Arctic sea ice affects temperate latitude weather

Three decades of data, graphed at the Arctic Sea-Ice Monitor.

The Christian Science Monitor explains why it matters to more than polar bears:

Earth's icy skull cap, floating atop the Arctic Ocean, has reached its lowest summer extent since satellites first began keep in track in 1979, and by some estimates its lowest reach in nearly 1,500 years...

Indeed, the ice hit hardest by the long-term decline is the thick ice that once survived several years of thaw and freeze. With more of the Arctic Ocean starting the freeze season as open water, an increasing proportion of winter ice heading into the melt season is relatively thin – more vulnerable to wind-driven break-up when the melt season returns, which can speed melting...

The decline coincides with warming at the top of the world that has been occurring twice as fast there as it has for the northern hemisphere as a whole as the global climate warms. This so-called Arctic amplification increases the likelihood of severe weather at mid-latitudes in the northern hemisphere, where most people live, according to a study published earlier this year in the journal Geophysical Research Letters...

As the temperature difference shrinks, the jet stream's speed slows and the north-south meanders it makes as it snakes from west to east grow longer. Both changes slow the jet stream's pace, contributing to the blocking patterns that lead to persistent bouts of heat, cold, or precipitation...

The jet streams' elongated meanders can bring one storm after another to parts of the continent while keeping other parts relatively storm-free. And the slowdown in the jet stream's migration across the hemisphere sets up the blocking patterns that can hold those conditions in place for weeks.

More at the links, which I found at Paul Douglas' incomparable On Weather blog.

Photos from the Paralympics

From a gallery of photos at The Wall Street Journal.  There is another gallery at The Telegraph.

Top: Matt Stutzman, of the U.S., prepared to fire an arrow on Sept. 3. He won silver, beaten in the final by Jere Forsberg of Finland.  Credit: Toby Melville/Reuters.

Second: Spain's Xabi Torres jumped next to his prosthesis as he left the pool after training.

Credit: Emilio Morenatti/Associated Press.

Richard Whitehead's Paralympic world record

YouTube link. 

Via The Dish, where there are some relevant comments.

A five-year old boy enjoys playing the piano

YouTube link. 

The parental interaction and his incentive is mentioned in the Reddit thread.

Play "pong" while you wait to cross the street

YouTube link.

Driving on the Autobahn

YouTube link.

The Democrats demonstrate their contempt for democratic voting processes

YouTube link. 

The Republicans did it at their convention, suppressing and gagging the electors representing Ron Paul, who had every right to attend the convention and vote.  There was a possibility that they would not vote for Mitt Romney, so Ron Paul was taken off the ballot (the rule HAD been that if you won 5 states you were listed on the ballot, but the powerbrokers changed it to 8 states, so Paul coudn't be on the ballot.)  And they didn't even allow the Maine Ron Paul supporters to be seated, replacing them with Romney supporters.  This was done to give the appearance of party unity during the nationwide telecast, and it was done simply because they were able to do it, principles be damned.  BTW, I'm no longer a Ron Paul supporter (I was years ago, but he has become a bit too much on the fringe for me in recent years).  But I do think his delegates should have been allowed their inconsequential votes.

At least the Republicans were ashamed enough or sly enough to do keep their power play sort of behind closed doors, so the broad public couldn't see the voting suppression within the election process. The Democrats, by contrast, were even more brazen and in-your-face.  

It's all there in the video embedded above.  The electors at the Democratic National Convention are asked to vote on changes in wording in the Democratic party platform involving "God" and "Jerusalem as the capital of Israel."  A two-thirds majority is required to approve the change.  You can see for yourself what happened.  There is no way on God's green earth that the voice vote was 2/3 in favor, but that's what those in power wanted, and that's what they declared to be the outcome.  You almost feel sorry for the guy at the podium calling for the vote, but he is too spineless to stand in the way of the predetermined outcome.

This debacle was featured by Jon Stewart in a segement of The Daily Show, and the video he used showed the Teleprompter telling the guy at the podium what to say.   Stewart laughed that "the Teleprompter breaks the tie" and the audience laughs. But to me it isn't funny at all. 

