Olympics

[bradman]

If it weren't for moments like this i'd have to wonder if life if life was worth living.........

https://www.yahoo.com/sports/beijing-wi ... 56960.html
Cross-country champ waits for last-place skier before celebrating gold medal win

After taking home cross-country skiing gold in the men’s 15km race at the Beijing Olympics, Finland’s Iivo Niskanen waited for the final competitor to cross the finish line before celebrating his victory.

Niskanen topped the podium with a time of 37:54.08, a whopping 23 seconds faster than the ROC’s Alexander Bolshunov, who finished in second.

However, it was Niskanen’s Olympic spirit that captured the hearts of people across the globe, as the 30-year-old waited for Colombia’s Carlos Andres Quintana to complete the race. Quintana finished last of the 95 skiers, with a time of 55:41.09.

Niskanen emphasized the need to respect all athletes because they have put blood, sweat and tears into qualifying for the Olympics. He also noted how some countries are not as financially privileged with their training as others.

“All athletes must respect each other,” Niskanen said of his decision to wait for Quintana to finish the race. “Everyone has worked hard to be here.

“You have to show this kind of respect at the Olympics towards countries that don’t have much budget to get the best results, unlike the best nations.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vdkIx3TXTI

The true spirit of what the Olympics were meant to be.

[ZoWie]

Exactly. The spirit you describe is what's missing from so much of the TV coverage, even though they have former athletes try to explain it amid the sound and fury of economic necessity.

Last two days they've been covering the winter games from in front of an excessively expensive stadium next to a fake lake in a declining suburb of LA way too close to a busy airport, trying to build an audience for the advertising commercials in a football game that only the wealthy and their entourages can afford to attend in person. I realize there are issues with doing it from Beijing, not least of them the diplomatic ones, let alone the 16-hour time difference, but still. Really, now.

[ZoWie]

I neglected to mention that the NBC talent at SoFi have been standing out in a 91 degree heat wave in February that has already lasted a week and is supposed to last two weeks longer, talking about a Winter Olympics on fake snow, which is now ironically being disrupted because... it's snowing.

But we don't talk about the climate. Too expensive.

Humans are such easy prey.

[bradman]

I neglected to mention that the NBC talent at SoFi have been standing out in a 91 degree heat wave in February that has already lasted a week and is supposed to last two weeks longer, talking about a Winter Olympics on fake snow, which is now ironically being disrupted because... it's snowing.

But we don't talk about the climate. Too expensive.

Humans are such easy prey.

Sorry Dark humor. Your first line is both humorous and frightening.

https://weather.com/forecast/national/n ... conditions

The current pattern in the upper atmosphere helps to explain the dry pattern that Californians have experienced for much of the year.

High pressure has dominated the West Coast because of a ridge, or northward bulge in the jet stream. This northward jet bulge diverts the Pacific storm track well north of California, leaving the state high and dry.

In the mean time, after it passes the Rockies, it's like there's nothing to stop the the colds dive south. If it keeps up like that, people in Texas will be flocking north to a infrastructure that can handle the cold.

[ZoWie]

You describe a winter-related phenomenon in the position and flow pattern of the mid-latitude longwave jet stream. The sine wave-like macro structure would attain that position, briefly, nearly every winter, but never for long. The prolonged locking in of that position would happen maybe twice in a decade.

Now, all evidence suggests that it's the new normal winter. We've had some evidence of that nearly every year for at least a decade now, and in the past two years it's combined with an unprecedented pause in the El Nino/ Southern Oscillation cycle where it's been stuck on full La Nina for the whole period.

Put it all together, you get a heat wave that would be noteworthy in LA in July, except that it's February.

[Motor City]

I neglected to mention that the NBC talent at SoFi have been standing out in a 91 degree heat wave in February that has already lasted a week and is supposed to last two weeks longer, talking about a Winter Olympics on fake snow, which is now ironically being disrupted because... it's snowing.

But we don't talk about the climate. Too expensive.

Humans are such easy prey.

too bad we cant do climate sharing you could shave off 20 * and send it up here wed be close to shorts weather for February. send it up the solar magnetic stream which Im making up to sound like the jet stream that we may discover in the future.

