Jim Berkland scores a mixed hit

Published by Jongleur on Tagged Events, Science, Teaching Moments, The Byways, The Highways

Last summer, I wrote about Jim Berkland, the controversial retired geologist who has been predicting earthquakes in Southern California based on moon phases and tides. He missed with two window predictions made last summer for the fall that failed to materialize, but in a prediction made this January he struck what may be paydirt.

From the USGS

Logo Recent Earthquakes in California and Nevada

== PRELIMINARY EARTHQUAKE REPORT ==
California Integrated Seismic Net
USGS/ Caltech/ CGS/ UCB/ UCSD/ UNR

Version #8: This report supersedes any earlier reports of this event.
This event has been reviewed by a seismologist.

A light earthquake occurred at 6:19:48 AM (PST) on Monday, February 1, 2010.
The magnitude 4.4 event occurred 50 km (31 miles) SW of Rosarito, Baja California, Mexico.
The hypocentral depth is 6 km ( 4 miles).

This event falls just within an event window that Jim predicted, one that was publicized on January 29th by amateur weather site SCWXA (Southern California Weather Authority) which wrote:

A COUPLE OF QUAKES IN KNOWN AREAS FOR QUAKES IN THE SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA REGION HAVE STRUCK THOSE AREAS IN THE LAST 24 HOURS. THESE NEXT 24 HOURS ARE CRUCIAL, INCLUDING JIM BERKLAND’S SEISMIC WINDOW THAT HAS OPENED AS THE MOON REACHES THE CLOSEST IT WILL BE THIS YEAR.

Now, I admit that I’m still on the fence here. Part of the problem is that my gut simply continues to say: “The phases of the moon just won’t be enough, and if they were, why hasn’t that been adequately explored and documented before?” Part of it is Jim Berkland himself, who failed to put this prediction up on his web site SyzygyJob.com, which troubles me. Maybe it’s in the ’subscriber newsletter’ – I don’t know. If someone would be so kind as to clear this up, I’d appreciate this.

Either way, Jim Berkland’s predictions are about the only ones out there. Sure, we hear all the time that the risk of an earthquake is increasing on this fault or that fault. We also get something like “Based on historical observations, earthquakes of magnitude X are predicted to happen on this fault every Y years. It’s been Z years since the last quake and we believe that one is due anytime within the next 50 years.” – but we almost never see “There should be a significant earthquake in this five day date range…”

Only time will tell. But Jim Berkland could certainly make his case a bit stronger by being a bit more forthcoming with  his predictions.

Life and Hearts is in Session. Are you ready to “Hunt the Bitch?”



Client side Windows 7 to Canon PIXMA MP500 on Ubuntu Samba

Published by Jongleur on Tagged Computers, Linux

I’ll be adding another longer post later detailing how I got SAMBA working on my home network, including file sharing and printer sharing, but this addresses a semi-unique problem that took some sleuthing to solve.

I have a Canon PIXMA MP500 hooked up to a home built pc running Kubuntu 9.10 with SAMBA installed, the printer was shared via wireless and wired connections to a Gateway laptop running WinVista and a Gateway desktop running WinXP. Lots of problems configuring Samba, but once configured the printers were pretty easy to add via the Add Printer – Network Printer dialog.

Toshiba Qosmio X500 with Intel Core i7 processor

Not so with a brand new Toshiba Qosmio X500 (Intel® Core™ i7 processor) running Windows 7. I had good connectivity to the network file share, but when I tried to add the printer I got this following error “Windows cannot access the printer. Operation could not be completed. (Error 0×0000000d)” – and it would not connect. Looked at various boards looking for solutions, everything from generic solutions to specific for the printer involved. None of them seemed to work for me until I came to TechGuy.org.

Found the working solution (but why it’s working is anybodies guess) at TechGuy.org, although it was specific to WinVista, which OS hadn’t given me any specific grief in this instance.

If you are having the same problem as me, try this.

Go to Control Panel. Choose printer. Then choose Add Printer.

ChooseAdd a local printer. Click on Create a new port. The default in the drop down box is Local Port. Do not change that. Click Next.

