A guy in my beautiful home state of Kentucky found this wondering around his yard:
He claims it’s a chupacabra. Up until a few years ago, no one had ever mentioned a chupacabra. Now they seem to be popping up all over the place in many different forms. Personally, I’m skeptical. From this angle, it looks like a big mangy cat or a fox. What do you think?
I got a free pass to use the new AT&T Family Map service. It’s cool. It allows me to keep an eye on any cell phone I’m paying for. There’s some caveats of course like the phone has to be on and in the service area. So, first thing this morning I fired it up. This is where it found me:
Actually, I’m not sitting on the Turkey/Syria border. I’m actually sitting in Kentucky. It’s only off about 3,000 miles or so. Now, I’m going to zoom in on the step-girl. If she’s in Europe right now I’ll be pissed. She’s supposed to be at school.
This is just too cool. The FAA acknowledges one of these hokey UFO stories. Here’s what prompted the story:
Now, my first assumption was indeed debris from the recent satellite collision. However, the FAA insists that is not the case. Im not sure how they know for sure it’s not. But, that’s their story. More likely, it’s a meteor. Either way, they can’t explain it and it didn’t seem to hit the ground, so there probably will never be an explanation. Oh well, it’ll make for another good conspiracy theory I’m sure!
Quick edit: There was also reports of a seperate fireball in central/eastern kentucky. This is way cooler because one of the reports came from a town about twenty minutes from here. Unfortunately, no one in my family saw it. 
Also, there are seperate reports that the FAA is indeed saying this could be debris from the satellite collision. I tend to think it might be. That was a lot of metal that got shot in all kinds of directions. Although I trust they know where some of it is, I’m sure there’s a lot they’re still trying to find. And, given an unplanned explosion, some of it would have careened towards Earth.
QUICK UPDATE: February 19, 2009: Authorities are pretty certain at this time it was a meteor and not debris. Mainly because they think they may have found some of the remnants of the fireball near Waco. Following the comments on the story’s source, it seems quite a few people are reluctant to believe it’s easily explained and seem to prefer it be forever unknown ( read, UFO ).
Me and Moonlet went exploring today. Our destination was a little spot in my local county called Short Creek. It’s the world’s shortest creek. It comes out one cave and runs right into another. There’s a second entrance where the water goes in that allows you to walk down to the underground creek and makes for some spectacular viewing.
I couldn’t help notice that with nothing else to do, and with no tools at all, my six year old son decided to build a castle in the sand. He has no experience building things of sand, stone, or concrete. His technical skills right now are at best rudimentary. In other words, a cave man could do better. Which got me thinking even more ( yeah, this was a deep thought ), just how advanced would man have to be to build something of clay and mud? Maybe we’re giving some ancient cultures a little more credit than is due? I mean, sure, a pyramid is a little more complicated than a child’s sand castle. But, honestly, not a whole lot. He builds pyramids now with lego blocks. If he didn’t have those pre-built rectangles, he’d probably just make his own out of red clay mud, which we have lots of here.
So, to assume they were “advanced” because they build bigger sand castles, and then ponder what catastrophe must have befallen them because they were “advanced”, just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense in this perspective.
Here’s the story:
High densely built-up areas trap the heat, especially at night, causing what is called Urban Heat Islands (UHI) in which city centres can be up to 10º C warmer than surrounding rural areas. Another consequence of UHIs is that energy consumption rises with the increased use of air conditioners and refrigeration appliances.
Now, I’m no rocket scientist, but I think I have some common sense. What is different about “urban heat islands” than the countryside? Let me see if I can illustrate this:
That would be the countryside.
Notice anything missing in Times Square?
Now, if you’re in my little town. You can be in a parking lot and it will be scorching hot right now. Today it’s supposed to get to 97 or so. It will feel a lot hotter than that. Guaranteed. However, the beauty of being here is that in seconds you can walk into a completely forested area. The temperature will drop at least 10 degrees. It will feel a lot cooler than that. Regardless of the calming and relaxing effect of being amongst the trees and fauna, there is a logical reason for this phenomena. Although extremely complicated, I’ll try to make it as simple as I can.
You’re standing in the shade. The direct sunlight is not hitting you.
The by-product of standing in the shade of vegetation is that said vegetation releases oxygen. Without going into a whole lot of science, your body functions much better when it’s burning oxygen than carbon monoxide. Trees and stuff consume that bad carbon monoxide and release, of all things, oxygen. So, your not exposed to the heat, and what heat you are exposed to, your better equipped to deal with.
Pretty amazing huh?
The article didn’t go into how much this ESA satellite cost to put together and launch and operate. But, as with any space venture, I can imagine it was in the millions of dollars. Wonder how many trees that would planted in those urban heat islands?
