Notice Anything?

The Associated Press is reporting that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is predicting that the "La Nina" phenomenon will not form this year. The report says that means that there should "generally" be a less severe hurricane season (which is not at all what the NOAA website says that La Nina usually brings - but we digress). But we'll let the AP report:

MIAMI - The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted that La Nina — a cooling of Pacific Ocean waters that generally brings a more active Atlantic hurricane season — will be absent for the next two months.

The absence of La Nina doesn't necessarily herald a tame summer for tropical storms and hurricanes, said Dennis Feltgen, meteorologist and spokesman for NOAA in Miami.

"There are so many other ingredients that contribute to the development of tropical cyclones, it's not just the fact that we don't have a La Nina that comes into play here," Feltgen said.

Hurricane season 2005 was a textbook example of this. La Nina wasn't around, but the season managed to break records, with 28 named storms, including 15 hurricanes, seven of which were major.

La Nina is the counterpart to the better known El Nino, a warming of Pacific waters near the equator that creates a less conducive environment for tropical cyclones in the Atlantic. Both ocean conditions are hard to predict long-term and don't follow regular patterns.

This year, forecasters have predicted an above-average hurricane season, which runs June 1 through November. They believe there will be 13 to 17 named storms, with seven to 10 of them becoming hurricanes and three to five of those reaching at least Category 3 strength.

All of which is interesting. But buried at the bottom of the story is something that suddenly struck me as odd. There has not been a single named Atlantic storm since June 1st. Not one. That would be six weeks with no storms worth noting. That, I think, is unusual for this time of year, isn't it? There is no guarantee that there will not be a lot of storms in the next few weeks or months, of course. And La Nina actually does not, according to NOAA, form all that often anyway. But six weeks without a named storm? 13 to 17 predicted storms would average out to more than two per month over the season. (Yes, I know these things do not actually average out, it still seems very quiet.)

UPDATE: Well, I found the historical data for hurricanes, and it isn't really unusual not to have any storms through the first six weeks - there is no real pattern to any of that. (I did not check every year they have records posted for, of course, just a random sample). Some years there are several through the early part of the season, some years they all hit late in the year. Take a look at 1933 if you get a chance, though. It would have been a crappy year to go for a Caribbean cruise.

Coldest Winter In 57 Years

Tim Blair devotes his supremely snarky column in the Australian Sunday Telegraph to noting the coldest June since 1950 in Australia - continent-wide, mind you. He's spot on.

LAST month Australians endured our coldest June since 1950. Imagine that; all those trillions of tonnes of evil carbon we've horked up into the atmosphere over six decades of rampant industrialisation, and we're still getting the same icy weather we got during the Cold War.

Not that June should be presented as evidence that global warming isn't happening, or that we're causing it. Relying on such a tiny sample would be unscientific and wrong, even if it involves an entire freakin' continent's weather patterns throughout the course of a whole month, for Christ's sake.

No such foolishness will be indulged in here.

Sadly, those who believe in global warming - and who would compel us also to believe - aren't similarly constrained. A few hot days are all they ever need to get the global warming bandwagon rolling; evidently it's solar powered. Here, for example, is an Australian Associated Press report on May's weather, which in places was a little warmer than usual:

"Climate change gave much of Australia's drought-stricken east coast its warmest May on record, weather experts say.

"Global warming and an absence of significant cold changes had driven temperatures well above the monthly average, said meteorologist Matt Pearce.

According to Mr Pearce, May's temperatures were "yet another sign of the widespread climate change that we are seeing unfold across the globe."

If that's the case, shouldn't June's cold weather - coldest since 1950, remember - be a sign that widespread climate change isn't unfolding across the globe? We're using the same data here; one month's weather. And, in fact, the June sample is Australia-wide while May only highlights the east coast. Fear the dawn of a great "coldening"!

