China reports that they scoop 368,000 metric tons of fish out of international waters annually. But it seems that they actually fish up something more like 4,600,000 metric tons, 2,900,000 of which comes from West African waters. This is rapidly depleting the fish stocks from the worlds oceans as a whole, but particularly from African waters, wiping out the ability of local African fishermen to make a living.
Woo.
An official announcement from the Ambassador from the Czech Republic to the US:
The Czech Republic and Chechnya are two very different entities – the Czech Republic is a Central European country; Chechnya is a part of the Russian Federation.
So, FYI.
I’d normally think that Mr. Ambassador didn’t need to mention that… then this other news item pops up to remind me that we have government-run public school in this country which is endeavoring to maximize mediocrity.
A1969-vintage artists impression of a single-launch space station with “arms” that would unfold. The whole structure would rotate, providing “artificial gravity” for the crew via centrifugal force.
Ford went on Jimmy Kimmel. Unsurprisingly the topic of the new Star Wars movie came up, but he didn’t want to discuss it. Like many a Hollywood celebrity when pestered about something they don’t want to discuss, he got snippy.
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I’m goin’ to bed. Maybe when I get up some of the chaos will have passed.
Carjackings, car chases, automatic weapons fire, explosives being thrown, naked guys being taken into custody, cops going door-to-door…
Picture not related:
Try to beat this. Jeff Bauman, the focus of the Boston bombing rescue operation I showed a cropped photo of, woke up after surgeries to amputate his legs. Asked for paper an pen and wrote “bag, saw the guy, looked right at me.” When he came around a bit more, he had a chat with the FBI and what he told them led them to the two guys on the video that the FBI released today.
With luck, Mr. Bauman will get the opportunity to look the guy right in the eyes again.
The Kepler-62 star system (K-type star, smaller and cooler than Sol) has two roughly Earth-sized planets within the habitable zone. Additionally, modeling suggests that both may be entirely covered by water oceans. Kepler-62e is 60% larger in diameter than Earth and orbits every 122 days; Kepler-62f is 40% larger and orbits every 267 days.
The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia has an entry on the system, which gives an orbital period of 367 days for Kepler-62f, not 267. So there’s a discrepancy. However, math can provide the answer. Kepler-62 is listed as having a mass of 0.69 Sols, Kepler-62f orbits with a semi-major axis of 0.78 AU. Go forth and mathify it!
Note that there are a total of five planets in the system so far discovered. The other three are closer in to the sun, and much smaller.
Kepler-62 is about 1200 light years from Earth. So… a bit of a schlepp.
The FBI has released images of two suspects. One is actually kinda clear… looks not like a jihadi or some stereotypical angry old guy, but more like a frat guy. Now that the FBI has shown who they think was involved, you can bet that Anonymous and the b-tards will troll through every last photo and scrap of video available and find much better images.
I am working on making cyanotype prints using vellum instead of the heavyweight watercolor paper used to date. This is historically appropriate, as well as being far lighter and rollable (ship in a tube rather than flat). Early test runs are encouraging, though the failure rate is higher than for watercolor paper. I’m going to make vellum-type available alongside the watercolor-paper-type. They will be more expensive, due to higher cost and more effort required. They will probably be special-order items. So if there are any of the current cyanotype prints you’d especially like to see as vellum cyanotypes, let me know via email.
Related: I’ve finally found a company that says they can make large-format transparencies, which I can used to make large-format vellum cyanotypes. I hope to have a set of large format transparencies (including both the Saturn Ib and Saturn V) sometime next week.
If it all works out, and things are at least encouraging, then I’ll also be able to make vellum blueprints to order, easily up to 18X24, likely to 24X36, and 14X72 or so (two different “frames” on hand). So if you have diagrams you’d like in velum cyanotype format, let me know…
