Pi(e) Day

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pies

I don’t eat much sugar, so dessert is a bit of a problem. But the Village Inn, god bless its strangely anarchic cultural heart, has sugar free apple pie most nights. As a result, pie is a common family outing. Lissa’s not terribly fond of the Village Inn, but Nora, The Boy and I are regulars. The night crew sees me and immediately begins checking to see if they have any of my pie. I don’t even have to ask any more. The pies are not all that great, but they’re not bad, and the staff is delightful, and the strange slices of humanity that hang out there late evenings even more so.

We didn’t have any cameras with us, so you’ll have to settle for the above stock shot as a stand-in for our Pi(e) Day desserts.

Sleep-painting

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From the Times of New York:

The Australian drug agency said it had uncovered a variety of unusual activities by consumers using the product, including sleep-driving, sleep-eating, and, in one case, a woman who painted the front door of her home while asleep.

Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere

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I’ve argued in the past that my enthusiasm for the “scientization” meme comes from my experience covering all sorts of controversies, large and small, that play out in the same way: competing data used to support conflicting political positions. This doesn’t just happen on the big stuff, like climate change. It’s an intrinsic problem, found in nearly every political debate I’ve ever covered where data plays a role. Today’s case in point is the Albuquerque debate over red light cameras. It’s not merely “something … to be avoided in debates.” It’s intrinsic to how debates are conducted.

Broad in the New York Times

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Apparently union regulations require all climate bloggers to weigh in on Bill Broad’s story in today’s New York Times about Al Gore etc. In brief, there’s not much more I could add to what Chris Mooney and Andrew Dessler have said:

  • “surprised it didn’t happen sooner” (Mooney) given that Gore was largely solid on the science but strayed a couple of times from the mainstream consensus: “Why include the 1 to 5 percent of more questionable stuff, and so leave onself open to this kind of attack?”
  • Is this all he’s got? (Dessler) A story that largely draws on predictable scientific outliers to criticize Gore is a story stating the obvious. We know Richard Lindzen didn’t like the movie. For Broad to make the case that there is unease in the fat scientific middle – “rank-and-file scientists” – he needs better than this.

If you look at the comments over on Gristmill and here on my own blog in a post that had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Roger Pielke Jr., you’ll see why I was tempted to publish a new edition of my semi-regular “Pielke watch” feature. But I’m awfully busy, and this whole thing where I have to be Roger’s lead cheerleader just takes too much time.

The Next Great Flood!

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Unfortunately, the world’s only reliable newspaper doesn’t put all its stories on line, so unless you’ve been to the supermarket recently, you probably missed this:

“It’s coming,” Dr. Soakes warned Weekly World News. “Due to the effects of global warming, there’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that a flood as bad or even worse than the biblical flood will wipe out all life on Earth sometime in the next six months! It will be a combination of rain and rising sea levels creating perfect flood conditions.”

“But unlike the first flood, this will be an act of man, not God!”

Warren Soakes is not a crazed voice crying doom on a street corner. He is one of the country’s leading climatologists, a respected scientist who, until last month, was director of the Pacific Region Climate and Oceanographic Institute.

Something about El Niño, too. Dr. Soakes is pictured building a large boat.

Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere

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On the latest Clovis research:

The Clovis hunters, some of the earliest human settlers in North America, were not around for long, new research suggests. But they made the most of the time they had.


The Clovis culture, named for the New Mexico site where its distinctive spear points were first discovered, spread across North America in just 200 years, according to Texas A&M’s Michael Waters.

And then it was gone, as its practitioners adapted to a changing world.