Trump orders all climate scientists to bend over and jam their heads under the sand

Well close enough.

Trump has ordered the US Environmental Protection Agency to remove all climate change information from its websites.

My mind boggles at how this is all going in the USA.

What next? NASA told to de-orbit all climate research satellites? Or perhaps they'll just have to recalibrate them to "alternative facts"?

Can't afford a boat trip to the Antarctic? Try this instead!

This is the view today from the bow webcam on the Aurora Australis, the resupply vessel that services Australia's Antarctic bases.

Not your average cruise ship view! Not your average webcam view either…

The ship left Australia on 15 October, and was slated to return on 16 November. The latest sitrep has them here (and it is so worth your time to zoom in and look around the shoreline on this map!):

Pakistan earthquake: 80+ dead and a whole new giant island

Yesterday I tweeted:

This'll be bad MT @NewEarthquake: 7.4 earthquake, 69km NNE of Awaran, Pakistan. Sep 24 16:29 at epicenter 19m ago http://j.mp/16WAcc9

And it was. The severity of the earthquake was quickly upgraded to 7.8 (remembering that the Richter Scale is logarithmic, so small increases in the number equate to very big increases in severity).

Reports from Pakistan today are that at least 80 people were killed and another 80 people injured. Dozens of mud-based houses collapsed. [UPDATE: later reports have 515 people killed.]

On the flip side is an awesome testament to the power of this earthquake. A quite large island erupted from the sea about 600 metres off the Gwadar coast:

Earthquake creates a new island. Photo: https://twitter.com/NewsweekPak

NBC reports that seismologists suspect it to be a mud volcano island, but no-one's been out to inspect it as yet.

If you are interested in following earthquakes that happen around the world, you can follow on Twitter @NewEarthquake. 

UPDATE 30/09/2013: Here's a good article looking specifically at the new island, with before and after photos:

Amazing landslide escape—just a whisker from a right squishing!

This guy is about as lucky as you could possibly imagine. Watch this massive boulder almost kiss the side of his car.

Go full screen in HD resolution, and at the very beginning watch the hanging rock right at the very peak of the hillside as it comes loose.


According to the ABC, this happened yesterday near Keelung City in Taiwan.

Whoa! Watch this frozen lake attack houses in slow motion. Like a B-grade scifi movie.

Whoa... What would you do if a frozen lake started rising up and across the shore,overwhelming your house?

That's what these people faced when the Mille Lacs Lake, Minnesota did just that on 11 May 2013.

The Pale Blue Dot - beautiful words, beautiful timelapses...

Take the words of Carl Sagan, some beautiful timelapses, and perfect musical accompaniment and you have a pretty compelling combination.

Try to focus on Sagan's words. They are just as important and hopeful now as when he first shared them years ago. Then share.


EARTH: The Pale Blue Dot from Michael Marantz on Vimeo.

Well done Michael Marantz!

What I've been reading lately

Just an archival catch-up of recent The Beach House Weekly—my Paper.li auto summaries—of an interesting few weeks in science, space and Australian politics.

From rockets to meteorites, Roxon to Rudd, novas to Nobels, planet hunters to metric hunters.

25 March 2013
18 March 2013
11 March 2013
4 March 2013
25 February 2013
18 February 2013
11 February 2013
4 February 2013
28 January 2013
21 January 2013
14 January 2013
7 January 2013
31 December 2012
24 December 2012
17 December 2012
10 December 2012

Intriguing to look back through actually. Something in there for everyone.

A meteorite has exploded over Russian cities, with damage to buildings. Amazing footage

(I've progressively updated this post throughout the news coming in on 15 February and again the next several days, so please check the latest information at the bottom. And don't expect quality writing—it was just a case of bang up the updates as quick as possible as they came in via my various astronomy and social media sources.

UPDATE 20150618: seems a number of the video clips through this article have been taken down. However, I'll leave most of the post as it was on the day, as it would take a lot of rewriting, and would lose a lot of the flow of the day...)

This is an incredible bit of footage of a large meteorite coming over a Russian city and exploding.

At 50 seconds into this clip, you'll see an amazing flare that gives you an idea of just how close and bright this meteorite was. The description reads: "Above Chelyabinsk was meteor rain: some houses shattered windows, some residents received cuts."



In this clip, you can see the contrail left behind, and then (off camera) you hear an loud explosions and followed by multiple smaller explosions and alarms in the background:



Most amazing footage yet of the moment of the explosion:

US Gun lobby inciting violence against journalists

Journalist details published by US gun lobbyists

This is an ugly turn in the rising tide of support for new gun laws in the US, following the recent horrific slaughter of 20 children and six adults. A New York publication The Journal News took the bold move of mapping local gun ownership locations to a Google Map. The gun lobby retaliated by publishing the home addresses and phone numbers of the publication's journalists (which I will not link to)!

Gun ownership map published by The Journal News, New York

It's debatable whether the publication's tactic was wise, and perhaps forcing a mobilisation and fightback by the gun lobby was a retrograde step.

But this is not new from the gun lobby. In fact, I was on the receiving end of similar tactics when I was one of the organisers of a rally on Queensland's Sunshine Coast to support strict new gun laws from John Howard's Australian Government.

Dear America, your adherence to Imperial measures is "illogical"

George Takei—of Star Trek fame—posted this gem today, saying 'As Spock would say, "Highly illogical." '

I concur. For a nation that fought a war against British Imperialism, I've never understood why they cling so tenaciously to an illogical Imperial measurement system that most of the rest of the world has abandoned.

My readings over the last month or so...

Another catch-up of my readings via various sites and social media forums, for anyone interested (but mainly just for my own record), through the Paper.li automatic magazine tool.

There's something in here for everyone...

