Flametoad

Oh great! As if solar flares weren’t enough, apparently scientists have discovered “space quakes“.

Every day we learn something new about how this planet works. It’s a good thing those discoveries lead to new technological breakthroughs.

Like practically everyone else in the civilized world, I have a number of cherished photos from “pre-digital” days. I’ve long wanted to scan them in to share and preserve, but my cheap nature has kept me from dropping >$100 on a new scanner that I would use infrequently. However, this week I solved that problem when I plunked down my hard-earned $25 on a used scanner I found on Craig’s List. This post is a test of a plugin that pulls images from my Flikr account to display here. I’ve had the plugin for a long time, but I haven’t used it in ages. This is a random assortment of photos I pulled from an old album to test on my scanner. The one thing I don’t like about this plugin is that it doesn’t pull the captions for the photos. Some of these really need context. The plugin author claims it’ll be coming in a future release.

Look for a series of photoblog posts covering a trip to Europe in 1990. It’ll be legendary! Or something.

That’s the random question of the day.

After Leia was captured at the beginning of New Hope and brought before Vader, she said “Vader. I should have recognized your foul stench as soon as I was brought on board.” (Really, Lucas? You’ve got to give props to Carrie Fisher for delivering that line with a straight face.)

My assumption was that she was just being insulting. However, in light of seeing how badly Anakin was burned in episode III, it struck me out of the blue today that maybe  Vader really does have a distinctive odor. That would have been a really interesting aspect of the character. It puts a whole new spin on the Robot Chicken parody though.

“Oh, wait, you were flying around for two weeks trying to get a signal! Gosh, you must smell like feet wrapped in burnt bacon!”

Do you use Google Buzz? I’m a die-hard Google Reader user, and I click the “share” button every time I hit a post that I think other people would enjoy. Those entries appear here on Flametoad.com to the right in the “Items of Interest” box, but they also appear in my Google Buzz stream if you follow me there. Buzz seems to have potential, but I haven’t hit critical mass with enough people I follow or people who follow me to get particularly serious about it. If you’re a Buzz user, you can follow me by adding preston.dubose. I’ll likely reciprocate.

Magnetic Field around a Sunspot. Image credit Hinode JAXA/NASA

I’ve had a long-standing interest in solar power, the effect of solar cycles on our weather, and the like. I suppose that’s why I’m fascinated by the Carrington Flare– an 1859 solar flare so strong that the magnetic effects on earth caused telegraph wires to spark and catch fire.  It really sparks the imagination. What would a flare of that magnitude do to our wired world today? Forget climate change– how could society react if the majority (or even merely half) of electronic equipment around the world simultaneously fried? It revives all those Y2K fears all over again, except we don’t know when the hammer will fall and we’re not sure how much we can protect. Imagine banking computers going down, hard drives frying, power transformers blowing out (such as the one pictured in the linked article), and cellular satellites and towers failing. Okay, I admit it. My fascination has less to do with science than an imaginary scenario in which the technological glue holding modern society together comes unstuck. There’s a “World War Z” story in there, sans zombies.

At any rate, it is worth noting that we appear to be emerging from a deep solar minimum (period of low sunspot activity). That means we’ll see roughly 11 years of growing sunspot activity, which means growing flare activity, which means increased magnetic fluctuation. Whether we’re due for a new Carrington-level event is a matter of conjecture, but it makes for nice drama. Maybe the Mayans were onto something with this whole calendar-ending thing. Anyone want to place bets? Electronic payment not accepted.