This happened a while ago but I just happened to watch the video tonight. Congrats John! Way to go! He's the blond short haired guy in orange on the video.
http://www.myfoxla.com/myfox/pages/Home/Detail?contentId=3358280
&version=1&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=VSTY&pageId=1.1
Friday, August 31, 2007
Meteor shower possible Sat morning!!!
Earth to Hit Aurigid Meteors?
August 23, 2007
by Joe Rao
Skywatchers were out in force for the familiar Perseid meteor shower peaking in mid-August at the dark of the Moon. So why bother with a shower that almost nobody has heard of coming two weeks later in bright moonlight?
Because the Aurigids are this summer’s skywatching wildcard.
The Perseids are the "Old Faithful" of meteor displays, whereas most years the Aurigids produce little or nothing. But three times in the last century, skywatchers were surprised by a short-lived burst of bright meteors emanating from the direction of Auriga early on the morning of September 1st. Circumstances appear excellent for a repeat in 2007, with a small chance that the shower could turn extraordinary. So well-positioned meteor observers — those in far-western North America and Hawaii — are going on high alert.
Surprise!
No Aurigid outburst has yet been photographed (hint, hint). But during the 1998 Leonid fireball shower, Lorenzo Lovato caught four bright meteors in this single 9-minute, wide-field exposure. One prediction suggests that any shower on the morning of September 1st would be especially fireball-rich.
Lorenzo Lovato
The first known Aurigid outburst came in 1935, when on the night of August 31–September 1, astronomers Cuno Hoffmeister and Arthur Teichgraeber of Sonneberg, Germany, witnessed an unexpected and moderately strong meteor display. It appeared to radiate from a spot near the star Beta Aurigae, not far from Capella. Orbital expert Vladimir Guth immediately suggested that the meteors came from Comet Kiess (C/1911 N1), which followed a similar path through space and last came through in September 1911. It has an orbital period of approximately 2,000 years.
Then in 1986, meteor watcher Istvan Tepliczky of Tata, Hungary, went out on September 1st around 1:00 a.m. local time (0:00 Universal Time) for a night of observing. "Just after 1:00 UT", he wrote, "I was an eyewitness of a very spectacular phenomenon. Very bright yellow meteors began to fall; all of them left long trains... Around 1:20 UT I detected meteors every one or two minutes." The shower tapered off slightly after 1:30, and he saw his last meteor at 2:12 UT.
The Aurigids made their most recent appearance on September 1, 1994, caught by experienced meteor observers Robert Lunsford and George Zay at Descanso, California. Considering how few observers our knowledge of these events comes from, Aurigid displays may have happened in other years without being noticed.
Encore in 2007?
At the August 2006 International Astronomical Union meeting, Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute’s Carl Sagan Center announced that the Aurigids are likely to come to life again this September 1st. He based his forecast on calculations by himself and Jérémie Vaubaillon of Caltech, and on earlier work done in collaboration with meteor astronomer Esko Lyytinen of Finland. Working from positions of Comet Kiess recorded in 1911, they determined that prior to that appearance, the comet last swept around the Sun in roughly 82 BC.
At that time the comet should have released a trail of fine rubble following along its path. Some of this comet dross from more than 2,000 years ago, the astronomers found, should only now be completing its first revolution around the Sun, decades behind the comet. Jenniskens showed that the Aurigid outbursts of 1935, 1986, and 1994 all arose when Earth passed through this one lengthy debris trail. And now the stage is set again.
When and Where
The Far West is the place to be for watching whether the Aurigids erupt before dawn on September 1st. The shower’s peak is predicted for about 4:37 a.m. PDT. However, the time prediction could be a little off, the shower may last up to an hour, and some of the meteors may be bright enough to show through a lot of twilight. So observers somewhat east of the prime area could have a chance as well.
S&T Illustration
On Saturday morning, September 1st, around 11:37 UT (plus or minus 20 minutes), Jenniskens and Vaubaillon expect Earth to pass smack through this one-revolution rubble trail from Comet Kiess. The timing favors far-western North America, as shown on the map at right. In this region 11:37 UT falls before the first light of dawn, with Auriga very high in the northeast (roughly 60° or 70° up) — ideal circumstances.
For Hawaii, the radiant will be much lower at that time (1:37 a.m. Hawaii Standard Time). So any shower members seen will be earthgrazers that skim far across the top of the atmosphere nearly horizontally and leave long, colorful, persistent trains (as observed in 1986 and 1994).
