The Best 4:50 You'll Spend Today - Courtsey Of Ben Folds, Nick Hornby, & Pomplamoose

Keep watching through the end, you'll laugh and hear about a cool album collaboration on its way out.  Also that's a staggering amount of books, not sure if it makes me feel better or worse about my to read pile...

(via Snarkmarket)

We're Gonna Need A Bigger Boat

Not really, but I love that line and I just couldn't resist.

Seems that fishermen going after cow-nose rays in the Potomac River netted themselves an 8 foot bull shark this week.

Pic courtesy of Buzz's Marina via WP

Over at Bay Daily, Tom Pelton was quick to point out that the shark's presence is actually an encouraging sign, given the decline in shark populations world wide.  From a local standpoint it's good as well since shark's are one of the few predators of cow-nose rays which are a horribly destructive, and more or less invasive, species that wreak havoc on Bay oyster beds and aquatic vegetation.

NPR had an interesting story last month on the increase in white shark sightings in New England in the late summer that you might like to check out as well.

Fish Out Of Water

Quite literally actually...



I wish it was longer and had more info, but it's fascinating nonetheless.  These little guys are seriously amazing, not to mention they can cause a pretty decent commotion if they come flying on board, especially at night and on a sailboat where you can hear them.

(via BF)

Tommy John

With Nationals' phenom Stephen Strasburg reportedly getting ready for Tommy John surgery the baseball corner of the internets has lit up with folks discussing the process and the road to recovery and comparing various pitchers who have returned to dominance after the procedure etc etc perhaps even ad nauseum.

The bottom line definitely seems to be that it isn't a career ending injury / surgery these days and that we'll have to wait and see.  Also, that this is a major bummer for baseball fans everywhere, not just those pulling for the Nats.

It looks like one of the most interesting things out there concerning TJ surgery may be Braves' pitcher Kris Medlin's  new blog documenting his recovery from the procedure two weeks ago.  If he keeps it up it will definitely be worth following.

Read This Now Flashback

The dash is missing from the title of this post since it isn't an actual RTN, rather it's a way to clean up the oldies archive from before we started using labels here.  Coppola Comments has evolved a bit since then and this is just another tiny step along that path. 

Thanks for reading.

These are the Read This Now items that appeared in the sidebar prior to March 2008:

• The Crash In Republican Economics
• Bringing Iran in From the Cold
• What I Hate About Political Coverage
• U.S.-IRAQ: Fallon Derided Petraeus, Opposed the Surge
• How Bush Is Trying To Save Face In Iraq
• The War As We Saw It
• Re-Open Abu Ghraib Investigation
• Impeach Alberto Gonzales
• Bush's Approved Torture Techniques Go Further Than the Nazi's
• The Defunding Myth
• Bill Moyers - Jon Stewart Interview
• Olbermann : The Entire Government Has Failed Us On Iraq
• All Hail The King
• The Politico: Exhibit A for our broken political press
• Buying The War
• Repeal The Second Amendment
• Iraq : Why The Media Failed
• Terrorized by 'War on Terror'
• What The People Need
• Congress Can End War In Iraq
• Fox News is Propaganda
• CPAC The Unauthorized Documentary
• The Iraq Effect - Report from NYU Center on Law and Security
• The Washington Post's crush on right-wing bloggers
• Victory is not an option

Shooting Stars

This video of asteroids discovered since 1980 is phenomenal, and amazingly spectacular.  Make sure to read the info section (from the youtube page)...

View of the solar system showing the locations of all the asteroids starting in 1980, as asteroids are discovered they are added to the map and highlighted white so you can pick out the new ones.
The final colour of an asteroids indicates how closely it comes to the inner solar system.
Earth Crossers are Red
Earth Approachers (Perihelion less than 1.3AU) are Yellow
All Others are Green

Notice now the pattern of discovery follows the Earth around its orbit, most discoveries are made in the region directly opposite the Sun. You'll also notice some clusters of discoveries on the line between Earth and Jupiter, these are the result of surveys looking for Jovian moons. Similar clusters of discoveries can be tied to the other outer planets, but those are not visible in this video.

As the video moves into the mid 1990's we see much higher discovery rates as automated sky scanning systems come online. Most of the surveys are imaging the sky directly opposite the sun and you'll see a region of high discovery rates aligned in this manner.

At the beginning of 2010 a new discovery pattern becomes evident, with discovery zones in a line perpendicular to the Sun-Earth vector. These new observations are the result of the WISE (Widefield Infrared Survey Explorer) which is a space mission that's tasked with imaging the entire sky in infrared wavelengths.

Currently we have observed over half a million minor planets, and the discovery rates snow no sign that we're running out of undiscovered objects.

Orbital elements were taken from the 'astorb.dat' data created by Ted Bowell and associates at http://www.naic.edu/~nolan/astorb.html

szyzyg put the video together.  I found it via Neil deGrasse Tyson's twitter feed - @neiltyson.

What Is Biodiversity?

It's a good question, and a disturbingly difficult one to give a good succinct answer to (kind of like sustainable seafood or any number of other environmental buzz words and terms).

In this case a picture (or many of them) is, if not worth a thousand words, at least worth watching...


Biodiversity 2010 from iLCP on Vimeo.

The video is from the International League of Conservation Photographers, a very interesting organization that does some amazing and beautiful work.

(via BD)