Pollyanna with groundhog and Super Bowl

Pollyanna says hi and that she is very glad to be back with you.  She, Titan and YandA are all sniffling and coughing with terminal colds, but we are all responsible and will not give you poor sufferers what the NFL calls a bye week.  We are gearing up to stay awake on Sunday night to watch the New England Patriots and the New York Giants battle in Super Bowl XLVI.  We can hear you squares and snobs yawning and we suspect that the Y of YandA will opt out, but we will hang in.  Pollyanna even has a prediction, but we shall see.

Pollyanna predicts Giants 35-31

Titan and I will try to persuade her to support the Patriots because Mr. Kraft is such a classy guy and even supports football for high schools in Israel.  BTW, grandson Arad (#20) is a corner back for the Kfar Saba Hawks.

 
GROUNDHOG DAY
Pollyanna also wants to wish you all a Happy Groundhog Day, and to tell you that at 7:25 a.m. Thursday morning EST, amidst mostly cloudy skies, and temperatures in the low 30s (~-0 C), Groundhog Phil saw his shadow in the little town of Punxsutawney, PA.

Famed weather prognosticating groundhog Punxsutawney Phil prepares to make his annual weather prediction on Gobbler's Knob in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, on the 126th Groundhog Day, February 2, 2012. Phil saw his shadow, signaling six more weeks of winter.

Source: Reuters

According to folklore, Phil’s sighting of his own shadow means there will be 6 more weeks of winter. Had Phil not seen his shadow, it would have meant “there will be an early spring.”  For more details on rodent meteorology, read on.
We must confess that when we worked as forecasters or taught meteorology at University, we did not make much use of Phil and his prognosticating ability.  Maybe we were overlooking something important.  BTW, Groundhog Day was an excellent  film.
IN MEMORIAM   We share the grief of the people of Egypt for the victims of the football violence.  The senseless football riots that took the lives of 74 people in Port Said last Wednesday have led into a continuation of the violence.  BBC reports  that at least four more people have been killed and that thousands are gathering in Tahrir Square.  The actions taken by the government in the wake of the incidents appear to be woefully inadequate.  We have heard calls for as much as the resignation of Tantawi himself and his military junta.
OUR FEMINIST RANT
Before we move on to the glad stuff that we all love, Pollyanna wants to let fly on some issues involving women and girls.  In this area, as in matters of the environment, she is as political as brother Titan. 
First we want to deal with the painful issue of child marriage.  Every year, all over the world, 10 million girls are forcibly married before the age of 18, many as young as 12 years old. That is more than 25,000 girls a day. “I knew that there was an institution of child marriage,” said Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa. “But I was devastated to discover how widely it occurs, and on such a huge scale.”  Tutu is a member of an organization called The Elders, which has announced an ambitious goal to stop this abuse of girls “in one generation.”   The Elders are mounting a campaign and we wish to express our support and to call for yours.  Please click on this link and become involved.

Girls in Rajasthan, India, where no child marriages have taken place, say villagers, since they learned of the dangers. Photo: Graham Crouch/The Elders

The other issue involves R., an employee of PM Natanyahu's office who was reportedly stalked and sexually harassed by her boss.  The case is being referred to the  Civil Service Commission for disciplinary action instead of to the police.  The lady refuses to testify, most probably out of fear for her future.  The women whose testimony sent former President Katzav to seven years in prison are essentially unemployable.

It is sad that even in the presumably enlightened countries of the West, women can still be subject to degradation and abuse.  What is even more outrageous is the large number of women who regard this as acceptable.  This is not only a question of religious women who accept the idea that they must not be too visible lest men become overly aroused sexually by their presence, but even in secular circles.   A well known female Israeli media person,  Ayala Hasson, 

Ayala Hasson speaking at a media conference recently.
Photo by: Nir Keidar

saw nothing wrong with the transfer of an attractive woman from her position because her boss became obsessed with her.  Hasson added the "solution" had been to transfer the woman "very quietly, what might be called the supportive environment moved the 'candy' out of reach." This has raised a storm of criticism from women's rights groups and rightly so.
A BIT OF POLITICS
If any of the readers in Israel is a member of the Meretz party, Pollyanna calls upon you to cast your vote for Zahava Galon as Chair of the Party.  The party was founded by a woman, Shulamit Aloni, who recruited Zahava long ago.  In the meantime, the party has gone downhill under the leadership of a series of male politicians.  If it is to be restored to a position of leadership in the country, it requires the hand of a strong and talented woman at the helm.  Zahava Galon is the right person at the right time. The elections will be held online on Tuesday, February 7.

Zahava Galon

LUCRETIA: A FEMINIST VIEW
Our Texan friends, Ray and Jane are going to see Britten's Rape of Lucretia in Houston this weekend.  We wish them a good time.  They will also see Verdi's  La Traviata and will return home with the realization of what Hadass told us long ago, to wit, the soprano comes to a bad end.  Of course, in opera buffa, she gets the tenor, for good or ill and now we shall remain PC silent.

Lucretia, Rembrandt, Metropolitan, New York

This got Pollyanna ranting again about how male culture can contextualize rape, which of course is among the crimes that can have no context.  We learned in history class that the rape of Lucretia is what triggered the rebellion of the citizens of Rome, brought down the Tarquin  monarchy and led to the founding of the republic.  Who gets lost in this story?  Of course, the female victim Lucretia, who is raped by Sextus Tarquinus, the Crown Prince,  and kills herself against the wishes of her loving husband.  All through the history of literature, the hero of the story is Lucius Junius Brutus, who up to now has avoided complicity with the rule of Tarquinius Superbus by pretending, like the Scarlet Pimpernel, to be a useless playboy, but now snatches the dagger from her breast and swears by her blood to be avenged on the Tarquinii.   Lucretia's body, with its gaping wound, is shown to the public and the citizens of Rome unite to throw off the tyrant's yoke.   Pollyanna agrees totally with Germaine Greer  who makes this strong feminist case in her review of the 2001 staging of Britten's opera at the Snape Aldeburgh festival and in London.

