Whether Weathermen Were Wrong...

There are few certain things in this world: the inevitability of bad hair days, the slow unrelenting march of age and time, and the death of a Sean Bean character. Yet, there is much more that is uncertain: stock prices, the number of socks that will emerge from the dryer, and, of course, the weather. Let's spend a few minutes dwelling on that last one, because despite the insistence of a certain doomed Sean Bean character, winter doesn't always come. That was proven on Tuesday when the New York area found itself bracing for a massive hurricane of icy death that never quite panned out.

Sure, we got a few inches, but growing up in the Northeast those are the kind of numbers you find yourself laughing at as your car skids slowly to work in the morning. What we were promised was a winter storm so impressive that it would bury us under feet and feet of snow. Curfews were enacted across New York and New Jersey. Trains, buses, and subways were shutdown. States of Emergencies were called. Government offices were closed, and grocery stores couldn't have been ransacked harder if there was a horde of ice zombies coming. I, personally, got up at 5:30 am to race the storm home from Maryland... Then it started snowing... Then it stopped and everyone emerged from their cocoons of blankets and Netflix to see that nothing had happened... Then a lot of people got mad.

Did you know that the 1977 revision of the Geneva Convention prohibits the weaponizing of weather? I know, it sounds like a plot cooked up by Cobra Commander, but did you also know that the United States of America successfully used weaponized weather during the Vietnam War? Operation Popeye used cloud seeding over Vietnam to increase the rainy season by thirty percent, in order to hinder troop and vehicle movements. Yet, seeding clouds is not the only way to use the weather as a weapon, and I have been hearing many people over the past few days call the false reporting of meteorologists, nothing short of criminal.

FYI, this is also against the Geneva Convention.

"Those weather-hacks misled us! The lied to us! We all put our trust in them and this time they used their power as a weapon to shutdown one of the world's largest and most densely populated metropolitan areas. New York City, New Jersey, and Philadelphia all came to a grinding halt because of the false promises of meteorologists and their scary, albeit colorful, maps of doom. They didn't even apologize, (except for the ones that did!) They told us falsehoods! They mildly inconvenienced us and damn them, they gave me a day off of work! Meteorologists may not be able to manipulate the weather, but they manipulate our feelings about the weather, and maybe its time we held them accountable.

"Under the Geneva Convention we should prosecute them as war criminals! Let's put them on trial in front of an international court. Let's send a message that we will not let our lives be dictated by people with names like Gretchen Storm and Sonny Day. I promise, no longer will the sadistic cackle of the dreaded Weatherman echo through the frozen halls of his Arctic Doppler Fortress. Huzzah! After all, what have they ever really done for us?"

...I mean aside from saving lives and preventing property damage. According to a 2013 World Bank Report, a fully staffed and equipped meteorological service saves an average of 23,000 lives a year and provides up to $30 billion a year in economic benefits. The real truth of this issue is that I think it is easy to hate on weathermen. Their jobs are based on speculation, and, in fairness, they are not right all the time. In fact, if you are looking for an interesting piece on the accuracy of weather forecasting I suggest you check out the Freakonomics site, which basically maps out the accuracy of weathermen in Kansas City over their seven day forecast. Spoiler: They are not 100% accurate, but that doesn't make what they do is any less difficult or valuable.

Granted, that even after the storm proved to be bust many stations kept their reporting up, as if we really were under attack by the love child of Elsa and Mr. Freeze, but that has more to do with the news stations than the actual meteorologists. If Fox News has taught us anything it is that scaring people is a surefire way to get good ratings, and maybe there were a few people out there who were more willing to fudge the numbers in one direction if it meant people would watch, but that was not the majority. If anyone is to blame, we are. Because, when you really think about it, meteorologists are a lot like the weather they report. We really don't pay attention to them till we need to, and even then its usually only in a negative way, Maybe that's part of the reason why sometimes they get a little overly excited about bad weather, in the same way firefighters get a little too excited about a structure fire. Only in catastrophe do they really get their chance to shine.

"I'm wearing camouflage, because... Did you see what
happened to that last dog?"

