Wednesday bleah, and Ursa Major Awards

[altivo]

As I had suspected, power was out for some time at the library on Sunday. The most crucial pieces of the network restarted successfully on their own, as they should, but less important stuff like my machines that run boinc software, were down until I got there today. Fortunately it was a fairly slow day because I was running out of steam long before closing time.

Snow is on the forecast again for tonight. They say only an inch, but that's often when they get it wrong and we get dumped on. When they predict heavy snow, we often get very little. Friday they're giving a 100% probability of snow, with three to five inches accumulation. Nearly all of the foot or so we had on the ground last week melted over the warm weekend so all there is right now is a layer of ice with some snow scattered here and there in patches.

Nominations are still being accepted through January 9 for the 2007 Recommended Anthropomorphics List and I encourage you to add stories, books, cartoons, comics, or films to that list. This is a preliminary list of possible candidates for the Ursa Major Awards, though a work is not required to be on this list in order to receive a nomination. It's also always interesting to look at the list to see what may be out that you have missed and want to read or see. Anyone can add titles to the list. Full details are given at the link above.

Comments

[schnee.livejournal.com]

This is a preliminary list of possible candidates for the Ursa Major Awards

So... it's a list of candidates for candidates for candidates? c.c

[altivo.livejournal.com]

In a vague sense, yes. It's really just a list to allow people to let each other know about new things that might be worth reading. ;p

[saythename.livejournal.com]

Glad you kept your feathers numbered and the system worked.

"When they predict heavy snow, we often get very little."

I've noticed this hear also, the meteorlogical mis-steps
of the weathermen. I dunno, but they seem to be losing
accuracy as the years go on, or I'm just applying my
cynicism to that field of science as well.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

The US weather service has several very serious problems right now.

First: The Bush administration has deliberately tried to kill the NOAA completely. Twice they proposed a zero budget for it and Congress put the money back. Then they wanted to turn it over to the Pentagon and make the military run it and budget for it. Of course the Pentagon said no, but funding has been cut pretty severely. NOAA and the Bureau of Standards are both really scraping for money and cutting everything they can.

Second: As a consequence of the budget issues, they've done all the early retirements and made the more experienced meteorologists and other scientists jump ship and look for work elsewhere. What's left is a bunch of teenagers and twenty-somethings right out of school who haven't the foggiest notion of what they're doing. It is obvious here in the midwest that they are running computer models like mad but not looking out the window or stepping outside. To the point that they will say "It's raining in Rockford" when there isn't even a cloud. The computer models aren't good enough for that. Maybe 15 years ago they were still using human brains to make up the forecasts based on maps and radar and satellite photos. Now they depend on the computers because the only staff they have left probably can't even read the radar screen. Oftentimes I can tell better by looking at the radars on the NOAA web pages than the written forecast seems to do.

[saythename.livejournal.com]

Unfortunetly your right it seems. Ironically
those old Boy Scout manuals about predicting
the weather (I wasn't a scout, I just read
everything) seem to be more helpful than the
Weather Channel now. I really can't see the
Pentagon being gaga about taking over meteorolgy
except for its own specific requirements (which,
needless to say, are not for Mr. Smith's driving
requirements).

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I think the Bushies' take on it is that the commercial weather services used by some of the media are profit making corporations and therefore the US government should not compete with them. The justification for killing the NOAA was that its place could be taken by weather.com. Of course, that's utterly untrue, because NOAA is a scientific and research body while weather.com is just a media-money-maker and probably relies on NOAA data itself. Science is just something that this administration can't grasp at all.

Further aggravator was the fact that NOAA collects data that is being used to verify theories about global climate change, which is of course anathema to the Bushites. Hear-no-evil, See-no-evil, and Speak-no-evil refuse to even consider the data, much less pay for collecting it.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

Well Bush seems to get rid of things he doesn't understand.
As to the Weather service, what with climate change its getting harder and harder to predict, I find my home instruments give a far better indication most of the time as to the weather.

By the way all that rain you sent to us awhile back has arrived :D We had one of the coolest Christmases on record, and the coolest December periods :)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

You can have some of our current cold too. This is much too cold for me.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

We'll have a bit of it :) Not too cold ;)