This is an interesting animation showing a three-axis presentation of recent solar coronal mass ejections. You can click on the image for the full-sized animation.

From SpaceWeather.com:

FOUR CMEs: On Sept. 19th, the STEREO-SOHO fleet of spacecraft surrounding the sun detected six coronal mass ejections (CMEs). Two of the clouds rapidly dissipated. The remaining four, however, are still intact and billowing through the inner solar system.

According to analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab, who prepared the movie, one CME should hit Mercury on Sept. 20th at 05:40 UT while another delivers a glancing blow to Earth’s magnetic field on Sept. 22nd at 23:00 UT. All impact times have an uncertainty of plus or minus 7 hrs.

The Palo Verde tree on the road in front of our house has a verdin nest; it has been there for over a year. Now, it seems, there is one of the tiny birds roosting in it. According to the Stokes Field Guide to Birds, the male verdin builds several nests and the female chooses only one to roost. I’m glad that she chose this one. I like that idea; the male builds several nests for the female.

The image above is the opening on the nest taken with the flash to illuminate the inside. I don’t see eggs or chicks but that doesn’t mean their are none. The upper left inset image is the spherical nest taken from the road under the tree. At the lower right is an image of our verdin that I took in June of last year in this very tree. Click on the image to enlarge.

We spent the weekend (extended weekend, actually) enjoying food and football. So, no significant blogging today. We hope you enjoyed your weekend as much as we did.

With Summer ending this week, I am glad that we’re still getting our red bird of paradise flowers. Enjoy them while you can! Click on the image to enlarge.

From The Patriot Post:

Strictly speaking, Social Security is not a Ponzi scheme, in part because it’s not against the law. Indeed, it is the law. (Try not paying payroll taxes — i.e., “investing” in the system.) But it is structured exactly like a Ponzi scheme, and it will eventually fail for the same reasons. Today’s workers are paying for the checks of today’s retirees, and it has always been that way. From the start, politicians have raided the Social Security “trust fund” and spent the money on other general fund projects. What was left were worthless IOUs. Now that benefits paid exceed taxes collected, that problem has become acute. According to the Social Security board of trustees, in 1945, there were 42 workers for every retiree; the current ratio of three workers to every retiree is unsustainable.

Emphasis added.

I bought a patriotic bouquet of lovely red and white roses with some (almost) blue accent flowers in the arrangement today when we went on our weekly shopping excursion for groceries. These are on my desk in the office tonight. Click on the image to enlarge.

We took an unscheduled scenic drive today. We took the dogs to the Wickenburg Dog Park and after that, we went to the recycle center to dispose of glass, plastic and paper/cardboard.

Since it was a very nice, clear day, we decided to take the scenic loop drive north of town. At one point along the drive, I took this image of Vulture Peak with the town in front of the Vulture Mountains. In the near foreground are the local native vegetation including saguaro, creosote, palo verde and a couple of varieties of cholla. Click on the image to enlarge.

Over the past several days, monsoon season has been in full swing in Arizona and other areas. We listen to a local radio station where the National Weather Service has the capability to override regular programming with NWS warnings. They have interrupted a couple of times today with alerts for severe thunderstorms in Maricopa and Pinal counties.

Damsel and I were out walking Cabela a few minutes ago when we observed a four-engine jet airliner flying above us (VERY unusual). Since the plane flew overhead eastbound and then turned to a southeast heading toward Phoenix, I can only guess that the crew diverted to this area to avoid the severe storms in progress in west-central Maricopa county and were proceeding toward Phoenix Sky Harbor.

We haven’t seen lightning shows as awesome as those depicted above, but the past several days and evenings have put on a pretty good show of lightning flashes and rolling thunder. We have had a little rain including a steady downpour for a half hour or so two or three evenings ago.

The cabinet makers delivered our entertainment center today. We asked them to match the knotted alder wood cabinets that they installed while the house was being built. I think they did an excellent job. We’re watching football this afternoon, so this will be a short post. Click on the image to enlarge.

Just in time for the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on America, the hit counter for the Never Forget Tribute rolled past 75,000,000. We believe that the American People and the World can Never Forget the attacks that happened a decade ago. To do so would lull us into the complacency that was set up by the Clinton Administration which allowed the Islamic threat to materialize into the terrible events of 9/11.

About the Tribute

The animation was originally inspired by an anonymously-produced PowerPoint slideshow making the rounds on the Internet and via emails after 9/11. I gathered some of the graphics and produced the prototype of the graphic to display on my personal website. After refinements and improvements suggested by Damsel and others, it appears as it does today. This is the graphic seen in the right sidebar depicting the attacks on America by terrorists.

In August of 2005, I made the animation available to anyone. The offer was only taken by a few sites at first, but since then, many more have begun displaying the animation. As of December 2005, there were over 200 sites linking to it, and that number has been growing since. Sites in the US, Canada, Australia, the UK and Italy (and several other countries) display it on their pages.

The statistics counter in the sidebar just below the tribute indicates the approximate number of times that the tribute has been delivered to websites all over the nation and the world. Watch it for a few seconds to see it increment each time the tribute gets downloaded.