Who Were the Sea Peoples?

Gene, I think you'll be amused by this article on the failure of Ernesto forecasting. I had been calling landfall in the middle Keys since before it hit Haiti, but I will admit that you can never tell where these things will go or how tough they will be if they have to go through Cuba. One of the problems I see a lot is that they don't seem to look at their own satellite or radar pictures. They say "the forecast track takes it into Tampa" and you'll see on the satellite loop that the storm is on a direct line to Miami. On one of Ernesto's satellite loops (visible) the center seemed to have crossed over the Haitian peninsula but the official track has it has having gone around. In unrelated Ernesto news, during the storm-that-wasn't, a water main broke and ate my van. No damage but it was a bitch to get the city to call the tow truck company and tell them to send the bill to the city instead of trying to swindle me out of $230 (for the use of two tow truck...

This guy at Strike the Root defends Amanda Taylor's column. But he misquotes me! I didn't say hers was "the dumbest article ever." Rather, I said it was quite possibly the dumbest article I had ever read . Big difference. (P.S. I haven't even read this yet. It's entirely possible that I will agree with him.)

I just saw that our local news team is called the "Eyewatch News." I guess this is kind of the regional version of Eyewitness News, except that, well, Eyewitness News is a pretty good name for a news team -- you know, they're out there actually witnessing the events that make the news, or interviewing those who did witness them -- while, on the other hand, Eye watch News makes no sense whatsoever. Are they trying to say they watch the news with their eyes? Well, what else would they watch it with? Or is it that what they watch to get the news is eyes? Well, at least it sounds a bit like the name of a real news programme.

The other day my kids were discussing which super powers they'd like to have, things like "Seeing through walls," or "Healing wounds with the mind." Then they asked me which one I'd choose. "That's easy," I said, "I'd like the power to get clothes clean and smelling fresh, while still leaving colors as bright as new."

to the question I posted some months ago, as to the meaning of "10% chance of rain": Precipitation Probability Forecasts In 1965, the National Weather Service instituted the use of probabilities into precipitation forecasts. This was done since the use of words such as "chance" and "likely" are much too ambiguous for the public to utilize effectively. Today, probability forecasts ranging from 0% to 100% (issued to the nearest 10%) are used to provide the public with more concise information. There are, however, common misinterpretations of the current precipitation probability forecasts. Consider the following statement "There is a 40 percent chance of precipitation at any location in the forecast area". Unfortunately many people interpret this statement to mean there is a 40 percent chance that measurable precipitation (>0.01") will occur somewhere in the forecast area, and a 60 percent chance that it will not occur anywhere in that area...

Our nemesis JIMB kept trying to hint that we must, you know, be the "anti-s" word for implying that the Israeli government attacks civilians in war. But, as Sheldon Richman reports, the Israeli government itself does not agree with him: "In 1978, after a major Israeli incursion into Lebanon, Chief of Staff Mordechai Gur bluntly told the press, "For 30 years, from the War of Independence until today, we have been fighting against a population that lives in villages and cities. " Gur cited as examples of Israel's previous campaigns against civilians the bombing of villages on the east side of the Jordan valley and the shelling of towns in the Suez Canal area in the years after the Six-Day War. These acts of terror drove more than a million and a half Jordanians and Egyptians from their homes. "At the time of the Israeli general's statement, Israel's most respected military journalist, Ze'ev Schiff, wrote, "The importance of Gur's r...

"Metafiction and metaphysics collide in this hugely ambitious debut novel. "After his discovery of a cure for psychosis leads to international acclaim and the Nobel Prize, Dr. Morris Fitzmaurice is unable to handle the pressure of his newfound fame, and he tumbles into a vortex of drugs and alcohol that eventually leaves him comatose. Meanwhile, in an alternate universe, nervous citizens await the return of a messiah-like figure, the Render, who will save them from an evil sweeping through the land. Back on Earth, Morris’s invention of Copenhagen II, a drug sold by a company called PUCK—one of the many overt references to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which acts as a controlling metaphor throughout the narrative—has gained popularity as a means to access the alternate realities postulated by modern physics. In the fantasy world, warring factions battle over control of The Book of Night, a vaguely biblical text—written in a Joycean mélange of allusions and puns—that tells the pa...