All Lancets.

This site is dedicated to compiling information about the collecting of antique Phlebotomy instruments. The site is growing daily as I begin the process of photographing items from my collection and adding information on the identification and understanding of this unique set of collectibles.

Common courtesy. Having fed and watered the animals, I'm headed back to the house when a certain need makes itself known. Mindful of Ed Abbey's maxim, I wander over to a friendly tree, and am well into the matter when up the driveway I see a pickup coming. Behind the wheel is a teenage boy with that particular stretched look that sets in around eighteen, and sitting next to him is a very pretty, and at the moment very red, seventeen year-old girl.

Well. There are, in this situation, two primary sets of vectors. First, there are the physical ones: hydrodynamic pressure is a bit much for any sort of hiatus. Wind velocity is at present to my back, aiding flow. I'd sort of like to keep it that way, since I like these pants, but the second set of vectors (societal) kicks in its share of torque, and I perform a quick volte-face and finish up before they're out of the truck. It's the little thoughtful details that make the host.

It turns out they're the son and daughter of friends of ours, here to get the co-op order which we picked up last night. The boy is Tom, the girl somethingsomethingmumbleVal (blush). I introduce myself, after a moment's thought about becoming our neighbor Bob Du Pont, as [Odious]. Nobody offers to shake hands.

Boxes loaded, they drive off with a wave from Tom. I can see Val's shoulders shaking before they're halfway down the driveway, but she's polite enough to wait until they're out of earshot to start really giggling.

"Honey," I say to my wife once I'm back inside, "we're living too close to town."

Anatomical snuffbox. Bundle of His.

More algae economy, again with the 10% of New Mexico idea. I'm not categorically against this idea, in fact I think it's really worth pursuing. But my concerns about water remain unanswered. This is not the first energy magic bullet I have seen whose advocates blithely neglect hydrological considerations. The oil shale everyone's so fired up about in Utah and Colorado requires substantial amounts of water for processing. Those happy Canadians have a great, big, mostly unallocated river to work with; Utah and Colorado have literally zero water to spare. And one must also consider the water needs of everyone who will move to the area to work on such a project. Perhaps the algae technology can be rigged to conserve its water; but it's an engineering issue which seriously needs to be addressed.

Update: As Jack comments below, apparently the system can work entirely on brackish water. Popular Mechanics lists freshwater usage for the process as zero. Excellent!

Signs you're in Northern New Mexico:

Terry Teachout visits Santa Fe in preparation for the 2009 premier of his opera (well, his libretto). The Letter will be composed by Paul Moravec and is based on a short story by Somerset Maugham. Says Teachout:

If you don't know the plot in any of its various manifestations, take it from me, it's the stuff operas are made of. Lust, betrayal, murder, blackmail...what's not to like? I feel like singing already. Paul and I are shaping it into a very tight structure (ninety minutes, no intermission) that we hope will have the feel of a film noir and the punch of a verismo opera. Think Tosca or Carmen directed by Jacques Tourneur and you'll get the idea.

It's rather gratifying that Moravec refers to Santa Fe as an American Bayreuth. Ongoing progress reports are listed on the right sidebar of Mr. Teachout's web site. This one has a lot of potential. Get tickets early! In fact, 2009 would be a great season to indulge in subscription seats. Besides The Letter, they're doing Gluck's Alceste (more Gluck, please!), Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore, Don Giovanni and La Traviata with Natalie Dessay: stellar, and all new productions except the Mozart.

Pretty clever for an online quiz:

I am the sonnet, never quickly thrilled; Not prone to overstated gushing praise Nor yet to seething rants and anger, filled With overstretched opinions to rephrase; But on the other hand, not fond of fools, And thus, not fond of people, on the whole; And holding to the sound and useful rules, Not those that seek unjustified control. I'm balanced, measured, sensible (at least, I think I am, and usually I'm right); And when more ostentatious types have ceased, I'm still around, and doing, still, alright. In short, I'm calm and rational and stable - Or, well, I am, as much as I am able. What Poetry Form Are You?

Things you don't see every day

Since I took the trouble to rant the other day about the spectacular absence of water from New Mexico, of course I immediately go out and find counter examples. Here's a waterfall I visited yesterday, not huge but plenty festive, near El Rito. As good as the waterfall, but much harder to photograph, was the enormous quartzite outcrop that formed the gorge.

But this was decidedly small potatoes compared to the next drainage over. The Rio Ojo Caliente flows southward out of the Tusas range. A southern outrigger of Colorado's San Juan mountains, the Tusas are consistently the snowiest part of New Mexico, and their snowpack this year was off the charts. The gracery store and a church in Chama actually caved in this winter. But warm weather is here, and the Ojo Caliente, normally a modest creek, is going big.

The river is charging like this for miles. These falls were the beginning of a fantastic gorge, full of continuous Class III-IV whitewater, pushy and very fast.

A big rapid. Those two V-waves are much bigger than they look in the photo.

