Igneous cats.

These are Julian's (Harmonic Tremors) cats, and are named after Californian faults.

1. Shouldn't this – more exactly – be “plutonite cats”?

This page is also linked in the sidebar to the right, under “overview pages”.

Next, there will be a collection of all WoGEs I solved.

This paper has several special properties:

• The fabric can be produced to be equivalent to sand paper grit sizes of >120, but is considerably thinner. Thus, even constricted openings and gaps can be neatly polished.
• In a special test run, fabrics were produced that are so thin that even light shines through, allowing the treated surface to be observed during the abrasion process.
• Due to its high structural integrity and low wettability, the material maintains a floating position on water, even when subjected to strong downwards pull, and without losing its coherence.
• Undisturbed storage on the roll is ensured by torque-limiting perforation (TLP): should any forces happen to disturb the spatial attitude of the roll, the generation of any torque is effectively averted by disrupting the transmission path.
• Thanks to bulk purchase, this product is extremely cost-effective, if not to say dirt-cheap.

However, there are still some disadvantages:

• The paper is rather brittle and prone to strong wrinkling. This complicates working on rounded surfaces.
• The low adhesion capacity of the fabric surfaces impedes lifting off and retaining material abrased from organic/biologic items.

Because of cost reasons and in order to assess the human component (“user interaction”, “skin feel”, reaction to larger amounts of blood), the tests are not performed by the FMPA (materials research and testing centre), but – sadly – directly in the various university department offices.

We're not quite happy with the location of the test stand. Although it's situated in a discreet and undisturbed location, conflicts of interest must be expected:

There are some interesting results when looking at the professions. As expected, law and economic sciences are strongly represented. But then:

The natural sciences are rather under-staffed: eight biologists, seven mathematicians, four physicist, zwo chemists and one geologist are found in the plenum – but also 17 physicians and 27 engineers.

One geologist of 621 MPs, that's really not much. (Who is it, by the way? Which party?) That explains, in my opinion, why there was so little mention about final storage when discussion the extension of the operational period of nuclear power plants… But at least 27 engineers, that's a little bit comforting. Computer scientist have to be content with just three representatives.

Sculpture “Kryptos” (CIA Headquarters, Langley, VA). Foto: Jim Gillogly.

However, I see another building almost every day, where I wonder if that letter tangle contains a hidden message (e.g. “the costs for this thing boggle the mind” *gg*).

The ICMC at BTU Cottbus. Source: Wikipedia.

I think we have to wait for Herzog & de Meuron to provide a clue.

But this time I was lucky and found Felix Bossert's remake of WoGE 122, a close-up view of dunes in the Apure River region of Venezuela – now called WoGE 273. I think I only had a chance because the accidental double-post prevented both Ron Schott and Péter Luffi from taking part.

The last WoGE was quite like a painting, and so I want to continue with nice-looking images. Is this a close view of a metamorphic rock? Who knows…

For any new players to Where on (Google) Earth, simply post a comment with latitude and longitude and write something about the (geologic) feature in the picture. If you win, you get to host the next one.

I'm not sure if this is easy or not. To be on the safe side, I invoke Schott's Rule: former winners have to wait until posting for 1 hour for each WoGE they got right. I will post some hints (e.g. a scale bar) if there is no answer after some time.

Posted on 10 March, 21:00 CET (20:00 UTC).

Have fun and good luck!

Rockslide at Hirschsprung cleft, Obermaiselstein, 2011. View from base of slope.

Rockslide at Hirschsprung cleft, Obermaiselstein, 2011. View from north (sorry, bad exposure because of low sun).

I've written a bit about it in German; if you're interested in a translation, please tell me so.

There was no call to order by the president [of the Bundestag], not even all too loud uproar or protest on your side [i.e. the ruling party], when for the first time in the Parliament's history a minister in office has repeatedly been called liar, impostor, and fraudster. […]

You were not really upset and there was no call to order. Mrs Chancellor, what do you think why it was this way? Because everybody in this house knew that these are statements of fact.

Also I found out that the Chancellor used the phrase “no risk, no fun” (in English) when talking to the commanders about the reform. Sweet.

Ole tried to slow down the rapid succession of WoGEs by zooming in a lot more than most previous posters with his WoGE #268. This seemed a success, at least people were desperately searching the planet for quite some time.

Felix Bossert liked this approach and presented another close-up view (WoGE #269), which I managed to solve rather quickly. This was by sheer luck: I had the Donauversinkung already prepared to be my next WoGE.

Therefore, I needed a new location, and I've found something similar:

Where on Google Earth #270.

For any new players to Where on (Google) Earth, simply post a comment with latitude and longitude and write something about the (geologic) features in the picture. If you win, you get to host the next one.

Because I think that this WoGE is still a bit easy, I invoke Schott's Rule: former winners have to wait until posting for 1 hour for each WoGE they got right.

Posting time is 24 February, 22:00 CET (21:00 UTC).

Have fun and good luck!

Living in Cottbus, I'm not directly affected, but I am convinced that, if something as essential as the public water supply is privatised, the contracts and agreements have to be public and be prepared with the participation of the elected representatives.

The main point of the referendum was (my translation):

§ 1 Obligation for disclosure

1. All contracts, resolutions and auxilary agreements that relate to the partial privatisation of the Berliner Wasserbetriebe and that have been made between the State of Berlin and private shareholders, have to be unconditionally disclosed according to §2 of this law. Clause 1, as well as the following legal provisions, apply also for future contracts, resolutions and auxiliary agreements.
2. Personal data of natural persons are exempt from disclosure.
3. Applicability of the exemption in clause 2 is determined by the Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information. He is authorised to blacken the corresponding data.

(§2 contains details on how and when information is disclosed.)

In the case of Berlin, and additional point is that the investors had been guaranteed a minimum profit. That's rather disputable considering Berlin's strained budget. And should privatisation not save some money? (Anyway, I don't know if it would, in principle.) There's an according paragraph as well:

§ 3 Obligation for approval and examination

All contracts, resolutions and auxiliary agreements in the sense of §1 of this law as well as amendments of existing contracts, which could affect the budget of Berlin, also regarding possible future consequences, in the widest sense, require the approval of the Berlin Parliament. Existing contracts, resolutions and auxiliary agreements require a extensive, public examination and public discussion by the Parliament, including consultation by independent experts. The Parliament has to be granted a time of at least six months for the examination.

Let's hope that this helps.

Because I already had als HTML and colour codes of the ISC already on my computer, it wasn't such a big deal to plug together a simple WebOS application². Until then, I had no experience in developing for smartphones, and therefore cannot compare to other SDKs, but programming for WebOS was quite comfortable.

Perhaps the intersection set of the people interested in geology and WebOS users is greater than one, so I'm releasing the app to the big world out there. I hope to get it included in Homebrew as soon as possible. In the meantime, you can get it here:

Stratigraphy v0.1.8 (Install with WebOS QuickInstall oor Internalz.) – Update 02.02.11

Any feedback is greatly appreciated!

And if someone could design a decent icon, please don't hesitate.

1. Bad bilingual pun not intended.
2. Basically, it just consists of that HTML page in a WebView Widget…