B and B

It literally rained mud here last Tuesday

Literally, mud fell from the sky here in San Antonio last Tuesday. 

I have no experience with that kind of weather phenomenon before, so I didn't know what to make of it.  My first impression upon seeing my car, after emerging from my office late that afternoon, was "My car is spattered in mud from top to bottom!  How did this happen?  Did some huge truck drive though a deep puddle at high speed?"  With no such large puddle nearby and thus no evidence that such a thing could have happened, I then noted that I had parked underneath a large live oak tree and that it is spring and rationalized that trees are messy in the spring. Then I promptly put it out of my mind, while driving to the nearest gas station to clean off the windows that I could barely see through.  There, some puzzlement  returned as I noted that the line for the car wash was six deep.

Daily life being full of distractions, and the concept of a muddy rain non-existent in my head, I once again forgot all about this, until, after a few days of no internet access thanks to a bad phone line, I read this article in the Express-News, titled, "Just ash with rain? Not so fast":

The strange stuff that fell Tuesday, griming up windows and lining the pockets of carwash owners, has had the additional effect of setting up a sort of meteorological whodunit.

Just what, some scientific sleuths want to know, commingled with the rain as it fell onto vehicles from San Antonio to Corpus Christi, from Austin to Houston?

Some initial reports, including one from a National Weather Service meteorologist, had the primary cause of the deposits as ash from wildfires in Mexico.

Other indications, including satellite photos, showed a dust plume also emerging from central Mexico.    

Another additive to the mix washed from the sky by the rain of a fast-moving cold front may have been particles from bone-dry West Texas.

...

Forrest Mims III, a science consultant and a freelance columnist for the Express-News, took a sample of the stuff from his window and put it under the microscope, forwarding some of his findings to TCEQ.

"There's one black spore and there are three possible soot particles and everything else is dirt, dust, sand. I would say that it's probably less than 1 percent smoke, and that's being generous," he said.

Joe Baskin, the weather service meteorologist who initially thought that what blew over here was mostly smoke since that's what it looked like in photos, said another look indicated that it likely was dust. (The weather service isn't responsible for investigating the stuff once it leaves clouds.)

    

David Gay, acting director of the Illinois-based National Atmospheric Deposition Program, said his government-funded network of researchers had five sample sites in South Texas and would be able to review initial findings as early as next week.

To me and, I suspect, most others here, it is much more plausible that the stuff in the rain was dust and not ash, as was apparently first reported.  The brownish, rusty color of the residue just does not fit the concept of dull gray ash.

So what is going on in west Texas or northern Mexico that their dirt is falling on our city?

Photos from Luminaria festival Saturday night

Here are a few of my photos from the first Luminaria arts and music festival, downtown San Antonio, Saturday, March 15, 2008.   There was way too much going on to come close to seeing and doing all I wanted to.  If the city this again (and I sure hope they do), perhaps they could split it up into a couple weekend evenings, instead of just one.  It was a blast. 

Schirra's death leaves only Glenn and Carpenter left of the original Mercury 7

More death, alas.  Wally Schirra, one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts, is gone.  Only two now remain: John Glenn and Scott Carpenter.

Schirra's last spaceflight, the first Apollo mission, launched the day after I was born, but my youth was steeped in the lore of the early space program, so I feel the death of each one of the pioneer astronauts keenly.

A quote of Schirra's from his obituary in the L.A. Times:

"I look back on those missions and I remember looking at the spaceship Earth," he told a reporter in 1998. "It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. We need to take care of it."

Death of an inspiring astrophysicist

With dismay yesterday, I noticed the obituary of the colossally-talented astrophysicist Bohdan Paczynski while perusing the Los Angeles Times website.  During my time as as astronomer, I never knew him or worked with him, but some words of his that he spoke at a colloquium at Caltech while I was in grad school back in the early '90s have stuck with me for many years, including long after I left the field.  They have always struck me as a fitting maxim for the creative theoretical scientist at work:

If you're not wrong at least half the time, you're not working hard enough.

The L.A. Times obituary, of course, celebrates some things Paczynski got right. 

Astrophysicist Bohdan Paczynski, who was the first to suggest that gamma-ray bursters lie outside the Milky Way and who revolutionized astronomy by using gravitational lensing as a tool to search for dark matter and new planets, died April 19 in his Princeton, N.J., home after a three-year battle with brain cancer. He was 67.

His novel ideas were often at odds with the conventional wisdom of his peers, but more often than not, he was proved correct, and his insights opened many new areas of research, including the search for stars and other celestial objects whose light output varies over time.

"He was incredibly creative and original," Princeton astrophysicist Michael Strauss said. "All of his life, he brought interesting approaches to interesting problems."

Astrophysicist Adam Riess of Johns Hopkins University said, "People often said that if you had a clever idea and were thinking of writing a paper, you had better check with him first.

"When I was in graduate school, I thought it would be neat to look for supernovas in [gravitationally] lensed systems. I looked it up, and he had already described it."

A native of Poland, Paczynski settled in this country permanently in 1981 when Polish leader Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski cracked down on the Solidarity trade union movement while Paczynski and his family were in this country on sabbatical.

But he retained close ties with the Polish astronomical community, collaborating with researchers there and creating a pipeline to bring many to the United States for training and research.

"He is basically a legend in Poland," said astronomer Krzysztof Pojmanski of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

I'm not sure Pacyznski would be happy with the phrase "more often than not, he was proved correct."  By the standard of his earlier words, that would mean he wasn't working hard enough.  And I find that very hard to believe.

