Comments on: Bits and pieces, part n

By: Scott Funkhouser

Scott Funkhouser — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 18:23:49 +0000

Freeman Dyson: global warming skeptic:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/magazine/29Dyson-t.html?_r=1

By: Scott Funkhouser

Scott Funkhouser — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 18:18:22 +0000

Still waiting for the bad astronomer to address Steven
Chu’s unscientific fear mongering:

http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/can-someone-point-to-the-science-4930

By: Grump

Grump — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 11:47:20 +0000

@BeinSilly
[i] and [em] are effectively synonymous. But technically, [em] is semantic – “I mean to emphasise this part”, whereas [i] is stylistic – “Write this in an italic font”. In theory, a browser or style-sheet would be free to display [em] in flashing neon pink. That would certainly be emphatic! In practice, they could do the same to [i], so it really doesn’t matter.

[strong] and [bold] have the same relationship.

@ Everyone objecting to “Canadia”
It’s a joke, for The Flying Spaghetti Monster’s sake! Just like Phil writing “misunderestimate” or “embiggen”. Sheesh.

Do I gotta explain everything to youse folks?

@Boris Behncke

By the way, I have a good friend who is also called Jon and he’s a volcanologist and for all the more than 20 years that we’ve been friends he’s been anything but leftist.

Anything that ever disagrees with a right-wing ideologue is part of the left-wing conspiracy. Because an ideologue of any stripe believes everybody else to be ideologues themselves. And ideologues don’t think for themselves (they let their ideology do that for them) so they just blindly support “their side” and blindly bash “the other side”.

A lot of the antipathy toward Obama is not because the haters are racist, or believe the guff about him being a “Manchurian Muslim” and a closet Communist.

He’s “from the other side”, and that’s enough reason for many to hate him, and for them to feel certain, at a molecular level, that he will destroy the country.

Don’t be a rightist, leftist, Democrat or Republican. Be a human being who thinks for himself, and who may or may not agree with some or all of the standpoints of one or other ideology, while reserving the right to change his mind should circumstances warrant it.

Be a flip-flopper, and be proud of it.

What anything I’ve written has to do with vulcanology, I have no idea.

By: ccpetersen

ccpetersen — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 00:19:13 +0000

I posted about Jindal’s gas-cloud the other day when Redoubt began erupting and for my pains, I had more gas clouds show up in my comments. Not ONE of them was fit to publish.

By: BMurray

BMurray — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:57:01 +0000

Please take the time to spell my country’s name correctly. You’ll even save a keystroke.

By: Boris Behncke

Boris Behncke — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 16:53:14 +0000

What should be emphasized, also to make our friend Jon chill down a bit, is that without instrumental monitoring, NOBODY would have known that Redoubt had erupted until many hours later – that is, when the ash began to fall in populated areas. This was due to bad weather, which prevented visibility of the volcano, plus the first explosions all occurred during the night. Had there been aircraft in the area above the volcano they would have risked to fly into the ash cloud – and if you know the story of the 1989-1990 eruptions of Redoubt, you know what can come out of such an encounter. Redoubt and most other north American volcanoes may not be much of an immediate threat to densely populated areas (except for Rainier, whose potential eruption-induced mudflows could directly impact Seattle and surrounding urban areas), but they are a serious threat for air traffic. So it really does not interest me whether the funding Jindal was talking about was for a stimulus bill or for “normal” research and monitoring, any money in that sector is welcome and surely could also help to create a couple of new jobs.
By the way, I have a good friend who is also called Jon and he’s a volcanologist and for all the more than 20 years that we’ve been friends he’s been anything but leftist. Yet his comments regarding Jindal were quite acid. Ask someone like him to learn how sufficient volcano monitoring is in the United States. From what I’ve heard it’s in a tremendously difficult situation.
So would you who don’t do the job of a volcanologist (I do, by the way, but over in Italy) please shut up if you don’t really know what you’re talking about and be glad that there’s a bunch of people who, in extremely precarious conditions, do that job, in order to save human lives and economic resources.

By: Michael L

Michael L — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 13:41:00 +0000

Obviously the Volcano God’s in Alaska are not happy with the Bristol/Levi break-up. Mr. Jindal should board the next flight to Alaska and perform an exorcism on the offending Volcano