Pikachu Genki Dechu FAQ Version .2

Â© Adam Einhorn - cainedna@earthlink.net This FAQ may not be reproduced without
explicit permission given by the author, and all that jazz. I am serious about all of this, of

This FAQ can be found currently only at www.gamefaqs.com.

- Version -

v .2, June 24, 1999 - Second edition. A bit more in this edition. I took out the Japanese
text, as there are some inconsistencies with MS Word and all sorts of other crap. Sorry. I
added a lot and edited a lot, but any help that can be given is very much needed!

v .1, June 23, 1999 - First Edition. Incomplete, very much so.

- Introduction -

        This is my first attempt at writing any sort of FAQ, so if I fail to provide any
information about the game that one would consider mandatory in an FAQ, e-mail me and
I'll try to improve the FAQ if at all possible.

        I recently purchased Pikachu Genki Dechu for the Nintendo 64 (Genki = Healthy,
energetic, dechu = corrupted version of Pikachu's speech saying "desu", meaning is.
Thus, "Pikachu is Doing Great") while on a class trip to Japan. The main selling point for
this game is that it's one of the first console games that actually responds when you talk to
it. The game comes with a microphone unit that it plugged into the fourth controller port,
which can either be worn on a ring that hangs on your neck (which I found uncomfortable)
or on a piece of plastic that you can wrap around the main controller (my choice).

        I ran in to a lot of problems in the game, as my Japanese wasn't quite at the level I
thought it was. A lot of other people (actually, the only people I'd heard of having the
game) also seemed to be having problems, as well. There is, as far as I can tell, no
additional information about this game anywhere on any English speaking sites.

        This is not a walkthrough. This is an FAQ at the moment (this may change), and
will just cover the basics, to help people through. If enough requests and information
comes in, this may change.

- Characters -

        Pikachu - A yellow mouse Pokemon. Incredibly cute, free-willed, and stubborn.
Known for his powerful electric attacks. Pre-evolution before Raichu (doesn't happen in
this game).

        Dr. Oak (Ookido Hakase) - Will call you on occasion from your TV, to help you
train Pikachu. Pikachu is your friend, of course!

        Mom (Mama) - Will encourage you, and play a very small part in the game. She
likes Pikachu a lot.

        You - Generic boy, though Nintendo's VMS system is very adaptable, and will
work for girls as well.

- Controls -

        Joystick - Movement, or look around. Sometimes you can only move around
Pikachu, or you can move much like a first person shooter... aside from the fact that
you don't shoot anything. Come on, this is a cute game...

        Z  or L Button - Hold this when you want to speak to Pikachu. Most used button.
        A Button - Pick up item, or use item (usually throw it). This will be the second-
most used command in the game.

        B Button - Find information on an item. Useful to find out what something is
called, if your Japanese vocabulary isn't quite up to par. The item or creature's name
should be in red.

        Start Button - Go to your toolbox. This has all of the items that you can use outside
of the house, such as your Pocket Helper or Onigiri. (yum! ^_^)

        C Up Button - Look at Pikachu. This button can be pressed to look directly at
Pikachu at all times, useful if you're having a hard time finding him.

        C Left and Right Buttons - Look to the left or right.

        C Down Button - Look around pivoted where you are. Useful to look at things with
the pointer, attracting Pikachu's attention to it.

- Pikachu's Vocabulary -

        This is going to be a very incomplete list, for the first version of this FAQ. If
anyone knows of any words in addition that Pikachu understands, please e-mail me, so that
I might add to this FAQ!

        However, there is one thing that you should know before having played this game
at all, which is basic linguistics of Japanese, and if at all possible, a knowledge of hiragana
and katakana.
        Japanese phonetics are simplified like this.

        Every Japanese character ends with one of the 5 basic vowels.

        A, as in "car".

        I, as in the e in "eat".

        U, pronounced like "oo"

        E, as in the e in "bed".

        O, as in "oh".

        There are the basic 5 vowels, and 5 variants of each consonant, ending with the
verbs (i.e. a i u e o, ka ki ku ke ko, sa shi(si) su se so, etc.)

        That should help with pronounce the words correctly to Pikachu.

        For additional help in reading Hiragana and Katakana, I suggest looking online for
simple lessons. The game is playable without understanding the characters, but it makes it a
whole lot tougher.

        Onto the words, finally.

- Vocabulary -

        Kawaii! - Cute! Pikachu normally reacts by blushing, and
shaking his head, further proving the point.

        Nagete - Not sure of the literal meaning, but I'm assuming it means "throw it".

        Dame da! - No good! Say this to Pikachu to get the meaning across to him that
whatever he's holding or doing is bad.

        Tabete ii yo! - You can eat it! Means what it sounds like. Pikachu will probably eat
it. He lots of things.

        Kore! - Means "this", hopefully calling attention to whatever your cursor is
pointing at.

        Juuman Boruto - 100,000 Volt Bolt. Pikachu will use
his thunder shock on what you're pointing at.

        Denki Shokku - Electric shock. Another Pikachu
attack, Used in other situations, if the other attack won't work.

        Yonde ii - I'm not sure about the translation for this, but it summons Koiru
(Japanese name. US name?) to take your vegetable in the Fushigidane (Bulbasaur) levels.

        Migi - Right (direction). Used in the Fushigibana (Ivysaur) level. Pikachu will
hopefully turn 90 degrees to the right.

        Hidari - Left (direction). Used in the Fushigibana (Ivysaur) level. Pikachu will
hopefully turn 90 degrees to the right.
        Hantai - Opposite (direction). Also used in the Fushigibana level. Not hentai, you
perv. ^_^ Pikachu will turn around.

        Soko da! - There! Use that to tell Pikachu where the watermelon is at, in the
Fushigibana level. When he's positioned right, tell him this, and he'll strike out, hopefully
smashing the watermelon.

        Ganbatte! - Do your best! Use this when fishing, and Pikachu needs
encouragement. I also used this to smash the really big watermelon, but I don't know if
this helped or not.

        Narashite mite!  - Play it for me! Use this to make him play the harmonica. It's
sooooo cute!

- Items -

        This section is a listing of items and their Japanese names, to help you if Pikachu is
doing something wrong to them, like eating them, or whatever.

        Ball (Booru) - Toy ball. You can use it yourself to throw with A, and it should be
in your toolbox.
        Onigiri - Rice ball/triangle thing. Fairly traditional food in Japan. Eaten as
commonly as say a sandwich in the US. They're rice, usually with some seaweed to hold it
together. They can have umeboshi (an odd pickled plum type-food, tasting kind of like
sour blood?) inside, which Pikachu does *not* like. I don't like umeboshi, either.

        Shinai - You get this for beating the Fushigibana level enough times. Pikachu
doesn't seem too interested in it, though.

        Light bulb (denkyuu) - Pikachu touches it an it lights up. It drains his electricity,
and I'm assuming you use it in some cave section, or something. I don't know of any.

        Fishing tools (tsuribari) - You have this in your inventory, and use it automatically
when you go to fishing levels.

        Megaphone (megahon)  - If Pikachu is far away, you can use this to call him closer.
Use it if Pikachu runs away to call for him.

        Harmonica (haamonika)  - A cute little harmonica. It's really adorable to watch him
play it!

        Balloon (fuusen)  - A balloon. You can get a red and blue one, and when you give
either to Pikachu, it blows up in his face. No use known.

        Water can (jooro)  - Give this to Pikachu so that he will water the Nozonokusa (US
name unknown) or VilePlumes (Japanese name unknown), after he's checked out that
they're Pokemon, not just plants that resemble it.

