Watts Up With That?

In a nod to alternate energy, Ford annouced a new sports sedan with roots in the Mustang design that will run on E85 ethanol fuel. It's called the Ford Interceptor. It is shown above. The fuel it can burn, E85, is a mixture of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline.

Ford says: “Our customer target for this powerful masculine sedan was a man with a family,� Horbury said. “He’s essentially a good guy, but a bit mischevious. He loves power and performance. But ultimately, he’s responsible. When he has his family on board, he values new safety technology as well as a powerful engine that runs on E-85 ethanol.�

You may have read in the ER where Rick Keene went to South America to view how ethanol is produced and used as an alternative to gasoline. In Brazil, ethanol is produced from sugar cane and fuels a major portion of their automobiles. It was Brazils response to the Opec induced oil crisis of the 1970's, and it's a good idea.

In the USA, ethanol is produced from corn, but its production efficiency is reportedly not as good as with sugar cane. Nonetheless, demand for ethanol continues to grow, with new production facilities coming online each year.

Ford has issued the following press release:

Building on its legacy of bold muscle cars, Ford is introducing a modern, all-American sedan concept that combines “Built Ford Tough� attitude with the sporty elegance of its iconic 1960s sedans.

The Ford Interceptor concept comes equipped with a manual six-speed gearbox mated to a Ford Racing 5.0-liter V-8 Cammer engine that delivers 400 horsepower and runs on E-85 ethanol.

“This concept celebrates the best of American muscle, showing customers what ‘modern muscle’ is all about,� said Peter Horbury, executive director – Design, The Americas. “The Interceptor concept is much like a Marine in dress uniform. He looks smart and elegant but you can see the raw power that lies beneath.�

Flexing Modern Muscle
The Ford Interceptor concept’s exterior design features substantial, sometimes brutish, surfaces and sections that give the concept its modern, powerful look.

The Mustang-based concept features a traditional rear-wheel drive proportion that includes a short front overhang, long rear overhang and extended dash-to-axle ratio.

The Ford Interceptor also has a low cabin and higher beltline, adding to the vehicle’s attitude and sense of mystery.

“The Ford Interceptor concept is a pure sedan that speaks to performance car lovers everywhere,� said Freeman Thomas, director, North American Strategic Design. “These people might need more space, but they still appreciate the power and attitude that cars like this represent,�

Painted a deep blue, the Ford Interceptor concept’s strength exudes from its strong, high shoulders. And much like on last year’s Ford F-250 Super Chief pickup concept, a single character line runs the length of the body side, slightly sloping downward as it reaches the back of the sedan.

This adds wedge to the car, making it dynamic, without detracting from its smooth, clean design.

Signature Ford touches include the horizontal three-bar grille, which has been structurally integrated into the bumper beam, as well as “squircles� – or professionally square circle-shaped graphics – inside and out.

As a nod to performance purists, the ultimate muscle lies under the powered clamshell “shaker� hood, which caps a thoroughly detailed engine compartment that houses a 5.0-liter V-8 Cammer engine.

This is an upgraded variant of the 4.6-liter engine under the hood of the current production Mustang GT. The Cammer modular engine powered Ford Racing’s FR500C race car to the top of the Grand Am Cup’s GS class, achieving five victories on its way to the Drivers, Manufacturers and Team Championships in its first season of competition.

The Interceptor concept’s Cammer engine is mated to a manual six-speed transmission. The car, equipped with 22-inch wheels, also features a solid rear axle for more hard-core performance feel.

Attitude Within
Inside, the Ford Interceptor concept is sleek and thoroughly modern, completed in contrasting black leather and metal finishes.

The dash, headliner and thick steering wheel are leather-wrapped. Plus, the Interceptor concept’s four low-back bucket seats are wrapped in thick black belt leather with exposed-edge seams and contrasting caramel stitching. The seats are accented with Ford GT-inspired squircle grommets finished with Titan Metal painted inserts.

Squircle accents are repeated in the concept’s door trims, floor, console and instrument panel.

Designed within a pair of squircles, the speedometer and tachometer are eye-catching. The needles for both start at center and move opposite each other as the speed and RPM climb.

Other clever touches include retractable headrests that deploy from the roof when the car is parked. They adjust fore and aft, as well as up and down for each occupant. Audio control panel and climate controls also are stowable.

On the other hand, the gated six-speed shifter is exposed, just waiting to be thrown into gear.

“The Interceptor concept is a sedan – but with the heart and soul of a performance car,“ Thomas said. “This car is about restraint – and not clouding the driving experience with too much technology. There aren’t a lot of layers between the driver and the road with this car.�

Safer travels
For safety, the Interceptor concept incorporates Ford’s patented four-point “belt and suspenders� safety belt design in all four seats and inflatable seat belts in the rear.

While current three-point safety belts are extremely effective in reducing the risk of injury in a crash, Ford Motor Company is researching these two potential safety belt technologies as possible ways to further reduce injury risk in vehicle crashes.

A number of technical challenges still need to be overcome before such restraint systems could ever be used, but these technologies might one day further enhance safety belt effectiveness.

The four-point belt showcases a possible next-generation safety belt that is more comfortable and easier to use than traditional three-point belts, according to consumer research. Additionally, inflatable belts have been included in the rear seat of the concept to help better protect occupants in a variety of crashes.

Ford Interceptor Concept

Powertrain
5.0-liter Cammer V-8

Chassis lengths
Overall length...........................................201.6 in.
Wheelbase.................................................120.8 in.
Overall width..............................................76.4 in.
Overall height at curb..................................54.8 in.

Track width
Front...........................................................66.5 in.
Rear............................................................67.8 in.

Suspension
Front....................... Double wishbone-independent
Rear.........................3-Link Design with Panhard Rod

Headroom
Front...........................................................37.5 in.
Second Row................................................35.9 in.

Legroom
Front...........................................................42.3 in.
Second Row................................................35.6 in.

Posted by Anthony Watts at 06:57 PM | Permalink

From the "us" against "phlegm" department:
There's a DailyMail article about the possibility of a revolutionary flu vaccine that could work against all strains of the Influenza A disease. This 'holy grail' of vaccines would work on everything from the annual 'winter flu' to the 'bird flu'. The best part is that just a few vaccinations may provide complete immunity, unlike the annual boosters are current defenses require.

From the article:

"The new jabs would be grown in huge vats of bacterial 'soup', with just two pints of liquid providing 10,000 doses of vaccine. Current flu vaccines focus on two proteins on the surface of the virus. However, these constantly mutate in a bid to fool the immune system, making it impossible for vaccine manufacturers to keep up with the creation of each new strain. The universal vaccines focus on a different protein called M2, which has barely changed during the last 100 years."

The brainchild of scientists at Cambridge biotech firm Acambis, working with Belgian researchers, the vaccine will be tested on humans for the first time in the next few months.

A similar universal flu vaccine, being developed by Swiss vaccine firm Cytos Biotechnology, could also be tested on people in 2007 - and the vaccines on the market in around five years.

