text: Statistics of Deadly Quarrels http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/14426?&print=yes [Click the URL to get the PDF to see the graphics. [I have a copy of Richardson's book by that title. It's so scarce that it's never been reprinted.] January-February 2002, Volume: 90 Number: 1 Page: 10, DOI: [28]10.1511/2002.1.10 [33]Brian Hayes Look upon the phenomenon of war with dispassion and detachment, as if observing the follies of another species on a distant planet: From such an elevated view, war seems a puny enough pastime. Demographically, it hardly matters. War deaths amount to something like 1 percent of all deaths; in many places, more die by suicide, and still more in accidents. If saving human lives is the great desideratum, then there is more to be gained by prevention of drowning and auto wrecks than by the abolition of war. But no one on this planet sees war from such a height of austere equanimity. Even the gods on Olympus could not keep from meddling in earthly conflicts. Something about the clash of arms has a special power to rouse the stronger emotions--pity and love as well as fear and hatred--and so our response to battlefield killing and dying is out of all proportion to its rank in tables of vital statistics. When war comes, it muscles aside the calmer aspects of life; no one is unmoved. Most of us choose one side or the other, but even among those who merely want to stop the fighting, feelings run high. ("Antiwar militant" is no oxymoron.) [34]click for full image and caption [35]Figure 1. The Great War in La Plata (1865-1870) . . . The same inflamed passions that give war its urgent human interest also stand in the way of scholarly or scientific understanding. Reaching impartial judgment about rights and wrongs seems all but impossible. Stepping outside the bounds of one's own culture and ideology is also a challenge--not to mention the bounds of one's time and place. We tend to see all wars through the lens of the current conflict, and we mine history for lessons convenient to the present purpose. One defense against such distortions is the statistical method of gathering data about many wars from many sources, in the hope that at least some of the biases will balance out and true patterns will emerge. It's a dumb, brute-force approach and not foolproof, but nothing else looks more promising. A pioneer of this quantitative study of war was Lewis Fry Richardson, the British meteorologist whose ambitious but premature foray into numerical weather forecasting I described in this space a year ago. Now seems a good time to consider the other half of Richardson's lifework, on the mathematics of armed conflict. Wars and Peaces Richardson was born in 1881 to a prosperous Quaker family in the north of England. He studied physics with J. J. Thomson at Cambridge, where he developed expertise in the numerical solution of differential equations. Such approximate methods are a major mathematical industry today, but at that time they were not a popular subject or a shrewd career choice. After a series of short-term appointments--well off the tenure track--Richardson found a professional home in weather research, making notable contributions to the theory of atmospheric turbulence. Then, in 1916, he resigned his post to serve in France as a driver with the Friends' Ambulance Unit. Between tours of duty at the front, he did most of the calculations for his trial weather forecast. (The forecast was not a success, but the basic idea was sound, and all modern weather prediction relies on similar methods.) After the war, Richardson gradually shifted his attention from meteorology to questions of war and international relations. He found some of the same mathematical tools still useful. In particular, he modeled arms races with differential equations. The death spiral of escalation--where one country's arsenal provokes another to increase its own armament, whereupon the first nation responds by adding still more weapons--has a ready representation in a pair of linked differential equations. Richardson showed that an arms race can be stabilized only if the "fatigue and expense" of preparing for war are greater than the perceived threats from enemies. This result is hardly profound or surprising, and yet Richardson's analysis nonetheless attracted much comment (mainly skeptical), because the equations offered the prospect of a quantitative measure of war risks. If Richardson's equations could be trusted, then observers would merely need to track expenditures on armaments to produce a war forecast analogous to a weather forecast. Mathematical models of arms races have been further refined since Richardson's era, and they had a place in policy deliberations during the "mutually assured destruction" phase of the Cold War. But Richardson's own investigations turned in a somewhat different direction. A focus on armaments presupposes that the accumulation of weaponry is a major cause of war, or at least has a strong correlation with it. Other theories of the origin of war would emphasize different factors--the economic status of nations, say, or differences of culture and language, or the effectiveness of diplomacy and mediation. There is no shortage of such theories; the problem is choosing among them. Richardson argued that theories of war could and should be evaluated on a scientific basis, by testing them against data on actual wars. So he set out to collect such data. Others had the same idea at roughly the same time. The Russian-born sociologist Pitirim A. Sorokin published a long list of wars in 1937, and Quincy Wright of the University of Chicago issued another compilation in 1942. Richardson began his own collection in about 1940 and continued work on it until his death in 1953. Of the three contemporaneous lists, Richardson's covers the narrowest interval of time but seems to be best adapted to the needs of statistical analysis. Richardson published some of his writings on war in journal articles and pamphlets, but his ideas became widely known only after two posthumous volumes appeared in 1960. The work on arms races is collected in Arms and Insecurity; the statistical studies are in Statistics of Deadly Quarrels. In addition, a two-volume Collected Papers was published in 1993. Most of what follows in this article comes from Statistics of Deadly Quarrels. I have also leaned heavily on a 1980 study by David Wilkinson of the University of California, Los Angeles, which presents Richardson's data in a rationalized and more readable format. "Thinginess Fails" The catalogue of conflicts in Statistics of Deadly Quarrels covers the period from about 1820 until 1950. Richardson's aim was to count all deaths during this interval caused by a deliberate act of another person. Thus he includes individual murders and other lesser episodes of violence in addition to warfare, but he excludes accidents and negligence and natural disasters. He also decided not to count deaths from famine and disease associated with war, on the grounds that multiple causes are too hard to disentangle. (Did World War I "cause" the influenza epidemic of 1918-1919?) [36]click for full image and caption [37]Figure 2. Magnitude of a war . . . The decision to lump together murder and war was meant to be provocative. To those who hold that "murder is an abominable selfish crime, but war is a heroic and patriotic adventure," Richardson replies: "One can find cases of homicide which one large group of people condemned as murder, while another large group condoned or praised them as legitimate war. Such things went on in Ireland in 1921 and are going on now in Palestine." (It's depressing that his examples, 50 years later, remain so apt.) But if Richardson dismissed moral distinctions between various kinds of killing, he acknowledged methodological difficulties. Wars are the province of historians, whereas murders belong to criminologists; statistics from the two groups are hard to reconcile. And the range of deadly quarrels lying between murder and war is even more problematic. Riots, raids and insurrections have been too small and too frequent to attract the notice of historians, but they are too political for criminologists. For larger wars, Richardson compiled his list by reading histories, starting with the Encyclopaedia Britannica and going on to more diverse and specialized sources. Murder data came from national crime reports. To fill in the gap between wars and murders he tried interpolating and extrapolating and other means of estimating, but he acknowledged that his results in this area were weak and incomplete. He mixed together civil and international wars in a single list, arguing that the distinction is often unclear. [38]click for full image and caption [39]Figure 3. Frequency of outbreaks of war . . . An interesting lesson of Richardson's exercise is just how difficult it can be to extract consistent and reliable quantitative information from the historical record. It seems easier to count inaccessible galaxies or invisible neutrinos than to count wars that swept through whole nations just a century ago. Of course some aspects of military history are always contentious; you can't expect all historians to agree on who started a war, or who won it. But it turns out that even more basic facts--Who were the combatants? When did the fighting begin and end? How many died?--can be remarkably hard to pin down. Lots of wars merge and split, or have no clear beginning or end. As Richardson remarks, "Thinginess fails." In organizing his data, Richardson borrowed a crucial idea from astronomy: He classified wars and other quarrels according to their magnitude, the base-10 logarithm of the total number of deaths. Thus a terror campaign that kills 100 has a magnitude of 2, and a war with a million casualties is a magnitude-6 conflict. A murder with a single victim is magnitude 0 (since 10^0=1). The logarithmic scale was chosen in large part to cope with shortcomings of available data; although casualty totals are seldom known precisely, it is usually possible to estimate the logarithm within ±0.5. (A war of magnitude 6±0.5 could have anywhere from 316,228 to 3,162,278 deaths.) But the use of logarithmic magnitudes has a psychological benefit as well: One can survey the entire spectrum of human violence on a single scale. Random Violence Richardson's war list (as refined by Wilkinson) includes 315 conflicts of magnitude 2.5 or greater (or in other words with at least about 300 deaths). It's no surprise that the two World Wars of the 20th century are at the top of this list; they are the only magnitude-7 conflicts in human history. What is surprising is the extent to which the World Wars dominate the overall death toll. Together they account for some 36 million deaths, which is about 60 percent of all the quarrel deaths in the 130-year period. The next largest category is at the other end of the spectrum: The magnitude-0 events (quarrels in which one to three people died) were responsible for 9.7 million deaths. Thus the remainder of the 315 recorded wars, along with all the thousands of quarrels of intermediate size, produced less than a fourth of all the deaths. The list of magnitude-6 wars also yields surprises, although of a different kind. Richardson identified seven of these conflicts, the smallest causing half a million deaths and the largest about 2 million. Clearly these are major upheavals in world history; you might think that every educated person could name most of them. Try it before you read on. The seven megadeath conflicts listed by Richardson are, in chronological order, and using the names he adopted: the Taiping Rebellion (1851-1864), the North American Civil War (1861-1865), the Great War in La Plata (1865-1870), the sequel to the Bolshevik Revolution (1918-1920), the first Chinese-Communist War (1927-1936), the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and the communal riots in the Indian Peninsula (1946-1948). Looking at the list of 315 wars as a time series, Richardson asked what patterns or regularities could be discerned. Is war becoming more frequent, or less? Is the typical magnitude increasing? Are there any periodicities in the record, or other tendencies for the events to form clusters? A null hypothesis