Cap'n Bob & the Damsel

March 2006

Bike Ride Across America to Honor 9/11 Flight Crews

A group of airline personnel and friends plan to ride their bicycles from Dockweiler Beach, adjacent to LAX, to Washington, D.C., in tribute to the 33 airline crew members who died that tragic day.

From the Daily Breeze:

Bike ride will honor flight personnel victims of 9-11

[Organizer] Thomas Heidenberger lost his wife, Michele, that day. She was a flight attendant on a plane destined for Los Angeles that crashed instead into the Pentagon.

There were 33 of them killed that morning, 33 flight attendants and pilots who were among the first to confront the terrorist hijackers of Sept. 11.

“It’s not about one person, one individual crew member,” he said from his home in suburban Washington, D.C. “It’s about all 33.

“We don’t know what happened up there. It’s all speculation,” he added. “But they were the first to confront the terrorists. They need to be recognized.”

The five bicyclists will leave April 2 on a route that takes them across 15 states and more than 3,500 miles. They chose to begin near Los Angeles International Airport because that was the destination of three of the four hijacked flights.
A small group of airline workers will set out from Dockweiler Beach early next month on a cross-country bike ride in their honor. The riders have given themselves 33 days to make the trip, one day for each of the crew members killed.

It’s a tribute first, but also a fund-raiser for the official 9-11 memorials and a salute to those who still work in the air. For its organizer, the ride is a chance to remind the nation of the full toll of the attacks.

[ read the rest of the story ]

15 Mar 2006 by Aviation Charity People

Fireball Global Warming Theory

Now, this is an interesting take on what might be causing temperatures to rise on Earth. A Russian scientist disputes that fossil fuel emissions are responsible for the increase of greenhouse gasses, while making claims that the Tunguska Event that occurred over Siberia in 1908 stripped the upper atmosphere of ice crystals and is the cause for recent warming.

Excerpt from Science Blog:

Russian blames global warming on 1908 Tunguska Event

A new theory to explain global warming was revealed at a meeting at the University of Leicester (UK) and is being considered for publication in the journal “Science First Hand”. The controversial theory has nothing to do with burning fossil fuels and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. According to Vladimir Shaidurov of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the apparent rise in average global temperature recorded by scientists over the last hundred years or so could be due to atmospheric changes that are not connected to human emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of natural gas and oil. Shaidurov explained how changes in the amount of ice crystals at high altitude could damage the layer of thin, high altitude clouds found in the mesosphere that reduce the amount of warming solar radiation reaching the earth’s surface.

Image: Tunguska Fireball – www.espacial.org

Shaidurov has used a detailed analysis of the mean temperature change by year for the last 140 years and explains that there was a slight decrease in temperature until the early twentieth century. This flies in the face of current global warming theories that blame a rise in temperature on rising carbon dioxide emissions since the start of the industrial revolution. Shaidurov, however, suggests that the rise, which began between 1906 and 1909, could have had a very different cause, which he believes was the massive Tunguska Event, which rocked a remote part of Siberia, northwest of Lake Baikal on the 30th June 1908.

[ . . . ]

The most powerful greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is water vapour, [Shaidurov] says, “Human activities have little direct control over its atmospheric abundance, which is controlled instead by the worldwide balance between evaporation from the oceans and precipitation.”

[read more]

Of course, the cycle of precipitation and evaporation largely is influenced by the Sun. While I agree with the good doctor’s analysis that fossil fuel has little to do with global climate, I respectfully submit that noctilucent ice is widely evident in the atmosphere today; moreover, should ice have been displaced in 1908, it would have had plenty of time to reconstitute in 98 years’ time. Yet, this is an interesting concept, and generates both insights and questions.

14 Mar 2006 by Global Warming Science

Still a Meathead – Part IV

While trying to “work” the system in an attempt to hijack your kids, the official state Meathead gets caught. Rob Reiner faces ethics charges for misusing funds intended for promotional TV ads to support a state ballot initiative intended to raise taxes yet again – and only for the “wealthy” – which, if you can afford your own computer system to read this article, probably means you!

Right: Meathead offering a bribe to a pre-schooler?

California – Embattled Reiner slams his critics – sacbee.com

Facing a state audit and possible criminal investigation of the state commission he chaired, movie director Rob Reiner on Monday said his opponents are targeting him for attacks to avoid discussing the merits of the universal preschool initiative he put on the June ballot.

“They will do whatever it takes to knock this thing out,” he said in an interview with The Bee. “So they will attack me because they know they can’t talk about the initiative.”

Opponents responded that they have discussed the shortcomings of Proposition 82, including their argument that raising taxes on the wealthy to pay for preschool for all 4-year-olds could harm the state economy.

“We are not the ones who have called for any investigations,” said Joel Fox, the opposition campaign’s co-chairman. “That has come from the legislators or the press.”

But Reiner pointed out that the opposition campaign’s original name was “Stop the Reiner Initiative.”

“Stop Reiner!” he exclaimed. “Stop Reiner? Stop Reiner from what? From giving kids preschool?”