Unfortunately, this time their excitement led to the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars by state and local businesses who listened to the dire warnings of weathermen and weather-women as they gazed into their crystal balls, but I don't mean to sound flippant (that just usually happens naturally).  I have a lot of respect for the people entrusted to predict the movements of nature. Weather forecasting is a science, but it is not an exact one. There are still many mysteries on why weather behaves the way it does, and what we get as a forecast is usually the best possible data as interpreted by local and national meteorologists. That means they are using their models and scientific understanding of weather behavior to give us their best estimate as to where a storm system will be heading and what conditions will lead to one forming in the first place. It also doesn't help that the American National Weather Service is woefully underfunded and understaffed.

In the past five years the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) budget has stayed relatively flat, despite significant budgetary increases for other federal departments. Even worse the National Weather Service has suffered from some 200-odd labor shortages, finding themselves without the money to hire and retain key meteorologists, even in critical areas such as Tornado Alley where accurate weather predictions help to save thousands of lives annually. This is trouble for local weathermen who get their core data from the National Weather Service, which helps them make their predictions. This severe underfunding is also one of the main reasons why the European weather agency, (European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting) typically produces more accurate weather models than the US National Weather Service. They have better equipment with faster computing power

All of this leads back to the super storm of snow that was supposed to hit New York this past week. Many weather agencies went with the European model for the storm, due to its track record of better accuracy, and for whatever reason, this time the European model was wrong and the American model, (which predicted that the storm would miss the city,) was actually correct. That's how bad it has gotten for the US National Weather Service. Even when they're right, the local agencies don't believe them. It's like their the weathermen of weathermen.

On the plus side, the development of hover technology is
coming along in time for Marty McFly's arrival this year.

The United States needs an updated weather model, proper funding, modern equipment, and proper staffing. Maybe if the weather could be used as a weapon of war there would be more funding available, but right now it is a low priority on the national budget. Yet, it shouldn't be. The National Weather Service does more than tell us whether to take an umbrella or sunscreen. Poor and improper weather forecasts, whether negative or positive, affects millions of American and billions of dollars worth of industry and infrastructure. Everything from mass transit to national trucking industries are affected by the weather. 

So yes, this time the weathermen got it wrong, but that doesn't mean they are always wrong or that they are criminals. Human beings have a tendency to want to kill the messenger, but the general public needs to reevaluate how we think about the weather and those who report it. With changing climates, global warming, and a myriad of other factors, the job of meteorologists gets harder and more important every year. That's why they need our support. So maybe with a bit of work, a bit more money, and a little faith, next time it will be different, (yes, there will be a next time,) because the weather can be a weapon, but not one controlled by humans. Still, it is no less dangerous. Weathermen and weather-women are the ones trying to keep us safe and prepare us for what is to come, because if we aren't prepared then that would be the real crime.

Tropes: Stuffed in the Fridge

Tropes are all around us, on TV, in books, film, and video games. They  allow us to compartmentalize concepts so that our brains don't have to waste too much processing power over-thinking certain ideas, which is both good and bad. After all, when two guys show up with bad Italian/Brooklyn accents in nice suits, our brain tells us that they are gangsters and we don't have to over think it. The authors, directors, and character actors of the world would tell us this is a good thing. After all, these two goons will probably be killed off in the next scene by our hero and the audience doesn't need twelve minutes of back story to understand that Goon #2 joined the crime family after his mother's store was tragically lost in a fire and he had nowhere to turn for money but the crime boss that ran his old neighborhood, thus embroiling him in a life of crime that has caused part of his humanity to wear away even as he still regrets the terrible things that he has had to do, and all the while all he wanted to be was a baker. (Consequently, I think I also just wrote the biography of the Cake Boss.) See, even writing all that down in a semi-sarcastic manner took up more time and attention than might really be deserving of a character that will get a total of thirty seconds screen time. Tropes allow us to enjoy a story without getting bogged down in the minutia of what we are missing. Because otherwise, you get The Song of Ice and Fire, and we all know how long it takes George R.R. Martin to write one of those books.

