Colorado
terrasig | August 26, 2008I was surfing around the DNC site last night and came upon this nice addendum to yesterday's post: a series of videos about the Denver area narrated by a proud native and six-term Congresswoman Diana Degette (D-CO, 1st).
I was reminded while going through 5280 magazine that Rep. Degette had written a book about the war on science by the Republicans called, "Sex, Science, and Stem Cells: Inside the Right-Wing Assault on Reason." (Actually the book was "co-written" with Daniel Paisner, the amazingly prolific and self-effacing "author, ghost-writer, reasonably nice buy.").
I'm a little short…
terrasig | August 25, 2008Get me in my 1977 Chevy pickup with KBCO blasting from the radio, head up for a trail run at the Dakota Ridge Red Rocks Trail near the I-70 geologic cutout (the hypoxia makes the colors seem even more intense), then back to town to the Wynkoop Brewing Company for a few pints of Railyard Ale and fish and chips.
That's where I'd be right now instead of inside the Pepsi Center or at Tent State University (although outside is always better than inside in Colorado).
I'm trying to dig some science out of this week's Democratic National Convention being held in Denver this week, other than ranting…
terrasig | August 22, 2008As a former resident of The Queen City of the Plains, my goal today was to write some travel tips for those bloggers attending the DNC in Denver next week.
However, I got a bit sidetracked by the case a couple of weeks ago about the gentleman who died of cyanide poisoning at a hotel near the Colorado State Capitol in Denver. You'll recall that "a pound" of sodium cyanide was also found with his dead body in room 408 of The Burnsley Hotel at 10th Ave. & Grant St. one needs only 50-100 mg of sodium cyanide to kill oneself so I still don't know what the other 453.9 grams was intended for.…
terrasig | July 21, 2008In my previous post on race-based vitamins where I invoked the bitingly satirical publication, The Onion, I noted something funny about their frontpage photograph that accompanied the article, Man Returns To Place Of Birth To Mate. BTW, it's quite a clever article, as usual:
TWIN FALLS, ID--In one of nature's most stirring and mysterious rituals, human male Michael Forrester journeyed back to his place of birth Monday in order to pair off, reproduce, and ensure the propagation of his species. . .
. . .With his readiness to mate signaled by a loss of hair around the crown and a swelling of…
chaoticutopia | July 19, 2008There’s nothing like spending a month staring at trees. As I hinted recently, my purpose for I was wandering all over the mountains, searching for aspen, was artistic inspiration. But to what end? Well... it all started when I painted my walls. Folks would come and observe my progress.
"The color looks great. But what are you going to do about the doors?"
I’d cringe every time. The battered hollow-core doors in a dark wood stain stuck out like sore thumbs, especially upstairs. There, the hallway was the loft, which was also our office. It’s the one room we spend more time in than any, and…
chaoticutopia | July 14, 2008A few weeks ago, I headed up into the mountains to find aspen trees and branches for inspiration. I took Magnolia Drive, which rises out of Boulder Canyon and straddles a high ridge before opening out onto the Peak-to-Peak highway running along the continental divide, near Coal Creek Canyon. (The mouth of the latter canyon opens near my home.) So, I had my eyes peeled for trees, but instead I spotted a pair of white-tailed does who were nibbling grass along the roadside:
The deer were so calm when I approached that I was able to take several photographs. I was so taken by the scene, I didn’t…
terrasig | June 29, 2008If you didn't catch NPR's StoryCorps feature this week, you missed a charming doozy:
As a young woman, Betty Jenkins received a gift from her mother that was meant to attract the attention of young men. But as Jenkins, who is now 94, tells her niece, the attention she got wasn't the kind she was expecting.
"I was very skinny, and I didn't have any curves. I guess my mother got kind of worried, because she didn't think I had enough boyfriends," Jenkins said.
The gift was an inflatable bra that was designed to enhance its wearer's figure. A straw-like tube was used to inflate pads in the cups.…
terrasig | April 20, 2008I never will forget the look on the faces
Of the men and women that awful day,
When we stood around to preach their funerals,
And lay the corpses of the dead away.
We told the Colorado Governor to call the President,
Tell him to call off his National Guard,
But the National Guard belonged to the Governor,
So he didn't try so very hard.
- Woody Guthrie, Ludlow Massacre (1944)
US Senator Ken Salazar (D-Colo) has commemorated today's 94th anniversary of the Ludlow Massacre by introducing a bill (PDF) to designate the coalminers tent colony as a National Historic Landmark. Unless you…
terrasig | April 6, 2008Alamosa is a town of 8,500 residents on the west side of the Rockies in southern Colorado, equidistant to Denver and Albuquerque. You may sometimes hear of Alamosa described by Al Roker or other morning weather reporters as the "nation's icebox" in setting the low temperature of the lower 48 US states, a title for which it fights with Fraser, Colorado (home of Winter Park ski resort).
Alamosa is also a strikingly beautiful place in the middle of some unique geological features, including the nearby Great Sand Dunes National Monument, a massive group of dunes several hundred feet high…
terrasig | March 8, 2008Just a hypothesis here.
