Heard on a local TV ad today:
Skiers and snowboarders! El Niño is back, and it’s gonna be a great year!
The iSentence Fragment
Daybook
cool new paper: Hainzl et al. show how rain can trigger earthquakes.
stuff I wrote elsewhere: Wave in Alaska busts up iceberg off Antarctica (no big scoop here, every science writer with an angle has been doing this story, ’cause it’s so insanely cool)
music: One of my favorite classic rock songs is Jim Hendrix’s version of Hey Joe (how many songs have their own web page?). I recently ran across another very creepy version by Patti Smith. Via the WikiPeople, we learn that Robert Mapplethorpe financed Smith’s first recording, in 1974. Hey Joe was the B side.
lights in the sky: Family gathered at Mom and Dad’s last night (they have a good view of the mountains) to see our weird light show, a two mile long line of battery-powered LED’s on the crest of the Sandias last night. Greg Peretti got a nice picture:
The Giants Fans’ Clever Plot
A San Francisco Giants fan sends along this, evidence of a clever “Moneyball”-style plot to capitalize on the fact that Yankee fans are stupid enough to think Alex Rodriguez is a lousy ballplayer.
Mariachi Action Team
There apparently is a picture of me on the InterWeb. Also, I believe taken the same day, Mariachis. (You’ll recall that, in last week’s episode, Mariachis serenaded us along the bike trail. Coming up, the Mariachi Action Team (MAT) rescues Sophie from the SUB.)
Defining Drought
Daniel Collins has a nice post on the problem of defining drought.
ENSO Forecast
The latest ENSO forecast came out Thursday. No big surprises here: El Niño is strengthening, as expected, expected to continue into northern hemisphere spring 2007.
Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere
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
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
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.