Posts from — August 2012

It looks like Charlie Pierce’s life just got a whole lot easier. He was in good shape having lived in Massachusetts when Romney was allegedly governor [something the Mittster seems to be denying], and now Mitt the Twit has chosen “the zombie-eyed granny-starver from Wisconsin” as his running mate. Charlie is in hog heaven wallowing in the muck.

It would seem that Romney felt he needed to balance the ticket with someone the Republican base and the Village seemed to like. So now the Republicans have two boring pasty-white men to lead their challenge.

The real problem is whether these two can attract enough votes to make stealing elections possible.

A few things are going on that are affecting the tropical weather.

The follow on wave that came off of Africa after TD 7 started to move to the Northwest, which put it over cooler water and into the envelop of dry air coming off the Sahara. If the waves don’t move due West and stay below 20°N they won’t develop.

TD 7 did that right, but it was moving too fast to expand, so when it encountered the wind shear near the Windward Islands, it didn’t have the inertia to overcome it.

Looking at the Sea Surface Temperature map for the Pacific shows that an El Niño seems to be developing off the coast of Peru, which would correspond with the wind shear that has been consistent in the Caribbean.

We may get a lot of tropical events this year, but the big ones will probably be at the peak in late September and October.

Marc Caputo of the Miami Herald explains what Paul Ryan’s selection does to Republican hopes in Florida.

Mitt the Twit has been avoiding being seen with Florida’s Fraudster-in-chief because of his subbasement poll numbers, but Ryan’s numbers are two levels below Scott’s among Florida’s senior voters.

So much for appealing to swing voters. After this choice the “fiscally conservative” thing to do would be to cancel the GOP convention and stop campaigning. Just concede and try again in four years.

TD Seven fell apart as it was approaching the Windward Islands this morning. It made the transit from the coast of Africa so quickly that it didn’t have the strength to combat the wind shear that it encountered when it approached the islands.

Position: 13.9N 54.1W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: West [275°] near 24 mph [39 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 35 mph [ 55 kph].
Wind Gusts: 45 mph [ 70 kph].
Minimum central pressure: 1009 mb.

Currently about 365 miles [ 590 km] East of Barbados.

A Tropical Storm Watch is in effect for Guadeloupe, Martinique, St. Lucia, Dominica, Barbados, St. Vincent and The Grenadines.

No changes in strength as the storm continues to move across the Atlantic.

Meanwhile Ernesto has become a remnant low in Mexico.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

Weasel Dines

Slurp!

[Editor: The Weasel with a fluffy tail and extended tongue was the only in focus shot I got today. For about 30 seconds I had an NCO Club of cats – stripes everywhere. Lucrezia and Lutu were in the frame with Weasel, but Lucrezia dashed off for no reason and Lutu panicked. That’s what Weasel is looking at.]

Friday Ark

In fairness I need to note something the media did right this week.

I was listening to NPR in the car and was shocked to hear Barbara Bradley Hagerty commit blatant journalism in her report, The Most Influential Evangelist You’ve Never Heard Of. In her profile of David Barton she actually pointed out that his claims about history were without a factual basis. Best of all she used historians at conservative Christian colleges and universities to do it, to forestall claims of bias.

The bad news wasn’t over for Barton, historian Chris Rodda, who has been fighting the misinformation campaign that Barton spearheads, noted that Barton’s “Jefferson Lies” Voted Worst History Book in Print at the History News Network.

The “cherry on top” was when the publisher of Jefferson Lies pulled the book, after investigating complaints about its accuracy and sources.

If Barton had been a real historian, he would have known better than to mess with “TJ”, because if you quote him and use a semicolon where there was a comma in the handwritten original, the Cult of TJ will descend upon you like a loft of damp hay.

My knowledge of David Barton goes back to the ancient times of news groups. He was outed as a fraud who created ‘ancient documents’ to prove his points, and has been caught doing it multiple times. Anything written by Burton should be cataloged with other alternate history books, like those of Harry Turtledove [well, same genre but not as well written or researched as Harry’s books].

Barton has managed to build a “Wall” between himself and reality, so it was nice to hear BBH and NPR say it.

Position: 13.7N 45.5W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: West [270°] near 20 mph [32 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 35 mph [ 55 kph].
Wind Gusts: 45 mph [ 70 kph].
Minimum central pressure: 1009 mb ↓.

Currently about 1045 miles [1680 km] East of the Windward Islands.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

Position: 18.1N 96.7W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: West [265°] near 14 mph [22 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 40 mph [ 65 kph].
Wind Gusts: 50 mph [ 80 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 35 miles [ 55 km].
Minimum central pressure: 999 mb ↑.

Currently about 80 miles [130 km] North of Oaxaca, Mexico.

The storm is on-shore and beginning to lose strength.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

The media apparently is unwilling to accept that there are a lot of Americans [and always have been] who are racist bigots, so when one of them kills a half dozen people at their house of worship, the media doesn’t simply report the facts, they create a ‘narrative’ that they are personally comfortable with.