Maybe we need to quit sciencing stuff to death and just rely a little more on God-given common sense?
Plant some trees. Rooftops and sidewalks make great places for trees and stuff to grow. They look a lot prettier than tar and concrete. And, they just absolutely LOVE to eat smog. And when it gets really hot, sit under one.
I won’t even bother with the energy saving or ecological impact aspect of lowering the impact of urban warming. Somehow I just know the attitude that most likely will be given when telling places like Madrid and New York City they need to be more like rural towns.
The forecast for my home town for Tuesday is high in the mid 60′s with a chance of snow.
Before people get too carried away with global warming and all that stuff, that’s not terribly unusual. The last huge snow we had was almost ten years ago to the day, and was a very warm February day as well before this happened in the evening:
I love weather like that!
Not too long ago, I was referred to in an unflattering way by Al Gore ( et al ):
…the people who still say that global warming isn’t real are actually in the same boat with the flat earth society. They get together and party on Saturday nights with the folks that believe the moon landing was in a movie lot in Arizona.
Since what Al said made basically no sense, Phil Plait gave him an assist:
Well, he meant Nevada, not Arizona, since that’s where Area 51 is, but other than that he’s dead-on.
The assumption there possibly by Al, and definitely by Phil, was that people who don’t fully buy man-made global warming political correctness hook, line, and sinker, are as crazy as people who believed anything happened at Roswell sixty years ago.
Well, this year’s lunacy surrounding Roswell comes in a different form:
There’s a lot more to the text. But, I just think it’s kind of curious how such a very brief incident sixty years ago seems to have such long legs. I’m sure just for writing this I’ll get taunted even more by the folks who think Area 51 was a movie lot in Arizona.
Meanwhile, and completely unrelated, Al Gore’s having awareness concerts all over the warming globe. If you’re lucky, you can win a dinner with a band that never existed……
And while you’re having that dinner with the band that never existed, you can have a few chuckles with the band that never existed over the issue people can’t confirm for sure, and if that’s not fun enough, finish it off discussing yet another person who claims they were there at Area 51 or, try to figure out where the moon landing movie lot in Arizona actually is.
What’s really neat about the story too, is apparently the alien scraps were hauled off to Fort Knox. Now Fort Knox is also mentioned prominently at Al’s buddy Phil’s blog as well. It’s just a hop, skip, and a jump from ( drum roll please ), Kentucky’s latest landmark, the Creationist Museum.
Amazing how the entire universe seems to center on Kentucky of late.
For about 20 years, this stretch of Buck Creek has been totally submered by Lake Cumberland. However, due to a few leaks in the dam, the Corps of Engineers decided to lower the lake about 50 feet. They did this during the winter. Now, the soil totally washed away and only rocks exposed, lush plants are growing as fast as they can.
Man doesn’t have to worry about the Earth surviving, it reclaims itself immediately. Man just needs to worry about Man surviving.
Moonlet and I took a ride on the Big South Fork Scenic Railway, again, yesterday. One of the stops along the way is beautiful Worley, Kentucky. Here’s some pics I took of Worley:
Now, Worley was a mining community that flourished primarily from 1928-1929 or so. Around 1932, a massive flood washed away almost everything that was Worley. The mine people decided not to rebuild Worley, and nature took over. Today, the only thing that signifies man was ever there are a couple of concrete slabs in the middle of nowhere. Nature has completely reclaimed what was once man’s. The coal mines, the buildings, the tipples, everything, is gone.
It’s places like Worley that gives me the feeling that Earth doesn’t need to worry about Earth too much. She’ll be just fine long after man is gone. Man needs to worry about surviving on Earth for a while. That’s all.
Kentucky’s #1! My little home state with a population about 1/9th that of California has topped the country in managing to kill ourselves in ATV deaths. Pretty creative huh? We don’t have that much violent crime, so we have to be a little more creative in how we do it. And, we’re good at that. Apparently we excel at it. No other state managed to kill themselves more often with ATV’s than Kentucky. Now, there is a disclaimer here, West Virginians do it more often per capita, but there’s not quite as many West Virginians as there are Kentuckians. The urban powerhouses of the US did poorly in doing themselves in via ATV’s. They need to get out more.
Here’s a breakdown of the current standings per capita:
| State | 2004 Deaths | 2004 Population | Per Capita Deaths |
I’m willing to bet that Californians, seeing how poorly they’re doing in the standings, will do what they can to prove they are better than Kentucky. Actually, I’d prefer that Kentuckians quit trying so hard to prove they’re better than anyone else at this. Wear a helmet for cryin’ out loud.
