Category Archives: Uncategorized
10 Best and Worst Horror Movies Featuring Archaeologists
Marked is History
In the middle of an important project with a deadline. Using BBEdit to write, Marked to check the markdown code.
Suddenly, Marked stops working. In a kinda scary way. Lots of spinning rainbow wheels of death stuff.
Marked recently came up with a new version and they want $9.99 for the upgrade, which provides nothing new for me. So, no.
Why did Marked break? I don’t know. I checked out a few free alternatives then I realized/discovered that BBEdit has the same exact ability built in and it has been there all the time!!!!!1
Appcleaner, meet Marked.
When women got the right to vote, that’s when things went down hill.
Arctic Sea Ice Extent
Arctic Sea Ice extent continues to be a problem. This year, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, ARctic Sea ice reached its lowest extent this year on September 17th, which is about the sixth lowest extent on record, following a multi-year trend of decline. There is variation from year to year. This year’s minimum was almost exactly the same as last years. With the exception of 2001, minimum extent has been below the climatalogical average every year since 1998.
Dana Nuccitelli has a post on this with excellent discussion and some nice graphics, and he has also produced a new version of the animated “How ‘Skeptics’ View Arctic Sea Ice Decline” graphic, which I reproduce here:
Windswept. The Climate Change Dance Performance
WordPress 4.0
Just installed WordPress 4.0. I’ve never had a WordPress installation or upgrade on this blog go well. This one went fine, no apparent difficulties. I just pressed the update button and it updated. I’d been putting it off because my prior experiences had been so bad.
I’m not sure it is working as advertised. The annoying web editing scrolling fiasco that is WordPress or any browser based editor is still the way it always has been despite the video WordPress shows me when it upgrades saying otherwise. So, I’m not sure what to do about that. But, it did not break, so that’s good.
Here’s the video on WordPress 4.0:
Ingredients of the all natural banana
I have mixed feelings about this. It could be a snobby chemist being all “without chemicals life itself would be impossible” and at the same time disrespecting the general public’s desire to have labels on the crap they sell us in stores, or it could be an honest and fun attempt to actually point out the chemicals in a banana (and other fruit). The guy’s site is generally pretty good though, lots of resources for teachers. Just gotta keep an eye on those chemists. If you know what I mean.
(I know, the pineapple is depicted, not the banana. Just go see the site you’ll understand.)
A small piece of interplanetary fiction
A glornififoov asks about planetary extinction.
“It’s called the Mars Rule.”
“Mars?”
“Yes, Mars. After the planet. Earthlings. Earth is a planet orbiting Sol A2234-332N. Dead planet now but that is where Earthlings are from. Mars is next to Earth.”
“A moon?”
“No, a planet, next orbit over. Can’t remember if it is closer or farther from its Sol. Anyway, doesn’t matter. Earthlings visited Mars and after about 20 years of poking around discovered that full blown life had evolved there and gone extinct. Aeons earlier.”
“So the Mars Rule is planetary extinction? It thought that was called the Koch Effect.”
“Ha. Funny you should say that, because Koch Syndrome, not ‘effect,’ you had that wrong. Koch syndrome was also named by Earthlings. And it is related.”
“Ah, right, I remember that now. Koch Effect.”
“Right. But the Mars Rule is different. Mars is smaller than Earth. According to the Mars Rule the total time frame from the origin of a planet to the appearance of life to the eventual extinction of life and the destruction of a life supporting planetary surface is faster on small planets than on large planets.”
“Really? Didn’t Sydour 7 snuff out before Skydour 9, and it’s bigger?”
“Right, it did. But this a rule, not a law. Lots of exceptions. But it tends to work all else being equal, which as you know, is not all the time.”
“Let me think. Smaller planet cools first, then has smaller surface area, so chemical evolution is faster.”
“A little, but only a little. It’s more the biochemical evolution. Right about the cooling, though. Turns out, most lifestarts kill each other off. It’s counterintuitive. More lifestarts — more primordial puddles if you will — you would think that would hasten the development of life, but most of the time some of the life forms ruin the biochemistry for the others, and eventually themselves.”
“Ah, right, but if there is only one primordial puddle, it gets to cycle from lifestart to extinction fast.”
“Yes, within a few klakons, a tiny fraction of the total lifespan of a planet, on a small planet like Mars.”
“Right, then the experiment starts again right away, less residual biochemical suppression.”
“Yes, that’s the start of the cycle, why a small planet — all else being equal of course — will go from no life to life, and go through the first few typical stages…”
“I remember! Colonial forms, multicellular, specialized, motile, informational, predator-prey, behavioral web, quasi-intelligent, Koch Effect.”
“Mostly right. You’re pretty smart for an Eetweeb. Informational comes after predator-prey…”
“Ah, right, mixed that up…”
And the small size only speeds up the start of the process. The middle part goes fast on any size planet once multicellular happens. Depends on extinction events.”
“Right, extinction events, that would slow it down…”
“OK, may be not so smart for an Eetweeb. Extinction events speed it up once there’s multicellular, as long as their magnitude is below the cube root of planetary mass rule. But that’s getting into esoteric details.”
“I guess that makes sense.”
“Yes. Yes it does. But then the last part of the cycle runs faster simply because the planet is smaller. Quasi intelligence builds technology webs sooner on smaller planets, and when the Koch Effect swings into play, smaller plants are simply more vulnerable. Less water, less atmosphere, less buffering.”
