Biscuit crumbs

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An airborne radar, Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar, developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., has returned to Hawaii to continue its study of Kilauea volcano, Hawaii’s current most active volcano.

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After 244 Years, Encyclopaedia Britannica Stops the Presses
By JULIE BOSMAN | Media Decoder | Mar 13, 2012, 5:54 pm

...Mr. Cauz [the president of Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., a company based in Chicago] said that he believed Britannica’s competitive advantage with Wikipedia came from its prestigious sources, its carefully edited entries and the trust that was tied to the brand.

“We have very different value propositions,” Mr. Cauz said. “Britannica is going to be smaller. We cannot deal with every single cartoon character, we cannot deal with every love life of every celebrity. But we need to have an alternative where facts really matter. Britannica won’t be able to be as large, but it will always be factually correct.”

But one widely publicized study, published in 2005 by Nature, called into question Britannica’s presumed accuracy advantage over Wikipedia. The study said that out of 42 competing entries, Wikipedia made an average of four errors in each article, and Britannica three. Britannica responded with a lengthy rebuttal saying the study was error-laden and “completely without merit.”

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Professor Timothy Messer-Kruse published his disapproval of Wikipedia’s editorial culture, describing his experience “a culture clash.” I would agree. Hear the full story in the audio, below.
Thanks, MinM.
~ A.

Friday, March 09, 2012

Professor Timothy Messer-Kruse has devoted the last ten years of his
life to one topic -- the 1886 Haymarket Riot. But when Messer-Kruse
tried to correct a wrong fact about the event, he ran afoul of
Wikipedia's thorny editing culture. Brooke talks to Messer-Kruse about
his editing travails, and Phoebe Ayers, Wikimedia Foundation member,
about Messer-Kruse's experience from Wikipedia's side.

http://www.onthemedia.org/2012/mar/09/p ... wikipedia/

[REFER.]

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Data from NASA’s AIM spacecraft show that noctilucent clouds (NLCs) are like a great “geophysical light bulb.” They turn on every year in late spring, reaching almost full intensity over a period of no more than 5 to 10 days. News flash: The bulb is glowing.

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Today is the great Leap Second Day, when an extra second is added to our clocks at midnight. For one odd moment, the official time will actually go from June 30 at 23:59:59 to 23:59:60 instead of directly to July 1 at 00:00:00.

The reason this is done is because the atomic clock standard we use has a very slightly different rate than the rotation-of-the-Earth based Coordinated Universal Time system. To be clear: it’s not that the Earth is slowing down so much we have to add a second every couple of years! It’s that they run at different rates, so we have to compensate by throwing in the odd leap second now and again.

This has been planned for some time, and in fact I wrote about this in excruciating detail in January. Because there is simply no way I can top the brilliance of that post, I’ll simply repost it here. It’s a bit long, but that’s OK: you have an extra second today to read it.

POST 2411

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Excerpt from Curiosity’s First Daredevil Stunt
— NASA Science News | August 2, 2012

< snip from top >

For the past nine months, Curiosity has been acting as a stunt double for astronauts, exposing itself to the same cosmic radiation humans would experience following the same route to Mars.

“Curiosity has been hit by five major flares and solar particle events in the Earth-Mars expanse,” says Don Hassler of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. “The rover is safe, and it has been beaming back invaluable data.”



More.

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The Moon is pretty bright, and when it’s full has a magnitude of about -12.7. That’s bright enough to read by. But the Sun is way, way brighter. It’s magnitude is a whopping -26.7. How much brighter is that?

Well, it’s 2.5(-12.7 – (-26.7)) = 2.514 = 400,000.

The Sun is 400,000 times brighter than the full Moon…

More Bad Astronomy.

[brainpanhandler]

Why isn’t this a front page story nationwide?
By: Cynthia Kouril Tuesday December 11, 2012 5:22 am


On November 20th 2012 I told you about a guilty plea taken by Lorraine Brown, the founder of DOCX (later known at LPS), in federal court in Florida. The press release for that plea did not come out until after 5 PM on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving most of the reporters who usually occupy the front pages of our newspapers and network news were presumably traveling or preparing for their holiday. The story was barely reported.

