It is a document linked to a secret society. Here is the translated text

A mystery that began nearly 2,000 years ago, when Chinese astronomers witnessed what would turn out to be an exploding star in the sky, has been solved. New infrared observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, reveal how the first supernova ever recorded occurred and how its shattered remains ultimately spread out to great distances. The findings show that the stellar explosion took place in a hollowed-out cavity, allowing material expelled by the star to travel much faster and farther than it would have otherwise. "This supernova…

If anyone reading this knows the (Chinese?) dialects being spoken, feel free to throw in a translation! (Or must make stuff up if you like.) Below the fold. May not be work safe. Depending on where you work.

Here in the Northern Hemisphere, many of our birds fly away in the fall. Other, very cool birds from even farther north, depending on where you live then arrive. But just about now, where I live, we are at the tail end of the migration out and not quite at the migration in, so this is a good time to take stock of what is important: Which bird books do you want people to give you for Christmas? Before I make any suggestions, I would like to point out that Princeton, an emerging and major player in the Bird Book world, has a facebook page that, if you "like," will automatically enter you in a…

This is very nice: hat tip: Got Emacs?

When climate changes, causing habitats to move, birds can get up and fly away to a new habitat, so really, they'll be fine. Right? Well, no. Read more.

The Universe has been simulated more accurately than ever before. There's a video. More whooping cranes have been shot to death, you can check on the details yourself but I suspect this problem is related to the fact that you can legally hunt some cranes (not whooping cranes) so you accidentally shoot the nearly extinct cranes. What is your professional responsibility? Physioprof wants to know. What does a science librarian want to read? How are we doing with this malaria vaccine? Scientists were recently lauded at the white house. What are the most pressing energy related challenges…

Years ago, I read an old newspaper account of chaos in 19th century New York City; A storm damaged many of the cages at the Central Zoo, and most of the wild animals got out. The next day or two was spent rounding up the animals, and even the mayor and the governor, who were experienced big game hunters, got involved in tracking down the rhino and the hippo and the lions and the rest of them. A few months ago, for some reason, that story re-emerged in my memory for the first time in decades, so I went and looked it up and found out that it was a hoax. I don't remember if I knew it was a hoax…

You will recall that I recently reviewed the book Land of Lisp. It turns out I've got two copies of it, and would like to give one away. To you. As a bounty. This is not a contest. It is a bounty. You can "win" a brand new copy of Land of Lisp very easily. What you need to do is to supply the best eLisp code, in my opinion, in the comments below. The code should have the following characteristics: 1) It should work, probably as an .el file. Code that you just think might work or has parts like "Then you do something like this bla bla bla" is interesting and you are welcome to post it…

click image to vote in poll

As you know, my nephew LeRoy is a contestant on the X Factor. I expect you to go vote for him on Tuedsay, OK? Assuming there is voting. I'm not sure how it works, actually. Anyway, here's LeRoy getting through the last round (and some other guy):

As an archaeologist, my expertise in the cognate field of geology includes fluvial processes, so I know something about floods. And I've experienced plenty of floods working in the Hudson and Mohawk river valleys ... now that I think of it, I've got quite a few good flood stories. But the most significant experience I've had with flooding happened in about a foot of water. It was in the Congo, at Senga, a location I've written about before. Our camp was on one side of a wash right where it entered the Semliki River, and the excavation was on the other side of the wash, but since the…

What is scarier than Halloween? 1804 Lewis and Clark struck out on their famous expedition. Alexander Hamilton was shot to death in a duel. Morphine is invented. Short distance transport is done on foot or horses, long distance on clipper ships or packets. The world population reaches 1 billion. 1927, over a century later Horses are still widely used but some people are driving around in cars and trains have been in use for almost a century. The War of 1812, the American Civil War, the Spanish American War, and World War 1 have all come and gone. The first transatlantic phone call is made.…

Although one can not be certain, all the evidence points to the fact that William Shakespeare smoked pot. This is not a new story. My good friend and colleague, Dr. Francis Thackeray, who has never smoked pot in his life but who has acted in Shakespeare's plays numerous times, led a research team that put 2 and 2 together and came up with narcotic literary munchies. In Shakespeare's time, land owners were required to grow pot in order to provide fibers for making the rope needed hoist the sails and flags over the increasingly powerful British Navy and merchant vessels. One of the better…

Urban areas can be warmer than surrounding non-urban areas because there is a lot of combustion, pavement and other structure can collect solar heat and retain it for a while, and other factors. It is not uncommon to look at a weather map where conditions for precipitation are marginal, and everywhere but the urban zone, or only the urban zone and nothing else, is showing a weather phenomenon. Because people and airports (where weather is very important) are located in or very near urban areas, it stands to reason that a lot of the data used to estimate global temperatures would be affected…

Fool Me Twice Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America" was officially released last night in Minneapolis with appropriate fanfare and celebration. Everyone who gets to know Shawn likes him from the start and quickly learns to respect him and eventually hold him with a certain amount of well-earned awe, and like any book, we've all seen this one coming for quite some time. (I have an old pre-release copy in which every page is "00" but, surprisingly, the front cover is just like the final form.) Shawn gave a talk at the release party, but since he is held in such high…

My sister won the science fair with a "frictionless puck" using CO2, two jars, and two hockey pucks. This is not that: More here.

The real question is, if sea levels rose due to melting glacial ice, what percentage of the word's population would get their feet wet? There are several problems with addressing this question, including the fact that it depends on how high sea levels rose. Most studies or calculations are based on what most people consider to be a large rise in sea level of about 10 meters/30 feet. Given this sort of consideration, the number of people living in the global food zone is significant. Here are a few tidbits from the Intertubes: Three-quarters of the world's mega-cities are by the sea.* By…

There are several reasons why there is no vaccine for malaria, but the thing you might want to know is that malaria is not a virus, and it is not even a bacterium. It's a protist. Generally speaking, there are not really vaccines for such organisms. One metastudy that looked specifically at Malaria had this to report: We identify and evaluate 1916 immunization studies between 1965-February 2010, and exclude partially or nonprotective results to find 177 completely protective immunization experiments. Detailed reexamination reveals an unexpectedly mundane basis for selective vaccine…