New Mexico Mercury

Solar Decathlon House: SHADE house 101

Unlike a fast paced NCAA basketball game, academic games are tortuga-paced.  For the last 15 months, team ASUNM -- Arizona State University and University of New Mexico -- has taken on the game challenge to design, construct, transport and operate a fully solar-powered house. The objective is to bring this house to the 2013 competition site of Orange County Park, CA.  20 teams from around the world and the US converge with their houses October 2013 to compete in ten categories...

Provincial Matters, 8-13-2013

V.B. Price's weekly collection of appreciations and observations.

Know your roach

You can help prevent cockroaches from coming into your home by inspecting all incoming food products, all boxes, and any used furniture or appliances for the presence of cockroaches or their egg capsules. Do not store paper bags anywhere in the kitchen. Seal any holes or crevices around plumbing under sinks and behind toilets. Regularly vacuum and clean floors under the kitchen appliances. Keep all of your drains closed at night to prevent them from coming up from the sewer system. Also, get your attic and crawlspace, if you have one, dusted with food-grade diatomaceous earth.

There are a number of good baits available for controlling cockroaches.

Seeing the pristine in a tainted Great Plains

As I prepared for my trek to the Northeast across the Great Plains this summer, I quietly resented that I would have to endure the mind-numbing, soul-sucking road trip I was directly and indirectly advised not to take for years, but, in my head, the justification of all the trouble existed in the destinations I would experience and the people I would visit. The road of nothingness was just the medium for time and space travel.

After watching the prairie for hours with predetermined discontent, I saw something beyond the straight roads, dividing fences, and regular telephone poles. I remember it was somewhere in Nebraska where I saw the grass move like the sea’s waves...

Tom Udall’s Campaign Against Global Warming

When I saw videos of two feet of hail in the streets of Santa Rosa in early July, and felt the power 10 days ago of the most intense wind and rain storm Albuquerque has ever seen, I thought of Senator Tom Udall’s line, “If anyone still denies that climate change is real, I invite them to come to New Mexico.”

Having seen the predictions of climate change scientists come to life, it’s heartening to know that New Mexico’s senior senator is among the most outspoken politicians in the country when it comes to confronting the reality of our changing atmosphere...

Provincial Matters, 8-5-2013

V.B. Price's weekly collection of appreciations and observations.

Extreme weather events are the new normal, are we prepared?

I’m happy to believe that the astounding, 89-mph wind that roared through the city last Friday was a once-in-a-lifetime event. National Weather Service meteorologist Clay Anderson told the Journal: “The storm was so anomalous that the chances are that everyone in Albuquerque that’s alive will not see a wind gust like again in their lifetime in Albuquerque associated with thunderstorms.”

Reassured? Don’t be. Notice that Anderson isn’t excluding winds that don’t come with thunderstorms. “I think we need to be prepared for 79-mile-an-hour and 69-mile-an-hour windstorms,” Anderson told me. “They can do damage too"...

Friday Voyage: The Grand Canyon

A journey of self-discovery through the center of the earth.

Provincial Matters, 7-22-2013

V.B. Price's weekly collection of appreciations and observations.

Provincial Matters, 7-15-2013

In this inaugural installment, V.B. Price explores a collection of appreciations of Albuquerque and New Mexico.