Another Solar Transit

This is some cool digital photography, not to mention a good use of photographic processing software:

Caption: Looking back on the year, have you wondered where the Sun was in the sky each day during 2010 at exacty 9am UT? Of course you have. Search no further for the answer! It was somewhere along this celestial figure 8 curve known as an analemma. Recorded from a residential backyard in the small town of Veszprem, Hungary, this composite analemma image consists of 36 separate exposures of the Sun made at 9:00 UT, spaced throughout the year, plus a background image made without a solar filter. The background image was taken on the sunny afternoon of October 9 (13:45 UT). On the left is the photographer's shadow. The positions of the Sun at the 2010 solstice dates are at the upper (June 21) and lower (December 21) extremes of the analemma curve. On the equinox dates (March 20, September 23) the Sun was along the curve half way between the solstices. The tilt of planet Earth's axis and the variation in speed as it moves around its elliptical orbit combine to produce the graceful analemma curve.

Image credit: Tamas Ladanyi/NASA

This picture was taken in Veszprém, Hungary, according to that Astronomy Picture Of The Day (APOD) caption, and the gallery page. As you can see from the shadow in the lower left hand corner, Tamas Ladanyi photographed the Sun by setting up the camera in the same place every week or so for a year. That in itself took a bit of determination and planning. Then he processed it to superimpose the Sun's position on one particularly nice photo.

Interestingly, Veszprém's latitude (47.1 N) is nearly the same as Seattle's (47.6 N). If I were to do such a thing from my house, the result would probably be similar, assuming I had both the wits and the determination.

Apparently, not many people have had those traits in regards to this sort of thing. This page of analemma pictures from Greece claims that only seven people have done it. Of course, if I did that here, most of the images of the Sun in the lower part of that figure eight would be just fuzzy gray patches.

Anyway, like the NASA Astronomy Picture Of The Day site where I found this picture, I can't think of a better photograph to wrap up the year.

Happy New Year.

Afterword: Visit Tamas Ladanyi's site to see some other interesting astronomy photos. He has some good photos of sunspots, among other things.

For a full size image, go to either the APOD page, or the photographer's gallery to see.

The Burien Squirrel

Because I can, and because someone forgot this happened, here are pictures of the Burien Squirrel:

Image credit: Cujo359

Image credit: Cujo359

We walked over to one of the local parks in Burien, and happened to see this little guy. He was completely unintimidated by human beings. Dana finally got some really good shots of him here:

Image credit: Dana Hunter

Here she was shooting almost straight down at him:

Image credit: Dana Hunter

I suspect there is more than one squirrel in Burien, but this one certainly is in a class by himself when it comes to hanging with the bipeds.

A Room With A View

It's an old theme - a pretty lady looking out a window. At least, it would be old if not for the location of this window:

Caption: We said farewell to our teammates Sasha, Misha and Tracy this weekend and they are safely back on planet Earth. Tracy in quiet reflection of an incredible journey…homeward bound[.]

Image credit: Astro_Wheels/NASA

This "picture window", the Cupola, was a recent addition to the International Space Station. Here's how its builder, the European Space Agency, describes it:

Cupola will become a panoramic control tower for the International Space Station (ISS), a dome-shaped module with windows for observing and guiding operations outside of the Station. It is a pressurised observation and work area that will accommodate command and control workstations and other hardware.

Cupola, ISS Observation Module

Plus, as the article mentions later, it's a great place for astronauts to just sit and watch the world go by.

It was installed early this year, during Space Shuttle mission STS-130

Caption: Cupola's 'eyes' open, its window shutters are moved. After the insulation blankets and launch restraint bolts had been removed from each of the seven windows, by spacewalking astronauts of the STS-130 crew, Cupola window shutters could begin opening.

Image credit: ESA/NASA

That's a view from outside the Cupola, with one of the shields pulled back so someone can see out that window. Given how complicated this thing is, it may not be a big surprise that, prior to the installation of the Cupola, there weren't a lot of ways to look out of the ISS.

The cupola will be like a mini control tower sticking out from the Tranquility node, as opposed to the other station windows, which are flush with the station’s exterior. Its seven windows – one in the center and six around the sides – will provide the only views of the outside of the station from the inside, in particular the Russian and Japanese sections. And with the station just about finished, there’s more to see out there than ever.

