In early twentieth century America, there were playground activists: Playground activists in cities across the nation, drawing from prevailing theories in psychology and sociology, championed organized play as the path toward stronger bodies and higher morals. That’s from Matthew Klingle’s fascinating Emerald City: An Environmental History of Seattle (The Lamar Series in Western History).
The reaction at the office today to the death of newspaperman Roger Ebert was striking. I cannot think of another writer of American English with the same broad, beloved appeal. One friend, a younger-generation journalist who’s from Chicago, sent around a collection of particularly delicious fragments from Ebert movie reviews, and I was struck by …
Here’s a great reminder that technology properly understood is not just the gizmo, it’s the human-gizmo interaction. The old people apartments where Mom lives some time ago added big-screen TV’s on the wall between the elevators on every floor. The idea was to use them as a messaging system, giving residents up-to-date information on stuff. …
2013 Earth Science Achievement Awards The 2013 New Mexico Earth Science Achievement Awards will be presented on February 4 to John Fleck, for outstanding contributions advancing the role of earth science in areas of public service and public policy in New Mexico, and to Tien Grauch, for outstanding contributions advancing the role of earth science …
Lotus 1-2-3, circa 1983
In today’s XKCD, Randall Munroe makes fun of the Wikipedia talk page for the new Star Trek into the Darkness movie: And then the Star Trek into the Darkness talk page people discuss whether to include a mention of the XKCD comic on the Star Trek into the Darkness page: I think this talk page …
As Kevin Anchukaitis put it, the Tree Rings’ Tale told by the olive tree is “Really really really really really really hard” to read. From Cherubini et al: Dendrochronological analyses of olive trees growing on the Aegean island Santorini (Greece) show that the determination of the number of tree-rings is impossible because of intra-annual wood density fluctuations, …
Continue reading ‘The Tree Rings’ Tale, as told by olives’ »
Most read this year: 736 gallons per person per day: Re Palm Springs water use, got linked on Reddit, wherein people rightly mocked my sloppy discussion of central tendencies, also exhibited poor understanding of the core issues of human water use geek humor: A 2006 joke that got a stumbledupon link of some sort chemistry …
Over at Goodreads, Dave gave Charles Darwin’s “Origin of Species” three stars (out of a possible five): The depth of his research is incredible. Jen was not so kind: I was amazed at how much Darwin simply wanted to believe in the evolutionary process.
Once, while a young teen, I spotted a house on fire while dad was driving me home from my bassoon lesson. I alerted the residents, who were unaware that their roof had caught fire. It was a relatively modest fire, and firefighters were able to quickly extinguish it without major damage to the house or …