Thursday, September 24, 2009
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
smooth cruising
Cruising on a cable car northeast down Market Street, 1905 (San Francisco, California, USA)
A year later, most of these buildings would be shaken or burned down, or both.
The Ferry Building is still there. What else can you see?
Please note that the interplay of pedestrians, bicycles, automobiles, and public transit was only a little less chaotic then than it is now.
A year later, most of these buildings would be shaken or burned down, or both.
The Ferry Building is still there. What else can you see?
Please note that the interplay of pedestrians, bicycles, automobiles, and public transit was only a little less chaotic then than it is now.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Spring came in like a big red lion
After several years of Australian drought, Broken Hill, on the west side of New South Wales, goes black in a dust storm:
But that's not all. Sydney is hundreds of kilometers to the east, and is getting whacked with it too, as is Queensland farther north. This is pretty much kicking ass in the western third and northern two thirds of the whole huge country.
It brings to mind images I've seen of the storms heralding North America's dust bowl of the Great Depression in the 1930s.
Reuters covers some of the reasons for the dust storm. A friend of mine was reporting rain where I used to live, in Australia, with some of the creeks flowing across roads. (This is normal, it's rural, and the bridges are concreted smooth spots across the creeks.) The front that caused those storms stirred up the dust:
And addressing the question of whether climate change caused the dust storm:
We also, for what it's worth, can't say whether climate change caused Hurricane Katrina. (Al Gore was wrong to imply that it did, and it affected his credibility for me, when I saw An Inconvenient Truth.) We can only look at patterns, not isolated events. But we do know that this dust storm was caused by changes in Australia that have come about as a part of a pattern of change in their part of the world. Did climate change cause the dust storm? No way to say. Did climate change cause the conditions that led to it? So far, probably. We shall see.
Dramatic pics in this story
Quite a lot of pictures here
My friend David Morgan-Mar has a dramatic set of photos, and his reaction, here.
@paddyplasterer pointed me at a live stream of photos posted on twitter.
But that's not all. Sydney is hundreds of kilometers to the east, and is getting whacked with it too, as is Queensland farther north. This is pretty much kicking ass in the western third and northern two thirds of the whole huge country.
It brings to mind images I've seen of the storms heralding North America's dust bowl of the Great Depression in the 1930s.
Reuters covers some of the reasons for the dust storm. A friend of mine was reporting rain where I used to live, in Australia, with some of the creeks flowing across roads. (This is normal, it's rural, and the bridges are concreted smooth spots across the creeks.) The front that caused those storms stirred up the dust:
During winter in Australia low pressure storms are generated in the Indian and Southern Oceans, whipping up huge seas and creating severe cold fronts which sweep across southern and eastern Australia.This caused a thunderstorm with winds of 100+km/hr in South Australia. Those winds lifted the dust from dessicated outback and marginal lands. Just as happened in the thirties in North America (and Australia too, for that matter), the soil was loosened and blew east into Queensland and New South Wales.
And addressing the question of whether climate change caused the dust storm:
....dust storms are usually restricted to the inland of Australia. Occasionally, during widespread drought they can affect coastal areas. Australia is battling one of its worst droughts and weather officials say an El Nino is slowly developing in the Pacific which will mean drier conditions for Australia's eastern states.
We also, for what it's worth, can't say whether climate change caused Hurricane Katrina. (Al Gore was wrong to imply that it did, and it affected his credibility for me, when I saw An Inconvenient Truth.) We can only look at patterns, not isolated events. But we do know that this dust storm was caused by changes in Australia that have come about as a part of a pattern of change in their part of the world. Did climate change cause the dust storm? No way to say. Did climate change cause the conditions that led to it? So far, probably. We shall see.
Dramatic pics in this story
Quite a lot of pictures here
My friend David Morgan-Mar has a dramatic set of photos, and his reaction, here.
@paddyplasterer pointed me at a live stream of photos posted on twitter.
Slipping past another marker on the orbital calendar
This is the September equinox. I grew up calling it the Autumnal Equinox, but having traveled in the Southern Hemisphere now, I'm going to have to go with the global flow and call it the September Equinox. Here in central California, summer has been droughty, not as hot as it can be, but with some sizzling days. As much as that autumn is still dry most of the time, and grasses turn from gold to brown, I welcome it. I welcome the shifting of the stars, the return of Orion to prominence. I welcome being able to sleep at night without tossing and turning on top of the blankets in a sweat. I welcome the buckeyes falling from the buckeye tree next door. This year I intend to plant quite a lot of them in cans, to keep the species going through habitat loss.
