Apparently, astronaut Sunita Williams will compete in the Boston Marathon this year even though she is stationed on the International Space Station. (I’d make some wisecrack about this being “your tax dollars at work” if my own stipend, which supports my own bike racing habits, weren’t funded exclusively by NASA dollars.)

Google Maps now allows you to search for directions between international locations, like, for example, Moscow, Russia and Anchorage, Alaska. Pay special attention to step 79. (via Metafilter.)

The folks over at the excellent blog Real Climate are freaking out over a very interesting paper in the Journal of Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics. The paper, “Does a Global Average Temperature Exist?”, contends that, because of the thermodynamic nature of temperature, the concept of average temperature is, at best, problematic.

The authors argue that the concept of average temperature is not meaningful:

The problem can be (and has been) happily ignored in the name of the empirical study of climate. But nature is not obliged to respect our statistical conventions and conceptual shortcuts. Debates over the levels and trends in so-called global temperatures will continue interminably, as will disputes over the significance of these things for the human experience of climate, until some physical basis is established for the meaningful measurement of climate variables, if indeed that is even possible.

First, this paper deserves credit for being in the very rare class of scientific papers that are clear, coherent, and carefully written. Second, the authors are correct that it’s not sensible, in the thermodynamic sense, to talk about average temperature. Why? Because temperature is what we call an intensive variable: it represents a quality of a system that doesn’t depend on system size. (Unlike an extensive variable, like volume or energy, that depends explicitly on system size.) You can add up the volume of a bunch of objects to find a total volume, but you can’t do that with temperature. (Two objects each at 90° do not equal one big object with a temperature of 180°!) But, for an average to mean anything, you need to be able to do that.

When we talk about temperature in the meteorological sense, we’re using it as a proxy for the internal energy of the atmosphere. But temperature is not actually — thermodynamically — a good proxy for energy, which is the source of the trouble. So the authors are correct that, regardless of the reality of climate change — and it is real — climate change deniers will continue to have ammunition if we can’t find a better defined measure of the changing earth environment. I’m not sure that the authors wouldn’t take this argument a step beyond, and claim that global warming isn’t real, but they’re nonetheless correct in their point.

I think all this stands to support the argument that it’s time to stop talking about Global Warming — a term that’s both overly simple and saddled with the baggage of politics — and start talking about Global Climate Change.

On Saturday we went downtown to run a couple of errands, and, when we were done, walked down to Prescott Park (which is right on the water, for those of you unfamiliar with our favorite town). We noticed that the drawbridge that connects downtown Portsmouth to downtown Kittery, Maine, was up. But the bridge goes up regularly throughout the day, so we thought nothing of it.

That is, until, walking back into town, we heard a huge, booming foghorn, and looked back down the street to see what appeared to be a four-story building had appeared at the end of State Street. We ran down to the water in time for an older couple to tell us it was a Liquid Propane Gas tanker, headed for the station upriver in Newington. A small armada of other boats — three tugs, a pilot boat, and a few police and coast guard vessels escorted it up the river and out of sight. And we thought we had had enough excitement for one weekend.

But on Sunday, just before midnight, we saw police lights and some unintelligible loudspeaker announcement. Outside, a veritable parade of police and utility trucks was escorting the single biggest vehicle I’ve ever seen up the street.

It turns out that it was a 215-ton transformer, headed from the Port of New Hampshire to a power plant in Londonderry. Apparently, driving down our street was the only way to avoid too-short underpasses on the way there.

So it was an interesting weekend — check out our Flickr set to see the whole crazy parade.

This afternoon we’re recovering from the premature ending of Kansas’s basketball season. (I can’t say I’m all that much of a basketball fan — or a Kansas fan — but it’s impossible not to root for them with a homegrown fan in the house.) With that, there’s no sports to watch (aside from the odd bicycle race) until the Sox’s season starts next week. They’ve got a solid rotation in place and Papelbon inked in at closer, so the pitching looks like it could be much improved from the end of last season, when it all but collapsed. I’m still confused about why they decided to break up the best infield in the game and about how they decided J.D. Drew was worth a ridiculously huge contract investment, but still, it’s exciting to have baseball back.

So it was sort of fitting that the Times ran this excellent piece about Adam Greenberg today. Greenberg is regularly compared to the legendary Moonlight Graham, who played in only one major league game, got on deck, but never got to bat. (Graham made an appearance in Field of Dreams, if that sounds familiar.)

Greenberg’s story is sadder: he got up to bat and got hit in the head by the first pitch, and hasn’t been the same since. This year he’ll start with the Royals’ AA affiliate, and he insists this is the year he’ll make it back. But who knows? But a week before the start of the season, the article is an excellent read about someone who came close to their dream only to have it dissolve away, and how he’s worked to get it back.