Endeavour to Deliver a Room With a View

Maybe this description of what the Cupola was meant to withstand explains why:

The windows are protected by external shutters, which can be opened by the crew inside with the simple turn of a wrist. Afterwards, the shutters are closed to protect the glass from micrometeoroids and orbital debris, and to prevent solar radiation from heating up Cupola or to avoid losing heat to space.

Each window has three subsections: an inner scratch pane to protect the pressure panes from damage inside Cupola; two 25 mm-thick pressure panes to maintain cabin pressure (the outer pane is a back-up for the inner pane); and a debris pane on the outside to protect the pressure panes from space debris when the shutters are open.

Caption: Internal view of Cupola during vibro-acoustic testing.

Image credit: Alenia Spazio/ESA

The 10-year on-orbit lifetime calls for user-friendly replacement of the windows while in space. The entire window or the individual scratch and debris panes can be replaced. To replace an entire window, an astronaut would first fit an external pressure cover over the window during a spacewalk.

ESA Node 3 and Cupola

Here's part of what the ESA site has to say about how the Cupola was constructed:

Cupola is a 1.6-tonne aluminium structure about 2 m in diameter and 1.5 m high. Its dome is a single forged unit with no welding. This gives it superior structural characteristics, which helped to shorten the production schedule and lower overall costs.

ESA Node 3 and Cupola

I'll bet it took a few tries to stamp out that puppy - not to mention a big press.

That vibro-acoustic testing the picture caption referred to is just one of a whole battery that have to be done in order to be certain that the assembled module and its parts won't shake apart, rust or rot, or fail due to unforeseen stresses. There are other tests to make sure that the electronics will work in all the conditions they need to, and that the software operates correctly in all foreseeable circumstances.

The cupola is part of the Tranquility module, which is meant to be a sort of all-purpose area, as well as a control room for station operations:

At 15 feet wide and 23 feet long, the Tranquility node will provide a centralized home for the station’s environmental control equipment – one of the systems that remove carbon dioxide from the station’s air, one of the station’s bathrooms and the equipment that converts urine into drinkable water, all of which is currently taking up space in the Destiny laboratory. And there’s enough room left over to house the station’s new treadmill and its microgravity equivalent of a weight machine, moving it out of the Unity node where it’s in the way whenever spacewalk preparations are going on inside the adjacent Quest airlock.

Endeavour to Deliver a Room With a View

I added that link to the article on the urine conversion equipment. It's an example of how the ISS and other space projects are still pushing technology that we may need here on Earth some day. Even if we don't, it's clearly going to be needed in space at some time in the future.

Sometimes I think that most people don't really understand what is so hard about building things like a space station. There are many reasons - it's work that's done where the assemblers have to bring everything they could possibly need, where the people doing the work must either do it in space suits, which allow almost no freedom of movement whatsoever, or by remote control. The things they're assembling are almost insanely complicated, with connections for electronic, plumbing, and pneumatic systems. But perhaps the most important reason is that it's such an incredibly harsh environment, where if radiation doesn't kill you and you don't run out of oxygen, some little speck of metal or rock moving at ten thousand miles per hour will. We're shielded from all that down here on the surface by the atmosphere and the magnetosphere.

The fact is we have it pretty good down here on the surface, compared to up there.

So it's great to see an engineering project of this magnitude up there and working. Four different space agencies, and no doubt dozens of contractors, all have to cooperate and communicate well enough to make sure that the different sections of the ISS all work together. That they've managed to do that says volumes about what people are capable of when they put their minds to it.

If It Were Done, ...

Caption: Riverbend's book. Alive or dead, she's a casualty, like millions of her countrymen.

It's hard not to read something like this without some mixed emotions:

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ruled out the presence of any U.S. troops in Iraq after the end of 2011, saying his new government and the country's security forces were capable of confronting any remaining threats to Iraq's security, sovereignty and unity.

Mr. Maliki spoke with The Wall Street Journal in a two-hour interview, his first since Iraq ended nine months of stalemate and seated a new government after an inconclusive election, allowing Mr. Maliki to begin a second term as premier.

