New Year's Eve 2006 in Tokyo

Many shops put up shimekazari and posters saying "Kin ga shin nen" or "Gassho" (Happy New Year).

Kadomatsu (gate pines) are put near entrances to houses and businesses.

Light fades across the town.

The Moon at sunset.

The Sun sets behind Mount Fuji on the last day of the year.

The Sun sets and 2006 draws to a close.

"For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."

Middlemarch
Geroge Eliot

The Sun sets behind Mount Fuji, December 31, 2006

The Woman of the Island of the Blue Dolphin

San Nicholas Island is just 70 miles off the coast of Los Angeles.

The island had been inhabited for 8,000 years by native Americans, but by 1835, only one remained. She lived there alone, dressed only in cormorant feathers, for 18 years. The irony of the events will make you weep.

Read the story first, then watch the video.

http://www.latimes.com/features/la-os-island15jun15,1,1046257.story?page=1

This is why I just throw away my pillow every new year and buy another one

http://news.scotsman.com/health.cfm?id=2092092005

If you wanna have a good laugh...

Go to iTunes and look for "one hit wonders". I warn you, this will consume days of your time once you get started...

Don't miss the 3D Cosmic Collisions show at the American Museum of Natural History in New York

Don't miss the renovated Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New Yorkhttp://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif. The current show is Cosmic Collisions. The simulation of the formation of the Moon is spectacular. When you project a movie onto a curved screen, like a planetarium dome, your brain automatically turns it into 3D without the need for special glasses. I went to see it twice! Here is a preview. You can save the video clip by clicking on the small black triangle at the bottom right of the trailer window, and then you can see it full screen.

http://amnh.com/rose/spaceshow/cosmic/trailer.php

Suppose you were a nice, tasty octopus walking along the sea floor...

You could walk on two legs and pretend you are a coconut.

http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/9999/rolling.mpeg

You could walk like an Egyptian walking in multiple directions and pretend you are seaweed.

http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/9999/walking.mpeg

On Christmas eve, a hundred years ago...

The first wireless broadcast of entertainment was received by radio operators across the North and South Atlantic. Reginald Fessenden played O Holy Night on the violin and read a passage from the Bible, broadcasting from Brant Rock Massachusettes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reginald_Fessenden

What if, for a dollar, you could raise the IQ of a child by 10 to 15 points?

“For 5 cents per person per year, you can make the whole population smarter than before” --Dr. Gerald N. Burrow, former dean of the Yale Medical School

For want of 5 cents of iodine per person per year, two billion people, mostly in Asia, Europe (including Spain, France, Germany, and Italy), Africa, and Australia suffer from goiter, dwarfism, and mental retardation.

This is a good example of how a very minor tweaking that costs almost nothing can have a huge effect on the growing good of the world.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/16/health/16iodine.html

If the link does not work, go to www.nytimes.com and search for
"On the Brink: In Raising the World’s I.Q., the Secret’s in the Salt"

If you have to register, I highly recommend it. You will not receive spam, and you really should be able to read the New York Times online anyway.

The Sun Dagger

In Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, on the south side of Fajada Butte, there is the most astounding astronomical device I have ever seen.

Three large slabs of stone were positioned on the south side of the upper part of the Butte by the Anasazi more than 1,000 years ago.



Below the three slabs are two spiral markings on the rock face: a large spiral and a small spiral to the upper left.

On the first day of winter at noon, sunlight passing between the slabs is projected as a pair of daggers that move from above on either side of the large spiral.
On the first day of spring at noon, a large dagger of light passes through the large spiral and a small dagger of light passes through the small spiral.
On the first day of summer at noon, a single dagger of light passes through the middle of the large spiral.
On the first day of autumn at noon, again as in spring, a large dagger of light passes through the large spiral and a small dagger of light passes through the small spiral.
The degree to which the slabs would have to be formed and positioned in order for this to happen, by people without writing, is simply astonishing.

But that is not all! The Moon goes through a complicated 19-year cycle as it moves across the sky. Sometimes it rises and sets far in the southern and northern sky (called the major standstill), and sometimes it rises and sets nearer due east and west (called the minor standstill). When the Moon rises at Chaco Canyon at the major standstill, the edge of the moonlight touches just the left edge of the large spiral; when the Moon is at the minor standstill, the edge of the moonlight passes through the center of the spiral; and when the Moon is between these two extremes, the edge of the moonlight touches the right side of the large spiral! And there are 19 turns of the spiral!



So there you have it. On a single space at the top of a butte with a spectacular view of Chaco Canyon is the perfect meeting of the Sun, the Moon, the Earth, and Time.

