Fire Up The Volcano - Yellowstone Is Even Bigger Than We Knew

April 18, 2013; Looks like we have something even bigger to worry about than we thought! According to a new research report out this week, the volcano that fuels Yellowstone park and all its wonders is even bigger than scientists first thought. 

"We are getting a much better understanding of the volcanic system of Yellowstone," said Jamie Farrell, a seismology graduate student at the University of Utah. "The magma reservoir is at least 50 percent larger than previously imaged."

Knowing the volume of molten magma beneath Yellowstone is important for estimating the size of future eruptions, Farrell told OurAmazingPlanet.

Geologists believe Yellowstone sits over a hotspot, a plume of superheated rock rising from Earth's mantle. As North America slowly drifted over the hotspot, the Yellowstone plume punched through the continent's crust, leaving a bread-crumb-like trail of calderas created by massive volcanic eruptions along Idaho's Snake River Plain, leading straight to Yellowstone. The last caldera eruption was 640,000 years ago. Smaller eruptions occurred in between and after the big blasts, most recently about 70,000 years ago. [Infographic: Geology of Yellowstone]

The magma chamber seen in the new study fed these smaller eruptions and is the source of the park's amazing hydrothermal springs and geysers. It also creates the surface uplift seen in the park, said Bob Smith, a seismologist at the University of Utah and author of a related study presented at the meeting.

The volcanic plume of partly molten rock that feeds the Yellowstone supervolcano. Yellow and red indicate higher conductivity, green and blue indicate lower conductivity. Made by University of Utah geophysicists and computer scientists, this is the first large-scale 'geoelectric' image of the Yellowstone hotspot.

"This crustal magma body is a little dimple that creates the uplift," Smith said. "It's like putting your finger under a rubber membrane and pushing it up and the sides expand."

A clearer picture of Yellowstone's shallow magma chamber emerged from earthquakes, whose waves change speed when they travel through molten or solid rock. Farrell analyzed nearby earthquakes to build a picture of the magma chamber.

The underground magma resembles a mutant banana, with a knobby, bulbous end poking up toward the northeast corner of Yellowstone National Park, and the rest of the tubular fruit angling shallowly southwest. It's a single connected chamber, about 37 miles (60 kilometers) long, 18 miles (30 km) wide, and 3 to 7 miles (5 to 12 km) deep.

Previously, researchers had thought the magma beneath Yellowstone was in separate blobs, not a continuous pocket. The shallowest magma, in the northeast, also matches up with the park's most intense hydrothermal activity, Farrell said. The new study is the best view yet of this zone, which lies outside the youngest caldera rim.
Additional molten rock, not imaged in this study, also exists deeper beneath Yellowstone, scientists think.

The planet is indeed such a marvelous thing, and hundreds of thousands of years from now, just through natural causes, the continent we know as North America will likely bear very little resemblance to what it looks like now.  In fact, if the volcano below Yellowstone ever erupts with all of it's potential, there's a good chance that a big part of the world will undergo a huge change.

blog post by Joe lizura
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Happy to Recommend a Great Movie

Big weekend at the box office for "42", "The Jackie Robinson Story".  Personally I loved it, we saw it Saturday night in a fairly crowded theater and I think everyone liked it because most folks clapped after it was over, which is always a good sign!  Although it wasn't the busiest weekend at the movies, there were some good stories, here's how the weekend shaped up:

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Baseball has scored a rare hit in Hollywood, while another American institution — Tom Cruise — has delivered his latest hit overseas.

 

The Jackie Robinson tale "42" took in $27.3 million to claim the weekend box-office championship domestically, according to studio estimates Sunday.

The film has yet to open overseas, where the sport is a harder sell. But Cruise knocked it out of the park with a $61.1 million international launch in 52 countries for his sci-fi thriller "Oblivion."
That bodes well for the domestic debut of "Oblivion" next Friday. The film stars Cruise as a workman on a devastated future Earth who lands in a battle with aliens.

