Quick, Somebody Check the Temperature of Hell

Virginia lawmakers tackle menhaden management

...Who could have possibly predicted that the Virginia General Assembly would consider six--six--bills concerning protection of menhaden, the Chesapeake Bay filter feeder and favorite food of striped bass?

While the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission chugs along toward some kind of new scientific foundation on which to build safeguards for the fishery, Virginia lawmakers are looking for their own ways to address the commercial fleet run by Omega Protein... 

Some background for the non-Maryland/non-fishermen reading.  Menhaden are one of the most abundant fish in the Chesapeake Bay, and currently the largest commercial catch.  The menhaden, also known locally as "bunker", "mossbunker", "pogie" or "alewy" (a corruption of alewife, which they're not), are a member of the herring family, grow to about a foot long, are considered inedible by people, and are one of the most important food for predatory fish such as striped bass, blue fish, weakfish and speckled sea trout.  Filter feeders, straining phytoplankton and zooplankton out of the water to feed, they are one of the mechanisms for removing excessive algal growth from the bay.  Since they prefer warm water, they migrate into the Bay from the Atlantic in the warm months, and leave for the warmer ocean in winter.

...Senate Bill 765 and House Bill 2280 would take menhaden management out of the inept hands of state lawmakers and give it to the professionals at the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, which handles all other fisheries issues. The bills are the work of Sen. Ralph Northam a Democrat from Norfolk and Del. John Cosgrove, a Republican from Chesapeake. The bill also repeals the governor's authority to enact menhaden management measures by proclamation.

Equally as important is HB 2369, sponsored by Del. Barry Knight, a Republican representing Chesapeake and Virginia Beach, which would reduce the 109,020 metric ton cap on menhaden harvesting in the Chesapeake Bay by 20 percent each year, starting Jan. 1, until the catch is reduced to zero...

When I arrived in Maryland in 1985, huge schools of menhaden roamed off our shores, often a mile or more across, with the edges of the schools being ravaged by large schools of bluefish and stripers, from underneath by trout, and preyed on from above by diving birds.  However, in recent years the commercial reduction fishery moved its grounds from the Atlantic to the Bay.  Fishing is conducted using spotter planes and large seines; huge schools can be netted at one time and reduced to chicken feed and Omega-3 oil supplements.   In the past several years, large schools of menhaden have rarely made it past the fishing grounds off Reedville; a school the size of a large room is now more common.

...Six bills, six different sponsors, both houses, three political affiliations. Fascinating.

Coastal Conservation Association Virginia is bird-dogging these bills. You can follow along, too, at the Virginia legislative website.

Fishermen and conservationists often claim, without much solid evidence, that lack of menhaden  is responsible for the lack of large stripers in the bay, the various diseases that ravage the native stripers, and responsible for increased algal blooms.  However, as the most important commercial species in the Bay, Virginia legislators have been very reluctant to cut back menhaden fishing beyond that required by the Federal Government through the ASMFC (Atlantic State Marine Fisheries Commission) which manages the fisheries in it's area as a whole, without regard to the local depletion.

It's a good sign that some Virginia legislators are serious about this.  I'll believe it when the bills pass, however,

The War on Metaphor Continues

CNN Apologizes For Guest Using Term "Crosshairs"

How long do you think they can keep this up, a week, maybe two?   Credit for the "War on Metaphor" goes to Ann Althouse.

UPDATE:  Possible alternative titles:

CNN Put Metaphors in the Crosshairs
CNN Targets Metaphors for Extinction

Any more? Leave them in the comments.

People Want to Know What Their DNA Says

Despite the "experts" who think they shouldn't

When companies tried selling consumers the results of personal DNA tests, worried doctors and assorted health experts rushed to the public’s rescue. What if the risk assessments were inaccurate or inconsistent? What if people misinterpreted the results and did something foolish? What if they were traumatized by learning they were at high risk for Alzheimer’s or breast cancer or another disease?

The what-ifs prompted New York State to ban the direct sale of the tests to consumers. Members of Congress denounced the tests as “snake oil,” and the Food and Drug Administration has recently threatened the companies with federal oversight. Members of a national advisory commission concluded that personal DNA testing needed to be carefully supervised by experts like themselves.

But now, thanks to new research, there’s a less hypothetical question to consider: What if the would-be guardians of the public overestimated the demand for their supervisory services?

In two separate studies of genetic tests, researchers have found that people are not exactly desperate to be protected from information about their own bodies. Most people say they’ll pay for genetic tests even if the predictions are sometimes wrong, and most people don’t seem to be traumatized even when they receive bad news.

Yep, people are often smarter and have better common sense than "experts" give them credit for. But then, that's a low bar. That is especially true when it comes to things that directly concern them. They may be a little flakier on stuff that doesn't impact their life.

I Think This Proves the Point

#1 Elected officials flunk constitution quiz.

#2 Sheila Jackson Lee claims it would be unconstitutional to repeal Obamacare.

Study: Many college students not learning to think critically

But most of them come out liberal.

Let Me Guess, Alchohol was Involved

River rescue as sex toy ditches rider 

A bizarre decision to ride an inflatable doll down a flood-swollen Yarra River blew up in a woman's face yesterday when she lost her latex playmate in a rough patch.

The incident prompted a warning from police that blow-up sex toys are "not recognised flotation devices''.

 Unless, of course, they're Coast Guard approved.

Alas, Poor Wiley

I rooted for him:

Why Did Neandertals Have Such Big Noses?

Nobody knows....

Potomac River Fisheries Commission Bans Oyster Gardens

Colonial Beach resident Michael Wardman says he was shocked to find out he couldn't create an oyster garden at his dock in the river.

Here in Maryland, the state will actually give you a tax write down of $500 on floats used to garden oysters at peoples personal docks, making the process all but free. Virginia has a similar program. What rationale does the PRFC offer for this decision?

Executive Secretary Kirby Carpenter told The Free Lance-Star that allowing so-called oyster gardening would be akin to leasing grounds to private growers. Carpenter says Virginia allows leasing Potomac oyster grounds, but not Maryland.

 Many people I know maintain such oysters, for their value as filter feeders in reducing algal pollution and as seed for new oysters stocks, but also as a yummy treat.

While I think growing oysters on this scale is of marginal value for the Bay on an ecological basis, I think the symbolic value is high, and I think the PRFC is being shortsighted.

UPDATE!  Capt. Mike sends a link to a more complete article. Which suggests one of their rationales is that oysters closer to habitation are more likely to be contaminated with pathogens.

Freezing Rain...

...sucks.  Two hour delay.  Not bad here, but I hear that Monkton, MD looks like a glazed doughnut.

