Sunday Night Video: Amazing Sand Art

An entrant (and I believe eventual winner) for a Ukrainian National talent show. I meant to post this so many times, but I would always forget.

The artist recounts the effects of the Second World War on the Ukraine through a series of emotionally-moving images.

Tags: kseniya simonov, ukraine, america's got talent, sand painting

Why was my flight so bumpy?

Aircraft wake turbulence

Last night I was flying back to Seattle from the Bay Area and it got fairly bumpy at times, with the pilot periodically putting on the seat belt sign.

What were the origins of that turbulence?

The cause last night was vertical wind shear, a large change in wind speed/direction with height. We were not flying in clouds or storms, and the turbulence was not connected with any terrain feature.

Take a look at the vertical sounding at Medford, Oregon, at about the half-way mark of my bumpy trip (see graphic). The pennants give you the winds-both the direction and speed (big solid lines are ten knots, triangles are 50 kts.) The height in pressure (millibars) and meters are shown on the left. The plane was flying around 36000 ft, 11ooo meters, for most the time. (This is around 250 mb). Between 250 and 300 mb
there was strong flow from the north (more than 100 knots), with the winds weakening rapidly below and above that level. The northerly flow slowed the plane down considerably, making the flight take longer by roughly 10-15 minutes. On the flanks of this wind maximum, above and below, there was large wind shear. At 5500 meters (500 mb) the winds were westerly at 15 knots, with weak winds below.

Wind shown by pennants (all I talk about). Solid lines are temperature and dewpoint (left one). Slanting lines you dry and moist adiabats and mixing ratio.

So why do we care about wind shear? Because if it is large enough, the atmosphere can breakdown into turbulent eddies. The fancy name for this breakdown is Kelvin-Helmholtz instability. And smaller scale turbulence can develop within these eddies. Sometimes you can even see this instability expressed in the clouds, as in the picture shown below. Looks like waves breaking at a beach...and like those waves there is lots of turbulence and sloshing around. Your plane enters an area with such shear-induced turbulence and it gets bumpy. Sometimes VERY bumpy.

I always pick a window seat when I fly (for obvious reasons!) and occasionally I see such clouds ahead. Last time I did told the person next to me to buckle up and they gave me a strange look. I told him I was a meteorologist and he smirked (the kind of smirk that says...sure...you guys can really predict ANYTHING). A few minutes later the plane was jerking all over the place and the seat belt sign was on. I bet he didn't joke about weather folks after that!

The thing about shear turbulence is that it is often limited in vertical extent and taking the plane up or down a few thousand feet can make a huge difference. That is why during uncomfortable rides pilots often chat with other planes and air traffic control to see how the "ride" is at different elevations and then alter their flight level if possible. "Testing" altitudes for better rides is not unusual. Interestingly, I know someone who flew the same root a half-hour earlier but at 41,000 ft and experienced virtually no turbulence.

Shear turbulence is probably the most important one for modern high-altitude jet travel, but there are others...mountain wave turbulence, convective turbulence from cumulus and thunderstorms, wake turbulence behind other planes (see picture at the top), and a few others. Fortunately, modern aircraft can handle the worst of it (except thunderstorms), but understanding what is going on certainly makes it more tolerable. And having your seatbelt on is essential...nearly all the injuries to passengers are to those unbelted.

The best web site for getting turbulence information is:

http://aviationweather.gov/adds/turbulence/

There you will find both current and forecast turbulence levels over the U.S.

Week 42: Pageant of the Transmundane

Now, you may have heard, but the students of Ole Miss have decided they no longer want their school's mascot to be the stodgy Southern stereotype it has been for many a year. Instead, they want their school's mascot to be Admiral Ackbar.

I would love to see that for just one game. One game. That would make my day.

Anyhow... *ahem*

This week's winning entry comes to us from the wondrous world of Electronic Cerebrectomy.

It is an interesting video directed by McG/Murakami and starring Kirsten Dunst exploring the cosplay culture of the Akihabara district of Tokyo while singing Turning Japanese.

And since this is once again an entry relating to something related to Japan that has stunned me, I have gone to the well again and drew another image from The Simpsons episode Thirty Minutes over Tokyo for this week's Transmundanity Award.



Congrats Aaron. You know the drill. Here is your badge.



The rules of this little contest: Every week I will be selecting one blog post that I have seen from the vast reaches of the blogging village to bestow with the Homer Simpson Transmundanity Award for being one of the freakiest(in a funny way) things I've seen or read during a 7 day period. It doesn't necessarily have to have been written during the week, I just had to have encountered it. That means that if you find something interesting and repost it like a movie or whatever, if I saw it at your blog first, you get the prize. Of course, creating your own content is also a very good way to win.

This is not a meme. This is an award that I give out, and thus, I am not "tagging" you.

Now, if you see a post that you think is worthy of this illustrious prize, just drop me a line at campybeaver@gmail.com and we'll see if we can't get your suggestion up and award-ready while giving you some credit and a link to your own blog.

Tags: homer simpson, pageant of the transmundane, ole miss, admiral ackbar, mcg, murakami, kirsten dunst, turning japanese, aaron davis, electronic cerebrectomy, akihabara, cosplay, cover, blue wig

Friday Favorite: A note to the Film Distributors and Theatre owners out there

I think it is sort of cute that I actually mention VHS near the start of this entry, posted in November 2006. It is so quaint.