Spring wildflowers on a river bench.

This is not an everyday sight in New Mexico. I have heard native New Mexican children exclaim in great excitement, "Look! The water's almost four inches deep!" This has been a very good year for the north.
Incidentally, the headwaters of this river host a truly classic New Mexican village. As I drove in, six cows were crossing Main Street (about eight feet wide) to ransack a garden. I was chased by dogs all the way through town. Splendid place!

The river canyon had no trail and as I was crossing one of many talus slopes a boulder rolled under my feet. After scrabbling a second trying to regain balance, I keeled over onto my right hand, which emitted a very audible snap, like a popsicle stick breaking. I lifted up my hand to see my ring finger pointing a good sixty degrees right of normal, clearly dislocated at the proximal joint. Thankfully, the pain was much less than I would have expected. But the "Holy Shit" factor was high, seeing a body part so far from its wonted environs, and the fight-or-flight response was very strong. I wanted to move, now, to be somewhere else right away. Also, since I wasn't thinking too clearly, I was not quite sure whether the thing was just dislocated or actually snapped through. An initial attempt to pull some traction and put it back in line was not satisfactory. Can I hike out like this? Bad idea. Fortunately, the cerebrum engaged: "You've got to deal with this now, before the adrenaline wears off." All right, brain. I staggered to stabler ground.

It's just dislocated, or it would hurt a lot more, right? Right. I hooked the finger through a loop on my camera bag to achieve a solider purchase, and pulled. Traction in line, then move it smoothly back into position, just like the WFR instructors say. Second time worked like a charm. Next step: extract first aid kit, swallow ten ibuprofen, splint it to the neighboring digit. It's nice to see wilderness medicine theory work in practice, gives you some confidence that they don't just make it all up so your rescuers have something to do while you die, like CPR in the field.

My one regret, a serious regret, is that I didn't stop to take a gruesome picture. At the time I was worried that it would be frivolous and irresponsible; now I feel differently, with posterity to consider. But it looked very much like this, except on the ring finger:

For more New Mexico whitewater, check out the first raft descent of Rio Embudo, just a couple weeks ago. Who says New Mexico has no decent boating?

Who is buried in Friedrich Schiller's tomb?

Lots of people other than Schiller.

Seems like a situation of which he would have approved.

Sketch of
The Analytical Engine
Invented by Charles Babbage
By L. F. MENABREA
of Turin, Officer of the Military Engineers
from the Bibliothèque Universelle de Genève, October, 1842, No. 82

With notes upon the Memoir by the Translator
ADA AUGUSTA, COUNTESS OF LOVELACE

...is well worth your time, if you are the sort of person who said to themselves, 'Ooo! Analytical engine!' when you read that. (ht)

"...we could grow all the fuel the United States needs using 1/10th of the land space of New Mexico..."

By covering that 10% into fancy algae incubators. It might not be the worst use for a tenth of New Mexico, provided it's the right tenth. I'd definitely nominate Roswell, Artesia and environs, which have no discernible charm to lose by being converted into algae. I'm sure the stuff also smells better than Artesia does currently.

Seriously, though, I assume the chappy in the link was using New Mexico largely just as a land-area comparison. While southwestern states possess certain recommendations for such a project, viz. lots of sunlight and available open space, they have one major negative: there's no water. None. It's all spoken for. One commenter to the linked post asks, "I wonder what portion of the total area of the state of New Mexico is currently dedicated to growing corn for ethanol. 50%? 75%? 100%? More?" Actually, the state's entire harvested cropland represents only about 1.1% of New Mexico's acreage; irrigated cropland about 0.8% (figures from 2002; these numbers are trending significantly downward, I expect because agricultural water rights are being diverted to residential development). These aren't typos, easterners; we are not Iowa. People from other parts of the country really can't imagine how little water we have around here. The video doesn't address whether the water in these algae tanks can be conserved and reused, but if not, that's a deal-breaker in most of the West. Lots of brilliant ideas for using our open spaces and unexplored resources seem not to consider this inconvenient reality.

Some nights ago I was indulging in a nip of red wine and a bite or two of chocolate, when I heard a small voice. "Ahem. I contain ze sulfites." Turned my head, looked around. Assessed the level of the bottle.

"I beg your pardon?" I asked.

"I contain ze sulfites," said the wine. "You should be aware of zis."

"And why is that, o bottle?"

"Well, I am sure I do not know. But if you did need to know, I 'ave done my duty."

"Ah." I poured another glass. The wine muttered a long phrase sotto voce. "What was that?" I said sharply.

"I said," it replied with exaggerated care, "zat I should not be consumed by ze women who are or may be pregnant."

"What?"

"Ze Surgeons General thought it was important. Zey are smart fellows, you should listen to zem."

Giving up for the moment on the wine, I turned to the chocolate. "Do you have anything to say for yourself?" I asked.

"I'm chock full of antioxidants!" it chirruped. "Ask me about my health benefits!"

