Thursday, October 31, 2019
Sprites
On Oct. 15th, pilot Chris Holmes had no place to go when lightning started to crackle in thunderstorms around his aircraft.
“I was flying 35,000 feet over the Gulf of Mexico near the Yucatan Peninsula when a super cell started pulsing with light,” he says. “It wasn’t just ordinary lightning, though. The cell was also creating lots of sprites and jets leaping up from the thunderhead.”
Your real question of the day: Is California Becoming Premodern?
More than 2 million Californians were recently left without power after the state's largest utility, Pacific Gas and Electric — which filed for bankruptcy earlier this year — preemptively shut down transmission lines in fear that they might spark fires during periods of high autumn winds.
Some co-workers haven't had power since last Saturday ( I fortunately have reliable power). What that will eventually do to property values can't be good, if this foolishness goes on much longer.
Consumers blame the state for not cleaning up dead trees and brush, along with the utility companies for not updating their ossified equipment. The power companies in turn fault the state for so over-regulating utilities that they had no resources to modernize their grids.
Californians know that having tens of thousands of homeless in their major cities is untenable. In some places, municipal sidewalks have become open sewers of garbage, used needles, rodents and infectious diseases. Yet no one dares question progressive orthodoxy by enforcing drug and vagrancy laws, moving the homeless out of cities to suburban or rural facilities, or increasing the number of mental hospitals.
Taxpayers in California, whose basket of sales, gasoline and income taxes is the highest in the nation, quietly seethe while immobile on antiquated freeways that are crowded, dangerous and under nonstop makeshift repair.
Gas prices of $4 to $5 a gallon — the result of high taxes, hyper-regulation and green mandates — add insult to the injury of stalled commuters. Gas tax increases ostensibly intended to fund freeway expansion and repair continue to be diverted to the state's failing high-speed rail project.
Residents shrug that the state's public schools are among weakest in the nation, often ranking in the bottom quadrant in standardized test scores. Elites publicly oppose charter schools but often put their own kids in private academies.
Yep, spent a fortune putting my three kids through Catholic school. Had to.
The real problem is the electorate that continues to send the incompetent political class to Sacramento, in spite of years of failure. Free stuff/Gimme dat! Unless that attitude changes, the descent of the Golden State into dross and slag will just accelerate.
Wednesday, October 30, 2019
Nutty news from Silicon Valley
Talked to the daughter this evening who works there.
The latest perk they offer down there to get people to sign on is "paw-ternity." Time off to be with your pet. Paid time off. Cat sick? Paw-ternity. Dog hit by a car and at the vet? Paw-ternity.
Ruff.
The latest perk they offer down there to get people to sign on is "paw-ternity." Time off to be with your pet. Paid time off. Cat sick? Paw-ternity. Dog hit by a car and at the vet? Paw-ternity.
Ruff.
Bald Eagles at work
At the office yesterday, for some reason I glanced up and out the window, and there were two bald eagles out flying over the river here in Redding, being harassed by a red tailed hawk. The hawk would dive at the pair, and then, just like a scene from Marty Stouffer's Wild America, the target eagle would swing around mid flight and they'd go talon to talon.
I had no idea hawks and eagles didn't get along.
Sorta like this, but higher, without the tree:
I had no idea hawks and eagles didn't get along.
Sorta like this, but higher, without the tree:
The sun has been without sunspots for 224 days so far this year.
The Dalton Minimum 1790 to 1830 brought with it a period of lower-than-average global temperatures. The Oberlach Station in Germany, for example, experienced a 2C decline over 20 years, which devastated the country’s food production. The Year Without a Summer also occurred during the Dalton Minimum (in 1816). As did crop failures across Eurasia & the Americas, which led to food riots, famine and ultimately the deaths of millions upon millions of people.
That 40-year temperature decline (1790-1830) matches perfectly with a dip in solar activity.
And so do temperature plunges of the past — preceding the Dalton were the much deeper Maunder and Spörer Grand Solar Minimums.
Taking the Maunder Minimum 1645 to 1715 (as we have far more data for it than the Spörer), we see it’s 70-or-so year spell of global cold, crop loss, and famine again correlates neatly with a sharp decline in solar output. During this Grand Solar Minimum, the Sun was all-but devoid of sunspots for not just years, but decades at a time.
An extended cold spell could occur, lasting for years. It has in the past, and will again in the future. Prepare accordingly.
Tuesday, October 29, 2019
USS New Jersey, fires on anti-government forces during the Lebanese Civil War, in retaliation for the Beirut Barracks Bombing. January 9, 1984
That's a lot of powder burning outside the barrel.
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