God hates Hawai’i

Hawaii Earthquake

See that map? There are 40 earthquakes on that map, including the 5.3-Scale monster that just hit the south-east of the Big Island about an hour ago. And that only goes back two weeks.

See this?

Hurricane Flossie

That’s Hurricane Flossie, due to hit the location in the above map in about twenty-four hours, with a 15-to-20-foot increase in wave height, winds up to 60mph, and 10 inches of rain.

At 5 a.m. EDT, Flossie had maximum sustained winds near 135 mph about. The storm was traveling west at about 14 mph.

Flossie may weaken as it moves over cooler ocean waters and travels south of Hawaii, according to the forecast. But it could also keep its strength and veer toward the islands.

It used to be that God hated trailer parks, and who can blame him? I felt about mine the way that kids in Springsteen songs feel about their small towns. But why, God? WHY MUST YOU HATE HAWAII???

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max adams: the Pinkertons dossier

max adamsAs promised, here is max‘s biography. Consider biographization to be a meme if you enjoy such things.

Warning: your mileage may vary. We assume no liability. No warranty implied. Before beginning this or any exercise plan, consult your physician. Not intended as a replacement for the advice of a competent professional.

Which, if I’d had access to, would probably have resulted in something a lot less interesting.

max adams: the Pinkertons dossier

Editor’s note: In relating the circumstances which have led to my confinement within this refuge for the demented, I am aware that my present position will create a natural doubt of the authenticity of my narrative. It is an unfortunate fact that the bulk of humanity is too limited in its mental vision to weigh with patience and intelligence those isolated phenomena, seen and felt only by a psychologically sensitive few, which lie outside its common experience. Men of broader intellect know that there is no sharp distinction betwixt the real and the unreal; that all things appear as they do only be virtue of the delicate individual physical and mental media through which we are made conscious of them; but the prosaic materialism of the majority condemns as madness the flashes of supersight which penetrate the common veil of obvious empiricism.

max adams is such a phenomenon.

In creating this dossier we have been in constant contact with our offices in St. Petersburg, Istanbul, Silverlake, Ponape, Zurich, Area 51, Abu Simbel, Great Zimbabwe, and of course, Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo-Jump. Although facts are few, and expensively won, we have been able to assemble the following biographical sketch.

max adams is the laboratory-created daughter of the frozen sperm of Errol Flynn and pioneering biologist Nicolette Tesla (granddaughter of the famous physicist) who, deprived by the relentless progress of Glasnost of a ready supply of involuntary subjects, was forced to experiment upon herself.

Succeeding beyond her wildest dreams, she gave birth to max, whom she named Erriol in an epidural trance, during which she recited the entirety of The Tempest, with different voices and everything, pausing only to berate the attending doula for her hopelessly provincial dress sense.

max was raised in Tesla‘s mountain fortress to the age of four, when she was taken away by agents of the state to undertake the gruelling process of being schooled for the Olympic ice dancing team.

During a particularly contentious international competition in Bakersfield, California, max defected to the West and since that time has denied all knowledge of the former European Ice Dancing Championship team of Erriol Tesla and Sergey Brin.

She currently lives a quiet life as a night custodian and DJ at Slim Jim’s Crematorium and Rib House hidden deep in the bowels of the the new CAA headquarters, while maintaining a small scientific consulting practice with an exclusive clientele including MIT’s jet propulsion laboratory, Chicago’s Slam Poetry Championship, and Burger King.

~end~

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yet ANOTHER reason to drink gin

St Mary MartiniAll the Polonium-210 in milk and groundwater.

A study released Friday by the US Geological Survey found the radioactive isotope in 24 private wells and one public well around Fallon, about 60 miles east of Reno. Polonium-210 is known to cause cancer in humans.

All dairies around Fallon sell their milk to the Dairy Farmers of America cooperative, which in turn markets the milk to a dairy in Reno and plants in northern California.

Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian security agent, was killed in London last year with a dose of polonium-210

The second in a series.

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Giant Squid: your Saturday science vid!

I am sure that I speak for many when I say I miss those endless Saturday afternoon nature shows that came on between the sports. Take thirteen minutes and climb with me back into the cosy, cowboy-printed sleepingbag of your childhood as we watch The Search for the Giant Squid!

from the YouTube notes:

For centuries, sailors have told tales of sea monsters with massive tentacles. But it was only recently that a giant squid was actually filmed. One man has spent his life tracking the elusive creatures.

When his large, powerful yacht slowed to a virtual stop, Olivier de Kersauson knew he had a problem. “I saw two arms, twice the size of my arm, grabbing the rudder.” A giant squid had got caught in the propeller. “It had a lot of power and started to shake the boat.” It was a sight Dr Steve O’Shea would love to have witnessed. For over 30 years he’s been chasing the rare creatures. But recently, he’s become aware of a disturbing trend. “Squids are incredibly good barometers of environmental health”, he explains. “If I go back 10 years, I had 23 giant squids in one year. Now, because of the intensity of fishing, it’s tailed down to one a year.”

And here is the requisite wistful portrait demonstrating the futility and the beauty of human hopes and dreams, from the New Yorker.

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Star Trek and the Red Jersey of Death: the math

lolredshirts

At last a twisted genius has applied some higher math skillz to the age-old question of just how deadly is the red Starfleet uniform?

Answer: pretty damn deadly.

Probability of a red-shirt casualty= 53%
14% of fights ended in a fatality (with a 72% chance the fatality wore a red shirt)
Probability of a red-shirt “incident” when Kirk has a “conquest” = 12%

Which leads to some truly fascinating conclusions:

As the data shows, Captain Kirk “making contact” with alien women has an impact on the crew’s survival. The red-shirt death rate is higher when a fight breaks out than when Kirk meets a woman and a fight breaks out. Yet the analysis shows that meeting Kirk meeting women only happens in 30% of the missions.

Conclusion:
We can reliably improve the survivability of the red-shirted crewmen by only exploring peaceful, female-only planets (android and alien females included).

I particularly love the Powerpoint presentation. Surely, surely, those wizened old Admirals would enjoy the slides as well, for getting in those needed snoozes. Yes, the whole intricate and elegant article on the morbid red shirt is really a stalking horse, to distract you from the fact that, like it or not, you’re reading a comparative analysis of bar graphs vs Powerpoint vs pie charts. It’s as if the anonymous Fellini of the flipchart from Ross Perot‘s campaign finally busted a nerdish nut and this is the offspring.

May he live long and, yes, prosper.

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