Friday, December 27, 2013

IPCC Report Haiku

IPCC_AR5_13.27
Source: IPCC AR5 Fig. 13.27.
Is the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)'s fifth report just too long and technical? The 23-page executive summary too forbidding? Maybe you just need some beautiful art to blunt the harsh blows of the report?

Well fear no more! Greg Johnson created this gorgeous set of illustrated haikus to sum it up for you. The whole series is available for personal or educational nonprofit use.
Climate Change Science 2013: Haiku, by Gregory C. Johnson.
full_15_future_airfull_20_future_fire

Ice Storm Images

Visiting friends and family in Vermont earlier this week, I completely underestimated the ice storm that was about to hit. After the worst was over I was able to cozy up to a woodstove during the two-day power outage, and had some adventures sliding down a sloped road and bruising my legs up pretty impressively. Fortunately I made it home for Christmas and the power lines were at least temporarily repaired.

I'm a huge fan of The Boston Globe's weekly segment The Big Picture. This week had many images of the aftermath of the ice storm that knocked out power for tens of thousands in my adopted state of Vermont, and hundreds of thousands across eastern U.S. and Canada.

Click images to link through:


(Bob Strong/Reuters)
(Aaron Vincent Elkaim/AP Photo/The Canadian Press)

I also loved this shot of ducks in Boise:
(Kyle Green/AP/The Idaho Statesman)

Thursday, December 26, 2013

Interactive Real-Time Wind Map of the Earth

A real-time visualization of Earth's weather conditions, generated by supercomputers. Updated every three hours:

Earth wind map

Sunday, December 22, 2013

Mefloquine dreams begin

Our project site in southern Mexico is mountainous, but we will still be potentially exposed to Plasmodium vivax, one of the six strains of malaria that commonly infects humans. To be on the safe side, my travel doctor has prescribed a course of mefloquine, one of the older malarial prophylactics that I've taken before. Many of the quinine analogues used as antimalarials have psychological side effects, and mefloquine is no exception. When I was in Namibia, our group had daily morning decompression sessions over tea to share and work through the vivid and sometimes terrifying dreams that commonly come with antimalarial drugs. I also found that lucid dreaming became much easier on mefloquine, which was a really interesting experience. So, I was not entirely unhappy to go back on the interesting-dream-drug.

I took my first dose a few days ago, two weeks before my arrival in a malaria zone. That night I dreamed that I was a sheet of carboard, being cut and folded into a banana box. My "body" was very light and rigid, and I experienced being cut up and folded into a new shape. Painless, not scary, and somewhat ticklish. I woke up before I encountered any bananas, but I was really satisfied with my new shape and thought it was super cool that I was now a box.

banana box
The whole dream like a first-person experience of a segment from "How It's Made," one of the most relaxing shows ever made.

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Preparations

In a little more than three weeks, I'll be catching the first flight of my next great travel adventure! Right now, I'm juggling half a dozen projects, trying to get prepared and to wrap up what I must leave behind. Although I'm feeling the pressure, it's nothing next to the borderline-panic I felt when I was preparing to study abroad for the first time. That experience gave me the confidence that I can handle far more than I had previously given myself credit for, and while having fun to boot.