canspice.org

SCUBA-2, being a revolutionary instrument and all, is still in the process of being commissioned at JCMT. It shipped with “engineering-grade” arrays, which are of lower quality than “science-grade” arrays. They have more dead pixels and the remaining pixels are noisier than the requested spec. They can still be used for commissioning, as they can detect photons, only not well enough to do proper science with.

The science-grade arrays are still being manufactured in a rather long and complicated process, involving groups from the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado, the UK Astronomy Technology Centre and the Scottish Microelectronics Centre in Edinburgh, Scotland, the Astronomy Instrumentation Group at the Cardiff University in Wales, and of course the Joint Astronomy Centre in Hilo, Hawaii. Bits and pieces get flown all over the place, and it’s a wonder that nothing serious has happened to the arrays or any bits of them*.

Until June 9, when NIST researchers discovered that a vial of plutonium was cracked and some particles spilled from the vial. Understandably this has lead to the closure of the lab while cleanup and investigations are done. Unfortunately this lab had either parts of the arrays or the full arrays in it. They’re not expecting to get into the lab until August, when we find out if the radiation event caused any damage to the sensitive SCUBA-2 array electronics.

Since then, NIST has found that some of the plutonium entered the sanitary sewer system at levels below state and federal limits, and that some NIST employees show evidence of internal plutonium exposure. Obviously SCUBA-2 should take a back seat to more important concerns.

But full operation SCUBA-2 has just been pushed back again. How much is still uncertain, but a month is probably the lower limit.

*One of the more serious problems to date came when one of the groups was preparing the arrays for shipping and accidentally dropped a crate on or tightened a lid on one of them, crushing one of the corners. Whoops.

Surely I can’t be the only one who find irony in the U.S. Mint announcing a coin that has Braille on it by unveiling a big picture of it at the National Federation of the Blind’s annual convention?

This one takes a personal twist, as a couple of weeks ago I was stricken with a case of campylobacteriosis, caused by Campylobacter jejuni. This video explains what the bacteria is, what it does (oh god it makes you sick) and how to avoid getting it into your system:

I don’t think I’ve got Guillain-Barré Syndrome yet…

Robert Lancaster runs a website called Stop Sylvia Browne. Sylvia Browne is a “psychic” who occasionally has a show in Las Vegas. On June 22, Lancaster went to see her show. Here’s an example of just how psychic Browne is:

The last woman who joined our “group” asked Sylvia, after telling her that her mom had died two days ago, if she had any message from her mom for her. Sylvia said that mom “liked the service.”

The woman recalled this for us, and said “We haven’t even had the service yet - she died two days ago.”

You’d think that a psychic would be able to “see” that a remembrance service hasn’t happened yet.

Sylvia Browne — not a psychic. She’s just a cold reader out to take money from gullible people.

This week’s list of baby names was quite a bit shorter than average, but the Bad Baby Names were distilled down into whiskey-level awesomeness. Let’s get to it!

We start off gently with Damin. Not a particularly Bad Baby Name, but we have to start off lightly to get us in the spirit of things. This is why I’m introducing Tayden early as well. See, they’re bad, but not that bad.

Not compared to, say, Shelcey-Lyn or KaianaLee. Now we’re getting somewhere! We’re continued on our merry little path with Chassee (perhaps Chasser is her brother?) and Shaylie.

Can someone tell me how to pronounce either Mikeilah or Alajshae? Mike-eye-lah? Mik-aye-lah? Al-aj-shay? Stoo-pid?

And then we get into our Biblical Bad Baby Names. Passion isn’t particularly bad, but Exodus is. Why would you name your son Exodus?

To top things off we have Lizandro, which sounds like someone out of a bodice ripper. “Lizandro stood before her, his proud head erect, his leonine mane thrown into relief by the flares flanking the large doors. For one suspended moment, they stared at each other, love, hope, and remembered pain reflected over and over between them.”