You can see Fajada Butte from space at this site. Click on the + sign in the box in the upper left and you will move in closer and closer.
http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=36.018889,-107.909722&spn=0.1,0.1&t=k&q=36.018889,-107.909722

For a full explanation, see http://www.solsticeproject.org/lunarmark.htm


For a fascinating explanation of the discovery and how the device works, look for the documentary narrated by Robert Redford called "The Sun Dagger". Available online for about 12 dollars used from major online bookstores.

If you think you know how to blow bubbles...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0I4VKj4d0WI

Ever have to move a table by yourself?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WR931mtC3l4

Senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota is apparently suffering from an arteriovenous malformation.

http://neuro.wehealny.org/endo/cond_arteriovenous.asp

Stardust reentry

Imagine you are on an airplane not too far from the reentry path of the fastest object ever made bhttp://beta.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gify the hands of Man...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cm3Kl_8dkTk

Animation of the reentry
http://www.nasa.gov/mov/139828main_stardust-edl.mov

Project webpage
http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html

Tsunami of 1700, NPR story of May 4, 2005

Listen to Renee Montagne and Brian Atwater describe the huge earthquake that took place off the coast of Washington and Oregon in January 1700 and caused tsunamis across the entire Pacific. Records in Japan allowed the time of the event to be determined to the hour. With pictures. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4629401

What is this?

It is a tree!

In many sunny areas of the world, people spend a lot of time cutting down trees and collecting wood for cooking. This takes a huge amount of time and contributes to deforestation and the spreading of deserts. Cooking using wood fires also creates a lot of smoke, which can have adverse effects on health.

The solar cooker will reach temperatures well above the boiling point of water without burning food.

Click on the topics on the left of this page for further information.

http://www.she-inc.org/index.php

From the Earth to the Moon

Winner of the 1998 Emmy Award for Best Miniseries, Ron Howard, Tom Hanks, and many others take you from Sputnik and Gagarin and the Mercury and Gemini Programs to Apollo--with all the aspects of the race to the Moon that you have never seen. Deliberately avoids overlap with the material covered in The Right Stuff and Apollo 13.

The entire space program is put squarely in the political and historical context of the 60s. And you will see the people behind the astronauts.
"Apollo One" is about the fire and how it happened.
"1968" is a rollercoaster of success and war and assassination.
"That's All There Is" is hilarious from beginning to end. (Pete Conrad died after a motorcycle crash a few weeks before the 30th anniversary of Apollo 11.)
"Galileo Was Right" will make you want to go out and become a geologist. The Moon seen with understanding.
"The Original Wives Club" is unforgettable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_Earth_to_the_Moon_%28HBO%29http://beta.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

http://imdb.com/title/tt0120570/

At major online bookstores from about 30 dollars used including shipping.

On major online auction sites from around 20 dollars including shipping, if you are lucky, but it is popular, so an online bookstore may be less trouble.

NOTE: When buying DVDs online, since if you live in North America you may have a DVD player that only plays Region 1 (US and Canada) DVDs, be sure that you buy a Region 1 DVD.
DVD players come in three basic types:
only plays DVDs from one Region,
plays DVDs from different Regions but you have to choose one Region and then the player locks for that Region, and
plays DVDs from all Regions (Region-free DVD player).
You may also be able to play DVDs on your computer, PlayStation, etc.
DVDs come in three basic types: set for one Region, set for all Regions, and pirated (illegal copy) of which there are many on auction sites.

The virus emails are getting trickier and trickier

I just received this email. It is a trick.

First of all, I am not using Windows. Below the message was a zip file, which, probably, when you click on it, installs some computer virus and tries to steal your credit card numbers or something. No reputable company would ever send you something like that in email. I get things from Bank of America (which is interesting since I don't have a BoA account), from Ebay and PayPal (with which I don't have accounts, etc., all the time. No one legitimate will ever ask you for account information by email or by telephone.

If you subscribe to a security service, such security software updates should happen automatically, or at the very least, you would be directed to their website. Do not click on a link inside an email from someone you do not know because it may take you to a fake site that looks just like the real one. And it is possible, if your computer is already infected, for you to type in an address and be taken to a fake website.


From: serv@guierfence.com
Subject: Mail server report
Mail server report.
Our firewall determined the e-mails containing worm copies are being sent from your computer.
Nowadays it happens from many computers, because this is a new virus type (Network Worms).
Using the new bug in the Windows, these viruses infect the computer unnoticeably.
After the penetrating into the computer the virus harvests all the e-mail addresses and sends the copies of itself to these e-mail
addresses
Please install updates for worm elimination and your computer restoring.
Best regards,
Customers support service

What was named "Innovation of the Year"?