Posted by Anthony Watts at 10:39 PM | Permalink

The image above is from Google Earth, which had its photography for Chico updated just within the last two weeks. The picture is the closest zoom available and shows the new City Plaza under construction. Based on other construction landmarks around town and the colors of foliage, plus the fullness of Lake Oroville at the time, I'm estimating the image was snapped by satellite sometime in late June 2006.

Just looking at it I immediately found out something I didn't know; That the four corners of City Plaza are compass points. The North corner, which points to Duffy's Tavern is almost exactly true North, with the other corners being East, South and West. I added the letters to the image for your convenience, they don't exist on the sidewalks.

The previous imagery for Chico on Google Earth was taken in 2003, and quite fuzzy. Partially due to the image being taken while smoke and haze from a wildfire somewhere covered the town. Part of that imagery remains in the Nord Avenue section on the west side and when you load images with that view, you can see a sharp cutoff where the smoke ends and fresh image begins.

Another thing thats been updated is integration of vegetation colors at lesser zoom levels, which clearly show where agriculture exists. See the image below.

But the coolest thing is the 3D capability, and in the image below, you can take in all of Chico and the foothills in one image. This view is looking Northeast from about 23,000 feet altitude. The Chico Airport is in the upper left. Click the link below the picture for a larger more detailed image.

Click to view larger image

If you haven't tried Google Earth yet, its really a lot of fun. Free too. See http://earth.google.com/ It's a great tool for figuring out things or for just looking around at things you've never seen from the air. The Pro version, which I use, allows integration of overlays and drawings, and allows measurements. When I was running for County Supervisor this past year I used Google Earth partly to devise a solution to the Keefer Slough flooding problem. I'll post that solution in a future blog.

Another thing that can be seen in Google Earth is the city owned stormwater basin just south of the Chico ER building that was the subject of problems this summer related to mosquitos and a West Nile virus outbreak. That was a hot topic on Jack Lee's blog this summer.

But the most odd new image in Chico is the one below. Can anybody guess what it is?

Posted by Anthony Watts at 08:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Have you ever worked for an employer that was cheap to the point of making you want to find another job? So miserly and humiliating at Christmas that you had visions of fun revenge instead of sugerplums dancing in your head?

Slate Magazine decided to have a contest for the worst corporate scrooge, and over 200 entries were submitted.

Some of the stories are pretty humorous, others are just downright depressing. You can read it here.

I have a couple of stories of my own. Both were TV stations I worked for. WLFI-TV in Lafayete Indiana where I got my start was owned by The Shively Brothers, and Harold, the younger brother, was the General Manager. They were newspapermen and this was their first TV venture. Being that, they were both clueless on how to run a TV station or treat employees that had been in the business awhile.

One Christmas 'bonus' was quit memorable. Each employee received a brass key chain with a giant brass letter signifying their last name. Seeing how mine was one of the largest letters, a "W", and it was about 5 inches long making it impossible to even fit into my pocket. One employee suggested we all get together, spell out an appropriate message (you guess what it was) and present it to the our clueless GM.

Another one happened right here at KHSL-TV in Chico, soon after the corporate weasels from Catamount Broadcasting bought the station, and turned it from a pleasant family run business, to a place that was all about the bottom line.

Mickey McClung, the former owner, and a kind woman, always made sure each employee had extra money or a gift card to buy Christmas dinner for the family, and we could always count on that, and sometimes more in good years. The next owner, Howard Brown, kept the tradition and was even more generous.

After Catamount took over, we wondered what would become of that tradition. We soon found out.

The next Christmas we were presented with a $25 gift certificate to Holiday Markets. They were an advertiser, and the gift certificates were "trade outs" for airtime, so they cost the corporation nothing.

And...surprise, there are no Holiday Markets in Chico, the company had closed its Chico store that year. They had stores in Redding and Paradise, but with the price of gas, it was hardly worth the trip.

What I learned from these experiences was to treat my own employees well. And hand out real, significant cash bonuses at Christmas instead of something that will make them think less of you. Employees make the company, not the other way around.

Posted by Anthony Watts at 10:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

An erupting solar prominence photographed by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). [More]

In a post a few days ago I mentioned scientists discovering that global warming appears to be happening on Mars in its polar ice caps and that this was likely evidence of a solar linkage that also affects Earth's climate. Today NASA announced in an article shown below that the next solar sunspot cycle due in 2010 is likely to be one of the historically largest in 400 years of sunspot records.

What does this mean? Well if you follow sunspots and temperature trends on earth you'll be able to see clear correlations between the ebb and flow of sunspots and Earthly temperature. While global warming proponents brush this off as inconsequential, the fact is that when sunspots happen in larger numbers, Earth warms up, when they disappear, the earth cools, as evidenced by a 50 year cold period in Medieval history with virtually no sunspots known as the Maunder Minimum. Its also called The Little Ice Age.

So, with a big sunspot cycle in the next few years, we can expect many record high summer temperatures and warmer than normal winters. We'll see melting sea ice, retreating glaciers, and wailing of those saying "We told you so, CO2 is killing the planet!". Al Gore will probably get elected President by a panicked nation, and general worry and angst will reign supreme. Emergency CO2 emissions measures may be enacted. Perhaps a rationing on driving our cars?

And then, when solar cycle 25 hits ten years later, which will likely be much smaller, the "crisis" will subside and those whom enacted those emergency measures will pat themselves on the back and bask in their "heroism". Except, it won't have anything to do at all with changes in emissions. It's all about the sun. Just take a look at the picture above and notice just how small earth is compared to the sun, or even a large solar flare. Anybody whom thinks the human race has more effect on our global energy balance than an active sun does is just deluding themselves.

There's a monetary bet out there: two Russian solar scientists are so certain that its the sun driving climate change and nothing else, they have put down a $10,000 bet with a prominent climate change scientist saying we'll see a cooler of the earth by about 2015.

I want some of that action. Bets anyone?

Solar cycle 24, due to peak in 2010 or 2011 "looks like its going to be one of the most intense cycles since record-keeping began almost 400 years ago," says solar physicist David Hathaway of the Marshall Space Flight Center. He and colleague Robert Wilson presented this conclusion last week at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

Their forecast is based on historical records of geomagnetic storms. Hathaway explains: "When a gust of solar wind hits Earth's magnetic field, the impact causes the magnetic field to shake. If it shakes hard enough, we call it a geomagnetic storm." In the extreme, these storms cause power outages and make compass needles swing in the wrong direction. Auroras are a beautiful side-effect.

Hathaway and Wilson looked at records of geomagnetic activity stretching back almost 150 years and noticed something useful:. "The amount of geomagnetic activity now tells us what the solar cycle is going to be like 6 to 8 years in the future," says Hathaway. A picture is worth a thousand words

Above: Peaks in geomagnetic activity (red) foretell solar maxima (black) more than six years in advance. [More

In the plot, above, black curves are solar cycles; the amplitude is the sunspot number. Red curves are geomagnetic indices, specifically the Inter-hour Variability Index or IHV. "These indices are derived from magnetometer data recorded at two points on opposite sides of Earth: one in England and another in Australia. IHV data have been taken every day since 1868," says Hathaway.

