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Tuesday, October 22, 2002
And, while we're speaking of bears...
Our very own Tare Panda! 
(We learned about tare kanji last night -- the ones where the radical sort of slumps over the rest of the character, not unlike our sleepy ursine friend above or the squishy tare pandas. Ideas do connect strangely sometimes.) Damned if you do...Contrails, the lines of cloud drawn by high-flying planes, may contribute more to global warming than the aircrafts' carbon dioxide emissions. Contrails could be eliminated if airplanes flew lower, but the denser air at lower elevations would increase fuel consumption and emissions. Scientists are still debating whether the tradeoff is worth it. Friday, October 18, 2002
Thursday, October 17, 2002
Oh, the wonderful future!In 1942, The Atlantic Monthly published an article by aviation pioneer Igor Sikorsky (as told to writer Frederick C. Painton) on the coming age of helicopters. In the 1950's, roads would be unneccessary since a helicopter bus could carry you into town. The controls would be little more complex than those of the average car. Why, even your wife could fly one!Once again let us peer briefly at 1955 and see how your wife handles a typical family helicopter as she flies fifty miles to spend an hour with a friend. She opens the doors of the helicopter hangar that is only slightly larger and higher than your old two-car garage. She pushes the starter, the motor purrs. Seated in the two-place cabin, she presses a clutch that applies the engine power to the wheels. For this is a roadable model; she does not have to push or pull it to the lawn. The helicopter drives itself out of its garage to a suitable space near your badminton court. Here she disengages the wheel-clutch and applies the power to the overhead rotor blades. Your wife is now ready to ascend.One misses the enthusiasm for the future, a sort of inverted nostalgia, which swept us away in the early and mid-20th century. We no longer seem to care what's to come beyond the next chip advance. On the other hand, few of those early predictions resembled anything that came to pass, so why bother? On the third hand, they were much more fun than worrying about snipers or the stock market. Wednesday, October 16, 2002
Benri de iiGaijin humorist Amy Chavez, writing for the Japan Times, lists suggestions to make Japanese life benri de ii -- convenient and good. Among my favorites: a row of deck chairs on top of crowded commuter trains, and the "Hit Kitty", which removes Hello Kitty from products.The last, one hopes, of the bearIn one of those sublimely Well, DUH! moments, I realized last night that since the bear story was now well into urban-legend territory, I should be checking urban legend sites. Sure enough, Snopes had already investigated the matter. In their analysis, the giant-bear tale was the conflation of two similar stories, neither of which involved a US serviceman or a freakishly large bear. The pictures show a bear killed in November, 2001 by a hunter. He was after deer, not bear, but his party surprised the bear while it was fishing for salmon.Another version of "the real story of the bear photos" is on TruthOrFiction.com, which, like Snopes, is an urban-legend analysis site. This account included the statement: He says the bear did not stand up then drop down and charge. It showed no aggression at all.Poor bear. I see, however, that Russian bears are taking their own revenge on humans by rolling stones down on them from the mountains. It must be true -- it's in Pravda. [via Fark] Tuesday, October 15, 2002
Books free for allThe progress of Eldred v. Ashcroft (the suit over the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act) to the Supreme Court has led to the creation of an quixotic hero. Activist Brewster Kahle is traveling around the country in a book-mobile, making books on demand from public-domain Internet texts and giving them away.Raul Ruiz and Ernest Miller are reporting the case more-or-less live [more] from outside the Supreme Court. [from LawMeme] Followup on the bearI received a note from a reader pointing me to two photos of the giant Brown bear said to have been shot in Alaska recently. The photos appear mostly on "outdoorsman" sites, usually with comments similar to "someone sent this to us, and isn't it amazing?" My correspondent received the photos and the story through a much-forwarded email. It seems to be a widely-circulated Internet tale. The apparently questionable details of the Irish Examiner story were absent; the core of the story was the same.The photos, if you care to see them, are at the following sites. I should warn you that they are not pretty. The sites they are on may also be upsetting to those who don't appreciate trophy hunting.
The nice lady fielding reference questions in the Division of Mammals confirmed what I had already suspected: I've checked with several of our staff in the Mammals Division. As far as we know, there is no official Smithsonian staff member involved in traveling to Alaska to confirm size; nor is there any plan to display such a bear, if it does exist, according to the mammal division. Someone mentioned there was a rumor about the Air Force seeing such a bear. That's it!If I learn anything else about this rumor, I'll report it here. If my readers have any details I've missed, please drop me a note. Friday, October 11, 2002
At least it wasn't a trophy killAccording to an article in the Irish Examiner, representatives from the Smithsonian and the Guiness Book of Records will visit Alaska next week to confirm the shooting of what may be the world's largest bear. US airman Ted Heuvelmans said he shot the 1,800-lb, 14-foot-tall Brown Bear (Ursus arctos) [more] in self-defense when the animal reared to charge him. The bear was twice as large as normal Brown bears, which are the world's largest bear species.William Golding, Professor of National History at Toronto University, told the Yukon Courier that the bear's size suggests that it suffered from a growth disorder, such as acromegaly.If this is not a hoax, it will be interesting to see where the body ends up. I'm frankly suspicious, given that the only report of this event seems to be in an Irish paper. Furthermore, I can find no evidence that either "Toronto University" (as opposed to the University of Toronto, which does not seem to have a "William Golding" on the staff) or the "Yukon Courier" exist. I assume "National History" is a typo for "Natural History", a mistake frequently made by tourists on the Mall. Thursday, October 10, 2002
Fire up those spell-checkers!How embarrassing! A ten-year-old from California pointed out spelling errors in NASM's signage which had been in place for years. The error? "Missle" for "missile" on at least three exhibit labels. Fifth-grader Dillon McBride explained his expertise:"I have a lot of video games that use missiles, especially the nuclear kind," he said. "In one, you use nuclear missiles to destroy bugs."The labels are being remade. Wednesday, October 09, 2002
Oh heavens! Another scandal!We all know about government coverups. Watergate. Monicagate. Teapot Domegate. But... the Great Serpent Moundgate? And the government agency responsible for the burial of the Troubling Truth was not the Oval Office, the FBI, the Pentagon or even NASA. It was the venerable Smithsonian Institution. According to this site, 19th-century Smithsonian scientists suppressed archeological evidence that the monumental earthworks in the central US were built, not by native Americans, but by an ancient race of giants. My guess is we're storing the giant skeletons at the Garber Facility, along with the alien corpses from Roswell. But what would I know? I'm just a database programmer. Tuesday, October 08, 2002
Can pinnipeds lie?The SealWyf acknowledges that some of her tribe, especially walruses, have been known to utter the occasional prevarication. But despite accusations of spokesmen for the Cleethorpes, UK, amusement park Pleasure Island, she refuses to believe that Bonnie the Sea Lion's false pregnancy was a conscious ploy to get out of performing for herring.It's getting crowded out thereSo how many planets are there? Eight? Nine? Lots and lots of them? Quaoar, the latest and largest of the trans-Neptunian objects in the Kuiper Belt, is raising a lot of questions about how we define the inhabitants of our solar neighborhood. SAO scientists, though not involved in the actual discovery, have weighed in with opinions. |
