More potential calamity to contemplate

The Other Hurricane: Has the Age of Chaos Begun?

From: http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1007-20.htm

Published on Friday, October 7, 2005 by TomDispatch.com
The Other Hurricane: Has the Age of Chaos Begun?
by Mike Davis

The genesis of two category-five hurricanes (Katrina and Rita) in a row over the Gulf of Mexico is an unprecedented and troubling occurrence. But for most tropical meteorologists the truly astonishing "storm of the decade" took place in March 2004. Hurricane Catarina -- so named because it made landfall in the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina -- was the first recorded south Atlantic hurricane in history.

Textbook orthodoxy had long excluded the possibility of such an event; sea temperatures, experts claimed, were too low and wind shear too powerful to allow tropical depress ions to evolve into cyclones south of the Atlantic Equator. Indeed, forecasters rubbed their eyes in disbelief as weather satellites down-linked the first images of a classical whirling disc with a well-formed eye in these forbidden latitudes.

In a series of recent meetings and publications, researchers have debated the origin and significance of Catarina. A crucial question is this: Was Catarina simply a rare event at the outlying edge of the normal bell curve of South Atlantic weather -- just as, for example, Joe DiMaggio's incredible 56-game hitting streak in 1941 represented an extreme probability in baseball (an analogy made famous by Stephen Jay Gould) -- or was Catarina a "threshold" event, signaling some fundamental and abrupt change of state in the planet's climate system?

Scientific discussions of environmental change and global warming have long been haunted by the specter of nonlinearity. Climate models, like econometric models, are easiest to build and understand when they are simple linear extrapolations of well-quantified past behavior; when causes maintain a consistent proportionality to their effects.

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October 31, 2005 09:48 PM, by Syd Gris

Halloween Weekend w/ Opel: Saturday, October 29th

Saturday, October 29th

The annual Halloween Opel bash returns to celebrate the Living before the Day of the Dead!

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October 29, 2005 12:51 PM, by Syd Gris

Halloween Weekend w/ Opel: Friday, October 28th

Friday, October 28th: Tramps and Beat Freaks!

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October 28, 2005 03:21 PM, by mark

A Loving Thanks

Nice!

As expected, San Francisco showed up for Love Parade in every way. The floats were beautiful and the scale was grander, the people were colorful and the weather was perfect. Somewhere around 70,000 came out and enjoyed the beats and all the day had to offer. Well done!

The Opel / Qool float: One Love, Many Beats rocked it's way down Market St. with many of you lovelies in tow, thanks for hanging out. The DJ's including Lee Coombs, Hyper, Evil 9, Spesh, Melyss, Hoj, Hyper D, Momu and myself all appreciated your shining faces and it was hard to get the smile off our faces! A happy couple even got married on our float as well! Now that's love...

Special thanks to all who came out for Infuse: A Declaration of Love. It was rocking and we hope you finally found the chill space downstairs. he he.

We apologize to those who felt the music was too loud in the first half of the night while the kinks were getting worked out with the fucky acoustics of the space, let us know if there's anything we can do.

It was a marathon weekend of work and play, and we could not have made it happen without the support of a huge cast of Opel Love Team mates. A very special thanks to all of you and the Qoolios! It takes a village to throw a proper underground flavored party, and we hope you all had a great experience spending some time with us over Love Parade weekend.

Check the pics!

Mark's of Infuse

Mark's of the parade

Mark's of the festival site

Gina's of Infuse

Gina's Love Parade pics