yesterdays APOD

Can I just say that Iceland is awesome!! check this out!


Volcano and Aurora in Iceland
Credit: Sigurdur H. Stefnisson

Explanation: Sometimes both heaven and Earth erupt. In Iceland in 1991, the volcano Hekla erupted at the same time that auroras were visible overhead. Hekla, one of the most famous volcanoes in the world, has erupted at least 20 times over the past millennium, sometimes causing great destruction. The last eruption occurred only six years ago but caused only minor damage. The green auroral band occurred fortuitously about 100 kilometers above the erupting lava. Is Earth the Solar System's only planet with both auroras and volcanos?

The people there are definitely hard core too.. putting up with winter and all that (I miss it). I was reading one of my favorite get-mad-at-stupid-people books Control of Nature by John McPhee and he's got this story in there about Iceland - it's the only one that doesn't make me angry. He tells this story about a fishing boat sinking and the one guy who survived SWAM back to shore. I think it took him 4 hours.. in that freezing, alomst arctic circle ocean water. I wouldn't have made it, cause then he walked dripping wet to some place to dry off and eat and all that jazz.

AND.. David and I just found out that 10% of the Icelanic population "definitely" believe in the existance of elves. Check out this quote from Health and Spirituality..

The village of Hafnarfjordur outside Reykjavik looks like any other little coastal town. A couple of boats in the harbor and a few streets with your average shops and businesses make the place alive. The only thing that sets it apart is the lava field surrounding the town — and that humans say they share their space with the elf people.

kickass! I love elves =) I was just telling Dave the other day that if I could have any kind of ears that are out there.. elf ears would definitely be in the top 3.

AND also from the same article...

According to surveys, 10 percent of Icelanders believe in elves. Another staggering 80 percent will not say they exactly believe, but neither are they willing to totally rule out their existence.

If you want to read the whole article click here..

New eNZed Posts!!

I'm not sure if any of you look at this stuff anymore, but I'll be posting some new eNZed stories way back in the May 2005 - June 2005 (when I get to June there will be a link/button) area in my archives starting today!

I bought me-self a new external hard drive so I've got all the pics in a nice easy place to deal with. YAY! Eventually I will also be posting photo albums of each day on my Yahoo photo account here so you can see all the pics I didn't put in the posts (it's so hard to choose them!!). There's a nice slideshow button you can push so you can just sit back and enjoy them without having to push any of those pesky buttons.

For all you rock-geeks out there

From today's EPOD...




This spectacular crystal of Rhodochorsite (MnCO3), known as the “Alma King” measures 14 cm x 16.5 cm. The perfect rhombohedron was recovered in the wall of a narrow pocket on a matrix of white, needle clear Quartz, blue Fluorite, black Sphalerite and Tetrahedrite, brasse Chalcopyrite and pale yellow Calcite. The “Alma King” was collected in 1992 from the Sweet Home Mine, which is located about 144 km southwest of Denver, Colorado, near the small old mining town of Alma. Sweet Home Mine was originally opened as a Silver mine in the 1870’s and was mined until the 1960’s. Throughout the mine’s lifetime, nice Rhodochrosite specimens were found along with the silver ore, but not used commercially. In 1991 the mine reopened as a Rhodochrosite specimen mine.

Rhodochrosites from the Sweet Home Mine are gem-quality crystals because of their translucent cherry-red color, which is due to the relatively low amount of iron, magnesium and calcium impurities. Note that when calcium, magnesium, and especially iron ions substitute for manganese, a pink color will result. Many experts acclaim the “Alma King” as the finest and most valuable mineral specimen ever mined in North America. Rhodochrosite became the Colorado State Mineral in 2002.

The “Alma King” can be seen in the permanent display in the Coors Mineral Hall at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, Denver, Colorado. (Photo taken in July 2005, Canon Power Shot A80).

it's the po-leece

So I'm just sitting here at my desk and I happen to look out the window and see 2 military cop cars pull up, a giant garbage truck, a MINIVAN, and 2 park maintenence trucks pull up to the little chinese pagoda thing across the bridge from my office.. They pull down this tent that's been up there for a couple of weeks, and start shoving it into the garbage truck. along with a couple of bikes..

There's 5 or 6 guys total. One definitely military (in fatigues and silly hat) and definitely a couple of SWAT looking guys.. complete with SHOT GUN! They have rubber gloves on and they're tearing apart the homeless camp in the bushes! I mean, I can understand wanting them out of the park, but where are they going to go? Especially after you've destryoed all of their possessions??

They also found some guy, questioned him for about 2 minutes and then looked through his bag and arrested him. But instead of putting him in one of the cop cars, they marched him the other direction! I have no idea what's going on here, but it's crazy that it's going on outside my window! And WOW! a 3rd car is now driving aropund the park! I wonder if there was a big meth lab in the bushes... it does stink over there. But what I also don't understand is why there's still a pile of stuff (maybe a person) and another guy (looks like one of the guys normally hanging out over there) still under the pagoda thing. How come they arrested the one guy, but didn't even talk to the other ones? And is it military just cause the park is ON Pearl Harbor? how come there aren't any Honolulu Police?

Htey've got this big garbage truck and they'redriving it all around the area chucking stuff into it, but not everything.. and now it's driving away. without taking down the camp in the trees - maybe it's full?

Crazy shit. I'll probably babble more about this later if anything more happens..

