Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: A Great View of Mars

From the morning paper, an epitaph to NASA’s Mars rover Spirit (sub/ad req). I’ve been writing about Spirit with some regulatory since before the mission, thanks to the presence of mission scientist and geologist Larry Crumpler in our midst here in Albuquerque. Larry is a delight in part because he really gets how cool it …

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Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: Lessons from a Drought

From the morning paper, a wander in the bosque to look for signs of drought (sub/ad req.): There is a resilience, it turns out, to these desert ecosystems. They’re used to this happening every so often, and they know what to do in response. Some leaf out less, or leaf out later. Some depend on …

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LTRR’s New Home

I’m excited to see my friends at the University of Arizona’s Laboratory of Tree Ring Research moving to their new home. (The LTRR people were instrumental and hugely generous in helping me with my book.) But I’ll miss the hilarious stories associated with one of America’s great research institutions stuck inside a football stadium: Great science …

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C’mon, Simone, let’s talk about *your* big “But”.

The Los Angeles Times reports that tragedy has struck the dinosaurs of Cabazon. Looming over Interstate 10 on the way to Palm Springs, they are the sort of cheesy roadside attraction that makes this country great, an icon of childhood road trips to the desert. It’s the place Pee-wee and Simone cemented their lasting friendship, …

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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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Scientific Literacy

It’s hard to know whether this glass is half full or half empty: It’s from “The Conceptualization and Measurement of Civic Scientific Literacy for the Twenty-First Century,” Jon Miller’s chapter in the new American Academy of Arts and Science report, “Science and the Educated American: A Core Component of Liberal Education.” (pdf here) Miller has …

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Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: Tea at the Santa Fe Institute

I used to write a lot about the Santa Fe Institute and the fascinating trans-disciplinary research that goes on there, but in recent years I sorta lost touch. I went up last week for a visit to reconnect, and, among other things, have tea (sub/ad req): SANTA FE — To understand the Santa Fe Institute, …

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