instantly translates words as you watch

A remarkable new iPhone app has been developed that instantly translates words viewed through the phone's camera from Spanish into English, and back again.

There's a mini ice age coming, says man who beats weather experts

He seems to get it right about 85 per cent of the time and serious business people - notably in farming - are starting to invest in his forecasts. In the eyes of many punters, he puts the taxpayer-funded Met Office to shame. How on earth does he do it? He studies the Sun.

Piers Corbyn believes that the last three winters could be the harbinger of a mini ice age that could be upon us by 2035, and that it could start to be colder than at any time in the last 200 years. He goes on to speculate that a genuine ice age might then settle in, since an ice age is now cyclically overdue.

Solar activity lowest in hunderds of years

Does this explain the cold Winter in south America and in Europe and North America?

By many measures things look to be cool for at least several more years.

The Dalton Minimum was a period of low solar activity, named after the English meteorologist John Dalton, lasting from about 1790 to 1830.[1] Like the Maunder Minimum and Spörer Minimum, the Dalton Minimum coincided with a period of lower-than-average global temperatures. The Oberlach Station in Germany, for example, experienced a 2.0°C decline over 20 years.[2] The Year Without a Summer, in 1816, also occurred during the Dalton Minimum. Solar cycles 5 and 6, as shown below, were greatly reduced in amplitude.

Ice Station, Britain, as cold as the Winter of 1659...

By some measures the UK is having the coldest weather since 1659

Remember South America had a very cold Winter earlier this year.

Basically as long as they have kept official temperature data. And the Army is called in to help.

The Army was called in today to help clear away ice and snow as Britain headed towards its coldest December for 100 years.

As temperatures plunged to -15c (5f) David Cameron ordered the military to step in and help the UK's beleaguered local councils.

The Prime Minister also revealed Cobra-style emergency meetings of senior officials and Ministers had been held to discuss the Government’s response to the big freeze.

Edinburgh City Council was the first local authority to ask for help. Officials have held talks with the Ministry of Defence and the Scottish government to allow soldiers to remove built up snow and ice from roads and pavements.

Jolie rules out White House Run?

Drat! She'd rather have fun, raise a family and do good.

Instead, she will continue to make films and continue her work with the UN.

Climate Prediction Shows Plants Slow Warming

Neat. turns out plants eat and thrive on CO2, who could have guessed that?

growth of plants and trees in a world with doubled atmospheric carbon dioxide levels would create a new negative feedback – a cooling effect – in the Earth's climate system that could work to reduce future global warming.

know if they adjust the models to vary the solar input and atmospheric density (most models assume the atmosphere is the same density for thousands of feet, and adjust for urban heat islands, and rural stations moving into cities, then we may start to have some real science going on.

Nice to hear we may not have to gut the world economy for no reason anymore.

Man buys Ansel Adams photos at garage sale

for $45, discovers they are worth $200 million

The Right Trousers

Paralysed inventor to sell robotic 'trousers' for $100,000

Sounds helpful, interesting, and cool. Walking and stairs for over three hours.
Being able to move in a different fashion should provide great therapy, physically and mental, as well as make people more productive. a win-win-win.

I would hope over time that the cost would comes down, but it is nice to see them at any price.

A harness around the patient's waist and shoulders keeps the suit in place, and a backpack holds the computer and rechargeable 3 1/2-hour battery.

When operated, it makes clanging robotic sounds, like the hero of the 1980s cult movie 'Robocop.'

25 most epic ads that aren't '1984'

A few great ones, a few misses, and creepy clowns,
I hate clowns...

25 interesting ads with links to video.

Global temperatures flat for past 15 years, warmists upset

CO2 levels rise and tempertures stay flat?
Seems like cause and effect are broken in some way.

UK Mail Newspaper on "Global Warming"

The question now emerging for climate scientists and policymakers alike is very simple. Just how long does a pause have to be before the thesis that the world is getting hotter because of human activity starts to collapse?

Looks like some new model or explination is needed and more public sharing of data and data sources.

Read carefully with other official data, they conceal a truth that for some, to paraphrase former US VicePresident Al Gore, is really inconvenient: for the past 15 years, global warming has stopped.

Actually, with the exception of 1998 - a 'blip' year when temperatures spiked because of a strong 'El Nino' effect (the cyclical warming of the southern Pacific that affects weather around the world) - the data on the Met Office's and CRU's own websites show that global temperatures have been flat, not for ten, but for the past 15 years.

Old weather data project, collecting old weather data from ships

Old weather org

Help scientists recover worldwide weather observations made by Royal Navy ships around the time of World War I. These transcriptions will contribute to climate model projections and improve a database of weather extremes. Historians will use your work to track past ship movements and the stories of the people on board.

A bad news week for AGW proponents

Too bad, so sad.

The threat to tropical rainforests from climate change may have been exaggerated by environmentalists, according to a new study.

he spectre of imminent thirst and/or starvation for billions by 2035 from melting glaciers would appear to have been confirmed as the worst kind of alarmist scaremongering. —

and more at the link

Climate data manipulators plan to double down

After suppressing data that did not support their assumption, rather then allowing the data to be free and open, the data manipulators have decided to take it to politicians.

If the warmists published their climate models , set the data sources and manipulations free, and stopped using other non-scientific methods, I will listen.

so far I see no real science showing we have a climate problem and/or if people are causing it , that it could be economically dealt with. This sounds like angry propaganda.

Climate: temperatures to average about 2 degrees below normal

Some nice historical temperature graphs, show that things are pretty good right now temperature-wise and that the Earth has tended towards cooler temperatures then we have seen recently.

Hear Shakespeare's words in his own accent

Sounds like Irish to me.

A University of Kansas theatre professor has pieced together the bones of a form of English that has never been heard in North America in modern times — the original pronunciation of Shakespeare.

Cheap Diesel-Powered Fuel Cells

May be available for $1,000 per kilowatt.

A Norwegian company is developing silent diesel generators based on a new kind of fuel cell. Nordic Power Systems, which is making the generators for that country's military, has successfully tested a 250-watt solid-acid fuel cell developed by SAFCell, a spinoff from Caltech. The companies are now working on a 1.2-kilowatt system.

The new generators work by producing hydrogen gas from diesel in a process called reforming (the fuel is heated, but not combusted, and mixed with air and steam). The hydrogen is then fed into the fuel cell to make electricity. Unlike the fuel cells that have been tested in cars, the new ones can tolerate impurities, such as carbon monoxide, that are present in hydrogen made from diesel.

Maps: How people see Europe ?

In the kaleidoscope of cultures that is Europe, no matter from where you look at it, you're always surrounded by 'the Other'.

A stronger Sun actually cools the Earth

Nice to see that the Sun may have goosed some of the temperatures on Earth from 2004 to 2007. More study is needed to figure out what this means.

An increase in solar activity from the Sun actually cools the Earth, suggests new research that will renew the debate over the science behind climate change.

There are some with a vested interest in discounting Solar activity and exaggerating human influence on climate. Who knows what the real causes are? Further research and a proper scientific method will help to illuminate all the factors that go into our climate over time.

Nothing Wrong With Our Graph

Global averaging. Still no sign of warming.

The GWPF’s graph, displayed on the GWPF's homepage masthead, showing that the global average annual temperature hasn’t changed this century, drawn against a nice blue backdrop, is making a few people see red. Why this is I don’t exactly know as their logic, in contrast to their anger, isn’t entirely clear. Perhaps it is because it neatly summarises the uncertainties in climate science as well as common misconceptions (as was the intention) that some commentators find too uncomfortable to address, instead becoming deniers of basic scientific data. It certainly seems a difficult fact for some, but inconvenience is one thing, facts are another.