Cross correlating sunspot number vs. IHV, they found that the IHV predicts the amplitude of the solar cycle 6-plus years in advance with a 94% correlation coefficient.

According to their analysis, the next Solar Maximum should peak around 2010 with a sunspot number of 160 plus or minus 25. This would make it one of the strongest solar cycles of the past fifty years—which is to say, one of the strongest in recorded history

Left: Hathaway and Wilson's prediction for the amplitude of Solar Cycle 24. [More]

Astronomers have been counting sunspots since the days of Galileo, watching solar activity rise
and fall every 11 years. Curiously, four of the five biggest cycles on record have come in the past 50 years. "Cycle 24 should fit right into that pattern,"says Hathaway.

These results are just the latest signs pointing to a big Cycle 24. Most compelling of all, believes Hathaway, is the work of Mausumi Dikpati and colleagues at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. "They have combined observations of the sun’s 'Great Conveyor Belt' with a sophisticated computer
model of the sun’s inner dynamo to produce a physics-based prediction of the next solar cycle." In short, it's going to be intense.

Details may be found in the Science@NASA story Solar Storm Warning

"It all hangs together," says Hathaway.

Picture above - Sunpot numbers have been increasing for the last 150 years and have been at their highest average levels during the last 20 years, which could explain much of the global warming conditions observed on earth.

Note that during the 1970s, sunspot numbers decreased, we had some severe winters, and many scientists and popular press at that time talked of a coming ice age. You can read a June 24th, 1974 article about a coming ice age in the TIME Magazine archive here:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,944914-1,00.html

Even as recently as 1994, TIME was concerned about a possible ice age coming as we see in this article:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,980050,00.html

Chances are, we'll see another dramatic dip in sunspots by 2015 through 2022 and global cooling will set in again as it did in the 1970's.

Posted by Anthony Watts at 05:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Sky of Jerusalem at 7BC-11-12 at about 7:30PM local time - Click to View Larger image

With all the hullabaloo about politically correct "Happy Holidays" greetings, as done up in electric lights on top of the Sierra Nevada Brewery, I thought the Christmas Star would be an appropriate topic.

About 2,006 years ago, according to a widely accepted historical and biblical accounts, a star rose in the east and guided three eminent thinkers, known as the Magi, to the scene of an event that was to change the face of the world.

Since that time, astronomers and theologians have been baffled as to the precise nature of the star which, as told in the Gospel of St Matthew, led the Magi to the stable in Bethlehem where Christ was born.

Was it a miracle, a divine intervention to herald the birth of Christ? Was there a star at all, or was it simply added to the Bible to fulfil an Old Testament prophecy? Or was there some actual astronomical event that gave rise to the story of the Star of Bethlehem?

These questions have intrigued scores of scientists, writers, and artists ever since.

Evidence drawn from modern Biblical scholarship, recent findings in space and ancient Chinese history to suggest that evidence of the star's existence could be at hand.

A British astronomer, Mark Kidger suggests that the Nativity may well have taken place at some time in March or April rather than in December.

Christ's birth is said to have taken place while shepherds were watching their flocks at night, he notes, something that takes place at lambing-time in the spring rather than in the depths of winter. If the local inns were full, as the Gospel of Matthew insists, this would be because of the Jewish Passover, which also occurs in the spring.

Kidger concludes that Christ was born some time around March in 5 BC, taking account of the generally accepted fact that the inventor of the Christian calendar, the 6th century monk Dionysius Exiguus, was five years out in his calculations.

Ther have been several theories, including the "star" could have been an unusual sighting of Venus, or perhaps Halley's Comet, a supernova, or a meteor shower.

More plausible is the popular theory that what the Magi saw was a planetary conjunction, which occurs when two planets pass very close to each other in the sky, often producing a very striking configuration.

As shown in the picture above, generated by a computer program known as Starry Night, one such conjunction took place in 7 BC when Jupiter and Saturn came close to each other three times in seven months and were then joined by Mars, an event known to have been observed in Babylonia, well to the east of Bethlehem.

A more recent idea is that the Star of Bethlehem may have been an occultation of Jupiter by the moon that occurred in 6 BC, the re-emergence of the royal planet from behind the moon's disc suggesting a royal birth.

However Kidger points out that the event would have taken place so low in the twilight sky of the region it would have been impossible to observe directly.

For his "best guess" at solving the Star of Bethlehem riddle Kidger looks to an ancient Chinese chronicle called the Ch'ien-han-shu which states that an object, probably a nova, or new star, was observed in March in 5 BC and remained visible for 70 days.

The object would have appeared in the east and remained in the sky long enough to have guided the Magi -- Babylonian astrologers, according to some scholars -- across the desert to Bethlehem.

"It's hard to believe the Star of Bethlehem could have been anything else," Kidger says of the nova, citing the coincidence in date, the duration of visibility and its position in the sky. And proof of its identity may soon be possible by looking for its telltale remains when the successor to the Hubble telescope goes online in 2011.

When a star goes nova, or supernova, if it has any planets, those planets usually become toast in the process. It may be that our birth of Christianity was heralded in by the destruction of another planet, possibly an entire civilization. As they say, God does work in mysterious ways.

Posted by Anthony Watts at 08:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Global Warming is a hot topic here on Earth, but it may be the issue will be settled not here on Earth, but on Mars. A study of the ice caps on Mars suggests it is also experiencing a warming trend. A story about new data from NASA cites a six year study by researchers at Duke University showing that Mars may also be seeing a Global Warming trend and that both the Earth and Mars are seeing changes related to solar output.

You can click on this link to get a time-lapse image of the Mars ice cap changes between 1999 and 2001. It may take awhile to load as its 1.6 megabytes in size. Those with very high speed connections can get an even larger and more detailed time lapse here which is 6.2 megabytes in size

Planetary scientists have been watching melting of deep, wide pits in the southern Martian ice caps. The melting is substantial. According to Michael Malin, principal investigator for the Mars Orbiter Camera, the polar ice cap is shrinking at "a prodigious rate."

Now where have we heard that before? Oh, seems Al Gore said in his movie An Inconvenient Truth that our own ice caps are melting and that we'll see a 20 foot rise in sea level as a result. Here's a transcript of the movie if you are interested.

The scientists believe this observed melting on Mars means that there is a layer of dry ice that is evaporating off of a thicker layer of water ice. The yearly increases in evaporation may be caused by a global warming trend happening on Mars.

The most recent images in the NASA sponsored study show changes from 1999 to 2005, suggesting the climate on Mars is presently warmer, and perhaps getting warmer still, than it was several years or decades ago.

Another recent NASA announcement, that recent water flows have also been discovered on Mars, also lends credence to the idea that Mars is getting warmer. One of the mechanisms suggested is that liquid water is subsurface, and that patches of dry ice acting as "plugs" are melting, releasing the water which moves enough surface material around before it freezes again to show up on photographic comparisons.

