Saturd80's

A classic I don't think I've posted before. Modern English: Melt With You

Romeo Void: Chinatown- oh, man I haven't heard this in years!

X: Los Angeles

In Which Pygalgia and I Compare the Size of Our Icicles

Blogger buddy Pygalgia took umbrage at my describing the li'l bitty things hanging off the awning this morning as "icicles." He's quite right... I mostly posted them because I thought they were so cute. But comparing them to real icicles is like comparing kittens to tigers. Here's what I grew up with, in terms of icicles:
These photos were taken in Hocking Hills, Ohio, not too far from Athens, where three of my favorite parks were Ash Cave, Cedar Falls, and Old Man's Cave. (The above was taken at Rockbridge) I'm actually really pleased this came up; otherwise I would have never found this page of beautiful wintertime photos from the area. It could be harsh to go out there in the winter, but I never regretted it. I also never had the nerve to get this close. Those suckers could, and often did, collapse without warning.

Below are a pair of pictures taken a couple of hours away at Multnomah Falls, from here.And here's an old post card:A more contemporary shot from nearly the same spot, but a bit wider angle:To give this some sense of scale, the upper falls is 542 feet tall... nearly a tenth of a mile. So these won't just impale you, they'll crush you. And your SUV. And the reinforced concrete garage it's parked in.

Yeah, I know the difference between cute icicles and dangerous ones. I try to stay away from the dangerous ones. Take care, Pygalgia.

Warm and Wonderful Zappadan: December 12

Zoot Allures & Trouble Every Day:

I generally don't care for— or more accurately, "get"— jazz. But Frank makes it work for me. And like much of his social commentary, "Trouble Every Day" is just as timely as it was 25 years ago. As always, if you want some more-a, right there on the floor-a, head over to Fried Green Al Quaidas, where Mark Hoback has been doing a daily roundup of the blogosphere's observations of this magical time of year (here's today's), as well as his own contribtions, such as today's Sleeping in a Jar. I had never heard this one before; experimental, but kind of fascinating, and in the end, engaging. Also, in black and white, the footage is sharper than much of Utoob's stuff, and kind of cool to watch.

How Many Seconds Left?

If you go to the Google Homepage, and, without entering any search terms, click the "I'm feeling lucky" button, a display telling you the number of seconds left in the year will pop up. It's currently 1,690,030.

1,690,029.

1,690,028.

Et cetera.

Icicles Outside the Interzone

Cute li'l things, no?
Didn't mean for the flash to go off, but I like the effect.This one is taken from inside. Now these are not your standard icicles; these ones coat every single surface exposed to the sky. The fence:The sidewalk around the fence.
The street:And the ground under the feet of an anonymous grad student. In case you didn't know, grad students don't get breaks. He had just come out of the building to the left, where he had likely spent the night working. Note the very short pace length and outspread hands for balance.
I got a comment on my closing post last night from my ducky Oregon blogger pal Fran saying,

It took me 1.5 hours to get home on a normal 20 minute commute.

I took the back roads, trying to avoid the Beltline freeway.... but so did hundreds of other people. Ugh!

It's 31 degrees now & looking shiny outside....

Shiny & sparkly= slick ice.

For all you crazy drivers out there.....

Ice is Ice. Slow down!

It's a freaking mess out there. I'm estimating about a millimeter of ice... not enough to be pretty, but more than enough to be treacherous. This morning's trek was probably the longest it's taken me to walk into the Interzone, and the most strategically planned as well: "there's a strip of lawn... there's some gravel, there's where a tree has caught the rain and left the sidewalk and pavement dry." Getting here felt like a major victory.

However, the temperature is now 32 and climbing slowly; it'll be gone soon.

Followup: Overheard at the Interzone: "I risked my life for a super burrito." Yeah, me too. This is an archival shot; I'm working on coffee right now, and won't order breakfast for a while. But this is a burrito worth risking one's life for.

