No doubt we’ll get many guesses and lots of speculation on this. Public interest will be whipped to a frenzy and Geraldo Rivera may be calling Space-X right now to see how soon they can get him on an outbound rocket. This find presents a marketable mystery on the same scale as Al Capone’s Vaults.
What IS that thing? NASA has determined the object is of Martian origin and not something that just fell off the rover. But … what?
My guess? Donald Trump’s cufflink.
Not of Martian origin? Think again!
Before they ruin our fun with science, identify the strange shiny object in the Martian dust!
Barley made the news yesterday, in part thanks to a Minnesota scientist. Professor Gary Muehlbauer of the Department of Agronomy and Plant Genetics at the University of Minnesota and a cadre of international researchers managed to sequence the genome for barley, said to be “one of the world’s most important and genetically complex cereal crops“. Results were published in the journal Nature. Apparently this work could lead to higher barley yields, better resistance to pests, and enhanced nutritional value. It may also help barley adapt to the stresses of climate change.
You know what that means – we can trash the environment and still have beer!
Congratulations to the researchers. A round for all my genome sequencing friends! It made me think of this old song about barley and its role in the beer and whiskey making process. Sung here by Martin Carthy.
The scientists have done their best
employing all their means
They found out, using every test,
John Barleycorn has genes!
They chopped him up so very small
and put him on display.
Tore him apart to see it all
and mapped his DNA.
If you were him by now you’d know
the sum of all your parts.
What makes you wilt. What helps you grow.
The compounds in your farts.
The sequence tells us who he is,
of what he is composed.
His elements, his spark, his fizz.
John Barleycorn, exposed.
There was another major heist at a European Art Museum yesterday – this time in the Netherlands at the Kunsthal Museum in Rotterdam.
Thieves broke in at 3am, set off alarms and managed to get away with 7 targeted works in less than 5 minutes, which is how long it took for the police to arrive.
Some people look on art theft as a fun, cinematic type of larceny. The stuff being stolen is extremely valuable but of no real use. Rich people and insurance companies suffer the loss. And if you’re the burglar, you could be a toned and sexy genius – a talented thrill seeker too smooth to get caught.
The Wall Street Journal says art theft is a $6 billion global black market, and the U.S. is the biggest single destination for taken treasures. But if you wind up with one of the more than 1,000 pilfered Picassos, you probably won’t be able to sell it because it’s logged in at the Art Loss Register, a worldwide database of missing masterpieces.
You’ll have to install it on the back side of a revolving wall, a priceless bauble to be shown only to “special” guests at your penthouse, but only after too many drinks have been poured and just before the cigars are lit.
Unless, of course, you come into it by accident, completely unaware that the “nice” picture you paid $15 for at a garage sale is the subject of an international search-and-rescue operation. Unlikely, but it could happen, what with all the quirky heist junkies out there. After all, it’s just a game to them. Who knows where the stolen art is hiding?
What object in your home could be a stolen work of art?
Just because a machine is designed to go incredibly fast, that doesn’t mean it should never slow down at a crosswalk, hit the brakes for a hairpin turn or come to a halt for a stoplight.
This is the mental message I beam to my fellow drivers during every commute, but we must not be on the same wavelength. They never seem to pick it up.
Yes, Endeavour, you’ve done 17,500 miles per hour on the open range, but this is a 2 mph zone with no allowance for thrill seeking, especially with so many amateur photographers milling around.
Reports say a million people came out to watch and the preparations took months. Power lines and sign posts had to be moved to allow the orbiter to pass, and hundreds of trees were taken down to provide clearance for Endeavour’s wingspan – unlikely sacrifices to America’s urge to explore space.
When have you had to carefully maneuver through a tight spot?
Today is the birthday of Jazz piano legend Art Tatum.
Tatum is one of those artists known mostly for the way he was admired by his fellow musicians. He didn’t achieve great popular success, but other players stood in awe of his talents and his influence is undeniable.
Need some evidence and a few accolades?
Here’s a clip from Ken Burns’ series, Jazz.
And here’s another sample of Tatum at work. I can’t tell you anything about the structure of this piece, but I recognize that there are a lot of notes in there. Without truly comprehending the significance of what he is doing, I can easily believe that Tatum is making something difficult appear to be quite easy.
We’d like to believe people who are the very best at what they do will be handsomely rewarded for their ability – that excellence will always be properly recognized.