If both Mars and Earth are experiencing global warming, then maybe there is a larger phenomenon going on in the Solar System that is causing their global climates to change, like changes in the Sun. There’s correlating evidence showing sunspot trends match temperature trends on Earth. Mars may have a similar linkage.

But perhaps there will be those arguing it’s because we’ve landed two tiny SUV’s (Space Utility Vehicles) named Spirit and Opportunity on Mars surface.

Posted by Anthony Watts at 05:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Anybody who wonders what we are fighting for in the middle east should read the article below in today's Boston Globe. In case you didn't know, there are places where you could go to jail for just reading this.

Iran bloggers test regime's tolerance
Push boundaries of political dissent
By James F. Smith and Anne Barnard, Globe Staff | December 18, 2006

TEHRAN -- By day, Alireza Samiei covers banking and insurance for an industry newspaper. By night, he writes a daring online blog about Iran's social and political ills.

In a recent blog entry, he described a scene he saw while talking to a greengrocer about soaring prices: A young child was pleading, " 'Mommy, I want watermelon.' The woman, shy and sorrowful, singled out one broken, small watermelon from the spoiled fruit bin and told the grocer, 'Just this one, please.' She put 20 cents on the counter and hurried away."

Samiei, 27, is among the growing ranks of Iranian bloggers who are relentlessly pushing the boundaries of free expression, making Farsi one of the 10 most popular languages for blogs. The bloggers are testing just how much political and social dissent the nation's rulers will tolerate on the Internet.

The authorities are pushing back. They have blocked access to thousands of websites in recent years that are deemed to threaten Iran's Islamic revolution, including the BBC's Farsi-language site. A trial began this month against four bloggers on charges including propaganda against the state. And in October, the government barred high-speed Internet service in private homes.

Especially threatening, it appears, are sites that create online communities that might allow Iranians to assemble virtually. The government banned the hugely popular Orkut site, an online Iranian social club. The latest casualty this month: YouTube.com, the American site for sharing videos online. Click on it in Iran and the screen reports, "Access denied."

The Paris-based rights group Reporters Without Borders includes Iran on its list of 13 countries designated "enemies of the Internet." That organization's website is also blocked in Iran.

The organization said repression of bloggers has eased somewhat in 2006. But in a report in November, the group said Internet filtering has accelerated, with two political sites, tik.ir and meydaan.com, closed down in recent weeks. Both had criticized the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Bloggers agree that they have found some latitude in recent months. Many have developed a feel for the boundaries, and some are trying to stretch them rather than break them.

Farzana Sayid Saidi, a 29-year-old reporter and colleague of Samiei, has two blogs, one political and the other showcasing her poetry. She has been blogging in her spare time for two years. Her first blog was shut down within three days, she said, after she wrote that school officials were providing access to abortions in clinics for young students.

Now she's back at it. She blogged a few days ago that while Ahmadinejad wants people to have more children, his economic policies make it difficult for many families to do so. She said she received some obscene and abusive replies. In a poem on her other blog, she compared Iran's leaders to the pharaohs of Egypt.

She estimates her readers at only in the hundreds, but adds: "We just want to express ourselves. We don't know how many people are reading."

Farzana's colleague Samiei admires her courage.

"Of the things she writes in her blog, only 1 percent would be acceptable in print," Samiei said.

She and hordes of other Iranian bloggers are pushing the envelope of the permissible. Technorati, a Silicon Valley search engine for blogs, said in October that Farsi has moved into the top 10 languages worldwide for bloggers. Most estimates put the number of active blogs in Iran at 70,000 to 100,000, and growing fast.

Iran has a long tradition of controlling the airwaves and the print media, banning papers and jailing journalists who criticize official policies.

But Iran's online activists have proved harder to quash. They have used fast-changing Web addresses, proxy sites, and other technological tricks to get around the restrictions.

"They block us and we evade the blocks," Samiei said. "It goes on every day. They code, we decode."

The Ministry of Information periodically sends lists to Internet service providers saying which keywords to filter out so that users can't get access to websites or blogs that contain them. The government contends that the principal target is pornography and other morally offensive material. The word "sex" is among those blocked.

That has some odd consequences. At one point, an Internet café owner said, the word "hot" was blocked. And that briefly prevented access to Hotmail, the popular e-mail program.

Amirhussein Jaharuti, the manager of a major Internet service provider in Tehran, said the government's restrictions focus on pornography, and he feels that filtering is appropriate.

"This is the demand of Iranian families, that they don't want their children to use these kinds of sites," he said. Asked about the political restrictions, he said: "All governments have ways to control their societies. . . . It's natural that when we see that someone wants to destroy us, we limit them."

Jaharuti said his client base has doubled in the past two years, to nearly 70,000. He provides dial-up and digital-subscriber line service to home and business customers at a cost of 20 to 40 cents an hour, or about $20 per month.

Internet use in Iran has exploded in recent years, with about 7.5 million users in 2005 in a country of nearly 70 million people.

Some journalists say the Internet has become even more vital in Iran as the government has suppressed other, more easily controllable forms of expression. Several opposition newspapers have been shut down since September, including the prominent paper Shargh.

The editor, Mohamed Atrianfar, said in an interview that the closure of Shargh and other publications and renewed pressure on critical websites reflects the government's concern that "the more challenges we have, the more agile and fresh the society becomes."

"All the hard-liners have mustered all their strength to fight this war. I am proud that we have invoked this reaction in them," he added.

Despite its closure, Shargh has maintained a website to continue coverage of elections last week.

Atrianfar estimated that about 70 to 80 Iranian journalists have their own blogs.

"Websites and blogs have real impact," he said. "They have been very powerful in forming a word-of-mouth culture, especially for those between 17 and 35."

An Internet café owner in central Tehran who gave only his first name, Shariar, said the filtering of keywords rather than individual sites often blocks legitimate websites that people need for academic research. He also said limits on credit cards resulting from US financial sanctions against Iran have all but eliminated e-commerce on Iran's Internet, a major obstacle to economic growth.

Shariar said that while the government contends it is aiming its restrictions at pornography, "I think they are worried about politics. . . . I think they fear everything. They don't want people to make connections overseas. They are worried about information."

The authorities also close Western media sites temporarily. Both The New York Times and Los Angeles Times sites were blocked briefly this month.

A 22-year-old university student, Morteza Yeganeh, said the state-owned broadcasters and newspapers "brainwash people, so we need to find ways to educate ourselves."

But he said the filtering of sites is effective because "even though people can get around the filters, it is difficult and time-consuming and people give up."

Most Iranian blogs are apolitical, and government members -- including Ahmadinejad himself -- have their own blogs to convey their views. But those with blogs that challenge the government know they are taking a risk.

Niloufar Taslim, 24, said that three years ago, she was one of Iran's first bloggers, writing about social and political problems. But she started receiving e-mails signed by a group calling itself the Army of God, listing her name, telephone number, and address and threatening to kill her.