The Light Bulb That Is Changing The World

Traditionally about 19% of residential electrical consumption was used by incandescent light bulbs. A switch to LED light bulbs would reduce that to 2% with a use savings on 17% and since about the same amount of energy is lost to transmission line loses, the production energy savings would be approaching 34% of the energy currently used in home electrical use.

Great savings and over time these will have a huge adoption rate.
Fewer power plants will be needed and more capacity will be available for
peak load.

Some distributed solar production in homes and LED lights could reduce home electrical needs 40% from current (pun intended) levels.

Tiny tiny houses

Some very interesting ideas for houses of every size at the Tiny houses blog

Here comes the sun

After knowing the daily solar effect on weather and the seasonal climatic effect, the seasons due to the Earth's tilt towards and away from the Sun, and the changing length of day, the "global warmists" aka "Climate disruptors" are now starting to bring solar factors back into some of their flawed climate models.

solar effects have generally been left out of climate models. However, the latest research has changed this view, and the next report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), due in 2013, will include solar effects in its models...

The sun is being unusually quiet and seems to be napping a long time before starting maximum solar activity, so we do not really understand what the role of the Sun is in the Earth's weather and climate. Some weather patterns like monsoons seem correlated to solar activity.

Science needs to study and rule in or out various solar factors and to improve drastically the climate prediction models. This is a nice first step, trying to follw real data not prejudge it or manipulate it.

And if you hadn't noticed here is a paper saying we have more Arctic Seas ice then any time in the past 900 years.

Pop goes the Weasel

The Nursery Rhyme, 'Pop goes the weasel' sounds quite incomprehensible in this day an age! The origins of the rhyme are believed to date back to the 1700's.

I grew up with the Australian variation of the lyrics:

Alternative Lyrics (3)
Round and round the mulberry bush
The monkey chased the weasel.
The monkey stopped to pull up his socks
And Pop goes the weasel.

Networks – not size – give cities competitive advantage

A city’s size no longer is the key factor in building vibrant local economies, according to a study by a Michigan State University sociologist.

Study pdf here- From Central Places to Network Bases: A Transition
in the U.S. Urban Hierarchy, 1900–2000

A pretty cool study.

If this keeps up, no one's going to trust any scientists.

The global-warming establishment took a body blow this week, as the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change received a stunning rebuke from a top-notch independent investigation.

the prestigious InterAcademy Council, an independent association of "the best scientists and engineers worldwide" (as the group's own Web site puts it) formed in 2000 to give "high-quality advice to international bodies," has finished a thorough review of IPCC practices -- and found them badly wanting.

The warming "scientific" community, the Climategate emails reveal, is a tight clique of like-minded scientists and bureaucrats who give each other jobs, publish each other's papers -- and conspire to shut out any point of view that threatens to derail their gravy train.

Doctor Who: Vincent and the Doctor

A review of one of my favorite Dr. Who episodes.

The acting, cinematography, set design and effects make this a great episode. Think you need BBC America to see it now or Netflix to see it soon.
Well worht the time to watch.

Tim Hawkins- Old Rock Star Songs

Beer microbes live 553 days outside ISS

Microbes from a place called Beer. Was A town called Beer a song from, The Jam?

Bacterial spores have been known to endure several years in orbit but this is the longest any cells of cyanobacteria, or photosynthesising microbes, have been seen to survive in space.

This type of research also plays into the popular theory that micro-organisms can somehow be transported between the planets in rocks - in meteorites - to seed life where it does not yet exist.

Rocks from the Earth have been blasted all the way to Mars and the other way as well and the idea that comets or space debris from other solar systems could have been a seed for life here is interesting. Some meteorites are older then our solar system formation.

This discovery could have implications on future colonization, exploration of the Moon and Mars. There are many scientific and cultural reasons for humans to colonize the Moon and Mars. some argue we will soon come into another age of exploration and in the coming decades we will spread out to the planets.

Travelling to Another Place, a beach sculpture

Stavanger, Norway hosted Another Place when I lived there. Meant to keep on traveling the sculptures are staying at Crosby Beach in the UK for a while longer.

It is a great experience to see, so please go see Another Place if you are traveling to other places near by Crosby Beach. A hundred cast iron human figures all standing and looking out to sea is something great to see. I Norway they were at Sola Airport's beach and made flying in or out more fun.

From
Antony Gormley decided to pursue art after studying anthropology and nearly becoming a Buddhist monk while travelling in India. The human body, his own in particular, has been his subject in sculpture that explores humanity, space and community

Another Place picks up related themes. It was first staged in 1997 at Cuxhaven, Germany, which was one of the major ports for emigration to America in the middle of the last century. "And in one sense it takes on utopia," he says - "the human need to imagine another life in another place and the founding of a better life on better principles. But in today's scientific, rational and globalised world we know there is no better place. In some way we have to deal with the here and now and so in a way the work measures the distance between the shore and the horizon through repeated human forms. The persistence of the human form in art is an attempt to deal with that question. Sculpture may now have come down from its plinth and where it belongs is perhaps not very clear. And I've tried to deal with that in a number of ways because I ultimately want to deal with the question of where we fit in the scheme of things."

I scream, you scream, we all scream

for ice cream

How to make your own in a few hours

Listening to radio on line to find new music

A station to follow and listen to for interesting music

Streaming on line, play lists, information on bands they follow.

Web traffic changes over 20 years

Great graphic and article on user trends

Over half the traffic is now video with peer to peer and the web making up most of the rest of the traffic.

Apollo 7 astronaut. on what is science and what is not

Climate change alarmists ignore scientific methods

Individuals should look at the evidence/data, and then judge for themselves whether the evidence supports the alarmists' hypothesis. I have, and it does not.

Human-caused global warming is simply not a threat to be concerned about. It is nature, not human activity, that rules the climate. Humans have adjusted to temperature changes for at least 100,000 years, and they will certainly do so in the future.

Cheap easy brown bag popcorn

Yum !
Gourmet popcorn on the cheap

early-human using tools 3.4 million years ago.

Early humans used tools much earlier than we used to think

Remaking American cities, economic geography

Serious discussion on economy and geography at Reason.com

From 1870's ubranisation peaked in 1920s, post World War 2 creation and movement to suburbia.

1st reset urbanization
2nd reset Metropolitan-ism with the city and it's expansion into suburbia
could the 3rd rest be the creation of more mega regions, a grouping of metropolotin areas like the Boston, New York and Washington DC area.

May depend on how government approaches infrastructure, i.e. the interstate highways and bypass, ring roads, primed the move to suburbs.

He is for increasing speed of travel. Making connections to hub cities.

In the 40s people could travel to and from Chicago for day shopping from 100s of miles away, so I am not sure this prediction will pan out. We already had that in many parts of America and it only stayed that way in the dense east coast corridor.
The Bay area and chcicago have limited train commutting cultures.

Telecommuting and decentralization seem more likely to me. And that will reduce congestion on the current roads.

Special exceptions due to tourism may make LA, Las Vegas, and Orlando move to a model where most of the workers would commute in trains.

The Economist remaps Europe:

Reasonible conclusions based on the premise.



Found this at Reason,com Blog

Government dietary advice often proves disastrous.

More and more, the history of dietary guidelines that our public-health authorities promulgate resembles the Woody Allen comedy Sleeper, in which the main character, awaking from a centuries-long slumber, learns that every food we once thought bad for us is actually good, starting with steak and chocolate.

