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August 25, 2005

The Year of Horrible Weather

I don't know how it's been in your area of the country, but here in New York, this has been one of the worst years for weather I can remember.

We barely had a spring. Oh, we did have two glorious weeks, yes.

The winter was bitter and cold and often slashing with freezing rain.

The summer has been unbearably hot and humid.

I suppose the autumn was nice. But fall is always nice.

I just mention this because the last two days have been nothing short of fantastic.

I'm sure I'm missing a bunch of days, but honestly, I don't think I've seen more than three weeks of really pleasant weather this past year.

posted by Ace at 04:59 PM

Comments

Aaaah, cry me a river, ya baby!

I crave the hot weather because I know in about three or four months I'll be bundled into two layers of thermal underwear, my work clothes, a heavy coat, gloves, a hat, a scarf...and I'll still be cold. Shit on that, brother -- gimme the heat.

Posted by: Monty on August 25, 2005 05:08 PM

Monty,

You think you have it bad? About the time you're bundled up in all those layers, I may actually have to wear a jacket.

Posted by: John from WuzzaDem on August 25, 2005 05:22 PM

I'm with you Ace, and to really make things unpleasant my AC broke in early June and I didnt have the money to fix it until about a week ago. You dont know uncomfortable until it's 99 degrees 90-95% humidity, your surrounded by fans but the air they blow on you feels like a hair dryer and you know it aint getting any better any time soon. On the good side I did see about 10 movies this summer (a couple of which were even good).

Posted by: Big E on August 25, 2005 05:26 PM

Florida checking in: We are having, and have had, a bit of a problem with hurricanes.
Hang in there in New York!

Posted by: Donnah on August 25, 2005 05:30 PM

I was up there last summer teaching at West Point and it was f'ing BEAUTIFUL. Sorry about your luck, but Kentucky's been hurting this year.

Posted by: SGT Dan on August 25, 2005 05:38 PM

I blame George W. Bush.

GLOBAL WARMING WILL KILL US ALL!!!

(Except for the caribou-- they like when it's warm).

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

Posted by: Dave at Garfield Ridge on August 25, 2005 05:47 PM

Boo, hoo, hoo - stop whining.

I'm having a hurricane right now as I type this. Just got donw putting up the plywood.

Posted by: Tony on August 25, 2005 06:02 PM

I was promised year-round 65-degree partly-cloudy (but not rainy, maybe a nice mist in the morning) weather, otherwise low-humidity. I swear it is in my contract. You know, the one we all get when we are born? Anyway, the evil Karlrove must have found a way to circumvent my contract. Damn their oily Halliburton eyes.

(Yes, 65 degree cloudy weather is my idea of a nice day. I live in Florida, where we have two settings: broiling and humid and sunny, broiling and humid and hurricane.)

Posted by: Andrea Harris on August 25, 2005 06:25 PM

The weather has been strange in Michigan,too. Usually we get about 10 days of 90 or over, and it is always about 68 at night. This year we have had 3 straight months of 90 during the day, and 85 at night. For us it has been brutal. We also had one day of spring and a horendously cold winter. And now it is beginning to look like we will have a really short fall,too. oh well.

Posted by: j. on August 25, 2005 06:46 PM

It was 103 today with the heat index at 109. I hate August. I guess I'll go see The Cave at the movies tomorrow and revel in the air conditioned monster goodness. Sorry about the whole hurricane thing, Floridians.

Posted by: on August 25, 2005 08:01 PM

It's been absolutely beautiful up here in Maine. We've had a few hot days, but for the most part the weather has been perfect.

Which is good, because in a few months I'm going to be in the same boat as Monty - freezing my behind off, scraping the ice off my car as I curse the subzero wind.

Posted by: Slublog on August 25, 2005 08:06 PM

Hate to tell you, but it's gorgeous in Ohio right now. After a really crummy summer (huge water bills to keep my new landscaping alive) me and the Warden have the windows open and are soaking it up.

Posted by: Michael on August 25, 2005 08:41 PM

Here in Colorado we've made it past our heat wave and we're back to the low 80's. Getting very pleasant now.

Posted by: Geoff on August 25, 2005 09:04 PM

98 today, 65% humidity. I just got finished cutting the grass.

But I keep the vodka in the freezer, so piffle.