Points along the path as the earth turns aren't part of a religion for me. I notice the Pagan and Christian, and sometimes other markers for stops along the seasonal paths, but I don't notice them in terms of gods or goddesses or the supernatural.
They keep my eyes and ears open.
They tie me to the earth, and that's important for me. Keeping my awareness on the planet (and the universe) that, probably without even knowing it, keeps conditions so that I can live the life I live now, helps me remember that one of my responsibilities is to care for it. One reason I like geography is that it's about something, some place, I love -- and if we love something, why wouldn't we want to learn more about it and take care of it?
Not only does the Time and Date link have a great explanation of how and why the equinox is what it is, it's full of more awesome links to information and fun.
Today, I'm heading out into the garden to separate the green-bin pruning from the compost-pile pruning, to pull down the remains of the corn, harvest some potatoes, sort out some pole-bean seeds for saving (and feed the rest to the chickens), and start preparing the planting beds for fall's parsnips, spinach, lettuce, carrots, and sugar snap peas.
Photos thanks to Wolfgang Staudt and kganes via Flickr's creative commons search.
Points along the path as the earth turns aren't part of a religion for me. I notice the Pagan and Christian, and sometimes other markers for stops along the seasonal paths, but I don't notice them in terms of gods or goddesses or the supernatural.
They keep my eyes and ears open.
They tie me to the earth, and that's important for me. Keeping my awareness on the planet (and the universe) that, probably without even knowing it, keeps conditions so that I can live the life I live now, helps me remember that one of my responsibilities is to care for it. One reason I like geography is that it's about something, some place, I love -- and if we love something, why wouldn't we want to learn more about it and take care of it?
Not only does the Time and Date link have a great explanation of how and why the equinox is what it is, it's full of more awesome links to information and fun.
Today, I'm heading out into the garden to separate the green-bin pruning from the compost-pile pruning, to pull down the remains of the corn, harvest some potatoes, sort out some pole-bean seeds for saving (and feed the rest to the chickens), and start preparing the planting beds for fall's parsnips, spinach, lettuce, carrots, and sugar snap peas.
Photos thanks to Wolfgang Staudt and kganes via Flickr's creative commons search.
I figure the bad guys can take care of themselves.
When the polar ice melts and the secret lairs are exposed, Superman will be at risk, too -- that's a terrifying thought.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
sense of place - Beach Chalet
The Beach Chalet, with breathtaking Depression-era art downstairs, and fabulous burgers, beer, and ocean view upstairs, is probably one of the least well known of San Francisco's most wonderful places. It's in the northwest corner of Golden Gate Park, across the Great Highway from the beach. When you visit, I will take you there.
Before my sister died, this was on the list of places she wanted to go again. I'd never been, had no idea it was there despite years of hanging out (and a few months of living in) San Francisco. Now, it has emotional value for its art, as well as having been the last place I had a coherent conversation with my sister. (Brain cancer sucks.)
(Clicking through to the flickr page will give you more info, and lots of links.)
Before my sister died, this was on the list of places she wanted to go again. I'd never been, had no idea it was there despite years of hanging out (and a few months of living in) San Francisco. Now, it has emotional value for its art, as well as having been the last place I had a coherent conversation with my sister. (Brain cancer sucks.)
(Clicking through to the flickr page will give you more info, and lots of links.)
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Earth's physical forms
This educational video might help a bit for homeschoolers and other new-to-geography learners.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Good Morning!
Good Morning!
The maker explains at http://blog.blprnt.com/ -
Much more info is at the post, with related images and explanation.
GoodMorning! Full Render #2 from blprnt on Vimeo.
The maker explains at http://blog.blprnt.com/ -
GoodMorning! is a Twitter visualization tool that shows about 11,000 ‘good morning’ tweets over a 24 hour period, rendering a simple sample of Twitter activity around the globe. The tweets are colour-coded: green blocks are early tweets, orange ones are around 9am, and red tweets are later in the morning. Black blocks are ‘out of time’ tweets which said good morning (or a non-english equivalent) at a strange time in the day.
Much more info is at the post, with related images and explanation.
I awoke last night to the sound of thunder...
Just one more gorgeous picture from the "big" bay area storm. Would have linked this earlier had it been up then.
It's still raining, but not lightninging. It feels unsettled, like seasons are changing a bit earlier this year. I hope this portends a proper wet El NiƱo effect this coming winter.
It's still raining, but not lightninging. It feels unsettled, like seasons are changing a bit earlier this year. I hope this portends a proper wet El NiƱo effect this coming winter.
