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Today's Global Warming URL
Apr. 7th, 2012 07:31 amFrom Universe Today comes this article, which predicted global warming in 1981. This was the first printed warning, 31 years ago. We have indeed been warmed…er…warned.
An alternative view of Irene
Aug. 29th, 2011 10:06 amI am glad that all my friends from whom I've heard have emerged from the hurricane relatively unscathed.
Here's an alternative view. Note that the language is pretty salty from the get-go so if you're easily offended by that kind of language you might want to go to the next post.
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Here's an alternative view. Note that the language is pretty salty from the get-go so if you're easily offended by that kind of language you might want to go to the next post.
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Bumbling Britain
Dec. 21st, 2010 06:23 pmAs many of you will be aware, Britain (and Europe generally) has been hit with a large (for us) amount of snow coupled with rather low temperatures in the last week. This has resulted in the closure and then tight flight restriction of Heathrow Airport, the cancellation of a number of Eurostar services, and a great amount of disruption on the East Coast Main Line from London to Scotland. On the roads and the sidewalks (pavements), clearing of snow and ice has only taken place on the main roads, while most pavements are still mired in ice and are skating rinks for the unwary.
For the last three years, Britain has lumbered under severe snowfalls at least once each year. This was not the case in the previous 14 years I have lived here—snow was rare and mostly consisted of flurries which did not stick, and temperatures stayed above 0° C most of the time. Every year for the last three, after the snow has fallen and the country is faced with paralysis, the scream goes up from the citizenry: "Why?"
Well, I'll tell you why. The United Kingdom does not believe that buying snowplows, antifreeze, sand, and salt in the amounts necessary to cope with the kind of winters we've had lately is economical. This is belied by the pictures on the evening news of acres of hopeful passengers camping out at Heathrow Airport waiting to get on an airplane, and the queue to get on a Eurostar train, which queue stretches out the doors of St. Pancras International Railway Station down the Euston Road, ending somewhere in front of the British Library.
Heads will, of course, roll. Probably not the Transport Secretary's; the government has no appetite for sacking yet another Cabinet minister (see below). Something may be done with the people at the airports and the railways responsible for deicing runways and running rails and overhead catenary wires. But sacking the personnel involved will not help the situation unless the country is willing to bite the bullet and plan out exactly what will take place when a snowfall occurs here.
Airports like that of Stockholm are still running; the only services curtailed are those to Heathrow and Frankfurt. Why doesn't BAA (the owners of Heathrow) tempt Stockholm-Arlanda's Director of Preparedness (or whatever they call the post) with a huge salary to come here and sort this out for us? If something like this does not happen, then next year, or the year after, when a paralysing snowfall dumps itself on the United Kingdom, I do not want to hear ANYone complaining about it. Either we decide to take our lumps and wait until the weather and the snow clears, or we plan for this occurrence and commit the money required to keep transport running through it.
In political news, we were greeted this morning with the news that the Business Secretary, Vince Cable MP (a Liberal Democrat), had been caught speaking indiscreetly to two people who he thought were constituents but who were actually reporters for the Daily Telegraph, which is the main Tory broadsheet newspaper here in the United Kingdom. Among the tidbits were:
Now the first three should not be news to anyone who follows British politics. However, the last one is one nuclear option that perhaps Mr. Cable wanted to avoid. His department is considering whether Murdoch should be able to buy the portion of BSkyB that he does not now own. For the Cabinet minister who would make the decision as to whether this purchase should go ahead to express such bold anti-Murdoch sentiments to people whom he did not know is unwise, to say the least. While many were calling for Cable's head, the news has just broken that he will continue as a Cabinet minister while losing control over the BSkyB sale to Jeremy Hunt, the Culture, Media, and Sport Secretary. For the Liberal Democrats to lose two Cabinet ministers (David Laws being the first to resign from his post as Chief Secretary to the Treasury because he fiddled his expenses to conceal the fact that his landlord was actually his same-sex partner.) would be extremely unfortunate. (Declaration of interest: I am a registered Liberal Democrat.)
An additional bumble is this: the Daily Telegraph did not break the news about Cable's attitude toward Murdoch. A leaker within the Daily Telegraph passed that information to Robert Peston, the famously hesitant-voiced economics editor of BBC News. The reason that the Telegraph chose not to publish these remarks is probably because it agrees with them and did not want to expose Cable's indiscretion on this subject to public view. Sauce, goose; sauce, gander!
