Oleg Zabluda's blog
Tuesday, June 05, 2012
 
Venus transit with Marianna Dizik
Venus transit with Marianna Dizik

Bananarama Venus

She is looking at a projection of the Sun on paper through a small telescope. Saved eyesight of 2 children from permanent damage when they were squeezing their heads in between the screen and ocular to look at the Sun directly.



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- posted by Oleg Zabluda @ 5:52 PM | permalink | | | technorati | bloglines | feedster
 
Hubble Space Telescope (HST) funding was approved in 1978, design began aiming for the launch date of 1983.
Hubble Space Telescope (HST) funding was approved in 1978, design began aiming for the launch date of 1983. Optics (2.4m mirror) was built in 1979-1981 by Perkin-Elmer, which also built optics for KH-9 Hexagon (declassified in Sep 2011) in 1971 (0.91m mirror, 0.6m resolution). It was widely assumed at the time that NRO must have something at least as good if not better. It was later suspected to be KH-11 Kennan (1976, same 2.4m diameter mirror as HST, 0.15 cm m resolution). KH-11 was the first reconnaissance satellite equipped with CCD. Before that film had to be jettisoned.

In Jan 2011 NRO offered NASA two spare earlier block (obsolete) KH-11 satellites, with steerable secondary mirrors and shorter focal length resulting a 10x wider field of view, and told them to keep quiet about it. Later block III (Nov 1992) are rumored to have 3.15m mirror.

In Jun 2012, it all leaked out.

Paraphrasing Khrushchev, NRO is making Hubbles like sausages.

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1206/04nronasa/
http://nasawatch.com/archives/2012/06/nro-gives-nasa.html#comment-547333898
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Space_Telescope
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PerkinElmer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-9
http://nasawatch.com/archives/2012/06/nro-gives-nasa.html#comment-547333898

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- posted by Oleg Zabluda @ 2:38 PM | permalink | | | technorati | bloglines | feedster
 
In Redwood City, where we live, several years ago, a man impertinently (нагло) cut down 2 huge palms on his property.
In Redwood City, where we live, several years ago, a man impertinently (нагло) cut down 2 huge palms on his property. The city council was incredulous in their collective gasp. Never ever did anybody do it that glaringly (вызывающе). Chapter 35 of the Municipal Code The ("Tree Preservation Ordinance") says that before cutting down a tree, he had to get a permission first (clearly wouldn't have been granted) and prepared to slap him with $500 fine per tree and required to replace both trees with the ones of similar size (which would have cost him  tens of thousands of dollars per tree. Мужик явно нарвался.

His defense - a palm is not a tree.

For example, it doesn't have a tunk with branches and rings and stuff. In fact, it most closely resembles a huge (60m tall) grass (like wheat) from hell, which one can clearly see up close. What seems like a trunk is a stem, made up of leaves. Each "branch" is a single huge leaf.

We sometimes see quirrels eating dates right off the nearby palms. Surreal. BTW, since many of you never saw a raw date on a date tree, it looks and tastes nothing like the dried one what you typically buy.

In 1991, when we were still in USSR, Yuri Panchul was already in SFBA, complaining to us on the phone that every day he drives to work in his everyday new car, on the everyday highway 101, past everyday (будничных) palms. "Вот зажрался, сука", завидовали мы ему [1]. Now we do the same, except we love the palms.

Friends of ours complain that owning a palm is useless and a pain. It's huge, provides no shadow, and drops enormous, heavy, razor-sharp leaves on your head. We don't care. But that's partially because we don't own any.

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/o3KLZB-ord48fO4FD0tVONMTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0

So, what about that city council? After consulting with an arborist and collecting themselves, they amended municipal code to include palms as well. You can fight city hall at most once.

http://library.municode.com/HTML/16574/level1/CH35TRPR.html

[1] Dramatization. In reality, it was in 1994, when we were already in Pennsylvania, but still envious.
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/o3KLZB-ord48fO4FD0tVONMTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0

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- posted by Oleg Zabluda @ 12:01 PM | permalink | | | technorati | bloglines | feedster
 
Voting in primary elections with Marianna Dizik

Voting in primary elections with Marianna Dizik

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- posted by Oleg Zabluda @ 9:01 AM | permalink | | | technorati | bloglines | feedster

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