Of possible interest to New Mexicans, on the price of uranium.
Cattails
The first cattails are popping up in the backyard pond.
Moth on Screen
Saw this guy this morning on our front door. I don’t know my bugs. Anyone in the audience able to identify?
update: Chantal, in the comments, says: “That’s a white-lined sphinx hummingbird moth!”
Parrot tulip
The garden’s going all nutso pretty all of a sudden, and Lissa got some nice pictures for me this afternoon, that we might share with y’all.
The parrot tulips are the showiest of all right now.
Meanwhile, the grape hyacinth are everywhere right now – sprinkled through our big iris bed, scattered among the meadow plants under the big tree in the front yard, just everywhere:
High Strange New Mexico
One of the great little New Mexico films, Tony DellaFlora’s High Strange New Mexico, is now available on line. (Hat tip The Fix.)
The Radioactive Pencil
In July, 1921, the United States Patent and Trademark Office granted Walter Meyner, of New York City, a patent for the radioactive pencil. Meyner’s idea was to mix ordinary graphite with “self-luminous material of the type ordinarily employed in so-called `radium paints.'”
The self-luminous pencil, or crayon, would be, Meyner told the patent office in his application, “relatively inexpensive and … entirely practical.”
White Iris
The little miniature white iris in our front yard started blooming this week.
A Proud Day
Conservapedia is threatening to ban Nora. Her offense? An entry on the shovel:
A shovel is a tool used for moving earth, sand and other granulates. It differs from spades because it is a real tool and not a suit of cards.
My little girl is growin’ up good.
No Monsters In The Rain
Sadie’s primary job is to protect us from monsters. From her observation deck (a stool at the front window), she can monitor the approaches to the house.
Sometimes the monsters are delivering the mail or taking away our garbage. Sometimes they merely walk by our house for no apparent reason. But without fail, if she barks well enough – with enough clarity of moral purpose – she drives them away.
This morning we’ve got a quiet rain falling, and there seem to be no monsters out. But Sadie’s at the ready, alert, just in case.
An Interesting Response to Scientization
Andrew Dessler and Chris Reddy had an op-ed in the Newport Daily News March 16 (the text is in a blog entry by Andrew here) that took a very interesting approach to the scientization problem. It was in response to an op-ed that resurrected the hoary old “water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas therefore CO2 is irrelevant” canard. Rather than try to argue the scientific details (a scientist’s usual instinct in these cases), Dessler and Reddy explained the process by which the scientific community had arrived at and explained the scientific consensus.
Down in the comments, Andrew explains the reason behind their approach:
When confronted with an editorial like the offending one, you have the choice of either arguing the scientific facts or arguing the process. The problem with arguing facts is that most people tune out — it’s just too boring. And the fact have been argued before. We decided that an argument addressing process would be more effective. The simple fact that a massive conspiracy involving thousands of people is so much less likely than one guy with no knowledge being wrong needed to be pointed out.