Your Colorado Voter Guides

Hey, that's me, a volunteer!

This week, I've been walking around my precinct distributing the BoCoDems 2016 Voter Guide.

This Voter Guide was dropped off at your door, or mailed to you by a neighborhood volunteer!"

It's a long ballot, with many Ballot Issues.   By press time, the BoCoDems had made recommendations on all but 4 of the initiatives.

Once again, my Colorado friend has written a well-considered guide to the issues.  To learn more, go to Colorado and Boulder Ballot Issues.

The two guides differ on Boulder County Issues 1B & 1C and BVSD Issue 3A.  So please read them and make up your own mind.

As long as I have your attention, vote the down-ticket races.  If you don't vote, then someone else decides for you.  Moreover, you won't get national candidates that you are happy with unless you give them experience at the local level.  Get civically-engaged.  Convince your friends and family to become civically-engaged.

We have a presidential candidate for a major party that says very dangerous things about minorities, women, the disabled and climate scientists.  This election hits very close to home.  If nothing else, please vote to protect me.

The perennial dilemma

Air is a common resource. Each of us suffers from degradation of the air quality, but we have no little control over what others do to the air that we personally breathe.

When people think of the Boulder, they don't often think of air pollution. But, the elevation and topography (mountains to the west and northwest and the Louisville Rise to the east and southeast), and the automobile traffic in this small town, mean that the nose-level pollution in central Boulder is usually higher than the western coastal neighborhoods of Los Angeles. (My doctors had recommended in the 1990s that I move away from Boulder for my health and suggested coastal LA as a good alternative.)

You can't see ozone, but it is created by a combination of automobile exhaust and sunlight, specifically UV radiation.  At high altitudes, we have plenty of UV (and cosmic ray) radiation.

Ozone is a lung irritant.

We can't control sunshine, so the only way to keep the ozone from reaching dangerously high levels is to refrain from driving.  That means you AND me.

But, sensitive people are cautioned from strenuous outdoor exercise during high ozone days.

What does an asthmatic do when an Ozone Action Day is called?  Ride my bike and possibly have an asthma attack?  Drive solo and pollute the air even more?

The combination of pollen and ozone is particularly irritating.  People with pollen allergies can be affected by lower levels of pollen when ozone is present.  The only time I ever ended up in a clinic gasping for breath was when I went for an after work run (in grad school in the 1990s) up Boulder canyon during a day with both high ragweed pollen and high ozone.  I now get allergy shots and that has helped somewhat.  But, I still avoid outdoor exercise when pollens are especially high.

Fortunately, my bike and I can pick up a shuttle bus to work 2 blocks from my condo and be whisked up to the main entrance of Mesa Lab.

So many of my coworkers did the same, we filled up both the front and rear bike racks of the van.

Some even took the RTD bus to meet the shuttle.

The best part of leaving the driving to someone else is that my hands are free to take pictures like this.

The ride home is an 800 foot elevation drop, so it is not the strenuous type of exercise that would be dangerous for me.

Links:

• The combination of pollen and ozone is particularly irritating.
• AirNow for Denver
• Sigalert real-time traffic for Boulder
• Pollen.com
• Colorado Air Quality
• Plant leaves are a good indicator of time-integrated ozone dosing.

Sewing in Series: Simplicity 2263

Why reinvent the wheel if something works?

I know that 'indie' and 'designer' patterns are all the rage in the blogosphere, but the 'Big 4' (but now really 6?) put out some solid patterns without much fanfare (e.g. blog tours.) Take Simplicity 2263, which looks rather pedestrian.

Prosaic pattern envelope.  The ASG symbol is a clue.

All patterns are 'designed' by someone.  Bold face names do not have a monopoly on good design.  I've had more misses than hits with indie patterns and their instructions.

However, I pick up some signals that others may overlook.  Have you heard of American Sewing Guild (ASG)?  ASG probably doesn't have a booth at 'Maker' faires, but ASG members know quality sewing.  (Disclaimer, I used to belong, but am not currently a member.)

Patterns with the ASG seal of approval tend to be very well drafted and extensively tested.  When I see a new pattern with the ASG seal, I pay attention.  This blouse with a back that extends over the shoulder to the front is a winner.  I've sewn it three times.

Three versions of Simplicity 2263

I made the first version in 2013 with a 1/2 yard remnant of rayon challis that I purchased at Britex at PR Weekend SF 2012.  1/2 yard is obviously not sufficient, so I improvised a yoke with a scrap of ponte.

