Reid Stowe and his girlfriend Soanya Ahmad are on day 143 of a planned 1,000 day voyage in the South Atlantic on a 70-foot schooner.

Stowe calls his project the Mars Ocean Odyssey, because he thinks the journey will provide valuable lessons for a manned flight to Mars, when astronauts would be confined to a small vessel for two to three years, separated from terra firma and most of humanity.

But

A representative for NASA says she doesn't know anyone at the agency who is following Stowe's mission.

The 55-year-old Stowe is an experienced sailor, having logged several very long trips, including a voyage to Antarctica in 1986. 24-year-old Ahmad never stepped foot on a boat before meeting Stowe four years ago. The world record for the longest continuous sail is currently 657 days. Link to article. Link to website.

These 5-year-olds in Taiwan are learning English. See how many children’s songs you can recognize inside U Can’t Touch This. Push play or go to YouTube. -via Arbroath

This recently-released image of a planetary nebula in Hercules was taken by the Hubble telescope. Phil at Bad Astronomy Blog explains (in a detailed but easily understood manner) what happens to cause a planetary nebula, and why this one is so pretty. Link

A Ukranian kitten enjoying what looks like a cantaloupe. No plot, just a cute video. Push play or go to YouTube. -via Arbroath

The movie Iron Man won’t be out til next May, but you can see the trailer now. And yes, you get to see Iron Man, although he is traveling pretty fast. Link -via Fuzzytopia

Dark Roasted Blend has a collection of images that predate 9/11, but eerily forshadow the destruction of the Twin Towers. Link

Other 9/11 anniversary links:

The progress in rebuilding at Ground Zero.

Ursi’s Blog has a roundup of 9/11 memorial links today.

Metafilter has a ton of music video links for Patriot Day.

An essay from a New Yorker: I am Not Afraid.

A spectacular entrance: The Queen Mary 2 luxury liner made its maiden call to the Port of San Francisco on February 4, 2007. Surrounded by a flotilla of ships, yachts and escorted by a San Francisco fire boat, Queen Mary 2 circled the harbor before docking at Pier 27.6 cameras were used.

Push play or go to Live Leak. -via Grow-A-Brain

How well do you know modern medications? In the latest mental_floss quiz, try to match the medicine with a side effect from its warning label. You don’t have to take these medications to know the answers -most have been in the news. Link

Do you know what your eyes are doing while you are reading? A group of researchers has determined that often, our left eye is not looking at the same printed letter as the right eye!

The team's results demonstrated that both eyes lock on to the same letter 53% of the time; for 39% of the time they see different letters with uncrossed eyes; and for 8% of the time the eyes are crossing to focus on different letters.

A follow-up experiment with the eye-tracking equipment showed that we only see one clear image when reading because our brain fuses the different images from our eyes together.

I’m impressed that they can actually measure such things, as fast as the reading process goes in most adults. Link -via Reddit

The Consumerist reports on the Continental Finance MasterCard. The fees include:

Account setup fee: $99
Program participation fee: $89
Annual fee: $49
Account maintenance fee: $120 (charged @ $10/month)
Purchase APR: 19.92%
Authorized user fee: $30 (great! seems like $53 credit is a bit too much for a single person to handle)
Credit limit increase fee: $25 (and you don't even have to ask for it!)
Internet payment fee: $4 for each authorized internet payment.

After all that, your credit limit is $53. Link - via Consumerist

Cristóbal Vila produced a stunning animation on one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s most famous buildings. Fallingwater {wiki} was designed in 1935 and built in Pennsylvania. This CGI movie shows the building process and takes you on a tour of the home’s angles. Link -via Ursi’s Blog

The folks at NPR wondered if $55 Bling H2O really tasted better than other bottled waters. They conducted a taste test featuring Bling H2O, normally-priced bottled water, and Manhattan tap water, and posted a video report. I don’t think the results will really surprise you. Link -via Metafilter

Paleo-Future has a series of French prints from 1910 depicting what life will be like in the year 2000. Some are precient, although the art is quaintly Victorian. Others, such as this woman being made up in her robotic bathroom, are still beyond us. Link -via Reddit

Similicio.us is an application that finds websites that appeal to similar tastes, using delicio.us bookmarks.

This is an experiment to see whether I can quickly find relevant web sites based on people's tags/bookmarks on del.icio.us, using a home-brewed association engine. It answers the question "people who tagged this site also tagged what other sites". I am using it mostly to find blogs that are similar to the ones I read, and to find new popular web sites that are in my area.

For example, if you like Neatorama, here is a list of other sites you might like. You can enter any URL and find a list of associated sites. You can also add this application to your browser toolbar. Link -via Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories

A classic clip of the best-named racehorse in history. Push play or go to YouTube. -via Arbroath