Ice forming on our privet hedge

Nothing like the horrendous ice storm in 1994, which deposited 3 inches of ice in a few hours, broke the tops out of most of the trees in it's swath, and left us without power for six days.

Oil Companies Provides 'Float Coats' to Eskimos

A good move.

Gordon Brower has been hunting bowhead whales for most of his 47 years, forgoing lifejackets because no one made them in white, the only color that works as camouflage on Alaska's icy arctic coast.

Now the whaling captain from the nation's northernmost town of Barrow and other Eskimo whalers have begun to wear personal flotation devices, custom-made in the white they've traditionally used to make them more invisible to their massive prey.

When the subsistence whaling season arrives this spring, more Alaska Native hunters from coastal villages will be outfitted with the white "float coats" being distributed through a safety program that debuted last year...

...Mike Folkerts, a recreational boating safety specialist with the Coast Guard, was participating in a mission to Barrow in 2009 when he noticed the town's main grocery and general store had no lifejackets for sale. Local whalers told him lifejackets were too bright and would scare away the animals. He asked if they would wear the jackets if they were available in white. The hunters said sure.

Folkerts called a couple of companies, including Mustang, which sent prototype samples. He then showed the samples to the whalers.

"They loved them," Folkerts said...

Now, I'm not totally convinced that the camouflage is completely necessary for whale hunting.  I doubt whales need much more clue than the boat, and I doubt they see the coat through the reflective water surface and the hull.  I also doubt that paint on the top of top water plugs is seen by the fish, but I buy them anyway.

...The Coast Guard can't buy equipment to give to the public, so Folkerts turned to the tribal health consortium. The organization tapped $12,000 of its own funds and ordered 52 coats from Mustang, distributing them among whalers in Barrow and two other villages...

...For the upcoming whaling season that begins in April when bowheads are heading north, the consortium is distributing 96 coats among crews from the remaining villages that are members of the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission, which represents 11 communities. Four crews, including Brower's, will get the float pants.

The funds for this year's effort came from a $15,000 donation from Shell Oil and almost $11,000 from ConocoPhillips, one of the oil producers on Alaska's North Slope, home to some whaling villages. Shell has offshore oil exploration projects in the region...

Those nasty oil companies, interfering in the life of those benighted Inuit, again, forcing them into the modern age.

I am a firm believer in personal flotation for boaters in any instance.  Personally, I have a "float coat" for cold winter boating, and an automatic inflation model (Sospenders) for warm weather, and I wear one or the other every time I go out.   My" float coat" is a Sterns, but there are several manufacturers (Mustang comes to mind as an alternative) The "float coat" is wonderful. It's warm when you need it, and protection if you do something stupid.  I urge anyone who does cold water boating to buy one.  The only problem with mine is that is smells like fish.  I can't imagine why:

Angry Red Galaxy Threatens...

...well, not us. It's 37 million light years away.  Hopefully there is something else to eat or exploit between there and here.

Visible and infrared images of M51, the "Whirlpool Galaxy"

 The red in the image on the right is interstellar dust. Do they have interstellar huskies to make interstellar dust bunnies, I wonder?  It doesn't take a lot of husky to fill a lot of space with fuzz:

 Anyway, go do yourself a favor and go look at some of the other exquisite photos here.

Stale Link Dump

The digital 'fridge is getting full again, and the contents are starting to get moldy and smell.  Time to dump them and find some fresh ones.

Scots relying on French Nuclear Power because their wind power generators were unable to cope with freezing conditions.

Snake owners see cold blooded bias:  They think the government trying to ban 9 species of commonly owned foreign snakes because they hate the cold blooded snakes for no good reason

Videogame joysticks to be replaced by mind control helmets?  Getting closer to Caprica.

If Aliens really exist, they probably want to kill us: A scientist uses evolutionary reasoning to conclude the we should avoid contact with any space traveling alien species if at all possible.

Wine is good for science:  Scientists slosh wine on superconductors during manufacture, find significant improvement.

Masturbation helps procreation:  Spanking the monkey found beneficial to reproduction in a variety of animals.

Sensitive blood test for cancer under development:  Faster please; too many of my relative have died of cancer.  Your evil drug companies at work.

Young people prefer self esteem to sex.  Why can't they have both?

World population to reach 7 billion:  Don't like it?  Leave.

Why is the CD 74 minutes long?  Beethoven's 9th Symphony in D minor, opp 125.  Maybe...

Eek! A male!  Hey, I didn't want to change diapers anyway.

Do it yourself castration in England:  I knew they had long lines in their health care, and it is an optional treatment after all.

Vaccine fears cause dead kids:  I know I touched on this before, but it can't be said too often.

Man claims to live with wolves for a year:  I have my doubts.

Your mom hates your video games:  Duh!

China makes solar powered air conditioner:  Color me skeptical;  I think the energy required would make for a huge area of solar cells

Apparently We Left Just in the Nick of Time (give or take a century or two)

Scientists warn California could be struck by winter ‘superstorm’

A group of more than 100 scientists and experts say in a new report that California faces the risk of a massive "superstorm" that could flood a quarter of the state's homes and cause $300 billion to $400 billion in damage. Researchers point out that the potential scale of destruction in this storm scenario is four or five times the amount of damage that could be wrought by a major earthquake...

...The threat of a cataclysmic California storm has been dormant for the past 150 years. Geological Survey director Marcia K. McNutt told the New York Times that a 300-mile stretch of the Central Valley was inundated from 1861-62. The floods were so bad that the state capital had to be moved to San Francisco, and Governor Leland Stanford had to take a rowboat to his own inauguration, the report notes. Even larger storms happened in past centuries, over the dates 212, 440, 603, 1029, 1418, and 1605, according to geological evidence.

Hmmm, I almost sense a pattern in there.  About every 200 years, with an occasional skip.  Of course, it hasn't happened yet, but if it does, they just want you to know, that even though it happened repeatedly in the past, it will be global warming at fault, just like the 50 year drought that might happen if it doesn't...

The risk is gathering momentum now, scientists say, due to rising temperatures in the atmosphere, which has generally made weather patterns more volatile.

Signs of the Zodiak Altered

Idiots everywhere are upset.

I've Seen Better Intern Applications

The JFK Presidential Library released his Harvard application.  His essay on why he wants to come to Harvard is charming in its simplicity:

The reasons that I have for wishing to go to Harvard are several. I feel that Harvard can give me a better background and a better liberal education than any other university. I have always wanted to go there, as I have felt that it is not just another college, but is a university with something definite to offer. Then too, I would like to go to the same college as my father. To be a "harvard man" is an enviable distinction, and one that I sincerely hope I shall attain.