Not a car. Not a computer. A nail. An antihurricane antiearthquake nail.

The HurriQuake Nail is not available outside the areas recently hit by Katrina and Rita, but it soon will be.

Click on the three thumbnails below the story.

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/flat/bown/2006/product_75.html

Simulation of November 15 tsunami Pacificwide

This is a large file, so you need a reasonably fast connection or it will take quite some time to download. Amazing animation showing the tsunami sweeping down from the Kuril Islands across the entire Pacific. Note how the undersea mountains to the northwest of Hawaii affect the waves.
http://staff.washington.edu/liujuan/tsunami/kuril2006/kuril_2.movhttp://beta.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

On January 28, 1700, the sea fell and rose

There is nearly always an earthquake before a tsunami. On January 28, 1700, no one on the Pacific coast of Japan felt any tremors, but waves were coming, some up to 15 feet high, and they would continue for more than 18 hours.

For nearly 300 years, no one knew the source of those waves. Brian Atwater saw evidence of a large earthquake off the coast of Washington and Oregon, and David Yamaguchi examined tree rings and found that huge numbers of trees there had died in the winter of 1699-1700. This and other evidence pointed to a magnitude 9 earthquake on January 26, 1700. How all of this was pieced together, with scanty written records, is the subject of The Orphan Tsunami of 1700: Japanese Clues to a Parent Earthquake in North America (ISBN: 0295985356)

See http://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/pp1707

You can find the book at more or less the best price at overstock.com, but it seems they only ship to the continental 48 states.

http://www.overstock.com/cgi-bin/d2.cgi?PAGE=PROFRAME&PROD_ID=1569545

Listen to the May 4, 2005, story in the NPR archive http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4629401

Brian Atwater, author of The Orphan Tsunami of 1700, named one of the most influential people of 2005 by Time Magazine

http://www.time.com/time/subscriber/2005/time100/scientists/100atwater.html

8.1 Earthquake near Kuril Islands

There was an magnitude 8.1 earthquake near the Kuril Islands, to the northeast of Hokkaido, the northernmost main island of Japan, about 4 hours ago. All TV programs were automatically interrupted with warnings about possible tsunami as high as 6 feet. So far, the tsunami have been much smaller. You can see the location of the quake on this map http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Sea_of_Okhotsk_map.png
It was near the words "Kuril Islands". That is about 2,000 miles from Tokyo, so we did not feel anything here.

YouTube did not exist last year... it was just sold for 1.5 billion

YouTube has everything, from the ridiculous to the sublime.
There are so many classic clips from TV like this one from July 12, 1969, just before the Moon landing, with Glen Campbell and Johnny Cash.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpc-llLROoE&mode=related&search=

You want to call someone far away... What time is it there? What day is it there?

If you need to know the time and day of somewhere far away, just look at http://timeanddate.com/

The site even has calendars showing holidays in many countries.

Yikes! Asteroid impacts may be much more common than we thought

There may be a reason for all the ancient stories of floods: The crash of meteor or comet into the India Ocean 4,800 years ago, perhaps around May 10, 2807 BC. The tsunami would have been more than 600 feet high. While the suspect crater is undersea, there are huge deposits of fused glass, metal, and deep sea organisms piled hundreds of feet high miles inland in Madagascar. (And there are deposits like this in Hawaii. Yikes!) This story will probably be available for free for only two weeks.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/14/science/14WAVE.html

Lung cancer due to asbestos exposure and a virus from a surprising source

Most people exposed to asbestos do not develop lung cancer, but a few percent do. Now it seems that those who did develop cancer may also have had active infections of a monkey virus that accidentally contaminated the polio vaccine.
http://starbulletin.com/2006/11/12/news/story06.html

Thanksgiving is coming

One of best things about Thanksgiving is a new story from Bailey White on National Public Radio. Here is her story from Thanksgiving 2003 about a woman who receives a large sum and suddenly finds herself very popular.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1524500

An American Living Treasure. Quirky stories that will take you far away to a different world.

You probably need to have RealPlayer, which you should have anyway and which can be downloaded for free. Clicking on "Listen" may download a small file which you click on to make it play.

