Port Royal Jamaica is the only submerged city in the Western Hemisphere. (…)

Port Royal was a city of cultural and commercial exchange. The city was a commercial center of trade in African slaves, sugar, and other goods.

Port Royal was also a hot spot for cut throat pirates. (…) The economy was flooded by the wages of a common artisan’s honest day’s pay, and revenue from under the table deals of pirates, gamblers, and tavern keepers. Women of ill repute frequented the taverns, and sailors who made a semi-honest living at sea lavishly spent their earnings on these ladies of the evening. (…)

The heyday of mischief and ill-gotten gain came to a cataclysmic halt on the morning of June 7, 1692 when an earthquake and tidal wave submerged the infamous city.

The disaster took 2,000 lives on impact, and 3,000 more lives were lost due to injuries and disease following the earthquake. Moreover, the catastrophic event drove history down to the depths of the sea.

{ Water Wide Web | Continue reading }

Experts are now applying forensic techniques to retrieve evidence from underwater crime scenes in an effort to uphold laws that protect coral life and other marine mammals.

Underwater crimes include events such as anchors tearing through coral reefs, spills, using bleach or cyanide to stun tropical fish for the aquarium trade and more.

{ Water Wide Web | Continue reading }

When an atomic bomb explodes, several things happen in short order. First is a flood of “prompt” radiation created by the nuclear fission that produces the explosion. The good news — if you can call it that — is that if you are close enough to get a lethal dose of prompt radiation, you’re close enough that you’re likely to be killed by other bomb effects before it becomes an issue. Next comes the “flash,” a brilliant pulse of light created as the air around the bomb is heated to millions of degrees; this starts out as ultraviolet, falls quickly into the visible light range, and then into the heat-ray infrared range within a few seconds. The flash can blind, or burn exposed skin, and start fires. Next comes the blast, as the superheated air expands outward, initially at supersonic speeds. The blast is dangerous on its own, and also because it crushes buildings and creates clouds of flying glass and debris.

Given that light travels almost instantaneously, for everyone outside the immediate vicinity of the bomb the flash will arrive before the blast. Furthermore, the fire-setting infrared part of the flash peaks a few seconds later than the initial burst of light. So those who see a brilliant flash of light — and know what it means — have a few seconds to get under some sort of cover to protect themselves from what comes next.

After these “prompt effects” of initial radiation, flash, and blast have passed, there is an additional hazard. A nuclear explosion sucks air, dust — and, if it’s close to the ground, vaporized soil, buildings, etc. — up into the fireball, where some components are transformed into radioactive isotopes that then fall out of the cloud and back to earth over the next few hours, hence the term “fallout.” (…)

So the Obama Administration wants to encourage people to shelter in place rather than head for the hills in the event of a nuclear attack. Even sheltering for a few hours, or a couple of days, lets radiation levels fall dramatically and avoids road tie-ups for later evacuation.

{ The Atlantic | Continue reading }

One in five teenagers in America can’t hear rustles or whispers, according to a study published in August in The Journal of the American Medical Association.

These teenagers exhibit what’s known as slight hearing loss, which means they often can’t make out consonants like T’s or K’s, or the plinking of raindrops. The word “talk” can sound like “aw.”

The number of teenagers with hearing loss — from slight to severe — has jumped 33 percent since 1994.

Many researchers attribute this widespread hearing loss to exposure to sound played loudly and regularly through headphones. (Earbuds, in particular, don’t cancel as much noise from outside as do headphones that rest on or around the ear, so earbud users typically listen at higher volume to drown out interference.)

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

Many drivers enjoy the so-called “new car smell,” a mix of volatile organic compounds that rise from the plastic, leather, cloth, wood and other interior components of cars fresh off the assembly line. The aroma is so popular that some companies even sell “new car smell” air fresheners. But is “new car smell” intoxicating?

That appears likely to be an element of the defense of a Colorado driver charged in a hit-and-run accident, according to court documents filed this week, The Vail Daily News reports. The driver, Martin Joel Erzinger, a financial manager, allegedly fled the scene of a crash with a cyclist in July.

