- reading: Everett Rogers’ History of Communication Study, suggested by a friend after I bemoaned the fact that, despite being a communications professional, I’m woefully ignorant about communication
- blogs: Nature’s new Climate Feedback blog looks promising, but I’m curious about something. The comments look suspiciously like a lot of the same people who show up at all the other climate blogs. Do we need another? A contingent “yes,” and I’ve added it to my blogroll and the Planet.
- garden: The iris are in full explosion in our front yard. Photos to follow. Tomatoes now in the ground in the back.
- word: irrigable – “The proper standard for measuring the water rights intended for the reservations was held to be `practicably irrigable acreage.'”
48
In past years, I’ve suggested that celebrating my birthday by riding my age was a modest goal. Forty-eight miles yesterday (77 kilometers, not sure what it is in metric years) was tough. I could blame the weather, but I really don’t have a lot of miles in my legs this year. Nah. I’ll go ahead and blame the weather.
Friends joined me for the ride, and we rode a favorite old route, down through the South Valley and out Rio Bravo onto Albuquerque’s southwest mesa. From the mesa you can see the city laid out before you, and it’s always been a special view for me: the sight I saw the first time Lissa, Nora and I pulled into town 17 years ago pulling a U-Haul with all our belongings. You can see how huge Albuquerque is from there, a big western city, but also how small, because you can see the edges.
It was stormy all day, with a howling wind. The view across the valley fit what my meteorologist friends call “energetic” – big shafts of precipitation against the mountains, clouds dancing across the city. That’s the best kind of ride, because it adds adventure, and I was with friends, suffering a bit (but really, not a lot) together.
Trying to find a way to cut back into town out of the wind, we followed an old shortcut we used to take years ago, when Jaime lived on the west side and we rode out there all the time. Around a closed gate, we found ourselves in the middle of a construction site where our shortcut used to be. Cyclocross across some packed dirt, then a fence.
“You know it’s a good ride when you have to climb a fence,” Cable said. Indeed, it was a good ride.
On Parenthood: Espisode XVII
The kids will do fine:
On New Mexico Drought
Describing current New Mexico drought conditions is a bit of a puzzle. Out in my Albuquerque garden this morning, I was pulling weeds easily out of damp soil, and the plants, with no supplemental water, are going bonkers. Yet I’ve been writing stories about surface water supply problems. What gives?
No Plagues Today
Malcolm caught this. Click through if you can’t read the fine print.
Science in Service of Society
Here in the arid west, one of the real pressing questions is the effect of reclaimed water on fairways and especially putting greens:
Although deficit irrigating can be practiced for short periods, adequate LFs are essential for the long-term success of golf courses irrigated with reuse water.
Good to know.
First Hummingbird Sighting
Inkstain Staff Ornithologist Big Toe spotted the first hummingbird of spring yesterday (May 1), so I had him go back through the records of first hummingbird sightings at Inkstain World Headquarters. This sighting appears to be substantially later than in 2004 (April 20) and 2005 (April 16). Big Toe attributes this late migration to later spring warming in the hummingbirds’ wintering grounds, and suggests this is definitive evidence of global cooling.
Steve Brügge’s eighth graders have done their annual chemistry cartoons:
Puzzling Connections
From Amazon:
We’ve noticed that customers who have expressed interest in Prediction: Science, Decision Making, and the Future of Nature by Orrin H. Pilkey have also ordered The Most Important Fish in the Sea: Menhaden and America by H. Bruce Franklin.
California Snowpack
On California’s dismal snowpack, from the Chron:
The water content of the Sierra Nevada snowpack is at its lowest level in nearly 20 years — less than 40 percent of usual for this time of year, state water officials say.
The size of the snowpack — the source for most of the state’s drinking water — has already prompted calls for immediate conservation. And orders to curtail use of water could become mandatory this summer or next year if 2008 is also dry.
Usually the biggest accumulation of snow occurs around April 1. But this year the snowpack didn’t grow after the first week in March.
Elissa Lynn, senior meteorologist at the California Department of Water Resources, called the 2007 snowfall “pretty dismal.”
(Hat tip Belshaw.)