Thursday, February 18, 2010

Weather Does Not Compute

Do you know what Southern California needs? Cyborg weathermen.
   This time of year the weather is very important in LA, because it's the only time of year we get weather. You can see the giddy excitement building in our local weathermen starting a little before Thanksgiving, when the winds start to change and things cool off. Slightly. But then come Christmas, oh man, they go nuts.
   But there are so many of them, on too many channels. You got your Johnny Mountain, your Fritz Coleman, your Dallas Raines, your Kaj Goldberg and other less-colorfully named weathercasters, a veritable legion of people trying to bring me up-to-the-minute weather. They each put their own spin on what is essentially the National Weather Service forecast, and I don't know who to listen to.
   If we had a cyborg weatherman, though... ah, that would enforce consistency. Cyborgs don't need to eat or sleep, so they could be up all the time, 24x7, during severe weather. You'd only need one cyborg per channel, and you could use the salary expense saved to get more accurate forecasts - for the three months that sort of thing makes a difference here. If the eggheads at CalTech aren't already working on this, they should be.
   Let's see... who to cyborg first? I'd love to put metal parts on Fritz Coleman, but I think Johnny Mountain should lead the pack on this one, he would benefit the most from rigorous computer-based thinking.

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