CONGRATULATIONS GRADUATES!!!!

--==HAPPY EASTER==--

Christians reflect on Good Friday

Christians have marked their most important holy day, Good Friday, in solemn and well attended church services around the country.

In Sydney, a dramatic re-enactment of Jesus' crucifixion broke the quiet of the CBD streets on Friday morning.

It began in Martin Place where an actor playing Jesus, dressed in bloodied robes, had a crown of thorns placed on his head.

As other actors, from Sydney's Wesley Mission, appeared as Roman centurions, guards, slaves and King Herod, `Jesus' limped and cried in pain as he carried a large timber cross along Pitt Street, where he was mocked and pushed to the ground.

The procession bewildered small groups of onlookers dining out in the few cafes open for the public holiday.

Earlier, a congregation of about 1,000 gathered in St Mary's Cathedral for the traditional Stations of the Cross Catholic mass.

A similar number attended an Anglican service in Sydney's St Andrew's Cathedral early on Friday morning.

In Brisbane, St John's Anglican Cathedral hosted a children's service for the first time this year.

Sub-dean Peter Catt said the church was so encouraged by the response from the 140 infants, children and teenagers who attended, it would become a regular event.

Canon Catt said the children brought joy - and noise - to the otherwise sombre day.

One two-year-old girl even did a dance while placing flowers at the foot of the cross, he said.

"Kids are kids," he laughed.

"Even when Jesus was being dragged around the streets, there would have been kids just doing their thing."

Around 400 people attended the cathedral's midday service, up on previous years.

Brisbane's Catholic community also flocked to services on Friday, with more than 1,000 gathering at St Stephen's Cathedral for the Stations of the Cross service on Friday afternoon.

About 400 people attended a service at Melbourne's St Paul's Anglican Cathedral.

The Very Reverend David Richardson said Easter was the "centrepiece" of the year for Christians.

"Their christianity connects at this time of year in significant ways," Dean Richardson said.

Larger congregations are expected at services on Easter Sunday.

Cosmic Clean-Up: Wild Ideas to Sweep Space

Jeanna Bryner
Staff Writer
SPACE.comWed Mar 19, 7:15 AM ET

Space is littered with millions of bits of orbiting garbage leftover from missions. The flying flotsam can delay launches and could potentially smash into spacecraft. Now some creative ideas are emerging for how to sweep up the junk. One idea even involves an oversized NERF ball.

The graveyard of ghostly scraps from satellites and other craft continues to grow. Last year, the intentional destruction of China's Fengyun-1C weather satellite sent at least 150,000 bits of orbital debris less than a half-inch (one centimeter) across and larger into space, according to NASA's Orbital Debris Program.

On Feb. 20, another load of debris was scattered into space when the U.S. Navy shot down a wayward spy satellite above the Pacific Ocean. Some 3,000 scraps spewed into space, each no larger than a football in size, adding to the cosmic clutter.�

The trashiest region of space lies within low Earth orbit, located at 1,243 miles (2,000 kilometers) above the Earth's surface. Space junk can also be found to a lesser degree in geosynchronous orbit—situated higher at 22,235 miles (35,785 km) above the Earth.

The U.S. Space Surveillance Network is tracking about 18,000 orbiting objects of debris about two inches (five centimeters) in diameter and larger.

The space around our planet is also polluted by millions to tens of millions of smaller, marble-sized pieces of debris. In order to officially catalog derelict debris, scientists involved need to identify each object's size, the mission it's attached to and its orbit.

Because the trash zips around the planet at around 4 to 5 miles per second (7 to 8 kilometers per second) at least in low Earth oOrbit, the physical makeup of space debris — especially those pieces that are five centimeters and larger — is not really important.

