1/12 defcon: wired #riot, cyberID & more

terror groups recruiting with social media*

flashback satire?: cia 'facebook' cuts agency's costs*
obama to hand cyberID to commerce dept.*
tiny hard drive stores one bit of data with just 12 atoms*
nytimes spams entire email list, tries coverup, then apologizes*
how santorum is making his 'google problem' worse*
audio satire: mischievous raccoon wreaks havoc on international space station*

activist moms push for change in land of rising radioactivity

Knowing the Japanese government has been unreliable and less than forthright, activist moms take to networking to push for change, according to AP article. Mizuho Nakayama, among a small group of activists, "...a 41-year-old mother joined a parents group — one of dozens that have sprung up since the crisis — that petitioned local officials in June to test lunches at schools and day care centers for radiation and avoid using products from around the troubled nuclear plant." Nakayama has a Geiger counter with her at all times!

Nakayama and other activists have a surprising obstacle, the country's affluence! The article spells out dilemma:

"Still, the growing dissatisfaction may not be enough to bring about fundamental change. Japan's affluence is an obstacle. Most people live comfortably and are reluctant to make too big a fuss, even if they're unhappy with the political leadership. Culturally, it's considered better to adjust to one's surroundings than to try to change them, said Ken Matsuda, a sociologist at Kansai Gaidai University in Osaka."

Is it a case of "going along to get along"? Or, are people so complacent creature comfort in the moment takes precedence over truly safe environment? It seems a diabolical wedge?

Japan failed to handle Fukushima with decisiveness the Soviet Union handled Chernobyl! It's conceded, Fukushima presents a more difficult problem, but efforts to date seem highly questionable? Fukushima will be far more deadly than Hiroshima and Nagaski. Fukushima continues to fission and spew radioactivity into immediate environment and across the globe. Radioactivity is bio-accumulative, it means shortened lives. Hats off go to Mizuho Nakayama, and the hope, she is successful!

covert US-China space wars: 2012 and beyond

Readers must challenge imaginations to resist media attempts to set terms of discussion! BBC caused a recent flap with article, "X-37B spaceplane 'spying on China'," observing X-37B and Tiangong 1 are in very similar orbits! There is, also, tantalizing mystery what remains hidden behind closed payload doors, the BBC article suggests sensor suites to be deployed in a new space-to-space surveillance game!  The response by many sources like Space on MSNBC.com offered similar arguments, "...the X-37B and Tiangong 1 have broadly similar orbits. Both are currently about 180 miles above our planet, with an inclination of roughly 43 degrees with respect to the equator (meaning their orbits range from 43 degrees south latitude to 43 degrees north latitude."

"However, the orbits of the X-37B and Tiangong 1 differ greatly — by about 100 degrees — in a parameter called right ascension, which describes where a craft crosses the equator, Weeden said. So the two satellites actually take disparate paths around the globe, with their orbits intersecting just twice per circuit." The present writer suspects twice per circuit sufficient, while maintaining plausible deniability. How many circuits are completed in just a day?

This analysis may be wrong-headed and inaccurate. Yet, it should be assumed, Pentagon will follow credo of seeking upper hand in any possible war theater! Readers should recall objections raised by Russia and India in 2010, when X-37B first launched! The rumor floated of a spy probe, which could be deployed from payload doors, to attack and disable orbiting satellites! How about just a good old surveillance bug in a much larger room called Space? Would a spy probe even need to attach to its target, but rather shadow it from a safe but still relatively close distance?

The defensive response to BBC article sends up red flag this is a sensitive area of contention! Readers must keep their minds open to thinking outside the box! What will be hidden behind payload doors of X-37C slated for 2014? X-37C is twice the size of its predecessor! The US and China are making every attempt to spy - don't kid yourselves!

latest hacking scandal arrest suggests focus on cover-up

from nytimes.com: Scotland Yard’s arrest of a former personal assistant to Rebekah Brooks, a former chief executive of the British newspaper arm of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, appears to reflect the investigators’ intensifying focus on the possibility of a cover-up by executives, editors and others of the extent of illegal phone hacking and other criminal wrongdoing at the The News of the World, which is now defunct. After 10 hours of questioning on Friday, detectives assigned to a special unit investigating the affair released the assistant, Cheryl Carter, 47, on police bail pending further questioning. She was arrested at dawn at her home in Billericay, 25 miles east of London. Efforts to reach her for comment on Saturday were not successful.