Art Tatum’s life and his relative obscurity seem to argue the opposite – that artistic genius does not guarantee success.
Who is the most accomplished artist you’ve seen in person?
I found a soggy note plastered to my windshield of as I was preparing to leave work the other day. A residue of sea salt still marks the spot where I peeled it off the glass. It’s from the widely feared pirate and international man of mystery, Captain Billy – rogue skipper of the ghost ship Muskellunge.
Ahoy, Landlubber!
This here notice is to call attention t’ th’ fact that October 12 is Columbus Day in the USA, or was, at one point, before it was changed t’ be th’ second Monday in October or some such nonsense.
But now payin’ respects t’ Columbus ain’t politically correct, so not much is said about him an’ hardly nobody gets the day off ‘cept fer longshoremen an’ postal workers. What wi’ labor unions an’ th’ very idea of government under assault from various angles, it won’t be long b’fore all recognition of Columbus Day is but a memory.
Not that me an’ the boys cares all that much about Columbus!
Aye, 1492 was a golden age for them what sought fame an’ riches on the high seas! Columbus wound up with both, I reckon. But now that his misdeeds have gained some ground on his legend, an’ bein’ a professional opportunist, of sorts, I’s of a mind t’ politely suggest that perhaps th’ American people needs a new role model of th’ salty waves t’ celebrate!
I hearby offers me’self as such a figure.
So if’n any municipalities is under pressure t’ tear down their Columbus statues, may I politely suggest that a much cheaper way t’ go would be t’ weld on an eye patch an’ a peg leg t’ th’ offendin’ figure, an’ change th’ name below from “Christopher Columbus” t’ “Capt’ Billy”.
I understands th’ Columbus statue in New York City is perfectly set up right now fer such a tidy make-over, what with a cozy room havin’ been built around it.
So why not head off any current or future criticism by re-purposin’ this here statue as a generic tribute t’ the seafarin’ explorer an’ man of adventure? Since I ain’t never had my photograph taken, I reckon no one will quibble wi’ th’ quality of th’ likeness.
An if any Italian patriots has a issue with th’ idea, I invites them t’ track us down! Me an’ th’ boys is always prepared t’ welcome company, th’ more hostile, th’ better. But don’t ferget to bring yer riches!
Yer seafarin’ pal,
Capt. Billy (an’ the crew of the Muskellunge)
Personally, I would be in favor if this change if Columbus Circle could be re-christened the “Billy Go-Round”.
Today’s post comes via text message from Bart the Bear, a wildlife-Minnesotan who found a smart phone in the woods.
Yo, Bart here.
So this summer I set up this alert-thing on the phone to buzz me whenever a bear shows up in the news. Being one, I just wanted to know how things are going for us. “Are you better off now than you were four years ago …” you know. That kind of thing.
Waiting for someone to bring me Cake.
But then a few weeks ago the alert starts pinging all the time. I couldn’t sleep, and it kinda worried me that bears were getting into so much trouble.
Then I figured out that it was the start of the football season and everything I was getting notified for had to do with the “Chicago Bears”. Not really too interesting to me, although whenever they show up there seems to be lots of food around. That would be nice, to be one of the bears that makes people get out large bowls of chips.
So then I figured out how to tell the phone to alert me ONLY when a story has both the words “bear” and “tranquilized” in it.
That made all the difference, and I started hearing only about bears going out of their way to get into places where people get freaked out by anything big and hairy. And we seem to do a lot of that.
Like this one. It seems a baby bear got into this house in Arizona and ate the cake and a whole bunch of sweet stuff. The only thing missing was the porridge!
Photo – Phil Volk / Arizona Daily Star
But instead of getting a nice bed to sleep in, this youngster got a tranquilizer dart and a hard floor.
That old “Three Bears” story pushes the idea that baby bears are hard to please. But I’ve known baby bears and I even was a baby bear once, and I can tell you for sure that baby bears are NOT PICKY. One thing about them though – baby bears KNOW that they are cute. Cute AND scary, which means baby bears are irresistible to humans, because those are your two favorite qualities no matter what form they come in.
Just a word of advice – if you find yourself looking at a baby bear and it is not in a zoo, you have looked too long and it is time to leave the area. Even if that area is your own bedroom, because you just don’t know were mama is at. As a friendly bear, I give you this advice to head off an ugly scene. And as a former baby bear, I suggest that as you leave the house, you should prop open the refrigerator door.