The message is one which I still believe in however.
--
I know there is one issue that most people agree on: they are sick of seeing straight-up advertising before movies. I am not talking about the previews here; I am addressing the placement of television ads for products and services before feature films at the theatre and on DVD/VHS recordings.

If the theatres, studios and advertisers insist on showing the movie-going and renting/buying public ads before features, they should at least compromise with us all and not show the same ads they do on television, because we all know they can do better.

I mean, look at the BMW Films series of branded content. You are telling me that the audience wouldn't respond to seeing well-crafted narrative short films featuring A and B-list celebrities and directed by accomplished directors? I am paying for that experience for an engaging narrative, and the BMW films ads do have that quality to them. Ads of this nature would be a welcome change from most of the drek we are subjected to before a movie. Considering the quality of those short films, they are probably better than most of features they would be the vignettes to.

Or how about some more of that old-time spectacle like that Honda ad... something that could be water cooler/web forum talk, ads which would be perpetually on Youtube and take on a life of their own, and while these ads may be expensive, they could probably yield better results than the ads that are currently being used and it would probably do a lot to clean up that black eye the industry is getting for how ubiquitous advertising is.

So I implore people at all levels of this problem to demand better. What's the worse that could happen?

--

In looking back at that Honda ad again, the company could totally play dirty and start playing that ad again just to stick it to Toyota.

Tags: advertising, movies, bmw films, honda, clive owen, the hire, the driver, david fincher, futurama, youtube, previews, ads, television

Breaking the habit

One of the missions of this blog is never to let peer-reviewed, academic papers that address parenting issues from an economics perspective go through without comment. This one in Applied Economics by Mixon, Pousson and Green fit the bill [HT: Craig Newmark].

As a test of elements of Gary Becker's model of habitual behaviours, the present study examines another potential example of a habit - pacifier use - within the youngest segment of the population, infants and toddlers. To explore the facets of a child's pacifier habit, we make use of an extensive questionnaire on the effectiveness of several proposed methods for stopping a child's pacifier consumption. Results indicate that children's pacifier use approaches the habit/addiction threshold, and it is best alleviated with abrupt cessation, or 'cold turkey.' Interestingly, our empirical finding that 'cold turkey' dominates or is superior to other methods of getting children to stop relying on pacifier use (e.g. limiting time of use, altering the pacifier's tip, etc.) has two implications. First, it supports the Beckerian notion that a child's pacifier habit approaches the habit/addiction threshold, as stated above. Second, it contradicts suggestions from many in the health profession to seek methods other than 'cold turkey' to stop a child's pacifier use. 

Some translation is in order. The Becker model suggests that there are some behaviours where your past consumption makes it much more likely you will consume today in the same manner. He was thinking of cigarettes but a parent will think of use pacifiers and, relatedly, the use of thumbs. The model's prediction is that 'cold turkey' -- the immediate cessation of the behaviour -- is the way to break the habit as softer forms of gradual modification mean that it is a constant struggle to resist temptation. Suffice it to say, there are some psychologists out there with another perspective.

The paper then looks at actual behaviour through a survey of parent choices and concludes that cold turkey was indeed far more effective in breaking pacifier habits than other forms. Of course, it is a bit contingent on the parental style and so it is hard to tease this out as something causal. Nonetheless, if a non-Becker view was right, then tough parents would also be failing parents. 

We've taken the cold turkey route in our parenting on this stuff (see here). Of course, we migrated the children over from a pacifier to a thumb as soon as we could so that we could save the fuss. But at about 2 years old, we went cold turkey on the thumb business (actually, it was a bit older for the first child). This was partly a function of our tough style and partly a function of the sad fact that I did not stop thumb sucking until age 11 and unavoidable dental costs. That you don't want to see.

Someone joined Twitter... and it wasn't me!

Man, maybe I would start a twitter account too if I could get 330000 fans with just two posts.

I am of course talking about Conan O'Brien's recent foray into the world of Twitter.



His latest post was the following:

This morning I watched Remington Steele while eating Sugar Smacks out of a salad bowl. I was naked.

I am surprised that Conan couldn't avoid talking about eating on twitter until his tenth post there. But I commend him on not making the obvious choice of Coco Puffs.

I guess he really does have the Twitter state of mind after all.

I wonder what other things he will get up to during his unemployment. You know, aside from considering a tour.

Tags: twitter, conan o'brien, unemployed, sugar smacks, squirrel, coco puffs, tour, remington steele, salad bowl, audience

I'm cooking up another blog

Hi there.

I am currently in the midst of developing another pop culture-related blog, and as I am one for collaboration, I would love to have some other people on board to help.

I haven't decided on a platform yet, but I do have a title in mind, and the general style involved.

Without being too specific, what I am looking for is people who know a particular movie/book/television series etc really well and would be willing to use that knowledge in a somewhat cheeky way. It will be an intriguing experiment to say the least.

If this sounds interesting to you, leave a comment or drop me an email at campybeaver@gmail.com.

Tags: pop culture, blogging, collaboration, new project, movies, books, television, stories

Mark your calendars for Google Code Jam 2010!

If you're reading this post, we know your passion is coding. You thrive when given the opportunity to tackle a challenge, and enjoy the rush of applying your knowledge and creativity to approach a problem. Once solved, there's nothing like the satisfaction that comes from knowing you've accomplished something great.

That's why we are excited to announce Google Code Jam 2010 to the true die-hard coding fans. Google Code Jam, powered by Google App Engine, is our annual programming competition, where thousands of coders around the world attack algorithmic problems in several 2.5-hour online rounds. If you make it through the first four rounds, you'll be flown to our on-site finals, to be held for the first time at the Google office in Dublin! Once there, you will compete with 24 other top coders for the $5,000 first prize -- and the coveted title of Code Jam champion.

