tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-101729932011-04-21T14:34:00.383-04:00Environmental science, traveling, and the sociology of the unraveling American dream.G. Jules Reynoldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15367465326064686130noreply@blogger.comBlogger211100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10172993.post-1113083809761165102005-04-09T17:32:00.000-04:002005-04-09T17:57:17.423-04:00

Why the recent rise in the popularity of knitting? I for one don't entirely get it -- as someone who was knitting as a kid, back in the bad old days when Red Heart was the standard and Lion Brand Homespun was classy stuff, watching knitting as a hobby turn into something as much fandom as craft has been exhilarating (and sometimes scary). But why now?The most commonly argued reasoning I've seen

G. Jules Reynoldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15367465326064686130noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10172993.post-1107991144273567682005-02-09T19:17:00.000-05:002005-02-09T18:19:04.273-05:00

Three weeks ago, my parents asked me about how I navigate in cities I don't know. It's a fair question, given that I generally spend at least one or two days out of the week wandering around a city I've never been to before. "Mapquest," I said. "Seriously. If it weren't for the technical difficulties involved, you'd be ending up with it as a son-in-law." Little did I know that under a month

G. Jules Reynoldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15367465326064686130noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10172993.post-1106787970260704852005-01-26T20:03:00.000-05:002005-01-26T20:21:20.866-05:00

For those who haven't been following: Larry Summers, our great President, screwed up once again, this time by telling women their lower natural aptitude may be partially to blame for their failure to find equal representation in the sciences. Slate tries to excuse him, but he's already apologized. Well, sort of. Those alumni donations would be missed. Women are less genetically fit for science.

G. Jules Reynoldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15367465326064686130noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10172993.post-1105812754248287592005-01-15T19:06:00.000-05:002005-01-15T13:12:34.246-05:00

The Great Smog of 1952 sounds rather like a poorly conceived disaster movie -- but even if no Hollywood funding would go into such a title, the event did happen. The historic pea souper fogs of London one reads about in Dickens and Doyle were actually what we today think of as smog -- a mixture of smoke and fog. In one particular incident in London, in December of 1952, an estimated 4,000 people

G. Jules Reynoldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15367465326064686130noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10172993.post-1105802071708528002005-01-04T09:42:00.000-05:002005-01-15T10:14:31.706-05:00

The Citizen's Guide To Using The Freedom Of Information Act No special expertise is required. Using the Freedom of Information Act and the Privacy Act is as simple as writing a letter. This Citizen's Guide explains the essentials. Here's a fun game for those following along at home: FOIA time! The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), instituted in 1966, gives citizens access to records held by

G. Jules Reynoldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15367465326064686130noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10172993.post-1105801923579712572004-12-22T09:42:00.000-05:002005-01-15T10:12:03.580-05:00

A small portion of today was spent in Plymouth. I looked out over the water and tried to see what my ancesters would have seen, coming over from England on the Mayflower -- cold, inhospitable, windswept, the Puritan worldview embodied in landscape -- but I couldn't. I won't ever be able to look at the New England coast as anything but home. There was also a Myles Standish Shopping Plaza. I for

G. Jules Reynoldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15367465326064686130noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10172993.post-1105801869836445082004-12-20T09:42:00.000-05:002005-01-15T10:11:09.836-05:00

Solstice this year is around seven a.m. tomorrow morning EST, which means (if I am correct in this) that tomorrow will be the shortest day, and tonight is the longest night. The winter solstice. The death of the Sun. There are a lot of places I'm not this Solstice, and a lot of things I'm not doing. I'm not sitting down to a Solstice meal with my parents, or holding a lit candle with friends and

G. Jules Reynoldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15367465326064686130noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10172993.post-1105801801740987262004-12-15T12:42:00.000-05:002005-01-15T12:39:43.896-05:00

The atmosphere when the plane flew in was one of the more stunning displays of air pollution I've seen: clear sky above, and then a sharp contact where the murky brown polluted air we on the surface breathe every day was confined by the tropopause. Entertaining, on a day when the front page news in USA Today was on a ten percent drop in particulate matter. (Since PM 2.5, the small stuff, is what

G. Jules Reynoldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15367465326064686130noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10172993.post-1105801725143475302004-11-18T09:42:00.000-05:002005-01-15T10:15:59.320-05:00

Today was spent driving through rolling mountains. The sky was grey, and the world was covered with smoke and mists. The hillsides looked like the ghosts of forests, with the branches reaching for the sky like the spectres of the trees. My voice has come back, but only partially, in that I now have the bottom two notes of my register but nothing else. (I sound hillarious trying to sing. Most of

G. Jules Reynoldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15367465326064686130noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10172993.post-1105801659889942822004-11-06T09:42:00.000-05:002005-01-15T10:07:39.890-05:00

A few things before I meander over to NTB with my laptop to get my studded snow tires put on. (Since it looks like I'll be spending time in upstate NY and northern Maine rather soon. And also the Rockies, but not with my car.) -I have a few semi-political essays I'm working on waiting in the wings, pulling themselves together, but I won't be posting them for a while now. Partly because posting

G. Jules Reynoldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15367465326064686130noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10172993.post-1105801540369174072004-10-28T09:42:00.000-04:002005-01-15T10:05:40.370-05:00

