More bad news...

NASA Research Leads to First Complete Map of Antarctic Ice Flows

First complete map of the speed and direction of ice flow in Antarctica, derived from radar interferometric data from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's ALOS PALSAR, the European Space Agency's Envisat ASAR and ERS-1/2, and the Canadian Space Agency's RADARSAT-2 spacecraft. The color-coded satellite data are overlaid on a mosaic of Antarctica created with data from NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on NASA's Terra spacecraft. Pixel spacing is 984 feet (300 meters). The thick black lines delineate major ice divides. Subglacial lakes in Antarctica's interior are also outlined in black. Thick black lines along the coast indicate ice sheet grounding lines.

"The map points out something fundamentally new: that ice moves by slipping along the ground it rests on," said Thomas Wagner, NASA's cryospheric program scientist in Washington. "That's critical knowledge for predicting future sea level rise. It means that if we lose ice at the coasts from the warming ocean, we open the tap to massive amounts of ice in the interior."

I asked about the bold text above and was told: "Wagner is referring to deformation, like a tank tread. In fact, the bed is considered frozen in most of Antarctica, so it is a bit surprising." Alan Buis JPL.


Water, it seems, is even stranger than I was taught with many more phases than I knew about until now.

The rest of it merely confirms what I've been saying for the past several years...that warming is a positive feedback process which accelerates each season.

The rates of movement of the ice shelves in Western Antarctica (magenta & blue) indicate that it will not be long before the ice on land is free to move and accelerate.

That ice will cause sea level rise--eventually around 5-10 meters.

There will also be a rebound of the currently depressed land, pushed down by the weight of the ice. How rapidly the land will rebound is unknown, but even a few cm per year will increase the sea level and the rate of ice flow in Eastern Antarctica--the largest block of ice on the planet.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-256&cid=release_2011-256

The new data does not change my pessimistic estimate of 5-20m sea level rise by 2027. Nor does it alter the projection that the rise will be non-linear with acceleration (each year it will rise more than it did the year before.)

Note that the rate of visible rise may stay the same or even drop depending upon the slopes of the areas flooded. Steep coasts will show a greater increase than gentle slopes.


To see this effect, fill a glass of water 1/4 full. Note where the surface is on the glass. Now tip the glass over slowly and watch the level rise, stopping when the surface is 3/4 up the glass.


See how much less water it takes to flood a shallow slope. The trade-off is height for horizontal distance.


A rise of 1m at the Gibraltar cliffs will flood well inland on the Nile and other river deltas....

infomot

infomot (alt. infomote)

[in-faw-moht]

-noun

A generic term for units of information media, which would include text, [txt], video, still images, audio, odor, texture or other sensible unit of information embodied as a coherent unit.

There is no existing term in English which specifies a coherent unit of information regardless of format/media.

Examples: movie, pamphlet, commercial, book, txt, white paper, voice message, song

plural: infomots

From 'information' & [mote]

Synonym: datum

Antonym: null

Related words: data, datum, information

Examples:

I sent him a couple of infomots about the project, including the conceptual drawings and sales video.

The product requires the ability to handle many infomots ranging from viral videos to [tweets] and billboards in order to reach market.

Wanna make US$10,000 just for having an idea?

...of course you do!


'course it's not that easy, you have to solve a game problem...

Here's the url http://www.kingarthur.com/games/

Good luck! We desperately need a solution.

The FDA & Me: It's all in how you define things....

I pulled this because on my display it dropped "-4%" and I wondered...
  Solar Wind T
"Shrinkage levels after washing fall within 3-4% of industry standards."

But having pulled it, I now see I was wrong--but I cannot say that I understand the complete version either....

"3-4%" Brackets some sort of "industry standards."

Nuts. In my ignorance, don't know any of the industry standards, and I'm not sure what they measure. Or for certain which industry....

This kind of stuff never used to bother me--ignorance can be happy.


Then one day, I bought a fresh turkey. The day before the Annual Turkey Feast of Overeating day.

It could hammer nails.

You can't take a 20# bird and thaw it and cook it in 14 hours--or at least I couldn't then.

