Northwest passage discovered at last by 28,800 peripatetic rubber duckies
Drudge had a headline today about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — a floating stream of stray plastic junk hundreds of miles long — and the scientists that follow it. They’re looking for the impact all this drifting shit might have on marine life, but there are happier uses for our seagoing garbage.
Flotsametrics is the term coined by oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer for tracking ocean currents by following floating garbage. He isn’t the first to do it, but he came up with a neat word and a book and stuff.
Also, an especially lucky spill. In January of 1992, a consignment of plastic bath toys fell off a Chinese ship into the Pacific — frogs, beavers and turtles and, of course, rubber duckies. Durable plastic, designed for floating, perfect. Soon, their packaging rotted away and the rubber duckies began their long journey.
A lucky few swam South and were picked up in Hawaii, South America and other sunny climes, but the bulk went North…Alaska, the Northwest Passage, Greenland. They spent some time frozen in icepack. Down the East Coast of the US. Last I heard of them, they’d crossed the Atlantic and were headed for the beaches of Britain — June of 2007, fifteen years after they started. A few are picked up at each landing. The duckies have now faded to white.
Ebbesmeyer tracked the toys mostly to test a computer program written by Jim Ingraham of NOAA. I had a DOS version of this program years ago, and it was way cool to watch the little junk trails swirl around and around in the sea.
Ebbesmeyer’s website, Beachcombers’ Alert, has more on this and many other kinds of fascinating floating crap.
August 5, 2009 — 7:34 pm
Comments: 14
Risk assessment, weasel style
Rick Rostrom commented on the last post that Al Gore’s statement about the relationship between reason and fear — while garbled as only Algore can — was based on some real research. Indeed it is.
Specifically, imaging of the brain has recently taught us that the pathways from our emotion gland to our logic lobe are much larger than the pathways leading back the other way. From this (near as I can figure it) Al deduces that it’s easier to frighten people into thinking than it is to think people into being scared.
This is why stupid people shouldn’t be allowed to handle facts (not you Rick — I know you know Al knows nuffink). Analogies about pipelines and highways and streams can only get you so far, and then they drop you over a cliff into a kettle of fish. The “size” of a neurological connection doesn’t necessarily speak to how “easy” it is for information to move. It is likely to have entirely different implications. Say, speed.
Like, I’m a hell of a lot more frightened of getting cancer (logical; there’s a lot of it in my family) than I am being crushed by a grand piano falling from a great height. But if I see a Steinway hurtling toward my head, I’m going to need to jump sideways really, really fast. And then figure out how the fuck a crane got in here, with the low ceilings and all.
I have worked with people who assess risk for engineering projects. They scoff at what they believe is the emotional, irrational way people evaluate personal risk. There’s a sort of math makes it science prejudice about sticking with pure probabilities and leaving sphincter-clenching horror out of the equation. But is that really more sciencier?
Okay, you’re like a willionty-jillion times more likely to die in a car crash than a plane crash. So why do people sweat flying in a way they don’t sweat driving? Wellll…most of us have personal experience of traffic accidents; they range from the truly fucking awful to the merely annoying. A plane wreck, on the other hand — son, you’re going to die. And before you do, you’re probably going to see it coming. Good and hard. Trapped in a small metal box. With a bunch of screaming strangers. And your pants on fire.
Yeah, I think even Spock would add that into his risk evaluation alongside pure numerical probability.
So, how likely a thing is does have to count the most. But other factors do and should count, as well. How horrible it would be. Whether you could prevent it. How predictable it is. How much warning you’re likely to have.
Have you heard the argument that terrorism should be WAY down in our list of priorities because the death count is so small? That there is some serious stupid masquerading as science. Terrorism adds human malice into the equation: a bunch of somebodies aiming all their brainal capacity at sneaking past every safeguard to do something of maximum horror, pain, visibility and surprise. I want a buttload of resources thrown at that creepy shit no matter how much more likely I am to be hit by lightning.
Emotional considerations are a kind of a logic. Thinking is not the opposite of feeling. They can elbow each other out of the way, but they aren’t two different states of the same element.
And poor old Al Gore, who thinks he can use the one to prop up the other, doesn’t have either on his side.
July 9, 2009 — 7:33 pm
Comments: 29
Thirty five minutes of rambling stoner gibberish
Did you follow the Al Gore link I put in yesterday’s post? No. Of course you didn’t. See, this is why we can’t have nice things.
Well, I just listened to the full 34 minutes and 57 seconds of Al’s address to Oxford, and I’m half dead of bullshit poisonining. I tried writing some of it down, but it doesn’t sound half as crazy in print as it does in Al’s inimitable lisping, halting, rambling stream-of-consciousness, bizarre emphasis on the wrong syllABLEs, crazy-ass numbtarded fucknut delivery. What a maroon.