        Big Water Can (deka jooro)  - Just like the other water can, except that it holds a lot
more water.

        Vegetables (yasai) - I'm just going to list a number of them here. (If anyone has any
more to add, email me)
        Carrot = Ninjin
        Apple (not a vegetable, I know) = Ringo
        Potato = Imo
        Mushroom = Kinoko

        Pocket Helper - An item that helps you with different things. Here's the menu.

        Menu - Has the list of things the Pocket Helper can do.

        Jootai - Lists things like where Pikachu is, how many P points you have (don't
know what they are for), and I think how many times Pikachu has heard you.

        Nissuu - How many days you've spent with Pikachu. (game days)

        Settei - Settings, such as Mono/Stereo, volume levels and joystick calibration.

        There's a lot more, but none comes to mind. If anyone has anything to add, again,
email me at cainedna@earthlink.net.

- FAQ -

        Not really an "FAQ" per se, as no one has asked anything yet.

        Q. Pikachu just won't listen to me!

        A. There are a number of things going wrong. Number one, make sure all of your
connections are in right. Second, make sure that you're holding the Z or L button, and that
the icon at the bottom left of the screen is highlighted when you do so. Also, make sure
Pikachu is in range. If the bubble comes out to Pikachu, and there is still no response, it
could simply be that your linguistics are still off. Practice, that's all I can say. ^_^

        Q. Pikachu turns on my N64, and plays some game. What is that?

        A. It's a Pokemon naming game. However, since this is a Japanese game, you'll
have to name the Japanese names of the Pokemon. There is a FAQ at GameFAQs.com for
Pokemon Stadium 2 by Paul Springer. I didn't ask for permission to link to his FAQ, but I
assume that he won't have any problem with it.

        Q. Fushigidane (Bulbasaur) says something to Pikachu, and vegetables appear
above his head! What am I supposed to do?

        A. This is a level I'm not sure about, totally. I think you're supposed to go to the
forest and collect the items that appear above his head, and have Koiru take them.
However, when I do this right, Fushigidane gives Pikachu something to eat, which his
stomach reacts badly to. I may be wrong about this.

        Q. Pikachu is baby-sitting Catterpies, and one became sick! What should I do?

        A. Pikachu has an idea what to do, but he needs your help! Follow him to a tree,
and point at an apple in it. Tell Pikachu to use a shocking attack, and he'll knock it down
and feed it to the sick Catterpie. You can also choose to use the ball to knock it down, but
it's much more difficult. Eventually, your Catterpies will grow until the evolve into
Metapods, then into Butterfrees. (as far as I know, these Pokemon names carried over to
the US).
        Q. I'm at XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxX, and don't know what to do next!

        A. Try re-visiting areas you've been to, collecting different items, or giving
different tools to Pikachu. Past that, I don't know how to beat the game yet, so it could just
be (as far as I know) that there is no end to the game. If anyone has any information, once
again, please email me, and I'll add to the FAQ! Thank you, in advance!

- Recognition -

        No one has submitted anything yet, but if anyone does.... well, your name would
be listed here.

        Paul Springer - For writing a FAQ on Pokemon Stadium that I linked to, rather than
listing the Japanese Pokemon names.

        This FAQ is not written to infringe on Nintendo's rights, Ambrella's, Game
FREAK, or any other party responsible for making this truly original game.


Building Equality

iDE has long recognized the central role women play in agricultural development. Women provide the majority of farm labor—including crop production, livestock development, and the provision and use of water for household and farming needs. Although women do much of the work, they often lack the resources available to men. Given equal access to resources and control over outputs, women farmers are as productive as male farmers. They are also more likely than their male counterparts to use their increased income to pay for children's food, education, and health care.

Highlights of iDE's Global Experience

Recognizing women farmers as a significant market segment, iDE ensures that women farmers are as likely as male farmers to benefit from program interventions. iDE selects agricultural value chains in which women can actively participate. Currently, we are partnering with women's unions in central Vietnam to provide technical advice to ethnic-minority Katu women engaged in pig-raising, which is predominantly "women's work." By selecting the pork value chain and partnering with women's unions, iDE guaranteed that program interventions would primarily target women.

In Nepal, under the USAID-funded Marketing, Production, and Services Project (MAPS), iDE implemented a women's microenterprise development program to provide female household heads—many of whom had lost husbands to the war or migrated to find work—with income opportunities. By combining numeracy and literacy skills development with market opportunities, more women were inclined to enter business for themselves.

iDE designs micro irrigation technologies that meet the needs of women farmers. The Rural Prosperity Initiative, a multi-country program funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is conducting gender-specific Voice of Customer surveys to determine the necessity and value of gender-appropriate micro irrigation technology designs and/or adaptations. Furthermore, to increase women's access to these technologies, iDE uses rural marketing strategies that appeal to women, and promotes products and services in places that are easily accessible to women.

Internal Policies

Whenever possible, iDE hires female program staff as way to overcome some of the gender barriers that may arise when working with female clients. Also, by recruiting female staff, iDE demonstrates to client households the importance of giving girls and women educational and productive opportunities.

In Ethiopia, to attract and retain female staff, iDE created female-focused job announcements and more attractive employment arrangements, including good benefits and not requiring female field officers to ride motorbikes. Today, the proportion of female staff holding key positions within iDE Ethiopia is over 30 percent.

iDE's Gender Statement

iDE helps poor families generate additional income by increasing access to affordable micro irrigation technologies and market opportunities. We follow a market-based approach, treating smallholder farmers, whether male or female, as customers rather than charity recipients.


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ILION, N.Y. (WKTV) - Ilion and Mohawk residents overwhelmingly approved a proposal to merge their two districts Tuesday night. Ilion residents voted 1131 yes, 456 no, in Mohawk 961 yes, 411 no.


Posts Tagged ‘astronomy’

All Eyes on Asteroid Vesta

Friday, March 30th, 2012

By Marc Rayman

Layered young crater as imaged by NASA's Dawn spacecraft
This image from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft shows a young crater on Vesta that is 9 miles (15 kilometers) in diameter. Layering is visible in the crater walls, as are large boulders that were thrown out in the material ejected from the impact. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA |
› Full image and caption

Dear Dawnscoverers,

On March 29, Vesta spent the 205th anniversary of its discovery by treating Dawn to more spectacular vistas, as it does so often these days. When Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers first spotted Vesta, he could hardly have imagined that the power of the noble human spirit for adventure and the insatiable hunger for knowledge would propel a ship from Earth to that mysterious point of light among the stars. And yet today our spacecraft is conducting a detailed and richly rewarding exploration of the world that Olbers found.

Dawn is continuing its intensive low-altitude mapping orbit (LAMO) campaign, scrutinizing the protoplanet 210 kilometers (130 miles) beneath it with all instruments. The primary objectives of the craft’s work here are to measure the atomic composition and the interior distribution of mass in this geologically complex world. In addition, this low orbit provides the best vantage point for high resolution pictures and visible and infrared spectra to reveal the nature of the minerals on the surface.

Ever since it left its home planet behind in September 2007, the robotic adventurer has pursued its own independent course through the solar system. As Earth and its orbiting retinue (including the moon and many artificial satellites) followed their repetitive annual loop around the sun, Dawn used its ion propulsion system to spiral outward to rendezvous with Vesta in July 2011. When the gigantic asteroid’s gravity gently took hold of the visiting craft, the two began traveling together around the sun, taking the same route Vesta has since long before humans gazed in wonder at the nighttime sky.