That’s just hospitality, and good manners.
Your pal,
Bart
Name a food you’d break into someone’s house to eat.
I just want to make it clear at the outset that I love my country.
I love it so much I want to make all of its decisions for it. But to be able to make those decisions, I have to win a major, major contest against the person who’s running it now.
I say “running it now” but in fact he’s not running it. No one person can run an entire country – especially this one. It’s too big and varied.
But anyway, I really, really want to win. So I go around pretending he’s running the country poorly and messing it up. And I also pretend that I can somehow do a better job. We both know this is nonsense, but we both continue to act like fixing an economy is no big deal, and that we both know exactly how it’s done.
Every now and then a bunch of numbers come out that indicate how the country is faring. When the numbers are bad, I look better. When the numbers are better, I look bad.
Dr. Babooner, I really need my country to have some bad numbers right now. I find myself dreaming of massive unemployment increases and a misery index that is off-the-charts awful.
But I only want to see this calamity deepen so I can get a chance to make things right! The agony of other people creates opportunity for me, and when I get a the right opportunity, I’m pretty sure I can make things better for everyone! That might be another hallucination but there’s only one way to find out!
Does that make me a bad person?
Seamus Roofrack, Esq.
I told Mr. Roofrack that yes, in fact, this does make him a bad person. No question. Wishing misery on strangers so one can get an opportunity to reduce their misery is as radical a self-glorification fantasy as one is likely to have. It’s like Lassie hoping Timmy falls in the well so she can charge to his rescue. This is a fanciful story, though, because a canine would never be so selfish or deluded.
But that’s just one opinion. What do YOU think, Dr. Babooner?
Yesterday we considered Felix Baumgartner and his strange, dysfunctional relationship with gravity, constantly challenging it to mess him up and regularly escaping from its clutches without injury.
Baumgartner’s latest attempt to give himself over to gravity and live to tell the tale is expected to happen this morning.
Meanwhile, in other gravitational news, we discover that the center of our Milky Way galaxy is dominated by a supermassive black hole which is pulling everything inward. The thing is so incredibly dense, when stars get too close even their light can’t escape.
Talk about dysfunction! Who could survive a relationship so completely confining?
That there is a Black Hole at the Center of the Milky Way is an idea that has been supported by the research of UCLA scientist Andrea Ghez, who just last week identified a new star racing around the center at a breakneck pace.
This star, called SO-102, goes around the black hole once every 11 years. By comparison, our own sun also orbits the black hole – every 200 million years. Clearly this newly discovered star is a speedster, leaving us in the dust and going considerably faster than the next quickest orbiter, a star called SO-2 which makes the trip once every 16 years.
By watching these two stars, Ghez will be able to learn quite a bit about the characteristics about that massive invisible thing in the center of our galaxy – kind of like going to a NASCAR race and deducing everything about what’s happening in the infield by the speed and trajectory of the cars barreling by.
But ultimately, all this racing around in space ends the same way things wound up in Talladega two days ago.
Sometime soon, possibly today, Felix Baumgartner will put on a space suit, climb into a capsule tethered to a high altitude balloon, ride to the edge of space and then jump out, falling 23 miles back to Earth.
He’ll cover almost the same distance as yesterday’s participants in the Twin Cities Marathon, but in just a few minutes rather than 3 hours, powered by gravity. But it’s not just a whimsical daredevil stunt – the project is intended to gather useful data to make high altitude bailouts possible for pilots and even astronauts.
If successful, Baumgartner will break the record for plummeting, now held by Joe Kittenger, who dropped from 19 miles up when he was in the Navy, almost exceeding the speed of sound in the process.
Baumgartner plans to go the rest of the way to Mach 1, and has been planning the attempt and training for years.
Lots of things can go wrong at high altitude and excessive speeds, especially when a human body is traveling faster than any body has before, outside the confines of a machine. One group of experts suppose that Baumgartner might not notice when he breaks the speed of sound. Others have worried that one part of his space suit could hit Mach 1 while other sections are going slower, setting up potentially destructive vibrations.
Apparently the only way to find out what happens is for Felix Baumgartner to leap out of his capsule and let gravity do its thing.
Trail Baboon 