All the asteroids discovered since 1980. Each second represents 2 months. This is best watched full screen, and a high-res version is available:
Earth Crossers are Red
Earth Approachers (Perihelion less than 1.3AU) are Yellow
All Others are Green
Notice now the pattern of discovery follows the Earth around its orbit, most discoveries are made in the region directly opposite the Sun. You’ll also notice some clusters of discoveries on the line between Earth and Jupiter, these are the result of surveys looking for Jovian moons. Similar clusters of discoveries can be tied to the other outer planets, but those are not visible in this video.
As the video moves into the mid 1990′s we see much higher discovery rates as automated sky scanning systems come online. Most of the surveys are imaging the sky directly opposite the sun and you’ll see a region of high discovery rates aligned in this manner.
At the beginning of 2010 a new discovery pattern becomes evident, with discovery zones in a line perpendicular to the Sun-Earth vector. These new observations are the result of the WISE (Widefield Infrared Survey Explorer) which is a space mission that’s tasked with imaging the entire sky in infrared wavelengths.
The scale of the video at 1080P resolution is roughly 1million kilometers per pixel, and each second of video corresponds to 60 days.
Currently we have observed over half a million minor planets, and the discovery rates show no sign that we’re running out of undiscovered objects, scientific estimates suggest that there are about a billion asteroids larger than 100metres (about the size of a football field) .
Orbital elements were taken from the ‘astorb.dat’ data created by Ted Bowell and associates at ftp://ftp.lowell.edu/pub/elgb/astorb.html
A recent BBC “Horizon” documentary contained the astonishing fact that a single observatory in Arizona discovers 3,000 asteroids, EVERY DAY.
A personal favourite, and one of the most remarkable works of fantasy, is “A Matter of Life and Death” (US title: “Stairway to Heaven”). Directed in 1946 by the great Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, it tells the story of a doomed RAF airman who mysteriously survives a bailout over the English Channel, cheating Death.
This is the opening – and a magickal beginning it is. You won’t find may HollyWOOD directors who could achieve this today. Apologies for the French subs, but this is the clearest version on youtube at the moment.
Listen.
LISTEN…….
Then to the fantastic sequence between David Niven and Kim Hunter, where they fall in love over the radio, sight unseen:
An amazing and delightful film…all the more impressive for 1946, made in the rubble of post war Britain. The Art Direction and SFX still impress, and hold up very well.
Most artists have a very hard time dealing with depictions of Heaven. Even the great Gustave Dore, when illustrating Dante and Milton, lavished his best work on Hell. His Heaven scenes seem bland and banal. Not so in “A Matter of Life and Death”, where Heaven feels spectacular, a place of grandeur – and more than a little eerie. Most modern depictions exude pure kitschiness, or bland colourless all-white. Not so, for Powell & Pressburger.
A great score and cast rounds off the film. Younger readers may be unfamiliar with Roger Livesey (wonderful, plummy voice) and Raymond Massey (boo! hiss!) – in which case, you have a rare treat in store!
It’s not possible to recommend this movie enough.
And from the late 1990s, an hysterical parody from the UK sketch comedy show, “Big Train”:
It’s not every day that your country is taken apart, piece by piece. Don’t be jealous though. They’re coming for you too, sooner or later.
In this wonderful re-imagining of “Hitler, the Rise of Evil” a youthful Fuhrer – played by Robert Carlyle, rides to the aide of benighted Ireland. Laugh, cry, and prepare to rip the paving stones out of the living earth – so many lamp-posts, so little rope.
You’ll need to be Irish to get most of the references, but even if not, the gist should be clear. “BIFFO” refers to the Prime Minister (Taoiseach), Brian Cowen. Cowen is from Offaly, and BIFFO is an acronym for “Big Ignorant Fucker From Offaly”.
Here’s a summary of the situation (with apologies for any gross errors; economics and ‘high finance’ isn’t a strong suit):
The Irish Economy needs about 52 billion a year to run.
The total tax take is about 30-32 billion. As you can see, there’s a problem already, without reading further.