As we have discussed before, the speed of an object in orbit, whether around Earth, the sun, the Milky Way (either my cat or the galaxy of the same name) or anything else, decreases as its orbital altitude increases. Farther from the sun than Earth is, and hence bound to it by a weaker gravitational grip, Vesta moves at a more leisurely pace, taking more than 3.6 years per revolution. When Dawn travels to the more remote Ceres, it will orbit the sun even more slowly, eventually matching Ceres’ rate of 4.6 years for each loop.

Just as the hour hand and minute hand of a clock occasionally are near each other and at other times are on opposite sides of the clock face, Earth and Dawn sometimes are relatively close and other times are much farther apart. Now their orbits are taking them to opposite sides of the sun, and the distance is staggering. They have been on opposite sides of the sun twice before (albeit not as far apart as this time), in November 2008 and November 2010. We used both occasions to explain more about the nature of the alignment as well as to contemplate the profundity of such grand adventures.

On April 18, Dawn will attain its greatest separation yet from Earth, nearly 520 million kilometers (323 million miles) or more than 3.47 astronomical units (AU). Well beyond Mars, fewer than a dozen spacecraft have ever operated so far from Earth. Those interested in the history of space exploration (such as your correspondent) will enumerate them, but what should be more rewarding is marveling at the extent of humanity’s reach. At this extraordinary range, Dawn will be nearly 1,400 times farther than the average distance to the moon (and 1,300 times farther than the greatest distance attained by Apollo astronauts 42 years ago). The deep-space ship will be well over one million times farther from Earth than the International Space Station and Tiangong-1.

Vesta does not orbit the sun in the same plane that Earth does. Indeed, a significant part of the challenge in matching Dawn’s orbit to Vesta’s was tipping the plane of its orbit from Earth’s, where it began its journey, to Vesta’s, where it is now. As a result, when they are on opposite sides of the sun this time, Dawn will not appear to go directly behind the sun but rather will pass a little south of it. In addition, because the orbits are not perfectly circular, the greatest separation does not quite coincide with the time that Dawn and the sun appear to be most closely aligned. The angular separation will be at its minimum of less than five degrees (about 10 times the angular size of the sun itself) on April 9, but the sun and Dawn appear to be within ten degrees of each other from March 23 until April 27. For our human readers, that small angle is comparable to the width of your palm at arm’s length, providing a handy way to find the approximate position of the spacecraft in the sky. Earth’s robotic ambassador to the cosmos began east of the salient celestial signpost and progresses slowly to the west over the course of those five weeks. Readers are encouraged to step outside and join your correspondent in raising a saluting hand to the sun, Dawn, and what we jointly accomplish in our efforts to gain a perspective on our place in the universe.

For those awestruck observers who lack the requisite superhuman visual acuity to discern the faraway spacecraft amidst the dazzling light of the sun, this alignment provides a convenient occasion to reflect once again upon missions deep into space. Formed at the dawn of the solar system, Vesta, arguably the smallest of the terrestrial planets, has waited mostly in patient inconspicuousness for a visit from the largest terrestrial planet. For the entire history of life on Earth, the inhabitants remained confined to the world on which they have lived. Yet finally, one of the millions upon millions of species, inspired by the splendor of the universe, applied its extraordinary talents and collective knowledge to overcome the limitations of planetary life and strove to venture outward. Dawn is the product of creatures fortunate enough to be able to combine their powerful curiosity about the workings of the cosmos with their impressive abilities to explore, investigate and ultimately understand. While its builders remain in the vicinity of the planet upon which they evolved, their emissary now is passing on the far side of the sun! This is the same sun that is more than 100 times the diameter of Earth and a third of a million times its mass. This is the same sun that has been the unchallenged master of our solar system for more than 4.5 billion years. This is the same sun that has shone down on Earth throughout that time and has been the ultimate source of so much of the heat, light and other energy upon which the planet’s residents have been so dependent. This is the same sun that has so influenced human expression in art, literature, mythology and religion for uncounted millennia. This is the same sun that has motivated scientific studies for centuries. This is the same sun that is our signpost in the Milky Way galaxy. And humans have a spacecraft on the far side of it. We may be humbled by our own insignificance in the universe, yet we still undertake the most valiant adventures in our attempts to comprehend its majesty.

Dawn is 210 kilometers (130 miles) from Vesta. It is also 3.45 AU (516 million kilometers or 321 million miles) from Earth, or 1,290 times as far as the moon and 3.45 times as far as the sun today. Radio signals, traveling at the universal limit of the speed of light, take 57 minutes to make the round trip.

Lunar Eclipse, the Moon’s Interior, and the Holy GRAIL

Wednesday, December 15th, 2010

By Sami Asmar

Earth's moon

In addition to the awesome views they offer, lunar eclipses have always provided scientific clues about the moon’s shape, location and even surface composition. Although there will continue to be opportunities for observers to examine and reflect on fundamental concepts about the moon, such as its origin and interior structure, more modern tools are aiding these observations.

When it comes to understanding what a moon or a planet is made of remotely — short of touching it or placing seismometers on its surface or probes below the surface — classical physics comes to the rescue. By measuring the magnetic and gravitational forces that are generated on the inside and manifested on the outside of a planet or moon, we can learn volumes about the structure of its interior.

A spacecraft in the proximity of the moon can detect these forces. In the case of gravity, the mass of the moon will pull on the spacecraft due to gravitational attraction. If the spacecraft is transmitting a stable radio signal at the time, its frequency will shift by an amount exactly proportional to the forces pulling on the spacecraft.

This is how we weigh the moon and go further by measuring the detailed distribution of the densities of mountains and valleys as well as features below the moon’s surface. This collection of information is called the gravity field.

In the past, this has lead to the discovery mascons on the moon, or hidden, sub-surface concentrations of mass not obvious in images or topography. If not accounted for, mascons can complicate the navigation of future landed missions. A mission, human or robotic, attempting to land on the moon would need to have a detailed knowledge of the gravity field in order to navigate the landing process safely. If a spacecraft sensed gravitational pull higher than planned, it could jeopardize the mission.

GRAIL spacecraft

The Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission, scheduled to launch in September, is comprised of twin spacecraft flying in formation with radio links between them to measure the moon’s gravity field globally. This is because a single spacecraft with a link to Earth would be obstructed when the spacecraft goes behind the moon, leaving us with no measurement for nearly half of the moon, since the moon’s far side never faces the Earth. The GRAIL technique may also reveal if the Moon has a core with a fluid layer.

So as you go out to watch the lunar eclipse on the night of Dec. 20, think about how much we’ve learned about the moon so far and what more we can learn through missions like GRAIL. Even at a close distance from Earth, the moon remains a mystery waiting be uncovered.

Planetary Trio Provides a Warm-Up Act for Perseids

Thursday, August 12th, 2010

By Jane Houston Jones

Star chart showing visible planets in August, 2010

Confessions from Comic-Con

Thursday, July 29th, 2010
Illustration of Whitney Clavin at Comic-Con 2010

Written by Whitney Clavin of JPL’s News Office while attending Comic-Con 2010 in San Diego

I’ve been standing in line next to a green monster for more than an hour. This might sound like a bad situation, but the monster is actually a rather nice human in body paint and stunning, neon-green contact lenses. This is my fourth time at Comic-Con — San Diego’s annual gathering of all things geeky (some people call it “The Nerd Prom”). Lines to get into the various panels are a regular part of the program, especially now that attendance has swelled to well over 100,000. The lines here can actually be kind of fun — people sit down on the carpeted floors, read comics, enjoy all the costumed creatures and superheroes, and chat with like-minded friends.