The “new car smell” from a month-old Mercedes-Benz may have contributed to Mr. Erzinger’s losing consciousness before the accident, his lawyers say.
The seemingly novel defense has been raised by an “accident reconstructionist” hired by Mr. Erzinger’s lawyers. They contend that Mr. Erzinger suffered from sleep apnea and dozed off at the wheel before driving off the road and striking the cyclist. (…)

When the local police arrested him, the police records say, he was placing a broken side mirror and a damaged bumper in his trunk.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

photo { Try it till you make it }

{ Nicolai Howalt }

In my column in Skeptical Inquirer (November/December 1996), I dealt with the major cases of alleged spontaneous human combustion (SHC) reported in Larry E. Arnold’s book Ablaze! The Mysterious Fires of Spontaneous Human Combustion (1995). (…)

Obviously, the Hess case had nothing to do with spontaneous human combustion, as Larry Arnold should have realized.

Arnold, who is not a physicist but a Pennsylvania school bus driver, had no justification for asking ominously, “Did Hess succumb to SHC?” The unburned clothing should have led any sensible investigator to one of the possibilities limited by that fact: for example, that Hess had been burned previously, or his skin injuries were caused by steam or hot water, chemical liquids or vapors, or some type of radiation (possibly even extreme sunburn through loosely woven clothing).

{ Skeptical Inquirer | COntinue reading }

If you’ve never started a fire in a fireplace (and no, those automatic electric fireplace don’t count), then this guide is for you.

1. Make sure your chimney is clean and free of blockages.

2. Open the damper.

3. Prime the flue.

4. Develop an ash bed.

5. Build an “upside down” fire.

…

{ The Art of Manliness | Continue reading }

How do you convert the whizz-bang acrobatics of Spider-Man into a live Broadway show? (…)

The show – directed by the award-winning creator of The Lion King, Julie Taymor, and with music by Bono and The Edge of U2 – had to be stopped five times to correct faulty technical equipment. (…) Reeve Carney, playing the superhero, was left swinging helplessly above the audience.

It took stage hands almost a minute to catch Carney by the feet to drag him down, and later there was some heckling.

{ The Guardian | Continue reading }

{ How to Photograph an Atomic Bomb | NY Times | Photos + Audio }

Rising ocean levels brought about by climate change have created a flood of unprecedented legal questions for small island nations and their neighbors.

Among them: If a country sinks beneath the sea, is it still a country? Does it keep its seat at the United Nations? Who controls its offshore mineral rights? Its shipping lanes? Its fish?

And if entire populations are forced to relocate — as could be the case with citizens of the Maldives, Tuvalu, Kiribati and other small island states facing extinction — what citizenship, if any, can those displaced people claim?

{ Scientific American | Continue reading }

related { Ten Amazing Uninhabited Islands }

A long-time Hollywood publicist was fatally shot inside her Mercedes-Benz, which then crashed into a light pole in Beverly Hills. Ronni Chasen, 64, was shot five times in the chest around 12:30 a.m. near Whittier Drive and Sunset Boulevard, according to Beverly Hills police.

Officers responding to the scene found Chasen’s black, late-model E-350 sedan crashed into a light pole on Whittier just south of Sunset. Chasen was taken to Cedars-Sinal Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead, according to the coroner’s office.

Police said they had no information about a suspect or motive for the shooting.

Chasen, the former senior vice president of worldwide publicity at MGM, was a well-known figure in Hollywood film and publicity circles. (…)

Chasen’s death was the third homicide this year in Beverly Hills.

{ Fox | Continue reading }

photo { On May 1, 1947, Evelyn McHale leapt to her death from the observation deck of the Empire State Building. Photographer Robert Wiles took a photo of McHale a few minutes after her death. }

Does forensic evidence really matter as much as we believe? New research suggests no, arguing that we have overrated the role that it plays in the arrest and prosecution of American criminals.

A study, reviewing 400 murder cases in five jurisdictions, found that the presence of forensic evidence had very little impact on whether an arrest would be made, charges would be filed, or a conviction would be handed down in court.

