October 10, 2013

Mauna Kea Heavens Timelapse

Shot over a period of three nights in April of this year, this timelapse from Sean Goebel shows the myriad arrays of telescopes and antennas at the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii. The clear view at 14,000 feet is the premiere location for astronomy in the Northern Hemisphere. The lasers you see are called laser guide stars and they help astronomers correct the atmospheric distortion of light by creating an artificial “star” to use as a reference point.
http://vimeo.com/75542539
more

http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2013/10/mauna-kea-heavens-timelapse/

October 10, 2013

Overpass Illusion and Other Murals by Dasic

more

http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2013/10/dasic/

October 10, 2013

A Close Look at the Toby Jug Nebula (Beautiful space pic)

ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) has captured a remarkably detailed image of the Toby Jug Nebula, a cloud of gas and dust surrounding a red giant star. This view shows the characteristic arcing structure of the nebula, which, true to its name, does indeed look a little like a jug with a handle.

Located about 1200 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation of Carina (The Ship’s Keel), the Toby Jug Nebula, more formally known as IC 2220, is an example of a reflection nebula. It is a cloud of gas and dust illuminated from within by a star called HD 65750. This star, a type known as a red giant, has five times the mass of our Sun but it is in a much more advanced stage of its life, despite its comparatively young age of around 50 million years [1].

The nebula was created by the star, which is losing part of its mass out into the surrounding space, forming a cloud of gas and dust as the material cools. The dust consists of elements such as carbon and simple, heat-resistant compounds such as titanium dioxide and calcium oxide (lime). In this case, detailed studies of the object in infrared light point to silicon dioxide (silica) being the most likely compound reflecting the star’s light.

IC 2220 is visible as the star’s light is reflected off the grains of dust. This celestial butterfly structure is almost symmetrical, and spans about one light-year. This phase of a star’s life is short-lived and such objects are thus rare.


more
http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1343/

October 10, 2013

“Alarming” mass die-off of starfish in areas along Canada’s Pacific coast — “They’ve disintegrated,

now there’s just goo left” — “Appeared to melt” — “Single arms clinging to rock faces, tube feet still moving” — Similar reports as far away as California

Canadian Press, Oct. 7, 2013: Vancouver Aquarium ‘alarmed’ at mass die-off of starfish on B.C. ocean floor [...] aquarium staff don’t know just how far-reaching the “alarming” epidemic has been, and whether this and other sea star species will recover. “They’re gone. It’s amazing,” said Donna Gibbs, a research diver and taxonomist on the aquarium’s Howe Sound Research and Conservation group. “Whatever hit them, it was like wildfire and just wiped them out.” [...] Aquarium staff don’t know the cause because they have had trouble gathering specimens for testing, as starfish that looked healthy in the ocean turned up as goo at the lab. [...] “We’re just not sure yet if it’s all the same thing,” Gibbs said. “They’re dying so fast.” [...] The collaboration came about after a graduate student collected starfish for a research project and then watched as they “appeared to melt” in her tank. [...]

Global News, Oct. 3, 2013: [...] starfish wasting or completely disintegrating ever since early September. “Now they are gone. They have disintegrated, and now there is just goo left,” says research diver and taxonomist Donna Gibbs. “So we are trying to see as much as we can really fast and get reports from divers in other areas to see how widespread this is.” […] “It is shocking to see them all dead. They are just gone. And, are they coming back? We want them back. B.C. is known for its sea stars. We have more species here than anywhere else in the world.” [...]

National Geographic, Sept. 9, 2013: [...] “It really struck a chord in other divers who were seeing it on Facebook and social media, both locally and as far away as California, who had been seeing similar things,” [marine biologist Jonathan] Martin said. [...] Martin wrote to invertebrate expert Christopher Mah, a researcher at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. [...] he said: “(The starfish) seem to waste away, ‘deflate’ a little, and then just … disintegrate. The arms just detach, and the central disc falls apart. It seems to happen rapidly, and not just dead animals undergoing decomposition, as I observed single arms clinging to the rock faces, tube feet still moving, with the skin split, gills flapping in the current. [...] we did our second dive in an area closed to fishing, and in absolutely amazing numbers. The bottom from about 20 to 50 feet [6 to 15 meters] was absolutely littered with arms, oral discs, tube feet, gonads and gills … it was kind of creepy.” [...] Yet what’s especially alarming to Martin, Mah, and other marine biologists is the fact that this die-off might not be restricted to P. helianthoides or the northern Pacific. [...] Fisheries and Oceans Canada is worried enough that they’ve asked Martin to go back out and collect samples for them to test in the lab. [...]

