bob

"submitted by reddit to blog." - bob

"Can't you see all love's luxuries / are here for you and me?" <3 - Zulema ❧ spicy cocoa tart

What are you doing up so early? - April Buchheit

:) - Aldo Oldo

I have seen that movie, but I honestly don't know why people are such huge fans of it! - Space Cowboy

People notice what things? - April Buchheit

maybe he means his status message? - Clare Dibble

"DuPont's biotech soybean could be welcome news for soy farmers, who have seen food companies move away from standard soybean oil as they work to eliminate trans fats, which are linked to coronary health risks, from their ingredients. It is a difficult shift. The industry uses about 6 billion pounds of the oil each year, all of which contained trans fats....Widespread adoption of DuPont or Monsanto's next-generation soybeans, which would also include traits for weedkiller or pest resistance, would be unlikely to shift the soy crop further toward bioengineering, simply because there is little room for expansion: More than 90 percent of the U.S. soybean crop is already genetically engineered." - bob

"In Kuwait, after the end of the Gulf War, the Kuwaitis celebrated by firing weapons into the air—and 20 Kuwaitis died from falling bullets" - bob

If you fire directly up, the bullet stops at the top of its arc and tumbles down harmlessly. If you fire with a ballistic trajectory its terminal velocity is much higher, and can be deadly. - Gabe

"Paul Kench at the University of Auckland in New Zealand and Arthur Webb at the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission in Fiji used historical aerial photos and high-resolution satellite images to study changes in the land surface of 27 Pacific islands over the last 60 years. During that time, local sea levels have risen by 120 millimetres, or 2 millimetres per year on average. Despite this, Kench and Webb found that just four islands have diminished in size since the 1950s. The area of the remaining 23 has either stayed the same or grown (Global and Planetary Change, DOI: 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2010.05.003). Webb says the trend is explained by the islands' composition. Unlike the sandbars of the eastern US coast, low-lying Pacific islands are made of coral debris. This is eroded from the reefs that typically circle the islands and pushed up onto the islands by winds, waves and currents. Because the corals are alive, they provide a continuous supply of material. "Atolls are composed of once-living material," says Webb, "so you have a continual growth." Causeways and other structures linking islands can boost growth by trapping sediment that would otherwise get lost to the ocean. All this means the islands respond to changing weather and climate. For instance, when hurricane Bebe hit Tuvalu in 1972 it deposited 140 hectares of sedimentary debris onto the eastern reef, increasing the area of the main island by 10 per cent." - bob

"extraordinary video captured early yesterday morning at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. Took place at the north toll plaza, which served as a launching ramp for one drunk driver trying to exit the airport in a hurry....We also have fiery post-crash pics after the jump -- because after the driver went all General Lee, she got out and made a call on her cell, at which point the vehicle went boom." - the video is pretty good too :P - bob

Nice! Too bad they don't have video of the whole thing. - Paul Buchheit

Nice pics, but it is an emergency situation anyway. - Nerie Carreon

"It’s hard to know just when a star will explode when you’re on the outside. Betelgeuse might go up tonight, or it might not be for 100,000 years. We’re just not sure....The post also talks about Betelgeuse shrinking. That claim is from observations made over the course of many years. Those data indicate the star is shrinking, but it’s unclear what they mean. While it may mean the star is in fact shrinking, starspots (sunspots on another star) may be fooling us, for example. Also, red supergiants aren’t like marbles, with a clean, sharp surface. They are balls of gas, extended and bloated, so there is no real surface. It’s therefore entirely possible the astronomers aren’t even really measuring the surface of the star at all, and it’s just the highly extended atmosphere that’s changing." - bob

"Nobel Laureate Charles Townes announced evidence that 15 consecutive years of stellar contraction has been observed by UC Berkeley's Infrared Spatial Interferometer (ISI) atop Mt. Wilson Observatory in Southern California. Reported on June 9, 2009, the star has shrunk 15% since 1993 with an increasing rate. The average speed at which the radius of the star is shrinking over the last 15 years is around 210–219 m/s (470–490 mph).[citation needed] According to the university, Betelgeuse's diameter is about 5.5 A.U., and the star's radius has shrunk by a distance equal to half an astronomical unit, or about the orbit of Venus." - bob

"Betelgeuse's angular diameter of just under 0.055 arcseconds makes it almost three times larger, 950 to 1000 times larger than the Sun (8.8 to 9.3AU, or roughly to the orbit of Saturn). It is one of only about a dozen stars whose apparent size is so large it has been imaged telescopically as a visible disk rather than a point. Why is this important? Well, you see, Betelgeuse has been shrinking continuously since 1993, at an increasing rate. By June 2009, it had shrunk 15% from its size as measured in 1993. But wait! There's more. It is rumored, though I have been unable to find any reliable confirmation of the source (which is claimed to be first-hand) that the latest observations from Mauna Kea show that Betelgeuse is now shrinking so fast it is no longer round. (Due to conservation of angular momentum, when a massive star collapses gravitationally, it collapses faster at the poles, becoming increasingly oblate — flattened — as its final collapse accelerates.) What does this mean? Well, briefly, what it means — if true — is that Betelgeuse could be within as little as weeks of a Type II (core collapse) supernova. (Astronomers have considered for some time that Betelgeuse has the potential to go supernova any time in the next thousand years or so. "Any time" may just turn out to be rather sooner than expected.) IF this happens, not to put too fine a point on it, it will almost undoubtedly be among the most dramatic astronomical events ever observed by human eyes. A type II supernova can briefly outshine an entire galaxy ... and this one will be only a little over five hundred LY away. The supernova that created the Crab Nebula, SN 1054, was bright enough to see in daylight for 23 days, and remained visible for 653 days ... and it was 6,300 LY away. Betelgeuse is almost 12 times closer, and can be expected to appear around 140 times brighter by virtue of that alone." - bob

"...here has so far been no confirmation of the original report from any reliable source, so the odds of the report being accurate are shrinking faster than Betelgeuse. ;) ... Kind of a shame, really; it would have been a hell of a spectacle." - eugenio

""Significant amounts of virtual property" were stolen from around 400 users of the Habbo Hotel virtual hotel, where visitors can create a character for themselves to hang out with friends, take care of virtual pets and furnish their own rooms for a fee, Finnish police said Tuesday. The cyber thieves used hoax web pages to steal user names and passwords, which they then used to sign in to Habbo profiles and shift property away from its rightful owners, the police said in a statement. As part of the investigation, the police have searched homes in five Finnish cities, confiscated computers and interrogated several people, they said, adding that while the value of damages could not yet be defined, for some users the cost could be "significant"." - bob

"During raids Thursday, Islamic police caught 18 women traveling on motorbikes who were wearing traditional headscarves but were also dressed in jeans. Each woman was given a long skirt and her pants were confiscated. They were released from police custody after giving their identities and receiving advice from Islamic preachers. "I am not wearing sexy outfits, but they caught me like a terrorist only because of my jeans," said Imma, a 40-year-old housewife who uses only one name. She argued that wearing jeans is more comfortable when she travels by motorbike." - bob

Wow. *shakes head* I'm betting jeans are a whole lot safer in the case of a motorbike crash, too. Sheesh! - Ordinarybug Heather