A majority of Iraqis—and some Iraqi and U.S. officials—have assumed the U.S. troop presence would eventually be extended, especially after the long government limbo. But Mr. Maliki was eager to draw a line in his most definitive remarks on the subject. "The last American soldier will leave Iraq" as agreed, he said, speaking at his office in a leafy section of Baghdad's protected Green Zone. "This agreement is not subject to extension, not subject to alteration. It is sealed."

Iraq Wants the U.S. Out

Of course, the most prevalent feeling is that it's about time we were out of there. We never should have been there in the first place. It's pretty clear that Iraqis have good reason to want us gone, we've wrecked the place, and it wasn't all that great when we got there.

Still, it does feel sad to be getting the bum's rush out of there. We lost good people there, and spent a lot of treasure, too. It's hard not to expect that people would be grateful for that, but I doubt I would be if I were in their place.


Caption: BARWANAH, Iraq (November 7, 2006) - U.S. Marines gather around the boots, helmet and rifle to pay homage to a fallen Marine during a memorial service in Barwanah, Iraq, on Oct. 25, 2006. Photo by Sgt. Jason L. Jensen, U.S. Marine Corps.

Image credit: U.S. Army Central Command, reduced by Cujo359

The other sad thing is that feeling of having gone through Vietnam all over again - lives lost and wealth destroyed in the name of making sure that some people didn't have to admit they were wrong, and others didn't lose profits from military spending. Our thousands of dead, the walking wounded who may never recover, the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who died, and the millions who lost their homes all suffered for nothing.

Somehow, this song seems appropriate:

The speculators made their money
On the blood you shed
Your Mama's pulled the sheets up off your bed
The profiteers on Jane Street
Sold your shoes and clothes
Ain't nobody talking 'cause everybody knows
We pulled your cycle out of the garage
And polished up the chrome
Our Gypsy biker's comin' home


Lyrics: Gypsy Biker

This video is a memorial to someone's friend, but I like it. It's the story of a life, and the people who valued that life. Hundreds of thousands of lives were extinguished in Iraq for no reason at all. It was started by a lie. Our current national house of prostitution (Congress), and our current con man of a President have decided that no one who told that lie will ever pay for it. And why should they? They did nothing to stop this tragedy from unfolding when they had the power. Many, in fact, profited from it, if only indirectly via campaign contributions from defense contractors.

As another great writer of tragedies once wrote, If it were done, when 'tis done; then 'twere well/It were done quickly.

It's taken more than eight years. In the end, we didn't even get that mercy.

The only good thing we can say is, at least for us, it will finally be over in a year or so.

UPDATE: Added the last two sentences in the fourth paragraph from the bottom. It's part of the tragedy of this war, and part of the folly, that the people who made the bad decisions are benefiting from them.

For Those Having Flash Problems

Image credit: I Can Has Cheezburger

It took long enough, but apparently Adobe released a 64-bit version of the Flash player, called Flash player "Square" for 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows, MacOS, and Linux. It's a beta version, but so far, it's been working fine for me.

I just happened to find this page out of desperation, because nothing I was doing with the new Fedora Linux (14) was working. If you're using Linux, or one of those other 64-bit OSs, you might want to check it out.

Ubuntu Linux has a workable solution for operation Flash in a 64-bit environment, but Fedora plays by different rules, as do some other distributions.

Those of you who can play the video in this article needn't worry about any of this.

Quote Of The Day

Economist Dean Baker:

Robert Samuelson is once again calling for cuts to Social Security and Medicare, ostensibly in the name of generational fairness. Samuelson makes the now common argument that a hugely disproportionate share of government spending goes to these programs that primarily serve the elderly. Of course, using Samuelson logic we should also complain that a hugely disproportionate share of government expenditures go the very wealthy.

Robert Samuelson's Social Security Demagoguery at the Washington Post

It constantly amazes me how many assclowns will spout off about how taxing the rich more is "unfair" or "class warfare", yet those same people seem to be perfectly OK with taking away money that ordinary people have been saving up via Social Security their entire lives.

As Close As TV Gets To Journalism

Caption: Jon Stewart talks to disabled firefighters, police officers, and equipment operators about the stalled bill to help 9/11 first responders, on the Dec. 16, 2010 edition of The Daily Show.

