Hmmm, laminar reverse doughnuts (I mean, flooww)

So have you ever wondered why those bands in Jupiter exist? More to the point, why they don’t go away? Shouldn’t they just mix together into one gaseous cloud? Well, the answer could be laminar flow. Laminar just means non-mixing flows. It actually does occur here on Earth. Flows of water, such as in rivers or oceans, where there is a difference in temperature and salt concentrations will barely mix. This can be demonstrated in the lab. The linked video actually shows laminar reverse flow. Basically three blobs of colored corn syrup are placed between two cylinders (one inside the other). The space between the cylinders has been filled with clear syrup. The inner cylinder is then turned to “mix” the three blobs in one direction, then turned in the reverse direction to un-mix. The video can be found here and a more detailed explanation can be found here. Warning to those of us who use dial-up, this vid does take a few minutes to download, but I think worth it.

Gotta hankering to rob a bank? Then you need to go to…

Hessmer Louisiana. This tinny town of ~650 people has two police cars. Well, they used to anyway. Actually, I guess technically they still do. Problem is that neither of them works. One was in a wreck and the other must be union because it just upped and stopped working last Sunday. And due to some crazy law, the police can’t answer calls in personal vehicles. Looks like Christmas has come early to all the scofflaws out there. Apparently there is more to the story than just a funny little blurb. Turns out that the city got $100,000 from insurance to either repair or replace the first cruiser and have been sitting on the money for around two months or so. In an effort to coax the city government to get off their duffs, Hessmer’s police chief, Mack Villemarette, put a large sign outside of the station saying, “Village of Hessmer: the only police car is broken. If you need assistance contact the mayor and council.” Even more amusing when you consider that neither knew he was going to do it. Has anyone seen my robbin’ mask?

"To catch the point (of a story)", with Chris Hansen

So I saw another Dateline story, “To catch an iPod thief”. I know, I know. I can already hear your moans of pain. I have a suggestion for Dateline. Perhaps for their next show, they should get Stone Philips to do a Dateline Mystery special to see if they can figure out what the point of this story was? What has happened to Dateline? I remember a time (a long time ago) when they actually did stories that mattered. Maybe not to the level of 60 Minutes or Frontline, but there was at least an effort, some justification for their journalism degrees. Wait — they do have degrees, don’t they? Maybe Stone should look into that first.

The overall strategy was to buy a bunch of 30Gb iPods, leave them were they would likely be stolen, and then track the people down to ask one of the more stupid questions they could’ve asked. “So why d-ya do it man?” Clever. Although I thought the strategy used to track down these cleptos was pretty sneaky. Perhaps not $40,000 sneaky, but sneaky. (They hired a software company to modify the installation software that comes with iPods so when people registered for iTunes, the personal information was also sent to Dateline. Chris happened to mention the cost of doing this.)

I can only justify this story airing by fooling myself into believing that every producer on the show was on vacation. There is no possible way they heard the pitch of this story and thought, “Brilliant!” What was the point? The overriding message? The great truth revealed? On the plus side, however, I think they did manage to run fewer commercials this time than with the last Pulitzer Prize winning show, “To catch an ID Thief”. But, they still didn’t have enough material for an hour long show. Also, I think they did manage to possibly give identity thieves a new and interesting way of, well, stealing identities.

Early morning hop through the prairie

Recently I had an opportunity to hop (get it? I’m a grasshopper?) through a nearby prairie and enjoy the early morning dew. What made it even better was that first you have to walk a few hundred feet through woods. Along the way, an emerald canopy above, lush moss beneath, and a cool breeze lays a light mist upon your face (which can actually get a bit annoying if you are stuck wearing glasses) half expecting a hobbit to appear. Then, stepping through a small opening (briefly doing battle with a few, rather obnoxious, vines) you are forced to just stand there for a moment and take it all in. Like ocean waves, rolls of mist crash upon cranberry bush shores carrying with it the unmistakable scent of honeysuckle. A truly surreal place indeed.

Father Brown stops by to knock some sense into Junior. Will it stick?

So Gordon Brown decided to drop by and pay a little visit to Junior Monday. Obviously, we don’t know exactly what was said. But, I’m pretty sure that once you boil down all of the pomp and circumstance it was basically, “What the hell are you doing?” with sprinkles of, “Why have you dragged England into this?” I do have to hand it to el Gordo, however. While Blair struck me as that parent who so desperately wanted to be the “cool one” and so let his kid get away with murder, Gordie seems to be more of the disciplinarian who will pull the reigns taught when needed. Perhaps, in the end, Gordon might have a greater positive impact on US foreign policy than on England’s. One can only hope.

Gimme your lunch money!

Hey man, I don’t any trouble.

