Sometimes it’s not the main story but the sidebars that really deliver the goods: Telstra says it may have to install temporary mobile phone towers in Sydney’s west to replace ones which were damaged overnight when a man went on a rampage in a restored army tank. (Via Malcolm)
Belshaw captures well a certain strangeness about our current governance: This isn’t a liberal or conservative thing. It’s not a Democrat or Republican thing. It’s a loon thing. Where did these people come from?
Nothing to see here. Go there instead.
It’s that time of year: So it was a holiday. Festivities included houses decorated with red, white and yellow paper flowers, balloons and pennants, like many other villages en route. There was even a giant bicycle built by schoolchildren out of beaverboard and flowers displayed outside the town hall on Place François Mitterrand. Best was …
Bingaman’s bill is in the hopper: New Mexico Democratic Sen. Jeff Bingaman will introduce sweeping legislation today aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The bill, being introduced with Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Penn., would impose costs on industries that emit greenhouse gases, including coal, petroleum and natural gas. By reaching across the entire U.S. economy, the …
The dawn of salsa: A Smithsonian archaeologist has found evidence for what could be the seeds of salsa. Native farmers using caves as seasonal shelter as long as 1,400 years ago in the southern Mexican province of Oaxaca were eating a diet that would look very familiar in a modern Mexican kitchen. They ate corn, …
This is serious: Careers at stake with each swing, baseball players leave little to sport when it comes to their bats. They weigh them. They count their grains. They talk to them. But in towns like this one, in the heart of the mountain forests that supply the nation’s finest baseball bats, the future of …
On the political turbulence affecting the Airborne Laser: A delay in a key test and a potential multi-billion dollar price tag to field a working system has members of Congress on the verge of grounding the anti-missile Airborne Laser. With headquarters at Kirtland Air Force Base and most of the hands-on development and testing being …
Simon Donner observes the hurricane-wildfire link: Has the epidemic of wildfires reached the point that we need to talk about the summer fire season the way we talk about the hurricane season? Should we be as concerned, or maybe even more concerned, about the migration to the edge of the national forests as the migration …
Last night’s spectacular thunderstorm over Albuquerque is a great example of the spatial variability of the summer thunderstorm season. Lissa and I were out for a wander around sunset and saw it coming from the north, great flashes of lightning against the sunset sky. We had to stop at the market to get some breakfast …