I think I can translate: if we can scare people enough, we have a fantastic opportunity to take shit away from rich bastards and give it to poor people. (Don’t believe me? Listen to the damn thing yourself). Uncle B and I differ on whether he’s dumber than he is dishonest, or crookeder than he is dumb. I’m on the “dumb” side of the argument.
I know stoner bullshit when I step in it: this is the voice of a dumb guy who hangs around science nerds long enough to pick up a few phrases to impress his fellow dumb guys. Here, have some:
We have to connect the soils with the trees and the vegetation and the energy sources the built environment and the human system including population. Population is a success story. It’s a success story in slow motion. But we are bending the curve and the old models of what people once thought worked to stabilize population have thankfully been discarded in favor of a model that works. It’s a common system that shifts from one equilibrium to another.
Aw, see…that’s a lot funnier when Al says it. Though, come to think of it, some of this gobbledygook is probably because he’s talking to people who already know what he’s talking about, and he doesn’t want anything leaking to the straights.
No. Dumb. I’m still going with dumb.
The part of our consciousness that feels and expresses and acts upon urgency is tied to the recognition of those ancient threats and when one of those appears then that part of our consciousness that is aroused and alerted can instantly activate the reasoning process and we can respond instantly and then we can respond in a more deliberative way. But when the threat itself can only be perceived with the instrument of reason, pushing that recognition into that part of our awareness that activates urgency is an entirely different proposition.
Had enough? Ready to confess?
The connecting lines between the amygdala and the neocortex are asymmetrical. The flow of information from the urgency center to the reasoning center is quite robust, but the flow in the opposite direction is just a little footpath. And that really is at the heart of the problem. But it is for us as a civilization the aggregate bandwidth that really matters, because when enough people make that connection and when that connection with all its import is held in common, then consciousness can focus on the danger we face and the solutions that are available to us.
I think what he’s saying is, if you scare somebody you can get him to reason, but if you reason with somebody, you can’t scare him.
Only a man who never had a mortgage could believe that shit.
July 8, 2009 — 7:37 pm
Comments: 34
Seven reasons a layman can be sure global warming is complete bullshit
It can be tough for a non-scientist to tease apart the arguments of scientists. To make truly informed decisions, you’d have to throw it all over and become one yourself. No thanks — there’s math involved! Instead, let me share a few reasons you can be pret-ty daggoned sure anthropogenic global warming AKA climate change is complete shite without a glance at the science.
7 Surprise! The “cure” is ALLLLLLL the things hippies have been trying to get us to do for decades: biff our cars and ride bikes, save the rainforest, go vegetarian — organic vegetarian (home-grown, or at least local), recycle, reject consumerism and, like, get back to the land and shit, man. What a lucky coincidence for hippies!
6 Globally, the “cure” involves sucking billions out of the economy and handing it over to government. Yay! What a lucky coincidence for governments!
5 Burning wood for heat — thereby releasing a bunch of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — is now considered a net REDUCER of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Ha! For this to be even remotely true, all firewood would have to come from lands newly turned over for purpose-grown forests. Boolsheet. Hippies just like woodstoves.
4Al Gore. Seriously — Al Gore. That’s some big fat clue right there, folks.
3 Nobody can think of a single good thing that would follow from higher average temps or CO2 levels. There was this article I read — see, plants love CO2, so it was all about how carbon dioxide is making poison ivy loads more poisonous. That’s really the only thing that comes to this writer’s mind when he thinks “plants love CO2”? Change makes some things better; an honest discussion includes those, too.
2 As Glenn Reynolds famously put it: I’ll believe it’s a crisis when the people who say it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis. Downsizing their mansions. Selling beachfront properties now, before they sink beneath the waves. Riding bikes to work — or at least not so much flying their personal jets to the 7-11 for a pack of Kools.
Numero uno But the main reason you can be sure global warmening isn’t happening? IT’S GETTING COLDER!!!!!!!
July 7, 2009 — 7:34 pm
Comments: 33
Thank christ it’s the solstice
Yesterday was the summer solstice, the longest day of the year in our hemisphere. Thirty thousand hippies turned up at Stonehenge, but it was cloudy and they couldn’t see the sun rise, so all they dressed up like assholes and got stoned. Oh, wait — that’s what they were going to do anyway.
This is the first I’ve spent time in England in Summer — it costs a fortune to fly overseas during the tourist season, so all my trips were off-peak — and I am so damned happy to see the solstice come and go.
See this map? I threw a lassoo around Britain and pulled it directly West. You’ll note that London is more or less in a line with Hudson Bay. Here’s what the forecast said for the day of the solstice:
sunrise sunset
London 4:47 9:21
Providence 5:13 8:24
Nashville 5:31 8:08
Given that it’s light long before sunrise and stays that way long after sunset, you can easily see that it never gets dark in England. Land of the Frakkin’ Midnight Sun, that’s what it is. Also, lucky me, it’s The Year It Never Rains Along the South Coast. The sun, it burnnnnssss ussssss.
