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Sunday, January 29, 2012

01-29-2012: Solar Flare Storms

"A string of massive solar storms have unleashed their fury on the Earth in the last 48 hours, just the first set of strong solar storms expected to hit our planet in the coming months. NASA scientists report that the most solar flare — the strongest one to date this year — erupted Friday from the same active region of the sun that triggered a raging solar tempest earlier this week... the latest coronal mass ejection (CME) was moving at almost 1,553 miles per second, warning that it could cause a number of disruptions."

Read more: http://www.thestatecolumn.com/science/focus-on-solar-storms-takes-priority-at-nasas-goddard-space-weather-center/#ixzz1ksufpsno

http://www.space.com/14387-biggest-solar-flare-2012-radiation-storm.html

Solar flares hit Earth with 3 effects at different times. First comes "electromagnetic radiation" which is mostly a concern for satellite disruption and astronauts in space. Next, radiation in the form of protons arrives @ 93 million m.p.h. -- followed by the "coronal mass ejection" of plasma from the sun itself (travels from one-to-four million m.p.h. It's the plasma that causes much of the noticeable problems on Earth's surface, such as the 1989 electrical grid outage in Quebec.

Note: Auroras are the visual effects we most commonly associate with solar flares.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_%28astronomy%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronal_mass_ejection

Solar storms and us:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30TXQkNBB9k&feature=related
1989 Quebec Outage:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1989_geomagnetic_storm
Austin outage Jan. 28 -29th???:
http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/blotter/entries/2012/01/29/austin_energy_expects_to_have.html
http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/blotter/entries/power/

Thursday, January 26, 2012

New Germany: Economic Role Model

Germany is thriving because its companies make high quality products that people value. With a population of 82 million, its export revenue nearly equals China's. Germany annually exports $1.3 trillion in goods -- over $200 billion than it imports.

German workers log in less hours than workers in Italy or Greece -- Germans work 'smarter'.  Germans save 11% of their disposable household income -- twice that of Italians or Americans.

For the rest of the story, google "Kurzarbeit" and also click on link:
http://theweek.com/article/index/223191/the-german-economic-colossus

Magnetic Poles Moving

Earth's magnetic field extends from the Earth's inner core to where it meets the solar wind emanating from the Sun. Earth's field orientation changes over time because it is generated by the motion of molten iron alloys in the Earth's outer core. The Magnetic North Pole wanders, fortunately slowly enough that the compass is useful for navigation. At random intervals ("averaging" several hundred thousand years) the Earth's field completely reverses (the north and south geomagnetic poles change places with each other). These reversals leave a record in rocks that allow 'paleomagnetists' to calculate past motions of continents and ocean floors as a result of plate tectonics.
Note: The region above the ionosphere, and extending several tens of thousands of kilometers into space, is called the magnetosphere. This region protects the Earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation and cosmic rays.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_magnetic_field

The rate of reversals in the Earth's magnetic field has varied widely over time. 72 million years ago (Ma), the field reversed 5 times in a million years. In a 4-million-year period centered on 54 Ma, there were 10 reversals; at around 42 Ma, 17 reversals took place in the span of 3 million years. In a period of 3 million years centering on 24 Ma, 13 reversals occurred. No fewer than 51 reversals occurred in a 12-million-year period, centering on 15 million years ago. Two reversals occurred during a span of 50,000 years. These eras of frequent reversals have been counterbalanced by a few "superchrons" – long periods when no reversals took place


Magnetic North Change:
http://modernsurvivalblog.com/pole-shift-2/alarming-noaa-data-rapid-pole-shift/

Magnetic South Change:
http://modernsurvivalblog.com/pole-shift-2/pole-shift-north-races-south-crawls/

Magnetic Declination:
http://www.compassdude.com/compass-declination.shtml

Magnetic Pole Record:
http://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/poetry/tour/AAmag.html

Magnetic Pole Reversals:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Geomagnetic_polarity_0-169_Ma.svg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/13/Geomagnetic_polarity_late_Cenozoic.svg

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Haredim: ultra-Orthodox Jews

"Haredim", the black-clad ultra-Orthodox Israeli Jews, number over one million in a country of 7.8 million people. The Haredim are the only group in Israel having more children today than 30 years ago.  They have much in common with their fundamentalist Muslim Middle Eastern counterparts. They're vehemently anti-feminist. They're also poor (because they're economically underproductive and living off of government subsidies that allow a 60% male unemployment rate). They do not serve in the military and they focus most of their attention on studying the Torah. Furthermore, they are even ambivalent about the existence of the state of Israel -- because the Messiah has not yet returned.    

Israelis Facing a Seismic Rift Over Role of Women:
http://tinyurl.com/77omr3a

Population Demographics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Israel#Total_population
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Population_of_Israel.png

Poverty In Israel:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_Israel

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Rick San'i'torium: Right to Choose

"Over the years, Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum has made his stance on abortion clear: he doesn’t believe it should be legal for any reason. Rape? Incest? The mother’s imminent death? Apparently, none of these circumstances warrant the slightest amount of understanding or sympathy. His views are so extreme that he thinks states should have the right to outlaw birth control. What’s really frightening about this lack of empathy is the fact that, in 1997, his own wife nearly died due to complications from her second-trimester pregnancy."

http://www.care2.com/causes/rick-santorums-right-to-choose.html

New Anti-Choice Movement:
http://us1.campaign-archive2.com/?u=34c8251342e0f59c19bee1935&id=a7eab17ae0&e=efed61ba49

Sunday, January 1, 2012

Double Whammy => Dark Ages

Krakatoa is a volcanic island in Indonesia that dramatically exploded in 1883.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krakatoa#535_AD_event
Video Clip (03:25)
http://www.history.com/shows/how-the-earth-was-made/videos/the-krakatoa-volcano#the-krakatoa-volcano

As huge as the 1883 explosion was, it was dwarfed by an earlier 535 A.D. eruption that was so huge that the emissions into the atmosphere caused such serious climatic disruptions that historians have known for centuries that a cataclysmic event somewhere had occurred. Worldwide records from cultures all over the world describe the same thing:
http://www.flixya.com/blog/98639/Days-of-Darkness-AD-535-AD-546
The sun dimmed for 18 months which caused famines that toppled governments and upset the status quo.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_weather_events_of_535%E2%80%93536

The "birth of the Dark Ages" began in 540A.D., when tree rings show that a global event occurred that stopped the trees from growing.  The Gauls and the Chinese recorded fiery skies & the sun only shone 4 hours a day for over a year.  The resultant Justinian Plague ensued and thwarted the reunification of the Roman Empire. The plague weakened the Byzantine Empire at a critical point, when Justinian's armies had nearly wholly retaken Italy and the western Mediterranean coast. This evolving conquest could have credibly reformed the Western Roman Empire and united it with the Eastern under a single emperor for the first time since the year 395.

 540 A.D. Comet:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Baillie
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1354622/Comet-caused-Dark-Ages-says-tree-ring-expert.html