Take a gander at the amazing Atlas Moth, and one of the longest Flickr descriptions I’ve ever
seen.

Atlas Moth

A great article addressing some common myths about recycling.

Recycling Myths

The ‘Great Worldwide Star Count‘, occuring between October 20th and November 3rd, is “organized by the Windows to the Universe project at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) in Boulder, Colo., in conjunction with planetariums and scientific societies across the country and abroad” (according to Jason McManus, Daily Galaxy ), with funding provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The event, in which anyone can participate, gets people out of their houses and into their backyards to see if they can see any stars, and if so, how many in the vicinity of a chosen constellation. Your data gets entered into a database in a citizen study of light pollution across the world.

Just in time for that special date next month, the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) has released an in depth report on our representatives and their voting record on environmental concerns. Read all about it at their website:

The League of Conservation Voters

Below is a quick summary of John McCain’s record. It can be summed up quickly enough as a 0% rating for 2008, while Obama gets an 18% rating, both low ratings  mostly due to not being present to vote on the major environmental issues.  Lifetime ratings are, 24% for McCain and 72% for Obama.

Well, you would think the Bush administration would have enough to deal with at this point in time, what with the economic meltdown and all, but alas, no. They are at it again. Sure, land and resource use is complicated and not all applications of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) have led to productive outcomes, but, come on! If this administration has been about anything, it’s been about wholesale deregulation in many areas, continuing the work started in the Regan administration. Gee, see how well that works? Human nature is what defines history, both the good and the bad, and that really hasn’t changed. The market did not regulate itself, and neither will people and industry necessarily be ‘voluntary’ good stewards of the environment. It just doesn’t work like that when money and assets are involved, because everyone wants their piece. So, in the era of limited pieces, when will we have to be serious about how those resources are best used? Our current state of capitalism is based (and crashing on) a highly leveraged, paper monetary system that is greatly divorced from our existing, natural world. Some thought the party would last forever, but it didn’t. How long will it take people to realize that our natural resources aren’t limited either? Below I include an article from the Center for Biological Diversity on the Bush administration’s attempt to essentially dismantle the Endangered Species Act, and after that is a link to a petition directed to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, urging him to abandon the awful changes to the ESA.

It appears that CERN has organized a project so that the amateur scientist can participate in analyzing data from one of the biggest scientific endeavors so far attempted by humanity, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It’s the same principle as seti@home, currently the largest distributed computing project in operation, which will happily use your idle cpu time in order to analyze radio telescope data in the search for extra terrestrial intelligence (SETI).

LHC At Home

A certain type of ladybug is disappearing from the eastern United States, and entymologists would like to know why. The nine-spotted ladybug, a beetle, used to be very common, but seems to have slipped into a disappearing act, one that might leave them extinct. Scientists think several factors have led to their demise, and to find out what those are, you should read the article. They are also asking school children for their help in tracking where the few remaining members of this species might be hanging out.

Vanishing Ladybugs

How beautiful. Space-X has had their first successful launch of their space vehicle, Falcon 1. It’s a lovely thing to see the video embedded in the article. The Chinese government has embarked on their own odyssey in space, following the US and Russia. And while that is great to see, a program I hope will inspire NASA to bigger and better things, and hopefully even cooperation between the nations, this event is special. The US has moved part of the exploration of space into private hands. This is the beginning of an interesting era.

Space-X Success

Here is a little article in my local paper regarding the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It looks like the poor thing will be off line, until next year. I have a personal interest in this story, because my husband, Thomas Humanic, is quoted, and indeed involved in the ALICE experiment at the LHC. Well, this is big science, the largest and most complex experiment in human history.

The LHC

Ohio Supercomputer Center

I know, Zeitgeistland took a little break, to refresh the mind. Anyway, here is a really cool set of pictures and a short article on stingrays migrating off the coast of Mexico. I would dearly have loved to have seen this in person!

Stingray Migration