I nearly forgot this gem from an article this week in the NY Times, describing a Spanish parishioner’s attempt to freehand repair a crumbling fresco of Jesus in her church.
The result of her efforts was less than impressive:
I nearly forgot this gem from an article this week in the NY Times, describing a Spanish parishioner’s attempt to freehand repair a crumbling fresco of Jesus in her church.
The result of her efforts was less than impressive:
This partial screen shot was taken from a weekly “new movie” email newsletter.
We could not help smiling a little at the unfortunate pairing of these two movie posters (and film titles):
FIVE GUYS – DAYUM!
Willy Wonka is genuinely interested in the meaning of that sticker on the back of your car:
And now a word from our sponsors:
I guess Michael Phelps prefers headphones from this company.
They have since created “headphones for cats”
I admire a company who goes all-in on a practical joke. They made a pretty entertaining infomercial:
Next up, a random sampling of some memes that made our day over the past week.
Since the Olympics are happening, McKayla goes first:
McKayla is not impressed
Oh wait, she IS happy! (You don’t want to see her upset.)
Random ones:
this is the question of our time
this happens to me all the time
The jealous girlfriend ones are pretty entertaining:
Finally, one more DERP for you:
every Costco has the same entrance
LAist is reporting that TMZ caught Joan Rivers at the Costco in Burbank on Tuesday evening – bullhorn in hand – protesting that Costco had banned her new book due to “several racy jokes on the back cover.”
she told the store manager 'I know you're trying to throw me out of your store - this is bigger than both of us.'
She soon handcuffed herself to a shopper’s cart:
'What's your name? Cynthia? You're going to be famous.'
At least the Burbank PD had a sense of humor about it:
service with a smile
Today we’ve experienced a few detectable – human-detectable, I mean – earthquakes in Southern California.
This is always fun when you work in a hi-rise office building. We often estimate the magnitude by the level of noise and groaning from the building. The windows, walls, ceiling and floors all seem to make crackling and popping sounds during an earthquake.
It’s around this time that a low-grade panic begins to set in; on the one hand, you recognize that it is futile or even dangerous to make a run for the stairwell, knowing that if it really starts to shake, you can go tumbling down flights of stairs. It is also more likely than not that you are living through a relatively minor temblor.
On the other hand is the nearly irresistible urge to evacuate a swaying, groaning and popping hi-rise office building before it potentially becomes a pile of rubble – with you still in it.
Often times the building sways back and forth for a minute or so after the shaking stops as well.
On the drive into the office this morning I heard a report of an earthquake last night in the vicinity of Yorba Linda, in northeast Orange County, California, at around 11:30 pm. As we were watching the Olympics at that time, just before bedtime, I can say that we didn’t feel it.
At around 9:30 this morning, while on a conference call with a client and several colleagues, I most certainty DID feel this one:
earthquake map from USGS
Following the action for a while reveals how the aftershocks played out. Notice that the red box, solid above, picks up the smaller aftershocks within about a half an hour (the smaller boxes overlaid on top of the larger one, demonstrating the magnitude of each quake):
aftershocks showing on top of the original quake
Here’s a summary of the shaking, courtesy the US Geological Survey:
lots of aftershocks!
On Sunday night PDT, the latest Mars Rover, Curiosity, made a successful landing on the surface of Mars.
Mars Science Laboratory (nicknamed “Curiosity” after a suggestion taken from schoolchildren in a national contest) is the most advanced vehicle ever deposited on a foreign celestial body in the history of our species.
It is twice as long as the previous pair of rovers, the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity, and five times as heavy. It has ten times the mass of science instruments.
Probably as exciting as anything else is the way that MSL landed on Mars. After hurtling through interplanetary space for 8 1/2 months, it entered the relatively thin Martian atmosphere, bleeding off a speed of roughly 3.6 miles per second down to 1,500 feet per second before deploying its parachute.
After the chute deployed, the heat shield fell away (which was captured in an amazing video) and the craft descended until it reached an altitude of about one mile, where it let go of the parachute and backshell, and began to freefall before its rocket motors kicked in to slow the descent.
Finally, just above the surface, the rover itself was lowered down from the “sky crane”, the jetpack descent vehicle, as the sky crane hovered in a stationary position. Once it touched down, the rover fired pyrotechnics which severed the cables to the sky crane and allowed it to fly off and crash land away from the rover.
Of course, all of this happened automatically within a very precise window. All steps were executed perfectly and the rover later sent back initial images that let JPL know that all was well.
left image with the transparent dust cover on the lens, right image without
check out that shadow!
Two satellites currently orbit Mars – Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Each has the capability of receiving signals from the rover and relaying them back to Earth.
MRO also took a phenomenal image of the landing, including the inflated parachute with the spacecraft dangling below:
Later it took this amazing shot of the landing area including all constituent components:
The Curiosity rover is in the center of the image. To the right, approximately 4,900 feet (1,500 meters) away, lies the heat shield, which protected the rover from 3,800-degree-Fahrenheit (about 2,100 degrees Celsius) temperatures encountered during its fiery descent. On the lower left, about 2,020 feet (615 meters) away, are the parachute and back shell. The parachute has a constructed diameter of 71 feet (almost 21.5 meters) and an inflated diameter of 51 feet (nearly 16 meters). The back shell remains connected to the chute via 80 suspension lines that are 165 feet (50 meters) long. To the upper-left, approximately 2,100 feet (650 meters) away from the rover, is a discoloration of the Mars surface consistent with what would have resulted when the rocket-powered Sky Crane impacted the surface.
Here’s the heat shield, the first part to hit the surface:
Parachute and backshell:
And the crash-landed sky crane jetpack:
We are very much looking forward to the science that Curiosity will begin returning in the coming years!
While we’re in the topic of Mars rovers, let’s not forget that one of the last rovers, Opportunity (which landed on Mars in January if 2004) is still functional and sending back images and scientific measurements a full 8 years hence!
Here’s a great panorama that Opportunity recently sent back:
The folks over at JPL in Pasadena here in SoCal are getting ready for their big moment in the spotlight, with the pending landing of the Curiosity rover.
Around 10:30 pm Pacific time on Sunday night, this will be happening:
RttRL says Good Luck to the MSL mission team!
Three Generations of Rovers with Standing Engineers
You can see the new rover is significantly larger than the Spirit and Opportunity type rover on the left part of the screen, and it dwarfs the Pathfinder rover.