Chris Mooney has a piece in Seed about heeding the Cassandras – the scientists who saw trouble coming and tried to warm people. In this case, it’s Al Naomi, who works for the Corps of Engineers: Pre-Katrina, he was pushing for a study of how to bring the city’s hurricane protections up to Category 5 …
The overnight low this morning in Albuquerque – 42 – was a record. Previous record – 41, back in 1982. (Via NewWest, we note that it’s a bit colder in Pinedale, Wyoming.) (update Jan. 2, 2006: Ken points out that it dropped down to 38 before midnight, so that’s the official Jan. 1 low. I …
In my own modest search to undestand the zeitgeist of the Inkstain reader, the top gaining search string for December 2005: Jeff “Skunk” Baxter. Big ass remains a perennial favorite (Was that really what they were looking for?), as does “don’t bogart that joint”. Sadly, inflatable turkeys seem to have dropped off the radar after …
Santa gave Kurt Vonnegut’s new book to Nora and me for Christmas, and I finished it this morning. Perhaps when I’ve more time I’ll jot down some ideas about Vonnegut’s significance to me as a writer (or perhaps I already have, though the idea deserves a bit more development than you’ll find there). But for …
Tropical storm Zeta. Atlantic sea surface anomalies.
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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.