Lost In A Fog

I previously read somewhere that nuclear warhead maintenance requires a constant stream of tritium. I wonder if this ‘Fogbank’ is related to tritium?:

PLANS TO refurbish Trident nuclear weapons had to be put on hold because US scientists forgot how to manufacture a component of the warhead, a US congressional investigation has revealed.

The US National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) "lost knowledge" of how to make a mysterious but very hazardous material codenamed Fogbank. As a result, the warhead refurbishment programme was put back by at least a year, and racked up an extra $69 million.

According to some critics, the delay could cause major problems for the UK Trident programme, which is very closely tied to the US programme and uses much of the same technology. The US and the UK are trying to refurbish the ageing W76 warheads that tip Trident missiles in order to prolong their life, and ensure they are safe and reliable. This apparently requires that the Fogbank in the warheads is replaced.

Neither the NNSA nor the UK Ministry of Defence would say anything about the nature or function of Fogbank. But it is thought by some weapons experts to be a foam used between the fission and fusion stages of a thermonuclear bomb. US officials have said that manufacturing the material requires a solvent cleaning agent which is "extremely flammable" and "explosive". The process also involves dealing with "toxic materials" hazardous to workers.

...But vital information on how Fogbank was actually made had somehow been mislaid. "NNSA had lost knowledge of how to manufacture the material because it had kept few records of the process when the material was made in the 1980s, and almost all staff with expertise on production had retired or left the agency," the report said.

...To John Ainslie, the co-ordinator of the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, it was "astonishing" that the Fogbank blueprints had been lost. "This is like James Bond destroying his instructions as soon as he has read them," he said. "Perhaps the plans for making Fogbank were so secret that no copies were kept. The British warhead is similar to the American version, and so the problems with Fogbank may delay Aldermaston's plans for renewing or replacing Trident."

Tailed

At 11:30 p.m. Sunday evening, I stopped by DMTC to attend to a few minor Box Office errands. No one was there - everyone had gone home.

Upon leaving, I noticed that there was a car idling across the street, it's headlights pointing straight towards the theater. Two months ago, a cop in a police car idling over at Peak Performance watched my every motion in an identical way - apparently I looked suspicious - so I figured the idling car must be a police cruiser too.

But no, the Watcher, whoever it may have been, was in a civilian car. As I left the parking lot, heading north on Peña Drive, the Watcher faked as if to go south, did a U-Turn, then started following. They caught up to me at the light at 5th Street and had enough time to write down my license plate number, if they had wished.

I headed west on 5th Street and the Watcher followed closely. I turned left into the Post Office parking lot and pulled up at the drive-through mail drop. The Watcher faked as if to turn left at Pole Line road, in order to keep watching, then gave up the pursuit and headed straight west on 5th Street when the light permitted.

No doubt the Watcher was an alert citizen with the best interests of DMTC at heart. But whoever they were, the CIA, they ain't.

"The Sound Of Music" - Second Weekend

Left: Giorgio Selvaggio as Captain von Trapp, Emily Cannon-Brown as Elsa Schraeder, and Herb Schultz as Max Detweiler.

Below: Marguerite Morris as Mother Abbess.



Left: Giorgio Selvaggio as Captain von Trapp and Emily Cannon-Brown as Elsa Schraeder.

Below: Moriah H. as Liesl and Matthew Kohrt as Rolf in "You Are Sixteen".



Left: Marta (Ani C.), Brigitta (Kendyl I.), Louisa (Jasmin M.), Liesl (Moriah H.), and Maria (Kay Hight).

Left: Louisa (Jasmin M.), Marta (Ani C.), Liesl (Moriah H.), Gretl (Rose M.), Maria (Kay Hight), and Friedrich (Rami R.).

Left: Giorgio Selvaggio as Captain von Trapp, Gretl (Rose M.), Marta (Ani C.), Friedrich (Rami R.), and Liesl (Moriah H.).

Below: Leave your camera alone for ten minutes and the nuns start taking liberties! (Erin Kelly and Stacey Sheehan).



Left: Liesl (Moriah H.), Friedrich (Rami R.), Louisa (Jasmin M.), Brigitta (Kendyl I.), Kurt (William C.), Marta (Ani C.), and Gretl (Rose M.), with Maria (Kay Hight).

Below: Kay Hight as Maria and Marguerite Morris as Mother Abbess.



Left: Herb Schultz as Max Detweiler and Emily Cannon-Brown as Elsa Schraeder.

Below: Herb Schultz as Max Detweiler, Giorgio Selvaggio as Captain von Trapp and Emily Cannon-Brown as Elsa Schraeder.

