Category Archives: GeekWorld

GeekWorld, Great Work, Weather +Climate

Mudslides, sinkholes and…craters?

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Summer                                                               New (Lughnasa) Moon

 

Russian scientists say they believe a 60-meter (66-yard) wide crater discovered recently in far northern Siberia could be the result of changing temperatures in the region.  Andrei Plekhanov, a senior researcher at the Scientific Research Center of the Arctic, told the AP Thursday that the crater was mostly likely the result of a “build-up of excessive pressure” underground due to rising temperatures in the region.

Plekhanov on Wednesday traveled to the crater, some 30 kilometers (18.64 miles) from the Bovanenkovo gas field in the far northern Yamal peninsula. He said 80 percent of the crater appeared to be made up of ice and that there were no traces of an explosion, eliminating the possibility that a meteorite had struck the region.

Read more : http://www.geologypage.com/2014/07/66-yard-crater-appears-in-far-northern.html#ixzz38V5KlWeU
Follow us: @geologypage on Twitter | geology.page on Facebook

 

Anoka County, GeekWorld, Our Land and Home

Itchy Palm? Too much odonatology?

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Summer                                                                  Most Heat Moon

The dragonfly came up in conversation yesterday because I saw one outside the window at Running Aces and remarked I’d read they hadn’t changed in 300,000,000 years. A remarkable fact to me and one I confirmed in some quick internet research this morning.

Tom then added that they were unique in their ability to vector their prey, that is, calculate the prey’s path and their own so they would intersect. All other apex predators chase their prey. Very interesting. (see video below)

A little more poking around found a few more interesting facts about the dragonfly, but I put the most remarkable one (to me) last.

 

 

1. The study of dragonflies, and sometimes damselflies, is called Odonatology. Dragonflies are referred to as Odonates.

2. About 5000 species of dragonflies and damselflies are known

3. Top speed for a dragonfly is between 30 and 60 km/h (19 to 38 m.p.h.)

4. A dragonfly needs warmth to fly and you will notice they will often land when
the sun goes behind a cloud.

5. Because of their compound eyes, dragonflies can see in many directions at once

6. Fact: They Calculate Velocity For A Perfect Kill

The dynamics of capturing an object in mid-air are staggeringly complex, so much so that it’s usually something that’s only done by animals with complex nervous systems, like seagulls, or humans. To intercept something moving with its own velocity, you have to be able to predict where it will be in the future. When researchers began studying dragonflies in 1999, they found that rather than “track” their prey—follow it through the air until they caught up with it—they would actually intercept it. In other words, dragonflies ensure a kill by flying to where their prey is going to be.

That indicates that dragonflies calculate three things during a hunt: the distance of their prey, the direction it’s moving, and the speed it’s flying. In the space of milliseconds, the dragonfly calculates its angle of approach and, like a horror movie monster, it’s already waiting while the hapless fly stumbles right into its clutches.

7. Most of a dragonfly’s life is spent in the naiad form beneath the water’s surface…They breathe through gills in their rectum, and can rapidly propel themselves by suddenly expelling water through the anus.[6

Colorado, GeekWorld, The Move

Foregrounded

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Summer                                                 Most Heat Moon

With Jon and Ruth here, the last realtor coming tonight and the 2nd Wind people coming to remove the Vectra and the leg press in a few minutes, the move has been pushed radically into the foreground, right here with daily life. We’re living the move almost all the hours of the day. (This needs slowing down, which will happen when three generations of Olsons pack up on Saturday.)

Jon, Ruth and Kate leave for Colorado then. Kate will meet two realtors out there and see some houses in situ. I’ll be packing books while they’re gone, maybe cleaning out some files, too.

Old computers, keyboards, mice and one printer will also head off to new places. Computer breaking yards are not as glamorous as the ship breakers of Bangladesh (which are pretty grungy really), but they’re vital. In fact, in the near future they may become as important as the mines from which their rare metals came in the first place.

We’ll have at least one more round of furniture (some desks, file cabinets, maybe more bookshelves) and many more books. Probably more this and that, too, all headed to the consignment store. Kitchen items, surplus garden tools.

After the realtor and Kate’s visit to Colorado, we’ll have much more reliable numbers on which to base our house hunting and the overall cost of the move. (not cheap) Then, we’ll go back to puttering the move. Getting stuff done in relaxed, but regular way. March will come in its own time. So will the moving van.