"You two," I said, "are getting worse than my breakfast cereal."

"Unfair!" said the wine.

"True," I said, considering. "Nobody is worse than the breakfast cereal. Just sitting there on the table, mumbling to itself like Rain Man. 'Vitamin A 25%. Vitamin C 2%, Riboflavin, definitely 35%.' You know, it's talk like this that makes my work a living hell. People are so flipped out about eating well that they're avoiding things for no reason. I had one person--neither coeliac nor intolerant--ask me if it was okay to eat gluten. She didn't even know what it was, and she was worried about it."

"I'm gluten-free!" said the chocolate, before the wine and I shushed it.

"And what is ze gluten?"

"It is an," I enunciated, "ergastic amorphous protein."

"Ah."

"Quite. Real food doesn't even have ingredients! It's just, 'bacon'. Or 'milk'. Or 'bread'. Maybe 'bread with things in it'. But look at you. They've got you spouting off about sulfites and birth defects. O tempora, o vino."

I looked to the bottle, but as it was empty, it had nothing left to say.

Camel demand soars in India...

...in response to high gas prices, apparently. Once again, your genial host Peculiar proves to be on the cutting edge of history: I've been demanding a camel for quite a while. No dromedaries, please. I need a big, shaggy two-humper that can deal with deep snow. A pair would be ideal.

Nobody thinks clearly, no matter what they pretend. Thinking's a dizzy business, a matter of catching as many of those foggy glimpses as you can and fitting them together the best you can. That's why people hang on so tight to their beliefs and opinions; because, compared to the haphazard way in which they're arrived at, even the goofiest opinion seems wonderfully clear, sane, and self-evident. And if you let it get away from you, then you've got to dive back into that foggy muddle to wangle yourself another to take its place.

--the Dain Curse, Dashiell Hammett

We visited this ruin last weekend, in a very out-of-the-way corner of northern New Mexico. People live around here their entire lives and never pass through this area. The cliff house above was located about 800 feet up the side of a heavily forested canyon. There was running water in the bottom, but it had just snowed the night before, so I don't know whether the stream is perennial. Here's the ruin with a little more context:

It's a pretty lush spot by New Mexican standards: in addition to the usual ponderosa, Doug fir and scrub oak, there were also spruce and true firs.
We only found one little pictograph panel, but I like it:

Detail:

Despite their enthusiasm for painting birds, these people, the Gallina, were not a culture you wanted to be part of:

...scarcely more than a hundred Gallina remains have ever been found, said Tony Largaespada, an archaeologist with the U.S. Forest Service who made the discovery in 2005.

"Almost all of [the Gallina ever found] were murdered," he said. "[Someone] was just killing them, case after case, every single time."

..........

"Why these [victims] were outside the house is kind of a mystery," Largaespada said. "Usually [attackers] threw [Gallina victims] in their houses and burned the houses on top of them. That's the case with 90 percent of them.

"But in this particular case they were thrown in a pile outside the house. … More than likely there are others [nearby]."

More, with photos, here.

Like the six other bodies found at the site—all members of a now vanished culture called the Gallina—Stargazer met a brutal end. Her neck had been broken, with her head snapped back so far that her skull rested between her shoulder blades.

"Her head was forced back so hard that it pushed a piece of [a] vertebra into the back of her skull," Largaespada said. "That was a pretty violent death."

..........

The murder scene is grimly consistent with the few other Gallina sites that have previously been excavated, Nelson added.

"[In] most of what we're finding, someone came through and killed them," he said. "If you find a Gallina site and there's skeletons in it, they were killed."

Also interesting: '"Probably the most famous thing about the Gallina is the towers they made," said Tony Largaespada, a U.S. Forest Service archaeologist. "[People] call them Gallina towers, and they almost looked like medieval European castles."'

Though there were no such towers at the location we visited, the site's defensive aspects were pretty unmistakable, with two separate structures set away from the main alcove, commanding views of the canyon. Here's a rather lousy photo of the upper one:

It also seems noteworthy that no modern Puebloans claim any ancestral connections with the Gallina. The Jemez, for instance, seem remarkably vehement on the subject.

To add one final, even more Lovecraftian touch, the site contained several deep holes that reached horizontally back into the sandstone. The largest was remarkably deep, perhaps 25 feet. It seemed as though it extended even further, but was blocked with a large stone that looked for all the world like it was deliberately placed. Another such crevice was similarly blocked. For all the progress in Southwestern archaeology, there's still a lot of room for play of imagination.

A short film of some very old school rockclimbing. Today's climbers will find it pretty primitive, but even I learned to climb with a bowline around the waist and belaying around the body. However, this is one of those occasions in which progress really does represent improvement. I must say, these folks' technique looks dubious even by 1938 standards. Also, clearly television's catering to the idiots in the audience is no recent phenomenon.

A new one for the sidebar: Nature Lyrics, the blog of a very fine wildlife and macro photographer in India. For a quick taste, check out his vultures and snakes. Browse the galleries too; among much else there are some excellent sloth bears to be had.

