Hampton Roads Publishing Company Blog

Despite the annoying need to either multiply figures in kilometers by point six (.6) to figure out how many miles this article is talking about, this is a very interesting story showing once again that we still don’t understand very well what’s happening at the poles. If — as I suspect is in the process of happening — West Antarctica comes out from under the ice, many things will change, not just global sea levels. But they’ll be first. From http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7261171.stm

Antarctic glaciers surge to ocean
By Martin Redfern
Rothera Research Station, Antarctica

UK scientists working in Antarctica have found some of the clearest evidence yet of instabilities in the ice of part of West Antarctica.

If the trend continues, they say, it could lead to a significant rise in global sea level.

The new evidence comes from a group of glaciers covering an area the size of Texas, in a remote and seldom visited part of West Antarctica.

The “rivers of ice” have surged sharply in speed towards the ocean.

David Vaughan, of the British Antarctic Survey, explained: “It has been called the weak underbelly of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, and the reason for that is that this is the area where the bed beneath the ice sheet dips down steepest towards the interior.

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From http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hX8lBEBzBIjvve9l9INca7yhM0Qw

Japan successfully launches high-speed Internet satellite

TOKYO (AFP) — Japan successfully launched Saturday an experimental satellite aimed at providing high-speed Internet access across Asia, even when terrestrial infrastructure goes down, the space agency said.

The domestically developed H-2A rocket carrying the Kizuna satellite was launched at 17:55 pm (0855 GMT) with no glitches from the Space Centre on Tanegashima island off the southern tip of Kyushu Island, southern Japan.

The communications satellite, expected to be in use for five years, separated from the rocket approximately 35 minutes after the launch, said an official of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) during a live broadcast.

The 342 million dollar-Kizuna will allow super-high speed data communications of up to 1.2 Gbps, which would make it the fastest in the world, the agency said.

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I have been fascinated by space exploration from the time I was a young teenager reading science fiction. I was already 11 years old when Sputnik I stunned us on October 4, 1957, and then Sputnik II a month later. Manned spaceflight has often had the spotlight, but ingenious instrument packages seem to have contributed far more, over time. But it will be a long long time before all that data is gathered, digested, and makes its way into our mental world. Meanwhile we get disconnected impressions. Interesting ones, though.

From http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/02/solar-probes-17.html

Solar Probe’s 17-Year Life Coming To Freezing End

In Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus (known as Ulysses to the Greeks) made it safely home after 10 years of wandering. His namesake, the Ulysses probe that has studied the solar environment for more than 17 years, lasted longer. But it’s not coming home.

Researchers say the probe, originally launched from a space shuttle in in 1990, is nearing the end of its life, after outlasting its expected mission duration by more than four times.

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From the NY Daily News http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2008/01/27/2008-01-27_empire_state_building_car_zap_mystery.html?page=0

Empire State Building car zap mystery

By RICHARD WEIR
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Sunday, January 27th 2008, 4:00 AM

Several cars a day get bizarrely stranded in a five-block ‘Bermuda Triangle’ near the Empire State Building. Smith for News

In the shadow of the Empire State Building lies an “automotive Bermuda Triangle” - a five-block radius where vehicles mysteriously die.

No one is sure what’s causing it, but all roads appear to lead to the looming giant in our midst - specifically, its Art Deco mast and 203-foot-long, antenna-laden spire.

“We get about 10 to 15 cars stuck near there every day,” said Isaac Leviev, manager of Citywide Towing, the AAA’s exclusive roadside assistance provider from 42nd St. to the Battery. “You pull the car four or five blocks to the west or east and the car starts right up.”

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From http://news.aol.com/story/_a/spy-satellite-spots-lost-mayan-cities/20080220171809990001

Spy Satellite Spots Lost Mayan Cities

By Brendan Kolbay,
Reuters
Posted: 2008-02-20 19:34:58

GUATEMALA CITY (Feb. 20) - Ancient Mayan astronomers aligned their soaring temples with the stars and now modern archeologists have found the ruins of hidden cities in the Guatemalan jungle by peering down from space.

Archeologists and NASA scientists began teaming up five years ago to search for clues about the mysterious collapse of the Mayan civilization that flourished in Central America and southern Mexico for 1,000 years.

The work is paying off, says archeologist William Saturno, who recently discovered five sprawling sites with hundreds of buildings using a spy satellite that can see through clouds and forest to reveal differences in the vegetation below.

Saturno said the satellite images made it infinitely easier to find ruins covered for centuries by dense jungle vines and trees. “It was like shooting fish in a barrel,” he said.

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From the Austin Chronicle – Feb. 15, 2008

LETTERS AT 3AM –

POLITICAL NOTES OF A RELIC

MICHAEL VENTURA

Michelle Obama said something that cuts through much of the nonsense this primary season. She said, “There is nothing rational about politics.” (CNN Ballot Bowl, Feb. 2). Nothing rational about political reporting either, as our next item testifies.

