An exceptionally clear day motivated us to drive to the west side of Palos Verdes peninsula today. One of several stops brought us to an overlook of Surfer’s Cove west of Malaga Cove along the coast. A flock of pelicans gracefully soared past as we watched the ocean and listened to the surf.
Yesterday, the Damsel and I went to San Pedro and enjoyed the local attractions. We took a walk through the Ports O’ Call Village – a touristy collection of shops and restaurants along the waterfront of the main channel of the Port of Los Angeles. Nearby are other attractions such as the Los Angeles Maritime Museum, the Merchant Marine Memorial, the S.S. Lane Victory, the Cabrillo Aquarium and my favorite, the Red Car. Actually there are a couple of Red Cars – restored from early-twentieth century electric streetcars that ran throughout the Los Angeles area. Damsel took these photos on an off-and-on rainy morning in the harbor:
I took some video as well: Red Car arriving at the 22nd Street Station and inside the Red Car on a rainy day.
Both Mars rovers have far exceeded their “warranty” and despite setbacks from time to time, have bounced back to carry on with their extended missions. The Spirit rover is currently limping (backwards, on five out of six wheels) toward it’s winter resting place atop a hill named “McCool.”
From Jet Propulsion Labs:
Mars Exploration Rover Mission: The Mission
Spirit Continues Driving on Five Wheels:
Spirit continued to make progress toward “McCool Hill” despite a reduction in solar energy and problems with the right front wheel. The team plans to have the rover spend the winter on the hill’s north-facing slopes, where the tilt toward the sun would help maximize daily output by the solar panels. On Spirit’s 779th sol, or Martian day (March 13, 2006), the drive actuator on the right front wheel stalled during a turn to adjust the position of the rover’s antennas. The stall ended the day’s drive, which brought Spirit 29 meters (95 feet) closer to McCool, still approximately 120 meters (390 feet) away.
Engineers conducted tests on sols 781 and 782 (March 15 and 16, 2006) on a testbed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as well as remotely on Spirit. Further analysis is needed to determine what caused the right front actuator to stop working. Meanwhile, the operations team has successfully commanded Spirit to drive using only 5 wheels. Engineers plan to have Spirit continue driving backward with five healthy wheels while dragging the right front wheel.
This is how we are celebrating the day: roast corned beef with cabbage and potato bake (and carrots and parsnips). A special horseradish sauce spiced up the beef and a frosty mug of Killian’s Irish Red beer to cool it off. MMMM MMMM! This is adapted from an Emeril Lagasse recipe which you can find on the Food Network cable channel.
Mexican truck traffic will be bringing pollution (and who knows what else?) and WE have to impose more strident emission controls on ourselves? Shouldn’t Mexican POS trucks be required to meet the standards in this country?
This is just plainly WRONG!
From the Daily Breeze/Copley News:
Ruling on Mexican trucks will bring the state a load of smog
California air-quality regulators say trucks from south of the border tend to pollute more. The border will open to them soon under NAFTA guidelines.
SACRAMENTO — An anticipated surge in long-haul truck traffic from Mexico will deliver more than loads of produce, electronics and clothing to Southern California.
It will also bring a lot of smog.
California’s air-quality regulators say the imminent opening of the state’s freeways and ports to older, diesel-fueled Mexican trucks could produce a dramatic increase in toxic pollutants, a new source of smog equal to another 2.2 million cars on the road.
“This would have a serious impact on the region’s health and particularly on the health of those community members living adjacent to any heavily traveled routes,” warns a just-released state Air Resources Board report.
“Additionally, the supplemental emissions generated by the increased truck traffic could impede California’s progress toward attaining the federal air quality standards, which could potentially jeopardize billions of dollars in federal transportation funding,” the report says.
As a result, state and Los Angeles officials say they may have to impose more stringent local standards to offset the added pollution from Mexican trucks. [emphasis added]
[ read more ]
In a universe where entropy prevails, it’s interesting to see something like this:
SPACE.com — Cosmic ‘DNA’: Double Helix Spotted in Space
Magnetic forces at the center of the galaxy have twisted a nebula into the shape of DNA, a new study reveals.
Image: Double Helix Nebula – Credit: M. Morris, UCLA
The double helix shape is commonly seen inside living organisms, but this is the first time it has been observed in the cosmos.
“Nobody has ever seen anything like that before in the cosmic realm,” said the study’s lead author Mark Morris of UCLA. “Most nebulae are either spiral galaxies full of stars or formless amorphous conglomerations of dust and gas—space weather. What we see indicates a high degree of order.”
[ read more ]
It turns out that this phenomenon may be an effect caused by a large gravitational mass orbiting our galaxy center; the gravitational attraction causes the dust and gas in the nebula to twirl around every 10,000 years or so, as the nebula slowly drifts away from galaxy center on a line roughly perpendicular to the galactic plane. This theory is consistent with the observations.
Picture the Blue Angels in an air show doing formation aileron rolls with smoke jettisoning from the F-18s. The resulting double or triple helix is a real crowd pleaser.
In case you were wondering . . .
From WikiPedia:
In the Roman calendar the Ides of March fell on the 15th day of the Roman month of Martius. The word ides comes from a Latin word that means to divide. The ides is simply the middle of the month.
Image: Vincenzo Camuccini, Mort de César, 1798.
Although the Roman calendar was eventually displaced by the modern days of the week around the 3rd century, the Ides continued to be used in a vernacular sense for centuries afterwards. When Shakespeare wrote the famous line “Beware the Ides of March!” in his play Julius Caesar in 1599, he did so in the reasonable assumption that his audience would know the date of Caesar’s death and so have a good idea of what the Ides were.
The date is famous because Julius Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March, 44 BC. Because of Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar and its line “Beware the Ides of Marchâ€, the Ides of March has had a sense of doom. But in Roman times the Ides of March was simply the normal way of referring to March 15.
More from InfoPlease:
The term Ides comes from the earliest Roman calendar, which is said to have been devised by Romulus, the mythical founder of Rome. Whether it was Romulus or not, the inventor of this calendar had a penchant for complexity. The Roman calendar organized its months around three days, each of which served as a reference point for counting the other days:
- Kalends (1st day of the month)
- Nones (the 7th day in March, May, July, and October; the 5th in the other months)
- Ides (the 15th day in March, May, July, and October; the 13th in the other months)
The remaining, unnamed days of the month were identified by counting backwards from the Kalends, Nones, or the Ides. For example, March 3 would be V Nones—5 days before the Nones (the Roman method of counting days was inclusive; in other words, the Nones would be counted as one of the 5 days).