An “in the moment” Sunday

Sunday was a day when everything came easy. I awoke refreshed. Breakfast wasn’t hurried. There was time to read the paper. And nothing on the family “agenda,” other than picking up Hallie from her sleepover. Kelly ran that errand while Travis and I figured out how to keep ourselves busy.

We began by moving our freshly-painted rocking chairs out of the garage and onto the screen porch. then we fixed a balky toilet. Then we vacuumed the porch floor. Then we began sweeping out the garage. Then before I knew it, Kelly returned with Hallie had returned and Hallie and the girl next door were gleefully sweeping the garage with Travis and me. I felt a bit like Tom Sawyer or something, but everyone was having so much fun I felt guilty when I finally had to declare the garage clean.
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Did the SBI set up Floyd Brown?

The story of the SBI’s treatment of Floyd Brown, convicted by a dubious murder confession, should make everyone shudder.

Some of the shine has come off former golden boy Attorney General Roy Cooper. It’s a shame, since I once thought Cooper could do no wrong.

Here’s Floyd telling his story, brought to you by Travis Long, Shawn Rocco, and Mandy Locke of the News and Observer.

Agents’ Secrets: A confession doesn’t add up from Travis Long on Vimeo.

Our weather ain’t got nothing on Moscow’s

Raleigh’s temperature is expected to reach 92 degrees Fahrenheit today, with a steady breeze moderating that a bit. While that’s warm, it’s a far cry from the weather Russia’s dealing with right now. Central Russia is experiencing an unprecedented heat wave, with temperatures up to 108 degrees. For a country more accustomed to extreme winters, this is a catastrophe. Wheat crops are withering, peat bog wildfires are raging, and people are dropping like flies because air conditioning is uncommon.

To make matters worse, the peat bog fires have made the air unhealthy in Moscow. So either Russians sweat it out indoors in buildings with no air conditioning, or they open the windows and breathe heavily-polluted air. Not much of a choice!
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Much Gulf Oil Remains, Deeply Hidden and Under Beaches

Surprise! BP is lying through its teeth again, and the goverment is buying it.

As BP finishes pumping cement into the damaged Deepwater Horizon wellhead Thursday, some scientists are taking issue with a new U.S. government report that says the "vast majority" of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill has been taken care of by nature and "robust" cleanup efforts.In addition, experts warn, much of the toxic oil from the worst spill in U.S. history may be trapped under Gulf beaches—where it could linger for years—or still migrating into the ocean depths, where it’s a "3-D catastrophe," one scientist said.

via Much Gulf Oil Remains, Deeply Hidden and Under Beaches.

Facebook’s facial recognition creeps me out

Wouldn't you like to know?

In a process known as tagging, Facebook users have long been identifying the friends that appear in the photographs uploaded to the social networking site. Tagging involves someone selecting the area of a photograph in which a person appears and then associating the person’s name or Facebook profile to that area. It’s all been a manual process, though an easy one.

I noticed today that one of the photos in my collection I purposefully have not tagged showed up on my Facebook page today: a photo of my son on his bike. Facebook had found this untagged photo and was asking me who he was. Apparently Facebook has implemented facial recognition software.
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Record-breaking hailstone

Hailstone from Vivian, SD storm


The largest hailstone ever recorded in the US fell in South Dakota on July 23rd. It weighed almost two pounds! NOAA scientists estimate the updraft required to keep it aloft exceeded 160 MPH!

During the late afternoon and early evening hours of 23 July 2010, thunderstorms developed over portions of central South Dakota. Several storms quickly became severe in an environment favorable for supercell thunderstorms. In particular, one very strong supercell thunderstorm moved southeastward across portions of Stanley, Jones, and Lyman counties. One of the hardest hit locations was the community of Vivian, South Dakota, where extremely large hail, destructive winds to 80 mph, and a brief tornado were reported.

A record setting hailstone was ultimately discovered in Vivian, measuring 8.0 inches in diameter, 18.625 inches in circumference, and weighing in at an amazing 1.9375 pounds!! This hailstone broke the previous United States hail size record for diameter (7.0 inches – 22 June 2003 in Aurora, NE) and weight (1.67 pounds – 3 September 1970 in Coffeyvile, KS).

via July 23rd Extreme Hail Event.

(h/t Mike Moss at WRAL)

The City of Raleigh’s new website

Yesterday, the City of Raleigh unveiled it’s new website: the first update in a dozen or more years. The old website has long been a pet peeve, with it’s cryptic, miles-long URLs and lack of photographs or graphics. To find anything useful, users often had to resort to using the search box.

Unfortunately, that’s also the problem with the new website: to find anything useful the user has to use the search box. In fact, it’s more of an issue now. The old site at least attempted to categorize information in a hierarchical format (for every page, you saw a list of breadcrumbs that showed you where you were in the site). The new one, however, makes no attempt at all at organizing data (at least as far as I can tell).
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