Standing in line to see one of Comic-Con’s regular heroes — Joss Whedon, the creator of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and director of the new “Avengers” movie — I discover that a couple of my line companions and I are even more like-minded than I thought. They also work at JPL in Pasadena. One is an engineer working on the next Mars rover, Curiosity (although he didn’t call the rover Curiosity — like many engineers, he’s accustomed to using its original acronym, MSL, which stands for Mars Science Laboratory). The JPL connection doesn’t stop there. My new JPL friends just came from a panel that included Kevin Grazier, who works on NASA’s Cassini mission to Saturn — he’s also science advisor for “Battlestar Galactica” and “Eureka.”

It’s no surprise that there’s crossover between science and science-fiction geeks. Many of the astronomers I work with at JPL were inspired to go into astronomy by sci-fi shows like “Doctor Who” and “Star Trek.” Science fiction and superhero stories take us to imagined worlds, while scientists and engineers take us to real worlds that can sometimes be even more surprising and exotic. At Comic-Con, the excitement about what we can do with our minds is more than a buzz, it’s a roar.

Mingling with all of us humans (or people like me who still haven’t figured out a good costume) are robots and creatures from many worlds. I spot bands of Cylons and stormtroopers, Bender the robot from “Futurama,” Sookie Stackhouse from “True Blood,” and many more. Superheroes stride proudly through the crowd, stopping about every two feet to pose for more pictures. There are numerous “Wonder Womans.” I was particularly impressed by one, a gray-haired woman probably in her 60s, who looked fantastic in her star-spangled short shorts and red vinyl boots. And of course there are lots of zombies. (If there’s one thing that became very clear to me this year, it’s that vampires are on their way out and zombies are back in.)

I also chat with several artists and writers, and sit in on a few panels teasing us with upcoming storylines for TV shows. In the end, I am left with the impression that there are still so many stories to tell, so much left to explore. The Comic-Con experience inspires me in the same way that astronomy conferences do. We’re all pushing into the unknown in unique ways. It would be cool, though, if astronomers also dressed up as what inspires them during their conferences. I’d love to come across a globular cluster of human stars parading across the exhibit-hall floor.

Comets and Life On Earth

Monday, August 17th, 2009
Donald Yeomans
Donald Yeomans

Amino acids had previously been identified in meteorite samples, and these samples are thought to be the surviving fragments from asteroid collisions with the Earth. So now it appears that both comets and asteroids in the Earth’s neighborhood, the so-called near-Earth objects, delivered some of the building blocks of life to the early Earth.

Asteroid Eros - Mosaic of Northern Hemisphere
Asteroid Eros - Mosaic of Northern Hemisphere. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/JHUAPL
› Full image and caption

For more information on near-Earth objects, see:

The Lowdown on Jupiter’s Black Eye

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009
Glenn Orton
Glenn Orton

We’ve had such great feedback and comments to our earlier post about the recent impact at Jupiter that we wanted to give you more details, plus answer some questions. My name is Glenn Orton, a senior research scientist at JPL. My colleague and fellow JPL blogger Leigh Fletcher is on a well-deserved vacation for a bit, and he filled in for me while I was at a conference talking about another aspect of our research and the Jupiter impact last week.

I’ve been on Anthony Wesley’s email list (as I am for many in the amateur astronomy community) for some time, so it wasn’t happenstance that I was aware of his Jupiter observation. Anthony is the Australian-based amateur astronomer who alerted the world to this big impact. When we received news of his discovery, we immediately wanted to verify it with some of the sophisticated telescopes NASA uses. Having actively observed in both the visible and infrared during the Shoemaker-Levy-9 impacts in 1994, I was aware that a quick verification was possible by looking at a wavelength with lots of gaseous absorption, which suppresses light reflected from Jupiter’s deep clouds.

This image shows a large impact shown on the bottom left on Jupiter’s south polar region captured on July 20, 2009, by NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility in Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Image credit: NASA/JPL/Infrared Telescope Facility

Luck was on our side. Several months before the impact, our JPL team had been awarded observing time on NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii. We had the midnight to 6 a.m. shift (from our Pasadena office, which meant we started work at 3 a.m.) so much of our observing time would take place before Jupiter rose over Australian skies. Another piece of luck is that Anthony’s “day job” involves software engineering so he was able to watch the same telescope instrument status and data screens as we were, while we did remote-style observing from the IRTF over the Internet. He would also be doing his own (now *very important*) post-impact observing. Weather was just as “iffy” over Mauna Kea as in Australia, so it was lucky for all of us that we could catch this event.

With Leigh, several JPL summer interns and me huddled at our side-by-side computers at JPL (one with instrument controls and one showing the data), and Anthony online from Australia, we got started. We knew the location of Anthony’s dark spot would be coming over Jupiter’s rising limb (edge) just as our allotted time was beginning. A near-infrared spectrometer was in the center of the telescope from the previous observer. Although it wasn’t our instrument of choice (we wanted images!), it has a very nice guide camera sensitive to the near infrared, so we used it rather than waiting for the 20-40 minute hiatus needed by the telescope operator to move it out of the way and put our preferred instrument in its place. This turned out to be a good decision because the very first image showed us something brighter than anyplace else on the planet — exactly where Anthony’s dark feature was located. For me, this totally clinched the case that this was an impact. Even better was the fact that Anthony was looking on in real time. We e-mailed him what was obvious - he was *definitely* the father of a new impact!

Right after this we collected data that may help us sort out any exotic components of the impactor or of Jupiter’s atmosphere and just how high the particulates have spread. Then we switched instruments to something at much longer wavelengths that told us the temperatures were higher, and that ammonia gas had probably been pushed up from Jupiter’s troposphere (the lower part of the atmosphere) and ejected into its stratosphere (higher up in the atmosphere). We finished up with our preferred (more versatile) near-infrared camera and ended up, pretty tired, at 9 a.m. (this was a midnight to 6 a.m. run in Hawaii, and in California we were three hours ahead). Then we took some of the screen shots we’d been making and used them to submit a press release. Another person had already alerted a clearinghouse for important astronomical bulletins, so that was another thing that was important but that we didn’t need to do.

Now some responses to posts:

Good post from Mike Salway who is another one of the cadre of the world’s talented Jupiter observers. I should note that, in fact, there aren’t all that many of us who track the time evolution of phenomena in the planets in the professional community, either (see the web pages for the International Outer Planet Watch:

Asim. Neither NASA nor JPL is capable of observing everything in the sky. There is a program to search for asteroids whose orbits will intersect the Earth’s, but not at Jupiter. In fact, it’s unlikely this object could have been seen, given that it may have been at most a half kilometer in size. For Shoemaker-Levy 9, we were both lucky and the disruption of the comets left a lot of very shiny material around it which made it easier to see.

Denise. It hit quite a bit further south than the Shoemaker-Levy 9 fragments, almost at 60 deg S latitude.

Patrick, Jim, BobK. I suspect that the only link between this and the SL9 fragments is the voracious appetite of Jupiter, the great gravitational vacuum cleaner in that part of the solar system! SL9 fragments impacted from the south; this was from the east.

All Eyes on Jupiter

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009
Leigh Fletcher
Leigh Fletcher

What an incredible few hours it’s been for astronomers everywhere, as we witness a chance of a lifetime event: evidence of a space rock of some sort slamming into Jupiter. Images taken after the impact show the debris field and aftermath of a gigantic collision that occurred in the southern polar region of the enormous planet.

