debris | Filome sharers have read the following articles about "debris" | www.filome.com filome.com http://www.filome.com/key/debris You're viewing shares 1-20 of 20 total shares for the keyword debris This is a keyword feed for "debris" from Filome read and shared items in Google Reader. If you would like to search or subscribe to category/keyword feeds for posts that are by shared with Google Reader users visit http://filome.com. en-us Copyright for these items belong to their original publishers. No filome, google reader, shared items, community knowledge organizer This is the keyword feed for "debris" from my read items in Google Reader. This is the keyword feed for "debris" from my read items in Google Reader. http://www.filome.com/images/feed_image.jpg debris | Filome sharers have read the following articles about "debris" | www.filome.com http://www.filome.com/key/debris This is a keyword feed for "debris" from Filome read and shared items in Google Reader. If you would like to search or subscribe to category/keyword feeds for posts that are by shared with Google Reader users visit http://filome.com. http://www.filome.com filome beta Kablam! http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BadAstronomyBlog/~3/w6dgJaxUUr0/ Shared item Bad Astronomy
First shared by - spavis
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This image is stunning. And not just because, well, it's all explodey and stuff:


[Click to explodenate.]

The three panels show a 1986 test of a Tomahawk cruise missile. The missile traveled 640 km (400 mile) low over the terrain to detonate above the target, a decommissioned fighter plane. It's pretty clear the test was a success.

But what caught my eye immediately was the middle panel. Let me zoom it for you:


[Click to hugely embiggen!]

Now look carefully there. When the missile exploded, the expanding debris cloud from the vaporized weapon was probably moving faster than the speed of sound. Even so, in this second picture you can see none of it had touched the plane yet when the shot was snapped.

Yet look at the plane: it's on fire. How can that be?

It's because of something that moves much faster even than supersonic debris: light. When the warhead exploded, it sent out a huge pulse of heat in the form of infrared photons, light that travels about a million times faster than sound. As far as that flash of heat was concerned, the expanding debris was standing perfectly still! There was plenty of time for that heat to get to the plane and set it aflame before the explosion itself could reach that far.

Note that third picture, taken from an oblique angle. You can match the features in the fireball to the ones in the second picture. The ground around the plane is lit up by the blast, and again no debris had yet reached the plane itself.

It's a little counterintuitive that the explosion works this way. We think of explosions as being made of expanding stuff, but it turns out that light has its role to fill as well. In fact, this is important in other ways: one idea to push Earth-crossing asteroids out of the way is to light off a nuke nearby. The force of the explosion itself isn't all that great in space, because there's no air to create a shock wave. The only momentum you give the rock directly is the expanding debris from the bomb itself, which isn't all that much. But the blast of heat/light is immense, and can heat the asteroid past its vaporization point. The flash-vaporized rock expands, pushing on the asteroid like a rocket motor.

Unfortunately, modeling of this shows it doesn't work terribly well compared to other methods (like simply slamming the asteroid with a space probe like a linebacker hitting a quarterback). Still, you need to consider all the details when thinking about things like this. The devil hides in them, y'know!

Oh, and one more thing. This Tomahawk test was done 24 years ago. How much has the technology improved since then?

Yikes.




plane debris light heat expanding plane heat light debris itself expanding expanding debris explosion itself faster than second picture ]]>Bad Astronomy
First shared by - spavis
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This image is stunning. And not just because, well, it's all explodey and stuff:


[Click to explodenate.]

The three panels show a 1986 test of a Tomahawk cruise missile. The missile traveled 640 km (400 mile) low over the terrain to detonate above the target, a decommissioned fighter plane. It's pretty clear the test was a success.

But what caught my eye immediately was the middle panel. Let me zoom it for you:


[Click to hugely embiggen!]

Now look carefully there. When the missile exploded, the expanding debris cloud from the vaporized weapon was probably moving faster than the speed of sound. Even so, in this second picture you can see none of it had touched the plane yet when the shot was snapped.

Yet look at the plane: it's on fire. How can that be?

It's because of something that moves much faster even than supersonic debris: light. When the warhead exploded, it sent out a huge pulse of heat in the form of infrared photons, light that travels about a million times faster than sound. As far as that flash of heat was concerned, the expanding debris was standing perfectly still! There was plenty of time for that heat to get to the plane and set it aflame before the explosion itself could reach that far.

Note that third picture, taken from an oblique angle. You can match the features in the fireball to the ones in the second picture. The ground around the plane is lit up by the blast, and again no debris had yet reached the plane itself.

It's a little counterintuitive that the explosion works this way. We think of explosions as being made of expanding stuff, but it turns out that light has its role to fill as well. In fact, this is important in other ways: one idea to push Earth-crossing asteroids out of the way is to light off a nuke nearby. The force of the explosion itself isn't all that great in space, because there's no air to create a shock wave. The only momentum you give the rock directly is the expanding debris from the bomb itself, which isn't all that much. But the blast of heat/light is immense, and can heat the asteroid past its vaporization point. The flash-vaporized rock expands, pushing on the asteroid like a rocket motor.

Unfortunately, modeling of this shows it doesn't work terribly well compared to other methods (like simply slamming the asteroid with a space probe like a linebacker hitting a quarterback). Still, you need to consider all the details when thinking about things like this. The devil hides in them, y'know!

Oh, and one more thing. This Tomahawk test was done 24 years ago. How much has the technology improved since then?

Yikes.




plane debris light heat expanding plane heat light debris itself expanding expanding debris explosion itself faster than second picture ]]> Fri, 03 Sep 2010 08:50:19 -0400 30:00 tag:filome.com,1 The Sonar Image Of The Titanic's Debris Field Is Bigger Than Expected [Titanic] http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/mPFlFiJB-RY/heres-that-sonar-image-of-the-titanic Shared item Gizmodo
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The first sonar images of the Titanic have been mapped and the ship's debris field is much larger than scientists anticipated. Here's what the dots in the sonar image is actually showing. More




sonar titanic field debris image debris field sonar image ]]>Gizmodo
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The first sonar images of the Titanic have been mapped and the ship's debris field is much larger than scientists anticipated. Here's what the dots in the sonar image is actually showing. More




sonar titanic field debris image debris field sonar image ]]> Sat, 28 Aug 2010 22:40:19 -0400 30:00 tag:filome.com,2 Hunza debris flow video http://daveslandslideblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/hunza-debris-flow-video.html Shared item Dave's Landslide Blog
First shared by - phillip
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Shared by phillip
That was interesting.
You probably guessed that I am on holiday this week (normal service will be resumed at the weekend), but I thought I'd quickly post this new debris flow video from Hunza in Pakistan. The interesting but starts at about 1 minute 15 seconds:



hunza video interesting flow debris flow video debris flow debris flow video ]]>Dave's Landslide Blog
First shared by - phillip
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Shared by phillip
That was interesting.
You probably guessed that I am on holiday this week (normal service will be resumed at the weekend), but I thought I'd quickly post this new debris flow video from Hunza in Pakistan. The interesting but starts at about 1 minute 15 seconds:



hunza video interesting flow debris flow video debris flow debris flow video ]]> Wed, 25 Aug 2010 08:25:15 -0400 30:00 tag:filome.com,3 Riki Ott: The Big Lie: BP, Governments Downplay Public Health Risk From Oil and Dispersants http://www.huffingtonpost.com/riki-ott/the-big-lie-bp-government_b_638369.html Shared item The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com
First shared by - boonsri
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Pensacola Beach, FL -- When Ryan Heffernan, a volunteer with Emerald Coastkeeper, noticed a bag of oily debris floating off in Santa Rosa Sound, she ran up to BP's HazMat-trained workers to ask if they would retrieve it.

"No, ma'am," one replied politely. "We can't go in the ocean. It's contaminated."

Ryan waded in and retrieved the bag. That was Wednesday, June 23, the first day visible oil hit Pensacola Beach. Ryan had been swimming off the beach the day before, as she said, "to get in my last swim before the oil hit." The trouble is that not all of the oil coming ashore is visible. Dispersed oil - tiny bubbles of oil encased in chemical dispersants - are in the water column. On Thursday Ryan was treated at a local doctor's office for skin rash on her legs.

Three days later on Pensacola Beach, I watched BP's HazMat-trained workers shovel surface oiled sand and oily debris into bags early in the morning. The workers followed the waterline like shorebirds, scurrying up the beach in front of breaking waves and moving back down with receding waters.

The late morning sun retired the workers to the shade of their tents and the job of "observing," while it brought out throngs of beach-goers - children, parents, grandparents - who happily plunged into the "contaminated" ocean without a second thought.

I was astounded. Why did people think the ocean was safe for swimming?

There were five HazMat tents, four front-loaders, and at least two dozen HazMat workers on the beach. HazMat workers wore yellow over-boots duct-taped to their long pants' legs to minimize risk of contact with the water. The white surf popped with visible black tar balls as it rolled towards the beach. Waves left an oily signature of tar balls on the beach, melting in the sun. The treads of my Chacos weighed down with oily sand despite trying to avoid the mess. Most people were barefoot. Hotels set up oil cleaning stations on their premises - and signs saying the water advisory (put in place after Ryan's incident) had been lifted.

What's wrong with this picture?

Lots. For starters, Ryan's story from Pensacola Beach is not an isolated incident. I have received emails and heard personal stories from Louisiana to Florida of people who have developed skin rashes and blisters from going in the ocean. People describe stings by "invisible jellyfish." Turtle patrol volunteers who walk beaches daily write of blisters and bronchitis. And then there are individuals like Sheri Allen who took her dog for a walk on a beach in Mobile Bay in May.

Sheri wrote me that her "arms and legs were burning, even after the shower. The following morning ... (there were) ... small blood blisters. By evening the blisters had begun to welt. By the fourth day, the areas had got larger and swollen." She went to see a doctor but the sores remain and they have begun to scar her arms and legs. For several days after Sherri's incident, her husband found fish kills on the beach.

William Rea, MD, who founded the Environmental Health Center-Dallas, treated a number of sick Exxon Valdez cleanup workers. He once told me, "When you have sick people and sick animals, and they are sick because of the same chemical, that's the strongest evidence possible that that chemical is a problem."

It's not just skin rashes and blisters. At community forums, I commonly hear from adults and children with persistent coughs, stuffy sinuses, headaches, burning eyes, sore throats, ear bleeds, and fatigue. These symptoms are consistent across the four Gulf states that I have visited. Further, the symptoms of respiratory problems, central nervous system distress, and skin irritation are consistent with overexposure to crude oil through the two primary routes of exposure: inhalation and skin contact.

Most distressing to me are stories about sick children. "Dose plus host makes the poison," I learned in toxicology. A small child is at risk of breathing a higher dose of contaminants per body weight than an adult. Children, pregnant women, people with compromised or stressed immune systems like cancer survivors and asthma sufferers, and African Americans are more at risk from oil and chemical exposure - the latter because they are prone to sickle cell anemia and 2-butoxyethanol can cause, or worsen, blood disorders.

Public officials have failed to sound an alarm about the public health threat because three federal agencies - DHHS, EPA, and OSHA - cannot find any unsafe levels of oil in air or water. Perhaps the federal air and water standards are not stringent enough to protect the public from oil pollution. Our federal laws are outdated and do not protect us from the toxic threat from oil - now widely recognized in the scientific and medical community.

BP is still in the dark ages on oil toxicity. BP officials stress that, by the time oil gets to shore, it is "weathered" and missing the highly volatile compounds like the carcinogenic benzene, among others. BP fails to mention the threat from dispersed oil, ultrafine particles (PAHs), and chemical dispersants, which include industrial solvents and proprietary compounds, many hazardous to humans.

