Daybook
reading: Preparing for a talk at UNM in a couple of weeks, I’m rereading a couple of old sciency favorites: Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions and The Golem, by Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch. paper of the day: Abrupt changes in rainfall during the twentieth century, by some UW-Madison folks, offering a new and [...]
The Perfect Drought
Bettina Boxall writes in the LA Times about “the perfect drought”: Nature is pulling a triple whammy on Southern California this year. Whether it’s the Sierra, the Southland or the Colorado River Basin, every place that provides water to the region is dry. It’s a rare and troubling pattern, and if it persists it could [...]
Worsening Western Drought
Drought conditions continue to worsen across the Western U.S., according to the latest edition of the drought monitor, out this morning: Temperatures fell from the previous week’s lofty levels but remained above normal for the 7-day (March 20-26) period. Late in the period, favorably cooler, wetter weather arrived in the West in conjunction with a [...]
Irrigated Agriculture
Apropos of nothing except that I’m fascinated by the interplay between agriculture and urbanization in the West, I ran across this data this evening in the Census of Agriculture (and if I blog it here, I can Google it and find it later): Irrigated agricultural acreage in Bernalillo County (that’s the county in which Albuquerque [...]
Global Warming to Speed Earth’s Rotation
Felix W. Landerer and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg say global warming will slow down speed up Earth’s rotation by changing ocean bottom pressure, in the process shifting mass around: We find a net transfer of mass from the Southern to the Northern Hemisphere, and a net movement of mass [...]
Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere
Of possible interest to New Mexicans, on the price of uranium.
Cattails
The first cattails are popping up in the backyard pond.
Moth on Screen
Moth on Screen Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. Saw this guy this morning on our front door. I don’t know my bugs. Anyone in the audience able to identify? update: Chantal, in the comments, says: “That’s a white-lined sphinx hummingbird moth!”
Parrot tulip
Parrot tulipOriginally uploaded by heinemanfleck. The garden’s going all nutso pretty all of a sudden, and Lissa got some nice pictures for me this afternoon, that we might share with y’all. The parrot tulips are the showiest of all right now. Meanwhile, the grape hyacinth are everywhere right now – sprinkled through our big iris [...]
High Strange New Mexico
One of the great little New Mexico films, Tony DellaFlora’s High Strange New Mexico, is now available on line. (Hat tip The Fix.)
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