Xinhua news has a cool list of photos of weird bridges from around the world. The photos include a staircase suspension bridge, a bridge that folds up, a bridge for boats to cross a river, and, well, just lots of cool photos. Check it out.
I've posted a number of times about the Solar Cycle, and the way the sun has been unusually quiet. I also posted a list of just a few of the hopelessly inaccurate solar climate models that had attempted to predict what would happen with the current solar minimum. All of them were hopelessly off target. Now, the New York Times publishes a story with an unbelievable piece of chutzpah inserted.
Now it is blank again, consistent with expectations that this solar cycle will be smaller and calmer, and the maximum of activity, expected to arrive in May 2013 will not be all that maximum.What the hell? Consistent with what expectations? Go on ... show me a model that predicted the current pattern? I guess there is a truth that dare not be mentioned: all the predictions proved hopelessly inaccurate, and if we dare to admit it, then it forces us to recognize that all the predictions and models concerning the Earth's climate are also most likely to be just as hopelessly wrong. "No no no no no. We expected the sun the behave like this." Hah!
But no one can quite explain the current behavior or reliably predict the future. “We still don’t quite understand this beast,” Dr. Hathaway said. “The theories we had for how the sunspot cycle works have major problems.”[Update] I just noticed that in my post (linked above) listing a few inaccurate predictions, the last one was from no one other than Dr Hathaway himself, the expert cited by the New York Times in this story. Hah. Here's his 2004 prediction:
The most recent solar maximum was in late 2000. The first spotless day after that was Jan 28, 2004. So, using Hathaway and Wilson's simple rule, solar minimum should arrive in late 2006. That's about a year earlier than previously thought. The next solar maximum might come early, too, says Hathaway. "Solar activity intensifies rapidly after solar minimum. In recent cycles, Solar Max has followed Solar Min by just 4 years." Do the math: 2006 + 4 years = 2010.Hah.
I commented before about how Obama doesn't understand freshman economics with his nonsense about creating competition in health care by making private enterprise compete with the government, (don't ask me to link it ... can't remember which post I said it in), but that was just peanuts compared to the moron Obama has appointed to run the Federal Reserve. I sat in front of the TV drinking my morning coffee, and watched Ron Paul ask Bernanke a pretty straight forward question. "What's your definition of inflation?" Now I remember covering this in high school economics ... I would have been about 16 or 17 ... it was my second to last year of high school anyway. That's an easy one Bernanke ... you can do it ... And Ron Paul, being the nice man that he is even gave the poor student a hint. "You've doubled the money supply. Does that have anything to do with inflation?"
Now previously I'd thought that Bernanke was a B- student. He tries hard, and while he's never going to be top grade material, he at least can get up to B level on a good day. Today, I realized that he's going to flunk the economics final exam. The short version of his answer? "Inflation is when prices go up." He didn't even try to moderate his answer by acknowledging that yes, money supply plays a role ... which, given the way Ron Paul posed the question, was an express disavowal that the money supply has anything to do with inflation. Mr and Mrs Bernanke, I'm sorry, but your son got an F this term. He really tries hard, but he just doesn't have what it takes. Has he ever considered a trade? I hear plumbers make good money.
[Update] AP reports that the man who doesn't know what inflation is
sought to assure Wall Street and Congress Tuesday that the Fed will be able to reel in its extraordinary economic stimulus and prevent a flare up of inflation when the recovery is more firmly rooted.Ummm ... I'm not quite sure what it is, but I'm confident I can stop it at some point in the future [smile at teacher].