[ZoWie]

Forgot to mention that they're already calling in the helicopters to stop brush fires. That used to happen sometime between July and September.

[ZoWie]

too bad we cant do climate sharing you could shave off 20 * and send it up here wed be close to shorts weather for February. send it up the solar magnetic stream which Im making up to sound like the jet stream that we may discover in the future.

It's the same pattern. When the jet stream gets stuck in this position it carries cold air, sometimes misnamed the Polar Vortex, and Alberta clippers right down into the midwest. Also the "negative" side of the sine wave intensifies noreasters going up the Atlantic coast. Anyone in Boston can tell you what that's meant this year.

The fluctuations in the solar magnetic stream are generally referred to as space weather, and they are real and they change things. Unfortunately the solar wind has actually been very quiet until about 6 months ago, when the cycle picked up. It's no longer possible to blame "sunspots" for the weather, because they haven't been there much of the period in question. We've recently had some pretty dramatic changes in the interplanetary magnetic field, but still nowhere strong enough to have the kind of lasting effects we see from, say, large volcanoes.

[bradman]

It's the same pattern. When the jet stream gets stuck in this position it carries cold air, sometimes misnamed the Polar Vortex, and Alberta clippers right down into the midwest. Also the "negative" side of the sine wave intensifies noreasters going up the Atlantic coast. Anyone in Boston can tell you what that's meant this year.

The fluctuations in the solar magnetic stream are generally referred to as space weather, and they are real and they change things. Unfortunately the solar wind has actually been very quiet until about 6 months ago, when the cycle picked up. It's no longer possible to blame "sunspots" for the weather, because they haven't been there much of the period in question. We've recently had some pretty dramatic changes in the interplanetary magnetic field, but still nowhere strong enough to have the kind of lasting effects we see from, say, large volcanoes.

For some reason i've always been a fan for the "pole flip." i've always rooted for the underdog, maybe that's why.

[ZoWie]

The recent sudden (by these standards) movement of the north magnetic pole might or might not indicate that a flip is imminent. It would take some amount of time, within which the planet would not be protected against cosmic rays.

[bradman]

The recent sudden (by these standards) movement of the north magnetic pole might or might not indicate that a flip is imminent. It would take some amount of time, within which the planet would not be protected against cosmic rays.

That's why of all things considered, the pole flip is the least likely to wipe out life as we know it. Yellowstone has a better chance of doing that. (although, they are not quite sure if the flip is that slow, or if it reach's a certain point and then suddenly flips.)

Still, ya gotta kinda wonder. If it's a fine balancing act for mother nature. could the recent shifts in the poles help tip that balance.

[ZoWie]

Yellowstone is overrated. Yes, once it blew its cookies so big that material from that region is routinely dug up by geologists in California. Yes, it's building up to another blow, the way volcanoes do. The question is whether the underground caldera is big enough to make another extinction level event like its big one, and the consensus seems to be a no.

The recent volcanic kerboom was Krakatoa, again, and the shock wave from it went around the world several times, again, and there were small tsunamis in the Atlantic Ocean when the volcano is in the South Pacific, again. It got the whole planet vibrating like a bell. It actually blew out material at escape velocity, which is now headed off into space. It was one of the better bangs, actually, leaving once again a hole in the sea floor where an island had been, but otherwise away from the scene the impact was minimal.

We're still here.

I'd worry more about Russia and China, and the Republicans keeping us from dealing effectively with them.

[ZoWie]

I just read that now the consensus among climate scientists is that the drought in the western US is the worst in 1200 years, and it's going to get worse.

In other words, last time it was this bad, Europe was still filling the power vacuum left by the collapse of the Roman Empire. The fire bomb catapult was the doomsday machine. The largest engineering accomplishment of the human species was the pyramids in Egypt. The people living in North America didn't have horses yet. The giant sequoias were saplings.

Read it and weep:

https://www.latimes.com/environment/sto ... 1200-years

[carmenjonze]

The true spirit of what the Olympics were meant to be.