If oil was so nontoxic, then why are the spill response workers giving hazardous waste training? Our federal government should stop pretending that everything is okay. What isn't safe for workers isn't safe for the general public either.

Ryan's rash was getting better until she sat on Pensacola Beach to watch fireworks on July 4. The next day her skin erupted in fiery red burns. She is worried about her health. So are many other people along the Gulf.

Perhaps it is time for the government to protect public health first and BP's profit second.

Riki Ott, PhD, is a marine toxicologist from Alaska, volunteering in the Gulf. She has written two books on surviving the Exxon Valdez oil spill - Sound Truth and Corporate Myths on biological impact of oil to people and wildlife, and Not One Drop on emotional impact of disaster trauma and litigation to people and community. www.rikiott.com. Ott is working with Emerald Coastkeeper and others to petition the EPA to delist toxic chemical products in oil spill response.

More on Gulf Oil Spill



oil beach workers bp ryan beach workers ryan skin public chemical water sick hazmat health blisters pensacola federal gulf spill ocean risk oily legs children pensacola beach public health oil spill tar balls hazmat workers skin rashes spill response chemical dispersants exxon valdez oil hit oily debris emerald coastkeeper hazmat trained trained workers riki ott dispersed oil hazmat trained workers ]]>The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com
First shared by - boonsri
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Pensacola Beach, FL -- When Ryan Heffernan, a volunteer with Emerald Coastkeeper, noticed a bag of oily debris floating off in Santa Rosa Sound, she ran up to BP's HazMat-trained workers to ask if they would retrieve it.

"No, ma'am," one replied politely. "We can't go in the ocean. It's contaminated."

Ryan waded in and retrieved the bag. That was Wednesday, June 23, the first day visible oil hit Pensacola Beach. Ryan had been swimming off the beach the day before, as she said, "to get in my last swim before the oil hit." The trouble is that not all of the oil coming ashore is visible. Dispersed oil - tiny bubbles of oil encased in chemical dispersants - are in the water column. On Thursday Ryan was treated at a local doctor's office for skin rash on her legs.

Three days later on Pensacola Beach, I watched BP's HazMat-trained workers shovel surface oiled sand and oily debris into bags early in the morning. The workers followed the waterline like shorebirds, scurrying up the beach in front of breaking waves and moving back down with receding waters.

The late morning sun retired the workers to the shade of their tents and the job of "observing," while it brought out throngs of beach-goers - children, parents, grandparents - who happily plunged into the "contaminated" ocean without a second thought.

I was astounded. Why did people think the ocean was safe for swimming?

There were five HazMat tents, four front-loaders, and at least two dozen HazMat workers on the beach. HazMat workers wore yellow over-boots duct-taped to their long pants' legs to minimize risk of contact with the water. The white surf popped with visible black tar balls as it rolled towards the beach. Waves left an oily signature of tar balls on the beach, melting in the sun. The treads of my Chacos weighed down with oily sand despite trying to avoid the mess. Most people were barefoot. Hotels set up oil cleaning stations on their premises - and signs saying the water advisory (put in place after Ryan's incident) had been lifted.

What's wrong with this picture?

Lots. For starters, Ryan's story from Pensacola Beach is not an isolated incident. I have received emails and heard personal stories from Louisiana to Florida of people who have developed skin rashes and blisters from going in the ocean. People describe stings by "invisible jellyfish." Turtle patrol volunteers who walk beaches daily write of blisters and bronchitis. And then there are individuals like Sheri Allen who took her dog for a walk on a beach in Mobile Bay in May.

Sheri wrote me that her "arms and legs were burning, even after the shower. The following morning ... (there were) ... small blood blisters. By evening the blisters had begun to welt. By the fourth day, the areas had got larger and swollen." She went to see a doctor but the sores remain and they have begun to scar her arms and legs. For several days after Sherri's incident, her husband found fish kills on the beach.

William Rea, MD, who founded the Environmental Health Center-Dallas, treated a number of sick Exxon Valdez cleanup workers. He once told me, "When you have sick people and sick animals, and they are sick because of the same chemical, that's the strongest evidence possible that that chemical is a problem."

It's not just skin rashes and blisters. At community forums, I commonly hear from adults and children with persistent coughs, stuffy sinuses, headaches, burning eyes, sore throats, ear bleeds, and fatigue. These symptoms are consistent across the four Gulf states that I have visited. Further, the symptoms of respiratory problems, central nervous system distress, and skin irritation are consistent with overexposure to crude oil through the two primary routes of exposure: inhalation and skin contact.

Most distressing to me are stories about sick children. "Dose plus host makes the poison," I learned in toxicology. A small child is at risk of breathing a higher dose of contaminants per body weight than an adult. Children, pregnant women, people with compromised or stressed immune systems like cancer survivors and asthma sufferers, and African Americans are more at risk from oil and chemical exposure - the latter because they are prone to sickle cell anemia and 2-butoxyethanol can cause, or worsen, blood disorders.

Public officials have failed to sound an alarm about the public health threat because three federal agencies - DHHS, EPA, and OSHA - cannot find any unsafe levels of oil in air or water. Perhaps the federal air and water standards are not stringent enough to protect the public from oil pollution. Our federal laws are outdated and do not protect us from the toxic threat from oil - now widely recognized in the scientific and medical community.

BP is still in the dark ages on oil toxicity. BP officials stress that, by the time oil gets to shore, it is "weathered" and missing the highly volatile compounds like the carcinogenic benzene, among others. BP fails to mention the threat from dispersed oil, ultrafine particles (PAHs), and chemical dispersants, which include industrial solvents and proprietary compounds, many hazardous to humans.

If oil was so nontoxic, then why are the spill response workers giving hazardous waste training? Our federal government should stop pretending that everything is okay. What isn't safe for workers isn't safe for the general public either.

Ryan's rash was getting better until she sat on Pensacola Beach to watch fireworks on July 4. The next day her skin erupted in fiery red burns. She is worried about her health. So are many other people along the Gulf.

Perhaps it is time for the government to protect public health first and BP's profit second.

Riki Ott, PhD, is a marine toxicologist from Alaska, volunteering in the Gulf. She has written two books on surviving the Exxon Valdez oil spill - Sound Truth and Corporate Myths on biological impact of oil to people and wildlife, and Not One Drop on emotional impact of disaster trauma and litigation to people and community. www.rikiott.com. Ott is working with Emerald Coastkeeper and others to petition the EPA to delist toxic chemical products in oil spill response.

More on Gulf Oil Spill



oil beach workers bp ryan beach workers ryan skin public chemical water sick hazmat health blisters pensacola federal gulf spill ocean risk oily legs children pensacola beach public health oil spill tar balls hazmat workers skin rashes spill response chemical dispersants exxon valdez oil hit oily debris emerald coastkeeper hazmat trained trained workers riki ott dispersed oil hazmat trained workers ]]> Thu, 08 Jul 2010 00:41:03 -0400 30:00 tag:filome.com,4 AP Not Amused By The Woot Story, Tries To Play The Oil Spill Card http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/Trajzu6-cAo/ Shared item TechCrunch
First shared by - Jorg
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Oh those jokesters over at the AP the fun never ends! Last night, we wrote a post noting that Woot was (humorously) calling out the AP for not following their own ridiculous rules for when quoting from their content. By Woot's calculation, using the AP tool, the AP owes them $17.50 (but Woot was nice enough to offer for them to buy some headphones off of Woot instead). The AP didn't like that story neither our's or Woot's.

This morning, Paul Colford, the Director of Media Relations for the AP sent emails to both me and Woot CEO Matt Rutledge. Here's what we got:

MG Siegler:

Surely you'll also want your readers to know that The Associated Press INTERVIEWED Mr. Rutledge, as this version of the newsy little thing you cite makes clear: http://bit.ly/cl8JlX

Meanwhile, AP staffers across the Gulf region and in Washington continue to provide comprehensive coverage of the oil spill.

You'll find highlights of that coverage here: http://www.ap.org/oil_spill/

Cheers,

Paul Colford

Did he really just pull out the oil spill card? Yes, he did.

A few minutes later, Rutledge got the same basic email, minus the oil spill coverage reference. The emphasis of both is that the AP actually interviewed Rutledge about the story. Sure enough, they did. Here's the quote the AP used from that interview:

I'm really excited, he said.

Yep, that's it. So that's 24 words lifted from Rutledge's post (which wasn't linked to, by the way) and 3 words from the AP's reporting.

So, if I'm interpreting this correctly, the AP's stance is that it's fine to lift excerpts from others' work as long as you interview them even if that interview only results in a three word quote and the quotes you're lifting are much longer. Just to make sure, I emailed the AP about it:

so I'm confused, you're allowed to quote all you want for free from a blog post if you do a phone interview with the person and quote three words from that interview? so if I do a phone interview with the AP, can I then copy and paste an entire AP story free of charge? serious question.

I didn't get a response. But I did send it to Rutledge (remember, the interviewee here). Here's what he wrote back, I was just mulling over how to respond to similar confusing email here, but I think I like your response better. A couple hours later I wrote a quick follow-up to the AP:

Hi Paul Just following up. No statement here about this? Happy to hop on the phone.

About 20 seconds later Colford writes back:

Root of this non-story ($17.50 for quotes) is 2 yrs old, as AP noted again in 2009: http://bit.ly/9ehJGZ

Thanks.

Ouch. Someone is a little cranky. A few things here.

1) Interesting that Colford didn't note that position at all in his original email. Instead, his position was that they were free to lift passages from Rutledge's post because they interviewed him.

2) That AP release from 2009 completely disregards the fact that in 2008, the AP did in fact try to bully Drudge Report into taking down excerpts from their stories that ranged in length from 39 to 79 words. After some big backlash, they quickly tried to back away from that, and their 2009 statement basically rewrites their position stating that they're not going after bloggers for using excerpts from their stories (even though they clearly went after Drudge Report).

3) Wouldn't a non-'story' be a story? The quotes around story already indicate Colford's belief that the Woot issue isn't a story. So a non-non-story is a story.

Anyway, whatever. I'm a little confused by this whole thing. So is Rutledge. I think the AP is too. But I'm going to go with what I can only assume is their policy now. Since I technically interviewed Colford for this post, I'm going to copy an AP story below. I'll go with an oil spill one since he was so quick to point those out. And sure, I only got a few words out of Colford, but since that doesn't seem to matter, I'm just going to paste an entire AP story below. I like this new policy.

Jun. 24, 2010 5:47 AM ET

AP check: Shoddy disposal work mars oil cleanup

JAY REEVES, Associated Press Writer

ORANGE BEACH, Ala. (AP) A leaky truck filled with oil-stained sand and absorbent boom soaked in crude pulls away from the beach, leaving tar balls in a public parking lot and a messy trail of sand and water on the main beach road. A few miles away, brown liquid drips out of a disposal bin filled with polluted sand.

BP PLC's work to clean up the mess from the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history already has generated more than 1,300 tons of solid waste, and companies it hired to dispose of the material say debris is being handled professionally and carefully.

A spot check of several container sites by The Associated Press, however, found that's not always the case.

Along the northern Gulf coast, where miles of beaches have been coated with oil intermittently for two weeks, the check showed the handling and disposal of oily materials was haphazard at best.
A mound of oily sand sits in an uncovered waste container in a parking lot at the crown jewel of Alabama's park system, Gulf State Park. Water from the previous night's storm drips out of the bin into a brown pool on the asphalt.