Of course, I’ll catch up on my sleep in Winter, when it’s dark for six months. Natural born Mole Person, me.
June 22, 2009 — 7:53 pm
Comments: 15
Science marches on
Good news! They’ve sequenced the cow genome. Finally.
The Hereford breed is the first domestic mammal to have its DNA completely sequenced and analyzed. At last we can get busy genetically engineering a cow that eats politicians and shits icecream.
Mmmmm. Ice cream.
It took 300 scientists six years to do rifle through all 22,000 Hereford cow genes. Then they took this map and ran it against the DNA of 19 other breeds of cattle.
Humans share 80% of those cow genes, and it turns out the organization of chromosomes in man is closer to moo than mouse. And before you even THINK about saying, “ZOMG! That means we’re all a real lot like cows!” …um, no, it means small genetic variations make huge differences.
God you get on my nerves sometimes.
June 1, 2009 — 6:49 pm
Comments: 22
Who’s this jaunty lad?
It’s the new H1N1 swine flu virus all the kids are talking about! The CDC Influenza Lab took some holiday snapshots.
Actually, now that I squint at it, I’m guessing that’s a bunch of H1N1s and a couple of distressed blood cells. Or is the scale wrong for that? There wasn’t anything descriptive by way of caption.
Does it strike you as odd that they’ve gone quiet about this thing? After grossly overplaying the looming plague, the daily sick-roll gets hardly a mention now. Paranoid Me thinks paranoid thoughts of paranoia. Reasonable Me thinks it’s probably because the thing is spreading like a pandemic, but not exactly killing like a plague. Wide but shallow. Bit of a dud, really.
Anyhow, you can find the CDC’s daily reports — if’n you are so inclined — here. Or you can follow them on Twitter, if you’re a Twit.
But, even better, you can sign up for their email alerts. They’ve got a whole bunch of different individual alerts to sign up for. Even better, on the next page, you can sign on for alerts from other government agencies, like FEMA and the FDA.
Sure, I just volunteered to get a buttload of government bureaucracy-spam. But I did it using my silliest email address!
Good weekend, all…!
May 15, 2009 — 6:43 pm
Comments: 19
I wanna get reincarnated at this lab
The University of Utah has a pretty neat site called learn.genetics, which breaks complicated ideas down into moron-sized bites using podcasts and colorful Flash animations. I love the internet.
I particularly recommend the module on addiction. There you can explore drugs of abuse and examine a variety of stoned mice without having to cut them up or anything.
I don’t mean to ruin the suspense or nothing, but it seems to me from cursory examination that all high-inducing substances work by fiddling your dopamine somehow (except LSD, which works via leathery, batwinged, brain-squeezin’ imps). I guess they feel different because they do kind of the same thing in different areas of the brain.
And if you read it all the way through, you’ll find neat tips for making your highs higher and more long-lasting.
I feel sure.
July 14, 2008 — 2:49 pm
Comments: 12
Honey, I think the magic has gone out of my magic rocks
Lookee what I found cleaning out the sideboard!
I was going to blame Uncle B for this — he’s knows how much I love this stupid Junior Scientist shit — but the date on the package is 1988. I was 28, and going through my “oh my god I’m a grownup now and I can buy all the toys I want!” phase.
I’m still going through it. Like when I stared out sadly at people frolicking about in the lake a few years ago, scuffing my foot and thinking, “I wish I could have a stupid inflatable boat.” Followed by, “OMIGOSH, I can have a stupid inflatable boat!”
I find it hard to absorb this lesson. I don’t know why.
Anyhow, I’ve been throwing out junk for months, so I had to eat, like, four of those huge kosher dills to get an appropriate jar.
Turns out, there are instructions. The instructions are: blah blah blah blah. Whatever. I don’t really do instructions.
The Magic Solution — which I assume was once a liquid of some kind — had fossilized into a chewy brick. Not that I actually chewed it or anything. I gather that would be bad. That much of the instructions I absorbed, mostly because it was in all caps and repeated several times.
I tried to revive the magic with some boiling water and a stick. It didn’t dissolve completely, but I figured there had to be a little magic left. I couldn’t tell; the dye in the rocks seeped out and made the whole thing a milky pink opacity.
When I got up this morning and poured off the liquid, I discovered…
(SEE FIRST COMMENT).
May 22, 2008 — 8:35 am
Comments: 27
Your one-stop shop for half baked ideas
Hey, hey…check it out. I ran across this while looking up the refractive index of vinegar (yes, I had to look it up. Shut up). It’s the Halfbakery “a discussion forum for poorly thought-out original ideas for inventions.”
Worth a morning browse. My favorite so far: cream cheese marketed in ring shape, so you just slap it on your bagel. I don’t know why I like that, though. I don’t like my bagels cut in half longitudinally. I like to eat them toroidally, dabbing cream cheese on the gnawed ends.
Why am I telling you this?
March 5, 2008 — 8:51 am
Comments: 54