A victory for the anti-mining faction in Crested Butte. Some background here. As I said in the earlier post, I have mixed feelings about this; however, I can't say I'm unhappy about the news.

Masai warriors will run the London Marathon. I cannot tell you how much joy this gives me. (ht)

It's Christopher Smart's birthday! Or it was, yesterday, when I meant to post this. Most people know For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffry, which is excellent. I will confess that always closest to my heart is the following couplet:

Of all Spring's blossoms I like best
My sunlit wife, herself sun-dressed.

England's thatching crisis.

It sounds truly aggravating: a combination of perverse agricultural policies combining with drastically over-zealous preservation efforts to kill an ancient tradition.

Via Cronaca.

Almost missed this one: John Derbyshire reviews a collection of nature writing, and gives a very nice tip of the hat to Steve, who is not included:

The [political] Left survives and flourishes because, as well as there being plenty of people whose satisfaction in life is to boss others around, there are even more who are willing to be bossed. Those who are not so willing — persons of a prickly-libertarian temperament — often head out to the wild places, to end up as lovers of the raw creation. There is, too, that aspect of the conservative temperament that abhors sentimentality and wishful thinking, and greets with happy recognition the cycles of death and mayhem that comprise most of the natural world's activity. I am thinking here, in both cases, of the Western writer Stephen J. Bodio, whose 1998 memoir On the Edge of the Wild offers an eloquent hunter's perspective on nature.

The Left undoubtedly has the best of it, though. They certainly have the best of this volume, which contains nothing of Stephen Bodio's at all — nothing at all sympathetic to hunting, except as carried out by American Indians.

The review finishes, unexpectedly, as a positive one. I note with amusement and approval that he prefers unknown writers, "writers I had never heard of, but whom I am glad to have encountered," among whom he numbers Ed Abbey. And though I agree with his assessment of two samples which he rightly mocks as purple prose, I disagree about his Eliot Porter quote:

In the winding canyon dark and light reflections replace one another in slow succession. The gentle wake of the boat breaks these images into undulating spots and patches, each wave for a moment holding a fragment of sky mixed with golden globules of sunlit rock.

I suppose Mr. Porter may be justly accused here of having failed to convey the moment to a distant audience, but the moments here described are a very large part of why I squandered years of time and set myself far behind my peers financially working as a ne'er-do-well river guide. Sunny canyon reflections on shaded water, broken by concentric ripples from my quietly dripping oars: it was worth everything for that alone.

Also worth noting is Mr. Derbyshire's mention of the decline in outdoor recreation:

While reading America's Earth I came upon a report just issued by the Nature Conservancy, telling us that people are spending less time in the Great Outdoors than ever before. Activity in this zone has been declining for twenty years, the researchers tell us. The annual per capita rates of decline have been from one percent to one and a quarter, depending on the type of activity measured — camping, backpacking, fishing, hiking, hunting, or trips to national and state parks and forests.

I hear this a lot, and it's probably true, but it's often hard to believe. It seems to be an instance of Yogi Berra's "No one goes there anymore. It's too crowded." So many places are positively infested with recreationists (as Mr. Derbyshire may recall from his hike to Inspiration Point in Grand Teton, where he missed the Peculiars by only a couple days). Even Nevada is becoming a destination, while REI, EMS and their ilk seemingly continue to flourish. I know people (assholes, I might add) who use Delicate Arch as a Frisbee golf hole. I suppose it's true though. Outdoor activities are now dominated by gearheads and destination vacationists, while locals who use their public land backyards on a regular basis do seem to be on the wane. The economic demographics of outdoor recreation are also unencouraging. My river company, which is actually a non-profit organization ostensibly dedicated to exposing the voting public to wilderness, recently raised prices on trips because people seemed to assume that our low cost reflected low quality. Bookings went up and honest working clientele continue to decline.

Still, though many places are overrun, a great many aren't. They can have Grand Teton and the Maroon Bells. There are areas right next door where I can still be confident of not seeing a soul.

More Tibet

...without (much) commentary from me. It all gets increasingly convulted; judge for yourself.

Here's an interesting perspective from a mountaineer who's been in Lhasa (scroll down to post by Corax towards bottom). The poster is a serious Swedish climber, and his observations are not to be lightly dismissed. To be fair, though, I had not had the impression from the international media that the Tibet protests were peaceful or harmless.

Meanwhile, here's another assessment of the state of Chinese and international media. Here's an account of alleged Chinese cyber attacks on Tibet activists, Uighurs and Falun Gong. And here's a report that China may ban live broadcasts from Tiananmen square during the Olympics.

Today is the birthday of Benito Pablo Juárez García, about whom I'm ashamed to admit I knew nothing. On a whim, I looked him up on Wikipedia, and found him to be, at least on the surface, an admirable fellow.

