Category: Hmmm

This semester I’m going back to school. I’ve signed up to take Dan Dennett’s Philosophy of Mind course at Tufts, and the first classes are this week. I knew that it was going to be a challenge to fit classes and work into my schedule; I hadn’t counted on the weather.
The first class was scheduled for Monday, but with the blizzard last weekend everything (including Tufts) was closed. So the next session was this afternoon, Wednesday, 4:00-5:15. Coincidentally, we’re having another winter storm today. We’ve only had about 7 inches so far, but after the blizzard that felt like nothing. (Note the overconfident attitude.) So after finishing up a work (phone) meeting, I set out to drive the 12 miles from Brookline to Medford.
It was a nightmare. Even a major artery like Route 9 was deep in slush. Every time I touched the brakes I felt the ABS chattering to try and get a grip on something, anything. I’d only gone a couple of miles, and it looked like I would be lucky to average 10 MPH.
And then I cautiously stopped at a red light at the bottom of a hill, and looked in my mirror, transfixed, as a car slid down the hill towards me, obviously out of control. Somehow the driver managed to scrub off some speed by steering into the snowbank at the side of the road, and stopped inches behind me.
I pulled off onto a side street, called Tufts to explain that I wouldn’t be at class, and then drove home very carefully. It’s important to keep your priorities straight.

Since they’re forecasting snowfalls of 20 to 30 28 to 38 20 to 30 inches in Boston before this storm winds down, I thought I’d see what it would take to break the records, especially the famous “blizzard of ’78”. Here’s the data from the NWS:

Most Snow in 1 Day     Most Snow in 2 Days       Most Snow in 3 Days
21.0  Jan 20 1978      27.1  Feb   6-7 1978      27.1  Feb   5-7 1978
20.0  Jan 24 1945      21.4  Jan 20-21 1978      25.8  Feb 24-26 1969
19.3  Feb 16 1958      20.7  Feb 24-25 1969      22.8  Jan 22-24 1945
19.0  Feb  7 1978      20.0  Jan 24-25 1945      21.7  Jan 18-20 1978
15.0  Feb 20 1934      19.7  Mar   3-4 1960
14.3  Feb  4 1961
13.8  Jan  7 1977

When severe weather threatens, I usually visit our local National Weather Service website and open up the discussion page. This is where the forecasters exchange information: where they talk about how the computer models are converging (or not), the range of possibilities, and how – and why – they come up with an overall forecast. Lots of little details that don’t make it into the forecast you hear on TV, using lots of jargon. But this afternoon, the discussion begins very simply: “Probable top ten snowstorm/blizzard for portions of sne is at hand and whereever you are this evening around 7 PM we recommend you be prepared to stay there through at least noon tomorrow”. “sne” is Southern New England, and we’re talking about a storm that will be among the 10 biggest on record for this area. 20 to 30 inches of snow and blizzard conditions, from late this afternoon through into Sunday. Cape Cod may get in excess of 30 inches.

How should one cope with such a situation? It seems very simple. I’m about to cook up a big pot of stew – beef, root vegetables, mushrooms, celery, red wine, onions, garlic, and herbs. Comfort food for a wild and wintry night. Now, where did I put the potato peeler…?

Grocery shopping on Sunday, I picked up a little sample cup of some white frozen stuff. Walked down the aisle, tasted it… and literally ran back to grab a couple of pints of it. Probably a New England thing. Usual disclaimers, etc. ‘Nuff said.

Over the last 12 hours a flu-like bug has attacked, so while Merry goes out to celebrate with some old friends (as I insisted), I’m sitting here with a temperature of 101.5F and delirium-style tremens. Oh well, mustn’t grumble…. Happy New Year, everyone.

We’re not yet half way through November, but winter can’t wait. The picture is from a traffic webcam about a mile from where I live in Brookline, MA. According to the NWS, Boston got 4 inches and Milton got 6.8 inches; we’re half-way between those points, so figure about 5+ inches. That’s what it felt like as I lugged the trash to the curbside.

Reading Terry’s blog (which everyone should do, not least to get an Iraq veteran’s perspective of some of the unbelievable stuff which is going down these days), I came across a link to this thought-provoking essay by Dawn Taylor on the other side of sexism: the “men are jerks, and they can’t help it” nonsense that you encounter every day. And I was reminded of the strange story on Yahoo! Oddly Enough about how blondes do worse on intelligence tests after they’ve been exposed to “dumb blonde” jokes. This stuff is not innocuous: it changes the way people think and act.

I’ve been trying to track this one down for 30 years. (I don’t even remember why.) I spotted a link to the reverse dictionary over at Alec’s blog and that led me, via cerulean, to the two dictionaries that also had cerulescent.

A correspondent on the Al Stewart mailing list asked for suggestions for a poem to use as part of his son’s Eagle Scout ceremony. I suggested my favourite lines from Walt Whitman:
This day before dawn I ascended a hill,
and look’d at the crowded heaven,
And I said to my Spirit,
When we become the enfolders of those orbs,
and the pleasure and knowledge
of everything in them,
shall we be fill’d and satisfied then?
And my Spirit said:
No, we but level that lift,
to pass and continue beyond.

[Leaves of Grass, 1871-72 edition, page 322]

I just posted a piece on my Sun blog about the day Reagan was shot. Hmmm… should I have posted that here, or there? Duplication seems undesirable.