At a maximum of 96 feet tall, the turbines can be placed in industrial areas where taller propeller turbines are not allowed. The speed of the blades is very low, making them less noisy and less dangerous to birds, officials said. In fact, they said no dead or injured birds have ever been found at the sites of their test models west of Cheyenne.

Cool. And they've got ones rated to produce a megawatt? Sounds like they're really onto something.

Cheyenne firm's wind turbines get makeover

Biggest hurricane season ever. Three cat5 storms in a single year when there has never been ever a 4 and 5 in the same year. 200 cities with new record summer highs. The warmest fall on record.

Now, maybe some of that is improved storm tracking technology, but this is the kind of thing global warming predicts.

Tropical Storm ALPHA

Lehigh's biology department sought to distance itself from Behe in August, posting a statement on its Web site that says the faculty "are unequivocal in their support of evolutionary theory." He earned tenure at Lehigh before becoming a proponent, which lets him express his views without the threat of losing his job.

Wow, they picked a professor that the rest of the college has basically disowned. That's a ringing endorsement!

Prof Speaks at 'Intelligent Design' Trial

As of September 21, the Arctic sea ice area had dropped to 2.05 million square miles (5.31 million square km), the report said.

From 1978 to 2000, the sea ice area averaged 2.70 million square miles (7 million square km), the report said. It noted the melting trend had shrunk Inuit hunting grounds and endangered polar bears, seals and other wildlife.

Would someone opposed to the idea of global warming like to explain this without it being real?

CNN.com - Report: Ice-free Arctic summers possible by 2100 - Sep 28, 2005

"All the Dover school board did was allow students to get a glimpse of a controversy that is really boiling over in the scientific community," Thompson said.

The controversy is how anyone could be stupid enough to but into the idea that ID is science in any way shape or form. But I guess teaching ID in school is exactly how that happens.

'Intelligent Design' Court Battle Begins - Yahoo! News

Education Board Chairman Steve Abrams, a conservative Republican who has supported the proposed standards, said he was unmoved by the scientists' plea, which became public Thursday.

"I don't think anything should be taught as dogma," Abrams told the Lawrence Journal-World.

Oh! That explains it! He wants religious dogma taught as science!

Nobel Laureates Frown on Science Standards - Yahoo! News

It appears that there are enormous differences of opinion as to the probability of a failure with loss of vehicle and of human life. The estimates range from roughly 1 in 100 to 1 in 100,000. The higher figures come from the working engineers, and the very low figures from management. What are the causes and consequences of this lack of agreement? Since 1 part in 100,000 would imply that one could put a Shuttle up each day for 300 years expecting to lose only one, we could properly ask "What is the cause of management's fantastic faith in the machinery?"

Linked from Dagmar's 6 dumbest ideas in computer security.

[Richard Feynman was one of the smartest guys this country has ever seen, and in some ways one of the luckiest as well. If the guys at NASA didn't read this before he died, then they probably shouldn't be at NASA]

Personal observations on

Scotland aims to generate 10 percent of its electricity from tidal and wave power which would be equivalent to replacing a huge fossil fueled power station, the Scottish government said this week.

Cool.

Scotland set to harness tidal power

In a recent paper [1] and letter [2], Rusty Schweickart made some recommendations on dealing with the threat of a possible impact in 2036, and he called on further analysis to be done. This is my input to that analysis. Comments are welcome.

The most important thing that I propose is that deflection by the impact of a spacecraft is practical in this case. Such a mission could be done fairly quickly at a reasonable cost.

The asteroid under discussion, with the provisional designation 2004 MN4, has now been assigned the number 99942 and the name Apophis. (Apophis was the Greek name of the Egyptian god Apep, "the destroyer.") Therefore, I use this name below.

Something fun to do with this, enter the data at http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/ (previously linked here) and it'll give you an idea of what would happen if it does hit. It's pretty interesting.

WHAT SHOULD BE DONE ABOUT ASTEROID APOPHIS (2004 MN4)?

I love the USGS. This is the 5.6 outside Butte Montana this morning.

BUT_ELN_MB.2005072600.gif (GIF Image, 850x1390 pixels)