A Conundrum for a Solsticial Evening: Does This Mayan Glyph Imply... Antarctica?

Some folks liken this Mayan glyph, called "Hunab ku," a kind of celestial crossroads where dieties are born, to the Maya knowing about the supermassive black hole at the center of our (and every other) galaxy. Maybe. That is, maybe the Maya knew that. But Da-da just saw this view of Antarctica from space (courtesy of Ferrebeekeeper's fine blog, one of Da-da's favorites), and... well, these look awfully similar.

Buzz buzz, little bee.

Could the above also represent a symbolic layer of an actual advanced civilization actually lost under the word, "actually"? Er, that is, lost under ice? An aerie, island continent, the highest in the world with an average height of 7000 feet, a powerful one that was reputedly both light and dark and highly technical, and affected the world in the four cardinal directions? Some scientists riddle that Antarctica has been covered by ice for roughly two million years, but then again some scientists raddle for Monsanto and think bees are evil. Kinda fun to consider -- the Maya thing, not Monsanto.

Post-Apocalyptic Note: What that Mayan glyph actually represents is 2012 going down the drain. Good riddance.

The One Where Da-da Shows How to Stop Wind Turbines From Killing Birds

"I mean, you're not helping. Why is that, Leon?"
"Well, those blades keep whacking me, 'cause I can't see 'em."
"Oh. Sorry."

Da-da's oldest, Nagurski, loves birds. He was just reading about how giant wind turbines were killing birds all over the place and no one knows what to do about it. Well, Da-da knows what to do:

Paint the giant blades with ultraviolet paint.

Sure. Why do birds never fly into spider webs? Because they can see into the ultraviolet end of the spectrum, and spider webs GLOW in birds' eyes. Some companies even make ultraviolet-colored fake spider webs to put on your windows to keep the birds from smacking into them. So, simply scale this up and paint the turbine blades with ultraviolet paint and turn the turbines back on and everyone's happy. A bird will fly near the turbine and basically see the equivalent of a huge glowing dinner plate spinning in the air and the bird will say, "WHOA! A HUGE GLOWING SPINNING THING! I BETTER NOT FLY INTO THAT!" And suddenly, the world is a better place for birds and the environment and all the choirs let loose and The Cabal goes to jail and none of us have to pay taxes or our mortgages ever again. You know, a Happy Place.

If someone somewhere wants to thank Da-da for this helpful suggestion, feel free to contribute to his boys' college fund. And now, on to the problem of saving snails from all those ravenous French bistros, but that's easy... 

WHOA! Note that this represents Da-da's 1000th post! Let's get this snail off the ground!

Of Eclipses, Sphinxes and Shrubberianism

You know things are getting weird when Ma-ma dons her Sphinx outfit.
If she asks you a question, be sure to know the answer.

Da-da hasn't seen news of this upcoming solar eclipse anywhere, but then again, Da-da refers to himself as Da-da and lives under a shrubbery (two actually, for a nice two-pronged effect). Anyway, said solar eclipse will be visible on Sunday, May 20th, in the early evening across much of the U.S., as well as other parts of the globe, with apologies to those readers in non-eclipse-y, socially and economically functional countries. All the info on when and where is elegantly presented HERE at Shadow and Substance. They do an awesome job. Basically, May 20th is gonna be one weird day. Trust Da-da on this one. All your plants WILL DOUBLE IN SIZE and become sentient, while all your Yahtzee dice will go missing. Weird, huh?

What this REALLY MEANS is that you'll be able to trick your kids into going to bed earlier. Ahem.

Almost time for Tubby Apocalypse. (Ignore the blood.) It'll be over soon, Roger the Shrubber.

Supermoon Apocalypse 2: Rare Chance to Snag Spurious Frisbees This Weekend

The boys love their new nightlight, which features its own guard.

