Cop Car's Beat

LAGEOS I

By courtesy of NASA:

LAGEOS I, 1976

The LAGEOS I, Laser Geodynamics Satellite, was launched on May 4, 1976 from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. The two-foot diameter, 900-pound satellite orbited the Earth from pole to pole and measured the movements of the Earth's surface relative to earthquakes, continental drift, and other geophysical phenomena.

The mirrored surface of the satellite precisely reflected laser beams from ground stations for accurate ranging measurements. Scientists at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. came up with the idea for the satellite and built it at the Marshall Center.

Image Credit: NASA/MSFC

________________

I recall marveling at the sight of Echo 1A, one of the first people-made shiny things in the sky  orbiting through the night sky over our home in 1960. Fantastic!

Need a soothing interlude?

With the compliments of NASA comes this video of the sun spinning, accompanied by soothing music. (Found through Slashdot.org.)

If you are inclined toward watching whole episodes of TV programming online, please note the addition of The Universe (TV Series): Season 1, a play list, to the "For Enlightenment" typelist in the left hand sidebar.

Poor birds

Previously, we've "discussed" how the bountiful snow (well, bountiful for around here) that fell on March 25 (see Photos) affected the birds. I pontificated that, "The birds are equipped to cope, for the most part; but, snowy weather makes it easy to gather a goodly crowd at our feeders." Freezing rain is another matter. Here are the words that another birder posted to the Kansas bird list (published online and maintained by Kansas State University - I subscribe to email delivery), yesterday.

"This morning I had to rescue two of our purple martins who had become stuck to their metal house by the tips of their wings and tails because of the frozen rain we had last night.  I freaked them out when my husband lifted me up to their house with the tractor bucket. The female lost a couple tail feathers and managed to get herself unstuck.  The male was more quiet and allowed me to pull the tip of his wing loose from the porch of the house.  He was stuck pretty good. 

"They are all fine now but cold."

Another birder had replied:

"Kinda like sticking your tongue on a frozen ice tray I suppose.  Very tired of this strange weather."

Yet a third birder wrote about a bird in Manhattan KS (about 150 miles NE of here):

"Two minutes ago I saw an ill-timed Blue-gray Gnatcatcher outside my office window in Manhattan. Poor little guy was hopping around like crazy, probably trying to warm himself, wondering where the heck all the gnats are.  I don’t like his prospects for survival the next 24-36 hours.  He didn’t look particularly plump like he could go on an extended fast.

"I love snow.  In December, January and February.  Not so much on April 23."

The weather channel, last evening, presented the data for March 2012 versus March 2013, here in Kansas. In 2012, average temperature (whatever that means) was 46+ degrees; in 2013, 32+ degrees. Average of all years is about 34 degrees; so, this year was actually closer to "normal" than was last year. Last year produced the warmest year in 120 years, here.

In March of 1967, we moved back to the Wichita area from the Seattle area. The day on which we drove into Derby (the 8th), the temperature hit a low of 0 degrees (Fahrenheit), as reported at McConnell AFB about three miles north of Derby. On the 11th, the temperature hit a high of 88 degrees. That is what I call "strange" weather.

Addition of a few hours later:

I saw a blue-grey gnatcatcher in our back yard - first of the season. Obviously, it's not likely to have been the little bird from Manhattan; but, at least one blue-grey made it through the 25-degree temperature of last night.

Technical postings from Slashdot.org

Crowdsourced Effort May Have Found Soviet Mars Mission's Remains11

Posted by timothyon Saturday April 13, @07:20AM
from the crispy-on-the-outside dept.

A story at Slashgear says that the remains of a Soviet mission to Mars may have been spotted — on Mars — by enthusiasts poring over old photos taken by a NASA orbiter. The article points out that the find must be confirmed by further imaging, but matches the seekers' expectations. From the article: "The community at VK.com/Curiosity_Live crowdsourced a mission to find the Soviet Union’s long-lost Mars 3 spacecraft, with the site’s leader, Vitali Egorov of St. Petersburg, Russia, creating models of what hardware from the spacecraft should look like. With this reference, the community combed through a large image taken five years ago by NASA’s MRO, identifying what is believed to be the craft’s parachute, lander, terminal retrorocket, and heat shield."

 

Stephen Hawking Warns Against Confining Ourselves To Earth165

Posted by Soulskillon Saturday April 13, @09:30AM
from the universe-won't-mourn-a-mote-of-dust dept.

alancronin writes with this excerpt from CNet:"Stephen Hawking, one of the world's greatest physicists and cosmologists, is once again warning his fellow humans that our extinction is on the horizon unless we figure out a way to live in space. Not known for conspiracy theories, Hawking's rationale is that the Earth is far too delicate a planet to continue to withstand the barrage of human battering. 'We must continue to go into space for humanity,' Hawking said today, according to the Los Angeles Times. 'We won't survive another 1,000 years without escaping our fragile planet.'"

 

Ask Slashdot: What Should Happen To Your Data After You Die?111

Posted by Soulskillon Friday April 12, @05:17PM
from the it-is-your-solemn-duty-to-clear-your-departed-best-friend's-browsing-history dept.

Nerval's Lobster writes "Death is Nature's way of telling you it's time to get off the Internet. But when you finally shuffle off this mortal coil, you leave something behind: all your email and other digital assets. That's a huge problem not only for the deceased — once you're on the wrong side of the Great Beyond, there's no way to delete those incriminating messages — but also any relatives who might want to access your (former) life. And it's a problem Google's seeking to solve with the new Inactive Account Manager. (In an April 11 blog posting, Google product manager Andreas Tuerk suggested that Inactive Account Manager wasn't a 'great name' for the product, but maybe the company shouldn't be so hard on itself: it's a way better name than, say, Google Death Dashboard.) Inactive Account Manager will delete your Google-related data (Gmail, etc.) after a set amount of time, or else send that data to 'trusted contacts' you set up before your untimely demise. Which raises an interesting, semi-Google-related question: What do you want to have happen to your data after you die? Give it to loved ones, or have an automated system nuke it all? Should more companies that host email and data offer plans like Inactive Account Manager?"

