Wednesday, September 26, 2007


Who needs Yucca Mountain, let's just use the Bingham Canyon Mine

7 Amazing Holes et al

SFW... Four mines, a glory hole, a great blue hole, and a home-eating sinkhole. 7 Amazing Holes even has a hole with a no-fly zone above it to prevent helicopters being sucked in, again. They omitted the largest meteorite crater in the world, now known as Lake El'gygytgyn. If you want depth there's the 1.4 mile deep Voronya Cave in Georgia or the 7.6 mile deep Kola Superdeep Borehole. Of course, for an virtual abyss, there's always the Black Hole of Calcutta.

7 Amazing Holes

Lake El'gygytgyn

Voronya Cave

Kola Superdeep Borehole

The Black Hole of Calcutta

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

The classic postcard Jackalope

Taxidermy Jackalopes

Distinctly American like jazz, baseball, and comic books. Relative to the tree squeak, hodag, hoop snake, splintercat, and fur-bearing trout. The jackalope is a cross between a jackrabbit and antelope found in the western states. Ronald Reagan had a jackalope mounted on the wall of his California ranch. To get your own mounted jackalope there's always the infamous Wall Drug with head mounts and buck & doe mounts. Wall Drug is credited with inventing the flying jackalope (jackrabbit, antelope, and chicken). However, to get a flying jackalope, you'll have to go to Jackalope Junction for a pheasalope. They also carry shoulder mounts, full body mounts, and buck & doe mounts. But the best deals are at the Douglas Area Chamber of Commerce Jackalope Store. Their shoulder mounted jackalopes come with a jackalope hunting license and are prepared by a direct descendant of Douglas and Ralph Herrick, the creators of the original jackalope in the 1930s. The Jackalopes are also a minor league hockey franchise affiliated with the Edmonton Oilers located in Odessa, Texas, but unfortunately I couldn't find any merchandise with their logo on sale.

Wall Drug Jacakalope Store

Jackalope Junction

Douglas Area Chamber of Commerce Jackalope Store

Odessa Jackalopes

Tuesday, September 11, 2007


The circled object is approximately the size of Steve's plane

Help find Steve Fossett

On Monday, September 3, Steve Fossett, the first person to fly a plane around the world without refueling and the first person to fly around the world in a balloon went missing in Nevada. An airplane he was flying failed to return. No one has any idea where he is. The search area is 17,500 square miles of mountain terrain that is a barren and rugged wilderness that has swallowed at least 150 light aircraft in the past five decades. Amazon Mechanical Turk has set up a website where you and others can help search for him. You're shown satellite images and you flag any which contain objects that may resemble an airplane or airplane parts. Multiple people will cover the same area several times over and marked images will be sent to a team of specialists. You need to have Google Earth installed and complete a short registration process to participate.

Help find Steve Fosset

Wednesday, September 05, 2007

Flying over San Francisco

Google Earth Flight Simulator (and Sky)

The virtual globe program, Google Earth, recently unveiled Sky, which allows users to view the night skies. Using Google Earth, Sky lets you fly around and zoom in, exposing increasingly detailed imagery of millions and millions of stars and galaxies. You can get Sky by downloading the latest (free) edition of Google Earth. However the buzz this past week was about the secret Flight Simulator hidden inside the latest version of Google Earth. To access the hidden feature, open Google Earth and hit Command+Option+A (note it must be capital A) or Ctrl+Alt+A (for Windows). Once you have entered flight simulator mode for the first time, you can re-enter the mode by choosing Tools > Enter Flight Simulator. There's a link to the control instructions below. Reportedly the visuals are as good as the paid Microsoft Flight Simulator.

Google Earth

Flight Simulator Keyboard Controls