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 over. And I didn’t see any of you there.

Talk went good. Saw some people with Wikipedia articles. Saw other more notable people without Wikipedia articles.

Other musings:
You can tell how popular your talk title is by the number of people that session-hop from a talk by Kerry Emanuel which was running late to your talk which was running early. (There were none, if you’re interested.) Still, I think there were more people at my talk than at Bill Gray’s. (I may be biased, but I think my talk was better too. Even though mine wasn’t that good…)

Funniest thing heard:
“This is Hurricane Katrina, which I’m sure you’ve all heard about…” (That’s not the end of the quote, but I think it’s funny nonetheless.)

Best talk:
Not sure. Possibly Peter Black, Hugh Willoughby, Morris Bender, or Greg Holland. Bonus points if anyone in the peanut gallery (that’s you) has ever heard of any of them.

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.

NASA can find an acronym for anything. I’m sure some will recognize the Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill, but what about this one:

REVEAL

No cheating. First correct response gets nothing except bragging rights.
I particularly like what the L stands for. As if that matters… but it completes the acronym.