Beginning to read an ancient library

There has been a recent breakthrough in reading the charred remains of papyri discovered in a library in Herculanium. It was covered by hot ash from Mt. Vesuvius in 79 AD. I have heard about this years ago and have followed the story of the efforts to read the scrolls from time to time. Using phase contrast X-ray imaging individual letters and in a few cases whole words have been worked out from the scrolls. This has the potential to add new missing works from the ancient world. The scrolls are a burned mess and at first seem like a lost cause. (image link)

 

Here is an image of the Greek alphabet from the scrolls.

 And a link to the original article.  

2014 the hottest year so far.

Video from NASA.

Ceres coming into view

NASA released some new images of Ceres as the Dawn spacecraft gets closer. 

Three are hints of craters.  Here is also an animation that shows the rotation. 

Ceres is the only dwarf planet in the inner solar system and contains a huge amount of water.  I've said it before, this should be a priority for exploration.  Read more about Ceres here (link). 

Electrical grid crisis in Honolulu

We had rolling blackouts on the island of 'Oahu last week.  The reason was that demand outstripped power production in light of the loss of some power generation units on the island (news link).  The irritating thing is---it was a bright and sunny day.  The electric company has a moratorium on private solar units being added to houses in some areas.  The public reason they give is that it makes the energy grid unstable; but of course it also means the electric company will loose money.  If they cannot supply enough electricity to meet demands (by burning fossil fuel that is shipped to the island I might add---the most expensive electricity in the country) how can any lawmaker in their right mind allow them to get away with blocking people from producing their own renewable power?