A vibrant, 55-year-old Denver-area furniture executive, Lesile Fishbein, is possibly near death according to The Denver Post:
The bubbly Fishbein, one of the most recognizable faces in the metro area because of her television ads for her company, Kacey Fine Furniture, was admitted to Presbyterian/St. Luke's Hospital for emergency treatment on Tuesday. She had been given an injection for chronic back pain and suffered a serious reaction, the friends said. She was later placed on life-support, which was removed Friday evening. [emphasis mine]
The natural product and…
terrasig | February 29, 2008Bisphenol A (BPA) is currently one of the major lightning rods for controversy in consumer products and public health research. The compound is used in the manufacture of plastic bottles, polycarbonate (PC) in particular, as well as in the lining of many food and beverage cans. The compound has been recognized since the 1930s as having estrogenic activity but it appears to have developmental, carcinogenic, and neurotoxic effects at concentrations well below those at which it binds to the two forms of estrogen receptor.
Confused?
US governmental advisory committees can't even agree on BPA…
terrasig | February 14, 2008It seems that everyone in the sci/med blogosphere is offering Valentine's posts reflecting their areas of professional interest. So, here's mine:
Your humble Pharmboy came of age with glam, punk, and New Wave music but thanks to PharmMom, RN, and her then-college-aged ER co-workers, I have a soft spot for 70s soft-rocking singer-songwriters. Yes, Jim Croce, John Denver, James Taylor, and Dan Fogelberg.
So it was with great interest and nostalgia that I opened this e-mail a few days ago from the Prostate Cancer Foundation:
Dan Fogelberg, the singer and songwriter whose hits "Leader of the…
chaoticutopia | February 4, 2008School can be fun. Tomorrow, I’ll be heading up into the mountains outside of Boulder for my first official in-the-field lab. I’ll be the first to admit, I’m more of a research and writing person than an experimental and field work sort of person. Since I hope to make a career out of science writing, I’m particularly eager to get this sort of hands on experience. So, what will I be doing in the mountains, exactly? I’ll be looking at ponderosa pine trees (Pinus ponderosa). Well, not just looking at them, but measuring them (height and width at breast height), taking core samples, and noting…
chaoticutopia | January 18, 2008 The following fractal is a tribute to our new overlords, Dendroctonus ponderosae.
Lindenmayer Trees and Fractal Brownian Motion
I wrote about the role of pine beetles in Colorado’s future last week. The conclusion of that piece: a slight rise in temperatures means a strong advantage for pine beetles, which will be able to decimate Colorado’s vast lodgepole pine forests, thus increasing fire danger and erosion, not to mention damaging our tourism. Well, our annual aerial survey of the forests was completed recently, and the news isn’t good:
The growth of the beetle epidemic affecting…
chaoticutopia | January 10, 2008Citizens of Colorado seem to enjoy pointing out the fortuitous nature of the state’s climate. "Don’t like the weather?" they say, "don’t worry, it’ll soon change." If it is difficult to predict the weather on a day-to-day basis, how could anyone hope to predict the effects of climate change in the future? Even the most generalized predictions are helpful, as the same attractions that bring people to live in Colorado--skiing on snowy mountains or hiking in lush evergreen forests--are dependant on the climate. The same folks who comment on the climate depend on it as much as natural ecosystems-…
terrasig | January 5, 2008The e-ink wasn't even dry last night on my Friday Fermentable post about the Flying Dog Open Source Beer project before I received a comment from Josh Mishell, Creative Manager for the brewery:
Thanks for writing about our Open Source Beer! $12.79 is a great deal, considering we sell it out of our tasting room for $18, as well.
By a strange stroke of luck, your blog entry is very timely. Today is the first Friday of the month, and every first Friday, beer bloggers everywhere write on a common theme (we call it "The Session"). I think it's a unique thing in the blogger world, and love being a…
terrasig | January 4, 2008I can't believe I missed this earlier in the year: Colorado's Flying Dog Brewery created a beer based upon a basic recipe together with reader suggestions in what was called The Open Source Beer Project:
You are holding what we believe is the first Open Source Beer to hit the market in the United States. We started with a basic Doppelbock recipe and solicited suggestions from homebrewers on our blog. We took your comments and crafted this Doppelbock, aptly named Collaborator. The blog, the recipe, and the label are online at opensourcebeerproject.com, if you'd like to brew some yourself.…
chaoticutopia | December 4, 2007The winds are blowing off of the Rockies, hitting the Front Range with brute force. The winds make walking around campus either fun or near impossible, and shake my townhome with enough force to rattle the ornaments on the mantel. The odd thing about the winds is the warmth.... it isn’t the slightest bit chilly. Still, the leaves have fallen from the trees around the school buildings, left to now dance around in the breeze. That shaking mantel is covered in tinsel and lights.... nevermind the warmth; it’s nearly the holidays!
So, here’s an odd assortment of things to do on a windy Tuesday…
chaoticutopia | December 3, 2007Roots Camp turned out to be pretty fun; I enjoyed talking to people about the causes and effects of climate change, and showing them how to defend the science when dealing with denialists. (A link to the presentation can be found at the end of this post.) Over a dozen people showed up in the brightly lit chapel room at the Unitarian Church to hear me speak and to discuss climate science. The big stained glass window on one end of the room was absolutely gorgeous, but sort of drowned out my presentation, projected on the opposite wall. Nonetheless, my slides were mostly visible and the…
chaoticutopia | December 1, 2007
If you’re in the Denver area this weekend, with nothing better to do, then come check out the Rocky Mountain Roots Camp. I'll be giving a presentation on climate change and defending predictive science today at 1:30 pm in the chapel room of the First Unitarian Church in Denver (at 14th & Lafayette.) It should be fun!
If you can't make it (I know this is a little last minute) just check back soon; I'll post my presentation later.
In the meantime, I'll try to get this week's fractal up...