I wasn't expecting an earth-shattering kaboom
Ian O'Neill posted about his experience watching the shuttle sail overhead, and I added mine in a comment:
In 1996, for some reason, the shuttle flew over Sacramento on its way to Edwards.
It went over at the very crack of dawn, so I went outside a bit before that, wrapped in a blanket, and lay back on the sidewalk to wait.
Soon, in the dark east, a hot pink triangle materialized, and slid quickly overhead. I think it was pink from the heat. It was close enough to see that it was clearly a triangle, and clearly the shuttle, but I could see no details.
It moved silently over me, then disappeared into the equally pink sunrise to the east.
I wandered back into my apartment, curled up in bed, then as I was drifting off, the BOOM that you experienced rattled my window glass. I jumped out of my skin, and then burst into laughter.
It was honest joy.
I am a total shuttle-hugger, and that morning made among my most memorable space-related events.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Abbey Road from low earth orbit
My friend Andy was poking around on the internets and found an interesting google satellite shot:
Abbey Road
Zebra crossings were cutting edge, back then. Now everyone has them.
That's a busy intersection. Wow.
Abbey Road
Zebra crossings were cutting edge, back then. Now everyone has them.
That's a busy intersection. Wow.
Dry Lightning...
I was awakened at about 4:00 this morning by thunderboomers and rain. I had to go cover our chickens, who perch on top of their hutch rather than inside, because it's higher, and won't always come in out of the rain.
Huge thunderstorms aren't that common here, and this one wasn't huge, but like too many of ours in the summer, was relatively dry, bringing no relief for the drought, but serious fire danger in our parched mountains.
It the same time, it's amazing and nifty. At our house, most of the thunder was about twenty-blue-tomcats away, and I wasn't one bit concerned. Our noise-phobic dog slept through them.
Avram Cheaney got a fabulous recording of the thunder, and that's what sent me geographile-ward to make this post. Go listen:
THUNDER! (Oh. And car alarms.)
Cory Dalva got a great picture that's too copyrighted to embed.
Huge thunderstorms aren't that common here, and this one wasn't huge, but like too many of ours in the summer, was relatively dry, bringing no relief for the drought, but serious fire danger in our parched mountains.
It the same time, it's amazing and nifty. At our house, most of the thunder was about twenty-blue-tomcats away, and I wasn't one bit concerned. Our noise-phobic dog slept through them.
Avram Cheaney got a fabulous recording of the thunder, and that's what sent me geographile-ward to make this post. Go listen:
THUNDER! (Oh. And car alarms.)
Cory Dalva got a great picture that's too copyrighted to embed.
Saturday, September 05, 2009
International Vulture Awareness Day
When I was a little girl, my family drove around a fair bit in northeastern California. The area wasn't nearly as populated then as it is now, with the growth of Redding and development of its suburbs, but the roads were lightly traveled. One day, while we were picnicking at Hat Creek along highway 89 north of Lassen Peak, my mother saw Turkey Vultures kettling overhead. Being my mom, she told one of my sisters to lie down in the middle of the road and see if the vulture would think my sister was roadkill, and land for a snack. Being one of my mom's kids, my sister protested but did it anyway.
Of course, the vulture never landed. What we didn't know then, but know now, is that the Turkey Vulture is one of the few birds with a keen sense of smell. They choose their carrion from the scents that waft up to them on warm air. It needs to be a few hours old, but can't really be rotting.
Researchers have put roadkill deer deep into bushes, not far from carefully cleaned and taxidermied deer that look dead, in a clearing, and the vultures have gone after the nice meaty stinky deer. There are stories of Black Vultures following Turkey Vultures to find better dinners.
North America's vultures – the common Turkey Vulture and Black Vulture, and the critically endangered California Condor – are very different animals from old world vultures, but share the same niche. They are more closely related to storks than they are to the old world vultures, and are not raptors, as they don't catch live prey with their feet. But all vultures and condors have mostly bald heads, and eat carrion. A bit more than a decade ago, the nascent Animal Planet had a show called “All Bird TV," and on it, host/ornithologist Ken Dial, a bald guy, illustrated the need for bald carrion eaters by putting a wig on and plunging his head into a huge pot of saucy spaghetti. It stuck all over the wig. Then he removed the wig and stuck his bald head in the pot. What spaghetti managed to stick at all was easily shaken and wiped off.
The California Condor is still at risk from myriad human causes. They bump their huge wings on high voltage lines, they consume lead bullets in carrion, they're occasionally shot at. They don't seem to mix well with modern human society, and there are only about 200 California Condors left.
