Yesterday I was on weather.com to check this weekend’s weather and while it looks like it’ll be a little wet, I was amused by the suggested links with the forecast:
Are you prepared for today’s hurricane? Maybe they are referring to the storm that is Barack Obama.
Photo courtesy Flickr user eralon
The bigger news out there appears to be the crazy weather (I woke up at 6 AM in the center of The Perfect Storm, the weather as I type this? Sunny.)
The story that should be a bigger splash? The Virginia Democratic Primary which opened their polls today as the three Democratic candidates for Governor face-off. At first I was a little interested in the race but now my interest has waned again. With more rain in the forecast today, I’m not expecting anything but lackluster participation totals for today’s race. That being said it’s no longer absolutely safe that front-runner Terry McAuliffe will walk away with a victory, who knows if Brian Moran or even Creigh Deeds could walk away with an upset.
Polls are open til 7 P.M. statewide if you are a resident and are itching to be vocal on the issue.
(UPDATE: And look what happened… Deeds upsets and wins it)
Remember Monday? You know that day we were either happy to not have school, or somewhat cranky that we only had a two-hour delay at work. Ya that day it snowed… a lot. Now all of a sudden it’s 70 and wonderful outside. I went out to the Natural History Museum with friends and I just walked all over downtown without a coat on. That was only a week after I was bundled up trying to scrap ice off my car.
While it may have been nice this weekend, it looks like the weather is going to get cooler as we get back to work tomorrow. It won’t get back up to 70’s but it will stay above freezing at least.
That’s what I love about DC, we get a winter but it doesn’t stay too long for us to hate it.
Anybody else do anything interesting with the warm weather out?
Might be a reasonable question to have when you first see this post on Capital Weather, but as it turns out the more appropriate question might be “what does the Smithsonian do with weather?” The answer is, apparently, not much.
The information presented in the exhibit stands in direct contrast not only to current climate science but also to other information that the museum has published.
[snip]
One of the panels of text in the ice ages exhibit is entitled “The Future” and states, “the minor global cooling trend of recent decades, with its attendant shifts in wind and rainfall patterns, is being carefully watched and studied. Already the effects on food production are severe in many parts of the world…”
Global cooling is typically something that climate change contrarians talk about, not the Smithsonian.
As it turns out, the culprit here is not the Smithsonian deliberately engaging in falsehoods, but rather simply failing to notice the old exhibit. Andrew quotes Smithsonian employee Bill Fitzhugh as saying they simply forgot the exhibits were there and contained that information.
It’s an interesting dilemma for the Smithsonian divisions that do more than simply display prior art, and presumably goes beyond just the science-minded stuff. What about text attached to, say, a painter’s biography if new information comes to light about their work or life? I hope this publicity goads the Smithsonian to add some ongoing oversight to their exhibits. Perhaps a project similar to the LoC’s Flickr project could put all the exhibit text in a format that people could view other than when they happen to be in front of it, improving the odds of finding antiquated info.
