The shape of space

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Pretty cool, cosmologists are developing the Standard Model for the universe. A while back I saw something on TV that speculated on how galaxies and clusters move. It almost reminded me of material moving through a cell along ionic channels on the submicroscopic scale. I’m not saying the universe is alive or anything, but it is probably way more complicated and ordered than we currently know.

Abuse directed at women on the Internet

Derogatory and scary comments directed at women, in large part women who are for one reason or another known by a real name to an online community, is a hot topic these days. The Internet is definitely a sewer, go to just about any active youTube video and check out the comment section for easy-to-find examples of pointless vitriol.

As someone who has waded through interminable chat logs for online communities of all kinds, I have seen some bizarre and at time unintentionally funny shit. Men posing as women and cybering with other men posing as women. Classic. I’ve seen men cybering with other men and then contacting that man and trying to scare them or even blackmail them by threatening to out them. But the worst thing I’ve ever seen was … [Read more…]

This is just SICK!

honnoldsolo

I know this route, I’ve been on it and I’m still friends to this day with the guys who first established it. The climber may have rehearsed it, inspected it carefully for loose holds, and cleaned it from top to bottom. and it’s still every bit as dangerous as it looks.

Surprising data about cold snap

Just goes to show, stats and empirical science beats the pants off of anything else:

WU — As notable as this week’s cold wave was–bringing the coldest air seen since 1996 or 1994 over much of the nation–the event failed to set any monthly or all-time record low minimum temperature records at airports and cooperative observing stations monitored by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center. As wunderground’s weather historian Christopher C. Burt summed it up for me, “The only significant thing about the cold wave is how long it has been since a cold wave of this force has hit for some portions of the country–18 years, to be specific. Prior to 1996, cold waves of this intensity occurred pretty much every 5-10 years. In the 19th century, they occurred every year or two (since 1835). Something that, unlike the cold wave, is a truly unprecedented is the dry spell in California and Oregon, which is causing unprecedented winter wildfires in Northern California.” Part of the reason that this week’s cold wave did not set any all-time or monthly cold records is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to do so in a warming climate.

As Andrew Freedman of Climate Central wrote in a blog post yesterday, “While the cold temperatures have been unusual and even deadly, climate data shows that intense cold such as this event is now occurring far less frequently in the continental U.S. than it used to. This is largely related to winter warming trends due to man-made global warming and natural climate variability.” For example, in Detroit during the 1970s, there were an average of 7.9 nights with temperatures below zero. But this decade, that number has been closer to two nights.

The universe is trying to kill us

I spoke briefly with Mike Mann last night, and we can talk about all kinds of fascinating climate physics, but the gist of it is, the cap of air that normally lays over the Arctic in the dead of winter shifted, virtually intact, way south toward North America. Which caused a lot of problems, obviously, all the way down here to Texas. Where I live, where a fifty-cent safety switch about the size of two stacked quarters in my heater conked out and I woke up with hypothermia. Didn’t even know what it was until it went away, I just thought I was either catching a hell of a cold or having a cardiopulmonary issue.

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.