Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere

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I did not know this, but apparently the whole Hindenburg thing (“Oh, the humanity!”) is something of a problem for hydrogen fuel fans. It stands to reason that images of a giant bag of flaming hydrogen with bodies falling hither and yon is bad PR, it just had never occurred to me.

Not to worry. As I note here (with a correction here), there’s a move afoot to pardon hydrogen.

Mailing List Dynamics

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Mailing list dynamics are often fascinating: a complex self-disorganizing system, like a bunch of really dumb ants who are neither very good at finding food, nor at finding their way back to the nest. When they work their best, they’re a fabulous tool for decentralized group communication, thinking and decision-making. At their worst…

Today’s case in point is a thread on our local bike-racers mailing list that somehow in the last hour exploded into a discussion of Catholicism and abortion politics. Boom. It was a thing to behold. No Nazi references yet, but the afternoon is young.

Why I Heart Google Earth

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Playoff baseball tonight in Yankee Stadium, and the game’s start has been delayed by rain.

Back in the olden days, I would have been perfectly happy with tracking the storm on National Weather Service radar. But that is so spring 2006. I mean really.

Fire up Google Earth and type “Yankee Stadium” in the search box. Bingo, you’re zooming in on the Bronx. Then go to the Weather Service’s KMZ Generator page. A bunch of choices there. I picked “All images for single radar” and chose New York City. Click “submit” and after some computational dialoging, Metamorpho Changeo! My desktop computer has a fully zoomable and scrollable weather radar map of Yankee Stadium and environs.

Looks like at least another half hour before the storm blows through, so I can get some work done before game time.

Pi

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Perhaps our resident translator of things Japanese can help explain this:

A 60-year-old man from Mobara, Chiba Prefecture, recited pi to 100,000 decimal places early Wednesday, smashing the world record.

It took clinical psychologist Akira Haraguchi–who also held the previous record–more than 16 hours to achieve the feat, which ended with the number 6.

The previous record-holder seems also to be Japanese. What’s up with that, James?

(Also, gotta love the Times’ headline: Rice balls power pi record.)

The Nature Problem

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James Annan has had several posts that were spot on over the past year (see here and here) about what I call “the Nature problem” – scientific results that get hyped all out of proportion because they appear in Nature.

My favorite case in point is the paper in Nature last year by Bryden et al. suggesting that the thermohaline circulation is slowing. It’s an interesting result, but by no means dispositive. But because it’s a dramatic headline-grabber – Europe Headed for Deep Freeze! – it makes it into Nature and into the newspapers.

Compare that with the coverage (or lack thereof, as I could find no coverage) of Latif et al., which recently appeared in the Journal of Climate. I’ve no expertise to judge, but it looks like a solid piece of work:

Indications of a sustained THC weakening are not seen during the last few decades. Instead, a strengthening since the 1980s is observed.

So to review: scary “Europe headed for deep freeze” conclusion, Nature, boffo headlines. Unscary “Europe not headed for deep freeze” conclusion, Journal of Climate, no boffo headlines.