Happy Fourth of July!!

[RStar]

I hope everyone has a great Independance Day Celebration today!

I'm hosting a party for about a dozen people who have become US citizens this year, mostly from South Africa. Here in Garden Grove we can still light off fireworks, and see the Disneyland fireworks from our yard. We will have red-white-and blue food and drinks. I made CDs with patriotic music. Flags will fly from every corner of the yard.

How about you? Any great plans (for those of you not camping that is:rolleyes: )?

If you do light up fireworks, please be safe. Although I have to admit that beer and explosives are my favorite pastime! :D

By the way, this was to be my 1776th post, but I missed it by one!!!

[Capt Jack]

Happy Independence Day everyone


BBQ @ noon here. nice thing....I aint cookin'
sadly, no personal fireworks allowed here in San Diego....although in my particular case that might be a good thing. I tend to get carried away with the pyrotechnic stuff :D

[Alex]

I'll be spending the day cooking at an A's game. Splurged on seats four rows back from home plate and of course it looks like it will be a billion degrees today (normally we try to sit under the overhang so we're in the shade).

One word of warning: I have given the Canadian Air Force permission to carpet bomb any location heard playing Lee Greenwood. So have fun everybody but do it safely (by not playing Lee Greenwood).

[blueerica]

But Alex... at least we know we're freeee...

<snort>

[JWBear]

Happy Fireworks Day!

[katiesue]

I'm just hanging around the house but I agree with Alex. Here's to a Lee Greenwood free day!

[Snowflake]

Happy Fourth of July!

Tonight, I'm going to Japantown for noodles and then the Kabuki for Ratatouille.

Right now, doing laundry. :(

[Matterhorn Fan]

I should be doing laundry. Or work.

Instead, I'm playing video games, and am being thankful that it's raining. Less chance of fires if everything's wet.

[cirquelover]

The boy has the sniffles so we're just going to the movies and then hanging around the house.
I'm hoping the neighbors bbq, then I can beg them to cook some hot dogs for the boy. He was supposed to go to a bbq today but he'd rather go to the movies with me!
I'm also hoping they, neighbors, will help me light fireworks tonight.

Can you tell the "jobs" I don't normally do on the 4th!?! I sure do miss my husband:(

[RStar]

One word of warning: I have given the Canadian Air Force permission to carpet bomb any location heard playing Lee Greenwood. So have fun everybody but do it safely (by not playing Lee Greenwood).

I made a set of patriotic CDs for the party, but I just re-burned the one that HAD the Lee Greenwood on it, removing said song. It had Bush on it, and I was afraid I might get some icy looks, which would be nice on a hot day....NOT!!

I left the Angry American on it, though. And Elvis. Gotta have Elvis doing God Bless Amurica, momma baby!

[JWBear]

We're going to a BBQ at a friends house. He lives in Lakewood, where you can still exercise your God given right to set off "Safe & Sane" fireworks right in your own front yard.

Oh... and, for the occasion, I'm making a red, white, and blue Jello mold! :cheers:

[Gn2Dlnd]

Today's also the fourth anniversary of Spring River Farm! My very first farmer's market was 4th of July weekend four years ago.

I've got ast least one delivery, then probably going to a friend's big gay pool party for an hour or so, then Zeke's for bbq (left my leftovers out of the fridge last night, dang), then Ratatouille at the El Cap, then CBS Radford for fireworks. The iPod is fully loaded with patriotic favorites, plus a fireworks friendly half-hour mix!

Yankee doodles!

[Stan4dSteph]

I just went to see Ratatouille. :) Now I'm going to have my grill party for one. Wheee!

[Morrigoon]

Great. My account's $16 in the negative. So much for going to the store...

[lashbear]

Happy America Day to you all.

.....but especially to the Americans.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

We walked up the overpass at La Veta, which is the highest point for miles that isn't a building. Some other locals showed as well. We could see tons of local shows and backyard pyro, all along the horizon. Disneyland's fireworks were visible, but all red, probably due to smoke and distance (not far enough away for a red shift ;) ). Fun!

[Alex]

but all red, probably due to smoke and distance (not far enough away for a red shift ;) ). Fun!

Sounds like a cool spot to watch from. Did something similar my summer in Kodiak though there was only one show to see. But it was surreal to see when so completely isolated as where we were.

On another (much geekier) note, red shift has nothing to do with distance -- it is the principal behind very local radar guns used by police -- but rather the velocity at which something is moving away from you. So, since you and Disneyland were not moving in relation to each other, there'd be no red shift regardless of how far away Disneyland was. Told it you was a geekier note.

