Bike racing – not the kind of weekend jaunts we do around here, but the real deal European racing scene – is fucking crazy. I mean, we as fans should feel this deep and abiding guilt about what we demand of “our” athletes. The doping is only part of it. Think of the most exciting …
Some months ago I blogged in puzzlement over what might connect Matt Busby, Doris Day, B.B. King, etc. A commenter who goes by “total info” popped in this morning with the answer: Those three people were all replaced by doubles upon their deaths, like Paul McCartney. This kind of activity is perpetrated by intelligence outfits …
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Fascinating paper in GRL suggesting that the massive Three Gorges Dam in China is making rain more in the mountains to the west, and rain less in the area of the dam itself: The independent satellite data sets and numerical simulation clearly indicate that the land use change associated with the TGD construction has increased …
The bike racing web’s crackling with the Floyd news: American Tour de France favorite Floyd Landis (Phonak) will hold a press conference on Monday to respond to press reports that he is suffering from a degenerative condition that could threaten his career and may undergo hip surgery following this year’s race. Landis, sitting second in …
Since last November, I’ve been spending odd bits of time here and there hanging out with a group of bright teenagers who do math competitions. They’re a wonderful bunch of kids, nurtured by a great group of adults. (Journal photographer Marla Brose has been working on this with me since the beginning, and her pictures …
We rode one of my absolute favorite stretches of Albuquerque-area road this morning. It’s in the Manzano Mountains, the road leading east from Oak Flat Picnic Area, a twisting gentle descent through the woods that lets a slowpoke like me feel really fast without being so steep that you end up going scary fast. The …
Could one of you please make a blood donation? Thanks. Here’s the deal. I experienced a bit of a misadventure Wednesday morning when I went in to give blood. I’ve got difficult veins, and the phlebotomists just couldn’t get a good one Wednesday. After ten minutes of so of poking around, with very little blood …
There’s an interesting article in the August Bicycling magazine that explains how Floyd Landis has done it. When he was a young cyclist, Landis sat down with cycling doctor Arnie Baker and plotted out an eight year plan. In the early years, he rode as much as 24,000 miles per year – 40 hours a …
I didn’t have a chance to do a story for the newspaper on the new Science paper by Westerling et al.[1] on wildfires and climate change, so I just got around to reading it this evening. In a sense, it seems like a bit of a no-brainer. Common sense would suggest that when temperatures are …
Interesting El Niño forecast out today from the Climate Prediction Center: Most of the statistical and coupled models predict slightly positive SST anomalies (ENSO-neutral to weak El Niño) in the Niño 3.4 region through the end of 2006. These forecasts are consistent with the recent build up in upper-ocean heat content along the equator. I …