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“In the online journal Terra Nova, a team of Italian researchers led by marine geologist Luca Gasperini reports on what may be the missing Tunguska impact crater.
Tunguska is a household name for meteorite enthusiasts. It’s the best-known destructive impact to have occurred in the modern era, a blast that destroyed some 800 square miles of remote forest near the Tunguska River in eastern Siberia on the morning of June 30, 1908. Something — a small asteroid or comet — entered the atmosphere and exploded with a force equal to about 15 million tons of TNT. That’s 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. Experts think the blast occurred some 5 miles above the ground, and— here’s the catch — no crater, not even the tiniest trace of the impactor, has ever been found. Gasperini’s team suspects that Lake Cheko, located some 5 miles north-northwest of the blast’s suspected epicenter was gouged out when the impactor struck and later filled with water. The region is remote, and it’s unclear from old maps whether the lake existed before 1908. The team’s investigation of the lake bottom’s geology revealed a strange funnel-like shape that differs from those of neighboring lakes but is consistent with an impact origin. They go on to say that it might have formed from a fragment of the main-body explosion. ” (Sky and Telescope via abby) |
![//media.skytonight.com/images/Tunguska_m.jpg' cannot be displayed]](http://media.skytonight.com/images/Tunguska_m.jpg "Devastated trees at Tunguska") |
Daily Archives: 2 Jul 07
Why Do Retirees Buy Such Big Houses?
…and Other Riddles From The Economic Naturalist: “The Cornell economics professor Robert Frank begins a semester by asking his students to ask and answer a real-world economics question in 500 words or less. He has now compiled these essays in a book called The Economic Naturalist. It is a great deal of fun, and interesting. Below are some excerpts, including the illustrations by Mick Stevens…”
(Freakonomics via walker)
Luxury Then and Luxury Now
“…[S]omewhere in the loving confluence between the European class system and North American mass media, the modern prestige brand came into its own. No French clerk in the nineteenth century would have dreamed of owning an Hermés saddle or Louis Vuitton luggage, if, indeed, he had ever even heard those names. Yet by the early twentieth century, thanks largely to an emerging breed of magazines like Harper’s Bazaar, Women’s Wear Daily, and Vogue, aspirational middle-class Americans had not only heard the names, they wanted them for themselves. In the absence of a bona fide US aristocracy, the paraphernalia of the Old World ruling classes would do just as well.
For the manufacturers of luxury, this presented a dilemma. On the one hand, they wanted to expand, to cash in on the burgeoning demand. On the other hand, the nature of their goods – hand-crafted, finite production – made it near-impossible to meet that demand without compromise. Then they had a collective realization. While artisans and fine materials are limited in supply, the one thing that can be replicated ad infinitum is the brand: the name, the monogram, the insignia.” (Adbusters)
French Activists Speak Out Against Invasive Ads
![//adbusters.org/the_magazine/images/stories/71/inside_collectif3.jpg' cannot be displayed]](http://adbusters.org/the_magazine/images/stories/71/inside_collectif3.jpg "Dismantling...") |
The Dismantlers: “Formed a year ago in Paris, Le Collectif des Déboulonneurs are one of several French groups on a crusade against consumerism and aggressive advertising. Staging high-profile protests across the country, the group demands that advertisements in public spaces be restricted to dimensions of 50 x 70 cm (the maximum size for political posters). This March, the Déboulonneurs won a huge symbolic victory at a trial when they were found guilty of vandalizing billboards, but only fined €1 – vastly less than the €75,000 and five years in prison which they could have incurred. Alex Barret, one of the founding members who was involved with the trial, shared his thoughts with Adbusters.”
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Armies Must Ready for Global Warming Role – Britain
“Global warming is such a threat to security that military planners must build it into their calculations, the head of Britain’s armed forces said on Monday.
Jock Stirrup, chief of the defence staff, said risks that climate change could cause weakened states to disintegrate and produce major humanitarian disasters or exploitation by armed groups had to become a feature of military planning.” (Planet Ark)
Has a Tunguska Crater Been Found?
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“In the online journal Terra Nova, a team of Italian researchers led by marine geologist Luca Gasperini reports on what may be the missing Tunguska impact crater.
Tunguska is a household name for meteorite enthusiasts. It’s the best-known destructive impact to have occurred in the modern era, a blast that destroyed some 800 square miles of remote forest near the Tunguska River in eastern Siberia on the morning of June 30, 1908. Something — a small asteroid or comet — entered the atmosphere and exploded with a force equal to about 15 million tons of TNT. That’s 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. Experts think the blast occurred some 5 miles above the ground, and— here’s the catch — no crater, not even the tiniest trace of the impactor, has ever been found. Gasperini’s team suspects that Lake Cheko, located some 5 miles north-northwest of the blast’s suspected epicenter was gouged out when the impactor struck and later filled with water. The region is remote, and it’s unclear from old maps whether the lake existed before 1908. The team’s investigation of the lake bottom’s geology revealed a strange funnel-like shape that differs from those of neighboring lakes but is consistent with an impact origin. They go on to say that it might have formed from a fragment of the main-body explosion. ” (Sky and Telescope via abby) |
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