stuff I wrote elsewhere
IPCC and New Mexico Republican Senate candidates: compare and contrast
What I Love About Scientists
Say it, Kim: I do geology because it’s beautiful. I love being outside, scrambling through brush, and then looking up and seeing the mountain across the valley, or the potholes in a streambed, and feeling as though the breath has just been knocked out of me. I’m fascinated by the stories hidden in the textures [...]
begobblement
“begobblement” – the act of being eaten – is not a word. But it should be.
Ag, Cities, Water in Australia
Australians seem to want to confront the inevitable conflict between ag and urban water use by buying out the farmers: Australia’s government promised Tuesday to spend about $2.9 billion to buy river water from farmers in a bid to address the country’s worst drought in a century…. But a mayor in the farming district targeted [...]
The Inefficiences of the MWD
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California provided my introduction to the strange world of western water, so I was intrigued by the findings outlined here, in the introduction to David Zetland’s thesis: The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MET), a cooperative of retail and wholesale water utilities, serves 18 million people. This case [...]
You know you’re in the rich world when…
From the AP story on the Mars-Wrigley merger: “In terms of Warren Buffett’s sweet spot, these are exactly the kind of brands that he wants,” said Jet Hollander, a former candy industry executive who is president of the snack food consulting firm Pre-Eminence Strategy Group. I’m guessing they don’t have “snack food consulting firms” in [...]
Roundabouts of Albuquerque
View Larger Map That’s the roundabouts in the shopping center north of Coors and Montano, on Albuquerque’s west side – the last piece in my “Roundabouts of Albuquerque” project. The blue line is the GPS track from today’s bike ride. Zoom out to see the whole thing.
Backyard Birdseed
My colleague Susan Stiger did a nice job in this morning’s newspaper of connecting the dots between global food and local bird food: Don’t believe everything is connected? At the moment, gasoline prices, Burmese cooking oil and potato chips are ruffling the feathers on your backyard birds. This is a good example of an effective [...]
Signs of Spring
kids in the bumper boats at Hinkle Family Fun Center first hummingbird, sitting on the power line in the backyard (2005: April 16; 2007: May 2) first bloom on the Harrison’s rose (yesterday, exact same date as first bloom last year) first of the main purple iris bloom in the front yard, over the last [...]
Malaria and Global Warming
Roger Pielke Jr., my favorite thrower of inconvenient hand grenades, wrote a provocative post this week about the linkage between malaria and global warming. Malaria, Jeffrey Sachs writes, causes poverty.1 It does this by reducing economic productivity, creating a vicious cycle in which people get sick, can’t work, are less productive and therefore can’t afford [...]
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