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Australia Is On So Much Fire, You Can See It From Orbit
Jeremy Lee writes "Temperatures in Australia this week hit the point where the Bureau of Meteorology had to invent a new color. And with heat and winds come Bushfires. So it's probably good that I made a real-time bushfire map with every known source of public data directly relating to fires in Australia, mostly because fire doesn't respect state borders."
From space.
Once you've smelled burning kangaroo mixed with the acrid stench of melted dune-buggy and dead mutant, you're never the same again. I can still hear the koalas screaming in my nightmares.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
they've gone to plaid.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
They had to invent a new colour, Australia wasn't visible from space before
Watch those corners
Yes, because English teachers are the only ones against it. Everyone else understands that it's acceptable when used properly.
Is this a drive-by post by a moron?
Octarine? That could explain its invisibility from space, I suppose.
Australia is pleased and proud to announce that the number of horrid and lethally venomous creatures per hectare has reached historic lows!
Of course this has nothing to do with the fact that the north pole melted to record small levels this years. This is an isolated incident of freak weather, as was Sandy.
It's all about finding better ways
You know must of us English speakers, both in the USA and else were would have written "So Much of Australia is on Fire" for a headline. "Australia Is On So Much Fire" Sounds like George Lucas is posting now.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
What's the big deal? It's 54 degrees here in Texas right now...what? metric? we don't do metric here in Texas. How much is that in 'merican? Wow, that IS hot. Never mind.
My brain is overly lubricated
Is that roughly the Canadian January experience if you swap C to F? I'm just south of Canada and its a balmy 40s day, when usually January is spent entirely below zero for the month. Not unheard of, but unusual to have a thaw in January. I'm thinking of selling my snowshoes after the last two years, which is too bad, because I really enjoy snowshoeing along hiking trails... well other than the snowmobiles trying to run everyone over. Its roughly like moving about 100 to 150 miles south.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Actually, this summary is pretty good. its concise, its not repeatin half the article its linking to. I'd prefer more summaries like this.
Greetings, time traveler from the 19th century. "And" has been an acceptable opening segue for some time now here in 2012. Also, we attempt to use gender-neutral language, which has made using the plural "they" and its variants as singular forms increasingly acceptable. In addition, the delineation between "effect" and "affect" seems to be fading in popular usage as well, as have traditional meanings of "irony" and "hacker" (a word which probably means something REALLY different to you).
Oh, and we have a cure or treatment for every venereal disease now! And we have a polio vaccine too!
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Something with a little kick to it.
I suspect next summer is going to be another bad year for fires in the USA. Seems like the entire goddamn west burned down last year. The sky was brown all summer. We cleared the layer of smoke in a plane, and the blue of the sky came as quite a shock. I'd actually forgotten the sky was supposed to look like that. I didn't want to descend back into the sludge, either. It was the first time in a couple of months that I'd had a breath of fresh air.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I wonder if this will create enough particulate in the atmosphere to reduce global temperatures.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Greetings, time traveler from the early 21st century. It's only 2013 now, maybe you should have gone for a longer journey than coming from 2012.
seeing a whole graph of temperature (or daily max, or daily mean or whatever) against time will always tell you much more about a trends than a list of its peaks can.
You seem to not understand the idea of colloquial grammar. "And" at the beginning of a sentence can communicate information that isn't necessarily directly dependent on the previous independent clause. It can, for example, represent the notion of building on a previous assertion in the same paragraph. And that is why colloquial grammar should be understood, and not edited for no better reason than "I say so".
Oxford disagrees (about conjunctions, but you are spot on about potatoes): http://oxforddictionaries.com/words/conjunctions It is fine to start a sentence with and.
Get a web developer
That's nothing. I slept through the end of the world a few weeks ago.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
The summary somehow leaves out anything related to the headline - the view of the fires from space. Didn't even bother linking to the relevant NY Times article. Okay then.
For the real good stuff, though, check out the high res images in the Universe Today coverage, which showcases several of the images directly from Cmdr Hadfield's twitter feed.
An ice age is not a multi-variable problem. Understanding how they came to be and changing the climate, however, is.
Since it is difficult in how it forms and goes away, I said it was dangerous to engineer a climate change, because it's a damn difficult multi-variable problem, and chances are we won't be able to predict the side effects of changing the delicate climate.
Yet I like to see anyone deny that we're still in an ice age, and how the ice is still melting more than there's water being frozen, anualy.
Here be signatures
As a brilliant British writer once said, "This is the kind of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put."
I am officially gone from
"between "effect" and "affect" seems to be fading in popular usage as well"
No more than "then" and "than", "there/they're/their", or various other commonly confused words with different meanings. No, they aren't "fading in popular usage". They're just more confused than ever because more people tolerate sloppy writing. They are still distinct, and the need for them to remain distinct has not vanished. (Example: "It is better to be pissed off then pissed on" -- "Uh, I think you meant 'than'")
It appears that they are using it instead for Fire in the Sky.
Yet you managed it.
It's a reasonable colloquialism. It basically indicates a strong tie of one sentence to the previous sentence. It is probably just a lazy way of avoiding run on sentances. And I think it does a great job at that!
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
No, it's not formally correct.
It's very much allowed, it just ceases to be formal English at that point. Most people do not communicate using formal English.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Should you put "and" in quotes or should we wait for the rest of the sentence?