Unfortunately, the rest of North America will be in bright twilight or daylight. Like the previous outbursts, the upcoming display should be short-lived, probably lasting no more than an hour or so.
Comet Crumbs
"What makes this shower so special," notes Jenniskens, "is the opportunity to see bits and pieces of the comet’s original crust." Long-period comets have just recently returned from cold storage in the Oort Cloud and are still covered by a crust that resulted from 4.5 billion years of exposure to cosmic rays. When the comet returns to the inner solar system, that crust is crumbled and creates peculiar meteors. "The only other time that a dust trail of a long-period comet was investigated, during the 1995 Alpha Monocerotid outburst, it was found that the meteoroids had lost all their volatile sodium minerals," continues Jenniskens. "There will be no other chance to study long-period-comet dust trails in the next three decades."
A drawback will be the bright waning gibbous Moon, 84% illuminated in nearby Aries. But because the Aurigids ram into our atmosphere at exceptionally high speed (66 kilometers, or 41 miles, per second), and because the particles are predicted to be relatively large, any shower should be rich in bright meteors, with many in the range of magnitude +1 to 0. "So," says Jenniskens, "the Moon probably won’t dim much of the display."
As to how many you might see, the safest forecast is perhaps 20 to 30 per hour. But Lyytinen is predicting many more, with a zenithal hourly rate (ZHR) reaching a few hundred. Lyytinen also expects the peak to arrive a few minutes earlier than Jenniskens and Vaubaillon: around 11:20 UT.
"I would predict a ZHR of 300," he says, "but with an uncertainty of 1 to 3; this would mean something between about 100 and 1,000. Let’s hope this will be around 1,000!"
August 23, 2007
by Joe Rao
Skywatchers were out in force for the familiar Perseid meteor shower peaking in mid-August at the dark of the Moon. So why bother with a shower that almost nobody has heard of coming two weeks later in bright moonlight?
Because the Aurigids are this summer’s skywatching wildcard.
The Perseids are the "Old Faithful" of meteor displays, whereas most years the Aurigids produce little or nothing. But three times in the last century, skywatchers were surprised by a short-lived burst of bright meteors emanating from the direction of Auriga early on the morning of September 1st. Circumstances appear excellent for a repeat in 2007, with a small chance that the shower could turn extraordinary. So well-positioned meteor observers — those in far-western North America and Hawaii — are going on high alert.
Surprise!
No Aurigid outburst has yet been photographed (hint, hint). But during the 1998 Leonid fireball shower, Lorenzo Lovato caught four bright meteors in this single 9-minute, wide-field exposure. One prediction suggests that any shower on the morning of September 1st would be especially fireball-rich.
Lorenzo Lovato
The first known Aurigid outburst came in 1935, when on the night of August 31–September 1, astronomers Cuno Hoffmeister and Arthur Teichgraeber of Sonneberg, Germany, witnessed an unexpected and moderately strong meteor display. It appeared to radiate from a spot near the star Beta Aurigae, not far from Capella. Orbital expert Vladimir Guth immediately suggested that the meteors came from Comet Kiess (C/1911 N1), which followed a similar path through space and last came through in September 1911. It has an orbital period of approximately 2,000 years.
Then in 1986, meteor watcher Istvan Tepliczky of Tata, Hungary, went out on September 1st around 1:00 a.m. local time (0:00 Universal Time) for a night of observing. "Just after 1:00 UT", he wrote, "I was an eyewitness of a very spectacular phenomenon. Very bright yellow meteors began to fall; all of them left long trains... Around 1:20 UT I detected meteors every one or two minutes." The shower tapered off slightly after 1:30, and he saw his last meteor at 2:12 UT.
The Aurigids made their most recent appearance on September 1, 1994, caught by experienced meteor observers Robert Lunsford and George Zay at Descanso, California. Considering how few observers our knowledge of these events comes from, Aurigid displays may have happened in other years without being noticed.
Encore in 2007?
At the August 2006 International Astronomical Union meeting, Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute’s Carl Sagan Center announced that the Aurigids are likely to come to life again this September 1st. He based his forecast on calculations by himself and Jérémie Vaubaillon of Caltech, and on earlier work done in collaboration with meteor astronomer Esko Lyytinen of Finland. Working from positions of Comet Kiess recorded in 1911, they determined that prior to that appearance, the comet last swept around the Sun in roughly 82 BC.