A mere 13.5 percent of the murder cases reviewed actually had physical evidence that linked the suspect to the crime scene or victim. The conviction rate in those cases was only slightly higher than the rate among all other cases in the sample. And for the most part, the hard, scientific evidence celebrated by crime dramas simply did not surface. According to the research, investigators found some kind of biological evidence 38 percent of the time, latent fingerprints 28 percent of the time, and DNA in just 4.5 percent of homicides.

{ Boston Globe | Continue reading }

screenshot { Errol Morris, The Thin Blue Line, 1988 }

Undoubtedly you have heard that dogs can sense earthquakes before the tremors occur. While anecdotes are common, experimental evidence supporting these claims remains elusive. The USGS in the 1970′s even examined the ability of animals for prediction “but nothing concrete came out of these experiments.”

Cueing on changes in the weather is frequent among the animal kindgom. Indeed, the daily, seasonal, and annual cycles of animals are triggered to changes in temperature, day length, precipitation, among a host of other environmental cues. But predicting the weather changes including large catastrophic weather events such as cyclones and hurricanes may be of another ilk.

Being able sense an oncoming major hurricane or cyclone would prove an invaluable trait for animal. Storm surges can both decimate and rearrange marine habitats especially in coral reefs. (…)

In 2009, the typhoon Morakot passed over the Philippines, Taiwan and eventually mainland China. (…) Researchers counted sea snakes in the coastal area before (July), directly before (August 5-6, labelled during below), and after the typhoon (August 12-17th). (…)

Data suggests that snakes senses the approach of the typhoon even before it made landfall.

{ Deep-Sea News | Continue reading }

photo { Stuart Robertson Reynolds }

At about 3am on 8 October last year, an asteroid the size of a small house smashed into the Earth’s atmosphere over an isolated part of Indonesia. The asteroid disintegrated in the atmosphere causing a 50 kiloton explosion, about four times the size of the atomic bomb used to destroy Hiroshima. The blast was picked up by several infrasound stations used by the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization to monitor nuclear tests.

No one was injured in the blast but the incident highlights the threat that planet faces from near Earth asteroids. Astronomers expect a strike like this once every 2-12 years. And the US congress has given NASA the task of sweeping the skies to identify anything heading our way. So far NASA has looked for objects of a kilometre or more in size and determined that none of these is on track to hit Earth in the foreseeable future.

But what of smaller objects? Various estimates show that an impact with an asteroid just 50 metres across would cause some 30,000 deaths (compared with 50 million deaths from an impact with a 1 kilometre-sized object).

This raises two important questions. The first is how best can astronomers monitor the skies for these smaller objects. The second is what to do should we find something heading our way.

{ The Physics arXiv Blog | Continue reading }

Steve Miller is justifiably proud of the manicured grounds around his stately stucco home in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. So he was nonplussed last year when he discovered that someone had been tossing plastic bags of dog excrement into the sculptured shrubs around a palm tree in his front yard.

“It was a pile of at least 10 bags,” said Mr. Miller, 55, who owned a dance costume business in Bristol, Pa., before retiring to Florida in 2005. (…)

Mr. Miller went to a local electronics store and bought a $400 do-it-yourself video surveillance kit. In so doing, he joined the ranks of outraged homeowners who are recording their neighbors’ misdeeds. Attracted by the declining prices and technological advances of such devices, these homeowners are posting the videos online to shame their neighbors or using them as evidence to press charges. (…)

A month’s worth of video footage clearly showed one of his neighbors slinging bags of dog feces into his yard. (…) Mr. Miller showed the video evidence to his community’s security patrol. “They were stunned, and wrote the guy a citation for improper waste disposal, littering and leash law violations.”

