Swine flu: flu pandemics — if you’ve seen one, you . . .

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Great flu coverage at Effect Measure

Right now the big picture isn't visible, but with the passage of days or a week, it should become clearer. The current spate of cases could burn itself out as warmer weather ensues. Flu is a highly seasonal disease, for reasons we don't understand. That wouldn't mean we were home free, however. Wherever flu hides in the "off season" (flu does find work in the southern hemisphere's winter), it can come back the following year. Those familiar with 1918 know there seems to have been a milder "herald wave" the previous spring which came back like a freight train in August.

Macropinna microstoma

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Saw this over at Deep Thoughts.  A beautifully weird fish, the "barreleye", with upward pointing eyes under a transparent canopy of a skull.  Another quirky player in life's mad pageant. This release from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute describes how researchers have discovered that these eyes can rotate to fix on prey (it was previously thought the eyes were fixed in their "barrels"), and that it might specialize in feeding on organisms trapped in jellyfish tentacles. The two duct-like bits above the mouth are nostrils.   
Another photo,Barreleye2-350 and a link to the paper in Copeia.

Einstein

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I just finished a wonderful biography of Albert Einstein. Well crafted and striking a happy balance between personal life and his understanding of the universe.  A number of random thoughts:Einstein

  • His major contributions were generally behind him by 1920. The theory of relativity was published in 1905. 
  • He didn't fail math.
  • A rebel and a non-conformist, he struggled to find work in academic physics until he revolutionized it.
  • Some casual conversations with a friend and a letter to Roosevelt, and the US was in the atomic bomb business.
  • Had Hitler not lost his theoretical physicists, we'd all be speaking German.
  • The Schrodinger Cat thought experiment was an approach to challenging quantum mechanics, not demonstrating it.
  • He was an A-list celebrity. Will we ever again pour such fame on a scientist? Particularly for a discovery of no practical application (at least for the next 3 decades).
  • He was the archetype absent minded scientist.
  • He was a weakly observant Jew who was offered the presidency of Israel, and turned it down.
  • He liked to sail.
  • Friendly and gentle, he was a world government pacifist.
  • His theories as described in the book are accesible and understandable, and his use of thought experiments is well described. The treatment of quantum mechanics and Einstein's rejection of 'spooky action at a distance' are satisfyingly clear.

My only regret is that I progressed through it in in fits and starts.  It's a great read.

dodged a bullet

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This was really close.  Less than a rounding error from an astronomical perspective.  It strikes me that the current state of our technology and resources will allow us to spot these things coming at us before we have developed the wherewithal to do anything about it.  I'll put aside the grim notion of helplessly watching the end approach to suggest pouring some of the stimulus money into avoiding armageddon.  Guns in the sky anyone? Space tractors?Asteroid-impact-on-Earth

The News Serving Pictou County Nova Scotia:  Phew! Asteroid’s passing by Earth on Monday was a cosmic close call:

An asteroid about the size of one that blasted Siberia a century ago just buzzed by Earth.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory reported that the asteroid zoomed past Monday morning.

The asteroid named 2009 DD45 was about 78,000 kilometres from Earth.

That is just twice the height of some telecommunications satellites and about a fifth of the distance to the Moon.

The space ball measured between 21 metres and 47 metres in diameter.

The Planetary Society said that made it the same size as an asteroid
that exploded over Siberia in 1908 and levelled more than 2,000 square
kilometres of forest.

Most people probably didn’t notice the cosmic close call.

The asteroid was only spotted two days ago and at its closest point passed over the Pacific Ocean near Tahiti.

Still angry they gave that frakin’ Apollo a new gig

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Apollo and starbuckSo i bumped into this interview with Dirk Benedict in National Review Online, skimming through it, a lot about his individuality and how he doesn't need hollywood.  Stuff like this:

Benedict wants little to do with Hollywood anymore. Since leaving television, he has written two books and raised two sons as a single father.

and this:

Not being able to shy away from such politically incorrect opinions
also might have had something to do with his decision to abandon
Hollywood for Montana. And Benedict protests that he never had the
pathological hunger for fame that characterizes Hollywood’s biggest
stars.

“George Roy Hill [the legendary director of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid] said to me once, ‘You’ll never be a star,’ ”
Benedict recalls. “He started inviting me to his house — which was
really Paul Newman’s house, he was renting — and he said to me, ‘You’ll
never be a star, and the reason is that you don’t have to have it.’ ”  

Seems like quite a maverick eh?  Then I get to this:

During his recent appearance on Celebrity Big Brother, a wildly popular reality-TV show in the U.K….

Celebrity Big Brother!  In the UK?  If that doesn't scream "somebody please notice me again" I don't know what does.  Sorry dude, all that Montana frontier conservative to-hell-with-what-they-think facade
just flushed down the toilet.  I think someone is just cranky that he didn't get a job on new & improved BSG.