David Appell, the science journalist whose work more than anyone else’s got me thinking hard about the implications of climate change and its relationship to my journalism, spewed some frustration last week that resonated. It doesn’t quoteblock well, go read the whole thing, but in a nutshell he argues that there’s not much point for …
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To track my favorite topic, I have a Google news alert set on “Colorado River”. I’m trying to track water policy issues, but every year beginning in spring that news is accompanied by a macabre uptick in stories about people falling into the river, flipping their boats, going missing, and frequently drowning. Crews search for …
From the US Bureau of Reclamation’s photo archive, Hoover Dam seen from the upstream side, circa 1935:
The issue of lead wheel weights has become a touchstone for me in thinking about risk perception and how we respond to various sort of environmental contamination. I did a story in 2001 about research by a clever scientist named Bob Root who had quantified the lead wheel weights falling off of our cars’ wheels. …
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There are birds living inside Denver International Airport. I kid you not. I’m pretty sure they’re house sparrows, but their flighty, and my binoculars are stowed in my luggage, so I can’t give you a positive ID. When last we met our intrepid international traveller (me), he was stuck in Prague, the victim of a …
When I told my friend Page, a veteran of European travel, that I had a connecting flight through Prague on my return to the states, she sent me a link to the Onion’s piece about Franz Kafka International being named “World’s Most Alienating Airport“. I couldn’t help but think about it as I waited patiently …
In my time wandering around Copenhagen, the Little Mermaid statue was not high on my priority list. But Tom Yulsman had arrived early for the conference and done a bit of scouting, which revealed that the statue was in fact on loan to the Shanghai World Expo. In its place down at the waterfront, Tom …
From the work blog, water conservation in a wet place: The rooftop rainwater catchment system and other features built into Kay Helt’s home and surrounding neighborhood in Stenløse, in the Danish farm country outside Copenhagen, captures some 70 percent of the annual rain that falls from the sky. It seems like a wet place – …
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Birdwatching in Europe is a whole new deal for me, fabulously entertaining, because pretty much everything I see wherever I go is new. And since I’m a recently minted keeper of lists, it’s also productive. Most of the time I’ve been in Denmark I’ve been working, so I’ve left the binoculars and bird book in …