If "Oblivion" packs in comparable domestic crowds, it will help maintain the action-star momentum Cruise regained with 2011's "Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol." That return to box-office luster came after some fitful years that followed odd turns in his personal life, culminating with the breakup of his marriage to Katie Holmes last year.

Released by Warner Bros., "42" easily beat the domestic start of an established franchise in "Scary Movie 5." The Weinstein Co. sequel opened in second-place with $15.2 million, the smallest debut for the horror-comedy series.

Three of the previous four "Scary Movie" installments had debuts of $40 million or more.
On the other hand, "42" outdid the usual expectations for baseball movies, which usually do modest business at best. Box-office trackers had expected "42" to pull in less than $20 million.
The previous weekend's top draw, Sony's horror remake "Evil Dead," tumbled to No. 5 with $9.5 million, raising its domestic haul to $41.5 million.

The $27.3 million opening for "42" is a record for a baseball flick in terms of straight dollars, topping the $19.5 million debut of "Moneyball" in 2011. Factoring in higher ticket prices, the $13.7 million debut of 1992's "A League of Their Own" would have been on par with "42" in terms of inflation-adjusted dollars.

The film stars Chadwick Boseman as Robinson and Harrison Ford as Brooklyn Dodgers boss Branch Rickey, who brought No. 42 onto the team in 1947 as the Major Leagues' first black player.
"It's a story that has so much emotion to it. Jackie Robinson's life had such an influence on our country," said Dan Fellman, head of distribution for Warner Bros., who noted that all Major League players will wear No. 42 on Monday for Jackie Robinson Day, the 66th anniversary of his Dodgers debut. "Think of what a tribute that is for what he accomplished. Every player wearing 42 on his back."
With generally good reviews, "42" drew in older crowds, with 83 percent of the audience over 25, Fellman said.

"Scary Movie 5" was the franchise's first installment in seven years and had the same lukewarm reception as another Weinstein series that returned after a long lag. In 2011, "Scream 4" opened 11 years after the franchise's last movie and took in just $18.7 million, a fraction of the $30 million-plus debuts for the previous two sequels.

The previous low for the "Scary Movie" series was the second one, which opened with $20.5 million in 2001. "Scary Movie 3" had the best debut, with $48.1 million in 2003, though its total domestic haul of $110 million fell well short of the $157 million take for the 2000 original.
"Sometimes, when there's too big of a lag, people lose interest. If it's a 'Star Wars' movie, nostalgia works in your favor. The long lag works in your favor. People are loaded with anticipation," said Paul Dergarabedian, an analyst for box-office tracker Hollywood.com. "Other franchises, if you go too long, they lose that pop and excitement, and it's hard to get that back."

It didn't help that "Scary Movie 5" got the franchise's worst reviews. Critics haven't much cared for any of the "Scary Movie" flicks, but reviews for the latest were almost universally bad.
In limited release, director Terrence Malick's drama "To the Wonder" had a modest start, taking in $130,000 in 18 theaters for an average of $7,222 a cinema. That compares to a $9,074 average in 3,003 theaters for "42."

"To the Wonder" stars Ben Affleck, Olga Kurylenko, Rachel McAdams and Javier Bardem in a dreamlike, poetic musing on love
.

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Where available, latest international numbers are also included. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.

1. "42," $27.3 million.

2. "Scary Movie 5," $15.2 million.

3. "The Croods," $13.2 million ($25.5 million international).

4. "G.I. Joe: Retaliation," $10.8 million ($15.6 million international).

5. "Evil Dead," $9.5 million.

6. "Jurassic Park" in 3-D, $8.8 million ($1.3 million international).

7. "Olympus Has Fallen," $7.3 million.

8. "Oz the Great and Powerful," $4.9 million ($5.2 million international).

9. "Tyler Perry's Temptation," $4.5 million.