At that time the comet should have released a trail of fine rubble following along its path. Some of this comet dross from more than 2,000 years ago, the astronomers found, should only now be completing its first revolution around the Sun, decades behind the comet. Jenniskens showed that the Aurigid outbursts of 1935, 1986, and 1994 all arose when Earth passed through this one lengthy debris trail. And now the stage is set again.
When and Where
The Far West is the place to be for watching whether the Aurigids erupt before dawn on September 1st. The shower’s peak is predicted for about 4:37 a.m. PDT. However, the time prediction could be a little off, the shower may last up to an hour, and some of the meteors may be bright enough to show through a lot of twilight. So observers somewhat east of the prime area could have a chance as well.
S&T Illustration
On Saturday morning, September 1st, around 11:37 UT (plus or minus 20 minutes), Jenniskens and Vaubaillon expect Earth to pass smack through this one-revolution rubble trail from Comet Kiess. The timing favors far-western North America, as shown on the map at right. In this region 11:37 UT falls before the first light of dawn, with Auriga very high in the northeast (roughly 60° or 70° up) — ideal circumstances.
For Hawaii, the radiant will be much lower at that time (1:37 a.m. Hawaii Standard Time). So any shower members seen will be earthgrazers that skim far across the top of the atmosphere nearly horizontally and leave long, colorful, persistent trains (as observed in 1986 and 1994).
Unfortunately, the rest of North America will be in bright twilight or daylight. Like the previous outbursts, the upcoming display should be short-lived, probably lasting no more than an hour or so.
Comet Crumbs
"What makes this shower so special," notes Jenniskens, "is the opportunity to see bits and pieces of the comet’s original crust." Long-period comets have just recently returned from cold storage in the Oort Cloud and are still covered by a crust that resulted from 4.5 billion years of exposure to cosmic rays. When the comet returns to the inner solar system, that crust is crumbled and creates peculiar meteors. "The only other time that a dust trail of a long-period comet was investigated, during the 1995 Alpha Monocerotid outburst, it was found that the meteoroids had lost all their volatile sodium minerals," continues Jenniskens. "There will be no other chance to study long-period-comet dust trails in the next three decades."
A drawback will be the bright waning gibbous Moon, 84% illuminated in nearby Aries. But because the Aurigids ram into our atmosphere at exceptionally high speed (66 kilometers, or 41 miles, per second), and because the particles are predicted to be relatively large, any shower should be rich in bright meteors, with many in the range of magnitude +1 to 0. "So," says Jenniskens, "the Moon probably won’t dim much of the display."
As to how many you might see, the safest forecast is perhaps 20 to 30 per hour. But Lyytinen is predicting many more, with a zenithal hourly rate (ZHR) reaching a few hundred. Lyytinen also expects the peak to arrive a few minutes earlier than Jenniskens and Vaubaillon: around 11:20 UT.
"I would predict a ZHR of 300," he says, "but with an uncertainty of 1 to 3; this would mean something between about 100 and 1,000. Let’s hope this will be around 1,000!"
Sun is making waves!!!
This is really cool:
The Sun is Making Waves
For decades solar physicists have wrestled with why the Sun's atmosphere (the corona) has a temperature of millions of degrees, when the solar surface below it is merely thousands of degrees hot.
Magnetic loop on the Sun
A solar flare in September 2005, recorded by the TRACE spacecraft, sends a magnetized loop of superheated gas arching high into the Sun's atmosphere.
Stanford-Lockheed Institute for Space Research
They thought they had the answer when, in 1942, Swedish physicist Hannes Alfvén predicted the existence of waves that could pump energy into the corona as they propagated upward from the photosphere. But no one had been able to observe these Alfvén waves because instrument technology wasn't up to snuff yet.
Now a team headed by Steven Tomcyzk of NCAR's High Altitude Observatory has managed to record and measure the elusive waves. The researchers (including a high-school science teacher from Massachusetts) used a new instrument that rapidly maps brightness and polarization over a large swath of corona in near-infrared light. They made the observations two years ago; it's taken them this long to puzzle it all out.
As Tomcyzk's team reports in the August 31st issue of Science, the waves propagate upward into the corona along magnetic field lines at speeds of roughly 1,000 miles per second, about 10 times faster than the speed of sound there. (That's not the velocity of the superheated gas but rather of the waves themselves — think of the fast-moving ripple created when you flick the end of a taut rope.)
