Note to pilot: run Windows Update prior to takeoff

The new US stealth fighter, the F-22 Raptor, was deployed for the first time to Asia earlier this month. On Feb. 11, twelve Raptors flying from Hawaii to Japan were forced to turn back when a software glitch crashed all of the F-22s’ on-board computers as they crossed the international date line.

The delay in arrival in Japan was previously reported, with rumors of problems with the software. CNN reported that every fighter completely lost all navigation and communications when they crossed the International Date Line. They reportedly had to turn around and follow their tankers by visual contact back to Hawaii. According to the CNN story, if they had not been with their tankers, or the weather had been bad, this would have been serious.

I have to think there’s going to come a time when wars are fought by warrior hackers, each trying to take down the other sides computers. Or there may come a day when an airliner falls out of the sky because software failed on all the redundant systems. I sure hope not.

ER Outlook- Sustainability - My missing article

A “computer glitch” when the reporter sent my story to copy editing added an extra “o” to the word “Outlook” in the title, sending my entry into “etherland”.

You can view the entire Outlook Special online at:
http://www2.chicoer.com/specialSections/Outlook_2007/Outlook_2007.pdf (takes awhile to download, my article on Page45, which they added afterwards)

Or you can read it below. If you have been thinking about putting solar on your home, here is a guide. Enjoy.

ER Sustainability Outlook 02/27/07

Sustainability is a trend that is growing not only here, but also throughout the world.

It is an attempt to provide the best outcomes for the human and natural environments both now and into the future. Essentially you could think of it as balanced use of the planet, where the use doesn’t outstrip regeneration.

Locally there have been a number of movements towards this goal, particularly with solar power. Butte County is particularly well suited for solar power. Climate records show that we have 219 sunny days and 57 partly cloudy days per year on average, which makes solar power viable. It wasn’t always that way, and it’s only now that solar power is becoming economically viable due to increased electricity costs, increased solar cell efficiency, and state rebate programs to help home and business owners kick-start the process.

No more regular light bulbs?

The California legislature may want to revisit the wording of their proposed ban on incandescents (AB 722). California assemblyman LLoyd Levine, a Democrat from Van Nuys in Los Angeles, wants to make California the first to ban incandescent light bulbs (by 2012) part of its new initiatives to reduce energy use and greenhouse gases blamed for global warming. But somebody hasn’t thought this through completely.

Why do I suggest a change? Two reasons: 1- There’s a new efficient challenger to the old tungsten filament light bulb. 2- The Compact Flourescent Lamps touted as “Eco Bulbs” have a small amount of mercury an other heavy metals in them, making disposal a problem. Some landfills won’t take them!

GE has announced an advancement in incandescent technology that promises to increase the efficiency of lightbulbs to put them on par with compact fluorescent lamps (CFL).

Bacteria to prevent earthquake damage?

If you live near the ocean, chances are high that your home is built over sandy soil. For example many places in San Francisco are built on sandy soil or fill. Many homes built on this type of soil were badly damaged during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

When an earthquake strikes, deep and sandy soils can turn to liquid by a process known as liquefaction, with disastrous consequences for the buildings above. In an odd application of biotech, researchers at UC Davis have found a way to use bacteria to steady buildings against earthquakes by turning these sandy soils into rocks.

“Starting from a sand pile, you turn it back into sandstone,” the chief researcher explained. It is already possible to inject chemicals into the ground to reinforce it, but this technique can have toxic effects on soil and water. In contrast, the use of common bacteria to “cement” sands has no harmful effects on the environment. The new process, so far tested only at a laboratory scale, takes advantage of a natural soil bacterium, Bacillus pasteurii. The microbe causes calcite (calcium carbonate) to be deposited around sand grains, cementing them together.

So far this method is limited to labs and the researchers are working on scaling their technique.

Below: Before and After electron micrographs of microbiollogically-induced calcite precipitation in which B. pasteurii cells are embedded.

Flame On !

Suppose a commenter posts a libelous comment here at NorCalBlogs. It’s been known to happen. Can the blogger, Enterprise Record, and its corporate owners be sued for defamation? A federal appeals court just held that no, they cannot. The court noted that a federal law was designed to ensure that ‘within broad limits’, message board operators would not be held responsible for the postings made by others on that board,’ adding that, were the law otherwise, it would have an ‘obvious chilling effect’ on blogger free speech.

Critical Mass

You know you’ve reached critical mass in an argument when you start having editorial cartoons drawn about you.

In this weeks Chico Beat, the editorial cartoon above appeared. While editor Tom Gascoyne would not admit to it being my caricature that was used, a call to artist Steve Ferchaud in Paradise confirmed he used me at Tom’s suggestion of my name.

I consider it high praise to be drawn by Ferchaud, but not so high to be in the Chico Beat.

In any event, by the end of the year 2017, ten plus years from now, we’ll know for sure who’s right. I think it will start to be cooler due to the solar cycle starting to dampen.

Solar Lotto Numbers

What do the numbers 923, 930, 935, 941 and 944 have in common? Answer: They’re different names for the same sunspot, this one shown above.