However, tropes aren't always great either. After all, the Italian American League might have a problem with Goon #1 and Goon #2 being typical Tony Soprano-like figures. Not all Italians are in the mafia, after all. Similarly, not all women exist just to be tragically killed and left in household appliances... What am I talking about? I'm talking about the trope called "Stuffed in the Fridge," which is when a hero's loved one, usually a wife/girlfriend is killed in a gruesome manner and then left around for the hero to find and tragically cry over. This cliche than gives the hero something fight for and becomes an easy way for the audience to compartmentalize what drives the hero to do the extreme things he is forced to do. Now, technically this trope can apply to any family member: mother, father, brother, sister, wife, pet dog Skippy, etc. However the dead character is more likely to be a woman and the hero character is more likely to be a man. If you don't believe me, check out Gail Simone's website Women in Refrigerators for a complete list of women in comics that have been killed off for no other reason than to motivate the men in their lives to do something.

This is going to take a lot of boxes of baking soda.

The trope itself comes from a now famous Green Lantern comic, where the villain, Major Force, kills Kyle Rayner's girlfriend, Alexandra DeWitt, and literally stuffs her into a refrigerator so that Kyle can find her mutilated body, like some two month old pastrami left in the back of the fridge. Like I said before, tropes have their places and they aren't all bad, but there is something particularly negative about this one. First off, it is lazy writing. If you want to motivate your characters than put a little more thought into the process that, "pissed-off over dead girlfriend." Secondly, it uses women characters as nothing more than cheap props who live and die at the whim of their male counterparts. Whenever a writer needs a quick motivating factor there always seems to be some vanilla girlfriend/wife character hanging around to kill off. I mean otherwise that character would just get in the hero's way, wanting him to settle down and be domesticated and all, because everyone knows that's all women want... right? (That was sarcasm folks) Basically the trope puts the female character at the beckon call of the male hero. She's not there to be a fully formed character, but a pretty face on a photograph that is clenched angrily in the righteous fist of our burly man-hero, as he wrestles with desire for vengeance and his guilt over not being able to save his bland, pretty, vaguely characterized love interest. This is a trope and a way of thinking that is all too, unfortunately, common, especially in comic books.

Maybe that's why I am enjoying the irony of Agent Carter. (Wait, did he just switch into doing a television review?) Peggy Carter, or Captain America's girlfriend, is proving very much that she will not be so quietly stuffed into some womanly appliance. The irony of the show is that it is the big strong hero, Captain America, who is in fact dead (well she thinks so anyway,) and it's his death that is one of the driving factors in Peggy's personal crusade. In this instance the hero is gone, (he may not be stuffed in a fridge but he is in a place that's plenty cold,) and it's the "unimportant," girlfriend character that is left to do the ass-kicking. It's a parallel that was made pretty stark in the last episode, "Bridge and Tunnel," where the entire show was interspersed with snippets of the fictionalized Captain America Adventure Hour radio serial, featuring a typical damsel in distress character that only exists so that the fictionalized fictionalized Captain America can save her from those 'damn Nazis.'

Carter even gets her own, "Refrigerator" moment, when she discovers her roommate dead in bed with a bullet straight through her temple. It was a pretty textbook example of the trope, as well. The gruesome yet pointless death of a person close to the hero, meant to serve as nothing more than a motivating factor to further that hero's guilt/anger and story, except that in this instance, the hero is a woman. Unfortunately the person who was "Stuffed in the Refrigerator" was also a woman.

Feminism

I will admit that, Agent Carter, isn't perfect. After all Peggy Carter is so busy being brilliant and infallible that she has almost no flaws to speak of as she outsmarts every sexist man in her office. She is not a hero like Tony Stark, who can be arrogant, or Peter Quill, who can be kind of an idiot at times. For better or worse, because she is Marvel's first leading lady, she has to be better than human, which is both commendable and a little sad. I mean, from a 2015 perspective it is pretty easy to be on Carter's side as she is faced with a brand of 1940's sexism that is so blatant it would make J. Jonah Jameson feel ashamed. After all, we may waggle our finger when Carter's boss makes her do filing work or get everyone a cup of coffee, but we still don't bat an eyelash when Black Widow is put in a skintight cat suit. Yet, it is hard for me to be too harsh on the morals of Agent Carter. After all, they may not be perfect but at least she isn't occupying space behind the milk carton in the back of Captain America's ice-box.