Juárez was born in the small village of San Pablo Guelatao, Oaxaca, located in the mountain range now known as the "Sierra Juárez." His parents, Marcelino Juárez and Brígida García were peasants who died when he was three years old. He described his parents as "Amerindians of the primitive race of the country." He worked in the corn fields and as a shepherd until the age of 12. On December 17, 1818, he walked to the city of Oaxaca looking to educate himself and find a better life. At the time he was illiterate and could not speak Spanish, only Zapotec.

In the city he had a sister who worked as a cook and there, he took a job as a domestic servant and eagerly made up for his lack of education. A lay Franciscan, Antonio Salanueva, was impressed with young Benito's intelligence and thirst for learning, and arranged for his placement at the city's seminary. He studied there but decided to pursue law rather than the priesthood. He graduated from the seminary in 1827 and went on to gain a degree in law.

Aside from seizing Church properties, he seemed to have been industrious, honorable, and dedicated.

Chas found it first and the Atomic Nerds personalized it, so in the interest of continuing Barbie ethnography, I'll offer some more easily overlooked specimens. Santa Fe has any number of them, of course, but particularly noteably to this blog's readership is

St. John's College [Santa Fe] Barbie: Available in a wide variety of hairstyles and body types, this Barbie's accessories include a bong and hardcover copies of Plato's Republic and the Fagles Iliad. Optional conversion kit to Eastern Orthodoxy available.

Española Barbie, Alternative Model: Includes long flowing robes and turban. Most commonly used with Santa Fe Whole Foods Market playset. Ken includes a dagger and a security business.

Truchas Barbie: Commonly mistaken for Española Barbie, Trucheña Barbie's accessories include an elk rifle, several yard appliances, stray livestock, and a kit to sabotage Santa Fe and Taos Barbies' vehicles when parked at local trailheads.

Steve is hereby challenged to offer up Catron County Barbie. Anyone else? I'd say glaring omissions include Tierra Amarilla, Roswell and Gallup Barbies.

Things I did not know about Alcibiades, part one: he had a lisp.

Probably not the kind you are thinking of, but the kind that, when you bweak into somebody's pawty dwunk and stawt chatting up the guests and pwaising Socwates, make evewyone say, "Awwwww..."

The kind of thing that makes the most beautiful person in existence (and also the quickest thinker, and the best rhetorician, and the greatest general--undefeated for life on whatever side he chose--and the best charioteer and a triple-medalist in the Olympic Games and a seriously impious fellow one way or t'other) just that much cuter.

He reminds me of Zhuge Liang; they were both dicks.

Running post; you have been warned. I ran the Shamrock 8km on Sunday (bad Episcopalian!) in 35:07. Not bad, but not great either. Some thoughts: I can go faster. If I'd known the distance better I could have cut 2 minutes off my time by not starting too slowly. I ran the first mile in 8:41 and the last in 6:17--and had enough left for a really stupid 200 yard burst at the finish. Next time I won't save up like that. Also, running with a big group of people is a blast! There was always someone going my pace, and even when I got boxed in, the course was wide enough that it didn't last long. I'm going to do this sort of thing again.

Tardigrades!

Update for posterity, in case the link should ever die:

I want a bonny tardigrade to serve me for a steed.
I'd harness him with watercress and provend him with mead.
We'd leave the hillock for the plain, forth to the desert wend;
from each bright globule of his brow a dock leaf I'd prepend.
His limbs, gone leathery with thirst, would lose their lustrous sheen,
and then I would rehydrate him with pulls from my canteen.
His feet would clasp the dunes beneath, his snout survey the sky,
while I, upon his back, sought out our caravanserai.
Unendingly we'd course the earth, our fortune never fixed --
the West Wind gee, the East Wind haw, and him and me betwixt.
My Octopod Bucephalus, my ally and my charge!
I'd do it all, were he less small, or I less sodding large.

The Chinese have closed Mt. Everest from the north until after the Olympic torch is carried up. The mountaineering community speculates that the Chi-Coms dread the appearance of a Free Tibet banner in propaganda photos. They have unsuccessfully lobbied the Nepalese government to impose a similar ban on south side expeditions. Interestingly, they have also closed Cho Oyu, which is not particularly close to Everest or the torch route, but was the sight of last year's shooting of Tibetans by the Chinese army. News of the atrocity was broken by a few mountaineers, a Brit, two Romanians and a Slovenian who provided photographic evidence. Most of the parties on the mountain said nothing at the time, no doubt fearing a reprisal just such as this season's ban. Given the narrow window of opportunity for climbing Everest, the need for extensive legwork and acclimatization, this effectively kills most expeditions from the north this year. The guiding companies will take a big hit, and I certainly feel bad for climbers who have already put massive sums towards their ambitions this season. A massive influx of climbers switching their plans to the Nepalese side may also make for a very interesting season.

