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Our government can't possibly control the weather!

It's seriously time to wake up, people!

All the adolescent "bulge" jokes aside, if you're interested in the technology used in this sort of situation, I may have a few links of interest. And while the technology is *relatively* new, it's not *brand* new. ASF alone has been doing this since 1991, and we aren't the first.

The Alaska Satellite Facility (ASF) - This is where I work. We gather SAR data (Synthetic Aperture Radar) and do a lot of interferometric processing. Certainly cool stuff. This data can be used to create DEMs (Digital Elevation...Maps? Models? Can't remember which), among other things. Definitely good to check out. Grab the Antarctica Mosaic! It's huge, and we have one of all of Alaska, as well! Check out the facility's page here: http://www.asf.alaska.edu/ and the SAR FAQ can be found here: http://www.asf.alaska.edu/3_1.html

The second one is the Geographic Information Network of Alaska (GINA) which is a more general source of geo-information. If you go to the SwathViewer, there is a ton of data available, everything from road maps to DEMs to SAR data to "Blue Marble"...definitely worth a look-see. Right here: http://www.gina.alaska.edu/

There is a *ton* of information out there, and those two places are a great start. Check 'em out!

All the adolescent "bulge" jokes aside, if you're interested in the technology used in this sort of situation, I may have a few links of interest. And while the technology is *relatively* new, it's not *brand* new. ASF alone has been doing this since 1991, and we aren't the first.

The Alaska Satellite Facility (ASF) - This is where I work. We gather SAR data (Synthetic Aperture Radar) and do a lot of interferometric processing. Certainly cool stuff. This data can be used to create DEMs (Digital Elevation...Maps? Models? Can't remember which), among other things. Definitely good to check out. Grab the Antarctica Mosaic! It's huge, and we have one of all of Alaska, as well! Check out the facility's page here: http://www.asf.alaska.edu/ and the SAR FAQ can be found here: http://www.asf.alaska.edu/3_1.html

The second one is the Geographic Information Network of Alaska (GINA) which is a more general source of geo-information. If you go to the SwathViewer, there is a ton of data available, everything from road maps to DEMs to SAR data to "Blue Marble"...definitely worth a look-see. Right here: http://www.gina.alaska.edu/

There is a *ton* of information out there, and those two places are a great start. Check 'em out!

All the adolescent "bulge" jokes aside, if you're interested in the technology used in this sort of situation, I may have a few links of interest. And while the technology is *relatively* new, it's not *brand* new. ASF alone has been doing this since 1991, and we aren't the first.

The Alaska Satellite Facility (ASF) - This is where I work. We gather SAR data (Synthetic Aperture Radar) and do a lot of interferometric processing. Certainly cool stuff. This data can be used to create DEMs (Digital Elevation...Maps? Models? Can't remember which), among other things. Definitely good to check out. Grab the Antarctica Mosaic! It's huge, and we have one of all of Alaska, as well! Check out the facility's page here: http://www.asf.alaska.edu/ and the SAR FAQ can be found here: http://www.asf.alaska.edu/3_1.html

The second one is the Geographic Information Network of Alaska (GINA) which is a more general source of geo-information. If you go to the SwathViewer, there is a ton of data available, everything from road maps to DEMs to SAR data to "Blue Marble"...definitely worth a look-see. Right here: http://www.gina.alaska.edu/

There is a *ton* of information out there, and those two places are a great start. Check 'em out!

You would need to eat a lot of Pringles.
http://www.haarp.alaska.edu/

I wonder if you can get a bounced 802.11 signal ....

The problem with this (apart from it being more expensive than cutting emissions) is that nobody knows what the affect of cutting significant amounts of light from reaching the atmosphere will be. It is UV hitting the upper atmosphere that creates the ozone layer. If we block significant amounts of light this could cause larger holes in the ozone layer and increased UV levels in the sunlight that does get through. UV also plays a pert in breaking down some pollutants, so this could change the chemistry of the atmosphere. And what about the effects on agriculture in areas shielded by the ring?

