On The Importance Of Diction

M. Noel and Ben had a baby. They named him Noah.
E. Noah. That's a Biblical name, like Joseph, and Joshua, and Macho.
M. Macho is a Biblical name?
E. Gee, not Macho, Matthew!

Dry Night In Phoenix

Deborah reports it didn't rain in Phoenix last night....

Dang that NM low! It started moving back towards the east last night after feinting west yesterday. So, it rained in the vicinity of Phoenix: N, NE, E, & SE. But not in the Valley itself.

The weather forecasts are getting discouraging again, keeping the rain in SE AZ and NM. To blame is a midlatitude trough moving in from the West (a most welcome trough for me, because CA temperatures are tolerable again, but bad for the monsoon).

Nevertheless, the last few days have been amazingly hard to forecast. It's been like polling the preferences of a convention of cats. Certain things are easy to call - the popularity of fish, for example, but where does everyone want to go next? Can we get a quorum? Good grief!

Just because the overall weather picture is degrading doesn't mean it's degrading in any one spot. Keep hope alive that it might still rain this weekend in Phoenix!

Phoenix Outlook

It looks like some rain will fall tonight in the Valley of the Sun. It may be hard to avoid, even, as it moves in from the north. These storms are circling a rather intense center of vorticity currently centered near Zuni Pueblo, NM and moving slowly westwards.

Last night, the storms on the Mogollon Rim got caught in an anticyclonic shear zone between winds circling the NM low pressure system, and other winds heading west towards Emilia. The environment became unfavorable for development, so as soon as sunset came, the storms collapsed. Nevertheless, it looked like the collapsing storms helped promote a refreshing breeze that started from the Rim, passed through Oak Creek and nearby canyons, and eventually rolled most of the way to the Colorado River. Lots of storm activity in southern NM last night, though.

Charles Peer's "Outword" Review Of "Falsettos"

Fascinating reading. Peer seems to have high standards, and looks at things from the LGBT perspective. He liked the show, often using the highest praise, but worried about things that never occurred to me. For example, regarding Jerry Lee and Craig Howard's interaction:

And although the pair when singing together are very moving, dramatically you don’t feel the connection between them that leads to such moving songs as “Unlikely Lovers.” Simply put, there is no chemistry between them.

I was so impressed by the singing of both Howard and Lee, I failed to take much note of the dramatic side. I thought there was chemistry there - my pH filter papers were registering a bright pink, and I thought I felt the earth move - but maybe I just misinterpreted the data. Wouldn't be the first time.

Even after taking all that analytical inorganic chemistry in grad school, some chemistry still escapes this diligent meteorologist.

Better living through chemistry!

Auditioning For The Lead In "Oliver!", 2017

Noah Bruening, 6 lbs., 8 oz., 19", 12:14 a.m., July 28, 2006.

What Goes Around Comes Around

Gabe notes that today is the 212th anniversary of the death of Maximilien Robespierre. Max's most famous quote:

Terror is only justice that is prompt, severe and inflexible.

Terror without virtue is disastrous; virtue without terror is powerless.

Gabe is much too cheerful about this dark day's anniversary. I wonder if Gabe is a closet Girondist. I know he's fond of the Vendée. As Maximilien might have said (if he could have talked through his busted teeth): Beware the Ides of Thermidor!:

Robespierre was the next day taken before the tribunal, and without trial he was guillotined, face up and screaming in pain from his injured jaw according to reports, with Couthon and Saint-Just and nineteen others of his adherents on the Place de la Révolution on the 10th Thermidor An II (July 28, 1794). His corpse and head both are buried in the common cemetery of Errancis, today Place de Goubeaux, and the spot is covered by an unmarked gravestone.

Review Of The Artistic Differences PREVIEW

From The Davis Enterprise's own Bev Sykes.....

(Post title corrected, because of my usual inattention to details - I only skimmed the review looking for the wit and wisdom of Erik Daniells, and didn't notice that this review was for the preview only.)

Guitar House Concert Series

At Nicholson Music in Folsom. Daniel Roest coming up, Sunday, July 30!

