gregladen | September 2, 2016Update (Sunday PM):
Hermine is still a big storm and will affect eastern regions to some degree, but the storm never reformed as a hurricane, and is not not expected to do so. Also, the storm has jinked out to the east more than expected and will likely move farther east. So, there will be some coastal effects, but not much out of the ordinary.
POST-TROPICAL CYCLONE HERMINE FORECAST/ADVISORY NUMBER 30
NWS NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL AL092016
2100 UTC SUN SEP 04 2016
CHANGES IN WATCHES AND WARNINGS WITH THIS ADVISORY...
A TROPICAL STORM WARNING HAS BEEN ISSUED FROM WATCH HILL…
gregladen | September 2, 2016I remember watching, decades ago, a short film with Picasso. There was a glass wall that you could not see, and Picasso was standing behind it, dressed like a French Artist and holding painting equipment. He then proceeded to draw lines on the glass. Each line had a particular orientation and shape. He put just a couple of lines on the glass, and in so doing, created a great work of art. If I recall correctly, he made a few of them. Years later, visiting Picasso's home in Paris, I saw a bicycle handlebar thad had been broken and welded roughly back together again. Two pieces of metal, each…
gregladen | September 2, 2016I was half expecting Trump to soften on immigration. The logic of that? His main supporters, who hate all immigrants and are a bunch of racist slobs will vote for Trump no matter what he says because the are morons. But, the fence sitters, the amoral "Good Republicans" who would vote for him because they have learned to fear Democratic economic policies (this group are also all morons) might vote for him if he was less crazy sounding.
But no, that didn't happen. Instead, he embarrassed our nation buy telling the President of Mexico, to his face, that he's going to have to pay for this wall…
gregladen | September 1, 2016But I'm sure you already knew that.
The Wall Street Journal is so far behind the curve when it comes to the science of climate change, and so deep in the pockets of the oil industry, that the following is now true: If you are in business or industry, and want to keep track of important news about markets and other important things, don't bother with the Wall Street Journal. You no longer need it for the stock info (that's on your smart phone). The editorial and analysis, and I assume the reporting, from the WSJ is so badly tainted and decades behind the times that the newspaper as a whole has…
gregladen | September 1, 2016For the latest post on Hermine GO HERE.
Update Thursday PM
Hermine has grown in strength, and may even make landfall as a Category 2 storm. At least a strong Category 1.
The right front quadrant of the storm is where the main "punch" (of winds) is located. If the storm winds come into an embayment, they can really build up the storm surge. Look at this image:
You can see the right front quadrant of the storm heading right into Apalachee Bay. Barrier islands to the west of the bay's head, and the communities right in the bay, are very much at risk for severe flooding.
Here is a blowup…
gregladen | August 31, 2016Update (Noonish Friday):
Lester is going to skim along to the north of the Hawaiian Islands. This is an estimate of the probability of the distribution of 50mph winds:
Surf's up, it will be stormy, but the significant threat is moderate.
Update (Noonish Thursday):
Madeline sort of hit Hawaii, but it also did a funny little shrug as the medial to outer bands got close to the big island, and the rematerialized on the other side, keeping with the mysterious tradition (see below) of hurricanes magical avoiding the island state. But, the storm surge did in fact swamp a lot of places along the…
gregladen | August 30, 2016Our latest Ikonokast Podcast is up; an interview with agriculture and ecology expert Emily Cassidy!
Organic vs. industrial, GMO vs GnMO, Food vs. Fuel, how to regulate (or not) farming. All of it.
The Podcast is HERE.
gregladen | August 30, 2016Sometimes I think there are not abundant intelligent life forms wafting about the universe. We would see things in our careful, highly accurate, detailed looking at a sampling of the universe. But, I suppose we've only been scanning with super amazing instruments for a few years, and only scanning a small fraction of the universe. But certainly, in a decade or two we'll be able to say that radio-communicative or emitting intelligent life is either out there somewhere, or not likely to be. Absence of evidence will evolve into evidence for pessimism, at the very least.
Meanwhile we get these…
gregladen | August 30, 2016The latest in GMO technology: Photosynthesizing Human Beans!
This is silly, but makes some good points. May be good for teachers in your biology class:
gregladen | August 30, 2016Original Post:
The Atlantic storms are getting interesting.