" Aleutians rocked by series of big quakes

The countless quakes started short after midnight. The biggest one, with a preliminary magnitude of 6.9, struck at 9:10 a.m. Tuesday. There were reports of items falling off shelves in Adak, about 175 miles from the epicenter.

The series of quakes occurred where the Pacific and North American plates collide. Most were in the range of 4.5 and 5.7."

Seems to be a relation.

KoA

Eagle crashes into living room of a Ketchikan home

It looks like a phased antenna array. The darker parts that look like a fence are actually shadows. It's located on the grounds of the Elmendorf Air Force Base. Perhaps it is the High Altitude Monitoring Station (HLMS)?

How many are there I made and posted my first torrent here http://linuxtracker.org/ how many sites can we list to make use of my idle bandwidth I seed linux torrents and other legal stuff like 10,000 free legal books http://www.gutenberg.org/ http://www.gutenberg.org/cdproject/ http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu:6969/ use you spare bandwidth to help the World torrents are like guns its how you use it that counts!

Think about all the people that 'buy' a name for a star for their loved ones, or purchase a claim for land or minerals rights on the moon, Mars, or elsewhere? Yes, I have read the international conventions stating no one can own this or that, but is naming something a claim to ownership? Alfred Brooks (the late geologist and explorer for the U.S.G.S.), nor his decendants, lay any claim to ownership of the Brooks Range in Arctic Alaska.

I might be inclined to give $100 to have a chunk of rock named after someone or something, especially if I knew the money was going to further scientific research.

-cp-

Alaska bear-mauling victim survives rare second attack

This page has some information about them, and their proper names. The pictures are pretty poor, though. I'll see if I can track down some better ones.

Sprite and Jets

piracy is just people wanting to get stuff for free.

True enough. But filesharing is not just people wanting to get stuff for free, which is the point of this court case.

What am I getting for free by spending a big chunk of my web server's bandwidth allocation seeding a torrent of the Project Gutenberg DVD, for example? (If you're downloading that and one of your peers is sending you a couple megabits/sec of data, that's probably me. You're welcome!) If Grokster and company lose this suit, it will quite possibly become illegal for me to give out that collection of free, unquestionably legal, public-domain works. What a victory for the public good that would be!

Main Page:
http://www.gutenberg.org/

Download Page:
http://www.gutenberg.org/cdproject/

Direct Torrent Page:
http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu:6969/

Direct edonkey2000/emule link:
ed2k:7Cfile7CTheProjectGutenbergDVDDecember2003Edi tionpgdvdiso7C41396469767C02CEB6E1E07A0CDC98757134 B0678B147C

Other links for ftp, etc available at the main download page.

Needless to say, we flew well clear of the plume.

And a good thing you did, too. A British Airways 747 flew through volcanic ash once. The results were nogt good, though kudos to the crew for getting the bird down safely.

The phenomena is called ice fog.

From the harp site

"Can HAARP create an artificial aurora?

The natural aurora is created when very high energy particles emitted by the sun, reach the Earth's vicinity, are swept toward the Earth's magnetic poles, and collide with gas molecules existing in the upper atmosphere. The energy involved in this process is enormous but is entirely natural and it has been a normal event throughout Earth's history.

HAARP is so much weaker than these naturally occurring processes that it is completely incapable of producing any optical effects that can be seen without using very sensitive telescopes."

Well... uh... guys... that's all cool to say that in your FAQ... but... er... this story is about the visual displays that HAARP can make...

er....

hmmm...

is it a white lie...

or is life going to start immitating a bad irwin allen flick?

There are multiple sites around the world like this. HAARP is based in Alaska. The other sites are in Norway, Russia, and, once it is reconstructed, there will be one at Arecibo. (The other one was on the other side of Puetro Rico but was destroyed by a hurricane in the mid '90s). UCLA also has a site near Fairbanks. I personally have been to both HIPAS and HAARP.