useful in addressing these questions suggests that wars are independent, random events, and on any given day there is always the same probability that war will break out. This hypothesis implies that the average number of new wars per year ought to obey a Poisson distribution, which describes how events tend to arrange themselves when each occurrence of an event is unlikely but there are many opportunities for an event to occur. The Poisson distribution is the law suitable for tabulating radioactive decays, cancer clusters, tornado touchdowns, Web-server hits and, in a famous early example, deaths of cavalrymen by horse kicks. As applied to the statistics of deadly quarrels, the Poisson law says that if p is the probability of a war starting in the course of a year, then the probability of seeing n wars begin in any one year is e ^-p p ^n/n!. Plugging some numbers into the formula shows that when p is small, years with no onsets of war are the most likely, followed by years in which a single war begins; as n grows, the likelihood of seeing a year with n wars declines steeply. Figure 3 compares the Poisson distribution with Richardson's data for a group of magnitude- 4 wars. The match is very close. Richardson performed a similar analysis of the dates on which wars ended--the "outbreaks of peace"--with the same result. He checked the wars on Quincy Wright's list in the same way and again found good agreement. Thus the data offer no reason to believe that wars are anything other than randomly distributed accidents. Richardson also examined his data set for evidence of long-term trends in the incidence of war. Although certain patterns catch the eye when the data are plotted chronologically, Richardson concluded that the trends are not clear enough to rule out random fluctuations. "The collection as a whole does not indicate any trend towards more, nor towards fewer, fatal quarrels." He did find some slight hint of "contagion": The presence of an ongoing war may to some extent increase the probability of a new war starting. [40]click for full image and caption [41]Figure 4. Distribution of wars in time . . . Love Thy Neighbor If the temporal dimension fails to explain much about war, what about spatial relations? Are neighboring countries less likely than average to wind up fighting one another, or more likely? Either hypothesis seems defensible. Close neighbors often have interests in common and so might be expected to become allies rather than enemies. On the other hand, neighbors could also be rivals contending for a share of the same resources--or maybe the people next door are just plain annoying. The existence of civil wars argues that living together is no guarantee of amity. (And at the low end of the magnitude scale, people often murder their own kin.) Richardson's approach to these questions had a topological flavor. Instead of measuring the distance between countries, he merely asked whether or not they share a boundary. Then, in later studies, he refined this notion by trying to measure the length of the common boundary--which led to a fascinating digression. Working with maps at various scales, Richardson paced off the lengths of boundaries and coastlines with dividers, and realized that the result depends on the setting of the dividers, or in other words on the unit of measurement. A coastline that measures 100 steps of 10 millimeters each will not necessarily measure 1,000 steps of 1 millimeter each; it is likely to be more, because the smaller units more closely follow the zigzag path of the coast. This result appeared in a somewhat out-of-the-way publication; when Benoit Mandelbrot came across it by chance, Richardson's observation became one of the ideas that inspired Mandelbrot's theory of fractals. During the period covered by Richardson's study there were about 60 stable nations and empires (the empires being counted for this purpose as single entities). The mean number of neighbors for these states was about six (and Richardson offered an elegant geometric argument, based on Euler's relation among the vertices, edges and faces of a polyhedron, that the number must be approximately six, for any plausible arrangement of nations). Hence if warring nations were to choose their foes entirely at random, there would be about a 10 percent chance that any pair of belligerents would turn out to be neighbors. The actual proportion of warring neighbors is far higher. Of 94 international wars with just two participants, Richardson found only 12 cases in which the two combatants had no shared boundary, suggesting that war is mostly a neighborhood affair. But extending this conclusion to larger and wider wars proved difficult, mainly because the "great powers" are effectively everyone's neighbor. Richardson was best able to fit the data with a rather complex model assigning different probabilities to conflicts between two great powers, between a great power and a smaller state, and between two lesser nations. But rigging up a model with three parameters for such a small data set is not very satisfying. Furthermore, Richardson concluded that "chaos" was still the predominant factor in explaining the world's larger wars: The same element of randomness seen in the time-series analysis is at work here, though "restricted by geography and modified by infectiousness." [42]click for full image and caption [43]Figure 5. Web of wars is constructed from Richardson's data . . . What about other causative factors--social, economic, cultural? While compiling his war list, Richardson noted the various items that historians mentioned as possible irritants or pacifying influences, and then he looked for correlations between these factors and belligerence. The results were almost uniformly disappointing. Richardson's own suppositions about the importance of arms races were not confirmed; he found evidence of a preparatory arms race in only 13 out of 315 cases. Richardson was also a proponent of Esperanto, but his hope that a common language would reduce the chance of conflict failed to find support in the data. Economic indicators were equally unhelpful: The statistics ratify neither the idea that war is mainly a struggle between the rich and the poor nor the view that commerce between nations creates bonds that prevent war. The one social factor that does have some detectable correlation with war is religion. In the Richardson data set, nations that differ in religion are more likely to fight than those that share the same religion. Moreover, some sects seem generally to be more bellicose (Christian nations participated in a disproportionate number of conflicts). But these effects are not large. Mere Anarchy Loosed upon the World The residuum of all these noncauses of war is mere randomness--the notion that warring nations bang against one another with no more plan or principle than molecules in an overheated gas. In this respect, Richardson's data suggest that wars are like hurricanes or earthquakes: We can't know in advance when or where a specific event will strike, but we do know how many to expect in the long run. We can compute the number of victims; we just can't say who they'll be. This view of wars as random catastrophes is not a comforting thought. It seems to leave us no control over our own destiny, nor any room for individual virtue or villainy. If wars just happen, who's to blame? But this is a misreading of Richardson's findings. Statistical "laws" are not rules that govern the behavior either of nations or of individuals; they merely describe that behavior in the aggregate. A murderer might offer the defense that the crime rate is a known quantity, and so someone has to keep it up, but that plea is not likely to earn the sympathy of a jury. Conscience and personal responsibility are in no way diminished by taking a statistical view of war. [44]click for full image and caption [45]Figure 6. Long-term catalogue of global conflicts . . . What is depressing is that the data suggest no clear plan of action for those who want to reduce the prevalence of violence. Richardson himself was disappointed that his studies pointed to no obvious remedy. Perhaps he was expecting too much. A retired physicist reading the Encyclopaedia Britannica can do just so much toward securing world peace. But with larger and more detailed data sets, and more powerful statistical machinery, some useful lessons might emerge. There is now a whole community of people working to gather war data, many of whom trace their intellectual heritage back to Richardson and Quincy Wright. The largest such undertaking is the Correlates of War project, begun in the 1960s by J. David Singer of the University of Michigan. The COW catalogues, like Richardson's, begin in the post-Napoleonic period, but they have been brought up close to the present day and now list thousands of militarized disputes. Offshoots and continuations of the project are being maintained by Russell J. Leng of Middlebury College and by Stuart A. Bremer of Pennsylvania State University. Peter Brecke of the Georgia Institute of Technology has begun another data collection. His catalogue extends down to magnitude 1.5 (about 30 deaths) and covers a much longer span of time, back as far as a.d. 1400. The catalogue is approaching completion for 5 of 12 global regions and includes more than 3,000 conflicts. The most intriguing finding so far is a dramatic, century-long lull in the 1700s. Even if Richardson's limited data were all we had to go on, one clear policy imperative emerges: At all costs avoid the clash of the titans. However painful a series of brushfire wars may seem to the participants, it is the great global conflagrations that threaten us most. As noted above, the two magnitude-7 wars of the 20th century were responsible for three-fifths of all the deaths that Richardson recorded. We now have it in our power to have a magnitude-8 or -9 war. In the aftermath of such an event, no one would say that war is demographically irrelevant. After a war of magnitude 9.8, no one would say anything at all. © Brian Hayes Bibliography * Ashford, Oliver M. 1985. Prophetor Professor?: The Life and Work of Lewis Fry Richardson. Bristol, Boston: Adam Hilger. * Cioffi-Revilla, Claudio A. 1990. The Scientific Measurement of International Conflict: Handbook of Datasets on Crises and Wars 1945?1988. Boulder and London: Lynne Reinner Publishers. * Richardson, Lewis F. 1960. Statistics of Deadly Quarrels. Edited by Quincy Wright and C. C. Lienau. Pittsburgh: Boxwood Press. * Richardson, Lewis F. 1960. Arms and Insecurity: A Mathematical Study of the Causes and Origins of War. Edited by Nicolas Rashevsky and Ernesto Trucco. Pittsburgh: Boxwood Press. * Richardson, Lewis F. 1961. The problem of contiguity: An appendix to Statistics of Deadly Quarrels. Yearbook of the Society for General Systems Research, Ann Arbor, Mich., Vol. VI, pp. 140?187. * Richardson, Lewis Fry. 1993. Collected Papers of Lewis Fry Richardson. Edited by Oliver M. Ashford, et al. New York: Cambridge University Press. * Richardson, Stephen A. 1957. Lewis Fry Richardson (1881-1953): A personal biography. Journal of Conflict Resolution 1:300-304. * Singer, J. David, and Melvin Small. 1972. The Wages of War, 1816-1965: A Statistical Handbook. New York: John Wiley. * Sorokin, Pitirim A. 1937. Social and Cultural Dynamics Vol. 3: Fluctuations of Social Relationships, War, and Revolution. New York: American Book Company. * Wilkinson, David. 1980. Deadly Quarrels: Lewis F. Richardson and the Statistical Study of War. Berkeley: University of California Press. * Wright, Quincy. 1965. A Study of War, with a Commentary on War Since 1942. Second edition. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press. References 28. http://dx.doi.org/10.1511/2002.1.10

subset: commoncrawl


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Caroline Barton, British Museum
Mourning rings are an emotive form of jewellery; very few objects that we have the privilege of working with in the Treasure process have such potentially traceable histories, and academically they are of great interest. Examples such as the Littleton ring, which features in the ITV series Britain's Secret Treasures can not only be accurately dated but also name the person whose death they commemorate.
