Ahrcanum

What’s twisting our antenna,

Friday, December 8, 2011?

Eclipse.  

As far as astronomy goes, we’d hardly call any of us experts.  We write from America’s  farmland, nestled between two major city airports and have an grass airstrip in the backyard.  A few folks are licensed pilots, and have served in the Air Force flying F-16’s and some bomber plane that the old man can’t remember the name of anymore.  We’ve always thought that flying, whether to the moon, planets or on an airplane is a privilege- not a right.   Baldwin should take heed.

The great thing about being rural is the night sky and no city lights. We have a good view of  weather fronts, contrails, chem-trails, satellites, and the sky in general.  A few favorites are NASA’s Solar Monitor, PUniverse (Physical), and Space Weather http://spaceweather.com/.  Last night we purchased SkySafari for iphone and highly recommend it.   http://www.southernstars.com/products/skysafari/index.html

All that Maxwell Smart could do with the phone in his shoe was talk.

We’ve turned our cell phones into a satellite and airplane tracking devices, but nothing beats the naked or enhanced telescopic eye.   A few days ago we found a UFO or something odd from the GOES satellite that we’ve never seen before. 

Judge for your self what it could be– https://ahrcanum.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/thats-no-bird-or-plane/

If God didn’t exsist, man would have invented him. Or something like that.  If Twitter didn’t exsist, we’d have to rely on Facebook and never see the half of what gets posted and miss out on all the public has to share around the world.  Except of course in France, where using the word Facebook and Twitter is prohibited.

In the free for all of the press, a judge in Oregon decided that bloggers are not journalists.   

In a decision with implications for bloggers around the country, a federal judge in Oregon has ruled that a Montana woman sued for defamation was not a journalist when she posted online that an Oregon lawyer acted criminally during a bankruptcy case…. “What could be more mainstream than the Internet and the top of the search engine?’’ she said.http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2011/12/08/judge-says-blogger-not-journalist/4LFxisYM0RdW3AxNOwgTCI/story.html

The judge said she had no media affiliation nor education relating to her writing.  That’s one for main stream media and zero for independent authors and websites like Ahrcanum.  For the record, we have over 600 articles dating back almost four years.  The CEO and Czar has a related Bachelor of Science Degree and so do others who contribute. Humph, that makes us a journalists- even if our proof reader quit.  

If independents authors are to be dismissed so easily, why is every Tweet stored in The Congressional Library? And just who has access to the master list of Tweets? 

“We have an agreement with Twitter where they have a bunch of servers with their historic archive of tweets, everything that was sent out and declared to be public,” Bill Lefurgy, digital initiatives program manager at the library’s digital information infrastructure and preservation program, told FederalNewsRadio.com.http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2011/12/library-of-congress-to-store-tweets-based-on-twitter-deal/1

Score a zillion for free speech, unless you are Joe Gordon, the man who translated and posted on his blog about the longest ruling monarchy.  When visiting Taiwan, they arrested him and sentenced him to two years in jail.  HE IS A U.S. CITIZEN.

Before the verdict was read out, Lerpong was allowed to speak to reporters.  “I’m not Thai, I’m American. I was just born in Thailand. I hold an American passport. In Thailand there are many laws that don’t allow you to express opinions, but we don’t have that in America,” he said. http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2011/12/09/2003520321

Guess Joe was wrong. 

Also on Jun 23, 2011 – A food blogger in Taiwan was sentenced to 30 days in jail, given two years probation and fined 200000 New Taiwan Dollars.  He wrote that noodles were too salty at a restaurant.  www.huffingtonpost.com Noodles for heaven sake! 

And so we shake our head.  Our heads will be looking up as always.  Tomorrow if the weather cooperates, we may catch a glimpse of the eclipse.  If not we’ll turn to Live webcasts: Hong Kong; India; North Dakota; Nevada.  And  http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/12/lunar-eclipse-feed/, plus  http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/12/how-to-watch-saturdays-total-eclipse-of-the-moon-on-your-computer.html,

Drop us a comment if you find more- send us tweets of your pix too.

The next total lunar eclipse visible in North America will be on April 15, 2014.   A partial eclipse will be visible to most of the continent less than a year from now on Nov. 28, 2012.

In good journalist ethics, we found this lovely photo highlighting the halo of the moon last night.  Jupiter is by its side and what appears to be an airplane.  Used with permission (thanks!) from; 

This photo is on it’s second trip to the Library of Congress.  After this article is published,  it automatically Tweets and it will also be in the Library.   

While we were howling at the moon, the sun had its own eclipse of a kind.  A cloud of plasma was eclipsed by a dark magnetic filament. December 8/9, 2011. NASA pix.

Stay tuned and have a good day, one day it will be your last.  God Bless.