A dialogue box will appear asking for you to enter a port name. Type in the \\computer name\printer name ie. My computer’s name is basement and the printer name is EpsonSty so I typed in \\basement\epsonsty

Worked like a charm. A comment in the thread might suggest the reasoning, that MicroSnuff in all of its wisdom considered intranet printers as “local printers” – who knows.

If you know why this works, leave a note. If this works for you, leave a note. Even if it doesn’t work for you, leave a note. It’s only by following the trail of crumbs that I was able to solve my problem, I’m hoping that this helps someone else out as well.

Life and Hearts is in Session. Are you ready to “Hunt the Bitch?”



Jim Berkland in the news again?

Published by Jongleur on Tagged Events, Science

Actually, Jim Berkland isn’t in the news yet, but if his latest earthquake predictions come true, he could very well become the next Earthquake Messiah.

I ran across this in an article in GoldSeek, a web site that covers things of interest in the Gold & Precious Metals world.

By R. D. Bradshaw

[...]

More on the Earthquake Potential

There are several fault systems in the US which could bring on enormous problems for America’s plutocratic rulers as they are busy manipulating the markets to make money. But in particular, there are two key fault systems which could be most troublesome. They are the New Madrid fault running from southeast Missouri to the Seattle area. The last major quake on this line hit in c1812. But a big one did hit Seattle in more recent years.

There is still one more grossly dangerous fault system. Here I refer to the famous San Andreas fault line running from Southern California to the San Francisco area and on north to southwest Oregon where the fault line extends into the Pacific Ocean. In US history, there have been a couple of bad quakes along this line. In 1857, there was a huge quake at Fort Tejon (between Parkland and San Bernardino). Most of us are also familiar with the April 1906 San Francisco earthquake. The one thing which can now be said about the San Andreas fault line is that California is long overdue for another catastrophic quake along the San Andreas.

To demonstrate how serious these possibilities are, the London Telegraph had a story on this theme around Jul 12, 2009. This one put the probabilities at 70% of a major quake that will strike along the San Andreas in the next 30 years. The report added: “… tremors have become more frequent and underground stress has increased at the end of a ‘locked segment’ of the San Andreas fault. A ‘locked segment’ is a portion of a fault that has not moved in years and is at high risk of a major earthquake.”

The Telegraph quoted Robert Nadeau, a seismologist at the University of California at Berkeley, and his colleagues who wrote a report on the issue (as published in the journal Science). This story said: “The increase in tremors could mean that stress is accumulating faster than in the past along that segment of the fault, which rupture(d) in the magnitude 7.8 Fort Tejon earthquake of 1857.”

They added that: “The region of southern California experiences a quake every 85 to 142 years. This makes a major quake theoretically 10 years overdue.” Nadeau notes that there have been some quakes nearby in the meantime, but the tremors keep occurring. He adds: “What’s surprising is that the activity has not gone down to its old level.”

In a more recent update, earthquake predictors Jim Berkland and Mitch Battros were on the Coast to Coast AM radio program on Aug 3/4 with predictions of huge earthquakes being very close in the United States. Berkland gave two dates near coming new moons that could see a big one, maybe in California—Aug 18-25 and Oct 15-25. Berkland didn’t cite the Sep new moon. But it also must be on the table of possibilities along with the Nov and Dec new moons.[...]

I wrote another entry here about Jim Berkland about a year ago, shortly after he made a prediction about a quake that struck Southern California on July 29, 2008. Maybe he was lucky, maybe he has something. I do know that if there is another major earthquake in Southern California during or near either one of those two windows, there will be a lot of people paying more attention to his theories.

Now, I admit that Coast to Coast AM is a place for various and assorted nutjobs to get their word out. Tin Foil Hats are required headgear if you listen to this show regularly. On the other hand, they also get some fairly well grounded and well versed guests on the show, people who for one reason or another have something to say that isn’t being covered by the rest of the press very well, and who should be at least listened to before dismissing them. Some of them may be right. I know that I continue to listen to it from time-to-time as my mood and schedules permit. Sometimes it’s with a “You’ve got to be kidding me, they let this whackjob out of the nut house!!!” and other times it’s “I wonder why I haven’t been hearing more about that…”

Life and Hearts is in Session. Are you ready to “Hunt the Bitch”?