Not faithful to the pattern, with a yoke and knit neckband.

When I saw this gray and red rayon challis at Elfriede's in Boulder, I snapped up a yard to sew another one for an upcoming MIT alumni event. (Is it the female version of a school tie?)

I used the serger for version 1.  Version 2 and 3 got the full french seam and bias binding clean finish.

I love a neat inside.  

I recently made a third version, with a rayon crepe I bought at SAS Fabrics in Hawthorne (near LA.)  Rayon crepe is rarely found in fabric stores.  When I found this small piece in a pretty print, for only $3, I brought it home without any immediate plans for it.  After I made version 2, I knew this remnant wanted to be version 3.

Version 3 with bonus view of kitchen.

Shoulder pleats instead of gathering.

You want to see them out in the wild?

Version 1 at the Getty Center in Brentwood.

Version 2 at the Petersen Museum in LA.

Version 3 outside my office.

A great, easy-to-make and easy-to-wear basic.  What's not to like?

The river that binds us

I'm swamped with both family work and market work that demand much of my time and attention.  The story about how I named my blog explains why.

As I sat on an airplane, leaving the family that needs me, to the job that also needs me, I pondered the irony that a woman so concerned with climate change is sitting on an airplane, spewing CO2 into the stratosphere.

A window seat in an airplane between LAX and DEN is also a good time to reflect about the water cycle.

Our familial home is down there, as is DD's school and DH's lab.

Remember when our elementary school teachers told us that, if we could pour a cup of water on top of the Continental Divide, half could end up in the Atlantic Ocean and half would end up in the Pacific Ocean?

It turns out, that it is not quite so simple.

The Colorado River, originating west of the Continental Divide, used to drain into the Pacific Ocean. But it hasn't for decades, because all of the water was used and reused until it peters out in the inland deserts of California (to grow alfalfa to grow cows to feed people.)

Colorado Snowpack

The water evaporates off the ocean and eventually falls down as condensed water or ice in the mountains.  Imagine the amount of energy it takes to lift up that large a mass and move it that great a distance!

Somewhere over the Four Corners area.  Not sure if this is the Colorado River or a tributary.  

The melted snow seeps into the soil and seeps into rivulets, creeks, small tributary rivers and then eventually into the mighty* Colorado River.  More than half of Colorado River water flow begins as groundwater.

Beginning in 1957, with the opening of the Colorado-Big Thompson Project, trans-basin water diversions were moving water from the western side of the Continental Divide to the eastern side. Without this water, the massive population growth of the Colorado Front Range wouldn't have been possible.

Trans-basin water diversion map.

Want to learn more about Northern (Colorado) Water, the public agency that brings this water to millions?  Of course you do!

Visit the Northern Water Annual open house and conservation gardens fair next Saturday, May 21, 2016.   Walk this scale model of the Colorado-Big Thompson and Windy Gap projects that deliver *half* of the water used by the Northern Colorado member communities (including Boulder.)  It's awe-inspiring to think about the amount of work that it takes to bring this volume and mass of water across the harsh alpine environment.

My favorite part is this landscape sculpture, which allows me to walk the journey of my Colorado tap water from mountain-top through tunnels, pipelines, and reservoirs.  It makes the monumental intimate.

Landscape art that makes this huge engineering and social project intimate.

Read Your Colorado Water Blog write-up about this event for more details.  I went last year with some gardening enthusiast friends.  I geeked out over the water engineering while they geeked out over the gardening booths.

Many, many Front Range nurseries set up booths at the fair to sell Colorado native plants that are rarely sold at commercial nurseries.  It's one-stop shopping for people who grow native and low-water gardens.  Plants, education, ideas and support from Colorado Extension master gardeners.

Whether I am in Boulder, Colorado, or in Los Angeles, the two parts of my life depend on the mighty* Colorado River.

* Anything that can carve the Grand Canyon and all the minor canyons you see here deserves the adjective mighty.  Anything that can bind my torn heart also deserves the adjective mighty.

Speed is relative

During Boulder's recent heavy snow storms, I worked at home.  I work with geophysical data sets, which can be large.

My home connection speed seemed soooo sluggish so I ran speed tests with a few websites.  The results were all similar.

50 Mbps down and 6 Mbps up is a fast home connection speed.

According to Geeksquad, this is about as fast as you can expect at a residence. Why did it seem so slow?

I reran the tests at work.

1 Gbps up or down!

I know now why 50 Mbps seems slow.  ;-)

Speed is relative.