[Ghoulish Delight]

I tried to tell her about red shift.

[RStar]

I belive what CP was seing is the way the smoke from the fireworks blocks the wave lengths of other colors. Red is able to get through.

Also, what is interesting about red shifts is that they appear to be quantized and this has interesting implications for the study of the universe. This suggests that the red shift may be caused by something other than the expansion of the universe, at least in part. This could be a loss of energy of light rays as they travel, or a decrease in the speed of light through discrete levels. Maybe there is some other explanation.

Several well-studied galaxies, including M51 and NGC 2903, exhibited two distinct redshifts. Velocity breaks, or discontinuities, occurred at the nuclei of these galaxies. Even more fascinating was the observation that the jump in redshift between the spiral arms always tended to be around 72 kilometers per second, no matter which galaxy was considered. Later studies indicated that velocity breaks could also occur at intervals that were 1/2, 1/3, or 1/6 of the original 72 km per second value.

That is what you told her, right GD? ;)

[Alex]

The Tifft research (with Arp's follow up) that you're quoting is generally regarded as bunk these days (and really never had much support to begin with), a product of bad modeling and finding significance below the level of measurement, and has been pretty thoroughly stomped on by the many more thorough surveys done since the mid-80s which finds no support for quantized redshift.

Though it is fun watching geocentrists cling to this research since one of its implications would that the earth is at the center of the universe. Another is that the Big Bang theory of cosmology is wrong.

So if that is what he told her, I hope he followed up with the additional research done over the last 20 years. (It's July 5th now so a complete derail is ok, right?)

[cirquelover]

I concur, a derail is safe after the date.

I have nothing to add but always feel like I'm learning something!

[Morrigoon]

That's why I love this damn board... a discussion wishing each other happy Independence Day turns into a discussion of varied theories relating to light over distances. It's like that time we derailed into a discussion of feminine bathing rituals.

[Alex]

By the way, here's the parent page (http://www.cs.unc.edu/%7Eplaisted/ce/) for the one where I think you got your quotes about red shift.

Two things scare me about that:

1) This is a page put together by a professor at the University of North Carolina. Even if he is writing outside of his field (no education in biology, physics, or cosmology) it is pretty bad.

2) This is a Web page owned by a professor of computer science. Hopefully the fact that it was apparently coded in 1994 isn't indicative of the currency of his teaching.

[innerSpaceman]

Disneyland's fireworks were fantastic .... but, alas, nothing as spectacular or mindblowing as last year's.


This was simply the second best 4th fireworks I've seen .... and too bad such a great show had to fall as ultimately disappointing to me.


Oh well, at least I don't have to keep coming back for as long as they will do "that" again. They didn't do it again.




But 'Ratatouille" was great, and the pyro was fantastic, and dinner was nice, and seeing friends is good. A quite happyish fourth of july.

[Morrigoon]

Thanks for talking me into coming out for that!

[Betty]

We spent the day off roading in Big Bear. We explored the gold trail and took lot's of photos where my daughter is frowning. (she didn't want to go for various I-am-12-years-old reasons.) Oh well.

After exploring and a picnic, we came home and declared: It's Hot!

Spent the next few hours trying to stay cool and finally went to bed. But not to sleep so at 9 when the fireworks went boom-BOOM we sat by the upstairs bedroom window and watched all the fireworks from Corona high. Great show! And the end?! Wow! Flashing, sparkling, lit up the sky, wow!

Good day. Except for the grumpy 12 year old part. She eventually, sort of, came around. Sort of.

[Ghoulish Delight]

2) This is a Web page owned by a professor of computer science. Hopefully the fact that it was apparently coded in 1994 isn't indicative of the currency of his teaching.

Dear god, rainbow horizontal rules?!?! That alone is enough to discredit anything that man says.

[Kevy Baby]

One word of warning: I have given the Canadian Air Force permission to carpet bomb any location heard playing Lee Greenwood. So have fun everybody but do it safely (by not playing Lee Greenwood).Thankfully, they didn't here me playing it. I had a DJ gig last night (I've been playing the same 4th of July party for 7 years) and they will complain like crazy if I don't play PTBAA during the fireworks (we can see both the Laguna Beach and Newport Beach fireworks from this location).

[Alex]

And kids will lie down in the cereal aisle and throw a fit if you deny them their preferred sugary cereal.