The bad news is that the Alfvén waves aren't nearly powerful enough to fuel the corona's incredible heat. Something at least 10,000 times more energetic is needed. The good news, however, is that scientists now have a powerful new technique to probe the solar corona. It turns out that the waves' propagation speed depends directly on the strength of the magnetic field around them. So the new instrument's images, when combined with other measurements of solar vibrations (helioseismology), can be used to estimate the intensity and orientation of the coronal magnetic field.
The Sun is Making Waves
For decades solar physicists have wrestled with why the Sun's atmosphere (the corona) has a temperature of millions of degrees, when the solar surface below it is merely thousands of degrees hot.
Magnetic loop on the Sun
A solar flare in September 2005, recorded by the TRACE spacecraft, sends a magnetized loop of superheated gas arching high into the Sun's atmosphere.
Stanford-Lockheed Institute for Space Research
They thought they had the answer when, in 1942, Swedish physicist Hannes Alfvén predicted the existence of waves that could pump energy into the corona as they propagated upward from the photosphere. But no one had been able to observe these Alfvén waves because instrument technology wasn't up to snuff yet.
Now a team headed by Steven Tomcyzk of NCAR's High Altitude Observatory has managed to record and measure the elusive waves. The researchers (including a high-school science teacher from Massachusetts) used a new instrument that rapidly maps brightness and polarization over a large swath of corona in near-infrared light. They made the observations two years ago; it's taken them this long to puzzle it all out.
As Tomcyzk's team reports in the August 31st issue of Science, the waves propagate upward into the corona along magnetic field lines at speeds of roughly 1,000 miles per second, about 10 times faster than the speed of sound there. (That's not the velocity of the superheated gas but rather of the waves themselves — think of the fast-moving ripple created when you flick the end of a taut rope.)
The bad news is that the Alfvén waves aren't nearly powerful enough to fuel the corona's incredible heat. Something at least 10,000 times more energetic is needed. The good news, however, is that scientists now have a powerful new technique to probe the solar corona. It turns out that the waves' propagation speed depends directly on the strength of the magnetic field around them. So the new instrument's images, when combined with other measurements of solar vibrations (helioseismology), can be used to estimate the intensity and orientation of the coronal magnetic field.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
August 28th Lunar Eclipse
So I hope you all saw the beautiful eclipse this week. It was just amazing. Unfortunately I found out too late that the Chabot Space and Science center was having this massive blow out, all-night long party with telescope viewing for it. Oh well, next time! However I did instead stay up and played WoW until about 1:30am, got into bed and watched a movie and then got back up at 2:30am to get my dad up, who wanted to see it as well. My dad was already up, apparently he's up every night from 2-3:30am. Gees! Well, I am too lots of times I suppose. So we got up and couldn't see the moon from the deck so we went out into the courtyard to look and found the moon perfectly. It was amazing seeing it almost covered. We turned off the bright night light that is on at night and my dad got his binoculars. It was just amazing, so beautiful and red/orange. Amazing images in the binoculars as it was quickly covered up for the full eclipse. So I read that early explorers who orginally thought the earth was flat, quickly realized from watching total lunar eclipses, that the earth was in fact, round. Also, another amazing thing about this months' eclipse is that the moon is supposed to be passing through some kind of solar meteor shower during the entire timeframe and news reported that those with telescopes out, might be able to see lunar meteor impacts! I still havne't been able to find data or pics on that as of yet, but will post here if I do.
This is a lunar eclipse computer calculator, where you can find info on the eclipses and info on upcoming ones as well.
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/LunarEclipse.html
This was taken in California:
And this is a really cool artistic photo collage that someone did:
This is a lunar eclipse computer calculator, where you can find info on the eclipses and info on upcoming ones as well.
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/LunarEclipse.html
This was taken in California:
And this is a really cool artistic photo collage that someone did:
Monday, August 27, 2007
Pirate Bay doing a great job of pissing off the MPAA!
How three Swedish geeks became Hollywood's Number One enemy
* Bobbie Johnson, technology correspondent
* Guardian Unlimited
* Saturday August 25 2007
Pirates of the Caribbean
Hollywood's image of piracy has been altered by the internet
Operating under the sign of a Jolly Roger, The Pirate Bay website hopes to evoke a buccaneer spirit: swashbuckling swordsmen, or perhaps the pirate radio stations of the 1960s. But as the internet's number one destination for illegal downloads, it has raised the hackles of the entertainment industry and elevated its founders to the top of Hollywood's most wanted list.
