Volcanic Activity-Japan & Washington

Hundreds evacuate as Japan volcano erupts

(AFP) – 5 hours ago

TOKYO — Hundreds of people living near a Japanese volcano that has been spewing columns of smoke and ash thousands of metres into the air were forced to evacuate their homes Monday, a local official said.

More than 600 residents of the town of Takaharu in Miyazaki prefecture, on the eastern outskirts of the erupting Mount Shinmoedake, were sheltering in school gyms and community halls, an official said.

Municipal authorities had issued an evacuation advisory for 1,158 residents in high-risk districts near the 1,421-metre (4,689-foot) volcano earlier Monday.

The mountain in the Kirishima range in southwestern Japan has been belching smoke and ash into the air since late Wednesday, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency.

The agency has widened the area that it fears could be hit by a torrent of high-temperature gas and ash from two kilometres (1.24 miles) to three kilometres from the peak.

It added that the dome of lava inside the volcano’s crater, which grows as pressure increases from below, was now five times larger than it had been on Friday.

For the complete article, go to:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gX3bk3avuId__3e6Af9y39X2DXGg?docId=CNG.c844ee3821075f96953de8636c1c359a.211

And in Washington:

Swarm of Quakes detected on Mt. St. Helens

by KGW Staff

Posted on January 31, 2011 at 9:10 AM

Updated today at 9:10 AM

Dangers of the ‘Pretty Princess” Paradigm

fr/livescience.com

The Destructive Culture of Pretty Pink Princesses

By Clara Moskowitz, LiveScience Senior Writer

Girls the world over often go through a “princess phase,” enthralled with anything pink and pretty — most especially the Disney princesses.

When it happened to Peggy Orenstein’s daughter Daisy, the contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine stepped back to examine the phenomenon. She found that the girlie-girl culture being marketed to little girls was less innocent than it might seem, and can have negative consequences for girls’ psychological, social and physical development.

Orenstein’s exploration took her to Walt Disney World, the American Girl flagship store in New York City and a child beauty pageant. She details her quest in the new book “Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture” (Harper Collins, Jan. 25).

Check out this link for the complete article.  The Q &A is particularly telling:

http://www.livescience.com/culture/pink-princess-toys-girls-peggy-orenstein-110124.html

January 30-February 5

Overall Color for the Week:    Pale Apricot

Synchronicity will be very much a part of the events of this week.  Pay close attention to things happening around you as there will be issues and events popping up that can make you anxious.  This is a week in which many will be called upon to stand up for what they truly believe in their innermost cores. For those who have been disguising and/or hiding their truths because of worries about fitting in, pleasing people, job concerns, etc,  this week can be extremely uncomfortable.  There will be a subtle speeding up of things, so look for quick ends to things.  As the Chinese New Year arrives on Thursday, there will be a shift in expectation, which can result in a pleasant finale.. Continue reading

Rare Light Pillars

fr/spaceweather.com

V-TOPPED LIGHT PILLARS: Light pillars are a common sight around cities in winter. Urban lights bounce off ice crystals in the air, producing tall luminous columns sometimes mistaken for auroras. But the light pillars Mike Hollingshead saw last night near a corn mill in Blair, Nebraska, were decidely uncommon. “They had V-shaped tops,” he explains, “and some of the Vs were nested.” Here is what he saw:

“These light pillars are not just rare, they are exceptional!” declares atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley. “Ordinary pillars are produced by plate-shaped ice crystals roughly half way between you and the light source. These are different. Their rarely seen flared tops show that they were made bycolumn-shaped crystals drifting slowly downwards and aligned horizontal by air resistance.” …

Solar Blasts

fr/spaceweather.com

DOUBLE ERUPTION: Jan. 28th began with not one but two major eruptions on the sun. Separated by more than a million kilometers, the two blasts occurred almost simultaneously on opposite corners of the solar disk. Click on the image to view a movie recorded by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory:


On the lower left, a magnetic filament became unstable and erupted, hurling a portion of itself into space. On the upper right, departing sunspot 1149 produced an M1-class solar flare and a bright coronal mass ejection (SOHO movie). Is this all a big coincidence? Maybe not. New research shows that eruptions on the sun can “go global” with widely separated blasts unfolding in concert as they trigger and feed off of one another.

These blasts are going to miss in concert, too. Plasma clouds ejected by the two eruptions will sail wide of our planet, one on the left and one on the right. No Earth-effects are expected

Business Leaders told ET is Real

“World Business Leaders told Flying Saucers are Real and Extraterrestrials Exist

1/25/11

by Michael E. Salla, Ph.D.

exopolitics.org

At five thousand dollars a ticket, some business leaders got more than they bargained for when they attended the first day of the Global Competitiveness Forum (GCF) being held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. They were told flying saucers are real, and they better start thinking about the business implications of extraterrestrial life and technologies. Convened each year by the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority, the GCF brings together business and political leaders to discuss ways of promoting business competitiveness. For the first time at its annual conference, the GCF held a panel discussing UFOs and extraterrestrial life. Titled “Learning from Outer Space” the panel comprised five speakers who all endorsed the view that extraterrestrial life is real, and has many implications for the world as we know it.

for the complete article, go to:

http://news.exopoliticsinstitute.org/index.php/archives/890

1st Crop Circle of 2011

First 2011 Crop Circle Reported in Indonesia.


On Sunday, January 23, 2011, a resident named Yudi of the Rejosari village
in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, southeast of Jakarta, reported that at 5 AM he discovered
a crop formation in a rice field below a peak called Mount Suru. Yudi says he was
outside from 3 AM on and all was quiet, while other residents said they
heard what sounded like a helicopter pass over. Also see Disclose.tv

fr/earthfiles.com

2 Suns by 2012?

Two Suns? Twin Stars Could Be Visible From Earth By 2012

The Huffington Post Dean Praetorius First Posted: 01/20/11 05:33 PM Updated: 01/22/11 07:11 PM


Two Suns

This is a photo illustration.
Get Green Alerts

Earth could be getting a second sun, at least temporarily.

Dr. Brad Carter, Senior Lecturer of Physics at the University of Southern Queensland, outlined the scenario to news.com.au. Betelgeuse, one of the night sky’s brightest stars, is losing mass, indicating it is collapsing. It could run out of fuel and go super-nova at any time.

When that happens, for at least a few weeks, we’d see a second sun, Carter says. There may also be no night during that timeframe.

The Star Wars-esque scenario could happen by 2012, Carter says… or it could take longer. The explosion could also cause a neutron star or result in the formation of a black hole 1300 light years from Earth, reports news.com.au. …

Omega Sunset

OMEGA SUNSET: “Last night’s sunset was an amazing sight,” reports Pete Lawrence from West Beach in Selsey, UK. “As the sun approached the horizon, the lower half of the solar disk extended downwards to touch an image of itself rising out of the waves.” He took this picture of the phenomenon:

Jules Verne famously likened this kind of sunset to an Etruscan Vase. Others call it an “Omega sunset” because it resembles the Greek letter. Either way, it is caused by warm air overlying the sea surface, which refracts the rays of the setting sun to produce a mirage, as shown.

This is a good weekend to watch the sunset. Not only are mirages a possibility, but also you might observe a sunspot in the twilight.

fr/spaceweather.com