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Pastimes : THE FREE SPEECH THREAD -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (487)	2/24/2013 12:25:42 PM
From: average joe	Respond to of 515

Are you in danger of spontaneously combusting? The risk factors according to a 1799 physician Modern scientists are still investigating what might be behind reports of alleged spontaneous human combustion, but by the end of the 18th century, reports of humans suddenly going up in flames were pervasive enough that physicians compiled supposed risk factors for the phenomenon. History magazine Lapham's Quarterly offers this list of "risk factors" collected by physician Pierre Lair in 1799: 1. Victims were older, usually over 60. 2. Victims were overweight. 3. Victims led inactive lives. 4. Victims were alcoholics. 5. Women were more prone to spontaneously combust than men. 6. At the scene there was often an external flame, such as a candle or fireplace. 7. Combustion was extremely rapid. 8. The flames were difficult to extinguish. 9. The flames produced a strong empyreumatic odor. 10. The surrounding room was coated with a thick, yellow, greasy film. 11. The first usually consumed the trunk of the body, but left the head and extremities intact. 12. Accidents occurred during fair weather, and more often in winter than in summer. The factor of alcoholism was particularly significant, especially for members of the Temperance movement. In the 18th century, there were anecdotal reports of women who allegedly died as a result of spontaneous combustion who were known to be heavy drinkers, and in the 19th century, it wasn't uncommon to fear that the perennially soused might meet a fiery end. Prohibition advocates even listed spontaneous human combustion as one of the potential evils of alcohol. The Lapham's Quarterly article has a fascinating account of some of the 18th century reports of spontaneous human combustion as well as more details on the relationship between these reports and the Temperance movement. It's also rather fascinating to compare this list to more recent attempts to determine whether the phenomenon is real or possible. One recent study suggested that ketosis might make the human body more flammable—and noted that alcoholism is a condition that can produce ketosis. But I can't help but wonder whether burning the body of someone who fit the accepted risk factors for spontaneous combustion might not have been a terrible way to cover up a murder. Photo credit: Yuganov Konstantin/ Shutterstock. A Fire in the Belly [Lapham's Quarterly] io9.com

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (487)	2/28/2013 4:03:12 PM
From: average joe	Respond to of 515

The American Government's Advice for Yeti Hunters, 1959 By Rebecca Onion Posted Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2013, at 1:27 PM This Foreign Service memo treats a science-fictional subject—the existence of the Yeti, or the Abominable Snowman—with utmost bureaucratic seriousness. Titled “Regulations Governing Mountain Climbing Expeditions in Nepal—Relating to Yeti,” it was issued from the American Embassy in Kathmandu on November 30, 1959. The memo came at the end of a decade of strenuous Yeti-hunting. This Outside Magazine timeline of Yeti hunts tells the story in compact form. In 1953, Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay climbed Everest, and reported seeing large tracks. In 1954, the Daily Mail (UK) funded a sixteen-week “Snowman Expedition” to Everest to look for clues. (The newspaper is still on the case today.) And in the late 1950s, American oil millionaire and cryptozoology enthusiast Tom Slick—whose colorful life, as Badass Digest points out, should definitely be made into a movie—bankrolled a number of Himalayan expeditions in search of the creature. Did the U.S. government believe in the Yeti, as some cryptozoologists took the memo to mean? The memo stipulated three rules: Yeti hunters must pay the Nepalese government for a permit; hunters can photograph, but not kill, any Yeti that surfaces, and must turn any photographs or captured Yeti over to Nepali officials; and new findings need to be filtered through Nepalese channels before going public. These regulations were actually first issued by the government of Nepal in 1957. The U.S. established diplomatic relations with Nepal in 1947, and the embassy had just opened in 1959, when the memo was written. The Yeti presence in a State Department document doesn’t prove that the U.S. believed in the Snowmen. Rather, by reprinting the Nepalese government’s regulations, the embassy could show Nepal that the U.S. respected its sovereignty, even in the matter of hypothetical hairy beasts. Thanks to Mark Murphy of the National Archives. "Regulations Governing Mountain Climbing Expeditions in Nepal - Relating to Yeti"; UD-WW, 1454, , Box 252, Accession #64-9-0814, folder 5.1 Political Situation - General, File ended Dec 31, 1959; Records of the Agency for International Development; Record Group 286; National Archives.