Least Reported and Most Important Numbers: It’s in the interest of the media to pretend that John McCain has a chance in a national election against Barak Obama and/or Hillary Clinton – and a surprising number of smart people buy that storyline. It’s dramatic, after all. Pundits cite this poll and that, though polls got both New Hampshire and Super Tuesday severely wrong. Look not at the polls but at the numbers. On Super Tuesday Hillary Clinton received a total of 7,427,700 votes; Barak Obama, a total of 7,369,798 (The New York Times, Feb. 7, p.1). Strangely, neither The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, Politico.com, CNN, nor MSNBC reported similar Republican totals. However, USA Today (Feb. 7, p.10) gave those totals state-by-state; I counted them up, rounding to the highest thousand. John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Mike Huckabee together won the votes of roughly 8,393,000 – compared to roughly 14,798,000 for Clinton and Obama. McCain alone got merely 3,628,000 – less than half the total of either Clinton or Obama.

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From The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/18/opinion/18krugman.html?ex=1204002000&en=6ebb3bdbc9b81a52&ei=5070&emc=eta1

Poverty Is Poison

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: February 18, 2008

“Poverty in early childhood poisons the brain.” That was the opening of an article in Saturday’s Financial Times, summarizing research presented last week at the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

As the article explained, neuroscientists have found that “many children growing up in very poor families with low social status experience unhealthy levels of stress hormones, which impair their neural development.” The effect is to impair language development and memory — and hence the ability to escape poverty — for the rest of the child’s life.

So now we have another, even more compelling reason to be ashamed about America’s record of failing to fight poverty.

L. B. J. declared his “War on Poverty” 44 years ago. Contrary to cynical legend, there actually was a large reduction in poverty over the next few years, especially among children, who saw their poverty rate fall from 23 percent in 1963 to 14 percent in 1969.

But progress stalled thereafter: American politics shifted to the right, attention shifted from the suffering of the poor to the alleged abuses of welfare queens driving Cadillacs, and the fight against poverty was largely abandoned.

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Government offline
Feb 14th 2008
From The Economist print edition

Why business succeeds on the web and government mostly fails

IN ONE respect at least, it has been a huge success. Selling new technology to governments has brought private contractors a bonanza of many tens of billions of dollars in the past ten years. Although putting information on the web (call it “i-government”) has worked, our special report shows that “e-government”-using the interactivity and speed of the internet to provide public services-has so far mostly meant high costs and poor returns.

Why is government unable to reap the same benefits as business, which uses technology to lower costs, please customers and raise profits? The three main reasons are lack of competitive pressure, a tendency to reinvent the wheel and a focus on technology rather than organisation.

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I have friends who deny that global climate change is happening, and others who concede that it seems to be happening, but say that it is part of natural cycles and deny that human activity is responsible. I can see either view as stemming from a natural emotion: inability or disinclination to run with the sheep in whichever direction the shepherds (or is it the wolves?) are indicating. There’s something to be said for that point of view. Most likely to me, though, is that human activity is interacting with natural cycles, sometimes to augment, sometimes to damp, what would be happening otherwise. If such is the case — and I strongly imagine that it is — surely it makes sense to reduce the levels of our impact when possible. (And surely it is no coincidence that spokesmen for those who are making the most money from the existing situation are among the loudest voices saying that nothing can/could/should be done to reduce the impact of human activity.)

The problem is, time may be short. Is it sensible to hold off reform pending greater certainty? And, on the opposite side of the coin, is it sensible to make moves when we don’t understand the situation? Prudence lies somewhere in between the extremes, it seems to me.

From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/351374_oceans15.html?source=mypi

Last updated February 14, 2008 10:21 p.m. PT
Scientists fear ‘tipping point’ in Pacific Ocean
Coast has seen deadly drop-off in oxygen levels for sea life

By ROBERT McCLURE
P-I REPORTER

Where scientists previously found a sea bottom abounding with life, two years ago they discovered the rotting carcasses of crabs, starfish and sea worms, swooshing from side to side in the current. Most fish had fled — and those that didn’t or couldn’t joined the deathfest on the sea floor.

Extraordinarily low oxygen levels were to blame — swept up from the deep ocean into normally productive waters just off the Pacific Northwest coast by uncharacteristically strong winds.

On Thursday scientists announced they had documented that low oxygen levels that killed the sea life in 2006 were the lowest in a half-century — and that for the first time, parts of the ocean off our coast were measured with zero oxygen in the water; 2007 looked only a bit better.

Strong winds and low oxygen levels have persisted for eight summers now, leading scientists to conclude that the ocean may be “poised for significant reorganization”– their way of saying an ecosystem gone awry.

It looks like the Pacific has reached a “tipping point,” a threshold where low-oxygen levels are becoming the rule, researchers said. And while scientists can’t prove it’s caused by a changing climate, that’s consistent with what is predicted by computer projections built to anticipate global warming.

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My friend Rich Spees, who is a photographer of professional caliber, sent me this kindly noting “Remember Frank, my camera was about 7 times the cost of the one you have,” thus providing me with a built-in excuse. he said i could share this, so here it is. Pretty nifty, no?