Whither Come the Tides?

I know this has been covered to death. It has been covered like a sore knee with icey hot. It has been covered like a (reference to a Japanese genre of porn film removed by publisher.) However this give me an opportunity to reference one of my favorite blogs, Bad Astronomy, which you might or might not be familiar with, but you should be now.

Bad Astronomy on the ridiculous, ridiculous, O'Reilly argument that the tides prove God's existence. I think the worst part of his contention was how pleased he looked with it. Being content with a thought so incompletely form is a small window into how actually ignorant O'Reilly himself is.

Further, I notice that O'Reilly always uses the construction, "Never any miscommunication." Each time he makes his assertion. Is there an underlying reason for this?

The Permeable Cone!

This is a pretty F'ing rad idea and just simple enough that it won't be tried. Of course it might not work and this could be attempted right now. But, of course, it is one of those ideas that might work but well, um, we really can't do it. Why? I don't know.

Something is Blocking the Sun!!!

Have I posted a link to this before? If not I will now because it is so rad. How awesome is that picture? How little do I care about Earth Day? Shit like this exists and we were able to do it. That is so bad-ass. I remember the first Earth Day that I can remember. We bought plants and T-shirts at Wal-Mart and planted them in the front yard. The plants, not the T-shirts. It rained and we felt that that had something to do with the environment. Shopping at Wal-Mart. No, wait, shopping really in general negates whatever plants we plant. Now, I am not a survivalist, but maybe I am a priority-ist. We exist on a little spaceship in front of the Sun, just like this one and we have to think about things in those contexts. The ingenuity of Apollo 13 being rescued from disaster is an American folk-legend. Advocating to fix the leak in our spaceship is dubious. I don't care about Earth Day. It will be very hard to role back the clock on consumerism and a World economy. I hope we can generate creative solution so that we can still enjoy the best parts of the society we have now and still maintain. I am skeptical though. We will see.

The Numbers are In

I realize that very few of you who read this care that much about the inner workings of MMA fights, but this seemed really interesting to me. In the fight this weekend between (my favorite fighter) BJ Penn and Frankie Edgar, BJ Penn lost his championship belt on, what seemed to me among many others, a dubious decision. Soon after the fight was finsihed, the FightMetric numbers came in. Here they are. I had the bout pretty much as they have it scored in the right-hand column. Douglas Crosby's now notorius 50-45 has Edgar winning every round. Now, how does someone who does this for a living and is sitting ringside (not that that is an improvement over TV) perceive something so opposed to reality? Maybe there could be an argument that Edgar hits much harder than Penn and Penn was just throwing pitty-pat strikes, but we know pretty much the opposite to be true. Here is a more elaborate breakdown. Crosby insits that he has rewatched the fight and is still correct. Strange things are afoot. Absurd.

Fishes

Here is a good list of fish to eat...and not. Good news for me; U.S. shrimp are good for every9one. Bad news for me; I don't live in the U.S.

Florida Panthers

Yes, I am here to talk hockey. Wait. No. Check this out. Florida panthers are living in an abandoned reclaimed Everglades subdivision. What really interest me about this is the notion of shutting down failed subdivisions and turning them back into actual pieces of the world. That is another huge benefit to lowering population growth that America refuses to think about, and Japan gets entirely wrong. Due to Kyoto's declining population lots of unused elementary schools are turned into public theaters and museums. Very nice.

Pair that with this piece that I put up on Facebook (pointed out by Alana) last week. Think of how much better Florida would be if people's beach front vacation homes were rendered back into nothing. Not to mention all of the go-kart tracks, t-shirt shops and strip malls that accompany them. I could go on about this article forever but I don't feel like sorting out all of my issues with the issue. I would have to say that, given that it is a barrier island, nothing should be done to save any home built on Holiday isle. Buying there is stupid. Building there is stupid. Telling people not to use the beach is stupid. Having buildings south of 98 is stupid, conceptually. Any further building in Destin is stupid and has been for a long time. While part of me saying this is out of gross sentimentality it also comes from more disciplined places. I think Destin, seeing cheap money is only putting itself in a downward spiral that will only be arrested by global climate change and the natural course of nature. How do I rectify this with my view that people shouldn't have trespassed on my grandmother's beach? Good question. I am sure I have an answer.

(Update: Here are some good links on the topic.)

I am trying to find a study on specifically what I was talking about but I am having trouble. "Aspenization" is mentioned heavily and is slightly different but also applicable. Aspenization is when an area becomes suddenly popular and wealthy people move in to build lavish second homes and land prices and property taxes shoot up forcing the middle class out to surrounding cities, commuting in by car while other people move in to take low-paying service jobs and live in cheap rentals, thus destroying the middle class base of a city.