Another problem Barack faces

You think the economy's in the tank? Worried about Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan? Will we ever get universal health care? Well, you better get your priorities in order, because O Sole Mio is fixin' to take center stage, and when this hot number starts barking, everybody listens.

See those two little dots in the sun's northeast quandrant? Well, my friends, those little spots mark the beginning of Solar Cycle number 24, and before it's over several years from now,well just about anything could happen, most of it bad. Mini Ice Age, disruption and/or destruction of anything electronic, drought, flood... name your poison. Here's the skinny from NASA:

Science Daily (Nov. 11, 2008) � After two-plus years of few sunspots, even fewer solar flares, and a generally eerie calm, the sun is finally showing signs of life.

"I think solar minimum is behind us," says sunspot forecaster David Hathaway of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center.

His statement is prompted by an October flurry of sunspots. "Last month we counted five sunspot groups," he says. That may not sound like much, but in a year with record-low numbers of sunspots and long stretches of utter spotlessness, five is significant. "This represents a real increase in solar activity."

Even more significant is the fact that four of the five sunspot groups belonged to Solar Cycle 24, the long-awaited next installment of the sun's 11-year solar cycle. "October was the first time we've seen sunspots from new Solar Cycle 24 outnumbering spots from old Solar Cycle 23. It's a good sign that the new cycle is taking off."

Old Solar Cycle 23 peaked in 2000 and has since decayed to low levels. Meanwhile, new Solar Cycle 24 has struggled to get started. 2008 is a year of overlap with both cycles weakly active at the same time. From January to September, the sun produced a total of 22 sunspot groups; 82% of them belonged to old Cycle 23. October added five more; but this time 80% belonged to Cycle 24. The tables have turned.

At first glance, old- and new-cycle sunspots look the same, but they are not. To tell the difference, solar physicists check two things: a sunspot's heliographic latitude and its magnetic polarity. (1) New-cycle sunspots always appear at high latitude, while old-cycle spots cluster around the sun's equator. (2) The magnetic polarity of new-cycle spots is reversed compared to old-cycle spots. Four of October's five sunspot groups satisfied these two criteria for membership in Solar Cycle 24.

The biggest of the new-cycle spots emerged at the end of the month on Halloween. Numbered 1007, or "double-oh seven" for short, the sunspot had two dark cores each wider than Earth connected by active magnetic filaments thousands of kilometers long. Amateur astronomer Alan Friedman took this picture from his backyard observatory in Buffalo, New York:

On Nov. 3rd and again on Nov. 4th, double-oh seven unleashed a series of B-class solar flares. Although B-flares are considered minor, the explosions made themselves felt on Earth. X-rays bathed the dayside of our planet and sent waves of ionization rippling through the atmosphere over Europe. Hams monitoring VLF radio beacons noticed strange "fades" and "surges" caused by the sudden ionospheric disturbances.

Hathaway tamps down the excitement: "We're still years away from solar maximum and, in the meantime, the sun is going to have some more quiet stretches." Even with its flurry of sunspots, the October sun was mostly blank, with zero sunspots on 20 of the month's 31 days.

But it's a start. Stay tuned for solar activity.

Veterans' Day

In June of 1956 I walked across the tarmac at Newark Airport and climbed aboard a Lockheed Super Constellation (right) non-stop to San Antonio, TX. It was my first flight, and the beginning of my four-year enlistment in the United States Air Force. It remains the most exciting and eventful four years of my life.

I was a boy of 17. When I was honorably discharged in July of 1960 I was a man, with a duffel bag full of one-of-a-kind memories. I was trained as a Russian linguist and received the equivalent of a Master's Degree in that language from Syracuse University.
It was the dawn of the Space Age. I traveled around the world, monitoring Russian military and space communications. I also worked as a basic Russian instructor and top secret code breaker.

When Sputnik I fell to Earth, I monitored its descent; when Khrushchev gave America a six-month ultimatum to get out of Berlin, I listened to Soviet preparations for conflict; when Francis Gary Powers's U-2 spyplane (left) was shot down over the USSR, I listened to possible MIG interceptors and the probable missile base that brought him down.


There was fun, too. When Alaska became a state I was in Anchorage. (Now THAT was a party!) I spent a 30-day leave on the Italian Riviera, living in a gypsy camp in the woods outside Bordighera.

And does anyone remember what a B-25 looks like? That was the twin-engine bomber (right) Jimmy Doolittle and his men flew in the famous thirty seconds over Tokyo raid in WWII. In 1960 I flew in the last official Air Force flight of the B-25, from Kelly AFB in Texas to Andrews AFB outside of Washington. I was on my way home to get discharged and the port engine conked out TWICE during the flight!


Every veteran has stories, many of them far more perilous than mine, but all of them with a unique bond; we were all proud soldiers of Uncle Sam. On Veterans' Day, remember who we were, who we are, and big or small, what we did.

(Click the title to visit the Intrepid Museum)

Ode to Sean Hannity

Ode to Sean Hannity

Aping urbanity
Oozing with vanity
Plump as a manatee
Faking humanity
Journalistic calamity
Intellectual inanity
Fox Noise insanity
You're a profanity
Hannity

Thanks to poet John Cleese... Hey! Wanna see Keith Olberman reading this ditty? Click Read more.

Local Voting -- The Tree Ordinance

I think it's safe to assume that the vast majority of Madisonians like trees. I think it's also safe to assume that most of us know next to nothing about their care and feeding; hell, we probably don't know half the species that call Madison home, so it would probably be a good thing to have some kind of protective oversight for our leafy neighbors. Maybe an ordinance of some kind is necessary, but please, let's try to be intelligent about it. Least government is best government here. A tree ordinance should make it difficult for a developer to arbitrarily level a plot of land, but it should not automatically pit that developer against the ghost of Joyce Kilmer. Individual home owners should be held to a different standard, one that upholds their authority over THEIR land and minimizes governmental intrusion on that authority.

Let me say that simpler: If homeowners want to cut down a tree or trees on their property, they should have to notify the town. If the town want to save the tree, well? Let the friendly negotiations begin, but the only trump card the town should hold would be if that tree were imminently endangered and irreplacable; even then the owner should have wiggle room. Maybe the town contracts to periodically prune the tree, or aid in its preservation and upkeep. We just shouldn't be able to arbitrarily save a tree on someone's private property just because we happen to like it.


(You know, the more one writes about this subject, the more this ordinance seems like a bad idea. So I take back everything I said so far. Can cooler heads prevail here? As my sainted grandfather would say, "What's the worst thing that could happen?" Left without an ordinance, will Madison become a macadam parking lot? Very doubtful. Without any oversight, trees appear to have a permanent home in the Rose City. One thing's for certain, though: with an ordinance, the only people who will be happy will be the creators of the ordinance.)