A different kind gold rush – scientists pay for meteorites, $1,000 a gram

In the Gold Rush town of Rescue, Brenda Salveson, a wife and mother of two, read a local news article about the meteorites. The area scattered with them, about three miles wide and 10 miles long, included Henningsen Lotus Park, where she walks her dog every morning. She noted what to look for: a rock that seemed out of place — different from anything around it. It would be dark and delicate.

On Wednesday, near the end of her stroll with Sheldon her dog, Salveson picked up a rock the size of a spool of thread that seemed to match the description.

She walked over to a group with metal detectors.

“I opened my hand and they all let out a collective gasp,” she said.

The geologists, as they turned out to be, wrapped the 17-gram stone in foil and told Salveson to get it into a bank vault.

A few minutes before, a firefighter had stopped to search at the park on his way to work and found a 2-gram meteorite in less than 20 minutes. A dealer paid him $2,000 on the spot.

– Meteorite hunters strike pay dirt

 

// Photo – Navicore

Yosemite – Range of Light

Ever since I became fascinated with timelapse photography almost 2 years ago, after seeing the work of Tom Lowe, I’ve wanted to do a piece on Yosemite and the Sierra. Now after almost 2 years of shooting, I’m thrilled to share. I hope you enjoy my vision of my home, the majestic Yosemite & Sierra. Best viewed Full Screen with Sound 🙂

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I am a destination visual artist who specializes in photography, timelapse cinematography, & filmmaking.  I love to travel, so if you have a project in some far-flung location, lets talk.

If you would like to license any of my clips or hire me to shoot for you, please be in touch.

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So it seems like a lot of people are asking what gear I used. Here’s the core of it: (Shot at 5k in Canon RAW)

  • Canon 5D Mark II
  • Canon 5D Mark III
  • Canon 14L II & 16-35L II (rented from LensProToGo)
  • Canon 17-40L, 24-105L, 50L, 70-200L IS
  • KesslerCrane 5 foot Cineslider, Revolution Head, Oracle’s & Basic controller, Elektra Motors, AT Outrigger Feet

Skip the backyard shed – go with a backyard office

It’s the instant office — or as close to one as you might get. Single-room structures made by a growing number of companies can be delivered to the backyard and set up in a matter of days.

Read the full story – Small prefabs as backyard offices

 

As the Junior Seau tragedy shows – life after football needs help

A man took his own life, and we might never know exactly why.

But regardless of what comes of any investigations or revelations, we’ve got enough circumstantial evidence already to have an idea that the NFL, its players and those who claim to love both have got to do something.

Fact is, too many men are stumbling unprepared into a scary world when the game stops and real life starts.

Whether Junior Seau’s ultimate decision to commit suicide can be traced in any way to his having suffered concussions during his playing career is important to find out.

But that just might be too neat a bow to tie on this tragedy, too straight a line to draw from head trauma to depression to death.

“The NFL is doing all these things to make football better and safer,” said former San Diegan John Lynch, who retired in 2008 after 15 years in the NFL. “But in a lot of ways it seems like they’re ignoring a real issue … The automatic response right now is it’s got to be concussion-related. I’d be cautionary of that. The league should do everything they can to find out more (about the long-term effects of head injuries), because I believe it’s real. But there are a lot of other dynamics that go with retiring and leaving that world.

– Seau’s death sheds light on strain of life after football

 

// Photo – NFL.com

Why is Cinco De Mayo not celebrated in Mexico, only the U.S.?

UCLA professor David Hayes-Bautista stumbled upon the answer to a question that for years had puzzled scholars and amateur historians alike:

Why is Cinco de Mayo so widely celebrated in California and the United States, when it is scarcely observed in Mexico?

As Hayes-Bautista explains in “El Cinco de Mayo: An American Tradition,” his new book on the origins of the holiday, Cinco de Mayo isn’t Mexican at all.

Rather, it is an American holiday, rooted in the Civil War and commemorated today because a network of Latino groups in California known as the juntas patrióticas mejicanas (Mexican patriotic assemblies) deliberately created a public memory of it.

“We have had a lot of conjecture, a lot of guessing, but no one actually really knew,” he said. “Now we know why it’s celebrated.”

 

Keep reading – to learn how France invaded Mexico, for slavery and the Confederacy, only to be defeated on May 5, 1862.

Or, listen to Professor Hayes-Bautista explain it himself:

Spanish version of the talk

Unemployment rate at 8.1% – job growth seen in manufacturing, architecture, engineering, and computers

Hiring continued its slow pace in April as employers added a modest 115,000 jobs to their payrolls.

The jobless rate inched down to 8.1% last month, the Labor Department said Friday, but that wasn’t because more people were employed. Rather, the rate fell as more workers dropped out of the labor force (about 342,000 workers).

The April jobs report was highly anticipated because job growth slowed sharply in March after three strong winter months of payroll gains averaging 252,000.

Job growth last month was bolstered by continued strength in manufacturing, which added 16,000 jobs to payrolls, and professional services such as architecture, engineering and computer systems design also increased staffing.

Wages overall were subdued; average earnings for all private-sector employees went up by a mere penny from March, to $23.38 an hour.

via LA Times

May the 4th be with you – #HappyStarWarsDay

May 4 is considered a holiday by Star Wars fans to celebrate Star Wars culture and honor the films.

May 4 is called Star Wars Day because of the popularity of a common pun spoken on this day. Since the phrase “May the Force be with you” is a famous quote often spoken in the Star Wars films, fans commonly say “May the fourth be with you” on this day.

Current day Star Wars fans were not the first to introduce the line “May the fourth be with you”: when Margaret Thatcher was elected Britain’s first female Prime Minister on May 4, 1979, her party placed an advertisement in The London Evening News that said “May the Fourth Be with You, Maggie. Congratulations.” This reading of the line has also been recorded in the UK Parliament’s Hansard.

In a 2005 interview on German news TV channel N24, George Lucas was asked to say the famous sentence “May the Force be with you.” The interpreter simultaneously interpreted the sentence into German as Am 4. Mai sind wir bei Ihnen (“We shall be with you on May 4”). This was captured by TV Total and aired on May 18, 2005.

In 2011, the first organized celebration of Star Wars Day took place in Toronto, Ontario, Canada at the Toronto Underground Cinema. Festivities included an Original Trilogy Trivia Game Show; a costume contest with celebrity judges; and the web’s best tribute films, mash-ups, parodies, and remixes on the big screen. The second annual edition is scheduled to take place on Friday, May 4, 2012.

via Wikipedia

 

 

…and don’t forget tomorrow is Free Comic Book Day.

 

// Photo – Amanda Blain

Biggest full moon of the year – this Saturday night!

The largest full moon of 2012 happens this Saturday, but it’s OK if you don’t really notice. The moon doesn’t really get bigger, it just gets closer to Earth.

At 8:40 p.m. Pacific Time on Saturday, according to the Griffith Observatory Sky Report, the moon will be at its closest point in its orbit to the Earth this year. (Accounting for the time zone difference, European moon-watchers will see it Sunday.) To be precise, Earth and moon will be just 221,801 miles apart — more than 17,000 miles closer than average.

NASA’s Science News calculates the moon’s appearance Saturday will be “as much as 14% bigger and 30% brighter than other full moons of 2012.”

Some call what’s known as a perigee full moon a “supermoon.”

via LA Times

 

“Folklore holds that all kinds of wacky things happen under the light of a full moon. Lunacy (modern word for insanity) comes from the Latin word for Moon.”