I was wondering if anyone else heard Hoagland on Coast to Coast Monday night saying that a microwave satellite image showed that someone was trying to diffuse Wilma before it became a huge storm. (Guess it didn't work.)

His evidence was an arc showing up on the picture extending from Honduras and going into the hurricane. I checked it out and it was interesting, but then I poked around the Univ. of Wisconsin site a little bit and found a disclaimer that said that sometimes incomplete data could cause an arc to show up on the picture. I emailed Coast to Coast to point out their "esteemed" science advisor's error, but, alas nothing was mentioned.

Coast to Coast science advisor? They should get Paris Hilton. At least she's more attractive.

Here is the link to the U of Wisc site:

http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/tropic/re...By12hr_04.html

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Believe nothing you hear and only half of what you see.

This claim and imagery are in his blog for Oct 19th.


Edited to add: and here's the UW disclaimer:

Why is the party responsible for creating these images using hardware/software that creates such artifacts? I mean, if my camcorder occasionally threw in artifacts of this nature, I'd return it and not buy that brand again. I've been accused of being too skeptical to believe that I even exist (I wonder, but just for fun), and I don't buy this as evidence of a conspiracy, but are we to believe that it's not possible to produce these sequences without these artifacts?

"You'll be pleased to know this new computer can do every single thing you want it to do, but occasionally, it'll throw in arcs of meaningless data. We're sure you'll still be able to interpret the results, though. Sign here for delivery, please.."

Am I missing something?

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If I'm wrong, you probably asked me the wrong question.

Yes, you are. Technology isn't perfect. Radar is prone to artifacts. They are trying to make images of clouds (which are nothing more than tiny water droplets) hundreds of miles away. This isn't as easy as taking a few minutes of camcorder video. People seem to expect technology to work perfectly all of the time. The fact is that it doesn't. Sometimes getting something perfect just isn't feasible. People have limited time, manpower, and money, so sometimes they have to just accept something as good enough and go with it. These artifacts are rather minor issues, they doesn't have that much of an adverse affect on the performance of the equipment, so I can easily see why they decided to just live with them rather than waste time, money, and manpower that could be allocated to solving problems that might actually be worth solving. I can tell you that if I was designign the system and there were a few seconds of aberattion on rare occasions I wouldn't want to make major changes to the hardware or software for such trivial matter. Especially if it would be extremely difficult to eliminate them completely. Engineers always have to draw the line at something being "good enough". There is never enough time or money to get it perfect beyond any change of failing.

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I met this wonderful girl at Macy's. She was buying clothes and I was putting Slinkies on the escalator.
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My Website: The Black Cat's Web Page

The photos are often composites from different satellites. If the composites are taken at the same time, terrific - great match.

With satellites, however, this is rarely the case, so the stitching together of two images, perhaps an hour apart, produces this artifact.

Well said. The entire post. Thank you. And I certainly understand the point about diminishing returns in trying to perfect a system. I guess I'm just annoyed at how often I see such compromises anymore. My computer occasionally locks up spontaneously, while it's just sitting there doin' nothing. My truck keeps going through starters; though, I've replaced all affecting components a couple of times over the past few years.

I just figured a major university would be able to demand a higher level of QC than that, and I wondered, on a whim, what IF there was "something" to the OP content, hypothetically, for the sake of argument? And we all happily buy the statement that this high-tech system has these artifacts that they can't do anything about because.. we're gullible? comfortable? sheep? I shouldn't post when I'm tired.

I *can't* be turning into a conspiracy theorist! I just CAN'T!

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If I'm wrong, you probably asked me the wrong question.

Your car radio is an excellent receiver. You can tune in radio stations on AM that are hunderds of miles away. Try it. Now what would the radio have to do when there is a thunderstorm in between you and the station, and every time lightning flashes, a burst of noise blots out the music? It could maybe detect that and momentarily mute the loud noise. of course that leaves a gap in the music when it happens. You could add a computer section to analyze the signal and synthesize something to fill the gap that approximates what the music might have been. No gap, but now you are not getting the actual music, just something similar.

Radar is just a radio set up for the special purpose of detecting rain or whatever. If something disturbs the reception, ther will be a gap in what it receives. The system could leave a blank spot - which is what it does - or it could generate a false fill to hide teh blanks. Of course that falsely represents what is out there. On the music station that doesn't matter, but in the weather radar, if there is a tornado in the blank spot we would never know it if the system filled in an average presentation. At least a blank spot doesn't mislead us.