An extremely dedicated and meticulous team of amateur astronomers observe Jupiter’s changing cloud patterns on a regular basis, and it came as an amazing surprise when Anthony Wesley, near Canberra, Australia, reported his Sunday-morning (July 19, 2009) observations ( of a dark scar that bore all the hallmarks of the Shoemaker Levy 9 impacts at Jupiter in 1994. By an amazing coincidence, I was part of a team that had already been allocated time to observe Jupiter from the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Based on Anthony’s discovery, we were crowded around our computers at 3 a.m. PDT (with Anthony observing with us remotely from Australia) as the first near- and mid-infrared images started to come in… it was such an exciting moment, seeing the high altitude particles that had been lofted by the impact (they appear bright in the infrared). Anthony celebrated with us, but then the real work began. We celebrated and then rolled up our sleeves and began an exciting night of observations.

With the assistance of William Golisch at the IRTF, Glenn Orton and I viewed the impacts in as many wavelengths and spectra as we possibly could, as Jupiter rotated and carried the impact scar out of Earth’s view. We used these many views to show evidence for high temperatures at the impact location, and suggestions of ammonia and aerosols that had been carried high into the atmosphere. The observations were repeated again today, Tuesday morning, to track the shape and properties of the site. The scar is extremely large, almost as big as Earth and will continue to grow as Jupiter’s atmospheric winds and jet streams redistribute the material, and then, like Shoemaker-Levy 9, it will begin to fade in the coming weeks and months. Based on comparisons to SL-9, the impactor was likely to be small despite the large aftermath, maybe a few hundreds of metres across. Not only will this tell us a lot about impacts in the outer solar system, and how they contribute to the nature of the planets and icy moons, but they’ll also serve as a probe for the fundamental weather patterns in Jupiter’s high atmosphere.

Amateur observers continue to flood the Internet with new images of the dark spot at approximately 60 degrees south on Jupiter, and so far it looks as though the impact took place sometime in the 24 hours preceding Anthony’s discovery. The debris field now extends out to the west and northwest, with additional high-resolution images from the Keck telescope (Marchis, Wong, Kalas, Fitzgerald and Graham showing the detailed morphology of the impact region. The hard work continues today, as an international team of planetary astronomers scrambles for time on some of the world’s largest astronomical facilities.

Finally, it’s a shame but perhaps not surprising that we didn’t see the collision, or the impactor itself, given the great distance to Jupiter. Like throwing a rock in a pond, we’re seeing and analyzing the splash that it’s made, and we can’t yet infer many details about the rock itself - the detailed shape of the impact site could help determine the trajectory and energy of the collision. But it certainly made quite a splash, and we hope to learn a lot about Jupiter from this event!

Anthony’s discovery is truly astounding, as it united astronomers in looking again at the gas giant Jupiter. It’s overwhelming and spectacularly exciting to watch this event unfolding before our eyes!

You can follow Leigh on Twitter at

Five ‘Holy Grails’ of Distant Solar Systems

Thursday, June 11th, 2009
Angelle Tanner
Angelle Tanner

1. First planet that weighs the same as Earth

Artist’s concept of an extraolar planet.
Artist’s concept of an extraolar planet.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

3. First atmosphere on a rocky planet

4. First hint of habitability and life

5. The unexpected

For more information about extrasolar planets, visit

Good and Bad Ozone

Thursday, April 23rd, 2009
Chris Boxe
by Chris Boxe
Scientist and Engineer

Oxygen, or O2 on the table of chemical elements, is a vital component for life on Earth. It is the second most abundant gas in Earth’s atmosphere, making up about 21 percent of its volume. On the other hand, its cousin ozone (O3) makes up less than 0.00001 percent. In fact, if all the ozone in Earth’s atmosphere were brought down to the surface, air pressure and temperature conditions would compress ozone into a layer just three millimeters thick, equivalent to two pennies stacked one on top of the other. ! Despite its tiny amount, ozone is also a vital ingredient for life on Earth.

Ozone in fact is vital for life on Earth, but it also has a “bad” side as well - that is, there is both good and bad ozone out there. Good ozone, which accounts for about 91 percent of the ozone in Earth’s atmosphere, is present in the stratosphere, the middle layer in Earth’s atmosphere. This portion of ozone is commonly referred to as the “ozone layer.” The ozone layer absorbs more than 90 percent of the sun’s high-frequency ultraviolet light, which is potentially damaging to life on Earth. Without the ozone layer, this radiation would not be filtered as it reaches the surface of Earth, resulting in detrimental health effects for life on Earth. Among the health effects humans could experience as a result of overexposure to ultraviolet radiation are skin cancers, premature aging of the skin and other skin problems, cataracts and other forms of eye damage, and suppression of our bodies’ immune systems and our skin’s natural defenses.

The troposphere, the part of the atmosphere closest to Earth, contains both good and bad ozone. In the lower troposphere, ozone may serve as an air pollutant since it is a major component of photochemical smog. In the middle troposphere, ozone acts as an atmospheric cleanser, and in the upper troposphere, ozone is a greenhouse gas, which could be bad if concentrations get too high.

artist concept of NASA's Aura spacecraft
The Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer flies aboard NASA’s Aura spacecraft. Image credit: NASA JPL

The Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer, a science instrument onboard NASA’s Aura satellite, is improving our understanding of the good and bad ozone in the troposphere. The spectrometer, which was launched in 2004, provides the first global view of tropospheric ozone and vertical concentrations of ozone, as well as temperature and other important tropospheric features, including carbon monoxide (CO), methane (CH4), water vapor and ammonia (NH3). The instrument has studied the origin and distribution of tropospheric ozone. It has also shed light on how the increasing ozone abundance in the troposphere is affecting air quality on a global scale, as well as ozone’s role in chemical reactions that “clean” the atmosphere, and climate change.

These data are used by scientists to determine the degree to which natural sources, like lightning and plant growth, and human-produced sources, like automobiles, industrial pollution, and biomass burning, contribute to ozone production and chemistry. For example, during summertime in the upper troposphere, where ozone acts as a greenhouse gas, lightning generates much greater amounts of ozone than do human activities, thereby having a big impact on regional pollution. Over the last few years, the spectrometer has obtained global data on ozone and chemicals that participate in ozone formation. The fact that the instrument is able to quantify vertical profiles of ozone improves our understanding of how various reactions taking place at specified heights contribute to ozone chemistry. Similar to ozone, chemicals that participate in its production also exist in tiny amounts. Still, this enables scientists to better understand long-term variations in the quantity, distribution and mixing of many tropospheric gases that have a large impact on climate and air quality.

My role with the instrument is to validate the quality of the most recent ozone measurements, which are taken in a special observation mode, called “stare.” This mode is used to monitor biomass burning events and volcanic activity. I compare measurements taken by an ozonesdone (a lightweight, balloon-borne instrument that measures ozone, air pressure, temperature and humidity as it ascends through the atmosphere) with measurements from the tropospheric spectrometer. We do this so we can demonstrate the accuracy and precision of the instrument’s readings. I am also participating in projects that use the instrument data to better understand the chemistry and transport of pollutants coming from wildfires, such as those that occurred in Australia in December 2006. For the future, I am interested in using the tropospheric spectrometer satellite data for ozone and methane to better quantify the degree to which they contribute to global warming and climate change.

Oceans Up Close - From Space

Thursday, April 2nd, 2009
Jorge Vazquez
by Jorge Vazquez


Annotations for Gregor the Overlander : Library Edition

Random House, Inc.

When eleven-year-old Gregor follows his little sister through a grate in the laundry room of their New York apartment building, he hurtles into the dark Underland beneath the city. There, humans live uneasily beside giant spiders, bats, cockroaches, and rats - but the fragile peace is about to fall apart.