In what will no doubt be the latest fear-mongering blogger/media attempt at mongering FEAR, we'll all soon be hearing about the moon being close to the earth again -- about 12 feet from the earth, which is about as far as Da-da can stretch for the remote -- causing all manner of disasters and we're all gonna die. Again. Seems like we're all gonna die about six times a quarter. Sure, it's the closest the moon's been in XX years, and YES it'll be full, which means that this weekend's lunar lambada will see the entire earth explode and corporations the only things left to survive along with all the cockroaches so they can each push the other around in a justice poétique kinda way usually found in Supermoon Apocalypses and apocryphal run-on sentences.

For anyone not in the know, Supermoon Apocalypses also always yield a certain inexplicable yearning for... isochronic tones. Why? Because:

1. They make your chakras all fresh and springy, and
2. They make you number things, and
3. They make you levitate high enough to snag those frisbees on the roof. 

Not sure if fear and frisbees and numbering things are related, but you're far less likely to think straight when you're afraid. Or playing Ultimate Frisbee. Or counting to infinity.

Ultimate. Frisbee.

Big Science LIVES

You know you want one.

Large Hadron Super Colliders be damned, Da-da's portable family room version is not only a huge waste of foil and cardboard, IT CAN ALSO STEAM VEGETABLES. Yes, Da-da's awesome foil-tech masterpiece is a gross waste of domestic resources, but hey: BIG SCIENCE IS EXPENSIVE. Da-da did have economy in mind though. What you see here is not only a space capsule and time machine, it's also a transmogrification chamber. Like Da-da, it's admittedly a little spurious and not without it's design flaws, like when we sent Bronko back to the Cretaceous Period and hit the transmogrifier button at the same time, but his fins glow a pretty blue when he breathes fire.

Bronko emerges after a time machine/transmogrifier accident wiser, and with a thicker skin.

Elvis' Ghost, Tires and the Other Side (or, "Where the Rubber Meets the... HUH?")

Da-da's backyard is BIG, Dracula.

Da-da was sitting in a tire store the other day – just for fun – when something occurred to him. There are lots of cars in the world, right? And each one has, presumably, four tires. And each of those tires is rolling and abrading and wearing and tearing to the tune of serious consumer moolah. So?

A recent worldometer study noted that approximately 500 million cars had been produced in the last decade alone, and about 1B+ cars and trucks are on global  roads today, which translates into... oh, 4B+ tires. That’s a lot of tires. (Da-da knows, he has a million in his backyard next to all the barrels of radioactive waste.) And at $80 a tire… well, let’s just say for the sake of argument that there’s roughly $500 billion in rubber and a bunch of questionable grammar grinding away at any given time. A natural question to ask is: where the flock are the giant piles of tire dust?

Wouldn’t you expect there to be huge black piles of tire dust on the sides of every interstate, what with all these tires rolling and wearing all over the place? Is it being absorbed by the road surfaces? Or are the tire manufacturers impregnating the rubber with tire-eating bacteria, to not only take care of the tire dust problem, but also to keep our precious sets of tires wearing and deteriorating predictably to perpetually boost their bottom lines? What’s going on at the molecular level? Can people be allergic to tire dust? Can it be ingested? Will it make Da-da's children go to sleep faster? Is it good in beer? Are these questions making you wanna OCCUPY DA-DA? (There are a lot in there, already; bring hors d'oeuvres and a perky zin.)

99% of the info out there revolves around telling you what to do when your tires wear out and how many exciting (read EXPENSIVE) new choices you have for boring old tires, blah blah blah... [SNORE]... ah, but not HOW they wear. AhA! Reams of data exist on tire size vs. load requirements, traction, tread wear, temperature, how to make old tires into modern office buildings, how to make tire-enchilada caseroles, how great that tire casserole would look on your HEAD... that kinda thing. All the rubber geeks (that’s what they like to be called) talk a good game, hiding behind stalwart phrases like, "proprietary optimized component" and "univolume torpometric reduction." Awesome. But what happens when the rubber literally meets the road? (You were waiting for that one, right? You're so LUCKY.)