"It could be made out of Jell-O or foam or stainless steel. When it's that big, it travels at orbital velocities and it hits something else, it's going to be a bad day," said Nicholas Johnson, program manager and chief scientist of the NASA Orbital Debris Program Office at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

Ideas for tidying up space range from the mundane, such as space tethers, to the exotic, such as trash-truck-like craft. Johnson says, however, that none of the proposals are feasible as yet.�

Trash pile-up

Rather than clogging up waterways and landfills like Earthly litter does, space debris has the potential to bang up working spacecraft along with their crews.

To date, there is only one recorded incident of a collision in which the debris was large enough to track. In 1996, a French satellite called CERISE was struck by a piece of a French rocket that had exploded 10 years earlier.

Normally, spacecraft can use information from tracking systems to dodge and avoid these collisions with larger objects. But small pieces of orbital debris routinely smash into and ding spacecraft, such as the space shuttle.

"It's not a near-term operational issue," Johnson said. "But it is something that, like any environmental problem, if you ignore it, it will get much worse and it could get to the point where remediating the environment is much more difficult and expensive than simply preventing it from becoming so bad."

To make matters worse, debris eventually begets more debris. Bits of space junk constantly collide with their neighbors, with the current smash-ups involving small pieces hitting larger vehicles and producing little extra debris. But that could change.

"It's a regeneration process that is going to happen," Johnson told SPACE.com. "The only way to prevent it would be to go up there and start removing these large derelict spacecraft and launch vehicles."

Litter bugs

Debris collisions are just a piece of the trash pie. Accidental explosions of old rocket bodies and other vehicles are the main contributors to debris in space. While not the primary litterbugs, spacecraft at the end of their lives can contribute to cosmic trash. Currently, the international space community has followed guidelines for preventing accidental explosions as well as for end-of-life disposal. That means removal of spacecraft from low Earth orbit within 25 years of their launch. Craft in geosynchronous orbit nearing old age get bumped into a higher orbit, where they won't interfere with other geosynchronous-orbiting satellites.

Even so, last year set a new record for the amount of space debris.

"The principle reason was the Chinese anti-satellite test," Johnson said. "That event alone far exceeded the debris generated in any other year, ever. Unfortunately, it's very long-lived debris; it will be up there for decades or even a century or more."

Cosmic collectors

The international space community, Johnson said, has brainstormed and experimented in efforts to concoct a way to clean up the graveyard of space for the past 20 years or so. "We haven't found a single concept which is both technically feasible and economically viable," Johnson said. "In the future if launch costs go down dramatically, which we always hope will happen but never does, or if we come up with new technology, the equation may change and all of a sudden a previous concept that was not viable could become viable."

Johnson is co-author of a new report set for publication next year that details a review of "clean-up concepts." Ideas range from the relatively mundane to the exotic, though none "meet all the requirements for a viable remediation technique," Johnson said.

One of his favorite ideas involves launching a giant NERF ball spanning a mile (1.6 km) across, which would sort of field the orbiting debris. As small particles pass through the foamy ball, they would lose energy and fall back to Earth more quickly.

Raining on this sporty idea, however, are technical issues. "The NERF ball itself would fall out of orbit pretty quickly, because it's so lightweight relative to its size; and it's non-discriminatory, so it could accidentally run into operational spacecraft and that's not a good idea," Johnson said.

Some other ideas

Ground-based or space-based lasers could also perturb orbits and push the junk to lower altitudes so they would fall back to Earth quicker. (The glitch: Lasers are very expensive and limited in the number of objects they can interact with.)

Trash-collector vehicles could rendezvous with a chunk of debris and latch onto it before dragging it into a lower orbit, or higher orbit, depending on its current location.

Specially-designed vehicles could rendezvous with old rocket bodies, for instance, and attach a propulsion system or so-called drag augmentation device onto the object. The result would quicken the debris' descent to Earth. "That vehicle could attach that device to an old satellite and then maneuver to another satellite and attach another device, etc., etc," Johnson said. (The glitch: The vehicles and operation would be complicated and costly.)

