Fight the Amoral Fight

Well. Another week+ gone by.

Baby girl was indeed born on the fourth but too late in the day to make the trip so I took my mom (do not call her great-grandma, lol) down there on Sunday. Thus, I lost an entire weekend's worth of plans. But, that's what babies do, isn't it?
I am not a huge Star Wars fan so I'm not sure but don't think female Jedi are canon. Nobody in the family cares that much about that, though, so the plans are already afoot for a Star Wars themed first birthday party ;)

We have had some odd weather. It rained .13” nearby but also .24” so I got somewhere in that neighborhood. LOX rain totals through May 9. Following that, there were thunderstorms in the mountains, I guess (and maybe at calpoppy's?). It was cool for a couple of days but sunny and nice until yesterday. Yesterday afternoon I went to see the movie I'd planned to see last weekend – walked in under sunny skies and 72 degrees (in Oxnard) and walked out under heavy grey marine layer and 62 degrees a couple hours later (still in Oxnard, haha). Fog was low enough to obscure tree tops. Figured then that the forecast for today's high temperatures was good, though it is not nearly so warm as forecast here (never is, except by chance – WU and the NWS seem to think SP is an interior valley, while two other online sources put us on the plain with Oxnard or Camarillo, and so I interpolate to get a closer guess, which They seem unable to manage). Pretty clouds popping up over the mountains.
SoCal has had record high temps, santa anas, major fire, rain, mountain snow, t-storms, fog … pretty much the entirety of what we get here all in the first two weeks of May. May! Something is out of whack. Wonder what the summer will be like?

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WTS – hey, you got rain, didn't you? Much more than I did! I imagine you are back to near-100 degrees today :( Hope you can stay cool ... though, if you went to see the bicyclists off, probably not! I just saw in Friday's paper that the tour is coming through here again. I might try to see them (missed them last time, thinking “next year”, and then there was no next year for five years, or something) but it's tough on a Wednesday and such a small time window – like, 20 minutes. Nifty, though, and lots of folks around here will make the effort to cheer them on :)

Karen – yep, four doors is definitely the “S” since the roadster is a true sports car with only two doors. The stylized “A” in the name does look like an “R”! I guess I never saw it that way because I'd been reading about the Tesla for years before they actually made one.

Saw you posting elsewhere that you got quite a lot of rain – hurray! Nice for a change, huh?
Hope you had a wonderful time at Disneyland (again!) and the rain kept the crowds away without hampering your fun :)

LC – believe me, I sympathize with your smoke woes. Well, you know that. So glad the weather shifted so quickly this time around.
A friend of mine lives on Lake Sherwood and enjoyed watching the helicopters dipping in for water for awhile, despite her smoke-stung eyes. Always an upside, lol

Ylee – as I'm sure you know by now, the fire is all out. There was a great sat picture on May 4 from NASA that showed the huge burn scar and a few isolated smoke plumes were still spewing but not a problem.

calpoppy – that's not lazy – that's justifiably tired! Busy season for you involves a lot of heavy work, I'm thinking, and relaxing is necessary if you're going to keep it up.
I did get some knitting in during the coolth and am almost ready to separate my sweater at the arms. Very exciting (well, for me, it is). Don't think I'll be knitting on that much today or tomorrow, though! It's okay – I've got two smaller projects going, too, if I get the urge :)
Here's a funny old knitting pic for you.

Glad to hear the pups listen better than the birds, LOL I'm afraid I'd be a helicopter puppy parent and put them on a leash, but I know you have to have them learn recall as early as possible where you live, for their own safety. Saw that the car ride was not so pleasant and hope she gets the hang of it soon!

Did you get thunderstorms? I was checking radar on my phone one day and it looked liked it was raining around Llano, anyway.

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LotsOfLinks, sorry, will try to keep commentary to a minimum (it takes forever to scroll down my blog, these days, and it's all because of my own humongous comments, lol).

Knitting plus stuff:

Knitting and science.

Knitting and Cryptozoology
Jackalope! Chupacabra and GOATS! And someone should knit WTS some Yeti feet so the Yeti will think he's one of them!

What people really think (no, really): A blog from a knitting designer quoting a thread initially about one of her designs which someone saw as a sign of the Second Coming (tm). No, seriously.
Well, I won't link it because it is old and I don't guess the designer wants it linked, at this point, so, here it is for copy and pasting pleasure:
http://www.subwayknitter.com/2008/02/this_explain s_alot.php

[this is all going to flow nicely … I can feel it … ]

John Shook wrote a piece on religion and skepticism with a bit of history. It is brief.

Longer, and in a similar vein, Sean Carroll (the physicist) writes a blog entry about why he won't take Templeton money (he explains Templeton, if you don't know them) and why science and religion are incompatible and that's just fine. Couple of new ideas in that one, for me.
His following entry is a funny video … I think I'll just post it at the end of this comment so you can watch NdGT get crazy ;)

Yesterday would have been Richard Feynman's 95th birthday. Here he is being bongo crazy – at 69, and a few days before he returned to the hospital for the last time. H/t @robinince
Here is Brian Cox's mini-tribute on BBC Radio4 h/t @ProfBrianCox

And his sister, Joan Feynman, was an accomplished astrophysicist, as well. Didn't know that, did you? Here's a blog post about her with a sweet video.

Has anyone heard of Starship Century? Their syposium is coming up and oh boy that would be fun to attend!
It's associated with the 100 Year Starship. I'm sure I've seen these both before but just never spent the time to investigate.

I'll have to fully break the flow here, alas, but thought wu might like this article on how everything we think we know about wolves is wrong.

Heading back towards the stream, another twitpic from a protest of some sort … “What do we want? … “

Oh, and speaking of activism, sort of, I have something from the UCS that those interested in ag policy might like to see – The Healthy Farm: A Vision for U.S. Agriculture - which I haven't spent a lot of time on but looks very interesting and useful.

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Let me know if I flubbed the links – I first typed them in instead of using the button and had to fix about half of them even though they looked exactly correct :-/

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Here ya go ;)



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'k. Think that's it. Is it enough? I'm never sure …
LOL

Happy week, WU!

WTS - oh, neato, that you got to see it! They're doing it backwards, this time, so they will go uphill from here to Ojai, which I think is nuts, but, it will be relatively cool tomorrow, at least. [how's my grammar in that sentence? lol]
Here's a map for Stage 4, including a graph of the elevations.

calpoppy - ha! I suppose if I get desperate! I did recently buy a whole set of dpns (cheap!) so if I lose one set I've got more, for skinny scarves, anyway ;)

Ylee - glad I checked the list as you had posted soon before I was going to. Not that this needs immediate attention but, well, I can't resist talking about my newest obsession, as you know!
Sweater is knit from the bottom up so when I get to the bottom of the arm holes I have to separate the left front, right front, and back pieces to knit separately, then the body pieces will come back together across the top of the shoulders, leaving a hole where the sleeves will fit in later. Make sense? I know - you were just making conversation, LOL, but one of the best things about knitting is the construction - all the ways pieces can be put together to make something, the way different materials dictate what can be done. There is a lot to it which makes it much more interesting to me.

Yes, do read the wolves thing - a new way to look at their social structure.

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Why Superman changes in phone booths, just for some geeky kicks :)

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Yesterday the forecast was for 100 degrees, dropped it to 97 at some point during the day, and the actual high was 87. Pretty nice.
Today is much cooler, of course, and normal-breezy, and I've enjoyed it very much.
Hope WU all did, too :)

Whoopsies. The link to Stage 4 of the Amgen race.