New Species of Frog Discovered

This is just a regular old leopard frog.

This doesn't sound like a big deal at first. I mean, it'll just be another random little tropical frog that no one will ever see, right? Well, no. It's nothing special either, it doesn't spit acid from its eyeballs or hunt birds or something spectacular, it's just another frog. So, why write about it? Well, this new species of frog is called the Atlantic Coast leopard frog, and it resides in one of the biggest cities on Earth: New York City. It is remarkable how even in the most dense urban areas, we can still manage to discover new species. Again, this isn't a new bacteria, or some simple animal like a nematode or worm, it's a frog. You can see them, you can hear them, it's an animal you could go out and find. Living right in New York. I just think that's amazing.

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Waynesboro Municipal Grand Reopening

A full parking lot for once.

Every golfer has a home course. It may not be the best course, or their favorite course, but it is still home. For me, that course is Waynesboro Municipal, a little 9 hole course which had fallen on difficult times. A combination of mismanagement, a lack of money, and harsh summers had rendered the course, rough around the edges in the best of times, borderline unplayable. For more than a year, barely anyone played, and there were only about 30 or so memberships. It was in danger of closing, but luckily, the course was bought up, and things are starting to look up again.

On October 26th, the course had a "grand reopening" where golf was free. I can't remember the last time I'd seen the parking lot so full, but it's been years. The course is still in lackluster shape, but it is fall, and the improvements only started a few weeks ago. There was a closest to the hole contest and a long drive contest, which I am happy to report that I won, much to my brother's irritation. Hey, gotta hit the fairway to win those things. Won a free sleeve of Pro V1's, which I'll probably hold onto for years because I won't play at a good enough course to warrant using those golf balls in the foreseeable future. Also, Golfzilla was there, and well, umm, Golfzilla. Not sure what else to say about that.

Even though I can't imagine I'll be in Waynesboro for that much longer, it makes me happy to know that the Muni will keep going, hopefully better than ever. I played my first round of golf here, for nearly 15 years now, this course has been home to me. I hope now that it can inspire people to take up the game, just like I did. Wow, that's cheesy. Anyway, it was a fun day, sunny, warm, and the golf was...well, not good, but not terrible. Adequate, that's a good word for it. It's golf, can't ask for much more than all that.

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Close Comet Encounter with Mars

Getting up close to a comet is hard. Getting up close to a pristine comet fresh from the Oort Cloud is even harder. Getting close to a pristine comet while orbiting another planet and in fact, on an entirely separate mission is...well, those are some long odds. And as you might have guessed, that is exactly what happened this past weekend when Comet Siding Spring came within 100,000 miles of Mars. That is very, very close.  Normally, we wouldn't have an opportunity to get a real good look at a comet from the Oort Cloud, because there just isn't enough warning. But wouldn't you know it, we've got spacecraft orbiting Mars. So, they diverted their attention for a while and hopefully we'll get some great images, and useful information. This is hopefully just the prequel post to a more substantial post with actual images of the comet. It takes time for things to process.

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Italy Putting Science on Trial

The earthquake in question.

I'm not sure what to say about this. Italy convicted scientist, actual scientists, for manslaughter, because they didn't science well enough to predict an earthquake that killed about 300 people in a town in central Italy. Now, the scientists are appealing, but their prospects don't look good. Looking at this story and another story going into more detail about the incident, it's clear that these people did communicate that earthquakes were unlikely, and that they didn't do a great job of stressing that earthquakes are not predictable, giving people the wrong idea so that the town was not as prepared as it could have been. But that's not the issue here, not really. The issue is that these scientists are being held accountable for getting their geophysics wrong.

We can't predict earthquakes, not with any accuracy. All we can say is that an earthquake is likely on a particular fault line in 10, 20, 50 years. If we had a way to know if San Francisco was going to have a major earthquake on December 15, 2014, it would be big news. But we don't. It probably isn't possible to predict earthquakes with that level of accuracy, and it certainly isn't possible today. These scientists are being held accountable for failing to predict the unpredictable, and it isn't right.

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Expanding Ice in a Warming World

The planet is getting warmer. This is a fact, backed by data. This year is looking to be the warmest on record, even if the year doesn't end all that warm. However, it is important to note that despite this fact, the world has not gotten warmer overall, and that some regions may not behave how you might expect.

