AntiBVBL

Last night, a 7.0 earthquake hit the country of Haiti which shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic.  Haiti is an impoverished country with a weak infrastructure and limited building codes.  Right now, there is limited information coming out of the country. 

Our silence on the blog should not be seen as indifference.  We simply don’t know much and the information on TV changes minute by minute.  However, I do want a thread up to show our support of this tiny nation and the people who live there.  Additionally, we have Americans in harms way.  The coast guard has begun rescuing Americans from the American Embassy there.

I cannot imagine an earthquake of that magnitude this close to the east coast.  Out west, around the ring of fire,  all ocean front land is peppered with tsunami warnings signs.  I don’t believe I have ever seen a sign on the east coast and I have been from Maine to Florida.  Perhaps these signs are new and I just haven’t been on a coastal route for a while.  But if Haiti, right below Cuba which is 90 miles off the US coast is having 7.0 quakes, we are all very much in danger.

UPDATE:
Pat Robertson being Pat Robertson. SHAME SHAME SHAME on Pat Robertston

UPDATE:  Actual Footage from earthquake.  Is this what it really feels like?

No words are needed.  I think I need a mental health day myself.

 

I knew there had to be something positive about this cold snap.

     Polar Ice from Satellite view

According to the New York Times, data sharing between the C.I.A. and leading scientists  has resumed. 

The nation’s top scientists and spies are collaborating on an effort to use the federal government’s intelligence assets — including spy satellites and other classified sensors — to assess the hidden complexities of environmental change. They seek insights from natural phenomena like clouds and glaciers, deserts and tropical forests.

Basically speaking, US top scientists are receiving top security clearances to have access to C.I.A. reconnaisance material.  This program was shut down by the Bush administration.  It has the strong approval  of the director of the C.I.A. and of leading scientists. 

In the last year, as part of the effort, the collaborators have scrutinized images of Arctic sea ice from reconnaissance satellites in an effort to distinguish things like summer melts from climate trends, and they have had images of the ice pack declassified to speed the scientific analysis.

The trove of images is “really useful,” said Norbert Untersteiner, a professor at the University of Washington who specializes in polar ice and is a member of the team of spies and scientists behind the effort.

Scientists, Dr. Untersteiner said, “have no way to send out 500 people” across the top of the world to match the intelligence gains, adding that the new understandings might one day result in ice forecasts.

“That will be very important economically and logistically,” Dr. Untersteiner said, arguing that Arctic thaws will open new fisheries and sea lanes for shipping and spur the hunt for undersea oil and gas worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

Read more…

The year is going to go out with a big bang and a blue moon. What exactly is a blue moon? The second full moon in a calendar month is called a blue moon. Not only will there be a blue moon on New Year’s Eve but there will also be a partial eclipse of this blue moon. Unfortunately, the eclipse will only be visible from Europe, Asia and Africa. The Americas and Australia are out of luck.

A little background on the science and the mythology of blue moons from NASA:

Most months have only one full Moon. The 29.5-day cadence of the lunar cycle matches up almost perfectly with the 28- to 31-day length of calendar months. Indeed, the word “month” comes from “Moon.” Occasionally, however, the one-to-one correspondence breaks down when two full Moons squeeze into a single month. Dec. 2009 is such a month. The first full Moon appeared on Dec. 2nd; the second, a “Blue Moon,” will come on Dec. 31st.

If you told a person in Shakespeare’s day that something happens “once in a Blue Moon” they would attach no astronomical meaning to the statement. Blue moon simply meant rare or absurd, like making a date for the Twelfth of Never. “But meaning is a slippery substance,” says Hiscock. “The phrase ‘Blue Moon’ has been around for more than 400 years, and during that time its meaning has shifted.”

The modern definition sprang up in the 1940s. In those days, the Farmer’s Almanac of Maine offered a definition of Blue Moon so convoluted that even professional astronomers struggled to understand it. It involved factors such as the ecclesiastical dates of Easter and Lent, and the timing of seasons according to the dynamical mean sun. Aiming to explain blue moons to the layman, Sky & Telescope published an article in 1946 entitled “Once in a Blue Moon.” The author James Hugh Pruett cited the 1937 Maine almanac and opined that the “second [full moon] in a month, so I interpret it, is called Blue Moon.”

That was not correct, but at least it could be understood. And thus the modern Blue Moon was born.

Blue moon has other connotations, too. In music, it’s often a symbol of melancholy. According to one Elvis tune, it means “without a love of my own.” On the bright side, he croons in another song, a simple kiss can turn a Blue Moon pure gold.

The modern astronomical Blue Moon occurs in some month every 2.5 years, on average. A Blue Moon falling precisely on Dec. 31st, however, is much more unusual. The last time it happened was in 1990, and the next time won’t be until 2028.

Then there is the song from the early 60’s, entitled, Blue Moon:

Many artists performed this song but most people know the Marcels version best.

If you need a party theme for tomorrow night, go to www.spaceweather.com for all the Blue Moon details.

Winter arrives officially today, December 21, 2009 @ 12:47 PM. 

The Winter Solstice has been observed in most cultures since time began.  It signaled the shortest day of the year.  Early people looked on winter as a time of dread.  In ancient times, many people didn’t make it through the winter.  They died or their loved ones died.  They battled the elements, faced starvation, ran out of fuel, and were often ravaged by disease.  Winter was deadly to early people.  Even as late as last century, winter could spell destruction  for people.  Depending on where you live and your circumstances, winter can be deadly even in our modern culture. 

While most cultures celebrated the Winter Solstice, one might ask, why celebrate?   Good question.  All sorts of superstitions and rituals were performed for good luck and to ward off bad things and evil that could happen.  Of all early people, the Celts are probably the group many of us are most familiar with who celebrated Winter Solstice.

In Celtic myth, the Holly king and the Oak king, twins,  were in a continual struggle for  domination.  At the Winter Solstice, the Holly King is overpowered and the Oak King rules until he is overthrown at the Summer Solstice.  Winter Solstice is a time for celebration because it marks the beginning of the days getting longer.  The cycle of the year is represented by this turmoil of continual struggle.  Neither can exist without the other.

Many of our Christmas traditions include pagan ritual involving Winter Solstice.  Yule logs, Christmas trees, Santa Claus, Mistletoe,  the date of Christmas,  holly, all have roots in pagan culture or in other religions.  Religions do not just spring up in isolation.  They merge and infuse and often take the old beliefs and remodel them into newer ones. 

So regardless of your religion or culture, you are sure to find a fit somewhere in the winter holiday season around the Winter Solstice.  Most of us are fortunate enough to be able to throw another log on the fire and sit back and let the winds howl outside.

Seasonal music on the next page

Please check out the howling in the last video.

Read more…

 It’s time for another Sky Event. (Dec. 13)

Tonight, if the skies are clear, those who are hearty enough to brave cold weather might have a real treat in store. Tonight is an annual meteor shower that is only increasing in intensity.

Before the Civil War, the meteor shower was sort of a dud. For starters, who wants to go out in the cold to watch the night skies?  Over time, however, this meteor shower has oncy increased in intensity. According to nasa.gov:

 

The Geminids are not typical meteors, also known as shooting stars. Most meteors are created when tiny particles from comets slam into the Earth’s atmosphere and disintegrate. Meteors fly through the sky every night, and when there are a lot, they are called meteor showers.

The Geminids are among the few meteors created from an asteroid, Cooke said. Several hundred or perhaps a few thousand years ago — scientists aren’t sure when — something caused what is now known as the 3200 Phaethon asteroid to start spewing debris. Perhaps something hit it. No one knows.

“The Geminids are kind of mysterious in that regard,” Cooke said.

What isn’t a mystery is the arrival of the Geminids each December. They are in different places in the sky, depending on the time and location. From about 9 p.m. until after midnight Sunday, look to the northeast.

The Geminids radiate near the constellation Gemini. At around 10 pm, locate the constellation Orion. Then look above Orion and to the left. Hopefully you will see at least 2-3 ’shooting stars’ per minute. We could be getting a real light show tonight, or, if skies remain cloudy like they are Sunday morning, we could see nothing. It is all a crap shoot at this point.

Wednesday night the White House lawn was littered with telescopes and portable planetariums. 150 Washington area students were fortunate enough to spend the evening, which began before sunset, at a star gazing party hosted by the Obamas. Inflated tents had constellations and universes projected onto domed celings. A cavalcade of who’s who in astronomy was also present with ’stars’ like Sally Ride, John Grunsfeld, Buzz Aldrin along with 2 amateur 15 year old astronomers with some heavy duty discoveries under their belts, just to name a few.

Lucky kids who got to attend. The President spoke of Galileo and how his telescope invention allowed all of this to be possible. A NASA astronomer with his home-built telescope announced:

“The Wild Duck Cluster is up,” Hudgins said as reporters toured the telescopes in the afternoon. “It’s an open cluster of stars in the Milky Way in the constellation of Scutum, I believe. It’s beautiful.”

The event was held to capture interest in astronomy and space. Many museums and planetariums around the county participated remotely. Sally Ride informed the crowd that middle schoolers start losing interest in science and hopefully events like these will keep kids on top of science and thinking it is cool.

Good for the Obamas for spearheading an event such as this. The Star Party went beyond the ordinary Easter Egg Roll and might very well inspire a young scientist to move beyond what we have imagined.

This Friday morning NASA will launch a rocket booster and space craft at the moon’s south pole in search of water.

From spaceweather.com :

LUNAR IMPACT: This Friday morning, Oct 9th, at approximately 4:30 am PDT, NASA’s LCROSS spacecraft and its Centaur booster rocket will plunge one after another into a shadowed crater near the Moon’s south pole. The spectacular double-impact will be shown live on NASA TV from the point of view of the LCROSS spacecraft. Meanwhile, impact debris plumes emerging from the crater may be visible through backyard telescopes. North American sky watchers west of the Mississippi river are favored with darkness and good views of the Moon at the time of impact. Visit http://spaceweather.com for observing tips and full coverage.

Watch the impact at 7:30 am Friday morning on NASATV.

Update: Scientists have discovered a huge super ring around Saturn.

The National Parks: America’s Best Idea begins tonight. Ken Burns, film maker for 30 years has created the series. So I dedicate this weekend to film makers.

I am a huge proponent of the National Parks and I have waited for today with great anticipation. The series starts tonight at 8 pm on PBS.

National Parks preserve that which is best of our country for our posterity. They are a great source of national pride. They require protection and preservation. They can cause controversy. They protect us from ourselves and from our greed.

Ken Burns exposes the difficulties the national park system has had since its inception and gives us beautiful film footage of the wonders of our nation, along with a good dose of history. The previews are on now and will be repeated throughout the day. Each episode can be viewed online and will be repeated for about 2 weeks on PBS. You can create a scrapebook of pictures as well as other things. You will be able to buy the dvd and book at some point.

http://www.pbs.org/nationalparks/

This series will probably renew a huge interest in our national park system. Plan to go soon, early and often, before the throngs get there. My wish is that we, the Anti crowd, will be able to put aside some of our rancor and discuss this series.

Rachel gives us some background and then interviews Ken Burns.  The theme from FDR resonates throughout, ‘building human happiness.’

Much as been made of the idea what if the government had not taken lands that ordinary people fell in love with and preserved them for our posterity.  Sedona, Arizona comes to mind.  Many of the most beautiful areas of that red rock country are sequestered away for only the rich people to enjoy.   Fabulous canyons are accessible, if you can afford to pay $400-$1500 per night for accommodations. 

Burns and Maddow tie in some of the problems being voiced today to the problems that have haunted the National Park System.  Regardless of how far we come, we still end up discussing some of the very same issues that were discussed a hundred years ago.

From the New York Times:  What’s Wrong with the National Parks?

The Farmer’s Almanac 2010 goes on sale September 1. It predicts an extremely harsh, cold winter this year. The Farmer’s Almanac, which has been printed since 1818 says that ‘numbing cold will predomintate the nation’s midsection.’ Oh joy.

According to the Huffington Post:

The almanac, which has been published since 1818, issues annual forecasts using a formula based on sunspots, planetary positions and the effects of the moon.

This winter, the 200-page publication says it’ll be cool and snowy in the Northeast, bitterly cold and dry in the Great Lakes states, and cold and snowy across the North Central states.

It says the Northwest will be cool with average precipitation, the Southwest will be mild and dry, the South Central states will be cold and wet, and the Southeast will be mild and dry.

The almanac’s forecast, however, is at odds with the National Weather Service, which is calling for warmer-than-normal temperatures across much of the country because of an El Nino system in the tropical Pacific Ocean, said Mike Halpert, deputy director of the NOAA Climate Prediction Center in Camp Springs, Md.

It all boils down to who you are going to believe. Winter is winter. Make sure you have a warm coat, hat and gloves. We aren’t even through hurricane season yet. That isn’t over until November 30. We are at the half way point.

Meanwhile, the much-anticipated Tom Ridge book The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege…And How We Can Be Safe Again is due out tomorrow. That ought to start everyone fighting. Hard cover is $17.15 Kindle is $14.29 for those of us who like instant gratification.

It’s that time of year again. The Perseid Meteor Shower is back again. Each August the Earth moves through the densest part of the tail of the comet Swift-Tuttle.

The best time to see the shower is from midnight to 5 am Wednesday morning. For those who aren’t early birds, the meteor shower can be seen tonight from 9 to midnight also. Look about half way up and towards the east-north east. The meteors will radiate from the area of the constellation Perseus. It is predicted that during the peak time it will be possible to see 60-100 meteors an hour.

