Santa Ana Wind Speeds — According to NASA

And, methinks the Earth Observatory knows of what they speak. On the aforementioned site, it’s explained how the satellite measures the wind speed over the water, which is astonishing:

The strength and scope of these winds were observed by NASA’s QuikScat
satellite at about 7 a.m. local time October 22. The wind speeds are
shown in colors and the direction by small white barbs. The dominant
direction of the winds is offshore, from the high deserts of the Great
Basin southwest toward the Pacific Ocean. QuikScat measures wind speed
over the ocean only, by sending radar pulses to the surface and
measuring the strength of the signals returned. The strength and
direction of the return signal reveal how winds are stirring the
surface of the ocean.

Fascinating image…

Windspeedimage

Heat, by Shirley Hazzard

In which I cannot stop myself from outright stealing a post from The Elegant Variation. Forgive me, Mark.

The greater thing was heat.  In North Africa, the sun had been
neutral, an impartial horror of war.  Now, with cessation of
hostilities, heat came out in its true colours as the enemy.  The
privileged of the colony clung to the mountainside.  The rest took
refuge in any merciful shadow or flutter of the humid air.  The town
never cooled: streets and street stalls broiled all night in the glare
of naked electricity or paraffin lamps.  A dry skin was an ultimate
luxury, even for the privileged, even on a soft white body.  Lust, if
there was energy for it, must be consummated in a lather of sweat.  And
it was the same thing, no doubt, with love."

– Shirley Hazzard, The Great Fire

Turner2
   

America Has Not Enough Cuisine — And Too Much Food Science

So says Michael Pollan, in a fascinating interview with farmer and Gristian food journalist Tom Philpott. That’s the starting point, with much more insight to follow, including:

I spent a lot of time looking at the science of nutrition, and learned
pretty quickly there’s less there than meets the eye, and that the
scientists really haven’t figured out that much about food. Letting
them tell us how to eat is probably not a very good idea, and indeed
the culture — which is to say tradition and our ancestors — has more
to teach us about how to eat well than science does. That was kind of
surprising to me.

A couple of years ago my daughter Anna said much the same thing about our sustenance, a little more forcefully, one time when the family had had to stop for lunch in a McDonalds in New Jersey.

Keep in mind, this was after she had been living in Paris for a few months.

"I hate our food," she said. (Or, I think that’s what she said.)

Now she’s in Turkey, where the politics are complicated, but the food sounds great. Take a look at her site — Turkish Delight — and you’ll see what I mean.

Raki

Fox Pundit Blames Wildfires on Federal Government

60 Minutes ran a spectacularly well-timed feature this past Sunday on wildfires in the Western states, entitled "Expert: Warming Climate Fuels Mega-Fires." Predictably, climate change denier Steven Milloy, who runs a website and serves as a pundit for Fox News, was quick to criticize the news report.

His press agent at Advocacy Ink issued a release for him, in which Milloy claimed that "There’s no evidence that man-made climate change is playing any role whatsoever in the current Western forest fire season."

I called the press agent, Audrey Mullen, to check on the quote, and to ask to interview the Fox pundit. She promised he would return the call within the hour; predictably, he did not. But Milloy’s outrageously false claims still demands a challenge — especially for those of us threatened by wildfires.

For more, please see the rest of my post on Gristmill.

(picture by Flickr sharer Andrew Meyer)

Fireincanyoncountry

Risk of Wildfires Recedes in VC

Good news for residents of Ventura County: although the Ranch Fire is listed as being only 10% under control, it’s not nearly the threat it was two days ago. From Inciweb:

Last night fire crews and structural protection engine crews reported
that the night operations went extremely well with no surprises. In the
early evening, the winds were less than previous nights and increased
slightly after midnight. By 2am, the winds over the fire calmed
considerably and in some places stopped completely. The fire did not
expand significantly to the south or east…The fire did not cross highway 126 or progress any closer to the
communities of Piru and Fillmore. All evacuations from the Ranch Fire
within the counties of Las Angles and Ventura Counties have been lifted.

The news from down south is much, much worse, and finally people are beginning to ask questions about San Diego’s fire preparedness. Could there be a connection between a low-tax, low-service county and inadequate fire protection? Gee, you think?

The former San Diego fire chief, Jerry Bowman, who quit in 2006 in frustration over San Diego’s refusal to fund firefighters, does make that connection. This cropped up in stories in both the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, but the best discussion I’ve seen is in popular Steve Lopez’s column today for the Los Angeles Times:

Although the city of San Diego has a fire department, the county
doesn’t, leaving many suburban and rural areas to rely on volunteer
departments. The city has but one firefighting helicopter and just 975
firefighters for 330 square miles and 1.3 million residents.

Compare that, he says, with San Francisco, which has 1,600 firefighters for 60 square miles and 850,000 people.

(Or Ventura County, which has about 800,000 people and 1900 square miles, but a highly-professional fire department with 700 full-time and seasonal firefighters, 5 helicopters, and extensive resource-sharing agreements with the Forest Service, which is responsible for its huge backcountry.)

Lopez also gets to the heart of San Diego’s real estate corruption, Developers turn out to back most of the county’s anti-tax movements, according to UCSD professor Steve Erie.

Erie says that "developers own most of the city councils. In Poway, in
Escondido, what they do is put homeowners in harm’s way. They’re able
to control zoning processes, and they’re frequently behind initiatives
that say no new taxes, no new fire services. It’s insanity."

Will this be the wake-up call that brings the county to its senses? Don’t count on it. After the devastating fires of 2003, which killed more that 20 people, and were the largest wildfires in modern state history, San Diego had a chance to pass a modest hotel tax increase to fund firefighting efforts.

It failed. And now this… (photo of Mt. San Miguel in San Diego burning, via Flickr, from slworking)

(cross-posted at The Ojai Post)

Mtsanmiguelburns

A Little News about Upper Ojai

We live out in the country, where folks still ride horses and manage oil wells, and my kids attended the cutest little grammar school, called Summit, which was founded in l911. All these years later it’s still cute and still short on funds. Here’s a post I wrote for an Ojai site about a community fund-raiser recently; I repost it because people tell me they liked it.

An Unknown Masterpiece

News came Friday of a big studio deal for an official Kurt Cobain biopic. Because it will be executive produced by widow Courtney Love’s lawyer, Howard Weitzman, many will doubt its worth, or its ability to be truthful about Love. (Some Kurt fans still blame her for his death, explicitly or implicitly: see Kurt and Courtney. And Courtney looks so bizarre after extensive plastic surgery that she’s easy to blame: What is less grunge than remaking your entire body?)
 

Nonetheless, this will be based on the best Cobain biography, "Heavier than Heaven," produced by the formidable team behind Working Title, among others, and written by David Benioff, probably.

You could do worse. Of course, you might not agree, but that would just be your opinion. Who cares? Which is Cobain’s point in this vastly-underappreciated song. (From a solo appearance for a radio broadcast.)

http://media.imeem.com/m/uArY43RtTa/aus=false/