Billmon:
So, if you’re one of those people who’ve e-mailed to tell me that you check every day to see if I’ve posted something new, you should stop now. You’ll only be disappointed.
Back to Main
September 26, 2006
WB: Between Sets
Comments
“Now it’s time to catch up (and also get ready for the big move up to the Arctic Circle).”
Aha! You’re a refrigerator salesman. At last the truth comes out.
I will really miss your intelligent ‘un-intelligence analysis’ and look forward to your return when ever time and constraints permit.
Posted by: pb | Sep 26 2006 1:06 utc | 1
another really sad day in the blogosphere.
thelrd in TEXAS
Billmon has been so hot recently.
Posted by: larry davis | Sep 26 2006 1:43 utc | 2
Your voice is important to so many of us and will be missed, Billmon. Please find whatever it is you’re looking for and return soon.
this is the saddest news i’ve heard in a while.
catch up and come back. or just write a book, dammit.
Posted by: georg | Sep 26 2006 2:00 utc | 6
Hey Billmon,
Do what you got to do.
We all need to be thinking/working in that direction. If I would never hear from you again, which I seriously doubt, I would consider it a remarkably worthwhile relationship and feel blessed to have experienced your writings & personality.
But I think we’re simultaneously preparing for the upcoming bifurcation and we’ll meet again.
Good fortune!
Posted by: Juannie | Sep 26 2006 2:24 utc | 8
Thanks billmon. But can’t you find a compromise between feast & famine? Can’t you set aside a little play time every week or two to blog?
Posted by: jj | Sep 26 2006 3:54 utc | 10
This is actually a good thing, because it’s very, very hard to do as billmon does: no living person could possibly do as he does without also taking a break (he makes it look easy–that’s part of his charm–but it really isn’t so).
Posted by: alabama | Sep 26 2006 3:58 utc | 11
I’m one who checks everyday. Thanks for your perspective and time. We’ll be here waiting for your return.
Posted by: mpower1952 | Sep 26 2006 4:02 utc | 12
Waaaaahhhh. You heartbreaker you! I’ll miss you.
Best wishes with the corporate day job. Squeeze every penny you can out of the bastards.
Posted by: cj | Sep 26 2006 4:07 utc | 13
1) Yes, the old boy does have a sense of irony.
2) Baffin Island is lovely this time of year.
3) Remember Kibo? How he tried to take some time off, and “they” held an election and chose a new “Kibo” and the old Kibo had to fight to get his old job back, and Dr. Plutonium never forgave him?
Posted by: dooglefish | Sep 26 2006 4:21 utc | 14
billmon, i have often wondered how you have kept up this pace and kept the corporate overlords at bay. there are times, like today, when there isn’t time to keep up with reading your and bernhard’s posts never mind writing a paltry comment. thank you for again your sharing your artful polemics. we’ve managed before to keep the place going in your absence, and it looks like we’ll all just have to pool efforts once again. good luck out there. as long as bernhard’s willing, we’ll leave a light on.
Posted by: conchita | Sep 26 2006 4:39 utc | 15
Please don’t be so melodramatic, folks. I just gotta go earn my paycheck for a little while. That’s all.
Posted by: billmon | Sep 26 2006 4:49 utc | 16
Billmon, can we trust that in the event of a crisis, you will return so we can share it – another rigged election, Iranian invasion…that kind of thing…??
Posted by: jj | Sep 26 2006 5:14 utc | 17
Was it Johnny P. or Izzy S. who said something about taking this and/or that job and shoving it?
And now that I think of it, what was it again that the good Doktor said about a man who writes for free?
.
Barring anything untoward, we’ll still be here when you get the time to drop us a line, Billmon. I’d just like to send you a very un-melodramatic thanks for all the time and energy you’ve given us so far.
Posted by: Monolycus | Sep 26 2006 5:46 utc | 19
AAARRGGGHHH!!! I’ll check every day anyway. I can’t help it. A person has got to have HOPE.
