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but sometimes you've got to recognize that someone who studied climatology for X years might actually know a thing or two that you can't pick up from reading a blog.

Fortunately climate science is a lot more accessible than something like, say, micro-biology. If you have reasonable understanding of physics and geology you can probably read the IPCC report with no problem, and understand the reasoning behind global warming. And I encourage you to do so, because you will find things sound very different in the actual report than they do when you hear about it in the news and on blogs.

For example, many people have mentioned that the most important contributing factor to the recent warming trend is greenhouse gasses. But if you read the report where it says that, you will find a footnote there that absolves the writer of any commitment to that actual position. This is what is known on Wikipedia as 'weasel words'.

Chapter two of the report goes deeply into the science of radiative forcing, which of course, is the heart of the greenhouse gas theory. This is where physics and math knowledge comes in handy. It is a great chapter. However, one thing you never see reported in the news or anywhere, is that it isn't entirely clear that the net effect of human pollution on the global climate system has been positive. That is, it is entirely possible that human pollution has been cooling the earth, not warming it. Think about the implications of that.

Or another thing you hear about in sensationalistic terms is rising sea levels. If you actually read the report, you will see that ocean levels are changing around 3.1 millimeters a year, and roughly projected to continue at that pace. Think about it: on any given coast, geological factors (ie. plate tectonics) are making significantly larger changes than that.

One other important surprising thing you will find, is that no one knows how much greenhouse gasses are contributing to the current trends in global temperature. The report says that it is very likely that most of it is human caused (again, with that qualifying footnote) based on the idea that computer simulations couldn't find any other explanation. How much do you trust this kind of logic?

In other words, if you really want to know the truth about global warming, I strongly suggest you read the IPCC report and draw your own conclusions. Don't rely on what you've heard from scientists when they talk to news reporters, or on 'informational' websites. Read what they say when they are talking scientifically.

I was obsessed with the NS Savannah recently because she is such a beautiful ship - I love ships and this cargo ship looks like a yacht. Whilst I am not a fan of the Nuclear Industry in it's current form her reactor appeared to be reasonably well constructed and whilst designed to cruise at 21 knots, she outperformed her design spec by steadily cruising at 24 knots - pretty fast for a cargo ship. Check page 16 of the MARAD documentation (warning - pdf).

There is significant historical information about her operation. Until 9/11 she was part of the National Defense Reserve Fleet (NDRF) but her reactor was permanently disabled due to concerns she could be used as quite a convenient weapon of terror. Sadly, her hybrid design condemned her to a short operational life (10 years) and she is now a ghost ship. There are plans to make her a museum ship whilst waiting for her decommissioned reactor to cool down for eventual disassembly, but no one seems interested in the project. Despite that the seafarers Union have been working to maintain the ship by improving her general appearance.

NS Savannah's crew dispute was because the executive officers traditionally got paid more than the engineering crew on board the ship, this dispute, high running costs, low oil costs all contributed to her eventual demise. An interest group (with mailing list) is looking for photos and artefacts whist she was in operation.

lots more photos, her community organisation, glory days, historical landmark program, service history and specifications, floorplan and schematics, current status, passenger lounge, reactor control room, dry docked , and finally a flickr photo stream and a rather excellent photo essay of the NS Savannah. A little bit of history for you to enjoy.

The geology of the Madeira Aplain further studies relevant to its suitability for radioactive waste disposal

According to this post it doesn't look like we were looking in the right place:

"I was involved in the mturk search for Fossett last fall and saved all of those overlays we were using. None of the ones I saved cover the area where the Fossett items were recently discovered near Minaret Lake/Minaret Mine. All of the overhead imagery covered areas further to the north of Mammoth."

Community forum for Google Earth - Mars section: http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/postlist.php/Cat/0/Board/mars

Community forum for Google Earth - Mars section: http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/postlist.php/Cat/0/Board/mars

That could be. But ask yourself this: if their goal was far more sinister than that, wouldn't being a search company be a great cover?

Well yes, they must obviously be a branch of the CIA/Haliburton! If not them, then the Illuminati/Freemason coalition must be responsible for Google's large market cap. Brilliant.

An ad hominem attack does not an argument make. It's not a "conspiracy theory" to question Google's links to the CIA, it's a fact.

Of course he departed from the Flying M Ranch in Nevada. But for those interested in the terrain you can check out http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://bbs.keyhole.c om/ubb/download.php?Number=167976&t=k&om=1 or download
http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/download.php?Number=167 976 to your Google Earth.