Lorraine Brown also pled guilty earlier that same day in state court in Missouri. She is rumored to be in plea negotiations in other states.

Even though this is no longer breaking news, it still belongs on the front page of every paper in the country and should be the lead story on every newscast. I’ll tell you why:

Whatever the banks thought about the robo-signing being “sloppy” before, once Lorraine Brown admitted that virtually every document coming out of DOCX/LPS was a forgery and that ALL documents coming out of DOCX/LPS were suspect, the banks that had court cases pending using DOCX/LPS documents had an obligation to either withdraw the documents and/or withdraw the lawsuits and other foreclosure proceedings.

It is a crime (common law fraud) to knowingly use a false, perjured, forged, fraudulent document as “evidence” in court. The specific statute violated will vary from state to state, but it is impossible to conceive that there is a single state where this is legal. If I’m wrong about that, I’m sure someone from the fraud-allowing state will set me straight in the comments. This is certainly a violation of federal criminal law, for example 18 USC §§ 371, 1341, 1342, and 1343 and 39 USC§§ 1341 and 1342.

I have seen no evidence that there has been a wholesale withdrawal of DOCX/LPS documents from evidence or a large scale voluntary dismissal of cases or even letters sent to chief judges saying that the cases should be stayed until they can perform the mechanics of withdrawing the fraudulent “evidence.” Nope, the cases I have been following are still going strong and being prosecuted vigorously.

This also means that the 50 state settlement notwithstanding, the Department of Justice and every attorney general in the country have a brand new, slam dunk, open and shut case against every single bank that is still allowing a foreclosure case to go forward based on DOCX/LPS false evidence.

THAT, my friends, is front page news. And getting it to the front page is essential so that judges know they are being hoodwinked, and homeowners know they should be making motions to dismiss. DOJ clearly knows about the Lorraine Brown guilty plea since the 13th hour press release came out of Main Justice instead of from the Middle District of Florida press office.

So, I’m asking for your help. Tweet this. Send a copy as a Letter to the Editor (or re-write your own using this information). Send it to the network and cable news shows you watch. Put up your own blog post about it. Email it to your favorite reporters. I don’t care if my little blogpost is the form you promote, just promote the story of the brand new massive fraud on the court that is occurring right now. The banks, and their lawyers, have no excuse. They can no longer harbor any belief, good faith or not, that those documents are not false and fraudulent.

http://my.firedoglake.com/cindykouril/2 ... ationwide/

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Apatheism (/ˌæpəˈθiːɪzəm/ a portmanteau of apathy and theism/atheism),

also known as pragmatic atheism or (critically) as practical atheism, is acting with apathy, disregard, or lack of interest towards belief or disbelief in a deity. Apatheism describes the manner of acting towards a belief or lack of a belief in a deity, so it applies to both theism and atheism. An apatheist is also someone who is not interested in accepting or denying any claims that gods exist or do not exist. In other words, an apatheist is someone who considers the question of the existence of gods as neither meaningful nor relevant to his or her life.

Apathetic agnosticism (also called pragmatic agnosticism) acknowledges that any amount of debate can neither prove, nor disprove, the existence of one or more deities, and if one or more deities exist, they do not appear to be concerned about the fate of humans. Therefore, their existence has little impact on personal human affairs and should be of little theological interest.

Apatheists hold that if it were possible to prove that God exists, their behavior would not change. Similarly, there would be no change if someone proved that God does not exist.

[Luther Blissett]

From Justdrew's post way back on the Images Only thread:

Since when do we have any plants like this on earth... ?

African fruit 'brightest' thing in nature - but!.. does not use pigment to create its extraordinary colour

September 10, 2012

Most colours around us are the result of pigments. However, a few examples in nature – including the peacock, the scarab beetle and now the Pollia condensata fruit – use structural colour as well. Fruits are made of cells, each of which is surrounded by a cell wall containing cellulose. However, the researchers found that in the Pollia condensata fruit the cellulose is laid down in layers, forming a chiral (asymmetrical) structure that is able to interact with light and provide selective reflection of only a specific colour. As a result of this unique structure, it reflects predominately blue light.