more

http://enenews.com/alarming-epidemic-mass-die-off-of-starfish-on-canadas-pacific-coast-theyve-disintegrated-now-theres-just-goo-left-appeared-to-melt-arms-just-detach-single-arms-clingi

October 10, 2013

Stupid Criminals of the week

Two Suspected Burglars Killed When Blow Torch Ignites Fireworks In Safe
October 9, 2013 4:40 PM

HOPKINTON, NH (CBS) – Two men who allegedly broke into a Hopkinton, New Hampshire business on Tuesday morning were killed in a massive explosion, officials said.

The State Fire Marshal says that the men, identified as Lucas Bourke, 21, of Allenstown and Ethan Keeler, 21, of Epsom, were using an oxy-acetylene blow torch to try and cut into a large safe inside a workshop at New Yard Landscaping on Farrington Corner Road.

That safe contained a large amount of commercial-grade fireworks, which exploded.

The two men were killed in the blast.

Officials would only say that the men did not have permission to be on the property. However, Tom Komisarek, the owner of New Yard Landscaping, told WBZ-TV that the men had already loaded some items from the business into a nearby vehicle.

more
http://boston.cbslocal.com/2013/10/09/two-suspected-burglars-killed-when-blow-torch-ignites-fireworks-in-safe/

October 10, 2013

School Silences 14-Year-Old Autistic Student From Questioning Treatment

Christian Ranieri said he wanted to be heard after he felt he was treated unfairly in class as a result of his autism.

Posted by Amanda Lindner


The Northport-East Northport Board of Education cut off a 14-year-old boy from speaking during Monday’s meeting when the teen, who has a form of high-functioning autism, attempted to express what he felt was unfair treatment in his classroom due to his disability.

Christian Ranieri held back tears as he left the room after being shut down just a few sentences into his speech, in which he was asking the board to hear him out after he felt he was unfairly suspended for two days from school.

The school board president cited privacy laws in his reasoning for halting Ranieri's speech. The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act protects the privacy of student education records.


more

http://northport.patch.com/groups/schools/p/14yearold-shut-down-from-speaking-at-school-board-meeting

October 9, 2013

The US has lost more than $250 million in tourist revenue because of the shutdown

By Rafat Ali, Skift

The US government shutdown is now well into its second week, and the national parks cross the country remain closed. With it, hundreds of millions of dollars in losses to the local communities that surround the depend on tourism for their sustenance.

The National Parks Conservation Association, the non-partisan, non-governmental advocacy organization that supports these national parks, has been tracking the losses and has come up with some numbers, which we’re outlining below:

401 national park units closed.
21,000 National Park Service employees have been furloughed.
As many as 750,000 visitors will be turned away daily.
$450,000 in revenues lost by park service every day.
Local gateway communities could lose as much as $30 million per day the national parks are closed.
Due to budget cuts, the budget to operate our national parks, in today’s dollars, is already 13% less than it was three years ago, a loss of $315 million.
In the busy summer tourist season, national parks operated with approximately 1,900 less staff due to the more than $180 million cut in 2013.
US national parks attract nearly 300 million visitors and support more than $30 billion in private-sector spending, generating $10 in economic activity for every federal dollar invested, claims NCPA.
Nine out of 10 Americans visited a national park, one in five international visitors visits a park service unit during their stay in US.

The NCPA created this live ticker to show how much estimated dollars have been lost since the shutdown of national parks last Tuesday.

more
http://qz.com/133641/the-us-has-lost-more-than-250-million-in-tourist-revenue-because-of-the-shutdown/

October 9, 2013

Tea Party’s shutdown lunacy: Avenging the surrender of the South

BY JOSH EIDELSON


On Monday, Republican Rep. Charlie Dent told me that he could see himself voting to raise the debt ceiling at “the bewitching hour” if “the markets start getting real jittery”; while Tea Party Sen. Ron Johnson castigated the White House for “scare-mongering” rather than “trying to calm the markets” as the Oct. 17 debt ceiling deadline approaches.