After some truly exciting research on road surfacing, Da-da finally found a DuPont engineer, Gregg Babcock, who seemed to know his stuff -- and who may or may not have been in a joking mood. Da-da asked him what happens when a tire wears on an Elvaloy-coated road surface (Elvaloy being a DuPont chemical coating for roads to make them last longer). Note that this is what the guy actually said, Da-da's not making this up.

“Tire rubber on DuPont Elvaloy roads is disposed of by Elvis,” said Babcock with a straight face. “We have an exclusive contract with him to dispose of rubber from Elvaloy roads. He takes it with him to the other side. [Italics courtesy Da-da.] Our COMPETITION, on the other hand, lets it sit on the side of the road, where bacteria eats it. The bacteria love the oil in the rubber. Don’t quote me on the Elvis thing, the King might not like it.” Oops.

Da-da then asked him what really happens to the rubber.

“Seriously, the bacteria is what eats the rubber,” he said. “I don’t know the exact details, but some form of naturally occurring bacteria just adore the high surface-to-volume ratio created by rubber wearing against the road. The bacteria eat the rubber getting at the oil. I don’t have any papers or anything detailing the process.”

Well. We can all sleep better knowing that all the tires in the world are slowly being ingested by countless legions of hungry Elvis-worshipping bacteria. Makes you wonder what else they’re eating. At least it should, MISTER TEXTING WHILE DRIVING. This of course will only remain important until that time when we don't need roads, which will be soon. No, really.

1.21 gigawatts... RIGHT THERE.

Your Autumnal Equinox Calibration Results

SNAP CRACKLE POP... ow.

Yup, Da-da's compass needle pointed directly east into the rising sun this equinoctial juncture, confirming this, our 5+ billionth equinox for planet earth. And of course after staring into the rising sun for too long in the interests of science, Da-da's eyes burned to a crisp, were powdered and are now being marketed in Japan as a combo soporific/prophyllactic. But don't worry, Da-da can still see, after a fashion, and you'll be happy to know he's also decided to go into politics...

Hey, you kids...

Welcome to Your Autumnal Equinox Calibration (and Improbable Space-Junk Heads-up)

Looks level, right? Did one of you bump it?

Da-da's boys adore compasses, especially those heavy brass ones they like to throw at each others' heads. So, speaking of barely tenable segues, some folks think that the earth may have shifted somehow, and that the sun is rising and setting in new, different places (like in Da-da's pants; maybe that's why he was so hot). There's an easy way to find out what's happening. On the Autumnal Equinox -- Friday, September 23, 2011 -- just get up early (yeah, right), set a compass (a real one) on the window sill and look toward the point where the sun rises. It should be exactly due east. If it's not, then we have a problem, Houston. (We kinda already had a problem, but Da-da doubts Houston can do anything about it.)

Question: if the earth's crust slipped a little and the magnetic poles shifted a little, would the compass and earth points still return the same values? But they'd be skewed values, right? Is this thing on? Anyway, because Da-da is all about skewed perspective, below please find a graphic showcasing the largest star yet found (at bottom) with our little big star (at top).

Hey, man. Are you small? No, man, I'm tall, I'm tall.

Please also note that NASA said that that small bus... er, satellite Da-da talked about earlier will probably come down on the Equinox. Jeez, talk about Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, the odds are approaching that of that improbability drive Da-da installed in his refrigerator. 

Coming soon: The Ultimate Do-or-Die Equinox.

Gravity Has Been Drinking

You are POWERLESS against GRAVITY! AHHHAHHHAHAHAHAA!