Egg on Their Faces

According to Scientific American, growing research into carbohydrate-based diets has demonstrated that the medical establishment may have harmed Americans by steering them toward carbs.

What if 24 was made in 1994?

How much does technology change in 16 years, 10 even?

What if 24 was made in 1994?

I do not fondly remember pagers or dial up modems.

Dining and Canal Boats

Menu ideas, adventure, luxury travel, Food Man Chan has it all

Yummy pictures of food on canal boats

referencis the Ladyline Hotel Boats

Mapping the cold snap in South America

a map to show extent of the cold air mass. One was needed given the revelation that the cold had crossed the equator from the South, a rather rare event.

Previous article,  Cold snap freezes South America

Was Apollo the Beginning, a Dead-End, or …?

"...Patterns in long-term trends over the last 200 years...point specifically toward the human colonization of space in the next 20!"

Is our space program at a dead end or are we headed back into space?

NASA's Kepler spacecraft hunting for Earth-like planets around other stars

has found 706 candidates for potential alien worlds while gazing at more than 156,000 stars

Since transits of planets in the habitable zone of solar-like stars occur about once a year and require three transits for verification, it is expected to take at least three years to locate and verify an Earth-size planet. The expectation is that Kepler should be able to identify at least 60 habitable earthlike planets in its 500 light year range.

North American English Dialects

Maps, samples...

There are 8 major dialect areas in North American English

Jane Austen's Fight Club

Low Solar levels may cause droughts

Strong correlations between water levels and solar activity.

There is some reluctance by some in climate research to attribute any major factor in our climate on the Sun. The Sun effects our weather, so why not investigate correlations over time? What climate models predicted cooling while CO2 still rises?

Given the unusually low solar activity, a long minimum and lower activity at the start of the latest solar maximum cycle, this next delayed solar maximum may mean we will see some historic droughts.

Given the link between East African and central South American rainfall and solar activity, the list of economic impacts from the current solar minimum (Solar Cycles 24 and 25) can be expanded to:

1. Canadian agricultural will get a severe whacking from a shortened growing season and un-seasonal frosts.
2. 24 year drought in central South America
3. 24 year drought in East Africa
4. Paraguay and Brazil having severe power shortages.

This list is by no means exhaustive. The last time the world witnessed mass starvation was the 1965-67 drought in India which killed 1.5 million people. Things don’t look pretty.

Water on the Moon is Widespread,

Lunar colonies would be more economical is water and air was available locally.
Certainly lot's of light on the moon, at least two week long days,

UT Researchers Discover Water on the Moon is Widespread, Similar to Earth’s

“Now we have ready sources of water that can be consumed by plants and humans but also electrolyzed into liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen to develop rocket fuel,” Taylor said. “Until the recent discovery of water in and on the moon, it was going to be a very energy-intensive endeavor to separate these elements from the lunar rocks and soil.”

A two-wheeled pickup truck

ZEV's dual purpose electric scooter

Sounds cool

The Trail was originally intended to be a delivery and police-usage vehicle, but park rangers soon took a liking to it because it didn’t have a hot tail pipe that could cause forest fires. Hunters also reportedly like the fact that its quiet motor makes it stealthy, and allows them to access land that is closed to traditional combustion-engined vehicles. The first bikes sold went to residents of the Rocky Mountains, who appreciated how it didn’t lose power at higher elevations, unlike gas-powered vehicles. ZEV also suggests it could be used as a runabout for yacht and RV owners who don’t want to deal with transporting flammable gasoline.

There are two models of the Trail, the 5100 and the 6100. So, what makes the bike rough n’ tough, apart from an optional camo paint job? For one thing, there’s a big-ass lithium battery - 4.32 Kw on the 5100, and 5.04 on the 6100. These batteries give the bike the maximum range of any electric scooter according to ZEV. The 5100 can travel up to 70 miles (113 km) on one charge, while the 6100 manages 85 miles (137 km)

More on $100 mini fuel cell, energy and cost savings

This makes a lot of sense and the fact that there is a method with the HydroPak
and electricity and water to recharge the canisters the MiniPak uses makes this a viable solution. Traveling and buying or trading in used canisters for recharged ones, even in remote locations seems like a useful market system and could be done on or off the grid.

Efficiency
About 50% of energy used in the world is lost to transmitting over wires. And AC to DC recharger works at 50% efficiency so to recharge from AC means a 25% energy efficiency.

Cost
The Horizon MiniPak replaces 1000 AA Alkaline batteries, which would cost $1500 to $2000 with a $100 unit.

Refills
From the Horizon Web site order page

The MiniPAK portable electronic device charger is a palm-size universal portable power charger and power extender for ANY electronic device requiring up to 2W of power. Devices compatible with the MiniPak include cellphones, but also smartphones, gaming devices, GPS handhelds, small lighting devices and MP3 players. The MiniPAK device integrates a passive air-breathing fuel cell and a "solid-state" hydrogen storage unit. The MiniPak DC power output is 2W (5V, 400mA), delivered through standard micro-USB port and a multi-choice cable. The device is supplied with 2 refillable and ready to use solid state hydrogen cartridge.While a cartridge replacement and filling infrastructure develops, Horizon took the extra step to develop a home refueling system called "HydroFILL" - sold as a separate accessory for added convenience. The MiniPAK is positioned to address gaps in providing energy "on the go" to power-hungry device users, as well as a low cost energy storage option for emergency and long duration off-grid power users.

Similar to a pocket-size distributed energy system, it avoids the energy losses that occur between the power plant and the battery operated devices that we charge from powerpoints. Cumulatively, these losses are massive. There are roughly 10,000 power plants in the US with an average thermal efficiency of 33%, and transmission losses of around 5-10%. When it comes to portable electronics, the US Environmental Protection Agency estimated that in 2004 in the US alone, there were 2.5 billion AC to DC power adapters consuming 207 billion kWh per year or up to 6% of the US$247 billion national electric bill. It is further estimated that 6 to 10 billion similar devices are presently in use worldwide, operating at an energy efficiency of around 50%. Whereas the MiniPak is not applicable to all AC to DC powered devices, it can indeed participate in reducing billions of dollars of wasted energy costs.

Besides contributing to overall efficiency, Horizon’s new micro-fuel cell system offers numerous environmental benefits. Just one of its Hydrostik fuel cartridges can deliver the same amount of power over its lifetime as over 1000 disposable alkaline AA batteries, while storing more energy at a lower cost. In addition, the cartridges do not contain any toxic materials and can be completely recycled, using conventional methods.

Source of quotes www.gizmag.com

Researchers discover a surprising threat to democracy: our brains

How facts backfire

Jay Leno 3D printing car parts

Custom printing of parts, telecommuting, maybe people will need less transportation in the future.

“Tonight Show” host Jay Leno has an industrial version in the Burbank garage that houses his collection of more than 200 vehicles. His mechanics design hard-to-find parts on a computer and then use the machine to make them real.

“It's a bit like when I was a kid and I watched ‘The Jetsons,' and they'd walk up to a machine and press a button and get a steak dinner with the baked potato sitting next to it,” Leno said. “But instead of a steak dinner, you're getting an old car part.”

WSJ: The Climategate Whitewash Continues

No significant changes in how the CRU functions for now, mostly to protect tens of millions in funding. I guess the CRU is too big to do wrong. Cooking data, trying to suppress other scientists papers, refusing to honor information requests all sound pretty wrong to me.

