Apparently the interwebs are aflutter because Pepsi is “blogging” on Scienceblogs.com. Of course, they aren’t blogging the the traditional sense, it’s advertising fluff. Even the header says it’s an “advertorial”, whatever beast that is. Wikipedia says it’s “an advertorial is an advertisement written in the form of an objective article, and presented in a printed publication—usually designed to look like a legitimate and independent news story.” Yup. Just a big ol’ advertisement dressed up as a blog. Nothing new for Scienceblogs. They tried it before when Shell decided to buy a few “scientists”. That one didn’t last long, just over a month; I predict this one will last an even shorter time.

Interesting tidbit. The “advertorial” part of the header on the blog isn’t linked, giving the impression that only some of the posts will be advertising. Wrongo. Compare Header2 with Header. Bad idea and good idea respectively.

h/t to mt

It’s nine o’clock on a Friday,
The regular crowd shuffles in
With their buckets and mops, cleaners and socks
the nightly cleaning begins.

Yeah. I’m not a poet, but I am at work. T’was here until 2:00am “yesterday” night, and back in the chair by 10:00am “today”. So while everyone else is busy getting drunk tonight, I’m reading papers while enjoying a sandwich. Since you asked nicely, the one that caught my attention enough to write blog about it was Kiehl (1994).

This assumes that the clouds determining the cloud forcing are the optically thick cirrostratus clouds associated with deep convective cells. The tops of these clouds are indeed thought to be defined by the strong thermal stability directly above the tropical tropopause.

The strong thermal stability directly above the tropical tropopause? Perhaps caused by [[this phenomenon]]? That Wikipedia article is sadly typical of its dedication to quality. I suppose now that I’ve seen it I have an obligation to fix it. Since it was Kiehl’s paper that made me look it up, I’ll pass the buck to him.

* Kiehl, J., 1994: On the Observed Near Cancellation between Longwave and Shortwave Cloud Forcing in Tropical Regions. J. Climate, 7, 559–565.

New undergrads on campus. Which means I get to hear all sorts of silly thing like:

Wombats are just like little kangaroos, right?

According to Le’ Wikipedia, they are both of the order Diprotodontia, and they both live on the Australian continent, but that’s as close as they get. Like comparing a fox and a polar bear because they’re both in the order Carnivora.

In other news, I’m looking for someone to help fix/update the blog software. He or she would be paid a modest fee. Leave your email in the comments and I’ll get back to you.

An unnamed source confirms that all crap has been removed from Wikipedia.[1] This also answers the question of where TCO has been the last few months.

In unrelated news, the articles for the 45th Vice President of the United States and the first-person, plural personal pronoun in Modern English. have been removed.[2] It’s suggested that until the vandalism is removed that you use the phrase “you and I” instead. Not to be confused with “you and us”[3], which will shortly be deleted as well.[4]