Old world vultures are also threatened by loss of habitat and environmental toxins. King Vultures in India are dying from exposure to diclofenac, a common anti-inflammatory in cows there. When the cows die, and the vultures eat their meat, the vultures are poisoned. It's even affected the Indian Zoroastrians' tradition of sky burial, with too few vultures to do the job. (And careful with that link – there are some slightly gooshy photos behind it. But the King Vultures are fine with gooshiness.)
I feel lucky to have Turkey Vultures as yard birds. Those in the photo illustrating this post were in my yard at the time, and they often fly overhead. But few vulture species are as common, and few have as secure a future as the roadkill-loving Turkey Vulture. The rest really need our help, which starts with awareness. After that comes working to promote (or require) bismuth bullets for hunting in condor ranges, research into (and banning of?) chemicals that poison vultures, designing human infrastructure and planning development in ways that allow the birds their space as well. But it starts with awareness of their beauty, the jobs they do, and why we need to help them.
Here are more links and stories about Vulture Awareness Day:
International Vulture Awareness Day home page
Picus blog
Ecoworldly
Vulture Awareness Day at the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center
In Haaretz
Vultures I Would Like To See
Reflection from Pinguinus
At Coyote Crossing
Carnival of vulture blogs
Of course, the vulture never landed. What we didn't know then, but know now, is that the Turkey Vulture is one of the few birds with a keen sense of smell. They choose their carrion from the scents that waft up to them on warm air. It needs to be a few hours old, but can't really be rotting.
Researchers have put roadkill deer deep into bushes, not far from carefully cleaned and taxidermied deer that look dead, in a clearing, and the vultures have gone after the nice meaty stinky deer. There are stories of Black Vultures following Turkey Vultures to find better dinners.
North America's vultures – the common Turkey Vulture and Black Vulture, and the critically endangered California Condor – are very different animals from old world vultures, but share the same niche. They are more closely related to storks than they are to the old world vultures, and are not raptors, as they don't catch live prey with their feet. But all vultures and condors have mostly bald heads, and eat carrion. A bit more than a decade ago, the nascent Animal Planet had a show called “All Bird TV," and on it, host/ornithologist Ken Dial, a bald guy, illustrated the need for bald carrion eaters by putting a wig on and plunging his head into a huge pot of saucy spaghetti. It stuck all over the wig. Then he removed the wig and stuck his bald head in the pot. What spaghetti managed to stick at all was easily shaken and wiped off.
The California Condor is still at risk from myriad human causes. They bump their huge wings on high voltage lines, they consume lead bullets in carrion, they're occasionally shot at. They don't seem to mix well with modern human society, and there are only about 200 California Condors left.
Old world vultures are also threatened by loss of habitat and environmental toxins. King Vultures in India are dying from exposure to diclofenac, a common anti-inflammatory in cows there. When the cows die, and the vultures eat their meat, the vultures are poisoned. It's even affected the Indian Zoroastrians' tradition of sky burial, with too few vultures to do the job. (And careful with that link – there are some slightly gooshy photos behind it. But the King Vultures are fine with gooshiness.)
I feel lucky to have Turkey Vultures as yard birds. Those in the photo illustrating this post were in my yard at the time, and they often fly overhead. But few vulture species are as common, and few have as secure a future as the roadkill-loving Turkey Vulture. The rest really need our help, which starts with awareness. After that comes working to promote (or require) bismuth bullets for hunting in condor ranges, research into (and banning of?) chemicals that poison vultures, designing human infrastructure and planning development in ways that allow the birds their space as well. But it starts with awareness of their beauty, the jobs they do, and why we need to help them.
Vultures are awesome.
Here are more links and stories about Vulture Awareness Day:
International Vulture Awareness Day home page
Picus blog
Ecoworldly
Vulture Awareness Day at the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center
In Haaretz
Vultures I Would Like To See
Reflection from Pinguinus
At Coyote Crossing
Carnival of vulture blogs
Friday, September 04, 2009
Thursday, September 03, 2009
It's play time....
This makes me wish I liked Monopoly more!
Monopoly City Streets is having a worldwide, everyone's-in Monopoly game using Google Maps as the game board.
There's not much news about it now, just the blog. Will it be worlds of fun, or will the boringness (okay, so I really get bored playing Monopoly) scale up with the size of the game board?
Monopoly City Streets is having a worldwide, everyone's-in Monopoly game using Google Maps as the game board.
