Odd News

[dwest]

What a waste of helium. With the looming helium shortage and all...

That's the fault of the DOE, chu on that for a minute.

[Denny]

'Ardi:' Was the 4.4 Million-Year-Old Fossil Really the Oldest Human Ancestor?

When Ardipithecus ramidus -- "Ardi" for short -- was shown off last fall, she took the scientific world by storm. Scientists said the 4.4-million-year-old fossil was the oldest pre-human species ever found.
A partial skeleton is believed to be the oldest link in the evolutionary chain.

"What we found in Ethiopia at 4.4 million years ago is the closest we've ever come to that ancestor along our own line," Tim White of the University of California at Berkeley told ABC News at the time.

[Denny]

[mutepointe]

A video about a dog stuck on a fence. If you're a dog person, this is worth watching

[Denny]

'Titanic' director Cameron joins effort to plug Gulf spill

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Filmmaker James Cameron and another Canadian who built submersibles for the director's 1989 thriller "The Abyss" joined talks on Tuesday in Washington on innovative ways of capping the Gulf oil spill.

Cameron and Phil Nuytten, head of North Vancouver-based Nuytco Research, were to join several deepwater and oil sector experts meeting with Environmental Protection Agency officials, a spokeswoman for Nuytco told AFP.

[fearfaoin]

'Titanic' director Cameron joins effort to plug Gulf spill

Geez, everyone's getting into the act.

[Denny]

be a good time for Mel Gibson

[Denny]

Artificial 'black hole' generator fashioned out of circuit boards

Chinese scientists have stunned the world of boffinry by fashioning an artificial "black hole" generator out of copper-coated circuit boards.

Disappointingly this is not a black hole in the normal sense of a universe-wrackingly dense lump of hypercompressed matter, exerting a gravitational pull so fearsome that not even light itself can escape - hence the blackness - of the sort which, some say, might be created by means of certain exotic experiments and then gobble up the entire Earth (and/or Moon and Sun) in a terrifying yet unambiguously newsworthy apocalypse incident.

No, this is a different kind of black hole altogether: but just like a proper black hole, electromagnetic radiation cannot escape from it. Technically it is referred to as an "omnidirectional electromagnetic absorber".

[crookedtune]

Now there's a concept! A vehicle that can trap police radar signals and use them to make popcorn!

GM, this could be your salvation.

[Denny]

Something hit Jupiter ... again!

Just as astronomers were telling the world that they figured out what gave Jupiter a black eye last July, yet another cosmic impact left a mark on the giant planet today. And this time, it was caught on video.

[Denny]

Appalachian Trail to leap abroad toward Morocco

TOWNSHIP 5, RANGE 8, Maine —

First, there was the Appalachian Trail, which winds 2,175 miles along the mountainous spine of the eastern United States. Then came the International Appalachian Trail, stretching the AT's northern end in Maine to the edge of Canada's Maritime Provinces, where Vikings long ago landed.

Now they're extending the walk: across the Atlantic to western Europe, where the mountain chain's other half loops south to Morocco.

[dwest]

Appalachian Trail to leap abroad toward Morocco

TOWNSHIP 5, RANGE 8, Maine —

First, there was the Appalachian Trail, which winds 2,175 miles along the mountainous spine of the eastern United States. Then came the International Appalachian Trail, stretching the AT's northern end in Maine to the edge of Canada's Maritime Provinces, where Vikings long ago landed.

Now they're extending the walk: across the Atlantic to western Europe, where the mountain chain's other half loops south to Morocco.

Well darn, that means I have to get new boots! OH! wait! New stuff! Now shall we do it north to south or south to north?

[Denny]

the kayak portion should be interesting...

[Denny]

<----clicky for more

Report from WSDOT:
Last Saturday, a huge rock tumbled down onto SR 20 on the opposite side of (Spiral Gulch, the Annex, the hairpin, or whatever you like to call it) from the Liberty Bell Avalanche zone. (That’s at MP 163.7 which is between where the two avalanche gun towers used to be).

Our Yakima radio dispatch center got the first call at about 11:30 a.m. and WSP got there and confirmed there was an 18’ foot long by 12’ high and 12’ wide boulder sitting in the lane. The Trooper began traffic control. Our maintenance crew got there about 2 p.m. and lead tech Deed Fink had brought the large loader up from Twisp to use in combination with the smaller loader parked at Washington Pass (used 6 times last week for clearing small snow slides…).

They were able (barely) to push it over the guardrail and into the gulch about 6 p.m. and then do the temporary pavement repair and reopen the lane to unrestricted traffic by 8 p.m. If the two loaders hadn’t been able to tumble it, they were going to have to call the avalanche crew to blast it, which would have kept the lane closed into Sunday and would have cost a lot more in overtime, flagging, equipment and the explosives. Deed said that as they jammed the loader scoops under the rock and started raising them, the rear wheels on both vehicles came off the ground, to start with, “We looked like a couple of angry stick bugs for a while, before we got it rolling!”

Crews went up there today, fixing the guardrail and doing a permanent fix to the pavement.

[s1m0n]

Now shall we do it north to south or south to north?

Both. The primary axis is now east to west.