Here's two views of Checko Lake from Google Earth and Google Maps

Inuit... Inuit have relatively dark colored skins...

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/climate-forces-in uit-onto-thin-ice/2006/05/26/1148524886121.html

And Inuit have been living in the North for many thousands upon thousands of years (50,000 I think). Actually I am always amazed at how dark their skin is comparing to where they live. It's not like you are going to see a bunch of Inuit suntanning on the tundra...

A skin near the equator that is light colored? Hmm... How about Amazon natives? http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/z0302a1700/amazon.jpg

The Amazon is about as close to the equator that you can get and their skin is relatively light colored when compared to say the skin color of an individual from Africa. And last I heard Amazon natives have been there for many many many thousands of years.

So the nutshell is equator = darkness of your skin color is HOGWASH! Want me to prove it even further? How about the aboriginals of Australia when compared to an individual from Malaysia? Aboriginals are much much darker and further away from the equator than individuals from Malaysia....

October 10, 2006, Wired: Generating Power From Kites

"KiteGen", a kite-driven rotating carousel generating electricity. The kites, at altitudes up to 2Km, could be quickly maneuvered to avoid aircraft, even individual birds. An initial cost of 360,000 euros for a 100m model could generate .5Gw of electricity. A 2 Km version could generate 5 Gw. A proposed initial site is the former Trino Vercellese nuclear power plant, already a no-fly zone.

• Woodhenge in England at Wiltshire
• Woodhenge in North America at Cahokia Mounds
• Woodhenge in the Netherlands at Zwolle

A few hours before this article was posted I investigated a different part of the globe and found that geographic swear words are censored, too:

http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/download.php?Number=308 998

The description includes the relevant fortune file entry that inspired my investigation and the KML file linked above:

"Between 1950 and 1952, a bored weatherman, stationed north of Hudson Bay, left a monument that neither government nor time can eradicate. Using a bulldozer abandoned by the Air Force, he spent two years and great effort pushing boulders into a single word.

It can be seen from 10,000 feet, silhouetted against the snow. Government officials exchanged memos full of circumlocutions (no Latin equivalent exists) but failed to word an appropriation bill for the destruction of this cairn, that wouldn't alert the press and embarrass both Parliament and Party.

It stands today, a monument to human spirit. If life exists on other planets, this may be the first message received from us."
- The Realist, November, 1964.

The "actual" Dracula's castle is the Poienari stronghold (see http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showthreaded.php?Number =64563 and http://www.webshots.com/search?query=Poienari). Obviously, the later has less real estate value than the Bran castle...

Go to the Google Earth forum here, search for "gaia" in the search box at the top. There is an entry called "Google Earth Community: Opensource GE client!". Click it. See what happens.

They simply deleted the entry. This smells like censorship, if you ask me.

Don't be evil. Yeah. Fuck off, guys.

Go to the Google Earth forum here, search for "gaia" in the search box at the top. There is an entry called "Google Earth Community: Opensource GE client!". Click it. See what happens.

They simply deleted the entry. This smells like censorship, if you ask me.

Don't be evil. Yeah. Fuck off, guys.

This is so ungoogle. Google builds, not buys.

  No, Google buys too.

... at a huge replica of a landscape the Chinese Army built in the middle of the central Chinese desert. It's a 700 x 900 meter (that means several football fields big) mock-up of Aksai Chin, occupied since the 1962 Sino-Indian War. It's complete with rivers, lakes and snow-capped mountains. You can see a base next to it with hundreds of troop carriers coming and going.

Nobody has figured out what it's for, though.

http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showthreaded.php/Cat/0/ Number/484568/

Sometime ago I created a Google Earth placemark for the Google Datacenter in Groningen, The Netherlands. I go by it every day.

Check out the site in Google Earth; lots of references there.

Keyhole Mars http://www.keyhole.com/keyhole.php

Of course! The CCD-makers biggest customer was the National Reconnaissance Office, (created in 1960 to resolve conflicts between the Air Force and the CIA). The first spy satellite to use the CCD was the KH-9, launched in 1971, which combined film and CCDs and was the first to transmit live images back to earth. KH-11 replaced film entirely with a digital, multi-spectral system. KH is the NRO's abbreviation for its codeword, "Keyhole," which is the domain Google uses for some of its Google Earth sites, like Google Earth Community.

There are many things that are "so cool" about Google Earth. I dare not cover them all, but I will cover what I think is most compelling about Google Earth.

