A Kitchen Trick

Not something I need to do often, but worth remembering.

Icy Balls of Lake Michigan

In the wake of the “Polar Vortex,” the balls formed “when water from the lake begins to freeze and is pushed ashore by wave motions,” according to AccuWeather.com meteorologist Jim Andrews.

Costa Concordia Refloated

The Costa Concordia, the cruise ship that ran aground on Giglio Island off Tuscany, Italy, after the Captain took it in too close to a reef to show off,  was righted and refloated yesterday. The time lapse video of the process is quite amazing. That's a lot of steel being moved:



The Captain is still expected to be tried on manslaughter and other charges relating to the wreck, which resulted in the deaths of 32 crew and passengers.  The ship will be scrapped, likely in spring, after it is searched for the remains of 2 missing, and any other evidence.

Go Up, Young Man

Asteroid Mining, an idea whose time has come?  

I can't tell you how many Sci-Fi stories I've read which featured asteroid mining. Can it be that it getting close to some version of reality?

A new asteroid-mining company launched Tuesday with the goal of helping humanity expand across the solar system by tapping the vast riches of space rocks.

The new firm, called Deep Space Industries, Inc., announced today (Jan. 22) that it plans to launch a fleet of prospecting spacecraft in 2015, then begin harvesting metals and water from near-Earth asteroids within a decade or so. Such work could make it possible to build and refuel spacecraft far above our planet's surface, thus helping our species get a foothold in the final frontier.

"Using resources harvested in space is the only way to afford permanent space development," Deep Space CEO David Gump said in a statement. Deep Space Industries will hold a press conference today in Santa Monica, Calif., at 10 a.m. PST (1 p.m. EST/1800 GMT) to unveil more details of its bold mission plan; you can watch the webcast live here at SPACE.com.(too late now - Fritz)

Sadly, or happily perhaps, it won't initially call for human spaceflight, just the now ubiquitous robots.

Deep Space will inspect potential mining targets with 55-pound (25 kilograms) spacecraft it calls Firefly, the first of which are targeted for launch in 2015.

Fireflies will conduct asteroid reconnaissance on the cheap. They'll be made from low-cost "cubesat" components and will hitch a ride to space aboard rockets that also carry large communications satellites, Deep Space officials said.

"We can make amazing machines smaller, cheaper and faster than ever before," Deep Space chairman Rick Tumlinson said in a statement. "Imagine a production line of Fireflies, cocked and loaded and ready to fly out to examine any object that gets near the Earth."

I'll look around for a suitable illustration later.

Bonus Monkey Dacker - The Worlds First Venomous Monkey

Poisonous Nocturnal Monkey Found In Borneo

Professor Anna Nekaris, of Oxford Brookes University, led the team of international researchers who made the discovery in Borneo and the Philippines.

She said: "The slow loris might look like a harmless, big-eyed Ewok from a scene in Star Wars, but the animal is actually one of the only poisonous mammals in the world.

"Its toxin can cause death in humans through anaphylactic shock.

"Unknowing humans should stay clear of the toxin, which is released from near its elbows. When threatened, the loris takes the toxin into its mouth and mixes it with saliva."

Cool!

Giant Great White Shark Stalks Georgia Beaches

A really cool site that allows you to follow telemetry tagged Great White Shark on a map.  Right now, a 16 ft shark named Mary Lee is moving down the East Coast, and is currently just off the coast of Georgia.  Go to the site, find the "Sharks" tab, select Mary Lee, and then push the "Where Have I Been" button to see her recent travels.  It's interesting how she seems to loiter around in one area for a while and then make a quick move to another. It looks like 2 days ago, she made a very quick move from the region off Charleston to the region off Beaufort in 1 hr?  That's a distance of about 70 miles in 1 hr?  I doubt it...

Putting Things in Perspective

Everything to scale.

Swiped from Ted.  I didn't even have to beat him up for it.

Man Flies Bay Flapping Arms

I think this is a first.  A few "French" words there at the end...



I'd love to try this; but I don't think I could get off the ground.  According to this Wired article, it works using a robotic enhancement to the power of the arm flaps. Clever, if true.

Pretty Cool Owl Video

An Eagle Owl about to be very surprised when it's prey turns out to a camera...

Thanks to Surly McNasty.

Too Bad it Won't Fit on My Boat

A self leveling pool table on a cruise ship in heavy seas:

Quantum Levitation

I gotta figure out how this works...

Takes the Wheel When I'm Seein' Double...

Pays my ticket when I speed: Mind Reading car could drive you home when you're drunk

The idea of your car being able to read your brain to decide whether you're about to dose off or just need a little driving assistance could become a reality. Nissan's doing research to create a smarter car — one that predicts what you might do next when you're behind the wheel. Hell yeah!

Nissan's not doing it alone, though. It's partnered up with Switzerland's École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne to figure out how to implement mind-reading tech into tomorrow's cars.

According to FastCompany, the researchers already have a mind-reading wheelchair system in place and are moving on to the next big challenge — cars. Presumably, a number of sensors will "monitors brain activity, eye movement, and the surrounding environment to predict whether a driver plans to, say, make a right turn, speed up, or change lanes on the highway."

More importantly, when you're sloshing back to your car inebriated, such a system in your car could sense that you're too smashed and refuse to start up, keep speeds at certain speed limits or maybe even kick things into auto-driving mode.

Cool Earth Flyover Video

Set the screen resolution as high as you can and watch full screen



Seen at Watts Up With That

For best effect, start the video below and let it run about a minute and a half before starting the fly over.

Stuff Charlie Sends - That's Racist!

