“Ozone” was President George H.W. Bush’s pet name for Al Gore during the campaign in ‘92. At that time, Gore’s weirdo environmental views were already well-known, but, that’s beside the point of this article.

What do we know about ozone?

To better understand that question, we must discuss oxygen. Earth’s atmosphere is composed of 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen and 1% “other gasses” which include water vapor, carbon dioxide and ozone. Included in the latter 1% is the dreaded “greenhouse gasses” you hear about. Less than one percent of the atmosphere is causing all that “trouble” — hmmmm. I digress — Back to oxygen . . .

Right: The Antarctic ozone hole (Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Continue reading » The “O” Zone

Taking to the skies to help celebrate Memorial Day, these beautiful vintage airplanes were just returning to home base at Zamperini Field in Torrance, CA (named for Louis Zamperini, living legend and WWII veteran — but that’s another blog post).

My aviator husband tells me that the aircraft were a mix of Stearman and Waco bi-planes — six alltogether — doing a pass over a local celebration, where they flew the “missing man” formation in honor of fallen military aviators. Even though we did not attend the celebration, we saw a parachute team circling down with a giant American Flag to open the ceremonies earlier in the day.

Damsel and I often speak of our visit to Arlington National Cemetery and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. On this day we recall the memories of that visit and the overwhelming sanctity of the tomb and the solemness of the soldiers guarding it. May the spirit of our fallen soldiers be remembered on this day.

She’s getting pretty damn good with that thing.

Check out her grin when she nails the bull’s-eye in this video:

World Climate Report, an excellent resource for scientific climate analysis, published an article that demonstrates the falsehood of increased hurricane intensity to have any relationship to increases in sea surface temperatures (SST) or anthropogenic (man-made) climate change.

Scientist Philip Klotzbach in a published paper analyzed the work done by a couple of misguided colleagues and compared their conclusions to his:
Continue reading » Actual Science Debunks Hurricane Intensity Myth

I hope everyone in the USA and all Americans enjoy the weekend and Memorial Day holiday. We started out a day early and ran some errands before commencing our weekend. One stop today found us at the flower concession in the local supermarket where I snapped this photo of the beautiful, patriotic bouquets all ready for the weekend ahead.

And please remember that if you’re planning to travel over the weekend that this weekend is statistically one of the highest-fatality weekends, so please, drive carefully!

The over-exercised term “networking” seems to be in wider use because it can be applied to many things. For example, your brain and nervous system are a network; the behavior of certain “social” insects (bees, ants, etc.) is a form of networking; the interaction between objects in the solar system can be described as a network; the relationship between people’s political leanings and the books they buy or the blogs they read can be modeled as a network.

Researchers at the University of Michigan have developed algorithms to analyze networks to detect trends and predict behavior.

New analysis of networks reveals surprise patterns in politics, the web

When analyzing buyers of political titles purchased through Amazon, they found this interesting relationship:

For instance, researchers used the algorithm to sort books sold on Amazon.com into left- and right-wing groups, and they found the book most appealing to conservatives was actually written by Democrat Zell Miller.

Miller, the former governor of Georgia and U.S. senator, angered Democrats by endorsing George Bush during the last presidential election. Miller’s book, “A National Party No More, The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat,” was the book most central to the community of conservative book buyers, according to researchers.

When analyzed using Newman’s method [associate professor Mark Newman, who developed the technique], the network of books separated into four communities, with dense connections within communities and looser connections between them. One community was composed almost entirely left-wing books, and the other almost entirely of right-wing ones. Centrist books comprised the other two categories. The computer algorithm doesn’t know anything about the books’ content—it draws its conclusions only from the purchasing patterns of the buyers—but Newman’s analysis seems to show that those purchasing patterns correspond closely with the political slant of the books.