Da-da rolls all his eyes (mutants have lots of eyes) whenever "experts" talk about the universe. How can you be an expert on something you only see a teeny part of, while dangling participles? Huh? It's like when Da-da was in physics classes and instructors waxed insouciant about physical "laws." There are no physical laws, Dracula. A physical law is merely someone saying, "Hey! It happened again!" It might not happen that way next time. This in mind, would it surprise you to know that gravity, typically 9.8 m/s^2 (or 32 feet per second per second) is different everywhere you go? Yup. It changes from place to place. It even changes IN those same places, fluxing up and down and sideways, changing every picosecond where you are right now. Why? We have no idea. But look at this gravitic satellite view of the earth:

Isn't that cool? Red is higher gravity, blue is lower gravity. Of course, we're talking about a very small change in what keeps you from flying off the earth, but it's a change nonetheless. (Note that this is just a snapshot of that moment; gravity changes all the time. Be fun to see this as a live view during extreme solar activity.) So, why is gravity lower over Hudson Bay versus the Aleutian Islands? Do Aleutians grow taller than Canadians, on average? Da-da doesn't know. No one else does, either. Sure, we're talking microgravities, but no one's ever put sensors in a high gravity locale and a low gravity locale and noted the differences. Is it easier to think in lower gravity? Grow plants? Move pianos? Win at bowling? Da-da will try to locate a UFOnaut and get back to you on that.

No one ever talk about this stuff. Why? Because we don't understand gravity or the inner workings of our own planet -- or how to get politicians to jump into that volcano. (Damn.) Speaking of that, would it surprise you to know that the universe is neither expanding nor contracting... that is, until you look at it? Weird, huh? One of the ancient's biggest secrets was, "The universe is mental." Quantum theory says the same thing. The presence of thought changes everything. Luckily, there's not much of that permeating the planet earth these days.

Ping Pong Ball vs. Giant Testicle

This is very interesting -- provided you like fluid dynamics and... well, pain -- and if you've studied any physics or chemistry or casino operations, you know that it's all about fluid dynamics and pain (and not just giant testicle simulacra). Everything acts as a fluid. Except Da-da's head. That's a solid.

Here, a water-filled ping pong ball impacts a giant testicle water-filled balloon at 600 fps (impelled by a leaf-blower, which influences the "bounce"). The obverse view is especially interesting. BTW, guys, next time put some dots on the ping pong ball, so we can see if it's spinning. And wear your cup.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like...

Pardon the levity interruption, but Science Da-da finds this interesting. It's not been well reported that the earth has actually been cooling, naturally, while what humans are doing is keeping it artificially warm; this was demonstrated by examining atmospheric records from those three plane-free days after 9/11 (no jet contrails to foul the data). Anyway, Da-da's geologic brain (which works about as fast) recalls that, according to ice cores, global warming typically preceded ice ages.

Interestingly enough, it seems glaciers have been GROWING, on Mt. Shasta, Mt. St. Helens, in Alaska, Norway, and in Antarctica over the past 30 years. Note that this is indeed possible with global warming, as local variations will exist and extreme weather prevail (more hot and cold air interactions), but Da-da has always suspected that we were living during yet another interglacial period, and a renowned Columbia University paleoclimatologist just confirmed it.

So what, right? Just put on a jacket and grab your sled? Alas, if an ice age is incipient, it's not the happiest of pictures. Ice age onset can occur very quickly, in a decade, and with growing populations, wacky weather, shrinking crop yields, shorter growing cycles... do the math. Certainly not a reason to panic (Da-da hates panic), but it's something to keep in mind. Worse case scenario: get ready for some do-it-yourself hydroponics. (And NO, not to grow that.) Da-da would actually be relieved by news of a new ice age, so all those gynormous methane deposits stay under the ocean where they belong; unleash methane with rising global temps and you've got... VENUS.

(Note: baseballs tend to catch fire when the planet's surface temp is 600-900 degrees, which makes foul balls reeeally HURT, if not more difficult to catch. AND while it may keep Da-da's hot dog warm, it would tend to make his $10 beer boil. Da-da does not like to pay $10 for boiling beer... unless it's to cook schnitzelgrubers, but that's a whole other planetary system.)

Mine mine mine mine mine... YOURS.

Note: not sure which theory this supports or refutes, but scientists also announced this week the observation of, "the highest level of Arctic ozone layer depletion on record, attributed to colder temperatures in the stratosphere." The upper atmosphere is very interesting, in that it gets colder -- then hotter -- the higher you go, though this is a bit misleading; the higher you go, the less actual particles you run into, but those that you do encounter are indeed like flaming baseballs.