Gregor wants no part of a conflict between these creepy creatures. He just wants to find his way home. But when he discovers that a strange prophecy foretells a role for him in the Underland's uncertain future, he realizes it might be the only way to solve the biggest mystery of his life. Little does he know his quest will change him and the Underland forever.
Rich in suspense and brimming with adventure, Suzanne Collins's debut marks a thrilling new talent, and introduces a character no young reader will ever forget.


The American Scene An Ongoing Review of Politics and Culture,2005:810b20d2b4ddd05b502fdaa79efccc1e Textpattern 2014-08-05T21:48:23Z Matt Frost Gabriel Rossman 2014-08-05T17:30:43Z 2014-08-05T21:48:23Z Heighten the contradictions,2014-08-05:810b20d2b4ddd05b502fdaa79efccc1e/d4dc92a72d2197dd5b297f498e786f83 Suppose that party A habitually engages in actions that party B finds morally offensive. Party B then finds various ways to obstruct this offensive action, but only partially, so the effect is to make the action more dangerous, but not impossible. Party A continues with the (now more dangerous) course of action and predictably problems ensue. Who is morally at fault? Or more to the point, who receives blame and is the ensuing policy push to prohibit A from engaging in the offensive action or instead for B to cease obstructing and switch to accomodation and harm reduction?

Gabriel Rossman 2014-07-01T19:13:29Z 2014-07-01T19:13:29Z Rape Culture/Structure,2014-07-01:810b20d2b4ddd05b502fdaa79efccc1e/14dd764c54d2f7407acab3015596b814 In Sunday’s column, Ross provided three proposals for reducing campus rape. (1. Lower the drinking age, 2. End the party school system, 3. Loco in parentis lite for dorms). For the most part it was well received (including by many people who generally disagree with Ross), but sampling on the derpendent variable reveals no shortage of people saying some version of “how about we just tell men not to rape” which in its more concrete version takes the form of some sort of sexual consent education class as part of orientation. What I find interesting about this is that this answer is essentially to tackle culture, whereas Ross called for tackling structure.

Gabriel Rossman 2014-06-18T17:30:47Z 2014-06-18T17:30:47Z Sticky demand,2014-06-18:810b20d2b4ddd05b502fdaa79efccc1e/9b7b14f53e652053324b14d33930d0cf Miriam Weeks (aka Belle Knox) has an op-ed at Time about rising college tuition, subsidies, and the high implicit marginal tax rates the means-tested subsidy regime implies for students like herself who have relatively high earnings during college. But rather than focus on her (quite reasonable) argument about the abuses of an industry in which I am objectively a member of the exploitative class, let’s change the subject to exegesis of a tangential sentence about another industry:

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry 2014-05-17T08:05:11Z 2014-05-17T08:24:04Z Star Trek: Into Dumb,2014-05-17:810b20d2b4ddd05b502fdaa79efccc1e/f26310d795e4b8c597c2b55a64b29461 Yeah, yeah, old news. What can I say, I have a family, so I only get to watch movies once in a while, after they’ve been on on-demand TV for a long time.

Gabriel Rossman 2014-05-06T18:27:15Z 2014-05-06T18:27:15Z At Midnight, All the Economists,2014-05-06:810b20d2b4ddd05b502fdaa79efccc1e/b2244026cb6e09ddae861fb69d9e7418 Krugman’s Journal. May 1, 2014.

Krugman’s Journal. May 2, 2014.

Krugman’s Journal. May 3, 2014.

Krugman’s Journal. May 4, 2014.

Krugman’s Journal. May 4, 2014.

Krugman’s Journal. May 5, 2014.

Krugman’s Journal. May 6, 2014.

Krugman’s Journal. May 7, 2014.

[Inspired by a conversation with James and Alan.]

Gabriel Rossman 2014-04-27T04:49:02Z 2014-04-27T04:49:02Z Everything you need to know about the Old Ones,2014-04-27:810b20d2b4ddd05b502fdaa79efccc1e/b0a98a6888634465136df07ebaecc396 Who is Cthulhu?

In his house at R’lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.

In his house at R’lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.

In his house at R’lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.

In his house at R’lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.

What is the relationship between the Old Ones and the shoggoth?

What effect does Cthulhu have on mental health?

Does Obamacare affect Cthulhu?

You didn’t answer my question!

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry 2014-03-10T12:50:33Z 2014-03-10T18:18:44Z Which Authority Do You Love?,2014-03-10:810b20d2b4ddd05b502fdaa79efccc1e/2751cd04d48e0fa54e60abef62b4da7c The problem with old-school blogathons is that you have to summarize the eleven posts you’re responding to and by the time you’re done you’re too tired to write anything else.

How do we convert in and out of religions, and worldviews in general? What roles do experiences, reason and revelation play? Here’s Scene Alum David Sessions, describing his own conversion from fundamentalist evangelical Christianity to secular materialist liberalism. Here is Scene Alum Noah Millman, responding with a great (as usual) meditation on how we deal with authority, also riffing off a post by TAS Overlord Ross Douthat. Here’s Rod Dreher.

The point David makes (violently compressed) is that while experience is the primary means by which we determine our worldviews, reason can and should play a role, and that experience-driven conversions that cannot be buttressed by reason are, to use a word David would I’m sure dispute, suspect.

As a Jew, this is a question Noah has had to wrestle with, and obedience to the law (or disobedience) is a dominant theme in both the Hebrew scriptures and the Jewish experience generally. In Judaism, or at least in a significant strand of it, there is, I think it is fair to say, an insistence that following the law is valuable for its own sake.

This is a question that also has a special resonance for the Catholic, because Catholicism is the faith where the authority has the strongest institutional component. Catholicism demands submission not just to a book or a tradition, but to—in Henry Cardinal Newman’s phrase—a “living voice.” The Church is “Mother and Teacher.” To be sure, most other faiths have clerics who speak with authority, but there are always ways to finesse this: there are different schools of thought; while these sometimes anathematize each other, more often there is room for legitimate disagreement within the same communion. In Catholicism, when the Pope speaks ex cathedra, that’s it—it is as good as the Word of God handed down on Mount Sinai. Allegiance to the Catholic Church is not just allegiance to an abstract worldview, it is also allegiance to a specific institution which is declared to have the same authority as God.

And so I think these words from the Catholic Eve Tushnet, talking about her discussions with other gay Christians, are of relevance here:

We need not only models for respectful sharing of life experiences, but also models for respectful disagreement–since at the end of the day, we do in fact disagree. At times I felt as though my Catholic faith was a gaucherie or an obscenity which must be hidden from the eyes of those it might scandalize.

But notice that I said “my Catholic faith,” not “my beliefs about gay sex.” This is the other reason I think mere sharing-stories “dialogue” is insufficient on gay Christian questions: It tends to make us think that our disagreements are primarily about homosexuality. But in my experience the deepest source of disagreement is authority. Which sources are authoritative for you, and when they appear to conflict, how do you rank or reconcile them?

My own “conversion” story might be of interest here, and it is a fundamentally Catholic one. I was brought up Catholic, but clichédly enough as a teenager I moved away from the faith. Oh, not very far. You see, from when I was young I had basically two ambitions for when I grew up: I wanted to have lots of children, and I wanted to be involved in Christian ministry. Obviously, for a Catholic, there’s a tension there. (If only I’d known about Marcial Maciel then, things would’ve been much easier!) I always figured that the Holy Spirit would one day point me in the right direction.

But hey—there was a way to square that circle: I could become a Protestant minister, and have my cake and eat it too. The entrepreneurialism (and Americanism) of Evangelical ministry definitely appealed to my character, as those who know me can imagine. There was a vocation that could combine it all: Christian ministry, entrepreneurialism, and a large family (not only allowed, but encouraged!). For a while there, my role model was basically Rick Warren.

