One Final Time

Jim Nabors gives his final performance of "Back home Again in Indiana" at the Indy 500 today:

This year marks the last time Jim Nabors will sing "Back Home Again in Indiana" before the Indianapolis 500.
The tradition goes back to 1972 and fans had a special opportunity Friday to talk with Nabors and say thanks.
The actor and singer is legendary at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and has become synonymous with race day and his rendition of the song.
RTV6 Sports Director Dave Furst joined the 83-year-old for a question and answer session. Fans gave Nabors a warm reception and asked how his yearly performance began.
Nabors first sang the song in 1972 at the request of then-IMS owner Tony Hulman. Nabors told the crowd that he thought he would be singing the national anthem only to learn five minutes before the race it was actually "Back Home Again in Indiana" that he would be performing.
Fans also asked Nabors who should replace him at the race and he said he thinks the crowd should sing the song -- not just one performer.

 Just one more thing that's changing at the Indianapolis 500.  I can remember when the 500 dominated the sports section for the entire month of May.  The Wide World of Sports would broadcast qualifying and radio stations would broadcast live on Carburetion Day.  Then we'd listen to the race on the radio during the day, and watch the tape delay broadcast in primetime.  It seems like it was a different world than the one we live in now.

Fire, in Slow Motion

Here is some lab work I could get into:

Memorial Day Weekend Reads

A few stories you can read on this extended holiday weekend:

The Case for Reparations - Ta-Nehisi Coates.  In case you hear somebody say something ridiculous like that black people are advantaged because of affirmative action.

Science Standards Divide a State Built on Oil and Coal - New York Times

The Dos Equis Guy Has Nothing on the Inventor of the Banana Slicer - Slate

Gaius Publius: "Erring on the Side of Least Drama" - Why Climate Scientists are Inherently Conservative - naked capitalism.  Uh oh.

California's Drought Isn't Making Food Cost More.  Here's Why - NPR.  Irrigation.  A real race to the bottom.

They're Here: Lake Flies Have Emerged - Wired. Gross.

Nazi pork and popularity: How Hitler's roads won German hearts and minds - VoxEU.  Infrastructure investment leads to the Holocaust?

'Pink Slime' Makes Comeback as Beef Prices Spike - Wall Street Journal.  Ok in my book.  See also, 5 food additives more disgusting than 'pink slime' - Marketwatch. Google Castoreum.

This Happened Twice Before, and Each Time Stocks Crashed - Wolf Richter.  The chart is disconcerting.

A libertarian utopia - Aeon.  Isn't libertarian society an oxymoronic concept?

The Effluent Society - Texas Monthly. I was well into the civil engineering program in college before I realized that city water wasn't recycled waste water.  I still drank city water, and I assumed that's why they added the chlorine.  As far as I was concerned (and it is true), well water on the farm was recycled waste water (well-diluted), since the leach field lets it percolate down to the aquifer.  Recycled waste water, meeting SDWA requirements, doesn't bother me a bit.

Everything is broken - Medium. "It’s hard to explain to regular people how much technology barely works, how much the infrastructure of our lives is held together by the IT equivalent of baling wire.

Computers, and computing, are broken." Yikes.

Rogue Element - The New Yorker. Crazy

I didn't realize that for more than two years I've been in the older half of the country's population:

NYT

Texas Six

Texas Six from Victory Journal on Vimeo.

Largest Man-Made Structures

Via Ritholtz:

The Newest Addition

I had a really rough year calving so far.  I lost three calves during the coldest week of the year, then I lost one a few weeks ago.  I finally have a little heifer on the ground:

Hopefully I haven't jinxed her by posting this.

Portrait of my grandfather: 80 and still cycling

Portrait of my grandfather : 80 and still cycling from Florent Piovesan on Vimeo.

How High's The Water?

My county got pummeled with rain tonight.  I got 1.9" while dad got 3.5" about three-and-a-half miles away.  In town they are reporting five inches with a lot of flooding. The interstate is a parking lot in front of my house.  Thank God I'm not stuck in that traffic jam.

If you want to know how global warming will affect agriculture, one way will be soil erosion.  Anyway, here's a song for you:



At least it wasn't this bad:

Not A Slow, Soaking Rain

About a half-hour ago:

Sprawl Kills

Wired:

Pedestrian deaths in the United States are at a five-year high, and if you’re among the few people who walks around Orlando, you’re more likely to be killed by a car than anyone else in the nation. You can thank 60 years of auto-centric planning and transportation policies for that.
Things aren’t much better elsewhere in the southeast or southwest, two regions that account for the majority of the 20 most dangerous metropolitan areas for pedestrians. All of them boomed after World War II, an era when urban design and transit planning favored the almighty automobile above walking, cycling and mass transit.
That’s the key takeaway from “Dangerous By Design,” a sobering report by the National Complete Streets Coalition, an arm of Smart Growth America. The report outlines the riskiest cities for pedestrians and argues–at a time when Congress is debating a transportation funding bill–that state and federal legislators and regulators must do more to make our streets safer for all who use them.
The report notes that 45,284 pedestrians were killed between 2003 and 2012 (the latest year for which data were available). The numbers have spiked in the past few years, from just over 4,200 deaths in 2007 to nearly 5,000 in 2012, and the researchers behind it are at a loss to explain why. But they make no bones about arguing pedestrians and cyclists would be safer on “complete streets”—those that include crosswalks and dedicated bike and bus lanes to slow traffic and increase safety.
The common link is among cities in the Sunbelt, which grew rapidly after World War II, when transit design abetted suburban sprawl and focused primarily on drivers.
There, low-density neighborhoods “rely on wider streets with higher speeds to connect homes, shops, and schools—roads that tend to be more dangerous for people walking,” the report says. More than half of all pedestrian deaths recorded from 2003-2012 occurred on wide arterial roads designed to move cars quickly.
The safest cities, according to the study, tend to be older ones, particularly in the northeast, that developed long before the car became the dominant form of transport.

Sprawl makes pedestrians more rare, which leads folks to forget they might be present.  God forbid you try to cross a multi-lane arterial street without a light.  One other thing to note is that Florida has the four cities with the highest danger index.  I think more older drivers may contribute to a higher fatality rate for pedestrians.  I am surprised Cincinnati or Dayton don't appear, as they are largely sprawling metro areas.  However, winter may limit the amount of pedestrian activity here when compared to the Sunbelt.