I will not be watching the games this summer (not much of a boycott, since I don't even have a TV, but what else can I do?), since it is increasingly apparent that they will be mainly a massive PR stunt on behalf of the Chinese government. The only thing I worry I will miss out on is some daring act of protest, but no doubt that will be instantly available on Youtube. I do hope that something occurs to make the country's rulers exceedingly uncomfortable while every news agency on earth is covering them live. As inconvenient as the Everest closure is to mountaineers, we can only hope that it will be one more event to focus the world's attention on the deplorable behavior of the Chinese regime. I hope it makes the news, I hope it thereby brings the Nangpa La murders back on the news just in time for the torch relay. Romanian witness Alex Gavan put it in a nutshell:

”China, a country to host the Olympic Games in 2008, is slaughtering its citizens.”

Update, 3-16: Nepal succumbs. More here and here. I'll comment soon.

Update, 3-17: Also, lots of interest regarding the Lhasa protests/riots from Dave's Gone China, including translations of Chinese Internet chatter on Tibet (more), which provide an interesting window into how mainstream Chinese see the problem. Reactions are a mixed bag.

Alright, final update for now: The Nepalese deny closures, but the situation remains ambiguous. Meanwhile, here's some reporting from Lhasa. Welcome to interacting with China in the 21st Century, folks. The Everest closures of course pale in comparison with the situation in Lhasa, but I still think they deserve coverage inasmuch as they enlighten us to the realities of life in an unfree society. Your life's ambition, a large portion of your savings, your mountain guiding livelihood, even your subsistance as a sherpa or local purveyor can be demolished on a whim of your government, for the slenderest of PR justifications. The Chinese can also put substantial financial pressure on anyone who might see things differently, as with their 121 million Euro loan to Nepal. And yet we rush to make our economics ever more dependent on China's goodwill. The Taiwanese better not be counting on our protection; we have already been bought, we just don't seem to know it yet.

On a lighter note, take a moment to read about Parachute-Gelenkhüü, the Mongolian Icarus, a sort of early 20th Century Mongol folk hero. His highly optimistic flight was fortuitously curtailed by sheep.

Mongolia's airport art has a much better sense of humour than ours.

Hat tip: The Regal Vizsla.

Also in Grand Canyon news, there's a new theory of its formation just out which deems its age much greater than previous estimates. While the structure of its constituent rock strata is pretty simple, explaining the formation of the Canyon itself has long been very contentious. "If you ever want to see geologists screaming at each other," an informed person once told me, "ask them to interpret the Grand Wash Cliffs Formation." We'll see how the new theory holds up long-term.

The brief Grand Canyon experimental "flood" is over.

I find that perhaps my previous comment on the flood was somewhat unclear. A longtime reader and friend writes:

With the caveat that I am a plant ecologist and not a geohydrologist, and am not familiar with the Salmon River, I think the problem with doing flooding experiments with the Salmon is that there is no dam and thus no large amount of water to use to mimic a flooding event with. Sure, someone could (and I hope is) studying the flood cycle of the Salmon River, but for controlled experiment's sake a damned [sic, indeed] river is better.

(Sorry it's taken me a while to reply, but, well, life gets in the way. And I'm not a geohydrologist either, but I've drunk some beers with them on river trips, so I'll try and do my best to answer.)

The problem with doing flooding experiments in the GC is that there is no large amount of water to use to mimic a flooding event, the dam notwithstanding. Releases from Glen Canyon are determined by a bewildering host of factors: agriculture in California; municipal water needs in Phoenix, Vegas and So-Cal; electricity needs in Arizona; our treaty obligations to provide Mexico with 2 million acre-feet yearly; balancing inflow (i.e., snow melt) with diversions in upper basin states while maintaining useful water levels in three major downstream reservoirs and three major and a host of minor upstream reservoirs. Powell Reservoir has been very low for years now, while water demands continue to increase; no water has reached the Gulf of Mexico since 1982. Under these conditions, sedimentation research in the Grand Canyon is very low on the totem pole.

Indeed, the current flood is really just a small bone thrown to conservationists by the Bureau of Reclamation. Other people besides me are unhappy about the experiment. For instance, the Executive Director of the Grand Canyon Trust:

We need high flows to rebuild habitats whenever we get significant sediment inputs from tributary streams, but instead we get rare, “historic” experiments. We need more natural steady flows through most of the remainder of the year to protect spawning and rearing habitat for humpback chub in the Colorado River, but what we get is continued erosion of backwaters and beaches through an almost unbroken regimen of fluctuating flows... if this high flow experiment is part of a package with no more floods for five years and just two months a year of steady flows, then the package will impair the resources in Grand Canyon.

Or the National Parks Conservation Association:

...the experimental plan fails to include follow-up floods, which are critical to ensuring that endangered fish and sandbars are preserved. Instead, it calls for steady releases during September and October over the next five years –essentially locking-in smaller flows from the dam in order to generate additional power – when larger flows might be more beneficial to the park’s ecosystem at other times of the year, particularly in the spring.

