From this morning’s paper, a visit to Work Case 82B (sub/ad req) at the University of New Mexico’s Museum of Southwestern Biology, where they keep that which has gone extinct: The Carolina parakeet on the top shelf of Work Case 82B, green with a dingy red head, looks little different from the other 30,000 stuffed …
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Daniel Treisman: Among the countries for which I have data, the most robust correlates of fearfulness relate to countries’ religious traditions. Fear tends to be higher in countries where more people believe in Hell and where fewer believe in Heaven.
While cruising today with Nora at 99 Bahn, the Asian market on Albuquerque’s far south side, I learned there are a lot of different kinds of vegetarian soy sauce. This particular one is House Wife brand:
Cecil Adams goes through the thought experiment of how an Evil Genius might melt Earth’s icecaps, discarding one idea after another until landing on this: See how this grabs you. We come up with a process that traps energy in the atmosphere rather than letting it radiate away, perhaps involving an accumulation of gases such as …
I love our winter color palatte. This is one of the main ditches at the Bosque del Apache, a bird refuge on the Rio Grande south of Albuquerque. Taken in December a few years back.
Barro and McCleary get to the bottom of one of the central questions in 21st-century economics – beatification: We classify these blessed persons regionally in accordance with residence at death. These data are combined with time-series estimates of regional populations of Catholics, broadly-defined Protestants, Orthodox, and Evangelicals (mostly a sub-set of Protestants). Regression estimates indicate …
While shopping recently at the Dollar Store, Nora and I came across the new frontier in climate change communication – inexpensive toys. The Endangered Species Grow Pal, Penguin Edition, is apparently collectible, and was a bargain at just $1. (It’s the Dollar Store.) Its package includes this helpful background: Penguin populations have decreased by nearly …
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The folks at Arizona’s Salt River Project are soliciting ideas from the public for the time capsule they plan to bury as part of Roosevelt Dam’s centennial celebration this spring. “What would you lock away for 50 years and give to the future people of Phoenix?” My question is how many acre feet you could …
This dude used to work with me at the newspaper. He was in a back corner, both literally and metaphorically, and was kinda quiet, and it took me a while to figure out that he was the smartest and most interesting person in the room.
When I was a boy, I built a river in the backyard of our family home in Upland, California. I would put the hose at one end, running slowly, and let the water course down through channels and lakes of my own devising, beneath a cluster of lemon trees. Eventually the water would spill over …