This year, Antarctic sea ice covered 7.72 million square miles, the biggest area since the 1970's, when accurate measurements began. It's theorized that changing wind conditions from global warming have caused cold air to move across the Ross Sea, allowing for large scale ice expansion, since there's no land to stop anything. Warm air has instead started moving across the Antarctic Peninsula, and it's worth noting that ice coverage in that area has shrunk from past years.

Another area that is not behaving as expected is half a world away, in the Himalayas. Glaciers in the Karakorum region are not shrinking like other glaciers in the area, and if anything, are expanding. As the planet warms, the Himalayas receive more moisture, and for most mountains, this moisture comes in the summer, as rain. Because of geography, the Karakorum receives most of its moisture in the winter, so it falls as snow, feeding the glaciers in the area.  So again, even though the area is warming, not everywhere behaves the same way. It is important to note that while some glaciers are expanding, many are not, and that some inconsistency does not mean global warming is not an issue. It would be more remarkable if every place on the planet was warming in the same way.

Exoplanet Mapping

It's not the easiest task in the world, and the result is less than spectacular, but Hubble has taken the best weather map of an exoplanet to date.  The planet is WASP-43B, a hot Jupiter with twice Jupiter's mass that takes only 19 hours to orbit its star.  In the sun, temperatures reach 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, while the night half is only a third of that, at 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit.  That's almost cold right there.

Hubble was also able to find water vapor in the planet's atmosphere, which doesn't do the planet much good, seeing as it's hot enough to melt quite a lot of metals, let alone water, but it does mean that we can detect water vapor in the atmospheres of exoplanets, which will come in handy whenever we start peering at smaller, cooler worlds.  You know, ones that might have life.

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"Impossible" Lunar Eclipse Happening Tonight

Lunar eclipses happen quite often.  There was one in April, and there are two more occurring in the near future.  There's one happening early Wednesday morning, October 8th.  This one is going to be different, and strictly speaking, impossible.  For a brief period of time along the eastern U.S., it will be possible to view both the lunar eclipse and the sun rising at the same time.  Since a lunar eclipse occurs when the Earth is directly in between the moon and the sun, this shouldn't happen, and if there was no atmosphere, it wouldn't.  But thanks to refraction from the atmosphere as the sun rises and the moon sets, the light from both objects will be visible for several minutes while both in the sky.  The light from the moon will be hanging around after it has set, and light from the sun will appear before it has actually risen.

It promises to be a unique astronomical experience, and I'm actually going to be awake for it.  Unfortunately, it's probably going to be cloudy, so I won't be able to see it.  Which is annoying.  Thanks a lot, weather.

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Positive Evolutionary Mutations Not Entirely Random

These beaks may not have evolved through random chance.

If anybody remembers their high school biology (and let's be honest, you probably don't, I barely do), you might remember learning about how evolution is random.  A species lives or dies on how lucky it gets.  If it gets a favorable mutation, it allows the species to survive and reproduce in changing conditions while other species, or even members of the same species, die off.  It's all about passing on random advantageous mutations to offspring.

A new study seems to disagree with that tried and true approach to evolution.  It found that most of the time, mutations occur not at random, but at so called "mutational hot spots".  These are places where DNA mis-pairing often occurs, but at crucial junctures within the sequence; so that during protein formation, instead of the mutation being repeated out, it remains in between sequences of normal DNA in order to preserve the function of the protein.  This combination of factors, DNA mis-pairing during replication and the need to preserve protein function, is probably what allows evolution to occur so rapidly during times of great upheaval in the environment, and more importantly, it just seems a bit more elegant.  Random chance happens, of course, but scientists aren't big fans of random, and the random nature of natural selection just didn't feel right.

Earth's Ocean Mapped in Greatest Detail Yet

When talking about the ocean, you often hear that we know the surface of Mars better than we know our own oceans. A new map changes that a bit. It's twice as accurate overall and more than four times more accurate in some areas. It adds a lot of information to our admittedly sketchy knowledge of the ocean floor.

