Bikinis Prove Global Warming!

Most climatologists, geophysicists, and atmospheric scientists agree that the world has been warming since the 1970's. The debate over how much, where, and how is all over the map, and of course the debate over what we can do, if we should, and would it matter is also all over the map. Previously, I had remarked on how the art record being used as a paleoclimate proxy was a little ridiculous, but maybe some new data can change my mind.

Those bikinis have been getting smaller and smaller since the 1960's, and I see no trend showing that they'll get bigger anytime soon. So, this current flat temperature trend since 1998 is just a hiccup before things get really hot! Of course, that means we really need to do something, but if you're not advocating the death of 2.5 billion people, then I'll know you're not really being serious about reducing anthropogenic carbon emissions by 50 percent.

Rain, Rain Went Away

Clear, blue skies, and a few puffy clouds: that's how we like our weather in Southern California.

Here's the view of La Cañada towards Glendale from above Chevy Chase Blvd.

There's some snow trying to hang on at Mt. Wilson, but I think the white stuff will be gone by the end of the week. Incidently, according to the National Weather Service, Los Angeles got the same amount of rain from 2007, all in one week.

Stinky!

Something most people don't know about synthetic fibers, like those used in sport clothing, mostly lycra and spandex blends these days, is that they really smell after a good work-out. However, if one works out in cotton or wool, the smell on the clothing is not as bad. Why? The simple reason is that the synthetic fibers are too neat. They don't trap the odor molecules the way messy natural fibers do. The synthetic fibers are designed that way, to transfer sweat away from the skin quickly, but once the watery components of sweat have been evaporated, guess what gets left behind: the odor molecules, in concentrated amounts on the surface of the fabric. Yummy. And that's why I stink after a ride. But, you may ask, what's the source of the stinky molecules? The source comes from the colonies of bacteria living on our skin. Hee, hee, you are not alone...

British National Healthcare Cures Deaf Boy!

Acually no, they kept the poor boy deaf for nine years. The doctors kept insisting the excess ear wax in the boy's ear was normal and had nothing to do with his partial deafness. But nine years later, the wax and part of a cotton swab popped out, and miracle of miracles, the boy can hear out of that ear again. Whoops!

Short People Advocacy

Um, we really don't need Rat's help...

I tried to run for Student Body Treasurer in 7th grade with the slogan: "Big Things Come in Small Packages!" I lost. I can't imagine why...

Update: Speaking of "fighting for the little guy," here's a democrat running for the Oregon Senate seat:

Art Disproves Science!

Actually, not really, but provocative headline, no?

What's interesting is that there are actually a few projects from AGW skeptics which are surveying medieval landscape paintings to help subjectively prove a Middle Warm Period in the European climate record. There is also a similar project to survey art from the Renaissance to about 1850 to look for subjective clues about the Little Ice Age. Why is this important? This is to defend against ten year old rhetoric that right now is the warmest it has been in 2000 years, nevermind that we didn't have a lot of carbon gas producing economies 2000 years ago to make it as warm as it is currently, but whatever. Still, it is pretty ridiculous to look for some kind of climate record hint in art, at least from a scientific viewpoint. What are the variables, the metrics, how do you test your theory that a worldwide rise in temperature inspires more sunny pictures? Will there also be more snowy pictures during the Little Ice Age? Anyway, it's a fun idea, but ultimately more hot air fueling the debate.

Halo and Metroid Enter The Matrix

You know you have an appreciative fan-base when people take the time to recreate your material into other kinds of media. Usually called fan-art or fan-fiction, some people can truly show their creative talents based on a great work. And I'm not just talking about all the Spock+Kirk fantasies popular among Trekkies. Case in point: just take a look at how much work was involved by this amateur 3-D animator involving the baddest asses in mechanical suits from the Nintendo and Xbox universes. Speaking of asses, you horn-dogs out there will definitely appreciate the last minute of this 10 minute video.

Warning: file is large, at 85 MB, so you may just want to download for viewing later, unless you have a big fat broadband pipe.

Brr! Then Aah!

So, what do you get when hard rain dumps on you at the beginning and at the end of your daily ride, in mid-40 degree weather? You get coooold! You get chilblains on your uncovered knees whenever you go downhill. You superficially, from an anatomical perspective, look like a castratus until you take a hot shower and coax "the boys" from your lower abdomen. Hot water feels cold to your extremities until they get warmed up. I keep forgetting to buy waterproof gloves every year, so I guess that'll learn me, until I ride in the rain again...

