At the Winter Sunset Café...

... it's not that bleak.

A Late Night Café...

... where you can talk until dawn.

At that Horizontal Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

"By far the most important debate about climate change is taking place among scientists, on the issue of climate sensitivity..."

"How much warming will a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide actually produce?"

The conclusion... is this: A doubling of CO2 will lead to a warming of 1.6°-1.7°C (2.9°-3.1°F).

This is much lower than the IPCC's current best estimate, 3°C (5.4°F)....

A cumulative change of less than 2°C by the end of this century will do no net harm. It will actually do net good... Rainfall will increase slightly, growing seasons will lengthen, Greenland's ice cap will melt only very slowly, and so on.

The difficulty has to do with water evaporating from the warmed up seas, and the way water vapor counts greenhouse gas. But how does it count? We're talking about clouds, and clouds also have cooling effects.

At the Cirrocumulus Café...

... you can talk about anything you like.

(This photo makes today look bleak, but it was midday, sunny, and warm out on the bike trail south of Madison.)

"I have to suspend my brain and mingle the subtle essence of my mind with this air..."

"... which is of the like nature, in order clearly to penetrate the things of heaven. I should have discovered nothing, had I remained on the ground to consider from below the things that are above; for the earth by its force attracts the sap of the mind to itself. It's just the same with the watercress."

Socrates, in "The Clouds," by Aristophanes.

At the Cloud Café...

... you can float along all day.

At the Lakefront Café...

... you can talk about whatever you like.

At the Events Garden Café...

... you could walk down the aisle.

"Ask me an interesting question... and I'll answer 10-15 every week..."

A simple enough Twitter project, by Yoko Ono.

do you consider the internet to be a nutopian space?
It is one of the nutopian spaces....

I recently watched the film LET IT BE and I wonder why you didn’t smile through the whole thing. You have such a lovely smile.
My smile was erased....

How do you always stay so grounded? So often I find myself floating away from all this.
Look at the steps we take when we walk. Our steps are made of floating and grounding, each time we take the step. So don’t worry. You are grounding and floating, every day, as you walk. You should walk more.

Ha ha. I like Yoko Ono. I was thinking of her today because I was thinking of my habit of thinking up ideas for books, which I don't write. That made me think of Yoko's old book "Grapefruit," which — yes, it is a book — describes projects, things that could be done easily, things that could be done but are too tedious or too hard to do, and things that are completely impossible. The descriptions are charmingly minimal. I'd quote some, but you'd get the wrong idea. Go over to the link and check some pages out. You can search inside the book. Try, for example, searching for "cloud."

It seems that the real project is stating one imagined project after another. Think of it, then let it go. Imagine all the unwritten books. Have you read them?

"Humanity, I've got a lot of problems with your work as a species..."

"... but I gotta hand it to you, sometimes you do something pretty cool."

Yesterday and today.

At the Cloudscape Café...

... you can see, touch, and taste everything.

(If you enjoyed the music that happened to be playing on the car radio in that little clip and you don't already have it, please buy it: here.)

Capitol cloudscape.

At the Cloudscape Café...

... you can think quite clearly.

"Google Introduces New Computer-Like Object, Where Everything Happens On the Web."

Oh? Great.

Benefit? It's a neat idea.

Drawback? Do you feel lucky?

Well, I'm not feeling lucky with Google this week. I'd like to like the cloud, though. You know, one reason that I've stayed on Blogger is that I want my archive to be around after I'm dead. I trust Google to continue on indefinitely, and because Blogger doesn't demand payments, I wasn't worried about my blog going away when I'm not here anymore to pay my bills.

So like, Google had become an idea of the afterlife. And now, they're all about the cloud. It's becoming so God-ish. Google as God. It's a mystical experience we are having here in the world, getting absorbed into The Whole.

The link goes to Ace of Spades, whose next post is "Google Pulls Althouse's Blog And Isn't Telling Her Why?" Why?! Well, clearly, I have sinned, and Google has said unto me — I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.

And I enjoyed the comments over there, even the ones that brought up the old show about "nutting." At some point, the commenters get into my political orientation:

I know that Althouse gets lots of link love from Instapundit, but I've never been all that impressed with her. She'll talk a good game about not being a liberal, but if you read her blog long enough you can tell that she's still emotionally wedded to the Democrats.

So no matter what complaints she has about the Democratic candidate, I doubt she'll ever be able to bring herself to vote for a <shudder> conservative. Plus she tends to be rather thin-skinned and quick to anger.

Meh.

Heh.

IN THE COMMENTS: Some advise me to switch to Catholicism and Don't Tread 2012 points to...

At the Winter Sky Café...

... it's getting warmer and the light is breaking through.

Sky and water.

On the Bad River in Copper Falls State Park.

Afternoon and evening light on the Apostle Islands.

Sailboats on Lake Monona, very free and easy...

Easy, like biking the Capital City bike trail...
Silver Madison skyline let me be...




We are leaving — you don't need us...