Still floundering around here doing a blog, and have not been responsive to commentators, haven’t quite done much to improve the presentation here, either, and it needs it. Many comments I’ve learned since starting up, are not “real” ones, but are advertisements for something. That said, there ARE many sincere ones that I have not responded to and I apologize for that rudeness, incivility, to someone who took some time to say something nice. The “Comments” aspect of a blog was the most fearful part of even starting one; “what if people actually read this and then said things?” You might eventually have a career being responsive to those comments, sorting out the real ones from the disingenuous ones, and so forth.
So, I have not yet figured out what to do with comments. While I will never attain the magnitude of a deeply admired friend’s sometimes controversial climate blog, one that was pummeled with more than 1000 (!) comments in 24 h after a controversial post, nevertheless there is time involved in doing “thoughtful” responses since I don’t write too good and have to go over drafts, a wife, two dogs and a horse to take care of, and am still a bit active professionally.
Mainly the goal of this blog is to pass along some knowledge gained over a lifetime of chasing clouds around, scrutinizing the sky, and in particular, that skill and knowledge gained with the University of Washington’s now defunct Cloud and Aerosol Research Group over about a 30 year period of “soft money” in airborne atudies of clouds. After all, in a sense, you paid for it via the National Science Foundation, and I thought this blog would be a modest way of paying you back for all those grand years I enjoyed so much. Below, a couple of shots of one of our more “interesting” maneuvers, gathering aerosol measurements over the surface of the (first, Atlantic, second, Pacific) oceans. (“Don’t try this at home….”) Will post a couple more shots a bit later. The shots were taken between 50 and 150 feet above the surface of the ocean, a height that depended on conditions. The 3rd shot below was taken from around 150 feet for obvious reasons.
During these many, many scraping-the-ocean’s-surface maneuvers, I made the same comment to the pilot every time: “Hey, Steve, I just saw a jelly fish….and the jelly fish had a gnat on it.”
The last one? Had a 16×20 of this shot framed. At the Seattle gallery where this was done, the person doing it asked,”Oh, did you take this from your boat?” It was so funny. It was taken from behind the pilot looking through his window.
Also, and I think its genetic, there is a tendency for goofy (sophomoric?) humor amid the serious commentaries here.
I’ve always tended toward humor as do other members of my family. I got kicked out of Jr. High classes after puberty due to a lot wisecracks, or actions like riccochetting rubber bands off the ceiling so that they would pile up next to the guy in my class most likely to use them in a more direct manner after he noticed them. Underlying cause, first principal for humor: there is no greater moment in human relations than creating a laugh or just a smile.
Of course, all of that Jr. High goofiness was REALLY all about girls in those days since I had been a model student, got lots of “A’s” before puberty. But it was all downhill after that, though a WONDERFUL, EXHILARATING discovery and academic cascade due to those marvelously different beings called, “GIRLS!” through Jr. H, HS a I drew attention to myself in unfavorable ways since I was too shy to actually talk to them… Oops, way off track.
Mainly, thanks for taking time to “comment”!
The end.
