Stannous Flouride's Book of Truthiness

A picture snapped by Spirit near Home Plate shows silica formations poking out of the soil, which may have been formed by microbial life. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Minerals sprout from Champagne Pool in New Zealand

Microbes created these similar silicate shapes around the El Tatio geyser in Chile

To understand Home Plate, it makes sense to turn to El Tatio, a region in the Atacama that is home to more than 80 geysers. While most other earthly animals wouldn’t last long here, many microbes do just fine, and fossil evidence suggests they also thrived in the distant past. By inference, Mars’s Home Plate might have once made a nice microbial home.

But the comparison goes further: When Ruff peered closely at El Tatio’s silica formations, he saw shapes remarkably similar to those that Spirit had seen on Mars. Fraternal cauliflower twins also exist in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming and the Taupo Volcanic Zone in New Zealand. In both of those places, the silica bears the fossilized fingerprints of microbial life.

Since microbes sculpted the silica features in Wyoming and New Zealand, it’s possible they also helped make the formations at El Tatio. And if microbes were involved with the cauliflower at El Tatio, maybe they made it grow on Mars, too.

But making a logical leap from one region on Earth to another—from New Zealand to Chile, for example—isn’t trivial or always correct. And it’s even more tenuous to then hop to a whole other planet where, so far, scientists have seen no signs of life. After all, history doesn’t favor life-friendly interpretations of data from Mars.

“Having worked on modern hot springs, I have seen all forms of structures that look biological but are not,” Kurt Konhauser of the University of Alberta says. Silica can come from non-biological processes and water, geography, wind or other environmental factors can then shape it into complex structures. “Because it looks biological doesn’t mean it is,” he says.
Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/mysterious-martian-cauliflower-may-be-latest-hint-alien-life-180957981/#OO8zcLEFyLU5MXpp.99

I’ve always wondered how long the flare of a supernova lasts. There is, of course quite a bit of variation but the brightest part of this one, that occurred during our own Cretaceous Period, lasted from the beginning of March to the end of June 2015.

Video Credit & Copyright: Changsu Choi & Myungshin Im (Seoul National University)

Explanation from Astronomy Picture of the Day:

The actual supernova occurred back when 80 million years ago, but images of the spectacular event began arriving last year. Supernova 2015F was discovered in nearby spiral galaxy NGC 2442 by Berto Monard in 2015 March and was unusually bright — enough to be seen with only a small telescope. The pattern of brightness variation indicated a Type Ia supernova — a type of stellar explosion that results when an Earth-size white dwarf gains so much mass that its core crosses the threshold of nuclear fusion, possibly caused by a lower mass white-dwarf companion spiraling into it. Finding and tracking Type Ia supernovae are particularly important because their intrinsic brightness can be calibrated, making their apparent brightness a good measure of their distance — and hence useful toward calibrating the distance scale of the entire universe.

An adult male of Aphonopelma johnnycashi, a new tarantula species named for Johnny Cash.

A new study that reorganizes the tarantula group, reclassifying the majority of 55 known species and adding 14 new ones, including the creepy-crawly named for Cash.

The study researchers evaluated close to 3,000 tarantulas from across the American Southwest. Scientists integrated tarantula DNA into the study alongside anatomy, geography and behavior gleaned from spiders that were gathered by the researchers, contributed by “citizen-scientists” and borrowed from museum collections, to deliver the most comprehensive overview of tarantulas ever assembled, according to the new study, published online Feb. 4 in the journal ZooKeys.

Turns out that when you Google “TRUS”, the logo at once becomes hilarious and hilariously appropriate:

“A transrectal ultrasound (TRUS) is an ultrasound technique that is used to view a man’s prostate and surrounding tissues. The ultrasound transducer (probe) sends sound waves through the wall of the rectum into the prostate gland, which is located directly in front of the rectum.”

Perfect for this asshole.

More signage and wordplay illustrations:

Spacecraft Rosetta continues to circle and map Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Crossing the inner Solar System for ten years to reach the vicinity of the comet in 2014, the robotic spacecraft continues to image the unusual double-lobed comet nucleus. The featured image, taken one year ago, shows dust and gas escaping from the comet’s nucleus. Although appearing bright here, the comet’s surface reflects only about four percent of impinging visible light, making it as dark as coal.

Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko spans about four kilometers in length and has a surface gravity so low that an astronaut could jump off of it. With Rosetta in tow, Comet 67P passed its closest to the Sun last year and is now headed back to the furthest point — just past the orbit of Jupiter.

Image Credit & Licence: ESA, Rosetta, NAVCAM

For Kids Only is leaving the Haight Ashbury after 30 years.
Few other businesses reflect the changing demographics of this neighborhood as well as this one.
I have dozens of boutiques, cafés, and clothing stores come and go over the years and few had the staying power (and I assume reasonable rent) to last for three decades.
In that time the neighborhood has passed from one with mostly young single people and couples with an active nightlife (5 places with live music in the 1980s) to a much more family oriented one where a store selling toys and kids’ clothing (albeit Ramones, CBGBs, and tie-dyed onesies) could survive and thrive.
I understand that this is also a reflection of gentrification but I have long recognized that as just part of the evolution of the urban environment.

On Saturday, 300 plumbers from unions across the country descended on Flint to install new faucets and water filters for free.

Many Flint residents needed new faucets because their existing faucets were so old they could not accommodate water filters provided by the state.

Interior Decoration A to Z, by Betty Pepis

Betty Pepis was an interior designer who in the mid-twentieth century, sought to de-mystify the decorating process.

During the course of her career, she wrote for and/or edited sections of the magazines McClure, Look, and House and Garden; and The New York Times.

Take a gander at her spectacular, though oft wince-inducing, designs from 1965:

Original scans by Annie Elliot, interior designer.