MPAA's Flawed File Sharing Study

The Motion Picture Association of America, back in 2005, commissioned a study done by research firm LEK, which attributed 44 percent of its lost revenue from illegal downloads of movie files to college students. Now they've found out that the number is at most 15 percent and attribute the mistake to "human error." What I found a little disturbing about the MPAA's statement about the research audit was their focus on understanding what went wrong:

"We take this error very seriously and have taken strong and immediate action to both investigate the root cause of this problem as well as substantiate the accuracy of the latest report," the group [MPAA] said in a statement. [emph. added]

Well, if they're looking for the "root cause," then it's obviously poverty and lack of education, at least that's what the major media outlets keep telling me are the "root causes" of "human error" the world over. Let's send an aid package and a UN sponsored NGO over to LEK right away to teach them how to do math properly. We'll just have to make sure the peacekeepers don't start a child prostitution ring and introduce white slavery while they're there...

Scots Want Ban Lifted

Ever since the big British prion-infested scare a few years ago, that's the mad cow disease outbreak for those not in the know, one of Scotland's exports have been denied entry to the United States. What was that poor product? Why, none other than the main dish based on a dare*, haggis. Why sheep parts were banned from the U.S. when it was cow parts that were the problem, I'm guessing it had to do with what the sheep were fed. But now that insane bovines are less of a threat, the ban has never been lifted. That's right. If you wanted haggis (and maybe you were sniffing prions yourself if you did), you had to get American sheep guts to satisfy your gag-reflex. So now, Scotland is considering whether to lobby America to let those boiled innards back in. I say, it's high time this offal ban was lifted.

* One of my all-time favorite movie references to Scottish cuisine, from So I Married an Ax Murderer: "All Scottish cuisine is based on a dare."

Scar-less Healing?

"Chicks digging scars" may be a thing of the past. Because the white blood cells that prevent infection in a recent wound to the skin also govern collagen build-up, scarring usually develops with any healing. However, by turning off a specific gene in those white blood cells, by applying a new gel to the wound, those layers of collagen are greatly reduced, leaving much less of a scar. As one who appreciates his many scars, I'm not sure how I feel about this development, other than I would probably use such a product only on my face. Vanity is such a weird thing.

Forbidden Helmety Love

In a universe torn apart by war, how can budding love survive? Well, at the very least, if you're a female package of ferocious elite, you have to meet the right guy. So what if he's seven feet tall and human, love will find a way, right? Right?

"Just him and me, and these two girls in my band." "Three on one."

Internet Piracy Challenges China

From the land of knock-offs, counterfeit clothing and accessories, and sub-standard pet food and pills, comes a massive understatement over combating internet-distributed pirated media:

BEIJING (AFP) — China said Thursday it faced "very big difficulties" coping with rampant piracy on the Internet and called for international help to make an ongoing crackdown more effective.

Yeah, "very big difficulties" indeed. Good luck getting those former Soviet Bloc countries to help you out with their crime syndicate servers. I guess it doesn't matter that you were former comrades and all.

More Good Battery News

This is the kind of news we need: Panasonic develops World's Longest Lasting AA Battery. Battery technology is still basically recycling 120 year old theory, so with yesterday's news, and further development of portable electricity power sources, we move towards better energy efficiency and lower power costs.

40 Hour Laptop Battery

Using silicon-based nano-tech, researchers have developed a way for rechargeable lithium-ion batteries to hold their charge ten times longer. Yes, please, soonest!

Turkish Porn Fair

Lately, I've been getting a lot of hits from Turkey, all coming from Google searches for "porn fair" and this post comes up second. I don't know what kind of porn fair these horny Turks are looking for, but sadly, this little blog has no information for them. Honestly, I'm not sure what they're looking for. Whether it's an international porn fair in Berlin, the adult video trade show that takes place during the same time as CES in Las Vegas (go figure on that one, eh?), or if there is actually an underground porn festival in a moderate Muslim country, I don't know. But they ain't no porn fair here! (I'm sure my bro will get that reference...)

Finds From The Grind III

Since this month is "climbing month" for daily rides (last month was cardio month), I've been picking a gear and picking a hill to concentrate on for each week. When you're training, try to stay one gear harder than you're comfortable with for as long as you can. It's only pain, right? And it's over with in about an hour. When you do your long mileage ride, don't ride the harder gear, but eventually you'll find the harder gear becomes the cruising gear. And that's how you do safe, slow strength-building.