By stating that a University should demand better QC, you are implying that the equipment is at fault. If you are taking a scope photo of Andromeda and an airliner flies through the frame, is it the scope's fault? What could you do to the scope to solve this problem? No data on a radar plot is just that - no data. it is not the system not working.

Ah, Richard C. Hoagland, what a piece of work!

http://members.aol.com/garypos2/Hoagland.html

Dave Mitsky

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Chance favors the prepared mind.
De gustibus non est disputandum.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Greetings!

I posted that link on RCH's blog. Somebody called me an eejit for doing so. That's a start!

Regards, tbm

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Paddle faster!! I hear banjo music!!

Ah, many thanks. At least I now know that if I am turning into a closet conspiracy theorist, at least I wouldn't be a very good one

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If I'm wrong, you probably asked me the wrong question.

Actully, my daughter has discovered the actual conspiracy. She say's that The Weather Channel is behind the creation of all these strong storms, to increase viewership. Hey, it's a lot more plausible than some of the other hurricane CT's out there.

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Some try to tell me, thoughts they cannot defend,... - Moody Blues.

Neptune- The original Dark Matter.

The author feels that this technique of deliberately lying will actually make it easier for you to learn the ideas. - Donald Knuth

I used to consider Hoagland entertaining to listen to, even if I didn't buy his tales, then he claimed that NASA deliberately destroyed Columbia and well, all I can think of now, when I hear him, is "pulling an Aldrin" on him.

The simple fact of the matter is that hurricanes are massive energy systems and if we had the technology to impact them in any significant way, we'd have warp drive as well. Since I don't see any Orion slave girls about (What? You think that we'd keep looking for "new life and new civilizations" once we found the ultimate nookie planet? Or that we'd be interested in something other than Orion slave girls? I don't think so.), I'd say we can't do squat.

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We want our children to go to the planets. Burt Rutan 6/21/04 K.I.L.L. S.M.U.R.F.S.
Tuckers! Automotive Oddities! Building my hot rod with the help of the intarwebs Those who would delay scientific progress for a little temporary prosperity shall have neither. MachineCast Save the planet, by leaving it! "To be second in space is to be second in everything," LBJ.

As one of my friends suggested, it would be easy to affect the weather. Get 10,000 people lined up with an aerosol can and all squirt in the same direction at the same time.

I do, however, like the idea that the weather can be manipulated. We always try to break nature (defy Gravity, split the atom etc) and this could be a real technological achievement. It is also a great excuse not to think any of this is to do with human global warming.

America is quite well known for experimenting on its own population, this could just be another one.

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Round...everything is always round!

Hoagland is grossly misunderstood by ALL of you, it seems.

If he keeps making positive predictions about all manner of crazy theories he thinks up while staring at extremely low-resolution JPL images in his basement, he will eventually get one right. In the meantime, we all laugh at his assertions that Iapetus is hollow (http://www.csicop.org/si/2005-05/psy...brations.html), Hale-Bopp comet created by aliens (http://www.zetatalk.com/halebopp/hb000004.htm), and other nuttiness (http://www.mufor.org/conrep.htm).

But who knows- in 4 or 5 years, maybe Hoagland will push forward a theory that Sedna's moon is really an outpost for aliens from the Horsehead Nebula that have been spying on us. He could arrive at this conclusion based on a speck of dust from a 70-year-old photographic plate of Pluto, or maybe the way some change falls out of his pocket. But if proven correct, then he'll instantly be touted as the genius of our time, "savior of the human race", and the greatest discoverer in history. That is why he does what he does. (Or perhaps he's just delusional.)

Personally, I think he's delusional. After all, studies have shown that if you set monkeys at typewriters, you do not eventually get the plays of Shakespeare. What you get is one letter typed over and over again, flung typewriters, and typewriters full of poo.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

In Hoagland's case, it's his theories that are full of it.......

tbm

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Paddle faster!! I hear banjo music!!

RH will no doubt be using this for ammo...

http://www.space.com/scienceastronom...ry_monday.html

A way to use weather as a weapon? Man, I would fear something like that. Get something wrong, and boom, you just wiped out a school instead of a military base. Not good.

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I'm an engineer. I've produced many ideas that have beauty, but only a few that have truth. The difference is important, and truth is discovered only in a harsh and unyielding crucible. It's up to you what you propose to value. -- Jay Utah

Check out my writing, maybe.

It would seem we do that anyway sometimes with "smart" bombs or cruise missles in foreign lands - at least in the 2 Middle East "Gulf Wars" we did.

