We've all heard of . . .

Stop Wind Chill

Look, now, we've all of us heard of, nay even directly felt, that cold calculation against our skin called the wind chill factor . . . but has any one of us, any single one of us, ever seen a wind chill factory?

Three-Hour Walk in Changing Climate

Lunar New Year: An Exhausting Three-Hour Lunatic Walk Along the Jungnang Stream as Climate Change Does Its Thing!

Snow Melting: Climate Change!

Brownland Ice Caps Melting: Climate Change!

Starving Emperor Penguins: Climate Change!

Human Excrescences to Blame for Everything: Climate Change!

Black Swan Turns White: Climate Change!

Ducks Fearful of Rising Tide: Climate Change!

As you see, climate change is so real!

(Yes, I'm joking, so don't conclude that I either affirm or deny Climate Change!)

Hwang Sa . . .

Seoul on  this Especially Dusty Day

Seoul's annual "Yellow Dust" was thicker than usual yesterday . . .

Poetry Break: Sexist Weather Report

Antarctica

Google Images

In thinking more about iambic pentameter, I recalled that one can vary the syllable length if the unstressed syllables allow an approximation of a single syllable . . . or is that a wishful 'memory'?

Anyway, does this twelve-syllabled monstrosity work?

Sexist Weather Report

It's colder than the tipple on a niche's wit.

Or is it too clever to be truly sexist?

After all, what do "tipple," "niche's," and "wit" have to do with reports about the sexiest weather report? Hold on, I meant sexist weather report . . . gotta watch that slip of the lip.

By the way . . .

Hurricane Kompasu

September 2, 2010

(Image from Korea Herald)

A hurricane hit Korea yesterday during the early hours of the morning. I thought that I ought to note that fact lest any reader imagine that I missed the storm as it passed over Seoul. I didn't miss it, though it had weakened from a typhoon to a tropical storm upon striking land, and it didn't miss me, as you can see from this comment that I posted over at Robert Koehler's blog:

I witnessed it. I get up regularly at 3 a.m. to blog, so I noticed the rushing wind and closed the window to just a crack, but as the gusts blasted harder, I had to shut even that, but I could hear things rolling around outside, and noise of other things scraping across the parking lot -- plastic, or metal, I reckoned. Around 3:30 or so, calm descended, and I wondered if the very eye of the storm was passing. Apparently so. The wind later picked up again. I even got blasted around 6:30 as I was heading to Mangu Station, an 8-minute walk from my apartment, but managed somehow to protect both myself and my umbrella. I discovered the trains weren't running there at Mangu, so I rushed to catch a taxi as gusts now blew my cap off. I caught it and the taxi and headed for Ewha. Along the way, I saw a lot of minor destruction and even one large tree felled halfway across the three lanes opposite, forcing the oncoming traffic to share our side of the street. I began to wonder if going to work this morning was a good idea, but I made it and learned from a colleague that the brunt of the storm had passed on to the North Country. It's their problem now . . .

Except for the large tree down, most of what I glimpsed from the taxi window was minor and superficial, not major, structural damage, but the news yesterday evening showed a lot of major destruction in other places.

I guess that we were lucky . . . some of us.