In Pensacola, Fla., along the road through Gulf Islands National Seashore, trash bags from the debris removal hang over the side of big storage bins.

A waste collection area dotted with numerous bins full of spill debris stands in what seems like an odd spot: Smack in the middle of the tourist section in Gulf Shores, Ala., directly across the street from a seafood restaurant hungry for customers because of a lack of tourists.

Cleaning up a spill is an undeniably messy job, particularly when crude oil or tar balls are washing ashore in varying amounts in four states. The debris isn't classified as hazardous waste, so it can be placed in landfills that accept ordinary household garbage, including table scraps.

Yet Jerry Kidd, doing maintenance work at a condominium, couldn't believe it when he saw a Waste Management Inc. truck pull away from a collection site in Orange Beach piled with loose sand, oil-smeared protective gear and oily boom pulled out of the water. It was trailing pollution of its own.
The company says it is using 535 containers lined with what amount to huge black trash bags to collect debris from Mississippi, Alabama and part of the Florida Panhandle under a contract with BP. But not all of the bins really are lined, and liners have failed in others.
They're going down the road leading to the landfill; they take the same route every day. They're leaking onto the roads, into the storm sewers, said Kidd. There's no telling where it's going.

The Alabama Department of Public Health, which regulates the transportation of such wastes in the state, said it wasn't aware of the problem until contacted by AP.

This needs to be taken care of, and get these things sealed tight, said Pres Allinder, director of environmental services for the department. There's no point in collecting this stuff if they're just going to spread it around.

Waste Management is taking solid wastes from the three states to landfills in Vernon, Ala.; Pass Christian, Miss.; and Campbellton, Fla. Spokesman Ken Haldin said the company would be more careful, having drivers check bins for problems and possibly using a new type of liner, because of the AP findings.

It is something we are going to be addressing, he said. They're probably isolated situations, but we are still early in the process with all this work.

Despite problems, Haldin said Waste Management is trying to make sure oil spill contamination isn't spread inland.

There are a whole set of steps we are taking to make sure this operation is safe, he said.

Liquid waste, such as oily water left from the cleaning of oil-blocking booms or the mix of oil and water picked up by skimmer boats in the Gulf, is handled separately. The oily residue is processed for sale where possible and the water is reused or injected underground.

The amount of waste being generated sounds staggering, but it's not unusual in the disposal business.

This whole spill is going to be a drop in the bucket for its impact on landfills, said Vic Cullpepper, technical director at River Birch Landfill, near New Orleans. A lot of people are trying to blow this up and say it's going to be a problem for landfills, but it's not.

BP says 761 tons of crude-contaminated waste already has been buried at the two landfills in Alabama and Florida. Some 13,100 cubic yards of oily waste have been buried in Louisiana, where the amount is being tallied by volume instead of weight.

Marlin Ladner, a supervisor with Harrison County, Miss., is angry about spill waste being buried in his coastal county, which still is trying to recover from Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The county could use the dumping fees from the disposal operations, he said, but there are too many uncertainties.

I just don't think it's worth it, he said. I just have a problem with BP, in effect, polluting our beaches, bays and estuaries and then turning around and hauling that stuff and dropping it just four or five miles from the coast here.

BP says no oily material will be sent to the Mississippi landfill.
___
Associated Press writer Melissa Nelson contributed to this report from Pensacola, Fla.
Associated Press
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.





ap oil story spill waste story waste spill rutledge woot colford oily water gulf interview associated press sure sand disposal work landfills debris words post alabama bins beach quote interviewed check oil spill associated press non story waste management parking lot pensacola fla trash bags haldin said tar balls story below paul colford spill card phone interview drudge report press writer orange beach associated press writer oil spill card ]]>TechCrunch
First shared by - Jorg
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Oh those jokesters over at the AP the fun never ends! Last night, we wrote a post noting that Woot was (humorously) calling out the AP for not following their own ridiculous rules for when quoting from their content. By Woot's calculation, using the AP tool, the AP owes them $17.50 (but Woot was nice enough to offer for them to buy some headphones off of Woot instead). The AP didn't like that story neither our's or Woot's.

This morning, Paul Colford, the Director of Media Relations for the AP sent emails to both me and Woot CEO Matt Rutledge. Here's what we got:

MG Siegler:

Surely you'll also want your readers to know that The Associated Press INTERVIEWED Mr. Rutledge, as this version of the newsy little thing you cite makes clear: http://bit.ly/cl8JlX

Meanwhile, AP staffers across the Gulf region and in Washington continue to provide comprehensive coverage of the oil spill.

You'll find highlights of that coverage here: http://www.ap.org/oil_spill/

Cheers,

Paul Colford

Did he really just pull out the oil spill card? Yes, he did.

A few minutes later, Rutledge got the same basic email, minus the oil spill coverage reference. The emphasis of both is that the AP actually interviewed Rutledge about the story. Sure enough, they did. Here's the quote the AP used from that interview:

I'm really excited, he said.

Yep, that's it. So that's 24 words lifted from Rutledge's post (which wasn't linked to, by the way) and 3 words from the AP's reporting.

So, if I'm interpreting this correctly, the AP's stance is that it's fine to lift excerpts from others' work as long as you interview them even if that interview only results in a three word quote and the quotes you're lifting are much longer. Just to make sure, I emailed the AP about it:

so I'm confused, you're allowed to quote all you want for free from a blog post if you do a phone interview with the person and quote three words from that interview? so if I do a phone interview with the AP, can I then copy and paste an entire AP story free of charge? serious question.

I didn't get a response. But I did send it to Rutledge (remember, the interviewee here). Here's what he wrote back, I was just mulling over how to respond to similar confusing email here, but I think I like your response better. A couple hours later I wrote a quick follow-up to the AP:

Hi Paul Just following up. No statement here about this? Happy to hop on the phone.

About 20 seconds later Colford writes back:

Root of this non-story ($17.50 for quotes) is 2 yrs old, as AP noted again in 2009: http://bit.ly/9ehJGZ

Thanks.

Ouch. Someone is a little cranky. A few things here.

1) Interesting that Colford didn't note that position at all in his original email. Instead, his position was that they were free to lift passages from Rutledge's post because they interviewed him.

2) That AP release from 2009 completely disregards the fact that in 2008, the AP did in fact try to bully Drudge Report into taking down excerpts from their stories that ranged in length from 39 to 79 words. After some big backlash, they quickly tried to back away from that, and their 2009 statement basically rewrites their position stating that they're not going after bloggers for using excerpts from their stories (even though they clearly went after Drudge Report).

3) Wouldn't a non-'story' be a story? The quotes around story already indicate Colford's belief that the Woot issue isn't a story. So a non-non-story is a story.

Anyway, whatever. I'm a little confused by this whole thing. So is Rutledge. I think the AP is too. But I'm going to go with what I can only assume is their policy now. Since I technically interviewed Colford for this post, I'm going to copy an AP story below. I'll go with an oil spill one since he was so quick to point those out. And sure, I only got a few words out of Colford, but since that doesn't seem to matter, I'm just going to paste an entire AP story below. I like this new policy.

Jun. 24, 2010 5:47 AM ET

AP check: Shoddy disposal work mars oil cleanup

JAY REEVES, Associated Press Writer

ORANGE BEACH, Ala. (AP) A leaky truck filled with oil-stained sand and absorbent boom soaked in crude pulls away from the beach, leaving tar balls in a public parking lot and a messy trail of sand and water on the main beach road. A few miles away, brown liquid drips out of a disposal bin filled with polluted sand.

BP PLC's work to clean up the mess from the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history already has generated more than 1,300 tons of solid waste, and companies it hired to dispose of the material say debris is being handled professionally and carefully.

A spot check of several container sites by The Associated Press, however, found that's not always the case.

Along the northern Gulf coast, where miles of beaches have been coated with oil intermittently for two weeks, the check showed the handling and disposal of oily materials was haphazard at best.
A mound of oily sand sits in an uncovered waste container in a parking lot at the crown jewel of Alabama's park system, Gulf State Park. Water from the previous night's storm drips out of the bin into a brown pool on the asphalt.

In Pensacola, Fla., along the road through Gulf Islands National Seashore, trash bags from the debris removal hang over the side of big storage bins.

A waste collection area dotted with numerous bins full of spill debris stands in what seems like an odd spot: Smack in the middle of the tourist section in Gulf Shores, Ala., directly across the street from a seafood restaurant hungry for customers because of a lack of tourists.

Cleaning up a spill is an undeniably messy job, particularly when crude oil or tar balls are washing ashore in varying amounts in four states. The debris isn't classified as hazardous waste, so it can be placed in landfills that accept ordinary household garbage, including table scraps.

Yet Jerry Kidd, doing maintenance work at a condominium, couldn't believe it when he saw a Waste Management Inc. truck pull away from a collection site in Orange Beach piled with loose sand, oil-smeared protective gear and oily boom pulled out of the water. It was trailing pollution of its own.
The company says it is using 535 containers lined with what amount to huge black trash bags to collect debris from Mississippi, Alabama and part of the Florida Panhandle under a contract with BP. But not all of the bins really are lined, and liners have failed in others.
They're going down the road leading to the landfill; they take the same route every day. They're leaking onto the roads, into the storm sewers, said Kidd. There's no telling where it's going.

The Alabama Department of Public Health, which regulates the transportation of such wastes in the state, said it wasn't aware of the problem until contacted by AP.

This needs to be taken care of, and get these things sealed tight, said Pres Allinder, director of environmental services for the department. There's no point in collecting this stuff if they're just going to spread it around.

Waste Management is taking solid wastes from the three states to landfills in Vernon, Ala.; Pass Christian, Miss.; and Campbellton, Fla. Spokesman Ken Haldin said the company would be more careful, having drivers check bins for problems and possibly using a new type of liner, because of the AP findings.

It is something we are going to be addressing, he said. They're probably isolated situations, but we are still early in the process with all this work.

Despite problems, Haldin said Waste Management is trying to make sure oil spill contamination isn't spread inland.

There are a whole set of steps we are taking to make sure this operation is safe, he said.

Liquid waste, such as oily water left from the cleaning of oil-blocking booms or the mix of oil and water picked up by skimmer boats in the Gulf, is handled separately. The oily residue is processed for sale where possible and the water is reused or injected underground.

The amount of waste being generated sounds staggering, but it's not unusual in the disposal business.

This whole spill is going to be a drop in the bucket for its impact on landfills, said Vic Cullpepper, technical director at River Birch Landfill, near New Orleans. A lot of people are trying to blow this up and say it's going to be a problem for landfills, but it's not.

BP says 761 tons of crude-contaminated waste already has been buried at the two landfills in Alabama and Florida. Some 13,100 cubic yards of oily waste have been buried in Louisiana, where the amount is being tallied by volume instead of weight.

Marlin Ladner, a supervisor with Harrison County, Miss., is angry about spill waste being buried in his coastal county, which still is trying to recover from Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The county could use the dumping fees from the disposal operations, he said, but there are too many uncertainties.

I just don't think it's worth it, he said. I just have a problem with BP, in effect, polluting our beaches, bays and estuaries and then turning around and hauling that stuff and dropping it just four or five miles from the coast here.

