A small town in Siberia collects the many small rocks that fell from the sky after the meteor explosion in Siberia last week. Scientists worry that the collectors are damaging scientific evidence. The towns people are just glad to have something to help out. It looks like hard times are not a stranger to this area of the world.
The children are just like children everywhere. The cold doesn’t seem to bother them but I am still cold after watching the video.
Archaeologists announced today (Feb. 4) that bones excavated from underneath a parking lot in Leicester “beyond reasonable doubt,” belong to the medieval king. Archaeologists announced the discovery of the skeleton in September. They suspected then they might have Richard III on their hands because the skeleton showed signs of the spinal disorder scoliosis, which Richard III likely had, and because battle wounds on the bones matched accounts of Richard III’s death in the War of the Roses.
The deadly outbreak of meningitis that has left 30 ill and 5 dead has been traced to spinal steroid injections, given as an epidural. This announcement put my family on red alert because my husband has gotten spinal injections in the past, given in epidural form, as an outpatient.
What is the most shocking here is the description of what went wrong. According to the New York Times:
The outbreak, with 5 people dead and 30 ill in six states, is thought to have been caused by a steroid drug contaminated by a fungus. The steroid solution was not made by a major drug company, but was concocted by a pharmacy in Framingham, Mass., called the New England Compounding Center. Compounding pharmacies make their own drug products, which are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
On Monday, federal inspectors at the New England center found a sealed vial of the steroid afloat with so much foreign matter that it could be seen with the naked eye, Food and Drug Administration officials said Thursday. Under the microscope, the particles were a fungus.
Over the next several days, Curiosity is expected to send back the first color pictures. After several weeks of health checkups, the six-wheel rover could take its first short drive and flex its robotic arm. Read more…
The Roswell incident turned 65 this week. The above video is from 1989 and is excellent, but it is lengthy. So is Roswell for real or just another bunch of nut jobs with conspiracy theories?
Happy anniversary, Roswell, N.M. It was 65 years ago today that the Roswell Daily Record blasted an infamous headline claiming local military officials had captured a flying saucer on a nearby ranch. And now, a former CIA agent says it really happened.
“It was not a damn weather balloon — it was what it was billed when people first reported it,” said Chase Brandon, a 35-year CIA veteran. “It was a craft that clearly did not come from this planet, it crashed and I don’t doubt for a second that the use of the word ‘remains’ and ‘cadavers’ was exactly what people were talking about.”
Scientists have stopped short of declaring a new discover but those at CERN feel they are closer to finding the “stuff” that makes matter have mass. For most of us, this abstraction remains just that, an abstraction. Will this near discovery of this sub-atomic particle change anything? Who knows.
Dubbed the Higgs boson — or the “God particle,” to the chagrin of scientists — the particle is thought to create a sort of force field that permeates the universe, imbuing everything that we can see and touch with the fundamental property known as mass.
Scientists also recoil from the expression “God Particle” which has been theorized about for nearly a half century. Perhaps there will be a better, more descriptive term. Maybe that discovery should come first.
There was another after shock late last night, around 11:21. This time the quake registered 3.1 on the Richter Scale. Are we turning in to California? We have summer in March and earthquakes. The world is turning upside down. I am waiting for hordes of grasshoppers and for it to rain frogs.
Have you looked at buying earthquake insurance? I have. It isn’t what I had imagined. I expected if an earthquake hit my house, the damage would be covered and the deductible would be what it is for any other disaster, frogs, hail, wind, etc. Such is not the case. There is a huge deductible, usually in the thousands. It also isn’t cheap. I guess if your house falls down on you then its worth it but then you have to think of the probability. If this aftershock stuff keeps up though, I might have to change my mind. I had said no.
Does anyone have any information or experience with earthquake insurance? Do you think that it is worth it? The Haiti earthquake wasn’t in a predictable area either was it?
Just 48 hours ago it was in the low 80s, but in another 30 hours, temperatures may dip near or even below freezing in the metro region. The National Weather Service has issued a freeze watch late Monday night into early Tuesday morning everywhere in the greater Washington, D.C. metro region except for Calvert and St. Mary’s county – due to the moderating Bay waters.
Temperatures are likely to dip to about 31-34 inside the beltway and and east of town, but 27-32 west and north of the beltway.
Impatiens are greatly at risk. The pansies that have survived the winter will be fine. Daffodils will be ok, if there are any left. I am not so sure about the tulips and hyacinths.
We are really in uncharted territory this spring. I have blue bells in front of my front porch. The latest last freeze was April 29, 1874.
Will fruit trees be damaged? How about the non-fruit producing flowering trees?
The Bluebell Festival will be held on Sunday, April 15, 2012 at Merrimac Farm Wildlife Management Area in Prince William County, Virginia. I hope there are still bluebells left.
Oooops…look what I just found! Why it’s Charlie Grymes giving us the inside story on Merrimac Farm and whats planned for the festival this year.