With more than two million visitors every day, The Pirate Bay has become one of the sharpest thorns in the side of the media business. Its controversial success has caused havoc in the music, TV and film industries.
Current top downloads include The Bourne Ultimatum, Die Hard 4.0 and Knocked Up — all showing in British cinemas, but available to watch on a computer screen for those willing to take the risk.
The three-year campaign to bring down the website is almost an epic of Hollywood proportions, sprinkled with high-flying lawyers and accusations of political extremism. And yet, so far, the chase has failed to bring the pirates down.
Despite their high profile, however, the men behind The Pirate Bay are not part of an organised crime syndicate. Instead, they are an unlikely trio of Swedish computer geeks who began their war with the media from a small room in Stockholm.
The group, who spoke exclusively to the Guardian, live like students in the suburbs of Sweden's major cities. They wake late and work into the night. The closest thing they have to an official headquarters is a desk on the suburban outskirts of Malmo — and that is simply because it has a working fax machine.
But as the most hated men in Hollywood, they said they have become used to the attention. "We get legal threats every day, or we used to," said Peter Sunde, 28, one of the site's main workers. "But we don't have a problem with them — we're just a search engine."
Fredrik Neij, a 29-year-old IT consultant, has a more prosaic view: "It's nice to be noticed," he smiled.
Chief among those angered by The Pirate Bay's popularity is the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), which represents the US film studios. It is waging war against the site, which it claims is costing billions in lost sales.
John Malcolm, executive vice-president of the MPAA, has railed against the trio, accusing them of cashing in on illegal activity. "The bottom line is that the operators of The Pirate Bay, and others like them, are criminals who profit handsomely by facilitating the distribution of millions of copyrighted creative works," he said.
Mr Sunde insists the site does not profit its founders, and money raised from advertising is used to cover expenses. Instead, he says, the team make their money from a variety of side projects and day jobs.
Filesharing and illegal downloading has been a big issue for media companies since the late 1990s. But while pioneering services such as Napster and Kazaa were closed down by the courts, the campaign against The Pirate Bay has failed to make a breakthrough.
The crux of the defence is that The Pirate Bay operates like any internet search engine: it points to downloads, rather than hosting any illegal content itself. Under Swedish law this has so far made it immune to prosecution.
"I don't like the word untouchable, but we feel pretty safe," said Mr Sunde. He thinks that European enmity towards the Bush administration has bolstered support. "The US government is losing popularity every day in Europe, and people don't want to see us give in to them."
Their apparent invulnerability to prosecution has made them heroes of the internet piracy movement, but not everybody feels the same way.
"I certainly don't see them as romantic pirates: it's out and out theft," says John Kennedy, chief executive of the international music industry body IFPI. "It's pure, ruthless greed — or total naivety."
But the group's supporters around the world say they are vexed with what they see as the "corruption" of the media industry.
"This is already happening — you cannot stop it," says Magnus Eriksson of Piratbyran, the Swedish thinktank which helped start the website in 2003. "But the thing is that the people who download the most are also the ones who spend the most on buying media. Media companies already know that they have to change."
The pirates suspect the campaign against them is gathering pace. Last year police raided the site and held Gottfried Svartholm, the third member of the group, for questioning. No charges resulted, but the site was offline for two days.
Lately critics have focused on potential political links, including one German failed attempt to link the organisation with far-right extremists.
More recently Swedish police said they were considering blocking the website because of a tip-off that some pages linked to images of child abuse. This, says Mr Sunde, was just an attempt to smear The Pirate Bay's reputation. "There were three files in question, but it turned out that none of them contained child porn," he said.
The group is adamant it is just a search engine, but Mr Kennedy rejects any analogy with traditional internet businesses. "When I sit down with Google they are prepared to talk about copyright issues," he says. "If I thought The Pirate Bay guys were doing something really new and clever, then we'd look at it — but there's no evidence of that."
Mr Sunde remains unmoved. He says piracy is a way of life on the internet. "I started off copying disks on my computer when I was eight or nine," he said. "You should never tell people where they can't go or what they can't do."
* Bobbie Johnson, technology correspondent
* Guardian Unlimited
* Saturday August 25 2007
Pirates of the Caribbean
Hollywood's image of piracy has been altered by the internet
Operating under the sign of a Jolly Roger, The Pirate Bay website hopes to evoke a buccaneer spirit: swashbuckling swordsmen, or perhaps the pirate radio stations of the 1960s. But as the internet's number one destination for illegal downloads, it has raised the hackles of the entertainment industry and elevated its founders to the top of Hollywood's most wanted list.
