On Tuzworld & the next few days…

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Well as some of you may have noticed, Tuzworld is now in version 3.0. After about 3 and a half years now I think I like this revision the best. I'm very proud of this one, much moreso than the others. If anyone has a suggestion or differing opinion email/call/im/comment.

They're dynamiting the rock at the lake today and tomorrow. Hopefully we may have the rest of the bulldozer work finished sometime next week because of this.

I'm heading down to Charlotte this weekend. If you know why then good...if not, ask me.  ESPNU is broadcastin just THREE and ONLY THREE Universities' Midnight Maddness practices from around the country on Friday night at 10:30. Guess whos school is going to be one of the three? GMU!!! Finally someone is paying attention to us. Its thundering outside....I love storms. Well. I have a long day tomorrow....to bed with my self I go.

CONFIRMED: Google buys YouTube for 1.65 billion in stock.

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Techcrunch first broke this rumor at the beginning of the weekend and has confirmed it today:

Moments ago the deal was confirmed. In their largest acquisition to date, Google has acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in an all stock transaction. Both companies have approved the deal, which should officially close in the fourth quarter. YouTube’s 65 employees will remain with the company at YouTube’s San Bruno headquarters.

Details are also emerging that Yahoo was in the bidding war until very close to the end.

More details here.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) - Google Inc. said Monday it's buying No. 1 Internet video sharing Web site YouTube Inc. for $1.65 billion in stock. The deal is regarded as a largely defensive one that leapfrogs Google into a leading role in a burgeoning Internet marketplace.

Marketwatch article.

CNN has it too.

South Korean nominated as U.N. Secretary General

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UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) -- South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon was formally nominated as U.N. secretary-general on Monday, only hours after North Korea defied the world body by announcing a nuclear test.

The U.N. Security Council voted by acclamation, thereby effectively anointing Ban as successor to Secretary-General Kofi Annan, whose 10 years in office expire on December 31, said Japan's U.N. Ambassador, Kenzo Oshima, this month's council president.

Six other candidates for the job had withdrawn, leaving members to vote only for Ban.

The 192-member U.N. General Assembly must give final approval to Ban's nomination, which usually follows within a week or two. That vote is expected to be positive.


I found this very ironic that this happed on the same weekend North Korea set us up the bomb.

North Korea has gone “Nukular” but its a dud apparently?

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According to this source the recent test by North Korea, that happened last night (Oct 8th), was a dud. The US Geological Survey has measured seismic activity related to the blast and have determined the following:

They've published lat/long (41.294 N, 129.134 E) and Mb estimates (4.2) for the North Korean test.

There is lots of data floating around: The CTBTO called it 4.0; The South Koreans report 3.58-3.7.

You're thinking, 3.6, 4.2, in that neighborhood. Seismic scales, like the Richter, are logarithmic, so that neighborhood can be pretty big.

But even at 4.2, the test was probablya dud.

Estimating the yield is tricky business, because it depends on the geology of the test site. The South Koreans called the yield half a kiloton (550 tons), which is more or less -- a factor of two -- consistent with the relationship for tests in that yield range at the Soviet Shagan test site:

Mb = 4.262 + .973LogW

Where Mb is the magnitude of the body wave, and W is the yield.

3.58-3.7 gives you a couple hundred tons (not kilotons), which is pretty close in this business unless you're really math positive. The same equation, given the US estimate of 4.2, yields (pun intended) around a kiloton.

A plutonium device should produce a yield in the range of the 20 kilotons, like the one we dropped on Nagasaki. No one has ever dudded their first test of a simple fission device. North Korean nuclear scientists are now officially the worst ever.

Of course, I want to see what the US IC says. If/when the test vents, we could have some radionuclide data -- maybe in the next 72 hours or so.

But, from the initial data, I'd say someone with no workable nuclear weapons (Kim Jong Il, I am looking at you) should be crapping his pants right now.

First the missile, then the bomb. Got anything else you wanna try out there, chief?