 

From the third (last) article, "...Google product manager Andreas Tuerk suggested that Inactive Account Manager wasn't a 'great name' for the product, but maybe the company shouldn't be so hard on itself: it's a way better name than, say, Google Death Dashboard."

I disagree. I think that "Google Death Dashboard" has a certain flair!

Buffy should expect - Beautiful ICE!

Buffy wrote, in a comment on Bogie's blog, "We tend to get the same severe weather that moves east from Cop Car's area." Thus, I want to show her what she is expecting.

Driving home, this afternoon, was like driving through a fairy land - still, at 3:00pm, the vegetation was coated with a layer of ice. Some of the trees/shrubs have purple buds, some have full-blown white florettes, and others have various colors. The layer of ice (which I could not see this morning because the sun had not yet arisen when I left home) gave everything a pastel look - a look that Monet would have struggled to convey. The wonder is that so much of the ice made it through the day. The ground is warm and the ambient air temperature has been around 28 degrees all day.

I'll let Bogie tell the story of the last two photos.

Photos

Below are some photos from Monday morning. The first two are of a male slate-colored (dark-eyed) junco and a female house finch.

Below is the scene on our patio (the rain gauge on the table).

Below is one frosted pane of the little bay window in our kitchen.

Below is the scene through the breakfast room sliding door.

A bit of explanation on Florida sinkhole formation

Slashdot.org can lead us to more information than we may have thought we needed to know about sinkholes - much in the news from having killed one person in Florida.

Florida Sinkhole Highlights State's Geologic Instability183

Posted by Soulskillon Saturday March 02, @02:49PM
from the this-planet-will-not-hesitate-to-attack-you dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Last Thursday night, a sinkhole took the life of a man (TV news video, with ad) while he slept in his home in Seffner FL, near Tampa.  While human fatalies are rare, sinkholes are so common in Florida that the insurance industry successfully lobbied the state lawmakers to pass legislation in 2011 making it more difficult for homeowners to claim sinkhole damages.  The bedrock in Florida is limestone, a weakly soluble mineral formed from calcified deposits of sea creatures tens of millions of years ago.  Above the limestone is a clay layer called the Hawthorn Formation which shields the limestone from ground water; and above the clay is sand.  However, the protective clay layer is thin or nonexistent in some areas of Florida, particularly in the middle part of the state near the Gulf coast, where caves and sinkholes are common.  Geologists say that human activity, particularly construction and irrigation, can trigger sinkholes by destabilizing the landscape above caverns by drawing down water tables and massing structures above them."

FromThe Christian Science Monitor, I would add:

Changes in drainage due to construction or agricultural irrigation have been known to activate mass outbreaks of sinkholes, where dozens of sinkholes can suddenly appear next to drainage wells and farm fields. Drought followed by heavy rains can also instigate sinkholes as heavy, water-logged earth presses down on limestone caves suddenly devoid of buoyant water. The two previous deaths attributed to sinkholes both involved professional well drillers whose activities cracked the top of limestone caverns, causing collapse. "Humans can [destabilize karst landscapes] by drawing down water tables or irrigate too much, increasing the weight of the mass of materials that sits on top of the void," says Jonathan Martin, a geologist at the University of Florida, in Gainesville.

"It's not yet clear what caused the Seffner sinkhole, however, but geologists say the area, which is part of the heavily populated I-4 corridor that crosses Florida's midriff from Tampa to Daytona, is particularly prone to sinkhole collapses. Humans can modify the environment" enough to cause sinkholes.

 

14 Feet!

No, that's not how much new snow we received last night (which was about three inches), but the maximum length between bounds of which a deer left tracks in the snow. Hunky Husband and I were amazed to see the long length between tracks, as seen from our windows; but, I just went out to measure and it was almost precisely 14 feet. There were shorter intervals between some tracks; but, that was the maximum.

The following photo shows the tracks of several deer as they visited our feeders and frolicked about the yard. (The tracks are more easily discerned in the larger version that is observed by clicking on the photo.)

Below is a photo showing the front of our house and how pretty the foundation plantings are with their coats of snow.

To add some spice, we close with a photo of a lady at her bath.

Yes, I can!

Yes, I can still make snow angels. Unfortunately, it didn't occur to me to make one until the snow was warmed enough to clump instead of being cleanly swept aside. Oh, well. This is just outside Hunky Husband's bedroom window.

Don't ask me about the challenge I had getting myself up without spoiling the image. My head was lower than my feet.

The last time I made snow angels was at midnight when the new millenium rolled in.

Still dancing

One of the joys of the snow ice cream that I had yesterday, was the joy of flavoring it with the rum vanilla that Bogie had sent us several weeks ago. Most of the "haul" that we received from her is in the photo posted at Goodies from Bogie. (I write "most" because Bogie alerted me to search the packing materials in the box, again. Thereupon, I discovered that I had missed finding two of the bottles of vanilla that she had made and sent us!) Scrumptious!

The snow had stopped in late afternoon, yesterday, but took up again in the evening. During the night, the snow (and a bit of lightning and thunder) continued to fall. Below are photos to be contrasted with those of the last posting.

From the front porch:

Photos from the back door:

The following photos are included because I find the scenes so pretty. (You may close your eyes if you don't wish to see them!) Please note the budding-state of the tree in the first photo.

The final photo is of a gorgeous tree that belongs to a good neighbor. I love the sight of it in any season, any weather, any light.