But not all mourning rings specifically name the deceased, as this one does. They might feature or incorporate mottos or death-related prose. It was in the seventeenth century that Momento Mori rings developed more fully into what we know now as mourning rings. Momento Mori rings (with their rather stern inscriptions, such as 'learn to dye') acted as a reminder that youth and beauty come to an end, reflecting the Biblical reference in Ecclesiastes: 'beauty ends in decay and putrification'. Memorial/ mourning rings marked the death of individuals rather than portraying urgings to godly living, and messages upon these rings became more personal.
Examples in the British Museum and on the Portable Antiquities Scheme database with messages/prose incorporated include inscriptions such as 'Hope helpeth greife', 'Not dead but sleepeth', 'not lost but gone before', 'In death shees blest Since heauens her rest', 'my friend is Dead my Joys, are fled' and one that impacts when reading it, the really rather poignant inscription, 'REMEMBER YOU ONCE HAD A SON GERALD'.
Rings such as the Littleton example give a glimpse into what we today consider a very personal matter – family mourning. These rings, to the modern eye, bring imagery of a mourning family, keeping the details of their deceased loved one close by: their name, date of death, age at death forever close, worn around the finger. Mourning ritual at this time, though, was not so much a personal matter but a public one and mourning rings showed societal obligation as well as fashion trends of the time.
The colour black seen on rings such as these signifies memorial and in later production (around the eighteenth century) the 'rules' of mourning rings were quite strictly adhered to (black enamel for married, white for unmarried). Indeed the ritual of mourning in general was scrupulously respected. It was more than a demonstration of regret; it was a mark of respect. Widows would wear black for a year, seal impressions were black wax rather than red, mirrors were covered in the household, and indeed mourning garb itself had to avoid having a shine or reflection (with the soul being vulnerable to reflective images, especially when weakened by grief). Black apparel was not the only acceptable colour for mourning; white was appropriate for when the deceased was a young virgin of either sex; a mixture of black and white was also acceptable; red was associated with redemption and the blood of Christ, and purple/mauve was for royal mourning.
At the time of the Littleton ring, the ritual of mourning was very public. The use of mourning rings was widespread from the mid-sixteenth century and peaked in popularity in the eighteenth. Earlier examples tended to be produced by the upper classes, and by the time of the Littleton ring they were mass-produced and supplied by specialist jewellers whose trade cards advertised mourning rings at the shortest notice.
It was common practice to have rings itemised in wills, listing the number to be produced in that person's name. For example, US president George Washington declared in his will: 'to my sister-in-law Hannah Washington of Fairford and Mildred Washington Hayford I give each a mourning ring of the value of $1000. These bequests are not made for the intrinsic value but as mementos of my esteem and regard".
The list of recipients for rings could actually be quite extensive and there are examples of itemised wills showing long (and expensive) lists of recipients. The rings tended to be distributed either at the funeral or within the mourning period, as shown in the contemporary source of Samuel Pepys' diaries. Pepys describes a business visit to Captain Cooke of Greenwich which happened to coincide with a recent burial of a gentleman unknown to him, James Temple: "Here I had a very good ring which I did give to my wife as soon as I came home". In fact, Pepys himself arranged for 128 rings costing over £100, to be produced upon his death.
From the 1860s the fashion of mourning jewellery started to change. The style of rings shifted to contain portraiture, and memento lockets, worn from the neck or from a bracelet, began to replace the ring. It's thought by some that once the tradition became widespread, and not just a ritual of the elite, the upper classes stopped commissioning mourning rings. And with this, the fashion for them eventually declined, with the exception of course of bequests of general rings worn in memory of someone, which continues, but such rings are not easily identified.
By the early twentieth century, as mortality rates dropped, death seemed more remote and one may even say less feared, and so with this change in sentiment the individualised mourning ring declined and even the death toll of World War I did not revive the practice.
Though the sometimes cavalier distribution of these rings demonstrates a potential lack of connection or even mourning from some of the recipients this does not detract from the emotive nature of the rings. Mourning rings are fascinating as a datable object type but also as poignant objects in and of themselves.
I will leave you with an example which I feel fully epitomises that. Originally a betrothal/wedding ring, one example in the British Museum collection bears the inscription 'God hath sent my hearts content'. It was later altered to become a mourning ring, with the addition of the black enamelled skeletal design on the exterior and the addition of R.C 1727 to the inscription, presumably now commemorating the death of one of the originally betrothed.
A ring that was once a romantic expression, refashioned to commemorate the loss of that same loved one. It clearly serves the intended purpose of a mourning ring; an affecting example that had much personal meaning to its owner, a sentiment that still resonates today.
Filed under: Archaeology, Portable Antiquities and Treasure, Britain's Secret Treasures, Portable Antiquities Scheme


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India and China's plates smashed into each other 55 million years ago, and this collision ultimately created the Himalayas, home to the world's biggest mountains..but we weren't exactly sure when this part happened. Now, thanks to frog genes, we know.
Huge mountain ranges are probably the most dramatic proof of plate tectonics, as colliding plates send unimaginable amount of rock shooting straight up into the sky. Home to the world's biggest mountain in Mount Everest (not to mention the world's toughest, K-2), the Himalayas are an indelible reminder of Earth's shifting landmass. But as much as geologists long ago figure out the "why" and the "how" of the Himalayas's formation, determining the "when" has proven trickier.
Now, evolutionary biologists have stepped in to help out, building a timeline of the formation of the Himalayas from the divergent evolution of frog species caught on either side of the growing mountains. UC-Berkeley biologist David Wake explains:
"Geologists know a lot about that area, but what they haven't been able to do is give a sequence to the timing of the rise of particular mountain masses and particular ridges and pieces. We use these frogs as a surrogate for a time machine. What we have here is a group of very old frogs that are so fixed to their habitats that they just stuck there, sitting on that mountain mass when it got raised up. They were separated by these uplifts and by the rivers between the mountains into different units, and these give us a fix on the timing of geological events."