Image credit: The Daily Show (see NOTE)

Not long after noting how superficial voters can be, I happened on this article in The New York Times:

Did the bill pledging federal funds for the health care of 9/11 responders become law in the waning hours of the 111th Congress only because a comedian took it up as a personal cause?

And does that make that comedian, Jon Stewart — despite all his protestations that what he does has nothing to do with journalism — the modern-day equivalent of Edward R. Murrow?

In ‘Daily Show’ Role on 9/11 Bill, Echoes of Murrow

What the article is referring to is this episode of The Daily Show, which was dedicated entirely to discussing the bill before Congress that was meant to provide additional funds for treating and caring for firefighters, police, and other workers who worked in the vicinity of the World Trade Center either on 9/11 or afterward. These people were trying to rescue people trapped there, and to remove rubble and other dangers so that bodies of the victims could be recovered. It was being blocked by a Republican filibuster, and, as usual, the Democrats were doing nothing to either end-run this maneuver or bring it to the public's attention. That all changed after that Daily Show episode. Suddenly, the television news channels that had utterly ignored the issue for months, including Fox "News", were all over it.

It's sad to have to write this, but Stewart is probably as close as television journalism gets to actually performing a public service these days. That's sad, of course, because he's not a journalist. Whether it's berating a loudmouthed financial "analyst" for his failure to foresee problems with any of the investments he was plugging, explaining how a President who promised to end the government's assault on civil liberties is doing the opposite, or telling a clueless Democratic hack that his act is getting old, Stewart has been reading us the news far more than most of the "real" journalists on television, particularly at the national level.

You really have to ask yourself why.

Television news is famous, one might say infamous, for the sort of "man in the street" interviews Stewart did with the 9/11 veterans two weeks ago. Their standard operating procedure, when some bizarre crime happens in a place such things usually don't happen, is to keep asking people in the vicinity "Aren't you pants-pissingly scared?" until they can find someone dumb enough to say he or she is pants-pissingly scared on camera. Yet it's pretty clear that no television journalists, at any of the broadcast networks or the four "news" channels, were interested in talking to the folks who were suffering thanks to breathing that toxic air while they were trying to excavate the area and look for survivors. This lack of interest is particularly strange here, since there's clearly lots of suffering and emotion involved. Plus, as Stewart demonstrated, there are clearly some who are giving interviews.

The only conclusion that seems logical is that they just didn't want to know. I don't know why that is, but it's hardly the first time that I've been amazed at the lack of curiosity in those quarters. This story, in particular, is easy to cover if you're willing to talk to a few people. Yet, as this article and Stewart both note, no one did.

The superficiality and lack of curiosity in our electorate is certainly reflected in the medium where most of them get their news. I suppose we can only hope that there's some comedian out there who's willing to do a little digging the next time there are people in need.

NOTE: This was a publicity photo, which normally television shows are willing to have reproduced. Its appearance here is not an endorsement by The Daily Show, Comedy Central, or any others responsible for the show, nor did they approve or contribute to the content of this article.

What Does This Say About Us?, Pt. 4

Caption: If you ever want to run for President, I suggest you not be caught driving one of these.

Image credit: cliff1066/Flickr

Josh Marshall addresses the issue of whether Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour would make a viable Presidential candidate in 2012:

Any number of things would have to change to make Barbour a remotely credible presidential candidate -- starting with erasing the image of Boss Hogg from the cultural memory of every American over the age of 30. And that would probably be one of the easier tasks on the list.
...
There are substantive knocks on Barbour. But you don't even have to go there to realize that the presidency is simply not in the cards. Do you see Barney Frank as a plausible presidential candidate? Even if you're a big Barney fan, probably not because you recognize that a) he's considerably more liberal than the rest of the country and b) even with social change being what it is a portly Jewish gay guy from Massachusetts with an irascible streak probably just doesn't compute as a presidential contender. Turn the ideological and sectional hour glass upside and you've got Haley Barbour's prospects as a national candidate pretty much down to a tee. In his bearing, mannerisms, appearance, accent and style of politics Barbour embodies a lot people's caricature of the unreconstructed, good-ole-boy South. And the confederate flag signed by Confederate President Jefferson Davis near his desk doesn't help either. As Newsweek put it in a profile a year ago, "The cofounder of one of the nation's largest lobbying firms may or may not be the Good Ole Boy Republican Fat Cat his liberal critics make him out to be, but he certainly looks the part."