“Cool. I always wanted to study Solsystemology, but I didn’t have the math skills.”
“Tectonics, too Larger planets have long lived tectonic moving system. That slows down the process.”
“How does that work?”
“Another time, next time we get together for a blopwut. I’ve got to go now. Time for my exnorphilation.”
“OK, professor, thanks for your time. See you in class tomorrow.”
“Sure thing. Stop by for office hours whenever you want. Nobody ever does, always a refreshing change to whatchawhacha with a glornififoov.”
“Cheers.”
“Glopfdorp.”
How smart are parrots?
Parrots are smarter than Nebo the dog
“Nebo.”
The dog’s name came from the direction of the enclosed front porch of the tin-roofed concrete block home of my friend Bwana Ndege, in Isiro, Zaire.
“Nebo.”
It sounded like an older woman, a somewhat crackly voice, insistent.
“Nebo. Kuya. Nebo.”
The old woman was calling the dog, in Swahili. Nebo, sleeping at first on the cool concrete floor under the dining room table startled awake, ears scanning. Nebo was a large Doberman who had never learned that one-man one-dog thing. He was gentle. And listening carefully.
“Nebo.” Louder, more insistent, the voice from the porch called. This time Nebo got it, jumped up, pushed his way past the legs of chairs and bounded past me in the living room, and onto the porch. Nobody there. Who had called him? I wondered if dogs ever considered that they might have dreamt something they they thought they had heard. Perhaps thinking that, Nebo looked around for a moment, and retired to his cool sleeping spot in the interior of the house.
“Heh, heh, heh, heh,” the old woman cackled. Bwana Ndege’s African Grey Parrot had fooled the dog again. And was clearly amused.
This happened… Read on.
Tropical Cyclones: First vs. Third World Problem.
How many lakes are there?
How many lakes are there? We don’t actually know. Lakes are often undercounted, or small lakes ignored, in larger scale geophysical surveys. It is hard to count the small lakes, or in some cases, even to define them. A recent study (published in Geophysical Research Letters) examines this question. We want to know how many lakes there are, and how much surface area they take up, in order to understand better the global Carbon cycle (and for other reasons). From the Abstract of this study:
An accurate description of the abundance and size distribution of lakes is critical to quantifying limnetic contributions to the global carbon cycle. However, estimates of global lake abundance are poorly constrained. We used high-resolution satellite imagery to produce a GLObal WAter BOdies database (GLOWABO), comprising all lakes greater than 0.002 km2. GLOWABO contains geographic and morphometric information for ~117 million lakes with a combined surface area of about 5 × 106 km2, which is 3.7% of the Earth’s nonglaciated land area. Large and intermediate-sized lakes dominate the total lake surface area. Overall, lakes are less abundant but cover a greater total surface area relative to previous estimates based on statistical extrapolations. The GLOWABO allows for the global-scale evaluation of fundamental limnological problems, providing a foundation for improved quantification of limnetic contributions to the biogeochemical processes at large scales.
So, there are fewer than thought but they take up more space than thought. Who would have thought?
Interestingly, there are more lakes at higher latitudes. Because of the uneven distribution of land surface in the Northern vs. Southern Hemispheres (more land in the north) this means more lakes in boreal regions, and more specifically, more lakes in previously glaciated regions. This makes sense because glaciation (and deglaciation, melting of the glaciers) produces lakes. The immature terrain produced by a glacier eventually matures with erosion joining streams and rivers to those lakes, making them disappear. If no glaciers return to a previously glaciated region, eventually all the lakes (or most of them) will disappear.
Look at the Congo, Amazon and Nile basins for examples of large inland regions in the tropics. There are very few lakes. Now look at North America north of the maximum extent of the recent (Wisconsin) glacier. Lots and lots of lakes.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson Trust in Physics
Keep an eye on Hurricane Gonzalo (Updated)
Atlantic Hurricane Gonzalo is a Major Hurricane, Category 3 at the moment, and it is heading towards Bermuda. The storm will weaken a little bit before getting there but it will still be major. This is a significant event. It is possible that a storm surge of about 10 feet could occur there. Gonzales will be very near Bermuda in by Friday Evening, and past it by Saturday morning.
Interestingly, Gonzalo is expected to remain a hurricane strength storm (though it may be called a “post-tropical cyclone” it will still have sustained winds at hurricane level) as it passes the Canadian Maritimes. It will be interesting to see how much of its hurricane shape it maintains as this happens. Gonzalo will still be a pretty nasty storm when, in several days it arrives in the general vicinity if Ireland and Great Britain.
UPDATE:
From NWS:
Although it appears that a gradual weakening has begun, Gonzalo is
expected to be a dangerous Category 3 hurricane as it
moves near or over Bermuda later today. After that time, increasing
shear and cooler waters along the track of the hurricane should
result in a faster weakening. Gonzalo is likely to transition
into a post-tropical cyclone by 36 to 48 hours as it moves near or
south of Newfoundland, and become fully extratropical thereafter.Significant coastal flooding on Bermuda is likely if Gonzalo
continues on the current NHC forecast track. Although specific
amounts cannot be forecast for Gonzalo, Hurricane Fabian produced an
estimated 10 feet of storm surge when it moved over Bermuda as a
major hurricane in 2003, and similar values could occur with
Gonzalo.
Bermuda radar:
