485-kilogram (1,070 lb) robotic American space probe in orbit around the planet Mercury. It was launched by NASA in August 2004 to study the chemical composition, geology, and the magnetic field of Mercury. It became the second mission to reach Mercury successfully when it made a flyby in January 2008, followed by a second flyby in October 2008,and a third flyby on September 2009. (The first space probe to reach Mercury was Mariner 10 in 1975.) MESSENGER is the first spacecraft to orbit the planet Mercury. Inserting into orbit around Mercury is difficult because a satellite approaching on a direct path from Earth would be accelerated by the Sun's gravity and pass Mercury far too quickly to orbit it.
The instruments carried by MESSENGER performed well on a complex series of flybys of Earth (once), Venus (twice), and Mercury itself (three times). These allowed the craft to be slowed relative to Mercury with minimal fuel. MESSENGER successfully entered Mercury orbit on 18 March 2011 with no reported problems. The craft's science instruments were reactivated 24 March, with a first photo returned from Mercury orbit on 29 March. Its formal science data collection mission is planned to begin 4 April 2011.
In 1973 Mariner 10 was launched to make multiple flyby encounters of Venus and Mercury. Mariner 10 provided the first detailed data of Mercury, mapping 40-45% of the surface. The final flyby of Mercury by Mariner 10 occurred on March 16, 1975, ending close-range observations of the planet for over thirty years. Being the least explored terrestrial planet with no future planned mission, a study, published in 1998, detailed a proposed mission to send an orbiting spacecraft to Mercury. In the years since the Mariner 10 mission, subsequent mission proposals to revisit Mercury had appeared too costly, requiring large quantities of propellant and a heavy lift launch vehicle. However, using a trajectory designed by Chen-wan Yen in 1985, the study showed it was possible to seek a Discovery-class mission by using multiple, consecutive gravity assist, 'swingby' maneuvers around Venus and Mercury, in combination with minor propulsive trajectory corrections, to gradually slow the spacecraft and thereby minimize propellant needs.
The primary science objectives of the mission include:
determine accurately the surface composition of Mercury
characterize the geological history of the planet
determine the precise strength of the magnetic field and its variation with position and altitude
investigate the presence of a liquid outer core by measuring Mercury's libration
determine the nature of the radar reflective materials at Mercury’s poles
investigate the important volatile species and their sources and sinks on and near Mercury.
The spacecraft was designed and built at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Science operations, managed by Dr. Sean Solomon as principal investigator, and mission operations are also conducted at JHU/APL. The contrived acronym MESSENGER was chosen because Mercury was the messenger of the gods according to Roman mythology.