Do you want to die? Vaccinations and the scare mongers

Published by Jongleur on Tagged Science

There are a lot of people out there who are horrified at the idea that the government may virtually mandate that they (or their children) receive a vaccination. The Internet has given them ammunition, and a voice. But is it a voice that you can afford to listen to? And is the ammunition based on anything other than random and unfounded fears?

One of the fears most commonly cited is the possible link between the rise in diagnosed cases of autism, and the rise in the population of children becoming vaccinated at an early age. Thimerosal is the commonly blamed ingredient in vaccines, even though its use has been generally discontinued in children’s vaccines since 2001.  The CDC  looked into the possibility of a causal relationship and reports: “the evidence favors rejection of a causal relationship between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism.”

Yet we see more and more about Autism, or Autism Spectrum Disorder, ASD for short. And concerned parents are scared, the science is too vague, the numbers elusive, and the statements not sharp edged enough.

Sad to say, what may work might be more stories like this one from The Guardian (UK)

Rash actions and dire consequences

I’m furious – the selfish, wrong-headed beliefs of a few precious MMR refuseniks have put my daughter’s life at risk.

My baby daughter is desperately ill and her life has been put at risk by the selfishness of a sizable minority of north London parents and their wrong-headed beliefs about the MMR vaccine. Earlier this week my normally vigorous and feisty 11-month-old was reduced to drowsy, snot-filled lethargy. She refused food, became uncharacteristically listless and developed a hacking cough. Then that evening the measles rash appeared over most of her body – great timing for trying to get an appointment with the doctor. The waiting room was rammed with patients convinced they had contracted swine flu.

That, at least, is a rational fear. The anti-MMR parents have endangered my child (she was due to have the vaccine at 13 months) because of their own ill-informed selfishness – and I’m furious.

We forget. We forget how common childhood illnesses used to be. I was too young to really appreciate it at the time, but the Polio Vaccine is one of the great success stories of medicine. During the 1950’s, the disease left hundreds of thousands of people in hospital wards, depending on “Iron Lungs” to breath. Many of them have since died, others have found that therapies reversed much of the damage, and a few still struggle silently with the effects of a disease that was all but wiped out 50 years ago because of vaccines.

Today’s horrors are averted by a simple injection (or series of injections), and tomorrows might be as well. Individuals are protected, but just as important, by vaccinating populations, we can virtually eradicate a disease. Without a vulnerable population in which to breed, these diseases can’t gain a foothold, and can disappear from the face of the earth.

The question that you must make for yourself is simple. Do you want to be responsible for not only your own child’s health (vaccine, or no vaccine?) but for the health of every child who your child associates with; or can you suspend your unfounded fears long enough to do the right thing?

This fall, when the new strain of Flu Vaccines become available, I plan to spend a few minutes at my local clinic, and let myself be a part of an ongoing experiment. Do we let disease win, or do we let fear win. I have also told my (now adult) children that I hope that they make the same decision.

Life and Hearts is in Session. Are you ready to “Hunt the Bitch?”



You heard it first, here!

Published by Jongleur on Tagged Science

About a year ago I wrote an entry, Do You Want to Avoid Being Dino-Chow? where I made the following observation:

[...]Underlying this are the common assumptions regarding warm-blooded/cold-blooded reptiles, and whether or not dinosaurs were cold-blooded. Cold-blooded animals have some advantages over warm-blooded animals. If an organism is warm-blooded it generally means that it’ll require 5-10 times as much food (energy) to maintain thermal homeostasis. [...]

Seems as if I was a bit ahead of the popular curve here. This new article at MSNBC (which references another article from “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences”) talks about this in a bit more detail, with a little bit different slant.

From Why dinosaurs could grow so big (MSNBC)

The secret to mega-dinosaurs’ impressive sizes may be that the reptiles used more of their energy for growing and less for keeping their bodies warm compared with some creatures.
<clip>
Whether dinosaurs were warm-blooded or cold-blooded has been a hotly debate issue among paleontologists. McNab attempted to answer this question by looking at what food resources were available to dinosaurs, and included this factor in his model that describes how vertebrate size, energy expenditure and food resources tie together.