CJSF

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Two years ago moved from my town
I was looking up past the city lights
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See the constellation ride across the sky
No cigar, no lady on his arm
Just a guy made of dots and lines

-from "See The Constellation"
by They Might Be Giants

Yeah, but we try to cut down on collateral damage, and a natural disaster has a LOT more potential. From what I heard, the recent earthquake killed 90% of Pakistan's youth (everyone below the age of 18).

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I'm an engineer. I've produced many ideas that have beauty, but only a few that have truth. The difference is important, and truth is discovered only in a harsh and unyielding crucible. It's up to you what you propose to value. -- Jay Utah

Check out my writing, maybe.

This is similar to the artifacts in SOHO images that send the woo woos into a frenzy. No matter the number of times those who work most with the data try to explain about cosmic rays, bad data blocks, and over exposed planets they see evidence for NASA coverup.

I was once a radar technician, and also studied remote sensing in college. This is simple clutter, and that's all it is. I already heard this same claim from someone about the appearance of "gravity waves" on the periphery of Katrina, with the same claim of weather manipulation. *Bzzzzz* Wrong!

As per usual, Hoagland is baying at the moon that has an alien outpost on it, and they want to eat our children and enslave our pets...

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Rest enough for the individual man -- too much, and too soon -- and we call it death. But for Man, no rest and no ending. He must go on, conquest beyond conquest. First this little planet with its winds and ways, and then all the laws of mind and matter that restrain him. Then the planets about him and at last out across immensity to the stars. And when he has conquered all the deeps of space and all the mysteries of time, still he will be beginning.

We should be so lucky!

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We want our children to go to the planets. Burt Rutan 6/21/04 K.I.L.L. S.M.U.R.F.S.
Tuckers! Automotive Oddities! Building my hot rod with the help of the intarwebs Those who would delay scientific progress for a little temporary prosperity shall have neither. MachineCast Save the planet, by leaving it! "To be second in space is to be second in everything," LBJ.

...and enslave our pets

Anyone who suggests that cats can be enslaved has never lived with one.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

I've had several.

They can't be enslaved. But they can be bribed...

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Rest enough for the individual man -- too much, and too soon -- and we call it death. But for Man, no rest and no ending. He must go on, conquest beyond conquest. First this little planet with its winds and ways, and then all the laws of mind and matter that restrain him. Then the planets about him and at last out across immensity to the stars. And when he has conquered all the deeps of space and all the mysteries of time, still he will be beginning.

I welcome the benevolence of our tuna eating masters.

Interestingly, I was watching Penn and Teller's show on DVD this evening after ritual, and we watched the PETA episode. My co-religionist/neighbor looked at one of her cats and said, "Would you like to be released into the cold?"

He licked her nose. We figure this means no. (But he was also mad at her for shooing him away from the milk she left out for the Fey.)

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Our one's vanished. I'm hoping he's just gone walk about for a day or two which he does sometimes, especially since we just had visitors staying, but I'm still worried...

Edited to say he's back,though a little skittery. Not sure what happened to him, but at least he's safe now.

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Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

From what I heard, the recent earthquake killed 90% of Pakistan's youth (everyone below the age of 18).

Reality check.

From the CIA World Fact Book:

Population of Pakistan: 162,419,946 (July 2005 est.)
Age structure:
0-14 years: 39.6% (male 33,104,311/female 31,244,297)
15-64 years: 56.3% (male 46,759,333/female 44,685,828)
65 years and over: 4.1% (male 3,189,122/female 3,437,055) (2005 est.)

The earthquake killed about 80,000 people in Pakistan.

A horrible disaster, but even if we assume 100,000 dead, and all of them children - neither of which is the case - that would be 100,000 out of 64,000,000. That's less than 0.2% of children under the age of 16 (i.e., doesn't even include 16-18 year olds).

Which doesn't minimize the tragedy, but where in the world did you get a crazy number like 90% of the kids killed? Have you checked the batteries on your baloney detector?

1) I didn't know the population of Pakistan in the first place.

2) The source seemed reasonable.

3) He claimed that it struck a lot of schools.

4) I might've misheard him or misinterpreted the number anyways.

5) I feel stupid right now.

__________________
I'm an engineer. I've produced many ideas that have beauty, but only a few that have truth. The difference is important, and truth is discovered only in a harsh and unyielding crucible. It's up to you what you propose to value. -- Jay Utah

Check out my writing, maybe.