From MSU News…..

Dana Longcope, a solar physicist at MSU, said the sun usually operates on an 11-year cycle with maximum activity occurring in the middle of the cycle. Minimum activity generally occurs as the cycles change. Solar activity refers to phenomena like sunspots, solar flares and solar eruptions. Together, they create the weather than can disrupt satellites in space and technology on earth.

The last cycle reached its peak in 2001 and is believed to be just ending now, Longcope said. The next cycle is just beginning and is expected to reach its peak sometime around 2012. Today’s sun, however, is as inactive as it was two years ago, and scientists aren’t sure why.

“It’s a dead face,” Tsuneta said of the sun’s appearance.

Tsuneta said solar physicists aren’t like weather forecasters; They can’t predict the future. They do have the ability to observe, however, and they have observed a longer-than-normal period of solar inactivity. In the past, they observed that the sun once went 50 years without producing sunspots. That period coincided with a little ice age on Earth that lasted from 1650 to 1700.

I would like to know how they know that there where no sunspots from 1650 to 1700. Where they looking at the sun back then?

From the New York Times….

A simple change to the design of the gallon milk jug, adopted by Wal-Mart and Costco, seems made for the times. The jugs are cheaper to ship and better for the environment, the milk is fresher when it arrives in stores, and it costs less.

What’s not to like? Plenty, as it turns out.

The jugs have no real spout, and their unorthodox shape makes consumers feel like novices at the simple task of pouring a glass of milk.

Regardless if people like this new design or not, I think all stores are going to be using it soon if oil prices stay high. The old design is just to inefficient to keep.

Johny Cash did not write the words to the song Hurt (although he did change them some to suit his own beliefs). But you would never know that from watching the music video. It has got to be one of the most artistic and well done music videos ever produced. Embedding for this clip has been disabled, so you will have to follow the link.

Bill Gates complains about Microsoft products in this week’s rant of the week.

The week’s essay of the week comes from Gene Logsdon’s blog and it is called Bouncing In The Wool Sack.

First SAS Survival Secrets episode. Well worth watching if you have any interest at all in basic special forces craft. Unlike some many others this is realistic and not over the top.

The squeal can be found here.

I guess this just goes to show that it could always be worse. From the Telegraph (h/t Calculated Risk)…..

British households are now more indebted than those of any other major country in recorded history, it has emerged.

Families in the UK now owe a record 173pc of their incomes in debts, official figures have shown. The ratio of debt to income is higher than any other country in the Group of Seven leading industrialised economies, and is sharply higher than the 129pc of incomes it was five years ago.

The figures, published by the Office for National Statistics as part of its National Accounts, underline the scale of the coming slowdown facing the UK, economists warned yesterday.

Michael Saunders of Citigroup warned that – at 173pc of household incomes – the debt burden is higher even than Japan’s when it peaked in 1990, before more than a decade of deflation.

“Not only are we the highest in the G7, we are the highest a G7 country has ever seen,” he said.

I know I claimed it was against my religion (or something like that) to tell people what was or was not the “best” of anything. So. . .
(1) I didn’t name them this. It’s not my fault, I swear!
(2) Even if I had named them this, I would make an exception for these brownies. You Click Here to continue reading.

From MarketWatch.…

Crude-oil futures climbed to unprecedented levels Thursday, as weakness in the U.S. dollar, influenced by the U.S. Federal Reserve’s decision to stand pat on interest rates, sent prices to a peak above $140 a barrel.

I don’t think that raising rates are going to cure all the economic problems we face. I don’t think there is a quick cure for all the economic problems we face. But when you depend on the rest of the world for financing, I really think that ignoring the value of your currency is a big mistake.

It is common knowledge in the Ethereal Land that the Japanese have expensiveness tastes in toilets. But I never would have guessed that it was popular in Japan to play a catholic prayer while making potty noises.

From the Washington Post……

There is a hiccup, though, in this world-beating record. It happens inside the Japanese home, where energy use is surging. And nothing embodies the surge quite like the toilet — a plumbing fixture that has been reengineered here as an ultracomfy energy hog.

Japanese toilets can warm and wash one’s bottom, whisk away odors with built-in fans and play water noises that drown out potty sounds. They play relaxation music, too. “Ave Maria” is a favorite.

High-end toilets can also sense when someone enters or leaves the bathroom, raising or lowering their lids accordingly. Many models have a “learning mode,” which allows them to memorize the lavatory schedules of household members.