This week is the narrow winding road above the Rose Bowl called Glen Oaks. Here's the view of the Bowl before you make the hillside turn towards Glendale.

And here, you can see the view into Eagle Rock. With the heavy rains we recently had, not only is there a lot of work going on keeping the hillsides from sliding into the homes, but all that brush is green and growing. Now is the time to shore up those fire breaks.

An odd find on the way home from the hills: a dead green parrot on the side of the road. Yes, it was a late parrot, not resting at all. In the San Gabriel Valley, we have flocks of wild parrots roaming around because a movie shoot let them loose in the 1930's. Now we have screeching swarms flying through Temple City, South Pasadena, Arcadia, Pasadena, and San Marino. This particular guy seemed out of his territory and young too.

The Achievement Quest

In the Halo universe on X-Box Live, to make the game even more interesting than just splattering your enemies' helmeted carcasses across the landscape, the concept of "achievements" was introduced. They're basically little medals you get for doing things well, usually creative ways in killing many people quickly. But they are also worth redeemable points in XBL Marketplace, creating a vibrant commodity-based economy, and encouraging some people to play the games forever to get more gold. So, how can a D&D RPG veteran and an example of today's FPS twitch-muscle specialists aid someone on their Achievement Quest? Just how many ways can you die in a video game?

"Every morning when I rise, I aspire to greatness."

Probably Bad Luck...

What do you call it, when you're pedalling at 20 mph, and a black cat runs across the wiiiide street in front of you to harass some squabbling pigeons, but when one of the pigeons tries to fly away, you discover the other squabbling "pigeon" is a young hawk trying to grab some prey that happens to weigh more than it does? And the black cat caught nothing...

This situation sounded a little familiar, a little looney, if you will.

"Aaah, I ain't so little!"

Why Don't You Exercise?

A very long entry over at Science Blog, reposted from the Psychological Science website, recounts various researchers' work on the reasons why people don't exercise when they know they should. Some key findings and theories:

• A change in environment, and not coping well with the transition, can disrupt people's routines, which seems to account for the "freshman 15."
• This seems true across all age groups and different environment changes, such as a new job, moving to a new area, or even a change in the seasons.
• Self-control may be regarded as something requiring stamina, so if someone uses too much self-control in a day, such as resisting an extra snack, or controlling one's emotions, that person may feel too tired or unmotivated for the afternoon run.
• Specific goals for exercise are more important than a vague "exercise more, eat less" formulation, since these specifics can be incorporated into a routine.
• It's important to know if you are extraverted or introverted, since this part of your personality affects your specific intentions for exercise: energizing social event or calming alone time.

Personally, I find the routine, or scheduling of exercise as very helpful for my motivation. Also, if I'm doing a long cardio workout, such as a 65 mile ride, I prefer riding alone, since I use the cadence of my breath and exertion almost as a meditation. But if I'm going to do strength conditioning, I need other people to satisfy my competitive edge, not that I'll outlift anybody at 120 pounds, but for comparing my results. As an empiricist, I just like numbers and data, and mentally plotting curves. Yeah, I'm weird like that. Like throwing a frisbee with my brother: who had the longer throw, more accurate, prettier float; that kind of thing.

Just Shut Up And Drink!

I guess that's all a Republican City Councilman in St. Charles, MO wants people to do in bars, since his new proposal would "ban indecent, profane or obscene language, songs, entertainment and literature at bars." Well, gee, what's left?

Finds From The Grind II

Snow and clouds above Pasadena.

Sunday Chuckles

First: Star Wars related. I thought it took at least a lightsaber and a couple of thermal detonators, or maybe some tow cable, to take those things down.

Next: I don't know what it is about "keel you face," but that phrase gets me, every time!

Malaysian Telecom Considers Wireless Switch

Telekom Malaysia is considering whether to turn itself into a fully wireless company. The reason? Rampant cable theft. They just got so sick of replacing cable, and then having those replacement lines immediately stolen as well. Do you think the power companies are pushing hard for development of wireless power transmission as well?

Helmety Rosy Aftermath

So, Pasadena is getting back to normal. Barricades are coming down, tourists are gone, RV's parked everywhere are gone, and some dude in a helmet is happy the traffic around the Rose Bowl is down to equipment transport vehicles.

[missing video, shoot!]

2008! Already?

Happy New Year, everyone!