She shut down that site, but now has two new blogs. One talks about social problems without crossing what she also considers political red lines: transportation and environmental problems.

Another blog features her poems. One laments that she has lost her voice, that in "a situation without possibilities" her hands are "in pain because they cannot write."

Posted by Anthony Watts at 08:54 PM | Permalink

It was with sadness and surprise that I learned today that Bombers Baja Grill off East Avenue has closed their doors forever. They served their last Mexican food ordnance today, 12/15/06.

Bombers was known for the biggest burrito ever made (at least in Chico). There was the "missile", the "bomber" and the "atomic bomb" which between the habeneros, beans, and the calories, was a nearly 2 pound explosive combination.

I'm not sure where they got the idea to mix bombs and burritos, but here is an early picture from the experimental days of the restaurant where they were loading planes at the Chico Army Air Base (now the Chico Airport).

Bombers was an original, so original that those corporate franchisers at Chipotle knocked off the idea I think. But unlike Chipotle, which has food served in prison cafeteria style with steel and glass ambience, Bombers food was great, and the ambience had history you could feel.

I suppose it was only a matter of time though, they had a terrible location, and competition was springing up around them. They were also nearly invisible, which goes to show it pays to advertise.

I'll miss Bombers.

Posted by Anthony Watts at 10:53 PM | Permalink

Irregardless of our political situation at home, our troops overseas and their families, always deserve the best support we can provide. For the past two years, this event gave comfort to many local families whose loved ones are serving overseas in the cause of freedom. Thanks to a great outpouring of community support, it was hugely successful. This year’s event promises to be even better.

While the sacrifice of the men and women in our nation’s armed forces is clear, what many in our community don’t know is that families of our servicemen and service women suffer even beyond the separation and the worry. Many families lose their breadwinner, and often take a large pay cut in service to our country. Sometimes it takes months for military pay to even be received as training, locations, and deployments change, leaving families to subsist on savings, borrowings, and kindness. Some families find themselves behind in rent, or leaving important bills unpaid while their loved ones selflessly serve our country.

Proceeds of this event will replenish an assistance fund used to help local military families in their time of need.

It also will provide entertainment, moral support, and inspiration. Most importantly it will provide cheer and personal contact via an Internet Video Conferencing System that will allow our troops stationed overseas to see, hear, and interact with their loved ones left behind.

On behalf of our local military families, and the members of the Chico National Guard, I ask for your support.

You can support our troops 3 ways:

1. Buy tickets to the event
2. Make a donation of goods and services for the silent auction
3. Make a cash donation.

Details are below. Thank you for your consideration. Anthony

• Emceed by Bruce Sessions, KPAY Radio
• Tri Tip dinner with the Soldiers families, catered by Larry Juanarena (Pat and Larry’s Steak House)
• Fundraising Silent Auction
• Guest Speakers - Entertainment, and more.

When and Where:
Chico Elks Lodge, 1705 Manzanita Ave. Chico Tuesday December 19th 2006 6PM -11PM
Tickets are $30 per person

Tickets are available at:

• California Water Service 222 Whitman Ave. Chico (Next to Costco)
• Wittmeier Auto Center, Forest Ave next to Wal-Mart in Chico
• Diamond W. Western Wear 181 E. 2nd, Street, Chico
• Coldwell Banker, 7030 Skyway, Paradise

Donations can be made out to “Chico National Guard Family Assistance� and dropped off at California Water Service Company 222 Whitman Ave Chico or at Tri Counties Bank, All Chico Locations.

If you have a donation for the silent auction, they'll be happy to come by and pick it up. Email Sgt. Douglas Shaw at:
Chicotroops@yahoo.com

Posted by Anthony Watts at 09:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

"Cosmos magazine is reporting that even the blind experience deja vu — backing the idea that it is caused by misfires in the brain's temporal lobe. They quote a British study where a blind man feels like he has 'already seen' some unfamiliar situations. 'Hearing and touch and smell often seem to intermingle in the déjà vu experiences,' said the study subject, whose name has not been made public. 'It is almost like photographic memory, without sight obviously... as if I was encountering a mini-recording in my head, but trying to think "Where have I come across that before?"

Déjà vu, French for 'already seen', is the illusionary feeling that one has previously witnessed or experienced a new situation, and has been reported to occur in up to 96 per cent of the population.

Posted by Anthony Watts at 09:06 PM | Permalink

Fact: Sunspot 930 on the sun right now is three times as wide as the earth. This picture of the sun was taken today from the SOHO satellite and I superimposed the Earth to give you an idea of its size. Last week sunspot 930 erupted with a massive Solar Flare and Coronal Mass Ejection which disrupted some satellite communications. This came during a time when the sun is "supposed" to be relatively quiet.

These pictures might help in understanding just how puny we are compared to the sun and its total energy output, and just how little we can do when the sun changes its energy output. By the way, here is a comparison of how much energy the sun produces and how much we receive on Earth:

386 YottoWatts - Total luminosity of the Sun
( 386,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 watts)
174.0 PetaWatts - Total luminosity received by the Earth from the Sun
(174,000,000,000,000,000 watts)

Based on historical records, earth has gone through warmer periods when sunspot activity peaks, as show by the graph below.

Remember the droughts and high temperatures in California in 1978, 79, and 80? Check out the sunspots then. The graph below shows the number of days of 100+ temperatures that year compared to the number of sunspots (thin red line). Click the graph for a larger image.

Notice also that the overall swings in solar activity are getting larger than they were 100 years ago, and that the variances in 100+ temperature days are also getting correspondingly larger.

This graph displays a climatic record for the Dallas-Ft. Worth area for the period 1899 - present, charting the number of days per year that the temperature exceeds 100 F (shown with blue diamonds). The data range from a minimum of 0 days (in 1906) to a maximum of 69 days (1980). The pattern is not totally random, nor is it perfectly regular. Both small and large variations occur from year to year. Short term trends are difficult to predict, yet some long-term patterns are suggested (note occurrence of "hot" maxima roughly every 10-11 years). Patterns repeat, but never precisely, and next year's prediction is uncertain, within limits.

This uncertainty is one property of deterministic chaos, a signal that is ubiquitous in nature. Pedicting chaos is no easy nor certain matter.

The data is from NOAA/National Weather Service: http://www.srh.noaa.gov/fwd/CLIMO/dfw/annual/d100data.html
(Year 2000 and 2001 data from The Ft. Worth Star Telegram).

Posted by Anthony Watts at 02:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I've been thinking a lot about bacteria lately.

With a stepdaughter in the hospital with a limb threatening Staph infection, and the latest E.Coli outbreak from scallions in Taco Bell, its become abundantly clear that we are under attack.

The scary part is, we may be losing the war, and its our own undoing. People tend to look at large threats with greater urgency than the smallest most insidious ones. Nuclear war, terrorism, and global warming tend to be the biggest worry points for many people.

