Where did the hurricanes go?

Wunder Blog : Weather Underground: "Quietest September in the Atlantic since 1997
Well, it's the end of September, and what is traditionally the busiest month in the Atlantic was unusually quiet. We had only two named storms this September, the first time since 1997 we've had less than three September named storms. There were only 6.75 days in September with a named storm, which ranks as the 4th fewest September named storm days since 1950 (only 1962, 1970, and 1994 had fewer). The Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) index for September ranked as the 6th lowest since 1950. The quiet period is likely to continue for at least another week, as there are no threat areas in the Atlantic to discuss today, and none of the computer models are forecasting tropical storm formation over the next seven days. I'll post my first-half-of-October outlook for the Atlantic tomorrow."

Comment -- Over the short term, weather is never "normal". It's only "normal" when you average it over long time spans. I guess you could say it's normal for weather to vary a lot!

Frost is predicted in mid-Michigan tonight. That may seem kind of early, but it appears that the earliest frost ever was Sept. 5 1997 (http://www.crh.noaa.gov/grr/history/?m=9).

Let there be (laser) light

Think you’re a real sharpshooter?

Hitting an object about the size of a minivan shouldn’t be a problem, then.

The catch? Your target is 250,000 miles away.

Oh, and it’s moving at 3,600 miles per hour.

That feat may be impossible for a single man, but NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center manages to achieve it 28 times per second. The target? Its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft, which orbits the moon.

The target practice is part of the first laser ranging effort to track a spacecraft beyond low-Earth orbit on a daily basis. The goal is to provide distance measurements accurate to 10 centimeters, or about four inches — far more accurate than current microwave stations, which track the LRO within 65 feet of accuracy.

Comment -- The thought that crossed my mind when I read this is that if NASA can hit a fast moving Orbiter with a laser, then the Air Force certainly has laser technology to hit a missile fired from Iran or North Korea.

Amazing pictures of Saturn

The Rite of Spring (NASA Cassini Saturn Mission Images): "Of the countless equinoxes Saturn has seen since the birth of the solar system, this one, captured here in a mosaic of light and dark, is the first witnessed up close by an emissary from Earth ... none other than our faithful robotic explorer, Cassini.

Seen from our planet, the view of Saturn's rings during equinox is extremely foreshortened and limited. But in orbit around Saturn, Cassini had no such problems. From 20 degrees above the ringplane, Cassini's wide angle camera shot 75 exposures in succession for this mosaic showing Saturn, its rings, and a few of its moons a day and a half after exact Saturn equinox, when the sun's disk was exactly overhead at the planet's equator."

Comment -- Never in history has anyone seen Saturn's rings from this angle. Pretty cool time to be a planetary astronomer!

Munch munch

More progress on the parking ramp demo.

It's always more fun to destroy than to create

I got a close up photo of the parking ramp demolition going on outside my office in downtown Lansing. They are about a third done.

The demolition is pretty noisy when you're close to the action. There's a giant steel jaw at the end of the arm that slowly munches away at the concrete and rebar. Every once in a while a huge slab of pavement falls off and crashes to the ground.

I was told that the demolition company has to be really careful in their work so that the ramp doesn't suddenly collapse and damage nearby buildings.

Life lessons from two recent sports meltdowns

This week I’ve been pondering what can be learned from two big sports meltdowns that happened in the last week: MSU’s upset football loss to CMU, and Serna Williams’ penalty-point ouster from the U.S. Open tennis tournament.

I think the big lesson is that lots of little mistakes can put you in the position where one more mistake becomes disastrous rather than inconsequential.

In the case of the football game, how did the Spartans allow themselves to be sunk by an improbably-recovered onside kick and subsequent game-winning field goal? They should never have found themselves in that position, but a game-long series of bad penalties, missed tackles and errant passes (i.e. mistakes) made them highly vulnerable to the improbable events at the end of the game.

Similarly, Serena Williams found herself in a tight match, had earned a warning earlier in the match for smashing her racquet, got behind in the last game, and so, when the very improbable happened (a foot fault) she made the additional mistake of losing her temper, screaming profanities at the judge and being assessed another point that lost her the match. Had she been well-ahead in the match, or if she hadn’t been on the judge’s bad side for smashing her racquet, she could have survived the penalty point.

So, since all of us obviously can’t avoid making mistakes from time-to-time, maybe the takeaway from all this is to avoid making a series of continuous mistakes – stop yourself before they get out of control. That helps you avoid getting into in a position – whether it’s in sports, financial or personal relationships – where a mistake turns into an irretrievable disaster.

Finally – when the coach says “be sure not to jump offside on this kick”, try extra hard to remember not to jump offside. And don’t smash your racquet.

I'm world famous (again)

Obama and Acorn - WSJ.com:

"Or at Least Agitated"
'Owner Outraged at Cat's Washing Machine Killing'--headline, Detroit Free Press, Sept. 15"

Comment -- I'm given credit in today's Wall Street Journal "Best of the Web Today" feature for contributing the witty quote above about the cat killed in the washing machine.

I certainly don't mean to imply that I think it's funny that a cat was killed in a washing machine. A microwave, maybe...but never a washing machine. However, I cracked myself up when I thought "I bet the owner was agitated!"

Below is how I'm credited. It's the second time I've been in "Best of the Web Today."

(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Tom Bemis, Jamie Extract, C.E. Dobkin, Hampton Stevens, Jim Tracy, John McGee, John Sanders, Matthew Hamel, Steve Prestegard, Mark Van Der Molen, Chris Scibelli, Nick Kasoff, Mordecai Bobrowsky, Glenn Rowan, Eli Bear, Daniel Mullen, Aaron Spetner, Mike Byers, Will Larson, Michael Segal, Bern Steves, Irwin Chusid, Stuart Creque, Tom Sommers, Joseph DeMartino, Doug Black, Stan Obenhaus, Kevin Hetherington-Young, Evan Slatis, Brian Smith, Michael Rogers, John Williamson, Ken Lawrence, Ed Jordan, Shawn Sarazin, Terry Holmes, Peter Iorio, Richard Haisley, Greg Askins, Ray Girouard, Kyle Kyllan, Phil Scott, Michael Ellard, Arlene Ross, Matt Smola, John Zimmerman, Bruce Goldman and Ross Firestone. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)