Ten Rings: Jewels of Achievement

  I am royalty. My two glorious children are diamonds on my fingers. My wife is a fabulous opal. That's three fingers for a happy family, seven for the rest, for life achievements. My library is an ascending gold ring, a new layer for each year of more enriching novels, interesting nonfiction and textbooks for edification. I am FunTrivia royalty, a sovereign silver "T" for having ventured through all the trivia categories, building a factual temple that is strong like a fortress, discovering countless new facts between the cracks of my books. All the miles my feet have pounded the ground are an earthy emerald, on pace to outdistance the length of the equator. That's six fingers covered, four for the rest. My career is a bluesy sapphire, difficult to endure at times but worth every penny, affording great strides through numerical efficiency. A ruby glows from my college degree, my whole academic career, even the parts left unfinished, filled with high marks and praise. Amethyst shards reach skyward where my travels and photos erect an album that is beyond beautiful. Finally, the 10th finger holds a modest pearl for my written collection, that if not is the highest quality at least is prolific. 

These are my jewels of creation and achievement. The highest order given by God for what He gave me. I hope that I am making Him proud for realizing His potential in all that I do. To balance the elements without from within, by softening time with the gift of technology. People couldn't do what I do a hundred years ago. What a time to be alive, after the horror and before the crash. Give me another 30, 40, 50 years. I will put ten more on my toes.

1816: The Year Without a Summer

The presentation below was completed for a weather seminar class in my master's program.

My professor noted a correction needed from slide 3: sunspots can influence climate albeit to a minor degree.

Inside Out 2

This is the best sequel I've seen in a while. The Inside Out movies really make you reflect on mental crises and how emotions are being reconciled when they happen. As a psychology amateur, I appreciate how their movies help me psychoanalyze myself to better understand what I went through during some crises. I believe both movies so far have explained two of Erickson's eight life crises in an entertaining film format. As there are 3-4 more coming and Riley's life, the creators have a lot to work with.

This one in particular helped me realize how we acquire new emotions throughout adolescence, some which we may have felt moderately as children but more strongly as teenagers. Anxiety, boredom, embarrassment, envy. These emotions did seem stronger during adolescence for me, but it was a gradual emergence that did not happen overnight hesitated for Riley. Learning to master them was a challenge that took me decades, and I still haven't mastered embarassment.

And boy are these movies funny, my wife and I laughed our heads off. The next one could be about Riley's first boyfriend, or first job- when the next crisis in Erickson's stages of development happens.

Fire Weather (Homo Flagrans)

  We call ourselves "wise humans", homo sapiens. This is the mother of all misnomers. A better name for us is homo flagrans, burning humans. That's what the geologic record is going to reveal about our legacy in the eons to come, as a runaway, reckless species that upturned Earth materials and burned the atmosphere to hell, causing the sixth mass extinction- the only such mass extinction caused by a single species- by regurgitating as many greenhouse gases as the freakish Siberian super volcanoes during the Permian extinction 250 million years ago.

 I came across this term in John Valliant's frightening book "Fire Weather", which he apparently coined. It made me laugh out loud: probably the only time in a book of such despair. Fire weather is a new phenomenon in meteorology that began at the turn of the century, when humans cranked up the thermostat and showed little collective interest in turning it down. The forest will burn until the sky is opaque, as if we, the incinerators of all materials, were the worst volcanic eruption ever seen. Because that is all we do geologically- burn shit. We are the Earth's first species that flourishes on fire. Homo flagrans, ha, that's what we are.

Quadratura

 Heaven is a ceiling that grows
 Through landscapes in the mind's eye
 To contemplate all our divine intentions
 Plastered in permanence, unfiltered
 From the shifting vices of Earth.
 Where the megaron strips navigation
 We look to the stars for an answer,
 Absolution in a rococo nebula
 Framed by imagination, trickling tintinnabulation,
 Echoes of bells off the bronze planetarium.
 Skyward we teleport home
 In a basket of deliverance, unfettered
 Cobwebs of illumination conducting
 Orchestral fantasies in the light,
 A radiance to cleanse our atmosphere.
 Soul meets body at the cherished boundary
 Where angels become humans that grow wings,
 Leaking children from the loophole of time,
 Oil streaked burden of gravity unrivaled
 To brighten the path in hymns of creation.

Best of Seinfeld

I'm nearing the end of my third viewing of all the Seinfeld episodes. The first was in the 90s when it originally aired, plus all the reruns on cable TV through the 2000s. The second was with my wife when she first moved here. It's still as funny as I remember it, even if it is more dated. All the social observations are prisoners of the 90s, though many of them would resonate today. And that is why I've enjoyed this cycle as much as the others, if not more.

Contrary to popular opinion, I like the later seasons more than the early and middle ones. The show seemed to get better as time went on, going hand in hand with the acting improvements, especially Jerry's. He really nailed that dumbfounded look when one of his friends had a bonehead idea. He looks at them as if he can already see the insanity of the plot unfolding before him, and we are in for another wild ride.

The comedic writing of Seinfeld is second to none. Plots are interwoven masterfully to make you forget the seemingly inconsequential event at the beginning of the episode that serves as the "butterfly effect" to corrupt an often routine situation into an awkward, hilarious one at the end. I often struggle to remember that key moment at the beginning of an episode as I'm nearing the end: the one that makes me realize, if this one little thing hadn't happened this whole mess could have been avoided. A great idea for a book would be to dissect each episode, analyzing each moment for the chaos generator. It helps that each of the four are neurotic, insecure people, which always seems to attract a crazy moment in real life. I'm thinking about you, mom.