Much more seriously, as I began to study the issue of justification, I found myself drawn heavily to the Protestant doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith alone, which seemed to me to be much more in accord with what I knew of Jesus’ message, and I was repelled by what I took to be the Catholic doctrine of justification by works (it tells you something about the state of modern catechesis that a literate cradle Catholic could think the Church taught salvation by works!).

As you know, I did not, in fact, become a Protestant minister. So what kept me in the flock? Was I convinced by the Catechism’s view of justification? That only happened much later.

What, in fact, kept me in the Catholic faith was the Eucharist. I might conceivably be sold on the idea that the Church was wrong about justification, or priestly celibacy, or sexual ethics, or anything else. What I found myself absolutely, utterly unable to renounce was the belief that the Eucharist is the Real Presence of Christ. As much as I wanted to, I absolutely could not stop believing in the Eucharist.

And if the Eucharist is the body of Christ, then the Church that “performs” this sacrament has to be the body of Christ as well, and if the Church is the body of Christ, then I have to be joined to it and obey it. So I put aside my qualms about justification (it would only be many years later that I would investigate the issue deeper and actually be convinced by the Catholic doctrine of justification) and let go of my dream of evangelical ministry.

Now, as far as reasons for joining a faith, this is inexplicable. In fact, I can’t explain it. At that point, I had never had any sort of mystical experience relating to the Eucharist. I have no idea whence the strength of this belief—which polls indicate is lacking in many Massgoing Catholics—originated. All I know is that I believe it, and I believe it with all my heart.

I think that for many Catholics who believe in the Eucharist, they believe in it because they believe in the Church and/or the Gospel. For me, it is exactly the other way around. It is because I believe in the Eucharist that I believe in the Church, and it is because I believe in the Church that I believe what it says about the Bible and the person of Jesus Christ.

I recognize how absurd this seems, or is. There is actually a fair amount of empirical evidence for the proposition that the man Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead. The empirical evidence for the proposition that bread and wine are transubstantiated into the body, soul and divinity of Christ is—the Church cheerfully admits—zilch.

I say all this because I am not sure how this all fits in the categories of “experience” and “reason” and “revelation” that David and Noah and Rod have been talking about. As I said, when I decided that the Eucharist was the one belief I could not part with, I had no specific mystical or religious “experience” to point to as justification for my belief (or my belief in my belief, so to speak). And the doctrine of the Eucharist is, by “design”, quite impervious to rational explanation. The doctrine of the Eucharist says that it is an incomprehensible mystery, so that if you claim to understand it (which I certainly do not) you are in fact in error. (In the small-t traditional phrase, the concept of transubstantiation explains the “what”, but not the “how”, which is incomprehensible.) I do not have any reason to believe in the Eucharist. I can certainly defend it. I can certainly explain (in inadequate words) why the Eucharist fits most sublimely into everything we know about the arc of the Bible and Christian revelation. But that is not ultimately why I believe.

Which is why, circling back, I found myself nodding along with Eve Tushnet’s words about authority:

authority is primarily an aesthetic movement of love rather than a rational movement of adducing evidence. (Adducing evidence can be a part of how we come to trust an authority–that was a part of Leah Libresco’s conversion, for example–and reasoned argument aimed at clearing away misconceptions was a big part of my own conversion. But overall, authority is what we love, not what we understand.)

I think this might be the missing piece of what we’ve been talking about. Experience, reason, yes, they are parts of it. But as Eve puts it, assenting to authority is “primarily an aesthetic movement of love.” I love the Eucharist—I crave it, I cherish it, I need it. I don’t know whether this belief is fully described as “primarily an aesthetic movement of love” but that does seem to me to be a better descriptor than the ones I’ve seen heretofore.

This notion of authority is also, I believe, important, because it is ultimately what this is about. When you are adopting a “world picture,” you are assenting to an authority. You are putting yourself under an authority. And while the various things that this authority says about the world might be defendable on their own terms, ultimately you assent because you assent to the authority they flow from. And it does sound right that choosing/being chosen by this authority is, yes, primarily an aesthetic movement (and experiential and/or rational second) and, certainly in the case of Catholicism but arguably for any authority, a movement of love. I would even go as far as to use this as an apologia for the Catholic faith, because Catholicism is the faith that makes this movement most explicit. As DFW immortally put it, in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there are no atheists. We all worship something. All we can do is choose what we worship. And Catholicism is most explicit about not only the choice but its implications.

I don’t know if this meditation is useful. But it might be.

Matt Frost 2014-03-07T22:22:08Z 2014-03-07T22:22:08Z In One Socket, A Revival,2014-03-07:810b20d2b4ddd05b502fdaa79efccc1e/ef505d922a97f5e216f29fb58d21be08 First it was Hesiod Amazonson, the 125-year-old bad boy of Elderporn, who sported one in his Super Bowl halftime performance. Then teachers noticed a certain glitter when they surveilled their adolescent MOOC students, particularly students in their rebellious early thirties. Finally, Jaden knew it was a trend: “monocles are back,” he says.

Jaden, who like most oligarchs uses only one name, owns the hereditary patent on circular objects. “The number of people licensing our geometric intellectual property to print monocles at home has doubled in the past two HBO seasons.”

Trend-watchers attribute the new fad to a desire for a sense of propriety, as the pendulum swings back from last season’s craze for provocative surgical augmentation. Asked about monocles, Dr HashtagTeachingIt, Professor of Awesome Studies at TheUniversity said, “IMHO after ‘face-ticles’ jumped the shark, ppl r looking 4 a new thing that has not jumped ne sharks. This new thing is a new thing that has not jumped ne sharks.”

This efflorescence of personal expression has its dark side, though. One America Prime customer, who chose to remain nameless as he negotiates his book deal, recounts taking a shortcut through an America Classic district, where the Classic customers, seeing his monocle, began to violence him with hatespeech. Fortunately, the customer had boosted his chillmeds before walking through the Classic district, and their hatewords had no triggering effect. The customer, whose insurance plan includes pre-emptive security, called a Prime Customer Support Detachment to administer corrective stimuli to the offending Classic customers, and escaped with his eyepiece intact.


What's the “digital dividend”? West African digital broadcast migration

No votes yet

Por Russell Southwood para APC

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, 22 November 2010

African countries are committed to migrating to digital broadcasting by June 2015. This will be a costly process both for government and citizens and it is currently unclear who will benefit from it or where the resources needed to make the transition will come from.

Arguably, it is one of the most fundamental changes in African broadcasting for over a decade and raises wider questions about how the “public interest” is expressed in broadcasting and its relationship with interactive, converged media. With certain exceptions, African public broadcasting has tended to express the needs and interests of the ruling party rather than a country’s citizens.

A new initiative from the Association for Progressive Communications and Balancing Act aims to help policy-makers and others make the best decisions.

Issues raised by the transition

The proponents of the transition have argued that it will yield up a “digital dividend” and that its benefits will include: more television channels; improved signal; potentially increased coverage; and the freeing up of scarce spectrum. However, these benefits come at a cost and it includes subsidising those who are unable to afford the new digital equipment and finding the resources to create programming for new channels.

In terms of subsidy, the scale of the issue can be judged from two very different statistics. In South Africa the Government has announced that it will spend US$300 million to provide a 70% subsidy to five million households. In Kenya 46% of televisions owned are still black and white.

Given the undoubtedly substantial costs involved in this transition, how can Africa do two key things?

Firstly, lower the costs of the transition.

