Earth Day

On Thin Ice

Global Warming Survival Skills
Inuit people in Alaska are reverting to traditional dog sleds instead of modern snow machines as the icy region warms.

Travel is safer with sled dogs.

"People go out on their snow machines, fall through the ice and are never seen again,"says Patricia Cochran, an Inupiat native of Nome, Alaska. "But our sled dogs will tell you when the ice is not safe ... "

Horsing Around

After a visit from Hollywood hairdresser.

Tiny Alcoholic

Taming of the shrew?

The Pen-tailed Treeshrew is one of the currently known seven wild mammals that actively and consistently (if not chronically) consumes mass quantities of alcohol.

This picture could explain the name, "Pen-tailed".

Because treeshrews are not the same as shrews, and are indeed distant relatives of our own species, they may indicate that consumption of alcohol in the evolutionary line that lead to humans may have occurred, and it may be why today we are still fascinated by alcohol. Because the treeshrew resembles early primates it is no far leap to guess that perhaps an ancestor of our own relied on alcohol naturally created in nectars, and indeed chimpanzees and gibbons eat fruits and nectars today, which can easily ferment.

However in humans, the ability to tolerate such high levels is no longer present, and it can cause disease and even death.

More Baby Stars Found

Stars forming in the Orion Nebula. (image-UKIT/SST)

Astronomers have completed the most wide-ranging census of baby stars in and around the Orion nebula, and found a stellar nursery that's both chaotic and crowded.

The new Aptera

The Wired.com guys test drive the new Aptera in S.F.

http://www.wired.com/video/aptera-car-of-the-near-future/17417995001

Neat Green Gadgets
A couple of Earth Day gadgets to do my part. There was very little Earth Day news, in the news today.
Air Cleaning Light Bulb

http://www.purelyproducts.com/products/purely-anion/

Solar Charger Bags

Manly men's bag

For the lady who likes to charge.

From Wired.com
Composed of biodegradable materials, each bag contains a flexible solar panel on the outside, which connects to a lithium-ion rechargeable battery pack hidden in a pocket. The bags also include adapters for you to plug your iPod, USB-powered device or cellphone into the battery pack to keep your gadgets juiced while you bask in the sun. (GreenLoop, from $330 to $500)

Dolphins Best Friend?

Is that a Portuguese water dog?

Today's Relatively Appropriate Song;
Talk to The Animals -Louis Armstrong

We Are Animals Too

Today In Space

Dodging Space Garbage

Space shuttle avoids debris when possible.

Impacts occur regularly on shuttle flights. Wired Science obtained the Hypervelocity Impact Database, which revealed that in the 54 missions from STS-50 through STS-114, space junk and meteoroids hit shuttle windows 1,634 times necessitating 92 window replacements. In addition, the shuttle's radiator was hit 317 times, actually causing holes in the radiator's facesheet 53 times.

Where Bankin's Funner!

I had to check this out. It's for real.

Redneck is currently offering a 3.1 percent yield, with no minimum deposit, on balances of up to $35,000 (1.65 percent on balances exceeding that) in its mega money market account. That’s considerably better than two of the biggest online banks' money market offerings, ING Direct’s 1.5 percent APY or HSBC Direct’s 1.65 percent.

River Fun

Follow that goose.

We will land here.

Fearless Phil.

Fearless leader.

Fearless follower.

Great fun on the river today. We went under the Sundial Bridge. People on the bridge took lots of pictures of us. Maybe I will see them, one day.

I kept my camera in the dry bag. Since losing the Olympus camera to a damp trunk, I didn't want to take a chance of getting the Sanyo wet. I will have to get a Kayak camera for the next trip. It was beautiful on the river.

Golden Frog

Panamanian golden frog.

I found these pictures in the "China View"-on line news.

Strange Statue

Santa Fe (Photo Source: CRIENGLISH.com/Xinjo.com)

I don't know what is stranger; The pictures, or that I got Panama and Santa Fe pictures, from China.

Wall-E

In keeping with Dodging Space Garbage, I heartily recommend the DVD, "Wall-E".

Today's Relatively Appropriate Song;
Stardust - Artie Shaw

Heavenly

My Life Is

Like It's Supposed To Be

International Space Station. March 25, 2009 (NASA)

Here on Earth
Spray Paint Space Painting

This was done with cans of spray paint!

Cosmic Art Show
This guy is good!

It Just Gets Better

I got an email from Jimmy Sakuma that had this link;

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=2539741

It's a video that uses the song, "Stand by me". The members of the, "Band", are people all around the world, that have been filmed while they add their part to the song. It brought tears of joy to my eyes to see and hear a dream come true.

In the 1960's, I imagined going around the world and playing music with people in different countries, in towns and villages, sharing the the common language of music. This video, and the foundation that produced it, takes that simple idea and raises it to a level that reaches even deeper into the heart and soul of the worlds people. Playingforchange.com

I still imagine jamming, "live", with people around the world. Fred Mitchell and I continue to experiment and research ways to accomplish this dream.

Here In America

Photo of high speed train in some other country.

