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 …
This is August 2012 along the Duranes ditch in Albuquerque’s north valley. The ditch on the left is relatively new. The spur to the right, obscured by the sunflowers, has been in continuous use for more than 300 years. The previous 24 months for this climate division had been the second driest such stretch on …
Continue reading ‘Where does this fit into our definition of “drought”?’ »
Many years ago, one of the newspapers I read (I think the Christian Science Monitor) held a contest, inviting readers to pen a weather forecast in the style of their favorite writer. I chose Hemingway: It was hot. Sadly, I never sent it in. This is one of my life’s great regrets. (Memory triggered by …
Many years ago, when I lived in California, I was walking down the street with a friend, an old Italian-Catholic grandmotherly woman who I knew through her work fighting against the construction of a freeway through our town. I was sharing my fascination with these tenacious little juvenile palm trees that had found a niche …
Sometimes the best graffiti involves subtraction rather than addition:
As Sandy converges on our stark, inevitable fate, people outside the weather nerd community are being again confronted by our dark, uncomfortable question – why do the official forecasts always make it seem like they’re shouting? Why do the forecasters always write in all caps? There are times when this feels right: FLOOD WATCH FOR …