UPDATE: Looks like the sun has finally decided to point South-dominant full time, now, which means that the earth and sun are geomagnetically sympatico. This means that the earth is absorbing most of the sun's output, rather than repelling it. This points to increased volcanism, as evidenced by all the recent volcanoes popping off left and right. If this continues, you'd best buy a warmer jacket.

SUPERMOON APOCALYPSE, AAAIIEIIEEEEE

It's a fact: full SUPERMOON APOCALYPSES encourage run-on sentences. And tantrums.

Sorry, couldn't resist. In yet another fear-mongering media attempt at mongering FEAR (you getting this?), the moon is apparently going to be soooo close to the earth -- something like 221,567 miles away (or 356,577 kilometers), which is about as far as Da-da goes for a taco, A REALLY GOOD TACO -- that we're all gonna die. AGAIN. Seems we're, "ALL GONNA DIE," about three times a quarter these days, he said, sardonically. Sure, it's the closest the moon's been in 18 years, and YES, it'll be full, such that on the March 19th APOCALYPSE MOONIE close-up, the entire earth will explode and all corporations will perish, boo hoo. (If all the corporations died, would you cry any big salty tears?) Anyway, that's what some people think. Then again, some people read, "PEOPLE."

For anyone not in the know, you should turn all this stuff off and go read, *Jane Eyre,* because:

1. It's really good, and
2. The fear mongers want you AFRAID and buying things 24/7 and not reading high quality books like, *Jane Eyre,* and using your head for something other than a hat rack while reading annoying run-on sentences all the time, what's wrong with you?

Not sure if fear and buying things and hat racks are related, but you're far less likely to think straight when you're afraid, and when you're not thinking straight... MAN, are you easy to control. (The last time Da-da didn't think straight due to fear -- BOOM -- he had two kids. Guess that was more like BOOM BOOM.) What was Da-da talking about? CONTROL. There's money to be made in control, and that's what life's all about, right? Right? Is this thing on? And stop starting sentences with AND, grammar-puss.

That said, it wouldn't hurt to ramp your earthquake preparedness a little, esp. as the earth and sun are more and more sympatico, electromagnetically speaking, and the mantle seems to be extra slippery in terms of the Pacific plate, but don't freak out about it -- don't freak out about anything, EVER. Even if zombies suddenly appeared, your life would be gravy. Think about it. Zombies mean all bets are off and there's no more taxes, no IRS, no 9-5, no mortgage to pay, lots of adventure and eating beany weenies before being bitten and infected and then leading all your zombie comrades on a ZOMBIE MARCH ON WASHINGTON DC... ah, allow Da-da his little fantasy a moment. Wherewasi? Right. The full moon at perigee does make earthquakes more probable, statistically, as tides are quite powerful, but nothing will happen right away. No, if Da-da were forced to hang his prophetic cheese in the wind, he'd mention that his spurious data points to a seismic event to occur early in the morning (Pacific time) on... April 14th -- 30 days from today (so you have some time to prepare), but nothing so serious that it can't be rectified by a few tactical moon pies and Da-da coffee. Put those two together and THERE'S your seismic event. Jeez, did you read all that? You NEED a moon pie and Da-da coffee after that post.

This is actually a quasi-moon-pie/vanilla ice cream thing, which is cheating, a little, but who's gonna complain?

[Postmortem: after the fact, the Supermoon Apocalypse turned out to be a micro rather than a macro, causing 3 and 5YO Bronko and Nagurski to become LOONEY, and chew on each other all freaking day. However, these types of moons tend to loosen things up for effects later. Da da da.]

The Aurora Has Been Drinking

For those with clear skies, you might wanna step outside your teepee tonight. The aurora borealis may make a rare appearance at lower latitudes given the sun's continuing dip into southern polarity. Science boy says, "HUH?" Follow me, Timmy.