Last November there was a world-wide outcry when a trove of emails were released suggesting some of the world's leading climate scientists engaged in professional misconduct, data manipulation and jiggering of both the scientific literature and climatic data to paint what scientist Keith Briffa called "a nice, tidy story" of climate history. The scandal became known as Climategate.

Now a supposedly independent review of the evidence says, in effect, "nothing to see here."

It's impossible to find anything wrong if you really aren't looking

496 scientists: A climate scientist enemies list?

Nice to see that almost 500 scientists are being tracked as enemies of climate research. Freeman Dyson is a great scientist and has many thoughts on climate and how to approach the problem as a scientist.

I would argue that this list is another example of how little science there is in the current climate belief system. Lot's of fear and intimidation being used when open data sets and cooperation is really how science works. Publish the prediction models and let others openly review your methods. That is how science is done.
Making lists and keeping peoples papers from being published and hiding data and threatening to destroy emails rather then met Freedom of Information requests are not scientific or signs that there is a valid theory here.

This does not help those that claim the science is settled or is being done properly.

The National Academy of Sciences, in its official journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has just published a list of scientists whom it claims should not be believed on the subject of global warming.

and

Notice that I am not saying that there has been no warming, just that the available raw data that I’ve personally been able to check do not show it. Until all the raw temperature data are placed online, so the data can be checked by anybody, a rational person has to suspend belief in global warming, to say nothing of AGW.

An affordable, portable, pocket-sized Personal Fuel Cell

Today is a day that you will probably tell your grandchildren about – the day they released the first affordable, pocket-sized fuel cell for personal usage. As with flying cars, personal jet packs and a usable voice recognition computer interface, the promise of a safe, affordable, personal power plant was entering the realm of perpetual vaporware. Now it's finally here! Whatsmore, at US$100, the Horizon MiniPak might well prove to be the “disruptive” technology the press release claims it to be. By producing electricity from hydrogen at the point of use and offering effectively unlimited run-time for personal electronics, it will almost certainly be the public's first experience of the coming Hydrogen Economy.

What's wrong with the sun?

What's wrong with the sun?

The climate link

Mike Lockwood at the University of Reading, UK, may already have identified one response - the unusually frigid European winter of 2009/10. He has studied records covering data stretching back to 1650, and found that severe European winters are much more likely during periods of low solar activity (New Scientist, 17 April, p 6). This fits an emerging picture of solar activity giving rise to a small change in the global climate overall, yet large regional effects.

Another example is the Maunder minimum, the period from 1645 to 1715 during which sunspots virtually disappeared and solar activity plummeted. If a similar spell of solar inactivity were to begin now and continue until 2100, it would mitigate any temperature rise through global warming by 0.3 °C on average, according to calculations by Georg Feulner and Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. However, something amplified the impact of the Maunder minimum on northern Europe, ushering in a period known as the Little Ice Age, when colder than average winters became more prevalent and the average temperature in Europe appeared to drop by between 1 and 2 °C.

There is no there there ?

Finnish police probe theft of virtual furniture

A virtual thieving spree could have real life consequences for culprits in Finland, where police are investigating the theft of virtual furniture on a social networking site popular with teenagers

What's in a name?

Richard Smith, a 41-year-old care worker in Carlisle, England, did not think his name did justice to the exciting person that he actually was, so he changed his name by deed poll. The new name he chose was Stormhammer Deathclaw Firebrand.

What is in an mane even a man named Stormhammer Deathclaw Firebrand would smell as sweet.

Europe is waking up and smelling the coffee

Update: Germany, below and now France

If you have read Jane Jacob'"Cities and the wealth of nations" you would have always been a skeptic of Europe trying to set up a single unifying currency. It would work in good times, but when feedback was needed in hard times, all sorts of unintended consequences would become evident.

Europe starts to see the euro plan may be flawed

And Singapore would represent the best ever feedback for a currency to an economic area on the planet.

“A currency without a state is difficult to manage,” said former Italian Prime Minister Lamberto Dini, 79, who also served as the nation’s finance and foreign minister. “The decision to create a single currency in Europe was an eminently political decision. It was supposed to bring about greater European integration not only at an economic level, but at a political one.”

Brontë Sisters Power Dolls

Cracking the code of French rudeness

I agree that a little "bonjour," "merci," and "au revoir" really helps in eating, shopping, and navigating around Paris.

Meghan Cox Gurdon: Cracking the code of French rudeness

As Barlow and Nadeau explain, the enduring stereotype of the rude Parisian springs from the fact that Americans and the French have different concepts of public and private space.

In the United States, we regard stores as public spaces where we can come and go without obligation. In France, a shop is regarded as an extension of the proprietor's home.

A Parisian would no more silently enter a neighborhood shop, finger the merchandise, and walk out again without comment than we would march into a stranger's living room, poke around, and exit without a word while they stand there open-mouthed at our rude intrusion. So when American tourists wander in to French shops without greeting the staff, we're behaving unbelievably impolitely.

Coachella 2010

The 40 Most Memorable People at Coachella Slideshow

Another climate Domesday is canceled

Just waiting for the real climate data to be revealed, might be nice to see what might really be happening with our climate. See the impressive list of errors or fraud in the IPCC's 2007 "Oh well it's this world over" climate propaganda report.

I call it propaganda, because with so many errors it certainly is not science anymore.

Challenge to IPCC's Bangladesh climate predictions

Scientists in Bangladesh posed a fresh challenge to the UN's top climate change panel Thursday, saying its doomsday forecasts for the country in the body's landmark 2007 report were overblown.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), already under fire for errors in the 2007 report, had said a one-metre (three-foot) rise in sea levels would flood 17 percent of Bangladesh and create 20 million refugees by 2050.

A list of the more then a single error in the IPCCs' 2007 climate doom report

* University of East Anglia e-mails that exposed data destruction, attempts to hide contradictory data, and conspiracies to sabotage the work of skeptical scientists
* The East Anglia CRU threw out their raw data, undermining any effort to check their work
* NOAA/GHCN “homogenization” falsified climate declines into increases
* East Anglia CRU’s below-standard computer modeling
* No rise in atmospheric carbon fraction over the last 150 years: University of Bristol
* IPCC withdraws claim that AGW will wipe out Himalayan glaciers by 2035
* IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri knew Himalayan claim was bogus for months before exposure
* Amazonian rainforest conclusions not based on scientific research but on advocacy group claims
* Mountain glacier claims based on unsubstantiated student theses and anecdotes from climber magazine
* Search of IPCC report footnotes exposes ten more student dissertations presented as peer-reviewed research
* Medieval Warming Period temperatures may have been global, undermining entire AGW case
* Measurements used for AGW case were influenced by urbanization, poor location, bad data sets
* African-crop claims exposed as false
* IPCC researchers excluded Southern Hemisphere data to exaggerate effects of warming on hurricanes
* Hurricane claims further exposed as false by actual peer-reviewed research — including by some AGW researchers
* Major scientific group concludes IPCC-linked researchers “complicit in the alleged scientific malpractices“
* NASA data less reliable than faulty UEA CRU data

3 D printers, build your own or buy a HP

Makerbot, build your own 3d printer

HP 3D printer and Popular Science Article on the new HP Designjet

With these you can design and "print" things that are designed and new from software modeling tools. The size of the items printed and the new HP offers colors, over time the size of the printed items will get larger and the cost of teh printers should drop.

AIR performing "La Femme D'Argent"

French band AIR performing "La Femme D'Argent" on a private concert in La Plaine Saint Denis, France. Recorded and broadcast by Canal + on 5th of May 2007.