We don't want you to miss out on any of the action, so we are announcing some important dates for Google Code Jam 2010. Mark your calendars:

Wednesday, April 7, 2010 | 19:00 UTC | Registration Begins
Friday, May 7, 2010 | 23:00 UTC | 24-hr Qualification Round Begins
Saturday, May 8, 2010 | 23:00 UTC | Registration Deadline & 24 hr Qualification Round Ends
Saturday, May 22, 2010 | 1:00 UTC | Online Round 1: Sub-Round A
Saturday, May 22, 2010 | 16:00 UTC | Online Round 1: Sub-Round B
Sunday, May 23, 2010 | 9:00 UTC | Online Round 1: Sub-Round C
Saturday, June 05, 2010 | 14:00 UTC | Online Round 2
Saturday, June 12, 2010 | 14:00 UTC | Online Round 3
Friday, July 30, 2010 | Google Office - Dublin, Ireland | Onsite FINALS

In the meantime, visit the Google Code Jam site and try out some of the practice problems so that you'll be ready to go once we kick off the qualification round. Hope to see you in Dublin on July 30th!

By Igor Naverniouk, Software Engineer

OutdoorFun Winter Weather Index: A Record Tying Year!

You come to this blog for the latest information on weather prediction. Cutting edge technology and modeling. Today we will push the envelope with the latest UW advance:

The OutdoorFun Winter Weather Index (OWWI)

When do you feel comfortable working and playing outside? 40s are too cold for most. 50, 51, 52 a little bit chilly and you still need a sheatshirt. 53 is on the margin. But 54F! You start to feel a bit warm. You take off the sweater. You start building a bit of sweat while exercising. Life is good.

Scientists at the UW define the OutdoorFun Index as the number of days from January 1 through February 22 with maxiumum temperatures at our above 54F at Seattle Tacoma Airport. Why January 1 ? Its the new year! Why February 22? Because Feb 23rd is the official start of meteorological spring in Seattle. Don't believe this? Read my book. Even better, buy my book and then read it.

Using the extensive weather archives at the UW, our trained climatologists can now answer the question at the tip of your tongue. How does this year stack up against others using this index?

It turns out we tied for number one, considering a period of sixty years! Twenty four days reaching 54F or above! See the official OutdoorFun Weather Index graph below:1995 was also a fun outdoor winter. It is not your imagination that sweaters were practically optional this winter!

Like the daily-average temperature better? How about the number of days our daily mean temperature is greater than 43F!. Why 43F? Again, read my book. Here is the graph. You guessed it, we are number one. The big Kahuna of warm winters.
Perhaps this is what happens when you get a new mayor. Nickels gets snowappocalype and McGinn gets spring in winter. Clearly, the weather gods look favorably on our new mayor. And I hear they like tunnels and don't like Discovering Math textbooks.

PS: Mathematician Neal Johnson is credited for the above calculations!

PSS: Please no mention of global warming in the comments!

Express Checkout: Harriet the Spy Remade and Gay Jesus

- Someone remade Harriet the Spy? Why? I don't like Rosie O'Donnell and all, but she doesn't wreck the original, and as it stood, the original was an entertaining little movie that transcended its age. I mean, it is still watchable today, and the problems and such are still easy to relate to, and it has aged very well. When I read that the remake changed the class paper angle to one of blogging, well, let's just say that was the icing on the cake of my disappointment.

- Elton John called Jesus a compassionate, super-intelligent gay man. This caused a furor. I will quote entire quote in context: "I think Jesus was a compassionate, super-intelligent gay man who understood human problems. On the cross, he forgave the people who crucified him. Jesus wanted us to be loving and forgiving. I don't know what makes people so cruel." So, basically, people are bent out of shape because god forbid someone even suggest that Jesus might be gay, despite all the other things that Elton John said, things which everyone would agree are admirable qualities. In those people's rush to judgment, they missed John's ultimate message which was be loving, forgiving and understanding. The fact that all those who are in an uproar about one word in this tells me that they aren't good Christians.

Tags: gay jesus, elton john, christians, understanding, tolerance, compassion, harriet the spy, rosie o'donnell, remake, children's book, newspaper, blog, travesty

Introducing Google's DoubleClick For Publishers API

Today, we announced the next generation of our ad serving technology for online publishers, the new DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) from Google. We are pleased to announce that the new version of DFP comes with a modern API that enables publishers and third-parties to customize and extend the product.

The new API is available to publishers who use DFP, as well as to third-parties and vendors who would like to build applications on top of DFP. A growing community of developers are already working on sales, order management, workflow and data visualization tools. We've incorporated feedback on the existing DART for Publishers API and believe the new API is a significant step forward. It uses SOAP, a standard and widely-adopted messaging technology that uses HTTP requests to transmit and receive XML data between your client and our servers. This means you can use it with virtually any programming language of your choice. We have a wealth of public documentation available online and there are numerous code samples and client libraries ready for you to download.

To learn more about the new API, there are a few places to get started:

• The DoubleClick for Publishers API blog:
  http://doubleclickpublishersapi.blogspot.com/


• The Google Code site that hosts all of the documentation for the new API:
  http://code.google.com/apis/dfp


• The Google Groups forum where we provide support and where you can provide feedback to us:
  http://groups.google.com/group/google-doubleclick-for-publishers-api/

We are looking forward to working with you and seeing what you build!