Cinema and Television, GeekWorld

Second Decade of the Third Millennium Television

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Summer                                                                     Most Heat Moon

Kate and I finished the final three episodes of 2014’s run of “Orange is the New Black.” We’ve been saving the last several episodes of “House of Cards” like hoarding candy against a day we can’t make it to the store. We did that by finishing up “New Tricks” and “Single-Handed.”

Now for those of you who still watch TV with the cable tuner and channels into the 400’s this may not be familiar ground for you. “Orange is the New Black” is, like “House of Cards”, a made for Netflix tv series. Both are really more like a novel with 13 chapters available all at once, and right now anyway, once a year. When ready, Netflix puts up all 13 episodes at once, available for streaming. If you wanted, and I imagine some do, you can watch all of them in one session.

Kate and I tend to do it a couple of episodes or one episode at a time. The second decade of the third millennium experience, watching video shows with no advertisements, feels like a luxury, like we’re getting away with something. Yet, I imagine there is a whole audience of kids for whom advertisements would be the odd experience, not their absence.

“New Tricks” and “Single-Handed”, on the other hand, we watch on Huluplus. It collects current tv shows (and all the episodes of older ones) and streams them, albeit with brief advertising, more like the old broadcast experience. There are though the important exceptions of being able to choose when and what to watch and to stop/pause it whenever desired. Huluplus also has movies, including 800 movies from the wonderful Criterion Collection.

We also watch certain other programs on Amazon Prime. Having a Prime membership in Amazon comes not only with “free” two-day shipping, but over a million downloadable songs and many movies and tv series available for “free.” Free in this case means no additional charge.

So that’s our new millennium television experience. No Comcast. No Timeswarner. Only our Roku box and three subscription services whose net cost is $30 a month. It may sound like we watch a lot of TV, but we only watch when we want, what we want. It is, as always, an excellent way to decelerate the mind in the evening.

And best of all, we’re shelling out much less to Comcast. All of this comes in over our broadband link for which, unfortunately, we still have only one choice. Comcast.

Friends, GeekWorld, Woolly Mammoths

Charge It

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Beltane                                                           Emergence Moon

This post is for friend Tom Crane who bought a Chevy Volt a couple of years ago and, in engineer fashion, has been keeping data about it ever since. Here’s a link to an NYT article today: Owners Who Are Happy When the Engine Doesn’t Start. This article itself references three blogs:  Volt Stats, Volt Fan Site, and CarKnow.  This last one is for those who want to hack their rides.

The era of the all-electric car is not yet upon us, but the consumer fleet will move that way as responses to climate change push us further into electricity as the dominant energy source for more and more things.

Kudos to all of those who are willing to pioneer these changes. May they breed others.

Friends, GeekWorld, Woolly Mammoths

Leeks In The Ground, Fresh Oil in the Truck

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Beltane                                                              Emergence Moon

I planted leeks this morning and will plant the onions soon. The leeks went in with a IMAG0595sprinkling of Jubilate (microbial inoculant) and a drenching with transplant water, made from OND and water. OND is a fish emulsion.  After closing up the 8″ trenches, I put all the planting paraphernalia back in the honey house, then hopped in the Rav4.

Over to Carlson Toyota for its 35,000 mile oil change and service. While waiting, the Lenovo laptop connected with Perseus and I went over my Latin for Friday’s session with Greg. In the work for him we’re back when Jupiter told his azure brother, Neptune, to let loose the reins that hold back the rivers. Let them flood the earth. The waters cover the fields, the cattle, the human beings and their homes and temples.

On the way to Carlson I had a thought about mentors. I’ve often said that I’ve neglected mentors and have probably suffered because of it. It occurred to me that that’s not exactly true. I have a circle of mentors in the Woolly Mammoths.

 

GeekWorld, Travel

In Nebraska

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Spring                                                                   Bee Hiving Moon

We have landed at Mahoney State Park about 10 miles outside Omaha. This is a favorite place of mine to stay since it’s cheap, $60, has a restaurant and the rooms come with balconies overlooking the Platte River.