Happy belated April Fools' Day.

This was my favorite 2016 April Fools' prank, but it's actually deadly serious.

Desert tortoise militia occupies Bundy Ranch: Endangered reptiles stage heavily armored takeover of cattleman’s property.

Aside:

Do you remember the pre-internet days?  When only a few non-military (ARPANET & MILNET) sites in the country were networked together through NSFNET?  56 Kbps was blazing fast, and you had to sit at one of 6 supercomputing centers to get that.

The network expanded and so did bandwidth in 1991.  Palo Alto was an upstart compared to Boulder.

NSF decided to allow anyone who wanted a connection to hook up to their network through NCAR.  (This was before the internet and ISPs.)  Boulder might have become a tech hub anyway, but this decision certainly accelerated that development.

The network was reconfigured with even faster speeds in 1992.  Notice that the major nodes were moved to population centers, with spurs to universities and national labs.

Weather data was one of the original Big Data use cases. And we need a pretty fat pipe to push data out to the world.

Working at home, on a standard connection, is a pretty humbling reality check. I need to experience what users outside of major universities and national labs experience.

I have helped climate researchers in Madagascar and east Africa, who work within the constraints of very slow network connection speeds outside their local regions. I've also helped researchers studying pollution in countries where questioning the effects of development puts them in personal peril. They are my heroes.

Who are your heroes?

Views & Social Media

I've been super-busy preparing for the talk and workshop next week. I'll just post some pictures of my past two weeks, with very short comments.

I'm tweeting more often, especially about science and women in STEM. If that interests you, follow @gspeng. Twitter, and email are the quickest ways to message me if you have a question or comment.  Comments left on this blog also get forwarded to my email.

I've also joined Instagram as bmgmlax. Instagram allows people to open accounts without verifying their email address. A young man used my personal email address to sign up for Instagram and was quite active on that site.

I couldn't get Instagram to delink that account to my email address. Finally, I took control of that account using the "forgot my password" option and then deleted his account. I felt bad about that for about a millisecond. The squatter using my email address and Instagram deserved it.

Twitter is is an extension of my professional life.  Instagram is for my off-duty life.

Waiting for a meeting to start.  That's the outdoor patio of the cafeteria.

Leaving work the day after the storm that just missed being classified as a blizzard because the high winds and zero visibility did not last 3 continuous hours.

Another shot as I left work.

View from my office window.

View from my neighbor's window.  You can see both my current office building up on the mesa top and my former campus tower office.

Mariposa for my reading nook.

I can see Long's Peak from my kitchen and bedroom windows. I'm told that I can see Pike's Peak from my office window, but I haven't learned how to recognize the shape yet. We had ~35 inches of snow in one week (3 storms). Each snowfall was preceded by half an inch of rain. The town is a soggy and muddy mess. The views are beautiful, but I've been putting in my miles on the treadmill indoors lately.

My first caucus

and I was elected to precinct caucus chair!

First, caucus goers went into the Boulder HS auditorium to hear representatives talk up their candidates, including down-ticket races.

Then, the more experienced caucus captains holding the precinct number signs led their precinct to individual classrooms (which we set up in advance) for more caucusing.  I was late getting to the auditorium so I sat up in the balcony w/o our precinct sign.

In advance, I volunteered to be caucus precinct secretary and a guy volunteered to be the caucus chair*.  I attended caucus leader training to learn more about the process.  I showed up at Boulder HS at 5:30 as instructed, collected my precinct materials, registered for my white voter/caucus slip, found my classroom and set it up.

At 6:30, there was still no sign of the other guy.  I called his cell phone.  It went to voicemail.  He left voicemail a few minutes later saying he was on his way.  !?!

After we were dismissed from the auditorium (around 7:15), I helped people find their way to their precinct classrooms and found about 2 dozen people seated in our classroom (Calculus BC, plastered with math joke posters, yay) when I returned.

I followed the script, which told leaders to go around the room and have everyone introduce themselves and approximately where they lived.  I was worried that would take too long by the time every (35) seat had filled up, but people kept streaming in.  We gave up introducing ourselves when we had nearly 50 people in the room.

It was 7:40 and there was still no sign of the guy who volunteered to be our precinct caucus chair. I told the room that my only qualification to lead a caucus was that I had taken the class.  They proclaimed me the caucus chair.   One young man volunteered to help as the caucus secretary and off we went.

