Colorado
terrasig | August 3, 2006Thanks to all for coming over and sharing your MTV memories earlier this week. Our SciBling editor and cat-herder, Katherine, came across with a very vivid list of great memories and Orac was able to bitch about being ever so slightly older than me. Then, Karmen surprised me by intimating that cable TV actually existed in Colorado in 1981, at least at her Grandma's house.
I said I was going to tell you some of my general recollections of MTV, but I have very specific memories of this very week 25 years ago thanks to my personal archivist, number one fan, and all-around keeper of my life…
chaoticutopia | August 1, 2006The current "Ask a ScienceBlogger" opens a big can of worms:
I heard that within 15 years, global warming will have made Napa County too hot to grow good wine grapes. Is that true? What other changes are we going to see during our lifetimes because of global warming?
I waited until the last minute on this one, because the more I thought about it, the broader my answer became. So, where to begin?
For want of a nail, the kingdom was lost...
Does a little grape relate to the changes of an entire planetary ecosystem? Of course. Slight changes in temperature will affect the producers, before it…
chaoticutopia | July 21, 2006I never did match any of Lillybridge's photography work on my visit to the South Platte. The past seemed to be lost under layers of roadways and rails. Still, within that changed land, patterns of natural beauty still exist. Sometimes, looking through fractals is the same way... there are many complex layers, and sometimes I have to search long and hard to find the pattern I seek. Today's fractal was no different. The lower layers are familiar Julia sets (similar to these) while the upper is a unique formula written by Andras Szolek. His formula is a complex conglomeration based on other…
chaoticutopia | July 21, 2006Note: I originally planned to post this along with the Friday Fractal. Then, like chaos, fractals, and life, it didn't turn out the way I expected. Considering the length and tone of this piece, it will stand better alone. Never fear, the fractal is still on the way.
"They paved paradise, and put in an interstate freeway..." In order to visit the place where the studio/shack of Charles Lillybridge once stood, I have to drive down the I-25, the interstate freeway which runs parallel to the Front Range. It already looks like a gloomy day, with thunderheads looming ominously to the west. As…
chaoticutopia | July 20, 2006An ecosystem is held together by complex interactions between living organisms and their inorganic environment. When early farmers and ranchers transformed the landscape in Colorado, were they destroying an ecosystem, or becoming a part of it? Perhaps there was a bit of both. The settlers who camped near Lillybridge's studio probably didn't have time to question it. It was life. If you worked hard enough, you'd survive.
In 1999, Robin Chotzinoff leafed through the Lillybridge collection for an article in Westword. One quote stood out above all the others, capturing the essence of struggles…
chaoticutopia | July 19, 2006While the world changes around us, does regular, ordinary life change as well? The Lillybridge Collection shows simple, ordinary life, 100 years ago. From that simplicity, personality emerges. Charles S. Lillybridge didn't bother to seek the rich and the famous. Rather, he preferred his neighbors, ordinary people, living in a shanty town off of the South Platte River. By 1910, Denver was a growing city, constructing five story buildings. Instead of seeking these marvels of the day--many now long gone--Lillybridge sought out the young and the old, the working stiffs, the grandmothers, and the…
terrasig | July 19, 2006While we're on the topic of death and acknowledging that 70-ish is a life well-lived, I'd note that experimental pharmacologist and legendary gonzo journalist, Dr Hunter S Thompson, would have been 69 yesterday.
His widow, Anita, keeps a blog at their fortified Owl Farm estate and posted this loving tribute to The Good Doctor yesterday.
Although we were live-blogging from Aspen last week, we're certainly not the kind of folks to go poking around in Mrs Thompson's business up Woody Creek Road - plus, I really do fear the remaining explosives, especially with a 4-year-old running wild and…
chaoticutopia | July 18, 2006When most people think of Colorado history, they picture the Wild West--outlaws, ghost stories, prostitutes, and other strange tales that go along with gold fever. (I talked a bit about gold mining on Friday, along with instructions for panning your own gold, in case you missed it.) It was a wild, rugged land, approachable only by the brave and determined. This was true in the mountains, surely, but also down on the plains. When settlers came to Colorado, they didn't think much about preserving the lands or ecosystem--on the other hand; it was a matter of preserving oneself. The plains…
chaoticutopia | July 17, 2006This sends a pretty powerful message to anyone thinking about drinking and driving: If they can bust Pete Coors, they can get you too.
When the brewery bigshot stepped into his car on May 28th, he'd apparently had a bit too much to drink. He'd been to a wedding. Everybody drinks at weddings, right? If you're known for your beer, you just have to join in that toast, right? Well, you might also think that a man who ran for the Senate should be able to find a ride home. Apparently not.
When he reached his neighborhood, Coors blew a stop sign. (He must have thought he was home free, or…
terrasig | July 15, 2006I've gotten a few raised eyebrows this week as to why a modestly-compensated, mid-career cancer researcher would choose to (or could afford) to vacation in Aspen, Colorado. I'll have more to say about this, but just one example of why this is such a worthwhile place to visit comes from my 2 hours yesterday at a free Aspen Institute lecture listening to financier, venture philanthropist, and prostate cancer survivor, Michael Milken, talk about how to revolutionize the pace of scientific discovery and implementation of medical innovations.
