Knockout Writer Denver Butson on Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac, Mars Rovers and an interesting Wall Street Journal article.

First of all, we're excited to announce that Garrison Keillor will be reading Denver Butson's poem "What She Was Wearing Today" on NPR's Writer's Almanac. If you don't hear it live over the radio, you can go here (http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2009/02/23?refid=0) to read it yourself and download his reading of it.

Next up, the Wall Street Journal ran a level-headed guest editorial entitled "The War on Drugs Is A Failure." It's a frank assessment of the policies of the last few U.S. administrations by three former presidents of Latin American countries (they are former presidents of Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, respectively.) They discuss what went wrong, why, and possible ways to proceed. Now don't get me wrong, I disagree with the WSJ a good deal of the time (especially about economics, don't get me started there), but not always. Anyway, judge for yourself.
Here's the link again: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123535114271444981.html

Finally, to the Mars Rovers. Remember the Spirit and Opportunity Mars landers? They touched down on opposite sides of Mars in 2004 and they've been cruising ever since. Originally designed for 90 day missions, they've both lasted five years on a planet



that's 128,400,000-154,900,000 miles from the sun (source). Along the way, they capture video of martian dust devils (here) and the best picture yet of a Martian sunset (left).


Also: When I was an undergraduate at Moorhead State I remember when the landers touched down. Soon thereafter we had a cold snap and I checked online and sure enough--it was warmer on Mars than in Fargo. Some things don't change: Later this week the low for Fargo is forecast to be -14. There's a chance that Mars will be warmer. In any case, if you want more info about Mars or the rovers, check out this link.

Image credit: NASA/JPL