The biologists discovered species of frogs split apart at four different intervals tied to new geological activity in the Himalayas, at 27, 23, 19, and 9 million years ago. These long breaks between speciation adds credence to an alternative, less-accepted geological theory that the Himalayas formed in sharp bursts instead of continuously.
The frogs had been overlooked as a potential guide because all the species that live around the mountains today share two fundamental characteristics that allow them to survive in such a harsh, steep environment: unusually strong arms and spines. It was only when Dr. Wake and his colleagues examined the frogs that they were able to demonstrate these features were not the result of one evolution 50 million years ago, but rather a case of the different, isolate species finding similar but separate solutions to the challenge of living in the shadow of Everest.
[Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences via Discovery News]


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Food For Thought Books was an independent, not-for-profit, workers' collective bookstore in Amherst, MA that started in 1976. The bookstore was forced to close in June of 2014 due to severe financial difficulties.
Below is a photography project by Abbey Entner for a community-based learning class at University of Massachusetts. It does a nice job of summing up how people felt about Food For Thought Books and the role it played in the political and cultural life of the Pioneer Valley.
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What's Inside the Great Pyramid?
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Cosmic particles reveal a previously hidden void in the Great Pyramid of Khufu in Egypt.
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Bozeman LibraryHome Menu
Top Searches:NY Times Music on the Green Hoopla OBOB
Calendar of Events
View upcoming Library Programs either from our Events pages or from the Library Events Calendar. See the link for a printable version of the Events Calendar below.
Minecraft Meetup
Computer Lab
- Date: 05/15/2019 3:45 PM - 5:00 PM
- Location: Bozeman Public Library
626 East Main Street
Bozeman, Montana 59715
Minecraft meets every Wednesday from 3:45 PM - 5:00 PM in the 2nd floor Computer Lab. Play Minecraft with other kids - bring your own device, or use one of ours!
For more information, call the Children's Library at (406) 582-2404.


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PENN TWP — An argument over television apparently sparked a domestic dispute Monday night during which a 71-year-old man allegedly strangled his wife, authorities said.
Penn Township police arrested Charles E. Ashton Jr. and paramedics tended to his 65-year-old wife but she refused transport to the hospital for further treatment, following the altercation at the couple's home.
Ashton was arraigned on a felony charge of strangulation, a misdemeanor charge of simple assault and a summary charge of harassment. He was later released on his own recognizance.
Ashton faces a preliminary hearing tentatively set for May 9 at the office of District Judge Sue Haggerty in Saxonburg.
A full story appears in the Butler Eagle.


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I am soo confused now after reading most of the posts since my last post. Think I'll just go have some cake now. Coming Honey-senpia?
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I am soo confused now after reading most of the posts since my last post. Think I'll just go have some cake now. Coming Honey-senpia?
As for the @DenjaX suspicions, I'm not so sure. To me it feels like a townie who isn't thinking about what is said.
BUT I'm still reading, so I may return with more thoughts.
My mood on a daily basis
I would've been alright with the self-vote. I'm not jumping Hakoshi at all for self-voting at the beginning. I was merely pointing out there were more options than just self-voting seeming that CrimsonMoon didn't seem to like that option. Also pointing out that he could've simply not voted for lack of time and info to process before leaving. But seeming that he was put-off by self-voting, I doubt he would've accepted not voting.I find this quote to be especially interesting. He explains how CM could have come on to make an educated/random vote rather than a self-vote as if he were against self-voting after he himself had sef-voted.
Thinking it could be a ruse too?As for the @DenjaX suspicions, I'm not so sure. To me it feels like a townie who isn't thinking about what is said.
BUT I'm still reading, so I may return with more thoughts.
My mood on a daily basis
Okay,,, so are there any CONSTRUCTIVE ideas on who I should vote for since I can't seem to keep up with every single post?
I might vote for Momo-chan since she seems to act all confused and noobish.... when she could just be acting.
Great overlords love deception and surprises.
Or I could be wrong.
Hmm, thinking I might just go for another random vote again. Just not sure.
also, if you were a Townie facing the same situation (tied votes), are you not gonna try to vote the other person out?
---------- Post added at 05:47 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:46 PM ----------
getting off work now~
see ya all in an hour or so
I'm not sure if I should go on instinct or logic. Both have let me down in the past. [Vote: Execute Deathblade/13.666.] Something just seems off with the way some things you've said are worded.
My mood on a daily basis
CrimsonMoon try to kill me ^^ . So it was just a question without anything else
I wish I had vote count hint hint @MaruDashi hint hint.
Anyways, so far everyone seems to be ..pinning around...
mmm, well because I seem to not have anyone this phase to vote for, I might as well think a bit.. and well give out my suspicions..
1. Sizary-Momo = being too noob'ish ... a bit too much.. and acting too innocent.. I find it.. suspicious......
2. Seraphin = asking questions about King.. and such... I find it also suspicious, even though you said not to think anything of it, but I find it.. suspicious, since in the beginning of the game Maru posted rules and what king does and such.. :c ..
-More to come, I think who knows-
---------- Post added at 06:52 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:42 PM ----------
ok, input..
so far, no one seems eh to me...
aside from the ones who voted agaisnt Daken.
but I dropped some of my suspicions from TheThunderBringer.. but doesn't mean I dont have my eyes on them.. lol
Ro seems.. aggresive, jumping on to RyuTama quickly...
Momo, seems too clueless and confused.. a bit too muuch.. mmm
Seraphin, seems to be showing some iffy signs, asking things that could easily be read up on the rules, or asked to the game maker (Maru..), but as he said, its just curiosity, and such.. mmm..
(I think I forgot someone.. :I ..ohwell..)
I can be over-analyzing everything so, yeah..
as of now, I don't have anyone to vote for..
The third eye of love♥ Koishi Komeiji ♥ Closed eyes of love
Let us seek that side.
Ro, Suzume, Momo, and Seraphin... I'm starting to get 'em mixed up. '>_>
CrimsonMoon: - 1 vote [DenjaX]
DeathBlade/13.666: - 1 vote [ZombieWolf2508]
Seraphin: - 1 vote [CrimsonMoon]
RyuTama: - 1 vote [-Ro-]
DenjaX: - 1 vote [RyuTama]
-Ro-: - 1 vote [DeathBlade/13.666]
---------- Post added at 06:02 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:57 PM ----------
I'm gonna go ahead and vote, I'm not sure if I'll be able to stay on or not.
[Vote Execute -Ro-] For being the first to lynch Daken. With little cause. And to top it all off, She decided to shoot (vote) first and ask questions about what he meant later (in the same post). And now she's going after RyuTama for using some logic.
I was going to do one after dinner, but Death beat me to it [thank you <3]
Unfortunately, I'm going to sleep :/
I'll place my vote
[vote execute -Ro-]
I find him suspicious even if he don't post a lot ( maybe because he don't post a lot ).
[VOTE EXECUTE Cheese the suarus Rex] simply cause I have no clue what's going on since I been enjoying some snacks.
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Crash on Interstate-295 injures 2
Southbound lanes affected
Two people were injured in a three-vehicle crash on Interstate 295 in South Portland on Wednesday afternoon.
Aimee St. James, 23, of Saco, was driving a Chevrolet Aveo south when traffic was stopped due to a crash farther down the highway, Trooper Doug Cropper of the state police said. The left-hand lane was closed. St. James tried to avoid backed-up traffic in the travel lane but struck two vehicles in the that lane, Cropper said.
They were a Chevrolet HHR driven by Tammy Cooper, 46, of Gorham, and a Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck driven by Richard Bemis, 63, of Steep Falls. St. Jamess' vehicle struck the Chevrolet HHR and ripped off its bumper, and then her vehicle ran into the pickup, Cropper said.
Medcu took Bemis to Mercy Hospital in Portand and St. James to Maine Medical Center in Portland.
Portland firefighters extricated St. James from her vehicle, which was later declared a total loss, Cropper said. Bemis' pickup truck had rear-end damage.
The crash occurred south of the Fore River Bridge, about mile marker three and a half, and was reported at 1:15 p.m., Cropper said.
Traffic was reduced to one lane for the two crashes for two hours.


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Sunday, 27 April 2008
Hi. I'm back.
I would post a link, but the comments are so far from the truth (for the most part) that it's not worth reading. You can google it if you like.
I'm just a normal young woman who wants to be the best wife and mother I can be. I've found true love and happiness in my life and I want to write about it; that's why I have this blog. Plus I enjoy having this link to the running community.