Under the IMF austerity plan, Ireland will have to pay them between 10 and 20 billion a year, in interest payments alone, depending on the interest rate that’s finally chosen – figures are varying between 4.8 and 7%. Even 2% would be punitive. So, that 10-20 billion needs to come out of the 30-32. Update: it’s 6.7%. Bloody hell.
Government policies seem likely to push the economy deeper into recession, and unemployment continues to soar. So that 32 billion in tax revenue is likely to fall. Recent increases in VAT (sales tax) will send many shoppers back to Northern Ireland for their essentials. Has the Minister for Finance forgotten that this is exactly what happened when he did this two years ago? Has his cancer metastasized, and spread to his brain? Is the Taoiseach drunk, again?
According to some sources, Ireland’s debt is 1 Trillion Euro (though again, most of this is foreigners’ savings/investments/bonds/whatever); Portugal’s is another Trillion, and Spain’s is about 4 or 5 Trillion. Who knows which numbers to believe any more? They seem to change every day, usually for the worse.
The alleged justification for the Irish bailout is to prevent contagion – the spread of the collapse from Ireland, to Portugal, to Spain, to the entire EU. “Alleged”, because it’s idiotic to believe anything from the mouths of professional liars.
Here’s where it really sticks in the craw: of the ~200 to ~350 billion”owed” by Ireland (what’s a few hundred billion between friends?), only about ~60 billion is sovereign debt – debt that’s owned by the State. The rest was invested in private Irish banks bonds and sundry financial doo-dads by U.S. Hedge Funds, Eurotrash billionaires, Maid-raping Saudi Princelings, and Assorted Moral Abortions. The sort of people who should be tucked away safely at the bottom of the sea.
These vicious bastards are to have their fortunes assured by generations of Irish taxpayers (debt-slaves).
Good luck with that plan. As the next few years grind on, the world will find out if the Irish are as house-trained as their American relatives. Already, there have been scattered incidents of government ministers being assaulted, though not, as yet, seriously.
Early days yet, boyos.
Riots or no, how do you get blood from a stone? They may get state institutions as collateral on the ‘loans’, perhaps?
The cover of a recent copy of the Irish version of the Daily Star, showing the cabinet. This is what happens when you let your country be ruled by second-rate teachers, doctors and lawyers:
A NYT piece by Krugman on the situation. God save the country from the “serious people”.
The U.S. economy ceased to function this week after unexpected existential remarks by Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke shocked Americans into realizing that money is, in fact, just a meaningless and intangible social construct.
Calling it “basically no more than five rectangular strips of paper,” Fed chairman Ben Bernanke illustrates how much “$200″ is actually worth.
What began as a routine report before the Senate Finance Committee Tuesday ended with Bernanke passionately disavowing the entire concept of currency, and negating in an instant the very foundation of the world’s largest economy.
“Though raising interest rates is unlikely at the moment, the Fed will of course act appropriately if we…if we…” said Bernanke, who then paused for a moment, looked down at his prepared statement, and shook his head in utter disbelief. “You know what? It doesn’t matter. None of this—this so-called ‘money’—really matters at all.”
“It’s just an illusion,” a wide-eyed Bernanke added as he removed bills from his wallet and slowly spread them out before him. “Just look at it: Meaningless pieces of paper with numbers printed on them. Worthless.”
According to witnesses, Finance Committee members sat in thunderstruck silence for several moments until Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) finally shouted out, “Oh my God, he’s right. It’s all a mirage. All of it—the money, our whole economy—it’s all a lie!”
Screams then filled the Senate Chamber as lawmakers and members of the press ran for the exits, leaving in their wake aisles littered with the remains of torn currency.
Orson Welles provides 2 minutes and 30 seconds of magic. From “F For Fake” (1974):
And this has been standing here for centuries. The premier work of man perhaps in the whole western world, and it’s without a signature: Chartres.
A celebration to God’s glory and to the dignity of man. All that’s left most artists seem to feel these days, is man. Naked, poor, forked, radish. There aren’t any celebrations.
