Good Internet Monday: This video.

Blerg. Fighting off the remnants of a cold; fighting with my code to get some results.

What I need right now is more videos like this:

Random Sunday Thoughts

Ex-Lions players know how to rub it in.

I'm watching Andre Goodman, ex-Lions cornerback, play well for Denver. Goodman was a starting corner for the championship Giants team a few years ago. The Lions struggle every year to get average players to play better, and eventually they do- by letting them go to other teams.

The U.S. is completely f**ked.

Here's a nice story about how GM has been displacing management duties to China. Does our country make anything anymore? Besides movies. And besides lousy pop music. Besides military stuff, too. C'mon, I meant something constructive.

I'm starting to lose faith in Umich coach Rodriguez.

Claims of breaking NCAA rules are leading to an investigation. I was adamant about giving "RichRod" the benefit of the doubt early, but as the problems mount (as well as the number of players leaving for other schools), it's getting tougher to defend him.

I just realized that my shirt is awesome.

I'm wearing a Farmer Jack grocery store employee shirt. I've never actually worked there.** What is impressive about the shirt is that it is now a relic of Detroit: Farmer Jack's was the last major grocery store left in the metro area, but they folded several years ago. Buying groceries in the city means either finding a small time local store or going on a car ride.

**my brother has never worked at Marco's Pizza, but that hasn't stopped him from donning a Marco's Pizza employee shirt. When inquired as to if he has worked there, he replies, "no, my name is Marco Pizza." Straight faced, every time. Always funny.

Los Hollywamos, NM.

Sitting in the ABQ airport, waiting for my flight to Toronto to board. Thought I would shoot off a quick post to describe a very bizarre scene from yesterday.

Because Los Alamos is so far from the nearest major airport, the standard protocol is to pick up a rental car in town (often the day before your flight) and drop it off at the airport. Yesterday, my wife drove me to the local Hertz station at the LA airport, which serves small airplanes and few flights. As we tried to pull in, a young man sporting a black hoodie and a walkie talkie stopped us and asked us what we were doing. We told him we just wanted to get to the rental car place and he waved us through.

It became far stranger as we approached the tiny Los Alamos terminal: in the gloomy weather we've been experiencing lately, there were dozens of people, large semi trailers, tents, equipment, and a lot of commotion. As I got out of the car I was stopped again by a tall man in a black, large rimmed hat, a long black trenchcoat, and a police badge hanging from his neck. Again, my request to get to the rental car desk was enough to get me through and I was able to pick up my car.

The cause of all of the commotion? Los Alamos was the background for a day of shooting a major hollywood movie, "Did you Hear About the Morgans?". The shoot had lasted all day, and the stars of the movie were on hand: Hugh Grant, Kim Shaw, and a talking horse.

I guess you never know what you'll run in to up here.

Space weather affects us all - even the hooved ones.

A colleague and I were discussing Google street view (see previous post) and Google Earth today when he mentioned that using Google Earth, researchers have found that grazing animals, such as cows, tend to align themselves in a North-South direction. This would imply that these animals can sense the Earth's magnetic field. I responded that, in a possibly related story, one of the Google street view cars had hit a deer. Conclusion: get back to work.

Later, a good friend who now works at NASA called to let me know that he had run into a ground-breaking peer reviewed article. As it turns out, low frequency disturbances of the Earth's magnetic field (say, from power lines) effects the animals' orientation, breaking the typical poleward tendencies.

What can't science do?

I will now desperately try to make this relevant to this blog. During solar storms, there are strong deflections of the Earth's magnetic field, even on the surface. This leads to a plethora of effects: overloading of electric relay stations, intense heating of long oil pipelines, and... THE CONFUSION OF OUR CATTLE, WHO PREFER TO FACE NORTH-SOUTH.

Space weather affects us all. We must remain vigilant.