By Adam Rogal, DoubleClick For Publishers API Team

Inversion and A Significant Change

We clear skies and light winds we had perfect nighttime weather for the development of an inversion last night (remember, inversions occur when temperature increases with height). Take a look at the Sand Point observations ending 10 PM last evening. Temps in degrees C and height in meters. The yellow line was for 4 PM...no inversion then. But you see how quickly the inversion forms after that...evident by 6 PM, and strengthens after that. It doesn't have to be dark for the inversion to start forming, you just need more outgoing infrared radiation than incoming solar radiation to do the trick. Look how shallow the inversion is! Roughly 200 meters, 600 ft. By 10 PM is was 6 C (around 11 F) warmer 600 ft up.

Today, many locations got into the upper 50s to near 60F. And something else happened...the winds picked up a bit. Below are the observations taken at the UW for the last 3 days. All with super sun and warm temperatures. The solar radiation is at the bottom...they looks like something out of textbook...no cloud effects. The wind speed (sustained and gusts) are at the top. Notice something? Winds tend to be strongest during the warmest time of the day. Why do you think that is?
The reason is at least two fold. The most important is that heating at the surface causes the air to be less stable with more up and down mixing. That mixing brings down stronger winds from aloft. Why stronger aloft? Less impact of friction and drag at the surface. The other reason winds pick up is that differences in heating between land and water and lowland and mountains produce diurnal winds (sea breezes, mountain-valley winds, etc) that increase wind speed.


Tomorrow will be the final perfect day. The last April day in February. On Tuesday a weather system will approach with a chance of showers later in the day. Then we switch into a cloudier, wetter pattern...but not too extreme. The El Nino impact is still clear, with the jet stream splitting to the north and south. We get some clouds and a few showers. Nothing interesting.

But I did but a lot of vegetables in today and planted my peas. Will they germinate? Will my lettuce and kale grow? If this keeps up it will be time for tomatoes in a few weeks (just kidding!).

Sunday Video: Hair of the Dog

I've had this song floating around my head for weeks now. So I thought I would spread the love as it were.

I mean the chorus would fit into a lot of action movies and/or red band trailers.

Tags: nazareth, hair of the dog, conan o'brien, action movies, rock, red band trailer

Upward sloping demand curves?

[HT: Tim Harford] Let's put this in the behavioural economics likely to go too far category. Here is a Dad who intends to pay his kids to play video games in an attempt to reduce the total time they spend playing video games.

There is no trick here. A straight out payment per unit of time spent. His theory is that his kids are intrinsically motivated to play video games and that there is some evidence that when you place a monetary reward on an activity with intrinsic motivation, it can actually demotivate. Now usually that is for stuff like working hard to help others out. It is not usually for something that is of private value. On those activities, surely normal economics will take over at there will likely be an increase and not a decrease in video game playing. That is definitely how it would work in our house.

But there is a caveat. If it works in concentrating gaming, it may turn out that the kids get sick of it quicker and it turns them off. We'll see. If it works, I'll let you know and will then try and conduct an experiment with my arguably more rational, economically minded children.

A good travelling experience. In the US!

It is hard to believe, I know but this week we took off to LA for the school holidays and we had a great experience. Way back in December we had accurately forecast that we would want to flee Boston in February and so we booked tickets back then and fled. Readers of Parentonomics will know that an entire chapter was devoted to previous woes with airlines (and those were in Australia). I myself have had my share of US poor experiences here and here. So I am very happy to report about a good one: on Virgin America.

Actually, Virgin has been pretty good to us in the past. I remember traveling on the Australian one, Virgin Blue, with kids over Easter. We were going on holidays on a 3 or 4 hour flight. A little while into it a hostess came by and said "who's up for face paints?" and off our then two kids went and we didn't see them again until the end of the fight! Perfect.

That didn't happen this week but the electronic equivalent did. Virgin America is the way too fly in the US. Each seat has an individual screen where you can choose from TV, movies, games and even live TV. (I spent a good 3 hours watching curling. I know, why? But once you start it is hard to stop). Oh and all this entertainment was available prior to take off and on landing so no blackout periods trying to work out how to keep the kids amused. 

But wait there's more. You can order food directly from your seat whenever you want. Just order, swipe your credit card and within minutes it is all delivered. And it was reasonably priced and good food too boot. On a 6 hour flight, being free of scheduled cart times is a real bonus. 

And I'm not done yet. If you think the kids just sat there glued to the TV, you would be wrong. The oldest ones spent a great deal of time chatting with other kids all over the plane. They have some messaging system and before too long, the whole flight was one big shared experience. Watching the same TV stations while chatting, pointing out things out of the window and otherwise never laying eyes on each other. Well, not really. Every now and again a child would walk down the aisle to the bathroom and linger peering at our row.

While all this was going on, I was free to do whatever; including work with the inflight WiFi. Add to that the fact that online check-in worked including pre-paying for checked baggage so that experience at the airport (well, apart from security) was first rate. Indeed, here is a hint, they often check baggage at the gate to speed up boarding. That gives you pre-boarding priority and saves you the $20 bag fee.

Sadly, Virgin only have a limited number of routes but wherever they are going we'll be there. (Oh and by the way, the fares were ridiculously cheap).

Week 41: Pageant of the Transmundane

Well, it turns out that the National Enquirer may be up for a Pulitzer. If they win it, you know we will never hear the end of this.

This week's winning entry comes to us from Overstated.

