We lost power here in NH on Thursday evening. Half the state was dark, due to very high winds. The airport nearest to me recorded 68 mph (100kph) winds. My home is on the slope of a mountain, at 800' (250m), so the winds here are higher, probably exceeding hurricane force that night. Friday AM, 50 State highways and 100 town roads were closed due to felled trees. many of the tree falls took down power and comm lines with them. The cleanup is taking days. I have no electricity, phone or cable at my house. Cellphones still work. I'm using my emergency water supply, as my well pump is inoperative without power. Fortunately, it hasn't been that cold (although it's snowing like crazy right now). I have a generator to periodically power the refrigerator, and my kitchen stove is propane, so it's not at all an episode of Survivorman. It's a dangerous situation; just massively inconvenient. Let's just say: I don't exactly feel fresh as a daisy. Spongebaths just aren't the same as a hot shower. Functioning public wifi hotspots are packed, and some are overloaded to the point of uselessness. This is coming to you from the parking lot of a McDonald's. (In the US, most McD hotspots went free in January; prior to that, you had to sign up and pay.) I typed this at home, wearing fingerless gloves, a hat, and full outdoor clothing indoors. I'm here at the hotspot to gather main and try to do a little online research for a column that's due Monday. I did the prelim research yesterday, here at the same McDonald's, and wrote the text back at home. New questions emerged, and there's more fact-checking to do, so here I am again. Anyway, that's the scoop, and why there haven't been any posts in a while. Best, Sergeant Preston
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Thursday, February 25, 2010
140-Year-Old Hot Dog Found In New York
A 140-year-old hot dog has been discovered on New York's Coney Island encased in ice underneath the restaurant formerly owned by the inventor of the Coney Island hot dog.
more: wmur.com
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
7 lb (3.2kg) hot dog. Really!
via bighotdog.com
STATS:
7 Lbs +/-
16" Long
4" Diameter
100% veal, beef, pork
50 servings per dog
Made in Chicago, IL USA
Shuttle re-entry, seen from the ISS
via newscientist.com
The space shuttle Endeavour makes an S-turn during its meteor-like atmospheric re-entry after its latest mission on Sunday. Astronaut Soichi Noguchi took the picture from the International Space Station, looking out of the newly installed observation deck known as the Cupola, which was brought to the ISS by Endeavour and fitted in a series of space walks by its crew.
S-turns are a series of banking manoeuvres used to slow the shuttle during re-entry and as it begins its final approach.
http://www.newscientist.com/gallery/dn15018-pick-of-the-pictures#
Cartography as art
Antique maps and sea charts, atlases and travel books
America atlas by Acosta
America by Blaeu
America atlas by de Laet
America by Munster
Anemographica by Lotter
Waghenaer chart of Holland
Schagen world map
Arctic by Mercator
Anonymous Holland map
Magellanica by Jansson
Moluccas by Blaeu
America by Schagen
Virginia by Blaeu
America by Ortelius
Septentrionalium by Ortelius
America by Sadeler
West Africa by Linschoten
North America by Coronelli
Iceland by Ortelius
New Netherlands by Jansson
via helmink.com
two views on freedom
Theory: 
Practice:
Practice:
human movement predictable 93% of the time
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/02/cell-phones-show-human-movement-predictable-93-of-the-time.arsTuesday, February 23, 2010
And you thought Google Street View was intrusive.....
And you thought Google Street View was intrusive.....
Try this: Go to http://gigapixelphotography.com/ (that's a billion pixels...) You'll see a panoramic view of Vancouver's waterfront with office buildings and high end condos. Pick a window and zoom in as far as you can go. At first it will look blurry but just wait a minute. It's enough to make you draw your curtains.
"The first new rocket to be launched from the Cape since 2002 is assembled and upright on Launch Complex 40.
via floridatoday.com
Private company prepares to let its Falcon rocket soar from Cape;
http://www.floridatoday.com/article/20100223/NEWS02/2230321/1006/news01/Falcon+9+prepares+to+soar
Invisible Extraterrestrials? One of World's Leading Physicist Says "They Could Exist in Forms We Can't Conceive"
� Does Google Make Us Smarter? The World Says Resoundingly, "Yes" (See Why Below) | Main
February 23, 2010
Invisible Extraterrestrials? One of World's Leading Physicist Says "They Could Exist in Forms We Can't Conceive"
The intriguing remark was made by Lord Martin Rees, one of the world's leading cosmologist and astrophysicist who is the president of Britain%u2019s Royal Society and astronomer to the Queen of England. Rees, who last month hosted the National Science Academy%u2019s first conference on the possibility of alien life, said he believes the existence of extra terrestrial life may be beyond human understanding.
%u201CThey could be staring us in the face and we just don%u2019t recognise them. The problem is that we%u2019re looking for something very much like us, assuming that they at least have something like the same mathematics and technology."
%u201CI suspect there could be life and intelligence out there in forms we can%u2019t conceive. Just as a chimpanzee can%u2019t understand quantum theory, it could be there as aspects of reality that are beyond the capacity of our brains.%u201D
During the conference entitled %u2018The Detection of Extra-terrestrial Life and the Consequences for Science and Society%u2019, Rees asked whether the discovery of aliens would cause terror or delight on earth, the Telegraph reported.
However, Frank Drake, the founder of SETI and Drake's Equation, told the conference that satellite TV and the %u201Cdigital revolution%u201D was making humanity invisible to aliens by cutting the transmission of TV and radio signals into space. The earth is currently surrounded by a 50 light year-wide %u201Cshell%u201D of radiation from analogue TV, radio and radar transmissions. According to Drake, digital TV signals would look like white noise to a race of observing aliens.
Although the signals have spread far enough to reach many nearby star systems, they are rapidly vanishing in the wake of digital technology, said Drake. In the 1960s, Drake spearheaded the conversion of the Arecibo Observatory to a radio astronomy center. As a researcher, Drake was involved in the early work on pulsars. Drake also designed the Pioneer plaque with Carl Sagan in 1972, the first physical message sent into space. The plaque was designed to be understandable by extraterrestrials should they encounter it.
Casey Kazan via the Telegraph
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/aliens-may-be-staring-us-in-the-face/582861/2
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� Does Google Make Us Smarter? The World Says Resoundingly, "Yes" (See Why Below) | Main
via dailygalaxy.com
Monday, February 22, 2010
Life-like evolution in a test tube
SAN DIEGO: Can life arise from nothing but a chaotic assortment of basic molecules? The answer is a lot closer following a series of ingenious experiments that have shown evolution at work in non-living molecules.
For the first time, scientists have synthesized RNA enzymes – ribonucleic acid enzymes also known as ribozymes - that can replicate themselves without the help of any proteins or other cellular components.
What’s more, these simple nucleic acids can act as catalysts and continue the process indefinitely.
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/3325/life-evolution-a-test-tube
Sunday, February 21, 2010
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