Unabridged: Over Troubled Water

A bit of scribbling just cropped up in New Scientist. Here’s the first 200 words or so:
It’s about some neat research into the way rip currents work – great food for thought during those endless counterproductive paddleouts at your local beachbreak.
It was interesting to write for a straight-ahead magazine like New Scientist. Forget these fanciful [...]

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Meanwhile in Antarctica: Big White Drifting Climate Pills?

Thanks to the pharmaceutical industry, most of us are familiar with the concept of time-release capsules. Our tummies ache and we soothe them – not with a concentrated blast of raw medicine, but with a pill that gently releases its ingredients through the day.
Now picture a 13-mile-wide time-release capsule floating in the Weddell Sea – [...]

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Desperate Vultures Roam Europe, Attack Cattle

More than 100 griffon vultures glided into Belgium this week, some 600 miles north of their breeding grounds in Spain. Taking up residence in an old field, the pack spent the next few days glowering at assorted birders and gawkers. A few got fed up and took off for Holland. On Tuesday, some Belgian environmentalists [...]

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Western Scenery Captured, Held Hostage on Flickr

If you’re interested, check out the slimmed-down set of 78 photos from our recent road trip. Clouds, rocks, self-taken group shots, and mustaches galore.

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In Water Cycle, You Are What Drips Out of Your Factories

I’m sorry to report that yesterday’s post about disease-causing organisms in ocean water is only half the story: there’s also disease-causing chemicals out there, too.
Now I realize that in the back of pretty much everyone’s minds, there’s the knowledge that ocean water contains nasty chemicals. So I won’t take a lot of your time here [...]

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There’s Something Kind of Alive in the Water

Reports of the declining state of the world’s fisheries aside, there’s a whole new frontier opening up in the world of ocean life.
They’re called “emerging diseases”: small, aggressive specks of life working like hell to get noticed in a mostly hostile environment. Kind of like “emerging indie-rock,” just less noisy and more likely to stick [...]

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Brother Dodges Sniper

My brother Owen was hit in the head by a sniper bullet yesterday in Baghdad. He’s uninjured, through some incredible luck, or perhaps just leftover grace from one of his myriad religions (ranging from Christianity to Harley-Davidsons). The bullet pierced his hi-tech Army headphones, ripped through the kevlar lining of his helmet, and… stopped. [...]

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Carnival Atmosphere Extends Across Oceans

Happy World Ocean day – at least, to all of you in the western hemisphere, since by coincidence I am writing this at midnight Greenwich Mean Time, meaning that for the whole eastern hemisphere it’s already tomorrow. Weird.
The good ocean advocates over at Blogfish organized a blog carnival to celebrate the day. Lead blogfish [...]

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Hedgehogs Hog Hedgerows in Hebrides

Pudgy, snub-nosed, totally cute and only slightly prickly. Can there possibly be such a thing as too many hedgehogs? Apparently, the answer is yes, at least for small islands like the Hebrides west of Scotland, where hedgehogs only recently arrived.
And yes, this story is filed under climate change because the author traces a possible [...]

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Carnitas Ante Raised Upon Return to Santa Cruz

Central Oregon’s Painted Hills, in the John Day Fossil Beds national monument.
The road trip is over. We wound 2,500 miles onto the odometer, took 414 photos, visited 15 friends, crossed the continental divide 9 times, and gawped at 13 volcanoes, 7 sandhill cranes, 4 snakes (50 percent rattlesnake), 3 eagles, 2 harlequin ducks and 1 [...]

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