The Dream Walker

It's been a long week back at work and I am admittedly out of my usual clever and witty ideas for writing. So for your enjoyment I thought it would be fun if I reproduce a supplemental story I wrote for a role-playing campaign I am running for my friends. Enjoy.

Dreams are born,
Dreams are bred,
Dreams are thorns,
Dreams to dread.

The scent is like fire in my nostrils. It is not smell in the sense most mortals or men understand it, but something deeper. It comes to me through the world of dreams, the world of my reality. The place where the heavens bear themselves open to me, unbound by the mortal flesh, where I rule, where I walk, and where I hunt.

The trail is fresh and I have been following it for leagues now. It had eluded me for a time, but there is no limit to the dream. Distance is but an insignificant speck among the vastness of eternity to one such as me, but even so, I knew I was now close, in both body and soul. The cursed one believes himself safe from me, shielded by his monstrous master and her deceptions. No one is safe, for I hunt on the most dangerous field of all.

Only one of ten men pay me any mind as I pass through the massive stone gates and with a touch they soon forget what they saw. They always forget, or they die screaming in their sleep. Either way they do not trouble me further.

Most people abhor my methods, but they have not seen what I have seen. My own kin and kind banished me from their borders for the words I spoke, the actions I have taken, the distances I am willing to go. Evil is a word bound in the dreamless world, just a bit of wind carried by the voice of a mortal. It has no distinction in my holy mission. There is only one who guides my actions and she has granted me this quest. There is a beast that will consume us all and it is my sacred duty to put it to rest. I do not have the luxury of bending to the moral judgments of the lesser.

This dreamless world is a strange place to me, full of anger and hatred, men in suits of metal, and men in suits of delusion. I walk by them all, a ghost on the wind, a shade at the tip of remembering and dismissed the next moment as if never existing. Only did I find one who could stand up to me.

He tried to lock me away in a collar of metal and mechanics. I consumed his dreams, I stole his nightmares, and I devoured his soul. Now he lives in me, a small part, but enough. I added him to my collection of voices and now he whispers to me, telling me things I would not normally know, a useful voice in this world devoid of dreams and magic. Strange words like “steam,” “shroud,” and “Ministry” swim up through the void to fill my mind.

The forest around me is sweet. It smells clean and pure with a hint of the sea. I allow myself to drift from the path, unmissed by the steady river of travelers who move down the road around me. I am a whisper, blown away by the breeze. I put my hand to the tree and feel its life below my skin. A tree does not dream as a mortal, but it dreams its own dreams, it exists in both the dreamless world and on the great plains of vision and mind. It is a comforting anchor, a creature not unlike myself, who walks in both. I am reminded of home and its tall wide trees, a place of paradise where the dream and the dreamer could truly be one.

Mortals and men are blind to what lays around them, consumed by their dreamless worries. They cannot walk in both as I can. When I gaze upon them, mulling past me on the road, like ants marching in their lines, I see what they cannot. I see their flesh and their faces with my own mortal sense, but I also see their spirits, the worlds that spin around them like the hands on a clock, worlds they can only glimpse as they lay in their beds.

An ugly farmer, with a boil for a noise, swims in a world where he is beautiful. A small boy of no more than nine summers walks in a suit of armor, the small dog beside him a mighty warsteed. Another woman, fat with child, has dreams of her son. In them she sees him growing up strong and doing great deeds, while the child in her womb dreams only of warmth and comfort and a soft voice without face. Behind her a man, her husband, with a straight spine, but a crooked bent in his soul dreams of her death. His mind is full of women, wine, coin, and the one murder he has already committed. It was self-defense, but he liked the taste of it on his lips and hands. He craves more and desires less family.

I peer harder and see their future. I see her broken body, and the cry of an abandoned child. I see the sorrow that will consume them all and for a moment I want to reach out and stop it. It would only take a touch and the man would fall screaming, his blood thirst cut short before the dream can come to pass, and the road before them all would be sweeter for it. Yet I stop myself. It is not my mission, not my place. The lives of mortals are their own in this dreamless world. So I let them pass down the road, the path to their futures set.

