blivet 2.0

Things will likely be quiet around here until Wednesday. We’re going to be in Flagstaff, AZ for the 8th Mars Crater Consortium Meeting.

But, you ask, why not head down on Saturday morning and make it a long weekend frolicking in the Ponderosa Pines, cinder cones and red rock of Flagstaff and Sedona around the commitments of the conference? I like how you think!

This was something that I didn’t expect when I installed Greasemap in Greasemonkey.

[Greasemap] augments any web page you visit by searching the page for geocodeable addresses or other geotags. If it finds any, it automatically shows all such locations on a Google Map which is injected into the page you are viewing, within an iframe from Vinq.com.

Pretty cool, says I. I get to see where various bloggers live (provided they’re in the US, anyway) and that’s about it. But, it does its one trick pretty well.

But when you are investigating something (like a business) on a website that has a link to bring up a map, a “where we’re located” sort of thing, and it sends you to a MapQuest page, you also get the Greasemap of the same place. I’m not even sure if it really qualifies as ‘interesting’, but that’s what I said to myself as it happened…

Garret Vreeland has been posting some of his photography from their vacation in northwest Wyoming this year. His latest batch is truly exceptional. This set is from in and around Grand Teton.

If you have the time, might I suggest taking a look around Garret’s photo blog? There are a lot of fine things to be seen there… IMHO, of course.

Joss Whedon’s Serenity hits the public theatres tomorrow.

It has been a delicious wait, but now I’m really impatient. See you at the movies…

600 Barrels of Loot Found on Crusoe Island [Guardian]
via kottke / mm

This is pretty interesting. I mean, anyone with a passing interest in history has wondered where some of the materials looted from the ‘New World’ ended up. Kudos to the crews who have done this.

But, let’s face it, the fact is I’m not really interested in this treasure stuff. At all. Loss of context and all that. What has piqued my interest is their robot, Arturito.

[It is] a mini robot that can scan 50 metres deep into the earth. The robot, dubbed “Arturito”, was invented by Chileans and over the past year has grabbed headlines by breaking some of the country’s biggest criminal mysteries.

First, the robot detected the buried arsenal of a rightwing sect known as Colonia Dignidad. The guns and rocket launchers were buried at some 10 metres and while the authorities had searched for years, the robot found the buried weapons almost instantly. Then, in the case of missing businessman Jose Yuraszeck, Arturito was able to analyse the soil and identify the molecular composition of human bones, allowing investigators to dig straight to the body of the murder victim. –from the Guardian article

So, Arturito found the Crusoe Island cache some 15m (50 ft.) down, can scan 50m deep and can do things like “identify the molecular composition of human bones” in soil. OK, you’ve got this archaeologist’s attention. Sooo, what else can Arturito do? Hmmm?

I also like that Arturito, besides being ‘Little Arthur’, could be derivative of R2-D2. At least in my head it is…

Hey, September 24–October 1 is Banned Books Week.

Now, while we still can…

Endangering the species [Orcinus]

David has a good piece on the evisceration of the Endangered Species Act.

via Lavagrrl I find that Don Adams, who played secret agent Maxwell Smart in Get Smart has died. Adams was 82.

I loved that show as a kid and had a crush on Agent 99… I wonder who got his shoe phone?

How I do love these insipid tests…

You are a Social Liberal (78% permissive) and an… Economic Liberal (30% permissive) You are best described as a: Strong Democrat Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid

via Dave who came out 75%/36%

The lines are once again drawn, with both camps acting as good primates should, flinging their dung peer-reviewed articles at one another. The latest volley is from the ‘these are fully modern Homo sapiens with a cranial defect’ group.

Next up, the discovers will posit that their adversaries are the ones with the crainial defect.

We’ve covered this before it completely turned into a cat fight (1, 2). Read all about this latest installment:

New ‘Hobbit’ disease link claim [BBC]
Scientists are to present new evidence that the tiny human species dubbed “The Hobbit” may not be what it seems.

The researchers say their findings strongly support an idea that the 1m- (3ft-) tall female skeleton from Indonesia is a diseased modern human.

Their claims have been aired in a BBC Horizon programme screened on Thursday.

The Hobbit’s discoverers are adamant it is an entirely separate human species, which evolved a small size in isolation on its remote island home of Flores. [more]

There will be more on this, but you already knew that…