The author concludes that the resources available to the dinosaurs was probably inadequate to support being warm-blooded, but neither does he believe that they were cold blooded. Rather, they fell into the middle, a category of metabolism called homeothermic, where their sheer size was enough to keep them warm due to the relatively small surface area that they had in relationship to their mass.

Life and Hearts is in Session. Are you ready to “Hunt the Bitch?”



Kids will be kids

Published by Jongleur on Tagged Science, Sex, Teaching Moments, The Byways

First off.

Happy Father’s Day to all you Fathers out there. I’m going to extend this wish to all of those who might not be biological fathers, but who operated as a father in all other senses of the word. The single mothers, the guy who married into a family, or just the guy who semi-adopted a kid because the kid needed a father-figure in their life. I wish you all the best!

We share parenting with a lot of other animals out there as well. Some of them make pretty poor parents if you look at how ‘interested’ they are in the lives of their offspring. Fish spawn and move on, or die. They often never meet their offspring. Other animals share similar roles to the ones we have. This is a short story, some of it conjecture, and some of it direct observation, that encapsulates a little drama that is still playing out near my home.

Every morning, I’m out taking a walk around sunrise. Part of my walk takes me over a portion of the LA River that runs near my house. The LA River, for those of you unfamiliar with it, runs 51 miles from the foothills of the mountains North and West of downtown Los Angeles, and eventually debouches on the beach near Long Beach. I’m up near the headwaters. It isn’t a very pretty river, the Army Corp of Engineers converted it from a seasonal stream to a concrete-lined flood control channel. During storms, the channel runs near over-flowing, and is the scene for the occasional tragedy when some child foolishly underestimates the power of flowing water. Right now, it’s a very shallow stream that almost covers the river bed, running maybe an inch or two deep. Later in the year, it will turn into a trickle, mostly fed by sprinkler run-off.

About a month ago, I was crossing the LA River on one of the bridges that support the many streets that cross over the river. Near one end of the bridge, I came across the body of a large adult male racoon. It probably had the misfortune to meet  up with a ton of steel hurtling down the street, and I don’t know if it was thrown there or someone picked up the corpse and moved it, but it was under a tree just off the sidewalk. I called Animal Control and reported the animal so that they could send out someone to pick it up, then promptly put it out of my mind.

Just the other morning, I’m walking across that same bridge, and out of the corner of my eye I happen to spot movement. Turning to look, I notice a juvenile racoon perched on the edge of the wall that forms the channel. Near the bridge, the walls are about 12 to 15 feet high, and completely vertical. Further downstream the walls angle down to the river, and maybe a hundred yards downstream the channel assumes a “V” shape instead of the “U” shape that it has at the bridge.

I could see that it was obviously somewhat distressed by my presence, as well as the fact that it was out in the open and seemingly fairly easy prey. It had probably decided that the wall was too high to risk the jump, and was nervously pacing back and forth a short distance, chittering occasionally.

A moment later, I spot movement near the first racoon, and saw a much larger adult emerge from one of the access tunnels that bring water from local drains into the river. She (I assume) looked up at her offspring, and then over at me. A rather agitated conversation ensued, with ‘Mom’ telling “Jr” to come down from there, “THIS INSTANT”

I could see the indecision in Jr’s manner, and both of them kept looking anxiously at me. I moved another 40 feet away, hoping to ease their anxieties.  Mom chattered at Jr again, and then started attempting to lead him downstream where the jump got progressively smaller until it would eventually disappear. She seemed unsure however, as she kept on eyeing the safety of the access way, and the open stretch of river that she would have to travel in order to get to where the jump became less treacherous.

A few more back and forth attempts, and then another player entered the scene, a sibling of Jr, I’ll call her “Sib” just to keep it simple. Sib came out of the access tunnel and chattered anxiously at both Mom and Jr, then walked up towards Mom, who was now about 50 feet from the tunnel. Mom abandoned Jr and scurried to shoo Sib back to the safety of the tunnel, all the while chattering at Jr. Sib wasn’t having any of this, either it felt afraid being away from Mom, or it just wanted a part in the drama.

Back and forth it went, with Mom and Sib edging away from the safety of the tunnel, and Jr following them, only to reconsider and go back to safety. Understanding their dilemma, I moved further away, and finally after about 10 minutes of this Jr was returned to the safety of Mom and the scorn of Sib. They all scurried into the tunnel, not to be seen again.

