A blog about societal, cultural, and civilizational collapse, and how to stave it off or survive it. Named after the legendary character "Crazy Eddie" in Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's "The Mote in God's Eye." Expect news and views about culture, politics, economics, technology, and science fiction.
While all of the families with children in the Jenison High School marching band have been busy fundraising for the last year and a half and preparing for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, that effort has been multiplied by three for the Milnamows.
My two sisters and I all marched in band my senior year of high school, so I can relate to that part of their experience, but we were one year apart, so I don't have an insight into being one of triplets unless being one of a set of "Irish triplets" counts. Yeah, I know that's considered offensive, but I have Irish ancestry, so I can say this about myself and my family. That written, good luck to the Milnamows and all the rest of the Jenison High School Marching Band in tomorrow's parade. Michigan represent!
Follow over the jump for more local news coverage, including from two university publicity departments, of the marching bands in tomorrow's parade.
Happy ThrowbackThursday! As I have every Thursday since the blog's 9th birthday, I'm observing the day by posting a retrospective on the top entries on a topic during the previous posting year. Today's topic is climatechange. I'll review the most popular posts on the subject over the jump.
As coronavirus quickly spreads around the world, the virus is forcing people to stay put. People aren’t driving or flying, leading to a massive reduction in air pollution, most notably in China, but also in Italy, the U.S. and other hard-hit areas that have implemented directives to stay home.
So staying safe at home is not only saving lives from COVID-19, but so is the reduction in air pollution from reduced travel. That's quite the silver lining to a response that's also produced record unemployment claims in the U.S. Unfortunately, it's hampering the fight against climate change. Sigh, a short-term gain leading to a long-term loss.
One of the experts interviewed in the CNBC segment is Katharine Hayhoe, who I've featured here before. She has two videos on the interaction among coronavirus, air pollution, and climate change on her Climate Weirding YouTube channel in which she expands on the points she made in the CNBC video. I begin with Climate Change and Coronavirus | Special Episode.
What does climate change have to do with the coronavirus?
Climate change is not increasing the geographic range of COVID-19. And the novel virus did not come from the permafrost or the soil, like other infectious diseases that climate change is spreading.
So where did it come from? How is it spreading? And what's the connection to climate change?
Find out on this special episode of Global Weirding with Katharine Hayhoe!
One of the most read entries from the previous posting year was about climate change leading to more diseases, so this video provides a good connection and reminder of the risk.
This pandemic is responsible for untold suffering around the world. If anything, it's simply reminding us how interconnected we all are, and how we can ignore a crisis until it's brought to our attention.
Let's take a step back and say 'what is going on?', in relation to COVID-19's effects on climate change on this special episode of Global Weirding with Katharine Hayhoe.
Everything Is Connected to Everything Else. There is one ecosphere for all living organisms and what affects one, affects all.
Everything Must Go Somewhere. There is no "waste" in nature and there is no "away" to which things can be thrown.
Nature Knows Best. Humankind has fashioned technology to improve upon nature, but such change in a natural system is, says Commoner, "likely to be detrimental to that system."
There Is No Such Thing as a Free Lunch. Exploitation of nature will inevitably involve the conversion of resources from useful to useless forms.
This crisis serves as a good example of the first law.
Follow over the jump for the top posts about climate change from the ninth year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News.
LOL, Rick Santorum. I thought I was done with him. Nope, Frothy is still not taking climate change seriously. Furthermore, I find his line about the scientists being in it for the money really insulting and ignorant, as well as a step backwards for him.
I then dismissed him as a sideshow. That written, I stumbled across CNN interviewing Katharine Hayhoe, the lead author of the National Climate Assessment that Santorum and Trump both dismissed, who responded to both of them better than I could manage. Watch and listen to her in Scientist laughs at climate change skeptics.
Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist who assisted government agencies in publishing a report predicting devastating damages from climate change, said she in no way benefited financially from helping to write it.
As an academic and scientist, I can tell my readers that she's absolutely right. Her salary from Texas Tech would be the same if she were studying climate change or astrophysics. Also, she may be comfortable and secure in being tenured, but she's not going to be rich from her science. The idea is indeed laughable. "Rolling in dough? More like rolling on the floor laughing."
By the way, I have mentioned Hayhoe in this blog before. She's the narrator of a video from Texas Tech about the likely spread of dengue fever this century because of climate change that I embedded in Heat wave and climate change news for the week of Bastille Day. Hey, Dr. Hayhoe, it's good to see you again!
Mindy Brashears appeared on “Lou Dobbs Tonight” to discuss current food supply issues.
Americans typically spend a relatively small amount of their disposable income on food, but that trend likely will change this summer, a Texas Tech University food expert told FOX Business on Tuesday night.
Appearing on “Lou Dobbs Tonight,” Mindy Brashears, professor of food microbiology and food safety, and director of the International Center for Food Industry Excellence, said that Americans should expect food prices to rise because of the current drought and other issues.
In the last year, the U.S. pork supply has decreased by about 10 percent due to the Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus (PEDv). Meanwhile, the drought in California continues to drive up prices on beef, vegetables and fruit. Over the weekend, nearly 2 million pounds of ground beef were recalled by a Michigan packing plant.
The video doesn't seem to embed, but it can be watched here.