The scientists also discovered that each individual cell generates colour independently, producing a pixelated or pointillist effect (like those in the paintings of Seurat). This colour is produced by the reflection of light of particular wavelengths from layers of cellulose in the cell wall. The thickness of the layers determines which wavelength of light is reflected. As a result, some cells have thinner layers and reflect blue; others have thicker layers and reflect green or red. The researchers believe that the plants invest in the complicated colouring structure as a mechanism for seed dispersal. Although the Pollia fruit does not provide any nutritional value, birds are attracted to its bright colouring – possibly as a means of decorating their nests or impressing their mates. Dr Beverley Glover from the University of Cambridge's Department of Plant Sciences, who jointly led the research, said: "This obscure little plant has hit on a fantastic way of making an irresistible shiny, sparkly, multi-coloured, iridescent signal to every bird in the vicinity, without wasting any of its precious photosynthetic reserves on bird food. Evolution is very smart!"

... this would seem to indicate we could invent a new kind of color printer that prints by spitting paper onto paper.

I saw a lecture by Janine Benyus at the Biomimicry Institute, which teamed biologists and physicists up with designers and engineers, back in 2006 while they were working on just such a project. They were inspired mostly by a species of bird with a brown feather whose fibers overlapped in such a way that they reflected wavelengths of light differently, and appeared brilliantly colored. The idea was a device that could manipulate the fibers of a textile or paper (or textile-paper) to make it appear printed, which could be changed back to a flat white surface at any time. I've tried a few times to follow up on the Institute's progress with this and other projects, but they never seemed very interested in self-promotion.

[justdrew]

hmm, maybe Carbon nanotubes filled with some magnetic molecules would do the trick, although that might lead to an issue around the nanotubes flaking off. maybe they would be protected under a super thin diamond deposition layer.

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Thanks to cptmarginal for the following.

Sublime Frequencies
PO BOX 17971 SEATTLE, WA 98127 USA

SUBLIME FREQUENCIES COMMUNIQUÈ

SUBLIME FREQUENCIES is a collective of explorers dedicated to acquiring and exposing obscure sights and sounds from modern and traditional urban and rural frontiers via film and video, field recordings, radio and short wave transmissions, international folk and pop music, sound anomalies, and other forms of human and natural expression not documented sufficiently through all channels of academic research, the modern recording industry, media, or corporate foundations.

SUBLIME FREQUENCIES is focused on an aesthetic of extra-geography and soulful experience inspired by music and culture, world travel, research, and the pioneering recording labels of the past including OCORA, SMITHSONIAN FOLKWAYS, ETHNIC FOLKWAYS, LYRICHORD, NONESUCH EXPLORER, MUSICAPHONE, BARONREITER, UNESCO, PLAYASOUND, MUSICAL ATLAS, CHANT DU MONDE, B.A.M., TANGENT, and TOPIC. SUBLIME FREQUENCIES PO BOX 17971 SEATTLE WA 98127 USA

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Tardigrade in Moss | Image Credit & Copyright: Nicole Ottawa & Oliver Meckes / Eye of Science / Science Source Images

Explanation: Is this an alien? Probably not, but of all the animals on Earth, the tardigrade might be the best candidate. That's because tardigrades are known to be able to go for decades without food or water, to survive temperatures from near absolute zero to well above the boiling point of water, to survive pressures from near zero to well above that on ocean floors, and to survive direct exposure to dangerous radiations.

The far-ranging survivability of these extremophiles was tested in 2011 outside an orbiting space shuttle. Tardigrades are so durable partly because they can repair their own DNA and reduce their body water content to a few percent. Some of these miniature water-bears almost became extraterrestrials recently when they were launched toward to the Martian moon Phobos on board the Russian mission Fobos-Grunt, but stayed terrestrial when a rocket failed and the capsule remained in Earth orbit.

