Remember When We Were Warned That Global Warming Would Increase Hurricanes?

 9/15/26 Ars Technica:

Last week, the Atlantic hurricane season blew through its traditional peak—which comes around September 10—with nary a tropical wave in sight, let alone a storm or hurricane.

This is remarkable. Usually this is the time of year when sea surface temperatures reach their warmest in the tropics, and with a favorable atmosphere it should be smooth skating for tropical systems. But this year, the main region where most tropical systems develop is choked with Saharan dust and wind shear.

No one is complaining. Landfalling hurricanes are incredibly destructive for coastal areas and have the potential for considerable inland rainfall. Even storms at sea, in the Gulf of Mexico, can send energy prices skyrocketing—the last thing needed this year.
This has never happened

Nevertheless, the quietude is historic.

Beginning in 1944, the United States began monitoring the Atlantic basin, which includes the Gulf, Caribbean Sea, and northern Atlantic Ocean, with aircraft to detect hurricanes. Dating back to 1944, a hurricane had formed every year by September 11. The latest “first” Atlantic hurricanes came in 2002, with Gustav, and in 2013, with Humberto on this date.

Atlantic hurricane records officially go back to 1851, although older records are less reliable because observations of storms developing at sea were reliant on reports from shipping vessels. So some storms were missed. If we extend the hurricane record all the way back to 1851, every year still records at least one Atlantic hurricane. But in 1941, the first hurricane did not form until September 17. This is the date of the latest first Atlantic hurricane on record.

I’m here to tell you that the Atlantic will not produce a hurricane by the end of Thursday. The National Hurricane Center is presently monitoring a single disturbance in the Atlantic, but it gives this system a “near zero” percent chance of becoming a tropical depression or storm during the next two days. The likelihood of it ever becoming a hurricane is low.

"The Racial Discrimination Will Continue Until We Get Caught"

 9/10/26 The Hill:

Officials from the Justice Department and Education Department alleged Wednesday that the University of California’s Berkeley School of Law favors Black applicants over white and Asian applicants, in violation of federal law.

In a letter to attorney Tania Faransso, who is representing the law school, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said the institution “deliberately discriminated” against Asian and white applicants based on race.

By doing so, Berkeley Law violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars the use of federal funds to further racial discrimination, Dhillon alleged. The Justice Department is seeking to enter into a resolution agreement with the college to ensure it complies with federal law.

“This discrimination is apparent from the significant disparity in objective academic metrics between racially preferred applicants, and applicants from non-preferred races,” Dhillon wrote, accusing the law school of discriminating by using racial proxies and certain essay prompts in admissions.

This is a sensitive subject for me because when I graduated high school, I was coming from a home below the poverty line. Another student from an East Indian family who lived in the nice neighborhoods north of Montana Blvd., back when East Indians were still considered oppressed minorities, received a full ride scholarship. 

When I started working, racial discrimination in hiring was explicit: "Because this position is currently held by an EEO double pointer, it must be filled with same."

Rabies Not Just From Animal Bites

9/1/26 Science Alert:

In February of last year, authorities confirmed the details of a grave medical accident.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) diagnosed a fatal rabies infection in a patient from Michigan.

The circumstances of transmission were unusual. The deceased man, an organ recipient, had received a donated kidney infected with rabies.

The source of the kidney was a man in Idaho who had died only weeks earlier, donating his organs for others in need. At the time of his death, nobody realized his body was infected with the deadly virus.

Subsequent investigations revealed the Idaho man had recently been scratched by a skunk on his rural property – an infectious encounter that ultimately claimed his own life, and that of the man to whom he gave his kidney.

Records show it was only the fourth time in US history that an organ transplant procedure had transmitted the rabies virus (Lyssavirus rabies) from an initially undiagnosed donor.

But what if these kinds of records are wrong?

A new analysis published in Communications Health suggests that official figures may dramatically underestimate how many human cases of rabies are actually circulating in the US each year.

According to researchers from the Pandemic Sciences Institute at the University of Oxford, the extremely low count of confirmed human rabies cases in the US each year – just 2.4 cases annually on average from 2000 to 2024 – seems much lower than it should be.

The reason why it seems low is that a relatively high number of rabies cases are subsequently confirmed after infected organ transplants, like the sad case of the kidney recipient from Michigan. 

And why would you check a donated organ for a rare disease that had nothing apparently to do with donor's death? 

Neighbors....

Tell me a bear got into their trash a couple nights ago. I hope they cannot scale a 6 foot fence for a swim. The bear I mean.

Decolonizing Canadian Law

8/14/26 National Post:


An Ontario judge has ruled that “colonialism” was primarily to blame in a deadly driving crash that saw a First Nations man kill a 12-year-old girl.


According to police reports, Darris Wilson’s Dodge Ram pickup truck was strewn with empty and partially consumed cans of beer when, in 2022, it slammed head-on into a vehicle carrying a mother and daughter en route to a sleepover.

Sierra Beverly, 12, was killed at the scene. Her mother, Naomi, suffered debilitating brain injuries for which she still requires 24-hour care.

But in a sentencing decision released last week, Ontario Justice Gethin Edward predominantly focused on how Canada’s “colonial past” had turned Wilson into a dangerous driver.

Wilson, he ruled, was suffering from cultural “disconnection” as a result of colonization, which “crystallized into the tragic events of Feb. 11, 2022.”

Poverty in the Bay Area

Warning Signs Ignored

 

Torrance, Cal. (1973)

02/11/1973: Police investigated a missing person report and four theater employees. They were at first unsure if the victims were shot or stabbed to death It turned out that he used a gun to get compliance but used a knife to slit their throats. They could not be identified at first because of the amount of blood on their bodies. The safe was open.

Subsequent investigation into a similar business robbery that only resulted in one murder and the suspect’s suicide in jail led police to surmise that a long-time criminal, 30, with an extensive psychiatric history, which included repeated warnings that he was a murder-in-training. Police arrested him for misdemeanor traffic warrants; he committed suicide in jail. He committed the murders after a detailed casing of the theater. He told his roommate that “if he didn’t come back there was no reason to feel guilty. If everything went right, he would have $2,000 owed to him and his roommate would read about in the newspapers.”

Category: public

Suicide: no

Cause: robbery

Weapon: knife[1]

---

[1] "4 Found Murdered At Theater Office; Vault Cleaned Out," Los Angeles Times, Feb. 12, 1973, 1; “Society Ignored Danger Signals in Maheu’s Life,” [San Pedro, Cal.] News-Pilot, Sep. 25, 1973, 5; “Maheu’s Death Sealed The Fully Story of Mass Killing,” [San Pedro, Cal.] News-Pilot, Sep. 25, 1973, 5.