Once upon a time…
Once, an impossibly long long time ago, it rained at my house.
Archive of posts filed under the mind category.
The Longest, Straightest Roads
Out on assignment yesterday we found ourselves on the stretch of New Mexico Highway 60 that crosses the Plains of San Agustin, out by the Very Large Array, I got to thinking about long straight roads. Between Magdalena and Datil, 60 runs 23 miles of absolute straight, not a single bend or deviation: It’s …
$12 buys a lot these days
In the elevator at Mazano del Sol, the retirement apartments where Mom and Dad live. Lady gets in with a fabulous cane – wooden, lightly carved and lovely bright paint job. Me: That’s a great cane? Does it have a story? Her: Got it in Old Town. Twelve bucks. It works. And she spryly strode …
Some Advice from Ezra
Ezra Klein’s nominally talking to economists, but you guys sitting in the back might get something out of this as well: Listen to political scientists, sociologists, etc. They have perspectives, evidence and training worthy of consideration.
Science Communication
So I’m not sure how this happened, but apparently I’m all over the Internet this week as the token science journalist trying to defend my entire profession. Good luck with that, me. Eli started it, and I tried to discuss things with him there. I figured I would get an indulgence since he was kind …
Stuff I wrote Elsewhere: A Visit to Work Case 82B
From this morning’s paper, a visit to Work Case 82B (sub/ad req) at the University of New Mexico’s Museum of Southwestern Biology, where they keep that which has gone extinct: The Carolina parakeet on the top shelf of Work Case 82B, green with a dingy red head, looks little different from the other 30,000 stuffed …
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On Fear
Daniel Treisman: Among the countries for which I have data, the most robust correlates of fearfulness relate to countries’ religious traditions. Fear tends to be higher in countries where more people believe in Hell and where fewer believe in Heaven.
What I learned today: vegetarian soy sauce
While cruising today with Nora at 99 Bahn, the Asian market on Albuquerque’s far south side, I learned there are a lot of different kinds of vegetarian soy sauce. This particular one is House Wife brand:
On Evil Genius and Melting Icecaps
Cecil Adams goes through the thought experiment of how an Evil Genius might melt Earth’s icecaps, discarding one idea after another until landing on this: See how this grabs you. We come up with a process that traps energy in the atmosphere rather than letting it radiate away, perhaps involving an accumulation of gases such as …
Winter Colors
I love our winter color palatte. This is one of the main ditches at the Bosque del Apache, a bird refuge on the Rio Grande south of Albuquerque. Taken in December a few years back.