With all the rain in the past month, mushrooms have popped up all over, tempting people to do the unthinkable. Their mothers much not have warned them about touching toad stools. Several people have picked the fungus and stir fried it up, only to get deathly ill. At least 2 area men have avoided a liver transplant. According to the Washington Post:
Physicians offer the cautionary tale of Frank Constantinopla, 49, who after a Sept. 12 rainstorm looked in wonder at his backyard in Springfield, Va. “Oh, there’re so many mushrooms,” Constantinopla recalls thinking. “They look so lovely; I’m so lucky.”
Constantinopla plucked a handful and stir-fried them with noodles.
“They tasted good.”
Problems set in within hours and continued for days. Constantinopla and his wife grew weak, their stomachs ached, they vomited. Two days later, Constantinopla went to a local emergency room and was transferred to Georgetown University Hospital for a possible liver transplant
Doctors broke the news: Those lovely mushrooms were Amanita phalloides, a toadstool commonly known as the Death Cap.
The U.S. House of Representatives forwarded a bill on Friday that environmental leaders warn would undermine the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to curb air pollution and protect public health. Green groups are now urging the Senate and President Barack Obama to stand strong — and avoid a repeat of recent environmental health failures, such as the shelving of proposed ozone and greenhouse gas standards.
“The Tea Party House has passed, with ease, the most radical dirty-air legislation in the history of this country,” John Walke, the clean air director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told HuffPost. “It absolutely eviscerates the legal standards for adopting emissions limits under the Clean Air Act.”
Introduced by Rep. John Sullivan (R-Okla.), the Transparency in Regulatory Analysis of Impacts on the Nation (TRAIN) Act would create a special committee to oversee the EPA’s rules and regulations, and require the agency to consider economic impacts on polluters when it sets standards concerning how much air pollution is too much. For the last 41 years, since passage of the Clean Air Act, only scientific and medical considerations have been allowed in that analysis.
“This results in lying to the American people about whether the air is healthy or not,” said Walke.
If you survived the earthquake, Hurricane Irene, Tropical Storm Lee, and all the flooding, there is another chance to defy the odds. It seems that now a man-made satellite the size of a school bus will come crashing to earth. Scientists are unsure of the exact location.
It’s the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, or UARS — YOU-arz — and it’s currently tumbling in orbit and succumbing to Earth’s gravity. It will crash to the surface Friday.
Or maybe Thursday. Or Saturday.
Out-of-control crashing satellites don’t lend themselves to exact estimates even for the precision-minded folks at NASA. The uncertainty about the “when” makes the “where” all the trickier, because a small change in the timing of the reentry translates into thousands of miles of difference in the crash site.
Release: Snakes on a Plane In Congress Sep 14 2011 The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has held 22 hearings attacking federal regulations, but not a single hearing on job creation, Congressman Gerry Connolly, a member of the committee, lamented today.
Connolly said Wednesday’s hearing bordered on theater of the absurd when the majority brought in a snake breeder who urged Congress to repeal regulations associated with the Lacey Act of 1900, a law that controls the importation of dangerous and invasive plant and animal species.
The majority’s witness, David Barker of the Association of Reptile Breeders, argued for the elimination of an Interior Department rule that would ban the transportation across state lines of giant Burmese pythons and eight other dangerous snakes. “These pythons are the same snakes that are breeding rapidly, overrunning the Everglades, eating every animal in sight including large alligators, and establishing a permanent habitat in South Florida, according to the National Park Service,” Connolly said.
Yellowstone National Park, August 26, hiker John Wallace, 59, was found dead along the Mary Mountain Trail. An autopsy confirmed he was killed by a grizzly the day before he was found, according to information the park released Friday. Now Yellowstone authorities report that they have captured a 450 p0und 25 year old male grizzly as the suspect. DNA testing will be done to determine if this grizzly is the killer. If confirmed, the grizzly will be killed.
There have been 2 deaths by grizzly so far this year in Yellowstone. Heretofore, there have been seven deaths attributed to grizzly bear since the inception of Yellowtone in 1872. About 3 million people visit Yellowstone annually and there is an average of 1 bear injury per year. However, three of the deaths have been in the past year.
Why will the bear be killed? Isn’t that what bears do? They are wild animals. Stories of the west all include our heroes getting into life or death conflicts with grizzly bears. It appears that man is trespassing on grizzly bear turf, not the other way around.
As one of those geeks who has driven up the mountain in Yellowstone to gawk at grizzlies, I can attest to the fact that people are fools. People set up tripods and move far away from their cars. I have never seen anyone allow a bear as close as in the video, however. That is just suicidal. There is always a raft of tourists out watching the bears eat. Even though it appears that the bears are a great distance from you, it is still a good idea to be able to get to safety immediately. A bear can always approach from a different direction, undetected. I have also seen fools go out and stick a camera in the face of a buffalo. People forget that wild animals are…WILD and unpredictable.