10. "The Place Beyond the Pines," $4.1 million.

There's always something great about going to the moview!

Joe Lizura
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Fired

So I just had to pass along my thoughts about Dennis Rodman getting fired from Celebrity Apprentice because his team made an absolute HUGE mistake on the marketing campaign project they were supposed to be working on.  Let me just say that it's a crazy episode when even Gary Busey comes out looking good!

Here's what happened,

The NBA star and Celebrity Apprentice contestant was fired from the reality show after his team misspelled Donald Trump’s wife’s name, NBC reports.

The two teams were asked to design an ad campaign for Melania Trump’s skincare line, Melania Caviar Complexe. Rodman, who was project manager for Team Power, opted for a large portrait of the former model along with the slogan, “Simply Milania, Simply Luxury," where Mrs. Trump’s name is misspelled with the letter "i" instead of an "e."

Throughout the team’s final presentation, nobody on Team Power noticed the mistake. In fact, they thought they did quite well.

The Trumps were in shock. “I cannot believe that they spelled my name wrong,” Melania said. “It’s all over the place and nobody even noticed. Amazing.”

Trump called Rodman and Trace Adkins into the boardroom to discuss the mishap. Adkins, who was in charge of the graphics, blamed the mistake on the graphic designer and Rodman for signing off on it. The Donald was not impressed with the typo or Rodman’s frequent boardroom appearances and fired the Hall of Famer.

But Plan B, the competing team, had its share of troubles. In its presentation, Project Manager Penn Jillette referred to Melania Trump as the product line’s “spokesman” instead of its creator, however
Melania Trump’s beauty didn’t go unnoticed. Team member Gary Busey said, "Have you ever had your genitalia so excited that it spins like a Ferris wheel on a carnival ride? That's how beautiful she is."

Funny day when you don't know whether to cheer for Rodman or Busey - haha.

Joe Lizura

Here Comes the Swarm

Get Ready East Coasters, here comes the swarm_April 7, 2013.  What kind of swarm?  The swarm of Cicadas that will pester the eastern coast for the summer.  If you've never had the experience of the swarming Cicadas, I can't say you've missed out that's for sure.  When I was a kid, I remember one of the years (usually once every 17 years) of the Cicadas, where there were tens of thousands of these grasshopper-like critters all over the place!

Here is the story from National Geographic - Published March 29, 2013

Periodical cicadas (Magicicada septendecim), the cousins of katydids and crickets, have a unique breeding schedule, and after 17 years of living underground, a large group of them are preparing to fill the skies along the U.S. East Coast, from North Carolina up to Connecticut.

Normally, periodic cicadas spend their lives in complete darkness underground, sucking the fluid out of the roots of trees and shrubs. At the end of their life, they emerge, breed, and almost instantly die, completing a lifecycle that humans have studied for centuries.

 

In the process, however, they annoy millions of people with their constant chirping and, of course, the piles of dead cicada bodies on the ground. While some areas may see no cicadas at all, others in the past have seen millions of cicadas in a single acre. (Listen to the cicada’s love song.)

"It can be like raking leaves in the fall, except instead of leaves, it’s dead cicada bodies," said Dan Mozgai, a cicada researcher who keeps a clearinghouse of cicada information and breeding schedules at cicadamania.com.

 

Cicadas are easy to anticipate because of their extremely consistent mating behavior. Every 13 or 17 years, depending on the population, species of periodic cicadas will emerge as part of a specific brood in order to look for a mate.

The group expected this spring, known as Brood 2, are the offspring of cicadas last seen in 1996. If they follow the same tracks as their parents, they'll emerge in Connecticut, Maryland, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.

The genetic mechanism that prompts periodical cicadas to emerge kicks in every 17 years (or every 13 years for other broods) when the ground warms up to 64°F (18°C).

