Global Warming To Smack The US -- January 25, 2019 -- Polar Vortex

Minor notes:

• Minot, ND, this morning: 66 degrees below zero, wind chill
• Weather Channel: coldest weather in two years about to hit the US
• "life-threatening cold invades the US" -- the Weather Channel crawler 
• polar vortex; colder than usual
• Chicago: the cold spell could be relatively short in duration
• Devils Lake, ND: forecast to hit 32 degrees below zero; that's not wind chill; that's actual air temperature
• Minneapolis, MN, cancels Winter Carnival, too cold. Are you kidding? Only 8 degrees below zero; real Minnesota folks could have handled that -- it must be all the new folks. They may need to schedule the winter carnival later in the year, maybe June or July

Reality:

• for all that talk, Winter Storm Harper was a typical winter storm for the US; those focused on AGW were simply taken by surprise; this wasn't supposed to happen in their movie; looking for an alternate ending
• Winter Storm Indra even less remarkable: mostly just some rain
• real storm: the government shutdown -- New York area airports shutting down/delayed due to ATC sick-out
• government will open up long enough to keep TSA/ATC on duty through the Super Bowl

**************************************

Notes for the Granddaughters

From:  Anabasis Alexandrou, The Campaigns Of Alexander, The Landmark Arrian, Edited By James Romm, c. 2010.

Greek and Macedonian ethnicity, p. 333:

The origins of the historical Macedonians as a people .... [o]ne matter, however, is certain: modern scholarship no longer adheres to hte anthropological question that dominated so much of mid-20th-century thought: Where does a people come from? Unless there is a clear archaeological and/or literary tradition describing the migration of a people from one place to another, modern scholars are increasingly inclined to ask: How and when does a people emerge? That is, by what process and under what influences does it acquire a character that makes its constituent members appear to be different and distinct from others, and to those around them, for these are the ways that ethnicity is characterized.

Notes on the book.

• the author: Arrian --
• full name: Lucius Flavius Arrianus
• the full name suggests that the Greek author's family most likely received Roman citizenship after Vespasian's triumph in the civil wars (69 - 70 CE -- 69 CE was the Year of the Four Emperors)
• most likely wrote during the reign of Hadrian (r. 117 - 138 CE) almost four centuries removed from the time of Alexander himself
• Arrian was a citizen and high official of a wide-ranging, multicultural, stable, and organized empire (the Roman Empire); not a member of a small, autonomous Greed city-state as many previous writers on Alexander were
• he spent much of his career in the military and administrative leadership of that empire
• he served as governor of Cappadocia in the 130s, the Roman province that included much of modern-day Turkey
• he was closely connected to Hadrian
• had a deep and automatic respect for authority
• had a high regard for great generalship and tactical success
• "worshipped" Alexander the Great; would likely "skew" his biography of the campaign
• his chief literary role models and rivals were Greek
• emulated Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon
• he even referred to himself as "the New Xenophon"
• Plutarch was an older contemporary of Arrian
• his main sources: Ptolemy and Aristoboulos
• Aristoboulus: an interior decorator; over the age of 80 when he began writing his history of Alexander
• Ptolemy I Soter: a close friend and perhaps Alexander's top general (certainly one of the top five)
• first foreign king/pharaoh of Egypt
• started the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt that last 300 years
• famously, women rulers in the Ptolemaic dynasty had significant power (the Cleopatra we "know" was Cleopatra #7; the first Cleopatra was Alexander the Great's sister)Notes for the Granddaughters
  
  From:  Anabasis Alexandrou, The Campaigns Of Alexander, The Landmark Arrian, Edited By James Romm, c. 2010.
  
  Greek and Macedonian ethnicity, p. 333:
  

  The origins of the historical Macedonians as a people .... [o]ne matter, however, is certain: modern scholarship no longer adheres to hte anthropological question that dominated so much of mid-20th-century thought: Where does a people come from? Unless there is a clear archaeological and/or literary tradition describing the migration of a people from one place to another, modern scholars are increasingly inclined to ask: How and when does a people emerge? That is, by what process and under what influences does it acquire a character that makes its constituent members appear to be different and distinct from others, and to those around them, for these are the ways that ethnicity is characterized.

  Notes on the book.
• the author: Arrian --
• full name: Lucius Flavius Arrianus
• the full name suggests that the Greek author's family most likely received Roman citizenship after Vespasian's triumph in the civil wars (69 - 70 CE -- 69 CE was the Year of the Four Emperors)
• most likely wrote during the reign of Hadrian (r. 117 - 138 CE) almost four centuries removed from the time of Alexander himself
• Arrian was a citizen and high official of a wide-ranging, multicultural, stable, and organized empire (the Roman Empire); not a member of a small, autonomous Greed city-state as many previous writers on Alexander were
• he spent much of his career in the military and administrative leadership of that empire
• he served as governor of Cappadocia in the 130s, the Roman province that included much of modern-day Turkey
• he was closely connected to Hadrian
• had a deep and automatic respect for authority
• had a high regard for great generalship and tactical success
• "worshipped" Alexander the Great; would likely "skew" his biography of the campaign
• his chief literary role models and rivals were Greek
• emulated Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon
• he even referred to himself as "the New Xenophon"
• Plutarch was an older contemporary of Arrian
• his main sources: Ptolemy and Aristoboulos
• Aristoboulus: an interior decorator; over the age of 80 when he began writing his history of Alexander
• Ptolemy I Soter: a close friend and perhaps Alexander's top general (certainly one of the top five)
• first foreign king/pharaoh of Egypt
• started the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt that last 300 years
• famously, women rulers in the Ptolemaic dynasty had significant power (the Cleopatra we "know" was Cleopatra #7; the first Cleopatra was Alexander the Great's sister)