catdynamics | September 11, 2007more strange goings on in the general vicinity of the Middle East
Syria Comment has an interesting series on the Israeli Air Force strike in Syria.
Given how potentially provocative such a strike is, the line of news stories and diplomatic reactions is weird.
It is also worrying that Israel has minor mobilization, as allegedly does Syria.
The story now is a strike on weapons shipments from Iran, but the geography doesn't make sense.
In the meantime the ever unreliable DEBKA claims the USS Nimitz is heading back to the Persian Gulf after exercises in the Bay of Bengal - I don't like that, they…
catdynamics | September 11, 2007dinosaur killer asteroid possibly traced back to specific belt asteroid collision
I was going to blog this - Bottke et al Nature paper last week (sub) tracing the K-T impactor to a specific disruption of the ~ 170 km diameter parent body of the carbonaceus chondrite asteroid Baptistina.
They also suggest we've been in a impact maximum over the last 100 million years or so, because of the shower - a factor of two above long term average for sizable (1 km) impactors.
They argue the Tycho crater on the Moon came from the same event.
Interesting, might be right.
catdynamics | September 11, 2007Expanding Beyond All Understanding
If the universe does in fact become dominated by Λ - dark energy drive acceleration, then in a surprisingly short time the Milky Way will be rather lonely, as all unbound nearby galaxies will have receded beyond our event horizon.
catdynamics | September 10, 2007In 1999, David Stevenson wrote a short correspondance to Nature, suggesting that radiogenic heating of free floating planets with thick atmospheres might lead to them having surface temperatures high enough for liquid water
These would be planets which had been ejected from the stellar system in which they formed, and could retain thick, possibly hydrogen rich atmospheres, since there would be no sunlight to drive hydrogen escape.
Natural heating from radioactive elements would provide sufficient heat flux through the surface that with deep enough an atmosphere the temperatures at the surface…
catdynamics | September 10, 2007Everytime I hear "Jesus of Suburbia" I think they sing "am I just self-adjoint"?
catdynamics | September 10, 2007On saturday I spend a fair fraction of the day seeing a small plane endlessly circling over town, and the local fooball stadium
it was towing a large banner, advertisement for a major car insurance company.
I was idly wondering for most of that day, just why Geico was using Che Guevara's image to advertise itself...
It was the absence of the signature beret that finally clued me in...
I am sooooooo out of touch with contemporary pop culture.
PS: From comments
Too funny. Wish I had thought of it.
Viva la evolucion!
(looks like several variants available on Cafe Press and similar sites)
catdynamics | September 9, 2007The Bitch, PhD is back on form
But, I thought we were rich!
Disposable income on the left coast, versus income in the flyovers
How the hell have we been doing it
After much informed debate, the gory details of the affluent ex-academic life.
Not buying books will not save enough money for a down payment on a house in LA.
No, don't go for the adjustable, interest only loan!
If you want to live in Ca you either need to: have lump sum to get into housing; or, make good double income (and little or no kids); or, live like a student all your life.
This is of course the academic perspective. YMMV…
catdynamics | September 7, 2007Interesting animation series of arctic ice cover over the last 25 years or so, colour coded by age of ice...
From NSIDC Arctic Sea Ice News - Fall 2007
catdynamics | September 7, 2007Steamy, sultry friday, and we ask the iPod: what is going on with 2M1207B? Is it a mash up, as predicted?
Whoosh goes the randomizer.
Whoosh.
The Covering: Goodbye Blue Sky - Pink Floyd
The Crossing: Wide Open Spaces - Dixie Chicks
The Crown: God's Comic - Elvis Costello
The Root: Waiting for the Worms - Pink Floyd
The Past: Mr Jones - Talking Heads
The Future: The Space Race is Over - Billy Bragg
The Questioner: A Little Cat Cat Cat
The House: Il Pleut Bergere - Sien Diels
The Inside: Proud Mary - Creedence Clearwater Revival
The Outcome: Frosty the Snowman
Damn, it is!
As always, the…
catdynamics | September 6, 2007I know this is tiresome, but I find it interesting to play "what if..."
I'll get back to all science soon. No point in dynamic web logs if they don't respond dynamically to changing issues... eh?
So, what if the US wanted to launch a pre-emptive strike on Iran, ASAP, either 'cause someone thinks they should, or because of some provocation they choose to accept as casus belli?
The US could do a cold start conventional attack with less than 24 hour notice, but ideally they'd want about 3 days to get ready.