The third bumble was committed on the Radio 4 breakfast news and comment show, Today. I listen every day and get my main daily diet of news from it. Last week, one of the subjects of discussion was the aforementioned Culture, Media and Sport Secretary, Jeremy Hunt. In announcing the segment, James Naughtie, one of the main presenters, said that he was going to be interviewing "Jeremy C*nt". He followed this with a long interval of coughing and sputtering. This mistake captured the smiles of millions at their breakfast tables. While that particular word is considered fairly taboo here, it is not absolutely proscribed in print or on TV or radio. Any usage of it has to be justified. In the US, of course, anyone who made that particular mistake would be banned from the airwaves and the station or channel that carried it would be fined. Naughtie apologised later on during the show, and disappeared for a few days while the country was digesting the news that he'd slipped up. Later on another BBC presenter, in reporting Naughtie's mistake, made the exact same mistake. Another apology. The nation chortled.
Thus, I live in a country where gaffes are made almost continuously. I love the frisson of danger this adds to listening to, watching, or reading the news. Others think that the country is going to the dogs. If it is, then I say, "Woof!"
For the last three years, Britain has lumbered under severe snowfalls at least once each year. This was not the case in the previous 14 years I have lived here—snow was rare and mostly consisted of flurries which did not stick, and temperatures stayed above 0° C most of the time. Every year for the last three, after the snow has fallen and the country is faced with paralysis, the scream goes up from the citizenry: "Why?"
Well, I'll tell you why. The United Kingdom does not believe that buying snowplows, antifreeze, sand, and salt in the amounts necessary to cope with the kind of winters we've had lately is economical. This is belied by the pictures on the evening news of acres of hopeful passengers camping out at Heathrow Airport waiting to get on an airplane, and the queue to get on a Eurostar train, which queue stretches out the doors of St. Pancras International Railway Station down the Euston Road, ending somewhere in front of the British Library.
Heads will, of course, roll. Probably not the Transport Secretary's; the government has no appetite for sacking yet another Cabinet minister (see below). Something may be done with the people at the airports and the railways responsible for deicing runways and running rails and overhead catenary wires. But sacking the personnel involved will not help the situation unless the country is willing to bite the bullet and plan out exactly what will take place when a snowfall occurs here.
Airports like that of Stockholm are still running; the only services curtailed are those to Heathrow and Frankfurt. Why doesn't BAA (the owners of Heathrow) tempt Stockholm-Arlanda's Director of Preparedness (or whatever they call the post) with a huge salary to come here and sort this out for us? If something like this does not happen, then next year, or the year after, when a paralysing snowfall dumps itself on the United Kingdom, I do not want to hear ANYone complaining about it. Either we decide to take our lumps and wait until the weather and the snow clears, or we plan for this occurrence and commit the money required to keep transport running through it.
In political news, we were greeted this morning with the news that the Business Secretary, Vince Cable MP (a Liberal Democrat), had been caught speaking indiscreetly to two people who he thought were constituents but who were actually reporters for the Daily Telegraph, which is the main Tory broadsheet newspaper here in the United Kingdom. Among the tidbits were:
- Being in the coalition government is like being at war.
- However, if the Tories push him too far, there is always the nuclear option of resigning.
- He compared the Coalition Government's policies and reforms to 'a kind of Maoist revolution' and thought that the Liberal Democrats should be a kind of brake on them.
- He "declared war" on Rupert Murdoch (owner of News International, Sky, and lots of other stuff here, in the US, and in Australia) and thought that he himself would win.
Now the first three should not be news to anyone who follows British politics. However, the last one is one nuclear option that perhaps Mr. Cable wanted to avoid. His department is considering whether Murdoch should be able to buy the portion of BSkyB that he does not now own. For the Cabinet minister who would make the decision as to whether this purchase should go ahead to express such bold anti-Murdoch sentiments to people whom he did not know is unwise, to say the least. While many were calling for Cable's head, the news has just broken that he will continue as a Cabinet minister while losing control over the BSkyB sale to Jeremy Hunt, the Culture, Media, and Sport Secretary. For the Liberal Democrats to lose two Cabinet ministers (David Laws being the first to resign from his post as Chief Secretary to the Treasury because he fiddled his expenses to conceal the fact that his landlord was actually his same-sex partner.) would be extremely unfortunate. (Declaration of interest: I am a registered Liberal Democrat.)