It is a double take of a single dog-related video, and the second one is an instant Transmundanity classic.

And since this week's winning entry has to do with dogs, well, a picture of Homer Simpson AS a dog seemed like it would be the most appropriate image this week.



Congrats Cameron. Here is your badge.



The rules of this little contest: Every week I will be selecting one blog post that I have seen from the vast reaches of the blogging village to bestow with the Homer Simpson Transmundanity Award for being one of the freakiest(in a funny way) things I've seen or read during a 7 day period. It doesn't necessarily have to have been written during the week, I just had to have encountered it. That means that if you find something interesting and repost it like a movie or whatever, if I saw it at your blog first, you get the prize. Of course, creating your own content is also a very good way to win.

This is not a meme. This is an award that I give out, and thus, I am not "tagging" you.

Now, if you see a post that you think is worthy of this illustrious prize, just drop me a line at campybeaver@gmail.com and we'll see if we can't get your suggestion up and award-ready while giving you some credit and a link to your own blog.

Tags: pageant of the transmundane, homer simpson, lady and the tramp, dog video, national enquirer, pulitzer, overstated

Big Diurnal Range in Temperature

During the last two days we have had something we haven't seen in a while. No, I am not talking about highs near 60F...although that is true. What we have had is a very large diurnal (daily) range of temperature. Look at the plot above at Sea Tac, today the high was 59 with a low of 39F, a 20F temperature range....far greater than we have had since December. Many locations got colder than that and frost graced many a car this am.

Why so large a range? Most important have been clear skies and our strengthening sun. You feel the warmth? Remember the sun right now is as strong as in mid October, with much longer days than two months ago. And the clear skies associated with high pressure aloft allow maximum heating during the day and maximum cooling at night as the earth radiates infrared energy to space.

But why no clouds and fog...which often occur in midwinter? The secret is that we have a modest east-west pressure difference (higher pressure to the east), which is producing easterly flow across and down the western Cascade slopes. Such downslope air produces drying and warming. Check out the latest profiler data from north Seattle...you can see the easterly flow.

But too much easterly flow would cause warming due to compression and keep our temperatures up at night. But fortunately for diurnal temperature range lovers the easterly flow is strong enough to keep us clear, but not strong enough to cause too much warming.

These conditions will continue through the weekend...warm enough for tee shirts during the day, but cold enough for frost in the morning at many locations.

Today's Contest: WHO HAS THE LARGEST DIURNAL RANGE?

PSS: There is an article in the Seattle Times today (Saturday) on the early spring

Friday Favorite: Loving your City: A prerequisite for art?

From back in August 2006.

--

I'm feeling a little philosophical tonight, so bear with me.

Recently I heard the Beastie Boys' An Open Letter to NYC, and it has just stuck with me the past few weeks. I know it is a post-911 song and all, but there is still a lot of love doled out to the individuality and character of the city and I realized that I've never lived someplace that I enjoyed enough and was so interesting to immortalized in an love song to the seemingly inanimate yet breathing entity that is a city. I sort of envy that feeling.

Perhaps it is my own fault, as I may be closed off to some of the things that make my mildly cosmopolitan place of residence interesting, but love is probably the one thing that I don't feel. Or it could be that I indeed live someplace that has some problems. I mean, for a few years we had our art gallery at the mall to make way for a casino, which is weird in a sad way.

Now a lot of people love New York (if they didn't, they wouldn't buy the t-shirts, would they?*), Chicago (oh how I want thee), Boston, Los Angeles, Seattle... the list goes on and on, and of course a lot of laudatory work has been produced about most of them along with a fair share of derogatory works of verse, fiction and non-fiction. So I guess the more general question is this: can great art be derived from a locale that the creator is apathetic towards or outright loathes?

* I know they are for tourists. Really, I do.

Tags: beastie boys, open letter to NYC, seattle, los angeles, new york, literature, art, creation, boston, love, cosmopolitan, writing, painting, gallery

Sunny Skies are Good For Olympic Snow

The forecasts for the next four or five days at the Olympic venues is for lots of blue skies and sun. No snow. None.

Believe it or not, this is very good for maintaining snow at Whistler and Cypress Mountains! The worst of the snow melt is over. The games will be ok.

So why is sun and lack of clouds and rain a good thing?

It turns out that the very worst enemy of snow is what they had a few days ago:

Strong winds, low clouds and fog, heavy rain, warm air.

It sounds like the plagues of Pharaoh.

And you know what was probably worst of all? The fog.

Warm air is obviously bad...it causes snow to melt. Strong winds and warm air are even worse, since the wind continuously brings more warm air to melt the surface. But believe or not, warm air is not an efficient melter of snow. It can do the job, but it takes a lot of time. In the business we call the effects of warm air sensible heating.

Now warm rain is not great in the melting department either. Warm rain can bring some heat to the snowpack, and if it refreezes it releases the latent heat of fusion into
the snow (about 80 calories per gram). Yes, heat is released when water freezes...the reach orchardists east of the Cascades spray water on their trees when the temperatures drop below freezing during critical periods.



But you want real melting? If the air is moist, and foggy/cloudy air is nice and moist, the water vapor can condense on the snow and that releases the latent heat of condensation...which is HUGE....around 600 cal per gram. Mega heat source.

And one more thing, clouds and fog intercept and remit infrared radiation leaving the surface, preventing cooling to space.

So the conditions earlier this week at Cypress Mt and lower Whistler were as bad as it gets: strong winds, warm temperatures, heavy rain, clouds to stop the radiation from escaping, fog and humid air for maximum latent heat release.

