Welcome, Wonkeratti! It's time once again for another strange and disturbing Wonkette Sci-Blog. Take off your eyeshades, pull out your earplugs and throw away the cork. The happy man with the glass laboratory apparatus in the photo is Charles David Keeling, Professor of Oceanography at the
In 1972, I was living in Cupertino, CA, in an old apartment building that has subsequently been converted to part of the Apple borg. You could <i>never</i> see the eastern foothills of Santa Clara Valley (aka Silicon Valley), which were twenty miles away. On a bad summer day, you could not see the southern foothills, which were maybe six miles away.
I got out of the Air Force, and moved to Marin County, where you could see forever. In 1977, I moved back to Santa Clara County. There were still quite a few bad days when the smog was noticeable, but you could always see all the hills from anywhere in the valley.
I will never cease to hate Tricky, but the fucking Clean Air Act was magic. Slow-acting magic, but magic. Since this experience, I am happy to consign the &quot;all regulation is bad&quot; crowd to the pit of Hell.
Tilapia: it&#039;s a fish. Protein, a little fat. Like most whitefish, it depends on the preparation. Like Berk says, they can be farmed without fucking up the ecosystem.
Completely OT: !!!!!!111!!!11!!!1, what has provoked you to change your screen name? Is it the mumbletypalooza of pseudo-scandals that currently afflicts us? This would be very understandable.
In any case, I&#039;ma have to follow you now.
The Yellowstone supervolcano thing is is a wonderful example of the inability of the human mind to grasp the scale of geological or astrophysical events.
In my admittedly amateur understanding, Yellowstone blows up about every 600,000 years, and it&#039;s been about 600,000 years since the last time. But there has to be some uncertainty about both the repetition frequency and the time since the last blow-off. I wouldn&#039;t be surprised if the uncertainty was 10%. (That&#039;s not bad for geology).
But suppose it&#039;s +/- 1% (which would be really good for deep geology). Loosely, this would lead us to expect that Yellowstone will blow up somewhere between 4000 BC and 8000 AD. The actual dates could even be way off from that, because 600,000 years is an approximation in both cases. But the plus or minus 6,000 years remains.
6,000 years is pretty nearly the entirety of recorded human history.
Huh? Fooled me. I thought the science story of the week was the &quot;10 Strangest Foreign Objects Found in People&#039;s Rectums&quot; aritcle.
You know, I thought that plate of fried clams that I had the other night tasted extra spicy. They weren&#039;t to my taste, so I gave the rest of the plate to my hound dog. The gas that he has been passing ever since has been particularly, ahhhh, deadly.
been gassy gate!!!!!
Thank dog for Brian Eno. I&#039;ve never heard that.
Edit: Is that Fripp?
There were parts of BC that were very good.
In 1972, I was living in Cupertino, CA, in an old apartment building that has subsequently been converted to part of the Apple borg. You could <i>never</i> see the eastern foothills of Santa Clara Valley (aka Silicon Valley), which were twenty miles away. On a bad summer day, you could not see the southern foothills, which were maybe six miles away.
I got out of the Air Force, and moved to Marin County, where you could see forever. In 1977, I moved back to Santa Clara County. There were still quite a few bad days when the smog was noticeable, but you could always see all the hills from anywhere in the valley.
I will never cease to hate Tricky, but the fucking Clean Air Act was magic. Slow-acting magic, but magic. Since this experience, I am happy to consign the &quot;all regulation is bad&quot; crowd to the pit of Hell.
Nah. Nikes were conventional warheads.
Had they not yet invented drawn butter? &#039;Cause really, you could serve toasted cardboard and drawn butter. (cf., escargots).
Tilapia: it&#039;s a fish. Protein, a little fat. Like most whitefish, it depends on the preparation. Like Berk says, they can be farmed without fucking up the ecosystem.
You lie.
Completely OT: !!!!!!111!!!11!!!1, what has provoked you to change your screen name? Is it the mumbletypalooza of pseudo-scandals that currently afflicts us? This would be very understandable.
In any case, I&#039;ma have to follow you now.
The Yellowstone supervolcano thing is is a wonderful example of the inability of the human mind to grasp the scale of geological or astrophysical events.
In my admittedly amateur understanding, Yellowstone blows up about every 600,000 years, and it&#039;s been about 600,000 years since the last time. But there has to be some uncertainty about both the repetition frequency and the time since the last blow-off. I wouldn&#039;t be surprised if the uncertainty was 10%. (That&#039;s not bad for geology).
But suppose it&#039;s +/- 1% (which would be really good for deep geology). Loosely, this would lead us to expect that Yellowstone will blow up somewhere between 4000 BC and 8000 AD. The actual dates could even be way off from that, because 600,000 years is an approximation in both cases. But the plus or minus 6,000 years remains.
6,000 years is pretty nearly the entirety of recorded human history.
Scale. Do you speak it?
Wait. Didn&#039;t it taste like chicken? So quarter insects, quarter seafood, half poultry, amirite?
Huh? Fooled me. I thought the science story of the week was the &quot;10 Strangest Foreign Objects Found in People&#039;s Rectums&quot; aritcle.
Does that insect-eating recommendation extend to subphylum Crustacea? (Lobsters, crabs, shrimp et.al.) Because I can totally get behind that.
You know, I thought that plate of fried clams that I had the other night tasted extra spicy. They weren&#039;t to my taste, so I gave the rest of the plate to my hound dog. The gas that he has been passing ever since has been particularly, ahhhh, deadly.
See, something of worth *occasionally* emerges from Scranton PA. (My hometown.)
I thought the only story was BENGHAZI, BENGHAZI, BENGHAZI. Ever. In book reviews and music and styles too.