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (487)	3/2/2013 2:46:24 PM
From: average joe	Respond to of 515

NASA: “We’ve discovered a previously unknown surprise circling Earth” Robert T. Gonzalez This is wild. NASA's recently deployed Van Allen probes — a pair of robotic spacecraft launched just last August to investigate Earth's eponymous pair of radiation belts — are already turning out some very unexpected findings. Chief among them: an ephemeral third ring of radiation, previously unknown to science, surrounding our planet. NASA says the discovery was a lucky one. Just three days after the Van Allen probes launched, a team of researchers led by planetary scientist Daniel Baker made an unusual last-minute request that their Relativistic Electron Proton Telescope (REPT) be turned on earlier than scheduled, in hopes that their observations would overlap with those of another mission called SAMPEX. What happened next was entirely unexpected. Almost immediately, the REPT instrument caught sight of a number of additional high energy particles trapped in the two previously established Allen Belts — but over the next several days, those particles began to settle into a never-before-seen configuration: a third, high-energy band embedded in the outer Van Allen belt, about 11,900 to 13,900 miles above Earth's surface. "We started wondering if there was something wrong with our instruments," said Shri Kanekal, deputy mission scientist for the Van Allen Probes and coauthor on the paper describing the results, published in this week's issue of Science. "We checked everything, but there was nothing wrong with them. The third belt persisted beautifully, day after day, week after week, for four weeks." But on October 1, the third belt vanished, apparently disbanded and "virtually annihilated" (to quote the researchers) by a powerful interplanetary shock wave of solar wind. The timing of the ring's formation suggests that a massive solar eruption on August 31st, 2012 (immortalized by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, which captured the picture seen above — click here for hi-res) may have helped trigger its formation. This is our absolute favorite variety of scientific discovery — one that forces us to rethink something we thought understood. As the video below points out, the Earth's Van Allen belts were, in many respects, the first discovery of the Space Age. To learn something so unexpected about them more than fifty years after they were first discovered is a humbling and exhilarating thing. Shown below are two animations of the newly discovered three-ring structure, courtesy of NASA's Goddard Multimedia Team: [iframe id=viddler-5a57e5df height=402 src="//www.viddler.com/embed/5a57e5df/?f=1&autoplay=0&player=full&secret=86024388&loop=0&nologo=0&hd=0" frameBorder=0 width=640 name=viddler-5a57e5df mozallowfullscreen="true" webkitallowfullscreen="true"][/iframe] Via NASA: This visualization, created using actual data from the Relativistic Electron-Proton Telescopes (REPT) on NASA's Van Allen Probes, clearly shows the emergence of new third belt and second slot regions. The new belt is seen as the middle orange and red arc of the three seen on each side of the Earth. [iframe id=viddler-b0d6a4b4 height=402 src="//www.viddler.com/embed/b0d6a4b4/?f=1&autoplay=0&player=full&secret=60125414&loop=0&nologo=0&hd=0" frameBorder=0 width=640 name=viddler-b0d6a4b4 mozallowfullscreen="true" webkitallowfullscreen="true"][/iframe] NASA: A narrated short video featuring visualizations of the Van Allen Belt's three ring structure. Baker's team's findings are published in this week's issue of Science. All images and video via NASA io9.com

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (487)	3/26/2013 5:31:14 AM
From: average joe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 515

Man dies swinging from Corona Arch A 22-year-old man was killed over the weekend when he slammed into the base of a massive sandstone arch in eastern Utah while trying to swing through the rock formation on a rope, police said on Monday. Kyle Lee Stocking apparently miscalculated the length of rope he used to swing from the 140-foot Corona Arch near Moab and suffered fatal injuries when he struck the rock on Sunday afternoon, the Grand County Sheriff’s Office said in a written statement. Stocking, of West Jordan, Utah, had hiked to the top of the red sandstone arch with five friends to rig a rope swing, the sheriff’s office said. His body was recovered by search and rescue teams. The Salt Lake Tribune newspaper reported that Stocking and his friends might have been copying a stunt popularized by videos posted of the activity on YouTube. In January, state officials barred outfitters from taking paying clients to the arch over concerns about rope swings, the newspaper reported. Here are some videos posted on YouTube of others rope-swinging on the Corona Arch: cnews.canoe.ca