April in Texas: Wildflowers, snow, and ice

Yesterday was an odd day in central Texas.  Early April, spring well-underway, yet the mid-day temperature was in the 40s and, at times, it was actually snowing!  That would be unusual here even in the depths of winter.

With my parents visiting from Chicago, we had planned to take them on an excursion to the Fredericksburg area to witness the amazing wildflower display that we had seen a portion of last weekend.  Despite the cold and sleet more reminiscent of their home than ours, we went anyway, and were not disappointed.  Even more flowers had come out in the intervening week, and they did not appear troubled by the freakish weather.

Below are some pictures.  The last one may appear to be one of our ice storm pictures from January snuck into this post, but it was taken yesterday in Gillespie county along with all the others.

Wildflowers!

This area of Texas finally dried out from our recent, and long awaited, soakings over the weekend.  And after taking a trip up north to Enchanted Rock State Park, I have to say that the rumors of an excellent wildflower season appear to be more than just rumors.  The bluebonnets, in particular, are already out in force.  Here is just one small scene from our Sunday outing.

First hummingbird of the spring is here

My wife just spotted the year's first hummingbird in our backyard--not sure if it was a Ruby-throated or Black-chinned, as we get both (though the latter are more common).  We rushed to put out our feeders.  Judging from the migration map at hummingbird.net, the first hummingbird sighting in this (roughly) this part of Texas was a week ago. 

This hummingbird was also the first sign of the spring migration we've seen here.  Very soon, we'll be seeing a lot more, I'm sure.

Blog feedback, good and not so good

One of the neat things about writing in this new-fangled format called a blog is the chance to get feedback from people who may otherwise may never have crossed paths with me. 

Sometimes this is good feedback, as in the case of fellow blogger Texas Liberal, who a few weeks ago titled a post of his:

B & B Is A Good Texas Blog Written By A Seemingly Well-Balanced Person

I've been cracking up over this one ever since.  I may just appropriate "A Good Texas Blog Written By a Seemingly Well-Balanced Person" as my official blog motto.  (By the way, did I mention that anyone reading this should take a look at Texas Liberal.  Where else do you get blog posts with titles like "I Stand With Care Bears And Against Brutal Economic Darwinism" and "Texas Should Build Atomic Bomb In Effort To Gain Aid From Washington.")

And sometimes the feedback is not so positive, as in the case today, where I was linked from the Washington Post.  No, not in an article--in a blog written by Post writer Joel Achenbach.  No, not by Achenbach himself--in a comment, about 300 comments through a 400-comment thread.  To see it, go to this page, and search for "pmbryant."  If you scroll through the comments, you'll be looking for about a year. 

Anyway, here is the comment, in full, written by someone signing themselves as "yellowjkt" (emphasis added):

Look what I stumbled across while aimlessly Googling, a blog entirely about San Antonio politics:

http://pmbryant.typepad.com/b_and_b/2006/12/more_san_antoni.html

It has posts about the Halitosis Fire, Riverwalk redevelopment, local politicians, and tons of links to other like-minded civicly active people that use the internet as forum to meet and discuss topics of mutual interest. The internet is truly a great place because there is a niche for everybody, no matter how narrowly focused or uninteresting their particular field of interest is to the general public.

That should keep me humble.  B and B blog:  "Narrowly focused and uninteresting to the general public."

Carl Sagan, 10 years later

The universe has now been without Carl Sagan for ten years.  In honor of this man's enduring influence, blogger Joel Schlosberg is promoting a Sagan blog-a-thon, which I discovered only last night via Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy Blog.  Since Sagan's thoughts had a profound influence upon me during my formative years, I could hardly let this pass without joining in, at least in a small way.

My obsession with all things astronomical pre-dated my introduction to Carl Sagan's writings by many years.  Despite this, I had to be goaded into watching his 13-part Cosmos by my mother when it first aired.  As I recall, this pre-teen was already jaded by the hype surrounding the show and naively believed that no mere popular show could be worthwhile for a self-proclaimed expert like me. The show was already several weekly episodes old before I gave in.  I was immediately hooked — and immediately humbled.

Sagan's knack for communicating the wonder of the universe went beyond any single field of science, which makes him unique amongst modern science popularizers.  He could talk about the the formation of the known universe and the spectacle of the Big Bang, effortlessly glide into discussions of the puzzles of the human brain, then take off again into the realm of cells, genetics, DNA and the ultimate mystery of life itself. Amidt this, he would remind us of the potential nuclear holocaust that for so long threatened to extinguish all these wonders on this tiny planet — this "pale blue dot."

Sagan would never let us forget how awe-inspiring the universe is and our miniscule place in it. But he would also never let us forget the joy and wonder of our existence. His presence is missed, but his influence will live on for a long time to come.

Back in Texas

We're back in Texas after a vacation adventure to the Pacific Northwest.  This was not a birding adventure, but we still managed to see some cool birds anyway.  Hopefully I'll have a chance to relate a story or two soon.

Meanwhile, though, I am happy to see that our resident flock of at leat sixteen(!) Lesser Goldfinch has stuck with us during our absence, thanks to the prodigious amount of nyger seed we left out in numerous feeders.  It is hard to believe that only a few months ago I claimed that a Lesser Goldfinch sighting in our yard was unusual.  This spring and summer, they have become the dominant bird in our yard, and their numbers keep increasing.

Also, we were delighted to discover that the cool weather appears to have come back with us.  Dare I hope that we have already seen our last 100 degree day for the year?