Starts with same jazz beginning with more soul to the bass with a spacier and a more energetic ending.



And "Kelly Watch The Stars", better paced version then the original. The Air website has a video that says it took them ten years to find the right pace to play this song at live.



Both are from "Air"s second album "Moon Safari", the name is the feeling and emotion you get when you look up at a start filled sky and look upon "The Milky Way."

Piece of Cake: Theme from TV spy comedy show "Chuck"

Cake "Short Skirt, Long Jacket"

Live like a millionaire or in a tree

How you can live like a millionaire... without spending a fortune!


The diary of a jobless and disillusioned author who decided to build a tree house in the woods and survive off Mother Nature

Air and Charlotte Gainsbourg

From Amazon.co.uk Review
Even without Charlotte Gainsbourg's musical heritage, the prospect of an album written and performed by Air, with lyrics by Jarvis Cocker (ex-Pulp) and Neil Hannon (The Divine Comedy) would be enough to entice most sensible music fans. But as a combination, 5.55 is far better than probably even the participants imagined it would be.

The combination of Air's trademark glide complements Gainsbourg's voice (which is less singing and more melodic, breathy recitation), to the point where, had the lyrical input been less than stellar, this could easily have sent the listener to sleep. Instead, the emotional detachment in Gainsbourg's delivery acts as a foil to the passion presented in the lyrics. For their part, Cocker and Hannon excel with their trademark darkly humourous input- the passenger on a doomed flight in "AF407105", the surgery/seduction metaphor in "The Operation", or the venomous "Jamais" being particular standouts.

Even though 5.55 bears all the hallmarks of its creators (if so inclined, one could see this as a new Air album, or imagine Cocker or Hannon singing the lyrics), it's even more than the sum of its parts and is almost certainly one of the best albums you'll hear in 2006 or beyond. --Thom Allott

Jeff Beck - "A Day In The Life," who is Tal Wilkenfeld?

Listen to Beck and this amazingly young talent on bass.

Meet Tal Wilkenfeld, Jeff Beck’s Young Aussie Bass Prodigy

The questions really began soon after Eric Clapton’s 2007 Crossroads Festival aired on PBS. Emails crisscrossed the world as music fans attempted to identify the impossibly young-looking woman laying down the sinewy bass lines for mercurial English guitar god Jeff Beck. She even took a memorable solo turn on Beck’s Blow by Blow classic, “Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers!” Some speculated she was Beck’s daughter, while one writer insisted she couldn’t be more than 14―“Who’s that girl?”

All this from a young musical prodigy who’s been playing the bass less than five years― she took up guitar at 14 in her native Sydney, before switching over to the electric bass just three years later. “I’ve always just picked up any instrument and been able to play it―I could sit down at the drums or the piano and just play for fun,” Tal says of her musical gifts. “But as soon as I started playing bass I knew it was my instrument. It was like, ‘Yes this is it. I don’t even want to play guitar anymore, this is amazing.’”

Neil Armstrong and other astronauts speak.

My experience is you need a goal to get things done, "flexibility" means wasting money and effort.

Armstrong rarely speaks, so this must really concern him.

NFL FLyovers

AIR = LID

The band's name "Air" stands for Amour, Imagination, Rêve
or in English:
Love, Imagination, Dream.

Video on Air's new studio "Atlas"

Review of "Love 2" and some about the new studio.

Cool Kitchen Tools

What Makes A Kitchen Tool Go Viral?

What if the Jobs Are Never Coming Back?

What if the Jobs Are Never Coming Back?

New Who rave review

Matt Smith's Doctor Who debut equals David Tennant's 8million viewers as critics praise first show


could the relatively unknown 27-year-old fill the considerable shoes of his madly popular predecessor, David Tennant?

Increase in Arctic ice confounds doomsayers

but does not spell the end of global warming, scientists warn

The Earth is warming, we are still coming out of an interglacial period, but geologists tell us the Earth does have many past freezing periods. If man is causing warming it may be beneficial.

How these past freezing were caused and when the next one is coming should be the real debate on climate.

Current climate models are flawed the are failing on short term predictions and they cannot model past know climates. When the data and models are flawed, science is supposed to start over, not double down on a bad hand.

Nintendo music version of Dark Side of the Moon

As a diversion, two of eight imaginings of what if Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" had been released with a Nintendo game
The Great Gig in the Sky and Any Colour You Like / Brain Damage / Eclipse

Maps of War

Maps of War

Noomi Rapace Interview

'Millennium' girl tells all, ahead of Cannes

USA Today is featuring "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo"

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo: Interviews

A book that sold over 8 million copies is now a film. I saw it last Saturday and highly recommend the movie.Noomi Rapace was stunning as the character Lisbeth Salander. Interesting to read her approach and reaction.

Noomi Rapace Interview with spoilers for the series of books


Noomi Rapace interview: the world’s most seductive sleuth

Podcast: Film Weekly meets The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Meet the Real ‘Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’

“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”: Exclusive Clip from the New Movie, and an Interview with the Director


Noomi Rapace's Lisbeth was a suicide mission

Wind power: Ouch

Wind farms failing to produce enough power... because there's not enough wind

Newer technology that will allow more power to be generated in low winds may help, but that is a few years away from reality.

Shakespeare's 'lost' play ?

Shakespeare's 'lost' play is published... or is it just a Double Falsehood?

Tangled relationships, women disguised as men, intrigue laced with tragedy and comedy - some might say it has all the hallmarks of Shakespeare.

But for the best part of 280 years The Double Falsehood, or the Distressed Lovers, has been dismissed as a falsehood in more than just title.

Eighteenth century scholar Lewis Theobald always claimed his play, first performed on a winter's evening back in 1727, was a version of a lost original by William Shakespeare.

Literal movie trailer

Playstation Move: Interactive controllers

PlayStation Move motion controller, starter kit to be under $100 with game

The demos are pretty impressive -- Sony's not kidding when it says the Move is incredibly precise. There's also going to be a secondary "subcontroller" with an analog stick for shooters -

Great photos always at Rex Features

Rex Features always has interesting photos. I recommend linking to it on your browser, as a matter of fact I will add it to my links page now.

Rex Features photos

Getting Orgainized

Spring cleaning

The 5-S Process for Getting Organized

Pluto is a planet

I am still mortified that Pluto has temporarily been stripped of a planet status.

Justifiable mail from children on the subject.

Seed Savers Exchange

A non-profit organization of gardeners dedicated to saving and sharing heirloom seeds.
Seed Savers

Time to think about planting and growing things.

Internet Radio

Create a station that plays artists or genres that you like.

Pandora

Darth Monet

Finds Your Lack of Artistic Appreciation Disturbing

The Secret Machines - "Atomic Heels"

Sounds like Phil Judd and The Swingers meets ???

The ice floes of reality

The news of the shipping trapped by ice in the Baltic could not have come at a worse time for the warmists.

The end of fishing as we know it?

I personally am morally opposed to fishing, but think others should be able to peruse and indulge in recreation and as a business, if they wish.

The Obama administration will accept no more public input for a federal strategy that could prohibit U.S. citizens from fishing the nation's oceans, coastal areas, Great Lakes, and even inland waters.

That's a disappointment, but not really a surprise for fishing industry insiders who have negotiated for months with officials at the Council on Environmental Quality and bureaucrats on the task force. These angling advocates have come to suspect that public input into the process was a charade from the beginning.