Or, long, thin wires called tethers could help to bring down objects. The most promising tether concept involves attaching the tether to a spacecraft prior to launch. (The glitch: Even though tethers work on paper, "unfortunately, we haven't had a successful demonstration yet," Johnson said.)

To date, most of the remediation research and experimenting has involved only academic institutions and national space agencies.

"There is not a business base yet for doing this," Johnson said. Though he doesn't expect truly feasible ideas for remediation, and the associated business opportunities, in the near-term, "that doesn't mean we're not going to keep looking and trying."

10 Most Memorable Pieces of Space Debris Orbital Overload: Space Debris Crowds the Not-So-Friendly Skies Great Space Quizzes: The Space Shuttle Original Story: Cosmic Clean-Up: Wild Ideas to Sweep Space.

CARL & CLARENCE AGUIRRE, my famous nephews

SCARSDALE, N.Y., Nov. 1 — It had all the trappings of a Cinderella story. Carl and Clarence Aguirre, impoverished Filipino twins conjoined at the top of their heads, arrived in New York in 2003, sick and malnourished, and after a series of death-defying operations, emerged late one night on separate gurneys — fragile, sedated and bandaged, but each with his own life.
The tale captivated the public and generated headlines around the globe. “Dateline NBC” chronicled the boys’ journey; one newspaper hailed the surgeons as miracle doctors; and the twins’ mother, Arlene Aguirre, appeared on CNN and on the “Today” show. She repeatedly expressed her gratitude for the medical care, attention and good wishes her children received at the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx. And always, she smiled.
Four years later, the cameras are gone, but the Aguirres are not. The twins need more surgery, and it can only be performed here. And Ms. Aguirre is alone, contemplating the uncertainties of the future and struggling to care for her boys, who are still in diapers even though they are 5.
Carl can speak a few words, but they are often unintelligible, and he cannot walk on his own because of an impaired left side; he crawls with his right knee and arm, dragging his limp left limbs as he moves about the house. Clarence can walk and talk, though his speech is somewhat garbled.

The boys do not eat well, so they must be fed all night, every night. Liquid food is pumped into their bodies through tubes Ms. Aguirre attaches to an opening in their bellies. On a recent afternoon, a dozen boxes of Nutren Junior, the liquid formula they are fed as they sleep, were stacked against a wall in the kitchen.
There are also financial concerns: The family lives in a home managed by a charity, and Ms. Aguirre is not sure how much longer they will be allowed to stay. If the donations that have supported them dry up, she wonders, how is she going to provide for her sons since, as a visitor from abroad, she is not allowed to work? What if their visas are not renewed and they are forced to return to the Philippines, where they lived in a poor village with no electricity, before doctors can close the holes left in the boys’ skulls?
“I guess nobody really think, if ever we’re going to live in a community, how we’re going to survive,” she said, struggling to express herself in English.
Every year, hundreds of gravely ill children from poor countries come to the United States for life-saving medical care, but little attention is paid to what happens afterward. Many return home after surgery and go on to live healthy lives; some, though, suffer severe setbacks, in part because they return to dire living conditions and a lack of adequate care in their own countries, said Cris Embleton, co-founder of Healing the Children, a charitable organization that has brought thousands of ailing children to the United States for treatment.
The Aguirres’ case is somewhat exceptional: The boys need further treatment, which must be carried out here, but it is unclear how much longer they will be able to stay.
“Conjoined twins have a unique situation that requires people to look at other alternatives with them because it can be life-threatening to send them home,” said Ms. Embleton, who is now director of Mending the Kids International, based in Santa Clarita, Calif. “After all the work that went into getting them to the point of separation, you have to determine if it’s prudent for them to go home, and if it’s not, how they’re going to be cared for while they’re here.”
A pair of Guatemalan twin sisters who were also conjoined at the heads were surgically separated in August 2002 in California and returned home five months later. But in May 2003, they came back after one of them contracted meningitis. The twins are still in the United States, living with volunteer families; their parents visit sometimes, said Ms. Embleton, whose charity is sponsoring their stay through private donations.
Over the last two years, Ms. Aguirre, 33, has slowly cut the family’s daily ties to the doctors, nurses, therapists and social workers who had made up their safety net. The family had been living at Blythedale Children’s Hospital in Valhalla, N.Y., but in November 2005, the boys were transferred to an outpatient program, and the family had to move. Then, last August, the twins were discharged from Blythedale altogether and Ms. Aguirre had to enroll them in the public school district, though at the time she had no idea what a school district was.
Now Ms. Aguirre and her sons are caught in a vacuum, celebrating the end of the first phase of the boys’ recovery while waiting to hear when the next portion of their treatment, an operation to reconstruct the parts of their skulls that were removed in the separation surgeries, will take place. (Had they not been separated, the boys would probably not have survived their second birthday, doctors said.)
Montefiore Medical Center, where Carl and Clarence were separated, is still paying for their prescription medications and other medical supplies. Pamela Adkins, the hospital’s public relations director, said Montefiore had provided “millions and millions and millions of dollars in medical care for the boys and their mother.”