More, if the Navy is in on it, subs and maybe carriers, need to be moved into place.…
catdynamics | September 6, 2007NRC webcast of the panel report on Beyond Einstein
The press releases are spinning this as all JDEM/SNAP - anyone hear what NASA actually said about launch priorities and LISA after the official report?
catdynamics | September 6, 2007Hm, a flight of eight Tupolev-95 Russian long range bombers buzzed the North Atlantic,
oh, and Syria claims Israeli air force bombed their desert?
Zipped down the Iceland-Faroe gap, RAF and Norwegian Air Force scrambled to meet them.
Grauniad version here
US comment was that they didn't worry about "mothballed relics", transliterating from the Icelandic story on the incident.
These used to be regular incidents - training and probing radar and readiness.
But they were suspended for fifteen years, until this summer, now they have Tu's nosing about both in the Atlantic and Pacific.
In a totally…
catdynamics | September 5, 2007Beyond Einstein
1) JDEM
2) LISA
"Recommendation 1: NASA and DOE should proceed immediately with a competition to select a Joint Dark Energy Mission for a 2009 new start.
The broad mission goals in the Request for Proposal should be 1) to determine the properties of dark energ with high precision and 2) to enable a broad range of astronomical investigations.
The committee encourages the Agencies to seek as wide a variety of mission concepts and partnerships as possible."
My translation of Rec 1.2 is that it tips the scales towards SNAP.
ADEPT and DESTINY are more narrowly focused on Dark…
catdynamics | September 5, 2007So the USAF took half-dozen nukes on an inadvertent roadtrip across the US heartland
careless that, but shit happens
no harm, no foul, as they say
The interesting question is why the 5th Bomb wing is shipping Air Launched Cruise Missiles to the 2nd Bomb wing?
The missiles are being decommissioned, notes the WaPo article, but that is subtly misleading.
The bulk of the ALCM inventory is armed with nukes, but the use of ALCMs in the last decade has been standoff conventional precision bombing by launch from B-52Hs, after the ALCM-B is converted to an ALCM-C - "C" for "Conventional".
There are,…
catdynamics | September 4, 2007Shocking news from Iceland: the foreign minister has announced the the immediate withdrawal of the entire Icelandic contingent from Iraq!
The Icelandic foreign minister, Ingibjörg Sólrún Gísladóttir announced that while she deplores the fighting in Iraq and expressing her full support for the Iraqi people.
The icelandic contingent is a NATO information officer working with the NATO training contingent in the 'Green Zone' in Baghdad.
He will be home by the end of september.
Iceland continues operations in Afghanistan.
(Seriously: bomb disposal and air traffic control, as well as development…
catdynamics | September 2, 2007The "Big 10" Channel just launched.
A channel dedicated to showing just the college athletics of the eleven teams in the Big Ten conference
That will include a lot of repeats...
I am slightly flabbergasted at a university consortium negotiating such a deal, it just doesn't seem quite right, just hope it is lucrative enough to be worth it.
They could not have picked a better opening weekend, what with PSU annihilating their opponents on a picture perfect afternoon.
But, the channel just keep showing the Appalachian State at Michigan University game over and over again.
It wasn't that good a…
catdynamics | September 1, 2007there are some interesting air national guard unit activations taking place
some for overseas deployment to places like the 'stans, support units,
there also seem to be new national guard activation for US internal security duty - "Operation Noble Guard"
nothing spectacularly unusual, but some movement
probably nothing, but the kos diaries unrest continues
catdynamics | August 31, 2007A cool autumnal friday, foreshadowing a cool weekend.
And we approach The Mighty iPod, with trepidation, and ask: Oh, Mighty iPod One, the hour of our doom approacheth - what will the outcome be at 4 o'clock on the 5th day of the month of September in the year 2007 of the Common Era? We gots ta know!
Whoosh goes the randomizer.
Whoosh...
The Covering: Nice 'N' Sleazy - Stranglers
The Crossing: Are We The Waiting (live) - Green Day
The Crown: I Ain't Gonna Let You Break My Heart - Bonnei Raitt
The Root: Oh Well - Fiona Apple
The Past: Ode To Boy - Alison Moyet
The Future: I Wanna Be…
catdynamics | August 30, 2007kos diaries are buzzing about rumours that the admin will roll out casus belli against Iran
the current rumour is that we're in the pre-amble (cf recent Bush speeches and press stories), that they'll go into "not August any more" ramp up next week (after Labour Day of course), and gear for confrontation/incident/strike on-or-after Sep 11th.
Interesting.
Paranoid.
Possibly some truth to it.
Sep 11-13 are a good time for doing silly things, new moon, start of Ramadan, and start of major political turmoil in DC as reports, hearings and subpoenas all come together and Congress settles in for the…