Scotland Yard said she was the 17th person, most of them former employees of the The News of the World, to be arrested by officers assigned to Operation Weeting, established last year under special provisions intended to ensure the independence of the investigators. The creation of that task force followed several years of faltering inquiries by Scotland Yard that upheld, until a torrent of disclosures last year, denials by News International that more than two people on the News of the World’s newsroom staff had been involved in the illegal interception of the cellphone voicemails of crime victims, politicians and celebrities.

titan weather: mid-lats dry, more lakes near poles

California Institute of Technology researchers have formulated successful model of Titan's weather, reports Daily Galaxy.  Professor Tapio Schneider states new model explains many features of Titan's weather. The story's short version: researchers determined summers in northern latitudes are longer but further away from sun, so water evaporates less than in shorter more intense summers of south lats.

"Schneider says the team's simulations were able to reproduce the distribution of clouds that's been observed—which was not the case with previous models. The new model also produces the right distribution of lakes. Methane tends to collect in lakes around the poles because the sunlight there is weaker on average, he explains. Energy from the sun normally evaporates liquid methane on the surface, but since there's generally less sunlight at the poles, it's easier for liquid methane there to accumulate into lakes.


But then why are there more lakes in the northern hemisphere? Schneider points out that Saturn's slightly elongated orbit means that Titan is farther from the sun when it's summer in the northern hemisphere. Kepler's second law says that a planet orbits more slowly the farther it is from the sun, which means that Titan spends more time at the far end of its elliptical orbit, when it's summer in the north.


As a result, the northern summer is longer than the southern summer. And since summer is the rainy season in Titan's polar regions, the rainy season is longer in the north. Even though the summer rains in the southern hemisphere are more intense—triggered by stronger sunlight, since Titan is closer to the sun during southern summer—there's more rain over the course of a year in the north, filling more lakes."

The intense interest in Titan, most Earth-like body in Solar System, brings question of how long before there's a mission?  JPL says the earliest date is 2018!

north pole inner earth expedition 2012

Physicist Brooks Agnew, in recent Red Ice Radio interview, announced North Pole Inner Earth Expedition appears set to happen in 2012. Agnew provides powerful arguments for an expanding earth process that resulted in a Hollow Earth.  An expanding Earth theory argues, our planet grew from approximately one third its present size to its current condition of dry lands and oceans.  Agnew relates evidence supports it as ocean floors are only about 70 million years old, while continents date as much as billions of years.  Evidence of fossil remains of ocean creatures in highest mountains also fits idea as most of Earth was underwater, long ago, when there was less surface area.  It's thought, natural centrifugal forces due to the Earth's rotation results in repeated splits in surface and new ground exposed.  Ocean levels recede with a larger surface to cover, until, dry land emerges.

Both, Agnew and his predecessor Steve Curry, only became open to idea of a Hollow Earth through evidence and experience.  Curry related in an Atlantis Rising article,  a few years ago, while on expedition through the Tsangpo gorge of Tibet, "...he had discovered a hidden waterfall behind which the Tibetans say a cavern leads into the Hollow Earth, which they call Agharta." Until then, Curry viewed his father's belief in a Hollow Earth as only strange, afterwards wanted to complete his father's wish to discover opening.  Unexpectedly, Curry died of fast-acting brain cancer in 2006.  You may view a Neal Adams video (below), which illustrates how well Expanding Earth Theory fits our planet!

phobos grunt images reveal reason probe unresponsive

Phobos Grunt spotted in low orbit by Astrophotographer Thierry Legault, reports Christan Science Monitor article with video. The astrophotographer detects no tumbling of spacecraft less than 200 miles up, but also, sees possible reason for mission's failure. "'The unexpected thing that I realized when I looked carefully at the video is that Phobos-Grunt is moving backwards,' Legault said, 'with its solar panels deployed but at the opposite of the sun. It's not surprising that it had no energy to communicate!'" Phobos Grunt Probe, is projected to reenter, Earth's atmosphere in January 15-16 time frame. You can locate Phobos Grunt's current position over Earth here. Another expensive mission ends as little more than space junk.