An additional bumble is this: the Daily Telegraph did not break the news about Cable's attitude toward Murdoch. A leaker within the Daily Telegraph passed that information to Robert Peston, the famously hesitant-voiced economics editor of BBC News. The reason that the Telegraph chose not to publish these remarks is probably because it agrees with them and did not want to expose Cable's indiscretion on this subject to public view. Sauce, goose; sauce, gander!
The third bumble was committed on the Radio 4 breakfast news and comment show, Today. I listen every day and get my main daily diet of news from it. Last week, one of the subjects of discussion was the aforementioned Culture, Media and Sport Secretary, Jeremy Hunt. In announcing the segment, James Naughtie, one of the main presenters, said that he was going to be interviewing "Jeremy C*nt". He followed this with a long interval of coughing and sputtering. This mistake captured the smiles of millions at their breakfast tables. While that particular word is considered fairly taboo here, it is not absolutely proscribed in print or on TV or radio. Any usage of it has to be justified. In the US, of course, anyone who made that particular mistake would be banned from the airwaves and the station or channel that carried it would be fined. Naughtie apologised later on during the show, and disappeared for a few days while the country was digesting the news that he'd slipped up. Later on another BBC presenter, in reporting Naughtie's mistake, made the exact same mistake. Another apology. The nation chortled.
Thus, I live in a country where gaffes are made almost continuously. I love the frisson of danger this adds to listening to, watching, or reading the news. Others think that the country is going to the dogs. If it is, then I say, "Woof!"
PM Blog FAIL!
Oct. 12th, 2009 06:34 pmI listen most afternoons at 5 pm to the afternoon news and interview show PM on Radio 4. Today they changed a little bit of the program, in which I was intensely interested. They've modified the weather forecast.
Now those of you in the U.S. or in Singapore might wonder what the fuss is about. I gather that Singaporean weather forecasts are pretty much the same every day, and weather forecasts in the U.S. generally focus on a small metropolitan area in which the weather is mostly homogenous.
Here in the United Kingdom, weather forecasts on the radio and TV have generally been delivered as a story. In order to keep the Scots, Welsh, and Northern Irish happy, sometimes the forecast begins with those, other times, and perhaps even most times, the forecast begins with Southeast England and East Anglia, corresponding to Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Hampshire, Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk counties and the London Metropolitan Area. But, what often happens is the one's ears glaze over when the weather forecast starts, only to snap to attention when it's too late and your area has already been mentioned.
A few weeks or a month ago, a woman wrote in to the PM program stating that the current weather forecast was very easy to forget to listen to; she wondered whether other formats would work better. So some experiments were conducted, including:
After trialling each of these, and consulting within the BBC and the Met Office (=USan Weather Bureau), the last alternative was selected. Peter Gibbs, the head of weather broadcasting for the Met Office services for the BBC, (also a hottie for those who are into men like him—unfortunately, he's already taken), went on PM and explained how and why the new style forecast was being trialled. If it works well, and people like it, it'll probably replace the current story weather forecasts on radio. The PM host asked for comments to be left on the PM Blog.
I heard the forecast, and I liked it. I was able to concentrate long enough to get the gist of what will be happening here tomorrow. However, when I went to the BBC PM blog website to comment, I discovered that one has to register to leave a comment.
No problem? After filling out the form, you have to also verify your email address by clicking on a link in an email that the blog will send you, presumably automated. What PM didn't seem to anticipate is that so many of its readers would not already be commenters that the comment verification email mechanism would be overwhelmed and is probably down for the count. I asked for the verification email to be sent 27 minutes ago. Nothing yet. Normally these emails arrive almost automatically.
Of course, when I finally get my email, finish registering, and make my comment, I'll have a short approving phrase for the weather forecast and a rant about not anticipating this kind of load.
#BBCPMBlogFAIL
Now those of you in the U.S. or in Singapore might wonder what the fuss is about. I gather that Singaporean weather forecasts are pretty much the same every day, and weather forecasts in the U.S. generally focus on a small metropolitan area in which the weather is mostly homogenous.
