Cop Car's Beat

ICBMs

The following photo and excerpt are from:

No, This Isn’t a Movie: Russian Missile Lights Up Space Station’s Sky By Phil Plait

The vapor trail from the Topol launch, seen by astronaut Luca Parmitano.

Photo by ESA/NASA

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I find myself conflicted; the image is lovely, but then, that’s an intercontinental ballistic missile [ICBM] you’re seeing there. Yikes. I’ll note that as far as I can tell, the arc of the missile was much lower than the orbit of the space station, and the astronauts were in no danger from this launch.

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The news reminds me of a phenomenon that I observed late one (dark) night from a motel's parking lot in Lancaster, California. (I was working at Edwards AFB). Slightly to the west of me was a rising pillar of light. It seemed to be a plasma of some sort that radiated deep blues and violet hues in a lazy sinuous fashion - with slight coruscation at one location. As, next door to the motel was a lighted ball field, I at first thought the phenomenon to be produced by fireworks. I quickly decided that I was seeing the trail of a rocket launched from Vandenberg AFB. The next day I learned that a Minuteman had been tested. (I would have known sooner had I merely watched the news on TV; but, having no TV at home, turning one on didn't occur to me!)

This will affect cartoonists a great deal - if they're paying attention!

Here is a posting from Slashdot.org:

Most Cave Paintings Were Painted By Women, Says Penn State Researcher110

Posted by timothyon Thursday October 10, 2013 @02:46PM
from the having-ruled-out-sandusky dept.

barlevg writes "Analyzing hand-prints found in cave sites, an archaeologist from Penn State University has concluded that roughly 75% of all ancient cave art was painted by women. Previously it was thought that neolithic cave paintings were made mostly by men, perhaps to chronicle their kills. But an analysis of the relative lengths of fingers in hand stencils found on cave walls suggests that it was mostly prehistoric women--not men--who created these works."

Following the link in the above posting, the following excerpts are from National Geographic's Daily News:

Virginia Hughes

for National Geographic

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Archaeologist Dean Snow of Pennsylvania State University analyzed hand stencils found in eight cave sites in France and Spain. By comparing the relative lengths of certain fingers, Snow determined that three-quarters of the handprints were female.

"There has been a male bias in the literature for a long time," said Snow, whose research was supported by the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration. "People have made a lot of unwarranted assumptions about who made these things, and why."

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Experts expressed a wide range of opinions about how to interpret Snow's new data, attesting to the many mysteries still surrounding this early art.

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I recommend that you follow the link to the National Geographic story to read it all!

Boston Dynamics ® gives a whole new meaning to "Wildcat".

From IEEE* Spectrum (found through Slashdot.org):

My next pet would be a Wildcat except for two things: 1) they are not available to consumers and 2) it appears to run on a highly polluting engine. (See the clouds of exhaust when the engine is started.)

Another video of the Wildcat (which shows as an option when the above video finishes) shows how it could be used to assist those with disabilities. Well...they don't really show that; but, I can infer from the way it performs on hills that it could be really, really useful in the "assist" role.

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* IEEE = Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers - to which Hunky Husband belongs. Years ago, I belonged to the forerunners, IRE (Institute of Radio Engineers) and AIEE (American Institute of Electrical Engineers).