Many people remember Mr Milken incorrectly, or at…
chaoticutopia | July 14, 2006When you peer into a fractal, you're seeing the edge of chaos. If you sift through enough Julia or Mandelbrot sets, you might catch a hint of fractal fever. When you find that point, where order is filtered out of randomness, and glimpse a familiar pattern, you might feel tempted to shout "Eureka!" That triumphant feeling is, of course, much older than the computers that generate fractals. We've been seeking precious patterns for centuries. Compare this fractal image, taken from a section of a Julia set colored with fractal Brownian motion...
...with a much older sorting method:
Panning for…
chaoticutopia | July 13, 2006"A good many of Colorado's mountain springs, especially the hot springs, are radio-active. Eminent physicians are now studying the affects of these to see what curative properties they may have. At some later time these undboubedly will be valued highly."
-Free Homestead Lands of Colorado Described: A Handbook for Settlers, page 41. (1915)
Ah, water. In the rugged, dry lands of Colorado, people would say anything to convince someone else to live there. When the expansion West began, things didn't look too good for farming along the Front Range. Looking across the plains, some called it "the…
chaoticutopia | July 12, 2006...but home is always changing. Every rainstorm washes away a bit of the soil. Trees grow, seasons change, like in so many songs and poems. We say "you can't go home again" because it is never the same, but we forget how it never stayed the same in the first place. Change is a part of life. I've always thought Stephen Jay Gould's theory of punctuated equilibrium applied to not just the speed of evolutionary changes, but of most complex changes. The little things add up, so to speak.
When I returned to Westminster, I found it had changed, in both small ways and big. The once barren and empty…
chaoticutopia | July 11, 2006I used to play among these tall grasses with my imagination running wild, pretending to be a warrior princess--nearly a decade before Xena hit the air. When I wasn't running, I'd often sit near the little lake by the railroad tracks, or wander through the abandoned greenhouse. Here, I learned to be a poet and a philosopher, a dreamer and a lover of nature. I'd watch the prairie dogs yip as the red-tailed hawks swept across the field, sometimes to catch a snack from the birdfeeder in my backyard. Sometimes, on hot summer days, I'd drag an inner tube down to lazily float down Big Dry Creek.…
terrasig | July 11, 2006Sorry, gang, but this is just more journal than blog - and yet another emphatic and blathering reason of why I love this town.
Had a lovely hike yesterday with PharmGirl and PharmPreSchooler to the Grottos just outside of Aspen proper, an amazing series of igneous rocks and ice caves at the base of Independence Pass. PharmMom now forbids posting pictures of her beautiful granddaughter on these here internets, so here's an inanimate shot that still doesn't do justice to the view:
Then, had a lovely lunch with a dear friend in Explorer Bookstore and Bistro, an idyllic setting in an old…
terrasig | July 10, 2006Turns out that I was not the only one offended by the content of Ken Lay's biography and obituary:
From the Letters to the Editor of this morning's Aspen Daily News:
Editor:
I just finished reading your paper's obituary of Kenneth Lay and was somewhat puzzled by the dichotomy between Kenneth Lay, convicted felon in one of the two biggest corporate scandals in American history, and your article.
I understand not dwelling on the negative but this man was not a good Christian in any sense of the word. He destroyed many, many more lives than he ever enriched outside of his family.
Kenneth Lay…
terrasig | July 9, 2006I wasn't going to disclose my location while on working vacation, but since half the world already has my dang cell phone number, I might as well share with you the latest from Aspen, a magnificent mountain town whose winter opulence gives way to slightly less opulence in the summer, together with some great art, music, science, and discussions of great ideas. Apologies to my SciBlings Karmen and Kevin for having such a short jaunt through the Front Range and being unable to catch up in person this time. Sounded like Kevin was checking out for awhile himself.
Got in late last night and had…
chaoticutopia | June 15, 2006I'd planned to spend the day discussing ancient rock art, but this isn't how I wanted to start. Earlier this month in Fruita, Colorado (located on the I-70 corridor on the western slope) a group of graduating high school seniors took a can of spray paint and marked their legacy on a couple of rocks outside of town. Kids will be kids, right? The trouble is, they weren't the first to leave a legacy on those rocks. Someone else had left their mark there, about a thousand years before.
Petroglyphs and pictograms, left by a people known collectively as the Fremont Culture, are scattered across…
chaoticutopia | June 9, 2006Lately, I've been thinking a lot about what it means to adapt. I made this "adapt fish", which you can see sitting beneath my blogroll. However, aside from the obvious-finding a way to live that isn't so dependant on fossil fuels-I'm not exactly sure what it means. This has dragged out a whole hoard of philosophical questions hidden within the big one: Do we know when we are adapting? Why do we react so badly to change, if change can bring improvement? It seems clear that it isn't a black and white issue... there's a swath of grayness, where our dependence on technology clashes with our…