I found another good video on YouTube about rogue waves, and this one actually talks at length about the dangers to offshore platforms and people on shore from rogue waves, using actual recent historical examples.
Continue reading “The science and history of rogue waves, part three”
Well. April 15th is another day that it seems like so many things happened throughout history. And for the most part, it seems like it has been a date on which a lot of truly tragic things happened. Honestly, I can only think of one really cool thing that happened on this date: it was the day that Jackie Robinson first debuted with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. And as big a fan of baseball as I am, and as happy as I am about how far my favorite sport has come since that time, I can’t help but contrast that event with all the other terrible, tragic things that have happened on this day.
Of course, the most immediate thing for me is that this is the 3rd anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing. Hard to believe it has already been three years. But I am glad that Boston had really come together and bounced back.
While searching for some videos on YouTube that might do a better job of explaining the phenomenon of rogue waves than I can, I actually found some really, really good material. First, one of my absolute favorite people on the Intertubes, Hank Green, who is also half of the awesome duo that is the vlog brothers. Here, Hank talks about rogue waves on his SciShow channel.
Continue reading “The science and history of rogue waves, part two”
Today I’m flying back to Boston from Dallas. As a matter of fact, as I write this I’m on the plane and we’re heading from the gate to the runway. I was surprised on my way down here how dramatic my process with the TSA wasn’t. The TSA is pretty much my nightmare of a government agency.
Today, when I went to my screening to leave Dallas, I lived my nightmare.
Well, well, well.
It appears that the Greens, the “Christian” family that owns Hobby Lobby, the same lovely people who think that there are one set of laws for them and another for everyone else when it comes to employee healthcare, may have gotten themselves in some hot water with the Federal government.
You see, with their billions of dollars, they have been building quite a collection of historical artifacts associated with the Bible: some 40,000 items, including the second-largest collection of Dead Sea Scrolls, all of which are unpublished (can’t have any more of those “funny” Gospels floating around now, can we?) And a huge number of Jewish scrolls, including many that survived the Nazis and the Inquisition.
It turns out that some of the items in their collection may have been acquired under, shall we say, murky circumstances.
Continue reading “I think a few Commandments got broken here…”
After the post I wrote most recently and some discussions I’ve had with people in various parts of my life, I’ve run across a fair number of people who seem to think that this schedule I’ve been living, this logging of 60-70 hours of work a week, minimum, is fun. That I do it because I like it and that somehow I’m not aware that it is inherently bad for me.
They are so, SO very wrong. But they refuse to understand that this has been a matter of survival. This has been the way that I’ve adapted to keep us afloat and alive and not living on the streets. So few people truly understand that our economy here in the US has fundamentally changed. Geoff and I are living proof that the old way, each having one job, having some security in that job, buying a house, and then eventually retiring just isn’t the way things work anymore.
Regular readers will recall that a little while back I said we’d be away for a while due to the death of a friend. Truth be told, his loss was, at the time, the latest in a long string of Very Hard Things 2015 had handed us.
It seems, however, that June might bright A New Hope. (Sorry) But, before we get to the good stuff, let’s go over where we’ve been, shall we?
I was overjoyed to hear that the FCC voted 3-2 to adopt new rules that treat broadband internet as a utility, much like telephones. The basic purpose of this would be to guarantee that internet service providers are neutral in terms of treating all customers and web content equally, and not favoring those who can pay more money or slowing down those that pay less. It means that a cable company can’t slow down the traffic to their competitors’ websites. It assures that the Internet remains a generally level playing field, so small businesses and start-ups don’t get squashed by huge corporate competitors who can afford to pay more to have their own service prioritized. And critically for people like me who have complained incessantly about being at the mercy of a few big telecoms when it comes to broadband service, it also means that it will become easier to get more choices, especially if those choices mean expanding municipal broadband service where they were previously banned by state laws favoring those big telecom companies.
And yet, there are those who are still opposed to it and will fight this tooth and nail. Needless to say, I am not a fan of those people. But I am encouraged by the fact that so many people thought net neutrality would fail, and they turned out to be wrong.
Continue reading “Net Neutrality and why the FCC’s new rules matter”
Kelly and I saw this commercial today that, frankly, kind of annoyed us.
Anyone who isn’t a moneyed plutocrat in the very tiny ruling elite here in Boston – Marty Walsh, John Fish, Charlie Baker, and Shirley Leung, I’m looking at you – likely understands that yesterday’s announcement that Boston “won” the USOC nomination for the 2024 olympics is a Very Bad Thing. The Boston 2024 group has existed for about a year and, chaired by Fish, has been trying to essentially shame the populace into believing that if we do not do this thing, invite the world to come here for a 3 week-long party 9 years from now, we’re provincial losers and that Boston isn’t fit for the world stage.
To put it bluntly, the people at Boston2024 are liars.
Continue reading “#BlackLivesMatter & #NoBoston2024 – The intersection of money, race & power”
The Books are Taking Over... 