And secondly, maximise the benefits it gains in terms of greater access to more diverse content and discussion?

Whilst the transition from analogue to digital will eventually be universal, it will nonetheless be achieved at different rates by countries within regions and between regions. For example only a few countries worldwide are anywhere near completing the switchover to digital broadcast television (excluding satellite delivery) and many countries (globally) are only in the early stages of the transition. However, in the majority of African countries, the switch over to digital by 2015 cannot be considered a realistic target. At present only South Africa has switched on a digital signal and other African countries that have done any substantial work on the issue are still very much in the minority.

Given the economic and social consequences of migration and the low response of African countries to the process – be this as a result of lack of awareness, limited resources and/or cost implications – it is important that approaches and progress towards digitalization be studied and reported on a country-by-country basis.

It is important to create research and policy tools that allowed countries to address issues relating to things like public interest media, the cost of subsidy and the resources required to programme additional channels, and that´s what APC and Balancing Act aim to do.

“A study of this kind will help countries in analysing and understanding the full socio-economic implications and opportunities of digital migration,” says Balancing Act’s Russell Southwood. More importantly, they could act as the trigger point for a policy discussion about wide range of public interest media and access issues, allowing a range of different solutions to be presented.

Costs and benefits of the transition

The research study will develop a set of policy and research tools that allow those involved in the discussions to understand both the costs and potential benefits of the transition.

On the cost side, it will look at: the likely costs of subsidising digital equipment for those unable to afford it; the costs of providing different types of equipment and how it might be lowered; the cost to broadcasters of making the transition both at a production and transmission level; the costs associated with additional programming; and the costs of extending to additional transmission areas.

On the benefits side, it will look at: the likely income to be raised from freeing up spectrum and where it might go; how increased programming output can meet a wider range of needs and help encourage local programming; the potential for public interest or community channels or slots; the financial benefits to be gained by having one or more signal carriers; and increasing the ability of broadcasters to engage with their different audiences.

The research study will raise and outline the range of issues below that can best be described as the public interest opportunity.

Identifying the “Public Interest” opportunity

It is currently assumed by policy-makers that the government-run broadcaster is responsible for meeting any “public interest” mandate but existing practice shows that the evidence does not necessarily bear this out. Therefore it would be helpful to open a debate about how best the public interest might be met and whether there are new models that would allow for more plural outcomes in terms of both content and governance.

Increased access and coverage

The transition to digital broadcast transmission offers the opportunity to separate transmission from content production. Traditionally, broadcasters have been vertically integrated organisations combining both production and distribution. In some countries, the government-run broadcaster has controlled the transmission network and sold access to it as a service. In other countries, privately owned broadcasters have built their own networks and the “what the market can bear” approach has tended to justify a focus solely on the more populated areas. Therefore few privately owned African broadcasters can lay claim to being national stations.

In the few African countries that have done detailed policy work on the digital transition (for example, Kenya and Tanzania), they have decided to separate out the “signal carrier” function. This is either done on the basis that there is a single, independent signal carrier (government or privately-run) or there are two or more competitive carriers. But however it is done, there need to be clear rules governing access to the MUX (the transmission device) that carries multiple signals from different broadcasters to a household.

This creates the opportunity for broadcasters (both public and private) to share transmission infrastructure and this sharing will allow an extension of all broadcasters’ coverage areas. Those previously marginalised in terms of access to television will be able for the first time to receive a signal. However, there are broader issues of electricity transmission that will also have to be addressed.

At the set-top box and television level, the study will look at which channels other carriers are obliged to carry and how the costs of these obligations will be met. The use of “conditional access” also highlights concerns about the ability of government and broadcasters being able to “shut people out” by cutting their signal.

Diversity of content

The digital transition offers a key moment to address the generation of local African content, both within particular countries and across the continent. It offers the opportunity to review the effectiveness of local production quotas and of Government schemes that support local production.

Over 2,000 languages are spoken in Africa and many of them represent different cultures within countries. Whilst the growing number of African “vernacular” radio stations has begun to cater for some of this diversity, African television broadcasting has not always been capable of providing the same degree of language and cultural diversity.

Although there are some notable exceptions, as much as 80-90% of content on African television stations comes from US, European and Latin American international content providers. These international content providers produce programmes for their own markets but offset the costs through selling global rights. However not surprisingly, locally generated programmes across the globe are nearly always more widely watched than international ones.

Nollywood has demonstrated that fiction programmes from one African country can be watched widely by people in other countries. Fiction output of this kind shapes how Africans see themselves. Several other African countries have also started to produce programmes that are more widely seen outside of where they were made.

The impact of convergence

Broadcasting and telecommunications are in many African countries treated as separate, vertical markets. Digital convergence means that telecoms operators have become involved in broadcasting and broadcasting companies are looking at how they might deliver Internet and voice services. The continent’s first real Triple Play offer (with the customer receiving television, voice and Internet) has been launched in Kenya by Wananchi. But often the two sectors are separately regulated or spectrum is regulated by the telecoms regulator and other broadcasting issues by a separate body. Integrated regulators dealing with both broadcasting and telecommunications are in the minority.

Many telecoms regulators will be able to generate a new stream of income from the sale of spectrum released once the digital transition is complete. There remain considerable arguments over whether this released spectrum should remain with the broadcasters or be released for telecoms use. But whatever happens, there will be a new stream of income but where will it go?

Elsewhere in the world, public broadcasters are increasingly using their funding to create complementary Internet platforms that make use of the more interactive forms of content creation (for example, blogs and citizen journalism). The equivalent development in Africa has been the much narrower use of SMS for programme voting and the equivalent of letters. However, as the Internet grows in Africa, both public and private broadcasters will begin to develop a more interactive approach to broadcasting and its relationship to audiences. Should this interactive approach to media be encouraged by public funding?

As mentioned earlier, it is currently assumed by policy-makers that the government-run broadcaster is responsible for meeting any “public interest” mandate but existing practice shows that the evidence does not necessarily bear this out. A study and discussion around digital migration is important because it creates opportunities to deliver real benefits to the public be these through:

  • the balancing (out) of the costs and benefits of the transition, and thereby contributing to increasing the range and choice of service providers for the public
  • delivering on increased access and coverage, and thereby increasing the scale and scope of public-orientated services that can be delivered (e-government, e-health, e-education etc.)
  • increasing the diversity of content available to the public, including the opportunity to increase participation of the public through community channels etc.

“Such benefits are important to the creation of and/or strengthening of open societies,” concludes APC’s executive director, Anriette Esterhuysen.

The project is supported by the Open Society Institute.

Photo by Andy Rennie. Used with permission under Creative Commons license 2.0.

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Equation balancer » percentage composition calculator

Go for it! Important chemistry should be difficult for being clever, not for being tedious.

Uncle Al

This is probably the easiest to use calculator in all of our programs. You just enter formula and it lists percentage composition of the compound, together with its molar mass. As the list content can be sorted any way you want, you may easily check which element is the most or the least abundant. For example if you enter formula of hemoglobin molecule C738H1166N812O203S2Fe, results will look like that:

EBAS - percentage composition calculator

and it is clearly visible, that hemoglobin is composed mostly of nitrogen.

Generally speaking every correct chemical formula of neutral molecule will be properly analyzed, be it something simple, like H2O, or smomething more complicated, like (C2H10N2)3[Fe(CN)6]2.

To be honest, we never though it may be really usefull, but after implementing many other parts of the program it was obvious that reusing parts of code from other calculators this one can be added in less than half an hour. We also know that hemoglobin example doesn't make much sense, as composition of such proteins depends on their source - it differs between species, or even individuals. So be it.