Two different systems are poised to become named storms, but it is not clear which one will be awarded the name Hermine, and which one Ian. If the storm recently near Cuba develops as expected, it could become a weak hurricane before making landfall along Florida's Gulf coast. This will not likely be a very impressive hurricane, but it will be big and wet, and the area is already experiencing too much water. Flooding will ensue.
A third system is moving off of Africa, with 40% chance of forming into a storm over the next several…
gregladen | August 30, 2016A lot of higher education institutions are old, and back in the day, things were different. Not only were most schools simultaneously on top of and on the bottom of great snow covered hills, but they were often surrounded by nearly medieval settlement, or at least, pre-industrial ones, that lacked things like central heat, electricity, and so on, even after these things became common and normal.
I remember the legacy of this reality at my Alma Mater, a small university in Cambridge, Mass. Most of the campus had its own heating system, which was built at a time when centrally distributed…
gregladen | August 30, 2016Women and Physics by Laura McCulloch is a concise addition to the IOP Science Concise Physics series.
McCullough is an award winning Professor of Physics at UW Stout, and served for several years as the chair of that university’s Chemistry and Physics Department. Her research focuses on physics education, and gender and science. By both chance and design, I know a lot of people in this area, and I’m pretty sure IOP Science could not have had a better choice in authors for this important book.
How do you make a physicist? Well, you start with a child, and poke at it for 25 year or so until it…
gregladen | August 29, 2016By one accounting, 90 companies. Richard Heede ...
...(pronounced "Heedie") has compiled a massive database quantifying who has been responsible for taking carbon out of the ground and putting it into the atmosphere. Working alone, with uncertain funding, he spent years piecing together the annual production of every major fossil fuel company since the Industrial Revolution and converting it to carbon emissions.
[source]
See the graphic at the top of the post. There is an interactive version HERE, with much more detail.
Heede is one of the victim's of Lamar Smith's McCarthy-esque attack…
gregladen | August 28, 2016How do you judge a field guide?
Phillipps' Field Guide to the Mammals of Borneo and Their Ecology: Sabah, Sarawak, Brunei, and KalimantanSome field guides you leave on the shelf and rarely look at. Others you may put in the living room to spice up the coffee table, because they make great eye candy, but are otherwise not that useful. Others you take out, and at least have around in case you need them. Others you make sure you are never very far away from because you find yourself looking for them all the time.
And, every once in a while, a field guide comes along that you want to take to…
gregladen | August 28, 2016Do you have 11 minutes? No? Move along.
Yes? Watch.
Elections matter. This year, more than ever.
gregladen | August 27, 2016Wildlife of Southeast Asia by Susan Myers, is a new pocket identification guide covering "wildlife" in Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, West Malaysia, and Singapore.
It covers birds, mammals, reptiles, frogs, and invertebrates. Considering that there must be tens of millions of inverts in Southeast Asia, the coverage here is very minimal, just the highlights, just a few pages. This is mainly a bird book, with pretty good coverage of mammals, a bunch of snakes, some of the more important frogs, and some of the more obvious insects, etc.
It is standard field guide size, and uses…
gregladen | August 26, 2016Using executive power, Governor Mark Dayton, recognized as one of the best governors in the US, has laid out protections for pollinators in Minnesota.
The Minnesota Department of Agriculture is ordered to implement recently developed recommendations related to neonicotinoid pesticides. Potential users must demonstrate a real need for the products, and use them properly. This and other state agencies will coordinate and develop a Pollinator Protection Team to develop and implement statewide goals, and keep track of things. The Governor created a Committee on Pollinator Protection to advise…
gregladen | August 26, 2016Treecology: 30 Activities and Observations for Exploring the World of Trees and Forests is an excellent new nature activity book for kids of a fairly wide range of ages.
Like a tree, the pattern of the book is pretty straightforward but fractal like; you start off simple but end up pretty much anywhere in the world of ecology. The book begins with the basic definition of a tree, simple tree anatomy, some phylogeny, some tree physiology and biology, but then branches off (pun intended) into things that are related to trees, like things that live on them, eat parts of them, etc. Seeds and…
gregladen | August 26, 2016A disproportionate percentage of Islamist radical actors, including suicide bombers, come from an engineering background. Why?
Right wing and Islamist extremism seem to share this and other traits, while left wing extremism is more commonly associated with individuals from the humanities and social sciences.
This is what we learn from "Engineers of Jihad: The Curious Connection between Violent Extremism and Education", by Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog.
An obvious reason that engineers may be more often associated with groups that carry out bombings is that such groups recruit engineers…