When it comes to political blogs, the algorithm shows that we tend to link to like-minded blogs while seldom crossing over to the other side:

In another example, Newman used the algorithm to sort a set of 1225 conservative and liberal political blogs based on the network of web links between them. When the network was fed through the algorithm, it divided cleanly into conservative and liberal camps. One community had 97 percent conservative blogs, and the other had 93 percent liberal blogs, indicating that conservative and liberal blogs rarely link to one another. In a further twist, the computer analysis was unable to find any subdivision at all within the liberal and conservative blog communities.

Now, I am certainly not qualified to analyze the psychology of this behavior, but I do know that people tend to gravitate towards the set of values and ideas that they hold as their own. I am not sure that I find this tendency “surprising.”

Finally! The Mars Rover “Opportunity” returned an image of the Martian Landscape that doesn’t look like it was taken in the Mojave Desert. The eerie textures and coloring lend an other-worldliness appearance to this image, unlike the images that comedian Dennis Miller asserts “Looks like Barstow!”

Photo Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech

Click here for a Larger Image.

As NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity continues to traverse from “Erebus Crater” toward “Victoria Crater,” the rover navigates along exposures of bedrock between large, wind-blown ripples. Along the way, scientists have been studying fields of cobbles that sometimes appear on trough floors between ripples.

They have also been studying the banding patterns seen in large ripples.This view, obtained by Opportunity’s panoramic camera on the rover’s 802nd Martian day (sol) of exploration (April 27, 2006), is a mosaic spanning about 30 degrees. It shows a field of cobbles nestled among wind-driven ripples that are about 20 centimeters (8 inches) high.

This is a false-color rendering that combines separate images taken through the panoramic camera’s 753-nanometer, 535-nanometer and 432-nanometer filters. The false color is used to enhance differences between types of materials in the rocks and soil.

OK — I admit that this is a “false color” image and isn’t representative of the natural sunlight on Mars, but if you were to pump sunlight up to the amount the Earth gets, you just might get a picture like this.

I was awakened this morning by one of the neighbor’s “kids” starting up his souped-up hot rod. Now it wouldn’t be a problem if he would get in it and drive away, but he leaves it curbside for about 15 minutes while it “warms up” making a terrible racket the whole time. I can’t get back to sleep, so I get up and go downstairs to wake up and try and get in a good mood.

Now this “kid” isn’t a kid at all — not any more. He’s about 22 or 23 years old and still lives at home with Mom. He and his friends used to throw wild parties and carry on when Mom was out of town until the Cap’n and I hauled Mom into mediation and threatened litigation. I still don’t understand why she hasn’t kicked his butt out.

I can see that I’m not the only person who is disturbed by an apparent trend for young adults to remain at home with parents rather than getting out on their own. This great article by Betsy Hart roots out the problem nicely:

Kick the Kids Out of the Nest, for their Own Sake

Ah, the season of college graduations is upon us. Many newly minted graduates have donned their caps and gowns, marched to “Pomp and Circumstance” and now they are headed back home.

That’s the problem. Too many of them just won’t leave.

In a hilarious episode of “Seinfeld” (and weren’t they all), Jerry is doing his stand-up routine. He asks the audience to imagine a grown fellow saying, “Boy, my life is great. I just got a promotion at work, my bowling score is going up and next month I might even be moving back in with my parents!” The audience laughs uproariously, because even back in the 1990s, such a move was for losers.

But today, fully 20 percent of “adults” between the ages of 22 and 26 live with Mom and Dad. That percent has doubled since 1970. Now let’s be clear. These kids typically have money and jobs. They are buying cool cars, flat-screen TVs and going out several nights a week. Often, they pay no rent. They are having a great time. Only, they are not growing up.

[ . . . ]

Here’s a suggestion: This college graduation season, go ahead Mom and Dad, and give the kids a party. A few good meals. A lot of guidance. But please, sometime between now and the end of summer — do yourself, your children and all of us a favor: Kick the kids out of the family nest.

Betsy Hart, author of It Takes a Parent: How the Culture of Pushover Parenting is Hurting Our Kids — and What to Do About It. She can be reached through www.betsyhart.net or betsysblog.com.

