Some snark from me on my Journal blog about Benny Peiser’s reaction to the new WMO handy hurricane science guide. Some actual non-snarky thoughtful discussion between Benny and myself in the comments on Roger Pielke Jr.’s post on this.
Daybook
reading 1: Andrew Dessler’s Prometheus post on scientific uncertainty and the making of policy sparked a good discussion. And a copy of his new book, The Science and Politics of Global Climate Change, with Edward Parson, arrived over the weekend. Good so far.
reading 2: Back when I first started thinking about drought in the mid-1990s, Julio Betancourt sent me a preprint of a paper he and Tom Swetnam were working on for the Journal of Climate about large-scale ecosystem phenomena that are linked to big climate swings in the southwest that last decades. I’m rereading it for my drought class, and it’s rewarding deeper perspective I have on the issue a decade later. Mesoscale Disturbance and Ecological Response to Decadal Climatic Variability in the American Southwest.
music: The podgoober challenge: I’m loading all my music into the device and trying to listen to everything. Every piece of music I own. Today’s hidden gem: The Flourescent Leach and Eddie, back at the Filmore East in 1971, doing their big hit record. With a bullet. “Everybody sing along, like a big rock show! C’mon!”
distress call: What’s that boy worried about? Don’t worry J, help’s on the way. (More of Big Mig’s snaps.)
word of the day: osseous – of bone, or turning into bone
Singin’ in Bahrain
I finally slunk into the 21st century this week, purchasing a portable pod device with which to play audio files.
The tipping point came when a friend explained that you can get podcasts of Le Show. Nora wisely points out that “podcast” is really just a fancy marketing word for “mp3 file you can download and listen to whenever you want.” What can I say? She’s right, of course, but I once bought a pair of Nike running shoes, too. I’m just not that bright when it comes to the wily ways of those skilled marketing professionals.
Once I realized I could set up playlists to skip those insufferably long Mickey Hart drum solos, I was hooked. Another friend pointed out that it’s easy to fix the Mickey Hart problem by keeping Grateful Dead music off the pod device entirely. What can I say? I’m just not that bright when it comes to the wily ways of those skilled marketing professionals.
Which reminds me of a favorite joke:
Q: What’d the Deadhead say when he ran out of pot?
A: “Hey man.” Quizzical pause. “This music sucks.”
The Oracle of Food
It was a Saturday family lunch at the Pie Shack that sealed the deal.
Family restaurant decisions are a bit of a tangle at our house, with everyone having preferences and problems getting them all to overlap. An alternative to the usual choices? Let Andrea decide for us.
Last month’s ode to the Pie Shack led us out into the far heights in search of pizza, and our trust was rewarded. She was right: on a cold day, the surfboards and skater tack (and Ms. Pacman!) did bring smiles to our cranky, hungry faces.
The good news is that my colleagues at the Journal seem to have noticed as well. Albuquerque cyberspace’s favorite foodie is now the Journal’s restaurant reviewer (sub. req.). For those of us in the cyberworld who think the planet revolves around our bytes, who already know all about text messaging and blogs, it’s worth noting that this is an unarguable social good: Andrea is now in a position to lead even more people to good meals. “Though I wish those idiots at the Journal didn’t make you pay to read her reviews on line,” he said with a grin.
(update: forgot the obligatory link to Andrea’s own blog)
Metablogging
Rufus asks: It’s Feb. 16th…. Why haven’t you updated your blog since 2/12????.
Good question, Rufus.
More on Blog Rage
A friend sends along Jim Brady’s column from today’s Washington Post:
For all the good things it has brought our society, the Web has also fostered ideological hermits, who only talk to folks who believe exactly what they do. This creates an echo chamber that only further convinces people that they are right, and everyone else is not only wrong, but an idiot or worse. So when an incident like this one arises, it’s not enough to point out an error; they must prove that the error had nefarious origins. In some places on the Web, everything happens on a grassy knoll.
Yeah. What he said.
In Which I Utterly, Completely, and For the Last Time (I Promise, Really) Swear Off All Participation in the Hockey Wars
Dan Sarewitz is so predictably right that it’s become comical.
“(S)cience,” Sarewitz argues, “supplies contesting parties with their own bodies of relevant, legitimated facts about nature, chosen in part because they help make sense of, and are made sensible by, particular interests and normative frameworks.”
In the resulting hoohaws, Sarewitz argues, the debate happens on the terrain of science, rather than the terrain of the underlying policy/value disagreement, with each side believing it will win the larger battle if it can grab the scientific high ground.
Bomb Town News Observer
By coincidence, I’m drinking my morning coffee from this mug:
It’s my favorite mug.
Former quarterly (and printed on paper), the Bomb Town News Observer has gone 21st century:
This morning my mate came across “Crazy Cat Man,” as we dubbed him, sitting out on the sidewalk in front of his house grinding corn with a stone.
“Corn? Are you sure?” I asked, when she related the story later.
Yes, it was corn or some other grain, being ground with a stone (a metate, prounounced Meh-ta-tay)–in the traditional manner of the Anasazi–by a man who makes a living doing something related to nuclear weapons design or maintenance, on a sidewalk, in the middle of winter, wearing shorts.
He used Tupperware to collect and contain his strange booty, which he was manufacturing in heaps.
We’ve now got a pretty good idea of what he eats for breaksfast. Atole anyone?
Los Alamos is, in fact, a strange place.
Santa Ana Winds
The Santa Ana winds are a fixture of my Southern California childhood – heavy, warm and dry with the hint of smoke and danger. I remember them as a fall phenomenon, though a more careful reading of the literature suggests they really spanned the winter and sometimes stretched into spring.
According to Kit Stolz, they’re now coming later, reaching into February with enough regularity that the firefighters have taken notice.
Drought Update
More than halfway through our winter precipitation season, the snowpack is pathetic and the runoff forecasts dismal.
(courtesy Western Regional Climate Center)
Tania Soussan has more in this morning’s Journal (sub. req.):
Several places set new record lows for snowpack as of Feb. 1.
The forecast calls for spring river flows to be 27 percent of average in the Santa Fe River, 40 percent in the Rio Grande near Española, 25 percent into Elephant Butte Reservoir, 30 percent into Santa Rosa Reservoir and 53 percent into Navajo Reservoir.
And if near-normal or greater rain and snow doesn’t materialize this month— something that appears unlikely— the runoff forecasts will drop again March 1.
Armijo said the stage is set for what could become a record low winter for rain and snow.