Chris Mooney has a good article about snow trolling, that is using cold snaps to promote the view that climate change is a hoax or has stopped or whatever the propaganda du jour happens to be. It’s worth reading and it brings up a great question for those of us on the scientifically demonstrated side of the issue. First a snippet from Chris’s piece: [Read more…]
Folks my age will recall when we became cognizant of pollution, maybe some of my peers will even recall a commercial with an Indian crying at the sight of trash. The thing is, I can’t recall anyone back then making the case all over TV that pollution didn’t exist. Contrast that with today. But one of the funnier things to emerge from the latest round of snow trolls on Fox et al is the claim, I think by RushBo, that “liberals made up the polar vortex” term in the last few days. I first saw that used when pics came back from Saturn’s pole taken by Cassini and it’s been around for a long, long time.
It’s cold, scientists baffled by Arctic front in Winter and all that, but it is miserable. It turns out the heating system in my shitty apartment can’t handle sustained temps much below freezing. The heating element only adds a few tens of degrees to whatever passes through it, so it blew warmer air, warmer meaning about 45 degree F if the thermostat is accurate. But hey, armed with a solid knowledge of thermodynamics and several layers of clothing, it also turns out that if you just leave the hot water in the shower on, that warm air rises to the ceiling and gets yanked into the heater and that gets it almost to 60 degrees. Which got the apartment above 50. … Let’s just say it was a bad night. Then I saw what was hitting the majority of the US and thought I’d better just quit bitching: [Read more…]
We’re all flawed human beings. As a single male constantly on the lookout for female companionship, I can readily admit one of the flaws inherent in the hetero-sexual Y-chromosome community is we, that is men, are easily manipulated by looks. It only takes a few months of puberty to go from painting No Girls Allowed signs on our tree forts to suddenly noticing the pretty faces and shapely bodies quickening on the other side of the sexual divide. But we spend the rest of our lives learning, or trying to learn, how to deal with the consequences. That knowledge doesn’t come easy. To this day, at age 51 and even as a hard-nosed cynical skeptic, I occasionally find myself wanting to give a pretty girl a pass for behavior and actions that wouldn’t be available to other ladies and certainly denied to my fellow man.
At least I’m aware of it, I know it’s a weakness, and as any recovering alcoholic or reformed gambling addict can attest, recognizing you have a problem is half the battle. So I wonder, are women as equally aware that they have a similar weakness for jerks? [Read more…]
Well, that’s a fair analogy for a bureaucratic hurdle currently faced by NASA, along with contractors and customers, all waiting on a critical reauthorization before a score of rockets can be duly licensed and cleared for launch in 2014. Follow me below, deep into the cosmic weeds, and we’ll review just how easy this should be to fix. [Read more…]
I like this guy more and more. For the same reason a handful of greed-crazed zillionaires are liking him less and less: [Read more…]
I should be back to regular posting tomorrow. But I wanted to drop this post on a low traffic day and thank all you regs for the support, both financially and emotionally, you have provided during the toughest year of my adult life. It would have been far worse without you guys. I’ve been on vacay, in part keeping tabs on my mother, she’s having some health issue, but she was well enough to dig up the pic above. That’s a 19 year-old Steven with my beloved bike and windjammer faring in the bottom right corner, in 1982! So much life ahead!
Got great news this week: my blood counts are perfect, hemoglobin is now 15.5. It was 21 at the height of the leukemia scare. My doc told me yesterday that that kind of elevated hemo increases stroke risk by a factor on the order of a 100. I celebrated with Four Loko last night. On a downside, I did finally lose my job, so I can now reveal I worked at Blizzard, maker of World of Warcraft. But it’s a new year, new hope, with health and a little luck, we can do a lot of good. Let the games begin!
The image is a good friend of mine cranking some Austin limestone a few years ago (Forget it guys, she’s happily married). It’s good to remember, as the year draws to a close, what a person can do and the kind of things I used to do, casually, without thinking much about it. Climbing, skydiving, partying hard afterward, or less eye-catching but equally risky activity, you name it, it all seemed a matter of course. Spare me the jokes about jumping out of perfectly good planes — jump planes are a far cry from perfectly good!
But it was exactly one year ago when I felt a new, weird sensation in my upper gut, for a few moments it was almost like I got my wind knocked out. A lingering burning feeling just below the sternum persisted, it was initially diagnosed as an ulcer, then a torn diaphragm. It wasn’t. [Read more…]
On the project, a decent desktop PC running two monitors built from donated parts, a reg here was kind enough to send me his old Lenovo laptop, which drastically lowered my desperate need for a new system, any system, real soon. I was limping along on old, failing, slow as shit devices. This donated laptop is fast and clean. On the FTB system being built, I have an AMD Athlon II X2 processor, a Biostar A880GZ motherboard, a Dynex power supply that meets the requirements as listed on power supply calculator, a Radeon 5870 HD graphics card, and an a Hitachi hard drive. Plus I have monitors and stuff.
I need DDR3 RAM and an optical drive, and a case. I’ll probably buy the case locally. And I can swing the rest, too, the laptop really bought me the luxury of time. But if anyone has some RAM or optics laying around, and wants to give them away, lemme know. l