Gas pipeline probe uncovers shipwrecks in Baltic Sea

A dozen previously unknown shipwrecks, some of them believed to be up to 1,000 years old, were discovered in the Baltic Sea during a probe of the sea bed to prepare for the installation of a large gas pipeline

Due to its low temperatures and oxygen levels, the Baltic Sea is known as an ideal environment for conserving shipwrecks, which can remain virtually unblemished for hundreds and even thousands of year.

According to Norman, some 3,000 shipwrecks have been discovered and mapped in the Baltic, but experts believe more than 100,000 whole and partial wrecks litter the sea bottom.

Ready To Go

Saffron stars in this video of the UK mix of "Ready to Go" a gret song to start the night before going out clubbing in Stavanger, Norway

Scribble maps: Customize, save, and share maps with others

This looks very useful.

Scribble Maps

- Draw shapes and Scribble!
- Pace Markers and text
- Create a Custom Widget
- Save as KML/GPX
- Send maps to friends

Whether it is planning a vacation, or plotting a hiking trail, Scribble Maps can help you out!

Click: 400 views and Jack London sails through the South Pacific

Sometime yesterday we passed over 400 views of this blog, so thanks for the visits.

To celebrate this occasion here is an online version of
Jack London's The Cruise of the Snark, a non-fiction account of a cruise in the South Pacific in 1907


My favorite passage in the book was acquiring the art of navigation and the power that he felt on this learning

More on the Snark

And the boats that Jack London owned in his life.

Technology: Smartphones and travel

I have often felt the information filter while in an airport, having a smart phone for travel arrangements and getting around the issues that show up would be nice.

Smartphones have changed the way we travel

Europe's 100 sexiest summer villas

The Sunday Times reveals the best places for hire around the Mediterranean and Europe this summer

Poverty is falling fast in Africa

Increases in wealth lead to declining birth rates which means more productivity and wealth per ca pita, so this is a good trend.

Poverty falling fast in Africa

For a long life, smile like you mean it

How you can live longer.

If you want to live to a grand old age, then smile – and make sure you mean it. Pro baseball players in the 1950s who genuinely beamed in their official photographs tended to outlive more sullen-looking sportsmen and those who put on fake smiles.

William Orbit - Time to get wize

Orbit has some interesting music. The vibe and energy of this song and this video makes for a nice funky chill out moment.

Air

Air's Youtube Channel supporting their 2010 tour.

Navy Captain of the guided missile cruiser U.S.S. Cowpens stripped of command

Captain Queeg or Bligh? And those both had extenuating circumstances,
this article seems to paint this Captain in a much worse light.

The Rise and Fall of a Female Captain Bligh

Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson - Colours

Climate: Australian News follows the money

A big push behind the need for data to show global warming may be the money lining up to be part of it. Massive fraud has been found in the European carbon trading market. Very good reporting.

Sceptics are fighting a billion dollar industry aligned with a trillion dollar trading scheme. Big Oil's supposed evil influence has been vastly outdone by Big Government, and even those taxpayer billions are trumped by Big-Banking.

The big-money side of this debate has fostered a myth that sceptics write what they write because they are funded by oil profits. They say, follow the money? So I did and it's chilling. Greens and environmentalists need to be aware each time they smear with an ad hominem attack they are unwittingly helping giant finance houses.

The money trail

Hundreds of thousands of radiosonde measurements failed to find the pattern of upper trophospheric heating the models predicted, (and neither Santer 2008 with his expanding "uncertainties" nor Sherwood 2008 with his wind gauges change that). Two other independent empirical observations indicate that the warming due to CO2 is halved by changes in the atmosphere, not amplified.[Spencer 2007, Lindzen 2009, see also Spencer 2008]

Without this amplification from water vapor or clouds the infamous "3.5 degrees of warming" collapses to just a half a degree — most of which has happened.

Could the Mono Lake arsenic prove there is a shadow biosphere?

Do alien life forms exist in a Californian lake? Could there be a shadow biosphere? One scientist is trying to find out

Felisa Wolfe-Simon, a geobiologist, is interested in the lake not for its scenery but because it may be harbouring alien life forms, or “weird life”. Mono Lake, a basin with no outlet, has built up over many millennia one of the highest natural concentrations of arsenic on Earth. Dr Wolfe-Simon is investigating whether, in the mud around the lake or in the water, there exist microbes whose biological make-up is so fundamentally different from that of any known life on Earth that it may provide proof of a shadow biosphere, a second genesis for life on this planet.

It's official: An asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs

And you are thinking you are having a bad day.


"We now have great confidence that an asteroid was the cause of the KT extinction. This triggered large-scale fires, earthquakes measuring more than 10 on the Richter scale, and continental landslides, which created tsunamis," said Joanna Morgan of Imperial College London, a co-author of the review.

When spinmeisters attack

Rather then clean up science, National Academy of Sciences scientists say attack, attack, attack

After the embarrassing emails and revelation of true "data"sources, I recommend cleaning up the science instead of trying yo spin.

I would like to see some reliable open data, please. An ad does not fix the lack of scientific process. If this is a belief system then go ahead, but I thought this was a scientific debate.

and

Climategate: ‘The Science is Settled,’ They Told Copernicus

Sun still at low levels, but more active then last year.

There is some evidence that solar activity influences the Earth's climate.
How and by how much? some theories have been formed and links between the sunspot cycle and specific monsoon patterns has been published. And there was a little ice age monitored in Europe when there was an extended period on no sunspots.

Sunspot numbers have been tracked for about 400 years.


Sun wakes up from a prolonged slumber, the sunspot level for February was 31, not a high number, but last year we had two months with zero sunspots and by some measures the Sun was a quiet as it has been in 50 years and 100 years depending on how you interpreted the data.

Previous post: Solarcycles: Is the Sun coming out of a minimum

Other climate influences are the Earth's tilt. orbit, and geology. As the Himalayas formed the rain that now falls in India and surrounding countries fell in other regions. And the monsoons do erode the mountains. A very complex system makes up our climate.

Stealth Energy: Wind

Secret Energy Turbine: rooftop wind power in stealth mode

The sliding trombone house

Want more room, push a button.

The Amazing Expando House - with Video

Slide away: how the design works

1 At the press of a button, four 24V electric motors powered by car batteries start up, and the 20-ton “shell” – 52ft long, 20ft wide and 23ft high – moves in either direction 104ft along a pair of concealed rails

2 There are three options (see pictures, top left). The shell can slide forward as a shady canopy; retract right back, covering the annexe and yard, leaving the bathroom open to the sky; or stop halfway, covering the bathroom but revealing the conservatory

3 For safety reasons, there’s always an exit in case the mechanism jams. As one door is closed off, another opens

video: Air - La Femme D'Argent and San Francisco Steetcar from 1905

A great song from the debut of the French band Air and a chance to see what did San Francisco look like 105 years ago.

shot from a streetcar traveling down Market Street in San Francisco in 1905. Before the earthquake/fire of 1906 destroyed the area.

can download video from the
www.archive.org . Search for
" trip down 1905 " without quotes.