Posted by: SaiHo | Sep 26 2006 10:57 utc | 20
It’s called life…go have one and enjoy it now with your family.
Best of luck!
Posted by: Parallax | Sep 26 2006 14:25 utc | 21
Thanks, Billmon; you provided some real clarity these last few months. Best of luck to you and yours.
Geez, maybe now I’ll have to come up with some original thoughts for my rather dormant blog…..
The last thing we’d ever want is for your muse to burn out permanently for any reason. So rest, refuel, recharge, and…return! …when the urge to comment once again becomes irresistible, as, knowing you, it no doubt will.
With much gratitude and appreciation for all that you do with this blog.
Posted by: Bea | Sep 26 2006 15:01 utc | 23
GLOUCESTER
I have no way, and therefore want no eyes;
I stumbled when I saw: full oft ’tis seen,
Our means secure us, and our mere defects
Prove our commodities. O dear son Edgar,
The food of thy abused father’s wrath!
Might I but live to see thee in my touch,
I’ld say I had eyes again!
Old Man
How now! Who’s there?
EDGAR
[Aside] O gods! Who is’t can say ‘I am at
the worst’?
I am worse than e’er I was.
Old Man
‘Tis poor mad Tom.
EDGAR
[Aside] And worse I may be yet: the worst is not
So long as we can say ‘This is the worst.’
——————————-
DON’T FORGET THIS
Posted by: American | Sep 26 2006 15:31 utc | 24
Thanks for taking some time off, Billmon. You’ve been enabling my procrastination about earning my paycheck for far too long and my colleagues and partners have started to notice. Now I can get back to earning a living too.
Posted by: kaleidescope | Sep 26 2006 18:46 utc | 25
Beal Mons (suffering from lenny bruce disease)
heads for the last exit
to brooklyn, offstage the harpies &
nudniks
deconstruct
we’ll soldier on without ye,laddie
funny & fun
tx
…
Just a thanks for sharing your insightful and well crafted view of what be. Best wishes!
Posted by: mzinformed | Sep 27 2006 0:25 utc | 28
I listened to the I.F. Stone radio spot and must say that I drew a connection between that panel of guests, plus host, and how Billmon seemed to be stunted by interruptions as he began to illustrate a point. It rather reminded me of Whiskey Bar back in the time when folks actively participated. I felt a similar frustration. or impatience from Billmon. Maybe just my imagination.
Billmon is one of those who needs to have free rein…. that’s just the way I like him and his writings. I’ve found much enjoyment when reading his posts and I don’t need others who challenge, contest, redirect. Let the guy write!!! lol
Posted by: SoandSo | Sep 27 2006 0:32 utc | 29
hope it’s a short break…
guardian: Earth’s temperature is dangerously high, Nasa scientists warn
Earth’s temperature could be reaching its highest level in a million years, American scientists said yesterday.
Researchers at Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies said a further one degree celsius rise in the global temperature could be critical to the planet, and there was already a threat of extreme weather resulting from El Niño.
The scientists said that in the 30 years to the end of 2005, temperatures increased at the rate of 0.2 degrees per decade, a rate they described as “remarkably rapid”.
Comparison of the current global temperature with estimates of historical temperatures – based on a study of ocean sediment – showed the current temperature was now within 1C of the maximum temperature of the past million years.
Dr James Hansen, who led the study, said further global warming of just 1C could lead to big changes to the planet.
“If warming is kept less than that, effects of global warming may be relatively manageable,” he said.
“But if further global warming reaches two or three degrees celsius, we will likely see changes that make Earth a different planet [to] the one we know.
“The last time it was that warm was in the middle Pliocene, about 3m years ago, when sea level was estimated to have been about 25 meters (80 feet) higher than today.”
Posted by: b real | Sep 27 2006 2:35 utc | 30
but on the other hand, in the observer today:
The earth could be rescued from global warming by an unlikely saviour: not fewer cars, nor less pollution, nor even thousands of wind farms spread across Britain’s hillsides – but, remarkably, by a cooler Sun. An
international group of scientists believes a period of reduced solar activity could soon bring desperately needed cooling to our sweltering world.