Week to 26 November
Week to 19 November
Week to 12 November
Week to 5 November
Week to 29 October
Week to 22 October
Week to 15 October

What I've been reading and writing - a bit of a catch-up

This is a catch-up of my reading and writing lists as auto-compiled into e-zines by Paper.li. As usual, it is mostly for my own reference down the track, but maybe someone is interested.

The recycling bin may no longer be full of discarded newspapers, but holy moley I'm chewing through some online reading...

Editions for the week ending:

1 October

24 September

17 September

10 September

3 September

27 August

20 August

13 August

6 August

30 July

23 July

16 July

9 July

Phew. That's it. Must keep on top of this a bit better...

Visit Antarctica with Streetview - even the actual South Pole. Awesome in a can!

Google is really pushing the boundaries with where it takes its Google Streetview cameras. So I'm thinking I'll feature some of these wonderful places with some screen grabs, for those who don't have the time to explore themselves.

First up is Antarctica. Click through to go exploring, and don't forget to wander on through doorways, or to zoom in on displays, artefacts and signs ("Close the damn door").

Mawson's Hut.

Shackleton's Hut.

The actual South Pole - yes there is a pole. And a whopping great building! Unfortunately one frame is poorly spliced...

Some beautiful words and advice from people working on Mars Curiosity

Sometimes on Twitter the are moments of profound wisdom and insight that warrant more than to be merely available for two weeks then gone. After the landing of Mars Curiosity, I started getting to know some new people. And from two of them came the following gems that I just had to lock in for the future. For your consideration:

Question from Vivian Quintana ‏@VeeQt:

@LeeCuriosity Do you have any thoughts on math/sci/eng/pursuing dreams/perservering you might want to share with students? Would love to hear from you too and it'd mean so much to the next generation of science/engineers

Steven Lee @LeeCuriosity

Steven Lee ‏@LeeCuriosity:

Thanks for the thought-provoking question, Vivian @VeeQt. Some thoughts to follow...

Pursue your interests and dreams. Look for ways to retain your sense of wonder, curiosity, and zeal to learn about the Universe.

Find dark skies and marvel at the milky way; you can almost feel the Earth turning beneath you.

The Beach House - readings and writings for the week 10-16 July

Here's the Paper.Li e-mag of my readings and writings for the week.

Emergency Services scanner feeds now online. Is there anything the interwebz can't find you??

Expensive gear now superfluous...

Following the tragic news of yet another mass shooting in America, there was an online message about the radioreference.com  live feed of the local police radio chatter - with the obvious warning that much of the feed at that time was quite disturbing.

The service also links to emergency service radio feeds for many Australian services (but not ACT or Northern Territory). There is scattered availability in the other states, with Inner Sydney an interesting omission...

Amazing that this sort of eavesdropping used to require expensive hardware of questionable legality. And now there it is, given the interwebz treatment for anyone to listen in on.

In just an hour of listening in on the Sunshine Coast feed, they nabbed a guy who lifted a $400 pair of sunglasses from a shop in Noosa (didn't arrest the shop owner for charging that much though!), a female wanted pseudo-ephedrine runner, a wanted parole defaulter and a male with suicidal tendancies after a knife-wielding house invasion in Coes Creek. Not a bad work rate guys!

Regarding the shooting in Aurora Colorado, in Australia we can be truly thankful that John Howard - strongly supported by Tim Fisher - showed true leadership following the Port Arthur shooting and (at great personal political cost) pushed through sweeping gun law changes that make such an horrific crime so much less likely here.

Enjoy: "Audacity to Dream" - an inspirational video presentation

Astronaut Ron Garan debuted this beautiful and inspirational video at the TEDxISU conference, hosted by the 25th International Space University Space Studies Program last week.

Enjoy.

But Garran's efforts don't start and end with a video clip, as some notes about his accompanying speech reveal:

Catch-up on The Beach House Weekly reading summaries

The weekly Paper.li digital magazine tool dropped off for a while and they lost the ability to call up archive copies by week.

It's sorted now, so here's a catch-up . Likely this isn't of much interest to anyone else - more for my own record. But feel free to check them out if you like!


What I've been reading and/or writing about:
July 2
June 25
June 18
June 11
June 3

Blowing out all the windows in the Supreme Court building - way to win friends!

Pretty awesome video of a ceremonial flyby gone wrong in Brasilia.



The Brazilian air force pilot wasn't supersonic, but he was doing some 700mph in his Mirage fighter jet, and all the broken windows racked up something like $40,000 damage. Needless to say, he's in a bit of strife...

Via @russellmahoney

Asylum seekers - there is a better way to "stop the boats"

Most Australians have been disgusted by what they saw in Parliament House last week during the rushed asylum seeker debate. They've seen the Labor and Liberal Parties bickering over which off-shore processing solution is the best, tears shed, and Tony Abbott proclaiming "I just don't like it." Oh OK then...

This is a lengthy post sorry. But it is a complex issue and eight-second sound bites cannot do it justice.

The reality is that both ALP and Liberals have painted themselves into corners. John Howard served his political purposes of the day to sow fear and uncertainty around the whole issue of border protection. Then to get elected, Kevin Rudd painted himself the same as Howard in order to remove that point of difference (and several others). Many ALP and Rudd supporters went along with it, believing that once elected, Rudd's ethics would win through and he'd take a more humane approach. But Rudd locked himself into his own rhetoric - instead of being a leader and bringing a more educated community along with the need to change, he locked the off-shore solution in even firmer.

Julia Gillard had a chance to leverage her "good party that had lost its way" speech and make changes for the better. But she also adopted a "don't scare the horses" path to asylum seekers and other contentious issues - and she's being paying the price for her lack of leadership on these issues ever since.