For the past three weeks, Reiner has been under fire from lawmakers because the First 5 California commission he chairs spent $23 million in taxpayer money on ads promoting preschool while Reiner was qualifying his “Preschool for All” initiative for the ballot.

Reiner sponsored Proposition 10, the 1998 initiative that created the commission he chairs and raised tobacco taxes to pay for early childhood programs.

“This money generated by Proposition 10 was not a private slush fund for Mr. Reiner to use,” said Assemblyman Dave Cox, R-Fair Oaks. “It appears that is what has transpired.”

[more]

14 Mar 2006 by California Degenerates Whacko Politics

Happy Days Flashback

Steve Marconi, a free-lance writer and resident in our area, prepared a list of “amenities we didn’t have in 1951.” I enjoyed reading the article in the Daily Breeze and want to pass along a few of my favorites from Steve’s List:

• The remote control. Television itself was fairly new, but it didn’t take long to come up with the remote — the two-legged kind Dad operated by lying on the couch (we called it a davenport back then) and saying, “Stevie, turn the TV to Channel 4.”

• The F-word. Oh, we had it all right, but you never heard it in polite company. Refined women never said it, and if kids said it, well, have you ever wondered what soap tastes like?

• Self-serve gasoline stations. They were called “service” stations because someone actually came out and pumped your gas, washed your windows and checked your oil. That was what service was. And you could ask for directions because the serviceman could speak English. Really.

• Timeouts. Back when kids actually respected their elders and didn’t talk back to parents, we had corporal punishment. At home that could mean a belt or a switch or the nearby kitchen spoon applied to the bottom. At school that meant swats with a paddle, not just a visit to the office. For most, it worked. For some, it meant years of therapy.

• Whiteboards. There is an entire generation of students that hasn’t had the excruciating pleasure of hearing fingernails scrape across an old-fashioned slate chalkboard. Think amplifier feedback that raises the hair on the back of your neck — only worse.

• Body piercings. Disfiguring your face, tongue and other body parts used to be considered a form of torture. We thure were thtupid back then.

• Tattoos. Amazing how what used to define a sailor or a criminal has become a fashion statement.

[read the rest of the article]

If you enjoyed these few, please read the rest. It’s certainly worth your time.

13 Mar 2006 by Culture Humor

Solar and Terrestrial Conveyor Belts

We previously posted the prediction of the next solar maximum in this article. Now, another article from NASA on essentially the same topic offers a different twist; the notion of similarities between the terrestrial ocean “conveyor belt” and a conveyor belt phenomenon postulated to occur in the solar interior are considered in the article:

NASA – Solar Storm Warning

It’s official: Solar minimum has arrived. Sunspots have all but vanished. Solar flares are nonexistent. The sun is utterly quiet.

Like the quiet before a storm.

[more]

In the article, they refer to the “ocean conveyor belt” which is an attribute of ocean circulation patterns. These patterns can alter the climate in certain areas . For example, the Gulf Stream portion of the “conveyor” keeps Northwestern Europe more temperate than normal for a high-latitude area. Likewise, Hawaii is cooler than many 20th latitude tropical areas due to the California Current, another segment of the “belt.” Left: Illustration of ocean circulation “conveyor belt” – NASA

The article describes the solar circulation pattern a bit more:

The sun’s conveyor belt is a current, not of water, but of electrically-conducting gas. It flows in a loop from the sun’s equator to the poles and back again. Just as the Great Ocean Conveyor Belt controls weather on Earth, this solar conveyor belt controls weather on the sun. Specifically, it controls the sunspot cycle.

[ . . . ]

The top of the conveyor belt skims the surface of the sun, sweeping up the magnetic fields of old, dead sunspots. The ‘corpses’ are dragged down at the poles to a depth of 200,000 km where the sun’s magnetic dynamo can amplify them. Once the corpses (magnetic knots) are reincarnated (amplified), they become buoyant and float back to the surface. Presto — new sunspots!

I think the comparison between the solar circulation and Earth’s ocean circulation is interesting, but the circulation of solar plasma is probably more analogous to the triple-cell atmospheric circulation model here on Earth, where there is lateral motion due to the rotation of the planet and Coriolis forces. Since the sun is effectively gaseous (albeit dense), the same sorts of forces should be in effect.

Left: Triple circulation cell illustration – WikiPedia

Don’t forget that both conveyor belts on Earth are driven by the energy of the Sun. The added insight into the Sun’s most complex workings will continue to benefit mankind. As solar research continues and we learn even more about the Sun, it will better enable us to prepare for the terrestrial effects of solar activity, whether it be for colder or warmer.

12 Mar 2006 by Astronomy Global Warming Science

The Succulent Department

We’re enjoying an indoor day here since the weather is a bit inclement. Not much to blog about when you’re just being lazy, so I’ll post this interesting picture from the local garden emporium’s succulent section. Interesting colors and textures – a change from the usual.

11 Mar 2006 by California Photography

Categories

Archives