NEWS FLASH – The Grim Reaper is a cat! (and his name is Oscar)

That’s right folks. And apparently he’s operating out of Providence, Rhode Island. A nursing and rehabilitation center to be specific. Turns out that 2-year-old Oscar has an uncanny ability to know when a patient is in the final hours. Usually about two to four hours before, Oscar will come into the room, hop onto the bed, curl up, and stay there. So far, he has been right over twenty-five times. He is so good, in fact, that doctors and hospital staff will use this time to notify family and make arrangements. He even has an article in The New England Journal of Medicine. Sleep tight. Is it getting cold in here? Read the story.

You mean Chihuahuas aren’t completely useless?

So, much to my surprise, it turns out that not all Chihuahuas are parasitic rats masquerading around as dogs. At least one of them, ten-month-old Zoey, has managed to do more than just stand around and shake. This Masonville Colorado resident selflessly jumped directly in the path of a three foot rattlesnake that was about to strike her boy, a one-year-old child. (Or maybe she finally realized that she was indeed a Chihuahua and decided life wasn’t worth living anymore. Who knows.) She was stuck in the head, which swelled to the size of a large grapefruit, but managed to survive after being treated. I wonder how long she is going to milk this one? Anywho, hip, hip, hooray for Zoey! Story here (and includes an image of the hero).

2,275 ft, 160 floors, and one…

I’m sure by now everyone has heard of what will soon be the newest tallest building in the world. At some point in the near future (the end of next year), the Burj Dubai will be thumbing its nose at the rest of the world. It will stand as the new measuring stick for adequacy everywhere. Jealous? Yep, 2,275 feet, 160 floors, and one bathroom.

The Chinese government may not be perfect, but at least they execute their bureaucrats

As I said in my “about me” page, I don’t know what my voice will ultimately be in this crazy world we call the blogosphere. But on the whole, I envisioned it being an upbeat one with a slant towards humor. However, over the last two weeks I have heard/read some stories about the actions of a few in our government that have made me quite annoyed and perhaps just a bit, dare I say, angry. Being in this state of mind draws me to a story a few days ago of the Chinese government executing Zheng Xiaoyu, the head (or former head) of their FDA. And despite all of their faults and brutality, I think they may be on to something here.

First up, FEMA administrator R. David Paulson. Do I really need to go into this one? Formaldehyde in Katrina trailers, FEMA knowing but not wanting to confirm it for fear of “owning” the problem, FEMA lawyers advising not to do it, and Paulson, only after being forced to publicly face the facts, having the nerve to say, “This agency made the best decisions it could with the information it had,” and, “Now we know we have to do something different than we’ve done in the past.” I would say that he and everyone at FEMA needs to burn at the stake for this one, but frankly, I think that they have wasted more than enough taxpayer’s dollars. Therefore, I think a single shot to the head would be most cost effective. Oh, and let us not forget all those involved in spending $30 some-odd million to ship ice all over the country which later had to be dumped. You can read about the formaldehyde story here.

Now we have Julie A. MacDonald (anybody have a picture of her?), she resigned as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Fish, Wildlife, and Parks for the Department of the Interior on April 30th. I’m assuming she did this to avoid having to go before a House oversight committee a week later which would have allowed the mainstream public to see just how much of an absolute jerk she is. She twice violated feral regulations by giving internal EPA documents to industry lobbyists, repeatedly violated the Endangered Species Act, rewrote conclusions of scientific field reports, commented on report drafts using language meant to belittle and censor field scientists, and numerous other acts that anger me too much to invest the time to type out. Her actions during her tenure have been so deplorable that the Inspector General for the Interior Department (ID) has referred her for administrative action. Although since she quite, I’m not sure what the ID can do. And what do you think the Bush administration’s opinion is? Well apparently they liked her behavior so much that in March 2005 they signed off on a $9,628 STAR award. An award for which no official justification has been given.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Commissioner Edward McGaffigan. I cannot believe anyone thought that he was qualified to be the head of anything. Briefly, the General Accounting Office (GAO) set up a sting. They wanted to see if they could purchase moisture density gauges containing radioactive materials. To do this they had to get a license from the NRC. They made fake everything, applied, and received the paperwork they needed. What really burns me up is not only did the NRC not bother their heads to do an on-site inspection (Oh I don’t know, like perhaps the STATE of Maryland does?), but apparently they didn’t do any verification of the GAO’s phony application. What?! Were they just too busy checking out sport scores or downloading porn? Was it too much trouble to put the address on the GAO’s application into Google maps or mapquest? Anything? And this happened after new security measures where supposedly implemented due to September 11th. When asked about it McGaffigan said, “We’ve fixed the problem…”. So the deaths of some 3,000 people wasn’t enough to get these people to do common sense things, but being publicly embarrassed was. You can read the story here.

Its stories like these that make me glad that I am just a simple grasshopper.

I’m sure there are others. Feel free to add to the list.