Uncertainty is not the right word, but it is hard for me to express emotions to those that do not fully experience the places I walk. Words are dry husks of something more. They are dead leaves carried about by whim, giving only the most passing impression of the true world. Still, I feel the need to reaffirm my quest, to reach out and find the nightmare I have been chasing.

The beast is so close I can almost taste his foulness. It repulses me to touch him, but I must. I calm myself, reaching both inward and outward. I cannot falter in my holy mission, not when I am so close to witnessing its completion. Soon I will face my fate as all must.

The first mind I find is basic yet brave and loyal. I know the sensation well: a wolf, still a babe as it bends its will to his master. The master is also a youth, but just as brave and of keen mind. There is barely a hair on his chin, but he swirls with secrets and half-glimpsed futures. There are paths to destiny on his road, if he does not fall among the brambles.

Another mind reaches out to grab me, like some giant fish jumping at a fly skittering across the stream. It is not a conscious effort on the part of this man, only a reflex he has long forgotten. He is a man of my own kin, the people of the forest, and in a way we are all bound together in dream and spirit. He is old, much older than the last, and his mind is littered with squalor. There are dark corners to his nightmares, those he has suffered, and even worse those he has inflicted upon himself. He has a buried heart, but even among the dark swamp of his mind it still beats, softly, but steadily.

The next man’s mind is like a fire. It burns to touch, yet I cannot seem to pull myself away, for there is warmth there. Words like responsibility and strength echo the halls of the castles he builds in his dreams. He is resolute in his convictions, straight as elven steel and twice as strong. Yet, it is a sword that cuts both ways in both victory and failure. It is a mind that can break bonds or break bones.

Simple, is not the proper word to use for the next mind I find. He is far from simple. Perhaps, uncomplicated or earnest are more precise. There is a stoicism there that lights every dream, and even his wrath and anger feel somehow clean. It is rare to find a creature without duplicity or malice, but even rarer to find one who has suffered as he has. I watch his pain among a cauldron of broiling memories, and yet they never bubble over.

These are the allies of the demon I seek, the men I must surely cut through to reach him, like a surgeon cutting away skin and bone to reach an infected organ. They are bound to the beast as he is bound to them in strange links of fidelity and shared experience. They are killers all, but not wicked. They are both good and bad, but I am beyond such distinctions. They protect the greatest evil, the beast which will lay siege to the lands. Their lack of foreknowledge is no excuse, in fact it will make them all the more dangerous.

Finally, my dreams reach out and I find the great evil. It is so close that I almost feel myself wither before it, but I cannot yield, nor do I dare touch its mind fully. I will not alert it to what is to come. The creature's mind is a vault, sealed off with locks of twisted magic and utter vileness. To even approach the door would be to close it forever and lose my chance to end the coming horror before it is unleashed.

I stand up, but I have no memory of ever sitting. The body has a mind of its own, and it is not a mind even I can control. Still my legs are sore and the dreamless part of me wonders if I have been still for moments or moon-turns. It is always such when I go seeking in the plains of dreams and visions. Yet the power that my great goddess has granted me is not without limits, for I only know the generalities of my target’s location. I will need to hunt him in more mundane ways if I truly wish to succeed, but he will not be able to conceal himself forever.

Finally, I turn my weary legs back toward the road. The voice of the man, who tried to bind me in steam and steel, floats up to me unbidden. I gaze upon the magnificent walls and soaring towers of the land that lay in the distance, the land upon which my feet now points. Words like “Long Neck” and “Kitehawk” swirl like vague memories in my mind. I pull them to me, learning all I can from the soul that now lives inside me. I will need this knowledge in the time ahead.

A small part of me regrets the things I may have to do, but I salve such wounds with the reminder that a few deaths are a small sacrifice to stop the coming horror, where corpses will be heaped upon themselves like logs on a fire. I look again to the city in the distance and I wonder if anyone there senses what is among them. I doubt it. To me the beast stands naked in all his true horror, but to them he is nothing more than a stranger.