BP says no oily material will be sent to the Mississippi landfill.
___
Associated Press writer Melissa Nelson contributed to this report from Pensacola, Fla.
Associated Press
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.





ap oil story spill waste story waste spill rutledge woot colford oily water gulf interview associated press sure sand disposal work landfills debris words post alabama bins beach quote interviewed check oil spill associated press non story waste management parking lot pensacola fla trash bags haldin said tar balls story below paul colford spill card phone interview drudge report press writer orange beach associated press writer oil spill card ]]> Tue, 06 Jul 2010 17:01:23 -0400 30:00 tag:filome.com,5 Most Widely Read Ebook in the World http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/ihdT/~3/29HAHyo9oVE/ Shared item Dilbert.com Blog
First shared by - BrandonMendelson
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What is the most widely read ebook in the world? Interestingly, no one knows the answer to that question. You can find best seller lists for ebooks, which are generally limited to one distributor's numbers for a limited time window. The best seller lists ignore all of the illegal ebook downloads, the free ebooks, the books from the past, and the books from distributors that don't report their numbers. In other words, no one has any way to determine which ebook has been the most widely read in the world. In the future, book best seller lists could become meaningless because the numbers will be too unreliable.

A good guess is that The Bible is the most widely read ebook in the world, and The Book of Mormon is second. Things get tricky when you try to figure out who comes in third. I think there's a good chance that I hold the third position with my book God's Debris.

Yes, I did compare myself to God. But if it makes you feel any better, God won this round.

God's Debris was an ebook before it was a traditional book, and during that time it was a #1 best seller. But that's not the basis for my estimate, because in those days few people bought ebooks. Ten thousand ebook sales would have been considered a blockbuster.

A few years ago I released God's Debris on the Internet for free. Anyone with a computer or smart phone can still download and read it at no cost. The book is designed to be viral, in the sense that it's most fun when passed along to a friend for later discussions.

Here's one free source: http://nowscape.com/godsdebris.pdf

Stephen King got a lot of attention for releasing the "first mass market ebook" called Riding The Bullet. Exact download numbers are sketchy because of a computer crash, but more than 500,000 copies were downloaded. It currently sells for $3.99 for the Kindle. My best guess is that God's Debris has been downloaded and read ten to twenty times more than that number because free is a good price, God's Debris has no DRM, it is a generic PDF file, and it's a viral book by design. Also, the topic in God's Debris tends to appeal to people who have access to the Internet. I think you would download a Stephen King novel if you liked his work, but you would download God's Debris just because it was free and you were mildly curious. Free is a good price.

When you're an author, people like to tell you when they have read your books. The number of times that happens, including email, for a particular book, generally tracks with the sales volume of the book, at least for the books for which I have sales numbers. In other words, the Dilbert book with the highest sales was The Dilbert Principle, and more people have commented to me about that book than any other Dilbert book. And so on down the line. The interesting thing is that I get more comments on God's Debris, both in person and by email, than I get for all of the Dilbert books ever written. That's what makes me suspect that God's Debris could be the most widely read ebook of all time, not counting books authored by The Lord Almighty.

God's Debris is allegedly available on iTunes now as an audiobook. I can't confirm that because iTunes gives me an error when I try to search for it. I don't have much luck with Apple products. Let me know if you can find it.



god book debris ebook read book debris ebook read books free widely numbers download dilbert world seller sales widely read best seller read ebook seller lists dilbert book widely read ebook best seller lists ]]>Dilbert.com Blog
First shared by - BrandonMendelson
syndication+ 0 | Search 1 | Shares 1

What is the most widely read ebook in the world? Interestingly, no one knows the answer to that question. You can find best seller lists for ebooks, which are generally limited to one distributor's numbers for a limited time window. The best seller lists ignore all of the illegal ebook downloads, the free ebooks, the books from the past, and the books from distributors that don't report their numbers. In other words, no one has any way to determine which ebook has been the most widely read in the world. In the future, book best seller lists could become meaningless because the numbers will be too unreliable.

A good guess is that The Bible is the most widely read ebook in the world, and The Book of Mormon is second. Things get tricky when you try to figure out who comes in third. I think there's a good chance that I hold the third position with my book God's Debris.

Yes, I did compare myself to God. But if it makes you feel any better, God won this round.

God's Debris was an ebook before it was a traditional book, and during that time it was a #1 best seller. But that's not the basis for my estimate, because in those days few people bought ebooks. Ten thousand ebook sales would have been considered a blockbuster.

A few years ago I released God's Debris on the Internet for free. Anyone with a computer or smart phone can still download and read it at no cost. The book is designed to be viral, in the sense that it's most fun when passed along to a friend for later discussions.

Here's one free source: http://nowscape.com/godsdebris.pdf

Stephen King got a lot of attention for releasing the "first mass market ebook" called Riding The Bullet. Exact download numbers are sketchy because of a computer crash, but more than 500,000 copies were downloaded. It currently sells for $3.99 for the Kindle. My best guess is that God's Debris has been downloaded and read ten to twenty times more than that number because free is a good price, God's Debris has no DRM, it is a generic PDF file, and it's a viral book by design. Also, the topic in God's Debris tends to appeal to people who have access to the Internet. I think you would download a Stephen King novel if you liked his work, but you would download God's Debris just because it was free and you were mildly curious. Free is a good price.

When you're an author, people like to tell you when they have read your books. The number of times that happens, including email, for a particular book, generally tracks with the sales volume of the book, at least for the books for which I have sales numbers. In other words, the Dilbert book with the highest sales was The Dilbert Principle, and more people have commented to me about that book than any other Dilbert book. And so on down the line. The interesting thing is that I get more comments on God's Debris, both in person and by email, than I get for all of the Dilbert books ever written. That's what makes me suspect that God's Debris could be the most widely read ebook of all time, not counting books authored by The Lord Almighty.

God's Debris is allegedly available on iTunes now as an audiobook. I can't confirm that because iTunes gives me an error when I try to search for it. I don't have much luck with Apple products. Let me know if you can find it.



god book debris ebook read book debris ebook read books free widely numbers download dilbert world seller sales widely read best seller read ebook seller lists dilbert book widely read ebook best seller lists ]]> Mon, 14 Jun 2010 19:25:26 -0400 30:00 tag:filome.com,6 A 2nd garbage patch: Plastic soup seen in Atlantic http://www.physorg.com/news190569673.html Shared item PhysOrg.com - latest science and technology news stories
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(AP) -- Researchers are warning of a new blight at sea: a swirl of confetti-like plastic debris stretching over a remote expanse of the Atlantic Ocean.

plastic atlantic debris confetti swirl ]]>PhysOrg.com - latest science and technology news stories
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(AP) -- Researchers are warning of a new blight at sea: a swirl of confetti-like plastic debris stretching over a remote expanse of the Atlantic Ocean.

plastic atlantic debris confetti swirl ]]> Sun, 18 Apr 2010 11:30:46 -0400 30:00 tag:filome.com,7 Tiny Cube Drags Space Debris From Orbit http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/A-cvc4YtuE0/Tiny-Cube-Drags-Space-Debris-From-Orbit Shared item Digg, del.icio.us, Reddit, Slashdot mashup
First shared by - ScottS
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krou writes "A team from Surrey Space Centre has developed a device called a CubeSail, designed to be attached to satellites and rocket stages in order to drag space debris from orbit. CubeSail is a nanosatellite, weighing 3kg (6.6lb), and measures 10cm x 10cm x 30cm. Within its frame is a polymer sheet that unfurls itself once in space. 'The simple deployment mechanism features four metal strips that are wound under tension and will snap into a straight line when let go, pulling the sheet flat in the process.' The overall idea is that 'Residual air molecules still present in the spacecraft's low-Earth orbit will catch the sheet and pull the object out of the sky much faster than is normal.' Sir Martin Sweeting, the chairman of SSTL, who supported the research, said, 'We would be looking to put it on our own satellites and to put it on other people's spacecraft as well. We want this to be a standard, essential bolt-on item for a spacecraft; and that's why it's very important to make it small, because if it's too big it will interfere with the rest of the spacecraft.' The team is also hoping that CubeSail can act as a propulsion system, using 'solar sailing' to help satellites keep their orbits more efficiently."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.




space spacecraft satellites sheet cm ]]>Digg, del.icio.us, Reddit, Slashdot mashup
First shared by - ScottS
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krou writes "A team from Surrey Space Centre has developed a device called a CubeSail, designed to be attached to satellites and rocket stages in order to drag space debris from orbit. CubeSail is a nanosatellite, weighing 3kg (6.6lb), and measures 10cm x 10cm x 30cm. Within its frame is a polymer sheet that unfurls itself once in space. 'The simple deployment mechanism features four metal strips that are wound under tension and will snap into a straight line when let go, pulling the sheet flat in the process.' The overall idea is that 'Residual air molecules still present in the spacecraft's low-Earth orbit will catch the sheet and pull the object out of the sky much faster than is normal.' Sir Martin Sweeting, the chairman of SSTL, who supported the research, said, 'We would be looking to put it on our own satellites and to put it on other people's spacecraft as well. We want this to be a standard, essential bolt-on item for a spacecraft; and that's why it's very important to make it small, because if it's too big it will interfere with the rest of the spacecraft.' The team is also hoping that CubeSail can act as a propulsion system, using 'solar sailing' to help satellites keep their orbits more efficiently."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.




space spacecraft satellites sheet cm ]]> Sat, 27 Mar 2010 18:55:35 -0400 30:00 tag:filome.com,8 Worst Boss. Ever. http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/worst_boss_ever/ Shared item Dilbert.com Blog
First shared by - BrandonMendelson
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Did you hear about the Bangladeshi brick company that beheaded an employee to improve the color of its bricks?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/bangladesh/7493874/Bangladeshi-man-beheaded-to-redden-bricks.html

This tragic incident raises many questions. The article is vague, but I assume a supervisor or some sort of boss was leading this strategy. So I wonder how the employee was chosen? Was he the worst worker, the biggest complainer, or the guy who looked the most like a brick?

You probably wonder why someone didn't speak out against this plan when it first came up. But my guess is that as soon as the beheading topic is on the table, disagreement trails off fast. That's a management technique called "getting buy-in."

I wonder how the boss broke the news to the employee. Did he work up to it with a list of criticisms about the employee's job performance? As a boss, you don't want to start that sort of conversation with the beheading part. Begin with something like "I noticed you've been late twice this week." That way it isn't such a cruel shock when you get to the decapitation scenario.

I wonder if the boss made any clever puns when he was breaking the news. I would have started the conversation with something like "You know how I always said you have a good head on your shoulders?" Or maybe I would have gone with the good-news-bad-news set up. "The good news is that you'll save a fortune in hats..."

I wonder what it's like to go home after work when you just beheaded a coworker.

Wife: "Hi, Honey. How was your day?"

Employee: "The usual. I swept up some brick debris, then a few of the guys and I beheaded Bob."

Wife: "You WHAT???"

Employee: "Brick debris. It's everywhere."

And I wonder how specific the Fortune Teller was when recommending the beheading as a way to fix the bricks. When I try to follow a recipe in the kitchen, I always run into a part that seems too vague. If I were involved, I'd be wondering if I'm supposed to use the head part or the rest of the body. Is stirring involved? How long is it supposed to simmer? I'd go through half of the marketing department before I got the bricks just the right color.

Too soon?



employee wonder news boss beheaded ]]>Dilbert.com Blog
First shared by - BrandonMendelson
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Did you hear about the Bangladeshi brick company that beheaded an employee to improve the color of its bricks?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/bangladesh/7493874/Bangladeshi-man-beheaded-to-redden-bricks.html

This tragic incident raises many questions. The article is vague, but I assume a supervisor or some sort of boss was leading this strategy. So I wonder how the employee was chosen? Was he the worst worker, the biggest complainer, or the guy who looked the most like a brick?

