Weather Update: Still Weird

This morning I had to take a circuitous route to work that involved heading way up north, then looping through the NE Heights, and into my office Uptown. On the way, I saw three bank marquees displaying the temperature. At 8:20 at Menaul and Carlisle it was 71 degrees; 8:40 at Wyoming and Comanche it was 52; and by 8:43 at Wyoming and Indian School it was 62. I have little doubt that these readouts were accurate.

On my 10-mile journey, I passed through three (likely more) climate zones. I want to remind all the folks back home that all of Albuquerque could fit inside the San Fernando Valley one and a half times.

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No Earl Grey at these Tea Parties

I stumbled upon David Weigel's blog for the Washington Post and have been reading up on his notes from the inside of the Conservative movement. This one and the stories it links to caught my eye in a special way. What is the deal with the Tea Party Movement (how I hate to even validate it by calling it so!), anyway? Is it racially driven? Who are these people? Are they as stupid as their signs suggest they are?

This Gallup poll gives us the figures. About 79% of Tea Party members are white, 6% black, and 15% other. Given that the total US population is 11% black, it seems to me that blacks are only half as likely to be tea partiers as people in other races. In addition to being whiter than average, they are more likely to be wealthier than average, less likely to hold an advanced degree, more likely to be a man, and more likely to be a homemaker. Though, your average tea partier is probably not those last two things at the same time. But hey - wealthy, undereducated white men directing their anger at a black politician and his followers...you don't say.

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The Economist and Me: Climate Change

I'm not saying the editors of the Economist read this blog, but I'd like to thank them anyway for expanding part of my climate change post into a well-structured, fiscally-focused piece for their March 18th edition.

On December 8, 2009, I wrote "...who can argue about scientific findings concerning an issue as big and as old as the planet itself? Just about everybody."

On March 18th, the Economist backed me up by writing,  "if records of temperature across the past 1,000 years are not reliable, it matters little to the overall story" and "the problem lies not with the science itself, but with the way the science has been used by politicians to imply certainty when, as often with science, no certainty exists."

There are some difference of approach, sure. Whereas I implicate the Right's haggling over climate change specifics, the Economist points fingers primarily at the Left for having sold it as such a sure thing to begin with.  I focus on the environmentalism of it, and they on the good financial sense of investing in our protection against something uncertain, but potentially catastrophic and very costly.

Seems fair. Both sides are to blame, and I'm not much more a fan of the Democrats than I am of the Republicans. Thanks Economist!

But, seriously, next time cite me! Please? Oh, fine. Phooey.

Thug Love

I'm sitting in the Albuquerque Main Library, directly across from a man who is reading, then sniffling as though crying, then kissing the pages of his book fervently. I guessed immediately that it wasn't a Where's Waldo collection. Its black covers, tiny text, and abundance of hair's-breadth pages told me it was the Bible.

I only realized this as I sat down, and now it's a bit awkward because I want to stare, to try to understand, but there is something sacred happening here, something that I would diminish to mere spectacle by witnessing.

He is a young man, maybe about my age, hispanic with the tattoos to prove he's had a hard life. I noticed one on his face, and his arms and neck contain the kind of writing endemic to gang life.

When I hear him sniffle, it's a sign he is about to dip his head into the filo-dough pages of his Biblia and kiss what I imagine to be every mention of his Lord's name. I take these opportunities to glimpse him again. Watching is only watching if he sees it happening, and I can't turn away from this passion. It's the stuff usually reserved for lovers resisting the inevitable break-up.

He doesn't look physically strong. This isn't one of the gangsters you see parading around the prison yard in crime movies, intimidating our lithe protagonist, who's only there undercover, anyway. He might be the protagonist. Only he's not undercover, and heroes don't have tattoos like this. He wants to be a hero, though. Villains don't tearfully kiss the Lord's name in public libraries.

Our hero just left. He sniffled one final time, deeply, in the manner of a recovery, zipped up something - a bag or a sweater maybe, and walked into the stacks, possibly to return the Holy Book to the piles of other things he does not own.

(sugar)Crystal Ball

The other day I came back to my desk after a brief turn in the garden (read: sitting on a tree stump in the parking lot) to find a curious little trinket just in front of the keyboard. It was a plain little fortune cookie, still in its plastic wrapper.  No note, no clues, no likely suspects.

My colleague/uber-boss who generally shares a cube with me was not in town that week, and the only other person who even might possibly leave me such a gift had dined much earlier in the day, and had not gone out for any sort of Asian cuisine. Nobody else leaves me treats. I just don't reach out to people that much.

Tragically for the fortune cookie, I lean much more heavily toward gluttony than toward mystery. Untroubled by the thing's origin, I was sure it contained sweetness, and thus made with the nom-nom post-haste. No, I wasn't troubled at all. Until, that is, I read my fortune.

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