Moreover, the neighbor had to pick up all that he had tossed. Mr. Miller also had some fun at the neighbor’s expense, posting a video on YouTube with a suitably silly soundtrack and narration. (…)

There are countless videos online that are intended to settle scores between neighbors. Whereas such disputes were once confined to the individuals involved, now they can have a much wider audience, whose members often take sides and post comments.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

photo { Bill Owens }

{ The townspeople demanded that Mary be killed. Debates on how to kill Mary ensued. It was determined that no gun existed big enough to take her down. Electrocution and canons were other proposed methods. Finally, it was decided that Mary would be hung from a rail yard crane in the nearby town of Erwin, Tennessee. | Keep my words | Continue reading }

related { Squirrels refuse medical care }

bonus:

{ Sam Hood Baby elephant, Taronga Zoo, 1930s }

{ How a Trading Algorithm Went Awry | Continue reading | More: May 6 Crash Minute by Minute }

Laws banning texting or talking on a mobile phone while driving don’t reduce car accidents.

“In fact,” concludes the US Highway Loss Data Institute, “[texting] bans are associated with a slight increase in the frequency of insurance claims filed under collision coverage for damage to vehicles in crashes.”

This counter-intuitive revelation comes from a study by the HLDI, which compared insurance-claim data in states that enacted texting bans with the same data in states where no such laws exist. Data from after the bans took affect was also compared to stats before the bans took effect.

Texting bans did not reduce accident rates, and in some states the accident rates increased after the bans went into effect. “In California, Louisiana and Minnesota,” the HDLI reports, “the bans are associated with small but statistically significant increases in collision claims (7.6%, 6.7%, and 8.9%, respectively).”

{ The Register | Continue reading }

Ben Bernanke has not only refused to abandon his idee fixe of an “inflation target”,  a key cause of the global central banking catastrophe of the last twenty years (because it can and did allow asset booms to run amok, and let credit levels reach dangerous extremes).

Worse still, he seems determined to print trillions of emergency stimulus without commensurate emergency justification to test his Princeton theories, which by the way are as old as the hills.  Keynes ridiculed the “tyranny of the general price level” in the early 1930s, and quite rightly so. Bernanke is reviving a doctrine that was already shown to be bunk eighty years ago.

{ Telegraph | Continue reading }

Structural unemployment is a fake problem, which mainly serves as an excuse for not pursuing real solutions.

Who are these wise heads I’m talking about? The most widely quoted figure is Narayana Kocherlakota, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, who has attracted a lot of attention by insisting that dealing with high unemployment isn’t a Fed responsibility: “Firms have jobs, but can’t find appropriate workers. The workers want to work, but can’t find appropriate jobs,” he asserts, concluding that “It is hard to see how the Fed can do much to cure this problem.”

Now, the Minneapolis Fed is known for its conservative outlook, and claims that unemployment is mainly structural do tend to come from the right of the political spectrum. But some people on the other side of the aisle say similar things. For example, former President Bill Clinton recently told an interviewer that unemployment remained high because “people don’t have the job skills for the jobs that are open.”

Well, I’d respectfully suggest that Mr. Clinton talk to researchers at the Roosevelt Institute and the Economic Policy Institute, both of which have recently released important reports completely debunking claims of a surge in structural unemployment.

After all, what should we be seeing if statements like those of Mr. Kocherlakota or Mr. Clinton were true? The answer is, there should be significant labor shortages somewhere in America — major industries that are trying to expand but are having trouble hiring, major classes of workers who find their skills in great demand, major parts of the country with low unemployment even as the rest of the nation suffers.

None of these things exist. Job openings have plunged in every major sector, while the number of workers forced into part-time employment in almost all industries has soared. Unemployment has surged in every major occupational category. Only three states, with a combined population not much larger than that of Brooklyn, have unemployment rates below 5 percent.

Oh, and where are these firms that “can’t find appropriate workers”? The National Federation of Independent Business has been surveying small businesses for many years, asking them to name their most important problem; the percentage citing problems with labor quality is now at an all-time low, reflecting the reality that these days even highly skilled workers are desperate for employment.

So all the evidence contradicts the claim that we’re mainly suffering from structural unemployment. Why, then, has this claim become so popular?

Part of the answer is that this is what always happens during periods of high unemployment — in part because pundits and analysts believe that declaring the problem deeply rooted, with no easy answers, makes them sound serious.

{ Paul Krugman/NY Times | Continue reading }

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