How do you say Missouri?

An interesting (if sometimes technical) article on the topic of why some people "say Missour-ee and others say Missour-uh", with implications for other words I've always wondered about, such as okra and bologna.  

No Trends in Weather Data

The Wall Street Journal:

[...] the project's initial findings, published last month, show no evidence of an intensifying weather trend. "In the climate models, the extremes get more extreme as we move into a doubled CO2 world in 100 years," atmospheric scientist Gilbert Compo, one of the researchers on the project, tells me from his office at the University of Colorado, Boulder. "So we were surprised that none of the three major indices of climate variability that we used show a trend of increased circulation going back to 1871."

In other words, researchers have yet to find evidence of more-extreme weather patterns over the period, contrary to what the models predict. "There's no data-driven answer yet to the question of how human activity has affected extreme weather," adds Roger Pielke Jr., another University of Colorado climate researcher.

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No Guarantees

C. Michael Patton:

After another period of silence he asked the question of the hour, "Will God protect my kids?"

He went on, "Will he protect them or is he going to do to me what he did to your mom? Because from where I sit it looks like that if you follow the Lord too closely, he brings terrible things into your life. I love my children and I am scared to death that he might hurt them or take them from me because I follow him . . . to test me or something. I don’t want that."

My friend was no longer questioning the reality of God, Christ, the resurrection, or even his own need for a savior. He was questioning God’s plan. He was questioning God’s intentions. Simply put, he was scared of God.

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Men & Hymns

David Murrow:

There’s nothing wrong with professionalism and quality in church music.The problem isn’t the rock band, or the lights, or the smoke machine. The key here is familiarity. When that super-hip band performed a hymn, the crowd responded. People sang. Even the men.

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Donald Rumsfeld Interview

An interview with Donald Rumsfeld about his life and his memoir (Known and Unknown).    A picture of the man emerges very different than what is usually assumed in popular culture.

A.I. Singularity

Time:

[...] But Kurzweil would spend much of the rest of his career working out what his demonstration meant. Creating a work of art is one of those activities we reserve for humans and humans only. It's an act of self-expression; you're not supposed to be able to do it if you don't have a self. To see creativity, the exclusive domain of humans, usurped by a computer built by a 17-year-old is to watch a line blur that cannot be unblurred, the line between organic intelligence and artificial intelligence.

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