Spam For Thought

I don't have a spam filter, so every imaginable message reaches my eyes. Here's a thought-provoking one for today:

COSTA MESA CA USA -- MEDICAL INDUSTRY E-MAIL NEWS SERVICE(TM) -- JULY 27 2006 -- Today the FDA warned consumers not to purchase or to use high-strength hydrogen peroxide products, including a product marketed as "35% Food Grade Hydrogen Peroxide," for medicinal purposes because they can cause serious harm or death when ingested. FDA recommends that consumers who are currently using high-strength hydrogen peroxide stop immediately and consult their health care provider.

Is this serious? H2O2 is the oxidant they use in products like Chlorox II, probably at much lower concentrations. In 1% solution, it's the fizzy stuff you use to treat cuts. At 35%, it'd practically be explosive. People drink this stuff? This is a problem? Regulators have to issue warnings, in 2006, about drinking highly-dangerous chemicals? Whassup wit dat?

"Memory"

By Deborah McMillion-Nering.

A desert painting for people like me, who forget what those big tall cactus-thingies - yeah, saguaro! - are called.....

I'm like that dessicated fish: fried brain, too damn dry, and rotting from the head down.....

Regarding weather, storms are late firing up today on the Rim. Last night's MCC is actively-suppressing convection in a ring just beyond its edge, so before it can start storming again, the MCC has to completely move out of the way. It has to be completely gone before convection can really get going in AZ. It's just barely out of the way right now, and so while there are some clouds up on the North Kaibab Plateau right now, the clouds on the Rim are only now just getting going. So, maybe rain in the Valley of the Sun after sunset, or in the early morning hours, like last night.

Why Montana's Senator Burns Is Likely To Lose Re-Election

What a colossal ass:

Republican Sen. Conrad Burns chastised a group of firefighters over the weekend for doing a “poor job” of squelching a 92,000-acre blaze near Billings, a state report shows.

Burns and the firefighters - members of the Augusta Hotshots from the George Washington and Jefferson National Forest in Virginia - were at the Billings Logan International Airport awaiting flights, according to Burns and U.S. Forest Service representatives.

Burns approached the firefighters and told them they had “done a poor job” and “should have listened to the ranchers,” according to a report prepared by Paula Rosenthal, a Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation employee who was sent to the airport to speak with the senator.

Rosenthal wrote in her report that she received word of an “altercation” occurring between Burns and the hotshot crew. The crew had been in Montana working on the Bundy Railroad fire near Worden.

The 92,000-acre timber, grass and sagebrush fire was contained on July 19 and the 368 people who came to fight it began dispersing a few days later.

...Matt Mackowiak, a spokesman for the senator, said he didn't think Burns met with any of the fire bosses who managed the firefighting response.

Instead, he confronted firefighters waiting for their ride back home.

...Burns said he was unhappy that fires are run out of the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, which he called “ridiculous.”

“The government needs to listen to these ranchers,” the report quotes Burns as saying.

Mary Sexton, director of the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, said in an interview that the National Interagency Fire Center does not run individual fires, but is the national hub for fire information and available resources. Beneath the Boise center are several regional dispatch centers, including one for the northern Rocky Mountains in Missoula.

Individual fires are managed by fire bosses on the ground, Sexton said.

Burns also said he was concerned that fire bosses don't let ranchers fight fire on their own land.

... Sexton said that fire teams - the groups of national and local fire experts who come to manage and fight large fires - cannot and do not tell private landowners what to do. They cannot force them to evacuate or not to fight a wildfire on their own land.

However, Sexton said, fire bosses prefer to know where all people working on a fire are - including landowners - and may ask landowners not to help in the interest of safety.

Burns also said he had heard from one rancher that fire crews on the Bundy Railroad fire put a strip of fire retardant on the edge of Bureau of Land Management land, implying that firefighters were more interested in protecting public land than private.

“The toughest part of the conversation was the point where the senator was critical of a firefighter sitting across from us in the gate area,” Rosenthal's report reads. “I offered to the senator that our firefighters make around $8 to $12 an hour and time-and-a-half for overtime. He seemed a bit surprised that it wasn't higher.”

Puritanical Las Vegas

One of the reasons Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo are worth worrying about is the likelihood that some of the tortures implemented there are likely to find their way back into ordinary American life.