But I think we are looking at an even bigger threat, and possibly a looming world population crash due to bacteria becomng increasingly resistant to antibiotics. My stepdaughter's Staph infection is a perfect example. She's been in Enloe now for over a week, getting antibiotics in an IV, the most powerful stuff they have, and it's only slowly making a dent in the infection.

The problem is, bacteria can evolve new defense strategies at lightning speed. Since antibiotics were first introduced with Penicillin during World War 2, bacteria has lived millions of lifetimes and has evolved strategies to resist it, whereas some humans haven't completed one lifetime, such as our surviving WW2 vets.

Today, the battlefield killer, Staphylococcus. aureus, has become resistant to many commonly used antibiotics. In the UK, only 2% of all S. aureus isolates are sensitive to penicillin with a similar picture in the rest of the world.

And we are making the problem worse. In addition to overprescribing antibiotics for things like the common cold (a viral infection which antibiotics don't affect), and with people often not taking a full course of antibiotics (they feel better then stop) we are also training a new army of bugs with everyday occurances, like handwashing. For every million bacteria we kill, a few survive, and they go on to reproduce and carry on the resistance.

While medical antibiotics are regulated, antibiotics in hand soap are not, and they are ending up in our rivers, streams, and water supply. Here is an except from a University of Cincinnati study that says the Ohio river is now becoming rife with antibiotic resistant bacteria.

The microbiology done...found that bacteria in the river were resistant to three common antibiotics: ampicillin, streptomycin and tetracycline. Streptomycin resistance was most common. "The frequency of resistance was startling to us."

We are training a big army of bugs for a war that we may not win. They can outwit us, out produce us, and out survive us. Bacteria have been around far longer than we have and can survive, even flourish in the most hostile environments earth has to offer.

Posted by Anthony Watts at 10:37 AM | Permalink

The latest food poisoning of E.Coli makes one wonder: Just how safe is our food supply? Are the increased frequency of incidents an indicator of sloppy food handling, processing, and transport, or are we seeing the work of some group or entity testing our ability to detect pathogens in our food supply?

Contaminating foods with E. Coli is extraordinarily easy. Just culture it in an easily made bilogical medium known as Agar. Agar is typically sold as packaged strips of washed and dried seaweed, or in powdered form. Combine the E Coli culture with liquid, and spray a field with a hand pump, or toss a jar of it onto a bin of it during harvesting or processing.

The culprit here is a speciifc strain of Escherichia coli (usually abbreviated to E. coli, coli is Latin for "of the colon") discovered by Theodor Escherich, a German pediatrician and bacteriologist, is one of the main species of bacteria that live in the lower intestines of mammals, known as gut flora. Specimens have also been located on the edge of hot springs. Presence in surface water is a common indicator of fecal contamination. It belongs among the Enterobacteriaceae, and is commonly used as a model organism for bacteria in general. One of the root words of the family's scientific name, "enteric", refers to the intestine, and is often used synonymously with "fecal".

The number of individual E. coli bacteria in the feces that a human excretes in one day averages between 100 billion and 10 trillion. All the different kinds of fecal coli bacteria, and all the very similar bacteria that live in the ground (in soil or decaying plants, of which the most common is Enterobacter aerogenes), are grouped together under the name coliform bacteria.

E.coli O157:H7 is the strain that cuases illness in humans and can be fatal, as has been the case this week with scallions served in food at Taco Bell Restaurants.

Escherichia coli O157:H7 is a leading cause of foodborne illness. Based on a 1999 estimate, 73,000 cases of infection and 61 deaths occur in the United States each year. In the ten CDC Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network (FoodNet) sites (which represent 15% of the US population), there was a 29% decline in E. coli O157:H7 infection since 1996-98.

Infection with E. coli often leads to bloody diarrhea, and occasionally to kidney failure. People can become infected with E.coli O157:H7 in a variety of ways. Though most illness has been associated with eating undercooked, contaminated ground beef, people have also become ill from eating contaminated bean sprouts or fresh leafy vegetables such as lettuce and spinach. Person-to-person contact in families and child care centers is also a known mode of transmission. In addition, infection can occur after drinking raw milk and after swimming in or drinking sewage-contaminated water.

Consumers can prevent E. coli O157:H7 infection by thoroughly cooking ground beef, avoiding unpasteurized milk, and by washing hands carefully before preparing or eating food. Fruits and vegetables should be washed well, but washing may not remove all contamination. Public service announcements on television, radio, or in the newspapers will advise you which foods to avoid in the event of an outbreak.

Surprisingly, a common household spice, cinnamon, seems to kill this strain of E.Coli. When cinnamon is in, Escherichia coli O157:H7 is out. That's what researchers at Kansas State University discovered in laboratory tests with cinnamon and apple juice heavily tainted with the bacteria. Presented at the Institute of Food Technologists' 1999 Annual Meeting in Chicago on July 27, the study findings revealed that cinnamon is a lethal weapon against E. coli O157:H7 and may be able to help control it in unpasteurized juices.

Lead researcher Erdogan Ceylan, M.S., reported that in apple juice samples inoculated with about one million E. coli O157:H7 bacteria, about one teaspoon (0.3 percent) of cinnamon killed 99.5 percent of the bacteria in three days at room temperature (25 C). When the same amount of cinnamon was combined with either 0.1 percent sodium benzoate or potassium sorbate, preservatives approved by the Food and Drug Administration, the E. coli were knocked out to an undetectable level.

Let's hope the active agent in cinnamon can be isolated and put twoards protecting our food supply.

In the meatime here is some information from the Center for Disiease Control

How is E. coli O157:H7 infection diagnosed?
Infection with E. coli O157:H7 is diagnosed by detecting the bacterium in the stool. About one-third of laboratories that culture stool still do not test for E. coli O157:H7, so it is important to request that the stool specimen be tested on sorbitol-MacConkey (SMAC) agar for this organism. All persons who suddenly have diarrhea with blood should get their stool tested for E. coli O157:H7.

How is the illness treated?
Most people recover without antibiotics or other specific treatment within 5 to 10 days. Antibiotics should not be used to treat this infection. There is no evidence that antibiotics improve the course of disease, and it is thought that treatment with some antibiotics could lead to kidney complications. Antidiarrheal agents, such as loperamide (Imodium®), should also be avoided.

In some people, E. coli O157:H7 infection can cause a complication called hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), a life-threatening condition that is usually treated in an intensive care unit. Blood transfusions and kidney dialysis are often required. With intensive care, the death rate for hemolytic uremic syndrome is 3%-5%.

What are the long-term consequences of infection?
Persons who only have diarrhea usually recover completely.

A small proportion of persons with hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) have immediate complications with lifelong implications, such as blindness, paralysis, persistent kidney failure, and the effects of having part of their bowel removed. Many persons with hemolytic uremic syndrome have mild abnormalities in kidney function many years later.

Posted by Anthony Watts at 07:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Ok the first thing that went through my mind when I saw the word Yottawatts was that episode of Seinfeld where Elaine uses the phrase...yadda, yadda, yadda...