I passed around a clipboard and asked people to sign up to speak on behalf of their candidates.  Several spoke on behalf of Sanders and one spoke on behalf of Clinton.  Then it was time for voting, which has two steps, for the presidential race.

First, we needed to take a non-binding threshold vote to determine which choices would be available for the binding second vote: uncommitted, Clinton or Sanders.  To be included in the binding vote, a choice had to reach a 15% threshold.

We counted off heads and got to 102.  One voted for uncommitted, 15 voted for Clinton.  That would have rounded up to 15%, but more people kept streaming in.

People at the door offered to count the number of people who were streaming in and their preferences so we could add them to the count.  We topped out at 125 in the end with 16 for Clinton.  Late-comers, who had braved the lines for hours, went overwhelmingly for Sanders while the earlier crowd was less so.

Both uncommitted and Clinton missed the 15% threshold.  Only Sanders was on the binding preference vote and we gave him our 3 delegates by proclamation.  I heard that happened at several precincts at our central Boulder super-site.

I announced we were going on to the down-ballot races and let people leave.  About half did.

Our precinct is in HD 10, which has a contested race between two highly qualified Dem candidates.  My goal was to allocate the 3 presidential delegates for our precinct fairly and accurately according to precinct sentiment, and then to get both HD 10 candidates qualified for the primary ballot.

Several people spoke on behalf of one candidate for HD 10.  None spoke for the other one.    To qualify for the ballot, each candidate needs to get 15% or more of the votes at the caucus.  At first, only one met the 15% threshold, with many abstainers.

But then some people switched their votes to help get both on the ballot.  Then we can make our final decision on the Dem HD 10 candidate, after we have time to get to know both candidates and their positions/differences better.

Our precinct did not spend any time on the party platform.  I had a paper copy and a form for  us to suggest changes.

I heard that another precinct voted 137-0 to change back to a presidential primary.  (137 is one over the fine-structure constant, which is a good omen for Boulder, n'est pas?)

Both the youth and senior vote went for Sanders at our precinct caucus.  I knew most of the seniors who attended because they came from my condo complex.  However, the Clinton supporters from my condo, for the most part, did not come to the caucus.  I would have driven them had I not needed to arrive two hours before the caucus.

From the Denver Post:

A total of 121,596 Democrats registered at caucuses across Colorado, an increase of 1 percent over the 2008 attendance, according to the Colorado Democratic Party. But some precincts were inundated with as many as three times more people than expected.

A crowd stretching four blocks from a Boulder Democratic caucus site became disillusioned Tuesday night as hundreds of people were turned away because of overcrowding.

I attended my first caucus.  I led my first caucus.  I am not sure the people who were able to either arrive hours early or stood for hours in line, are representative of the electorate.  I recall (though my recall might not be perfect) only 4 non-white caucus-goers in my precinct.  This is Boulder, but I was surprised by the whiteness and the youth of the crowd.

I'm with the 137 who would like to go back to a presidential primary so that more people's voices can be heard.  However, with the funding (and hence spending) limitations of TABOR, the state switched to the caucus system to save money.

The state pays for elections.  Volunteers run the caucuses.  This cost-transfer (5 hours of my time Tuesday night plus 2 hours for training) gives us a semblance of democracy.  But, I worry that the caucus system gives the sentiment of a very narrow slice (~10%) of the electorate.

* The guy who volunteered in advance to lead our caucus came in the door at 8:30 (3 hours late!), just in time to cast his vote for Sanders.

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Waiting at the bus stop

This one is for Rose in SV, who misses the snow.

Waiting for the shuttle to the office.

It takes a little bit longer to take the shuttle than to drive, but it is so much more relaxing, especially when the streets are icy.

What it really looks like.

See the difference artful cropping makes?  They say that Colorado has two seasons: snow season and construction season.  In central Boulder, construction never stops.

Nearly there.

My office window faces S.  My condo windows face W, N and E.  So I enjoy a 360 degree view if you sum over my entire day.

PS, I am in SF December 13-19, 2015 for the 2015 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting.  Anyone want to get together for food/shopping/culture on Sunday, Dec 13 or a weeknight evening?  I'm staying downtown but can meet anywhere I can get by public transit.

That was some windsday!

A couple of weeks ago, we had some wild winds up at the Mesa Lab.   The instruments up on the roof of the building recorded a peak gust of 94 mph!

Notice how the sustained winds (in red) were pretty similar for the last 3 events while the peak winds (in blue) varied much more widely?