Some Of The Folks At Step One Perform



These guys are apparently in the Tuesday night Hip-Hop class, but a few of these same moves Pepper brought into the Thursday night Cardio Funk class (held in the same room).

Greta Gerwig In "Greenberg"

Wow, Greta's on the move! Not bad at all for the St. Francis grad with a hankering for theatre!:

Greta Gerwig is getting into "Greenberg."

The indie star has landed the lead role opposite Ben Stiller in the latest Noah Baumbach relationship dramedy.

Baumbach, best known for the Oscar-nominated intergenerational divorce saga "The Squid and the Whale," is writing and directing the film. The project's logline is being kept under wraps, but it is expected to be set in L.A. and center on relationship intimacies in the manner of past Baumbach pictures.

Scott Rudin will produce "Greenberg" and Focus Features will finance and distribute; the specialty division had been in talks to board the project. Shooting is expected to begin in March, with Stiller officially on board.

Gerwig, repped by UTA and managers Dallas Sonnier and Jack Heller, is known for a host of indie movies, including the Duplass brothers' genre spoof "Baghead" and the offbeat relationship tale "Hannah Takes the Stairs," which she co-wrote.

Gerwig is affiliated with the loose movement of verite filmmaking known as mumblecore.

Baumbach is on board to write and direct the 9/11 tale "The Emperor's Children," based on Claire Messud's acclaimed novel, at Universal. He also co-wrote animated parable "Fantastic Mr. Fox," which Wes Anderson is directing for Fox.

Pink Dolphin

Strange creature:

Charter boat captain Erik Rue, 42, photographed the animal, which is actually an albino, when he began studying it after the mammal first surfaced in Lake Calcasieu, an inland saltwater estuary, north of the Gulf of Mexico in southwestern USA.

Capt Rue originally saw the dolphin, which also has reddish eyes, swimming with a pod of four other dolphins, with one appearing to be its mother which never left its side.

He said: "I just happened to see a little pod of dolphins, and I noticed one that was a little lighter.

"It was absolutely stunningly pink.

"I had never seen anything like it. It's the same color throughout the whole body and it looks like it just came out of a paint booth.

"The dolphin appears to be healthy and normal other than its coloration, which is quite beautiful and stunningly pink.

"The mammal is entirely pink from tip to tail and has reddish eyes indicating its albinism. The skin appears smooth, glossy pink and without flaws.

Leave Limbaugh Alone!



He's not even a human!

"The Sound Of Music" - Second Friday

Left and Below: Kay Hight as Maria and Giorgio Selvaggio as Captain von Trapp.


Left: Kay Hight as Maria and Giorgio Selvaggio as Captain von Trapp.

Below: Moriah H. as Liesl and Matthew Kohrt as Rolf in "You Are Sixteen".


Left and Below: "Doe A Deer". Liesl (Moriah H.), Friedrich (Rami R.), Louisa (Jasmin M.), Brigitta (Kendyl I.), Kurt (William C.), Marta (Ani C.), and Gretl (Rose M.), with Maria (Kay Hight).


Left and Below: "Doe A Deer". Liesl (Moriah H.), Friedrich (Rami R.), Louisa (Jasmin M.), Brigitta (Kendyl I.), Kurt (William C.), Marta (Ani C.), and Gretl (Rose M.).


Left: "Doe A Deer". Marta (Ani C.), Gretl (Rose M.), Kurt (William C.), Brigitta (Kendyl I.), Louisa (Jasmin M.), and Liesl (Moriah H.).

Robin Antin Interview



Just really curious who Robin Antin is. I still feel like I have no idea....

Pussycat Dolls - Bottle Pop



Yes, we truly live in a Golden Age!

Kea Birds - Arthurs Pass, New Zealand



I can watch video clips of keas all afternoon long.

I was set upon by keas, if I'm not mistaken, in this same parking lot, last December.

Detail From "Underworld 2"

I liked this painting (which is much larger than just this detail)

The painting's called "Underworld 2" by artist Tony de Lautour, and is located at the Christchurch Art Gallery, Christchurch, New Zealand.

Arctic Nomenclature

Image from brain_blessed at B3ta.


In regards to how many words Eskimos have for snow, it depends on what you mean by an Eskimo.

The Right Thing To Do At The Time

What's new in South Carolina?:

Tammy Fausel said that she and her family were shocked at what happened during her uncle's funeral in Gray Court.

A Candler, N.C., woman danced in front of the service, waved a wand around the casket, opened the lid, laid her hands on the deceased's head and struck the body with a wand, according to an incident report from the Laurens County Sheriff's Office.