Air is touring the US in March, they are supposed to be amazing to see live:
March
13 - MIAMI - USA (Fillmore) - Book
14 - ORLANDO - USA (Hard Rock Live) - Book
15 - ATLANTA - USA (Centerstage) - Book
17 - WASHINGTON DC - USA (9:30 Club) - Book
18 - PHILADELPHIA - USA (Electric Factory)- Book
19 - NEW YORK - USA (Terminal 5) Book
20 - BOSTON - USA (Berklee Performance Center) Book
22 - MONTREAL - Canada (Metropolis) Book
23 - TORONTO – Canada (Phoenix Concert Theatre) Book
24 - CHICAGO - USA (Riviera Theatre) Book
26 - OAKLAND - USA (Fox Theatre) Book
27 - SAN DIEGO - USA (4th & B) Book
28 - LOS ANGELES - USA (Walt Disney Concert Hall)

Less but better: Design according to Dieter Rams

Legendary industrial Dieter Rams has always focused on doing ‘less but better’ – a credo David Sharp found he even applied to a rare interview with The Local.

Dieter Rams' Ten Principles of good design:

Good design is innovative.
Good design makes a product useful.
Good design is aesthetic.
Good design makes a product understandable.
Good design is unobtrusive.
Good design is honest.
Good design is long-lasting.
Good design is thorough down to the last detail.
Good design is environmentally friendly.
Good design is as little design as possible.

Covers: Ananda Shankar and Jumpin' Jack Flash

Blesssed are the Cheesemakers

World cheese contest expands as it ages, and will be in Madison again soon

Sabrina, 1954, Audrey Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, and William Holden

Audrey Hepburn's follow on to "Roman Holiday" and teb years before "My Fair Lady."

quieter, more productive wind farms

Rubber trailing edge flaps could result in quieter, more productive wind farms

Risoe DTU is now looking towards production and testing of a full-scale prototype. Its trailing edge flap is reminiscent of a forward edge design for turbine blades, previously covered in Gizmag.

Ice, ice, baby

Thick Baltic ice causes ferry havoc

Kate Bush - "King Of The Mountain"

Elvis, Rosebud and King of the Mountain.
Kate Bush knows how to produce a unique sound.

Crowded House Italian Plastic live 1996

Written by the late great Paul Hester

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale

After this the only thing from the 60s that remains to be made into a movie will be
the Alberto Culver hair spray ad in the pounding surf.

Big Screen Gilligan

Space: Moon's North pole has a lot of water

NASA radar finds at least 600 million tons of ice at the Moon's north pole

Music: Trying to remeber a song's name

Help! I cannot remember the band or song name but the words go something like this ...

Finding a song when you can't remember the name

It takes a Potemkin village

Recession? What recession? Fake shopfronts built to cover up High St stores that have been closed down

Potemkin villages "were purportedly fake settlements erected at the direction of Russian minister Grigory Potyomkin to fool Empress Catherine II during her visit to Crimea in 1787."

History as a wave

Something to look forward to, another great age of exploration.

21st Century waves

"...Patterns in long-term trends over the last 200 years...point specifically toward the human colonization of space in the next 20!"

The Next Maslow Window (2015 – 2025) Will Be Spectacular :
Patterns in economics, technology, and exploration over the last 200 years enable us to make forecasts for the next 20+ years, including for the 2015-2025 Maslow Window. Our expectations should realistically include humans on Mars, solar power satellites in Earth orbit, and tourists on the Moon.

Porsche unveils a futuristic hybrid supercar

Porsche unveils 'green' supercar for petrol-heads

Strategy and Tactics: John Boyd and the Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act process

John Boyd developed the OODA, Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act,decision loop and influenced US fighter design. The lessons learned by the OODA loop are now being applied to areas outside of the military.

Developing the Warrior Mind: Boyd’s OODA loop and Cooper’s Color Code lay the foundation

A book on Boyd

Boyd was asked to look into the overweight design of the FX, the initial concept for the F-15 Eagle. He used energy-maneuverability to reduce its weight and cost and increase its performance. His follow-up project, the F-16, increased the U.S. Air Force's inventory with the ultimate air-combat fighter.

The Publishing Revolution

A wise person once told me that software sells hardware.

The attempts to new royalty structures with artists receiving 70% for
electronic books and songs versus 10% for paper printed and manufactured music
seems to point to a glut of content appearing in down loadable form.

The Publishing Disruption

Thus, without many people even noticing the murmurs, we can predict that the next 3 years will see the biggest transformation in book production and consumption since the days of Johannes Gutenberg. That is a true demonstration of both the Accelerating Rate of Change and The Impact of Computing.

Wilderness Survival Videos

Self shot. I especially like the Iceland trek as I know someone who has hiked there several times. You can reserve huts to sleep in and the scenery is supposed to be amazing.

Wilderness Survival Videos

Main Page with trek across Iceland

"My name is Michel Blomgren and my greatest interest is survival in the wilderness and primitive, but comfortable, outdoor life. I have earlier shared my outdoor experiences and experiments through photographs and stories. This engagement has now resulted in the making of a short movie series about survival with a documentary touch"

Earthquake may have changed the Earth's rotation

The quake, the seventh strongest earthquake in recorded history, hit Chile Saturday and should have shortened the length of an Earth day by 1.26 milliseconds, according to research scientist Richard Gross at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Strong earthquakes have altered Earth's days and its axis in the past. The 9.1 Sumatran earthquake in 2004, which set off a deadly tsunami, should have shortened Earth's days by 6.8 microseconds and shifted its axis by about 2.76 inches (7 cm, or 2.32 milliarcseconds).

Chile earthquake may have slength of day

When nations behave badly

The BBC let's us know what is going on in South America.

Spanish judge: Venezuela 'helped Eta and Farc plot against Columbia

As in plot to kill their leader. Looks like Chavez is trying to destroy two nations, Venezuela and Colombia.

This should be a major story in the US right now. If not why not?

Backpack Hydroelectric Plant Gives You 500 Watts on the Move

A human-portable hydroelectric generator that weighs about 30 pounds and generates 500 watts of power may soon be a new option for off-grid power.

Developed by Bourne Energy of Malibu, California, the Backpack Power Plant can create clean, quiet power from any stream deeper than 4 feet.

Backpack Hydroelectic Plant

Mars Rovers: Videos of six years of exploration

Short videos on the rovers, Spirit and Opportunity.

Spirit: Six Years of Roving Mars

Opportunity: Making Tracks on Mars

Current status of Spirit

What's so funny about peace, love, and understanding?

Most governments all over the world are spending too much money. And there will be great wailing about reducing any aspect of any part of any government. We can always save some money somehow in our personal lives. I predict there will be an eventual backlash against attempts to avoid cuts in government spending.


BBC Director defends cuts 
and from last week here BBC signals end to an era of expansion.

I think over the next few years we will settle into a era where people will have some sense of shred sacrifice.
Sitting behind a wall, in German "Mauer," and asking everyone else to sacrifice is not an option.

Only then may we say, "What's so funny about peace, love, and understanding?"

Show it, don't say it

Amazing to look at these 30 day moving ratings for the past two years.
Fox News looks more variable and is building audience, while the competition all seems to be blending toghether and approching 1 million or a half million viewers.

Fox's gain in audience over two years is two to four times the total audience of any single competitor .

Cable news ratings graphs

Not sure what it means, but there is probably some fascination data analysis in these numbers.

Shall we play a game>

Sheepshead is a German card game which is popular in Wisconsin and other American regions.

The rules of Sheepshead and also here

Play Sheepshead on line: Jack of Diamonds partner 5 handed

Keep it dark

In the dark people may be less honest and
More light leads to more honesty

When hiding climate data is a standard practice

Simply amazing.

Head of 'Climategate' research unit admits he hid data

The scientist at the heart of the 'Climategate' row over global warming hid data 'because it was standard practice', it emerged today.

Professor Phil Jones, director of the University of East Anglia's prestigious climatic research unit, today admitted to MPs that the centre withheld raw station data about global temperatures from around the world.

