When you hear Harry Shearer’s real voice, which Simpsons character does he most remind you of?
The Phosphorescent Deep
In which the ABQJournal’s Bruce Daniels muses wisely (Bruce is one of the wiser guys I know) about yesterday’s Jessica Simpson dustup:
But then you take one step off the Web’s continental shelf and you’re suddenly plunged to the depths … you know, those “there be monsters” deeps that the National Geographic used to show as frightening blackness filled with wriggling, twisting phosphorescent creatures and otherworldly shapes.
An Ethical Dilemma
I have a bit of a quandary.
Regular Inkstain readers will know of my podGoober Project, wherein I load all music I own into my new Portable Music Device, in the process listening to everything. I’m pretty close to completing it – down to the last few CDs, and a pretty marginal group it is. There are a couple of CDs that will not cross the podGoober’s electronic threshold, including a monstrously bad recording of Rhapsody in Blue that I picked up cheap in the used bin at Page One Too. It clearly was there for a reason. I must find a good recording of RiB (suggestions welcome – the opening clarinet run is one of life’s great pleasures, and belongs on my podGoober) but the two times I listened to the bad one it just pissed me off.
The real dilemma involves Alvin and the Chipmunks. What are my ethical obligations to them?
How Orange County Got Its Name
There’s this story I made up once a long time ago. It’s about how Orange County, in Southern California, got its name.
I was on a date at the Irvine Meadows Amphitheater, which is up on the side of a hill, before a Jackson Browne concert. Jackson Browne, as you know, is pretty cute, which makes a Jackson Browne concert a great date. Doctor my eyes and stuff.
Anyway, we were waiting for the show to start, and as the sun set you could look out across Irvine and see the street lights coming on, that orange glow you get from sodium vapor street lamps.
I explained to my date the way Orange County got its name: from the orange street lamps, which were invented by Marlin Irvine (I think I called him Marlin), who became fabulously well-to-do because of his invention of orange street lamps. He later used the money to develop Irvine.
My date was skeptical. “No,” I said. “This is a true story.”
Of course this story is not true. Orange County was really named for the fruit, which they grew there in vast, fragrant citrus orchards. I know they were fragrant because I grew up amid citrus orchards in Southern California, before the widespread use of sodium vapor lamps.
Jackson Browne was terrific, and we had a good time, but I don’t think we went on any more dates. I think maybe she didn’t like my story, and could tell I was full of crap. I’ve never been very good at making stuff up.
The Irvine Meadows Amphitheater is now the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater, which is a dumb name.
Years later, I saw Jackson Browne again. I was covering a protest at the federal building in downtown L.A. against U.S. involvement in El Salvador. If I remember correctly, Jackson Browne was arrested that day. To be honest, I haven’t seen him since. I hope he’s OK.
NASA News
Is it just me, or does there seem to be a post-Deutsch flood of climate change news releases coming out of NASA recently:
NASA Finds Stronger Storms Change Heat and Rainfall Worldwide
NASA scientists confirm climate warming is changing how much water remains locked in Earth’s largest storehouses of ice and snow.
Bering Sea Ecosystem Responding to Changes in Arctic Climate
Study previews ice sheet melting, rapid climate change
Scientists Confirm Historic Massive Flood in Climate Change
New Test of Snow’s Thickness May ‘Bear’ Results Key to Polar Climate Studies, Wildlife Habitat
No doubt this stuff had just piled up in Deutsch’s inbox, and whoever replaced him has just been clearing things out?
Fun With Google Ads
From Robbert Heederik’s web page on Michael Kenyon, The Illinois Enema Bandit, we find an advertisement for Johnny Cochran’s law firm, specializing in theft/armed robbery. No mention of whether Cochran defends enema cases, though the legend suggests Kenyon’s odd predilection was not, in and of itself, a crime.
Hurricanes Part XXVII
Last week I mentioned the new Virmani and Weisberg hurricane paper. Now Kevin Vranes has gone the extra mile (where would we be without the blogosphere?) and actually read it:
What controlled the anomalous 2004 and 2005 seasons was a slackening in the easterly winds in the tropical Atlantic (for you non- atmospheric nerds, the “ly” at the end of a direction means “coming from” that direction). The winds usually cool the upper few dozen meters of the ocean surface, so when the winds aren’t there the ocean gets anomalously warm, which leads to stronger hurricanes.
When this slackening of the easterlies occurs concurrently with a couple of other climatological factors that favor hurricane development, you get a big hurricane season. This has happened a few times in the past, with no apparent connection to any known climatological cycle or to anthropogenic global warming (AGW):
The bottom line, as usual from those pesky policy types, is that it’s the building of the big hotels and the houses on the beaches and such that dominates the hurricane damage equation. (I like that Kevin requotes Ross Gelbspan, everyone’s new favorite leftist scientization whipping boy.)
Storm of the Winter Update
Inkstain’s staff empiricist forgot the salient detail: 0.13 inch of rain in the Inkstain rain gauge. For a normal March, we’d get one storm that size per week.
Also, a correction. This wasn’t the first measurable rain since January. March 1 we got 0.01 at the airport.
Explora
Lissa and I had planned to go to Santa Fe yesterday to see art, but we didn’t really want to drive in snow, so we stuck around town and went to Explora instead.
The museum’s a hoot in a couple of ways. First of all, they’ve got a lot of sciency exhibits that allow you to play with the concepts involved: build dams to see divert water hither and yon, bend lasers in a plexiglass tube, watch light bend through a stream of flowing water. The aesthetics of manipulation are a delight. But what’s even more fun is watching other people (kids and adults) play. I probably spent half my time playing myself, and the other half watching other people play in ways I never would have thought of.
The most fun: standing on the stairway looking down on the first floor and watching the little kids figure out how a column of rising air can support a floating beach ball. Or a smaller floating basketball. Or both balls at the same time!
Storm of the Winter
No question mark. We awoke to snow this morning. Our camera’s busted, so I refer you to Coco for a look. The staff empricist empiricist here at Inkstain reports 1-3/4 inch on the various flat bits in the backyard. The water equivalent at the airport is a tenth of an inch. Those of you living in more arduous climates will no doubt scoff at a storm of this magnitude qualifying as “storm of the winter,” but we’ll take it. It’s the first measurable precipitation here since Jan. 25.
Most importantly, according to the Snotel stations, we had up to an inch of snow water equivalent. Snow water equivalent is the water there is when the show’s melted, which is what matters for water supplies. Actual snow depth was more than 7 inches at Chamita and more than a foot of snow at the Grayback station in southern Colorado.