You probably wonder why someone didn't speak out against this plan when it first came up. But my guess is that as soon as the beheading topic is on the table, disagreement trails off fast. That's a management technique called "getting buy-in."

I wonder how the boss broke the news to the employee. Did he work up to it with a list of criticisms about the employee's job performance? As a boss, you don't want to start that sort of conversation with the beheading part. Begin with something like "I noticed you've been late twice this week." That way it isn't such a cruel shock when you get to the decapitation scenario.

I wonder if the boss made any clever puns when he was breaking the news. I would have started the conversation with something like "You know how I always said you have a good head on your shoulders?" Or maybe I would have gone with the good-news-bad-news set up. "The good news is that you'll save a fortune in hats..."

I wonder what it's like to go home after work when you just beheaded a coworker.

Wife: "Hi, Honey. How was your day?"

Employee: "The usual. I swept up some brick debris, then a few of the guys and I beheaded Bob."

Wife: "You WHAT???"

Employee: "Brick debris. It's everywhere."

And I wonder how specific the Fortune Teller was when recommending the beheading as a way to fix the bricks. When I try to follow a recipe in the kitchen, I always run into a part that seems too vague. If I were involved, I'd be wondering if I'm supposed to use the head part or the rest of the body. Is stirring involved? How long is it supposed to simmer? I'd go through half of the marketing department before I got the bricks just the right color.

Too soon?



employee wonder news boss beheaded ]]> Wed, 24 Mar 2010 15:50:31 -0400 30:00 tag:filome.com,9 Information Resolution on the Windows Phone 7 Series http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/FunctioningForm/~3/UANqE25M2V4/entry.asp Shared item LukeW | Writings on Digital Product Strategy and Design
First shared by - Zaki_Manian
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In his iPhone Resolution video, information design expert Edward Tufte, praised the information density and content resolution of the device. Known for evaluating Web interface designs by counting the quantity of links present, Tufte is a big proponent of clarifying information by adding detail not "computer administrative debris."

"Computer administrative debris reduces information resolution and steals content space away from the user. The iPhone brilliantly suppresses much admin debris. The idea is that the content is the interface, the information is the interface, not computer administrative debris."

In particular, Tufte called out the iPhone's Photos application as an example of clarifying information by adding detail. "In this collection of photographs, many information elements are arranged on the same surface as the user scans 150 images arranged in a two dimensional small multiple format."

With this in mind, it's interesting to compare the information density of the iPhone's photos experience with Microsoft's Window Phone 7 Series experience. The iPhone's first screen concisely lists available photo sets and with one tap drops people into a dense grid of images where the user interface is minimal and transparent enough to enable the entire screen to display content.

The Windows Phone 7 Series begins with a top-level navigation menu consisting of three options. A quick tap on "albums" brings up a similar listing of images but with substantially more interface elements. It's also a bit unclear if all the pictures in an album will be listed in this view or if another tap on the album title is required (adding a third step to the navigation process).

The differences in information resolution between the iPhone and Windows Phone are even more stark in the application store features. In addition to seven ways of finding & filtering apps, Apple's App Store displays four apps complete with icon, title, publishing, average rating, number of ratings, and price.

Marketplace on the Windows Phone features one application with an icon, title, and one-line description. One touch gesture (drag/flick) later, there's a menu consisting of six items. Tapping on "applications" takes you to another featured application. One more drag/flick and you are finally seeing three applications you can download. Contrast the amount of information present on this screen (the fourth in the process) with the amount shown on the iPhone's initial App Store display.

It will be interesting to see if these differences in information resolution have an impact on the overall user experience of using the Windows Phone 7 Series.



Tags: , , , , ,

information iphone resolution interface phone ]]>LukeW | Writings on Digital Product Strategy and Design
First shared by - Zaki_Manian
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In his iPhone Resolution video, information design expert Edward Tufte, praised the information density and content resolution of the device. Known for evaluating Web interface designs by counting the quantity of links present, Tufte is a big proponent of clarifying information by adding detail not "computer administrative debris."

"Computer administrative debris reduces information resolution and steals content space away from the user. The iPhone brilliantly suppresses much admin debris. The idea is that the content is the interface, the information is the interface, not computer administrative debris."

In particular, Tufte called out the iPhone's Photos application as an example of clarifying information by adding detail. "In this collection of photographs, many information elements are arranged on the same surface as the user scans 150 images arranged in a two dimensional small multiple format."

With this in mind, it's interesting to compare the information density of the iPhone's photos experience with Microsoft's Window Phone 7 Series experience. The iPhone's first screen concisely lists available photo sets and with one tap drops people into a dense grid of images where the user interface is minimal and transparent enough to enable the entire screen to display content.

The Windows Phone 7 Series begins with a top-level navigation menu consisting of three options. A quick tap on "albums" brings up a similar listing of images but with substantially more interface elements. It's also a bit unclear if all the pictures in an album will be listed in this view or if another tap on the album title is required (adding a third step to the navigation process).

The differences in information resolution between the iPhone and Windows Phone are even more stark in the application store features. In addition to seven ways of finding & filtering apps, Apple's App Store displays four apps complete with icon, title, publishing, average rating, number of ratings, and price.

Marketplace on the Windows Phone features one application with an icon, title, and one-line description. One touch gesture (drag/flick) later, there's a menu consisting of six items. Tapping on "applications" takes you to another featured application. One more drag/flick and you are finally seeing three applications you can download. Contrast the amount of information present on this screen (the fourth in the process) with the amount shown on the iPhone's initial App Store display.

It will be interesting to see if these differences in information resolution have an impact on the overall user experience of using the Windows Phone 7 Series.



Tags: , , , , ,

information iphone resolution interface phone ]]> Tue, 16 Feb 2010 21:55:24 -0500 30:00 tag:filome.com,10 Rendered in Neat Circles http://dd.dynamicdiagrams.com/2010/02/rendered-in-neat-circles/ Shared item Information Design Watch
First shared by - phillip
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Popular Science links to another interesting information graphic on space exploration. This one, designed by Michael Paukner, illustrates the number of human-created objects orbiting Earth and assigns responsibility:

You can view larger versions on Paukner's Flickr page.

The title of my post comes from the Popular Science URL: see-space-debris-cloud-surrounding-earth-rendered-neat-circles. Ironically, this summarizes the problem with the visualization. Despite the attractiveness of the graphic, the neat circles show linear values by area, making precise comparisons completely impossible.

The donut shapes created by the overlapping circles also confuse comparison. Take a quick look at the darkest circles that for space debris around the United States and Russia. The United States is bigger, but by what order of magnitude? We see a lot more black a thicker torus but the actual ratio is just 1.2 to 1.



circles space neat created paukner ]]>Information Design Watch
First shared by - phillip
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Popular Science links to another interesting information graphic on space exploration. This one, designed by Michael Paukner, illustrates the number of human-created objects orbiting Earth and assigns responsibility:

You can view larger versions on Paukner's Flickr page.

The title of my post comes from the Popular Science URL: see-space-debris-cloud-surrounding-earth-rendered-neat-circles. Ironically, this summarizes the problem with the visualization. Despite the attractiveness of the graphic, the neat circles show linear values by area, making precise comparisons completely impossible.

The donut shapes created by the overlapping circles also confuse comparison. Take a quick look at the darkest circles that for space debris around the United States and Russia. The United States is bigger, but by what order of magnitude? We see a lot more black a thicker torus but the actual ratio is just 1.2 to 1.



circles space neat created paukner ]]> Sat, 13 Feb 2010 08:55:16 -0500 30:00 tag:filome.com,11 "WOW!" The Famous 1977 'ET Signal' -A Look Back http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheDailyGalaxyNewsFromPlanetEarthBeyond/~3/Gdrbmgrnt_g/-wow-the-1977-et-signal-a-look-back.html Shared item The Daily Galaxy - Great Discoveries Channel -Your Daily Dose of Awe: Science, Space, Tech
First shared by - Ganesh_Ravindran
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August 15, 1977: the night before Elvis Presley died, at 11:16 p.m. an Ohio radio telescope called the Big Ear recorded a single pulse of radiation that seemed to come from somewhere in the constellation of Sagittarius at the 1420 MHz hydrogen line, the vibration frequency of hydrogen, the most common molecule in the universe -exactly the signal ET-hunters had been instructed to look out for. The signal was so strong that it pushed the Big Ear's recording device off the chart.

Jerry Ehman, the young Columbus, Ohio volunteer man who spotted it in the computer printout, scrawled the now infamous "WOW!" in the margin. The Big Ear team explored every possibility: military transmissions, reflections of Earth signals off asteroids or satellites, natural emissions from stars, but nothing fit. And most odd of all, the signal came from a blank patch of sky totally devoid of stars. The young engineer's only thought was that it could have been beamed from a spaceship traveling through the universe in search of some sign of life.

Ohio State University researchers wondered if it was man's first contact with extraterrestrial intelligence. They trained the massive scope on that part of the sky for the next month, and have returned periodically since, with no repeat of the signal

And although many point to it as a possible extraterrestrial intelligence sighting, Ehman, now 54, says told the Cleveland Pain Dealer "We should have seen it again when we looked for it 50 times. Something suggests it was an Earth-bound signal that simply got reflected off a piece of space debris."

"Even if it were intelligent beings sending a signal, they'd do it far more than once," Ehman, now 54, says. "We should have seen it again when we looked for it 50 times. Something suggests it was an Earth-bound signal that simply got reflected off a piece of space debris."

"If those civilizations are out there and we don't know that they are those that inhabit star systems that lie close to the plane of the Earth's orbit around the sun will be the most motivated to send communications signals toward Earth, because those civilizations will surely have detected our annual transit across the face of the sun, telling them that Earth lies in a habitable zone, where liquid water is stable," says Richard Conn Henry, of Johns Hopkins University. "Through spectroscopic analysis of our atmosphere, they will know that Earth likely bears life. Knowing where to look tremendously reduces the amount of radio telescope time we will need to conduct the search.

Henry and colleagues think that we limit our search for extra-terrestrial intelligence to the ecliptic plane in which our solar system's planets orbit. This ecliptic band comprises only about 3 percent of the sky, which could make it easier for scientists to effectively narrow their search for intelligent ET.

The logic behind it postulates that if there is another, perhaps more advanced alien civilization in our galaxy out there; they may be trying to contact us, as well. If this is the case, Henry says a search focused on the ecliptic "should lead rapidly to the detection of other civilizations".

Exoplanets in the ecliptic should be able to see Earth passing in front of the Sun. These transits are what Earth astronomers rely on to identify a variety of information about the transiting planets, such as radius, density and composition. Transits also reveal the secret's of a planet's atmosphere, therefore any potential alien astronomers studying the Earth's spectrum would theoretically find the indicators of life in our atmospheric oxygen, letting them knowjust as we long to knowthat they are not alone.

Henry, along with his colleagues, plan to search the ecliptic for these advanced alien civilizations with the Allen Telescope Array, a set of dozens of antennae in Hat Creek, California, US.

According to Greg Laughlin, an astronomer and extrasolar planet hunter at the University of California, Santa Cruz, if there is a stargazing civilization trying to make contact with us within 50 light years, its inhabitants would see the Earth as a bluish dot. All they would need is an 8-metre space-based telescope with a good coronagraph along with a set of space-based infrared telescopes, which would enable them to detect ozone and water vapor in our atmosphere.

