It came to light yesterday that Apple has begun “user-proofing” the iPhone with a new type of security screw in an effort to keep users from opening the device. Apparently the screws are swapped out anytime a customer brings an iPhone 4 in for service, and the owner of the phone is not told about the switch. Apple has refused to comment, but it is widely known that it tries very hard to protect its secrets. I think this has more to do with trying to protect the $79 they will charge you to replace the battery instead of you being able to do it yourself for considerably less. One more reason not to buy an Apple product as far as I am concerned. I don’t own one, don’t plan on owning one.
Everybody can take a breath of relief, according to a New Jersey Institute of Technology source. The giant red star Betelgeuse will not explode in 2012 as previously predicted. While its distance from earth can only be estimated, the current best guess is that Betelgeuse is 640 light years from earth. For those who may have napped through that portion of sixth grade science class, a light year is the distance that a beam of light travels in a year through free space. That means that if Betelgeuse exploded today, the people on earth would not see it until the year 2651, or 640 years from now. If you want to keep tabs on it for yourself, go out on a clear night and find the constellation Orion. Betelgeuse is the pinkish star in the upper left corner of the constellation. If you look tonight, you are looking at history. The light you see is at least 640 years old, if the estimates are correct.
A new species of crayfish has been discovered in Tennessee, and is said to be at least twice the size of any others that live there. Found in a creek that is frequented by human visitors, this 5” long specimen has managed to elude detection until now. Makes you wonder why we spend millions of dollars of taxpayer money to investigate the flora and fauna in places like the Amazon jungle and ignore our own back yards. (Side note…I love fried crawfish tails!)
The “Aflockalypse” continues with reports of more mass bird die-offs. These happened in California and Italy this time and the “end of the world” fans are all abuzz about it. As I said in an earlier issue, this is just the normal workings of Mother Earth, it’s just now people are actually paying attention and have the technology to document it.
In the last issue of this blog, we talked about several renewable energy sources. One of the best and the most abundant energy sources is our own sun, which brings us all sorts of energy every day, free of charge. Many folks have taken up the task of inventing ways to harness this bonanza, but as with everything else it has its opponents. There’s a new solar power plant under construction in the California desert which is being challenged in court now by a group who claim this project poses a threat to migratory birds, the desert tortoise, bighorn sheep, ground water resources and rare plants. The proposed facility will produce 370 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 140,000 homes. It never seems to matter what gets proposed, one or more of these “environmental” groups opposes it, yet these same groups are the first to say that we have to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels. So what would they have us do? Just stop everything? Life will go on in spite of all this, and we should do what we can to preserve the natural condition of the earth, but we have to have food and power. A return to living in harmony with nature is not possible, and will not happen. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle. We are an industrial society, and will continue to be so until the actual “end of the world”. We may bring that about ourselves, or it may be a cataclysmic natural occurrence, but it will end sometime.
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