April 23, 1935
John F. Kennedy

He did, of course, graduate cum laud, and the rest, as they say is history.  It didn't hurt that his father was a rich powerful man, who provided him this classic recommendation:

Jack has a very brilliant mind for the things in which he is interested, but is careless and lacks application in those in which he is not interested. This is, of course, a bad fault.

Times were simpler then.

Ron Effing Reagan

Not President Ronald W. Reagan, but rather his son, Ronald P. Reagan (Jr.), who recently came out and claimed to have (in hindsight) seen signs of Alzheimer's disease in his father while his father was serving as president in the late 80's. For anyone who has been on Mars for the past 30 years, President Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimer's 5 years after leaving office in 1989, and died of it's complications in 2004 at the age of 93.

As for Ronnie Jrs accomplishments, I believe Wikipedia inadvertently summed it up in one sentence:

He is notable for his liberal or progressive views, despite being the son of a conservative icon – the late former United States President Ronald Reagan.

 Indeed, Ron Jr. appears to have made a career out of being the trained monkey being trotted out periodically (along with his sister Patty) to show that even his kids weren't persuaded by his beliefs.

As a slow progressive biochemical malfunction in the brain, it is almost certainly true that there was some presence of amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary fibers in his brain, perhaps even more than might be found in a normally aging brain of Reagan's years.  But Ron seems willing to ascribe any forgetfulness or confusion he saw at that time to the later illness.  I guess anything is worth a shot at another 15 minute of fame. 

If Alzheimer's had any significant influence on the way Reagan governed we could only wish that all our subsequent presidents had a touch of it.

Bonus Beach Day

We got the day off for Martin Luther King Day, so as usual, Skye dragged us off to the Beach:

It was not particularly photogenic today, gray, a bit windy and cold, but I did see what appeared to be a pseudo-sunset, with light coming under the cloud layer:

I got lucky, and found this mako or white sharks tooth.  At just over 1 1/2 inches, it is just a little shorter than Georgia's find 2 weeks ago.  We found a few more, but nothing worth blogging about.




Destruction of the deer carcass by scavengers  continues. (Gross Picture warning).

Well, she asked for it

Taken from a jeep discussion group (hat tip to Brian):
Click to embiggen:

Iron Age Beer - Cloudy, Sour, and Hallucinogenic?

New evidence suggests early Celtic beer might have had an extra kick...

Early Celtic rulers of a community in what’s now southwestern Germany liked to party, staging elaborate feasts in a ceremonial center. The business side of their revelries was located in a nearby brewery capable of turning out large quantities of a beer with a dark, smoky, slightly sour taste, new evidence suggests...

...At the Celtic site, barley was soaked in the specially constructed ditches until it sprouted, Stika proposes. Grains were then dried by lighting fires at the ends of the ditches, giving the malt a smoky taste and a darkened color. Lactic acid bacteria stimulated by slow drying of soaked grains, a well-known phenomenon, added sourness to the brew.

Unlike modern beers that are flavored with flowers of the hop plant, the Eberdingen-Hochdorf brew probably contained spices such as mugwort, carrot seeds or henbane, in Stika’s opinion. Beer makers are known to have used these additives by medieval times. Excavations at the Celtic site have yielded a few seeds of henbane, a plant that also makes beer more intoxicating.

“These additives gave Celtic beer a completely different taste than what we’re used to today,” Stika says.

Not to mention a little extra "kick".  Mugwort produces the drug thujone, the active ingredient (other than alcohol) in absinthe, while henbane contains a number of psychoactive alkaloids, including scopolamine, and hyoscyamine.  Effect include confusion, agitation, rambling speech, hallucinations, paranoid behaviors, and delusions.Just the thing to get fired up before you go into battle with the Roman Legions.  And what did the Romans think of it?

Perhaps they’ll find out whether Roman emperor Julian, in a 1,600-year-old poem, correctly described Celtic beer as smelling “like a billy goat.”

Oxytocin - The Racist Hormone

No love for outsiders – oxytocin makes us favor our own ethnic or cultural groups

Few molecules have a reputation as glowing as that of oxytocin. Often billed as the "love hormone" or "cuddle hormone", oxytocin has been linked to virtually every positive aspect of human behaviour. But it also promotes racial and cultural bias...

...Carsten de Dreu from the University of Amsterdam has found that sniffs of oxytocin make us more biased towards peers from our own ethnic or cultural group, versus those from other groups...

...First, de Dreu looked for any hidden biases in the volunteers' reactions to German, Arab or other Dutch men. He used an ‘implicit association test, where volunteers used two keys to categorize words into different groups ...Combinations of categories that contradict our biases should subtly slow our reaction times. If people are biased against Arab people, they'd take longer to finish the test if the same key was assigned to both Arab names and positive words. These "implicit associations" are very hard to fake, especially if the test is done at speed.

Sure enough, oxytocin strengthened the biases of the Dutch volunteers. When they sniffed oxytocin (rather than the placebo), they were quicker to associate positive words with Dutch names than with either German or Arab ones.

So the hormone that helps bring families together, causes them to be more anxious of people they are not as familiar with?  OK, that makes evolutionary sense.  Do women get a bye on racism because oxytocin predisposes them to it?  Are we really just chemical machines?

A Dog's Love

A dog takes its loyalty to the grave in Brazil

A dog, "Leao", sits for a second consecutive day, next to the grave of her owner, Cristina Maria Cesario Santana, who died in the week's catastrophic landslides in Brazil, at the cemetery in Teresopolis, near Rio de Janiero, on Jan. 15. Brazilians braced for more rain Saturday, fearing further landslides after walls of muddy water tore through towns and claimed some 550 lives in the country's worst flood disaster on record.

Dog's are sometimes better people than people.

Penguingate

Tagged penguins could skew climate studies

Tagging penguins with flipper bands harms their chances of survival and breeding, a finding which raises doubts over studies that use these birds as telltales for climate change, biologists said on Wednesday.

The metal bands, looped tightly around the top of the flipper where it meets the body, have long been used as a low-cost visual aid by researchers to identify individual penguins when they waddle ashore.

 So far, so good.  Tagging studies have been used to get data on countless species in the wild.

But, says the new study, the seemingly harmless bands affect the penguin's swimming performance, causing it to waste more energy in foraging for food, sometimes with life-threatening consequences.

Publishing in the journal Nature, French and Norwegian scientists reported that they took 100 king penguins (Aptenodytes patagonicus), selected at random on Possession Island on the Crozet archipelago, a sub-Antarctic group in the southern Indian ocean. All were tagged with a minute, electronic transponder that was implanted under the skin, which can only be read by using specialist equipment placed close to the bird. Fifty of the 100 birds were additionally given a flipper band.

