Private Water

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Water management, sale and delivery has traditionally been the province of government in the United States. But an interesting story out of Texas heralds some significant potential for change:

In the five years since billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens started trying to sell water from beneath the vast empty spaces of West Texas, he hasn’t had any paying customers.

Not one city or local agency has signed on, even after years of drought conditions and soaring water usage by Texas’ booming population, which is expected to more than double by 2060.

However, officials at Pickens’ company aren’t concerned. And water law experts say they shouldn’t be because, quite simply, the second-most populous state in the nation is running low on water.

Happy Together

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Back to work on the morrow, I’ll leave my weeks’ vacation with one last bit of business.

There are competing tales of the origin of the fortune cookie. Everyone agrees it was born in the United States, but beyond that its history is the product of a classic Northern California-Southern California rivalry, each claiming provenance and both sides lacking in the definitive evidence to seal the deal.

The Northern California origin myth has the cookie invented by Makota Hagiwara, who ran the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park. According to this version, a racist city government kicked Hagiwara out in 1907, only to succumb to political pressure from Hagiwara’s more liberal-minded supporters. Hagiwara, the story goes, invented the cookie as a way of quietly conveying thank-you notes to his supporters.

I kind of like this version, if only for sentimental reasons. When we went to the tea garden last week, this was the fortune I received with my tea:

You and your wife will be happy in your life together.

That seems about right.


Albuquerque Bicycle Map

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Albuquerque Bicycle Map

Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck.

The city of Albuquerque has published a new bicycle map. I point this out because I went on a wander this morning on the bike, deciding to follow the green “bike route” signs north out of my neighborhood. It was a bit of an adventure, especially the part where the bike route signs directed me onto Montgomery NE, which seems to me one of the class A bike unfriendly streets in this town. Sunday morning, not so, though. And mostly, the signs offered a reasonable way through neighborhoods I don’t normally ride through, so it was a plus. I used the map afterward to figure out where I’d been.

It’s a good map, though I can’t help but think there’s room for some sort of Google maps/Google Earth/kmz mashup here. I’m not saying here that “they” should do it. This is a perfect opportunity for some sort of Wiki-Creative Commonsish sort of thing, so I suppose if I think it should exist there’s no reason not to make it myself. I dunno. Maybe this is the sort of thing that works better on paper. It’s not like I’ve got Google Earth along on my bike rides. And I did send for a paper copy.

Daybook (Nightbook?)

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  • reading: Endangered Species, Steve Younger’s discussion of the complexities of being a pacifist nuclear weapons designer
  • reading II: Just finished – Howl on Trial, a collection of letters from in and around the time of the publication of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, along with transcripts of the obscenity trial that are an absolute hoot.
  • music: Epistrophy, on the recommendation of the guy at Natural Sound in Albuquerque. It’s a performance by Charlie Rouse, a longtime sideman to Thelonious Monk, doing a tribute of Monk’s music.
  • writing/paper of the day: I’m working on a piece about Maya Elrick and Linda Hinnov’s collection of deep paleo records in sedimentary rocks ((Millennial-scale paleoclimate cycles recorded in widespread Palaeozoic deeper water rhythmites of North America, Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology,Volume 243, Issues 3-4, 22 January 2007, Pages 348-372)) suggesting that millennial-scale variability is a permanent feature.
  • line of the day: “listening to the crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox,” from Howl, though it’s a sound that Steve Younger (see reading, above) also has heard up close

Shutting Down PlanetFleck

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Just an FYI, PlanetFleck will be shutting down within a day or two. I post this here because there seem to be four or possibly five people reading it regularly, but I only know who two or three of them are (and one of those is me).

Its original purpose was to give me an aggregated feed of the blogs I read, something available wherever I happened to be sitting (i.e. either here at home, or while at work). Google Reader now admirably handles that task, with more bells and whistles, so the technical and social hassle of maintaining my Planet no longer seems worth the trouble.

Scientists, the Public and Risk

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Richard Kerr has an excellent article in today’s Science ((Pushing the Scary Side of Global Warming, Science 8 June 2007: 1412-1415, sub. req.)) looking at the discomfort scientists face in going beyond the IPCC’s conclusions on the extent to which sea level might rise over the next century. The problem here is how to approach public communication and public policy in an area where the science is moving considerably faster than the consensus-identification process of the IPCC:

Continue reading ‘Scientists, the Public and Risk’ »

Quenching Front Range Thirst

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Via Coco, another scheme (this one with private money) to get water from the sparsely populated western Colorado side of the continental divide to the heavily and rapidly growing east:

Time will tell whether Aaron P. Million’s plan to bring water from Flaming Gorge Reservoir to the Front Range will make him a legend in Colorado water lore or just another wild-eyed, big-talker with a water scheme.

Million’s $3 billion project, which he says will be completed in three to five years, would move up to 250,000 acre-feet of water annually from the reservoir on the Utah/Wyoming border.

Water would be pumped through a 400-mile pipeline across southern Wyoming along Interstate 80 to Colorado’s Front Range – serving up to 650,000 homes.

Big Toe in Chinatown

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Big Toe in Chinatown

Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck.

Big Toe met up with us while we were in San Francisco. Before he came to Inkstain, he worked for some time for a jade importer in Chinatown, and he spent a few hours showing me around and introducing me to some of his old friends. The whole thing is a bit mysterious to me, but I have my suspicions. Big Toe’s copious knowledge of paleontology remains unexplained, but is entirely consistent with the possibility that the “jade merchant” was really a front for illegal importation of Chinese dinosaur fossils.

Sometimes it’s best not to ask.