Stay Inside

I just got home, where I have a weak signal. It was a rather terrifying two and a half block walk. I didn't fall, but there were a couple of close ones. The ice isn't continuous, but it seems to have taken hold on about a third of the pavement and sidewalks. As a pedestrian that meant each step was an unknown: would my foot slip or not? The rain is still coming down, temperature is falling slowly.

If you're (narrowly averted crash there- a car skidded on the street outside for about 3-4 seconds) in the Corvallis area, stay inside tonight, go to bed early, and go wherever early tomorrow morning. NWS is still forecasting above freezing temps before sunrise.

It's bad. Real bad.

Wonderous Zappadan! December 11

Joe's Garage/Why Does it Hurt When I Pee?

Zappa was, from accounts I've read, a harsh task master; he would accept nothing less than perfection. You can see and hear that in live performances; despite the crazy transitions in tempo, timing and key, he and his band are spot-on. The switch from the first to second song in this clip was unexpected and mind-blowing to me.

If I Couldn't Laugh, I'd Cry

Via OregonLive.

Samson Versus Portland

Samson, via Oregon Live.

The 66-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton known as Samson, one of the most complete T. rex specimens in existence, will make its world-wide museum debut in OMSI's Earth Science Hall on Thursday, Dec. 17.

Close to 60 percent of Samson's original bones, including its nearly complete skull, will be on exhibit. Samson is close in weight and length to the T. rex known as Sue, considered the largest, most complete T. rex yet discovered, according to OMSI.

(...)

Samson’s skull has several healed puncture wounds, most notably a healed injury in front of the left eye. These most likely came from bite wounds from other Tyrannosaurus rex. Other injuries include fused tail vertebrae and extra bone growth on the dorsal spine which indicate an overload of weight upon the tail. The back of Samson’s head also shows severe trauma with evidence of punctures and an active bacterial infection. The infection may have been caused when Samson was eating, tearing its flesh on sharp broken ribs allowing access by bacteria.

The pathological features sound fascinating... I'm think I may have read a more extensive piece on this very T rex some time ago, but I'm not sure. This is a real privilege for OMSI, and while I've never been all that impressed with the museum, it has a limited budget, in an underpopulated state, and it's in a not very big city. It's not bad if one takes into account its situation.

OMSI has some more information here, which I just read. It infuriates me when a so-called "journalist," in this case, one James Mayer, cuts and pastes data from another source, adds a few bridge sentences, then passes the final piece off as his own "writing." Yes, Mr. Mayer, you included a link, but if a substantial amount of the source text is unchanged, not noted as quotes, and not given an explicit citation, that constitutes plagiarism.

12 Hours of Nasty

In their most recent winter storm warning, the National Weather Service is forecasting about 12 hours of nasty... from 4 PM this afternoon to 4 AM tomorrow morning.

A DISTURBANCE WILL LIFT NORTH ACROSS THE FORECAST AREA THIS
EVENING AND TONIGHT. PRECIPITATION ASSOCIATED WITH THIS
DISTURBANCE WILL FALL AS A MIX OF SNOW...SLEET AND FREEZING RAIN.
A TRANSITION FROM FROZEN PRECIPITATION TO RAIN WILL TAKE PLACE
FROM NORTH TO SOUTH LATE TONIGHT AND EARLY SATURDAY
MORNING.

SNOW ACCUMULATIONS IN THE CENTRAL AND SOUTH WILLAMETTE VALLEY ARE
EXPECTED TO BE AN INCH OR LESS...WITH THE POTENTIAL FOR UP TO 3
INCHES IN THE NORTH.

ICE ACCUMULATIONS ARE EXPECTED TO BE LESS THAN ONE QUARTER OF AN INCH.

.DAYS TWO THROUGH SEVEN...SATURDAY THROUGH THURSDAY

THE UPPER HOOD RIVER VALLEY...COLUMBIA RIVER GORGE AND AREAS NEAR
THE WEST END OF THE COLUMBIA RIVER GORGE MAY CONTINUE TO HAVE
WINTRY PRECIPITATION WELL INTO THE AFTERNOON HOURS ON SATURDAY.

AN EVENTUAL CHANGE OVER TO ALL RAIN IS EXPECTED IN THESE AREAS BY
SATURDAY EVENING AS THIS DISTURBANCE SCOURS OUT THE COLD AIR.