Posted by: Dave in Texas on August 25, 2005 09:21 PM

Well. its horribly bad here too. I've had to turn up the heat on my swimming pool to 90 degrees and this constant sunshine is a real pain. No Earthquakes no Tornados no hurricanes. Jeez its so boring: good weather day after day. In the pool then out of the pool. In and out, in and out day after day. But I'm keeping my spirits up with good cigars and a snifter of brandy. Thanks for your concern.

Posted by: john on August 25, 2005 10:03 PM

I'm going to John's house.

Later,
bbeck

Posted by: bbeck on August 25, 2005 10:23 PM

me too

Posted by: Dave in Texas on August 25, 2005 11:35 PM

Dave, you're from Texas and you drink vodka?!?

I thought beer was the state drink.

Posted by: Slublog on August 25, 2005 11:37 PM

Just another crappy California day here:

Mid 80's, absolutely no humidity. Cools down into the 60's at night. And it's like that 9 months out of the year. Sometimes cooler or warmer, but not much.
Winters are unbearable, getting down into the frigid
40's sometimes. One year we got an 1/2 inch of snow.

And that is why so damn many people live here despite the insane politics. That, and it's about 50% illegals here.

Posted by: Log Cabin on August 26, 2005 12:13 AM

Katrina is/was a vicious bitch for a "low grade" Cat1 storm that nobody thought was going to be anything.

...four confirmed kills in Broward county so far.

More than 1.3M without power

Posted by: Tony on August 26, 2005 03:42 AM

Bring some guacamole, Dave.

Later,
bbeck

Posted by: bbeck on August 26, 2005 04:01 AM

It has been brutal here in NY. My lawn looks like Mosul because the only rain we've had in a month was 3 inches in one hour a couple of weeks ago. Something had to be done to rescue my lawn as well as remedy the water restrictions.

So I planned a camping trip with the kids next week. Guess what the forecast is.

Posted by: spongeworthy on August 26, 2005 09:25 AM

It is absolutely beautiful out today. It's about 70 degrees at the moment, with a clear sky. Might get up to 85 with light humidity.

Looks like the weekend's going to be more of the same.

Posted by: Slublog on August 26, 2005 09:33 AM

Not just any vodka.

Tito's

The only vodka (or liquor) distilled in Texas.

This stuff is fabulous.

Posted by: Dave in Texas on August 26, 2005 10:17 AM

bbeck, will do.

keep an eye on Michael though. he double dips.

Posted by: Dave in Texas on August 26, 2005 10:17 AM

I do NOT double dip (when anyone is looking).

Posted by: Michael on August 26, 2005 11:06 AM

Try living in 115 degree + heat..
give me snow and bundled up anytime.

Posted by: lea on August 29, 2005 06:11 AM

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In a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, a team of scientists announced the detection of dimethyl sulfide (along with a similar detection of dimethyl disulfide) in the atmosphere of an exoplanet called K2-18b. This is actually the second detection of dimethyl sulfide made on this planet, following a tentative detection in 2023.
Tons of chemicals are detected in the atmospheres of celestial objects every day. But dimethyl sulfide is different, because on Earth, it's only produced by living organisms.
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He means they tried to prove the signal was caused by things other than dimethyl sulfide but they could not.

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Good rickroll

What? Skeleton of the most famous Musketeer, D'Artagnan, possibly discovered in Dutch church closet.
Dumas picked four names of real musketeers out of a history book, D'Artagnan, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos. So there was an actual D'Artagnan, though he made most of the story up. (Or, you know, all of it.)*

Charles de Batz de Castelmore, known as d'Artagnan, the famous musketeer of Kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV, spent his life in the service of the French crown.
The Gascon nobleman inspired Alexandre Dumas's hero in "The Three Musketeers" in the 19th century, a character now known worldwide thanks to the novel and numerous film adaptations.
D'Artagnan was killed during the siege of Maastricht in 1673, and there is a statue honoring the musketeer in the city. His final resting place has remained a mystery ever since.