Britain is suffering through a summerless summer at the moment - and a darned wet one, too. There is a hot spell across much of the US, but it follows what was an unusually cold spring in many areas. In other words, there is a lot of weather. But as Blair notes:

Think of these little factoids the next time your read a report linking a hot day or month or year to global warming.

There are people dying of exposure in the snow down in Argentina and the South African leg of the global goregasm had lousy attendance do to extreme cold weather. Factoids can be terrible things.

Nassau Kneads Spell Czech

The United States space agency Nassau NASA kneads needs a gud good spell czech check program. Boy are they embarrassed right now. They rolled the space shuttle Endeavour out to the launch pad and sent it on its way with a nice banner. The banner said: "Go Endeavor". Whoopsie.

The spacecraft arrived at the its launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center on Wednesday, and officials welcomed it with a banner reading "Go Endeavor."

The shuttle's name, however, is spelled the British way, with a "u." It's named after the first ship commanded by 18th century British explorer James Cook.

The banner was up for about 90 minutes before being replaced by one with the correct spelling, but with photographers on hand for the arrival of the shuttle, cameras captured the mistake.

(I just think its amusing, by the way. It is exceedingly easy to make minor spelling errors - and spell check actually makes it worse sometimes. For example, I used to work at ComEd. Microsoft Word spell check did not recognize that and would always helpfully offer to insert its best guess as to the correct word: commode. That caught a few people. My blog spell checker recommends 'comedy' instead, by the way.)

North Korea Shuts Down Yongbyon Reactor

The United States has been informed that the North Korean reactor at Yongbyon has been shut down by the North Korean government. The news came just hours after oil was delivered to the Stalinist state. The shutdown has not been independently confirmed by the IAEA yet, however.

"The US has been informed Saturday that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea shut down its nuclear facilities at Yongbyon," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in a statement.

"We welcome this development and look forward to the verification and monitoring of this shutdown by the International Atomic Energy Agency team that has arrived in the DPRK," he said.

A US official said that Washington was informed of the shutdown through North Korea's mission to the United Nations.

The announcement came after UN inspectors, carrying 100 cases of equipment weighing about one ton, arrived in Pyongyang to supervise the reactor shutdown.

Their arrival was the first step in the February 13 deal under which Pyongyang agreed to scrap its nuclear program in exchange for aid and security guarantees, including 50,000 tons of fuel oil aid from South Korea. The first 6,200-ton shipment arrived early Saturday.

McCormack said Saturday the United States, together with all the partners in the six-party talks on Pyongyang's nuclear program — the two Koreas, Japan, China and Russia — look forward further progress.

"We, along with all our other Six-Party partners, remain firmly committed to achieving the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula through the implementation of the September 2005 Joint Statement," McCormack said in reference to a prior declaration before talks broke off two years ago.

Hopefully there are plans to have the North Koreans hand over their weapons grade fuel as well, but I have not seen any mention of that at this point. But that stuff needs to be accounted for and stored safely or disposed of.

Prison Break!

More specifically, prison break-in. The United States sent paratroopers to invade the Colorado Fremont Correctional Institute early Thursday. Well, actually, the 25 paratrooper had not actually been sent to invade it, they just got lost.

CANON CITY, Colo. - A unit of 25 military paratroopers landed inside the perimeter of a state prison, but not to quell a riot or attempt some movie-script breakout. They just goofed.

The paratroopers, armed with exercise rifles that shoot rubber bullets, landed in a corn field outside the Fremont Correctional Institute early Thursday, Colorado Department of Corrections spokeswoman Katherine Sanguinetti said.

Guards escorted them off the grounds with no violence, she told the Rocky Mountain News.

The only problem? Neither the Army or the Air Force know anything about the paratroopers. It may have been a National Guard unit, but they didn't return reporter's calls. So, the question is, who were those guys? Did the guards see proper identification before they led them out the gate?