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman apparently wants to lead the charge. Las Vegas has a freewheeling attitude towards some human sins, but not others, and as Richard Abowitz notes, he's willing to use the iron fist to make sure people do what he wants them to do:

A classic rock radio station sent two employees to a city park with sodas, iced tea and doughnuts. The station is the latest to rebel against city's the new rule that bans feeding homeless people in public parks. Police ordered the radio station employees out of the park. Do city officials even begin to see how nasty Las Vegas looks to the nation? Abbie Hoffman where are you?

And also:

It never ends. After outlawing feeding homeless people in parks, Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman now wants to put those convicted of graffiti in medieval-style stocks.

The idea would be that the fiendish criminals would be locked and displayed in some sort of public square to be humiliated like a colonial Puritan caught missing Sunday church. For the final touch, the mayor thinks it would be great to allow the public to then come paint the criminals' faces.

To be fair, this is actually a step back from Goodman's earlier proposal to remove their thumbs. Anyone remember when Mayor Goodman's irreverence and straight talk used to be refreshing and fun?

Big Arizona MCC Report

Deborah in Ahwatukee reports:

It's raining now.

This shows the high water mark on our walkways from the faux arroyo put in to regulate run-off. Would've been cool to see if not for all the lightning.

I reply:

The thunderstorms that started on the Rim yesterday morphed into one ginormous Mesoscale Convective Complex (MCC): basically one big mass of many thunderstorms. The MCC proceeded south, through eastern AZ, carefully circled around Ahwatukee so as not to disturb your sleep (you caught only the feathery edge of it), and now it's heading SW, crossing the border around Organ Pipe Cactus National Park, and heading towards Mama - the remnants of Tropical Storm Emilia, which has broken up west of Baja California (Punta Eugenia).

There's no reason why this kind of stuff can't keep happening for the next few days. There's some sign the thunderstorm switch will be turned off by Tuesday of next week, at least for awhile. But as long as there's these big discontinuities of humidity, and Emilia keeps pumping humidity north, it'll keep raining!

"Pirates of the Caribbean - II"

Saw the movie. Had a great time. Didn't understand a frickin' thing.

According to G., the movie is composed of a number of interwoven Caribbean tales and legends of pirates, and has been carefully researched.

Well, maybe. If you take a bunch of unrelated Caribbean tales and try to weave a coherent plot, you might get something like mush:

Pintel: ...I always heard it said "kray-kin"
Ragetti: What? with a long A? Na-na-na-na-no-no no "Krah-ken"'s how it's pronounced in the original Scandinavian, and "Krakken"'s closer to that.
Pintel: Well we ain't original Scandinavians, are we?
Ragetti: It's a mythological creature, I can calls it what I wants!

And that's one of the better dialogues!

There's a lot of action and adventure. Way too much action. 'Pirates' resembles a forebear, "Raiders Of The Lost Ark," a movie with so much action, and so many improbable escapes, that it made me ill when I first saw it, in Las Vegas, in 1981.

In the Sacramento Bee's newspaper ad for the new 'Pirates' movie, they quote Larry King:

Finally, a movie you can see over and over again.

Well, you can do that with any movie. But if you want to understand what is happening with this movie, you might have little choice. It's been three years since the first movie, and I've forgotten who all the characters are. And so when the portentous music signals that someone has entered the screen that was in the other movie - in other words, a profound, significant moment with a supposedly familiar character - all I could do was shrug my shoulders in ignorance.

So, saw the movie. Had a great time. Didn't understand a frickin' thing.

Tears Of A Clown

Why can't everyone just get along?:

Happy the Clown is sad -- and looking for a good attorney.

A New York law firm is threatening to sue Happy and other clowns if they don't stop dressing as purple dinosaurs or red dogs in their shows at children's birthday parties. Those characters, the firm alleges, are too much like Barney and Clifford the Dog.

And no more Mr. Conductor or Bob the Builder look-alikes either.

``I was crying,'' said Sari Mitchell, the person behind Happy the Clown, who's also president of Most Unique Parties & Ponies, based in Boulder Creek. ``One clown threatened suicide but we talked him out of it.''