Today. Lighter winds, cooler air, no clouds or fog. Drier air. No warm rain. Snow reflects much of the solar radiation that falls on it, but is a very good emitter in the infrared. In short, they are in a much better place for maintaining the snow.

Remembering Zombies Ate My Neighbors

Back in the early 1990's was the age of the Super Nintendo and the Sega Genesis, an age before the ESRB and other such organizations, meaning that at the time, there were no clear cut delineations between games for kids and stuff that was geared towards an older audience.

It was into that environment that one of the great games of that console generation was release. I am of course talking about Zombies Ate My Neighbors.



It was a game designed by Lucasarts, who at the time was well-known for their sense of humor in their games (I certainly loved Maniac Mansion), and at the time, I hadn't realized it was one of the games that was pushing the envelope of what was allowable on consoles in those pre-ratings days.

The premise is simple. You play as either a male or female teenager who is tasked with saving the normal people in their town from not only the titular zombie horde, but from a whole host of other movie beasts and baddies.

Check out some of the gameplay.

Now I haven't played the game in quite some time, but let me rundown at least a few of the other kinds of enemies you will encounter throughout the game and you will get a sense of what the game represented. There were hockey-masked, chainsaw wielding maniacs, axe-wielding demonic dolls, giant ants, werewolves, mummies, Creatures from the Black Lagoon, Blobs, martians, Draculas, Frankenstein monsters and my personal favorite, Snakeoids. I know there are other monsters I am forgetting, but as you can tell, the people who made this game loved horror and B-movies, and the cover art work tells you this one is pure kitsch.



The fact that you battled those things in an environment that was cute and bright was also what made the whole experience so charming. The level titles were also rather cheeky and gave you a hint as to the kinds of enemies you would be facing. I remember some of the names in particular: The Day the Earth Ran Away, Seven Meals for Seven Zombies, I Was a Chainsaw Maniac, and my personal favorite, They Came to Earth for One Thing: Mars Needs Cheerleaders.

How could I not love a game that has that sense of comedic style?

The weapon choices were also interesting because for the most part, they are things that seem very improvised, and sort of kid friendly. Yes, there was a bazooka, but other things that you might find for your arsenal included a water gun, cans of soda (which were like grenades), a weed whacker, silverware, a fire extinguisher (because, you never know when you will need to fight a blob) and a few others.

It was just fun, and I didn't think too much about it at the time.

Zombies Ate My Neighbors is one of those games from my youth that my older sister loved playing too, and since it was a co-op experience, well, I have very fond memories of the title. It is 55 levels long, and it did have a short password system, so it allowed us to have many hours of fun. I mean, she was a horror junkie, and I was a game junkie who had seen a lot of movies with her, so there was a lot for us to do with this title.

And I will be honest with you... this game probably gave me my first genuine scare in gaming.

You see, there is a certain level that you start and you can see the screen shaking, and as you move closer to the disturbance, you suddenly see just a giant pair of legs at the top of the screen.

And at that moment, I turned to my sister and exclaimed "What the Hell was that?!?"

As we inched closer, we discovered to our horror exactly what that thing was.



DUN DUN DUN!

I mean, when you've been killing normal sized enemies for many levels, and then you suddenly encounter something that huge. The fact that it is a baby is both surreal and daunting, because you know it isn't evil, but you are going to have to try to destroy it anyway.

After that, well, survival horror couldn't scare me after that. I survived a giant baby... I can take anything else you throw at me.

That being said, at the time, I didn't realize that all the horror elements in the game were causing Nintendo to sweat (Sega was cool with the game as it was originally designed), so there were a few minor tweaks in North America (the blood became purple) and in Europe and Australia, well, the cuts were a lot more severe, with Australia not even allowing the words "Ate My Neighbors" to appear on the game.

But now there is a second chance for people around the world to experience this gem. It was released for the Wii's Virtual Console just before last Halloween, so a new generation of gamers can play this campy cult classic.

Tags: zombies ate my neighbors, maniac mansion, lucasarts, mars needs cheerleaders, seven meals for seven zombies, super nintendo, censorship, virtual console, nintendo wii, tremors, black lagoon, australia, jason, chucky, dracula, frankenstein

Who's @ Google I/O: all things Google Web Toolkit

The Google Web Toolkit (GWT) team had an exciting 2009 -- ending the year with a Campfire One where the team announced the release of GWT 2.0 with Speed Tracer. Developers are quickly adopting GWT to build compelling apps in the browser, and we're excited that we'll have the following companies demoing their applications and talking about how they leveraged GWT (and other Google technologies) in the Developer Sandbox at I/O:

Clarity Accounting, Dimdim, DotSpots, Entrinsik, Hydro4GE Inc., JetBrains, Lombardi, Media Beacon, RedHat, Rosetta, SAS, and StudyBlue.

In addition to developers from these companies, we'll also have Google engineers in the Sandbox, talking about how our internal teams have used GWT to build products like Google Wave.

And members of the GWT team will be hosting a number of advanced sessions at Google I/O. Here's a quick preview of some of the sessions (there are 4 more on the I/O website):

GWT + HTML5 can do what?!

How can you take advantage of new HTML5 features in your GWT applications? In this session, we answer that question in the form of demos -- lots and lots of demos. We'll cover examples of how to use Canvas for advanced graphics, CSS3 features, Web Workers, and more within your GWT applications.