From Scientific American
President Obama outlined his vision today for high-speed rail service in the U.S, identifying 10 corridors in heavily populated regions around the country – from the Pacific northwest to the gulf states – for the laying of hundreds of miles of new tracks.

The stimulus bill that passed in February set aside $8 billion for the initiative. The Federal Railroad Administration will begin awarding grants late this summer after a competitive bidding process amongst rail companies.

Hooray!
We can start catching up to the rest of the world.

Here in Redding

The Sundial Bridge before the tea party. 4/15/09

I made a little video about the Fox News Tea Party.


Friday 4/17/09

Flowering plant at Creekside Gardens. 4/17/09

I went to a local nursery to get an aloe plant for my medicine cabinet. What a delightful place.
Pictures, HERE.

Sandi went with me to the nursery and to OSH, where I got a new, and hopefully, longer lasting, umbrella.

New umbrella from inside sliding screen door. 4/17/09

Time For Breakfast

A healthy, Happy Phil, breakfast, at 4:00PM. 4/17/09

Today's Relatively Appropriate Song;
Lazy Bones -Mills Brothers

Relax-Enjoy God's gifts

Spacecraft, Spring, Stars, Trekkies, and Turbans

Enough Space

Measuring sea level, gravity field fluctuations and more.

ScienceDaily (Apr. 8, 2009) — GOCE’s highly sensitive gradiometer instrument has been switched on and is producing data. The spacecraft has an ion propulsion device to keep it in a perfectly steady orbit and accelerometers, (Like the one in this Macbook), that can detect the slightest fluctuation in earths gravity.

Gris Gris In Your Pocket

Happy Phil adds background vocals in living room.
Zombie Reggae
I made time today to experiment with the new MXL microphone. It fulfilled it's expected purpose and then some. It responded well to a variety of vocal and mechanical techniques, and embedded the results with presence and dynamics in the recordings. So far, the nuances and qualities have been able to withstand the digital processing required to converting to various formats. Speaking parts retained an intimate quality and the singing retained physical and harmonic dynamics.

Spring Has Sprung

Rose along the driveway at the Treehouse Apartments.

Each day brings more beautiful sights and smells.

Spock Shows New Star Trek Movie

Enterprise

Surprise, surprise.
Leonard Nimoy showed the new Star Trek movie to a group of Trekkie's in Austin, Texas, Monday. The Star Trek fans thought they were going to see a special showing of "Wrath of Kahn". Imagine their delight when, "Spock", announced they would be getting an advanced showing of the new Star Trek film. Rave reviews were, "all a twitter".

Starlight

A star making galaxy, billions of light years from here.

After two years spent analyzing data from the Balloon-borne Large-Aperture Sub-millimeter Telescope (BLAST) project, an international group of astronomers and astrophysicists from Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. reveals April 8 in the journal Nature that half of the starlight of the Universe comes from young, star-forming galaxies several billion light years away.

Yo Ho Ho

Pirates everywhere

The coastal region of Puntland is booming.

The port of Eyl, is where most of the hijacked vessels are kept by the well-armed pirate gangs.

People wear ties and smart clothes. They drive land cruisers and carry laptops.

Fancy houses are being built, expensive cars are being bought - all of this in a country that has not had a functioning central government for nearly 20 years.

Observers say pirates made about $30m from ransom payments last year - far more than the annual budget of Puntland, which is about $20m.

What I find interesting in the news about pirates, is what isn't in the news about pirates. Pirating and collecting ransoms has been the economic engine of the Muslim world for hundreds of years. Nations throughout history have been ponying up payoffs to Islamic Pashas, Imams, and Sultans, for safe passage. To learn more about the role of pirates in history, type, "Pirates", in the blog search box at the top of the page.


Ask An 8 Year Old
HOW CAN A STRANGER TELL IF TWO PEOPLE ARE MARRIED?

"You might have to guess, based on whether they seem to be yelling at the same kids."
-- Derrick, age 8


Todays Relatively Appropriate Song;
Zombie Reggae
Of Course.

Be Kind

Getting The Picture

How to Blog?
Making Big Pictures Fit
The Happy Phil Way

Poppies by the doctors parking lot. 4/7/09

Put picture on desktop as png file.

Insert image in Google Docs.

Now you have the picture in the document editor, where it can be moved around, sized, and used to illustrate text.

The Video


I made this video for George Bleich, explaining how I reduce 10 mega pixal pictures from my photo library so they will fit on a blog or web page. His mail server cant handle a 17MB file, so I put it here for all to see. I hope it's helpful.

Good Stuff To Eat

I really enjoy Natures Path cereals.

I am not real big on granolas, but this is different. It's good by itself, or when mixed with another cereal. I feel good about the cereal that I get from Natures Path, especially after I went to their website. I have written about them before. You can find those previous posts with the search blog box. Type "cereal", or "granola", or "Natures Path", and it will find the articles I have written that have that word in them. It's actually much easier than the labels. The labels are getting top heavy. I may change that feature.

Dog In A Teacup

Chihuahua-Jack Russel mix. 1 month old.

I remember when you could buy a dog that fit in a tea cup. Just send $4.95 and the coupon from the back of the comic book. You could also get "Sea Monkeys" for $1.49.