Destroying Trust

The head of the British Broadcasting Corporation, Mark Thompson, has warned employees that they are in serious jeopardy of losing the public's trust in the aftermath of the fraudulent editing of the documentary on Queen Elizabeth. The controversy has already led to a humiliating public apology by the BBC for deliberately reversing the order of two scenes to falsely portray the Queen as having "stormed" out of a photo shoot with Annie Leibovitz. Thompson has now ordered a formal inquiry into the matter. And people are calling for heads to roll.

In a hard-hitting email, a copy of which has been passed to The Daily Telegraph, Mark Thompson said that the BBC had to put its house in order urgently.

The humiliating apology to the Queen came only days after the BBC was fined £50,000 for cheating on a phone-in on Blue Peter, the children's programme.

Mr Thompson has set up an inquiry into how the BBC incorrectly declared in a trailer for A Year with the Queen that she had flounced out of a photo shoot with Annie Leibovitz, the American photographer, after objecting to the suggestion that she should remove her crown.

RDF Television, the independent production company that edited the trailer, may now be sacked as a BBC contributor.

Peter Fincham, the controller of BBC1, who fuelled the controversy by saying that the Queen had "lost it" and walked out in a "huff" was last night insisting that he would not quit. He was buoyed by a private message of support from Mr Thompson.

Prediction: Fincham is toast. He actually made the entire thing worse by trumpeting the fraud as fact. There is no way the inquiry will let him off for that one. Helen Mirren, who just won an Oscar for her portrayal of the Queen, is calling the entire situation a disgrace. She's right and there will be some folks out of work as a result. Of course, back in the old days, the rolling of heads would have been quite literal rather than figurative. Today's media would be incapable of functioning under the old rules, wouldn't they? The turnover would be too high.

Obituary For Michael Moore’s Career?

This is kind of interesting. Michael Moore's biographer, Roger Rapaport, writes a fairly long essay asking whether Michael Moore's career as a maker of "documentary" films is over. And Rapaport himself questions the integrity of Moore's filmmaking.

He is one of the greatest documentary makers of his time and ours, a folk hero of the left, the scourge of presidents, politicians and business leaders, winner of Oscars in Hollywood, Palmes d'Or at Cannes, and the inventor of the personal-essay-style feature-length political documentary. His latest film, Sicko, has had a vast amount of publicity. But amid the glad-handing, one awkward question is being whispered: could Michael Moore be running out of steam?

Let us consider the evidence. His new documentary, on the subject of health care, appears to not be doing such good box office as his last one (Fahrenheit 9/11, on George Bush). While some Sicko reviewers have been kind, others are not convinced: the influential New Yorker says Moore "scrapes bottom" with "superfluous" Sicko. And this is a film that does not even have a release date in the UK.

Elsewhere, Moore's methods and past work are under scrutiny while another film about Bush's last election campaign appears to have been placed firmly on the back-burner. Rumours abound, sparked by the man himself, that he may now decide to abandon documentaries to write romantic comedies and straight dramatic features (with a slice of wry) instead. Where else is there left for Moore to go?

The long gestation period for Sicko, Moore's paintball-style attack on the American health-care system, reflects parallel changes in his own life. Recognising the irony of an overweight director on a bad diet preaching healthy living, Moore decided to heal himself. He hired a personal trainer and began taking long walks. He also created the Traverse City Film Festival near his impressive home on Michigan's Torch Lake. As he personally reviewed entries, Moore also continued working on fictional screenplay ideas of his own…….

……But a more likely reason ties in to the most-asked question I've been hearing from audiences and interviewers: "Are his films documentaries, or are they fictional comedies?" Since Moore gets the credit for making documentaries as popular as dramatic films, let's turn to the first cameraman Michael that ever hired, Kevin Rafferty, for the answer. This famed cinéma-vérité film-maker, who is also George W Bush's first cousin, gave Moore his film debut in Blood in the Face, an exposé of the "racialist right". The then Flint journalist Moore scored a major coup when he helped Rafferty's team film a Michigan Ku Klux Klan rally where two lovebirds said their marital vows in a ceremony illuminated by the glow of a burning cross.

