Music: Sylvia Tosun

This week I’ve been listening to Jump In by Sylvia Tosun. She’s a New York singer-songwriter, who had a couple of locally well-received recordings a few years ago. She’s now teamed up with the folks from October Project to produce this new album. (I heard about this from a recent OP newsletter.) Most of the songs are co-written with Emil and Julie, and they have that indefinable OP feel to them. However Sylvia has her own strong style and a great voice.
The album is not in stores, AFAIK: you’ll have to order it from her website. Highly recommended.

Writer's unblock

I’ve been blogging less frequently over the last few days, not because there was nothing I wanted to say, but because I felt that I wanted to treat each subject at greater length than I had time – or inspiration – for. But that’s silly: there’s nothing wrong with dashing off an abbreviated blog entry. If comments suggest interest, it’s easy to follow up. I’ll think categorize them as “Quickies”….

Necessity is the mother of all inventions

I love inventors…. people who dream up practical solutions to exasperating problems. Even when the problem is man-made. Here’s a case in point. Riverbend just blogged about the chaotic gasoline supply situation in Baghdad:

People buy black market gasoline because for many, waiting in line five, six, seven… ten hours isn’t an option. We’ve worked out a sort of agreement amongst 4 or 5 houses in the neighborhood. According to a schedule (which is somewhat complicated and involves license plate numbers, number of children per family, etc.), one of us spends the day filling up the car and then the gasoline is distributed between the four or five involved neighbors.
The process of extracting the gasoline from the car itself once it is back at the house was a rather disgusting and unhealthy one up until nearly a year ago. A hose was inserted into the gasoline tank and one of they unlucky neighbors would suck on it until the first surge of gasoline came flowing out. Now, thanks to both local and Chinese ingenuity, we have miniature gasoline pumps to suck out the gasoline. “The man who invented these,” My cousin once declared emotionally, holding the pump up like a trophy, “deserves a Nobel Prize in… something or another.”

Four months and counting

You should check our my colleague Dan Templeton’s account of his recent visit to Biloxi, MS. Recent journalistic coverage of the aftermath of Katrina has become predictable and formulaic; I liked the direct simplicity of Dan’s observations.

The part that is truly mind blowing is the scope of the damage. It’s not just a town or a city or a stretch of the coast that is damaged. It’s the entire Mississippi gulf coast. Miles upon miles upon miles of homes and businesses are gone. Four months after the storm most of the coast still looks like the destruction happened last week.

A damp squib

Well, it looks as if “the first big one” is going to turn out to be a non-event. It seems that the pressure gradient was so great that it sucked in more (relatively) warm air from the ocean than was expected, keeping the temperatures quite a bit higher than needed for snow. (Right now it’s 39F in Boston.) I drove in to the office without any problems….

Arrogance, not the price of oil

For an aviation enthusiast like me, the new blog at Enplaned is essential reading. For a good example of the anonymous author’s work, check out today’s obituary for Independence Air, which has announced that it’s ceasing operations this Thursday. Twisting the knife:

In the event, Independence Air described a bone-headed catastrophic year-and-a-half arc through the airline business. This is, without question, one of the epic flameouts in the airline business. Nothing excuses taking this extraordinary risk, though Independence Air management has tried to pin the tail on fuel prices. At the end of the first quarter of 2004, ACA had over $350mm in cash. All gone now. The Independence Air press release manfully attempts to find some good in what’s happened, but to balance the enormity of the disaster, Independence Air would have had to have incidentally found a cure for cancer.

Elsewhere in the same blog there’s an intriguing look at the U.S.Airways/America West merger, and the enduring legacy of the three airlines (PSA, Allegheny, and Piedmont) that were brought together to create U.S.Air back in 1987. As someone who’s involved in merger and acquisition work at Sun, I suspect that there may be some lessons here.