A cool visualization of the changes in the population from the 2000 to the 2010 census.

I think I'd have found something other than race/ethnicity as the other variable to explore, but hey, that's just me, and I'm not the New York Times.

Only slightly related, "That's Racist" has become a phrase of derision by today's youth, a way of dismissing/dissing societies preoccupation with race:

But what’s the joke? We don’t find out until a 14-year-old-boy says it plainly: “I think I or other people just sort of do it as a way of mocking people who are overly sensitive about race issues.”

Bingo!

NPR could have done the whole story in 30 seconds. But instead it spent more than five minutes trying to grapple with a wonderful yet utterly inconvenient truth for the ostentatiously liberal network: Young people just aren’t as uptight about race as their parents, never mind their grandparents, are. And, by the way, the days of segregated swimming pools and neighborhoods haven’t merely “yielded” to “more subtle forms of discrimination”; they’ve yielded to — wait for it — less discrimination.

 Hat Tip to Charlie.

Pendulum Waves

Watch until near the end.



How it works is pretty simple, but that only adds to interest for me.

A Little Overkill for a Ground Squirrel

Brit Rifle Finds the Enemy

The ultimate rifle: British snipers to be armed with supergun that pinpoints the enemy by 'hearing bullets'

A supergun that targets enemy snipers by the sound of their gunfire is being trialled by British soldiers, it emerged today.

The 'gunfire locator' is fitted next to the scopes of rifles which uses sonar to calculate an enemy's position within 1.3 seconds.

Paratroopers even field-tested the device by offering themselves as targets to Taliban insurgents last weekend in order to draw out the fire.

 This seems like such obvious technology; once you think about it.  I wonder where they got the idea...

The same technology used in Nintendo Wii games - where players use wireless controllers - has been used to develop the sensor.

A cross-hairs target on the device is able to display the enemy sniper's position using sensors that pick up the range and elevation. The soldier can then fire back with speed and precision accuracy.

'It enables you to run away in the right direction or take cover. You can also return fire accurately. We need to save lives, and you do that by knowing where the enemy is,' developer Colin Howard told The Sun.

The SAS and front line troops currently serving in Afghanistan will be the first to use the high-tech pods.

Now all it has to do and point itself and pull the trigger.  Skynet here we come!

The Real 'Sword in the Stone'

The Sword in the Stone at Montesiepi Chapel 

The legendary sword in the stone, often linked to king Arthur’s legend, does exist. Not in Avalon, of course, but in Italy. One can see it in the Montesiepi chapel, near Saint Galgano Abbey in Chiusdino, in Tuscany.

Galgano Guidotti was born in 1148 near Chiusdino. After spending his youth as a brave knight, in 1180 Galgano decided to follow the words of Jesus and retired as a hermit near his hometown.

He is said to have stuck his sword onto a rock in order to use it as a cross for his prayers. One year later Galgano died, and in 1185 Pope Lucius the 3rd declared him a saint...

Not Fade Away

X-rays show why van Gogh paintings lose their shine

...Scientists have identified a complex chemical reaction responsible for the degradation of two paintings by Vincent van Gogh and other artists of the late 19th century. This discovery is a first step towards understanding how to stop the bright yellow colours of van Gogh’s most famous paintings from becoming covered by a brown shade, and fading over time. In the meantime, the results suggest shielding affected paintings as much as possible from UV and sunlight...

Changes in Van Gogh "Bank of the River Seine" though time

...The fact that yellow chrome paint darkens under sunlight has been known since the early 19th Century. However, not all period paintings are affected, nor does it always happen at the same speed. As chrome yellow is toxic, artists quickly switched to new alternatives in the 1950s. However, Vincent van Gogh did not have this choice, and to preserve his work and that of many contemporaries, interest in the darkening of chrome yellow is now rising again...

...To solve a chemical puzzle nearly 200 years old, the team around Janssens used a two-step approach: first, they collected samples from three left-over historic paint tubes. After these samples had been artificially aged for 500 hours using an UV-lamp, only one sample, from a paint tube belonging to the Flemish Fauvist Rik Wouters (1882-1913), showed significant darkening. Within 3 weeks, its surface of originally bright yellow had become chocolate brown. This sample was taken as the best candidate for having undergone the fatal chemical reaction, and sophisticated X-ray analysis identified the darkening of the top layer as linked to a reduction of the chromium in the chrome yellow from Cr(VI) to Cr(III). The scientists also reproduced Wouters’ chrome yellow paint and found that the darkening effect could be provoked by UV light.

Because the affected areas in these multicoloured samples were even more difficult to locate than in the artificially aged ones, an impressive array of analytical tools had to be deployed which required the samples travelling to laboratories across Europe. The results indicate that the reduction reaction from Cr(VI) to Cr(III) is likely to also have taken place in the two van Gogh paintings.

The microscopic X-ray beam also showed that Cr(III) was especially prominent in the presence of chemical compounds which contained barium and sulphur. Based on this observation, the scientists speculate that van Gogh’s technique of blending white and yellow paint might be the cause of the darkening of his yellow paint.'...

Cool stuff.  I've done a little work with photochemistry of chromium  in the distant past, but nothing this sophisticated.  Chromate, the oxidized form of chromium, commonly with red, orange or yellow colors, is a tremendously strong oxidizing agent.  It would like to oxidize any organic molecule available, but often the kinetics (the speed) of the reaction is very slow.  Light, particularly UV light, can often provide the "kick" required to get over the kinetic hump.  The reduced form of Cr, chromite, is usually green or blue when pure.

But How Many Rod Holders Does it Have?