Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.
…and this is a pharyngula stage embryo.
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« No, really, I doubt that religion is adaptive | Main | Planet Earth »
Category: Local
Posted on: March 25, 2007 7:49 PM, by PZ Myers
I just had to say that I stepped outside the door a few minutes ago, and it is 60°F! And almost all the snow is gone! And the sky is blue! And there are birds chirping in the trees!
I think aliens kidnapped me while I wasn't looking and have transported me to a strange and distant world. But the internet still works here!
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Comments
Actually, it's not the internet any more. We've replaced it all with an incredibly accurate simulation.
Although, oddly, we couldn't get the pornography quite right. All of the women seem to have only two breasts.
Posted by: John | March 25, 2007 8:24 PM
It's hot everywhere. Here in central Alabama, we hit 87 today. Two more degrees and we would have tied a record. It feels less like early spring and more like early summer, without the humidity.
Posted by: Godless Geek | March 25, 2007 8:27 PM
It will hit 80 by the end of the week here in Balmy Central Minnesota.
You know, for all my ranting about Global Warming, I'm not really completely against it...
(the widespread death and mayhem is bad, I know, I know.)
Posted by: Greg Laden | March 25, 2007 8:29 PM
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." (in a Spanish accent, of course)
Posted by: Stwriley | March 25, 2007 8:30 PM
Lucky you. Here I'm surrounded by people who don't believe that "almost all the snow is gone" at "60 F." In keeping with your previous post, I suppose the "complete fucking pansy about nonwarm temperatures" characteristic of the average Californian must be an indoctrination thing...
Posted by: Azkyroth | March 25, 2007 8:31 PM
It keeps flipping between "hot summer day" and "hellish Siberian winter" where I live. The weather cant decide how to torture us.
Posted by: Baratos | March 25, 2007 8:47 PM
Today when I was taking the scungy compost out to the bin in the backyard, I noticed green, growing things poking their way up out of the ground! I was stunned, especially considering that a week ago, it was -8C with a vicious windchill, and there warn't nuthin' growin' outside but the icicles on people's eaves. Plants really get a move on when they want to, don't they?
Ah, life in the Carolinian Canada microclimate. This time next week, it'll either be summer or snowing. I feel Baratos' pain, deeply, much as I felt the pain in my joints when this warm front came in, and the barometer dropped 2.1 kiloPascals in just under 24 hours. Ouch!
Posted by: Interrobang | March 25, 2007 9:12 PM
You Northerners with your "winter" and your "snow" amuse me.
Posted by: Rick @ shrimp and grits | March 25, 2007 9:30 PM
60 degrees? Brrrr.
(says the Houstonian)
Posted by: speedwell | March 25, 2007 9:34 PM
Baratos, you wouldn't live in Missouri, by any chance?
Posted by: j | March 25, 2007 9:37 PM
What is this "snow" you talk of? You mean the stuff that hangs around in the mountains in sensibly arranged countries?
Yours, surrounded by a Pacific heat sink...
Posted by: Phoenician in a time of Romans | March 25, 2007 10:09 PM
I was just watching an episode of Planet Earth where they showed the weather in Patagonia was so unstable you could get all four seasons in a single day. We're getting close.
Posted by: Ian H Spedding FCD | March 25, 2007 10:10 PM
It was 45 today here! That makes us happy! The snow is, well, melting! In most places! Upstate New York sucks.
Posted by: Carlie | March 25, 2007 10:19 PM
Here in Minnesota, it isn't hard to convice people of the idea of global warming. The problem is convicing them that it is a bad thing. (Lower heating bills, shorter winters, longer growing season, etc)
Of course, I know better than to trust Minnesota weather. It will stay warm just long enough for people to put their shovels and winter coats away, then we will get hit with another snow storm.
Posted by: Tony Popple | March 25, 2007 10:21 PM
You should be excited, PZ. Earth is undergoing the most dramatic climate shift since the end of the Last Glaciation. And you have a front-row seat.
(Despite my joking, no individual extreme can be attributed to global warming, and 60 F weather in Mn in late March is only unusual.)
Posted by: llewelly | March 25, 2007 10:40 PM
And here we're going to have several warm spring days (today I think it hit 82 at the airport, and it is still 70 at 9:52 p.m.
Got almost all my windows open, I get great cross ventilation (I loves Victorian houses...).
I'm in KC, MO. I like hearing all the birds, and a fan keeps me from being annoyed with the birds early in the morning. (At night it is kind of touching, after dark you can hear them twittering among themselves as the settle into their night's roost...)
Posted by: Paula Helm Murray | March 25, 2007 10:53 PM
And despite the fact I live in Urbia, I live in an urban forest. Once the temps go up to a reliable enough steady warmth, we have the lovely call of tree frogs all night. Which is quite nice.
Posted by: Paula Helm Murray | March 25, 2007 10:54 PM
It's the annual miracle. Rejoice.
Posted by: Jeff Chamberlain | March 25, 2007 11:04 PM
It occasionally gets that cold here, at night; then we break out the blankets.
OT--surprised to see no mention here of the coming out of an atheist congressman from California. See, for example:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17594581/from/RS.5/
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/03/23/now_
theyre_campaigning_on_a_wing_and_a_prayer/
above boston globe link (Ellen Goodman article) converted to:
http://tinyurl.com/yo4v8w
Posted by: JoeB | March 25, 2007 11:37 PM
Cold? I hung up the coat, unbuttoned my shirt, and rolled up my sleeves. This was weather for getting naked.
And yeah, we had a thread on Pete Stark last week. It's just scrolled off the front page already.