In this case they are pushing the idea that the shooter mistook the Sikhs for Muslims.

If you are a drunken jerk, you might mistake a Sikh for a Muslim, because you are as ignorant as a brick. If you are as ignorant as a Midwestern tourist you might mistake a group of Orthodox Rabbis as Muslims and stop your plane from taking off. If you are a former member of the Army who qualified for a Psy Ops slot, you don’t make that mistake. At a minimum you check the phonebook for a Mosque.

The shooter had a ‘9/11’ tattoo, so he must have been targeting Muslims – that’s the level of critical thinking you get from the media. The guy had dozens of tattoos, and ‘9/11’ was an excuse, not a reason. He decided to murder people who were different than his concept of ‘real Americans’, because he blamed “them” for his failures. In his mind, “they” got all of the opportunities that belonged to him, and it couldn’t possibly be that they consistently showed up for work on-time and sober. No, it had to be “special treatment”.

This guy could have just as easily targeted a Synagogue, a Black church, a Catholic church, but he selected the Sikh temple because of the way they dress for services, which he viewed as totally ‘unAmerican’.

Unlike Mitt the Twit, the shooter certainly knew the difference between ‘Sikh’ and ‘Sheik’. He was in Psy Ops – he selected the target for the visuals.

[I do know what the guy’s name is, but he won’t get any free publicity from me – that was one of the things he wanted to accomplish – fame.]

Position: 18.8N 91.8W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: West [270°] near 7 mph [11 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 65 mph [105 kph].
Wind Gusts: 75 mph [120 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 140 miles [220 km].
Minimum central pressure: 994 mb.

Currently about 15 miles [ 25 km] North of Cuidad del Carmen, Mexico.

A Hurricane Warning is in effect for the coast of Mexico from Veracruz to Chilitepec.

A Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for the coast of Mexico from Veracruz to Barra de Nautla and from Chilitepec to Campeche

A Hurricane Watch is in effect for the coast of Mexico from Veracruz to Barra de Nautla.

The storm has entered the Bay of Campeche and slowed down.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

Juan Cole posted on something that really struck me when I was watching the Curiosity landing: the people in the control room.

In addition to the fact that the people in that room obviously came from every continent, and both sexes, they were also multi-generational. The young guy with the now famous ‘Mohawk’ was on the same row as a guy who looked like a middle-aged hippie. There were people who looked like they were in high school when this project started, and others who may have been in high school or college when Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon.

One of the comments at Dr. Cole’s said they didn’t see any blacks, but they were there and some in the shirts and ties of administrators.

It was interesting to watch the stress drain away from the individual units when their part of the mission was completed successfully and someone else was in the spotlight.

In addition to the team for Curiosity, the teams that handle the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and the Odyssey spacecraft were involved in this mission. The data from Curiosity was sent to the MRO, which relayed it to Odyssey, which transmitted it to Earth. The MRO also managed to snap a picture of Curiosity descending on its parachute and the ejected heat shield falling away. An amazing number of things had to go right for this to work, and it worked.

So during my usual scan of media sites today I was looking for Curiosity coverage. The “Tech” stories at CNN really stood out, and not in a good way:

• Meet ‘Mohawk Guy,’ Mars landing star
• Gaming creates fame and ‘addiction’
• 5 warning signs of gaming addiction
• Is ‘gaming addiction’ a real disorder?
• How to become a pro at ‘StarCraft II’
• The best nonhuman Twitter feeds
• Apparently This Matters: Phelps, Phish

We safely land a vehicle the size of a compact car, crammed with scientific instruments to explore another planet, and all CNN notices is a guy with an unusual haircut‽ The only other reference on the front page was a link to an opinion piece asking the burning question: “Is science ‘cool’. now?”

Fortunately the BBC, even with the Olympics going on, and even though it is primarily a US mission, has a nice long, link-rich article. Without the BBC, CBC, and ABC [Australia] I wouldn’t know we still do science in the US, because the US media doesn’t report on it.

Position: 18.7N 87.7W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: West [270°] near 15 mph [24 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 85 mph [140 kph].
Wind Gusts: 100 mph [160 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 175 miles [280 km].
Hurricane Wind Radius: 35 miles [ 55 km].
Minimum central pressure: 980 mb.

Currently about 40 miles [ 65 km] East-Northeast of Chetumal, Mexico.

A Hurricane Warning is in effect for the coast of the Yucatan from Chetumal northward to Tulum, Cozumel, and the coast of Belize from Belize City northword to the border with Mexico.

A Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for the coast of Belize South of Belize City, the East coast of the Yucatan from Tulum northward to Cabo Catouche, and the West coast of the Yucatan from Celestun southward to Chilitepec.

A Hurricane Watch is in effect for Barra de Nautla southward to Punta el Lagarto, Mexico.

A Tropical Storm Watch is in effect for Barra de Nautla northward to Tuxpan, Mexico.

Update at 10:15PM CDT: Data from Belize radar indicates the eye came ashore as a Category 1 hurricane at Mahahual about 30 miles North of Chetumal on the Yucatan Peninsula.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]