I was touched by SJRunner's following comment (when the easy thing to do would have been to join in and gang up on me):
...we've all made diet/workout/life choices that might be controversial to others. Why do we single her out this much, just because she is willing to be open about it? I just don't feel I can say she's crazy, and at the same time be mad when people tell me running and training for marathons is obsessive and unhealthy. Also I honestly support our preggo runners with various mileages, then I don't feel right criticizing her about her preggo mileages. Of course there's a line with everything, however, I don't feel I have the right to name that line when it comes to pregnancy and child rearing.
Yeah, I do write honestly. Maybe that is why the blog is so controversial. I don't know. And as long as I'm being honest, I do want to clarify my background a bit (also in response to the runango forum).
I had a normal childhood with wonderful parents. I went to a great college and was a French and English major. I also studied at the Sorbonne. I then moved to Toulouse, France to teach handicapped children. I really got into spiritual biking and running at this time. I almost went to medical school in France, but got into a really good one in the United States. I enjoyed med school. And it brought me to doing work in a great little hospital in rural Guatemala.
I matched at great residencies, one transitional (internship) and then one in a competitive surgical subspecialty which would follow internship. It was during internship that I met SR. After the year of internship, I moved away to start the surgical residency and was torn apart by not being with SR. He was unable to transfer to do residency there. I learned I was pregnant and didn't know how I would raise a baby living alone during residency. One night, SR drove all night to convince me to move back and live with him. There was really no other option; I missed him so much that I could hardly function and I didn't want to raise our child alone or with a nanny. I left the program in good standing. I have been taking the year off, moonlighting in Urgent Care and Inpatient Alcohol Detox. We're moving to Denmark next year for a number of reasons. I am planning to restart residency there (and the work week there for residents is only 37 hours a week!).
I hope that brings everyone up to speed. So, yes, I am a physician. I love the work and I take it very seriously.
Sorry to my regular readers who know pretty much all of that already.
Anyway, we did have a great weekend. Found a nice sushi restaurant in our town, enjoyed some eel. And we did some speed work on our run today.
The Bois has been more animated than ever. Maybe I'll find time to upload a video soon.
17 comments:
- Michelle said...
Welcome back!
I was worried I would be shut out of your blog forever! ;-)
- 28 April 2008 at 03:15
- Lucy said...
Hi Sea Legs Girl,
I have read your blog off and on for the last few months and have really enjoyed reading about your pregnancy and running adventures. I was very impressed with the quality and quantity of research that you did on pregnant runners. As a fellow doctor, I know that medicine is an art and that there are many things we have yet to learn, so I applaud you for looking outside the box. As a runner, I am amazed at your determintation and will power and I hope you keep getting your PRs. I have not read the latest running forums but I think that people become antagonistic and defensive when they see someone else doing great things that they can't or won't do themselves. Most of the time this stems from jealousy. So don't worry about the naysayers. Keep your great positive attitude. Congrats on your beautiful family!
- 28 April 2008 at 04:15
- Abbie said...
I was sad to see the negative comments posted. Everyone does things differently and it's unfortunate when others forcefully and rudely place their opinions on others. Having just had a baby (and boy is she fussy) I am constantly bombarded with people telling me what I should do to help her. Though their advice is almost always with the kindest of intents (unlike many who have commented on your blog) I too feel like you mentioned... a fragile mom who is just trying to do the best for my baby.
That said, I was curious to know if you are able to exclusively breastfeed. I have been trying but feel that my milk supply is so low. Our little girl wasn't gaining weight like she should have been and so now we give her formula every now and then. I was curious if you had noticed whether your running and eating had any effect on feeding the Bois breastmilk.
I guess I just feel sorry that so many people have anonymously (read cowardly) forced their opinion on you. I can tell that you love the Bois and that you are looking out for the well being of both of you. I'm sure you know the importance of taking care of the Mom too... :) Sorry for the novel.
- 28 April 2008 at 05:28
- Bec said...
Sea Legs Girl,
I am so glad that you went public again. I went to check both your blog and your husband's blog and was sad to see they were both private. I was also worried I would be shut out!
I think that people (and women especially) are often critical of other women. The internet provides you an anonymity which allows you to be so frank and honest about your trials and tribulations; your quirks and joys; your successes and disappointments as a wife, mother, and woman. Unfortunately, that same anonymity gives other people the freedom to be judgmental and cruel. I am not yet a mother, but I am under no assumption that everything I will do will be right or perfect according to what 'others' think. This would be especially true if I were under a microscope for others to see. Make yourself, your husband, and your child and stepchildren happy and forget about what other people think.
Your honesty and candor with which you have described your life has been fascinating to read. I have been reading for a long while and know that both you and your husband have experienced rude, judgmental, and negative comments in the past. Although I have never commented before, I felt the need to tell you this time that there are people out here reading, enjoying, and NOT judging. Take care!
p.s. Please pass along my good wishes to the RunningDoc and let him know I miss reading his blog!
- 28 April 2008 at 05:51
- sea legs girl said...
Wow. I guess I feel pretty good in my skin now. SR and I have been enjoying these comments. You all have made me so happy I didn't just scrap the whole blog thing, as I was considering.
Abbie, I wanted to answer your question about breastfeeding. I have had a good milk supply. I did something unusual when I began breastfeeding: I just fed out of one breast and pumped out of the other for the first week, partly because I had a sore on one side, partly because I wanted to make my body think I had twins. Anyway, it seems to have at least given me ENOUGH milk as The Bois went from about 10th percentile to 50th percentile in weight in his first 9weeks (6lbs 1oz to just under 12lbs).
Unfortunately I don't know much about increasing milk supply after that initial stage. If I learn anything helpful, I'll let you know.
- 28 April 2008 at 05:52
- Michelle said...
I'm glad you didn't scrap the blog, too.
I know how much it sucks to have someone leave a mean comment on a blog. Some jerk left one on mine several months back. Something to the effect of "Your blog is so god damn boring!" Um, well why are you reading it, jerk?! It wasn't even a personal attack, but it really bothered me, and I made my blog private for a couple days, too. Come to find out this guy hates a lot of people and has his own blog where he basically rips this one guy in particular to shreds just about every day. Sad that he's so unhappy with his life, isn't it?
Anyway, keep on keepin' on and try not to let people get you down.
(Oh, and I'm the same Michelle who posted a comment earlier, but I have a new pic now.) :-)
- 28 April 2008 at 07:22
- H said...
Try not to let it get to you. I have made choices others disagree with and some take the relative anonymity of the internet to be quite mean and vocal. People need to learn to back off and not judge others. It drives me crazy when some do... What's that quote... "Just because someone is not on your road to fulfillment and happiness does not mean they've gotten lost." Everyone judges sometimes, but personally I try to minimize that and keep it to myself unless I'm asked specifically about it at that time. I'm not sure why some have such a hard time with that. I have not run into it so much in the blog community as in internet forums, for whatever reason.
I was worried when I thought I'd been blocked off your blog! I really enjoy reading it, and was glad I found it. I think you are helping people out there by being honest and having it up there. So thank you for bringing it back!
People will try to tell you all aspects of your life are wrong if you don't follow the beaten path or the prevalent mindset. Try to ignore it and focus on your happiness, and the happiness of those you love. I think it shines through that you love your family. I grew up with an abusive/selfish mother and, sister, you ain't it! It makes some people uncomfortable when others don't follow the same thing that is right for them, because they can't accept differences and see it as an affront to their choices. A strange pathology, and not worth your time!
- 28 April 2008 at 17:42
- sharprunner said...
I am from runango. I can say that "yes" I have a negative image of you. BUT- I can say that jealousy is not the reason for the megative comments from most ladies on the forum. A lot of the women from forum are faster and thinner than you- and ran as many miles as you pregnant. So nothing to be jealous of from that stand point. Most of the "rude" comments came from the fact that you posted about an unsafe biking incident that turned out ok, but could have been deadly. You never once made the comment that you were wrong for using the bike trailer and in fact continued using it after the accident. If you are still using it, then yes you are "acting irresponsible" and need to stop using it until he is older. That is like driving in a car without a carseat--how are you going to feel if something bad happens when you knwingly acted against the safety laws. You just took that part out of the blog so that no one would call you on the mistake. No one is perfect in childcare. BUT- you have to admit when you make a mistake....not assume everyone is jealous because you can keep up that level of exercise even with kids. Yes- I have 2 kids and have always exercised. BUT- I followed the safety rules on the jogger stroller and bike trailer. I paid a babysitter for all other exercise until kids were older. Since you have read runango-- you'll see that many new mom's ask for exercise equipment advice BEFORE they do something. If someone on runago would have posted the bike trailer story WITHOUT admitting how wrong it was, then she too would have been told the same things you were told. I AM using my name and have never posted before....