It won’t be permanent, but it may offer us a chance to save our sorry butts if we can wake up the human race quickly enough to take advantage of the most important window of opportunity of our lives.
Posted by: conchita | Sep 27 2006 3:05 utc | 31
i’ll match that entry & raise the temp a bit more 😉
Study acquits sun of climate change
September 15, 2006 OSLO, Norway (Reuters) — The sun’s energy output has barely varied over the past 1,000 years, raising chances that global warming has human rather than celestial causes, a study showed on Wednesday.
Researchers from Germany, Switzerland and the United States found that the sun’s brightness varied by only 0.07 percent over 11-year sunspot cycles, far too little to account for the rise in temperatures since the Industrial Revolution.
“Our results imply that over the past century climate change due to human influences must far outweigh the effects of changes in the sun’s brightness,” said Tom Wigley of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research.
…
“The solar contribution to warming over the past 30 years is negligible,” the researchers wrote in the journal Nature of evidence about the sun from satellite observations since 1978.
They also found little sign of solar warming or cooling when they checked telescope observations of sunspots against temperature records going back to the 17th century.
They then checked more ancient evidence of rare isotopes and temperatures trapped in sea sediments and Greenland and Antarctic ice and also found no dramatic shifts in solar energy output for at least the past millennium.
“This basically rules out the sun as the cause of global warming,” Henk Spruit, a co-author of the report from the Max Planck Institute in Germany, told Reuters.
…
Spruit said a “Little Ice Age” around the 17th century, when London’s Thames River froze, seemed limited mainly to western Europe and so was not a planet-wide cooling that might have implied a dimmer sun.
And global Ice Ages, like the last one which ended about 10,000 years ago, seem linked to cyclical shifts in the earth’s orbit around the sun rather than to changes in solar output.
“Overall, we can find no evidence for solar luminosity variations of sufficient amplitude to drive significant climate variations on centennial, millennial or even million-year timescales,” the report said.
Solar activity is now around a low on the 11-year cycle after a 2000 peak, when bright spots called faculae emit more heat and outweigh the heat-plugging effect of dark sunspots. Both faculae and dark sunspots are most common at the peaks.
rpt was based on this paper, which, like the sun is over my head
Variations in solar luminosity and their effect on the Earth’s climate
Posted by: b real | Sep 27 2006 3:34 utc | 32
I heard a reliable science program on the radio today – said So. Greenland had warmed up 4 deg. in last few yrs (2 or 4, I forget which), and that enough ice had melted to more than fill Lake Eerie! But we can take a cruise over the ex-polar ice cap!! Yippee..
Posted by: jj | Sep 27 2006 3:38 utc | 33
Thanks billmon. Hopefully, next time you returned to full steam posting we won’t be talkin about an Iran attacked.
Posted by: izzet | Sep 27 2006 4:06 utc | 34
I’ve heard rumors that there is an entity called the real world out there, and I hope you find it to your liking. As for your last set, it were a good ‘un.
Posted by: Roger Bigod | Sep 27 2006 15:09 utc | 35
All the best Billmon, have a coke or something stronger, an olive, a paprika crisp.
Thanks.
Posted by: Noirette | Sep 27 2006 15:54 utc | 36
Billmon,
Thanks so much for the food for thinking you provide.
I am saddened that your corporate day job is “soulless”, and “meaningless”. For someone of such obvious talent and estimable sentiments to not have found a way to marry these with the necessary task of making a living is a pity, and a waste IMHO. Though I suppose we have all benefitted from the diversion of your talents to the blogosphere.
Keep well.
Posted by: PeeDee | Sep 28 2006 9:20 utc | 37
that was a short break, billmon must be multitasking 😉
Posted by: annie | Sep 28 2006 16:15 utc | 38