A lot of Dumas's stories are based on bits of real history. The plot of the >Three Musketeers, about trying to recover lost diamonds from the queen's necklace, was cribbed from the then-almost-contemporaneous Affair of the Queen's Necklace. And the Man in the Iron Mask is based on real accounts of a prisoner forced to wear a mask (though I think it was a velvet mask).
* Oh, I should mention, Dumas says all this, about finding the names in an old book, in the prologue to his novel. But authors lie a lot. They frequently present fictions as based on historic fact. The twist is, he was actually telling the truth here. At least about these four musketeers having actually existed and served under Louis XIV.
Fun fact: You know the beginning of A Fistful of Dollars where the local gunslingers make fun of Clint Eastwood's donkey and Eastwood demands they apologize to the donkey? That's lifted from The Three Musketeers. Rochefort mocks D'Artagnan's old, brokedown farm horse and D'Artagnan is incensed.

A commenter asked which should be read first, The Hobbit of LOTR?
Easy, no question -- read The Hobbit first. It's actually the start of the story and comes first chronologically. It sets up some major characters and major pieces in play in LOTR.
Also, the Hobbit is Beginner-Friendly, which LOTR isn't. The Hobbit really is a delightful book, and a fast read. It's chatty, it's casual, it's exciting, and it's funny. In that dry cheeky British humor way. I love that the narrator is constantly making little asides and commentary, like he's just sitting next to you telling you this story as it occurs to him.
LOTR is a very long story. Fifteen hundred pages or so. The Hobbit is relatively short and very punchy and easy to read. If you don't like The Hobbit, you can skip out on LOTR. If you do like it, you'll be primed to read LOTR.
Oh, I should say: The Hobbit is written as if it's for children, but one of those smart children's stories that are also for adults. Don't worry, there's also real fighting and violence and horror in it, too.
LOTR is written for adults. (It's said that Tolkien wrote both for his children, but LOTR was written 17 years later, when his children were adults.) Some might not like The Hobbit due to its sometimes frivolous tone. Me, I love it. I find it constantly amusing. Both are really good but there is a starkly different tone to both. LOTR is epic, grand, and serious, about a world war, The Hobbit is light and breezy, and about a heist. Though a heist that culminates in a war for the spoils.

The Hobbit Challenge: Read two more chapters. I didn't have much time. Bilbo got the ring.
I noticed a continuity problem. Maybe. Now, as of the time of The Hobbit, it was unknown that this magic ring was in fact a Ring of Power, and it was doubly unknown that it was the Ring of Power, the Master Ring that controlled the others.
But the narrator -- who we will learn in LOTR was none of than Bilbo himself, who wrote the book as "There and Back Again" -- says this about Gollum's ring:
"But who knows how Gollum had come by that present [the Ring], ages ago in the old days when such rings were still at large in the world? Perhaps even the Master who ruled them could not have said."
In another passage, the ring is identified as a "ring of power."
I don't know, I always thought there was a distinction between mere magic rings and the Rings of Power created by Sauron. But this suggests that Bilbo knew this was a ring of power created by Sauron.
Now I don't remember when Bilbo wrote the Hobbit. In the movie, he shows Frodo the book in Rivendell, and I guess he wrote it after he left the Shire. I guess he might have added in the part about the ring being a ring of power created by "the Master" after Gandalf appraised him of his research into the ring.
I never noticed this before. I know Tolkien re-wrote this chapter while he was writing LOTR to make the ring important from the start. And also to make Gollum more sinister and evil, and also to remove the part where Gollum actually offers Bilbo the ring as a "present" -- Bilbo had already found it on his own, but Gollum was wiling to give it away, which obviously is not something the rewritten Gollum would ever do.
But I had no memory of the ring being suggested to be The Ring so early in the tale.

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Tomorrow is March 25th, "Tolkien Reading Day," because March 25th is the day when the Ring is destroyed in the book. I think I'm going to start the Hobbit tomorrow and read all four books this time.
The only bad part of the trilogy are the Frodo/Sam chapters in The Two Towers. They're repetitive, slow, and mostly about the weather and terrain. But most everything else is good. Weirdly, the Frodo-Sam chapters in Return of the King are exciting and action-packed and among the best in the trilogy. (Though the chapters with everyone else in Return of the King get pretty slow again. Mostly people talking about marching towards war, and then marching towards war.)

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[Hat Tip: Diogenes] [CBD]

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One day I'm gonna write a poem in a letter
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AI is doing a lot of the work in analyzing images to find the exact hiding place of the launchers. Counter-strikes are now coming in four hours after a launch, whereas previously it might have taken days for humans to go over the imagery and data.