In Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, plow operators are dealing with some of the deepest snow seen in years. Above, 23 feet of snow on Trail Ridge Road.

New York Times

Four hours later, Purcell was up with the sun, and by late morning he was on deck with the crew, watching the Remus bob in the distance. A little after 1 p.m., they pulled the sub onboard and attached two thick cables to upload its data into the computers in the mission-control room. They drew the curtains around the room, so nonscientific crew members could not see in, and yanked the satellite uplink offline, so no one could leak the news. Then they crowded around the computer monitor as the first images of Flight 447 came onscreen: engines, landing gear and sections of fuselage, all unmistakably vivid on the ocean floor. But as they turned the satellite back on and began sending the first photos to air-crash investigators in France, the deeper implications of their discovery were just beginning to surface.

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, along with members of the national security team, receive an update on the mission against Osama bin Laden in the Situation Room of the White House, May 1, 2011. (White House Flickr stream)

Its been a sad few days for the Healey family lately. Mark’s Uncle Thom passed away on thursday after a long battle with Cancer.

I only had the pleasure of meeting Uncle Thom once, and it was on one of my very first trips to America. It was Christmas day and we had all gone out to Gram’s house for a big old Christmas Dinner. Being somewhat chilly outside, we had all bundled up really well, and I wore my new green cashmere turtleneck sweater from my future mother-in-law. So into Gram’s sweet little house on the Cape we all crammed, and the Christmas spirit was upon us. An enormous spread lay before us, and we all adjusted our waistbands to do it justice. I was perhaps understandably nervous being the newcomer and all, and pretty soon I felt a prickly heat creeping up my neck. New turtleneck perhaps? That and nerves maybe? Or could it be the 80 degree heat that Gram had pumping into the house. Pretty soon I was as red as a tomato and very aware of it too. Beads of sweat were gathering on my brow. I sheepishly I took a little peak up at my neighbors, Uncle Thom, and Mark. Sure enough Uncle Thom as going a beautiful shade of red too. “Hot enough to melt the butter in here” he cracked, and sure enough the butter was literally a pool in its fancy bowl. It was exactly what I needed to relax, and Mark and I snorted with laughter.

He knew just how to make you laugh. I only met Uncle Thom once but I will never forget how at ease he made me feel, what a ready smile he had and how eager he was to share it.

The world is a lesser place without him, thats for sure.

(via)

Mint.com has a drill-down on how you can pull it off:

If you are looking to save money without sacrificing the movies and shows you enjoy, there is an option to fit every budget. Here are three ways to optimize your cost-per-channel ratio.

It’s almost impossible to grasp the scale of the tsunami that slammed into Japan yesterday following the 8.9-magnitude earthquake that struck off the coast near Sendai. The quake was a global-scale event, shifting the axis of the entire earth by four inches.

These satellite photos may help you grasp just how much water moved from the ocean onto land. Comparing the image from after the quake above with an image shot February 26 below, you can see how the coastline got erased by the displaced water.

If you click on the photos, you can see the very high-resolution photos that NASA’s Terra Satellite captured.

 

(via)

I’ve been giving this app a test drive for the past month — as a full replacement to Photoshop — and it’s holding up surprisingly well.

From the beaches of Mexico to the wilds of Kurdistan, the places on this year’s list take you to the end of the world and back.

Don’t miss the accompanying slideshow.

A New Jersey guy named Michael Black did a much better job over the weekend tracking the snow as it piled up on his patio furniture. Check out this “20 hours in 40 seconds” time lapse photo sequence he put together.

Bad Astronomy:

Every year, thousands of incredible images of the sky are taken from observatories on the ground and in space, from spacecraft, and from amateur astronomers. And it seems that the people who make these images are getting better with time, creating nothing short of art.

(via)

Transmit 4. It’s easy to use, but there’s a whole lot under the surface. And while we try to design apps for the majority, sometimes we throw in some power user features for the pros. As the Finnish always say, “always add a few extra blood dumplings when cooking mykyrokka for a tonttu-ukko!”

So here are 15 “secrets” of Transmit 4. Hopefully you’ll learn at least one new thing!

Awesome.

Here’s a bunch of photos and the accompanying article. The sheer size of this thing is absolutely incredible.

I asked him if he was looking forward to conducting the full-on pat-downs. “Nobody’s going to do it,” he said, “once they find out that we’re going to do.”

In other words, people, when faced with a choice, will inevitably choose the Dick-Measuring Device over molestation? “That’s what we’re hoping for. We’re trying to get everyone into the machine.” He called over a colleague. “Tell him what you call the back-scatter,” he said. “The Dick-Measuring Device,” I said. “That’s the truth,” the other officer responded.

The pat-down at BWI was fairly vigorous, by the usual tame standards of the TSA, but it was nothing like the one I received the next day at T.F. Green in Providence. Apparently, I was the very first passenger to ask to opt-out of back-scatter imaging. Several TSA officers heard me choose the pat-down, and they reacted in a way meant to make the ordinary passenger feel very badly about his decision. One officer said to a colleague who was obviously going to be assigned to me, “Get new gloves, man, you’re going to need them where you’re going.”

The agent snapped on his blue gloves, and patiently explained exactly where he was going to touch me. I felt like a sophomore at Oberlin.

(via)

”My father didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.”

- Clarence Budington Kelland

Dear Mark,

A request has been received to completely close [your account]. Please note that when the request is processed, this action will close all Services and Contacts associated with this account. All data, files, email, passwords, etc. will be deleted from our servers and backup systems.

Another email will be sent once this request has been fully processed.

Regards,

(mt) Media Temple, Inc.
Hosting Operations

As of now, this site lives in a new virtual space. There’ll be some visible changes coming soon, but for now I’ve only made invisible ones. I have moved across town leaving MediaTemple’s hosting services for a new relationship. It was a good few years with them, but the amount of security vulnerabilities and increasing price for the same-features-cheaper-elsewhere facilitated this departure. A better experience awaits.

Amazing photo. MSNBC.com’s Cosmic Log:

This image from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory shows a fast-growing sunspot 1112, crackling with solar flares.

Alan Boyle says:You don’t want to see the sun when it’s angry. Or do you? Over the past few days the Internet has been buzzing about a monster mega-filament of magnetized material, stretching more than 300,000 miles (500,000 kilometers) across the sun’s solar hemisphere. In this color-coded, extreme ultraviolet image from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, you can see the filament arcing around sunspot 1112 at lower right. To give you a sense of scale, that width is longer than the distance between Earth and the moon. If the filament unleashed a flare in just the wrong direction, it could have caused trouble for electric grids and communication links on Earth.

Fortunately, when the eruption finally came on Monday, it sent a solar flare off into deep space and away from Earth. You can watch the blast on the SpaceWeather.com website. This won’t be the last outburst: Astronomers expect solar activity to continue rising toward“Solar Max” in 2012 or 2013.

However, the events of the past few months have left me sorely disappointed in Mr Mugabe, and in his betrayal of the confidence that I and many Zimbabweans have personally invested in him.

…

Mr Mugabe was one of the leaders of the liberation struggle which led to our country’s independence 30 years ago. For those efforts, and for all the sacrifices of those who fell in that struggle, Zimbabweans will forever be grateful. But no actions of the past translate into a right to wield power in the present. That right derives solely from a mandate from the people. And citizens rightly judge their leaders on their record in office.

Yikes.