While the question of market panic has highlighted the financial markets’ central role in American politics, the Tea Party’s role in pushing debt default brinkmanship has prompted new rounds of debate about the relationship between Big Business and the GOP.

To talk about both, I called up left-wing economic analyst Doug Henwood, the editor of Left Business Observer and the 1997 tome “Wall Street.” What follows is a condensed and edited version of our conversation.

There’s a hope or perception from some in the media or Congress that eventually a change in the stock market will force some resolution before a debt default. What do you make of that?

That is, of course, what most people have been presuming. I think the markets have been a little annoyed, but still reasonably confident that things will be solved without a default. I think that confidence may be shaken somewhat, at least the way the bond market is behaving today. You would normally think that that would do the trick, that we would have some kind of game of chicken. But as Vincent Reinhart pointed out, the original game of chicken ended with somebody going over the cliff and dying.

more

http://www.salon.com/2013/10/09/tea_partys_shutdown_lunacy_avenging_the_surrender_of_the_south/singleton/

October 9, 2013

House Republicans’ Ransom Demands Falling

By Jonathan Chait



One way to understand the dysfunction within the Republican Party is to think of it as a hostage scheme that spun out of control. The plan, originally formulated by Paul Ryan and other party leaders, involved a more aggressive reprise of the 2011 negotiations, where Republicans would use the threat of default, along with sequestration, to force President Obama to accept unfavorable budget terms. The plan was hijacked by Ted Cruz and transformed into a scheme using a less effective hostage threat (shutting down the government rather than defaulting) but tethered to the much more grandiose ransom of repealing Obamacare. As the Cruz scheme disintegrates around the Republicans, the original leaders are attempting to reassert control and revert to the original plan.

The subtext of op-eds today by Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan is a promise to ratchet down their ransom terms. Neither op-ed mentions any demands related to Obamacare. Ryan proposes to trade higher short-term discretionary government spending for permanent cuts to tax rates and retirement programs. “We can work together,” he writes. “We can do some good.”

The policy demands in Ryan’s op-ed are sufficiently vague that, if viewed as an opening bid, they would not completely preclude some kind of deal if he actually wants to bargain. The trouble is that Ryan’s entire history strongly suggests he does not want to deal. Every major attempt to create bipartisan budget negotiations has been quashed by Ryan. He voted against the Bowles-Simpson proposal, kiboshed a 2011 agreement between John Boehner and President Obama, then single-handedly blew up a bipartisan Senate budget deal.

Obama’s reelection has not prompted Ryan to veer from this strategy. Last spring, the president tried to spur bipartisan negotiations by compromising with himself in his budget, including cuts to Social Security and Medicare along with reducing tax deductions. Ryan waved it away and made no counteroffer. Instead, working through what Republicans called the “Jedi Council,” Ryan crafted a strategy of using the debt ceiling to extract unreciprocated concessions. He spent much of the year repeatedly turning down a budget conference on the assumption that he could get a better deal by threatening default. He confidently assured Republicans that Obama would fold and bargain for the debt ceiling. (National Review’s Jonathan Strong two weeks ago: “I asked Ryan if he believes President Obama’s steadfast vows that he won’t negotiate over the debt ceiling. His reaction? You’ve got to be kidding me. ‘Oh, nobody believes that.’”)

more
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/10/house-republicans-ransom-demands-falling.html

October 9, 2013

Foster Friess' "Practical" Debt Ceiling Solutions

Multimillionaire GOP donor Foster Friess, who famously suggested that women put Aspirin between their knees instead of using contraception, has some equally solid advice for the congressional Republicans who are refusing to raise the nation’s debt ceiling.

In a blog post last week, Friess offered a line for congressional Republicans who deny that defaulting on the nation’s debt by failing to raise the debt ceiling would harm the world economy. Calling a default a “default,” Friess writes, is “over-dramatic nonsense.” Instead, he writes, “why not be honest and say ‘the government wouldn’t be able to pay all of its bills’”:

Friess then offers some creative solutions to lowering the nation’s debt, including asking public employees “if they would enjoy a voluntary unpaid sabbatical” and using the wages not paid to these employees to fund national parks and White House tours:





- See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/foster-friess-practical-debt-ceiling-solutions