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JamesSavik

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  3. JamesSavik

    Fifth of November

    By JamesSavik,

    Remember, remember the fifth of November,
    The gunpowder, treason and plot,
    I see of no reason why gunpowder treason
    Should ever be forgot.
     
     
    In 1604 a group of disaffected Catholics decided that they had a belly full of Protestant King James.
     
    One Guy Fawkes tried to blow up Parliament and King James with many kegs of gunpowder. It didn't work out and Fawkes was executed but November fifth has been an unofficial holiday in Great Britain and many countries in the Commonwealth ever since.
     
    Although the Gunpowder Plot didn't work out, it did serve as a wake up call to an arrogant king that the people wouldn't put up with his shit forever.
     
    Fawkes ghost was recently resurrected by a graphic novel and movie called V for Vendetta.
     
    I shan't waste your time by giving up the plot. That is a joy that you should discover yourself. The story does raise questions about what some people would do to be free. This is a question that many Americans couldn't be bothered with but we had better start.
     
    Dictatorships don't arrive escorted by marching bands. Dictatorships creep in quietly like a fog, with whispered conspiracies, labeling dissidents unpatriotic and making scapegoats of unpopular minorities. Does this sound at all familiar or have you been too busy watching MTV to notice?
     
     
    Valarie's Story
     
    I was born in a rainy burg in
    Nottingham in 1975. I passed my
    eleven plus and went to girl's
    grammar.
     
    I met my first girlfriend at
    school. Her name was Sara. Her
    wrists. Her wrists were beautiful.
     
    I sat in biology class staring at
    the pickled rabbit fetus while Mr.
    Our teacher said it was an adolescent
    phase that people outgrew.
     
    Sara did. I didn't.
     
     
    In 1994, I stopped pretending and
    took a girl called Christine home
    to meet my parents.
     
    A week later I moved to London to
    go to college and study drama. My
    mother said I broke her heart.
     
    But it was my integrity that was
    important. Is that so selfish? It
    sells for so little but it's all we
    have left in this place...
     
    It is the very last inch of us...
    But within that inch we are free.
     
    London. I was happy in London.
     
    I played Dandini in Cinderella.
     
    The world was strange and rustling
    with invisible crowds behind the
    hot lights and all that breathless
    glamour.
     
    Work improved. I got small film
    roles, then bigger ones.
     
    In 2006, I starred in "The Salt
    Flats." That's where I met Ruth.
    We fell in love.
     
    Every Valentine's Day she sent me
    roses and, oh god, we had so much.
    Those were the best three years of
    my life.
     
    In 2010, they came.
     
    And after that there were no more roses...
    Not for anybody.
     
    After the takeover, they started
    rounding up the gays. They took
    Ruth while she was out looking for
    food.
     
    Why are they so frightened of us?
     
    They burned her face with
    cigarettes and made her give them
    my name. She signed a statement
    saying I'd seduced her.
     
    I didn't blame her. God, I loved
    her but I didn't blame her.
     
    But she did.
    She killed herself in her cell.
    She couldn't live with betraying
    me, with giving up that last inch.
    Oh, Ruth.
     
    They came for me. They shaved off
    my hair. They held my head down a
    toilet and told lesbian jokes.
    They brought me here and pumped me
    full of chemicals.
     
    I can't feel my tongue. I can't speak.
     
    It is strange that my life should
    end in such a terrible place but
    for three years I had roses and
    apologized to no one.
     
    I shall die here. Every inch of me
    shall perish...
     
    Except one.
     
    An inch. It is small and fragile
    and it's the only thing in the
    world that's worth having.
     
    We must never lose it or sell it or
    give it away. We must never let
    them take it from us.
     
    I don't know who you are but I hope
    you escape this place. I hope that
    the world turns and things get
    better and that one day people have
    roses again.
     
    I don't know who you are but I love
    you.
     
    I love you.
     
    Valerie.
     
    Excerpt from V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd.
  4. JamesSavik

    Retarded Science

    By JamesSavik,

    World-class radio telescopes face closure
     
    November 4, 2006
    Jeff Hecht for NewScientist.com news service
    Source Link
     
    Two of the world's best-known radio observatories
  5. JamesSavik
    Wow! Striking Green Comet Suddenly Visible in Evening Sky
    Robert Roy Britt
    Senior Science Writer for Space.com
    October 26, 2006
    Source Link
     
     

    Tony Wilder of Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin photographed comet Swan amid city glow this week. A faint meteor was captured streaking across the right side of the image, too. Credit: Tony Wilder
     
    What had been a modest comet seen only with binoculars or telescopes flared up this week to become visible to the naked eye.
     
    Comet Swan, as it is called, is in the western sky after sunset from the Northern Hemisphere. It remains faint, likely not easy to find under bright city lights but pretty simple to spot from the countryside.
     
    It is a "fairly easy naked-eye comet," said Pete Lawrence, who photographed the comet from the UK. "The tail is now showing some interesting features too."
     
    Find it
     
    The comet, also catalogued as C/2006 M4, is about halfway up in the sky in the direction of the constellation Corona Borealis.
     
    As with most comets, this one looks like a fuzzy star. It has an interesting green tint, however, indicating it has a lot of the poisonous gas cyanogen and diatomic carbon, astronomers say.
     
    Sam Storch, a long-time sky watcher from Long Island, NY, said the comet appears "quite a bit deeper than any other green I have seen in any sky object, even planetary nebulae."
     
    "Comet Swan is very easy to find," said Joe Rao, SPACE.com's Skywatching Columnist. "In good binoculars it appears as a bright, symmetrical and surprisingly green blob."
     
    Legendary objects
     
    Comets, the stuff of legend and myth, are frozen leftovers of the solar system's formation. Most orbit the Sun out beyond Neptune, but a few wander through the inner solar system now and then. As a comet gets closer to the Sun, solar radiation boils the frozen gases, along with dust, off the comet's surface. Sunlight reflects off this material, creating a head, or coma. Some comets never get very bright. Others brighten dramatically. Some even come unglued as they round the Sun.
     
    Some comets, like Swan, also sport a tail or two. Such detail is best seen with binoculars or a small telescope.
     
    Comet Swan was discovered last year. It makes its closest approach to Earth today. Eventually it will return to the distant reaches of the solar system.
  6. JamesSavik

    Remember

    By JamesSavik,

    Matthew Shepherd Foundation
     
     
    I remember when I heard about it. It was an ordinary day at work. I had the radio on. I didn't want to care about it. I had enough to care about.
     
    I had been assaulted myself- many times. I'm alive myself because I've got a thick head. In fact all the fuss over a run of the mill gay bashing made me angry. When it had happened to me, the cops were completely disinterested.
     
    It didn't really hit me until I saw the picture. He looked like a little kid. It made me sick. It made me ashamed for the way I had felt. There but for the grace of my own thick skull go I.
     
    When he died, it pissed me off. It incited me to action. I became one of those obnoxious gay activists that you hear about. I don't know if I've done any good and I have paid a serious price for speaking out.
     
    Silence is surrender. Silence in the face of those that would deny us our rights and even our lives is a kind of cowardliness that I can't live with. Silence is an tacit vote of approval for the thousand little indignities that GLBT people are forced to endure.
     
    I will be Silent no more.
  7. JamesSavik

    Cat Personals

    By JamesSavik,

    TOS: Kitty porn is strictly prohibited!
     

    Mellow Yellow
    Hi My name is Boo and I live in Mississippi. I'm a 10 year old male yellow tabby. I like cat nip, long naps, music, birdwatching and hissing at other cats that get too close to my dinner dish. I dislike noisy humans, strangers, pedigreed cats that think they are better than everyone else and smart-assed squirrels.
     
    My perfect mate likes to sleep as much as I do. I'm really mellow and don't like to fight.
     
     

    Home Kitty
    I'm Blackie! I am a year old Tom from Mississippi. I like playing with fireflies and my brother, hunting, slapping around other Toms that invade my territory and eating blue-jays. I dislike dogs, cars, possums, mosquitoes and old ladies with brooms. I really like my human. I had to look long and hard for a good one and then convince him that he was my human.
     
    I like one night stands. Don't call me in the morning. I'll be sleeping.
  8. JamesSavik
    This is a deep field image of the Orion nebulea (M42). It's the little glowy patch that you see along Orion's belt on winter nights. If you look closely at the left hand side, you can see the tiny Horse-head nebulea which is a region of dark gas back lite by the bright reflection nebulea.
     
    Orion is an area of intense study. This is a stellar nursery that is home to many infant stars- t-tauri variables and ZAMS (Zero-Aged Main Sequence stars). The luminosity of young O and B embedded within the nebulea powers this magnificant light show.
     
    This and other spectacular images can be had from Astronomy Picture of the Day.
     
    There is a plugin for APOD on goole desktop or google homepage. I think there is one for Firefox as well.
     
    If that's not the cool wallpaper, I don't know what would be.
  9. JamesSavik
    Hubble's main camera hobbles back to life
    October 2, 2006
    David Shiga for NewScientist.com
    Source Link
     
    Hubble's most frequently used instrument, the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), is partially functioning again, after shutting down unexpectedly last week.
    Before it shut down on 23 September, the ACS was Hubble's most frequently used instrument. It uses three channels that are essentially three different cameras, and the problem began shortly after Hubble's managers attempted to switch power from the Solar Blind Channel (SBC) to the High Resolution Channel (HRC).
     
    Despite the command to switch, Hubble's computer detected that power was not getting to the HRC and automatically shut down all three channels (see Hubble's key camera shuts down again).
     
    Now, the camera's Wide Field Channel (WFC) has resumed observations, with the other two channels still offline. The WFC, the channel that had been used for most ACS observations, gets its power from an independent route that is not affected by the other two channels.
     
    Switch issue :doh:
    Hubble began taking observations with the WFC on Sunday. "The instrument seems to be performing nominally," says Preston Burch, Hubble's mission manager at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, US.
    Hubble engineers are now pretty sure that the problem with the other two channels is related to the mechanical relay that flips back and forth to send power to either the SBC or the HRC.
     
    "All indications are that the commands [to flip] were properly received by the spacecraft, but we're not seeing the voltage [expected]," Burch told New Scientist.
    There might be some dirt or debris that is preventing the switch from closing properly, he says. Another possibility is that the mechanism that moves the arms of the switch from one position to another is broken, he says.
     
    Short circuit
    Hubble's managers are thinking about trying to flip the switch back and forth, which could solve the problem by dislodging any dirt.
     
    However, there is some worry that if the switch itself is broken, moving it could cause a short circuit that would kill the ACS's power source. A short circuit is considered an unlikely event, but it would make all three channels unusable, Burch says.
     
    The Hubble team will meet on Wednesday to discuss what to do about the switch. "We're probably a couple days away from doing any on-orbit commanding of the hardware," Burch says.
     
    If the switch problem cannot be fixed, the High Resolution Camera may still be able to make observations, but with only half its original field of view.
  10. JamesSavik

    Oh No!

    By JamesSavik,

    Hubble Telescope's Main Camera Fails
    Associated Press
    9/25/06
    Source Link
     

    The main camera on the Hubble Space Telescope has shut down unexpectedly for the second time this year, the operators of the orbiting observatory announced Friday.
     
    The Space Telescope Science Institute, which coordinates use of the telescope, said the camera shut down Saturday. Program managers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt and at the institute were investigating the cause and what action to take.
     
    In the meantime, observations on the Hubble were being rescheduled to use other instruments, the Baltimore-based institute said.
     
    The orbiting Hubble telescope, launched in 1990 by the space shuttle, has revolutionized the study of astronomy with some of the most striking images ever seen in space.
     
    However, a servicing mission by the space shuttle is needed to install two new instruments as well as fresh batteries and gyroscopes to keep the telescope working until 2011 or 2012. NASA, which has not decided whether to send astronauts to repair the Hubble, is planning to replace it with a new, improved version, the James Webb Space Telescope.
     
    It's scheduled for launch in 2011.
     
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
     

     
    Most of us don't have cars as old as the Hubble. Those of that do have "geriatric cars" know the challenges of keeping them running: it doesn't happen unless you put serious effort into maintaining them.
  11. JamesSavik
    Astronomers Gain Important Insight on How Massive Stars Form
    National Radio Astronomy Observatory
    Press Release
    September 27th, 2006
    Source Link
     
    Astronomers using the National Science Foundation's Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope have discovered key evidence that may help them figure out how very massive stars can form.
     
    "We think we know how stars like the Sun are formed, but there are major problems in determining how a star 10 times more massive than the Sun can accumulate that much mass. The new observations with the VLA have provided important clues to resolving that mystery," said Maria Teresa Beltran, of the University of Barcelona in Spain.
     
    Beltran and other astronomers from Italy and Hawaii studied a young, massive star called G24 A1 about 25,000 light-years from Earth. This object is about 20 times more massive than the Sun. The scientists reported their findings in the September 28 issue of the journal Nature.
     
    Stars form when giant interstellar clouds of gas and dust collapse gravitationally, compacting the material into what becomes the star. While astronomers believe they understand this process reasonably well for smaller stars, the theoretical framework ran into a hitch with larger stars.
     
    "When a star gets up to about eight times the mass of the Sun, it pours out enough light and other radiation to stop the further infall of material," Beltran explained. "We know there are many stars bigger than that, so the question is, how do they get that much mass?"
     
    One idea is that infalling matter forms a disk whirling around the star. With most of the radiation escaping without hitting the disk, material can continue to fall into the star from the disk. According to this model, some material will be flung outward along the rotation axis of the disk into powerful outflows.
     
    "If this model is correct, there should be material falling inward, rushing outward and rotating around the star all at the same time," Beltran said. "In fact, that's exactly what we saw in G24 A1. It's the first time all three types of motion have been seen in a single young massive star," she added.
     
    The scientists traced motions in gas around the young star by studying radio waves emitted by ammonia molecules at a frequency near 23 GHz. The Doppler shift in the frequency of the radio waves gave them the information on the motions of the gas. This technique allowed them to detect gas falling inward toward a large "doughnut," or torus, surrounding the disk presumed to be orbiting the young star.
     
    "Our detection of gas falling inward toward the star is an important milestone," Beltran said. The infall of the gas is consistent with the idea of material accreting onto the star in a non-spherical manner, such as in a disk. This supports that idea, which is one of several proposed ways for massive stars to accumulate their great bulk. Others include collisions of smaller stars.
     
    "Our findings suggest that the disk model is a plausible way to make stars up to 20 times the mass of the Sun. We'll continue to study G24 A1 and other objects to improve our understanding," Beltran said.
     
    Beltran worked with Riccardo Cesaroni and Leonardo Testi of the Astrophysical Observatory of Arcetri of INAF in Firenze, Italy, Claudio Codella and Luca Olmi of the Institute of Radioastronomy of INAF in Firenze, Italy, and Ray Furuya of the Japanese Subaru Telescope in Hawaii.
     
    The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.
     

    Artist's Conception of Young Star Showing Motions Detected in G24 A1:(1) Infall toward torus, (2) Rotation and (3) outflow.
     
     
     
    Note: Giant stars (25+ solar masses) are something of an enigma. How they form vs how other stars form has been a riddle that scientists studying stellar evolution have been looking into for years.
  12. JamesSavik

    The Royal Time Machine

    By JamesSavik,

    Something really awesome is happening on the web!
     
    The Royal Society of London is opening 340 years worth of its archives to the public until December.
     
    Now, free of charge, you have the oppertunity to download and look at the works of some of the giants of science like Hawkins, Einstien, Pauling, Chandrasekhar, Bohr, Herschel, Kelvin, Liebnitz, Maxwell, Newton, Rutherford and many, many more.
     
    Of course I'm biased towards the physical sciences, but biology is covered too. Watson, Crick and Edmond Stone's breakthrough in 1763 that willow bark cured fevers, leading to the discovery of salicylic acid and later the development of aspirin.
     
    This is an immeasurable treasure! For people that study or work in the sciences, this is a chance to see our understanding of chemistry, math, physics, biology evolved with time. For historians it is a chance to look at the impact of the earth shaking discoveries like gravity, electricity and DNA.
     
    Imagine having tea with Sir Isacc Newton or attending a lecture by Chandrasekhar. This rocks!
     
    I'm so going to be downloading like a maniac!
     
    340 Years of Science
  13. JamesSavik

    Planetary Follies

    By JamesSavik,

    Astronomers lean toward eight planets
    August 22, 2006
    Stephen Battersby, Prague
    NewScientist.com
    Source Link
     
    Finally, astronomers could be homing in on a definition of the word planet. After a day of public bickering in Prague, followed by negotiations behind closed doors, the latest draft resolution was greeted with a broadly friendly reception.
    If accepted on Thursday, it would be bad news for Pluto, which would no longer be a full-fledged planet.
     
    The crucial change in "draft c" is that a planet must be the dominant body in its orbital zone, clearing out any little neighbours. Pluto does not qualify because its orbit crosses that of the vastly larger Neptune.
     
    The planet definition committee is also stepping back from trying to define all planets in the universe, and sticking to our solar system
  14. JamesSavik
    A 'Genetic Study' Of The Galaxy
     
    Galactic Bulge and Disc Stars Shown To Have Different Oxygen Abundances
     
    ESO 34/06 - Science Release
    12 September 2006
    Source Link
     

    Part of one of the four regions of the sky in the direction of the Galactic Bulge in which the astronomers measured the iron and oxygen abundances in stars. This particular field is in the vicinity of the so-called 'Baade's Window', a region with relatively low amounts of interstellar "dust" that could block the sight, allowing astronomers to peer into the central parts of the Milky Way galactic centre and beyond. The globular cluster NGC 6528 is visible in the lower left corner. The image is a colour composite, based on images obtained in the B-, V-, and I-filters with the FORS instrument on the ESO VLT. The images were extracted from the ESO Science Archive and processed by Henri Boffin (ESO). North is to the right and East on top.
    _________________________________________________________________
     
    Galactic Bulge and Disc Stars Shown To Have Different Oxygen Abundances
    Looking in detail at the composition of stars with ESO's VLT, astronomers are providing a fresh look at the history of our home galaxy, the Milky Way. They reveal that the central part of our Galaxy formed not only very quickly but also independently of the rest.
     
    "For the first time, we have clearly established a 'genetic difference' between stars in the disc and the bulge of our Galaxy," said Manuela Zoccali, lead author of the paper presenting the results in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics [1]. "We infer from this that the bulge must have formed more rapidly than the disc, probably in less than a billion years and when the Universe was still very young."
     
    The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy, having pinwheel-shaped arms of gas, dust, and stars lying in a flattened disc, and extending directly out from a spherical nucleus of stars in the central region. The spherical nucleus is called a bulge, because it bulges out from the disc. While the disc of our Galaxy is made up of stars of all ages, the bulge contains old stars dating from the time the galaxy formed, more than 10 billion years ago. Thus, studying the bulge allows astronomers to know more about how our Galaxy formed.
     
    To do this, an international team of astronomers [2] analysed in detail the chemical composition of 50 giant stars in four different areas of the sky towards the Galactic bulge. They made use of the FLAMES/UVES spectrograph on ESO's Very Large Telescope to obtain high-resolution spectra.
     
    The chemical composition of stars carries the signature of the enrichment processes undergone by the interstellar matter up to the moment of their formation. It depends on the previous history of star formation and can thus be used to infer whether there is a 'genetic link' between different stellar groups. In particular, comparison between the abundance of oxygen and iron in stars is very illustrative. Oxygen is predominantly produced in the explosion of massive, short-lived stars (so-called Type II supernovae), while iron instead originates mostly in Type Ia supernovae [3], which can take much longer to develop. Comparing oxygen with iron abundances therefore gives insight on the star birth rate in the Milky Way's past.
     

    Ratio of Oxygen over Iron abundance as a function of the iron content in stars (both axis are using logarithmic scales). The green circle denotes the stars in the Bulge studied by the present astronomers, while the yellow triangles and blue crosses are previous data obtained for stars in the disc of our Galaxy. The bulge stars are clearly more oxygen-rich than disc stars, highlighting the 'genetic difference' between the bulge and disc stars.
    _________________________________________________________________
     
    "The larger size and iron-content coverage of our sample allows us to draw much more robust conclusions than were possible until now," said Aurelie Lecureur, from the Paris-Meudon Observatory (France) and co-author of the paper.
     
    The astronomers clearly established that, for a given iron content, stars in the bulge possess more oxygen than their disc counterparts. This highlights a systematic, hereditary difference between bulge and disc stars.
     
    "In other words, bulge stars did not originate in the disc and then migrate inward to build up the bulge but rather formed independently of the disc," said Zoccali. "Moreover, the chemical enrichment of the bulge, and hence its formation timescale, has been faster than that of the disc."
     
    Comparisons with theoretical models indicate that the Galactic bulge must have formed in less than a billion years, most likely through a series of starbursts when the Universe was still very young.
     
     
     
    Notes
    [1]: "Oxygen abundances in the Galactic bulge: evidence for fast chemical enrichment" by Zoccali et al. It is freely available from the publisher's web site as a PDF file.
     
    [2]: The team is composed of Manuela Zoccali and Dante Minniti (Universidad Catolica de Chile, Santiago), Aurelie Lecureur, Vanessa Hill and Ana Gomez (Observatoire de Paris-Meudon, France), Beatriz Barbuy (Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil), Alvio Renzini (INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova, Italy), and Yazan Momany and Sergio Ortolani (Universita di Padova, Italy).
     
    [3]: Type Ia supernovae are a sub-class of supernovae that were historically classified as not showing the signature of hydrogen in their spectra. They are currently interpreted as the disruption of small, compact stars, called white dwarfs, that acquire matter from a companion star. A white dwarf represents the penultimate stage of a solar-type star. The nuclear reactor in its core has run out of fuel a long time ago and is now inactive. However, at some point the mounting weight of the accumulating material will have increased the pressure inside the white dwarf so much that the nuclear ashes in there will ignite and start burning into even heavier elements. This process very quickly becomes uncontrolled and the entire star is blown to pieces in a dramatic event. An extremely hot fireball is seen that often outshines the host galaxy.
     
     
    PDF of Zoccali, et al- Oxygen Abundances in the Galactic Halo
  15. JamesSavik
    Coming up Oct. 1st, I'll have been clean and sober for two years.
     
    At first it was really hard passing up the sleezy bars and liquor stores. I really missed going to meet dangerous characters in dangerous allies to buy weed.
     
    Being drunk and stoned was for a while.. liberating. I do something stupid my friends would laugh it off. I was really drunk at the time was like a get out of trouble free card. Sorry I screwed your boyfriend at the party. I was so drunk I can barely remember it.
     
    Yeah- I hung out with some real winners. ...and woke in some interesting places- like Arkansas.
     
    Being sober takes some getting used too. It was really difficult at first. Breaking old habits is hard. Late on Sunday nights I just didn't feel right and I couldn't figure it out. This went on for a couple of months before I figured it out: it felt so strange to go all weekend without barfing.
     
    Kicking weed is difficult but its different from smoking ciggerettes or drinking. Those tasty treats from 7-11s you pick up at 2:00am just don't taste the same. Watching TV for hours on end didn't hold the same charm. Before I knew it, I had ditched my junk food for vegatables. I still like Taco Bell but we're talking about progress, not perfection.
     
    I stayed stoned for months at a time. I didn't stop to ask myself why. I was too busy looking for just the right brand of microwave buritos. Weed comes on slowly and quietly. First its just holidays like New Years, the Superbowl or the 4th of July. Then its weekends. Then its for a headache or a bad day and then its not just a hobby anymore.
     
    When I cleaned up, I had searing headaches. They were so bad they blurred my vision. I got diagnosed with glaucoma and figured it out- it was taking being high just to make me feel normal.
     
    Sadder and wiser I look back and feel embarrassed. How could I have been such an idiot?
     
    Things happened for me fast and furious. I graduated in '86 with a hot degree and moved up in the business effortlessly. By the time I was 32, I had a house and was a member of senior management. I made my career goals. My problem: What's next? No shit, that's a killer. I was no longer the hot-shot kid. I felt like my best work was behind me.
     
    I was in an empty and soul-less place; a circular prison of expectations. Looking in the mirror and seeing myself going stale- becoming a middle aged burn out and feeling useless. Keeping the yard mowed and the house painted but behind the shades, the inside was empty and silently rotting away.
     
    Thankfully I'm not in that place anymore. Part of recovery is figuring out how f-ed up you really are. It motivates you to work towards something better. After a long time of wandering around without purpose and in the dark, I'm back. I'm smart, strong and frankly pretty tough. I'm seeing a great guy. Despite the pain, I would not go back to the way it was.
     
    I'm the same person but not the same guy. Some things inside me that were broken are repaired and bad programming has been... upgraded. I've still got a lot of work to do but for some reason, it seems possible. Dare I say it? I believe that I've found some hope.
     
    Now when I do something silly, as I'm apt to do a couple of times a day, I no longer have the I was drunk at the time excuse.
     
    I say, Pardon me. I was having a blond moment.
     
     
    JS
  16. JamesSavik

    Dog Tired Commuter

    By JamesSavik,

    I spent the last couple of weeks commuting back and forth to Gulfport. I was doing a job overseeing the installation of a business network. Actually- the business was rebuilt after a certain be-yach of a hurricane blew most of it to Wiggins. It took almost a year to get a construction company that wasn't booked up.
     
    They must be well practiced as they went from concrete slab to interior finishing in Three weeks. It's like watching mushrooms pop up after the rain.
     
    I see some definite advantages to Katrina. Everything that was destroyed- save the historic buildings- are being built back brand new. Businesses are getting a modern makeover. Homeowners that weren't screwed over by the wind vs rain loophole are getting brand new houses. Unemployment is unheard of. If you can walk and use a push-broom, someone will hire you.
     
    Construction is going on everywhere and the watch-word seems to be bigger and better.
     
    I got a chance to catch up with some of my relatives on the coast and all of them have hair-raising stories.
     
    Heath is a 22 year old who used to live in Moss Point. They went to a relatives house that was in the hills 15 miles behind Pascagoula, MS. Even at that distance, they had major problems. The storm damaged the roof and knocked down so many trees, it was a week until they could drive to the main road. They weren't allowed back to Moss Point for almost a month and then all that was left was a concrete slab. Their family lived in a FEMA trailer from October of last year until June when they finished rebuilding. Heath has become a champion roofer and can get as much work as he can do.
     
    Even a year after the storm, the tell-tale "Blue Tarps" still cover many roofs. If a house didn't get flooded, the winds from Katrina ripped shingles off a roof like a fisherman scales a fish. After the storm, FEMA gave out blue tarps to cover roofs until they could be repaired.
     
    My cousin Rick has a house outside Pascagoula. He built it himself- he is a contractor. He built it 10 feet off the ground with I-beams and concrete blocks. As the area he was in didn't get flooded during Camile, a cat 4 hurricane in 1969 that previously served as a benchmark, he was confident that his house would be fine. What he wasn't counting on was a 35 foot storm surge that despite his elevation and stilts put 3 feet of water on his first floor. His family moved everything upstairs to ride out the storm. To their horror, they looked out and saw their neighbors house coming apart and the neighbors holding onto floating debris. He took the poll that he used to dip leaves out of his pool, went out onto the top of his garage and dipped his neighbor and her two kids out of the flood waters. Before the storm was over, seven more people from the neighborhood were saved. Unfortunately, several of his neighbors are still missing.
     
    Rick's house, built tough, survived the storm easily. It just got a bit wet. His basement workshop was wreaked and he needed new wiring and carpet. He has been working steadily ever since rebuilding homes wreaked by the storm. On the anniversary of the Katrina, he bought a show truck to replace the one that the storm had ruined.
     
    The Mississippi Gulf Coast is down but it's not out. Reconstruction is going on at a furious rate. I am confident that it anything, it will be bigger and better than ever before. Wait a year or so and y'all come see us.
     
     
    JS
     
    PS- I hear that Joey's on the Beach, the gay mecca in Biloxi, is going to be rebuilt and should be open
    by next summer.
  17. JamesSavik
    Spacecraft strikes Moon with intense flash
    September 3, 2006
    Hazel Muir for
    NewScientist.com
    Source Link
     
    The SMART-1 lunar probe crashed into the Moon right on cue on Sunday morning. Mission controllers at the European Space Agency lost contact with the probe at 0542 GMT, indicating that it had struck close to the planned landing site on the lunar
  18. JamesSavik

    NFC Preview

    By JamesSavik,

    NFC 2006 Preview/Predictions
     
     
    NFC North
     
    Bears- the Bears have improved steadily over the last 3 years. With a draft that improved their depth on both sides of the ball and 22 starters back from their division winning team of last season, I expect them to continue this trend. If they can add some punch to their passing game, they could make some noise in the playoffs. They are the team to beat in the North.
     
    Vikings- the Vikes have made some major moves bringing in Brad Johnson, a lot of help on defense and Ryan Longwell to give them a steady kicker. How well it goes for the Vikings depends on chemistry but they
  19. JamesSavik
    In the year 2012 an astronomer discovers that in six months an asteroid will collide with the earth destroying all life. NO problem! A highly trained international team of astronauts is ready to save the earth. They didn't count on a stow-away.

    Raccoon on a Space Shuttle
     
    Staring:
     

    Robert Hayes as Mission Commander Stryker
     

    Leslie Nielson as the President
     

    Billy Bob Thornton as the folksy Mission Control Guy
     

    Scott Bakula as the nice, sincere guy that gets killed in a loud grotesque manner
  20. JamesSavik
    Nine Planets Become 12 with Controversial New Definition
    Robert Roy Britt, Senior Science Writer
    August 16, 2006
    Source Link
     

    The 12 planets under the newly proposed IAU definition. Planet sizes are shown to scale but their orbital distances are not to scale. Credit: IAU/Martin Kornmesser
     

    In proposing a new planet definition, the International Astronomical Union put 12 objects on a watch list of candidates that need further study. They are shown here to scale with Earth. Credit: IAU/Martin Kornmesser
    _____________________________________________________________________
    The tally of planets in our solar system would jump instantly to a dozen under a highly controversial new definition proposed by the International Astronomical Union (IAU).
     
    Eventually there would be hundreds as more round objects are found beyond Neptune.
     
    The proposal, which sources tell SPACE.com is gaining broad support, tries to plug a big gap in astronomy textbooks, which have never had a definition for the word "planet." It addresses discoveries of Pluto-sized worlds that have in recent years pitched astronomers into heated debates over terminology.
     
    The asteroid Ceres, which is round, would be recast as a dwarf planet in the new scheme.
     
    Pluto would remain a planet and its moon Charon would be reclassified as a planet. Both would be called "plutons," however, to distinguish them from the eight "classical" planets.
     
    A far-out Pluto-sized object known as 2003 UB313 would also be called a pluton.
    That would make Caltech researcher Mike Brown, who found 2003 UB313, formally the discoverer of the 12th planet. But he thinks it's a lousy idea.
     
    "It's flattering to be considered discoverer of the 12th planet," Brown said in a telephone interview. He applauded the committee's efforts but said the overall proposal is "a complete mess." By his count, the definition means there are already 53 known planets in our solar system with countless more to be discovered.
     
    Brown and other another expert said the proposal, to be put forth Wednesday at the IAU General Assembly meeting in Prague, is not logical. For example, Brown said, it does not make sense to consider Ceres and Charon planets and not call our Moon (which is bigger than both) a planet.
     
    IAU members will vote on the proposal Thursday, Aug. 24. Its fate is far from clear.
     
    The definition
     
    The definition, which basically says round objects orbiting stars will be called planets, is simple at first glance:
     
    "A planet is a celestial body that (a) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and ( is in orbit around a star, and is neither a star nor a satellite of a planet."
     
    "Our goal was to find a scientific basis for a new definition of planet and we chose gravity as the determining factor," said Richard Binzel, an MIT planetary scientist who was part of a seven-member IAU committee that hashed out the proposal. "Nature decides whether or not an object is a planet."
     
    "I think they did the right thing," said Alan Stern, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute and leader of NASA's New Horizons robotic mission to Pluto. Stern expects a consensus to form around the proposal.
     
    "They chose a nice economical definition that a lot of us wanted to see," Stern told SPACE.com. "A lot of the other definitions had big problems. This is the only one that doesn't have big problems."
     
     
  21. JamesSavik
    Cats are superior to kids in all respects.
     
    Forget to feed a cat and he will go out and kill something. Try that with kids and the welfare will come after you.
     
    Cats kill vermin. Kids attract vermin.
     
    Kids are messy. Cats, with the exception of litter-box and cat-fur, are exceptionally clean.
     
    Cats are independent. Kids are always whining "Mummy, Mummy!"
     
    Kids are noisy. Cats are usually quiet unless they are hungry.
     
    Petting a cat will lower your blood pressure. Dealing with kids will raise it.
     
    Kids bring home their friends to eat. Cats bring home their dinner and offer to share it.
     
    Cats sleep silently on your feet on cold winters nights. Kids get sick, come to your room and barf on your bed.
     
    Kids pick their nose and don't bath unless you make them. Cats keep themselves neat and clear with no urging at all.
     
    Cats are very agreeable when it comes to your choice in television or music. Kids insist on Purple Dinosaurs and hip-hop.
     
    Kid
  22. JamesSavik
    I've been dieting and I hate it. Why is it that everything in the Southern diet has too much cholesterol, fat or sugar? Maybe it would help if we didn't roll everything in flour and lemon-pepper and fry it.
     
    Salad and pasta and fruit oh my! Salad and pasta and fruit oh my!
     
    I'm sorry but I'm a carnivore. Nothing made of meat is safe near me at the moment. I'm liable to kill it and fry it. I'm hoping that my cat will bring me a squirrel carcass.
     
    Awe- screw it. I'm going to Wendy's.
     
    I'm going to have the triple bypass special: a triple bacon-cheese burger with chili and jalape
  23. JamesSavik
    I recently got hold of two programs that I love dearly: Mathematica and Delphi 2006.
     
    Niether are cheap- both run about $100 if you are a student or teacher. If not, they'll run 10 times that.
     
    Delphi 2006 is the latest incarnation of Borlands Object Pascal and C++. It is a industrial strength programming environment with debugger and lots of bells & whistles. It produces lightning fast executable code. While I am not the worlds greatest C++ programmer, I am a competent Pascal programmer. The Delphi environment lets you mix & match.
     
    Mathematica is absolutely awesome. It is an environment that allows you to do higher math. What makes it so cool for me is that I was never a good math student. I always knew the concepts but I have problems with my vision that makes things really difficult. BAM! Along come Mathmatica and I can put the problems on the screen and I don't have to draw (which I can not do). It also gives you confidence to explore math that might have sounded entirely too scary to mess with. There is a series of 5 differential equations that I needed to learn. After putting them in mathmatica and running them through their paces, I ain't skeered of a few little differential equations anymore.
     
    I sure wish I had this stuff when I was an undergrad. I really envy you guys that are in or starting college now. You've got some of the neatest toys in world history to play with. Jump on that wave and ride!
     
    New technologies like Delphi and Mathematica make new worlds open up; worlds that are accessable to all- not just a few ivory tower coneheads.
     
    Just think what Einstein or Schrodinger might have accomplished with a tool like Mathematica!
     
     
    JS
  24. JamesSavik
    Stellar explosion revealed in unique detail
     
    David Shiga for NewScientist.com news service
    July 19, 2006
    Source Link
     

    The material collected from the red giant leads to a nuclear explosion on the surface of its companion, a white dwarf star (Artist's impression: David A Hardy/PPARC)
    ____________________________________________________________________
    An unprecedented glimpse of the blast wave from an erupting star has been seen by astronomers.
     
    The new view suggests the binary system observed could be responsible for some of the universe's most powerful explosions, called Type Ia supernovae. These are very important to astronomers as they are used as "standard candles" to measure distances, but their source has been a major mystery in astronomy.
     
    The explosion occurred in a binary star system called RS Ophiuchi. It consists of a red giant star orbited by the dense core of a burned-out star, called a white dwarf. The outbursts occur because the white dwarf slowly collects gas shed by the red giant. When enough gas piles up on the white dwarf, the mounting pressure triggers a tremendous nuclear explosion.
     
    RS Ophiuchi explodes this way every few decades, but not with a regular schedule. Before the latest outburst, it had not exploded since 1985. Astronomers were therefore excited to discover a new explosion in progress on 12 February 2006. They were able to track the blast wave's progress sooner after its onset and in more detail than ever before.
     
    "We really saw much, much more this time," says Jennifer Sokoloski of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, in Cambridge, US. Sokoloski led a team that observed the event with the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE), starting the day after the initial detection of the outburst.
     
    Flickering candles
    The researchers found evidence that the system was on its way to producing a Type Ia supernova. Although these are used as standard candles, there are in fact slight differences in their brightness. This adds uncertainty to distance measurements.
     
    Part of the problem is that astronomers do not know for sure what causes the supernovae. Evidence strongly suggests that they occur when a white dwarf collects too much mass, triggering a nuclear explosion that completely destroys the white dwarf.
     
    Although astronomers have seen many systems where a white dwarf is collecting matter, none seemed to have the right conditions to lead to a Type Ia supernova. For example, some white dwarfs are collecting matter at too low a rate to get to the critical mass in the universe's lifetime.
     