Arguments and relativism

Step 1. Go to Alec’s blog and read this fine piece on the frustrating tendency of people to turn arguments about substantive issues into debates about how we feel about these issues.
Step 2. Go to Edge.org and read through the pieces that were submitted in response to this year’s Edge question: What is your dangerous idea? Note how a number of the pieces address the question of relativism. On a radical relativist view, how can we have a substantive discussion about anything, since my “truth” is as good as your “truth”. (Ugh!) Note also how many of the contributors chose to talk about the concept of a “dangerous idea”, often expressing reservations that seem to be rooted in the same fear that real argument is becoming impossible.
Step 3. Pour yourself a stiff single malt Scotch and contemplate the futility of the world. Or go ride your bike down the M3. Or grab an axe and split a few cords of firewood. Or write a Zen koan. (Don’t try to combine these activities.)

The first big one of the new year

It looks as if I’m going to be working from home tomorrow: the first serious snowstorm of the year is headed our way. As usual, the geek in me prefers to get this forecast in metereologist-speak, straight from the NWS Taunton Forecast Discussion (my emphasis):

THIS WILL NOT BE A VERY DEEP LOW WITH SFC PRESSURE JUST BELOW 1000 MB BUT COUPLED WITH HIGH PRES TO THE N WILL RESULT IN VERY STRONG ENE GRADIENT WITH IMPRESSIVE ATLANTIC INFLOW. IT WILL ALSO BE A SLOW MOVER AS IT GETS CAPTURED BY UPPER LOW RESULTING IN LONG DURATION OF PRECIP AND HIGH WINDS ALONG THE COAST TUE/TUE NIGHT.
NAM/GFS AND EVEN REGIONAL GEM ARE SIMILAR WITH QPF TUE/TUE NIGHT OF 1-1.5" SE NEW ENG...0.5"-1" VCNTY I-90...BUT SHARP CUTOFF N OF PIKE DECREASING TO LESS THAN 0.1" ACRS S NH. ...

Note that QPF denotes the precipitation measured as liquid water. The challenge with a storm like this is to translate QPF into snowfall:

SHARP QPF GRADIENT AND PTYPE ISSUES WILL MAKE FOR VERY DIFFICULT SNOW FCST FOR TUE. PARTIAL THICKNESS PROFILES SUGGEST PRECIP CHANGING TO MOSTLY SNOW ON TUE IN THE INTERIOR NW OF I-95 INCLUDING BOS AREA BUT THIS IS NOT A SLAM DUNK NEAR I-95 AS THERE IS A HINT OF WARM AIR ALOFT WHICH COULD AFFECT SNOW ACCUM IN THIS REGION. ... CROSS SECTIONS SHOW BEST SNOW GROWTH NEAR MASS PIKE FROM BAF-ORH-BOS ALONG WITH STRONG BANDING SIGNAL IN DEFORMATION AXIS. ...
GFS SNOW AMT TOOL INDICATING OVER 12" IJD-ORH-BOS AND EVEN 10" PVD BUT DUE TO UNCERTAIN THERMAL PROFILE AND QPF GRADIENT DECIDED TO TONE THIS DOWN AND GO WITH 4-10" IN THE WATCH AREA WITH HIGHEST AMOUNTS NEAR OR JUST S OF MASS PIKE. ...
WINDS WILL BE A CONCERN WITH THIS STORM AS 50-60 KT NE LLJ REACHES S COAST TUE MORNING PERSISTING INTO TUE NIGHT.

So although the official forecast says “New snow accumulation of 6 to 10 inches possible”, we see that this is the result of interpreting the output from a tool that’s predicting over 12 inches! We’ll see…. And the forecast of high winds suggests that power outages are likely; time to check batteries in flashlights. (I also tend to bump up the thermostat program before a storm like this, so as to keep the house a few degrees warmer than usual.)
UPDATE 5:48pm: Well, the forecast seems to be changing rapidly. Latest prediction is for just 2 to 4 inches of snow, with more ice and sleet. The heaviest snowfall is now predicted to hit Smithfield in northern Rhode Island – 8-12 inches. I wonder how it will actually come out…..