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Bald eagle , Haliaeetus leucocephalus , on Alsek River Rebounded from DDT, but now threatened by the Department of Interior itself Aside from the Bill of Rights, the most valuable aspect of the U.S. Constitution is the balance of powers among the three branches of government, and the access ordinary citizens have to all three. In the area of environmental protection, for example, Congress writes laws, executive departments (mainly EPA and Interior) promulgate regulations to implement those laws, and the courts ensure that the intent of the laws is reflected in the details of the regulations. Citizens can participate in public hearings on proposed regulations, and can file suits if the regulations do not seem to meet legislative intent. The system is currently under stress, however, as secretaries of several executive departments were nominated primarily on the basis of their antipathy to the mission of their departments. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, for example, is responsible for th

One of the first things I ever posted on the web was an article about lyophilisation , better known as freeze-drying. It was for the Wornick Company , my employer at the time and one of the pioneers in the process. Even though we no longer produced freeze-dried products, they were part of our history and I was involved in some very nerdy financial machinations about freeze-dried fruit. I even took a bunch of the product with me on my first trip to the Amazon . So I know something about freeze-drying, and about what it is good for. To the ever-growing list of things I have learned from my wonderful alumni, we can add this: I just learned freeze-dried corn meal is a thing, that I have probably had it, and that it is not good. Mexican food guru Diana Kennedy is not a fan. Image by Eleanor Skrzat for Taste . In The Tortilla Cartel , journalist Elizabeth Dunn describes the strange story of Maseca. This powder gives home cooks and even some restaurants the idea that they are making tortilla

This week, the president of the United States justified his calls for even tougher action on immigration by referring to those who cross illegally into the United States as "animals" and worse. With the recent appointment of an acknowledged torturer to one government agency (CIA) and the announcement of familial torture as a deterrent by another (ICE), the words could not be taken lightly. Within a day, his administration was partially walking back the comment, insisting that it applied only to the Salvadoran-American gang MS-13. This is part of a broader strategy, of course, of using a small number of admittedly odious migrants as rhetorical cover for deporting dishwashers, shopkeepers, and thousands of other ordinary undocumented Americans. In this case, though, the rhetoric is different not only in degree, but in kind. It is not acceptable talk for a person occupying an office that was once called "leader of the free world" in a country whose national anthem stil

NOTE: This post has grown over nearly a month of turmoil in my beloved Nicaragua. The opinions expressed here are my own, and based on my best reading of the ever-changing situation. I welcome comments, especially from my friends throughout the country. I was on my way to dinner with colleagues a month ago (the time since has passed very quickly for me) when I started to notice concerning posts from some of my friends in Nicaragua. At first I assumed there had been a volcanic eruption or an earthquake. I soon learned that the problem was much worse. I usually manage to get through a meal without checking my phone, but as events in Nicaragua were unfolding, the outside media did not seem to be noticing, so I was checking frequently with my friends and sites inside the country. Throughout that evening and for several days thereafter, social media was the only way to track what was happening in a country that for several years has been  the exception  to the patterns of violence that beco

I first became aware of the country of Cape Verde some time during my college-level study of geography. Throughout my studies -- including two graduate programs -- I would occasionally notice it on a map or in an article, and I always had difficulty figuring out its exact location. Part of my confusion arises from the name -- whether pronounced Cabo Verde, Cabo Verd, Cape Verd, or Cape Verde, the implication is some kind of peninsula or point of land, a cape. It is neither a cape nor is most of it green. Its existence as a country was also somewhat unclear, as cartographers were slow to note its 1975 independence from Portugal. Others showed it as including both the Cape Verde Islands and a point of land several hundred miles to the east, in what is now Senegal. That is the cape, apparently, from which the name originally derived. One explanation I heard was the they were the islands west of that cape. Cartographic confusion has continued at least as late as 2013, when I tried in vain

1,000th POST I began this blog -- which I sometimes call my "main blog" -- in 2008. At the time, I had just started using the center of my faculty home page to highlight examples of environmental geography as I see it. Those examples are still there, but the new platform of blogging seemed a more effective way to add many kinds of examples, and emerging social media platforms made it easy to share those examples with a wide readership. I recently realized that I was approaching my 1,000th published post (quite a few more remain as yet-to-be-published drafts), and I decided to celebrate with something fun. Coincidentally, I recently started making my own "Aw, Professor" memes, which friends and followers on Facebook really seem to appreciate. These are tongue-in-cheek words of unsolicited advice that echo themes found on the Not-the-13th Grade section of my faculty site. It seems fitting to gather all of them on this post, to which I will add any more that I end up

Africa is not a country! When, as I often do, I have students gathered in front of the Africa side of our EarthView globe , I ask them to repeat the phrase, "Africa is not a country!" For a brief time during the month when I was born, however, it was a possibility under serious discussion. I learned this from BBC Witness , a nine-minute radio program that followers of this blog will recognize as one that has become a favorite of mine. It was through the author John McPhee that I developed an appreciation for biography as a great way to learn geography and history, and Witness  gives me such lessons in a small doses. The whole series is available online, but I often plan my morning coffee routine around its local airing on 90.9 WBUR. I have to get the hand grinding done before 4:50 so that I can hear the whole program. The most recent episode to capture my attention was a rebroadcast that I actually heard in my car, as I drove to early-morning rowing. (My dog, my wife, coffee,

June 2014: Delivering a boat to the Open Water Challenge so that the racing crew would be fresh for the 3.75-mile race. I have since had the chance to be in the race a couple of times, and lucky enough to be on a winning crew in 2017. As I wrote in my November 2012 post Harbor Learning , I first learned of whaleboat clubs from a Boston Globe article about the activity (hurray, journalists!), and within a few weeks found myself on the water. I continue to enjoy the physical exercise, the company of new friends, and the learning that always happens in these boats. On the learning front, I was pleased to be able to give back in a small way on the learning front. One of my whaleboat clubs (I'm a member of two now) sponsors an annual skills contest called the Wicked Whaleboat Challenge . Circling Crow's Island, crews compete not on speed or endurance, but rather on fairly complicated maneuvers. I helped to design the original challenge (on a cocktail napkin, truth be told) and have

Because of ideology, resilience innovations such as this double-decker pier can only be installed as replacements, not as part of long-term planning. "Ignorance of geography is a threat to our national security." The great geographer Harm de Blij made this assertion during one of his visits to our campus, and it is one I have often repeated . