I can see my house!

Boston, from the International Space Station, last week

via bostinno.com

Canadian Astronaut Chris Hadfield is a true shutterbug, snapping photos of Earth at every spare moment. He Tweets them in near-real-time: https://twitter.com/Cmdr_Hadfield

SpaceX founder: The Boeing 787 battery design is fundamentally flawed

Elon Musk owns two companies that extensively use the same battery chemistry (lithium cobalt) as Boeing's Dreamliner.

But Musk's private space cargo company http://tinyurl.com/acbk9pk

For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact, Unaware of World War II | History & Archaeology | Smithsonian Magazine

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/For-40-Years-This-Russian-Family-Was-Cut-Off-From-Human-Contact-Unaware-of-World-War-II-188843001.html

Midatlantic residents: NASA rocket to paint the sky red starting at 4:30PM ET

Info: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/wallops/news/west129.html

The mission will be available live on Ustream beginning at 4:30 p.m. on launch day at: http://www.ustream.com/channel/nasa-wallops

Mission status on launch day can be followed on Twitter and Facebook at: http://www.twitter.com/NASA_Wallops or http://www.facebook.com/NASAWFF

via nasa.gov

"The Shining" twins grow up ... and old

More cinema icons imagined as Seniors: Darth, Michael, Jason & Freddy Krueger Hit Old Age

Happy 'Gun Appreciation Day!'

Since 1968, "more Americans have died from gunfire than died in … all the wars of this country's history."

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/jan/18/mark-shields/pbs-commentator-mark-shields-says-more-killed-guns/

Live flight tracker; real-time and near-real-time aircraft radar, worldwide

via flightradar24.com

Zoom way out...

The flu hit Boston hard this year.

via thechive.files.wordpress.com

Define: "Obedience"

via thechive.files.wordpress.com

Siesta Key/Everglades Jan 2013

I just got back from the Tampa (FL) area. I was there for business, but took a few days off to enjoy the beach at Siesta Key, and to tour the Everglades.

The rest of the pix:
http://fredlanga.blogspot.com/2013/01/siesta-keyeverglades-jan-2013.html

See the full gallery on Posterous

Siesta Key/Everglades Jan 2013

I just got back from the Tampa (FL) area. I was there for business, but took a few days off to enjoy the beach at Siesta Key, and to tour the Everglades.

Some snapshots:

Siesta Key, on the Gulf Coast, is known for its very fine-grained, high-quartz, sugar-sand beach.


It's a good walking beach, especially where there are fewer people.


There's lots of bird fishing going on; mostly pelicans, but also some osprey.




















It was too hazy/cloudy for a green flash, but the sunsets were still very nice.


The Everglades were also a treat.






I took a Ranger-guided tour at Shark Valley, in the Everglades National Park; it was spectacular.

A flock of Ibises. There were in the Everglades early, as were many other species; a sign of climate change and general warming.


Gators were abundant.





Wood stork.


Gator love; we saw many mating pairs, unusual for January. Historically, pre-global warming, alligator mating took place 60-90 days later in the year.











The Great Blue Heron (left) is a visual hunter; it sees dinner, and strikes. The Wood Stork (right) is a tactile hunter, feeling around with its beak in the water for prey.






Views from the Shark Valley Observation Tower:

Giant turtle, about 1M (1 yd) head to tail.







Partial panorama from the Shark Valley observation tower.





Anhinga; a diving bird, similar to cormorants (but more colorful, and deeper-diving.)




It was a good trip!

Tweet o' the day, so far...

Adobe Creative Suite 2 now available, free.

"An old version of Adobe Creative Suite—the 2005 vintage CS2, to be precise—became freely downloadable from Adobe... For Windows users this is a powerful, if not quite cutting edge, suite of graphics apps."

Download:
http://www.adobe.com/downloads/cs2_downloads/index.html

A simple request.

"Bad Astronomy" is an excellent blog started long ago by Phil Plait as a site to counter the dumb special effects and mangled science that appeared in many, many Hollywood sci-fi offerings. With humor and intelligence, Phil would present the bogus special effect or "fact," and then counter with the reality that should have been shown --- often showing that Hollywood's made-up science was usually less awesome and interesting than the real thing.

Over the years, Bad Astronomy has grown into a kind of general science truth squad, and it's reliably excellent reading.

Today, Phil makes a simple request:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy.html

Sorry for the old posts. Posterous error, not mine. Sigh.

.

She's older than she looks.

From an Arizona newspaper in 1898:

"Miss Annie Coulter, who was charged with cruelty to an animal for starving a milch cow, has been declared insane." -- AR1898

(

Miss Annie Coulter, who was charged with cruelty to an animal for starving a milch cow, has been declared insane. AR1898

— R.L. Ripples (@TweetsofOld) January 4, 2013

)

R.L. Ripples (@TweetsofOld) tweeted at 5:46pm - 4 Jan 13

Happy Holidays to one and all!

Very interesting experiment in multimedia journalism from the NYTimes

Long-form text plus photos, video, audio...

http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/?emc=na#/?part=tunnel-creek

=========

Somewhat relatedly (re: revival in newspaper journalism) , the Boston Globe has just published a week-long series on a local, troubled neighborhood. To get the real story of what was going on there, the Globe assigned two writers to pose as a couple and rent an apartment in that neighborhood for six months. Now that's in-depth research.

Perhaps --- please let it be true --- the era of sound-bite journalism* is closing.

(* sound bite journalism: )

D.W. Griffith made the original 'eagle snatches baby' viral video way back in 1908

Story:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2012/12/20/the_original_eagle_snatches_child_video_rescued_from_an_eagle_s_nest_1908.html#