DO PLANETS WEAR OUT?
In 2008 the long sought-for planet, expected to be orbiting the nearby star Fomalhaut, was thought to have been found in two Hubble Space Telescope images taken two years apart.  Everything fit including the observed motion.  Now the Spitzer Space Telescope, which is far more sensitive  in the infra red, failed to find it, which indicates that planet Fomalhaut b does not really exist.  Hubble apparently observed a clot of dust bright enough to be mistaken for a planet.  For the chagrin of the astronomical community and details of the findings or non-findings, we refer you to Phil Plait and his Bad Astronomy blog.

 

This image is pretty damning for the existence of Fomalhaut b. It’s the Spitzer infrared observations of the star, with the star’s light carefully removed. On the left is the actual image, and on the right they artificially added a point of light calculated to be equal to what the planet would emit, in the same position the planet should be — that’s what Arrow 1 is pointing at. It should be one of the brightest things in the image (Arrow 2 points to an unrelated bright spot). And while it’s obvious on the right, nothing can be seen on the left, in the real image. In other words, the planet isn’t seen.  We wuz robbed!!   
STARBURSTS AND HUGE GALAXIES.  
A recent study has shown that in the early days of the universe, frenetic star birthing was eventually throttled by loss of matter into huge black holes and the creation of huge galaxies, much younger and nearby.  The results hint in a tantalizing manner at interaction with the elusive entity known as dark matter.  As Alice said "curiouser and curiouser.

"Starbursting" galaxies can be seen by the APEX telescope, overlaid with an image from Spitzer

LITTLE ICE AGE 

University of Colorado, Boulder Professor Gifford Miller collects dead plant samples from beneath a Baffin Island ice cap. Miller led a new study, to be published in in Geophysical Research Letters, which indicates the Little Ice Age began roughly A.D. 1275 and was triggered by repeated, explosive volcanism that cooled the atmosphere. (Credit: Gifford Miller, University of Colorado)

The Earth was considerably colder than it was before or after an era that began after the Middle Ages and ended in the 19th century.  The question of dating the onset and finding the cause has been more difficult. During the cool spell, advancing glaciers in mountain valleys in northern Europe destroyed towns. Famous paintings from the period depict people ice-skating on the Thames River in London and canals in the Netherlands, places that were ice-free before and after the Little Ice Age. There is evidence also that the Little Ice Age affected places far from Europe, including South America and China.

Pieter Breughel the Elder, 1565, Winter Scene with Skaters, Brussels Museum

Now  new research by an international group led by Gifford Miller of the University of Colorado, Boulder US appears to have resolved the issue.  The data pinpoint the start to a narrow period in the late 13th century and are consistent with the cooling of the Earth being associated with anomalous volcanism that inserted aerosols into the atmosphere that block solar radiation.  Computer simulations  show sustained cooling from volcanoes would have sent some of the expanding Arctic sea ice down along the eastern coast of Greenland until it eventually melted in the North Atlantic. Since sea ice contains almost no salt, when it melted the surface water became less dense, preventing it from mixing with deeper North Atlantic water. Without mixing taking place, the water that flowed back to the Arctic was colder, helping sustain large areas of sea ice and creating a self-sustaining feedback loop long after the effects of the volcanic aerosols subsided.
The collapse and extinction of the Norwegian colonies in Greenland, discussed in detail by Jared Diamond in his book Collapse, is certainly associated with the cooling.  We should note, however, that the Inuit who had arrived in Greenland well after the Norse, adjusted and survived.  The so-called civilized Europeans failed to make the transition and died out.  Food for thought.

GENIUS KID
Aidan Dwyer is a thirteen year old who figured out a way to use Fibonacci numbers to design improved  solar panel exposure techniques.  We recommend this video.  It is most impressive.





BOOK REVIEW
We have been a bit remiss in our book reviews and will try to do better.  Now Pollyanna wants to mark the 50th anniversary of a book that made a huge difference for girl readers, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle.  It is the first sci-fi with a girl as protagonist and constituted a major breakthrough,  It is reviewed in the New York Times by Pamela Paul who also addresses the question of what puts girls off science fiction and indeed science.   Pollyanna wishes to give Meg Murry a warm hug from one girl book heroine  to another.  “Part of what made it seem so liberating to so many girls is that it allowed those with an analytic mind and an interest in the pursuit of science to read about a subject that at the time was not perceived of as a suitable course of study for girls,” said Leonard Marcus, author of a biography of L’Engle, “Searching for Madeleine,” to be published this fall. “At the same time, at its core it’s about a girl’s love for her father, and that emotional level transcends the genre aspect of the book.”

RECURSION

Pollyanna found Hofdstater's book Godel, Escher, Bach to be fascinating and has long wondered about what levels of self-recursion are possible. She would have liked to have shown us an example taken from HO model building as given to us by XKCD.  Unfortunately the cartoon is too large to reproduce in the blog with proper resolution, so we shall  give you the link:

http://xkcd.com/878/

 

DEADLY SIN
Sloth is our favorite deadly sin (OK, our second favorite), with gluttony a distant third. We are, therefore, full of empathy for Wally in the latest Dilbert cartoon.

Finally, Pollyanna allows herself a wee dram of cynicism:

IN PRAISE OF IGNORANCE

``Ignorance is the most delightful science in the world, because it is acquired without effort and keeps the mind from melancholy.''-Giordano Bruno, burned at the stake in 1600.