jfleck at inkstain

A few thoughts from John Fleck, a writer of journalism and other things, living in New Mexico

$10 bill on the sidewalk

There’s this old joke. Two economists are walking down the street when one points to the ground and says, “Look, a ten dollar bill!” The second economist replies, “That’s crazy. If that was a ten dollar bill someone would have picked it up already.” I love it because there’s a really interesting dynamic in it [...]

Science: It’s a tough job, but somebody’s gotta do it

I’d love to have been in on the meetings that lead to this paper. “I agree, we really need a better way to get to the question of whole-ecosystem metabolism and basin-scale carbon budgets. Lava Falls will be critical.”  

Halfway through the water year: fear and the attention economy

What we call here the “water year” runs from October to the end of September. It’s a useful tool, capturing the fall-winter-early spring water collection season, in which snow builds up in the mountains for later use by humans and ecosystem, followed by the water use season. So the end of March is a nice [...]

The power of Snopes. Or not.

I’ve always thought Snopes, the debunking site run by Barbara and David Mikkelson, is a treasure. Fighting the good fight and all. Kinda sad, then, but not surprising, to read this: When reporters interview us about our work, they often ask us to comment on the notion that we’re engaged in a great public service, making [...]

Another New West real estate metric: dog pee

My interest in water lured me into an interest in real estate, because of the way the West’s housing boom ramped up the demand for water, and the way the bust has scrambled the equation. So I’m looking for new ways of measuring the housing market’s recovery. I’m still scratching my head about this one, [...]

How Django Reinhardt survived the Nazis – the most interesting thing I read today

From Sociological Images, how Django Reinhardt survived the Nazi effort to exterminate the Roma by playing jazz: Reinhardt, then, survived because the Nazis loved jazz music, even as Hitler censored the music and, on his orders, people who dared to listen to, dance to, or play it were encamped and members of the groups who [...]

Gyroscopic self-leveling pool table

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always found the inability to play billiards on cruise ships to be one of society’s great technological dilemmas. Problem solved: Next up: poor people who have to cook with dung.

Magic socks

Sometime in the mid-1990s, I purchased three pairs of socks at the old Gil’s Runnershoe World on Carlisle and Lomas. The store’s long gone, its building torn down and replaced by a Walgreens. But the socks remain. In 1997, I was wearing a pair of them when I was caught in a storm while hiking [...]

Stuff I wrote elsewhere: football

Really. I wrote a newspaper piece about football (the pointyball kind). The backstory is the recent departure of a chap named Mike Locksley, who had a less than successful record coaching the University of New Mexico’s football team. I took to the front page of the morning paper to be what is almost certainly his [...]

From the whole Inkstain team, wishes for a Sassy Christmas

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