Ours, the scientists keep telling us, is a universe which is disposable. You know, it might be just this one anonymous glory of all things, this rich stone forest, this epic chant, this gaiety, this grand choiring shout of affirmation, which we choose when all our cities are dust, to stand intact, to mark where we have been, to testify to what we had it in us, to accomplish.
Our works in stone, in paint, in print are spared, some of them for a few decades, or a millennium or two, but everything must finally fall in war or wear away into the ultimate and universal ash. The triumphs and the frauds, the treasures and the fakes.
A fact of life. We’re going to die.
“Be of good heart,” cry the dead artists out of the living past. Our songs will all be silenced — but what of it?
“None are more hopelessly enslaved
than those who falsely believe they are free.”
If you want an insight into the dismal mindset of the modern slave, look no further than many of the comments on – well, any given comment thread on any given website, regarding the latest ‘security’ measures in U.S. airports. There is a large minority who seem to take an active pleasure in the TSA’s latest violations … in this case, the double-insult of a strip-search machine (which may or may not expose you to dangerous radiation) and the added insult of a full pat down (which may or may not be given even after the virtual strip search). Age is not a factor: toddlers and small children can also be groped by the jackboots.
Of course, the TSA is just trying to “keep us safe”, these slaves insist. Even the ones who are guilty of child rape, apparently. From March, 2010:
A Transportation Security Agency worker who pats down members of the flying public was charged with multiple child sex crimes targeting an underage girl yesterday.
The bust outraged privacy and passenger advocates who say it justifies their fears about Logan International Airport’s full-body scanner.
As Grandmother used to say: “Put a Devil on Horseback, and he’ll ride you to Hell”
Working for the TSA has to be the sex-criminal’s dream job! Twenty years ago it was Father Flanagan and the confessional booth, today it’s Officer Ben Dover with the rubber glove. A shitty uniform, a little power, and a frightened herd of human cattle. The recipe never changes.
A wise and well-read uncle related a story about a type of person in Hungary and Czechoslovakia in the 60s and 70s who, though having zero interest in politics prior to the Soviet invasions, came out and cheered when the tanks rolled in to enforce the Iron Fist. These sad creatures were known, apparently, as “Tankers”.
They LOVED those tanks. They didn’t care who was in them.
Whether this tale is true or apocryphal, it sounds much like the TSA cheer-leading goons who are now crawling out from under rocks. One shudders to imagine the void that their inner lives must be. Life’s ultimate losers: happy because the TSA are helping to drag innocent people down to the same sordid level as the tankers and slaves.
New national motto: Misery Loves Company.
George Kenney of electricpolitics.com interviewed Bob Altemeyer a few years ago. The topic was the personality type called “Authoritarian Follower”. It’s essential listening to understand this odious sector of society – numbering between 20 and 30%.
…a small, energetic, organized minority that’s impervious to reason will always do harm to everybody else. Given the influence to match their ambition they will wreck the planet.
Anyway, what to do? On Thursday, another trip to Los Angeles. By train, as usual. It would be 2 to 3 hours by plane, but is 30 hours on the rails. That’s a long trip, but nobody touches mister floppy.
In 1145, the Syrian bishop Hugo of Jabala brought Pope Eugene III the news of the Muslim reconquest of Edessa, an important Crusader stronghold in the Holy Land. The bishop softened the blow – and hoped to encourage the Pope to a new Crusade – with tales of a mighty Christian king attacking the Muslims from behind: Prester John, a descendant of one of the Three Magi and ruler of a Christian Empire beyond the Muslim-ruled lands in India, on the very edge of the world then known to Europe.
Capital! When Saladin finds PJ taking him from behind, in retro caninis, if you’ll pardon the expression, Your Holiness, ‘twouldst be a source of infinite merriment to behold the expression on his Saracen countenance!