HAARP is a scientific endeavor aimed at studying the properties and behavior of the ionosphere, with particular emphasis on being able to understand and use it to enhance communications and surveillance systems for both civilian and defense purposes.

(cutnpaste), but i think this is more likely than anything else.

and it seems some ordinary people there will get somewhat pissed about enquiries about them destroying us all. .)

whoops: Can HAARP create an artificial aurora?. oh.

HAARP is a scientific endeavor aimed at studying the properties and behavior of the ionosphere, with particular emphasis on being able to understand and use it to enhance communications and surveillance systems for both civilian and defense purposes.

(cutnpaste), but i think this is more likely than anything else.

and it seems some ordinary people there will get somewhat pissed about enquiries about them destroying us all. .)

whoops: Can HAARP create an artificial aurora?. oh.

Either sign up on the Aurora Alert mailing list or keep an eye on the realtime Kp index wherever you are. If it's night where you are now and you're not in the middle of a bloody thunderstorm then gtf out and look for auroras.

And if you're willing to pay $4.95 per month for it you can get the information brough to you by subscribing to the spaceweatherphone

Have fun down under - I heard you guys raise to hell and descend to heaven.

We're agreed that cost-effective wind power would be a good thing, however unlikely it may be. I'm not sure that I agree with your list of miracles it would cause.

the end of middle east conflict,
Does that mean that you think the Muslims are fighting the Jews and Christians for oil? Better think again: they've been killing each other, and us, since about 624 AD.

global warming,
You might be right on this one, but us Northeners like global warming.

rural poverty in developing countries,
Wish you were right on this. It should help, but poverty is caused more by government corruption and lawlessness than by lack of infrastructure. Given good government, Uganda would soon be more like Canada than Uganda. Unfortunately, no one knows how to ``give'' good government.

lung disease in Beiging.
This one we can agree on.

what would happen to your Internet connection when they key this transmitter up?

In Alaska, we often see a hazy sky, caused by pollution from Siberia and points east.

For the long term, we should probably be more worried about the Soviet nuclear waste the Soviets and now the Russians have accumulated in the Arctic and Pacific Oceans. Then there's the nuclear plants, two of them in Siberia, that we're down wind of. They were built by the same government which brought us Chernobyl.

If you're looking for things to worry about, you'll never run out.

Mt. Spur

Also, the informative US Navy Fact File on the Clam Lake, WI ELF site, as well as the station's actual home page.

Is http://www.haarp.alaska.edu/haarp related to ELF/VLF?

---begin speculation---
The fact that is backing me up here is the recent 7.9 earthquake up in Alaska in 2002. Link here.. The sheer length of the break during that earthquake is staggering -- 150 miles (something like 300-odd km) of ground was shifted.

While I am aware there are differences between tectonic movements in Alaska and plate movements on the West Coast, I still think that in order for the two to be related, seismic measurements between Mt. St. Helens and Parkside (Parkridge?) would reflect that. That's about 1,000 km. The data doesn't reflect that.

Radio Luxembourg is, however, most famous as the source of the "Luxembourg effect." In 1933, shortly after these powerful transmissions started, its modulation was heard in the Netherlands, mixed with that of a German station on another frequency (1). It was soon proposed that this occurred because Radio Luxembourg's signal was so powerful it was heating the ionosphere, producing a nonlinear condition that mixed the two AM signals (2). This effect has since been studied by the HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program) in Alaska.

As an aside, B. D. H. Telegen, the discoverer of the Luxembourg effect, was quite an interesting guy. He also invented the pentode vacuum tube (valve).

(1) Telegen, B. D. H., Interaction between radio waves? , Nature, 6, 369, 1933

(2) Bailey, V.A. and D.F. Martyn, Influence of electric waves on the ionosphere, Phil. Mag., 23, 369, 1934

a driver in Alaska is being charged with second-degree murder

they're the U.S. Government and they can do whatever the hell they want

Oh, like HAARP (High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program)?