With more than two million visitors every day, The Pirate Bay has become one of the sharpest thorns in the side of the media business. Its controversial success has caused havoc in the music, TV and film industries.
Current top downloads include The Bourne Ultimatum, Die Hard 4.0 and Knocked Up — all showing in British cinemas, but available to watch on a computer screen for those willing to take the risk.
The three-year campaign to bring down the website is almost an epic of Hollywood proportions, sprinkled with high-flying lawyers and accusations of political extremism. And yet, so far, the chase has failed to bring the pirates down.
Despite their high profile, however, the men behind The Pirate Bay are not part of an organised crime syndicate. Instead, they are an unlikely trio of Swedish computer geeks who began their war with the media from a small room in Stockholm.
The group, who spoke exclusively to the Guardian, live like students in the suburbs of Sweden's major cities. They wake late and work into the night. The closest thing they have to an official headquarters is a desk on the suburban outskirts of Malmo — and that is simply because it has a working fax machine.
But as the most hated men in Hollywood, they said they have become used to the attention. "We get legal threats every day, or we used to," said Peter Sunde, 28, one of the site's main workers. "But we don't have a problem with them — we're just a search engine."
Fredrik Neij, a 29-year-old IT consultant, has a more prosaic view: "It's nice to be noticed," he smiled.
Chief among those angered by The Pirate Bay's popularity is the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), which represents the US film studios. It is waging war against the site, which it claims is costing billions in lost sales.
John Malcolm, executive vice-president of the MPAA, has railed against the trio, accusing them of cashing in on illegal activity. "The bottom line is that the operators of The Pirate Bay, and others like them, are criminals who profit handsomely by facilitating the distribution of millions of copyrighted creative works," he said.
Mr Sunde insists the site does not profit its founders, and money raised from advertising is used to cover expenses. Instead, he says, the team make their money from a variety of side projects and day jobs.
Filesharing and illegal downloading has been a big issue for media companies since the late 1990s. But while pioneering services such as Napster and Kazaa were closed down by the courts, the campaign against The Pirate Bay has failed to make a breakthrough.
The crux of the defence is that The Pirate Bay operates like any internet search engine: it points to downloads, rather than hosting any illegal content itself. Under Swedish law this has so far made it immune to prosecution.
"I don't like the word untouchable, but we feel pretty safe," said Mr Sunde. He thinks that European enmity towards the Bush administration has bolstered support. "The US government is losing popularity every day in Europe, and people don't want to see us give in to them."
Their apparent invulnerability to prosecution has made them heroes of the internet piracy movement, but not everybody feels the same way.
"I certainly don't see them as romantic pirates: it's out and out theft," says John Kennedy, chief executive of the international music industry body IFPI. "It's pure, ruthless greed — or total naivety."
But the group's supporters around the world say they are vexed with what they see as the "corruption" of the media industry.
"This is already happening — you cannot stop it," says Magnus Eriksson of Piratbyran, the Swedish thinktank which helped start the website in 2003. "But the thing is that the people who download the most are also the ones who spend the most on buying media. Media companies already know that they have to change."
The pirates suspect the campaign against them is gathering pace. Last year police raided the site and held Gottfried Svartholm, the third member of the group, for questioning. No charges resulted, but the site was offline for two days.
Lately critics have focused on potential political links, including one German failed attempt to link the organisation with far-right extremists.
More recently Swedish police said they were considering blocking the website because of a tip-off that some pages linked to images of child abuse. This, says Mr Sunde, was just an attempt to smear The Pirate Bay's reputation. "There were three files in question, but it turned out that none of them contained child porn," he said.
The group is adamant it is just a search engine, but Mr Kennedy rejects any analogy with traditional internet businesses. "When I sit down with Google they are prepared to talk about copyright issues," he says. "If I thought The Pirate Bay guys were doing something really new and clever, then we'd look at it — but there's no evidence of that."
Mr Sunde remains unmoved. He says piracy is a way of life on the internet. "I started off copying disks on my computer when I was eight or nine," he said. "You should never tell people where they can't go or what they can't do."