Twenty years later, a letter addressed by Prester John to the Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Comnenus caused a great stirring of hope in all of Christendom. Pope Alexander III sent out an envoy to the Prester, but without result (the fate of the papal diplomat is unknown). The letter, however, remained a powerful tonic to a Europe feeling hemmed in by the Muslim ascendancy in the Middle East and Northern Africa. It was copied (and embellished) for many decades afterwards. The letter described a Christian empire with 72 tributary kingdoms, in an area of the world with a fantastic ecology inhabited, among others, by vampires and dog-headed people. The Fountain of Youth and a river flowing from Paradise itself and filled with precious stones helped complete a picture of thrilling exoticism. And of perfect piety, happiness and wealth: “All Christian values are respected to the letter. Theft, greed and lies are unknown. There is no poverty.”
Like the maps of the day, the story is a window into the Weltanschauung of Medieval Europe. (One sounds more intellectual when one says Weltanschauung instead of “Worldview”).
But the letter was a forgery, Prester John as virtual as he was virtuous, the legend literally too good to be true. All Prester John ever was king of, was Wishful Thinking. Prester John’s fictional empire proved as movable as the imagination of beleaguered Christianity required. First inferred in India, the kingdom was later situated in Central Asia, and eventually assumed to be in Africa. The ease of these huge locational shifts was due not just to Europe’s dim perception of geography at the time, but also to the elasticity of the contemporary concept of ‘India’, which in its broadest interpretation could stretch all the way from Africa to China.
But, a strange consequence of ideas: they don’t have to be ‘correct’ to have far-reaching effects!
Only in the 17th century did Europeans realise their mistake, and Prester John finally faded from maps, and from memory. Prester John might never have been real, but his influence can be felt clearly; in the push of European exploration around Africa towards India and Ethiopia, and in cultural references ranging from William Shakespeare and Umberto Eco to Marvel Comics.
Hmm. So, the filthy Muslim won’t be put to death by imaginary Christians in Africa. That means: PLAN B. Send in the children!
One day in May 1212 there appeared at Saint-Denis, where King Philip of France was holding his court, a shepherd-boy of about twelve years old called Stephen, from the small town of Cloyes in the Orléannais. He brought with him a letter for the King, which, he said, had been given to him by Christ in person, who had appeared to him as he was tending his sheep and who had bidden him go and preach the Crusade. King Philip was not impressed by the child and told him to go home. But Stephen, whose enthusiasm had been fired by his mysterious visitor, saw himself now as an inspired leader who would succeed where his elders had failed. …
…Undismayed by the King’s indifference, he began to preach at the very entrance to the abbey of Saint-Denis and to announce that he would lead a band of children to the rescue of Christendom. The seas would dry up before them, and they would pass, like Moses through the Red Sea, safe to the Holy Land. He was gifted with an extraordinary eloquence. Older folk were impressed, and children came flocking to his call. After his first success he set out to journey round France summoning the children; and many of his converts went further afield to work on his behalf. They were all to meet together at Vendôme in about a month’s time and start out from there to the East.
Some post-modern revisionist spoilsports are casting doubt on the veracity of the Children’s Crusade. Hm. Was it a missile, or a contrail, perchance?
The Children’s Crusade is the name given to a variety of fictional and factual events which happened in 1212 that combine some or all of these elements: visions by a French or German boy; an intention to peacefully convert Muslims in the Holy Land to Christianity; bands of children marching to Italy; and children being sold into slavery.A study published in 1977 cast doubt on the existence of these events and many historians now believe that they were not (or not primarily) children but multiple bands of “wandering poor” in Germany and France, some of whom tried to reach the Holy Land and others who never intended to do so. Early versions of events, of which there are many variations told over the centuries, are largely apocryphal.
Apocryphal, eh? Well stuff this unfinished episode of “Ren & Stimpy” in your Apocrypha, you dumb snopes. From Prester John to John K:
Wanted to share this view out of the Cupola. We said farewell to our teammates Sasha, Misha and Tracy this weekend and they are safely back on planet Earth. Tracy in quiet reflection of an incredible journey…homeward bound…
That’s what space travel should be about…perspective, awe, mind-change, evolution – not making bloody Velcro or Tang.
“I’m ready for my close-up, Mister Vermeer…” (the girl in the red hat, 1665).