Rafferty says that he was stunned when he arrived in Flint and Moore handed him a terrific shot-list for Roger & Me. This was simply not the way cinema verité documentaries were made: a director would create the storyline after shooting was finished. Two-and-a-half years later, Rafferty was even more astonished when he saw that the shot-list had become the movie. Instead of shooting first and editing afterwards, in the traditional manner of documentaries, Michael had scripted Roger & Me like a dramatic feature.

Another problem is a lack of trust. There are nagging questions about well-documented omissions. Moore's decision to leave two filmed interviews with the General Motors chief executive Roger Smith on the Roger & Me cutting-room floor raises questions he has not answered. The ethics of launching his career by falsely claiming that he couldn't get an interview with the head of General Motors creates a credibility gap. Is it a good idea to rewrite history so that it creates the storyline and publicity necessary to reach an audience that normally skips documentaries?

After years of dodging the subject, Moore confirmed my story that he did, in fact, film an interview with Smith. Then he made the mistake of arguing that this event took place before he began working on Roger & Me. According to his commentary on the documentary's DVD, shooting began in February 1987, three months before the first filmed interview at a GM annual meeting in Detroit. The second deleted interview, a "home run" according to the soundman, also Moore's friend and Ralph Nader's attorney, Jim Musselman, took place in January 1988.

Read it all, it is, shall we say, less than flattering to Moore. I did learn one thing I had not known before: Moore was responsible for the execrable Canadian Bacon, John Candy's last - and arguably worst - film. Somehow I can't see Moore transitioning to romantic comedy.

Blitzkrieg In Oz

An Australian man has been arrested after taking a little joyride around the Western suburbs of Sydney. The arrest had  bit to do with the vehicle he chose for the jaunt and a bit with his choice of places to visit. Driving one's armored personnel carrier through mobile phone towers is frowned upon, even in free-wheeling Australia.

John Robert Patterson, 45, allegedly led officers on a 90-minute chase through six suburbs in Sydney's west as he crashed the privately-owned APC through fences, mobile phone towers, telecommunication relay sheds and an electrical substation at about 2am (AEST) today.

The man from Dharruk, in Sydney's west, was arrested after the APC stalled on its way to damaging a seventh property, police said.

He was refused bail in Parramatta Bail Court today.

Defence lawyer Ivan Bertoia told the court that Patterson claimed "that certainly he had authority to behave in such a manner".

In refusing bail, the magistrate recommended that Patterson, who had facial lacerations and a swollen left eye, receive medical and psychiatric attention.

The hearing was adjourned to Penrith local court on July 16.

Well of course he did. Have you seen the roaming charges down under? Heck, if you own your very own APC and want to play panzer, everybody gets all huffy. (Fortunately nobody was hurt in this incident so we can joke about it.)

Escapee Captured

A scout for the Animal Uprising™ who escaped from her incarceration in New Jersey has been recaptured. Unfortunately, the miscreant was on the lam for a week and was found 80 miles away at the Jersey Shore. But at least the macaw is back in custody.

Robert Daly, 25, said he was driving near his home Thursday night when he spotted the large blue and gold bird sitting quietly by the side of the road.

He called police, who captured the bird and put it into a box. Officers who had seen news reports about the bird's disappearance notified the owner, Rosalie O'Hara, and the two were reunited Friday.

"I knew it was Sophie," O'Hara told The Record of Bergen County. "She did some little shakes and gestures, and I knew it was her."

Sophia had vanished last Saturday after O'Hara's husband lost his grip on the bird while the couple were out for a walk.

Here's a picture of a macaw. Note the shifty eyes. A brief look at a Google map of the region shows what the bird may have been up to. There are a number of military installations along the route the bird presumably took. We'd also mention there are chemical plants nearby, but it is New Jersey so that's pretty well meaningless.