Nicole Marie Loretta Leonard, 25, has been charged with disturbing a funeral and public disorderly conduct in Tuesday's incident, according to tickets.

Fausel said she had never before seen the woman and had no idea why she would've been at funeral at Church of God on State 14.

"Everybody was just kind of flabbergasted," she said. "They didn't know what was going on."

The woman took flowers from the top of the casket and threw them at the family before leaving in a burgundy Toyota, according to the report.

Fausel said she called the Sheriff's Office.

A lieutenant intercepted a burgundy Toyota Corolla heading south on Interstate 385, according to the incident report.

When deputies asked the woman why she acted the way she did, the woman said "she felt that it was the right thing to do at the time," according to the report. The woman told deputies she knew no one at the church, according to the report.

Never On Sunday

This is baffling - Utah is high, but Idaho, a very similar neighboring state, is low:

A study by a Harvard Business School professor shows that Utah outpaces the more conservative states -- which all tend to purchase more Internet porn than other states.

Online porn subscription rates are higher in states that enacted conservative legislation banning same-sex marriage or civil unions and where surveys show support for conservative positions on religion, gender roles and sexuality, according to an analysis published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives.

The Beehive State briefly experimented with a state-funded porn czar until 2003. The study examining online porn usage from 2006 to 2008 shows those efforts apparently failed.

Utah has the nation's highest online porn subscription rate per thousand home broadband users, at 5.47, while the nearby states of Idaho and Montana showed the lowest rates of 1.98 and 1.92, respectively, according to the study.

Utah's No. 1 score may have to do with its demographics, said the author of the study, Benjamin Edelman.

For instance, Internet porn subscriptions are particularly widespread in states with young populations, in the 15 to 24 age group, while people over 65 are less likely to subscribe. Income can be a another factor, with each $1,000 increase in average household income pushing up the number of subscribers. Rates also go up with a college education and among people who are divorced, although marriage and graduate degrees have the opposite effect.

"Even when I control for income, age, education, and marital status, Utah residents still consume disproportionately more than people from other states," said Edelman.

...Although Utah is headquarters for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Edelman found that regions where people regularly attend religious services are not statistically different from their counterparts in more secular regions. But users who do attend religious services tend to shift their adult entertainment sessions to other days of the week than the day of services.

Scolded By The Stone

I remember once talking to Phil Krider, a lightning authority, about an experience I had on top of Mt. Audubon, in the Rockies outside Boulder, CO:

Marc: We were on the mountaintop and our hair stood up on end!
Phil: It was time to leave.
Marc: We could swish our fingertips through the air and hear crackling!
Phil: It was time to leave!
Marc: There was a growing cumulus cloud over a nearby mountain. We worried that we might get hit by lightning, so we laid down on the mountaintop.
Phil: Don't do that! It was time to leave!

Anyway, here's what might have happened if we had waited too long before leaving:

MOHAMMAD Ponari was, until last month, a typical kid in the impoverished East Java village of Balongsari. Then, quite literally, lightning struck.

The nine-year-old, who had been playing in the rain in his front yard, was hit by the thunderbolt but, to the astonishment of his young friends, he was unharmed.

All the more bizarre, according to an account by his village chief and his family, when he came to, he found a stone the size of an egg on his head, and was convinced he possessed healing powers.

A boy next door with a fever was his first patient. The stone was placed in a glass of water and the boy drank deeply. His fever vanished.

Then another neighbour approached him, a woman in her 30s who had suffered from a depressive condition for 15 years. She, too, was healed.

The miracles, large and small, kept coming, said Nila Retno, the local village chief.

"My arm was sprained. The water touched by stone was given to me and I applied the water to my sprained arm. Suddenly, I was OK again," she said.

The district police commissioner, Sutikno, a devout Muslim who will be making the Haj pilgrimage to Mecca this year, told of his experience.

"I was inside the house talking to the boy and his family. Together with me in the house was a boy of his age who had not spoken for five years," he said.

"Ponari shook him. The boy reacted and they started fighting, like wrestling and pulling each other's hair. Then, a few moments after the fighting, the boy started to talk."

What did he say? "He said 'I'm scared' in Javanese — but he talked."

The tales of miraculous healings spread. Within a week of the lightning strike, hundreds of villagers were lining up outside Ponari's modest home.

A week later, the ailing, the lame and the curious were coming from as far afield as Malaysia. Thousands queued each day in lines stretching for kilometres, carrying plastic bags of water ready to be transformed into an elixir by the magical stone.