The team then recorded sightings of the group over the next 10 years. Banded birds were 16 percent likelier to die than non-banded counterparts, and had 39 percent fewer chicks, they report.

King Penguin with flipper tag; the walking wounded

Not so good.  Hardly anybody would get upset if a study of house sparrows caused a little extra mortality, but penguins are a little rarer, and more charismatic.  Ooops, it's bad when your scientific study is inadvertently causing extra mortality of an animal they make animated movies about.

It seems that the Antarctic is a truly tough environment (what a shock) and that anything even marginally reduces the ability of the penguin to swim, or catch food etc, significantly reduces it's survival rate.

But how does this play into global warming studies, you might ask?  

Penguins sometimes feature in climate research as tool for measuring the impact of global warming on cold-water wildlife.

But such studies may now have to be reviewed, for penguin population data could be skewed by flipper banding, says the paper.

"During the course of our study, when the sea temperature was low and food resources were abundant, there was virtually no difference between banded and non-banded birds," explained Claire Saraux, like Le Maho a member of France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS).

"However, when there was a rise in sea temperature and food was less abundant, the penguins had to swim farther, and banded penguins stayed longer at sea to forage compared with non-banded birds."

So flipper banding studies have exaggerated the effects of warm water on penguin survival, calling past results into question.

A Walk on a Winters Day

Today was much cooler and rougher than yesterday, and the wind was coming out of the Northeast, not a friendly direction.

Do I see some white specks in the distance?
(Click to embiggen pictures)

A few Tundra Swans behind the Port Republic sand bar.

Skye giving Georgia a hand up the hill.

I think this is a Red Shouldered hawk, sitting on a branch over one of the streets.

He turned sideways before he took off, giving us another view. This picture is not well well exposed, this was about a good as I could do with it before it turned into strange colors.

Update - More below the break

This Goes Out to Ted...

...Hoping to make a convert out of him (see comments).



Boy, were they young then. Note proper use of pedal steel.

Another Piece of Skynet Ready for Use

U Penn's Quadrotor



This little autonomous drone is capable of plotting a course through moving holes not much larger than it's own dimensions. Now, if it just carried a syringe and could inject poison...

Hat tip to Schwing.

America Ends Search for God...

...Particle

For nearly three decades, the United States has hosted the world's most powerful particle collider – a critical tool scientists use to probe the nature of matter and the origins of the universe.

This week, the director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, which operates the machine, announced that the lab would pull the plug on the device, known as the Tevatron, at the end of the current fiscal year...

I'll bet that's a darn big plug.

...But last summer, researchers at Fermilab announced that a much-sought elementary particle that the LHC also has on its Most Wanted list – a particle known as the Higgs boson, and sometimes called the "God particle" – might be within reach of collision energies the Tevatron was achieving at Fermilab. The Higgs boson is a hypothesized particle associated with a quantum field that imparts mass...

Kind of like fusion reactors.  Always just around the corner.

But to take advantage of the new information, the lab would have to keep the Tevatron running for up to three more years. In the end, the US Department of Energy was unable to find the money without threatening the health of other research programs the high-energy physics community had set as priorities.In a letter to the chairman of the DOE's High Energy Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP), which had looked at options for extending the Tevatron's run, William Brinkman, DOE's director of science, explained that "the current budgetary climate is very challenging and additional funding had not been identified."

This is really sad, but we really do have to do something about the budget.  The Higgs boson will still be there (if it exists at all) after we get that straight.

YouTube Discovery

I was wandering around YouTube, going link to link, and I found this:



I've always like Joni Mitchell, even though she's gone weird(er). I think she's got one of the best and most distinctive voices in her end of music (folk-pop?), and not a bad guitar player, for a girl...

I'm more familiar with the song in this form:

$#!* My Brother Sends

Thanks Ted. I'm not much of a country music follower, but I do like the funny stuff. Needs pedal steel.

Beach Report 1/15/11

We begged off from our morning walk with Skye and did some chores, and waited for the tide to turn.

 This little guy, and a friend were working the waters edge when we arrived. I'm not really sure which sandpiper this is, but I'm guessing Semipalmated, although I wouldn't be sure it's not a Sanderling. They look pretty similar in winter.

 Today was sunny and warm by recent standards, getting up towards 40F! The wind was pretty light from SSW, which is a friendly direction for us. However, the tide was high, which force us to take the stairs up to Calvert Beach to get around the narrow spot. But that also gets us up to the top of the cliff for a vista.

The Way $#!* Works

Simple animations to explain complex principles

Malta Cross movement - second hand movement used to control the clock

 

 

 Go see the rest.  I finally understand how sewing machines work.

Giant Nude Offends French

Plans for giant nude statue roil French community

TOURS, FRANCE - This graceful old city on the Loire River has long been considered typical of France. New products get tested here because the consumers of Tours mirror national tastes, for instance, and foreigners come here to learn French because the local accent is considered the norm.

So it was perhaps inevitable that a raging controversy would explode over plans for the Loire Woman, a statue of a reclining nude designed to be 50 feet high and 120 feet long with her thighs evocatively opened....

OK, I'm with the people of Tours. It's hard to make the female form ugly, but I believe he has achieved it. Just because it's art, doesn't mean its good art.  Well, one good thing about it, it won't last nearly forever, like say, Venus de Milo:

In a bow to the environment, the statue will be constructed out of cardboard, plaster and other materials designed to be recyclable, he said. "She will herald tomorrow's habitat," Audiard declared grandly on a Web site dedicated to his project...

Recycling can't happen fast enough. Now kids, this is good French nude...

Sharks Spotted in Australian Town

No, not lawyers...

Two bull sharks, renown for their aggression, were spotted swimming through the flooded streets of a small town in the inundated Australian state of Queensland, the Queensland Times reported Friday.

The amazing sightings were made in Goodna, a center of around 8,000 people which lies between the state capital Brisbane and the nearby southeast city of Ipswich.

One of the sharks was spotted by local butcher Steve Bateman swimming in floodwaters near his shop Thursday while another one was seen in water covering the town's main street...

Though confusion between bull sharks and lawyers could be easily explained, both are attracted by disasters and muddy waters. 

So, do you know why sharks won't eat lawyers?

Professional courtesy.

Bah dump...

Nope, No Over-regulation Here

City puts a stop to homeless outreach
Couple must have proper permit to continue feeding dozens each day

Bobby and Amanda Herring spent more than a year providing food to homeless people in downtown Houston every day. They fed them, left behind no trash and doled out warm meals peacefully without a single crime being committed, Bobby Herring said.