But its actually about powers of ten and electrical power (watts). I was researching the amount of solar insolation the earth receives from the sun (174 Petawatts) and ran across this page in WikiPedia full of variations on my namesake.

By the way, Petawatts has nothing to do with my disdain for the sometimes crazy tactics of the animal rights group.

So have a few watts on me:

Yoctowatt (10^-24 watt)

Zeptowatt (10^-21 watt)

• ~10 zW - Tech: approximate power of Galileo space probe's radio signal (when at Jupiter) as received on earth by a 70 meter DSN antenna.

Attowatt (10^-18 watt)

• 1 aW - Phys: approximate power scale at which operation of nanoelectromechanical systems is overwhelmed by thermal fluctuations.

Femtowatt (10^-15 watt)

• 2.5 fW - Tech: minimum discernible signal at the antenna terminal of a good FM radio receiver
• 10 fW (-110 dBm) - Tech: approximate lower limit of power reception on digital spread-spectrum cell phones

Picowatt (10^-12 watt)

• 1 pW - BioMed: average power consumption of a human cell
• 2.5 pW - BioMed: Sound intensity per square centimeter for average human threshold of hearing at 1000 Hz; 1 phon or 0 dB SPL
• 150 pW - BioMed: Power entering a human eye from a 100 watt lamp 1 km away

Nanowatt (10^-9 watt)

• 2-15nW - Tech: Power consumption of some PIC Microcontroller chips such as the PIC12F683 when in "sleep" mode. (actual consumption when sleeping depends on voltage supply used, see data sheet, Electrical Characteristics section).

Microwatt (10^-6 watt)

• 1 µW - Tech: approximate consumption of a quartz wristwatch
• 3 µW - Astro: cosmic microwave background radiation per square meter

Milliwatt (10^-3 watt)

• 5 mW - Tech: laser in a CD-ROM drive
• 5-10 mW - Tech: laser in a DVD player
• 100 mW - Tech: laser in a CD-R drive

Watt

1 Watt = 1 amp x 1 volt of electrical power

• 5 W - Legal: maximum power output of a CB or hand-held radio transmitter
• 20-40 W - BioMed: approximate power consumption of the human brain
• 30-40 W - Tech: the power of the typical household tube light
• 60 W - Tech: the power of the typical household light bulb
• 82 W - Tech: peak power consumption of Pentium 4 CPU
• 100 W - BioMed: approximate average power used by the human body
• 120 W - Tech: power output of 1 m² solar panel in full sunlight
• 253 W (2,215 kWh/year) - Geo: per capita average power use of the world in 2001
• 290 W - Units: approximately 1000 BTU/hour
• 300-400 W - Tech: typical PC power supply
• 400 W - Tech: legal limit of power output of an amateur radio station in the United Kingdom
• 500 W - BioMed: power output of a person working hard physically
• 745.7 W - Units: 1 horsepower
• 750 W - Astro: the amount of sunshine falling on a square metre of the Earth's surface on a clear day
• 900 W - BioMed: power output of a healthy human (non-athlete) averaged over the first 6s of a 30s cycle sprint. ^[1]

Kilowatt (10³ watt)

• 1.366 kW - Astro: power received from the Sun at the Earth's orbit by one square metre
• 1.39 kW (12.2 MWh/year) - Geo: per capita average power use in the U.S. in 2003
• 1.5 kW - Tech: legal limit of power output of an amateur radio station in the United States
• up to 2 kW - BioMed: approximate short time power output of sprinting professional cyclists
• 1 kW to 2 kW - Tech: heat output of a domestic electric kettle.
• 3.3-6.6 kW - Eco: average photosynthetic power output per square kilometer of ocean [2]
• 30 kW - power generated by the four motors of GEN H-4 one man helicopter
• 16-32 kW - Eco: average photosynthetic power output per square kilometer of land [3]
• 50 kW to 100 kW - Tech: ERP of clear channel AM
• 40 kW to 200 kW - Tech: approximate range of power output of typical automobiles
• 167 kW - Tech: power consumption of UNIVAC 1 computer
• 250 kW - Tech: highest allowed ERP for an FM band radio station in the United States.
• 250 kW to 800 kW - Tech: approximate range of power output of 'Supercars'

Megawatt (10⁶ watt)

• 0.7MW - Tech: Power output of Bugatti Veyron Supercar
• 1.3 MW - Tech: power output of P-51 Mustang fighter aircraft
• 2.5 MW - BioMed: Peak power output of a Blue Whale
• 3 MW - Tech: Mechanical power output of a diesel locomotive
• 10 MW - Tech: Highest ERP allowed for a UHF television station.
• 10.3 MW - Geo: Electrical power output of Togo
• 190 MW - Tech: peak power output of a Nimitz class aircraft carrier
• 900 MW - Tech: electric power output of a CANDU nuclear reactor
• 959 MW - Geo: average electrical power consumption of Zimbabwe in 1998

The productive capacity of electrical generators operated by utility companies is often measured in MW. Few things can sustain the transfer or consumption of energy on this scale; some of these events or entities include: lightning strikes, naval craft (such as aircraft carriers and submarines), engineering hardware, and some scientific research equipment (such as the supercollider and large lasers).

For reference, about 10,000 100-watt lightbulbs or 5,000 computer systems would be needed to draw 1 megawatt. Also, 1 MW equals approximately 1341 horsepower. Modern high-powered diesel-electric railroad locomotives typically have a peak power output of 3–5 MW, whereas a typical modern nuclear power plant produces on the order of 500–2000 MW peak output.

Gigawatt (10⁹ watt)

• 1.21 GW - Sci Fi: power needed to run the Flux Capacitor in Back to the Future to travel though time
• 1.3 GW - Tech: electric power output of Manitoba Hydro Limestone hydroelectric generating station
• 2.074 GW - Tech: peak power generation of Hoover Dam
• 2.1 GW - Tech: peak power generation of Aswan Dam
• 3 GW - Tech: approximate peak power generation of the world's largest nuclear reactor
• 12.6 GW - Tech: electrical power generation of the Itaipu Dam, the world's largest hydroelectric power plant
• 12.7 GW - Geo: average electrical power consumption of Norway in 1998
• 18.2 GW - Tech: electrical power generation of the Three Gorges Dam in China when complete

Terawatt (10¹² watt)

• 1.7 TW - Geo: average electrical power consumption of the world in 2001
• 3.327 TW - Geo: average total (gas, electricity, etc) power consumption of the U.S. in 2001
• 13.5 TW - Geo: average total power consumption of the human world in 2001
• 44 TW - Geo: average total heat flux from earth's interior (See figure in http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/9/7/16/1)
• 75 TW - Eco: based on global net primary production (= biomass production) via photosynthesis
• 50 to 200 TW - Weather: rate of heat energy release by a hurricane
• In "Star Trek: The Next Generation", the warp core of the fictitious Enterprise-D was able to produce a maximum power output into the Terawatt range.