This "flood's" 41,500 cubic feet per second for 60 hours is a paltry flood in a drainage the size of the Colorado Basin. And we only get this every four years (the last such experiment was in 2004). I have no doubt that these events do provide a wealth of data for scientists, and are useful due to their closely controlled nature, one data set in four years is a pretty plodding pace of research.

The big thing that's missing in the science here is baseline data for the behavior of sediment in a natural river system of this size. No one thought to look at any of this before the dam went in in 1963. And there is precisely one river system in the same ballpark in the United States unaffected by dams: the Salmon. Lets look at some hydrographs (which I got here). Here is the Main Salmon's high water season (April-July) for the last two years

2006, a fairly average year:

2007, a low year:

(Note that the scales are not the same; 2007's peak was about 38,000 cfs, while 2006's was over 90,000. That's a ton of water, and the Salmon can go way bigger than that!) Observe how the high flows are spread out over a good three months. Low elevations melt first, it peaks when the weather really heats up, and lingering snow melt and groundwater keep feeding it, stretching out the right end of the graph. Note also the multiple small peaks.

Now lets look at the Colorado. Here's last week, encompassing the flood:

And here's the last 12 months of business as usual at Glen Canyon Dam, with the flood spike at the far right:

In the flood graph, obviously, we have a sharp rise, a steady plateau and a sharp fall, enormously different from a natural high-water episode. In the lower graph, note that the daily fluctuations are so extreme that they're represented by three separate lines; GC boaters have to be careful when setting up camp to avoid being flooded or having their boats beached. The many little spikes represent weekday vs. weekend flows: they don't need as much electricity Saturday and Sunday when Phoenix office buildings are closed. Note also the increase to power Phoenix A/C in the summer heat.

Is a four day peak long enough to really stir up the sand and put it where we want it? Does the steep right-hand tail of the flood actually do harm by causing beaches to erode into very steep banks, something I've observed non-scientifically in Idaho (Mark Schmeeckle is probably working on this question as we speak)? What would happen if we three one-day floods instead? Is 41,500 cfs at all adequate, or do we really need something closer to historic highs (estimated to have been something like 70,000 to 300,000 cfs on the Colorado pre-dam; again, the Salmon's the only river with at all comparable bed and gradient that gets anything like these flows)? These are the kind of questions which the Salmon's annual natural flood experiment could help answer, without being dependent on the vagaries of western water politics. No, it's not a controlled experiment, but natural scientists commonly use natural experiments to gather data on phenomena for which a deliberate experiment would be irresponsible or impossible. That's how we've gained almost all of our knowledge about things like debris flows, landslides, avalanches and forest fires, let alone earthquakes, volcanism and astronomy.

Also worthy of note is that baseline data for sediment behavior in a natural river system would not be useful only in the Grand Canyon. Lodore Canyon below Flaming Gorge Dam on the Green and the entire Dolores River in Colorado have very similar management issues. I ran Lodore on an experimental flood in 1999 (which was a blast), but there hasn't been another, and we're not likely to see one any time soon. McPhee Reservoir has rendered the Dolores virtually dead for two decades. The Yampa (the last significant undammed river in the Colorado Basin) is also threatened by headwaters diversions and a dam on the Little Snake which would cut off its major source of sediment. Solid baseline data on sediment behavior would greatly benefit conservation proposals for these rivers.

"But what's the point?", you ask. "If the Bureau is so loathe to release a piddling flood for research purposes, we'll never see a flow regime that even vaguely mimics the natural hydrograph." Good point, and alas, very probably true. But you never know: things change. Water issues are only likely to get worse in the Colorado Basin, and if the Colorado River Compact ever comes up for major renovation, conservationists need to have their ducks in a row, with specific proposals instead of just objections. Also, every dam in the Basin is silting up in a big hurry; whether they like it or not, the Bureau is going to have to come up with some new plans eventually, and it would be nice to know how all the silt in the reservoirs is going to behave. Or the drought might even break (hey, I can dream), the dams might someday be looking to release large volumes (as Glen Canyon Dam was forced to do in 1981 and 1983), in which case scientists should be able to tell them how to do it in an ecologically beneficial manner.

You can never have too much data these days, and the Main Salmon is a great place to get some. And there are any number of grad students looking to research their theses is beautiful surroundings*. Grad students, I'm available, I know the Salmon and I'm a good river cook. Science!!!!

*I talked once with a guy who was writing his thesis on box elder trees in Dinosaur National Monument. "So what got you so interested in box elders?" I asked. "They grow here," said he.

Y'all are reading Skin Horse, right? I wasn't sure it was going to be my bag until the quasi-Italian irradiated silverfish started singing opera....

From the Annals of the Grand Historian:

These, then, were the actions undertaken by the Duke of Qin after his victories. Without any check to his desires, he began to oppress the people, and, at the advice of Li Su, destroying the works of the scholars. At this time a popular song began to circulate amongst the peasantry, which I here record.