This is what the Olympics actually is, though.
__________

B. Janine Morison - Vaxxed, Boosted and Masked.
@bjaninemorison

Disgusting that @Olympics is allowing Russian ice skater Kamila Valieva to compete after she tested positive for drugs. #OlympicGames is showing us that honesty, clean games, & a level playing field doesn’t exist. Russia should be banned from Olympics. Olympic failure! @iocmedia

https://twitter.com/bjaninemorison/stat ... 2495709184

__________

Sha’Carri Richardson, Not Chosen for U.S. Relay, Will Miss Tokyo Olympics - NYT, 2021

The star sprinter, who lost a chance to run in the 100-meter individual event after failing a drug test for marijuana, could have been chosen for the relay team. But officials decided not to include her.

[ZoWie]

Russia as a nation has already been banned from the Olympics. I don't know how long this ban lasts.

The team currently in China is called ROC - Russian Olympic Committee. It's a work-around so that the athletes who don't fail drug tests can still compete even though their government is banned. It was decided that honest Russian athletes were being unfairly excluded for the offenses of their leaders. One can debate the honesty of this decision, but I can see how there would be valid arguments on both sides.

The Russian flag was not carried in the opening ceremonies, nor is it raised when medals are awarded. They're using a generic thing with a torch on it.

[carmenjonze]

Russia as a nation has already been banned from the Olympics. I don't know how long this ban lasts.

The team currently in China is called ROC - Russian Olympic Committee. It's a work-around so that the athletes who don't fail drug tests can still compete even though their government is banned. It was decided that honest Russian athletes were being unfairly excluded for the offenses of their leaders. One can debate the honesty of this decision, but I can see how there would be valid arguments on both sides.

The Russian flag was not carried in the opening ceremonies, nor is it raised when medals are awarded. They're using a generic thing with a torch on it.

Even they're now evidently failing drug tests.

What a scam.

[Libertas]

I just read that now the consensus among climate scientists is that the drought in the western US is the worst in 1200 years, and it's going to get worse.

In other words, last time it was this bad, Europe was still filling the power vacuum left by the collapse of the Roman Empire. The fire bomb catapult was the doomsday machine. The largest engineering accomplishment of the human species was the pyramids in Egypt. The people living in North America didn't have horses yet. The giant sequoias were saplings.

Read it and weep:

https://www.latimes.com/environment/sto ... 1200-years

fire
fire
fire

[bradman]

Yellowstone.

Ya, i had written down something about human extinction but change it to, life as we know it. Because, from past evidence, if Yellowstone pops it cork like they say it might it would wipe out our breadbasket for years.

[ZoWie]

It would be a very bad year for crops, yes.

Climate change and economics of scale will wipe out the family farm in the US years before that ever happens.

[Bludogdem]

Yellowstone.

Ya, i had written down something about human extinction but change it to, life as we know it. Because, from past evidence, if Yellowstone pops it cork like they say it might it would wipe out our breadbasket for years.

Those who study this sort of thing postulate that a 6th century massive eruption of the Krakatoa Caldera or other equatorial volcanoes brought on the dark ages.

https://www.lanl.gov/orgs/ees/geodynami ... akatau.htm

https://www.vice.com/en/article/ezpv7n/ ... -eruptions

[ZoWie]

I've seen a volcanic theory for the Dark Ages, as a single period in European history was named by the victorious Christians who took over the writing of same. Presumably, the causal mechanism would be that it caused the gulf stream to shift and the continent to temporarily freeze over. Like the "little ice age" after another more recent volcanic event that caused a couple of years without summers in North America.

I've also seen fairly good evidence for a meteor storm, which is suspected by some to have caused nuclear-sized explosions all over the Northern Hemisphere in the First Millennium of the Christian epoch. A wrath-of-God type of scenario would certainly explain all the doomsday scenarios and religious upheavals of the period following the decline in Roman authority in the relevant areas. These of course also accelerated the transition, since after all this "fall" was actually less with a bang than a whimper.

Keep in mind that all these accounts are Eurocentric. On this continent, something similar happened in the same planetary time frame, presumably for the same reasons. We see evidence from tree rings and possibly other records that whatever happened then also caused a drought here, which was the worst until our misuse of technology combined with a possible but yet undiscovered natural fluctuation to cause we are now calling global climate change because the planet is bigger than Europe now.

