Not only is the streak well and truly ended, last night we came in dead bottom. Poor play, especially on defense sank us.
At what price cheap stuff?
Like every parent of young children, I have been reading with a sinking feeling in my stomach about the lead paint that was used by Mattel toys. Our kids do not have that many toys, but the ones they have they put in their mouths. A lot. And pretty much every toy is painted.
I doubt that the problem is limited to Mattel or to toys that were made in China. Even the toys that we bought at craft shops were probably painted or stained using cheap paints and chemicals, and cheap paint is likely to have been made in a developing country. With little in the way of regulation of dangerous compounds.
Now comes an article by a pediatric cardiologist at U. Mass. saying that the industry essentially got politicians to torpedo stricter lead controls starting in the 1980s (The Reagan and the two Bush administrations are implicated) and that the 10 mcg/dl limit that is suggested as safe by the CDC would actually result in 7 lost IQ points.
At what price, cheap stuff? And at what price industry profits?
I doubt that the problem is limited to Mattel or to toys that were made in China. Even the toys that we bought at craft shops were probably painted or stained using cheap paints and chemicals, and cheap paint is likely to have been made in a developing country. With little in the way of regulation of dangerous compounds.
Now comes an article by a pediatric cardiologist at U. Mass. saying that the industry essentially got politicians to torpedo stricter lead controls starting in the 1980s (The Reagan and the two Bush administrations are implicated) and that the 10 mcg/dl limit that is suggested as safe by the CDC would actually result in 7 lost IQ points.
At what price, cheap stuff? And at what price industry profits?
Finding overshooting tops
One of my colleagues has long wanted me to create an algorithm to find overshooting tops in satellite imagery. There were a couple of things holding me back -- one administrative and the other technical.
The first was a lack of funding to pursue that work. But all of a sudden, in the last six months or so, I have gotten funding (from NASA, NESDIS and HPCC) to work on satellite data. In the past few years, none of these guys would fund us. This year, they all did -- when it rains, it pours. Anyway, we have the funding, so I have the time. That's how science works. Administratively at least.
The second reason was techical. The first signature I tried to find on satellite data was v-shaped notches on infrared imagery which was at 4km resolution and came every half hour. The temporal and spatial resolution was too poor to do anything worthwhile (as a comparison, radar data is at 1-km resolution every 5 minutes). But recently, my colleague got his hands on 1-km visible data combined from the GOES east and west satellites at 1 minute intervals and suggested that I try to find overshooting tops which are indicative of strong updrafts which themselves are indicative of severe weather.
To find overshooting tops, I wrote an algorithm to look for areas with high spatial variance (taking to care to avoid using parts of the image that are unlikely to be clouds in the variance computation) and that was it! As it turned out, given 1km visible imagery, you don't even need a sequence for quality control (In many algorithms, one way to avoid lots of spurious detections is to correlate things across time).
In the image to the left, the red contours are drawn by the automated algorithm that results. Since the 1-minute temporal resolution is not required, and because 1km visible imagery is available during daylight hours in realtime, we should be able to run an overshooting tops algorithm in real-time. As the newpapers say, watch this space.
The first was a lack of funding to pursue that work. But all of a sudden, in the last six months or so, I have gotten funding (from NASA, NESDIS and HPCC) to work on satellite data. In the past few years, none of these guys would fund us. This year, they all did -- when it rains, it pours. Anyway, we have the funding, so I have the time. That's how science works. Administratively at least.
The second reason was techical. The first signature I tried to find on satellite data was v-shaped notches on infrared imagery which was at 4km resolution and came every half hour. The temporal and spatial resolution was too poor to do anything worthwhile (as a comparison, radar data is at 1-km resolution every 5 minutes). But recently, my colleague got his hands on 1-km visible data combined from the GOES east and west satellites at 1 minute intervals and suggested that I try to find overshooting tops which are indicative of strong updrafts which themselves are indicative of severe weather.
To find overshooting tops, I wrote an algorithm to look for areas with high spatial variance (taking to care to avoid using parts of the image that are unlikely to be clouds in the variance computation) and that was it! As it turned out, given 1km visible imagery, you don't even need a sequence for quality control (In many algorithms, one way to avoid lots of spurious detections is to correlate things across time).
In the image to the left, the red contours are drawn by the automated algorithm that results. Since the 1-minute temporal resolution is not required, and because 1km visible imagery is available during daylight hours in realtime, we should be able to run an overshooting tops algorithm in real-time. As the newpapers say, watch this space.
A tropical storm!
We had planned to go on Sunday to the Chickasaw Recreation Area, about an hour south of Norman. There are a few kid-sized waterfalls there, so it's a good place for a family day trip.
Unfortunately we woke up to rain in the morning. "Is the rain going to go away?," the wife asked, so I dutifully pulled up the radar pictures from the real-time WDSS-II website -- this is probably the first time that I've used our system to make a decision that affects me personally. Usually, I just use the Norman forecast office's website.
Imagine my surprise when the radar image looked like a hurricane. "Must be Erin," I thought. But it was still weird to see the eye of a tropical storm over central Oklahoma.
Anyway, the straight line of storms south of the eye would pass Sulphur by 10am but the satellite visible showed continued cloud cover. No rain, but overcast. I felt safe in announcing that we could go. And we could. It turned out to be a pleasant day. The kids had awesome fun. The two-year old wanted to know if she could "come back tomorrow".
As we were driving south, we encountered periodic bands of rains. I tried to explain to my father-in-law that this was like a cyclone. But he didn't realize that there was something strange in having a cyclone this far inland.
Off to school
It finally happened. The 5-year old has been counting down the days to today. This morning he was off to school. He was absolutely excited and amazingly enough ready to go a full 30 minutes before the bus arrived (7.30 a.m ).
The 2-year old woke up as soon as he did and came to the street corner to send him off. She's been bearing the brunt of her brother's excitement. For the past few months, whenever they bicker, he'd start singing a ditty:
S_'s not gonna go to school
She's not even five
and reduce her to tears. Today, she did fine for a while, even waving to him after he got on the bus but then she broke down. "S. gone to school on the yellow school bus," she sobbed. We consoled her saying that she'd be going to "2-year old" class soon.
The 2-year old woke up as soon as he did and came to the street corner to send him off. She's been bearing the brunt of her brother's excitement. For the past few months, whenever they bicker, he'd start singing a ditty:
S_'s not gonna go to school
She's not even five
and reduce her to tears. Today, she did fine for a while, even waving to him after he got on the bus but then she broke down. "S. gone to school on the yellow school bus," she sobbed. We consoled her saying that she'd be going to "2-year old" class soon.
The streak continues
Our severe weather products have been listed for the second year in the "Best of ... " series by the popular Google Earth Blog. The products themselves are available at http://wdssii.nssl.noaa.gov/.
This post (from last year) describes what they found most interesting about our feed.
The streak ends
The streak had to end sometime. It did so yesterday. Every week since I took up bridge, I've been earning master points and am up to about 10 now. In yesterday's club game though, we placed in the bottom half and got zero points. Both partner and I were off our games. But better that we both had our off day on the same day, eh?
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