The stream itself had several examples of large woody debris both creating waterfalls and directing the water movement.
Unforced Variations: Sep 2026
1 week ago
Road Prong
Tuesday was a beautiful day and with most classes canceled because most people were at the AAG meeting in San Francisco, I went to the park to do a little site scouting at Road Prong. I was surprised to see Clingsman Dome Road closed, so I parked at Newfound Gap and walk the ~ 2 miles of the Appalachian Trail to Road Prong. I quickly noticed there were a large number of large Red Spruce trees down over the trail from the high winds we had the past 3 days.
The stream itself had several examples of large woody debris both creating waterfalls and directing the water movement.
There was also an old debris dam made of large logs that created a pool upstream of it.
Suddenly, I came on a large section of stream completely covered with large Red Spruce. I tried climbing over it but gove up after 300 ft as it was getting more difficult.
I walked back on the Clingsman Dome Road and saw why it was closed. There were many trees down blocking the road, however, I did get some good pictures of the Mt Le Conte Massif and the valley of the Beach Flats Prong in North Carolina.
The stream itself had several examples of large woody debris both creating waterfalls and directing the water movement.
The Media's Natural Disaster Coverage
With the recent formation and movement over Florida of the first tropical system in the Atlantic in 2006, Alberto, the media frenzy over tropical systems this year has started. Although, I am happy about the increased coverage natural events are getting, the type of coverage is awful at best, turning such events into man vs nature battles, neglecting the wider causes, and not providing "solutions" to the problems highlighted by these events, rather playing sound-bytes from politicians.
The man vs nature battle view is most prevalent before the event, often taking the guise of people nailing boards over the windows of their homes, lines of people at grocery stores, and cars jamming the freeways going out of town. All of these images help to propel the battle mentality. Rather than a more truthful view that these are natural events, with both positive and negative results, communities in the path often resemble 1940 England waiting for Nazi planes.
As Katrina and New Orleans as an example, the media did drive in the fact that large portions of the city exists below sea level. However, the investigation stopped there. Why would a city build on such land, or why would people live on such land were questions that were not asked. The socioeconomic reasons for poor people living on below sea level land were not examined, other than on a superficial level. Capitalism, new deal socialism, and the flight from the inner city all have their role to play. Similarly, the environment stances of the various local, state, and national governments and businesses helped to create the conditions that allowed such a disaster to take place. Once again, the media gave facts like the dates on when the levées were built, but not in why levées would be built in the first place. Left unexamined was the idea that the environment should be engineered against rather than with. When taken together, these causes form complex relationships. Low wages for the poorest of New Orleans resulted in them being clustered in some of the most at risk areas. However, civil engineering project spent millions of dollars on protecting these high risk areas. These engineering projects help to destroy much of the wetlands of southeastern Louisiana, increasing the risk to everyone.
Lastly, the issues of solutions to stop or mitigate such future events were rarely discussed, except by politicians, that have little to no clue on what actually needs to be done. Those that knew in government were often silenced by bureaucracy and academics had little power to implement solutions. It is here were a proper understanding of the causes are necessary. Should billions be spent to rebuild levées to protect some of the lowest valued land in the country? Many thousands have moved to places like Houston. Will these new homes be any safer than New Orlenes, as much of Houston is built on coastal wetlands? Does a person have a right to build their house on a barrier island, when it will be destroyed in the future, and should the government stop the legally from doing this?
Sadly, from all the coverage of Alberto I have seen, I doesn't appear the media has started to do any of this.
The man vs nature battle view is most prevalent before the event, often taking the guise of people nailing boards over the windows of their homes, lines of people at grocery stores, and cars jamming the freeways going out of town. All of these images help to propel the battle mentality. Rather than a more truthful view that these are natural events, with both positive and negative results, communities in the path often resemble 1940 England waiting for Nazi planes.
As Katrina and New Orleans as an example, the media did drive in the fact that large portions of the city exists below sea level. However, the investigation stopped there. Why would a city build on such land, or why would people live on such land were questions that were not asked. The socioeconomic reasons for poor people living on below sea level land were not examined, other than on a superficial level. Capitalism, new deal socialism, and the flight from the inner city all have their role to play. Similarly, the environment stances of the various local, state, and national governments and businesses helped to create the conditions that allowed such a disaster to take place. Once again, the media gave facts like the dates on when the levées were built, but not in why levées would be built in the first place. Left unexamined was the idea that the environment should be engineered against rather than with. When taken together, these causes form complex relationships. Low wages for the poorest of New Orleans resulted in them being clustered in some of the most at risk areas. However, civil engineering project spent millions of dollars on protecting these high risk areas. These engineering projects help to destroy much of the wetlands of southeastern Louisiana, increasing the risk to everyone.