Parts of HAARP's usefulness include:

- boiling portions of the atmosphere
- conducting imaging through the earth
- initiate electromagnetic pulses on the enemy thousands of miles away without nuclear weaponry to initiate the pulse
- deactivate cell phones, radios and other communications for thousands of miles
- cook french fries... 8,000 miles away.

and other good wholesome Tesla fun!

As for climate change, it is inevitable. There are fossils of large reptiles in Arctic Alaska, and evidence of vast, tropical forests in other parts of Alaska. Many of these were buried under thousands of feet of ice until recently (~9,000 years ago).

And polar bears spend time on land during the summer, and they can swim for many, many miles. They are very comfortable on the ocean, and are very well adapted to it.

-cp-

As for climate change, it is inevitable. There are fossils of large reptiles in Arctic Alaska, and evidence of vast, tropical forests in other parts of Alaska. Many of these were buried under thousands of feet of ice until recently (~9,000 years ago).

And polar bears spend time on land during the summer, and they can swim for many, many miles. They are very comfortable on the ocean, and are very well adapted to it.

-cp-

Another amazing video is of a plane getting hit by lightning at a Japanese airport--check it here.

Bottom line: planes can be just like a big hydrometeor from lightning's perspective.

Another amazing video is of a plane getting hit by lightning at a Japanese airport--check it here.

Bottom line: planes can be just like a big hydrometeor from lightning's perspective.

I'm quite surprised nobody has mentioned sprites yet...

Still, as far as I have seen the worst to hit North America since europeans settled here struck in a series between 1811 and 1812 near New Madrid, Missouri, one of which reportedly run church bells as far away as Washington DC.

I read the link, and it was a pretty weaselly way of describing the quake. It tries to give the impression that it was the largest quake to hit North America, but that is not correct. The largest to hit North America is the 1964 quake in Alaska. Less than two years ago, a 7.9 quake hit Alaska so hard that it sloshed water in ponds in New Orleans and affected groundwater levels in New England.

I just checked, and it looks like there were about 78 earthquakes in Alaska in the past 4 days, though mostly quite small.

It really isn't that hard to perform some basic safety engineering for all buildings, whether they are in earthquake areas or not. Many of the upgrades would help with floods, tornados, or possibly with other disasters.

Jason Ohler just gave a talk at NASA/Goddard, in which he discussed the problems with technology, and in teaching students about art as related to communication.

He also touched upon issues with manipulated information, and how most kids these days just think if it's on a website, it's got to be true. [which was the slogan of ScoopThis.com, since gone, but by the same person who did the Metallica Hoax].

One of Dr. Ohler's points about deception in communication was that it's best to make it seem plausible, but incorrect, rather than just ranting. [He cited a webpage about Martin Luther King, that was indirectly tied to a white supremicist group, that just slightly skewed the details] Unfortunately, kids don't understand that a website has no due diligence required in confirming their sources -- and newspapers and television news are trying so hard to scoop each other, that we end up with Jack Kelley, Jayson Blair, and the like.

It's been a while since university physics, but as I recall, you wouldn't need the scramjet or the maglev if you could get rid of friction. Gravity alone would get you from one end to the other in about 42 minutes, regardless of the tube's length.

http://dgc.gi.alaska.edu/Overview_2_1_04.htm Section 2.4.1

Don't mod this cut-n-paste troll up anymore.

Here's the scoop from the Alaska Volcano Observatory. And here is some information on what to do during an eruption. "Alaska is home to more than 40 volcanoes that have erupted in the last 200 years, and more than half of the state's population lives within 100 miles of an active volcano. The single greatest hazard from an explosive volcanic eruption is ash, fine fragments of rock blown into the atmosphere during volcanic eruption. Ash is carried downwind where the coarser particles fall to the ground and fine ash forms a cloud that is carried with the air currents. Ash is extremely abrasive, does not dissolve in water, and is heavy and slippery when wet. Inhaling ash can be dangerous, especially for those with breathing problems, for children, and the elderly. While ash is falling to the ground, you may experience prolonged darkness, loss of water and electricity, and have transportation and communication problems.