- 28 April 2008 at 18:03
- H said...
Okay, more comments--- I googled the forum and I read. Some of the people seem to be honestly concerned, most just into drama.
Complete honesty: I was worried reading your blog to begin with because of your low weight gain. My doctor told me to gain 25-35 lb, and there does seem to be a consensus in the research I reviewed indicating inadequate weight gain is not in the best interest of the baby. However, you had a healthy child and I'm not sure why they'd still be attacking you now-- apparently your midwife and yourself knew better what was right for you than general research.
As long as you aren't insulting others who feel that doing less/gaining more is right for them (me, for instance. :) ) I'm not sure why you should be attacked for your choices.
I have wondered if you might have some body image/eating issues -- but that is not for me to decide. Your health and your baby's health is most important and the internet is not the one to be judging that-- it is you, your family, and your doctors.
I hope the best happiness and health to you and your child-- and that you continue your blog for all those of us who enjoy reading it.
(Oh, and some of those people are grossly misinformed! Can't run while pregnant? Can't ride a bike outside? They need to do a little bit of research on their own about the current recommendations for a healthy, low-risk pregnancy in someone who was participating in those activities before becoming pregnant! My OBGYN warned me himself that people feel it's their right to comment on what's best, and to ignore them-- and I'm glad he did. I only listen to myself, my husband, him, and my midwives as to what's right for my pregnancy. Those are the people who will know... not internet folks.)
- 28 April 2008 at 18:11
- Lisa said...
I agree with Traci. I do not think the Runango crowd is jealous, as lucy stated. I thought it was clear that they did not agree with a few of your actions.
I'll say this, there are times I do not agree with your choices SLG, but I'm not going to judge you or admonish you, you could come over to my blog and do the same.
It may not seem like it, but they really were *more* concerned about the safety of you and your son and *less* hunting for a reason to berate you.
I hope your training is going well and I am glad you kept your blog up.
- 28 April 2008 at 18:56
- notjustamom said...
So glad to see you back! It's a shame you had to temporarily close your blog. I guess people were just concerned about the bois hanging upside down in the bicycle trailer, held in by a bungee cord. I am sure you have learned a hard lesson from the experience, and it won't be repeated. Much of parenting involves learning lessons the hard way. Not all of us are perfect!
- 28 April 2008 at 18:56
- Nancy said...
I have been reading your blog for quite awhile now, and felt compelled to comment for the first time as a result of the "bike trailer incident." Fist off, I was shocked that you didn't research the safety issues of this thoroughly prior to attempting it; you posted so much research about exercise in pregnancy, you seemed to research labor options well (water birth, etc), you're obviously a smart woman, so I assumed you would be type A about all baby safety issues. Maybe you did know that bike trailers are for 1-yr olds and older, but decided since your baby was born healthy while breaking the conventional "rules" about pregnancy, you could make your own rules for anything. I don't want to speculate too much into your motives for strapping an infant car seat into a bike trailer not designed for such an adaptation (forcing age inappropriate activities for the sake of proving family togetherness? impatience and a feeling of invincibility? perhaps just excitement of spring emerging and actual ignorance??), so I instead I wanted to comment about your reaction to the accident. Whatever your motivation for doing it was, it is done, so let's move on. You have since deleted the original post and added a disclaimer about being a new parent and making mistakes, which of course is very valid. New parents make mistakes all the time, it is forgivable, no one is perfect, I wouldn't judge you for a first-time parenting blunder. My concern is that you did not include anything resembling a lesson learned. You don't say that you won't do it again. In fact, in the original post, you did do it again, but just used an extra bungee cord the next time. That is not acceptable, and I am judging your parenting on that choice. You knew that your baby almost fell out once, and could have been seriously hurt, but you went ahead and did it again. Using a second bungee cord will not keep your bike trailer from flipping over. It will not protect that fragile neck and brain and delicate fontanelle with incomplete skull fusion . It will not act as a helmet if you did crash or get hit by a car (lots of states have helmet laws for minors which include kids riding in trailers for a very good reasone, and just because your state doesn't have that law, doesn't mean you don't need a helmet for him when he is old enough to be in the trailer). It will not keep the trailer from jostling and bouncing and shaking your baby's brain like jello. Please assure your readers that you have learned your lesson, and will NOT take Christian out in the trailer until he meets the age/size requirements recommended by the manufacturer. I enjoy your blog a great deal, I was glad you removed the private settings, and I hope that you will continue to blog in the future. I believe you when you say you would be destroyed if something happened to your baby, but it just didn't seem like you really learned your lesson here. Stick to the baby jogger, assuming you have the kind with the actual adapter for the car seat, and aren't just tying/bungee cording/duct-taping him on there or something.
- 28 April 2008 at 19:24
- Allison Chapple said...
I am the one who said on Runango that I am not riding my bike outside whole pregnant, Heather. I said that PERSONALLY I was making the decision not to, not that pregnant women COULDN'T. Seems like an unnecessary risk to ME. I just don't want to do anything that might put my baby in harm's way, even if my doctor told me it was ok. It just doesn't seem worth it to me when I can ride my bike all I want to when I am not pregnant.
- 28 April 2008 at 23:03
- Olga said...
Welcome back, girl:) Wow, I feel like I don't need to comment anymore - you've got so much going on...but know mine would mainly stay where they did for the last year. I like you, dear. Go on, live life...
- 28 April 2008 at 23:09
- Fast Bastard - World's Fastest Hematologist said...
Hi, I've been lurking for a while and actually created a profile just to comment. I have enjoyed your blog for a few months now.
This type of blog will attract attention. Of course these runango ladies are going to be jealous of you. You could gain 20 pounds and decrease your training to 5 miles a week and these ladies would still hate you!
I missed the bike trailer indident but I have done the car seat-in-the-baby-jogger trick. Kids get way more vibrations from sitting in a car than in a baby jogger if you are on flat pavement. Lot's of poeple do that. You gotta use common sense here. It sounded like you made a stupid mistake, though. That doesn't mean you have an eating disorder or that you are selfish for exercising so much (or whatever they are saying about you over there right now).
Thanks for blogging!
- 28 April 2008 at 23:24
- notjustamom said...
Jeff, she was going down the side of a mountain, not on flat pavement. I'm not trying to beat a dead horse here, just pointing that out. And I think the people who are getting most upset are probably mothers themselves; it's the maternal instinct kicking in. (although I am not from runango, so I can't speak for them) But as already pointed out, every new parent makes mistakes! It's a learning experience.
- 28 April 2008 at 23:51
- Meghan said...
Oh Sea Legs Girl!
When will these human beings simply put their heads down and do their own life? What makes them so anxious to sniff around in the business of others so seemingly judgmentally? I have not read the Runango madness, nor do I need to it seems. Same crap, different month.
When I read the bike trailer incident story, it read to me like you were horrified of what had happened, and what the consequences could have been. It seemed like a post about learning how to parent, feeling bad about what had happened. We've all made mistakes. I'm not a parent, but when I first got my dog, I did some stupid things with her. I've learned my lesson and I don't do those things anymore. I'm not trying to compare the importance of a dog and an infant, merely pointing out the human capacity for mistake-making even when the stakes are living, breathing creatures and acquiring new knowledge from such mistakes. Do these Runago people perhaps think they are perfect, unable to err in their ways?
And, I think you are completely normal in size for a runner. I have met you and seen you in person and you seem a healthy young woman. You and I are probably about the same age and size, what do you think? And, the Bois looks like your average, healthy baby, too. (This is all quite obvious to you, Sea Legs, mostly I write this for the benefit of your commenters.)
Anyway, my best and unsolicited advice is to do your best in turning your head away from these people. Obviously if they are judgmental and write with viciousness and all of this on an online forum, methinks that the best interest of your family is not really in their minds.
Sigh, humanity sometimes. Keep your head up Sea Legs, and know there are a lot of people on your side. Including me!
- 29 April 2008 at 01:50


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MERRA-2 re-analysis
|Last update: Feb. 2018
The Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications, Version 2 (MERRA-2) Web service, available worldwide, delivers time series of Temperature (at 2 m), Relative Humidity (at 2 m), Pressure (at 2 m), Wind speed and direction (at 10 m), Rainfall, Snowfall and Snow depth. Time steps range from 1 min up to 1 month (original data are hourly). Spatial resolution of approx. 50 km. The data are available since Jan. 1980 and are regularly updated with approx. one month of delay.