Google Earth is compelling because it is a platform for geographic information. The main Google Earth document type "KML" are simple XML files that anyone can create or generate if they have data with addresses or latitude/longitude data. If you know how to write HTML, you can write a KML after a few minutes of looking at a KML example. If you can generate dynamic, database driven HTML using whatever language/server you prefer, you can generate a dynamic database-drive KML file. If you don't know anything about HTML/XML, you can also create KML files WYSIWYG-style directly in Google Earth. It's extremely simple.

With that capability, Google Earth is now the equivalent of a browser for geography. I can provide a KML file on my website, and anyone (with Windows/Mac) can click on them and view it in seconds. Companies can view their regional sales data in a very cool, compelling way. 911 operators could easily have Google Earth show them the location and physical situation of a caller, in an automated screen-pop-style way. Google Earth is brilliantly simple for complex things.

If you don't get what I mean, just look at the Google Earth Community for a wide variety of data you can view in Google Earth. Trust me, Google Earth is "so cool".

Yeah, it already works in Wine, but it would be nice to be able to run it without that.

The report is a "pre-announcement" of the railway, and has all the credibility of undiluted Chinese Propaganda. See ChinaView.CN's article http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-10/15/conte nt_3620072.htm for the unadulterated Chinese-English report of the ceremony - the government newsagency report is worth reading for the payout to the projects opponents.

The railway could be a wonderful feat of engineering - but you can't tell from these kind of reports. The railway traverses very inhospitable earthquake prone territory. How many slashdotters were aware that the day before the 8th October Pakistan Earthquake there was a large 5.0 richter scale earthquake with epicentre just 6 km from a mountain pass traversed by the railway http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/bulletin/neic_dxbv.html ?

For a google earth placemark of the location see http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showflat.php/Cat/0/Numb er/139349/an//page//vc/1 ?

I couldn't find any media reports of the earthquake - and certainly no mention of any impacts or lack of impacts on the railway.

If the railway survived this unscathed, it would be a great credit to it. So why no report from the Chinese or Western media ?

The Chinese might be good at building monuments, and certainly can spin wonderful propaganda. But until they've built a hint of democracy, can you really give any credit to their claims ?

For better overview and more options, don't forget Google Earth:

Damage assement, see it at a glance

NOAA overlays updated as new info comes in.

For better overview and more options, don't forget Google Earth:

Damage assement, see it at a glance

NOAA overlays updated as new info comes in.

Google Maps uses the .kml extension (.kmz if compressed), where KML stands for Keyhole Markup Language, and XML format documented here

This guy seems to have figured it out. I tried it out and it seems to show all of the tropical storm data I want.

Alternatively, you can also use X-Planet cloud map overlays. Set your refresh to once every few hours, and you can see the storms that way too.

Burt Rutan has said he will be one of the passengers on the 50+ test flights that will occur before they start accepting paying passengers. I'm not sure about Paul Allen, but I'd guess he would go up also.

BTW, check out this photo essay of SpaceShipOne's visit to Oshkosh this week:

http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showflat.php/Cat/0/Numb er/53677/an/0/page/0#53677

[ scroll down about half way to see the pics of SS1 fly-bys and landing ]

http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showthreaded.php?Cat=&B oard=SupportDiscussions&Number=33460&page=0&view=c ollapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1

"Due to huge demand (even compared to my own aggressive estimates), the Google Earth free download and activations have been temporarily disabled. If you are running Google Earth on your machine, it will continue to work, but you won't be able to install it on a different machine."

Gee, that sucks.

I would think that Google could get similar high res data from DigitalGlobe, or to establish new relationships with AirPhoto for the old high res data. I remember reading on their forums, http://bbs.keyhole.com/, that they were comitted to reinstating the old high res data. -QMan

People have been helping each other to make the most out of this software for years. To visit the most interesting landmarks and learn how to use Google Earth to its maximum potential, take a look a the official BBS.

Strange things are afoot at the state of Missouri. Why would that state, and Indiana, require full coverage so soon?

The real link to the project is here.. Roland the Plogger makes you go through two extra levels of blogs to get there. (Does he get traffic kickbacks, or what?) The project ran from 2001 to 2004; it's done.

And Keyhole does the same thing. For $29.95, not €12,000.

I downloaded and tested Keyhole's http://www.keyhole.com/ Personal 2 LT software and am considering purchasing a subscription for $30 a year. The software is great, it's 3D and you can zoom, pan, rotate, tilt, see superimposed road maps, measure distances, create videos, etc. I've already journeyed virtually to many exotic places like Patagonia South America, the Amazon, New Zealand, northern places like Canada and Russia. Google now owns this company and it also provides for Google Maps. I think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread!