The Bishop Museum has a new website

The Bishop Museum in Honolulu has a new website. Click on
"A Cinematic Tour of The Mauna Kea Science Reserve" and
"Bishop Museum Data for Google Earth" (If you don't have Google Earth on your computer, go to www.google.com, click on "more>>", then click on "even more>>". Also, poke around and see all the other things Google offers, all for free! Jaw-dropping, although many of these may require relatively new, fast computers, and you may need broadband to be able to practically use some of the features. You can also go directly to Google Earth by clicking on this link http://earth.google.com.)

http://www.bishopmuseum.org

Why you should avoid burned or browned food

Yes, yes, I know. This is boring.
You should avoid burned, browned, and carmelized food.
If you don't like bread crust, by all means cut it off and throw it away.
When food browns, it produces carcinogens and Advanced Glycation Endproducts, which are really really not good for you. They increase chronic inflammation, among other deleterious effects.
In general, it would be better not to cook food at temperatures higher than the boiling point of water, or if baking, lightly brown the food rather than make it very dark brown.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_glycation_endproduct

It's not hot... it is just the house that is hot...

There are now simple, inexpensive roof coatings that will reflect heat off the roof of your house. I applied it to my house a year ago, and it is just amazing... the ceiling is cold to the touch at midday! And it was half the cost of a new roof!
http://www.hawaiiansunguard.com
http://www.hawaiiansunguard.com/cool_class_challenge.htm

How to enjoy sushi

The more you know about sushi and sushi bars, the more hilarious this is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bc6v8IUe_0g

The size of things

See the relative sizes of planets in the solar system up to famous stars like Antares, the blazing red heart of Scorpio, and Arcturus, the star the Hawaiians called Hokule'a, the Star of Joy that passes directly over Hawaii and was used by the Hawaiians to find Hawaii when voyaging from the south Pacific. http://www.rense.com/general72/size.htm

This one is even better http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P38ri8vQjRU

Waipahu is being invaded by aliens... NOT!

I originally ran across this on YouTube. Look at the third picture, Phenomenon II. It says it is a picture of crop circles from Waipahu, Hawaii... But I am from Waipahu, and it sure looks like England to me... Hmm, maybe I should check if there are any pods next to the bed the next time I go home... http://www.exexexe.com

It is about time to buy a high definition TV... or maybe a computer would be better...

I have had a high definition 48-inch TV for 10 years now. One of the best things I ever bought. I have seen live broadcasts from the top of Mauna Kea looking through the Subaru Japanese National Telescope, live simultaneous broadcasts from the north and south poles showing the aurora borealis and the aurora australis, bower birds displaying in New Guinea, ER, the Olympics, and so many movies in HiDef. It is just totally different. The prices are coming down, and yes, they will be even lower next year, but they are reasonable now, and as we say in Hawaii, "bambai mahke" (it ain't gettin' any earlier; literally "by and by, die"). http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15546132/

If you haven't seen Minority Report, you should just to see the computer...

If you have not seen Minority Report, look at the first few seconds of this trailer. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn2sLUJ-eLk

These kinds of screens are already in prototype and will be common in a few years.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89sz8ExZndc

Don't read this before lunch... where mad cow disease came from

It's enough to make you turn vegetarian: mad cow disease may have come from humans who died of neurodegenerative disease. Bone meal imported from India to the UK has been tested by DNA analysis and contains human DNA. That is an established fact. The hypothesis is that such bone meal was fed to cows in the UK in the early 80s, leading to the mad cow disease outbreak which is still going on. Few cases are found in the US because the US refuses to test all cows. The FDA's own estimates are that there may be hundreds of thousands of infected cows being slaughtered for food in the US, but they don't want to know...

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/mg18725163.300-bse-may-have-come-from-dead-people.html

Resveratrol reduces inflammation, prolongs lifespan, reduces risk of cancers

Resveratrol is a chemical made by plants in response to stress. It is found in large amounts in grape skins and in the roots of some plants like Japanese knotweed. The reason resveratrol can have so many beneficial effects is that it turns on damage repair genes. This results in a reduced rate of ageing, less inflammation in joints and blood vessels, and reduces the risk of many types of cancer by repairing cells before they become cancerous and increasing the rate at which cancer cells die. Chemicals like resveratrol used to be common in the diet, but they are now at very low levels in our food because of the way plants are cultivated. Resveratrol can be found naturally in greatest amounts in French red wine because of the way the wine is processed.

Slows rate of ageing
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-02/cp-rpl020206.php

Has cardiac benefits
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-12/osu-rwl120704.php

Delays onset of neurological diseases
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-11/asfb-ciw110305.php
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg16121682.000-why-wine-is-good-for-your-brain.html

May help asthma and chronic pulmonary obstructive disease
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-10/aps-rwm102804.php

Can reverse effects of obesity
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-11/hms-sme103106.php

Can reduce risk of cancers
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-09/fhcr-ago092204.php
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2000-06/UoNC-Ssts-2906100.php