In this post: the large versions of the Environment and Humanities and Social Science channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week.
Environment. The ocean off Jamaica. From Flickr, by rappensuncle
Humanities and Social Science. A crowd in Venice Beach, California. From Flickr, by Joseph.S
Reader comments of the week:
The big news in the Environment this week was Hurricane Ike and the destruction it wrought in Texas. Greg Laden's Blog captured the magnitude of the hurricane best in his post 'Flee Ike or Face Certain Death' (What you need to know about Hurricane Ike) Greg is rather vehement in his exhortations to evacuation from the path of Ike, noting that:
If you stay, and you are wrong, those last few minutes as you are being swept out to sea in the crumbling, tumbling remains of your house, unable to distinguish between sea and sky, choking on the salt water and being battered by debris, will be very, very embarrassing. Seriously. Go. Now.
This post got a lot of reader feedback, mostly related to the political reaction to hurricanes. Reader Auriette said it best:
I live in Hurricane Land, so I know all about storm surge, winds, torrential rains, and tornadoes. I hate to wish something bad on someone else, but it might help if a major hurricane hit Washington, D.C. Just so they'd understand.
With the way Global Warming is going, Auriette just might get her wish one of these days.
On the Humanities and Social Science channel, the big news of the week was the death of writer David Foster Wallace. A literary novelist and journalist as comfortable talking about math and biology as he was talking about tennis or pornography, Wallace was a McArthur Genius grant recipient who's suicide provoked an outpouring of grief in the SciBlogs community. It also provoked an outpouring of people noting that they never managed to finish Infinite Jest.
Reader Sven DiMilo, who did make it all the way through Jest, summed it up on Built on Facts:
I'm floored. Finally got around to Infinite Jest this summer and it rocketed to my top 5...was looking forward to lots more good stuff from the hyper-talented Wallace.
What a bummer.
Some other Environment posts we thought were cool this week were:
Palin-spastic: Climate change denial
And from the Humanities and Social Science channel:
See no evil: How to destroy your photojournalistic credibility in nothing flat
The Failure of Blogdom as a Source of Public Conversation
New Yorkers do need to see their analysts
Look for highlights from other channels coming up!
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I think I see some tropical convection in your pic of the ocean off of Jamaica .