Author: Dan Brekke

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Don’t Talk About the Weather

earthtemperature.jpgThe New York Times reports that NASA headquarters ordered its scientists to keep their mouths shut about questions arising from the upcoming climate-change blockbuster "The Day After Tomorrow" (with someone named Claude Laforce playing "UN Norwegian diplomat").

"No one from NASA is to do interviews or otherwise comment on anything having to do with" the film, said the April 1 message, which was sent by Goddard’s top press officer. "Any news media wanting to discuss science fiction vs. science fact about climate change will need to seek comment from individuals or organizations not associated with NASA."

The Times also reports that the space agency has called off the dogs and will now let its experts talk about climate stuff. Maybe that has something to do with some research results published last week on NASA’s own site, "Satellite Thermometers Show Earth Has a Fever." Keep it cute like that, so no one will get the idea that increased temperatures have anything to do with well, anything.

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View from the Ferry

FerrybuildingCaught the 6:25 ferry back to Oakland after work. Sitting on the top deck, noticed the sun was blocked behind  One Embarcadero Center (that tall building in the middle). Decided to try to shoot it with my camera phone, using my sunglasses as a filter. The building in the center-right with the flag on top is the Ferry Building; that little tiny nub to the far right is Coit Tower, I think. I’m surprised both at the ability to shoot anything with the phone and also at how modest the resolution really is.

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In the Mail

My medal for finishing the 2003 Paris-Brest-Paris randonee.
My medal for finishing the 2003 Paris-Brest-Paris randonee.
So, just about eight months to the day after I finished PBP, look what came in the mail. In reading the lore of the ride over the years, I’d seen reports of the medal, complete with your own individual
time on it. For some reason, I thought it might show up by the end of  last year. But it never came, and lots of other stuff came up, and I never really thought too much about it. I just figured that maybe I was the one rider who didn’t get one; or that my ride had been declared invalid for some unworthiness that the organizers had detected in me; or that I had managed to ride the one year when no medals were awarded. Just my luck.

Then I started to see accounts on some cycling email lists a month or so ago that none of the American riders had gotten their medals yet. But they were coming. By sea mail, maybe.

Yesterday, a big brown envelope with my self-addressed sticker was in the mailbox. Heavy. The medal was inside, along with my brevet card, with the stamps from all the controls along the way, and the English-language program for the event, with the finish times for all the participants, including No. 4417, Dan Brekke: 85H51.

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Un Pez sin Agua

Sinagua“I feel like a fish without water.” The small type under “sin agua” says “Francisco, 5 años, descridiendo el asma.” It’s a billboard at the corner of 7th and Brannan streets in San Francisco. Kate says she’s seen English versions of it. It struck me just because of my (nearly lifelong) problems with asthma; and also because of the fact the disease seems to have become so prevalent among city kids now; the why of that still seems largely unknown, but one has to think it has got be due to basic environmental causes.

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A Totally Whack New World

Opportunity012504The second Mars rover, Opportunity, plunged and bounced and rolled safely to rest last night/this morning. The NASA scientists running the Martian campout are agog at images of the landing site (“it’s a bizarre, alien landscape,” quoth one).

In other news, engineers think the other rover, Spirit, marooned in a less bizarre, less alien landscape, might not be totally brain dead.

[Image credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell]

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Molly Kelly

RabbitproofThe lead paragraph from the AP obit in Friday’s New York Times:


SYDNEY, Australia, Jan. 15 — Molly Kelly, whose childhood trek across 1,000 miles of the Australian desert to return to her Aboriginal mother inspired the 2002 movie “Rabbit-Proof Fence,” died on Tuesday at her home in Jigalong in Western Australia, her family said. She was thought to be 87.

The movie is great.