Monthly Archives: August 2006

The IDF moves north

Posted on August 9, 2006 | Comments Off on The IDF moves north

Forty thousand troops against an estimated 8,000 hez dug-in in about 130 villages in terrain that’s been mined and booby-trapped. Israeli blogger Yoni Tidi concludes:

"From here on it is going to get bloody on both sides. The fighting till now has been the warm up and now we are going to go for the knock out.

"Both sides are going to take it all the way there will be a winner and a looser.

"Look for Haifa to get harder and look for Tel Aviv to get hit in the next few days and I think that the chance of Syria getting involved has now gone up to a 70% chance."

Other good sources are here and, in Haifa, here and a site whose Hebrew name is scribbler here.

UPDATE Then US pressure forced a delay, which Olmert seems to want, according to this analysis in Haaretz: "Israel is telling the UN ‘hold me back,’ in efforts to prevent itself from getting swept up in any one decision and hoping for the best. Olmert’s moment of truth has been postponed, at least until Friday." 

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Posted in Israel

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Martians still in doubt

Posted on August 8, 2006 | Comments Off on Martians still in doubt

PhotomicrographSM.JPG

A decade after their discovery, few scientists believe these ball and wormlike shapes imaged by an electronmicroscope inside a Martian meteorite that fell to Earth in Antarctica really are indicative of life, even bacterial life. Mainly because they’re way too small for life as it is understood.

"`We certainly have not convinced the [scientific] community, and that’s been a little bit disappointing,’ David McKay, a NASA biochemist and leader of the team that started the scientific episode," said a few days ago.

Yet for all the doubts–which were also present at NASA’s unveiling of the meteorite in 1996–no one has yet explained the shapes, any more than they have explained the similar ones University of Texas emeritus geologist Robert Folk first found in rocks from an Italian hot springs and later in everything from rust to kidney stones to Austin tap water.

It was Folk’s discovery of what he chose to call "nannobacteria" (because he asserted the shapes could not have been made by any known sedimentary process) that started McKay and his colleagues hunting inside the Martian rock, where they found the same shapes.

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Posted in Science/Engineering

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Big Bang

Posted on August 8, 2006 | Comments Off on Big Bang

Most folks have heard of the Big Bang Theory, but have a hard time imagining how an explosion started the universe. Which is the first misunderstanding of the theory with the unfortunate name, hung on what was originally called the primeval atom by an astronomer who was mocking it.

Instead try this: "The frequent picture people seem to have is matter flying outwards from a single point (like an explosion). However, The matter is all actually standing still while space itself expands dragging the matter with it."

Got that?

The author is Jon Voisey, The Angry Astronomer, a graduate student at the University of Kansas who knows his astrological sign (Libra) and Zodiac year (Boar) but otherwise seems to be in a fight to the death with superstition. That’s the source of his anger, anyhow. Along the way he has come up with what is becoming a popular Big Bang explainer.

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Posted in Science/Engineering

Treebeard

Posted on August 8, 2006 | Comments Off on Treebeard

Now here’s a good guy that Mr. Boy seems to like after so many Orcs, the hard slog through the Mines of Moria, and the loss of Gandalf. Treebeard is the old hoom-boom fellow Tolkien dreams up to send the story off on a twisty turn, giving the reader hope that the evil which Frodo and Sam are walking into can eventually be defeated.

A good way to spend an hour, reading aloud, post-camp, as we push on through the last vacation days until school starts next week. Mr. B. and Mom are off to Houston on Friday to visit friends. The day after we find out the name of his new teacher and, possibly, the list of classmates. Wondering how many from kindergarten will be with him for first grade, hoping it’s the ones we like instead of the ones we’re less sure about. 

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Posted in Mr. Boy

Fathers in arms

Posted on August 7, 2006 | Comments Off on Fathers in arms

Allison, at the Unsealed Room, an Israeli blogger, has a poignant post that’s worth a read:

"I just got back from my daughter’s karate class. I brought my toddler along this time, and hung out in the lobby waiting for the class to finish. Next to me was a guy dressed in a T-shirt and chinos who looked like he was in his early 30’s — he had a son in the same class, who must have been six or seven. He had a toddler girl in tow, too. He also had an M-16."

Imagine the carrying on if you saw something like this almost anywhere in USA. In Israel it’s normal. 

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Posted in Israel

Aurora

Posted on August 7, 2006 | Comments Off on Aurora

Soske1_strip.jpgAuroras over Colorado, 3:59 a.m., August 7, 2006. Credit: Thad V’Soske, in a 75-second exposure, via spaceweather.com. Pretty colors thanks to an unexpected stream of solar wind hitting the earth this morning and creating a geomagnetic storm.

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Posted in Space

“Background chatter men”

Posted on August 6, 2006 | Comments Off on “Background chatter men”

I don’t recall anyone in the Army of the 1960s sounding like LTC Randolph C. White, Jr., but times certainly have changed in the past forty years. The quote below is from a Free Republic transcript of White’s speech to an advanced individual training (in this case, infantry) graduation back in April at Fort Benning, Ga., and it’s a rouser:

"Don’t let the pessimistic television talking heads, high browed newspaper writers, Hollywood idiots, or any other faction of the ‘blame America first’ crowd get you down! I’m speaking of the ‘Latte Biscotti Crowd.’ They are simply background chatter men and will always exist on the periphery of any endeavor that requires selfless service or loyalty. They are not worthy of your concern and truth be told — in the pit of their cowardly hearts — they wish they could be like you."

Blackfive has the complete video and the transcript and a link to where all 26 MB of the video can be downloaded for repeated viewings and squirreling away.

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Posted in Troops

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