Posts by Lilith __
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Many of our waterways are already saturated with nitrogen (and its evil twin, phosphorus), such that regional councils are spending tens of millions of ratepayers’ – and taxpayers’ – dollars trying to clean them up. But we haven’t even begun to see the worst of it. Beneath every dairy district, there is a subterranean tidal wave of nitrogen seeping inexorably downhill, into groundwater, into creeks, then rivers, then estuaries.
Arrrgh. Just waiting for this to happen in Canterbury, funded by the public, against our will.
The Key government has cancelled regional democracy in Canterbury as "too risky" for their massive irrigation-for-dairy plans. Y'all should watch out. -
I love the Firefly solution: "Gorram", "Humped", etc. Any really bad cussing in Chinese. And gather not usual Chinese curse-words either.
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Public shaming and humiliation of victims via social media is part of this awful sequence of events.
Hoping it's not too OT to point y'all to Monica Lewinsky's Ted talk on how the internet enables instant, global, and unerasable shaming. It's really worth watching. -
Hard News: The greening of the Red Zone, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Wow, shows what a huge area it is. How many displaced people...
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Capture: Movement, in reply to Chris Waugh,
European, especially French, media is going on about an eclipse today, yet I’ve seen nothing in our own papers. Are we on the wrong side of the equator for this one?
Yes. Happened during our night. :-)
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Seriously, though. Aurorae are very high above the Earth, in the almost-vacuum of the magnetosphere.
Les Cowley of www.atoptics.co.uk has some really good pages on the physics of aurorae. Particularly this one on the atmospheric particles involved. To quote part of it:
Green oxygen aurorae are at 100 km up to about 150 km [above the earth’s surface]. Red oxygen aurorae are 150 km upwards to 250 km and more rarely to 600 km plus.
We only see aurorae because we are looking through tens to hundreds of kilometres of glowing gas. By sea level standards that ‘gas’ is a vacuum. At 100 km, the altitude of green aurorae, the atmosphere’s pressure is a millionth of that at sea level and the mean distance an oxygen atom travels between collisions is about a metre^^. Even so, it undergoes about 500 collisions each second and any excitation is quickly removed. At 200 km, where the red oxygen aurora glows, the vacuum has hardened. The oxygen atom will travel on average 4 to 5 kilometre between collisions and will be hit on average only once every 7 seconds. Excited atoms then have ample time time to radiate their energy and their collective light over a layer perhaps tens of kilometres thick gives us the soft and elusive auroral glow. Lights in a vacuum.. ..almost!
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Eddie's in the space-time continuum
Imagine if radiation from the sun reached us here on Earth!
Oh wait.
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Police corruption is a big allegation to make. Perhaps we can agree it looks bad that one of the alleged perpetrators is a cop’s son and leave it at that.
Police culture and competence in the area of rape and child abuse is clearly at fault. It’s hardly the first time the justice system has massively failed the survivors of rape. We must press for an overhaul of their system.
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Capture: Aurora Australis, in reply to Ross Mason,
As one watched, these curtains – imagine floor to ceiling drapes and you are looking from the floor up into them – swished and danced and jetted toward me and drifted back to space. Then to be replaced by another set adjacent to begin the show again.
That would be INCREDIBLE! Wow.
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Capture: Aurora Australis, in reply to JacksonP,
I’ll wear a parka. ;-)
An anorak, pls. And BYO Thermos and sandwiches. x