I remember day being like midnight during one of the eruptions. The description above is very conservative. But it is my choice to live here, and I am well aware of the hazards. I've nearly been stomped by a moose in my year, and charged by bears, so a volcano is seemingly less of a threat. At least we don't have any muggers here.

And here is a page for very recent earthquakes in Alaska, Russian Far East, Japan, etc.

-cp-

Here's the scoop from the Alaska Volcano Observatory. And here is some information on what to do during an eruption. "Alaska is home to more than 40 volcanoes that have erupted in the last 200 years, and more than half of the state's population lives within 100 miles of an active volcano. The single greatest hazard from an explosive volcanic eruption is ash, fine fragments of rock blown into the atmosphere during volcanic eruption. Ash is carried downwind where the coarser particles fall to the ground and fine ash forms a cloud that is carried with the air currents. Ash is extremely abrasive, does not dissolve in water, and is heavy and slippery when wet. Inhaling ash can be dangerous, especially for those with breathing problems, for children, and the elderly. While ash is falling to the ground, you may experience prolonged darkness, loss of water and electricity, and have transportation and communication problems.

I remember day being like midnight during one of the eruptions. The description above is very conservative. But it is my choice to live here, and I am well aware of the hazards. I've nearly been stomped by a moose in my year, and charged by bears, so a volcano is seemingly less of a threat. At least we don't have any muggers here.

And here is a page for very recent earthquakes in Alaska, Russian Far East, Japan, etc.

-cp-

Believe it or not, that is a minature of the 1921 Rumpler, a name that anyone familiar with the aircraft of WWI will recognize. After the war Dr. Rumpler applied aircraft knowledge to automobiles, but was usually too far ahead of his time and so largely ignored. Witness the Benz Tropfenwagen GP car of the early 20s. Fully streamlined, independently sprung, with mid-mounted motor and radiators, the very model for the modern GP car. The FIAT of the same year became the model for the next 10 years of GP car though, for although it was revolutionary, it was also evolutionary, and thus in an idiom other designers could understand, copy and develop.

1921 Rumpler

1923 Benz Tropfenwagen

KFG

I'm betting it's an electrical disturbance

Doubtful 60 Hz would cause a problem at 315 MHz, which is typically used for remote keyless entry..

It'd be amusing to wonder about HAARP as well, except 315 MHz is a little high for its reach (actually, quite a bit high).

Quite an interesting situation though...

My best guess: it was a HAARP experiment.

Dr. Elizabeth Rauscher was there, speaking about her ELF work and project HAARP. Interestingly, she claims a very accurate prediction rate, but I'm told that the US Navy asked her to quit that line of investigation (they use ELF for long-range comms)

Make Your Own Gold Mine

there are some articles about it here and here. and there's plenty more if you searchfor it.

the abcnews article says that the internal clock is reset by visual light cues from the sun, and that blind people are more susceptible to falling into a 25-hour rhythm.

I've been keeping an eye on the link you provided most of the day and the overall area is finally getting larger. It seems we're getting closer and may get a better shot of the show tommorow evening... The clouds may clear up. If they don't clear up here, the skies may be better a bit west....maybe a little road trip to the Poconos?

Also, according to this link , poeple as far south as Texas and Florida may be able to catch a glimps of the aroura.

expend a significant amount of money to defend themselves against these bogus charges

Unfortunately this appears to be what happens when you combine a society fixated with junk science with a political class ruled by trial attorneys.

The State of Missouri had an issue a bit more than a year ago with a state legislator that was trying to get all communication towers banned. The reason? "It might harm children." A few folks did some research on the legislator pushing the bill and guess who one of his largest financial supporters was? Incumbant local telephone companies (the competition to wireless providers). Save the children unfortunately has become code for political and legal system payola.