Can Haley Recover?

[link from original]

I should mention that this article actually does point out some "substantive knocks" on Barbour's chances for being President, things that ought to disqualify him in any sane society, but that's not the point here.

The point is that nearly everything in that paragraph is superficial nonsense.

Who cares what the guy looked like? Should it matter that a man happens to look like a foolish TV character? This was, after all, a not-particularly thoughtful work of fiction produced nearly a generation ago. While I remember Catherine Bach in cutoffs and the orange Charger named after a Confederate general, nothing much else made an impression on me at the time.

For that matter, you have to wonder why a portly Jewish guy would be out.

He speaks his mind? Should that count against someone? I suspect that depends on what that mind is saying.

He has a Confederate flag in his office? Why? If it's to remind him that his ancestors made a big mistake 150 years ago, then I'd say that's not a bad thing. Maybe it's nostalgia for antebellum society. Once again, the "why" has a heck of a lot more meaning than the fact itself. Taken with his recent remarks about the Citizens Councils of the Deep South during the Civil Rights era, it suggests a pattern of insensitivity to racial issues, or perhaps even full-on racism. What it doesn't do, in and of itself, is prove much of anything. We're the sum of our actions, not particular ones that have to do with office decorations.

Image credit: Library Of Congress/Wikimedia

Under the circumstances, it's hard to imagine this guy being elected President nowadays. Look at that nose, and did the guy ever shave?. He's not fat, but he sure is an ugly mug, isn't he? Couldn't he get someone to straighten that bow tie, and isn't that a clip on? No way was he going to make a good impression on TV.

He had this habit of speaking his mind, too. Ahem, excuse me, General McClellan, if you're not using that army may I borrow it? It's hard to imagine someone more divisive. Did he mean to suggest there was actual slavery going on here?

And wouldn't you know it, he was a Republican.

Taken altogether, what we know about Haley Barbour, his lobbying firm, his apparent attitudes about race, his whole life, actually, it's hard to imagine anyone I'd want in the White House any less. But that's based on a complete picture, not what he looks like or what he chooses to put in his office. No one who occupies the Oval Office is going to be even close to perfect. Choosing who goes there based on what they stand for, and what they've done in the past, is a lot more important. If resembling Boss Hogg were Barbour's principal imperfection, he'd be the best President ever.

I don't mean to suggest here that these aren't Josh Marshall's priorities, by the way. I think it's implicit that he doesn't think that way just based on what he wrote in that article. What he appears to think there are lots of us out here in the Land Beyond DC who do think that way. Given our recent history, I can't say he's wrong, either.

Afterword: No mention of The Dukes Of Hazzard and presidential politics would be complete without mentioning this little gem from the 2008 election:

[Democratic Presidential candidate John] Edwards announced his candidacy while helping to rebuild communities destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.
...
Somehow, that never seems to get the sort of attention that his support from Cooter did.

Lawrence O'Donnell Is A Wanker

As it happens, John Edwards had some serious character flaws, but they had nothing to do with his being supported by an actor who used to play a hick on TV.

Ho, Frickin, Ho

Nothing says "I care" like a recycled photo:

Image credit: Cujo359

Except maybe this:


Image credit: I Has A Hot Dog

If you're celebrating Christmas, hope it's a good one. For the rest of us, it's the weekend, and that's good enough.

I (Won't) Be Home For Christmas

Caption: Denver Airport snowed in, December, 2006.

Image credit: ashleyniblock/Flickr

I'm so glad that I'm not traveling over the holidays this year:

Delta Air Lines plans to cancel 500 flights Saturday because of heavy snow expected in Nashville and Atlanta. For the first Christmas in 17 years, Nashville and Atlanta could get more than just a dusting of snow, according to the National Weather Service. The storm is expected to intensify and move northeast on Sunday to the mid-Atlantic states and New England.

In fact, a good section of the U.S. is getting snow Friday night. Winter weather advisories were in effect from Kansas east to Kentucky and from Minnesota south to Arkansas on Friday.