Stampedes erupted on at least three occasions, resulting in the deaths of three people and injuries to dozens more.

...As for Ponari, he stopped administering his miracle cures this week after tending to tens of thousands of patients. The public disorder forced police to remove the boy to an undisclosed location.

Even so, as much as 1 billion rupiah ($A120,000) has been raised through a charity box outside his home. This, many adherents to mysticism believe, was poor form indeed. Dukuns are not supposed to profit from their activities.

According to village chief Retno, Ponari himself said he had been "scolded" by the stone for accepting cash. "He said he felt that his whole body was whipped," she said.

Ponari himself has now fallen ill, gripped by fever and nausea. Exhaustion perhaps. Or a sign of displeasure from the spirit world?

As A Catholic

The fellow waiting at the bus stop and carrying a bedroll was big - he looked a little bit like an aging Kid Rock:

K.R.: Sir, perhaps you could help me with my problem. I'm a Catholic and I need $2.00 to get across town. Please help me out, if you would. I implore you, as a Catholic.
Marc: Well, I'm not a Catholic, but I'll give you a dollar.
K.R.: Well, that gets me halfway there.

DJI 6,000, Ho!

Wow! Closed at 6,594.44!

Courtroom Chaos

Be careful with the schizophrenic meth addict! They get really paranoid!

STOCKTON – His family said he never should have been on the stand.

But it was in the middle of David Paradiso's testimony in his own murder trial that the Stockton man leapt from the witness stand and attacked the judge – seconds before being shot to death by the Lodi police detective who built the case against him.

The attack occurred during a brief disturbance when Paradiso's mother, Debra, was removed from the courtroom after shouting that her son should never have been asked to testify. Paradiso, 29, had just told the court that he stabbed his 20-year-old girlfriend in the neck in 2006 " 'cause she deserved to die," according to observers.

San Joaquin Superior Court Judge Cinda Fox ordered a recess and directed the jury from the courtroom. In the commotion, observers reported, Paradiso left the witness stand, walked behind the judge's bench and grabbed her from behind.

He appeared to punch and stab Fox, according to reporters from the Stockton Record and Lodi News-Sentinel newspapers who were in the Stockton courtroom.

Authorities later confirmed Fox had been stabbed with "an unknown cutting instrument," though her injuries were minor. She was treated at St. Joseph's Medical Center and later released.

As the attack unfolded, Lodi Police Detective Eric Bradley, the lead investigator in the case, jumped from his seat at the prosecution's table and fired several shots, killing Paradiso. Bradley was later placed on paid administrative leave pending investigation, as is routine in officer-involved shootings.

Chaos ensued, and the reporters described people screaming and ducking for cover. Trials were halted and the courthouse locked down. Later, the building was emptied, save for witnesses, court employees and authorities beginning their investigation.

San Joaquin County authorities released little information about the day's events.

Paradiso's family, however, had much to say. His older brother, Aaron Paradiso, was in the courtroom when the shots rang out. He saw his brother fall before rushing his own 14-year-old daughter out of the room.

Recalling the scene in a long and emotional telephone interview, Aaron Paradiso went silent. "You've got me speechless," he said. "I was just feeling my little brother's pain."

Aaron Paradiso and his family assailed lawyers' decision to put David Paradiso on the stand, saying he was a paranoid schizophrenic who had been "breaking down" in recent weeks and couldn't withstand the stress.

"They were playing with a sick man on the stand like it was a game," he said.

The Record reported Paradiso had been questioned by his defense attorney, Charles Pacheco, without problem Tuesday. But he balked when asked to take the stand Wednesday for cross-examination.

Paradiso agreed to testify after a short meeting in Fox's chambers, the paper reported.

"He was going after her jugular, just as he did to the victim in this case," Pacheco told the News-Sentinel. "He was not stopping stabbing her, going for her neck. Bradley did the right thing."

Aaron Paradiso said his brother's illness was evident in the crime he was accused of committing: In December 2006, David Paradiso allegedly stabbed his 20-year-old girlfriend, Eileen Pelt, in the neck as the two rode in the back seat of his mother's car while she drove through Lodi.

His family does not dispute his guilt. Instead, they say the defense argument that methamphetamine use prompted the violence is deficient.

"The evidence shows what it shows. But the paranoia is real," Aaron Paradiso said. "The craziness was there."

Great Unemployment Interactive Map!

Thanks, John!

It's interesting looking at the geographic variation.

I’m very surprised how well OK, TX, NM, and the Plains states are holding up. There was at least some advantage in NOT participating strongly in the housing boom!