Lastly, the issues of solutions to stop or mitigate such future events were rarely discussed, except by politicians, that have little to no clue on what actually needs to be done. Those that knew in government were often silenced by bureaucracy and academics had little power to implement solutions. It is here were a proper understanding of the causes are necessary. Should billions be spent to rebuild levées to protect some of the lowest valued land in the country? Many thousands have moved to places like Houston. Will these new homes be any safer than New Orlenes, as much of Houston is built on coastal wetlands? Does a person have a right to build their house on a barrier island, when it will be destroyed in the future, and should the government stop the legally from doing this?
Sadly, from all the coverage of Alberto I have seen, I doesn't appear the media has started to do any of this.
Morphology on Titan
Last January, the Cassini spaceprobe acquired amazing photographs and other science data from Saturn''s moon Titan. It now appears that even river morphology of Titan resembles that of earth.
Here are some examples of Titan images that appear to be similar to structures on earth.
Dunes
Canyons
Rivers
There are only three parameters that differ significantly between Earth and Titan, Parker said. First is the acceleration due to gravity – on Titan it is about one-seventh the value on Earth. Second is the viscosity of flowing fluid – the viscosity of liquid methane on Titan is about one-fifth that of water on Earth. Third is the submerged specific gravity of sediment – the value on Titan is about two-thirds of that on Earth.
“What this means is that for the same discharge of liquid methane as to water, the channel characteristics on Titan should be remarkably similar to those on Earth,” Parker said. “However, because of the smaller acceleration due to gravity, channel slopes on Titan should be wider, deeper and less steep than those on Earth.”
Wildcards that make Parker’s predictions tentative include a freeze-thaw process of methane that might not be analogous to the freeze-thaw process of water on Earth, and the formation of hydrocarbons on Titan that might add a kind of cohesion not encountered on Earth. “The interaction of sunlight with a hydrocarbon rich atmosphere could possibly precipitate very sticky compounds that could give streams on Titan a degree of cohesion that makes them behave differently,” Parker said.
Here are some examples of Titan images that appear to be similar to structures on earth.
Dunes
Canyons
Rivers
The lizard vs the....swirly spiral thing
On Friday Slashdot picked up the story about the conflict between Debian and Mozilla. The situation involves Mozilla's trademark policy and The Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG). Mozilla says
Basically, you are allowed to change/use their code, but you can not release it using the Mozilla name. The logic behind this is, if joe developer releases his own version of Firefox that is not of high quality, Mozilla will get "a bad name". Now enters Debian. Debian uses Mozilla code, and modifies it to include in their operating system. Debian is known for their quality software, so Mozilla waves their normal policy specifically, and only for Debian. However, DFSG says in article 8
This says that if Debian gets certain rights, those rights must be passed on to everyone using Debian. If Debian uses the Mozilla trademark and doesn''t pass it on, Debian is violating its own guidelines. If Debian doesn''t use the Mozilla trademark, they will have to name it something different and it will be a splinter in the FOSS community. To those whom ask "why does this matter", if Debian were to agree to this Knoppix, Mepis, Ubuntu, and every other Debian based operating system could not use the Mozilla trademark. Lets hope Mozilla comes to develop a trademark policy that is in-line with the concept of freedom.
Our code is free, but we do strictly enforce our trademark rights, we must, in order to keep them valid. Our trademarks include, among others, the names Mozilla, Firefox, Thunderbird, Bugzilla and XUL, as well as the Mozilla logo, Firefox logo, Thunderbird logo and the red lizard logo. This means that, while you have considerable freedom to redistribute and modify our software, there are tight restrictions on your ability to use the Mozilla name and logos, even when built into binaries that we provide.
Basically, you are allowed to change/use their code, but you can not release it using the Mozilla name. The logic behind this is, if joe developer releases his own version of Firefox that is not of high quality, Mozilla will get "a bad name". Now enters Debian. Debian uses Mozilla code, and modifies it to include in their operating system. Debian is known for their quality software, so Mozilla waves their normal policy specifically, and only for Debian. However, DFSG says in article 8
License Must Not Be Specific to Debian. The rights attached to the program must not depend on the program''s being part of a Debian system. If the program is extracted from Debian and used or distributed without Debian but otherwise within the terms of the program''s license, all parties to whom the program is redistributed should have the same rights as those that are granted in conjunction with the Debian system.
This says that if Debian gets certain rights, those rights must be passed on to everyone using Debian. If Debian uses the Mozilla trademark and doesn''t pass it on, Debian is violating its own guidelines. If Debian doesn''t use the Mozilla trademark, they will have to name it something different and it will be a splinter in the FOSS community. To those whom ask "why does this matter", if Debian were to agree to this Knoppix, Mepis, Ubuntu, and every other Debian based operating system could not use the Mozilla trademark. Lets hope Mozilla comes to develop a trademark policy that is in-line with the concept of freedom.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