Glaciers

Does anyone else love glaciers? Cause I do.. =) Look at that!



Wouldn't it be kick ass if Dave could time-lapse over the course of a year.. or 100+? We could go some crazy place like the Juneau Ice field and set up a camera.. and then we could occasionally go back and maintain.. I'm sure the power source would be a bitch, but I'm getting ahead of myself here...
Look at the patterns of dirt and gravel in the ice.. that's so cool! That's from the glacier ripping chunks off the mountains all around it. . that's how Yosemite formed! That's why no state in the upper midwest has any topsoil! It's so easy to think of a glacier as a river of ice when it has the lateral and medial moraines in it like that.
To give a quick story about how big of a geek I am... A couple of years ago (try 6 or so) I was supposed to go out with some friends to a bar (where I couldn't drink cause I wasn't 21 yet), but I was an hour and a half late cause the Discovery channel had this show on where they were talking about all of this glacial research going on. They were talking about Lake Vostok in antartcica and how it has all these crazy life forms in it cause it's a lake (liquid) but it's burined under a couple miles of ice in the middle of Antarctica! I also have this image in my head of this point inthe show where they go back to this area where some scientists (not sure if they were geos or not) had carved out a cross-section of the glacier and poked some nails in the ice at different depths to see how the ice moves in relation to depth. they had thought it would be linear but it turned out to be more of an exponential.. moving quite fast at the top, but falling off as it got deeper. I don't know why, but that really stuck with me. I got all excited, and that's when I thought that it would be super fun to go to Antarctica.. and now that I've pestered Rosie about it, I know it'd be super fun to go to Antarctica... but how to do it.. hmmm..

anyway, that's my geo babble for the day. And if you've already read Dave's "i love fighting" babble, I have to say I agree. Lots of chill people (except for the one we all already know about). And I'm all excited about boxing. It was so fun, and I'm so sore =)! I could barely type with my left hand yesterday cause it was so tired and shakey (much better today, but my back hurts in a lot of new places).. =) yay!

Winter

Right now out my office window it looks like a nasty snow storm out of Houghton. The clouds are all low and dark and some of the trees are fuzzed out by rain or the bottom of the cloud. I know Dave thinks I'm crazy, but I miss that. I wanna look out the window and not be able to see across the street because it's snowing so hard. It just gives me something that I can't get any other way. All i have is my crappy camera phone, but here it is...

For Claire..

Sillyness is fun..


and sillyness just happens when you hang out with Claire =)

For Steve..

I have been going through pics today and I found some that I downloaded from my dad's camera when they came visiting in September. Steve had been taking some pics at the spreading of my Grandma's ashes and caught a Monarch butterfly. It was originally a much bigger pic, but I could tell he'd really gotten the butterfly well.

I cropped it down and here it is!


Pretty..

Today's EPOD

EPOD has a great cloud pic for today. I just couldn't resist putting it up. By the way, I'm also very excited - I've been sleeping though the night! Saying that makes me sound like a 2 year old, but every night this week, I've woken up no earlier than 6am. This moring I was even woken up by my alarm clock! And I didn't know what day it was, thinking it must certainly be saturday, and I should be waking up to my alarm! That never happens, I always wake up 2 minutes before it goes off, and I usually have to get up and pee at least once between 2-5am.. none of that! This is great! I'm not sure how many of you realize how big of a deal this is, but hopefully it's at least funny, cause I can only hope such wonderfulness will continue.

Podcasts

I hate to say it (but I'm not entirely sure why), I've discovered Podcasts... and they're wonderful. They have made the normal drudgery of sitting at my desk (either doing nothing or actually working) tolerable and even interesting. I get to listen to my favorite NPR shows that I frequently miss cause i don't have a radio and I don't have a car to drive around listening to the radio in. The best part is you can download OLD shows! Not just the new ones! I have 7 monts of Science Fridays downloading right now!!! Not to mention a week of Democracy Now! - not sure why I don't have 7 months of that show.. I'd certainly love it. yay.. I have a big warm, if not slightly smug happy spot shining around me.

Depending on how good I get at listening, thinking, and working all at the same time, you might even find some interesting stuff right here because of this new found wealth of information. Maybe you should even down load yourself some itunes and get your own.

Rants are Funny

So just before christmas my brother sent me this link to this chrinstmas rant. I didn't know, but apparently the right wing is all up in arms about people attacking christmas.. I had no idea! How did I know know where to join up!?

Here's a little sample from this website:

Speaking of Jew-hating, Pat Buchanan has joined the hype-a-thon of the supposed Attack on Christmas, too. Or, as he put it, “What we’re witnessing here are hate crimes against Christianity.” Sorry? We’re not so hot on paying for an inflatable camel for your goddamn nativity scene and suddenly we’re Slobodan fucking Milosevic? Fuck you. Get some goddamn perspective, you little prick. When they start hunting Christians in the streets, it’ll be time to start yelling “Hate crime.” And no, it won’t count when they start chasing you with the torches. That’ll be called “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year.”

If you enjoy Rants-ala-Sean, you should definitely check it out, especially cause it's so well informed (lots of links) -> here!

Whoa!

I'm at work so I have to make this quick! Dave is up at Mauna Kea right now trying to deal with a crappy radio telescope. This sucks for him trying to get work done, but it's made for some amazing timelapse with the new SLR!!! I'm really excited, if you can't tell! So everyone should downloasd Quickime 7 here and look at Dave's time lapse here!!