There's not much news about it now, just the blog. Will it be worlds of fun, or will the boringness (okay, so I really get bored playing Monopoly) scale up with the size of the game board?
Tuesday, September 01, 2009
The Station Fire from around the web
Mashable offers a great huge pile of embedded images and video from around the web to illustrate the ferocity of the Station Fire.
You know what's a scary thought? This fire grew and spread fast without the offshore Santa Ana winds that can pop up and push fires around at this time of year. I don't want to imagine what this fire might be like with the Santa Anas working their magic.
You know what's a scary thought? This fire grew and spread fast without the offshore Santa Ana winds that can pop up and push fires around at this time of year. I don't want to imagine what this fire might be like with the Santa Anas working their magic.
The Station Fire - this time with armageddon
For the next couple of winters, any storms with a lot of rain are going to make the San Gabriel range flow into debris basins and Pasadena.
After the Oakland Hills fire, officials sprayed the steepest hillsides with goo to glue the dirt together, mixed with wildflowers seeds - and the next few springs were stupendous. I'm not sure there's enough glue in the world for the San Gabriels, one of the fastest-rising and most fragile mountain ranges in the world -- but I hope they try something like that.
Thanks to Ian O'Neill for the pointer.
After the Oakland Hills fire, officials sprayed the steepest hillsides with goo to glue the dirt together, mixed with wildflowers seeds - and the next few springs were stupendous. I'm not sure there's enough glue in the world for the San Gabriels, one of the fastest-rising and most fragile mountain ranges in the world -- but I hope they try something like that.
Thanks to Ian O'Neill for the pointer.
Who ya gonna call?
Sometimes I wish California had the lightning storms they do back east.
We definitely get lightning, and parts of the state get intense lightning.
When I was little, in Shasta County, the grid wasn't as robust as it is now. We'd get days where the temperature would be 100, then 105, then 110, and sticky humid, unlike what we're used to in parts of California that aren't the northwestern corner. Then kaboom, the angels would start bowling, as Mom described it, and we'd have a huge storm, and the rain would pour. The power would go out, and we'd eat hot dogs cooked on unbent metal hangars in the fireplace, and pop popcorn in my mom's old campfire popping basket, and toast marshmallows, and sing. We were a girlscouty sort of family like that. Then we'd go to bed, and at some point the next morning, the power would come back on, usually just in time to power our tiny air conditioning unit in the living room so that as the temperatures rose back up into the 90s, we could lie in front of it and read. If the gutters were still running, we'd go block off the storm drain with detritus and walk around in our boots or pretend to fish.
There are other parts of the state that get lightning storms. But for the most part, we don't get big thunderboomers in California, the storms slide on overhead and aren't terribly dramatic.
We worry a bit when they come over, sometimes, as our summers tend to be dry, and a dry lightning storm can be troublesome. But lightning doesn't terrify me the way it can people in, say, Florida, where death by lightning is generally understood as one of the ways to go.
We definitely get lightning, and parts of the state get intense lightning.
When I was little, in Shasta County, the grid wasn't as robust as it is now. We'd get days where the temperature would be 100, then 105, then 110, and sticky humid, unlike what we're used to in parts of California that aren't the northwestern corner. Then kaboom, the angels would start bowling, as Mom described it, and we'd have a huge storm, and the rain would pour. The power would go out, and we'd eat hot dogs cooked on unbent metal hangars in the fireplace, and pop popcorn in my mom's old campfire popping basket, and toast marshmallows, and sing. We were a girlscouty sort of family like that. Then we'd go to bed, and at some point the next morning, the power would come back on, usually just in time to power our tiny air conditioning unit in the living room so that as the temperatures rose back up into the 90s, we could lie in front of it and read. If the gutters were still running, we'd go block off the storm drain with detritus and walk around in our boots or pretend to fish.
There are other parts of the state that get lightning storms. But for the most part, we don't get big thunderboomers in California, the storms slide on overhead and aren't terribly dramatic.
We worry a bit when they come over, sometimes, as our summers tend to be dry, and a dry lightning storm can be troublesome. But lightning doesn't terrify me the way it can people in, say, Florida, where death by lightning is generally understood as one of the ways to go.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Rambles through our country
Rambles through our country, an instructive geographical game for the young, 1890
Originally uploaded by trialsanderrors.
(The caption says:
From the Popular Graphic Arts Collection at the U.S. Library of Congress....This picture is in the public domain.)
edited to add at 10:26 pm:
Linda says that you can find the maps on ebay, and that the rules are on google books! Yay!
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