The version 2 of MERRA was introduced in 2016 to replace the original MERRA dataset because of the advances made in the assimilation system. More information on the GMAO website.
Main publication is Gelaro et al. 2017.
|More information >>
|We are pleased to inform you that the CSV file has been modified to welcome a new column corresponding to the Global Horizontal Irradiation component. The data are available in the last column. Enjoy !! :o)


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Category: Laser Discs
What's a Laser Disc???
There are hundreds of laser discs at Krasker. For those of you who might not know, laser discs were a precursor to DVDs; approximately the size of an LP record, laser discs look similar to DVDs, only bigger. Wait. What? What's an LP? Oh good grief, how about you just Google that! For today's lesson all you need to know is that the darn thing's big. Whilst prized by hardcore cineastes, the laser disc didn't catch on and soon the more portable DVD usurped its position as the next best thing. We still use laser discs at Krasker for one simple reason: we have to. Yes there are certain films (or certain editions of certain films) that just are not available any other way. Unfortunately laser discs do degrade over time leaving some titles at risk for extinction, all the more reason to support film preservation initiatives. Plus often DVD releases (see comments below) are very flash-the-pan and not always easy to obtain for educational purposes.
Current BU faculty, staff and students can learn more about laser discs by visiting our center at Mugar Library, 771 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston MA 02215. Check out our website for additional info.


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Urania's Well: Astrology for Changing Times
PaganSquare is a community blog space where Pagans can discuss topics relevant to the life and spiritual practice of all Pagans.
Magickal Monday: Your Guide to the Week Ahead - 10/1/12
Four planets change signs this week, pointing to a dramatic shift in the collective consciousness, in the zeitgeist. What will trigger this shift? With Uranus in Aries under pressure from Pluto and Saturday's Full Moon, who knows? Uranus deals in the unexpected, the sudden, the big surprise, and Pluto's realm is hidden, and underground.
We do know that the astrology of the moment calls for leadership, individual initiative, and courage blended with a willingness to change and transform in order to create new collective structures. Each individual, of course, will feel these collective demands in different areas of their personal lives. Do you know which houses of your chart are being affected by the current planetary line-up? If not, you might consider looking into it. Having a good grasp of the underlying issues involved for your personally can help you make wiser decisions when you are under pressure from unexpected events.
Monday features some challenging aspects of the Moon to Mercury, Mars, and Saturn, suggesting difficulties in communications, misunderstood actions, and stressful emotional scenarios that pit personal needs against social obligations. The Moon moves into Taurus around 7:30 p.m. (all times EDT), then sextiles Neptune. A nice night for a movie at home, or some magick to help with financial flow.
Tuesday, the Moon trining Pluto mid-morning gives an earthy start to the day. Think in terms of empowering what you value, and consider the role of the dark goddesses in your life, particularly their transformative power. The symbol of the cauldron is a good one to keep in mind today, if it is meaningful to you. Venus, in the last degree of Leo, is the dispositor of the both the Taurus Moon as well as Saturn in the final degree of Libra, which she sextiles in the early evening). Another good night for money magick, and a productive time for artists.
Early Wednesday morning, Venus moves into Virgo. Venus rules social interactions, and she is not at ease in Virgo (exalted in Pisces, she's in fall in Virgo). Criticism and fault-finding frequently define Virgo's approach — not a great strategy for getting along with others. But it is also necessary to look at one's friends, lovers and family with a critical eye at times, to determine whether or not these relationships are healthy, and if not, what needs to change. Look to the houses in which the sign of Virgo falls in your chart to determine where this energy is likely to manifest for you. For instance, if it's in the 3rd house, there may be issues with siblings, or people in your carpool. In the 11th, pay attention to groups you belong to. You'll want to carefully evaluate relationships in these areas over the next month or so with an eye towards how they can be improved. If Venus makes any major aspects to planets in your chart as she moves through Virgo, also look at the houses ruled by those planets. She'll be in Virgo until October 28.
Early evening Wednesday, Venus opposes Neptune. Ooooh…Romance! Mysticism! Art! Also, whininess, overindulgence, confusion, blind infatuation. You choose.
If you find yourself with insomnia early Thursday morning, you can blame the Moon. She'll be opposing Mars and making a few other irritating aspects before she moves into Gemini around 8:00 a.m., just about exactly the time that Jupiter grinds to a halt and goes retrograde (Rx). And there's more! If you've been following along, you've realized that the Moon will be forming a T-square with Neptune and Venus not long after she enters Gemini. Smoke and funhouse mirrors. Tread carefully — things are probably not as they seem.
(Here's the political angle: The T-square is happening in the 3rd, 6th, and 9th houses of the USA's chart, with Jupiter - the chart ruler and the natural ruler of foreign policy - going Rx in the 7th house. A major diplomatic challenge? The military is indicated by the 6th house placement of the Moon, and, in a few days, Mars will enter Sagittarius and then take over the Moon's place as the focus of the T-square from the 12th. But I'm getting ahead of myself…)
Now, where were we? Oh, right, Thursday. It's a busy one — all this going on and you've only just gotten to work! So, around noon, Mars conjuncts the North Node, which may key some emotional upheaval or trauma, particularly if you have natal placements around 28 Scorpio-Taurus. Later in the evening, the Moon sextiles Uranus and inconjuncts Pluto, which may trigger the U-P square, but probably in a mild way.
Friday, Mercury and Saturn hold hands in the last degree of Libra, and then jump into Scorpio only a few hours apart. Saturn is exalted in Libra, Mercury quite comfortable in this Air sign — together, they may bring practical solutions to knotty problems. Their move into Scorpio suggests some major reality checks going on. Check the houses that hold the sign of Scorpio in your chart — this is where you are likely to see some serious focus and work now, as well as demands on your time. Remember, too, that Saturn can also bring recognition and honors to those who have done the work. Don't be scared of a Saturn transit — as long as you don't evade, whine, or act contrary to your values, you'll be fine.
I want to expand on this move of Saturn into Scorpio a bit, because it will be here for 2½ years, in mutual reception with Pluto (each in the sign the other rules). Also, usually fast-moving Mercury will retrograde back through Scorpio and not move on until mid-December, so we are going to be getting a lot of Scorpio energy, especially when you add in the November solar eclipse in Scorpio. Issues of control, emotional isolation, and sexuality are likely to emerge on a personal, internal level, (again, much depends on where in your chart all this action is happening), and on an outer level, we are likely to see questions of debt and taxes surfacing, as well an emphasis on the way we approach death.
What's the best way to handle this transit? Look deeply into where you are giving away your power, how you manipulate others and let yourself be manipulated, and focus on building a core of inner power that allows you to act with the authority that comes from self-knowledge. For magickal people, it is also helpful to remember that Pluto and Scorpio have rulership over matters having to do with magick, mysticism, and what is commonly known as "the occult". Saturn is about manifestation. The combination of Saturn and Pluto points to the discipline and work of the adept. Word to the wise.
OK, let's get on with the week. Saturday's major aspect is the Moon moving into Cancer in the evening, then quickly trining both Saturn and Neptune, giving us a grand trine in Water. Grand trines are generally thought of as wonderful — in my experience, that's not always the case, any more than squares and oppositions are always negative. You can use these aspects to bring dreams down to earth, but getting caught up in an emotional feedback loop is also possible. Either way, honor the Moon, strong in her home sign, over the next couple of days, and think of who or what needs nurturing in your life. Late in the evening, Mars moves into Sagittarius, bringing in a very fiery vibe. It may seem like just everyone has an opinion they need to share, or a philosophy to promote, and not a lot of tact with which to do it. On the positive side, there's a sense of enthusiasm and adventure in the air, and a willingness to fight for a cause. Mars will stay in Sagittarius until mid-November.
Sunday features a mish-mash of lunar aspects, punctuated by Mars moving into a square with Neptune, as the Moon squares Uranus and opposes Pluto. Move with care today, these are some challenging aspects. Honor everyone's need for emotional security, and (with Venus opposing Chiron) remember that healing can come through service to others. Worry more about managing your personal energy than whether or not others are in agreement with you.
Until next week!
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State CIOs hear plenty about thinking outside the box.
NASCIO kicked off its 2013 annual conference Monday, Oct. 14, in Philadelphia with what was reported to be record attendance. The organization expects 600 people to show up for the four-day conference, including representatives from all 50 states (and about 43 actual state CIOs, by our count).
The day one discussion leaned heavily toward innovation, which rapidly is becoming a buzzword among CIOs and their bosses. But some of the best presentations on the topic didn't come from states. Boston CIO Bill Oates and Philadelphia CIO Adel Ebeid talked insightfully about how their cities use new approaches to solve real community problems and how their IT organizations balance innovation and basic blocking and tackling.