Sunday, August 26, 2007
**Lunar eclipse this week!!**
Mon Aug 27 - Tue Aug 28
Total Lunar Eclipse
Website
Schedule
Location Date and Time
high in the post-midnight sky
N/A
San Francisco, CA N/A
district: San Francisco
Mon Aug 27 (on the 28th at 2:52am (Good Night!))
Tue Aug 28 (2:52am (Good Morning!))
Description
"Close your eyes, breathe deeply, let your mind wander to a distant seashore: It's late in the day, and the western sun is sinking into the glittering waves. At your feet, damp sand reflects the twilight, while overhead, the deep blue sky fades into a cloudy mélange of sunset copper and gold, so vivid it almost takes your breath away.
A breeze touches the back of your neck, and you turn to see a pale full Moon rising into the night. Hmmm. The Moon could use a dash more color. You reach out, grab a handful of sunset, and drape the Moon with phantasmic light. Much better.
Too bad it's only a dream...
Early Tuesday morning, August 28th, the dream will come true. There's going to be a colorful lunar eclipse visible from five continents including most of North America"
- http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2007/03aug_dreamyeclipse.htm
Total Lunar Eclipse
Website
Schedule
Location Date and Time
high in the post-midnight sky
N/A
San Francisco, CA N/A
district: San Francisco
Mon Aug 27 (on the 28th at 2:52am (Good Night!))
Tue Aug 28 (2:52am (Good Morning!))
Description
"Close your eyes, breathe deeply, let your mind wander to a distant seashore: It's late in the day, and the western sun is sinking into the glittering waves. At your feet, damp sand reflects the twilight, while overhead, the deep blue sky fades into a cloudy mélange of sunset copper and gold, so vivid it almost takes your breath away.
A breeze touches the back of your neck, and you turn to see a pale full Moon rising into the night. Hmmm. The Moon could use a dash more color. You reach out, grab a handful of sunset, and drape the Moon with phantasmic light. Much better.
Too bad it's only a dream...
Early Tuesday morning, August 28th, the dream will come true. There's going to be a colorful lunar eclipse visible from five continents including most of North America"
- http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2007/03aug_dreamyeclipse.htm
New age art!!
This I definetly have to go see!!
Dark Matters: Artists See The Impossible
Through a Glass, Very Darkly
By Jesse Nathan (Aug 24, 2007)
* Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA)
701 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94103 Map
415-978-2700
New technology always generates new art forms, mediums, and modes of exhibition. The rapid digitization of our globe -- with its accompanying technologies of hyper-communication, intimate surveillance and documentation -- stands as no exception. “Dark Matters” at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts addresses the information-technology drenched society we reside in head-on, uniting a range of artists, each one using a dramatically different medium to reveal the invisible and the shrouded.
Though the artwork is not intended, exclusively anyway, to leave us with a sinking, paranoid feeling, much of it does -- and beautifully so. There are the blurry-by-necessity photographs, for instance, of camera-wielding, self-described “cyberspace researcher” Trevor Paglen that target the governmental use of secrecy we’ve become accustomed to if not before then certainly during the eight year reign of Bush II and his Junta.
Taken 18-20 miles out from Tonopah Test Range (a classified U.S. military base in Nevada) because civilians are prohibited from getting any closer, Paglen’s hefty photographs shimmer before our eyes, huge, stark reminders of how little we’re allowed to see of the inner-workings of our own government and military. They are, reads the description on the wall beside the photographs “minimalist statements about what we can know” –- images of faint, almost unseeable things that “threaten to disappear from sight.”
Paglen’s service to the public and it’s right to know continues with a wall-to-wall list of code names used by the U.S. for secret operations from 2001-2007. Etched into the white walls glare hundreds of bizarre, double-speak-laden handles like Black Demon, Bent Pipe, Eastern Reasoner, Hairy Buffalo, Salty Script, and Wiley, monikers for who-knows-what. Paglen’s bone-chilling installation prods us to wonder: what else will we find out (maybe) long after the fact? What else is Big Brother up to?
Those questions, however, punch at us in precisely the way these artists want them to -- thrusting us in front of the sort of “dark matter” we rarely come face-to-face with, let alone to terms with. The curator’s exhibit statement, for example, decries a “culture of secrecy” at all levels of government, as well as “a concern that we are losing touch with reality [as] the digitization of most content...produces a situation where information loses a sense of relative importance.” Surrounded by “digital white noise,” reads the statement, we must turn to art – and this exhibit specifically -- to “reveal the hidden and obscured.”
