Friday, August 31, 2012

This Quote of a Lifetime just became Historic

Clinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. (82) is US Army vet, an American film actor, director, producer, and a composer. Eastwood has also been an elected politician. In April 1986 he was elected mayor for one term in his home town in California. In 2001 Eastwood was appointed to the California State Park and Recreation Commission by Governor Davis, and reappointed in 2004 by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

In his ongoing film career, Eastwood has delivered dozens of memorable lines. Here are just a selected few that are easily remembered:

If you want a guarantee, buy a toaster. - The Rookie; 7 Dec 1990

I have strong feelings about gun control. If there's a gun around, I want to be controlling it. - Pink Cadillac; 26 May 1989

Go ahead. Make my day. - Sudden Impact; 9 Dec 1983

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Clint Eastwood's quotation of a lifetime, however, has not only been more recent, it was delivered in a more extraordinary venue and has become instantly historic, especially to a growing population of astute observers. You may read it below, or hear and see it in its entirety on a video here.

See, I never thought it was a good idea for attorneys to the president, anyway.
- Speech to the RNC; 30 August 2012 , Tampa FL.


Submarines are always silent and strange.





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Thursday, August 30, 2012

Accurate hurricane information found imbedded Early U.S. maps

We can mentally process and get probabilities from tabulated hurricane statistics like the table in last year's USA Today article.

Alternatively, a picture is worth a thousand words, so might it be even easier to "read" what has always been readily available and even easier to understand? Check out the picture below.


What do you see? Large areas of the U.S. coastline carved over millions of years by successive hurricanes? If you predicted Miami, the intersection of the largest concave features on the coastline, has the highest probability for hits by both any hurricane and major hurricanes (winds of 111 mph or faster passing within 75 miles) you would be correct according to data compiled by Dr. Bob Sheets and Jack Williams as published in Hurricane Watch: Forecasting the Deadliest Storms on Earth.

Unlike a record of millions of years (US coastline image) the probabilities provided by Sheets and Williams may contain some anomalies (intuitive disconnects). Consider whether you find the map image more reliable than the following probabilities pairings excerpted from the table:


Which one of the above pairs does not appear as intuitively correct as the other pairs?

If your answer was B, you have probably learned how to read historical hurricane probabilities from a map of an overall coastline. WARNING: Do not apply this knowledge to islands, even very old ilands.

Submarines are always silent and strange.

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