Randall Munroe of XKCD said it pretty well
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/math.png

"As of this writing, the only thing that's "razer thin" or "too close to call" is the gap between the consensus poll forecast and the result"

To me there is a crime here. Why are they on the "national commission for the forecast and prevention of major risks" when they knew full well they can't predict earthquakes? It seems to me they shouldn't be getting a check from the government to do something that can't be done. It would be fine if they were just geologists or whatever, but these guys were stupid enough to take on the responsibility of providing warning when they couldn't. I mean, it's still ridiculous, and I think the bigger issue is that this kid "predicted" it. Maybe they should look at those radon measures again? Are they really less reliable?

1:53... BIG SMILES Smiles all around are in the forecast.

>> ^CirSam:
love the rapping weatherman


Hey CirSam, you're back from vacation! Great to see you.

Oh no!
In reply to this comment by dotdude:
But now the forecasters have the storm coming at New Orleans. Of course that could change. This storm is unpredictable. http://www.skeetobiteweather.com/picservice.asp?t=t&m=09&av=2
In reply to this comment by oritteropo:
In light of the news that the GOP has had to delay the start of their convention based in Tampa, what you were saying makes a lot more sense now : Pardon my confused expression, was just missing some context.

But now the forecasters have the storm coming at New Orleans. Of course that could change. This storm is unpredictable. http://www.skeetobiteweather.com/picservice.asp?t=t&m=09&av=2
In reply to this comment by oritteropo:
In light of the news that the GOP has had to delay the start of their convention based in Tampa, what you were saying makes a lot more sense now : Pardon my confused expression, was just missing some context.

Ayn Rand's Influence on Alan Greenspan
In The Age of Turbulence, Alan Greenspan describes the influence that Ayn Rand had on his intellectual development.

Ayn Rand became a stabilizing force in my life. It hadn't taken long for us to have a meeting of the minds -- mostly my mind meeting hers -- and in the fifties and early sixties I became a regular at the weekly gatherings at her apartment. She was a wholly original thinker, sharply analytical, strong-willed, highly principled, and very insistent on rationality as the highest value. In that regard, our values were congruent -- we agreed on the importance of mathematics and intellectual rigor.

But she had gone far beyond that, thinking more broadly than I had ever dared. She was a devoted Aristotelian -- the central idea being that there exists an objective reality that is separate from consciousness and capable of being known. Thus she called her philosophy objectivism. And she applied key tenets of Aristotelian ethics -- namely, that individuals have innate nobility and that the highest duty of every individual is to flourish by realizing that potential. Exploring ideas with her was a remarkable course in logic and epistemology. I was able to keep up with her most of the time.

Rand's Collective became my first social circle outside the university and the economics profession. I engaged in the all-night debates and wrote spirited commentary for her newsletter with the fervor of a young acolyte drawn to a whole new set of ideas. Like any new convert, I tended to frame the concepts in their starkest, simplest terms. Most everyone sees the simple outline of an idea before complexity and qualification set in. If we didn't, there would be nothing to qualify, nothing to learn. It was only as contradictions inherent in my new notions began to emerge that the fervor receded.

One contradiction I found particularly enlightening. According to objectivist precepts, taxation was immoral because it allowed for government appropriation of private property by force. Yet if taxation was wrong, how could you reliably finance the essential functions of government, including the protection of individuals' rights through police power? The Randian answer, that those who rationally saw the need for government would contribute voluntarily, was inadequate. People have free will; suppose they refused?

I still found the broader philosophy of unfettered market competition compelling, as I do to this day, but I reluctantly began to realize that if there were qualifications to my intellectual edifice, I couldn't argue that others should readily accept it. [...]

Ayn Rand and I remained close until she died in 1982, and I'm grateful for the influence she had on my life. I was intellectually limited until I met her. All of my work had been empirical and numbers-based, never values-oriented. I was a talented technician, but that was all. My logical positivism had discounted history and literature -- if you'd asked me whether Chaucer was worth reading, I'd have said, "Don't bother." Rand persuaded me to look at human beings, their values, how they work, what they do and why they do it, and how they think and why they think. This broadened my horizons far beyond the models of economics I'd learned. I began to study how societies form and how cultures behave, and to realize that economics and forecasting depend on such knowledge -- different cultures grow and create material wealth in profoundly different ways. All of this started for me with Ayn Rand. She introduced me to a vast realm from which I'd shut myself off.

From The Age of Turbulence, pp. 51-53. Omissions from the text are shown with bracketed ellipses. All other punctuation and spelling is from the original.

http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/bio/turbulence.html

>> ^siftbot:

This video has been nominated as a duplicate of this video by bareboards2. If this nomination is seconded with isdupe, the video will be killed and its votes transferred to the original.


*isdupe

This video has been seconded as a duplicate; transferring votes to the original video and killing this dupe - dupeof seconded with isdupe by ant.

>> ^bareboards2:

dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/The-Strangest-Weather-Forecast-Youll-Ever-See
I hope you complete the dupe, instead of killing it. The promote will transfer over if you dupe.
@pumkinandstorm.... you might consider changing your tags to be more specific, to save some other poor sifter the heartache of the missed dupe.
Blah blah blah.
Great vid!


Thanks BB2! I will add a virginia tag. That should take care of it.

This video has been nominated as a duplicate of this video by bareboards2. If this nomination is seconded with *isdupe, the video will be killed and its votes transferred to the original.

*dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/The-Strangest-Weather-Forecast-Youll-Ever-See

I hope you complete the dupe, instead of killing it. The promote will transfer over if you dupe.

@pumkinandstorm.... you might consider changing your tags to be more specific, to save some other poor sifter the heartache of the missed dupe.

Blah blah blah.

Great vid!

How to forecast the weather... like a boss.

http://lyrics.wikia.com/John_K._Samson:Longitudinal_Centre

This spring made winter an insulting opening offer down the passing lane
It's getting harder to negotiate, thawing out and icing up again
Past the Mint, where a circle of provincial flags are flagging in the front yard
I'm tired of trying to make us think that it hasn't always been so hard

The sky looks sea-sick on the boxcar sway
Where the Atlantic and Pacific are the very same far away

So the sun pulls me out a bit and lets me go, I'm a vacuum power cord
In the back of that van full of kids, cleaning carpets for the Lord
And I make a little list of sounds I found have comforted us in the past
The roar of the rumble strips and the Mennonite meter of the flood forecast

Oh, how the wind strums on those signs that say
The Atlantic and Pacific are the very same far away

Steer this boat around the slowplow spray
While the Atlantic and Pacific are the very same far away

If Professional Cosplay doesn't work out, Dr. Mrs. The Monarch has a future in Hungarian Weather forecasting...