Now Happy and other clowns are worried about what Bay Area children will think when they find out they can't invite the characters to their birthday parties.

Rainy Night In Phoenix

Deborah in Ahwatukee reports:

We got hit by a major thunderstorm, rivers of water, light show of amazing proportions and 4 hours at least (I fell asleep at 1:00 AM) of solid rain. A huge miracle for our parched trees and cacti.

THAT'S monsoon!

That's wonderful to hear!

Yesterday, looking at the radar images, I could see a line of powerful thunderstorms coming off the Rim in the Oak Creek area, and they seemed to line up in an arc with budding storms east of the Four Peaks area, and with the big storms towards Nogales. There was also a sharp discontinuity in humidity between the humid low deserts in the west and the drier plateaus and mountains to the east. Thunderstorms often favor 'dry lines' like this. And so I thought, "what can go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong?" And then the Four Peaks storms collapsed towards sunset, and then I thought, "that's what can go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong!" But I still held out hope that you'd at least get some sprinkles, and I'm very happy for you!

The next week should feature more opportunities as well!

Small Changes

Can sometimes make a big effect:

When Starbucks started using 10% post consumer recycled paper cups and offered coffee sleeves so folks would stop "double cupping," 5.5 million less pounds got sent to landfills.

Forecasting For Phoenix

Should get a break, over the next week, with thunderstorms.

Lots of lower-level moisture from the south, particularly with Hurricane Emilia, spinning away off the southern Baja coast, acting to pump moisture north.

Upper level winds from the NE, from the Rim. The different wind directions means a considerable amount of shear - more than normal - which can, under some circumstances, promote storms.

It seems promising. What can go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong?

Bad Israeli Idea To Make It Rain

Or at least it seems so to me. By creating very high surface temperatures with black plastic, the idea is to promote convective instability through the release of latent heat of vaporization of water, and generate an artificial cloud, and, with luck, a thunderstorm. Trouble is, I don't think they realize just how readily the hot air will mix with surrounding air, therefore lowering its temperature, and just how large an area they'd have to cover with the plastic:

They will spread large sheets of black solar-absorbing film over perhaps 9 square miles of land to generate intense heat. How long the plastic sheeting will withstand the natural elements is not clear from the article.

Energy from sunlight, absorbed by the material, will radiate upward, heating the lower atmosphere.

Scientists hope the heated air will lift water condensation high enough to form clouds and produce rain.

"I'm always interested in looking at anything that will make it rain," Grant told me by phone from his office in Big Spring. He added that the Negev project is all new to him.

The area between San Angelo and Del Rio is about 30 degrees north of the equator - virtually the same latitude as Israel's Negev Desert. A major difference, however, is that West Texas has no major bodies of water within 100 miles - unlike the Negev's nearby Mediterranean Sea.

"I guess the proof will be whether they can put it in and see what happens," Grant said. He oversees cloud-seeding across a 1,000-square-mile area of Borden, Scurry, Mitchell and eastern Howard counties, north and northwest of San Angelo.

...Over areas such as West Texas and the Negev Desert, normal air currents prevent water vapor from rising high enough to form clouds.

Israel's rainmakers say installing large black patches could raise the surface temperatures by 120 degrees, and thus create a chimney of fast-rising air currents. The artificial thermal would then lift the water vapor to about 10,000 feet elevation, where it can condense into water droplets that create clouds.

Clouds up to 20 miles long would form from noon to 5 p.m. daily above the black plastic, then drift with winds and shower nearby lands.

Parts Is Parts

Goth nude dancer has too many props:

While the subject of the initial phone call was not located in the home, authorities found six skulls in an upstairs room. The Middlesex County medical examiner has determined all are human. While human skulls may be purchased online, the origin of the hand is more troubling. The police report states it was severed roughly, not surgically, with bone fragments in the jar.

Two people who knew Kay, including one who stayed at her house for about two months earlier this year, told The Star-Ledger of Newark for that the hand, which Kay nicknamed "Freddy," was a gift from a medical student who frequented the Union strip club where she dances. At the all-nude juice bar called Hott 22, Kay nurtured her Gothic persona, wearing dark costumes, heavy eyeliner, piercings and tattoos.