It’s not quite tropical, but we already have the first named storm of the hurricane season, three weeks before the season is supposed to officially begin.

I hope that this isn’t a portent.

[Update in the afternoon]

OK, why are they naming this storm? Do they name nor’easters? No, they don’t, even though they can have much higher winds.

How long have they been naming subtropical storms? If we’re seeing more named storms now than we used to, I wonder if it isn’t because (a) we literally are seeing more than we used to, because many of the ones in the past decades we never even knew about if no ship encountered them, or they encountered no land, and (b) we are changing the naming rules, and comparing apples to oranges.

I think that we ought to stick to the tradition, and only name storms if they’re tropical. If “Andrea” becomes tropical, then fine, but for now, I don’t think it deserves a name.

…that every bloggist should know.

Megan channels one of my gripes:

What the hell is with multiple page web articles? The reason books have pages is obvious; it’s hard to carry around a single 110×80 foot sheet of paper, much less unfold it to read. Not so much for web articles. Does someone actually find this preferable?

Yes, what is up with that? More ad space? I don’t see why. Maybe more page views to fool the advertisers? Computer World does this, and I do find it annoying.

I’m showing up on the first page of a Google search for “rosie o’donnell,” under “Blog Postings” (at least for now–Google is fickle).

As the first one. Behold, the power of the Instalink.

Congratulations, Joe.

We went for a walk on the beach in Spanish River Park yesterday afternoon. I saw several of these washed up on shore.

You can’t really get that much scale from the sand and seaweed, but the body was about the size of my hand. I’ve heard they can get larger, but I’ve never seen any much bigger than this one around here.

It makes one a little nervous, walking barelegged through the surf, because the surging waters could deliver one unto your legs and wrap the tentacles around them without your even being able to see it coming. Fortunately, there were no incidents. This one was still alive, but probably not for long. And I wasn’t going to try to pick it up and toss it back. Particularly given the almost certain futility of it.

We went for a walk on the beach in Spanish River Park yesterday afternoon. I saw several of these washed up on shore.

You can’t really get that much scale from the sand and seaweed, but the body was about the size of my hand. I’ve heard they can get larger, but I’ve never seen any much bigger than this one around here.

It makes one a little nervous, walking barelegged through the surf, because the surging waters could deliver one unto your legs and wrap the tentacles around them without your even being able to see it coming. Fortunately, there were no incidents. This one was still alive, but probably not for long. And I wasn’t going to try to pick it up and toss it back. Particularly given the almost certain futility of it.

We went for a walk on the beach in Spanish River Park yesterday afternoon. I saw several of these washed up on shore.

You can’t really get that much scale from the sand and seaweed, but the body was about the size of my hand. I’ve heard they can get larger, but I’ve never seen any much bigger than this one around here.

It makes one a little nervous, walking barelegged through the surf, because the surging waters could deliver one unto your legs and wrap the tentacles around them without your even being able to see it coming. Fortunately, there were no incidents. This one was still alive, but probably not for long. And I wasn’t going to try to pick it up and toss it back. Particularly given the almost certain futility of it.

On defending yourself.

Professor Chris Hall, former aerospace engineering blogger, but now department head at VPI and too busy to blog, checks in with a message:

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

I have heard from many of you throughout the last 24 hours. I’m sure I speak for the entire department, when I say that we thank you for thinking of us and for your many thoughtful notes. It means a lot to us.

As far as I know there were no casualties from the department of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering. We won’t really know that until the names are released though. My son is a sophomore in Engineering Science and Mechanics, which is the department that Occupies most of Norris Hall. He is safe, but his undergraduate research advisor was one of the fatalities.

The departments of Engineering Science and Mechanics and Civil and Environmental Engineering lost three good men, and there are several folks in the hospital. The three fallen professors are Liviu Lebrescu, Kevin Granata, and
G.V. Loganathan.

Liviu was an internationally known mechanician and was teaching a junior-level course on Solid Mechanics yesterday morning in Norris Hall. I did not know him well, but occasionally chatted with him about his home country of Romania.

Kevin was a young professor with a young family. His field was biomechanics, and my oldest son chose to major in ESM because he wanted to work in Kevin’s lab. My son, Duncan, a sophomore, has worked in Kevin’s biomechanics
lab for the past year. I thoroughly enjoyed Duncan’s stories of how Professor Granata was teaching him how to program nonlinear controllers for inverted pendula. I know Duncan will miss those lessons.

G.V. was an award-winning professor of environmental engineering, whose expertise was in water resources. Most recently he won the university’s prestigious Wine Award for excellence in undergraduate teaching.

Again, I thank you all for your kind messages. I will let you know more when I know more. Please feel free to forward this email to friends and colleagues.