About 15,000 new seamounts have been identified, and while most of them run in chains, there are plenty that are more isolated, and studying these may help scientists just what cause volcanoes to form away from fault lines. Mantle plumes are a topic of debate in the geologic community, apparently. Hey, I don't know, I'm not much a geologist.

What I find more interesting is the mapping of abyssal hills. I, just like pretty much everybody else in the world, have probably never heard of these before, and yet, they're the most common surface feature on Earth. These hills aren't a new discovery, but they've never been mapped before, and they must be everywhere. It really is surprising to learn how little we know about our own oceans, every new bit of research brings back so much information, and raises so many more questions.

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Cedar Ridge Golf Club Review

Yes, another golf course review.  Hey, been playing some new ones, and it is very exciting.  Today, the course in question is Cedar Ridge in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.  It's actually right next door to Meadow Brook, which I played a couple of months ago.  Couldn't see one from the other, but they're less than a mile apart, I think.  They're fairly similar courses too, neither are very long, both are on fairly small properties, though Cedar Ridge is comfortably bigger than Meadow Brook.  Not big, by any means, but they didn't run out of room and stick in some kind of wacky holes.  Too bad, because given the choice between the two, I'd definitely take Meadow Brook.

Condition-wise, there's no contest, Cedar Ridge is in much better shape.  It's not ready to host the professionals, but there is green grass in places other than the greens.  The conditions of the greens were about the same, but I preferred Meadow Brook to Cedar Ridge, the greens at Cedar Ridge just seemed a bit off to me.  The fairways were ridiculously narrow, I only hit one out of fourteen, which is one more than my younger brother, who shot a 73.  Sure, they may not have been important to hit, but it's nice to do so anyway.  So, in that regard, these two course are alike.

There is something that I have to address, something that is most definitely affecting my judgment of Cedar Ridge.  Trees.  I spent all day dealing with trees, and I was getting real sick of it.  I managed an 80, even with having to hit under/around/over/through/into trees on more than half of the holes.  I don't know if I could have managed 73, but I would have done better than 80.  The place doesn't even have that many trees, but I was managing to find all of them.  I believe there were only three holes where I didn't have tree trouble, not counting the par 3's, of course.  Then again, a tree did provide me with what my brothers and I all agreed was the luckiest shot they or I had ever witnessed.  On the 11th hole, a 95 yard par 3 over a pond, I hit a big pull into trees long and left, only for the golf ball to come bounding back onto the green and stopping about 7 feet away from the hole.  I missed the birdie (of course), but that shot was ridiculous.

The course started off with four par 4's in a row, none of them very long, with the third hole being just under 300 yards.  Nothing really interesting about them.  Really, none of the holes on the front nine are all that interesting, it's pretty standard parkland golf in southern Pennsylvania.  Not really very much in the way hazards, or interesting features, just golf.

The back nine is a little more interesting.  The tenth is a short par 4 where you can't drive it more than 220 yards, with ponds cutting the green off from the fairway.  I've already mentioned the tiny 11th hole, and after a mid-length par 5 and a par 4 flanked by trees, the 14th is probably the most difficult hole on the course.  It's 430 yards, the fairway isn't wide, and there's out-of-bounds left.  I hit a good drive, terrible second, and miraculously got up and down for par.  Seriously, that doesn't happen often.  The 15th is similar to the 10th, where a pond cuts the hole in two, but the hole is a bit longer, so the second is longer as well.  The 16th is an awkwardly narrow short par 5, and the 17th is a short par 3, which my youngest brother played in a most ingenious fashion.  He took out his cleek (the equivalent of a two iron, but a wood, gave it a little three-quarter swing, and stopped a few feet past the hole.  Got it way closer than my other brother or I did, and we used more traditional wedges.  The last hole was another short par 4, which I birdied with a good drive, a good pitch, and a six foot putt.


So, why did I prefer Meadow Brook over Cedar Ridge?  Well, other than the aforementioned trees, Meadow Brook was just more fun.  It was goofy, it was silly, it was more enjoyable.  Cedar Ridge tried to take itself seriously, but it's just not good enough for it.  Meadow Brook felt like it had a sense of humor, so for that reason, if you're considering an inexpensive round of golf in the Gettysburg area, I would recommend Meadow Brook.

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