The weather makes frequent appearance in this general introduction posts each month here at Blog Wyrm.  The primary reason is that it is easy to talk about, although, to paraphrase Will Rogers, no one does anything about it.  But one of the compelling reasons to talk about it, besides its impact on day-to-day living, is that sometimes Mother Nature goes out of her way to present the glory and beauty she possesses in a way that one simply can’t ignore.

Such has been her habit for the last several weeks.  About twice a week, she has opened her skies and brought rain down upon the land during my commute home.  Ordinarily the snarled traffic would cause me not end of headache but Mother Nature had a reward in mind.  Just as a certain overpass presented itself in my way, the rain would let up, the sun would emerge, and a spectacular arc would appear (as well as sometimes a fainter arc above and outside the main one).

Rainbow

The above picture can only give on a modest sense of the breathtaking wonder.  Needless to say, it made the whole trip worthwhile.

Now onto our own small wonders the posts, which, hopefully, will make the time you invest in reading them worthwhile.

A recent news story reported that Navy pilots saw hypersonic UFOs off the east coast of the United States.  Once a source of wide-spread skepticism, frequent scorn, and story material for science fiction both good and bad, UFOs have gained a bit of cache in the recent months.  But does that make them any more ‘scientific’ or are they still in the realm of ‘pseudoscience’ and what do any of these terms really mean?  This month’s Aristotle To Digital takes a stab at answer these questions by casting an uncompromising look at what really constitutes scientific inquiry and what problems arise when we blur the lines between science and pseudoscience.

Many people believe they know exactly what is wrong with a monopoly.  But when pressed the answers sound more like a politicians polemic than a hard and dispassionate analysis using the tools the ‘dismal science’ of economics.  Surprisingly in contrast to the way monopolies are portrayed in movies and in the often useless punditry that litters our public discourse, monopolies are really slackers in corporate disguise.  Common Cents continues its multipart analysis of how monopolies work by working with one of the favorite tools of economists the world over  – graphs of supply and demand curves.

Given the wide range of fluid behaviors and the weird phenomena that often crop up assuming a linear relationship between stress and strain rate may seem awfully limiting.  That is until one steps back and appreciates that the two most ubiquitous  fluids on the planet – water and air – often  follow such a Newtonian behavior.  This month Under The Hood explores Newtonian fluids and derives the famous Navier-Stokes equations.

Enjoy!