Architecting for performance with Google Web Toolkit

Modern web applications are quickly evolving to an architecture that has to account for the performance characteristics of the client, the server, and the global network connecting them. Should you render HTML on the server or build DOM structures with JS in the browser, or both? Bruce Johnson -- one of the founders of Google Web Toolkit -- will discuss this, as well as several other key architectural considerations to keep in mind when building your Next Big Thing.

GWT Linkers target HTML5 Web Workers, Chrome Extensions, and more

At its core GWT has a well-defined and customizable mechanism -- called Linkers -- that controls exactly how GWT's compiled JavaScript should be packaged, served, and run. Matt Mastracci of DotSpots will discuss how to create linkers and explains some of the linkers we've created, including a linker that turns a GWT module into an HTML5 Web Worker and one that generates an HTML App Cache manifest automatically.

Architecting GWT applications for production at Google

For large GWT applications, there's a lot you should think about early in the design of your project. GWT has a variety of technologies to help you, but putting it all together can be daunting. This session walks you through how teams at Google architect production-grade apps, from design to deployment, using GWT.

If you're a GWT developer or considering using GWT for your next project, we hope to see you at Google I/O! It'll be a great place to meet and chat with other engineers, including the team behind Google Web Toolkit.

To learn more and to sign up for Google I/O, visit code.google.com/io.

By Joyce Sohn, Google Developer Team

OK, this "rehab" thing is going too far

Chynna Phillips has checked herself into rehab.

For Anxiety.

You know, I didn't think that anxiety was something you went to rehab for.

And I am not saying that people shouldn't get help for anxiety, because I know from first hand experience that it is a debilitating thing. What I am questioning is calling that help rehab, because really, everything can't be called rehab. As a society, we have to draw a line somewhere, and I think this is one of those points.

Chynna is getting help for anxiety issues. That's a good thing. But it is not rehab (at least from my understanding).

Calling it rehab is trying to dodge the stigma that mental health treatment has by dodging what it really is, and while it might work in this case, it isn't helping anyone.

Instead of trying to cover it with euphemisms, I wish that her publicist had been honest and just said that she was getting the mental help that she needed.

Given what she has gone through recently with her step-sister's revelations about her father, I think it would be more than understandable that Chynna might need the aid of a trained professional to come to terms with it. And in calling it what it is, she could have helped so many other people.

But again, calling it rehab is sort of minimizing what is going on here.

Tags: chynna phillips, rehab, mackenzie phillips, mental health, anxiety

Ridgodzilla

What is very big, very persistent, brings lots of heat on one side and chills on another? A huge ridge and blocking pattern...or in meteorological parlance-- RIDGODZILLA! And its coming to a winter Olympics in your neighborhood!

Take a look at at series of upper level (500 mb pressure level) charts starting Wednesday at 10 AM. You will notice substantial ridging (higher values of this chart indicate high elevations for this pressure level). Winds are parallel to the lines. Ridging is associated with sinking air and lack of precipitation.


On Friday....the ridge is stronger...now a very strong closed high. And flow and a low are now cutting undernearth into California.


On Sunday...a strong high is over the NE Pacific and a low off of California. RIDGODZILLA! In fact, this configuration also has another name...a REX BLOCK...and is very stable. (Note: this is not named after a king, but some guy named Rex!)

Once the ridging moves in late Tuesday and early Wednesday, precipitation will completely shut off for the region. No snow, no rain. Nothing.

And temperatures will be very different on the two sides of the Cascades...much warmer than normal to the west (due to easterly flow down the Cascades) and cool temps to the east. Lots of sun on the west side. It will feel like April. What else is new?

Reminder: The Northwest Weather Workshop on March 5-6 in Seattle. The big weather meeting for laymen and professionals of the area...

Express Checkout: Blow Out, Kevin Smith, Pattinson

- You know, for a second on the weekend, I felt bad for the women on the Slovakian Hockey Team at the Olympics after taking an 18-0 shellacking from the Canadians. And then I found out that the Slovakians piled 82 goals on the Bulgarians to qualify for the Olympics to begin with. Someone calculated that was a goal every 44 seconds. The thing that really makes that horrific from a karma standpoint was it was the closing game of a qualifying tournament, so there was a point where they could have stopped scoring and they still would have made it to the next stage. It makes me wonder what Bulgaria did to the coach of that team because that is just insane. I mean, I think that is worse than the infamous Georgia Tech-Cumberland State football game of 1916 (and 82 goals isn't even the biggest blowout in international hockey history).

- Kevin Smith was kicked off of a Southwest Airlines flight over the weekend because he was too big to fit in a single seat after trying to get a standby flight from the San Francisco area to Burbank. He had purchased two seats on the flight up there, and admitted that he is "way fat". Now, I'm a husky dude, I admit it, but I have to side with the airline here, as much as it pains me to do so. When I am not blogging and doing all the various other things I do in my life, I watch and read a lot of things about plane crashes. I mean, a lot, so I know a thing or two about them, and the operation of aircraft and regulations as well. From reading the stories from both Smith and Southwest Airlines perspectives, this is what I think happened. Kevin Smith boarded the plane as a standby passenger, he sits down and gets settled in. The pilots in the cockpit are doing their preflight check and knowing what was in the cargo area, they do their weight calculations (based on average weights per passenger), and they discover that they are over the carrying weight limit for that plane, and they then made the decision to kick Smith off because he was the sole standby passenger, and the airline then tried to get him off the plane delicately so the other people on the plane didn't know that there was a potential issue with the flight through another pretense (because they kept saying it was a safety issue). Smith has also heard speculation that someone near the flight had him pulled because they didn't like his movies or his attitude when he boarded the flight... which also seems possible. EDIT: I just got through listening to Smith's Smodcast, and he told a tale about the flight after the one he was kicked off of, and I have to say, I was wrong. He was very much slighted, and apparently he is not alone.

