Going boldly: Behind the scenes at NASA’s hallowed Mission Control Center | Ars Technica
Going boldly: Behind the scenes at NASA’s hallowed Mission Control Center | Ars Technica.
Wow, this is pretty neat stuff.
Pacific Northwest Eclipse Times, Dec 10
My sister passes along the OMSI planetarium manager’s useful local timeline:
“For the Pacific Northwest viewers, the penumbral eclipse begins at 3:33 a.m. PST and the umbral shadow takes a small, dark bite out of the left edge of the moon starts at 4:45 a.m. PST. For 66 minutes of the partial phase, the darkness engulfs more of the moon’s disk as it slides into the shadow. The partial eclipse ends and totality begins at 6:06 a.m. PST and the point of the greatest eclipse occurs at 6:31 a.m. PST. The eclipse’s total phase will lasts for 51 minutes. The moon will be only 6.5 degrees above the north western horizon at the instant of the greatest eclipse.”
So setup your camera tonight!
Moving Planet – Bike Bellingham – Sat Sep 24
Who wants to join us at Columbia School?
[Copied from ride event http://facebook.com/350bellinghamRide Event Page ]
11am – Ten city bike rides from 10 schools in Bellingham, to converge downtown at City Hall and Library. Meet in front of: Happy Valley, Sunnyland, Kulshan, Shuksan, Fairhaven, Columbia, Larrabee, Silver Beach, WCC (meet in front of Laidlaw Building), WWU (meet in Red Square)
*Join your nearest listed school location, dressed up with decorated bikes,
helmets required, parents must accompany kids
12-2pm – CLIMATE RALLY and INFO FAIR
– Bike Skills Course for Kids with everybody BIKE from 12-1pm
– Guest Speakers beginning at 1:15, including Mayor Dan Pike
– 350.org group photo just before 2pm.
2 pm – Advanced Ride to Cherry Point, with a send off from everyone else.
**Looking for volunteers AT event (setup, take down, bike skills course, resource collection), Please contact Jill at 360-201-3093 if interested (text ok) or email jillmwitt@hotmail.com.
***Thank you to the following sponsors: Sierra Club, Climate Solutions, Surfrider Foundation, RE Sources, Transition Whatcom, Cascade Community Wind, Forest Ethics, Adventures NW Magazine, SSC, Fairhaven Bike, Earls Bike Shop, Mount Bakery, Community Food Coop, The Bagelry, Jacks Bicycle Shop, Fanatik Bike Co, Kulshan Cycles and Hammerhead Coffee
keep updated at facebook.com/350bellingham and ‘like’ or moving-planet.org!
…pssst…pass this on and invite/add your Bellingham friends to this event!
TSA cagey on cancer risk?
Interesting. One wonders what the exposure rate for standing in line for those back-scatter and the luggage x-ray things are. Worth noting that the safey regulations on those things are prolly totally vain–have you ever seen how tightly cramped the security areas get?
http://www.infowars.com/cancer-surges-in-body-scanner-operators-tsa-launches-cover-up/
(I saw this link via bear454)
Great interview on hacker spaces, responsible disclosure (TCLP)
Thomas interviews Tiffany Rad in this episode of The Commandline Podcast. I appreciated this interview because, as a father, I am interested in all the ways I can expose my kids to learning opportunities, and while I might not end up with little net-running hellions, it sounds like public schools are often becoming less and less places where hands-on experience in engineering and science can occur.
I also appreciated how the discussion verged into responsible disclosure. As contractor in my past, one encounters clients that might be in violation of laws, or vulnerable to attack, but just broaching the topic with them might get you sued. This is an aspect of responsible disclosure that I’d be interested in hearing more about.
There is also good discussion about how the auto industry is using the DMCA as a legal claymore to keep people from modding their car computers. This is particularly frustrating to any mechanic. It makes me wonder if there are other examples of “trading down” technologies so that one can use less sophisticated vehicles, computers, appliances, just for the ability to treat them in a more fungible manner. Phones and cameras come to mind.
Makes me wonder if the Sustainable Connections people in Bellingham have heard of hacker spaces?
Tiny Computers: 4 for $100
This would be an awesome exhibit for LinuxFest Northwest 2012: small usb computer kit.
Paleolithic Bread (NYT)
This is really a fluff article from the NY Times, which is kinda sad. It implies that the Paleo diet (meat and raw veggies, very low carb) might be invalidated by this discovery which pushes the date of the use of flour to 30,000 years ago. However, it doesn’t explain why that actually threatens the notion of the Paleo diet. Consider that there were probably many paleo humans that lacked flour, the evidence could be regional, and it doesn’t change the fact that humans evolved from millions of years of a mostly raw vegetable diet. So what does 10,000 years matter? We’re left to guess.
Chances are that you know at least one person with a wheat (gluten) sensitivity. It is important to not confuse the “potato-like” tuber evidence found on the mortars and pestels of paleo peoples mentioned. The highly industrialized, over-fertilized, hybridized and now possibly GMOed wheat that you find in nearly every processed food you purchase has little resemblance to the wheat that humans cultivated three thousand years ago. So while the article seems to be on the topic of archeological diet, only the grain lobby would really want the article written as an attack on a low carb diet.
I have neighbors that have tried the Paleo diet. They’re looking for the next nutty diet. I’ll keep encouraging them to eat meat and raw veggies. It’s effective at maintaining healthy gut flora and keeping your insulin levels even.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2010/10/19/science/19bread.xml
[categories health]
Game Play and War
This NPR episode delves into discussion on the difference between play fighting and actual fighting. Apparently this difference is wired into people and dogs and presumably many other animals. So when you see your kids play fighting, think about when dogs play fight. Surprise–this same instinct is engaged during video game play. The non-gamer video-game critic also is in the role of the parent watching their kids sword fight with sticks: instinctually removed — they forget that someone in a play-fighting mindset might instinctively know the difference of their own actions. (The metaphor is approximate and is not parenting advice, of course.)
Diabetes and Air Pollution (Science News)
I do not care for the title of this article, because the end of the article discusses how the trend is definitely not causational and might only relate to increased rates of obesity. We all know that air pollution is bad, and we all still drive a heck of a lot. So basically, even if there is an inflammatory relationship between small airborne particles and human health, this study is almost besides the point. We already know how to reduce pollution and get more exercise at the same time.
Remarkable Fossils in San Timoteo Canyon
Robert Reynolds is helping recover an exceptionally old saber-cat and llama, horse, dear and ground sloth fossils.
Press Enterprise article has a video interview with the southern California Edison manager of the substation project where the find occurred
Also an LA Times article.
Researcher links autism, testosterone (OttowaCitizen)
There’s been a lot of ideas about autistic spectrum. This is yet another.
Civil Engineering and Science of the LHC (TWiT)
Just the broad array of topics covered in this discussion of how the Large Hadron Collider was built was interesting. But it also covers a lot of the other science topics, including the topic of singularities and a super-scalar universe.
