Daily Archives: 25 Sep 05

Who’re you gonna believe, the BBC??

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Hurricanes and global warming – a link?: “The latest to succumb was the British newspaper The Independent, which screamed on its front page: ‘This is global warming’, above an alarmingly portentous graphic of Hurricane Rita’s projected path.

But is it global warming? What is the evidence that the growing concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are changing weather systems in such a way that hurricanes become more powerful, or more frequent?” (BBC)

There have been 270% the average number of intense storms expected by this date in the hurricane season, but it is certainly rash to draw conclusions from a given year. The formation of tropical storms over the Atlantic runs in phases, and we are in the midst of a several-decade active phase. However, we are almost certainly seeing an effect, from the warming of the average surface water temperature in the Gulf of Mexico, on the storms that cross the Gulf.

At ABBA, Go Left to SpongeBob

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The robotic exploration of Mars is coming up with so many features to name that scientists go wild:

“Like European explorers who named the New World after their homes in the Old, the Mars scientists have filled the strange landscape of the Red Planet with a mishmash of modern life on Earth.

The twin rover missions have forced scientists to come up with more than 4,000 names to mark everything from the majestic Columbia Hills to a few pebbles in the sand.

The result is an extravagantly labeled map punctuated by the scientists’ ever-changing preoccupations with history, holidays, monkeys, ice cream, cartoon characters, sushi, Mayan words, Scandinavian fish delicacies … the list goes on and on.

It hasn’t been easy.

Sometimes a rock gets named twice. Sometimes the names run afoul of the official naming protocol. Sometimes a team member doesn’t like the theme for an area.

And sometimes team members get desperate.” (Yahoo! News)

‘Of all the nightmares during Hurricane Katrina, this must be one of the worst…"

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Human Rights Watch: New Orleans Prisoners Abandoned to Floodwaters: “As Hurricane Katrina began pounding New Orleans, the sheriff’s department abandoned hundreds of inmates imprisoned in the city’s jail, Human Rights Watch said today.

Inmates in Templeman III, one of several buildings in the Orleans Parish Prison compound, reported that as of Monday, August 29, there were no correctional officers in the building, which held more than 600 inmates. These inmates, including some who were locked in ground-floor cells, were not evacuated until Thursday, September 1, four days after flood waters in the jail had reached chest-level.

“Of all the nightmares during Hurricane Katrina, this must be one of the worst,” said Corinne Carey, researcher from Human Rights Watch. “Prisoners were abandoned in their cells without food or water for days as floodwaters rose toward the ceiling.” “

R.I.P. Serge Lang

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Gadfly and Mathematical Theorist Dies at 78: “Serge Lang, a leading mathematical theorist who became better known for his academic jousts with nonmathematicians on social and political issues than for his work in geometry and the properties of numbers, died Sept. 12 in Berkeley, Calif. He was 78.

…Throughout his life, Dr. Lang railed against inaccuracy and imprecision and felt that the scientific establishment unfairly suppressed dissident ideas. Beginning around 1977, he adopted a more activist approach, writing letters and articles – sometimes even buying newspaper advertisements – to challenge research that he considered unscrupulous or sloppy. He would pull together his writings and add news articles, Congressional testimony and other documents into what he called files and mail the compiled documents to scientists, journalists and government officials.” (New York Times )

This Band Was Your Band, This Band Is My Band

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The New York Times writes about all the old dinosaur bands resurrecting themselves with new lead singers these days. The focus of the article seems to be whether, with such a profound change, a band is justified in continuing under the same name. The more profound issue is why so few acts let themselves die a dignified death anymore. One needs to wonder what it is about rock musicianship that prevents members of dinosaur bands from ever evolving any new chops and moving on and what it is about rock consumers’ sensibilities that encourages the musicians to do the same old things over and over again ad nauseum. And why in the world the New York TImes covers the phenomenon in an equally shallow manner.

In Plans to Evacuate U.S. Cities, Chance for Havoc

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“The chaotic evacuations of New Orleans and Houston have prompted local officials across the country to take another look at plans for emptying their cities in response to a large-scale natural disaster or a terrorist attack. What they have found is not wholly reassuring.” (New York Times )

The absurdity of the fact that there was no provision to ensure gasoline supplies to motorists along the clogged evacuation routes was just the tip of the iceberg. It is not a matter of individuals’ panic or ill-will but partly the lack of centralized planning and partly just the nature of things. Large cities are located at unique geographic points — that is why their precursor settlements were sited there in the first place — which often translate into bottlenecks even in a normal rush hour, not to mention a mass evacuation.

Prepearedness is not the issue. In fact, if anything, it appears to me that part of the problem in the Texas evacuation resulted from overpreparedness. Not only was there several days’ notice of where Rita was headed and approximately how strong it would be but people were more obedient than they would otherwise be to directives to evacuate because of the memory of Katrina. In most of the disasters that will call for mass evacuation, even with disaster authorites operating effectively, that combination of circumstances is not likely to recur.

At ABBA, Go Left to SpongeBob

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The robotic exploration of Mars is coming up with so many features to name that scientists go wild:

“Like European explorers who named the New World after their homes in the Old, the Mars scientists have filled the strange landscape of the Red Planet with a mishmash of modern life on Earth.

The twin rover missions have forced scientists to come up with more than 4,000 names to mark everything from the majestic Columbia Hills to a few pebbles in the sand.

The result is an extravagantly labeled map punctuated by the scientists’ ever-changing preoccupations with history, holidays, monkeys, ice cream, cartoon characters, sushi, Mayan words, Scandinavian fish delicacies … the list goes on and on.

It hasn’t been easy.

Sometimes a rock gets named twice. Sometimes the names run afoul of the official naming protocol. Sometimes a team member doesn’t like the theme for an area.

And sometimes team members get desperate.” (Yahoo! News)