« September 2, 2007 | Main | September 4, 2007 »
By Brendan Loy
My clerkship starts tomorrow. Wish me luck!
P.S. Of course, this is just about the last you'll be hearing of the clerkship here on the blog. :)
P.P.S. And yes, I've been waiting to post that headline for weeks. What can I say, I'm a man of simple pleasures. Though admittedly, perhaps I shouldn't be paraphrasing Mark Twain, considering what he thought of lawyers. Heh.
By Brendan Loy
Brian Neudorff takes a closer look at Invest 99L, the disturbance off the Southeastern U.S. that could become a tropical storm later this week, and could threaten the East Coast.
By Brendan Loy
USC used the "missing man formation" during its first extra point Saturday against Idaho to pay tribute to kicker Mario Danelo, who died tragically and mysteriously in January. Here is a TrojanWire article about the tribute; here's a YouTube clip from the TV broadcast:
(Hat tip: BK.)
By Brendan Loy
From the latest update to my Pajamas Media post on Hurricane Felix:
Felix is down to 135 mph, a minimal Category 4, as of 5:00 PM. Of course, a "minimal Category 4" is still one heck of a powerful storm. ...With landfall likely to occur in a relatively unpopulated area, flooding remains the principal threat, and [Alan] Sullivan "remain[s] optimistic that the storm is too small and quick moving to cause major loss of life from flooding in the more populous interior." He hopes, however, that residents have been adequately warned: "That area is one of the poorest parts of our hemisphere, and communications are sparse." Sullivan also suggests that Hurricane Watches for Belize are "overkill." ...
Meanwhile, Eric Berger notes that 2007 is only the fourth season in recorded history with two Category Five hurricanes.
By Brendan Loy
I just submitted another "update" to my Pajamas Media post, noting Felix's weakening to a Category 4 as of 2:00 PM, but also quoting Dr. Jeff Masters providing some historical perspective on its weekend intensification to Cat. 5 status: "Felix now holds the record for shortest time for an Atlantic storm to intensify to Category 5 strength. Felix required just 51 hours to reach Category 5 strength after it started as a tropical depression. That is a truly remarkable intensification rate, considering most tropical cyclones take 3-5 days to organize into a Category 1 hurricane."
Read the whole thing from Dr. Masters -- and read my whole post here.
By Brendan Loy
Here is my first Pajamas Media post on Hurricane Felix. I submitted it at just after 1:30 AM, but it didn't appear online until after 5:00 AM; I'm assured this was an unusual circumstance, and updates will normally appear much more quickly, even in the middle of the night. In any event, I'm allowed to post an excerpt here, so here goes:
Hurricane Felix has undergone a remarkable period of rapid intensification over the last two days, strengthening from a tropical depression with 35 mph winds at 2:00 AM Saturday into a Category Five hurricane with 165 mph winds at 8:00 PM Sunday -- the Caribbean's second Cat. 5 in two weeks. Further strengthening is possible as Felix barrels westward through the southern Caribbean, menacing Central America and perhaps eventually Mexico, but probably not the United States.The storm's minimum central pressure dropped 73 millibars in those 42 hours, from 1007 mb to 934 mb. The Atlantic has seen speedier bursts of intensification in recent years -- Hurricane Wilma's 8-hour, 69-millibar plunge in 2005 comes to mind -- but still, going from a T.D. to a Cat. 5 in less than 48 hours is quite a feat ...
Where will Felix go? A Hurricane Watch is up for the Honduras coast from the border with Nicaragua east to Limon, and the official forecast track brings the storm very close to the Honduras coast by Tuesday morning. Whether it actually makes landfall in Hondruas, or merely scrapes the coast as Hurricane Dean scraped Jamaica's south shore, is difficult to predict. But even a glancing blow could be devastating.
To read the rest, you'll have to visit Pajamas Media -- where a new update will be posted shortly, at the top of the page, BTW.
UPDATE: The update has posted. Here's an excerpt:
Hurricane Felix weakened ever-so-slightly overnight, its winds down from 165 to 160 mph and its pressure up from 934 to 940 mb as of 11:00 AM EDT. But that’s almost a distinction without a difference: Felix remains, in the National Hurricane Center’s words, a “potentially catastrophic hurricane” menacing Central America ...The Houston Chronicle's Eric Berger discusses Felix's likely impacts on Central America, and examines why it got so strong, so fast. He also states definitively that "the hurricane is no longer a threat to the United States." Meanwwile, fellow weatherblogger Alan Sullivan looks at the targeted regions of Guatemala and Nicaragua, and notes that Felix -- like Dean before it -- may make landfall in a relatively unpopulated area. That would certainly be a blessing, especially as Felix's hurricane-force winds are limited to a very compact area, no more than 30 miles from the center in any direction. Those 160 mph winds have catastrophic potential, but they will only impact a very small portion of the coastline.
By Brendan Loy
"Did Mr Bush last week set America inexorably on a path to the next war?"
If so, I somehow think the fallout (no pun intended) will last a wee bit longer than three days.
By Brendan Loy
How amazingly cool must it have been to be one of the handful of Appalachian State fans who made the trip to the Big House for the Michigan game on Saturday, probably daring to hope for nothing more than the moral victory of a good effort and a surprisingly close loss... and then...
(Hat tip: Fanhouse.)
P.S. Here are the TV highlights from the final two minutes:
That's the same announcing crew that did the Boise State-Oklahoma Fiesta Bowl, isn't it? [UPDATE: Yup.] Lucky bastards!! Anyway, here's the radio call from the Appalachian State radio network.
After the jump, clips of Ohio State, Penn State and Michigan State fans reacting to their hated rival's humiliating loss... heh.
By Brendan Loy
We're back from Buffalo... and greeted by this lovely image:
Remarkable. The second Category 5 hurricane in the Caribbean in the last two weeks, and this one exploded into being over the course of less than two days! I'm in the process of writing a full update -- but it will appear first on Pajamas Media, with only an excerpt here at BrendanLoy.com. The management at PJM has asked me to do hurricane updates for them, and unlike the bum who runs this website, they're going to pay me! :) I'm allowed to cross-post excerpts of my Pajamas posts here, and then after 48 hours I can include the whole thing. Anyway, stay tuned for the latest.
(Headline shamelessly stolen from Alan Sullivan.)
My other sites