Most of the 100 billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy are located in the galactic plane, forming another great circle around the sky. The two great circles intersect near Taurus and Sagittarius, two constellations opposite each other in the Earth's sky areas where the search will initially concentrate.

"We have no idea how many if any other civilizations there are in our galaxy, Henry noted. One critical factor is how long a civilization for example, our own remains in existence. If, as we dearly hope, the answer is many millions of years, then even if civilizations are fairly rare, those in our ecliptic plane will have learned of our existence. They will know that life exists on Earth and they will have the patience to beam easily detectable radio (or optical) signals in our direction, if necessary, for millions of years in the hope, now realized, that a technological civilization will appear on Earth."

Casey Kazan with Rebecca Sato

Source: Johns Hopkins University

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1248974/The-sewage-engineer-Wow-Signal-proof-really-IS-life-Mars.html




earth signal search ecliptic civilizations ]]>The Daily Galaxy - Great Discoveries Channel -Your Daily Dose of Awe: Science, Space, Tech
First shared by - Ganesh_Ravindran
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August 15, 1977: the night before Elvis Presley died, at 11:16 p.m. an Ohio radio telescope called the Big Ear recorded a single pulse of radiation that seemed to come from somewhere in the constellation of Sagittarius at the 1420 MHz hydrogen line, the vibration frequency of hydrogen, the most common molecule in the universe -exactly the signal ET-hunters had been instructed to look out for. The signal was so strong that it pushed the Big Ear's recording device off the chart.

Jerry Ehman, the young Columbus, Ohio volunteer man who spotted it in the computer printout, scrawled the now infamous "WOW!" in the margin. The Big Ear team explored every possibility: military transmissions, reflections of Earth signals off asteroids or satellites, natural emissions from stars, but nothing fit. And most odd of all, the signal came from a blank patch of sky totally devoid of stars. The young engineer's only thought was that it could have been beamed from a spaceship traveling through the universe in search of some sign of life.

Ohio State University researchers wondered if it was man's first contact with extraterrestrial intelligence. They trained the massive scope on that part of the sky for the next month, and have returned periodically since, with no repeat of the signal

And although many point to it as a possible extraterrestrial intelligence sighting, Ehman, now 54, says told the Cleveland Pain Dealer "We should have seen it again when we looked for it 50 times. Something suggests it was an Earth-bound signal that simply got reflected off a piece of space debris."

"Even if it were intelligent beings sending a signal, they'd do it far more than once," Ehman, now 54, says. "We should have seen it again when we looked for it 50 times. Something suggests it was an Earth-bound signal that simply got reflected off a piece of space debris."

"If those civilizations are out there and we don't know that they are those that inhabit star systems that lie close to the plane of the Earth's orbit around the sun will be the most motivated to send communications signals toward Earth, because those civilizations will surely have detected our annual transit across the face of the sun, telling them that Earth lies in a habitable zone, where liquid water is stable," says Richard Conn Henry, of Johns Hopkins University. "Through spectroscopic analysis of our atmosphere, they will know that Earth likely bears life. Knowing where to look tremendously reduces the amount of radio telescope time we will need to conduct the search.

Henry and colleagues think that we limit our search for extra-terrestrial intelligence to the ecliptic plane in which our solar system's planets orbit. This ecliptic band comprises only about 3 percent of the sky, which could make it easier for scientists to effectively narrow their search for intelligent ET.

The logic behind it postulates that if there is another, perhaps more advanced alien civilization in our galaxy out there; they may be trying to contact us, as well. If this is the case, Henry says a search focused on the ecliptic "should lead rapidly to the detection of other civilizations".

Exoplanets in the ecliptic should be able to see Earth passing in front of the Sun. These transits are what Earth astronomers rely on to identify a variety of information about the transiting planets, such as radius, density and composition. Transits also reveal the secret's of a planet's atmosphere, therefore any potential alien astronomers studying the Earth's spectrum would theoretically find the indicators of life in our atmospheric oxygen, letting them knowjust as we long to knowthat they are not alone.

Henry, along with his colleagues, plan to search the ecliptic for these advanced alien civilizations with the Allen Telescope Array, a set of dozens of antennae in Hat Creek, California, US.

According to Greg Laughlin, an astronomer and extrasolar planet hunter at the University of California, Santa Cruz, if there is a stargazing civilization trying to make contact with us within 50 light years, its inhabitants would see the Earth as a bluish dot. All they would need is an 8-metre space-based telescope with a good coronagraph along with a set of space-based infrared telescopes, which would enable them to detect ozone and water vapor in our atmosphere.

Most of the 100 billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy are located in the galactic plane, forming another great circle around the sky. The two great circles intersect near Taurus and Sagittarius, two constellations opposite each other in the Earth's sky areas where the search will initially concentrate.

"We have no idea how many if any other civilizations there are in our galaxy, Henry noted. One critical factor is how long a civilization for example, our own remains in existence. If, as we dearly hope, the answer is many millions of years, then even if civilizations are fairly rare, those in our ecliptic plane will have learned of our existence. They will know that life exists on Earth and they will have the patience to beam easily detectable radio (or optical) signals in our direction, if necessary, for millions of years in the hope, now realized, that a technological civilization will appear on Earth."

Casey Kazan with Rebecca Sato

Source: Johns Hopkins University

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1248974/The-sewage-engineer-Wow-Signal-proof-really-IS-life-Mars.html




earth signal search ecliptic civilizations ]]> Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:33:17 -0500 30:00 tag:filome.com,12 Drink The Punch, DO IT NOW: Hubble Space Telescope Spies Unusual Space Debris Aliens http://www.geekologie.com/2010/02/drink_the_punch_do_it_now_hubb.php Shared item Geekologie - Gadgets, Gizmos, and Awesome
First shared by - RandumBoi
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I hate to start wild speculation, and I'm by no means one of those foil-hat asshats (industrial-grade aluminum all the way, baby), but this is a picture of an alien spacecraft. Per NASA cover up:
...what Hubble saw indicates that P/2010 A2 is unlike any object ever seen before. At first glance, the object appears to have the tail of a comet. Close inspection, however, shows a 140-meter nucleus offset from the tail center, very unusual structure near the nucleus, and no discernable gas in the tail. Knowing that the object orbits in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, a preliminary hypothesis that appears to explain all of the known clues is that P/2010 A2 is the debris left over from a recent collision between two small asteroids. If true, the collision likely occurred at over 15,000 kilometers per hour -- five times the speed of a rifle bullet -- and liberated energy in excess of a nuclear bomb.
I hate to tell you how to do your job, NASA, but you're really stabbing yourself in the crotch here. Think about it: you're losing funding and getting projects cut left and right. Because nobody gives a shit about space. But if this was, in fact, an alien spacecraft, then....see where I'm going with this? (Fake another moon landing) Hubble spies debris 'unlike any object ever seen before' [dvice] Thanks to wes g, Ste, emerica, Brad B, timotheus maximus and sammy, who all agree space technology is bitchin'.

space object tail debris hubble ]]>Geekologie - Gadgets, Gizmos, and Awesome
First shared by - RandumBoi
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I hate to start wild speculation, and I'm by no means one of those foil-hat asshats (industrial-grade aluminum all the way, baby), but this is a picture of an alien spacecraft. Per NASA cover up:
...what Hubble saw indicates that P/2010 A2 is unlike any object ever seen before. At first glance, the object appears to have the tail of a comet. Close inspection, however, shows a 140-meter nucleus offset from the tail center, very unusual structure near the nucleus, and no discernable gas in the tail. Knowing that the object orbits in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, a preliminary hypothesis that appears to explain all of the known clues is that P/2010 A2 is the debris left over from a recent collision between two small asteroids. If true, the collision likely occurred at over 15,000 kilometers per hour -- five times the speed of a rifle bullet -- and liberated energy in excess of a nuclear bomb.
I hate to tell you how to do your job, NASA, but you're really stabbing yourself in the crotch here. Think about it: you're losing funding and getting projects cut left and right. Because nobody gives a shit about space. But if this was, in fact, an alien spacecraft, then....see where I'm going with this? (Fake another moon landing) Hubble spies debris 'unlike any object ever seen before' [dvice] Thanks to wes g, Ste, emerica, Brad B, timotheus maximus and sammy, who all agree space technology is bitchin'.

space object tail debris hubble ]]> Fri, 05 Feb 2010 14:50:50 -0500 30:00 tag:filome.com,13 Hubble captures picture of asteroid collision! http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BadAstronomyBlog/~3/OUhABY9MiKg/ Shared item Bad Astronomy
First shared by - spavis
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Last week, the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) sky survey program, designed to sweep the heavens looking for near-Earth asteroids, spotted something really weird; an elongated streak that looked as if two asteroids had collided. Just days later, Hubble was pointed at the object, and what it saw was really really weird:


[Click to armageddonate.]

This is a false-color image showing the object, called P/2010 A2, in visible light. The long tail of debris is obvious; this is probably dust being blown back by the solar wind, similar to the way a comet's tail is blown back. What apparently has happened is that two small, previously-undiscovered asteroids collided, impacting with a speed of at least 5 km/sec (and possibly faster). The energy in such a collision is like setting off a nuclear bomb, or actually many nuclear bombs! The asteroids shattered, and much of the debris expanded outward as pulverized dust.

Now, let me just take a moment and say HOLY HALEAKALA WHAT WE'RE SEEING HERE IS THE COLLISION BETWEEN TWO PREVIOUSLY UNDISCOVERED ASTEROIDS THAT EXPLODED LIKE THERMONUCLEAR WEAPONS WHEN THEY IMPACTED!!!

Phew. OK, I feel better. I needed to get that off my chest.

First off, to be clear we're in no danger from this event. It was really far away (in human terms; 140 million km or 90 million miles the object's orbit keeps it farther from the Sun than Mars so we're not about to get pummeled with debris. And while the explosion energy was quite large certainly much larger than any weapon ever detonated on Earth it wasn't radioactive, in case you're worried about that sort of thing. This was a kinetic explosion, caused by a high-speed collision, and not an actual detonation of any kind.

Looking at the image, the bright spot to the left is most likely what's left of one of the two asteroids, a chunk of rock estimated to be a mere 140 meters (450 feet) across. In the press release they're not clear about the curved line emanating to the right of the nucleus. It may be and I'm spitballing here dust blown back from a stream of chunks, since the tail is broad and appears to originate from that swept curve, and not from the nucleus itself. The other filament perpendicular to the curve is from yet another piece of debris.

Despite how much this looks like a comet, ground-based observations indicate no gas is present, meaning this was from asteroids colliding, not comets, which have significant amounts of ice which turn to gas near the Sun. The collision energy was high enough to produce a lot of gas if any were present. That clinches this being an asteroid impact.

Also, the orbit of the object indicates it's an asteroid, and it appears to be part of a well-known group of asteroids called the Flora family, which share similar orbital characteristics, and are probably remnants themselves of an ancient breakup of a much larger parent asteroid.

Nothing like this has ever been seen before. Sure, Hubble and about a hundred other telescopes observed the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 slam in to Jupiter in 1994, but that was different than seeing two asteroids hit. Asteroids are small, and very very far apart on average (don't believe scenes like that in "Empire Strikes Back"), so a collision like this is extremely rare, and catching it from such a great vantage point rarer still. But we have a lot of eyes on the sky, and the more we watch the more we'll see.

