Crank it up

I entertained my survivalist paranoia and bought myself a special kind of radio, Kaito Voyager KA500. You have got to love this little thing: it has AM, FM, SW1, SW2 bands, plus 7 NOAA Weather channels. But that's not why I bought it. It's primary attraction is the versatility of power sources: AC if you are home, AA batteries, USB, and most importantly, solar or crank shaft (!) charging of the accumulators. In other words, it's completely power independent.

The cool little part is that it has a USB output: in conjunction with a ton of included phone adapters, you can use it to charge your phone in case you are stranded somewhere with a dead phone. Just crank up the handle for a couple of minutes, and your'e good to go.

It has a reading light and SOS-like red flash too.

Neat little bugger, I tell ya.

...and the giant blob of gas, please

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Astronomers on Wednesday announced the discovery of a massive and mysterious gas blob of the type that can be precursors to galaxies, which they dubbed Himiko.

The data used in identifying the megablob came from a suite of telescopes. Scientists said the object, which they named Himiko for the legendary Japanese queen, existed when our universe was only about 800 million years old.

Our universe, borne of the Big Bang as the theory goes, is an estimated 13.7 billion years old.

Himiko, a ball of gas, stretches for 55,000 light years, a record for that early era. The enormous length is comparable to the radius of our Milky Way's disk.

For the astronomically inclined

Oh fuck...

Ehh

Watched the movie "Evolution" again. Noticed it all having been filmed in Northern Arizona, mainly Page and in Utah's Monument Valley. The knob at the the shore of Lake Powell is the one where I took the night-time constellation pictures...ehhh, good times :)

Also, in the movie "Maverick", the stage coach scene where the driver dies and Maverick has to stop the horses from running the coach off the cliff, that scene was filmed at the Horseshoe Bend in Arizona...

In the same movie, the scene with the indians and the "hunting man" crap was shot at the base of Half Dome on the shore of the Merced River in California. We hiked near there in 2006...