A few more pieces of pertinent information, which you may wish to dazzle your friends or kids with: A small object passing through space is a meteoroid; if it hits the Earth’s atmosphere and becomes luminescent, it becomes a meteor; if some part of it survives its passage through the atmosphere and hits the ground, that part is a meteorite. Should anyone ask, the Perseids are burning up at a temperature of over 3000 degrees Fahrenheit (1650 Celsius), and become visible to the naked eye at about 60 miles up.

The moon is half full tonight so there will be some light pollution to detract from the splendor of a good meteor shower. Inclement weather can also be a problem as there is some cloud cover today.

Just to whet your appetite even further, here’s a video a man named John Chumack shot in Dayton, Ohio a few days ago, compressed down to a few seconds. And that was before the peak!

Yahoo reading
Further Reading

Tips for viewing the Perseids

Those hordes of invaders are fireflies, also known as lightning bugs. Actually they are neither bugs nor flies. They are beetles. Glow worms are lightning bug larvae. Because of the wet spring, we have a bumper crop of the critters, all out looking for love in all the right places, according to the Washington Post:

The tiny lights shone in Virginia, too. In Alexandria a figure chased a waist-high yellow light across her yard — driven to obsession by flashes of unrequited love.

“I’ll go, like, catch a male and bring it over to the females. It’s really ridiculous,” said Kate Pabis, 36, a guidance counselor. “I just almost, like, feel sexual frustration for them. It’s like, ‘Come on, people! Let’s get together!’ ”

In recent decades, scientists have been able to translate snippets of this firefly babel. They say the flashes are a muddle of conversations, usually several species communicating in the same meadow.

They’re talking — as animals usually are — about sex.

 

Read more…

Vancouver…Vancouver…This is it!

Those were the now famous last words of volcanologist David Johnston.

May 18 marks the anniversary of the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in Washington State. Far from Virginia and in a rather remote section of the country, almost 2 hours off the interstate, the remains of this mountain still show the devastation Mother Nature reaped upon the land, the air and the water.

Visiting Mt. St. Helens can only be described as humbling. About a third of the pre-1980 mountain is gone. A huge crater remains, with a cone mini- mountain inside, spouting molten, gaseous materials from the earth’s interior. The devastation reaches out some 15 miles on all but the southern side of the mountain.

Read more…

Hey everyone, if you really want to enjoy Mother Nature’s splendor, don’t miss this opportunity at Merrimac Farm! See the info below from the Prince William Conservation Alliance:

Bluebell Festival at Merrimac Farm Wildlife Management Area
15014 Deepwood Lane, Nokesville, Virginia

Saturday, April 11, 009 from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Free of charge, no reservation required.

More information: 703-499-4954, alliance@pwconserve.org, http://www.pwconserve.org/plants/

Bring your family and friends to Merrimac Farm on Saturday, April 11, to welcome spring and view the spectacular display of Virginia Bluebells that carpet the floodplain along Cedar Run for nearly a mile.

Event includes a nature art show and naturalist-led tours to Cedar Run, where everyone can learn more about the birds, butterflies, frogs and other wildlife at Merrimac Farm.

Read more…

Residents of Prince William County have been clamoring for a dog park for years. Finally one has arrived, thanks to Merrifield Garden Center. The park, the first of its kind, has been open for about 6 weeks. Merrifield has had a presence in the county for about a year and a half. However, up until recently, they only had a satellite shop. The new center which looks like a huge sports arena from Wellington Road is not completely finished but open to the public. If it is anything like the parent company in Fairfax, it will be a wonderful garden experience. According the Manassas News and Messenger:

And it’s something Merrifield president and co-owner Bob Warhurst said he’s wanted to create for a long time.

Merrifield has had a presence in Prince William for about a year and a half, but its present facility has been open only since mid-November.

The chain’s other two locations, in Fairfax County, don’t have enough room for a doggie den. But when Warhurst realized he could transform an overflow parking area, he went for it.
He said he felt sorry for canines who rarely got a chance to run around.

“I’ve had several people come here since we’ve had this dog park and say, ‘Oh my goodness, this is the first time I’ve had my dog off-leash for two years,’” Warhurst said.

The setup was fairly simple: The Merrifield folks put down a couple inches of mulch and fenced off two areas.

“We have one that’s 40-by-40 for little dogs, and we have one that’s 50-by-80 for larger dogs,” Warhurst said. “I think the real winner here is the dog.”

Read more…