Posted by: PZ Myers | March 25, 2007 11:47 PM
As long as the internet works, you can be assured that you haven't been raptured. ;)
Posted by: beepbeepitsme | March 26, 2007 12:07 AM
Not only that, the redwinged blackbirds are back (males singing on their territories, females hanging around in spectating flocks), the pintail ducks are passing through on their way back to the arctic, the killdeers are here in breeding plumage, the cormorants are returning to their nesting platforms in Burlington Bay, and the cardinals (birdlike dinosaurs, not religious dinosaurs) are singing.
And I've metamorphosed from a Crunchy Crustacean to a Lowly Insect!
Posted by: Monado | March 26, 2007 1:19 AM
What if some of the kooks are kooks because they've been raptured, and no longer have non-internet contact with reality?
Posted by: llewelly | March 26, 2007 1:59 AM
That's 15.5 degrees in "real money" isn't it?
Here ( outer London ), the weather has been flipping.
Today is beautiful, and sunny and warm - expecting outside temp to hit 17-18.
Yesterday, the Robins and Skylarks were singing away, and the blue-tits, Parus caeruleus apparently renamed Cyanistes caeruleus (Why?) nesting furiously, lots of different species of Ladybird etc.
But last week was cold and miserable - temps hovering between +3 and -1, with sleet and snow flurries.
Yet a week earlier, it was really unseasonably warm, with temps. reaching 18 at a maximum.
And we are considerably further North than you in Minnesota, at Lat: 51:35:06N (51.5849) Lon: 0:00:54W (-0.0149) - or about 700 meters W of the Greenwich meridian.
Posted by: G. Tingey | March 26, 2007 4:58 AM
Well, it's not quite the first of May (audio less than safe for work if you work with prudes), but it's getting closer!
55° yesterday here in eastern Pennsylvania, the tulips are up, the daffodils are starting to set blossom, and the crocus are happy creatures getting ready to bloom in a few days! Even the grass put on a quarter inch in my yard yesterday.
My neighbors refer to me as, "The guy with the lawn," so your mileage may differ...
Morph
Posted by: MorpheusPA | March 26, 2007 7:21 AM
Boston is second to no other place for fickle weather. The forecast for the next few days is very seasonable (and reasonable!). I have to resist the urge to start moving plants outside, because I know that there is likely to be at least one more hard frost before winter's really over.
Posted by: Rugosa | March 26, 2007 9:05 AM
We're experiencing similar temperature swings in New England -- my favorites have been in the last two weeks. We've gone from wind chills in the negative numbers (Fahrenheit) to near 70s, and AFTER the 70s, we had 18" of snow last week Friday, which still hasn't all melted even though the last three days have been in the 50s. Crazy.
Oh, BTW, I like the redesign. The tiled backgrounds on the title bars and quotes were cute, but for some reason, they made my browser scroll slower. I have no idea why that was, but reading here just got (even) more pleasant without them :)
Posted by: jan andrea | March 26, 2007 9:09 AM
We've had the tree frogs on and off for weeks now in Maryland. It sounds like a Greek chorus outside.
Posted by: Vreejack | March 26, 2007 9:12 AM
Hey, as scientists shouldn't we all be promoting the metric system? Here in Hamilton,ON it's a breezy 282.15 Kelvins! Practically T-shirt weather!
Posted by: carlman23 | March 26, 2007 9:53 AM
I've come to realize how little I care for Centigrade temperature. You Centigrade dorks only get about 30 degrees to play around with. It doesn't even sound intimidating. Ooh, its...30 out today! Back here in Farenheit-land, we get a full hundred at least. Yeah, ours is bigger.
Posted by: stogoe | March 26, 2007 10:28 AM
I've come to realize how little I care for Centigrade temperature. You Centigrade dorks only get about 30 degrees to play around with. It doesn't even sound intimidating. Ooh, its...30 out today! Back here in Farenheit-land, we get a full hundred at least. Yeah, ours is bigger.
I guess it seems that way if you can't conceive of negative temperatures :)
Here in Celsius land, we get to say "It's below zero" rather more often, and have it actually mean something. Nyah!
Posted by: windy | March 26, 2007 11:52 AM
Yeah, it means it's time to put a spring jacket on over your sweater. Now, when it gets below zero Fahrenheit, we're starting to talk real cold. ;-)
Posted by: Tukla in Iowa | March 26, 2007 1:02 PM
Yeah, it means it's time to put a spring jacket on over your sweater.
Oh, I didn't mean that below zero Celsius is especially cold, just that something significant happens to the outside environment at 0 C.
Now, when it gets below zero Fahrenheit, we're starting to talk real cold. ;-)
Perhaps, but how cold is real cold? :) We had compulsory skiing in PE down to about -4 F (-20 C). 'Damn, it's cold' rather than 'OMFG my ears just fell off' cold.
Posted by: windy | March 26, 2007 1:49 PM
Greetings from Massachusetts. It snowed Saturday night. The crocuses are out anyway, of course, and mock the snowfall with their sassy purple blossoms, just as the nascent daffodils poke their little green noses up through the slushy mud to be warmed by the early spring sunshine. I love them so!
And by the way, our thermometer goes to "eleven."
Posted by: Kseniya | March 26, 2007 4:19 PM
No it doesn't. You just didn't listen and adjusted the vertical.
And you don't want to know what happens if you even touch the horizontal...
Posted by: blf | March 26, 2007 4:45 PM
Yes, that wonderful Massachusetts weather. It lends itself to creating microclimates, since small details can make large differences in our wrinkled landscape: sun exposure; altitude; shade/wind shade from hills, trees, or buildings; distance from ocean; drainage; what the glaciers left and what they scraped away; etc.
Posted by: rugosa | March 26, 2007 6:46 PM