The drive was uneventful, which is good.  We drove from dry to wet, then wet to dry and back again. That’s the cool, humid east. Soon we’ll be in the arid west where any rain is a blessing.  Fortunately, the Rockies had a great snow pack this year, so problems for some states will diminish.  But not vanish. The drought in the southwest is brutal and continuing.

Kate drove the whole way. It helps her back. She got out and was not in too much pain.

I’m writing this entry on my new Lenovo laptop, the first time in 8 or 9 years that I have not used my netbook.  It ran windows XP and since Microsoft shut down securities releases for XP this month I decided to get a more up to date laptop.  This one runs Windows 8.1. I’m not a touch screen guy but we’re living in a touch screen world now. Fortunately, for those of us retro folk who still use mouse and keyboard, it’s possible to revert to the former connection methods.

I had no trouble getting the wifi connection here and, as I usually do, I have my own keyboard and mouse with me. That makes typing so much easier.

GeekWorld, Latin, Literature, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Science, Translating Metamorphoses, World History

Emergence, Complexity and Augustan Rome

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Spring                                                                 Bee Hiving Moon

Two projects are pushing themselves forward, aspects of work already underway.  After reading a recent batch of articles arguing against a crass materialism and insisting on looking at the world not only through reductionist goggles, I have decided now is a good time to reimmerse myself in the world of emergence.  Emergence is a concept that identifies emergent properties, things not predictable by the sum of a thing or processes immediately preceding a particular phenomena.

(Garni_Gorge Symphony of the Stones carved by Goght River at Garni Gorge in Armenia is an example of an emergent natural structure.)  wiki, emergence

The example that is most familiar to me is culture.  Culture is that society based phenomenon that weaves language, place, kinship, food choice, divisions of work, art, music and play into a whole that shapes the individual, makes them part of something, a culture, larger than themselves.  Culture does not follow from an examination of an individual or even a small group of individuals, it only begins to emerge in a larger group over a period of time.

Another and easier to grasp emergent phenomenon is the transition of a caterpillar to a butterfly.  Am I a butterfly or am I a caterpillar dreaming I’m a butterfly?

This also relates to the complexity movement in science.  Science proceeds by breaking things down to their most basic components, then discerning law-like behaviors.  Physics is the paradigmatic science in this respect.  But there are many phenomena, like emergence, that appear not as things are reduced to their simplest parts, but as things combine to create more and more complex materials and organisms.  Science has historically ignored those areas because they are difficult to quantify and/or difficult to study using usual scientific methods.

I’ve flirted with learning these two areas:  emergence and complexity theory, but have never devoted the necessary time to it.  It’s time.  This fits in my reimagining my faith project.

The second is broadening the scope of my learning about Ovid, his time, the Augustan period, other tellings of the same myths Ovid works with, and Augustan poetry more generally.  This is in service of the commentary/translation I plan to begin in earnest after this growing season ends and of a big novel still forming itself.

 

Garden, GeekWorld, Great Work, Latin, Myth and Story, Translating Metamorphoses, World History

An Afternoon

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Spring                                                             Bee Hiving Moon

Moving deeper into Book I of the Metamorphoses.  Next week I’ll set a schedule for translating, so many verses a day.  Plus I plan to set a schedule for certain additional research that will go along with this task, things like comparing Ovid’s stories with other accounts of the same myth, investigating key grammatical or etymological points and, the big one, getting deep into Roman history of the late Republic and early Imperial era, Ovid’s time.  Over the last couple of years I have purchased books about Ovid and his poetry, Roman poetry and comparative literature between and among Ovid and his peers.

(Deucalião_e_Pirra   Giovanni_Maria_Bottalla)

I’ve not been too willing to get into these areas in any depth until I felt the translating had reached some point, though I didn’t know what that was.  Well, now I’ve reached it.  And I’m ready to go the next step.

I spent a half an hour today and translated 5 verses, so my speed is picking up, though to be fair the difficulty varies, usually with regard to the length of a sentence.

Also in the mail today.  The nitrogen for the vegetable garden and my new Lenovo laptop. This replaces my old Hewlett-Packard, a sturdy and reliable machine that has been outstripped by cheaper processors and memory and the retirement of Microsoft XP.  It doesn’t have enough juice to run Windows 7 or Windows 8.  Tomorrow I plan to start it up and see what’s what.