Tardigrades are more common than humans across most of the Earth. Pictured above in a color-enhanced electron micrograph, a millimeter-long tardigrade crawls on moss.

[KUAN]

During the late Summer of 1963, Beatle George Harrison traveled to Benton IL for a three week visit with his sister Louise Caldwell as “1st Beatle visit to the USA”

http://www.historicjail.com/?page_id=17

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Rebus | Wikipedia

A rebus is an allusional device that uses pictures to represent words or parts of words. It was a favourite form of heraldic expression used in the Middle Ages to denote surnames, for example in its basic form three salmon fish to denote the name “Salmon”. A more sophisticated example was the rebus of Bishop Walter Lyhart (d.1472) of Norwich, consisting of a stag (or hart) lying down in a conventional representation of water.

The composition alludes to the name, profession or personal characteristics of the bearer, and speaks to the beholder Non verbis, sed rebus, which Latin expression signifies “not by words but by things” (res, rei (f), a thing, object, matter; rebus being ablative plural).

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See Non verbis sed rebus | See Latin declension for ablative plural

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The following music was included on the Voyager record.
The Interstellar Mission | Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology

» Bach, Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F. First Movement, Munich Bach Orchestra, Karl Richter, conductor. 4:40
» Java, court gamelan, “Kinds of Flowers,” recorded by Robert Brown. 4:43
» Senegal, percussion, recorded by Charles Duvelle. 2:08
» Zaire, Pygmy girls’ initiation song, recorded by Colin Turnbull. 0:56
» Australia, Aborigine songs, “Morning Star” and “Devil Bird,” recorded by Sandra LeBrun Holmes. 1:26
» Mexico, “El Cascabel,” performed by Lorenzo Barcelata and the Mariachi México. 3:14
» “Johnny B. Goode,” written and performed by Chuck Berry. 2:38
» New Guinea, men’s house song, recorded by Robert MacLennan. 1:20
» Japan, shakuhachi, “Tsuru No Sugomori” (“Crane’s Nest,”) performed by Goro Yamaguchi. 4:51
» Bach, “Gavotte en rondeaux” from the Partita No. 3 in E major for Violin, performed by Arthur Grumiaux. 2:55
» Mozart, The Magic Flute, Queen of the Night aria, no. 14. Edda Moser, soprano. Bavarian State Opera, Munich, Wolfgang Sawallisch, conductor. 2:55
» Georgian S.S.R., chorus, “Tchakrulo,” collected by Radio Moscow. 2:18
» Peru, panpipes and drum, collected by Casa de la Cultura, Lima. 0:52
» “Melancholy Blues,” performed by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven. 3:05
» Azerbaijan S.S.R., bagpipes, recorded by Radio Moscow. 2:30
» Stravinsky, Rite of Spring, Sacrificial Dance, Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Igor Stravinsky, conductor. 4:35
» Bach, The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2, Prelude and Fugue in C, No.1. Glenn Gould, piano. 4:48
» Beethoven, Fifth Symphony, First Movement, the Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, conductor. 7:20
» Bulgaria, “Izlel je Delyo Hagdutin,” sung by Valya Balkanska. 4:59
» Navajo Indians, Night Chant, recorded by Willard Rhodes. 0:57
» Holborne, Paueans, Galliards, Almains and Other Short Aeirs, “The Fairie Round,” performed by David Munrow and the Early Music Consort of London. 1:17
» Solomon Islands, panpipes, collected by the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Service. 1:12
» Peru, wedding song, recorded by John Cohen. 0:38
» China, ch’in, “Flowing Streams,” performed by Kuan P’ing-hu. 7:37
» India, raga, “Jaat Kahan Ho,” sung by Surshri Kesar Bai Kerkar. 3:30
» “Dark Was the Night,” written and performed by Blind Willie Johnson. 3:15
» Beethoven, String Quartet No. 13 in B flat, Opus 130, Cavatina, performed by Budapest String Quartet. 6:37