It was interesting trying to understand the processes going on there. I am probably attributing some “human” emotions to the encounter, but I somehow doubt that I’ve gone too far. Racoons are notably intelligent animals, and are also quite well adapted to humans and are very much able to defend themselves from most of the world that we represent. Cars are probably their greatest enemy around here, most dogs would find themselves at a disadvantage in an encounter with an adult racoon, especially one that was protecting its young.

I don’t know if “Papa” – the deceased male that I saw a month earlier would have been part of this drama or not, I don’t believe that male racoons have much to do with child-rearing. My guess is that he wouldn’t have had much to do with it if he had survived.

That this mother was caring was very apparent. That “Jr” was the adventuresome sort, well… my guess is that this isn’t the first time he’s tried Mom’s patience. The sibling rivalry is pretty much of a stretch, but possible nonetheless.

That in a large urban area like Los Angeles this drama is possible to observe is a testament to the ability of Racoons to adapt to us. They are largely nocturnal animals, most people only encounter them if they hear something rustling by their trash late at night. I look forward to more such adventures, and will share them as I find them.

Life and Hearts is in Session. Are you ready to “Hunt the Bitch”?



Sasquatch 2009 – One Person Is All The Difference!

Published by Jongleur on Tagged Arts & Entertainment, Events, Music

A moving little video, showing just how infectious a little bit of “Over the top” can be. From Sasquatch 2009, a music festival held in George, Washington. This year is was over the weekend of May 23 thru May 25.

This poor guy is out there, dancing to his own tune, rockin and jammin all by his lonesome, undeterred by maybe looking foolish. Then, one other person joins in. A dozen seconds later, another joins, then a few, then the crowd flows in to gyrate and dance to the music. Soon, the dancers outnumber the watchers.

Life and Hearts is in Session. Are you ready to “Hunt the Bitch?”



To gaze in awe, at the edge of infinity

Published by Jongleur on Tagged Science

The video below, “The Hubble Deep Field: The Most Important Image Ever Taken” will take you a mere 6 minutes and 38 seconds to watch. What it will attempt to do is to introduce you to the wonders of Billions and Billions of Stars in our Universe, existing Billions and Billions of Light Years away. While I believe that the title is overly dramatic, I can’t disagree with the sentiment. This video, incorporating animation sequences provided by NASA and the European Space Agency, and put together and narrated by Tony Darnell of DeepAstronomy touches on the true vastness of our universe.

The area of the sky looked at is likened to an area the size of a dime, held out not at arms length, but a dime as seen from seventy-five feet away. And in that minuscule portion of the sky, astronomers are able to discern some 1,500 galaxies, some of them existing at the furthest reaches of the universe.

Tony Darnell, who writes DeepAstronomy is my kind of guy. He can’t go out to his car at night without gazing at the sky, and wondering “Just what is out there, and what is my place in all of this?”

Maybe the only rational answer is nothing more than “A sentient being who wonders how he is  connected to other sentient beings.” Maybe it’s something grander, something as grand as the skies above, and the dreams of those who gaze upon infinity.

Life and Hearts is in Session. Are you ready to “Hunt the Bitch?”



A light from the Cretaceous

Published by Jongleur on Tagged Science

This beautiful picture comes to us courtesy of NASA/APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day).

NGC 7049 - APOD

If you haven’t been there already, I strongly urge you to go to NASA/APOD. Each day they put up another picture or illustration, something to do with the heavens that Man has gazed up at ever since he became aware of his surroundings.

The object in the photo is a galaxy, the identifier is NGC 7049, more poetically known as “The Crown of Thorns Galaxy.” Located near Indus, a constellation unfamiliar to most Americans and Europeans because it is in the southern sky,  the Crown of Thorns Galaxy  is about 100 million light years away from Earth. This photo is part of the astronomical treasure that the Hubble Space Telescope has given us, many of which can be seen at APOD.

This is tentatively categorized as a Spiral Galaxy; however, the rings that you see are not spirals of stars, but rather a gathering of dust. Whether or not that dust will eventually coalesce into stars remains to be seen. The bright cloud behind the dust ring is comprised of millions of individual stars, their individuality lost in the immense distance. The bright star top right is not part of NGC 7049, rather it is a star located in our own galaxy that lies on the line between us and NGC 7049.

