Among other things, we took a boat trip down the Animas River through Durango.You know it’s an urban float trip when the boatman points out that we’ll be passing the new Home Depot, but it was great fun. We took the train, too. More photos on our Flickr page once I get ’round to posting ’em.
Gender Issues
Over at Dave’s blog, some thoughtful comments from Malcolm regarding gender issues in the computer world:
I’ve been using motherboards and daughterboards since I started playing with computer hardware. No fatherboard in sight, though. Come to think of it, most of the plugs on the back of my machine are female as well.
I’m with Dave, though, Malcolm. What’s with that Monday morning coffee on a Sunday night?
Another Climate Change Threat
Nora sends along this, a climate change threat of which I was unaware:
I can’t believe a company like Amazon would promote global warming by allowing those bastiches at Dole to continue to melt icebergs just to get the head of lettuce that lies at the center. Sure, it tastes like ambrosia, but look what it’s doing to our environment! Shame on you Dole and shame on you Amazon!
Criticism of My Work
Today’s Journal letters page has some discussion of my climate science story from a couple of weeks back. I apparently don’t have many fans:
John Fleck probably has a PR job on George W. Bush’s staff waiting for him after the spin he put on global warming science in the Journal.
Hey, at least they’re reading!
Fix Problems Being Fixed
Just a note to let y’all know that, according to sources close to the Duke City Fix, the web site hasn’t been taken over by Roswell aliens, and is in the process of being (heheh) fixed, and will be back on the air within the next few days.
Central New Mexico Community College
Fellow New Mexico bloggers: CNM needs your help.
Google CNM – the community college formerly known as TVI – and you find the College of Naturopathic Medicine, but no reference on the first page of hits to Central New Mexico Community College. Link to it. Let’s see if we can get CNM’s Google ranking up onto the first page, where people can find it.
Milk
Tuscan Whole Milk, 1 Gallon, 128 fl oz:
Nothing will ever be the same. Nothing ever is … once your milk goes bad. Then it’s just too late. And nothing will bring it back.
Is the Drought Over?
Monday afternoon, I was sitting in a meeting of federal drought scientists up in Santa Fe when Nora pinged me this text message:
Yes, it is raining really hard here.
It was something of an understatement. When I got up Tuesday morning and checked my rain gauge, it had recorded 1.93 inches in the previous 24 hours – the highest single-day total in the “period of record” here on Aliso Drive (and by “period of record,” I mean “since Spet. 1, 1999, when I put up the rain gauge.”
That’s about as perfect a setup as you can get for a story about a drought meeting, because it embodies the uncertainties in our definitions of drought, and how therefore we ought to go about measuring and talking about it. My story:
So is the drought over?
That was probably the most-asked question in New Mexico last week, as long-awaited rains hit the state with so much force that floodwaters damaged neighborhoods from Rio Rancho and Belen to Silver City and Sunland Park.
If your living room was flooded with muddy water, the answer to the drought question must have looked pretty obvious: what drought?
But to 50 of the nation’s top drought scientists meeting at a Santa Fe hotel last week, the answer appeared as blurred as the view out the rain-streaked hotel windows.
The answer really depends on what you mean by “drought,” said Kelly Redmond, a Nevada climatologist and leading expert on western drought.
Water in the Desert
Normally fish live in rivers and the like. It’s a pretty straightforward thing. Here in Albuquerque, we’re building a sort of quasi-river for them instead, on account of the actual river is sort of messed up.
This is the new intake structure, down in the south valley, for the Bureau of Reclamation’s minnow sactuary.
Flower Friday
This clump of sunflowers doesn’t seem to mind that its source of water is the concrete channel draining the parking lot in a semi-industrial Albuquerque business park. Another example of why I love alleys, bike trails, train tracks and other routes along the back side of society.