So all I do is stupid, surreal Sunday now?

Apparently.
That will change soon, nevertheless since it is indeed Sunday....

You can't make this stuff up:  Gun Appreciation Day Celebrated With Accidental Shootings at Gun Shows in North Carolina and Ohio (complete with ignorant, ahistorical paranoid comments from weapons fetishists).


From the blindingly obvious file: If she's afraid of kids, maybe this woman should pick another profession (just sayin'). 


How bad is Beijing’s air pollution?  Try “beyond index.” 


Don't hassle the dead boy, they have eerie powers.

Yeah, this isn’t racist. 

The NHL is back! Apparently so is the enticing aroma.

Cash is cash.


Sure, the dog ran him over.

We now know Walter White's nemesis for the final episodes of Breaking Bad. 

Just let me state for the record, this woman does not represent all cat haters.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the sweatiest part of your body (if you have to know).

So now I have to get naked the old-fashioned way at the airport?

Can't do stupid etc. Sunday this week

Our little guy was sick with a fever Friday and Saturday (much improved today), so I have been a bit distracted. Next Sunday will have a double dose!

It's baaack: Absurb, Stupid and Surreal Sunday

Hey tourists, the Vatican doesn't want your rubber checks anymore.

Tip to avoid a stabbling: If someone from Jersey is giving you a lift, make sure you tell them where you want to get dropped off.

But would it be OK if you insulted the Emir on Facebook instead?

Sure cattle dogs can drive, but they can't park for shit.

But a cattle dog would have been a better smuggler than a cat...

WaPo: name of Idaho senator arrested for DUI is pronounced CRAY-poe  

Brazilian teen wants to sell her virginity? I think there's a name for that...

I guess a story like this indicates the end is in sight for Bieber (one hopes).

Icelandair discovers that there is no end to the uses you can find for duck tape.

Returning for the New Year

Now that the hectic fall and another (final?) failure of the Delaware Ivory Tower to come through for me are past, I am ready to make a triumphant return to the Old School House. I mean that literally as we are on a New Year's trip to Mass. right now.  Yes, I haven't yet reviewed my forecasts for 2012, but I will and will provide new ones for 2013. I can give you one right now though - there will be no NHL season. Goin' out on a limb, I know right? Still a lot of work to do on the homestead and salvaging some sort of use for my geological education, but the scheduling is all mine now.  I'll probably write in the evening and try to post in the morning, if someone lets me:

Joe in a rare quiet moment

My old twitter account @ekoh_PA will now be a personal one like this blog, @wtf_PA is now for Marcellus and energy news for Pennsylvania and I've begun posting again over at What The Frack Pennsylvania.

I will be back, I promise

My hopes were to get back to regular postings here and more frequent updates on twitter. Alas my extra class that I took on at the last minute, coupled with the class schedule disruption Sandy caused, threw those plans into disarray. 

I have two finals to give and grade next week, then I'm done (with academia for good???). By the New year I plan to be back up and running....I promise....

Quick Note on Sandy

We weathered the storm well here in the old school house, for once we didn't lose power.  Of course that was after storing a ton of water segregated for drinking/cooking, cleaning and toilet flushing.  Better safe than sorry. I'll have more thoughts on this latest extreme weather event and climate change later, but I have to agree with NY guv Andrew Cuomo:

"There has been a series of extreme weather incidents. That is not a political statement, that is a factual statement," Cuomo said. "Anyone who says there is not a dramatic change in weather patterns is denying reality."

Meanwhile, NY Times dot green blogger Andrew Revkin contorted himself into some sort of pretzel creature in his efforts to deny any linkage between this unprecedented hybrid storm and climate change. 

Sep 9th, A Sunday, time for strange, surreal and stupid news.

I didn't reckon that we had some real-life rootin' tootin' cattle rustlers here in Pennsylvania. Sure dem cows were rustled up there in Massachusetts but they wound up here.

I hate it when the dog gets into something.

You don't want 'em to drive drunk in their own cars do ya? Think about how that would affect their insurance.

The pigs will be the end of us, at least those who go to state fairs. Was Leviticus right?

Pacino to play Paterno? Will he channel Micheal Corleone or Ricky Roma? At least they had the sense to put this story under the Penn State Scandal section.

Once upon a time CNN's Headline News proudly "all the news in 30 minutes" and they delivered. Now? Well there's this, real important stuff ( and yes this was a leading story on the cable version).

Beware grumpy old men, they hold grudges.

I've lived in Rhode Island, there is nothing shocking about a cursing bird, in fact it would be more shocking if it didn't.

No new chupacabra news - the coverup deepens!

Disturbing Arctic Sea Ice News

Before my concentration on Penn. Marcellus news and the summer blogging doldrums, I was frequently posting on climate change and suggesting is it should be a big issue in the election - "It's the climate stupid."  During my slowdown, weather and climate have become big news with the record heat and drought.  Jeff Master's Weather Underground blog has become a drumbeat of a destabilized climate. Here are just a few entries from July:
   Record warmth at the top of the Greenland Ice Sheet
   Historic 2012 U.S. drought continues to expand and intensify
   June 2012: Earth's 4th warmest June; heavy rains in Beijing kill 37
   Greenland experiences melting over 97% of its area in mid-July
   Oil industry-funded "BEST" study finds global warming is real, manmade
   July 2012: hottest month in U.S. history
You get the picture. Now one thing I used to post quite regularly were Arctic sea ice coverage images from the National Snow and Ice Data Center.  We've seen some high amounts of melting this year, but I found the data posted yesterday unsettling. First, look at the trend and see how the rate of melting had recently increased:

Then look at the ice coverage, notice the the big break-up near the Bering Sea along the Siberian coast:

The reason I find this image disturbing is because it reminds me of ice on a frozen puddle just before it completely melts, when it's soft, fragile, thin and full of holes.

The accelerated melting and break-up is due in part to an unusually strong summer storm in the Arctic. In and of itself this is not earth-shattering. Though uncommon, strong summer storms are not unknown, but this one comes as part of a package deal with more heat and moisture in the Arctic and more melting.  Recent data suggests that the sea ice is melting faster than expected, maybe as much as 50% more, and the volume is decreasing as well. The volume is a crucial element here.  The Arctic will continue to freeze over in the winter, but much of that will now melt in the summer. Thus the we will see more and more thin (low-volume) single-year ice instead of thicker multi-year ice. This ice is more susceptible to melting, which leads to more melting in the summer, less high-albedo ice to reflect sunlight, more exposed water to absorb and retain heat, delayed onset of winter freezing and thinner ice. Rinse and repeat.

The rapid decrease in Arctic sea ice is what caused me to change my thinking that climate change was a long-term problem that would incrementally affect us to a short-term unpredictable crisis. A change in the Arctic climate affects storm generation and jet-stream patterns, more convoluted jet stream paths means greater and more unpredictable shifts in weather at lower latitudes and we could see wide swings in winter from intense snow and rain storms to record warmth, maybe in a single season.