I want to be a grammar nazi too. ;-)
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Oh, and we have a cure or treatment for every venereal disease now!
Greetings time traveler from the 22nd century.
rather then argue with you id say your rite wen it cums to ppl dropping some real anachronistic and arcane usages of grammer speling is also real grate hear U definately have a point weve cum a long way!!! i think the affect of this has bin AWESOME!!!
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
I find it slightly ironic that you're talking about the demise of the English language when evolving use is a sure sign of a living language.
You seem to not understand the idea of colloquial grammar. "And" at the beginning of a sentence can communicate information that isn't necessarily directly dependent on the previous independent clause. It can, for example, represent the notion of building on a previous assertion in the same paragraph. And that is why colloquial grammar should be understood, and not edited for no better reason than "I say so".
This is because they live in constant terror of comma splices or run on sentences. Bad grammar is a leading cause of slow painful death.
Mod parent up. You can affect an effect, but you can't effect an affect unless you're in the same business as Meryl Streep and Robert DeNiro.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
I'm not an English teacher, but I think that starting a sentence with a conjunction is okay if it is used for rhetorical emphasis.
What surprises me is that nobody in this grammar-nazi thread has picked up on the dyslexic object phrase in the article's headline. I guess they're "on too much fire" about other trivialities.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
We're now using and at the start of sentences?
Yup.
Face it: language changes. The English of Beowulf is a foreign language to modern speakers. Chaucer is heavy going. Hell, many people struggle with Shakespeare and Dickens.
Some changes I've seen in my own life. I'm 51.
Loss of distinction between adjectives and adverbs in spoken English, particularly "good" vs. "well".
Loss of "hw". "Whale" and "wail" are homonyms except in a few regional accents.
Singular "they" as a gender-neutral pronoun. I like this and use it myself.
Very few people use colons or semicolons in written English. Fewer still know how to use them correctly.
My grandparents were born from 1884 (paternal grandfather) to 1905 (maternal grandmother) and used the subjunctive mood. It was largely gone before I was born. It only survives in fossilized expressions like "so be it" and the song title "Let it be".
...laura
It's not 50. You see, most charts, you know, will be capped at 50. You're at 50 here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on 50 on your chart. Where can you go from there? Where?
I don't know.
Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?
Put it up to 54.
54. Exactly. 4 Hotter.
Thanks to you and everyone who looked at the map. The extensive slashdotting let me code some improvements :-)
Jeremy Lee | Orinoco
I'm not sure if it slipped your attention, but a lot of online communication, even if typed rather than vocal, tends to take the conversational form/tone.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
I think this was intended to be a joke, but actually kanga meat is available in most supermarkets here.
That particular colour cannot be used to indicate bushfires. I believe it's been reserved for smoke on the water only.
Meanwhile, down under is burning. Could you all topic drift back to that huge problem?
Agrisea Tsunami - Epyc Servers... https://agrisea.net/products
Just for the record, the land burnt or burning in the current outbreak is 368,940 hectares (~911,670 acres) in the State of New South Wales (with a few just over State borders) where most of the fires are concentrated. The largest single fire is approx 177,000 hectares (437,000 acres). (Source: http://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/feeds/majorIncidents.xml at 2013-01-09T21:10Z)
There does not appear to be "a whole lot in central Australia to burn" but what is present, not forests but grassland, is tinder dry and burns routinely and for extended periods. The last few years have seen abnormally high rainfall in large parts of the interior (result of cyclones) which has made the fuel load higher than usual. Take a look at the NASA Black Marble imagery: almost all light not on the coastal fringe is the result of a fire in this compound imagery (22 days in 2012). http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/NPP/news/aus-fires.html
Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
Yep, I had Kanga Bangas for dinner last night. Not as succulent (fatty) as regular sausages and with a stronger flavour but not bad all the same. Kangaroo burgers rock, and Kangaroo steak is great when done quite rare, but overcook it and it goes tougher than a pair of Chuck Norris's boots.
Kangaroo meat is also much better for you and the environment than beef. Kangaroos need to be culled in many parts of Australia due to rising population levels (there are considerably more kangaroos in Australia now than before white settlement, due to agriculture), the meat is very low in fat, and kangaroos fart far less than cows, so we don't get the methane output that cows produce. If you can get kangaroo meat, try it.
You call me a pedant? I prefer the term "correct"
Another old joke about this problem:
Visitor to Harvard: "Where's your library at?"
Harvard student: "This is Harvard. We don't end our sentences with a preposition."
Visitor; "Ok, where's your library at, jerk?"
I am officially gone from
Quote from the linked Mashable article:
with temperatures hitting 107 degrees Fahrenheit in some areas
That's 41C, and not entirely accurate. The island-state of Tasmania, the coldest (on average) place in Australia, reached 41C. Some areas on the mainland have reached 49C, which is 120F. My home in central NSW (six hours west of Sydney) was 40-42C for 4-5 days, with high winds for the last couple. Bushfires were burning several kilometers from my home, with over a hundred firefighters fighting to contain them. Emergency vehicle sirens have been common, and I've received SMS messages from the Rural Fire Service warning about how close the fires are.
Thankfully a cool change appeared yesterday, but there are still many fires burning around the country and temperatures are expected to increase again tomorrow.
As an aside, why won't Slashdot let me post the degree symbol (alt-248)?
need to add the weather events to the map
Cat 4 cyclone off WA
Better a grammar nazi than a nazi gra'ma ^_^