Paglen’s work only marks the beginning of this exhibit’s disarming array of hair-raising artwork. Tucked in corners and hallways around the gallery, for instance, wait black phones on black tables. The brainchild of artist Kambui Olujmi these pieces simulate eavesdropping. Each phone bears a sign inviting a person to pick it up. Though the conversations are in (sometimes obscure) foreign languages, they are each discussions of traumatic events, filled with emotional hooks that allow us to know –- even across languages –- that we are peeping in on something painful and private. Again, our spines tingle as we come face-to-face -– or ear-to-ear, as it were -- with the technologies and practices the information-age has unleashed.
The exhibit continues with music, video, and other multimedia. The pieces touch on only some of the dark matters swirling just beneath our lives, exposed here for brief, chilling moments in this show. Installed and exhibited with meticulous attention to space and light and color, the exhibit grabs and shakes gorgeously, and leaves us looking over our shoulders for hours.
Dark Matters: Artists See The Impossible
at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
$7 regular/$5 seniors, students & teachers
FREE for YBCA Members
Dark Matters: Artists See The Impossible
Through a Glass, Very Darkly
By Jesse Nathan (Aug 24, 2007)
* Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA)
701 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94103 Map
415-978-2700
New technology always generates new art forms, mediums, and modes of exhibition. The rapid digitization of our globe -- with its accompanying technologies of hyper-communication, intimate surveillance and documentation -- stands as no exception. “Dark Matters” at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts addresses the information-technology drenched society we reside in head-on, uniting a range of artists, each one using a dramatically different medium to reveal the invisible and the shrouded.
Though the artwork is not intended, exclusively anyway, to leave us with a sinking, paranoid feeling, much of it does -- and beautifully so. There are the blurry-by-necessity photographs, for instance, of camera-wielding, self-described “cyberspace researcher” Trevor Paglen that target the governmental use of secrecy we’ve become accustomed to if not before then certainly during the eight year reign of Bush II and his Junta.
Taken 18-20 miles out from Tonopah Test Range (a classified U.S. military base in Nevada) because civilians are prohibited from getting any closer, Paglen’s hefty photographs shimmer before our eyes, huge, stark reminders of how little we’re allowed to see of the inner-workings of our own government and military. They are, reads the description on the wall beside the photographs “minimalist statements about what we can know” –- images of faint, almost unseeable things that “threaten to disappear from sight.”
Paglen’s service to the public and it’s right to know continues with a wall-to-wall list of code names used by the U.S. for secret operations from 2001-2007. Etched into the white walls glare hundreds of bizarre, double-speak-laden handles like Black Demon, Bent Pipe, Eastern Reasoner, Hairy Buffalo, Salty Script, and Wiley, monikers for who-knows-what. Paglen’s bone-chilling installation prods us to wonder: what else will we find out (maybe) long after the fact? What else is Big Brother up to?
Those questions, however, punch at us in precisely the way these artists want them to -- thrusting us in front of the sort of “dark matter” we rarely come face-to-face with, let alone to terms with. The curator’s exhibit statement, for example, decries a “culture of secrecy” at all levels of government, as well as “a concern that we are losing touch with reality [as] the digitization of most content...produces a situation where information loses a sense of relative importance.” Surrounded by “digital white noise,” reads the statement, we must turn to art – and this exhibit specifically -- to “reveal the hidden and obscured.”
Paglen’s work only marks the beginning of this exhibit’s disarming array of hair-raising artwork. Tucked in corners and hallways around the gallery, for instance, wait black phones on black tables. The brainchild of artist Kambui Olujmi these pieces simulate eavesdropping. Each phone bears a sign inviting a person to pick it up. Though the conversations are in (sometimes obscure) foreign languages, they are each discussions of traumatic events, filled with emotional hooks that allow us to know –- even across languages –- that we are peeping in on something painful and private. Again, our spines tingle as we come face-to-face -– or ear-to-ear, as it were -- with the technologies and practices the information-age has unleashed.
The exhibit continues with music, video, and other multimedia. The pieces touch on only some of the dark matters swirling just beneath our lives, exposed here for brief, chilling moments in this show. Installed and exhibited with meticulous attention to space and light and color, the exhibit grabs and shakes gorgeously, and leaves us looking over our shoulders for hours.
Dark Matters: Artists See The Impossible
at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
$7 regular/$5 seniors, students & teachers
FREE for YBCA Members
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