- I will just present this quote I found browsing Google News with one brief comment at the end. "In a new interview with Details, Robert Pattinson reveals that he loves his dog more than any living lady, and that he's not a big fan of vaginas." Yeah, is anyone really surprised by that last revelation... at all?

Tags: olympics, southwest airlines, kevin smith, details, canada, slovakia, bulgaria, women's hockey, preflight check, weight limits, google news, vendetta

Sunday Video: Operator

Now, I've never been a fan of sappy songs of adoration, nor the bitter breakup song where the singer/songwriter proceeds to rip their former partner a new one lyrically, but there is an interesting middle ground between those two extremes.

There is the breakup song where the person singing the song starts to get over the relationship/person in question while they are singing it.

Operator by Jim Croce is just such a song.

Not a complete breakthrough mind you, but it was a start of the narrator.

Here's Where the Story Ends by The Sundays also fits in the same motif as Operator.

Tags: operator, jim croce, breakup song, here's where the story ends, valentine's day

Week 40: Pageant of the Transmundane

A Minnesota farmer made a giant half-mile wide valentine for his wife... out of manure. His wife was quite taken with the romantic gesture.

But anyway...

This week's winning entry comes to us from Eclectorama.

In this case, it is the latest installment of what looks like a long line of posts recounting the tale of a Spock action figure and its interactions with the real world.

The ubiquity of Simpsons images and merchandise made find the appropriate image for this week a little easier as well.



Congrats Chunky B. Here is your web badge.



The rules of this little contest: Every week I will be selecting one blog post that I have seen from the vast reaches of the blogging village to bestow with the Homer Simpson Transmundanity Award for being one of the freakiest(in a funny way) things I've seen or read during a 7 day period. It doesn't necessarily have to have been written during the week, I just had to have encountered it. That means that if you find something interesting and repost it like a movie or whatever, if I saw it at your blog first, you get the prize. Of course, creating your own content is also a very good way to win.

Now, if you see a post that you think is worthy of this illustrious prize, just drop me a line at campybeaver@gmail.com and we'll see if we can't get your suggestion up and award-ready while giving you some credit and a link to your own blog.

Tags: pageant of the transmundane, spock, star trek, eclectorama, homer simpson, minnesota, chunky b, kansas, pittsburg

Olympics Weather Forecast: Heavy Rain and Fog

Current condition at the top of Whistler: FOG!!

I hate to say it, but for the next day the weather for the Olympics venues will be better for surfboarding than snowboarding. Heavy rain. Thick fog. Not luge, but deluge.

Bringing snow to Cypress Mt.

Lets face it. Our Canadian friends were mighty unlucky...a moderate El Nino at just the wrong time. And El Ninos are bad for snow. Since southern British Columbia weather is going to be a big topic for the next few days, so lets see what is going to happen.

First, as any good forecaster would, lets begin by looking at the latest satellite picture. A deep low center is offshore (see the spiraling clouds), with a juicy looking front in the offshore waters ready to move inland. Not good.


As shown in the figure below, which presents the winds and temperatures at 1 PM today at around 5000 ft, a strong current of warm air associated with the front will be aimed directly towards the Olympic venues. Those triangular barbs indicate 50 kt sustained winds and 4 indicates 4C or 39F. Way above freezing at elevations above nearly all Olympic venues.


And rain..you bet...here is the 24-h rainfall ending 4 AM tomorrow (Sunday). Looks like 1-3 inches of rain, not snow, at Cypress Mt.


Warm rain with fog and strong winds. The ABSOLUTELY WORST conditions for maintaining a snowpack.

Now let me show a forecast product I have never used on this blog...a time-height cross section (for Vancouver, CA). A very important tool for meteorologists. The x axis is time...in GMT: 1312 is today at 4 AM, 1400 is today at 4 PM, etc. The y-axis is pressure in millibars. Lower pressure is higher in the atmosphere. 850 is around 5ooo ft, 700 around 10,000 ft. The shading is relative humidity. Darker green...above 90%. Think clouds and fog. Red gives temperature (in degrees C) and the winds are shown by those barbs (they point to the direction the wind is going, big tail lines-10 kts, 3 of them-30 kts, etc). You are now trained.

What do we see? First, the air is saturated and moist until tomorrow at 4 AM Sunday. Strong winds developing from the south. The freezing level climbing to 6000 ft or more.

WETAPPOCOLYPSE! FOGARMAGEDDON!

What will happen when all the sawdust and hay base at Cypress Mountain gets saturated? I don't want to even think of it. The first snow/sawdust avalanche in history?

Anyway, it is going to be a bad day at the Olympics today. But you can see that after the front moves through later tonight the air will dry out considerably and the freezing level will drop to below 5000 ft. Helpful for Whistler but still way too warm for Cypress Mt. The only snow there are going to get is snow they truck or helicopter in.

Whistler has plenty of snow, even though the lower elevations around the village are marginal. And there will be more high elevation snow this week.

But there is one weather feature that is really going to impact Northwest and Olympic weather later this week. It looks like a HUGE ridge will develop on Thursday through the early weekend. No precipitation at all. Warm temperatures in the lowlands. Sun. And our gardens will surge forward again.