Put on my orange suede shoes and I boarded the plane touched down in the land of the Delta Blues in the middle of the pouring rain -- I went to Graceland today, or more specifically to the parking lot, and also to the gift shop, which was closed for inventory. Whenever I'm traveling and start seeing signs for something like this, I seem to find myself very excited about going there up until I

G. Jules Reynoldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15367465326064686130noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10172993.post-1105801437681882102004-10-27T09:42:00.000-04:002005-01-15T10:03:57.680-05:00

Nestled into the hills of Virginia, Charlottesville has managed to avoid the McMansion sprawl that characterizes so much of America. Even the strip mall areas on the outlying highways have positive natural capital (environmental engineering class jargon for "they're pretty"), but the downtown is heavenly. Unlike most cities in the States, Charlottesville has taken the sensible route, the good

G. Jules Reynoldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15367465326064686130noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10172993.post-1105801237637894752004-10-15T09:42:00.000-04:002005-01-15T10:00:37.636-05:00

I have just brought my woolly-headed Massachusetts liberal self back from Texas, where the skies are open and the developers roam free. It was a good trip, made rather entertaining and more than a little bit frightening by the election fervor -- after all, if any place can be said to be the exact opposite of Massachusetts... Also, the highways were large and open and scared me a bit. We're

G. Jules Reynoldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15367465326064686130noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10172993.post-1105801106893445062004-09-11T09:42:00.000-04:002005-01-15T09:58:26.893-05:00

It's only 7 am and people have already posted about, well, today's date. I've been debating with myself over whether I wanted to post something-- and over whether I'm qualified to post something. Let me be honest, I don't buy the "today we are all New Yorkers" bullshit. Do we grieve? Yes. Is it traumatic, tragic, something we never believed would happen here? Yes. But that still doesn't mean we

G. Jules Reynoldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15367465326064686130noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10172993.post-1105800835901304952004-09-09T09:42:00.000-04:002005-01-15T09:57:06.726-05:00

This is getting posted from something I wrote yesterday, as I had no net access. (Urgh. I had legit, non-lj need of it, too.) Trip was-- well, survived. Turns out that if you sprain an ankle it is possible to drive an automatic with your left foot. Surprisingly easy, in fact-- although I drive a standard normally and an automatic is already weird for me, so I wouldn't try that one at home. I'm

G. Jules Reynoldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15367465326064686130noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10172993.post-1105800691588392022004-07-26T09:42:00.000-04:002005-01-15T09:51:31.590-05:00

Coming back from work tonight, the traffic was nearly non-existant, since I live in beyond the place where they force off all but local and airport traffic before closing the highway entirely. I saw between 12 and 20 official vehicles. A complete count wasn't possible-- too many. I also saw the Boston skyline, from a distance. It shouldn't have been a reassuring sight, but it was. Of course, I

G. Jules Reynoldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15367465326064686130noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10172993.post-1105800592915838932004-06-30T09:42:00.000-04:002005-01-15T09:49:52.916-05:00

As a celebration of my first full day as a licensed Massachusetts driver, and the first day of my car's Mass plates, I hereby present gjules' Rules for Driving Like A Masshole. 1. Ignore your spedometer. Seriously: driving at the speed limit will endanger everyone. You should always drive at the same speed as the surrounding traffic, and looking at the spedometer will only increase your stress.

G. Jules Reynoldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15367465326064686130noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10172993.post-1105800472246122222004-06-18T09:42:00.000-04:002005-01-15T09:47:52.246-05:00

Just read that vertigo gets more common as you get into your early twenties. *looks around* Yep, judging by the ages of the people here, you're just moving into your vulnerable years. (I know you're here because you made fun of me for getting stuck in the elevator when you read about it, you RL lurkers you.) So as soon as I finish accidentally pushing my fan off the bookshelf and into the wall (

G. Jules Reynoldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15367465326064686130noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10172993.post-1105800352092929602004-06-10T09:44:00.000-04:002005-01-15T09:55:01.503-05:00

I love rocks, and I'm starting to realize that people are wondering why. It's hard to explain, that's the thing. How can you not find a rock incredible? How can you not be amazed? But I'll give it a try. Looking at a rock, you're looking at its history, at the world that existed, that had the conditions to create this rock, this particular rock, under those conditions. And you can get a glimpse,

G. Jules Reynoldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15367465326064686130noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10172993.post-1105800261727963292004-05-31T09:42:00.000-04:002005-01-15T09:44:21.726-05:00

Long piece crossposted from a discussion on Hatrack, where someone asked about the "science" of The Day After Tomorrow, specifically in reference to the fact that global warming was leading to cooler temperatures. My personal favorite for global warming arguments is the comparison to the Paleocene Thermal Maximum, when a methane release from methane hydrates bumped the temperatures up

G. Jules Reynoldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15367465326064686130noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10172993.post-1105800158625529362004-05-22T09:42:00.000-04:002005-01-15T09:42:38.626-05:00

At one time in my life, I was a female in a physics world, which is the closest thing to a male world I've been in. My favorite physics boy story: My freshman year, I went to an introductory picnic, and went to stand with a bunch of guys I vaguely knew who were talking about a problem set in advanced intro physics (I was in the medium class, since I hadn't had AP physics). Naturally, they were

G. Jules Reynoldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15367465326064686130noreply@blogger.com