In March, we wrote about Tom Heidenberger’s memorial bike ride to honor the memory of the 33 flight crew members that were killed on 9/11/2001. Tom and his riders have now completed their journey.

Bike riders travel 3,800 miles to honor 33 victims of 9-11

The cyclists made the pilgrimage from Los Angeles to the three crash sites to raise money and awareness of the Sept. 11 memorials.

Thomas Heidenberger ended his cross-country bike ride this month the same way he started: asking himself what the heck he was thinking.

He knew, of course. He had done it for his wife, Michele, a flight attendant killed aboard a hijacked airplane on Sept. 11, 2001. He had done it for all 33 airline crew members killed that day.

The ride had taken him and four other riders from Los Angeles to a wind-swept field in Pennsylvania, a gaping hole in Manhattan, the scarred Pentagon in Washington. They did it to raise money and awareness for Sept. 11 memorials, and they dedicated each day of their ride to one of the crew members.

Image: Cyclists complete journey arriving at Pentagon.

[ . . . ]

The Airline Ride Across America was supposed to raise $300,000 for the Sept. 11 memorials in Pennsylvania, New York and Washington. It has raised about a third of that so far, and Heidenberger hopes to raise the rest with his Web site, www.airlineride.org.

He’s working on a book about the ride, and talks about dividing it into 33 chapters, each with a short biography of one of the crew members killed on Sept. 11. He thinks he may call it Why I Rode My Bicycle for 3,800 Miles.

“It’s a good story, a happy story,” he said. “It’s a story about life continuing on.”

This is a very touching story where each day the riders dedicated their ride for that day to one of the 33 crew member victims. The last day’s ride was dedicated to Tom’s wife, Michelle, Read the whole story.

Despite what you may have heard about Mel Gibson’s critical remarks regarding the Republican Administration, you can be sure that his political leanings trend toward conservative values. Recently, a letter arrived at our household from the McClintock for Lieutenant Governor organization. The letter itself was from Mel Gibson who endorsed Tom McClintock to be California’s Lieutenant Governor.

Excerpts from the letter:

When I find that rare politician who will stand his ground for what is right–no matter what the pressure or consequences–I take notice.

During the recall election in California, I saw such a person. He stood solidly for principles that might not be politically correct — but that were right and true. And because he stood his ground, millions of Californians heard his message and recognized that it was the direction California needed to take. And even though he didn’t win their votes, he won their hearts and minds.

[ . . . ]

I am convinced that there is no one on the political scene today who can articulate these positions more clearly and compellingly. Tom McClintock proved in the recall election that he can reach voters across a wide political spectrum — by the end of that campaign, he had the highest approval rating of any of the candidates among ALL voters!

And here’s some of Tom McClintock’s conservative credentials from his website:

First elected to the California Assembly at the age of 26, McClintock quickly distinguished himself as an expert in parliamentary procedure and fiscal policy. He served in the Assembly from 1982 to 1992 and again from 1996 to 2000. During these years, he authored California’s current lethal injection death penalty law, spearheaded the campaign to rebate $1.1 billion in tax over-collections to the people of California, and became the driving force in the legislature to abolish the car tax. He has proposed hundreds of specific reforms to streamline state government and reduce state spending.

In 2000, McClintock was elected to the California State Senate, where he has continued to develop innovative budget solutions such as the Bureaucracy Reduction and Closure Commission and performance based budgeting, and to advocate for restoring California’s public works.

I understand why voters in California vote the way they do — they continue to elect liberals and get higher taxes and liberal social programs. I blame that on voter ignorance and union-sponsored political commercials filled with lies and deceptions. What I don’t understand is why the voters in New Orleans reelected the incompetent Ray Nagin to another term as mayor. I would think that they would be smart enough to see through all the post-Katrina rhetoric and send Nagin packing after his dismal performance in crisis and the racist rhetoric that followed. I guess I was wrong.

Image: Nagin sleeping on the job.

Read Michelle Malkin’s post-mortem on the New Orleans mayoral race, The Definition of Insanity.