Insomniac's Corner

[gotsnowgotslush]

March 30, 2013

April meteors

The peak of the display will be on the morning of April 22, between midnight and dawn’s early light. Normally that would be the optimum time to see 15 to 20 Lyrid meteors per hour at best advantage. Unfortunately a waxing gibbous Moon only three days before Full will severely brighten the sky, definitely reducing the number of meteors that can been observed. It will set around 3:51am EDT for southern New England observers, leaving only approximately one hour or so
of dark sky before morning twilight begins.

The only saving grace is that the radiant point for the April Lyrids lies on the Lyra–Hercules border, near the bright star Vega. It will be high in the eastern sky while the Moon will be in the western sky. To maximize your chances of seeing as many meteors as possible, the best defense will be to at least block the Moon’s direct light with some trees or a building if possible.

The Lyrids are very fast meteors, slamming into the Earth’s atmosphere at a moderate speed of 29.8 miles per second. And for that reason about one-quarter of the meteors leave luminous trains of dust that can be observed for several seconds. The Lyrids are a fairly narrow stream of particles, so don’t expect many to be seen before or after peak day.

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

Happy Invasive Plant Pest and Disease Awareness Month!

USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has dedicated April
as Invasive Plant Pest and Disease Awareness Month

http://blogs.usda.gov/tag/invasive-plant-pest-and-disease-awareness-month/

I love it, that they did not bother to show a picture of the native, beneficial insect,
that looks exactly like the invasive insect they are targeting for extermination.

Yay USDA /end sarcasm

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

wow The legend of Babe the Blue Ox, had a smidgen of truth to it. *Rage gasp* Bison Bob, had a cousin, who survived in the Lower 48 ?

Tip of the hat to our Lit polar bear, and Alaska Dispatch, online

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

"you never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete".

Buckminster Fuller

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

Mar 30, 2013

This will be the first laser tested on a deployed ship; designers believe the weapon soon will be potent enough
to disable flying drones, speeding boats and incoming missiles.

http://new.navytimes.com/article/20...3/Laser-gun-could-counter-surface-air-attacks

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

I started getting accustomed to a Spring, that would last for five minutes. If you are in Boston, carry rain gear and some Polartec. Sunscreen,too.

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

8 ton X-Ray machine, to help us unravel ancient secrets. yay! PBS, lets us in on it.

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

Huzzah for NOVA

In 1900, a storm blew a boatload of sponge divers off course and forced them to take shelter by the tiny Mediterranean
island of Antikythera. Diving the next day, they discovered a 2,000 year-old Greek shipwreck. Among the ship's cargo
they hauled up was an unimpressive green lump of corroded bronze.

Rusted remnants of gear wheels could be seen on its surface, suggesting some kind of intricate mechanism.
The first X-ray studies confirmed that idea, but how it worked and what it was for puzzled scientists for decades.

Recently, hi-tech imaging has revealed the extraordinary truth: this unique clockwork machine was the world's first computer.
An array of 30 intricate bronze gear wheels, originally housed in a shoebox-size wooden case, was designed to predict the
dates of lunar and solar eclipses, track the Moon's subtle motions through the sky, and calculate the dates of significant
events such as the Olympic Games. No device of comparable technological sophistication is known from anywhere in the
world for at least another 1,000 years. So who was the genius inventor behind it? And what happened to the advanced
astronomical and engineering knowledge of its makers? NOVA follows the ingenious sleuthing that finally decoded the
truth behind the amazing ancient Greek computer.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/ancient-computer.html

Fragment F hides an answer.

Ancient Astronomers

A nine year rotation

Athens, Sparta, Corinth, Syracuse

Eureka! A riddle solved.

(We almost lost this precious knowledge, because someone wanted to pinch pennies. )

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2008/dec/11/antikythera-first-computer

Warning- Spoilers

http://blog.makezine.com/2009/03/03/lost-knowledge-the-antikythera-devi/

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

March 20, 2013

“The federal government continues to argue that Secure Communities is a program that only targets and deports criminals."

"That is not true.”

Patricia Montes, executive director of Centro Presente

3/06/2013

Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, protested Tuesday that "an internal [ICE] document"
his committee obtained apparently detailed ICE plans to release more low-risk illegal aliens from detention facilities to save money.

Rape and violent physical abuse, motivate the detained to chose to be deported, rather than put up a legal fight. This, is America ?

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

Currently, more than half of all farmworkers in the U.S. are believed to be in the country illegally.

April 03, 2013

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/apr/03/opinion/la-ed-immigration-reform-guest-worker-20130403

{gsgs comment- Are more than half of America's sex workers, here illegally ?}

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

Awww! I missed it.
(August is a bit rough for old wenches, who like rocking chairs.)

http://www.fortpointboston.com/2012/08/cliff-diving-at-ica-tomorrow.html

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

30 Years of Global Climate Change- Adapt or go extinct ?

Summer ice retreat in the Chukchi Sea between Alaska and Russia is a significant climate change impact affecting Pacific Walruses,
which are being considered for listing as a threatened species. This twelve minute video follows walruses in their summer sea ice
habitat and shows how USGS biologists use satellite radio tags to track their movements and behavior. The information identifies
areas of special importance to walruses during sparse summer sea ice and as human presence increases in the region from oil
drilling and activities such as shipping and tourism now possible with less ice.