The frequent high winds rattle and stress the windows.  The larger ones are prone to cracking and breaking.  My neighbor noticed the crack in his office window before the wind incident of November 18, 2015.

(The window in the mirror image office across the hall from this one cracked last spring.)

It isn't every day that you can see a paneless opening in your office building.

It took three guys on the inside and one guy on the outside to replace the window.

Some view!

Now that's a windsday!

The snow blew sideways outside my window for much of the afternoon.  When I left work tonight, I worried that I would be blown off the mesa!

I feel so used

The GOP presidential debate is taking place right now at the 11,000+ seat Coors Events Center on the CU Boulder campus.  Only 1,000 of those seats will be filled.

Most of the tickets are going to GOP donors or potential donors.

The community of Boulder gets road closures of main arterials during peak commute hours in exchange for 0 seats for the event (and a 2-day! closure of a bicycle arterial).

The campus hosting the event?  At first, they got 50 tickets, then 100, then 150.

University officials told the Daily Camera this week that of the 150 CU tickets, 99 tickets are for students, 17 are for faculty and 34 are for event volunteers, the nine members of the Board of Regents, plus a guest each, Chancellor Phil DiStefano and a guest.

This event just gives the national press an excuse to run lazy and stupid stories like this.

The GOP gets to borrow the veneer of economic vitality of this STEM-heavy community while not mentioning how much of Boulder's high-tech economy is due to the THREE national labs and the only major research university in the Rocky Mountain time zone--all fueled by federal spending they want to cut.

Meanwhile, the residents and students are told to stay home and avoid the streets.  What's the GOP plan for the small businesses that will be empty tonight?

Wordless Wednesday

Democracy 3

This November will be my first time to vote as a Boulder, Colorado resident since the 1990s. Fortunately, I can rely on the help of my friend who writes the Colorado and Boulder Ballot Issues blog to help me sort out the issues.

FWIW, Boulder politics hasn't changed much since my last stint.  Many candidates give lip service to affordable housing, but don't lift a finger to do anything about it.  Worse, they block attempts to ameliorate the severe housing crisis faced by moderate and low-income workers* in Boulder.

Boulder is the most expensive housing market in Colorado both to rent and to buy.  What has city council done?  Say yes to a new Googleplex, as well as hundreds of thousands of square feet of new office space while severely restricting construction of housing.

After navigating the Boulder real estate market as both a renter and a buyer (and a remodeler), I have a few thoughts about how the city could improve the situation.  ;-)

Please read Colorado and Boulder Ballot Issues for very well-informed and reasoned arguments about how to vote on the myriad issues that Colorado in general and Boulder County in particular will vote on this November.

* The land purchased by the city to build permanently affordable housing has shot up in value while the city has dragged it's feet on building said housing.  Meanwhile, some council members propose to sell the valuable site in the transit village to the highest bidder (adding to the supply of $2000+/mo 1-bedroom apartments in that neighborhood) and put affordable housing on the outskirts of town.

Not only would this delay the delivery of affordable housing, but it's a giant FU to those that need it.

After all, don't low-income single-parent families NEED walkable neighborhoods and good transit options even more than families that can afford reliable cars and a stay-at-home parent or nanny to schlep the kids around?

Wordless Wednesday

Requiem

I saw this real estate agency door in my old neighborhood* and realized that Boulder is soooo over. Look at the list of places that are now playgrounds of the extremely rich.

I am especially sad about Boulder and Monrovia because they are towns where scientists who worked at CU/NOAA/NIST/NCAR/JPL/Caltech used to live, but can't afford now.

When scientists at national labs can't afford to live close to work, we scatter to the four winds and no longer run into each other outside of work.

When something breaks down in lab, it's hard to pop in to fix it on weekends and evenings if you live far away.  Alternatively, you could stay in lab more and never see your family.

We as a society have decided to pay scientists a lot less than similarly trained professionals and consigned scientists to a financially precarious life.  We're not as badly off as artists financially**, but the trend is worrisome.

* I lived on West Pearl back when it was inhabited by graduate students and winos.  My roommate at the time, a PhD candidate in human geography, said that we were the shock troops of gentrification.  She was so, so right.

** Artists do have more freedom to move to cheaper places, but scientists need to work in labs in places like Boulder and Palo Alto.  Then there is the two-body problem of finding two science jobs in the same locale when scientists marry one another.  This is a severe problem.  I read one survey that uncovered that 80% of female PhD physical scientists are married to another physical scientist or an electrical engineer.

Wordless Wednesday