"You won't have credibility in innovation if you can't reliably run core services," Oates said. "And credibility leads to funding conversations that let you build the projects you want."
Here's a look at highlights from day one:
STRUGGLING WITH INNOVATION — One of the first sessions on NASCIO's opening day focused on "mastering innovation" — and states could use the help. An audience poll asked how much time attendees spend being innovative. Fifty percent said they spend less than a quarter of their time doing innovative things. And almost 30 percent spend less than 5 percent of their time on such activities.
OUTNUMBERED — State CIOs could be excused for feeling a bit like fish in a barrel as they strolled the Philadelphia Marriott. As usual, vendors far outnumbered state officials at the annual event. By our count there were almost 370 corporate members registered for the conference, that's almost nine vendor reps for each of the 43 state CIOs attending the event.
ALL ABOUT CHANGE — Today government IT agencies focus on specific tools of change — the cloud, mobility, analytics — but in the future they're likely to focus more on change itself. "Five years from now, we'll be much more concerned with creating the structure for change management," Maryland Chief Innovation Officer Michael Powell told attendees. "The innovation world will be about the process of change."
CIOs RETURN TO INFORMATION — As governments collect growing amounts of data, the role of the CIO will return to literally focusing on information. The drive toward big data coupled with the rise of the Internet of Things will put government in the position of having more data than ever, causing CIOs to get back to the roots of their job title. And that may lead to more role-specific jobs, some of which are already popping up in government like data and privacy officers.
PHILLY TAKES INNOVATION TO THE STREETS — The City of Brotherly Love is working to spur innovation outside of brick-and-mortar government. Philadelphia is preparing to open an innovation lab in a couple of months that will bring city employees to work with nonprofit organizations and startups. In addition, Ebeid said he's working to create an innovation academy that will bring people together, including nontechnologists, to learn about the principles of innovation, innovation management, ideation and getting ideas to successful completion. "We will give them real problems to try to resolve," he said.
THE MORE THE MERRIER? — Is there a need for a chief innovation officer separate from the chief information officer? NASCIO attendees were completely split on the answer: 33 percent said yes, 30 percent said no, and the remaining 37 percent were unsure. However, it was made clear that innovation isn't going away. In another survey, 80 percent of attendees said innovation is a necessary skill set for technology leaders to possess.
SAY CHEESE — Government Technology gathered all state CIOs attending the conference for a group photo (see above). Check out the professional photographer's version in the December issue of the magazine.


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Joining us today is James McCombe, the technical visionary behind Caustic Graphics and one of the company's three founders. Most recently James was the chief architect of Apple's next-generation embedded rasterization algorithms, the basis of the rendering and compositing technology used in the iPhone and iPod. He was also a lead architect for Apple's OpenGL graphics system, and worked with the OpenGL standards committee to create early specifications for programmable shading languages.
Dr. Dobb's: James, what is ray tracing and why is it important?
JM: Ray tracing is a method of using "virtual light rays" to determine visibility between two points in a geometric scene. This allows for the modeling of physically accurate lighting phenomena such as reflection, refraction, soft shadowing, and global illumination, just to name a few.
The simplest example involves starting with a pixel on the display. We trace a ray outward until we encounter the first object in the scene that the ray intersects. Then, that object sets the color of the pixel to the color of the object. The object could then cast more rays into the scene based on the properties of the material that the object is simulating. These additional rays could be used to determine if the object is in shadow, to calculate a glossy reflection, to evaluate translucency, etc.
After many millions of rays bounce around the scene every which way, a beautiful image results.
Ray tracing is a much more intuitive rendering paradigm and can provide high-quality images with relative ease to the artist and programmer when compared to rasterization-based techniques which require many strange tricks to be employed to creating seemingly natural phenomena. Unfortunately, ray tracing has traditionally been orders of magnitude slower so it wasn't fit for interactive applications. In addition, ray tracing has never had a general purpose API to abstract it from the underlying hardware, like OpenGL and DirectX have provided for rasterization.
We believe ray tracing will gradually supersede rasterization as the most popular rendering technique once it can be performed at acceptable speeds and have a familiar hardware independent programming interface.
Dr. Dobb's: How does ray tracing differ from rasterization?
JM: As I mentioned earlier, ray tracing can allow all of the objects in the scene to interact with each other by casting light rays between them. These complex interactions create the difference between visually pleasing images and images that are obviously "computer generated". For example, light that bounces off of a red book on a shelf can produce a reddish tint on a white wall behind it.
Rasterization, by contrast, streams all of the geometry through the pipeline one object at a time. This means that the red book has no way to know that it should tint the white wall, and the white wall has no way to know about the red book.
To overcome some of the limitations of rasterization, many content creators use tricks and pre-baking. These can yield good results, but at a cost of labor and scene dynamism. Tens of thousands of hours and millions of dollars are spent creating the complex multi-pass renderers behind high-production-value video games. And each additional interaction needs to be coded into the game engine. Nothing just "falls out". Nothing is free.
And these hacks are heavily specialized to the scene they are rendering. Many of the supporting assets for an object (shadow maps, reflection maps, etc.) need to be recreated for every environment that the object may find itself inside of. You could not transplant a car in a racing game from an Alpine track to a City track without doing substantial work to regenerate many of its assets.
Dr. Dobb's: Caustic Graphics, the company you founded, has developed a ray-tracing co-processor. What are the advantages of the co-processor approach, as opposed to a software only ray tracer.
JM: In a word, efficiency.
Today's GPGPUs have a tremendous amount of compute power but their architectures are not suited to ray tracing. This is because, unlike rasterization, ray tracers cannot just stream geometry through a pipeline. The complex visual effects that make difference between "game" quality graphics and photorealistic quality are created with incoherent rays bouncing around the scene in a chaotic way.
Each of these rays could access a different part of the scene and run a different program to simulate the material it is interacting with. GPGPUs, which amount to incredibly wide SIMD machines, are optimized for running many instances of the same program kernel and accessing data that is fairly nearby in memory. This means that GPGPU ray tracers don't utilize most of the compute available since adjacent code threads will be taking divergent branching paths causing stalls and also frequently waiting on global memory access due to the small caches inherent in GPGPU architectures.
The Caustic co-processor offloads the scattered database operations inherent in ray-tracing and schedules results so that many rays accessing similar objects can be evaluated at the same time. This relatively small chip unlocks the massive compute available in a GPGPU and allows it to run highly complex shaders in a ray-tracing system.
Dr. Dobb's: Does it make sense for your co-processor to be implemented in one core of a multicore processor?
JM: The internal structure of the Caustic hardware is not similar to anything in general-purpose processors today. We don not believe it is possible to achieve comparable performance on today's CPUs.
However, just as floating-point instructions have made their way into almost all CPUs available, we believe the fundamental capabilities of the Caustic hardware could be integrated into future GPGPU architectures, enabling even better performance. With Caustic's help, of course.
Another alternative would be to take the Caustic co-processor IP as-is and transplant an existing general-purpose core in a multicore processor. As I said earlier, the Caustic co-processor is highly silicon efficient and would unlock the potential of the other general-purpose cores to perform shading operations in an efficient and ordered fashion.
Dr. Dobb's: In what way did you extend the OpenGL APIs?
JM: We have diverged from OpenGL ES in two significant ways. First, we allow shaders to cast rays. A shader author can programatically define the way a material interacts with light by using a ray shader. In addition to all of the shading techniques available in a traditional GLSL fragment shader, rays become the most powerful tool in the toolbox, enabling interactions between ray shaders on multiple different objects in the scene.
Second, we changed to rendering pipeline to require "retain mode" operation. Because ray tracing requires every part of the scene to be accessible when rays are being evaluated, we have created "Primitive Objects" to encapsulate all of the state needed to render an object in the scene. A primitive object can reference shaders, textures, uniforms, vertex data, and anything else that is specific to a single object.
Dr. Dobb's: Where can readers go for more information on the Caustic co-processor and SDK?
JM: For more information, you can read our technical brief on CausticGL published here. Also, our technical F.A.Q. contains lots of information about CausticOne published here.


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The New Blue Orange – Outside Back Garden
Adventures in liqueurs, liquor and other potables.
Indigenous plants, farm life and wild food in Cape Point
A New Orleans Enthusiast sharing recipes and more
wat brand in my kop
Faces, places, food, football and other southern goodness that strikes me.
Freelance Writer - Aspiring Author - Travel Enthusiast