2011 Walrus was listed as threatened- What happened to the perfect place to raise walrus pups ?

Tracking Pacific Walrus: Expedition to the Shrinking Chukchi Sea Ice

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF-aNYhCr8k

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

September 10, 2010

Massive walrus haulout observed near Point Lay, Alaska

2009 near Icy Cape, a trampling event led to the deaths of more than 100 of the animals,
most of whom were juveniles crushed as the group headed for water en masse, likely after
getting spooked. By what remains unknown.

Massive walrus haulout observed near Point Lay, Alaska

Leo Ferreira, the village's mayor theorizes that ship traffic is diverting the walruses to shore in unusual increasing numbers.
But government scientists suspect it has more to do with an increasing lack of sea ice. Walruses have been known to haul
out onto land in large numbers in Russia, but never on the Alaska side of their migratory corridor in the tens of thousands,
as is being witnessed this year.

"We suspect it will have real change in the cost of making a living for the walrus. Instead of rolling off the ice and
having your food right there, they might have to commute," said Tony Fischbach, a USGS walrus researcher who
just returned from the field trip to Point Lay.

http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/massive-walrus-haulout-observed-near-point-lay-alaska

Any figures, on the increase of abandoned walrus pups ?

Walrus pups can't forage for themselves and rely on their mother's milk for up to two years.

Mother walruses take their young nearly everywhere they go, but they need a safe place to
leave the pups when it's time to find food or if they both need a rest from swimming.

Ice platforms floating over shallow waters have traditionally been the perfect place for both these needs.

The walruses follow these platforms as they retreat northward in summer.

The researchers found evidence that in the summer of 2004, water 6 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than usual
washed into the Canada Basin. This might have caused the seasonal sea ice over the shallow spots to melt
quicker than usual or drift to deeper, colder waters.

"We think ... the ice retreated really quickly," Ashjian told LiveScience. "We think the mothers had to keep
up with the ice and the babies couldn't keep pace and were left behind."

Strict restrictions on interacting with marine mammals prevented the researchers rescuing the nine pups,
which were probably abandoned when their moms were forced to chase rapidly retreating seasonal sea ice.

http://www.livescience.com/4067-stranded-walrus-pups-cry.html

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

from the Ballad of Gresham College (1663)-

And that which makes their Fame ring louder,
With much adoe they shew'd the King
To make glasse Buttons turn to powder,
If off the[m] their tayles you doe but wring.
How this was donne by soe small Force
Did cost the Colledg a Month's discourse.

Exploding glass sperms!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xe-f4gokRBs

Prince Rupert of Bavaria (1619-1682), grandson of James I, brought the glass teardrops to Charles II as a gift.

Demonstrations of the stress of glass were introduced to England as a curious party trick.

In 1661, King Charles asked his personal scientific society, which later evolved into the Royal Society, to investigate.

No one could give Charles Il a satisfactory explanation of the extraordinary behaviour of how the trick worked.

One of the scientists investigating was Robert Hooke, who became famous for Hooke's Law.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...d-hammer-blow-end-EXPLODES-scratch-other.html

It was not until 1994 that scientists at Cambridge University and Purdue University in Indiana solved the puzzle.

 

[coastal-boy]

That is actually cool.

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

I am very glad, that they saved the old black and white films.

D.O.A. - Starring Edmund O'Brien

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kL-Udh7BtOg

Tip of the hat, to Off Beat Cinema

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

"He was a man, so it did not matter."
-Vicar of Dibley TV series

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

Kitteh goes crazy for milk (sometimes, there is a thing, way beyond enthusiasm)

http://www.vancouversun.com/videos/recommended/video.html?embedCode=EwcXZuYTrL9P3oi7cfjrJQCYPHVIBFvs

Keep scrolling down for the video!

 

[sweepthefloor]

That is a big bowl of milk for little kitty.

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

There might be Snow Drops, somewhere. But, there are Crocuses. (Those flowers, put up with anything.) *in denial of Winter's End*

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

good gravy! Did everyone get that saying from Frank Zappa's Two Hundred Motels ?
(It went viral, before "going viral" existed.)

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

Sorry. I will not watch an actor who puts obscene words in President Obama's mouth. I will watch "Waking the Dead," instead.

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

A road construction crew found bones fragments while renovating a street in New York City. They called the police.
It was assumed that a person was simply buried in the wrong spot since there was is a cemetery next to the street.
However, FBI also got involved that sent the fragments to the Smithsonian Institute.

The Smithsonian Institute carbon dated the bones to 1725 and determined that they were actually from two men and one woman.
Therefore, foul play was suspected. EMSL Analytical analyzed the bones from each body and determined two points of interest.
First, each person had an elevated level of lead evenly dispersed through the bone.
(common with wealthy persons of the era that were using leaded crystal as glassware)

The key finding was an acute concentration of arsenic along the inside of the bone where the marrow would have come in contact.
This is an indication of poisoning and not chronic exposure. The image presents the elemental mapping of the bone fragment
showing the accumulation of lead (green) and arsenic (red).

http://www.emsl.com/index.cfm?nav=Services&action=show&ServiceId=459

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

Just before the sunset began, I looked up- my everyday Boston sky, had been replaced. Yes, it was lovely. A wonderful artistic creation.

But, it looked like a CGI version, created for people taking videos on their smartphones. *Am I experiencing Hunger Games syndrome?*

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

Why do cats stick their tongues out?

The cats forgot to pull their tongues back in.

(Really ? The cat's mind is wandering, elsewhere. The tongue stays, in the position that it it was left, in ? Cat does not say Brain, WTF. )