And we'd better. An object 140 meters across hitting the Earth would, to be technical, suck. Hard. Whatever caused Meteor Crater in Arizona, an impact scar over a kilometer across, was itself probably about 40 meters across. An object like 2010 A2, which is three times the diameter, would have 20 -30 times the mass, and do considerably more damage. I'm glad groups like LINEAR are out there patrolling the skies for such things. We need to learn as much as we can about these asteroids, so that we can prevent the next Meteor Crater from occurring.



asteroids object collision asteroid across ]]>Bad Astronomy
First shared by - spavis
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Last week, the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) sky survey program, designed to sweep the heavens looking for near-Earth asteroids, spotted something really weird; an elongated streak that looked as if two asteroids had collided. Just days later, Hubble was pointed at the object, and what it saw was really really weird:


[Click to armageddonate.]

This is a false-color image showing the object, called P/2010 A2, in visible light. The long tail of debris is obvious; this is probably dust being blown back by the solar wind, similar to the way a comet's tail is blown back. What apparently has happened is that two small, previously-undiscovered asteroids collided, impacting with a speed of at least 5 km/sec (and possibly faster). The energy in such a collision is like setting off a nuclear bomb, or actually many nuclear bombs! The asteroids shattered, and much of the debris expanded outward as pulverized dust.

Now, let me just take a moment and say HOLY HALEAKALA WHAT WE'RE SEEING HERE IS THE COLLISION BETWEEN TWO PREVIOUSLY UNDISCOVERED ASTEROIDS THAT EXPLODED LIKE THERMONUCLEAR WEAPONS WHEN THEY IMPACTED!!!

Phew. OK, I feel better. I needed to get that off my chest.

First off, to be clear we're in no danger from this event. It was really far away (in human terms; 140 million km or 90 million miles the object's orbit keeps it farther from the Sun than Mars so we're not about to get pummeled with debris. And while the explosion energy was quite large certainly much larger than any weapon ever detonated on Earth it wasn't radioactive, in case you're worried about that sort of thing. This was a kinetic explosion, caused by a high-speed collision, and not an actual detonation of any kind.

Looking at the image, the bright spot to the left is most likely what's left of one of the two asteroids, a chunk of rock estimated to be a mere 140 meters (450 feet) across. In the press release they're not clear about the curved line emanating to the right of the nucleus. It may be and I'm spitballing here dust blown back from a stream of chunks, since the tail is broad and appears to originate from that swept curve, and not from the nucleus itself. The other filament perpendicular to the curve is from yet another piece of debris.

Despite how much this looks like a comet, ground-based observations indicate no gas is present, meaning this was from asteroids colliding, not comets, which have significant amounts of ice which turn to gas near the Sun. The collision energy was high enough to produce a lot of gas if any were present. That clinches this being an asteroid impact.

Also, the orbit of the object indicates it's an asteroid, and it appears to be part of a well-known group of asteroids called the Flora family, which share similar orbital characteristics, and are probably remnants themselves of an ancient breakup of a much larger parent asteroid.

Nothing like this has ever been seen before. Sure, Hubble and about a hundred other telescopes observed the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 slam in to Jupiter in 1994, but that was different than seeing two asteroids hit. Asteroids are small, and very very far apart on average (don't believe scenes like that in "Empire Strikes Back"), so a collision like this is extremely rare, and catching it from such a great vantage point rarer still. But we have a lot of eyes on the sky, and the more we watch the more we'll see.

And we'd better. An object 140 meters across hitting the Earth would, to be technical, suck. Hard. Whatever caused Meteor Crater in Arizona, an impact scar over a kilometer across, was itself probably about 40 meters across. An object like 2010 A2, which is three times the diameter, would have 20 -30 times the mass, and do considerably more damage. I'm glad groups like LINEAR are out there patrolling the skies for such things. We need to learn as much as we can about these asteroids, so that we can prevent the next Meteor Crater from occurring.



asteroids object collision asteroid across ]]> Tue, 02 Feb 2010 16:25:29 -0500 30:00 tag:filome.com,14 Los Angeles vs. Nature http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/doc/2010/01/20/los-angeles-vs-nature/ Shared item Doc Searls Weblog
First shared by - christomer
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John McPhee is the best nonfiction writer alive. My opinion, of course. But I happen to be right. Nobody describes anything better. No writer does a better job of digging into subjects most would find dull (rocks, pine barrens, river levees, minor species of fish) and making them not only interesting but relevant. Sometimes extremely so.

Take what he wrote in The Control of Nature about the Mississippi river, describing, among much else, what would happen to New Orleans when a levee failed. Which, ineviably, one would. In a chapter titled Achafalaya, McPhee handicapped the Army Corps of Engineers against the Mississippi. That was in 1987. The New Yorker ran it again in 2005, after Hurricane Katrina gave McPhee's words the ring of phophesy.

Another chapter in The Control of Nature is Los Angeles vs. The San Gabriel Mountains. That one has special relevance today, when torrential rain on mountains denuded by fires brings the threat of mud slides a term that doesn't describe what really happens. McPhee:

In the blue light they saw a massive blackness, moving. It was not a landslide, not a mudslide, not a rock avalanche; nor by any means was it the front of a conventional flood. In Jackie's words, It was just one big black thing coming at us, rolling, rolling with a lot of water in front of it, pushing the water, this big black thing. It was just one big black hill coming toward us.

In geology, it would be known as a debris flow. Debris flows amass in stream valleys and more or less resemble fresh concrete. They consist of water mixed with a good deal of solid material, most of which is above sand size. Some of it is Chevrolet size. Boulders bigger than cars ride long distances in debris flows. Boulders grouped like fish eggs pour downhill in debris flows. The dark material coming toward the Genofiles was not only full of boulders; it was so full of automobiles it was like bread dough mixed with raisins. On its way down Pine Cone Road, it plucked up cars from driveways and the street.

Geologists call mountain-building orogeny. In his Pulitzer-winning book on geology, Annals of the Former World, McPhee explains, in the fight between orogeny and erosion, erosion always wins. Fires side with erosion. Rain does too, especially when teamed with fires.

It is important to understand, if you live on or under their slopes, that the mountains of Southern California are brand new and not all well built. There are volcanoes that grow slower than some of these mountains, and come down slower too. Many of the canyons and ravines in the San Gabriels the Big Tujunga, the Pacoima are flanked by dirt whose angles of repose nearly exceed the temporary frictions that hold the land in place. Water-soaked dirt can weigh more than rock, and will seek a level lower than its own. Burn off the desert chapparal that carpets the slopes, and debris flows become certain once the rain soaks in.

So that's not just what to watch for in the current heavy weather. It's what to expect.



mcphee debris than big water ]]>Doc Searls Weblog
First shared by - christomer
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John McPhee is the best nonfiction writer alive. My opinion, of course. But I happen to be right. Nobody describes anything better. No writer does a better job of digging into subjects most would find dull (rocks, pine barrens, river levees, minor species of fish) and making them not only interesting but relevant. Sometimes extremely so.

Take what he wrote in The Control of Nature about the Mississippi river, describing, among much else, what would happen to New Orleans when a levee failed. Which, ineviably, one would. In a chapter titled Achafalaya, McPhee handicapped the Army Corps of Engineers against the Mississippi. That was in 1987. The New Yorker ran it again in 2005, after Hurricane Katrina gave McPhee's words the ring of phophesy.

Another chapter in The Control of Nature is Los Angeles vs. The San Gabriel Mountains. That one has special relevance today, when torrential rain on mountains denuded by fires brings the threat of mud slides a term that doesn't describe what really happens. McPhee:

In the blue light they saw a massive blackness, moving. It was not a landslide, not a mudslide, not a rock avalanche; nor by any means was it the front of a conventional flood. In Jackie's words, It was just one big black thing coming at us, rolling, rolling with a lot of water in front of it, pushing the water, this big black thing. It was just one big black hill coming toward us.

In geology, it would be known as a debris flow. Debris flows amass in stream valleys and more or less resemble fresh concrete. They consist of water mixed with a good deal of solid material, most of which is above sand size. Some of it is Chevrolet size. Boulders bigger than cars ride long distances in debris flows. Boulders grouped like fish eggs pour downhill in debris flows. The dark material coming toward the Genofiles was not only full of boulders; it was so full of automobiles it was like bread dough mixed with raisins. On its way down Pine Cone Road, it plucked up cars from driveways and the street.

Geologists call mountain-building orogeny. In his Pulitzer-winning book on geology, Annals of the Former World, McPhee explains, in the fight between orogeny and erosion, erosion always wins. Fires side with erosion. Rain does too, especially when teamed with fires.

It is important to understand, if you live on or under their slopes, that the mountains of Southern California are brand new and not all well built. There are volcanoes that grow slower than some of these mountains, and come down slower too. Many of the canyons and ravines in the San Gabriels the Big Tujunga, the Pacoima are flanked by dirt whose angles of repose nearly exceed the temporary frictions that hold the land in place. Water-soaked dirt can weigh more than rock, and will seek a level lower than its own. Burn off the desert chapparal that carpets the slopes, and debris flows become certain once the rain soaks in.

So that's not just what to watch for in the current heavy weather. It's what to expect.



mcphee debris than big water ]]> Sat, 23 Jan 2010 17:02:56 -0500 30:00 tag:filome.com,15 6.5 Northern Calif. Quake Leaves Jumble Of Debris http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122406139&ft=1&f=1001 Shared item NPR Topics: News
First shared by - AKachmar
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Feds say 6.5 quake strikes off California coast

E-Mail This Add to Del.icio.us



quake coast california e mail ]]>NPR Topics: News
First shared by - AKachmar
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Feds say 6.5 quake strikes off California coast

E-Mail This Add to Del.icio.us



quake coast california e mail ]]> Sun, 10 Jan 2010 11:22:41 -0500 30:00 tag:filome.com,16 Tossed in Space http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ICringely/~3/Ih8OHmqlJVs/ Shared item I, Cringely
First shared by - TimYonkers
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Just in case you are an astronaut and need something to worry about, according to NASA there are 18,000 pieces of space junk the size of a basketball or larger right now orbiting the earth. That's 18,000 chances to slam into the International Space Station (ISS), bump into a U.S. Space Shuttle, or plow into any of a number of satellites in low Earth orbit. Twice the ISS has had to be moved to avoid potential collisions and one other time when it couldn't be moved the crew huddled in their Soyuz taxicab for danger to pass, with one such near-miss taking place just last week, which is what inspired this column.

I say it is time to clean up all that junk.

Space junk means everything from rocket upper stages weighing several tons down to the odd wrench lost in space by space-walking astro- or cosmonauts. This stuff that got to space more or less by accident is now torquing above the ionosphere at around 17,000 miles-per-hour, which would be worse if nearly all the junk wasn't going in the the same direction. Friction and gravity will eventually bring all the space junk back to earth, but that could take centuries. So I say simply to avoid any more space junk stories in USA Today, we ought to find a way to get rid of the stuff.

It won't be easy. We can't shoot it down, because even if we are accurate enough to hit the junk all we are likely to accomplish is blasting it into lots more smaller pieces that will need tracking. We could shoot it with high-powered lasers, but unless we were able to vaporize the debris completely, all we'd be doing is boring very nice holes in it.

Nope, we have to gather the stuff and bring it back to Earth. But how?

I propose a space garbage scow.

My garbage scow would use a very fine net to capture the debris and hold it. The net could be built from kevlar, but this week I'm making everything from carbon nanotubes, thanks, so that's what we'll use. Nanotubes have the highest strength-to-weight ratio of any material and would allow us to make a very large, very light weight net. Our point here is to make the net light rather than strong, since our capture speeds will be low and the lack of gravity ought to make it easy to keep the junk tethered together. The point of making it strong, then, is so it can be light enough to be big enough to maybe gather all the junk all 18,000 pieces into a single scow.

