On continued funding (sub. req.) for some nuclear weapons research programs that have not performed up to snuff: Members of Congress last week called for an independent investigation into a Los Alamos National Laboratory nuclear weapons project that is 18 years behind schedule and more than $250 million over budget. But funding for the project …
My favorite painting showed up amidst a fascinating package on human creativity in the Oct. 29 New Scientist (sub. req.) Historian and philosopher of science Arthur Miller says this: Marcel Duchamp had read some works on relativity and the influence is obvious in his Nude Descending a Staircase. I want to believe this. I’m not …
Given my personal feeling that variability is the climate change bugaboo that matters the most, I spent a lot of time thinking and asking about last year’s Science paper by Hans von Storch about variability in the paleo record. Now there’s a new paper in Journal of Climate by Mann, Rutherford, Wahl and Amman that …
Global warming has its winners as well as losers: That’s a hollyhock in the front garden, still blooming away two weeks after the average first fall freeze date in Albuquerque. Overnight lows for November in Albuquerque this month have averaged 42 F, 7 1/2 degrees above average. Daytime highs are 8 degrees above average. Obviously …
With a couple of fun longish rides this weekend, including a lovely trek through the bosque yesterday with Jaime, I had my first 100-mile week since last March, when the knee drama began. It’s not all about the numbers, of course. It’s also about three casual hours on the bike chatting with my pal, and …
Via Duke City Fix, an explanation of what’s been going on at my house this month: Nora is currently embrangled in a month-long marathon of creative writing known as National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short.
Don’t panic just yet, but it’s worth paying attention to a couple of signs out of the monitoring and forecast community that La Niña (the cool equatorial Pacific that tends toward dry winters here in New Mexico) may be about to sneak in the back door. The latest CPC forecast, out Thursday, said as much: …
I don’t mind saying that Al Zelicoff is a bit of a nut. But I mean that with the greatest respect, because you frankly can’t argue with the results (1.2 meg pdf, and more here). At Al’s ordinary (OK, slightly larger than ordinary) upper middle class Albuquerque home down the street from me, he has …
I tried posting a comment last week over at Tim McGivern’s blog, but it seems to be caught up in some moderation queue either technological or human, so I thought I’d throw this up here instead. Tim took a shot at the Journal for its “feckless” coverage of the meth problem. My comment was that …
Geez, conspiracies are complicated. Turns out that tin foil hat I’ve been wearing may actually enhance those evil government radio transmissions. (hat tips The Register and Dave)