Here’s a documentary that’s well worth your time. You’ll never look at an Old Master painting in the same way again – but in a good way, promise.
Back around 2001 (probably overlooked by many due to certain unpleasant events that occurred that year) David Hockney revealed his thesis that the Old Masters used lenses and mirrors as primitive ‘cameras’, allowing phenomenal leaps of realism in their art. They projected their subjects onto canvases, and painted over the image.
It’s not exactly a secret <snark>to those who go to the trouble of reading books</snark>that painters of the 1600s like Vermeer used the Camera Obscura to assist them with complex perspective scenes. The Hockney thesis pushes the use back to the early 1400s – and the evidence of lenses and concave mirrors is pretty good – as in, it’s in the paintings, goode syr – as in Van Eyck’s c1434 ‘van der Paele altarpiece’:
Yeah yeah, but they didn’t have fancy curved mirrors so shut up you…
Well, it’s probably not very clear and crude and….
Mother of…
The original documentary is on youtube. The image quality isn’t great, but it’s watchable. Those who prefer a higher quality version can download it from the usual sources.
There are 8 parts. You WILL watch them all.
Of course, there was a backlash to the theory from poorly educated nitwits. These people took the thesis as an attack on the painters of the Renaissance. Clearly they know not a lot about the skill required to convert a tracing of a blurry projection into a coherent work of art. It’s only a tool, and not a crutch. Having built a couple of primitive camera obscura, the idea that it’s a magic bullet, or a crutch is laughable.
As Hockney has been forced to point out – the projections don’t make marks, the artist does. There are great photographers, and crappy ones. Cameras don’t make artists.
File under: blindingly obvious.
Hockney’s demonstration of the work process for a Caravaggio only increases respect for that man. Working within the constraints of the primitive technology must have been a headache. It’s amazing to see how the scenes were built though – they seem more like the work of modern cinematographers – who were themselves some of the great visual artists of the 20th century.
Here’s Hockney’s partner in thought-crime, Charles M. Falco, professor, College of Optical Sciences, University of Arizona. He gives a really great talk about the optics behind some of the pictures. Five parts. Watch them and weep.
Imagine being shanghaied from the year 1970, and taken into the future – all the way to the distant year…2000AD!
It’s a very different place, 2000AD:
Ladies: a quick comment. As you know, recycling is important, especially in the future. So, instead of throwing your disposable sticktite clothes in the de-atomiser, why not recycle them? Just give the filthy sticktites to your household robot and input the correct FORTRAN instructions (a jest of course: ask your husband to input the Fortran commands, lest your robot go on a kill-spree). Your machine butler will gladly take them to Recycling base #23047, conveniently placed on the far side of the moon.
Well droogs, things have changed a lot in the decade since 2000AD. Progress has, as always, continued its parabolic rise! Some breaking news from the Frontier:
In two separate cases, a toxicologist and a chemist independently confirmed their seafood samples contained unusually high volumes of crude oil and harmful hydrocarbons — and some of this food was allegedly being sent to market.
The world’s largest independent airline pilot association is warning its members to avoid security screening by full-body scanners out of concern the machines emit dangerous levels of radiation.
allegedly, the hive does many things better than paid experts. Wikipedia is an example of this assertion. Most web content is generated by hive inhabitants for free, profiting the new elite cybernetic ownership class, which is to say some corporation or other. This also means that content becomes worthless. That the efforts of skilled and devoted journalists, artists and others become valueless, unsellable, just more info-shards in the hive. Only advertising has value in the cyberhive. In a nation whose social realism has been represented by advertising for three quarters of a century, that was to be expected.
Well done, China. It’s amazing what can be accomplished when your country isn’t having a collective nervous breakdown. Don’t worry: the western internet hive-mind will soon reach a plurality consensus that your moon mission, like theirs, was hoaxed.
Yeah yeah, but they didn’t have fancy curved mirrors so shut up you…
Well done, China. It’s amazing what can be accomplished when your country isn’t having a collective nervous breakdown. Don’t worry: the western internet hive-mind will soon reach a plurality consensus that your moon mission, like theirs, was hoaxed.