I used to think of Kramer as this zany, eccentric individual who was secretly a genius. Upon this viewing I see him more as an endearing idiot but still hilarious. Elaine is much more vain than I remember her. George is more relatable as I get older, so I actually like him better than I did before, though he does get away with some horrible things. Jerry is Jerry and he will always be Jerry, the ambivalent viewer making snide remarks at all the stupidity while engaging in it himself unwittingly.

 My favorite episodes:

 The Marine Viologist
 The Pothole
 The Serenity Now
 The Label Maker
 The Gum
 The Package
 The Little Kicks
 The Contest
 The Boyfriend
 The Airport
 The Voice

This ranking is based on laughs, enjoyment, memorable quotes, and scenes that I have rewatched over and over. For example in "The Label Maker" it is the risk game. In "The Package", it is the write-off scene.

Article Review: Measuring resilience and assessing vulnerability of terrestrial ecosystems to climate change in South America

Summary

            Measuring the impacts of climate change is becoming increasingly important as biodiversity in ecosystems continues to decline.  This is as true in South America- the geographic focus of this study- as it is anywhere.  The goal of this study is to find the best way to measure ecosystem resilience against increases in climate stress. 

Several methods have been used to research this problem, which the researchers state, but they are all qualitative.  Unfortunately, no background was provided to support these qualitative methods- only that they involve ecological stability theory and ecological niche theory.   The article doesn’t specifically state what these methods entailed, only that they apply to the theories. References are provided for these methods, making it up to the reader to investigate them.

Their research proposal is to generate a quantitative method by coupling the two theories.  The idea is to construct spatial models that measure the resilience of ecosystems “through a metric of climate suitability, based on the multidimensional niche preferably occupied by them” (p. 2).  The educational significance of such a method is to provide the only quantitative way of measuring ecosystem resilience against climate stress.  Results indicate that forests are more vulnerable to climate change in South America than savannas or grasslands.

 

Critique

            I did not find a comprehensive review of the related literature in this study.  Citations mostly applied to the data being used to delineate ecosystem boundaries and vegetational cover.  While it is stated that the reference for vegetational cover was a MODIS satellite, a reference for delineating the ecosystem boundaries was not.  The reader needs to look in the reference section to find data for that.

            There is not a specific question to be answered or a hypothesis to prove or disprove.  The goal of this research is to make the case for a quantitative method of measuring ecosystem resilience against climate change.  As we’ll see later, they don’t really answer this question so much as what the findings imply for conservation.

            The only instrument used was a MODIS satellite to delineate ecosystem boundaries by examining the vegetation content of each pixel.  Ecosystems were classified based on the percent of vegetation in them: less than 5% was grassland or desert, 5%-60% was savannah, and over 60% was forest.  MODIS satellite data is a cheap and effective way to estimate ecosystem boundaries, since these would be difficult to determine by fieldwork alone.

            Samples were collected for ecological niche modeling.  Based on the classification scheme, 53% of the samples were savannah, 38% were forest, and 9% were grassland.  A total of 37,763 samples were used in the model, indicating an impressive amount of data for the study.  However, it was not mentioned if the sample locations were randomly generated, systematic, or stratified in any way, leading the reader to wonder how much room there is for sampling error.  The model also used data from CHPclim (precipitation) and the WorldClim temperature database.  The need for these variables in the model wasn’t clearly stated in the text; we are to assume they are the key climatic ones when measuring climate change resistance.  Using the biomed2 package in R software, the model was processed using the variables above.  It was run using 10 different methods!  The highest quality methods were selected based on a True Skill Statistics (TSS) score of .7 or above.  An exponential equation was then used to fit the models into a curve that would generate an indicator of ecosystem resistance to climate stress.

            The design of this research is stated with great attention to detail but is difficult for someone without knowledge of R and statistics to thoroughly understand.  Because there is so much detail, other researchers familiar with these topics should be able to replicate the method if desired.

            Results from the study are clearly explained, not only in the text but in the maps and graphs provided.  The maps and graphs were appropriately clear and colored to make the data easy to read.  Figure 1 showed a color-coded map for each of the three bioregions (grassland, savannah, forest) and their resilience level.  Figure 2 showed the relative frequency of resistance to climate change response for the bioregions.  Figure 3 showed patterns between climatic variation in temperature and precipitation and ecosystem resilience.

            Based on the figures, moisture availability showed the strongest interaction with climate resilience.  Forest ecosystems in South America have a relatively narrow ecological niche, and since the models predict there will be less moisture in the south of the continent, that is where the researchers expect the least resistance to climate stress.  Stronger resistance can be seen on map B for savannah, having more extensive areas of high resistance across the continent.  A potentially confusing aspect about map A for grassland is that it shows low resilience across the continent, yet it is stated in the text that high resistance can be expected.

            Results are discussed in terms of the ways this method can apply to applications within the science of conservation, whether it is in evaluating ecosystem resilience or restoration policies.  I didn’t find a strong argument supporting why this quantitative one would be a better option than the qualitative ones briefly mentioned in the introduction.  The results would have been stronger if they had addressed which method is more accurate, costly, and beneficial.

            Surprisingly, there was no suggestion of further research involving their method.  Much of the discussion revolved around the findings and what can be done to conserve the environment in South America.  Placing more attention on forests is an important conclusion since they demand more moisture and are more important to a balanced global climate.  But this seems to be something conservationists- and perhaps the researchers themselves- already suspected.  If the hypothesis had been that forests in the south would show less resilience, then the discussion would have more aligned with it.