That ended two weeks ago when the city shut down their "Feed a Friend" effort for lack of a permit. And city officials say the couple most likely will not be able to obtain one.

"We don't really know what they want, we just think that they don't want us down there feeding people," said Bobby Herring, a Christian rapper who goes by the stage name Tre9.

Anyone serving food for public consumption, whether for the homeless or for sale, must have a permit, said Kathy Barton, a spokeswoman for the Health and Human Services Department. To get that permit, the food must be prepared in a certified kitchen with a certified food manager.

The regulations are all the more essential in the case of the homeless, Barton said, because "poor people are the most vulnerable to foodborne illness and also are the least likely to have access to health care."

 So they can go back to dumpster diving?  They want to keep us beggars 'cause they're easier to please.

I Stand Corrected

It seems the people that matter agree, only one space after a period.

...Two-spacers are everywhere, their ugly error crossing every social boundary of class, education, and taste. You'd expect, for instance, that anyone savvy enough to read Slate would know the proper rules of typing, but you'd be wrong; every third e-mail I get from readers includes the two-space error...

I was taught two spaces in my typing class in, let me see, 1964? I even typed my own Ph.D. thesis on an Apple II computer, using two spaces after each and every period (enforced by the mean old ladies in the grad school office who also checked every page for 1 inch minimum margins). I've been vaguely aware that many people used only a single space, but I just figured they were, well, wrong. It's utterly reflex by now; I had to go remove them from the text above already. So why was I taught two spaces?

The problem with typewriters was that they used monospaced type—that is, every character occupied an equal amount of horizontal space. This bucked a long tradition of proportional typesetting, in which skinny characters (like I or 1) were given less space than fat ones (like W or M). Monospaced type gives you text that looks "loose" and uneven; there's a lot of white space between characters and words, so it's more difficult to spot the spaces between sentences immediately. Hence the adoption of the two-space rule—on a typewriter, an extra space after a sentence makes text easier to read. Here's the thing, though: Monospaced fonts went out in the 1970s. First electric typewriters and then computers began to offer people ways to create text using proportional fonts. Today nearly every font on your PC is proportional. (Courier is the one major exception.) Because we've all switched to modern fonts, adding two spaces after a period no longer enhances readability, typographers say. It diminishes it.

OK, I can take a hint.  But can an old dog learn new tricks?

The Return of the Wooly Mammoth?

Mammoth could be reborn in four years:

The woolly mammoth, extinct for thousands of years, could be brought back to life in as little as four years thanks to a breakthrough in cloning technology... 

I found a piece of mammoth tooth on the beach once.  I wonder if we can get them released back into the wild in Southern Maryland.

Click to embiggen

OK,  maybe that's not the best idea...

...Akira Iritani, a professor at Kyoto University, is reactivating his campaign to resurrect the species that died out 5,000 years ago.

"Now the technical problems have been overcome, all we need is a good sample of soft tissue from a frozen mammoth," he told The Daily Telegraph.

They've found fresh enough mammoth meat in Siberia, that they ate some to test it.  Of course, taste standards in Siberia are likely a bit different than ours.  Enough vodka and anything will be tasty

He has announced plans to travel to Siberia in the summer to search for mammoths in the permafrost and to recover a sample of skin or tissue that can be as small as 3cm square. If he is unsuccessful, the professor said, he will ask Russian scientists to provide a sample from one of their finds.

"The success rate in the cloning of cattle was poor until recently but now stands at about 30 per cent," he said. "I think we have a reasonable chance of success and a healthy mammoth could be born in four or five years."

Of course, if we do release mammoths in the wild, we'll need to revive the proper predator to keep them in control...

Click to embiggen

No, I meant the sabertooth cat, not the cave girl.  She scares me...

Watermen Aren't Wild About Saving the Bay, Either

Maryland Watermen want restrictions on oysters, crabs eased

PRINCESS ANNE -- Somerset County watermen say Maryland should relax its crab catch restrictions for 2011, putting the state in line with size limits in Virginia.

Five watermen met with Delegate-elect Charles Otto, R-38A-Somerset, on Saturday in Princess Anne to discuss that matter. The group -- men who have been fishing the waters off Somerset's coast for decades -- also contend that the governor's aquaculture program will hurt watermen by taking away some of the best oyster bars.

 I think we're beginning to see a trend here:  Anybody with a financial interest in the bay would rather pursue that than to spend or lose money to improve the Bay.  But what about aquaculture,  you might ask (everyone does).  Why don't the watermen switch to growing their own?

The five waterman began Saturday's discussion -- which was held in a back room at the Hotel Inn -- by stating their dismay for the governor's aquaculture plan. The plan ropes off 24 percent of existing habitat as oyster sanctuaries and establishes a process for leasing that land for the development of aquaculture projects...

Eddie Brimer, a Westover waterman, said that 40 years ago, there were aquaculture projects on the Manokin River and Wicomico River, but disease wiped out the project.

He said an initial investment for an acre, under the sanctuary program, is about $15,000."If this were such a good idea and such an easier way to make money, don't you think we'd already be doing it?" Brimer said.

The Coyote and Governors - California vs. Texas

CALIFORNIA: The Governor of California is jogging with his dog along a nature trail. A coyote jumps out, bites the Governor and attacks his dog.

1. The Governor starts to intervene, but reflects upon the movie “Bambi” and then realizes he should stop; the coyote is only doing what is natural.

2. He calls animal control. Animal Control captures the coyote and bills the State $200 testing it for diseases and $500 for relocating it.

3. He calls a veterinarian. The vet collects the dead dog and bills the State $200 for testing it for diseases.

4. The Governor goes to hospital and spends $3,500 getting checked for diseases from the coyote and on getting his bite wound bandaged.

5. The running trail gets shut down for 6 months while Fish & Game conducts a $100,000 survey to make sure the area is free of dangerous animals.

6. The Governor spends $50,000 in state funds to implement a “coyote awareness” program for residents of the area.

7. The State Legislature spends $2 million to study how to better treat rabies and how to permanently eradicate the disease throughout the world.

8. The Governor’s security agent is fired for not stopping the attack somehow and for letting the Governor attempt to intervene.

9. Additional cost to State of California: $75,000 to hire and train a new security agent with additional special training re: the nature of coyotes.

10. PETA protests the coyote’s relocation and files suit against the State.

TEXAS: The Governor of Texas is jogging with his dog along a nature trail. A Coyote jumps out, bites the Governor’s leather boot, and attacks his dog.

