In The News 10/27/08

Could waves (from storms or even tsunamis) pass by off-shore drilling platforms or even very small islands?  French and British physicists think so.  Their work needs to be taken from the lab to a more realistic situation before viability can be assessed.

Companies are going to make the recession deeper and longer.  They’re cutting wages and jobs as the economy continues to weaken.  It protects shareholders and executives, but prevents short- to medium-term economic growth.  You want consumption to pick back up?  It’s easy: increase wages.  When lower- and middle-class workers earn more, they buy more.  The past 8 years have clearly shown that when the upper-class makes more, they save more.  They don’t spend their money.  They don’t increase the size of business or create enough jobs.

The Bush doctrine is still in full effect.  U.S. commandos executed a strike into Syria over the weekend.  A couple of questions spring to mind.  First, don’t we have a Secretary of State?  Or is she too busy shopping for shoes to actually do her freaking job?  Second, do Americans realize that these kinds of actions solidify our wrecked image abroad?  The U.S. strikes with impunity into sovereign countries that it considers weak.  Actually, I think Americans do understand what’s going on: it’s one reason why Obama continues to lead McCain.  Unfortunately, this insane policy ensures that there will be future tension between the U.S. and interests in and around the Middle East. Anything to justify the War budget.

Corrupt Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens has been found guilty of lying about gifts he received and never reported.  An interesting facet of this case: if Stevens wins his re-election campaign this year, he can serve in Congress even though he is a convicted felon.  Why is that interesting?  Republicans have passed laws around the country denying convicted felons voting rights because they tend to vote Democratic.  The hypocrisy is disgusting, though unsurprising.  Stevens should be allowed to serve again once he pays his debt back to society, just like voters should be allowed to vote again once their debts have been repaid.  Stevens certainly shouldn’t be allowed to take part in any further Senate proceedings until his sentence has been served in full.  [Update]: Irony strikes in this case.  According to Alaska state law, Sen. Stevens can’t register to vote due to his felon status.  Which means he can’t vote for himself.  It’s only one felon, but it is interesting to see a Republican get caught up in conservative voter suppression strategies.

‘Freak ocean wave’

Having just completed a masters level course in oceanography, my curiosity was piqued by this research article write-up at ScienceBlogs.

Waves in the ocean are forced by surface winds on daily to multi-year time scales. This article deals with waves on a climatic scale, under the influence of the Madden-Julian Oscillation. The MJO is a trigger for El Nino conditions. It’s a one to two month change in the pattern of rainfall and surface winds on a planetary scale.

The MJO exhibits itself by creating a train of waves that travel along the equator (they actually can’t move north or south from the Equator, they’re trapped). These waves are known as Kelvin waves. Their influence extends only through the top 50-100m of the ocean due to fluid dynamical processes. The interesting thing about these waves, and why the ‘freak’ nomenclature has been assigned, is they are moving below the surface of the ocean. Way below: 1000m to 1 mile in depth! They’re similarly equatorially trapped, like their surface residing cousins, but they are exerting influence at some serious depths.

Waves are anomalous perturbations from a mean state. Think of the mean state as a straight line that describes a field’s long-term behavior, like the height of sea level. Anomalies, or deviations, from this mean state exist as waves: troughs and ridges. Waves exist for another good reason: they transport things across the medium they’re a part of. In the case of the ocean, they’re responsible for transferring heat from the equator pole-ward. They also transport momentum and things like carbon dioxide and other molecules from source regions like the atmosphere. In this case, the deep-Kelvin waves are transferring energy from the surface to the ocean interior. Not at all the usual case, so far as I’m aware.