Tonight's forecast (from NOAA/NWS):

Tonight: Freezing rain likely before 4am, then rain, possibly mixed with freezing rain. Snow level 1500 feet lowering to 400 feet. Low around 22. Light east northeast wind. Chance of precipitation is 80%. Little or no ice accumulation expected.

OK, the temperature has come up a little since I started on this, and the above is sounding more plausible. When I started it was 19 F; it's now 26. I ran off and messed with the above satellite image (current here) to illustrate the problem here in the Willamette Valley.In the above, I have marked the location of Corvallis (CVO is the call sign for the municipal airport), the Coast Range, the rough outline of the Willamette Valley, the Cascades, and some of the major peaks in the latter, visible due to snow that has already fallen this winter.

The Willamette Valley is like an enormous bathtub; cold air such as we've had over the last ten days or so tends to get stuck. If a warm, wet weather system moves relatively calmly off the Pacific, it will simply flow over the top of the colder, denser air stuck in the valley. If it drops rain, the rain can become supercooled (cooled below 32 F, but remaining liquid) as it falls into and through the cold air on the valley floor. When it hits the ground, it will then freeze on contact.

There are two factors here that make me feel a little optimistic: first, as I noted above, we are warming rapidly toward freezing. Once the clouds move in, sunlight can't warm us up further, and heat can't escape as effectively through IR radiation; clouds prevent rapid temperature change through radiative processes. I was worried we'd still be in the teens when the clouds moved in... if that had happened, we'd be stuck in the upper teens/lower 20's until the system physically moved out and replaced the cold air in the valley. Which leads to the second point: based on my reading, it looks as if the incoming system is indeed vigorous enough to get rid of the arctic air that's been sitting here for over a week, and fairly quickly too.

Another thing to be thankful for is that it's going to be mostly a night time event. Today is the last day of finals at OSU, and many people, including a number of friends, will be traveling either this evening or tomorrow morning. Tomorrow morning may not be pretty, but it doesn't look to be particularly dangerous. We'll see what time the precipitation starts, but it may not be until later in the evening. In any case, we may manage to squeak above freezing before that happens. When I was last outside, cloud banks were moving in from the west, but it was still sunny here. Looking out the window, it appears they've started to move out over the valley now, though it's still pretty bright.

Whatever the case, be safe, folks. Ice can be spotty, and icy pavement can look wet. Keep it slow and safe, and I'll see you after the new year.

Mmmmm.... Data!

(Graphic from the Christian Science Monitor)

In 2008, Americans consumed information for about 1.3 trillion hours, an average of almost 12 hours per day. Consumption totaled 3.6 zettabytes and 10,845 trillion words, corresponding to 100,500 words and 34 gigabytes for an average person on an average day. A zettabyte is 10 to the 21st power bytes, a million million gigabytes.

From a study done by the Global Information Industry Center, via an article in the CS Monitor. That sounds high to me: a DVD holds 4-4.5 gigabytes, so this rate of data consumption would be the equivalent of watching roughly eight full-resolution movies a day, every day. The first link is to the abstract and summary, where the PDF of the full study is available. I haven't looked at it yet, but I'd like to figure out how they conclude we consume better than 2 gigs of data every waking hour. Another mind-boggling way of expressing this incredible data rate was in the CS Monitor article:

According to the study's authors, 3.6 zettabytes is equivalent to all of the "information in thick paperback novels stacked seven feet high over the entire United States, including Alaska."

I'm wondering if the issue here is "available to consume" versus "consumed." For example, there's some music playing right now that I'm not very fond of. It's not obnoxious, but I am more or less ignoring it. It's just background noise for me and the twenty or so others in here right now. So over the course of an hour, does that CD count as 0.7 Gb of data consumed by me and each of the others present? I suspect that's the case. If so, I'm extremely curious as to what the "desirability ratio" is. In other words, how much of the data consumed is desired, and how much is simply inflicted upon us by an increasingly electronic and commercially driven world?

Jolly Zappadan: December 10

Let's Make the Water Turn Black:

Some of Zappa's lyrics could be very... colorful. I remember reading an interview with him, back when I was living outside of Cleveland in the late 70's, in which he said (my paraphrase) the lyrics are unimportant. The art is in the music and the rhythms, and the purpose of the lyrics is to further those. I mentally called "Bull Dung" at the time; so many of his songs are satirical or socio-political commentary. But I kind of see his point. The song above has never made any sense to me, it just is what it is. Funny in a way, but with an oddly existential twist. It exists, but has no meaning (to me, at least) beyond that. Still the lyrics clearly support the music and the rhythm, so once again, Frank shoots and scores.

Today's trivia: if anyone ever asks you to name an English word with two syllables but only one vowel, it's in the above paragraph in both singular and plural form.

No Nightmares for Me, Thanks

Would I have been thrilled or terrified to go to bed if this had been my nightly resting place through grade school? I'm betting mostly the former, but with frequent screaming nightmares.
Very cool, but in the end, I think I'm grateful for a plain old rectangular mattress with no toothy things in my field of view. I've seen this in a number of places today, but the source appears to be here. A number of other pictures too.

Oh. Terrific.

I may need to head home a little early tomorrow. As of yesterday, the prediction was that we wouldn't get freezing rain until well into the night. There are a lot of people traveling tomorrow and Saturday. Please be careful, folks. (From NOAA-NWS)

SOUTH WILLAMETTE VALLEY-
INCLUDING THE CITIES OF...EUGENE...CORVALLIS...ALBANY
242 PM PST THU DEC 10 2009

...WINTER STORM WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM FRIDAY AFTERNOON
THROUGH LATE FRIDAY NIGHT FOR THE SOUTH WILLAMETTE VALLEY...

A WINTER STORM WATCH FOR FREEZING RAIN REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM
FRIDAY AFTERNOON THROUGH LATE FRIDAY NIGHT.

* PRECIPITATION MAY BEGIN AS EARLY AS FRIDAY AFTERNOON.

* PRECIPITATION IS LIKELY TO START AS FREEZING RAIN.

* FREEZING RAIN WILL MOSTLY LIKELY CHANGE OVER TO RAIN LATE
FRIDAY NIGHT.

* THERE IS A GREATER THAN NORMAL DEGREE OF UNCERTAINTY WITH THIS
FORECAST...SO CHECK WITH LATER FORECASTS FOR MORE DETAILS.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

A WINTER STORM WATCH MEANS THERE IS A POTENTIAL FOR SIGNIFICANT
SNOW...SLEET...OR ICE ACCUMULATIONS THAT MAY IMPACT TRAVEL.
CONTINUE TO MONITOR THE LATEST FORECASTS.

On the upside, we're supposed to be back to more normal highs in the mid- to upper 40's an night time lows of mid- to upper 30's by Sunday. Which is about 15-20 degrees improvement in both.

The Norway Sky Spiral

(Image via Gizmodo; quite a few more at that site)

Via Emily at The Planetary Society Blog, we get a firm explanation for this bizarre sight:

Not only is there that crazy spinning spiral, but the way its center opens up in what looks for all the world like sci-fi movie's "gate to another dimension" is just freaky. Of course, as with most initially unidentified flying objects, it had an explanation: with all the publicity since yesterday Russia was forced to admit publicly that the spiral was the highly visible and embarrassing failure of a test of its submarine-launched Bulava ICBM.

The clip below (also from Emily) is a refined version of a theory that was floated yesterday, and has been more or less confirmed: a rocket spiraling out of control.

Not sure I buy it... I am not the first to say something along the lines of "I, for one, welcome our alien time lords." I might be the first to say that this is a much more impressive fireworks display than your typical version.

Merry Zappadan: December 9

Peaches En Regalia:

Possibly one of FZ's most widely-known and technically admired instrumental pieces... it almost seems cliched to post. On the other hand, if this gets the word of Zappadan to even one infidel heart, it will have been worth all the effort.

1930

OK, it could be worse... according to KATU, a Portland TV station, the following photo and another at the link were taken in 1930. The mighty Columbia River froze over thick enough to support a car or an airplane.That would not only require it to be quite cold, but for even longer than we've had it. The piece also points out, interestingly, that whatever cold spell we might have, because of modern hydrological management this probably isn't possible now.

Inside The Winterzone

When I came in this morning, the air temperature was 9 Fahrenheit. It was warmer inside the Interzone, but the furnace is having a difficult time keeping up.Alicia
Matt
Mike, Caitlin and Justin
Caitlin, Justin, Lydia and Celina
Tucker
Francesca
Bill and Iris (below)
...and me.
Frozen buttocks from inside the Winterzone.

War On Terror: The Bush-Obama Strategery

I haven't completely given up on Obama, but I've given up on his being able to herd that flock of cats who call themselves democrats... demo cats? I haven't said anything about the Afghanistan "surge," mostly because 1: I have no idea what it is we're trying to accomplish; 2: which means I have no idea how to accomplish it; 3: I have felt all along that Afghanistan was where we could accomplish something of value, where we could say to the Muslim world, "see, we don't hate you, we hate the extremists." Except for the last eight years what we've demonstrated is, if not that we hate Muslims, that we simply don't give a damn; and 4: I honestly don't see a good way forward. No matter what we do, we're screwed. Lean back and enjoy the show, folks! (Picture from Blue Oregon, video via Jesus' General)

Zappadan: December 8

...or as they say in France, "Joyeaux Zappadiu!" Montana:

Gonna be a dental floss tycoon! (Yes I am!) Also too, FGAQ is the blog you want to look at for a serious celebration of Zappadan.

Interesting Article

Hmmm. Interesting article. I enjoyed reading it.

If it looks and smells like spam, I delete it. Sorry Gretta. Actually, no, I'm not sorry. I get a fair amount of pleasure deleting crap seconds after it shows up.

Experts Go Galt

WASHINGTON, DC—Citing years of frustration over their advice being misunderstood, misrepresented or simply ignored, America's foremost experts in every field collectively tendered their resignation Monday.

"Despite all our efforts to advise this nation, America still throws out its recyclables, keeps its guns in unlocked cabinets where children have easy access, eats three times as much red meat as is recommended, watches seven hours of TV per day, swims less than 10 minutes after eating, and leaves halogen lights on while unattended," said Dr. Simon Peavy, vice-president of the National Association of Experts. "Since you don't seem to care about things you don't understand, screw you. We quit."

The Onion, of course. I'm hoping it's not true, but it would certainly be justified.

Brrrrrrrrrr

(click the pic for a link to current data) A week ago, it was foggy, cold, and overcast... and we were all looking forward to partly sunny on Wednesday. We knew it was going to get cold at night, but we really weren't expecting it to get this cold, and stay near freezing during the day. When I came in this morning, about 8:00, it was 12 degrees F. Which was up a degree from the overnight low of 11. Note that dewpoint, the green line has been in single digits for nearly two days now. That's not unheard of in Corvallis, but it's rare.

Dewpoint is defined as the temperature at which a mass of air would be saturated with water vapor. Warmer than that, and the air would be able to hold more vapor, cooler than that, and some of the vapor will condense to liquid (or sublimate to frost, if below freezing). If you enjoy watching the weather, this is an unappreciated stat. In winter here, moderate dewpoints in the upper twenties to thirties, effectively set a lower boundary on how cold it's going to get at night, even if the sky is clear. Suppose the dewpoint is 30 degrees... when the air cools to that temperature, fog forms. This has two consequences: first, condensation of water vapor releases a tremendous amount of heat, so as the fog forms, the air maintains fairly steady temperature. Heat is being lost as radiation, but it is balanced by heat released as water changes phase. Second, fog is very effective at trapping radiated heat, so it tends to shut down heat loss.

In short, reaching an air temperature equal to dewpoint locks up heat loss at night. When we cool to our typical winter dewpoints (according to Weather Underground, 20 degrees average for December in Salem; sounds low to me), it stops getting colder.

I'm sure there are plenty of people in colder climates, some of them not all that far from my favorite coffee shop. I heard that Millican, Oregon reported a temperature of -38 this morning. But I'm not used to this, and sunshine notwithstanding, I don't like it.

No break until Friday. When NOAA sez we're likely to get freezing rain. Oh. Frakking. Boy.

Who Was E.C. Segar?

He was the creator of Popeye. Yay, Popeye! Here are a couple of articles from The Guardian and The CS Monitor. I was particularly amused with a bit of trivia regarding spinach in the first article. I grew up with the "common knowledge" that spinach has an equivalent amount of iron as red meat. That always sounded suspicious to me, but hey, everyone knows it, so it must be true. Turns out, not so much...

Spinach is the source of Popeye's muscular prowess – upon eating it, his biceps immediately swell to three times their normal size. Segar chose the vegetable due to an 1870 German study which claimed it contained the same amount of iron as red meat.

The strength-giving properties of spinach were later revised however, after it was found a stray decimal point had led researchers to believe the vegetable contained ten times its actual iron content.

Darned decimal points, always screwing up good myths.

Ba-Woing!

OregonLive

Zappadan: Dec. 7

Zappa Plays Zappa: Call Any Vegetable

Good News

According to The Guardian,

Environmental Protection Agency declaration allows it to impose emissions cuts without agreement of reluctant Senate.

The Obama administration adopted its climate change plan B today, formally declaring carbon dioxide a public danger so that it can cut greenhouse gas emissions even without the agreement of a reluctant Senate.

This is actually one of the most positive things I've seen from our young administration. This does not mean that EPA will impose regulations for controlling CO2 emissions, but it means that they are empowered to if Congress, especially the Senate, refuses to act in any meaningful way. The article implies that drafts and guidelines of such regulations have been created.

The announcement gives the EPA a legal basis for capping emissions from major sources such as coal power plants, as well as cars. Jackson said she hoped it would help to spur a deal in Copenhagen.

The EPA action had been seen as a backstop should Congress fail to pass climate change law. Obama and other officials had repeatedly said they would prefer to pass legislation, but that prospect has grown increasingly remote. The House of Representatives narrowly passed a climate change bill in June, but the proposals have stalled in the Senate.

I have been badly backed up on expressing my outrage over the so-called "Climategate" so-called scandal because it seems theres so much I want to say. Let's start with this: scientists are human. Get over it. If you have never referred to someone who, from your perspective, is being stupidly obstinate, by an unflattering epithet, you aren't.

Second, is there anyone who cooks who doesn't have a few kitchen tricks up their sleeve? Auto mechanics? Don't all human activities have "tricks" that get a job done with less hassle, more efficiency, and often better, than simple brute force? Does that mean the food is no good, or the car doesn't run? Of course not; if that's what it meant, such tricks wold be useless. People who refuse to admit that this is an extremely common colloquial usage, and not just by scientists, of the word "trick" are being stupidly obstinate assholes.

Cheney Got a Gun

Just discovered two things: first, many of my friends haven't seen this. Second, it's now on YouTube, which means I can embed it. It's old news, nearly four years old now, but it's still funny. And whoever the vocalist is, he does an excellent impression of Steve Tyler.

Followup: If you have seen the above (or even if you haven't until now), try this on for size: Elmo's Got a Gun. "Big Bird's on the run, Ernie's dialin' 911"

Geology in the UK

Via BBC, I just found out that The British Geological Survey (BGS) has gone online with its Open GeoScience website. I have only spent a couple of minutes browsing, but it looks like one could easily spend a couple of centuries. From The BBC article,

At the 1:50,000 scale, geological details down to about 50m on the surface can be resolved - essentially street level. The BGS says this is a world first in terms of releasing country-wide information.

Those who live in Edinburgh, for example, can see how their city is built on top of an ancient volcano. Glaswegians on the other hand will notice that their city is built on the remains of an ancient tropical forest, evident in the coal measures and fossil trees that can be seen today.

Regular drivers of the M1 motorway between Leicester and Loughborough might be interested to study how their route passes across some of the oldest rocks in England that preserve the remains of soft-bodied animals which once lived in an ancient sea.

The BBC also has a gallery of photos selected from the new site, and here is one photo, of the approximately 50,000 released, that struck me as particularly delicious-looking:
The description reads "Atar sheet. Sodalite-syenite." I don't know the word "atar," but I know sodalite and syenite, and I like.

Index of Refraction

We had a running joke in science ed that kids get so overexposed to discrepant events involving density and air pressure that they tend to try to explain anything and everything they don't understand with respect to science in terms of those two concepts. Why do we have seasons? Ummm... air pressure? Why did Dr. Smith use that particular research design? Ummm... density?

I think we need another catch-all explanation. I suggest index of refraction.

To simplify greatly, index of refraction describes the amount of bending a light ray will undergo as it passes from one medium to another (it's also related to the velocity of light in both media, but I do want to keep this simple). If the two media have significantly different indices, light passing from one to the other at an angle (not perpendicularly, in which case there is no bending) will be bent more than if indices of the two are similar. The first four data points are from Hyperphysics, the final one from Wikipedia... glass has a wide range of compositions and thus indices of refraction.

Material: IoR
Vacuum: 1.00000
Air: 1.00029
Water at 20 C: 1.33
Glycerine: 1.473
Typical soda-lime glass: close to 1.5

Since glycerine and glass have similar IoR, light passing from one to the other isn't bent; as long as both are transparent and similarly colored, each will be effectively "invisible" against the other.

So, why does it rain? Umm... index of refraction?

Save the Dino Tracks!

Stealing this post in full from The Coastal Paleontologist, whose work focuses on marine vertebrates mostly in California and Oregon:

An early Jurassic dinosaur track site in New Jersey is currently in danger of being destroyed by development for a new set of high-end condos. The track site is directly adjacent to a park, and if the park boundary is extended only 200 feet, the locality can be preserved for posterity (and I believe *most* or *some* of the condo development can continue as well, so that would be more or less a win-win for both sides).

While many folks don't believe in online petitions, the "Help Save Capitola!" petition catalyzed opposition in 2003 and 2004 to help defeat the seawall that would have been built along the Capitola cliffs; that locality was saved, due in part to the petition I drafted during my freshmen year of college.

Anyway, the petition can be viewed here and signed here. I highly suggest anyone worth their salt as a paleontologist or fossil enthusiast to sign the petition; it broke 1000 signatures friday morning, and as of now, has 1804 signatures.

And my signature makes it 1861.

Smile

I opened the page with the image above, and after a moment, realized that a big wide smile had spread across my face. The abstract symmetry of these martian dunes is exquisitely beautiful to me... with the added bonus that they're on Mars! From NASA's Image of the Day Gallery, where a variety of image sizes are available.

This view from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is of the Proctor Crater. The relatively bright, small ridges are ripples. From their study on Earth, and close-up examination by the MER rovers (roving elsewhere on Mars), scientists surmise that the ripples are composed of fine sand (less than 200 microns in diameter) or fine sand coated with coarser sand and granules.

The larger, darker bedforms are dunes composed of sand, most likely of fine size. Ripples tend to move slower than dunes. Because of this, over time, ripples get covered with dust, possibly explaining the bright tone visible here. The dunes are dark probably because they are composed of basaltic sand (derived from dark, volcanic rock) that is blown by the wind enough that dust does not sufficiently accumulate to change their color.

This area in Proctor Crater is being monitored by HiRISE to document any changes over time.

This image is a portion of the HiRISE observation taken on Feb. 9, 2009.

I Get Spam...

This has to be one of the funniest so far...

From: Mrs Alyssa Walton

I am the above named person from Iceland. I am married to Hewett Walton who worked with Embassy of Iceland - Ottawa, Canada for Ten years before he died .We were married for years without a child. He died after a brief illness. Before his death we were both born again Christians. Since his death I decided not to re-marry or get a child outside my Matrimonial home which the Bible is against. When my late husband was alive he deposited the sum of 19Million Dollars (Nineteen Million United State Dollars) on the safe deposit Box with the diplomatic vault house.

Presently, this money is still deposited on the safe deposit box with the vault house .Recently; my Doctor told me that have cancer Problem. Though what disturbs me most is my stroke sickness. Having known my condition I decided to donate this Funds better still a Christian individual that will utilize this money the way I am going to instruct here in to fund churches, orphanages and widows propagating the word of God and to ensure that the house of God is maintained. The Bible made us to understand that blessed is the hand that giveth.

I took this decision because I don't have any child that will inherit this money and I don't want my husband's hard earned money to be misused by unbelievers. I don’t want a situation where this money will be used in an ungodly manner. Hence the reason for taking this bold decision. I am not afraid of death hence I know where I am going. I know that I am going to be in the bosom of the Lord. The lord he will fight my case and I shall hold my peace. I don't need any telephone communication in this regard because of my health and because of the presence of my husband's relatives around me always. I don't want them to know about this development.

With God all things are possible As soon as I receive your reply I shall give you the contact of the diplomatic vault house. I will also issue you a letter of authority that will prove you as the original- beneficiary of this Fund. I want you and the church to always pray for me because the lord is my shepherd. My happiness is that I lived a life of a worthy Christian. Whoever that wants to serve the Lord must serve him in spirit and truth. Please always be prayerful all through your life.

Any delay in your reply will give me room in sourcing for a church or Christian individual for this same purpose. Please assure me that you will act accordingly as I stated herein Hoping to hearing from you.

I have set aside 15% for you and for your time and 10% for any expenses if there is any then remaining balance for the word of God.

Remain blessed in the name of the Lord.

Yours in Christ,

Mrs Alyssa Walton

I was seriously thinking about replying and playing this out. I would love to see where it goes. But in the end, I have better uses for my time than to torment and tease an illiterate scam artist. Anyway, it would be cruel to treat someone with stroke sickness and cancer Problem with anything less than my sincere wishes for a swift and dignified demise.

Only in a culture that sanctifies idiocy would something like this flourish.

Sunday Funnies

Scientifically proven by 7 out of 10 dentists to be superior for your dental health.xkcd
WTF WWF. Skull Swap
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Saturday Bulletin
epic4chan
A Tee for Charity from Regretsy... as of yesterday, Helen Killer had reached her goal of $200 to knit caps for children going through chemotherapy. Nice.
Hawtness... Commentary on this picture includes,

All She Needs Is A Guy With A Shirt That Says, “Chick Magnet.” T-shirts with silly slogans have gotten out of hand…no good can come of this...

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"Did you hear that? It’s was the sound of a chiropractor’s pupils turning into tiny dollar signs." Don't Judge My Hair (The title of this picture is "I didn’t know H.R. Giger did hair.")

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Tee shirt design of the day, BiPolar Bear, via The Daily What
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Stephen Colbert mimics a nuclear explosion to perfection. The leadership of nuclear-armed countries should be required to watch this annually. Via The Daily What.
The universality of expression is fascinating... no words needed here. Skull Swap

The Daily What... Laughter is contagious; I caught it from this. (Followup, 3PM: I just found out the "clip has been removed by user." But if you go here, you'll find that apparently lots of babies find tape measures hysterically funny)

The great thing about a boomervan is that if it misses its intended target, it comes right back...
LiveLeak
Via Skull Swap:

Good news is that I truly out did myself this year with my Christmas decorations. The bad news is that I had to take him down after two days. I had more people come screaming up to my house than ever. Great stories. But two things made me take it down.

First, the cops advised me that it would cause traffic accidents as they almost wrecked when they drove by.

Second, a 55 year old lady grabbed the 75 pound ladder almost killed herself putting it against my house and didn’t realize that it was fake until she climbed to the top (she was not happy). By the way, she was one of the many people who attempted to do that. My yard couldn’t take it either. I have more than a few tire tracks where people literally drove up my yard.

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Actually, this is true in lots of disciplines. BuzzFeed

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Good question... The Daily What
Water polo pleisiosaurs- Skull Swap
Non Sequitur