(Salt Lake Tribune photo.)
"We've just never really seen this in Utah before." --DEA Supervisory Special Agent Michael Root.
In a series of raids last week, Utah law enforcement officials busted a number of pot farms in southern Utah-- one apparently up Little Creek Canyon, just a few miles from where we live. A friend of mine was in on one of the busts and took the photos below. Utah can be a challenging climate, but these pot plants look better than anything growing in my garden... Read Full Story
I wondered how Sarah Palin would do last night in her first major speech to the nation. Though I had to sit through hours of Rudy Giuliani (was it only minutes?), an unbearable speaker as far as I'm concerned, it was worth the wait. My assessment: Palin slayed them. She appeased the Right, appealed to the Center, demonized the opposition, and even threw a bone or two to the moderate Left. And she did it with an appealing down-home style that made me want to run right out and vote for... Read Full Story
(Mr Ush photo.)
"Skeptics have sometimes dismissed clean energy technologies such as solar and wind power by arguing that these technologies "can't compete on price without public subsidies". However, the history of coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear power shows that no energy sector was developed without subsidies." --Wikipedia
Fossil fuels get a lot of government subsidy. So does renewable energy. In fact, in 2007 renewable energy received 29% of the $16 billion spent on energy... Read Full Story
"The Markham Ice Shelf... suddenly disappeared. We went under cloud for a bit during our research and when the weather cleared up, all of a sudden there was no more ice shelf. It was a shocking event that underscores the rapidity of changes taking place in the Arctic." --Derek Mueller, Trent University, Ontario, Canada.
The vanishing ice shelf was the size of Manhattan! Read Full Story
Our first baby chicks hatched. Here's one breaking through the shell for the first time. They are amazingly weak and fragile when they first hatch. Here, the first one rests after falling on its back. In the lower right you can see the second beginning to hatch. Here's a video of one taking its first steps: http://asymptoticlife.com/2008/09/03/baby-chicks.aspx Unfortunately, the first one was malformed and didn't live long,. The second one is healthy and vocal-- and lonely, since... Read Full Story
(Doug Berry photo.) The Salt Lake Tribune reports that BLM has announced a blueprint for managing public lands in northern Utah, which "makes clear that [fossil fuel] energy development is the top priority." Says the Trib:
"A Bush administration study released in May re-emphasized policies established in 2000 that would speed carbon-based energy development with minimal restraints unless federal public-land managers found it 'absolutely necessary' to preserve other resources."
County... Read Full Story
We had a light frost last night. I took these photos just before leaving for LA this morning. The pumpkins and ground cherries took it hard. The tomatoes (those I covered and those I didn't) all got their tips frosted, but the rest of the plants look okay. We may yet have tomatoes this year. Our last frost was June 14. Our first frost was September 1. That's exactly 2-1/2 months of growing season. This has been an unusual year-- still, I find myself asking, how did the pioneers... Read Full Story
National Weather Service says we're due for a cold night tonight: 36 degrees. Here in the bowl of the valley, we often get temperatures five degrees or more colder than what they predict. Will we have frost tonight? This would be unusually early for frost. I'd hoped for three more weeks. But we also had an unusually late frost, the second week of June. And the summer hasn't been nearly as hot as other recent summers-- we never even plugged in our swamp cooler. Frost would mean the... Read Full Story
National Weather Service says we're due for a cold night tonight: 36 degrees. Here in the bowl of the valley, we often get temperatures five degrees or more colder than what they predict. Will we have frost tonight? This would be unusually early for frost. I'd hoped for three more weeks. But we also had an unusually late frost, the second week of June. And the summer hasn't been nearly as hot as other recent summers-- we never even plugged in our swamp cooler. Frost would mean the... Read Full Story
(Moratuwa 2006: A Sri Lankan child orphaned by the war.)
It was 5 a.m. on a Wednesday when police started knocking on doors. They searched hundreds of homes, then forced thousands of men, women and children to get dressed and walk through the narrow streets lined with soldiers to a nearby sports field. Over the next six hours, authorities questioned, photographed and videotaped the neighborhood's inhabitants. Still, few of those rounded up expressed surprise at the intrusion. Members of Sri... Read Full Story