[ProfX]

What Europeans call "The Dark Ages" were not global.

First off, they weren't called that until later, during the Renaissance, though I don't blame this kind of historicist viewpoint, as they certainly were darkened by the rise of the Catholic Church as a theocratic force suppressing learning and scholarship. (see: Name of the Rose). It also was a period of some regrouping, as the Roman Empire collapsed, and new entities vied to replace it regionally.

They were not very dark, for example, in the Islamic world, which was busy translating Plato and Aristotle into Arabic, instead of hiding them away from the rest of the world and burning them. That same period Europeans call the Dark Ages were a Golden Age of classic Islamic civilization.

[carmenjonze]

What Europeans call "The Dark Ages" were not global.

First off, they weren't called that until later, during the Renaissance, though I don't blame this kind of historicist viewpoint, as they certainly were darkened by the rise of the Catholic Church as a theocratic force suppressing learning and scholarship. (see: Name of the Rose). It also was a period of some regrouping, as the Roman Empire collapsed, and new entities vied to replace it regionally.

They were not very dark, for example, in the Islamic world, which was busy translating Plato and Aristotle into Arabic, instead of hiding them away from the rest of the world and burning them. That same period Europeans call the Dark Ages were a Golden Age of classic Islamic civilization.

Yes "Dark" and "Middle" age parameters are really contingent on Christian eschatology. As much as people, self included, love to harsh on the Christian Zionists and other endtimers, the reason why people even started talking in terms of "dark" and "middle" ages at all is because of Protestant theology about when the world is/was coming to an end.

And also European Protestant pretentions about their own scholarship and their supposed Enlightenments.

It's really interesting to me about the Enlightenment era because that's right when churches like the original US Evangelicals and my home denomination, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, were formed. Right in the era when Kant was telling the world how inferior Africans are to Europeans, right during the era when the mainstream Protestant position was that people of African descent did not even have souls to "save". :problem: Ironically, this made the Evangelicals of the time the "liberals" of the era. :problem:

This stuff is complex...and then, it's not so complex.

[ProfX]

I've always been a fan of Horkheimer & Adorno's Dialectic of the Enlightenment.

(And yes, it's part of - gasp - critical theory, which could eventually lead to - well, dancing. )

There is a definite problematic in presenting the period as one of universal emancipation and reason. In particular, "scientific" (not) ideas of race and eugenics are all post-Enlightenment ideas/projects. As you say, it also led to the age of European colonialism and imperialism.

As Max Weber argued, it is, in a way, the Enlightenment, rationalization, and the Protestant Reformation that leads to the rise of capitalism, and what that meant for the loss of human freedom.

Oh yeah, it's complicated.

In any case, people promoting ideas like volcanoes causing dark ages, are engaging in reductionist thinking over things that were localized, not caused by global climate disruptions, but other forces. It's typically found as an argument over those arguing against anthropogenic climate change.

A volcanic eruption probably did affect global climate in the 6th century, but saying it "caused" the Dark Ages is a ridiculous form of reductionism. BTW: what people call the "Classic Maya Collapse" of the 9th century (which wasn't really a collapse as I keep saying - more of a population relocation) - and while I don't doubt drought and deforestation created by the Maya themselves helped cause it, that also had to do with other social forces, too.

[carmenjonze]

I've always been a fan of Horkheimer & Adorno's Dialectic of the Enlightenment.

Haha, same.

(And yes, it's part of - gasp - critical theory, which could eventually lead to - well, dancing. )

And not even square dancing!

And goodness gracious, postmodernism, oh hells bells!

There is a definite problematic in presenting the period as one of universal emancipation and reason. In particular, "scientific" (not) ideas of race and eugenics are all post-Enlightenment ideas/projects. As you say, it also led to the age of European colonialism and imperialism.

As Max Weber argued, it is, in a way, the Enlightenment, rationalization, and the Protestant Reformation that leads to the rise of capitalism, and what that meant for the loss of human freedom.

Oh yeah, it's complicated.

Yes a lot of this is just an effect of the Reformation. TMK, people stopped using "the dark ages" and "the middle ages" as valid terms, long ago.