To the southwest of Anchorage, AK are four volcanos that are fairly active. Every decade or so they blow some ash. Mt. Redoubt is currently grumbling and according to a scientist at the Alaska Volcano Observatory: “this activity is going to culminate in an eruption.” (cnn)

For those seeking the latest information on Mt. Redoubt, here’s a collection of resources.

Realtime seismic graph. This is about 5 minutes short of being realtime, and shows the last 24hrs of activity:

Another realtime graph that shows aggregated readings over a longer period is also available:

The Alaska Volcano Observatory is posting updates every hour or two. You can get them by following alaska_avo at http://twitter.com/alaska_avo. Here’s a direct RSS link if you prefer to subscribe in your email program or reader.

Also thanks to Twitter, a stream of people sharing news and links with the word “Redoubt” in them: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=redoubt.

For the authoritative source of information, visit the Alaska Volcano Observatory Mt. Redoubt website which includes the same updates posted to Twitter, along with links to ashfall trajectory, preparedness resources, seismic charts, and other relevant and historic information.

For more preparedness information, particularly regarding falling ash, the USGS has a number of resources.

If you’d like to get email updates sent to you, you can subscribe here.

A couple decent webcam views (if only the clouds would get out of the way):
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/avo/webcam/redoubt.jpg
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/avo/webcam/redoubt-2.jpg

UPDATE: In the early hours of March 23rd Mt. Redoubt erupted five times, spewing ash as high as 50,000 feet.

September 11th is a huge day in history. On that day, in 1822, the Catholic church finally admitted that Galileo was right. (Of course, he’d been dead for nearly 200 years.) The Earth wasn’t the center of the universe, and indeed there exists the actual possibility that other planets with ecosystems just like ours may exist, but more importantly, that it’s “OK” to teach scientific truth (ie: heliocentrism) in school.

As I’m pondering the state of our world today, I feel sad for all the history that has brought us to this point. Decisions made not because of facts, but for the pursuit and protection of a myth. I love myth, but not at the cost of human life. Had the church recognized the truth about human’s place in the universe earlier, would that have prevented them from crusading to the holy land, sacrificing millions of lives, and permanently dividing the Arab and European worlds? Without that divide would we be in this mess today? Would the attacks on the twin towers have occurred?

I know that faith is the source of solace for many people, but historic decisions made by organized religion, defining reality by committee vote, are causing horrible repercussions, which we, and our children, are having to deal with.

Whose holy land is it? Who is the bastard? Does it really matter any more?

And when will we be able, if ever, to get a clean slate?

The image above captures the scene of Galileo’s trial before the Inquisition in 1633. “Nearly two centuries later, however, the weight of scientific evidence was so overwhelming that the College of Cardinals finally reversed itself and allowed the teaching of heliocentrism. Still, it would take another 170 years, until 1992, for a pope — in this case, John Paul II — to officially concede that, yes, the Earth isn’t stationary in the heavens. Eight years after that, in 2000, John Paul apologized for the way the Catholic Church treated Galileo.” (source)

I was depressed this morning, lying in bed thinking about death, for no apparent reason. And then I got up and logged-on (without coffee, a bad idea in general) and read that George Carlin had passed away. Perhaps I was channeling his wonderful cynicism in my dreams.

Now he’s hanging out with The Big Electron.

Here’s my favorite bit of his:

These “totally rad” pics have been making the rounds on the web today, so I thought I’d contribute to the over-saturation of something really cool! These are from the Chaitin volcano eruption in early May of this year.

Recently on Facebook I linked with some old friends. This got me digging up the photo album and scanning a few 10-year-old pictures. While I was at it I found a few more gems. Like this one. Lu, Myself and nephew Joe were at Thane beach during the summer: built a fire, roasting hot dogs, skipping stones. Joe was at that fantastic age where everything is a wonder and discovery. He couldn’t stop asking questions, including “Why did God make guitars?”, “Why are there flowers?” and my favorite: “Do rocks burn?”. (Those who know me should be able to guess the answer I gave him. )

Yesterday the Department of Defense announced the creation of the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine. This means they have a department specifically devoted to growing new human tissue.

If you read Scientific American, or are tuned in to the wild world of modern science to any degree, you’ll already know that thanks to the wonders of stem cell research and other techniques, scientists are able to grow living tissue. But not just tissue, actual organs: “…blood vessels, livers, bladders, breast implants… [and] beating, disembodied rat hearts” (source).

Here’s a fairly comprehensive article on the whole thing: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=regrowing-human-limbs

Scientists have been able to create DNA in a test tube for 50 years or so, but only in small amounts (IE: one or two genes). Now that is changing. Thanks to computers and other magnificent (and/or scary) technologies we are able to compose entire strands of DNA much like we would a computer program:

“Today a scientist can write a long genetic program on a computer just as a maestro might compose a musical score, then use a synthesizer to convert that digital code into actual DNA. Experiments with “natural” DNA indicate that when a faux chromosome gets plopped into a cell, it will be able to direct the destruction of the cell’s old DNA and become its new “brain” — telling the cell to start making a valuable chemical, for example, or a medicine or a toxin, or a bio-based gasoline substitute.” (Source: WA Post, Synthetic DNA on the Brink of Yielding New Life Forms)

The ramifications of this are quite huge in many aspects of society: medicine, disease, performance, comprehension, growth, energy, and not to mention the capability of basically being able to engineer a being. This raises a lot of questions for me, the main one being: What is nature? For further reading on synthetic DNA, here’s a Google news search.

Walrus can’t swim for long periods of time and they depend on the ice along the water’s edge to hang out. With the gradual decline of Arctic ice, thanks to the warming of earth’s oceans, this creates an over-crowding problem. When something spooks the herd a stampede ensues and invariably the young/weak pay the price.

“As a result, walruses came ashore earlier and stayed longer, congregating in extremely high numbers, with herds as big as 40,000 at Point Shmidt, a spot that had not been used by walruses as a “haulout” for a century, scientists said.” (source)

This year, out of 200,000 walrus an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 were killed from stampede.