Whew it's MUGGY!

This is a plot of dew point temperatures from the NOAA station Thomas Point Light, which is near Annapolis. Notice the spike in dew point temperatures on the right side of the graph: this is the dreaded summer moisture I've not been looking for! I guess now that the Chesapeake Bay water temperatures have reached ~ 80 (Thomas Light recorded 81F last hour), ridiculously high dew point temps can be expected any time we get a sea breeze and/or synoptically-driven south wind. This is MUGGY.

Norway, in pictures

Over spring break, back in March, I visited my good friend Trygve Watne in Sandnes, Norway. It was an amazing trip full of good conversation, fun times at the middle-high school where Trygve works, and fabulous scenery. We played curling, ate whale, visited a spectacular fjord, goofed around on the Atlantic coast, took in a concert, and scarfed perhaps my favorite food in Europe: a kebap sandwich!

Here are some pictures:

What to do?

Yesterday, the Pew Hispanic Center released a report on Mexican migration (immigration) to/from the United States. The authors found that the annual number of Mexicans coming into the USA had declined from > 1,026,000 in 2006-07 to 636,000 in 2008-09. During the same periods, an average of 420,000 Mexicans returned to Mexico. The two most interesting parts of the study, in my opinion, are (1) that it found 11,500,000 Mexicans lived in the USA in 2009, and (2) the US Border Patrol apprehended 662,000 Mexicans in 2008, which is 30,000 more people than got into the country! (Granted of the 662,000 detentions, some of them are bound to be people trying to enter the country more than once, maybe many more times.) The Pew Hispanic Center's report also estimates that ~85% of Mexican immigrants living in the USA are undocumented/illegal (meaning they did not apply for an expensive and nearly impossible to get visa from a U.S. Consulate office).

So a question I have this morning is: what to do? Maintain the status quo? Offer blanket amnesty to those in the country illegally? Ask them all to leave? Increase measures that close off options for undocumented (i.e., inability to get driver license, apply for bank loans, etc?)

I've posted about this many times before, and I want to again reprint the poem written by Emma Lazarus, which is engraved on a tablet on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. Her words are powerful! What are your thoughts?

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Such a tragedy - Int'l exchange program gone awry

The summary: terrible stories from bad exchange experiences of int'l high school students who come to the USA to study for 6 months / 1 yr. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090716/ap_on_re_us/us_foreign_exchange_scandal

What a cool time it's been!

The past 18 days have featured extraordinary weather in Annapolis! Temperatures have been below normal since about June 28th - and several days have featured temps much below normal. The culprit has been an anomalous upper-level low parked over the Great Lakes and southern Ontario, which anchored cool Canadian high pressure and northerly lower-tropospheric winds over the eastern 1/3rd of the U.S. since the end of June. See the two figures below: one, the 30-day temperature plot for Baltimore, and two, the mean 500 hPa geopotential height from June 28-July 11. Let's hope the trend continues for the rest of the summer!

Finally, a reasoned analysis of the hype

In the midst of Michael Jackson "hoopla", something remained unsettled with me, something I struggled to put into words but felt none-the-less. Today's opinion piece in the NY Times captures it very well: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/04/opinion/04herbert.html?_r=1

"The Michael-mania that has erupted since Jackson’s death — not just an appreciation of his music, but a giddy celebration of his life — is yet another spasm of the culture opting for fantasy over reality. We don’t want to look under the rock that was Jackson’s real life."

And, by analogy, we don't want to critically examine our own lives (or the collective life of the country) because it does seem to have become quite hedonistic (pleasure-seeking; "Am I happy?" is a very popular self-analysis question). Your thoughts?