I imagine a seine purse-style net, if you know your commercial fishing. Launch the net into an inclined polar orbit generally higher than the space junk to be harvested. The polar orbit will ensure that eventually the scow will go over every spot on the Earth as the planet rotates below, but it also means the scow will eventually cross the path of every piece of space junk.

Here's where we need an algorithm and a honking big computer, because this is a 3-D geometry problem with more than 18,000 variables. Our algorithm determines the most efficient path to use for gathering all 18,000 pieces of space junk.

I haven't yet derived this algorithm, but I have some idea what it would look like. We'd start in a high orbit, above the space junk, because we could trade that altitude for speed as needed, simply by flying lower, trading potential energy for kinetic.

Dragging the net behind a little unmanned spacecraft my idea would be to go past each piece of junk in such a way that it not only lodges permanently in the net, but that doing so adds kinetic energy (hitting at shallow angles to essentially tack like a sailboat off the debris). But wait, there's more! You not only have to try to get energy from each encounter, it helps if like in a game of billiards or pool each encounter results in an effective ricochet sending the net in the proper trajectory for its next encounter. Rinse and repeat 18,000 times.

It won't always be possible, of course, to gain energy from each encounter, but that's why we start in a higher orbit, so as energy is inevitably lost it can be replenished by moving to a lower orbit.

By the same token I think we would logically start with smaller bits of space junk so the net would gain mass steadily over time, then do the same again at each lower altitude. Eventually the net would have corralled hundreds of tons of debris, carrying it down into the atmosphere where atmospheric friction would eventually burn it all up in a spectacular visual display that would create a thin ring of fire all around the Earth.

It's a crazy idea, sure, but it could work. For all the worrying we do about space junk hitting astronauts or rockets as they launch, we could pretty easily get rid of it all. Small to big, high to low, all it would take is time. How much time? If the scow orbits every 90 minutes and it takes an average of a dozen orbits to set up the capture of each piece of space junk, that's 18,000 * 90 * 12 = 19.4 million minutes or 36.9 years to get it all.

Funny, that's about how long it took to put all that crap up there in the first place.



space junk net scow orbit ]]>I, Cringely
First shared by - TimYonkers
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Just in case you are an astronaut and need something to worry about, according to NASA there are 18,000 pieces of space junk the size of a basketball or larger right now orbiting the earth. That's 18,000 chances to slam into the International Space Station (ISS), bump into a U.S. Space Shuttle, or plow into any of a number of satellites in low Earth orbit. Twice the ISS has had to be moved to avoid potential collisions and one other time when it couldn't be moved the crew huddled in their Soyuz taxicab for danger to pass, with one such near-miss taking place just last week, which is what inspired this column.

I say it is time to clean up all that junk.

Space junk means everything from rocket upper stages weighing several tons down to the odd wrench lost in space by space-walking astro- or cosmonauts. This stuff that got to space more or less by accident is now torquing above the ionosphere at around 17,000 miles-per-hour, which would be worse if nearly all the junk wasn't going in the the same direction. Friction and gravity will eventually bring all the space junk back to earth, but that could take centuries. So I say simply to avoid any more space junk stories in USA Today, we ought to find a way to get rid of the stuff.

It won't be easy. We can't shoot it down, because even if we are accurate enough to hit the junk all we are likely to accomplish is blasting it into lots more smaller pieces that will need tracking. We could shoot it with high-powered lasers, but unless we were able to vaporize the debris completely, all we'd be doing is boring very nice holes in it.

Nope, we have to gather the stuff and bring it back to Earth. But how?

I propose a space garbage scow.

My garbage scow would use a very fine net to capture the debris and hold it. The net could be built from kevlar, but this week I'm making everything from carbon nanotubes, thanks, so that's what we'll use. Nanotubes have the highest strength-to-weight ratio of any material and would allow us to make a very large, very light weight net. Our point here is to make the net light rather than strong, since our capture speeds will be low and the lack of gravity ought to make it easy to keep the junk tethered together. The point of making it strong, then, is so it can be light enough to be big enough to maybe gather all the junk all 18,000 pieces into a single scow.

I imagine a seine purse-style net, if you know your commercial fishing. Launch the net into an inclined polar orbit generally higher than the space junk to be harvested. The polar orbit will ensure that eventually the scow will go over every spot on the Earth as the planet rotates below, but it also means the scow will eventually cross the path of every piece of space junk.

Here's where we need an algorithm and a honking big computer, because this is a 3-D geometry problem with more than 18,000 variables. Our algorithm determines the most efficient path to use for gathering all 18,000 pieces of space junk.

I haven't yet derived this algorithm, but I have some idea what it would look like. We'd start in a high orbit, above the space junk, because we could trade that altitude for speed as needed, simply by flying lower, trading potential energy for kinetic.

Dragging the net behind a little unmanned spacecraft my idea would be to go past each piece of junk in such a way that it not only lodges permanently in the net, but that doing so adds kinetic energy (hitting at shallow angles to essentially tack like a sailboat off the debris). But wait, there's more! You not only have to try to get energy from each encounter, it helps if like in a game of billiards or pool each encounter results in an effective ricochet sending the net in the proper trajectory for its next encounter. Rinse and repeat 18,000 times.

It won't always be possible, of course, to gain energy from each encounter, but that's why we start in a higher orbit, so as energy is inevitably lost it can be replenished by moving to a lower orbit.

By the same token I think we would logically start with smaller bits of space junk so the net would gain mass steadily over time, then do the same again at each lower altitude. Eventually the net would have corralled hundreds of tons of debris, carrying it down into the atmosphere where atmospheric friction would eventually burn it all up in a spectacular visual display that would create a thin ring of fire all around the Earth.

It's a crazy idea, sure, but it could work. For all the worrying we do about space junk hitting astronauts or rockets as they launch, we could pretty easily get rid of it all. Small to big, high to low, all it would take is time. How much time? If the scow orbits every 90 minutes and it takes an average of a dozen orbits to set up the capture of each piece of space junk, that's 18,000 * 90 * 12 = 19.4 million minutes or 36.9 years to get it all.

Funny, that's about how long it took to put all that crap up there in the first place.



space junk net scow orbit ]]> Sat, 14 Nov 2009 19:28:52 -0500 30:00 tag:filome.com,17 Watch The NASA Moon Bombing Live Online http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheInquisitr_tech/~3/nscTge0b85o/ Shared item The Inquisitr » Technology
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NASA is bombing the Moon Friday, and you can watch the unprecedented event via live stream online.

The LCROSS (Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite) mission launched in June with its main goal to look for frozen water reserves on the moon by literally blowing up an area at the Moon's south pole.

A source of water on the Moon could provide hydrogen for fuel, and assist in the establishment of a permanent moon base.

If bombing the Moon once wasn't enough, NASA will actually do it twice. The mission has two stages: the shepherding spacecraft and Centaur heavy impactor will separate, with the Centaur creating a debris plume that will rise above the lunar surface. The shepherding spacecraft will fly through the debris plume, collecting and relaying data back to Earth before impacting the lunar surface and creating a second debris plume.

The first impact takes place on Oct 9, 2009 at 4:30 a.m. US PDT (7:30 a.m. US EDT, 10:30pm AEDT) with the second 4 minutes later.

You can watch a live stream of the NASA Moon bombing on NASA TV or via theSLOOH telescope system. Twitter updates are available on the official LCROSS account.

Related posts:

  1. Probers Confirm Water On Moon
  2. Watch the Shuttle Launch Live
  3. Watch the Super Bowl Live Online



moon nasa live bombing debris ]]>The Inquisitr » Technology
First shared by - robdiana
syndication+ 0 | Search 1 | Shares 1

NASA is bombing the Moon Friday, and you can watch the unprecedented event via live stream online.

The LCROSS (Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite) mission launched in June with its main goal to look for frozen water reserves on the moon by literally blowing up an area at the Moon's south pole.

A source of water on the Moon could provide hydrogen for fuel, and assist in the establishment of a permanent moon base.

If bombing the Moon once wasn't enough, NASA will actually do it twice. The mission has two stages: the shepherding spacecraft and Centaur heavy impactor will separate, with the Centaur creating a debris plume that will rise above the lunar surface. The shepherding spacecraft will fly through the debris plume, collecting and relaying data back to Earth before impacting the lunar surface and creating a second debris plume.

The first impact takes place on Oct 9, 2009 at 4:30 a.m. US PDT (7:30 a.m. US EDT, 10:30pm AEDT) with the second 4 minutes later.

You can watch a live stream of the NASA Moon bombing on NASA TV or via theSLOOH telescope system. Twitter updates are available on the official LCROSS account.

Related posts:

  1. Probers Confirm Water On Moon
  2. Watch the Shuttle Launch Live
  3. Watch the Super Bowl Live Online



moon nasa live bombing debris ]]> Fri, 09 Oct 2009 06:08:18 -0400 30:00 tag:filome.com,18 Pentagon looking for someone to pick up the trash in space http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GizmagEmergingTechnologyMagazine/~3/9JVa7pQ1Axw/ Shared item Gizmag Emerging Technology Magazine
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The Soviet Union launched the very first earth-orbiting satellite in 1947, and the world looked on in awe as Sputnik flashed through the sky. Fifty years later, you'd be lucky to see anything. The U.S. Space Surveillance Network says there are almost 20,000 man-made objects in orbit, ninety-four percent of which are non-functional debris. And that's not counting the hundreds of thousands of bits of junk too small to track. Little wonder the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has put out a call for someone anyone to come up with a way to effectively remove orbital debris. ..

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space debris darpa orbital orbit ]]>Gizmag Emerging Technology Magazine
First shared by - ScottS
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The Soviet Union launched the very first earth-orbiting satellite in 1947, and the world looked on in awe as Sputnik flashed through the sky. Fifty years later, you'd be lucky to see anything. The U.S. Space Surveillance Network says there are almost 20,000 man-made objects in orbit, ninety-four percent of which are non-functional debris. And that's not counting the hundreds of thousands of bits of junk too small to track. Little wonder the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has put out a call for someone anyone to come up with a way to effectively remove orbital debris. ..

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space debris darpa orbital orbit ]]> Thu, 08 Oct 2009 23:24:26 -0400 30:00 tag:filome.com,19 RIP Majel Barrett http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/boingboing/gadgets/~3/489122246/rip-majel-barret.html Shared item Boing Boing Gadgets
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Majel Barrett, widow of Gene Roddenberry and the voice of the Enterprise's computers, passed away today at 76. She was gorgeous and charming and awesome.

She had recorded the voice work for the upcoming Star Trek movie just two weeks ago.

Majel Roddenberry, widow of 'Trek' creator, dies [Mercury News/AP]

Image: Space Debris





majel trek voice roddenberry widow ]]>Boing Boing Gadgets
First shared by - JoshBancroft
syndication+ 47 | Search 1 | Shares 1

Majel Barrett, widow of Gene Roddenberry and the voice of the Enterprise's computers, passed away today at 76. She was gorgeous and charming and awesome.

She had recorded the voice work for the upcoming Star Trek movie just two weeks ago.

Majel Roddenberry, widow of 'Trek' creator, dies [Mercury News/AP]

Image: Space Debris





majel trek voice roddenberry widow ]]> Thu, 18 Dec 2008 21:44:15 -0500 30:00 tag:filome.com,20