1. The Governor shoots the coyote with his State-issued pistol and keeps jogging. The Governor has spent $0.50 on a .45 ACP hollow
point cartridge.

2. The buzzards eat the dead coyote.

Stolen from Dan Mitchell. Read his commentary to keep me from stealing it too.

Never Mind the Situps, I'm Just Gonna Die Anyway

Exercise Can't Undo the Damage of Too Much Screen Time

Spending more than four hours a day sitting in front of a television or computer more than doubles your risk of dying from or being hospitalized for heart disease, according to a new study.

And even those who exercise can't overcome the detrimental effects of too much screen time, said study researcher Emmanuel Stamatakis, of the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at the University College London.

OK, I spend 8 hours at work, most of which is in front of a screen, I come home and I play internet and blog.  How have I survived to be 59?

Stamatakis said there are two reasons why spending leisure time in front of a screen might be associated with increased risks of dying and heart disease. One is that the type of person who sits in front of a TV for long periods of time may lead an unhealthy lifestyle in other ways as well.

Or, sitting for long periods of time could increase heart problems by inducing inflammation, he said.

Researchers found that blood levels of C-reactive protein - a marker of inflammation - was twice as high in people who spent more than four hours of time in front of a screen than people who spent less than two.

If it's true that the act of sitting is to blame, then "the findings are generalizable to those who sit and stare at a computer for eight hours a day during work," Stamatakis said.

The body needs to move around in order to break down sugars and triglycerides, said Dr. Gerald Fletcher, an American Heart Association spokesman and cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic in Florida, who was not involved with the study.

 Oh yeah, put the final nail in my coffin...

Hummmmmmm, Maybe I Need a Brain Reboot

'Rebooting' brain could ease ringing in ears

Scientists have found a way to ease chronic ringing in the ears, known as tinnitus, by stimulating a neck nerve and playing sounds to reboot the brain, according to research published Wednesday.

There is currently no cure for tinnitus, which can range from annoying to debilitating and affects as many as 23 million adults in the United States, including one in 10 seniors and 40 percent of military veterans.

I acquired a mild case of tinnitus early in adulthood, a vague omnipresent hum or ring.  I'm not really quite sure when it started, although an ear infection (swimmers ear), using a chain saw, and practicing with a high powered rifle with ear protection all seem likely candidates as contributors.  It would be a real boon to get rid of it.  Faster, please!

To fix that, researchers used rats to test a theory that they could reset the brain by retraining it so that errant neurons return to their normal state.

In rats with tinnitus, they electrically stimulated the vagus nerve, which runs from the head through the neck to the abdomen, in combination with playing a certain high-pitched tone.

When stimulated, the nerve can encourage changes in the brain by releasing chemicals such as acetylcholine and norepinephrine that act as neurotransmitters.

Rats that underwent the pairing of noise and stimulation experienced a halt to the ringing sounds for up to three and a half months, while control rats that received just noise or just stimulation did not.

An examination of neural responses in the auditory cortexes showed normal levels in the rats who were treated with the combination of stimulation and sound, indicating the tinnitus had disappeared.

The treatment "not only reorganized the neurons to respond to their original frequencies, but it also made the brain responses sharper," the study said.

So you stick a probe in my ear, shock the nerve and play music in my ear at the same time, and it stops?  Skip the rats, you can try it on me.

Canada Bans "Money for Nothing"

The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council has ruled that Dire Straits’ 1980s hit Money for Nothing is too offensive for Canadian radio.

The ruling, released Wednesday, was in response to a complaint against St. John’s radio station CHOZ-FM. The listener complained that the word faggot – which appears three times in the song is “extremely offensive” to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

 


Truly a great song, and proof that Canada is not the great enlightened state that some would lead us to believe. The part about the faggot is supposed to be coming out of the mouth of an uneducated laborer pissed off that rock stars make too much money for what they deserve (at the same time, supporting them by watching MTV). Friggin' morons.

Freedom minded Canadians can come here to listen to it as long as I can keep it linked...

Feds to Pay for Some of Their Own $#!*

Cardin: Feds can now pay local stormwater fees:

The federal government can now pay local stormwater fees that will help Chesapeake Bay restoration efforts... Cardin says the law affects jurisdictions nationwide, particularly Washington, which is owed $2.4 million.

Federal officials told D.C. last year the Constitution prohibits the federal government from paying taxes levied by state and local governments. Stormwater runoff is the fastest growing source of pollution in the Chesapeake watershed and the federal government is a major landowner in the region.

I confess, I didn't see this one coming.  A long-time complaint of Washington D.C. residents has been that the Federal Government doesn't pay it's fair share of costs of supporting the city's infrastructure, since the Federal Government is immune to state and local taxes.  While I doubt that 2.4 million is a fair share, it is interesting that this is the area that they have chosen to bend on.

Four Steps Forward, Two Steps Back

West Virginia announced changes to it fish consumption advisories today. Four advisories were reduced in strength:

1. For Summersville Lake for all sizes of walleye to increase to one meal per month from six meals per year due to decreased mercury,
2. On the South Fork of the Potomac River's South Branch a restriction of one meal per month of any size of smallmouth bass was dropped due to decreased mercury,
3. On the Shenandoah River, an advisory for the consumption of channel catfish greater than 17 inches has changed from "do not eat" to one meal per month due to lower PCB levels,
4. Advisories for all non-game fish have been removed from the Potomac River and its North Branch due to lower dioxin levels.

On the negative side, two advisories were strengthened:

1. On the Shenandoah River  an advisory for one meal per month of any size of smallmouth bass has been put in place due to increased mercury levels.
2. On Marshall County's Fish Creek, an advisory previously limiting consumption of smallmouth bass under 12 inches to one meal per month has been extended to all sizes due to higher mercury levels.

Good news, but it would be better without the backsliding.

Twit Tweeting Palin Death Wish Requests Privacy

YouTube Asked to Remove Video of Left’s Threats Against Palin

Within minutes of the shooting Saturday, the onslaught of inflamed rhetoric was immediate. And by the time Sheriff Clarence Dupnik made his now infamous accusations against right-wing radio and TV, which he’s since confirmed are nothing more than opinion, he’d stoked up the hate level online to a boiling point... I was stunned by the hundreds and hundreds of brazenly stupid threats of death against a woman whom most of these people had never even met.

Others were just as shocked. In fact, a couple of conservatives on Twitter – @coyotered9 and @JoeKenHa – were so disgusted that they decided to collect just a sampling of these public tweets and compile them into a slide show of sorts.

Twitter Users Wish Death on Sarah Palin from JoeKenha on Vimeo.