That's A Cute Baby

Infant Francois Langur. Toranga Zoo Wildlife Hospital.

When people show me their babies, "cute", is not the word that comes to my mind. But, this little monkey is the very esscence of cute, in my humble opinion.

Albino Bottlenose Dolfin

Albino dolphin in Louisiana's Lake Calcasieu,(inland estuary).

Meanwhile In Space

Dust lanes backlit by millions of stars in NGC 7049 halo.

The Hubble and ESA telescope images never fail to fascinate me.

Nanotubes Strengthen Plastic

Electron microscopic view of nano composite strength test.

(PhysOrg.com) -- A research group from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel has discovered that adding carbon nanotubes to a widely used commercial plastic can greatly strengthen it. Their work is one example of how incorporating carbon nanotubes into plastics and other materials can yield composites with much improved properties.

Happy Phil Podcaster

Still experimenting with the new microphone. 4/7/09

I have tried the new 1" diaphragm condenser mic, singing a song, and speaking a voice over. It sounds great. Another experiment will be with my friend, Fred, down in Mississippi. He wants to do a radio show/podcast, and is finding the places on the internet where we can do it. It should be fun. Fred and I were in radio, years ago.

Today's Relatively Appropriate Song;
Radio -Van Morrison

It might rain tonight

In The Zone

Fuel For Thought

Dead Zone in Gulf of Mexico.

This week, environmental arguments against corn-derived ethanol and mandates to blend more ethanol into gasoline got extra ammo with a new study showing that growing enough corn to meet renewable fuel standards will mean increasing the “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico, as the Wall Street Journal reports.

Life On Mars

Picture of Mars from Google Maps

Fingerprints

There was an article in Physorg.com, by Lisa Zyga, about fingerprints. It was in essence, a review of a study called;

"The Role of Fingerprints in the Coding of Tactile Information Probed with a Biomimetic Sensor." J. Scheibert, S. Leurent, A. Prevost, and G. Debregeas (13 March 2009) Science 323 (5920), 1503. DOI: 10.1126/science.1166467

via: CERN Courier and Science

I got the feeling that she didn't read the study, because her speculations were misleading and off topic from the report. It did however spark a lively bunch of comments from people who were perfect examples of our faulty educational system. The Article.

I felt the need to comment in the hopes of steering the discussion back to the role of fingerprints with the following comment from, Happy Phil;

"The natural world is constructed with fractal geometry. No two leaves, or snowflakes are exactly alike. The stuff we design and manufacture uses Euclidean geometry, (Circles, Squares, Triangles). The study did, however, create a sensing device based on the general dimensions and spacing of fingerprints that showed a greater signal at the same frequencies that our brain uses for the sense of touch. It seems our fingerprints are enhanced sensory devices."

Mt. Redoubt, indubitably.

Is that a bird or an airplane?

Apparently, a large petroleum storage facility was built in the path of the volcanic mud flow, and 6.3 million gallons of oil could be lost.

Nano Supercapacitor

The device is a supercapacitor, a circuit component that can temporarily store large amounts of electrical energy for release when needed. A team headed by Chongwu Zhou describes it a newly-published paper on "Flexible and Transparent Supercapacitor based on Indium Nanowire / Carbon Nanotube Heterogeneous Films" in the journal Applied Physics Letters (Vol.94, Issue 4, Page 043113, 2009).

Every day I find more and more advances in nanotech research and development. There was also an article about a surfactant separation method that could be applied to separating carbon molecules from oxygen molecules.

In the current Nature Chemistry , the IBN scientists report that this novel material, named IBN-9 after the research institute, is the first hexagonal nanoscale construct with 3 unconnected interwoven channels. It is by far the most complex mesoporous nanostructure to have been synthesized in real-life and represents a new class of mesoporous materials, which consist of pores of 2-50 nanometers in size.

America really needs to get on the Buckyball. Most of these breakthroughs in nano science are taking place in other countries.

DNA Nanoparticle Connection


(PhysOrg.com) -- Building on the idea of using DNA to link up nanoparticles — particles measuring mere billionths of a meter — scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory have designed a molecular assembly line for predictable, high-precision nano-construction. Such reliable, reproducible nanofabrication is essential for exploiting the unique properties of nanoparticles in applications such as biological sensors and devices for converting sunlight to electricity.

Powerful Pulsar

A small, dense object only twelve miles in diameter is responsible for this beautiful X-ray nebula that spans 150 light years. At the center of this image made by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory is a very young and powerful pulsar, known as PSR B1509-58.

At the center of this Chandra image, a pulsar -- only twelve miles in diameter -- is responsible for this X-ray nebula that spans 150 light years. This pulsar is spinning around almost 7 times a second and has a magnetic field at its surface estimated to be 15 trillion times stronger than the Earth's magnetic field.

What a miracle we are. Here we are, tiny creatures in an incomprehensibly vast universe, yet we are able to observe, marvel, and learn from objects like this pulsar, 150 light years distant. Life is amazing.

New Microphone

I received the MXL V63M microphone today. I like it.

Today's Relatively Appropriate Song;
Sultans Of Swing -Dire Straits

Life is good