Zeta
Tropical storm Zeta. Atlantic sea surface anomalies.
Archive of entries posted on December 2005
Daybook
stuff I wrote elsewhere: 2005 Duke City’s 6th Hottest Year: Albuquerque is getting warmer. The year ends as one of the wettest and warmest years in history here. The warmth is a trend, while snowless mountains suggest the wet is not. readings: An interesting window into a world I don’t travel in: Teenagers Mix Churches …
Daybook
book: I’m rereading bits and pieces of Rivers of Empire, Donald Worster’s 1985 book about water and the west. When I read it 20 years ago, I was sympathetic to Worster’s argument that the concentration of power required for great irrigation works defined the social and political structures of the west. Not entirely convinced, but …
Getting Lit Up
While we here in Albuquerque were busy this holiday season setting ourselves alight, the residents of Tokyo appear to have tried a different approach. We had fun here. James suggests the Tokyo version is not worth the bother: This picture really doesn’t do them justice – they were much more boring and inconsequential than they …
Worst Pitcher Ever?
Wandering through my newly acquired baseball encyclopedia, I was looking at the records of some of baseball’s greats, and it got me wondering about baseball’s worst. Who, for example, is the worst pitcher in baseball history? It’d be easy to pick on someone like Bill Abernathie, who pitched two innings for the Cleveland Indians back …
Reviews of “Collapse”
I very much liked Jared Diamond’s Collapse, but as a non-specialist in the fields he writes about, I approached this work (like Guns Germs and Steel) with a bit of trepidation. So I was pleased this morning to run across this collection of reviews from the latest issue of Current Anthropology.
Daybook
weather: Looks like this morning’s overnight low of 40 set a record for Dec. 26 – 5 degrees F warmer than the old record of 35. It got down to 37 at my house, according to my new Christmas weather station. (update 10:19 a.m. – Doh! It’s the 27th, the record’s 40 set in 1923, …
Suburbs?
Coco explains why Corrales et al. weren’t really suburbs of Albuquerque back in 1750. Suburban-style development grew around existing villages after the first and second world wars as agriculture declined and land was sold or lost to taxes.
Beavers in the Bosque
My friend George, who commutes to work by bike very early in the morning, has seen beavers in the bosque a couple of times, at dawn on the west end of the Alameda Bridge where the Corrales drain empties into the river. I’ve never seen ’em, though I’ve seen gnawed tree trunks many times. But …
Happy Christmas Parties
With help from Nora, the Easy-Do Parties lady wishes you and yours an electric Christmas.