...quite a few from both the right and the left were sickened enough to let some of those Twitter users know that their behavior was reprehensible. And when the heat got to be too much for one user, she complained to YouTube about her precious privacy. Because she was “just voicing anger” in a public tweet and doesn’t want anyone “attacking her” back on Twitter.

This of course after publicly wishing death on a public figure.

YouTube has since issued a notification to the video’s creators, indicating that the video will be removed unless the so-called private information has been removed:

This is to notify you that we have received a privacy complaint from an individual regarding your content:

Video URLs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxgJKNpjSNI

The information reported as violating privacy is at 1:50

We would like to give you an opportunity to remove or edit the private information within the content reported. You have 48 hours to take action on the complaint. If you remove the alleged violation from the site within the 48 hours, the complaint filed will then be closed. If the potential privacy violation remains on the site after 48 hours, the complaint will be reviewed by the YouTube Team and may be removed pursuant to our Privacy Guidelines (http://www.youtube.com/t/privacy_guidelines).

However as Professor Jacobson points out:

There are two principles at issue. First, there is no expectation of privacy as to death wishes. Second, there is no expectation of privacy on Twitter.

Sorry lady, you'll have to live with the consequences of your Tweet, because even if YouTube takes down the video, we all have screen shots.

Which brings me to a third principle. You can't take it back on the internet.

Oh, yeah, Youtube probably will pull the video, but you know it will continue to live on, and on, and on...

Ckoo, ya'llzins

Tweets have regional accents

PITTSBURGH – Tweeting about what club "y'all" are going to tonight? Must be from the South. Looking forward to "suttin" special? Then you probably live in New York. Think that new movie was "koo?" Northern California.

The words you write on Twitter can tell people more than just the status of your relationship or how you like the latest Bon Jovi CD. It may just indicate not only how you're living, but where you're living in the U.S.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University examined 380,000 messages from Twitter during one week in March 2010 and found that the social networking site is full of its own kinds of geographical dialects.

Take the word cool. Southern Californians tend to write the shorthand "coo," while their neighbors up north use the phonetic shorthand "koo."

The 4.5 million words the researchers examined were full of similar examples. Some were obvious — like "y'all" in the South or "yinz" in Pittsburgh — and some more mysterious. The word "suttin" was found over and over in New York City, a shorthand for "something."

I spent the first 18 years of my life in Southern California (and yeah, we talked like that), moved to Northern California, and married a local, went on to Oregon, Florida, and wound up in Southern Maryland, which is just far enough south that ya'll is heard with some regularity. My kids moved to the Pittsburgh area, and visiting has taught us the "yinz" or "yousins" usage.  Assuming I ever get on Twitter, how the hell am I supposed to tweet?

You Can Take the Woman Out of the Cave...

... but you can't take the cave out of the woman.

Turns out, at least in England, women would prefer the old ways, staying at home with the kids, and sending the hubby out to slay the mammoths and bring home to meat.

Most women still prefer to marry a man who earns more money than they do and would stay at home with their children if they could afford it, according to a survey published yesterday.

Despite years of equality campaigning and advances for women in the workplace, 64 per cent said they aspire to find a husband who brings home a larger pay packet than they do. None wanted to marry a man who earned less.

And they aren't exactly insistent that their provider be more intelligent than they are.

Only 19 per cent wanted their other half to be better educated than they are. Instead 62 per cent said they wanted a man to have the same level of intellect.

Thirty-one per cent thought they were better educated than their other halves, while 19 per cent thought their husbands were better educated.

So guys, just come home, slap the meat up on the table and grunt; she doesn't expect much more from you.

Warning! Slightly NSFW cartoon below

Surpise! Cities Don't Want to Pay for the Bay Either

Bay watch: Creative funding will spur Chesapeake cleanup

Pennsylvania got about as good of a deal as it could on the Chesapeake Bay.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency finally agreed to back off on some of the more draconian measures it was ready to implement. At the top of that list was tighter controls of municipal sewer treatment plants...

So, last night we see the farmers didn't want to lose income or pay more to help the Bay.  Now we see that cities are doing their very best to wriggle out from under having to pay for cleaning up their shit as well.

Our sewer standards — while more stringent than in the past — will end up being less than those implemented on neighboring bay states such as Maryland.

An equally large sigh of relief is that the EPA is not going to immediately demand similar upgrades to local government storm water treatment. It is still a possibility the EPA will regulate it in the future if the state isn’t making enough progress, but municipalities aren’t going to have to rush out and invest millions in that as well.

To compensate, Pennsylvania will demand large changes from the agriculture community, which is the greatest polluter of phosphorous and nitrogen and other sediments into the bay, according to EPA models.

So, now we see why the farmers might be upset; they're being asked to shoulder a share of the cities burden in this.  But not to worry, they'll get a pittance of federal and state funds (i.e, someone else's money, including their own) to pursue some green projects to make up for their lost profits.

The Keystone State has proposed the creation of a $100 million Baywide Agricultural Technology Fund with federal and state funds. The money would go toward incentivizing agricultural improvements that will be necessary to realize the bay goals such as manure-to-energy projects.

CO2 Sequestration Project Fails, Disasterously

Land fizzing like soda pop, animals dying

A Saskatchewan farm couple whose land lies over the world's largest carbon capture and storage project says greenhouse gases seeping from the soil are killing animals and sending groundwater foaming to the surface like shaken soda pop.

The gases were supposed to have been injected permanently underground.

Cameron and Jane Kerr own nine quarter-sections of land above the Weyburn oilfield in eastern Saskatchewan. They released a consultant's report Tuesday that links high concentrations of carbon dioxide in their soil to 6,000 tonnes of the gas injected underground every day by energy giant Cenovus (TSX:CVE) in an attempt to enhance oil recovery and fight climate change.

"We knew, obviously, there was something wrong," said Jane Kerr.

 It's inevitable that new technologies (indeed, all technologies) have their failures, but to have a failure on this scale on one of the first few working  projects suggests that this will be a troublesome process, and suggests inadequate groundwork for this project in particular.

Linked by Soylent Green!

Once a Jolly Swagman Sat Beside a Billabong...

and watched his car wash away...



Widespread  flooding in Queensland, Australia, which was recently said to the suffering from a drought caused by global, uh, climate change.

A Moron

Rep. Peter King, a Republican from New York, is planning to introduce legislation that would make it illegal to bring a gun within 1,000 feet of a government official, according to a person familiar with the congressman's intentions.

If we could just put giant bells and strobes light on them so we can always know where they are, it might be a fair trade.