But sometimes you have to be the adult and hold firmly to "no." It's for their own good Kevy.

[JWBear]

The people who live a few houses down from the party I was at last night accidentally lit some of their front yard shrubbery on fire with fireworks (at least, I'm assuming it was an accident). Is it wrong of me to have found it hysterical?

[RStar]

And kids will lie down in the cereal aisle and throw a fit if you deny them their preferred sugary cereal.

But sometimes you have to be the adult and hold firmly to "no." It's for their own good Kevy.***SNORT***

Sorry :blush:

The people who live a few houses down from the party I was at last night accidentally lit some of their front yard shrubbery on fire with fireworks (at least, I'm assuming it was an accident). Is it wrong of me to have found it hysterical?No, not at all. I've been lighting off fireworks for 40 years, and I have never lit anything on fire, nor hurt myself or anyone else. Only stupidity can do that, and stupidity must be laughed at or all is lost!

The Tifft research (with Arp's follow up) that you're quotingShoot! I was hoping I'd at least get a few posts about how intelegent I sounded before I posted the sorce of my quote. ;)

Oh well, everyone knows better anyway! :D

That was not the link, Alex. This is: Red Shift Riddles (http://www.cs.unc.edu/~plaisted/ce/redshift.html)

[Alex]

RStar, that page is a subpage from the one I posted above. Remove the redshift.html part of the URL and you'll get it.

It is a page or fundamentalist Christian theories of science. Needless (I hope) to say, most of them aren't very strong arguments (and most aren't even accurate representations of the science).

[blueerica]

I stopped by the grocery store before I hit the highway yesterday, and PTBAA came over the speakers. I chuckled to myself and thought I hope Alex was just kidding about the carpet bombing... I just wanted to get some crackers.

[cirquelover]

We went and bought fireworks at half price today. I love a bargain! Now when Gary gets home we can light a few with him too.

[Not Afraid]

Yeah, that was one really great holiday.

[innerSpaceman]

Hmmm, sorta gives a second meaning to "Independence" Day though.

[BarTopDancer]

Nothing says Happy Birthday America like blowing stuff up.

[RStar]

RStar, that page is a subpage from the one I posted above. Remove the redshift.html part of the URL and you'll get it.Oh, thanks Alex. That's the problem with Google-type searches, sometimes you just get the one page. I hadn't thought of going to the main page by dropping the extentions on the address. Great trick.

I hadn't even heard of Red Shift before this thread anyway. Interesting idea, I'll have to find some stronger, more accurate info on the subject.

[Alex]

You've probably heard of it as the Doppler Effect. Essentially, when something is moving away from you the wavelength of light from that object is "stretched" which has the appearance of being more red than it naturally is.

In reverse, an object moving towards you shortens the wavelength making it look more blue. This is blue shift.

For cosmology, if you have a method for knowing what the natural wavelength of light is (and spectroscopic measurements give us that for stars) you can then determine the relative motion between you and that object. Since, when you look out into space, pretty much everything is red shifted that suggests everything is moving away from everything else. And because the red shift is proportional to the distance away from us (things farther away are moving away faster, aka Hubble's Law) that is strong support for the idea that space itself is expanding and is a key underpinning of the Big Bang.

On a much more local level, redshift/blueshift (oneshift, twoshift), is used for many things. One example would be police radar guns. The gun emits light of a known wavelength which hits the target and reflects back to the gun. If that object is moving relative to the speed gun the wavelength of the light will be subtly changed during the reflection. If it is more "red" then the object is moving away; more "blue" and it is moving closer and the amount of change tells you how fast.

Another local use is in the Doppler Weather Radar all our TV stations brag about having. The key different between previous weather radar and the suddenly hip Doppler radar was that it added the ability to measure phase shift and so could "see" wind rather than having to physically measure it on site. So not only could the weather station say "it is raining over there" but also "it is raining over there and moving towards over here at some miles per hour." Even more valuable is that it has allowed for much improved tornado prediction.

Thus ends today science lecture. Please fill out the comment cards before leaving as that is how they decide if I get tenure. I'm sure someone will be along to correct my mistakes if I made any.

[mousepod]

Nicely summarized, Alex. Thanks.

[Morrigoon]

On a much more local level, redshift/blueshift (oneshift, twoshift),
It says I must spread some around first, but visible mojo on the Dr. Seuss reference.

[RStar]

Very cool, Alex. Thanks!

I always wondered what kind of technology was used for those things, especially Doppler.