Well it’s official, folks, the 12-team Big Ten will continue with its tradition of not knowing how to count. Maybe they could just say they only count the ten best teams each year, and the other two are on probation or something?
Hurricane Alex, the Atlantic Basin’s strongest June hurricane in 44 years, has been downgraded to a tropical storm as it moves over mountainous terrain, after “ripping off roofs, causing severe flooding and forcing thousands of people to flee coastal fishing villages” in northern Mexico. Meanwhile, Dr. Jeff Masters is looking back at some eyewall replacement weirdness that happened yesterday as… Read more »
I confess I haven’t had much time to read up on Hurricane Alex today, but just visually, it looks like it is spinning itself into a tighter, more intense form just as it prepares to come ashore. That’s never good. Intensifying hurricanes are more volatile; higher gusts and such. But I’m talking through my hat on the particulars; it just… Read more »
“It’s fine to go through life happy…but I suspect we also want to go through life without becoming big fat self-absorbed jackasses. Children really help in that regard. To be sure, there are too many parents who, despite their children, remain narcissistic nimrods. But the nature of parenting is to beat that out of you.” —Tony Woodlief [Bumped, because it… Read more »
Landfall is expected early tomorrow morning. Winds are “conservatively” estimated at 80 mph, and expected to increase. From the 5am EDT discussion: VERTICAL SHEAR IS FORECAST TO REMAIN LIGHT UP UNTIL LANDFALL OCCURS IN ABOUT 24 HOURS. GIVEN THAT ALEX IS ALSO MOVING SLOWLY OVER SOME OF THE WARMEST UPPER-OCEAN HEAT CONTENT IN THAT REGION OF THE GULF OF MEXICO…STEADY… Read more »
FiveThirtyEight’s updated Senate forecast is out, taking into account the results of various primaries — most significantly Nevada, where the victory of Tea Party favorite Sharron Angle has turned a likely GOP pickup into a tossup (and where “Harry Reid’s favorability/approval numbers have also improved some, and are now merely godawful rather than mind-bogglingly wretched”), and Arkansas, where choosing incumbent… Read more »
The quote, of course, is from “M” as wonderfully portrayed by Judi Dench in “Casino Royale”, 2006. The inspiration is from the FBI, which has just busted a veritable burrowfull of Russian moles, operating here under Deep Cover for many years. No one answered the telephone late Monday afternoon at the news media office for the Russian Embassy. A State… Read more »
> After five days as an iPhone 4 owner, here — as promised — are a few of my miscellaneous thoughts about the device: • It’s awesome. I mean, this has to be bullet point number one, right? Having never owned any smartphone before, it’s like I’ve stumbled directly into nerd nirvana with this thing. It’s mind-blowingly incredible… Read more »
Once upon a time — the summer of 1991, when I was nine years old, to be exact — I was in Chicago, leaving the Field Museum of Natural History in the midst of a massive thunderstorm, when lightning struck the Sears Tower… but my view was completely blocked because I happened to be standing directly behind one of the… Read more »