Here in the United Kingdom, weather forecasts on the radio and TV have generally been delivered as a story. In order to keep the Scots, Welsh, and Northern Irish happy, sometimes the forecast begins with those, other times, and perhaps even most times, the forecast begins with Southeast England and East Anglia, corresponding to Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Hampshire, Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk counties and the London Metropolitan Area. But, what often happens is the one's ears glaze over when the weather forecast starts, only to snap to attention when it's too late and your area has already been mentioned.
A few weeks or a month ago, a woman wrote in to the PM program stating that the current weather forecast was very easy to forget to listen to; she wondered whether other formats would work better. So some experiments were conducted, including:
- Delivering the regional forecasts in the accent of the area concerned—Scotland in a Scottish accent, North East England in a Newcastle accent, and so on;
- Playing music behind the forecast;
- Playing agricultural sounds such as birdsong behind the forecast;
- Playing sounds corresponding to the weather being forecasted—gales behind strong winds, pattering rain behind showers, and so on;
- Finally, dividing the country up into regions and announcing each region, then its weather—similar to the Shipping Forecast.
After trialling each of these, and consulting within the BBC and the Met Office (=USan Weather Bureau), the last alternative was selected. Peter Gibbs, the head of weather broadcasting for the Met Office services for the BBC, (also a hottie for those who are into men like him—unfortunately, he's already taken), went on PM and explained how and why the new style forecast was being trialled. If it works well, and people like it, it'll probably replace the current story weather forecasts on radio. The PM host asked for comments to be left on the PM Blog.
I heard the forecast, and I liked it. I was able to concentrate long enough to get the gist of what will be happening here tomorrow. However, when I went to the BBC PM blog website to comment, I discovered that one has to register to leave a comment.
No problem? After filling out the form, you have to also verify your email address by clicking on a link in an email that the blog will send you, presumably automated. What PM didn't seem to anticipate is that so many of its readers would not already be commenters that the comment verification email mechanism would be overwhelmed and is probably down for the count. I asked for the verification email to be sent 27 minutes ago. Nothing yet. Normally these emails arrive almost automatically.
Of course, when I finally get my email, finish registering, and make my comment, I'll have a short approving phrase for the weather forecast and a rant about not anticipating this kind of load.
#BBCPMBlogFAIL
Departing on a cold day in London
Dec. 13th, 2007 09:45 amI presume I'll be arriving on a cold night in Massachusetts. There is frost on the grass in the back garden and frost on the roof of the church. The thermometer hasn't risen above 0 C today (it was close to -1 when I got up this morning) and the house was 17 C at 5:30am. I'm sure none of these temperatures are astoundingly cold to you Americans who have been going through rough weather lately, but they're pretty cold for us Brits, especially in London where it rarely goes anywhere near zero C.
I have to shower and then pack. I'm leaving the house around 1:30 pm for a 5:55 pm flight. I hope that's enough. I will be writing to you from Massachusetts next, I hope.
I have to shower and then pack. I'm leaving the house around 1:30 pm for a 5:55 pm flight. I hope that's enough. I will be writing to you from Massachusetts next, I hope.
Winter Wonderland
Feb. 8th, 2007 06:39 amThe subject of this entry is not one that I would be able to use very often here in London. Last night, and continuing this morning, we are having what the weather forecaster on Radio4 described as "the heaviest snowfall in England". I can't imagine having the heaviest snowfall in England here in London, but there you go.
I opened the back door, turned on the light, and took a picture of the backyard and the snowfall. I'm glad I don't have to shovel it. I believe it'll top out at about 2 inches so I'll be working at home today as public transport will not be easy. Oh, and those of you from places where people sneer until you get a foot of snow or more, please do not comment on what wusses we are, or I'll drop a house on you.
I opened the back door, turned on the light, and took a picture of the backyard and the snowfall. I'm glad I don't have to shovel it. I believe it'll top out at about 2 inches so I'll be working at home today as public transport will not be easy. Oh, and those of you from places where people sneer until you get a foot of snow or more, please do not comment on what wusses we are, or I'll drop a house on you.
Oh, Christ, it's snowing
Dec. 27th, 2005 09:50 amWe don't get snow very often in London, but it's snowing heavily at the moment. Being 2 degrees (C) outside, it won't stick, but I still detest snow.
Update: It was over in a few minutes, and the snow didn't really stick. Hurray!
Update: It was over in a few minutes, and the snow didn't really stick. Hurray!