Harsh Climate Conditions or When physicists attack

Some very good points basiclly asking,
"Where's the science?"

Some concerns over the lack of science by the "Global Warming clan"

Memo to self, never thick off a physicist.

Looking for clues

I thought I solved this mystery decades ago.
Total eclipse + vein = Dracula

Carly Simon says You're so vain mystery not solved

I think the "controversy" resurfaces every time she releases a new record.

Media: Understanding the Participatory News Consumer

A Pew study, they do interesting media research, show, that the
Internet is climbing as news source passing by newspapers and raio and climbing towrds television news and national television news.

When I screened calls for PBS talk shows people seemed to crave being able to talk back with mass media and it seemed to me that mass media always wanted to pretend to listen. The Internet and social networking sites are changing the rules, people can participate and organizations are springing up to "astroturf" pretend to be people commenting to try to spin the news and attitudes of real people.

People have fewer places to talk to others, so the lure of a media that allows people to listen and communicate back is understandable. The old media may not see the trend in anything else but diminished use.
Most US newspapers are rapidly losing readership.

Winter Gardening (With Plans!)

Get a jump on the growing season.

Plans for building a cold frame for Spring gardening.

and a  50 Dollar hoop greenhouse and a 
Wood framed Greenhouse

Climate: Issues with source data and "data massaging"

Something is fishy with the claim that the Arctic is warming.

Using weather data from 1000 kilometers away?

and another explanation of how the  rural data is "adjusted" and it shows warmer temperatures then actually happened , again this was supposed to be an adjustment to the urban temperatures to take out the "heat island effect", such as a temperature reading station being next to a hot air conditioner exhaust. Time after time the rural data is made warmer. Something is rotten in the state of temperature data.

It would be nice to have accurate data to see what is really going on. The Earth is warming out of an Ice Age, but how fast, in what ways, and do humans contribute, and if so by how much. There are too many problems with data collection and storage to say it is useful at this moment.

I think satellite data will cover more of the Earth and have less bias then ground measurements and the ground measurements have a troubling reduction in rural stations all over the world in the past twenty years.

297 our of 300 views and the Spatans at Thermopylae 480 BC

Thanks for stopping by in the first 20 days of this blog.
One of you stopping by will be the 300th viewer of the blog.///////

Here are two entries on a famous 300, the Spartans that made up a small group of 7,000 soldiers that foughts and stood off an army estimated to be about 25,000 to 200,000 Persians.

300 Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae

Map showing Thermopylae as a choke point to enter Greece.

Archeology: A place in Turkey called Eden from 12000 to 1300 years ago

A fascinating archeological site, built by nomads, then buried. Why? and why?

Three articles on this amazing place with some great photographs.

Predating Stonehenge by 6,000 years, Turkey's stunning Gobekli Tepe upends the conventional view of the rise of civilization

The World's First Temple: Turkey's 12,000-year-old stone circles were the spiritual center of a nomadic people

The oldest man-made place of worship yet discovered, Göbekli Tepe is "one of the most important monuments in the world," says Hassan Karabulut, associate curator of the nearby Urfa Museum. He and archaeologist Zerrin Ekdogan of the Turkish Ministry of Culture guide me around the site. Their enthusiasm for the ancient temple is palpable.

Do these mysterious stones mark the site of the Garden of Eden?

They certainly were important. The solitary Kurdish man, on that summer's day in 1994, had made the greatest archaeological discovery in 50 years. Others would say he'd made the greatest archaeological discovery ever: a site that has revolutionised the way we look at human history, the origin of religion - and perhaps even the truth behind the Garden of Eden.

Around 8,000 BC, the creators of Gobekli turned on their achievement and entombed their glorious temple under thousands of tons of earth, creating the artificial hills on which that Kurdish shepherd walked in 1994.
No one knows why Gobekli was buried. Maybe it was interred as a kind of penance: a sacrifice to the angry gods, who had cast the hunters out of paradise. Perhaps it was for shame at the violence and bloodshed that the stone-worship had helped provoke.

Transportation: The Age of Steam

Recently built "Tornado" A1 Steam Engine

A BBC news story Steam train's snow rescue 'glory' from December 2009.

To get some idea of the power of the Tornado steam engine watch:



UK Rail Tours with Steam Dreams and nformation on UK Railway Preservation and steam tours

Who are you: Some background on a political movement

I try to avoid politics on this blog, but want to cover how the media reports about politics, rarely. As this is a recent and realatively large movement.read about the Seattle woman credited with being the first Tea Party protester, she held a rally before the Tea Party started forming up.

Refreshing to read some background on the news instead of some sort of personalized projected reality. I have seen Tea Parties and many media accounts do not accurately characterize the tone, makeup, and attitudes of those attending.

I saw one Tea Party rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin and it as made up of all sorts of people, farmers, small business owners, men and women. And people seemed to be ripping equally on both parties for spending too much money.My best explanation is that those in the Tea Party want to reign in waste, pork barrel spending, and make the public sector more productive.

It is ironic that while businesses to survive have cut staff and maintained or increased productivity over the past 30 years I do not know of any governments that have not grown in size while  reducing their services. Maybe we are past the point of no return when a cap or reduction in public sector spending and an increase in services and productivity is not expected or demanded. 

Chart - 50 years of government spending

The computer and network have allowed most businesses to carve out many mid-level management positions and entire careers, typists and secretaries for example are mostly gone in the private sector. What has the public sector done to control costs, eliminate or re-purpose  redundant staff and increase value?

Unlikely Activist Who Got to the Tea Party Early

“I basically thought to myself: ‘I have two courses. I can give up, go home, crawl into bed and be really depressed and let it happen,’ ” she said this month while driving home from a protest at the State Capitol in Olympia. “Or I can do something different, and I can find a new avenue to have my voice get out.”

This weekend, as Tea Party members observe the anniversary of the first mass protests nationwide, Ms. Carender’s path to activism offers a lens into how the movement has grown, taking many people who were not politically active — it is not uncommon to meet Tea Party advocates who say they have never voted — and turning them into a force that is rattling both parties as they look toward the midterm elections in the fall.

Reader Email on the 80s

Update:
Nick chats with Susannah Gora about her book You Couldn't Ignore Me If You Tried: The Brat Pack, John Hughes, And Their Impact on a Generation.      Sat-Sun show 02/27/10

Book about the 80s teen movies -

You Couldn't Ignore Me If You Tried: The Brat Pack, John Hughes, and Their Impact on a Generation

She's on the radio right now. Book includes stories about the movies / behind the scenes. When Ally Sheedy went for audition she had 2 black eyes. She was in a play and a board had fallen on her head. When Hughes was casting for Breakfast Club he remembered her look at the audition so hired her for the role. Hughes had seen Molly Ringwald in something. He had her picture above his desk when he wrote the screenplay. (Needless to say she didn't have to audition for the role.) Jon Cryer was supposed to end up with Molly Ringwald in Pretty in Pink. But when they screened it the audience booed when he got the girl. So they re-shot and Andrew McCarthy got MR. (I realize I never saw that movie.)

Guy on the radio knew John Cusack back then. Says his character in 'Say Anything' IS John Cusack. That's what he was like at that age. Book sounds interesting (but she's only 32).

Haven't heard anything about this book  - released last fall by Stewart Copelandmusic, video
Strange Things Happen: A Life with The Police, Polo, and Pygmies

Since we're looking back. Let Suzuki blow your mind.
http://www.filmarchive.org.nz/sellebration/view.php?id=154