Since the light from this galaxy left on its journey to our little dust-mote, much has happened. 100 Million Years ago is the dividing line between the Early Cretaceous and the Late Cretaceous. The main geographical features of the Earth are starting to look similar to what you find today, though the division between the “Old World” and “New World” is much smaller than what we currently see.

Otherwise, the main distinguishing features of the Cretaceous are probably warm shallow swamps, populated by a variety of life-forms, some of which remain virtually unchanged, others of which have come and gone. The classic “Dinosaur” that we are most familiar with are creatures primarily of the Late Cretaceous, they suddenly disappear 65 million years ago at the K-T Boundary, also known as the Cretaceous-Tertiary Extinction Event. More familiar to us would be smaller things, insects primarily. That cockroach that you saw this morning in the kitchen? On the day that the light we see today left the edges of that galaxy, her ancestor was probably scurrying under forest leaves; virtually unchanged up through the ages.

Enjoy this short animated video that takes us on a quick (0:52) journey through a hundred million years of time and space to visit The Crown of Thorns Galaxy.

More details about this photo of the Crown of Thorns Galaxy can be found on this SpaceTelescope.org photo-release. Links to other videos about this spectacular galaxy can be found there as well.

Life and Hearts is in Session. Are you ready to “Hunt the Bitch?”



Origins of Sex?

Published by Jongleur on Tagged Science, Sex

I came across this incredible video today at Telegraph Co. (UK), don’t worry – it’s safe for work. The video shows one HIV infected cell in the process of infecting another cell.

The first thing that struck me was that was Sex – yeah, the old exchange of fluids type of sex. Well, actually not that the fluids are so important, what is important is that we’ve witnessed a one-sided way of passing on genetic information.

From the article

Researchers found that the virus is transferred from infected cells to healthy ones in a previously unknown way.
[...]
They noted that when an infected cell came into contact with a healthy one, a bridge was created between them, called a virological synapse.

You call it a Virological Synapse, I call it a bit of hanky-panky.

On a bit more serious note. Strictly speaking, no this isn’t sex. There is no intermingling of genetic information between biological equals, this is an infection mechanism pure and simple. Yet the mechanism certainly leads one to wonder, is this a demonstration of the origins of sex?

No one is sure how, when, where or even why sex first occured. Sexually reproducing Eukaryotes appeared on the scene about 1 to 1.2 billion years ago.  The advantages of sexual reproduction are many, primarily, it provides an efficient means of mixing genetic traits between partners that are succesful enough to make it onto the dating scene and attract a partner. The end result should be a generation of organisms that will be a little bit more successful in the constant competition of life.

Wikipedia suggests four reasons for the origins of sex.

  1. An organism might have used ’sex’ to repair damaged DNA via the replication process.
  2. Selfish parasitic genetic elements (selfish genes) evolved in order to use ’sex’ to pass on their own information. Think of a patch of DNA that is selfish enough to act somewhat independently, yet ends up carry along the rest of the DNA with it.
  3. Incomplete cannibalism allowed the ‘eaten’ organism to pass on it’s DNA.
  4. [...] (fusionsex) arose from prokaryan unilateral sex-as-infection when infected hosts began swapping nuclearised genomes containing coevolved, vertically transmitted symbionts that provided protection against horizontal superinfection by more virulent symbionts. Sex-as-meiosis (fission sex) then evolved as a host strategy to uncouple (and thereby emasculate) the acquired symbiont genomes.

This looks a lot like the beginnings of number 4. Missing is the ‘protection’ – yet evolution will in all likelihood one day see to it that the HIV virus either provides protection/advantage to the host(s) or it too will pass into the dustbin of unsuccessful experiments.

In the meanwhile, I can tell you that HIV has certainly modified my own sexual behavior. No more casual hanky-panky for this guy. The transmission method of this organism has proven to be very successful, whether or not it has been filmed at this detail in living color. On the other hand, the effects of contracting this disease are anything but beautiful. I’ve a handful of friends and acquaintances who are victims of this disease, and it is a bad way of going.

Life and Hearts is in Session. Are  you ready to “Hunt the Bitch?”