Some researchers think the timing of a brood’s emergence is a defensive mechanism—appearing at infrequent intervals means that it’s harder for would-be predators like birds and squirrels to anticipate when the insects will be available to eat.

 

Others suggest that the 13- and 17-year cycles, prime numbers in mathematics, help cicadas avoid parasites. A 2004 study from the University of Campinas in Brazil suggested that a cicada with a 17-year cycle and a parasite with a two-year cycle, for example, would meet only twice each century.

But not all cicadas breed on this multiyear cycle. Some, like the tibicen cicadas, work on an annual rotation, leaving them more susceptible to predators like the cicada killer wasp (Sphecius speciosus).

The wasps know exactly when to expect the annual cicadas in late summer or early fall. The wasp lays its eggs on the cicadas, and the larvae slowly kill the cicada and feed off its carcass.

 

For the periodical cicadas, their temperature thresholds for emergence are getting harder to anticipate. During mild winters, like in 2012, cicadas from Brood 1 appeared in mid-April. Scientists think that this year, Brood 2 cicadas could wait until early May or even later

.

last appeared when Bill Clinton was President will soon be making their presence very well known.

 

So, needless to say, it should be an interesting start to the Summer.

 

Joe Lizura

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A Big Birthday Thanks

Well it's almost the end of my birthday, April 4, 2013 and it turned out to be a pretty nice one.  I must admit that over the last few days I was dreading the day as I've gotten to the point where moving through my 50's just isn't as much fun as I thought it would be - let's face it, the next "Big" one will be the "big 6-0" and who looks forward to that??!!

But after a little Carpe Diem (seize the day) I got out of my funk and jumped into the day - which turned out alright . . . I received a bunch of facebook Happy birthdays (34 and counting) and a bunch of phone calls and balloons and cake!  I even had a few drinks for happy hour with a couple of close friends that have been with me through "thick and thin" and that meant a great deal to me.

It was also wonderful to get my first card from my Daughter who no longer lives at home most of the year (she's in college) - it meant that she was able to do a nice thing that us grown-ups take for granted, and that is getting a birthday card to someone on time.  The same thing goes for my brother and sisters, all of whom called and sent cards - which meant a lot to me as well.

Now it's almost the end of my birthday and I wanted to say thanks to everyone who made my day a special one for me.  Thank you.

Joe
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Making Los Angeles Traffic Move Faster

Here is an interesting thought - trying to make the traffic flow better in Los Angeles.  April 2, 2013_As I can certainly agree, LA traffic is just a train wreck when it comes to organization.  Finally there is a new system in place to make it work better (at least in theory). 

San Francisco may be testing smart self-driving cars, but farther south, Los Angeles is still battling dumb traffic. To speed things up (a bit), the city has synchronized 4,000-something traffic lights, becoming the first city in the world with such a system, the New York Times reports.
One might imagine this would lead to drivers across the city swearing in unison as they hit red lights at the same time, but it's far more complex than uniform timing.

Magnetic sensors at street corners funnel real-time information about traffic flow into a central system, which then predicts where congestion will take place. If tweaking signal times could help traffic move quicker — say, speeding up turnover at an intersection — the software or a human operator makes it happen.

After 30 years in the works, the plan went live in February, and the results of the change are trickling in. Average driving time has fallen — it used to take 20 minutes to drive 5 miles, but now it just takes 17.2. And, the average speed has gone up: from 15 miles per hour to 17.3 mph, the Times reports.
The goal is to raise the travel speed by 16 percent, and reduce travel time by 12 percent, L.A. authorities said when they first introduced the scheme.

In Tennessee, Nashville and its suburb, Brentwood, may get their lights synced as well.
Perhaps this will take off as a partial solution to gridlock across America. However, there are some who argue light syncs aren't a healthy long-term approach to traffic — they just lead to more cars on the road.

All I hope is that it actually makes a difference the next time I am in LA, which is probably going to be in the next few days if all goes well.

San Diego's Joe Lizura
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