Those naive electors sitting in the auditorium traveled to the convention actually thinking they would be voting on things, but they are just pawns in the hands of corporate and political forces many log powers more powerful than they are.  What scares me is the hubris of the party insiders doing this "in your face" on live national television.  That, and the relative silence of the media in not bringing it to people's attention.

This is a rant.  The danger of a rant is that I may be wrong and may be embarassing myself because of extenuating circumstances I'm unaware of.  If that's the case, I'm sorry.  But I'm pissed.  At both political parties.

Time to quit blogging and go watch football...

Death march ("mortichnium") of a horseshoe crab

It's a "trackway" - fossilized footprints of the last steps of a creature that died 150 million years ago, as reported by the BBC:

The fossil trackway of the animal's last moments - known as a mortichnia, or death march - was discovered in the lithographic limestone of Bavaria in Germany in 2002, where spectacular fossils of the famous feathered dinosaur Archaeopteryx have also been found.

"The lagoon that the animal found itself in was anoxic, so at the bottom of these lagoons there was no oxygen and nothing was living," Mr Lomax told the BBC. "This horseshoe crab [Mesolimulus walchi] found itself on the lagoon floor and we can tell by looking at the trace that the animal righted itself, managed to get on to its feet and began to walk," he explained. However, the anoxic conditions of the lagoon floor quickly proved fatal to the arthropod and it soon began to struggle.

"We started to study the specimen closer and saw that the walking patterns and the animal's behaviour started to change. The leg impressions became deeper and more erratic, the telson (the long spiny tail) started being lifted up and down, up and down, showing that the animal was really being affected by the conditions," he said. 

New word for the day: "mortichnia."  However, after (very brief) research, I've used the word "mortichnium" in the title, because I think "mortichnia" is plural, based on the last paragraph on this page of this book on trace fossils, written in 2007.

"Although such markings are exceptional, I would like to call them mortichnia - perhaps an adequate act upon finishing this book and a happy affair that has lasted sixty-five years."

Healthcare's "massive transfer of wealth"

Here are excerpts from one family's story about the financial aspects of end-of-life-related healthcare:

My aunt, aged 94, died last week. In and of itself, there is nothing remarkable in this statement, except for the fact that she died a pauper and on medical assistance as a ward of the state of Minnesota...

My aunt and her husband, who died in 1985, were hardworking Americans. The children of Polish immigrants, they tried to live by the rules. Combined, they worked for a total of 80 years in a variety of low-level, white-collar jobs. If they collectively earned $30,000 in any given year, that would have been a lot.

Yet, somehow, my aunt managed to save more than $250,000. She also received small pensions from the Teamsters Union and the state of California, along with Social Security and a tiny private annuity. In the last decade of her life, her monthly income amounted to about $1,500...

But when she fell ill and had to be placed in assisted living, and finally in a nursing home, her financial fate was sealed. Although she had Medicare and Medicare supplemental insurance, neither of these covered the costs of long-term care. Her savings were now at risk, at a rate of $60,000 a year...

In the end, she spent everything she had to qualify for Medicaid in Minnesota, which she was on for the last year of her life. This diligent, responsible American woman was pauperized simply because she had the indecency to get terminally ill...

Though I have not been able to find statistics on the subject, I am certain that there will be a massive transfer of wealth over the next two or three decades, amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars or more, from people just like my aunt to health insurers and health care providers...

This week, I was about to close out her checking account in the amount of $215, the sum total of her wealth. But I received, in the mail, a bill from a heath care provider in the amount of $220. Neither Medicare nor her supplemental insurer will pay it, because it is an unspecified "service not covered."

More details of the story at the StarTribune.  Of course, it's just one family's story.  Repeated hundreds of thousands of times across the country.

My own mother, age 94, has asked me, "when the time comes" to "put her down."

"Cigarette magic"

YouTube link.

Via BoingBoing.