I've only found a couple of problems with Keyhole. First, due to their crazy licensing, you can only run Keyhole on two machines. What this means is...

1. You can install the software on as many machines as you want.
2. Your account name will be your email address.
3. You will recieve a license key when you register.
4. If you try to use that license key to logon to more than two machines (not even at the same time) you will not be allowed to run it.

If you were trying to use the software on two machines or more at the same time, then not being allowed to run it would make sense. But I was testing several machines with different graphics and CPU capabilities and found that when I tried to logon to the third machine (at a different time) it would fail. Keyhole user support confirmed this dilemma. This just doesn't make sense to me.

Second, Keyhole isn't available for Linux, or OSX yet. But it does use OpenGl, so I don't see too much of a porting problem.

Finally, they want a different user account for each piece of their software they sell. I find that to be annoying.

Google Earth is 3D... it just costs $30 a year to access.
http://keyhole.com/

Google also owns Keyhole. Keyhole is the original source of all the imagery in Google maps. Keyhole also has a for-fee browser (with 7 day trial) that has more mainstream features than Worldwind, but that could generate that image.

Oh no! Yahoo bought something? Are you serious?! Well, long live Google then, because they invent everything in house, don't they?

The Google Maps thing is a limited HTML/Javascript image file hack. The real Keyhole application works through OpenGL, and you get real 3D. Pan, tilt, zoom, fly over 3D terrain, seamlessly.

The evil Sphericalists tried to convince the world's people otherwise, so Google bought them and silenced the remaining heathens.

However Rosco P. Coltrane is not yet convinced of The Truth. He is a Traitor to the Masses, and so the War on Sphericalism must go on.

Google has had a pet project for quite a while called Keyhole 2 that has many more features that they seem to be dragging over to their maps site. The zoom is a lot better ( down to the level where you can see cars clearly ) and it is international ( China doesn't seem to work, go figure..)I got sucked in during the trial period but couldn't find a logical reason to pay for it.

You forgot Keyhole. I think they read Snow Crash.

It seems like they are imagining a free (to the user) all-knowledge-and-communication-anywhere brought to you by anonymous infrastructure. The problem with their scheme is its all based on advertising. Bleagh.

MSN have more than a screenshot, they have video

errr. so does Keyhole. Google Earth is just a beta. They don't need marketing material yet. They're not done.

Lowest resolution data is 15m-per-pixel worldwide with 18" to 12" per pixel data for thousands and thousands of cities. Coverage map: http://www.keyhole.com/data Free trial: http://www.keyhole.com/ 20000 places described: http://bbs.keyhole.com/

Lowest resolution data is 15m-per-pixel worldwide with 18" to 12" per pixel data for thousands and thousands of cities. Coverage map: http://www.keyhole.com/data Free trial: http://www.keyhole.com/ 20000 places described: http://bbs.keyhole.com/

Lowest resolution data is 15m-per-pixel worldwide with 18" to 12" per pixel data for thousands and thousands of cities. Coverage map: http://www.keyhole.com/data Free trial: http://www.keyhole.com/ 20000 places described: http://bbs.keyhole.com/

If you haven't checked out http://www.keyhole.com/ I really suggest it. There is a seven day free demo, and after that if you wish to buy it it's somewhere around $20/year.

This is a full 3-d map of everywhere. Kind of like nasa's free world wind program, but MUCH better including an improved GUI and the ability to overlay google maps and see businesses and any level/combination of user bookmarks.

The ability to change perspective on the 3-d engine means you can look at mountains from the side, or see what the view looks like driving up the I-5 in California.

I hate to sound like an add, I really haven't even paid for a subscription (mostly because I was wasting too much time at work playing with it!), but Microsoft is once again a day late and a dollar short.

For those who don't know: the images that google makes available at maps.google.com are not the best they have access to. Google bought Keyhole and shortly thereafter launched google maps. However, anyone who did a keyhole free trial knows that the keyhole database had very high resolution images of the whole planet. What you see in google maps is about half the resolution that keyhole has. Not only that, but keyhole had imagery for the whole planet.

My point is that google is not limited in what it has available. Obviously they are releasing lower rez images for google maps (and charging for the keyhole service for professionals that need the higher rez), and it's also taking them some time to get google maps working for other parts of the world. But they already have access to a very extensive database (although possibly there are some licensing issues?).

You should play with keyhole. Google maps with satellite images don't do justice to what that program can do.

It streams all the map and picture data as you zoom in. Terrabytes of data are sitting at keyhole/google but your client only downloads what you need to look at -- in 3D! It's pretty slick.