Petawatt (10¹⁵ watt)

• 1.25 PW - Tech: world's most powerful laser pulses (claimed on 23 May 1996 by Lawrence Livermore Laboratory).
• 1.4 PW - Geo: estimated heat flux transported by the Gulf Stream.
• 4 PW - Geo: estimated total heat flux transported by Earth's atmosphere and oceans away from the equator towards the poles.
• 174.0 PW - Astro: total power received by the Earth from the Sun

Exawatt (10¹⁸ watt)

• 1 EW - Astro: Approximate power generated between the surfaces of Jupiter and its moon Io due to Jupiter's tremendous magnetic field.

Zettawatt (10²¹ watt)

• 135 ZW - Astro: Approximate luminosity of Wolf 359

Yottawatt (10²⁴ watt)

• 5.3 YW - Tech: Power produced by the Tsar Bomba fusion bomb, the most powerful device ever made
• 386 YW - Astro: Luminosity of the Sun

Greater than Yottawatt

• 3.31 × 10³¹W - Astro: Approximate luminosity of Beta Centauri
• 1.23 × 10³²W - Astro: Approximate luminosity of Deneb
• 5 × 10³⁶W - Astro: Approximate luminosity of the Milky way galaxy.
• 1 × 10⁴⁵W - Astro: Approximate luminosity of a Gamma ray burst
• 3.63 × 10⁵²W - Phys: The Planck power, the basic unit of power in the Planck units.

Posted by Anthony Watts at 02:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This Envisat MERIS image acquired on 25 November 2006 captures smoke spewing from Europe’s largest active volcano, Mt. Etna. The 3 350 metre-high volcano resumed eruptions in early September this year and entered its highly active phase on 5 November, according to the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanic Studies.

For a very cool large image see this: http://esamultimedia.esa.int/images/EarthObservation/images_of_the_week/MER_FR__0PNPDE20061125_H.jpg

The European Space Agency (ESA) is putting recent pictures of the Earth (taken 2 hours before) online using Envisat. To avoid filling up their server hard disks too quickly, only the bmp of the last 30 days are available but jpg are kept.

To try out this unique service visit http://earth.esa.int/earthimages/

Posted by Anthony Watts at 10:29 PM | Permalink

Solar power has held out a promise of energy independence for a very long time. Unfortunately, its taken a very long time to become a significant part of the energy production in the US. California leads the way with solar power, thanks to rebates and tax initiatives.

I was fortunate enough to be able to take advantage of that in putting solar power on my own home and as Trustee for Chico Unified School District, I spearheaded their first ever solar power installation
at Little Chico Creek Elementary School which you can see online here

The panels used for both of those projects had solar to electricity conversion efficiencies of about 14-15%, which is normal for today's silicon solar cells. So its with some real excitement that I found on the U.S. Department of Energy website news of a real breakthrough in solar energy efficiency

From the article: "...with DOE funding, a concentrator solar cell produced by Boeing-Spectrolab has recently achieved a world-record conversion efficiency of 40.7 percent, establishing a new milestone in sunlight-to-electricity performance." Ever since solar cells were invented to power satellites for the space program, improving conversion efficiency has been a slow process as you can see in the graph below.

Now here's where it gets really interesting.

A page linked from Wikipedia's article on solar energy calculates the land area that would need to be covered by solar collectors at 8% efficiency to meet the world's energy needs (18 Terawatts using 2003 figures). At this new 40% efficiency, it looks like a square 265 square miles American southwest would be enough to supply the
entire world energy needs. Just supplying the USA would take about 25% of that land area. It's possible. It's within our reach.

The big question is: will it be cost effective to produce this new type of solar cell?

Right now, off the shelf silicon solar panels are still so expensive that rebate and incentive programs are needed to make it cost effective. Let's hope that congress will take our presidents call for oil independence seriously enough to put some funding behind this new discovery.

Posted by Anthony Watts at 08:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

One of the downsides in dealing with blogs is that sometimes people like to take potshots but won't give their name, or they use a "handle" like NorcalBlogs infamous "Tasker".

Sometimes even the ER print edition gets nailed by it. For example, during the Jeff Sloan affair, editor David Little accidentally published a couple of letters to the editor critical of the CUSD Board of Trustees that were emailed in that appeared valid, but were actually sent by a bogus author. Of course I can't work up a whole lot of sympathy for that problem since the ER encourages a daily excercise in opinion without responsibility known as "Tell it to the ER". What most people don't realize is that email is traceable, leaving IP signatures that can even be traced down to the exact DSL or cable modem used to send the email, the type of PC or Mac computer used, and the email program used to author and send it.

Thats about to change.

So, its with some trepidation that I announce a new "10 minute email" service for all those anonymous cowards out there who like to fling opinion without having any responsibility for it. But I figure you'll find out soon enough anyway, so I may as well make others aware of it so they can learn to deal with it.

It is called 10MinuteMail and you can see it at www.10MinuteMail.com

It gives you a temporary e-mail address, and lets you receive and reply to e-mail sent to that address. The e-mail address expires in 10 minutes (or more, you can extend it as you need more time). Basically it provides an easy way to avoid giving your real e-mail address to Web sites which require an e-mail from you to sign up. You could think of it as spam avoidance or "drive by email".

I'm sure the cloak-and-dagger crowd will have fun conjuring up all manner of nefarious uses for such a transient communications tool. Drive by opinion just got easier I guess, but I suppose its up to editors and bloggers to ensure that posters have valid email addresses before they publish controversial work.

Now if we can just make SPAM expire in 10 minutes, we'll really have something.

Posted by Anthony Watts at 06:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

According to folklore, tonight's full moon is the Long Nights Moon. It gets its name from the long nights of December, when the full moon is closest to the Winter Solstice. It is also sometimes called the Moon before Yule. There's also something special about the Long Nights Moon: it travels extra-high in the sky, passing almost directly overhead at midnight. Go outside and take a look.

Posted by Anthony Watts at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

There's a Chicago Tribune article reporting that in Colorado the Air Force is jamming garage doors. In a joint U.S.-Canadian operation, they were testing communications on a frequency that would be used by first responders in the event of a threat to homeland security. The 21st Space Command based in Cheyenne Mountain is conducting the tests.

From the article:
"But the frequency also controls an estimated 50 million garage door openers, and hundreds of residents in the area found that theirs had suddenly stopped working... Technically, the Air Force has the right to the frequency, which it began using nearly three years ago at some bases. Signals have previously interfered with garage doors near bases in Florida, Maryland, and Pennsylvania."

I've always believed that eventually, somebody (maybe TV sitcom Home Improvement's Tim Allen) would put a garage door opener in orbit, and have it cycle through every code. It's the ultimate geek prank. In this case, the stronger Air Force transmitter signal is "swamping" the garage door receivers so that they can't hear the weaker signal from the remotes, just like local radio stations drown out distant ones, but when they go off-air you can hear the distant stations.

Posted by Anthony Watts at 11:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Those of you who know me kn