So, I wondered: Why is a "fresh" turkey, frozen like a mammoth? Am I being cheated? What's goin' on here?

This being in the old days, pre-Net, days of BBS & Fido, I made a phone call to the FDA to find out what was what--and report the b(&$%^%$ if I could.

Eventually (no...government access was actually WORSE back then,) I found someone who could tell me.

"How's a 'fresh' turkey get to be hard as rock & still be 'fresh' & not 'fresh frozen?'" says I.

The lady on the phone says: "'Fresh' turkeys are defined as turkeys which have not been frozen below 0 degrees Fahrenheit."

"Wonderful," I sighed, "and just HOW is the consumer to know the difference between a turkey that has been frozen to zero, and one that was frozen to -20 but warmed up?"

She didn't know either.

One can only assume that somewhere out there are people with tiny ice core drills and thermometers checking truckloads of 'fresh' fowl to make certain that no one (overfreezes? underfreezes?)the birds.

 More recently, I had occasion to wonder about the FDA regulations regarding insects as you should know, insects are the second most efficient food sources after bacterial slime. Insects produce up to 1# of feed per 1# of food (1:1:) cows are like, 30:1...the next food craze is spiders & bees on grassshopper & mealworm patties. And they're low-fat & full of protein! Yum! *images

I wondered, "How many insect parts are permitted in a food like chocolate coated grasshoppers?" And, upon further thought, "What, exactly, is an insect part or for that matter the difference between insect parts and fragments?" Rat hairs & rodent droppings I understand, but parts & fragments seemed a bit vague.

So I hit the Net. I found the FDA, I found how many of each thing each kind of food is permitted...but nowhere was there a definition for parts and fragments?
I emailed their consumer (their bosses, you remember--us!) handling people and soon received a reply.

"Insect parts are things like legs, wings, thoraxes & such." And insect fragments? Insect fragments are unidentifiable portions smaller than a part.

That's it? That's insane! There's no size or mass definition. Can't be. A bug ground to flour is millions of tiny unidentifiable bits.

Back it comes. "No, that's correct, it's left up to the inspectors."

Ohhh. Kaaaay.

What about those foods like chocolate covered grasshoppers? Where the insects are a main ingredient?
"They're exempt from the rules."

Exactly what I needed to know to market my new Mexican roll "burrito con escarabajos y saltamontes la huitlacoche!"

Inquiries welcome!

Autopsy Data

Wikipedia:

A systematic review of studies of the autopsy calculated that in about 25% of autopsies a major diagnostic error will be revealed.^[6] However, this rate has decreased over time and the study projects that in a contemporary US institution, 8.4% to 24.4% of autopsies will detect major diagnostic errors.
A large meta-analysis suggested that approximately one-third of death certificates are incorrect and that half of the autopsies performed produced findings that were not suspected before the person died.^[7] Also, it is thought that over one fifth of unexpected findings can only be diagnosed histologically, i.e. by biopsy or autopsy, and that approximately one quarter of unexpected findings, or 5% of all findings, are major and can similarly only be diagnosed from tissue.
One study found that "Autopsies revealed 171 missed diagnoses, including 21 cancers, 12 strokes, 11 myocardial infarctions, 10 pulmonary emboli, and 9 endocarditis, among others".^[8]

Let's return to the past...a bit.

Currently, the USA elects the Prsident and Vice-President as a single unit.

It wasn't always this way!

Originally, candidates ran for President, and the first runner-up became Vice-President.

This ensured that if a single party had no huge majority, the Vice-President would represent the largest minority in the Executive Branch.

This was changed (surprise!) because it reduced the power of the winning party.

This is how we came to live in a country where political parties claim a "mandate from the people" with as little as 51% of the vote--effectively removing nearly half of the population from representation in the Executive Branch.

Electing them as a unit effectivley disenfranchises huge minorities from being represented in the White House


Get rid of "winner-takes-all" in the White House!

Nova Scotia Promotes Gaelic Heritage

Here are some images from Nova Scotia

The Office of Gaelic Affairs