My thoughts and prayers(and a little money) go out to the people of the Philippines who were hit by Typhoon Yolanda. The donation page at the Salvation Army for this specific disaster can be found here if you are able to help. As is usually the case when Mother Nature wreaks havoc on somewhat isolated areas, it's the slow-motion effects after the initial blow that threaten to kill the most people. Lack of clean water, shelter, medical supplies, and great difficulty getting the logistics chain up and running. It's going to be a terribly hard and heart-breaking couple of weeks there.
Like every natural disaster these days, much of the incompetent and hysterical news media gets the story wrong and the climate change vultures swoop in to use the dead as props in their propaganda campaign. You have probably read that Typhoon Yolanda is one of the most powerful and deadly storms ever. Sadly, it's not even close. For some Truth to News Mediatm, check out this post at Watts Up With That. For some additional historical perspective, check out this one there also. None of that matters to the victims of Yolanda right now, of course, but it is important for the rest of us to push back against the nitwits, charlatans, and outright liars who are trying to con people into believing that something unprecedented just happened because of climate change.
The leaves have finally come down here in the Twin Cities. They stayed on the trees as late into November as I've ever seen. I ran a ton of leaves through the leaf vac over the weekend, so I have lots of compost material in both bins for the spring and plenty of shredded leaves bagged up to mix in with the lawn clippings next year. Even though we're well below freezing today, the forecast maybe has enough of a warm up for the composting process to work for a couple of weeks before winter finally shuts it down until spring.
The GOCE satellite indeed fell to Earth Sunday night. It looks like it broke up over the Falklands. Pic at the link. Just an FYI on those satellite tracker websites that appear to be doing real time tracking. After the European Space Agency announced that GOCE had probably disintegrated those websites showed it still going strong, which was kind of confusing. It turns out that the websites get periodic updates of tracking information that they then feed into a software program that predicts the actions of the object between updates. When the tracking info stopped for GOCE the ESA declared it dead, but the software programs kept going, presenting viewers with false information. Those websites are probably pretty cool for finding or tracking stable satellites, but viewer beware when it comes to events like what just happened with GOCE.
I reserve the right to change my mind based on further information, but as of today I think this whole business about Jonathan Martin being bullied by his Miami Dolphin teammates is a steaming load of you know what. Jonathan Martin is a pansy for running away from whatever problems he had in the locker room and now a bunch of other pansies in the media and punditland have glommed onto the issue so they can get their self-righteous on and stir the pot some more. Martin should have worked it out with his fellow offensive linemen, and if not them, the O-line coach. And if not him, Martin should have gone to the player captains and/or up the coaching staff chain of command. Instead he ran away like a little girl. Check that, I didn't actually mean to insult little girls.
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