O such a bad Duke of Qin
I scarcely know where to begin
For he's a horrible, terrible
Wholly unbearable
Rascally mad Duke of Qin

His taxes are really quite fair--
At least if you get by on air
He drips jade and gold whilst we starve in the cold--
That miserly mad Duke of Qin

The scholars he takes from their books
And gives both their eyes to the rooks
He answers their learning with strangling and burning
That arrogant mad Duke of Qin

We pity the Confucianist
Whose name has appeared on his list
His pleas go unheard, so far down he's interred--
Such a rotten old mad Duke of Qin

With each of his neighbors he's made peace--
By killing them down to the least
Each federate state but a crumb on his plate,
Th'incontinent mad Duke of Qin

His justice is modelled on trust:
He trusts us to die when we must
"For virtue's the fruit of which torture's the root,"
So says the mad Duke of Qin

We'd love to move out of this state
But such simply is not our Fate
For he owns all the land from the sea to the sand
That cantankerous,
Rancorous,
No-hanky-pankorous
Disgustingly mad Duke of Qin!

Images and video of the moon's south polar region:

“We now know the south pole has peaks as high as Mount McKinley and crater floors four times deeper than the Grand Canyon,” said Doug Cooke, a deputy associate administrator at NASA.

Have I mentioned that I'm all for terraforming other worlds? Particularly worlds with abundant rafting and mountaineering potential.

...the philosopher Wang Ji wrote about a journey he claimed to have made to the Land of the Drunk, one of those fantasy places the medieval Chinese loved to invent, and ended up half-believing in. There, he said, citizens "sip the wind and drink the dew, and abstain from the five cereals."

John Derbyshire on Chinese inebriaty.

A most thouroughly laudable python.

Video clip here.

This & That

The book meme with which Steve has tagged me seems a jolly thing, but my case has failed to produce interesting results. My genuine closest book has most of p. 123 taken up with a large picture. What to do? If I simply follow five sentences onto p. 124 I get

The transmitted sound resembled a high-pitched birdlike warble. The Russians called the novel sonar the CHIRP.

Late that first night at sea, after about six hours of steaming westward from Gelendzhik, the Aquanaut approached the place where the ancient Don River might once have flowed on its way to the Ice Age Black Sea lake.

My second nearest book had p.123 blank (chapter break). Choice three, my current read, yields

"The sun, Mr. Barrow?" said the master. "Mr. Snow, clear me those men to the foc's'le. When is the side to be dressed, bo'sun? We do not have all day."

"I suggest that hats should be ordered to be worn," said Tobias, plucking Mr. Clerk's coat to draw his attention."

Oh well, monkeys with typewriters can't produce Bartlett's every day.

The Querencia blog has had food on its mind lately (no surprise, really). In the comments here, Moro Rogers asked about eating well when one is broke, and the topic has continued. I'll try to post some reflections in the future, but I don't have all night and there's nothing like working on an organic farm to make you really think about food, economics, sustainability and affordability. (Our farmer's wife was so harried that she actually on occasion purchased canned Kroger tomatoes while our beautiful heirlooms rotted in the compost.) The affordability issue really became a serious philosophical concern for us, as we watched all our produce leave its fertile valley to be sold at greatly magnified prices in Colorado's mountain Disneylands. And the farmers still don't make money. It's also true that it can be cheaper than you think, though. But getting the good stuff cheap definitely involves barter, making lots of friends, rural networking, really living in an area. I'll stop rambling for now, but here's another good interview with Michael Pollan.

And finally, they're planning another Grand Canyon flood experiment for this year. Wish I could be on the river! The main purpose of these releases is ecological experimentation, particularly as relates to sediment redistribution (rebuilding eroded beaches), its effects on invasive plants and native fish. I have certainly seen beaches grow dramatically less and the weeds wax much worse in my two decades' experience in the canyon; it's worthwhile science. But a lot of this experimentation could be conducted much more easily, and I hereby offer the following to geomorphologists free of charge, with the stipulation that I be hired as their boatman should they secure funding for this project:

Idaho's Main Salmon River would be a much more convenient venue for sedimentation and beach building research than the Grand. The Salmon is comparable in its channel, gradient and volume to the Colorado, and most importantly it is undammed. Instead of planning occasional manmade floods amidst the minefield of agency politics, Colorado water allocation and power generation requirements that beset the Grand, researchers could avail themselves of a natural experiment in Idaho annually. The Salmon commonly has peaks from 40,000 to 120,000 cfs, again comparable to the pre-dam Colorado and boasting high volumes that Reclamation would never agree to. The specific hydrograph (swift vs slow rise and fall, multiple peaks, &c.) also varies greatly, and we commonly observe large variations in the beaches from year to year. It's a superb natural laboratory, and the Canyon folks should take advantage of it. And secure lavish funding for their boatmen.

Another sunset, last night, looking into the West Elk Range:

Please enlarge!

An excellent new reference, and most prodigious time-killer: the Internet Bird Collection. Lots of video of lots and lots of species. Added to the sidebar.