Science from the Duh! Files

Chemist horrified to find his pioneering work with psychedelic drugs turned into deadly 'legal highs'

A brain scientist who studies the effects of psychedelic drugs on serious illnesses has been left horrified after criminals hijacked his work to make 'legal highs' that caused fatal overdoses.

Dr David Nichols makes chemicals roughly similar to ecstasy and LSD that help explain how parts of the brain function.

But he said he was shocked to discover underground chemists have been poring over his research papers in order to make recreational drugs for sale on the black market.

Worse, some of these illicit but legal drugs have been implicated in the deaths of young people who took them.

 Some scientists are sooooo naive...

I Hope He Went Right Out and Bought a Lottery Ticket

Italian man shot in head sneezes out bullet 

An Italian man who was struck in the head by a stray bullet during New Year's Eve celebrations is recovering after sneezing the projectile out of his nose... The bullet went through the right side of his head, behind his eye socket and lodged in his nasal passage but miraculously did no serious damage. Bleeding heavily, he was taken to hospital in an ambulance shortly after midnight, but while waiting to be seen by doctors he sneezed and the bullet shot out of his right nostril..."The route of the bullet broke his temporal bone, near his temple, and this slowed down the bullet which grazed his eyeball without hitting it directly," Dr Guglielmo Ramieri told Gente magazine.

Turns Out, Farmers Don't Really Want to Save the Bay

The "Bay News" today is full of different references to the same story.  The American Farm Bureau Federation and Pennsylvania Farm Bureau have sued the EPA to prevent enforcement of the new TMDL (total maximum daily load) standards for phosphorus, nitrogen and sediment.

I hate to say I told you so, but... 

As a conservative, I'm reasonably sympathetic to the needs of farmers to use fertilizer to produce crops, and our need to have crops to eat. However, the fertilizers put on the soils in the bay drainage trickle off into the streams and rivers, and do have a significant deleterious effect on the Bay.   The government does have a role to play in striking the balance between the needs of the farmers and the needs of the people who live around and make their living on the Bay.

But, Was it a Good Year?

At 6,000 years old, wine press is oldest yet found

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Archeologists have unearthed the oldest wine-making facility ever found, using biochemical techniques to identify a dry red vintage made about 6,000 years ago in what is now southern Armenia.

The excavation paints a picture of a complex society where mourners tasted a special vintage made at a caveside cemetery, the researchers reported on Tuesday in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

"This is the world's oldest known installation to make wine," Gregory Areshian of the University of California Los Angeles, who helped lead the study, said in a telephone interview.

Carbon dating showed a desiccated grape vine found near a wine press was grown around 4000 BC, his team reported.

This makes it 1,000 years older than any other wine-making facility discovered, the team from Armenia, the United States and Ireland reported...

..."This was a relatively small installation related to the ritual inside the cave. For daily consumption they would have had much larger wine presses in the regular settlement," said Areshian, who was deputy prime minister in the first government of the independent Republic of Armenia in 1991...

So they had graveside wineries, probably to make wine for funeral parties.  I wonder if their descendants settled Ireland?

Are You Feeling Dirty Today?

Earth Is Twice as Dusty as in 19th Century, Research Shows

If the house seems dustier than it used to be, it may not be a reflection on your housekeeping skills. The amount of dust in the Earth's atmosphere has doubled over the last century, according to a new study; and the dramatic increase is influencing climate and ecology around the world.

The study, led by Natalie Mahowald, associate professor of earth and atmospheric sciences, used available data and computer modeling to estimate the amount of desert dust, or soil particles in the atmosphere, throughout the 20th century. It's the first study to trace the fluctuation of a natural (not human-caused) aerosol around the globe over the course of a century. Mahowald presented the research at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco Dec. 13...

I disappointed you, didn't I.

To measure fluctuations in desert dust over the century, the researchers gathered existing data from ice cores, lake sediment and coral, each of which contain information about past concentrations of desert dust in the region. They then linked each sample with its likely source region and calculated the rate of dust deposition over time. Applying components of a computer modeling system known as the Community Climate System Model, the researchers reconstructed the influence of desert dust on temperature, precipitation, ocean iron deposition and terrestrial carbon uptake over time.

To paraphrase Tom Lehrer: "Models are like sewers; what you get out of them depends on what you put into them."

Giant Glowing Green Space Blob!

Hanny's Voorwerp. About the size of the Milky Way galaxy.

Hanny's Voorwerp—a glowing, green blob in space—is unexpectedly giving birth to stars, a new Hubble Space Telescope picture has revealed.

The odd object was discovered in 2007 by a Dutch schoolteacher participating in Galaxy Zoo—"voorwerp" is Dutch for "object." The online project had public citizens worldwide helping to classify galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey catalog.

Sounds like a fun project; either that or a way to get suckers to do your work for you for free... But I jest, just imagine "Fritz's Voorwerp."

The other object is IC 2497, a spiral galaxy lit from within by a quasar.  Hanny's Voorwerp was created from a string of matter from IC 2497 by the radiation from the quasar.

Hanny's Voorwerp is an unusual member of a recently discovered class of galaxies, "green pea" galaxies.

The universe is a weird, cool, place.

Will the Bay Freeze?

Chesapeake could freeze if cold snap continues

With each passing day, the creeks and rivers of the Chesapeake Bay are filling with windowpanes of ice, beautiful to look at but capable of slicing through the hull of a boat with deadly precision.

Several weeks of teeth-chattering cold that triggered a massive fish kill, stranded duck hunters on an ice-choked island off Baltimore County and contributed to Maryland's first boating fatality also have put the state's ice-breaking fleet on standby to begin the great push back.

After a fast start to the ice-breaking season in December, sheets of frozen water are again starting to knit together in tributary shallows. Around the bay many places are close to the freezing mark, with the Chesapeake's coldest period still ahead...

 I guess the problem could be worse further up the Bay than where I see it, but IMHO, I've seen it freeze far further out earlier.  I remember ice you could walk on in November.  No photos from then, but here's one from Dec, 2000 which is far greater from anything we've seen this season here:

And while it won't rival the unrelenting conditions of the "Big Freeze" of 1977, when people walked and drove across the bay in the shadow of the Bay Bridge, this weekend's temperatures and 30-knot gusts were expected to accelerate the creation of massive ice plates.

"This winter is so cold right now, it's unbelievable," said John Gallagher, director of hydrographic operations for the Department of Natural Resources. "After this weekend, we're going to see some pretty good ice buildup. We think the season is about to spring wide open."

 I wasn't here for 1977, but I've heard stories of  about it.  It's interesting that 1977 was about when scientists were warning about colder climate, and the possibility of the start of a new ice age.