You should see Puget Sound right now.

We get a very interesting phenomenon here in the aftermath of a particular kind of winter storm, locally called a “pineapple express,” in which warm temperatures combine with heavy rain to cause massive river-flooding. The phenomenon is that Puget Sound is two colors instead of one. For a distance of maybe a quarter of a mile from shore, the water is pale green, and beyond that it is the usual grey.

I remember staring at this oddity in befuddlement the first time I ever spotted it, and then suddenly realizing what it is. Silt, of course.

It’s incredibly impressive. That is one hell of a lot of mud, that can turn all that … Read the rest

They’re kidding, right? This is a joke? It has to be a joke – right? They can’t be serious?

A doctor has been arrested for insulting the Prophet Mohammed in Pakistan…

Naushad Valiyani was detained on Friday following a complaint by a medical representative who visited the doctor in the city of Hyderabad.

“The arrest was made after the complainant told the police that Valiyani threw his business card, which had his full name, Muhammad Faizan, in a dustbin during a visit to his clinic,” regional police chief Mushtaq Shah told AFP.

“Faizan accused Valiyani of committing blasphemy and asked police to register a case against the doctor.”

And the police obliged.

So………no phone books can be thrown out in … Read the rest

Stephen Law offers us a video of the Permanent Secretary for Government Communications telling a bunch of people that communications are goods things and that he is goods at doings them. I watched a minute or two, which was enough to confirm me in my surmise that I didn’t want to watch more than that. Stephen explains why.

He has little to say, surely? Strip out the “successful behavioural outcomes”, “partnership”, “stakeholder”, “co-creation”, “we’re on a journey” jargon and rhetoric, and his message boils down to:

• The public used to be seen by Government as passive recipients of information, not as customers to engage with, which they now are, ‘cos of the internet, twitter, etc. Citizens can now provide

As is typical with coverage of this subject, the New York Times has to blame Lars Vilks just a little for doing that Motoon.

But the country’s prime minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt, stopped short of connecting the bombs to an e-mail that a Swedish news organization received minutes before the blasts, which seemed to link the attacks to anger over anti-Islamic cartoons and the war in Afghanistan.

It wasn’t cartoons plural, it was one cartoon. And anti-Islamic? What’s that supposed to mean? It sounds sinister.

The e-mail’s reference to Mr. Vilks, a 64-year-old artist and free-speech activist, pointed to the deep anger in the Muslim world over his drawings of the prophet Muhammad in 2007.

“The” deep anger in “the” … Read the rest