Greg Piepol of Rockville, Maryland, took the picture yesterday using a Solar Max Solar telescope/camera. It shows sunspot 944 coming around the sun’s eastern limb–for the fifth time! Usually sunspots form and dissolve in a matter of weeks, but this spot has endured for more than five 27-day solar rotations. By long and idiosyncratic tradition, a sunspot receives a new number each time it reappears and is visible to earth.

Sunspot 944 may not seem impressive now, but one month ago as “941″ it was a lovely spiral. Three months ago as “930″ it produced one of the strongest solar flares of the past 25 years and Northern Lights as far south as Arizona. What will it do this time?

Even though we are in between peaks in our 11 year sunspot cycle, we still seem to have quite an active sun. The trend over the last century has been that our solar cycle has had more activity than centuries before.

Of course, that couldn’t possibly have anything to do with global warming.

Triple Green Flash

Mila Zinkova of San Francisco who took this picture of the setting sun on Dec. 29, 2006

You have probably heard something about green flashes, but may not have seen one. If so, you’ll be happy to find that a number of pictures of green flashes are available on the Web like the one above. The one pictured above is special because its a TRIPLE green flash which is exceedingly rare. Its explanation lies in refraction of light (as in a prism) in the atmosphere and is enhanced by layered atmospheric inversions and possibly fog.

There was a time when green flashes were thought to be fables. Jules Verne, of all people, fixed them as real in his 1882 novel “Le Rayon Vert” (The Green Ray). He described “a green which no artist could ever obtain on his palette, a green of which neither the varied tints of vegetation nor the shades of the most limpid sea could ever produce the like! If there is a green in Paradise, it cannot be but of this shade, which most surely is the true green of Hope.”

Green flashes are real (not illusory) phenomena seen at sunrise and sunset, when some part of the Sun suddenly changes color (at sunset, from red or orange to green or blue). The word “flash” refers to the sudden appearance and brief duration of this green color, which usually lasts only a second or two.

For an explanation along with some great pictures of the atmospheric optics involved in green flashes and other sorts of colorful atmospheric phenonmena, I recommend this website in the UK: http://www.atoptics.co.uk/

China Star meets KFC

No thats not the title of a new Godzilla movie, but “Deep Fried Rodan” could be.

My friends in journalism say news goes in cycles. If that is so, this must be the year of the creepy crawly restaurant.

Today I see on the TV news the shocking video (a frame of which is shown above) of the Kentucky Fried Chicken combo Taco Bell in New York City’s Greenwich Village that has been taken over by rats and closed down by the health department.

What’s in those buckets anyway? Just kidding, and the trademark bucket in the picture above had a little help using Photoshop. But it makes you wonder just how many restaurants in America are as bad as this?

Oddly, it was exactly one year ago today that we had the China Star meltdown, where police and fire responders to a burglar alarm found a restaurant so incredibly filthy and pest ridden, it defied description.

In his ER article last year, reporter Ari Cohn and Chico PD officer Melody Davidson’s incident report did an admirable job in conveying the heebie jeebies via the written word to anyone whom ever ate there. Today reading the news reports online and then seeing the videos, it was “like Deja Vu all over again”.

I wrote a letter to the editor last year suggesting we need to have color coded health inspection reports posted in the entrance of every restaurant showing its last inspection status. Green for Pass, Yellow for some minor violations, and Red for get the heck outta there ! I still think its a good idea.

Some progress has been made, as now you can get inspection reports online at Butte County’s Health Department. Here is the link: http://www.buttecounty.net/Default.aspx?tabid=312

Reading through the list of inspection reports at the Butte Health Dept website, I was surprised to learn that even some well known and considered “classy” Chico restaurants had some major violations in the last year. If you eat out a lot, this website is worth a look. Any enterprise that sells packaged food, serves food or food samples, including school cafeterias, coffee houses, country clubs, fraternal clubs, and even liquor stores get inspected by the County Health Department.

Here’s a surprising fact: Indian Casinos and their restaurants are exempt from inspections, because tribal operations are considered their own sovereign nation. That may be so, but I think any place that could potentially make people sick through sloppy food handling shouldn’t get a free pass on a legal technicality.

U.N. Urged to Take On Asteroid Threat

From the France surrenders just to be safe department :

Some “experts” think we should put the U.N. in charge of our space defense against large meteors or asteroids that could wipe out Earth. Ok, let me ask you a question.

Can you name one thing the U.N. has been able to accomplish with complete success? …..Yeah, I thought so.

If the world needs to deflect an asteroid, or even practice doing it, failure is not an option. So rather than leave the fate of the world in the hands of this, ahem, “capable” diplomatic organization, who you gonna call? (Hint, they have headquarters in Florida and Texas). Please, leave space work to space agencies, and the hand wringing to diplomats.

SAN FRANCISCO (Feb. 1 - An asteroid may come uncomfortably close to Earth in 2036 and the United Nations should assume responsibility for a space mission to deflect it, a group of astronauts, engineers and scientists said on Saturday.

Astronomers are monitoring an asteroid named Apophis, which has a 1 in 45,000 chance of striking Earth on April 13, 2036.