Nick Brooks kindly dropped by a few weeks back with a comment that’s worth pulling out and highlighting in its entirety. Brooks is assistant director of the University of East Anglia’s Saharan Studies Programme, and I’d commented on a paper of his on cultural response to climate change. Nick’s comment: Flattering that you guys are …
Continue reading ‘Brooks on Climate, Society and “Progress”’ »
In which a team of Australian researchers determines the half-life of the teaspoon. It would be easy to jump to conclusions here about the obvious policy responses this suggests, but I think it’s important to remember that science can do no more than inform the political/policy process. What society does with this information is as …
This is a great example of the issue Daniel Collins raised a couple of days ago in a discussion of the definition of drought – the extent to which the demand side of the equation must be taken into consideration. It’s a Reuters story about Prince Edward’s visit to northwest Kenya, “where drought has decimated …
Heard on a local TV ad today: Skiers and snowboarders! El Niño is back, and it’s gonna be a great year!
Because everyone has the attention span of a nine-year-old with a cocaine problem. (Hat tip Nora.)
cool new paper: Hainzl et al. show how rain can trigger earthquakes. stuff I wrote elsewhere: Wave in Alaska busts up iceberg off Antarctica (no big scoop here, every science writer with an angle has been doing this story, ’cause it’s so insanely cool) music: One of my favorite classic rock songs is Jim Hendrix’s …
A San Francisco Giants fan sends along this, evidence of a clever “Moneyball”-style plot to capitalize on the fact that Yankee fans are stupid enough to think Alex Rodriguez is a lousy ballplayer.
There apparently is a picture of me on the InterWeb. Also, I believe taken the same day, Mariachis. (You’ll recall that, in last week’s episode, Mariachis serenaded us along the bike trail. Coming up, the Mariachi Action Team (MAT) rescues Sophie from the SUB.)
Daniel Collins has a nice post on the problem of defining drought.
The latest ENSO forecast came out Thursday. No big surprises here: El Niño is strengthening, as expected, expected to continue into northern hemisphere spring 2007.