Unfortunately this poster touches on the reality of the current US legal nightmare: many defendents cannot afford the fight for what is right due to the complete lack of financial accountability of irresponsible plantiff attorneys and their clients. I'm predicting the school will back out and turn off their wireless devices. Their students will lack the access to information that other students might have. Unless other parents get vocal and oppose this luddite activity, they'll further the progress of their children towards a future job at Burger King.

Per the allegation that the school has been ignoring evidence that electromagnetic radiation from Wi-Fi networks poses health risks, I'd invite the luddite parents and their attorneys to have a radiofrequency engineer show them what the airwaves in the classroom (or better, at home) look like. 802.11b/a/g is background noise compared to many of the narrowband signals out there. Better shut off the FM, AM and TV broadcasters immediately. Throw away that cellphone (you don't hold that anywhere *near* your head, do you?) Better start packing candles in the kids lunch bag... those fluorescent lights are little RF monsters ("to quote: while the intentional radiation of fluorescent light tubes lies in the visible light range, such tubes also generate very low levels of microwave and RF white noise (Mumford, 1949)... microwaves? That's not a classroom lit by fluorescents, it's a Easy Bake Oven from Hell!). Lock up the school TV sets - what do you think that gunnplexer is firing at your eyeballs? Get weather, aviation and police radar shut off immediately (sure hope that speeder doesn't crash into the school bus). And god forbid you have one of those Air Force E-4B 747's fly over your home as they do mine... one of those bastards wipes out my TV amplifier every time it flies over my farm! Heck, we haven't even thought about RF experiments like HAARP that can probably melt a human in milliseconds!

Of course, the final step for the trial attorneys and their luddite clients will be banning the ultimate producer of raw RF. Once that's done, we can all rest assured that no RF deathrays will harm us.

*scoove*

Subject: Linksys/Cisco GPL Violations
From: David Turner (novalis@fsf.org)
Date: Mon Sep 29 2003 - 10:22:47 AKDT

To Linux Developers Concerned about the Linksys/Cisco GPL Violations:

We are in ongoing negotiating with Linksys/Cisco about this issue. Information from Andrew Miklas and others has been very helpful to us in our negotiations, and we encourage others to share with us any technical information about this or any other GPL violation.

This isn't the first GPL violation we have dealt with; we've been actively enforcing the GPL for over ten years. Our usual practice is not to publicly announce details of ongoing violation negotiations, because we find that private negotiation yields quicker and better cooperation. By building a relationship with violators where we are helping them to come into compliance, we avoid having to fight in court, and are able to spend less resources per violation. Our number one goal in any GPL violation case is to get proper and full compliance with the license; everything
else is secondary.

GPL violations sometimes take time to resolve. We wish that we could force resolution quicker, but we haven't found a way to do that. We have, however, discovered a variant of Brooks's Law: adding more lawyers to a GPL violation usually makes it take longer. Lawyers are reluctant to admit to mistakes, because they fear it could be used against them. Engineers and product managers are typically interested in fixing mistakes, so we try our best to work with them first before escalating to legal teams on both sides. Such escalation has happened on this violation, so it will take additional time to resolve the matter.

In addition, we are leading a coalition of many copyright holders in the WRT54G, as Linux is only one part of a large body of GPL'ed software in the product. We formed this coalition because, having done enforcement cases for a product with a broad range of copyright holders before, we have found that separate enforcement actions and/or law suits from individual copyright holders make attainment of compliance more difficult.

We will continue to do everything necessary to obtain full compliance on this and any other products where violations can be confirmed. On this particular violation, we will keep the community informed when issues come up that impact the rights of everyone whose work is being distributed by Cisco or any of its subsidiaries.

If you are a copyright holder on software in the WRT54G, or any other Cisco product, you are welcome join this coalition. Please email for details.

Sincerely,

David Turner, GPL Compliance Engineer, FSF
Bradley M. Kuhn, Executive Director, FSF