Nabiyotum crater

What an impressive landform, described in a Telegraph photogallery as "an aerial view of Nabiyotum Crater in Lake Turkana - the world's largest desert lake and the world's largest alkaline lake - in the Great Rift Valley in Kenya.

Lake Turkana:  "It is the world's largest permanent desert lake and the world's largest alkaline lake. By volume it is the world's fourth-largest salt lake[citation needed] after the Caspian Sea, Issyk-Kul, and Lake Van (passing the shrinking South Aral Sea... Nile crocodiles are found in great abundance on the flats. The rocky shores are home to scorpions and carpet vipers..."

This is located in the Rift Valley area of Africa, the acknowledged "cradle of mankind." I wonder if modern people have explored inside the crater, which does have a land bridge to the mainland.

Photo credit: Martin Harvey.

Clips from 600 Criterion Collection movies

YouTube link. 

Frankly, this is not a very enjoyable video, because the clips are so very short that it's hard to even register the image, much less identify the source movie.

But, it does provide an excuse for me to recommend the series, which I have found outstanding not just for the selection of movies, but for the typically excellent commentary soundtracks.

Here is a list of the Criterion Collection movies.

Why it's hard to protect your Social Security number

I should think the most significant risk of insecure medical records is not that your colon polyps will be publicized, but that most medical records would include a Social Security number (and a current name and address).  That's why reports like this are so disconcerting:

Over the past three years, about 21 million patients have had their medical records exposed in data security breaches that were big enough to require they be reported to the federal government... Six health care organizations listed on The Wall of Shame reported security breaches that involved one million or more records...

Theft made up 54% of the breaches, while hacking made up only 6% of the compromised data. Theft was followed by unauthorized access or disclosure for 20%, lost records and devices for 11%, improper disposal of records made up 5% and other/unknown categories made up 4%.

"By far ... theft is the number one type of breach we're seeing," Seeger said. "We've really seen this as a commentary on crime in America where the thieves are not after the information in the laptop, but they're after the laptop."

"Most of the portable devices are being stolen out of cars or otherwise being lost. Many of these laptops are lost by an employee while in transit on public transportation," Seeger added.

The names of some of the breached companies are listed in the Computerworld article.

A 92-year-old man defends his castle

YouTube link. 

Earl Jones, a 92-year-old farmer from Verona, Kentucky, shot and killed Lloyd "Adam" Maxwell, 24, after Maxwell broke into his home about 2 a.m. 9/3/12. Jones was armed with a .22 caliber rifle and fired one shot that hit Maxwell in the chest.

Text from Cincinnati.com, which has a more detailed video interview which I was not able to embed.  Commentary about the man and discussion of "castle defense" in the Reddit thread.

Down syndrome child not allowed to fly first class

Perhaps there's more to the backstory than what is included in this Huffington Post column, but what is there is not very complimentary toward American Airlines:

Joan and Robert Vanderhorst had flown without issue with their 16-year-old son Bede, who has Down Syndrome, at least 30 times, Robert told the New York Daily News. This time, on a "lark," they decided to spend an extra $625 to fly first class. "My wife said, 'Oh Bede's never flown first class. He'll be so excited,'" Robert recounted.

And yet, while the family was waiting to board from Newark, New Jersey back home to their Porterville home, near Bakersfield on Sunday, an American Airlines representative pulled them aside and said the pilot thought Bede was a "flight risk."..

Robert said he and his wife were told that their son's behavior could disrupt the pilot, since their first class seats were close to the cockpit, KTLA reports. But Robert insisted, "My son is no different from a 4 or 5 year old as far as behavior."

An American Airlines spokesman said the boy was agitated and running around the gate area and thus deemed "not ready to fly," the Associated Press reports. But Robert said his son did not run, make any loud noises or cause any other distractions.

The family was escorted from the gate by Port Authority and transferred--to the coach section--of an United Airlines flight. They were not refunded for their upgrade fee, according to KTLA.

So after the airlines spent a bazillion dollars installing zombie-proof steel doors to the cockpit to keep out terrorists, they are concerned that a boy with Down syndrome would "disrupt the pilot."