Archives for February 2003

February 17, 2003

The Penguins are Complaining

The 54th blizzard is headed toward New England, and with that in mind, I checked the weather.com forecast for Boston. I clicked on the 10-day forecast, and what I saw alarmed me. I called the Harvard Climatology Department; they were happy to answer all my questions for a $4,000 donation (check's in the mail, guys!). Here's a transcript of our conversation.

Q: How are you guys?
A: Fine. You?

Q: Not bad. Now I have a question about this forecast. It says that later this week, temperatures will be in the low-to-mid 40's. Is that right?
A: Yes, it is.

Q: I can't believe that! Can human life withstand those extreme temperatures?
A: Suprisingly, it can. I know it seems like Boston's been frozen solid for generations, but we actually went above 32 degrees (that's the freezing point) for a good solid hour back in early January. And records from last November show that the city actually enjoyed a spell in the 50s.

Q: Wow, that must be like living on the surface of Mercury.
A: (chuckles) Sure is. And remember, when the planet enters its solarcentic, or "summer" season, we might record temperatures in the 60s or above. It's hard to visualize, I know.

Q: What's life like in the Climatology Dept. these days?
A: You know the Stephen King book "Thinner"? How the obese lawyer has a Gypsy curse placed on him to lose weight until he's a hideous skeleton? And how every morning, he resignedly approaches the bathroom scale, knowing full well that his horrible wasting disease is continuing and there's not a damn thing he can do about it?

Q: Yup.
A: That's how we feel all the time now.

Q: Pretty amazing. One last question about winter. Remember last winter, how it was really mild and the only time it really snowed was the evening of the Patriots-Raiders game? Which the Patriots won? Is there a scientific explanation for that?
A: (suddenly abrupt) You'd have to talk to the Divinity School for that.

February 11, 2003

Sports!

I'm really liking what I see at Sportsfrog.com. It's a sports blog run by 4 guys who seem really sharp and funny and (most importantly) able to post a few things everyday. I'm gonna go check out their forums. Perhaps you should too.

SOME BLOG FACTS

I spent a good chunk of this afternoon surfing the sites of some of the seemingly-professional bloggers to see what was on the minds of my fellow opinionmongerers. If there's any generality to be made about the blogging "community", it's that every single one of 'em knows they're right. Just out of curiosity, wondering exactly how confident we bloggers are in ourselves, I threw in some random phrases into Google to see what came up. Results are hardly scientific, but interesting.

Instances of "blog + 'I know'": about 423,000
Instances of "blog + 'I don't know'": about 262,000

Instances of "blog + 'I'm sure'": about 167,000
Instances of "blog + 'I'm not sure'": about 113,000

Instances of "blog + of course'": about 316,000
Instances of "blog + possibly'": about 125,000

Instances of "blog + anyone with a brain": 136
Instances of "blog + it's open to interpretation": 15

My, we're a self-satisfied bunch, aren't we?

February 10, 2003

CODE ORANGE

So we've all been under "Orange Alert" (no, not a new Mountain Dew flavor) since Friday, and I still don't have any idea how I, as an average everyday chump, am supposed to behave. The government has "specific, credible threats" on their desks; of course, they won't tell us what they are, but want us to go about our business, albeit in a nervous, ill-prepared manner.

So here's what I've done. I've been walking around in a basketball defensive pose for the last three days, like I'm Ben Wallace trying to guard Shaq one-on-one. I incinerate all incoming mail in case it has anthrax spores (Sorry cable company! That includes my bills!). I've asked my boss at work if we have permission to frisk anyone who comes into the store; so far I haven't received official permission, but I have been doing random searches on an informal basis.

But seriously. We're entering Boy-Who-Cried-Wolf territory with these high alert messages. If the administration is going to come running to us with "serious, credible" information, why not share it? If they think, for instance, that terrorists are going to blow up the Tacony-Palmyra bridge, don't the citizens of Philadelphia deserve to know, so they can leave town or at least pick a different commute? Or maybe they want us all in a low-grade state of unease and uncertainty, thinking that we'll all trust them to do what's best. I know...that's crazy talk.

Also in terrorism news, Oliver Willis has a list of good ol'fashioned all-American terrorism plots in the Northwest, and two Marines were caught plotting to blow up Camp Lejeune. The sad part is that in someone in Washington's mind, this bolsters the case against Iraq.

February 05, 2003

YOU LAUGH NOW...

God, I love the Onion.

Yankees Ensure 2003 Pennant By Signing Every Player In Baseball

February 02, 2003

TO THE SKIES

I was home sick from school twice during my junior-high years. By an astounding coincidence, one of the days was the day the stock market fell 508 points; the other was the day the Challenger exploded off the Florida coast. No one ever let me stay home sick again, for obvious reasons.

Today I was at work all day, watching news come in about the Columbia's horrible end. There aren't really any words to decribe your gut reaction to the explosion of the space shuttle and the instant deaths of seven -- I'll say it -- heroes. It's like a kick to the stomach; that's the closest I can get to it.

Now, in the days to come, we're going to hear all of the blame and the face-saving and the speculation (well, we already did...of course some people with no concept of physics immediately assumed that al-Qaeda figured out a way to shoot down something 200,000 feet above the ground traveling at 3x the speed of sound). And some will wonder why we're sending any money at all into the space program. It's a valid question to ask; there are enough problems on Earth that demand, or should demand, our attention.

But come on. We're human beings. The nature of our species is to dream, to question, to risk lives to find out why. The astronauts, even by doing something as prosaic as testing floral scents in space, were pushing the limits of human knowledge. It's as simple as that.

The seven astronauts who died today were following in the footsteps of the prehistoric Asians who set off over the Bering landbridge and the Indonesian seas to find more fertile land. And in the footsteps of the European explorers who sailed into "Terra Incognita" to see what was out there (yes, I know...gold, profits, slaves...but there was surely some noblemindedness). And in the footsteps of scientists today who work tirelessly to answer questions and cure ills that have haunted us all forever.

But some people will want to end the space program out of fear. Some people are content to look at the mysteries of life, shrug and say "[fill in deity]'s will." Some people don't want to risk the pain and the despair of loss, even when the potential rewards are limitless. Some people want to drag our collective feet on any subject with the slightest hint of controversy. It's always been that way; it probably always will.

But history remembers the name Galileo, not the cardinals who had him jailed for suggesting that the earth revolved around the sun. We remember Darwin (well, most of us) while we're constantly forgetting those who've tried to discredit him.

And we'll remember the names Anderson, Brown, Chawla, Clark, Husband, McCool and Ramon for a long time to come. One way or another, the human race is richer for their lives and their sacrifice.