She noted that the broader issues facing the family fell outside the scope of a hospital’s responsibilities.
Residents in Scarsdale collected donations that provide a monthly food allowance of $160 for the Aguirres at a local supermarket, but it is not certain how much longer the allowance will last. Ms. Aguirre has no relatives or friends here, except for Meredith Gosin, a social worker once employed by Blythedale, and Ronald E. Feiner, a Manhattan entertainment lawyer who took pity on the Aguirres and is volunteering his time to help them. Mr. Feiner has set up a trust fund to administer cash donations made to the Aguirres; he estimates the money will be enough to cover the family’s needs for about six months.
“The operation was a miracle,” Mr. Feiner said. “The twins are alive and functioning. But, unfortunately, this is not the happy ending we all hoped for, not the perfect story we were all led to believe.”
For the last two years, Ms. Aguirre and the twins have lived in Scarsdale, in a house managed by Westhab, a charity that provides shelter for homeless families in Westchester County. The arrangement was meant to be temporary from the start, and last August, a Westhab worker told Ms. Aguirre that their home would have to be vacated by the end of the school year. Ms. Aguirre called Mr. Feiner in a panic.
“How do I find a house?” she asked him, as they recalled later in separate interviews. (After a reporter’s inquiry, a Westhab spokeswoman, Connie Elkinson, said that “the position of our president, Robert Miller, is that the family can stay at the home for as long as they need.”)
The Aguirres’ medical visas must be renewed every six months. Ms. Aguirre, who fills out the visa renewal forms with Ms. Gosin’s help, said that the last visas expired in September, and she still does not know if new ones have been approved.
“I’m so nervous and afraid,” Ms. Aguirre said. “Nobody really explained me or told me, when you come to New York, all this is going to happen.
“I see about immigrants deported on TV,” she said, “and I’m thinking, is this going to happen to us? If we don’t have visa, are we going back to the Philippines? My boys are not ready.”
Craniopagus joined twins, as twins fused at their heads are known, are rare, estimated to occur once in 10 million births. Dr. James T. Goodrich, chief pediatric neurosurgeon at Montefiore and one of the doctors who operated on Clarence and Carl, said that no more than 60 sets of craniopagus twins worldwide have undergone separation surgery, and that, in most cases, the separation was carried out in one operation. The single-operation approach, Dr. Goodrich explained, often resulted in serious neurological setbacks for at least one of the children.
After carefully reviewing the Aguirre twins’ case, Dr. Goodrich and his colleagues decided to separate them in stages and wound up performing four operations over 10 months.
Dr. Goodrich and Dr. David A. Staffenberg, a pediatric plastic surgeon who is part of the twins’ medical team, have traveled the world giving lectures about the technique they used to separate Clarence and Carl, including talks at the Royal Society of Medicine of London and at a medical conference in Brazil. They have also advised other doctors on the treatment of craniopagus twins, and last year they helped a team of British doctors separate a pair of such twins.
A section devoted to the boys on the Montefiore Web site describes the medical work as “the first-ever separation of craniopagus twins where both twins survived with no neurological damage or deficit incurred from the surgery.”
By many measures, Carl and Clarence’s separation was a success, even if the boys have progressed unequally. Clarence is learning his ABCs and spends hours in front of a computer at home, playing games that feature Diego, one of Nickelodeon’s animated stars, making his way across a dense forest.
Carl can maneuver a children’s VCR hooked to a television in the playroom, and he seemed to entertain himself turning the TV on and off. But because of his limp left side, he has to hold on to something to take a few steps. When he goes to school, he wears plastic braces on his lower legs for more stability.
“I’m sure this is related to the separation because we had to cut through the brain to get them apart and Carl took the hit,” Dr. Goodrich explained.
“We hope that he will outgrow” it, he said.
The boys wear blue helmets to protect their fragile skulls and sleep in special cribs with high bars to prevent falls.
Sometimes, when the boys are frustrated, they slap their helmets repeatedly. Late one afternoon, as Ms. Aguirre tried to get him to sit down for dinner, Clarence hit her and yelled, angrily, “Stop it! Stop it!”
The stress has taken a visible toll on Ms. Aguirre, who sat slumped on a couch one recent afternoon, bags under her eyes. When she was exasperated, she let out a short, high-pitched scream.
She has developed an ulcer, she said, and often cries herself to sleep.
“I cry, but nobody see,” Ms. Aguirre said. “I feel embarrassed to cry. If I’m going to cry, I’m like a weak person, and nobody is going to help me because I’m a weak person.”
She added, “Because of everything that’s going on with the boys, with our lives, I have to stay strong.”

2 sTaRt WiTh.... knOw mY bAsiX....

Name: ANDRIE

Surname: AGUIRRE

Nickname: ANDZ

Age: 29YO

Status: single

Birthday: 06/30/78

Religion: roman catholic

Hair Color: Black

Height: 5'9"

Right Handed or Left Handed: Right

Your Heritage: Filipino

Your Weakness: SECRET!

Your Best Physical Feature: MY EYES

Your Bedtime: sira na sched ko cause of my work

Your Most Missed Memory: Nothing

Single or Group Dates: Depende

Do you Smoke: Casually

Do you Swear: Yes

Do you Sing: YESSS!!

Do you Shower Daily: of course!

Have you Been in Love: yeah

Do you want to go to College: done

Do you want to get Married: yes!

Do you believe in yourself: yes!

Do you get along with your Parents: gyeah

Do you like Thunderstorms: not really

Do you play an Instrument: not much

Do you play computer games: MU

In the past month have you Drank Alcohol: yep

Ever been Drunk: yup

Ever been Beaten up: nope

What do you want to be when you Grow Up: grown up already... contented now

What country would you most like to Visit: London and Slovak Republic

Favorite Eye Color: green

Favorite Hair Color: black

Short or Long Hair: long

Best Clothing Style: ragged

Number of Piercings: 2

Are you friendly?: yes

Color?: black, gray, blue and green

Number: 03

Magazine: anything

Food: Oriental & Western

Drink: anything

TV Show: CSI: Miami

Want To Get Married?: yes

Want To Have Kids?: got 1 already ^_^

What Would Their Names Be?: his name is Andre Bhern

How Many: 1

Where Do You Want To Live: Slovak Republic

Where Do You Want To Get Married: by the sea

How Do You Want To Die: by the hands of my love

Tattoos: nope

Do Drugs: NO

Chocolate or Vanilla?: chocolate

Favorite Shoes?: rubber shoes

Favorite motto: STRIKE WHILE THE IRON IS HOT!