    The properties of the shock wave observed around RS Ophiuchi allowed Sokoloski's team to calculate the mass of the white dwarf that produced it. They determined it is very close to the critical mass that would trigger a supernova.
     
    That led them to suggest that systems like RS Ophiuchi, called recurrent novae, account for at least some of the Type Ia supernovae. If true, this would help solve the mystery of their origin and could help refine the distance scale they underpin. "It would be very nice to explain why there is this slight variation in supernova brightness," Sokoloski told New Scientist.
     
    Lack of hydrogen
    But there is a problem with this idea, argues Sumner Starrfield of Arizona State University in Tempe, US, who is also studying RS Ophiuchi's recent outburst. Type Ia supernovae are distinguished by a lack of hydrogen in their blast waves, he says, and the red giant in the RS Ophiuchi system has shed a lot of hydrogen into the surrounding area. "I think it will explode as a supernova but it's not going to be a Type Ia," Sumner told New Scientist.
     
    Sokoloski argues that the white dwarf's recurrent outbursts have probably removed the hydrogen from the immediate vicinity, so that it would not appear in a future Type Ia blast wave.
     
    A second study released on Wednesday shows that the material from the explosion seen in February was probably spewed out in jets rather than equally in all directions. Tim O'Brien of the Jodrell Bank Observatory in Macclesfield, UK, led the study. It was based on radio data from the UK's Multi-Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network (MERLIN) and the European VLBI Network (EVN).
     
    "It's a jet-like explosion, probably shaped by the geometry of the binary-star system at the centre," says O'Brien.
     
    "This suggests that there is much more going on than we believed," says Sumner. He added that it will probably take years to figure all out the implications of the new information.
     
    Journal reference: Nature (vol 442, p 276, 279)
    __________________________________________________________________
     
    Mystery of Explosive Star Solved
    Ken Thar for space.com
    July 19, 2006
    Source Link
     
     
    In February, a faint star a few thousand light-years away flared suddenly, beaming so brightly that for a few days it was visible to the naked eye.
     
    The star is a stellar corpse the size of Earth, known as a white dwarf, and it is paired in a binary system with a red giant, a dying, bloated star that once resembled our Sun. The red giant has been dumping gas onto the surface of the white dwarf, and every few years, enough matter accumulates to set off a giant thermonuclear explosion.
     
    It was one of these explosions, called a "nova," that astronomers and stargazers detected earlier this year.
     
    The two-star system, called RS Ophiuchi, is known as a recurrent nova because five similar eruptions have been detected before. The first observation occurred in 1898; the last eruption prior to this latest one happened in 1985.
     
    The new observations, made using advanced radio and X-ray telescopes not available during the last outburst, reveal the explosion to be more complex than was previously assumed.
     
    Standard computer models had predicted a spherical explosion with matter ejected in all directions equally. The latest observations instead showed that the explosion evolved into two lobes, confirming suspicions that the nova outburst produces twin jets of stellar material that spews out from the white dwarf in opposite directions.
     
    "The radio images represent the first time we've ever seen the birth of a jet in a white dwarf system. We literally see the jet 'turn on,'" said Michael Rupen, an astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory who studied RS Ophiuchi using the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA).
     
    As impressive as the nova are, they might just be precursors for a more violent supernova explosion that will occur in the future, scientists say.
     
     
    Like the Sun, Only More Powerful
     
    The white dwarf's thermonuclear blasts are similar to those that occur on the surface of the sun, but they can be over 100,000 times more powerful. During each outburst, an amount of gas equal to the mass of the Earth is flung into space. Some of this ejected matter slams into the extended atmosphere of the inflated red giant, creating blast waves that accelerate electrons to nearly the speed of light. As the electrons travel through the stars' magnetic fields, they emit radio waves that can be detected by telescopes on Earth.
     
    The blast waves move at over four million miles (about 6.4 million km) per hour. For a few weeks during each outburst, the white dwarf becomes a red giant.
     
    "After the [thermonuclear explosion], the white dwarf will puff up into a red giant for a few weeks as the hydrogen that has been blasted into space fuses into helium," explains Richard Barry of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
     
     
    All eyes on Ophiuchi
     
    Japanese astronomers first detected signs of RS Ophiuchi's latest nova on the night of Feb. 12. Follow-up observations by radio telescopes revealed an expanding blast wave whose diameter was already the size of Saturn's orbit around the Sun.
     
    In the weeks following, several radio and X-ray telescopes around the world tracked RS Ophiuchi closely, including the MERLIN array in the UK, the European EVN array, the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) and Very Large Array (VLA) in the United States, and NASA's Swift and Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer satellites.
     
    Findings from the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer and the VLBA/EVN observations are detailed in two separate studies published in the July 20 issue of the journal Nature.
     
    The red giant and white dwarf stars making up RS Ophiuchi are separated by about 1.5 astronomical units, or one and a half times the distance the Earth is from the sun. The binary star system is located in the constellation Ophiuchus, about 5,000 light-years away
  25. JamesSavik
    Did I mention that the MSN messenger hates me?
     
    I'm not sure what I did to piss it off so bad.
     
    Every time I try to use MSN, it connects,might work for a short time (or might not) and then it locks up my internet connection. GRRRR.
     
    I missed the GAC meeting tonight because it wouldn't work. That bums me out because I hate to let down the team.
     
    I even uninstalled it and tried to reload it, then cold booted the entire system. Same crap.
     
    How embarrassing. The International Brotherhood of Geekdom is going to demand that I return my pocket protector.
     
    Sorry guys.
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