The third U.S. National Climate Assessment was released which took observations from NASA's fleet of satellites to help understand climate change in the United States. Also, NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 spacecraft arrived at California's Vandenberg Air Force Base to begin final preparations for a scheduled July 1 launch. In Florida, the remaining flight hardware for the Delta IV rocket that will launch NASA's Orion spacecraft on Exploration Flight Test-1 in December arrived at Port Canaveral. At the Stennis Space Center, a cold-shock test for the RS-25 engine that will help power NASA's new Space Launch System rocket was completed. The Chandra X-ray Observatory found new stars, simulated space dust was created on earth, a new ISS crew trains in Russia, Shannon Lucid and Jerry Ross are inducted into the Astronaut Hall of Fame and NASA recognizes the small business community for helping the agency work toward achieving its goals!
I'll have the rest of the space news later. Right now, follow over the jump for what three campuses on the campaign trail, Indiana University, Texas Tech, and Texas A&M, have to say about our current climate.
While I was featuring Neil DeGrasse Tyson on Late Night for Apophis Day to mark the showings of "Cosmos" last week, another media event even more appropriate for my Sunday night collapse-and-decline-related entertainment entries was taking place, the premiere of "Years of Living Dangerously." Here's the second trailer for the series.
Don't miss the documentary series premiere of Years of Living Dangerously, Sunday, April 13th at 10PM ET/PT. ... It's the biggest story of our time. Hollywood's brightest stars and today's most respected journalists explore the issues of climate change and bring you intimate accounts of triumph and tragedy. YEARS OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY takes you directly to the heart of the matter in this awe-inspiring and cinematic documentary series event from Executive Producers James Cameron, Jerry Weintraub and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The entire first episode is available for free on YouTube. Watch it there.
Katharine Hayhoe will discuss findings in premier of "Years of Living Dangerously."
A Texas Tech university climate scientist will appear with Academy Award nominee Don Cheadle in a new nine-episode Showtime documentary series covering climate change and its effect on people around the globe.
Katharine Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University, will discuss her climate findings with Cheadle, who serves as a U.N. Ambassador for the United Nations Environment Programme, during the premier episode at 9 p.m. (CDT) April 13 on the Showtime cable network.
“I hope this program will show us how climate change isn’t just some far-off issue that only matters to our children’s children, the polar bears in the Arctic or to islanders in the South Seas,” Hayhoe said. “Climate change is already affecting our lives today right here in the places where we live. It’s changing the birds, bugs and plants we see in our backyards. It’s affecting where we grow our food and how much water we have, altering the shape of our coastlines and increasing the risks of many types of extreme weather.”
I've been thinking about replacing "An Inconvenient Truth" with another film. My first choice is "Chasing Ice." I might use one of the episodes of this show instead.
Astronomers are hoping that the existence of a subsurface ocean on Saturn's icy moon Enceladus will build momentum for life-hunting missions to the outer solar system.
Researchers announced their discovery of the deep watery ocean on Enceladus on Thursday (April 3) in the journal Science, confirming suspicions held by many scientists since 2005, when NASA's Cassini spacecraft spied geysers of ice and water vapor erupting from Enceladus' south pole.
The discovery vaults Enceladus into the top tier of life-hosting candidates along with Europa, an ice-sheathed moon of Jupiter that also hosts a subterranean ocean. Both frigid satellites bear much closer investigation, researchers say.
Thanks to NASA's Cassini spacecraft and the Deep Space Network, we have evidence that a large underground ocean of water exists on Saturn's moon Enceladus -- a theory formulated in 2005. Radio frequency and gravity measurements of Cassini flying by the moon indicate a large ocean about 6 miles deep, below an ice shell about 19 to 25 miles thick. This finding validates the inclusion of Enceladus to the list of possible places in our solar system to contain microbial life. Also, LADEE update, Women in Aerospace, Lightfoot visits Langley, Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board meetings, International students observing climate and New partner at Kennedy!
Before I head over the jump to the rest of the past week's space news, Science at NASA presents the other featured story in ScienceCast: The Opposition of Mars
Earth and Mars are converging for a close encounter in April, an event astronomers call "the opposition of Mars."
This happens tonight, which is why I'm posting this today instead of waiting for later in the week.
Follow over the jump for the rest of the week's space and astronomy news.
Pi Day is the annual celebration of the mathematical constant pi! It happens every year on March 14, since the numbers match the first three digits of pi. Is there anything better than pi? Tara joins Trace to discuss whether or not tau is better than pi.
Math lovers celebrate today (3/14) as Pi Day, in honor of the irrational number pi.
Pi, or ?, is defined as the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Pi is an irrational number, meaning it cannot be written as a simple fraction. Instead, it can be expressed as an infinite, nonrepeating decimal (3.14159…) or approximated as the fraction 22/7.
Here are some nerdy facts about the irrational number, to impress your friends as you celebrate Pi Day (which is also Albert Einstein's birthday).
Pi or pie? With today (March 14) being celebrated around the nation as Pi Day, these homophones can be confusing, especially when baking pies is a popular way to celebrate the famous mathematical constant.
A Texas Tech University alumnus decided to combine these words and create something for everyone to enjoy on Pi Day: a Pi Pie Pan, a pan in the shape of the pi symbol designed for baking pies.
“It’s a fun way for people to show off being a little geeky while enjoying to cook,” said Garrett Heath, creator of the pan. “There’s no better way to make a pie on Pi Day than to have a pi-shaped pan.”
I can't have just one slice of pie--or Pi Day, for that matter.