Some Regions Getting Fresh Snow for Christmas

Atlanta is a major hub airport for Delta. Odds are fairly good that if I'd been flying Christmas day, I would have been going through Atlanta. Of course, it could be worse, I could have been trying to get to or from Europe:

Thousands of travellers were stranded at the main Paris airport Saturday after hundreds of Christmas flights were cancelled, as freezing weather and widespread snowfalls caused travel chaos across Europe.

About 400 flights in and out of Roissy-Charles de Gaulle were scrapped, with some 30,000 travellers plans disrupted by the cancellations and delays, said the airport's director Patrice Hardel.

Flights in Belgium and Germany were also affected and motorists stayed off the roads as western Europe battled the latest cold snap.

Christmas chaos in Europe as snow strands thousands

Frankfurt and Heathrow, the other two of Europe's three busiest airports, have been either closed or operating at reduced capacity much of the week.

As it turns out, at least part of the problem is that the airlines in Europe weren't planning ahead:

Airport authorities at Charles de Gaulle ordered part of Terminal 2E to be cleared of passengers because of fears that the roof might collapse under the weight of 60cm (2ft) of snow.

In 2004, the same roof collapsed shortly after the terminal opened, killing four people.

The disruption at Charles de Gaulle was also blamed on a shortage of de-icing fluid, and the cancellation of flights led to 2,000 people being stranded at the airport overnight.

The French authorities, struggling to cope with the country's third major snowfall of the winter, said fresh supplies were on their way but would not arrive before Monday.

Snow paralyses transport in parts of Western Europe

Who could have foreseen that there would be lots of snow in winter, or that they might need de-icing fluid? Only people familiar with air travel, I suppose. You'd think they'd rather have a little extra on hand than have to refund thousands of tickets, and having to put 2,000 people up for the night in Paris hotels.

There's at least one woman who is probably sorry her flight wasn't canceled.

Claire Hirschkind, 56, who says she is a rape victim and who has a pacemaker-type device implanted in her chest, says her constitutional rights were violated. She says she never broke any laws. But the Transportation Security Administration disagrees.

Hirschkind was hoping to spend Christmas with friends in California, but she never made it past the security checkpoint.

"I can't go through because I have the equivalent of a pacemaker in me," she said.

Hirschkind said because of the device in her body, she was led to a female TSA employee and three Austin police officers. She says she was told she was going to be patted down.

"I turned to the police officer and said, 'I have given no due cause to give up my constitutional rights. You can wand me,'" and they said, 'No, you have to do this,'" she said.

Hirschkind agreed to the pat down, but on one condition.

"I told them, 'No, I'm not going to have my breasts felt,' and she said, 'Yes, you are,'" said Hirschkind.

When Hirschkind refused, she says that "the police actually pushed me to the floor, (and) handcuffed me. I was crying by then. They drug me 25 yards across the floor in front of the whole security."

Woman arrested at ABIA after refusing enhanced pat down

They're really good at beating up and arresting 56 year old women, but they don't seem to be much good at finding security problems:

Houston businessman Farid Seif says it was a startling discovery. He didn't intend to bring a loaded gun on a flight out of Houston and can't understand how TSA screeners didn't catch it.

Nearing the height of last year's Christmas travel season, TSA screeners at Bush Intercontinental Airport somehow missed a loaded pistol, one that was tucked away inside a carry-on computer bag.

"I mean, this is not a small gun," Seif said. "It's a .40 caliber gun."

Man boards plane at IAH with loaded gun in carry-on

I'm sure Mr. Seif obeyed all the instructions from the TSA agents. It would be nice if they were just useless, but sadly, the TSA are a danger to travelers, and they're an expensive one, at that. Their current budget (PDF - see page 24) is just shy of $7 billion. That could buy a lot of snow plows and de-icing fluid.

Based on the dates of those reports, these two incidents with TSA occurred roughly a week apart.

Why do I hate traveling in winter? Your fate is in the hands of airport administrators who don't think they need to have collapsed roofs beefed up to meet worst case winter conditions, airline logisticians who can't plan for a snow storm, and "security" people who couldn't find their asses with both hands and a big type copy of Gray's Anatomy.

Come to think of it, those are good reasons to avoid airline travel the rest of the year...

UPDATE: James Ala has a quote from a report about the man who managed to smuggle that gun through the TSA (in)security checks. It appears that the TSA does, as I expected, routinely miss these things. It's not the first such report, either.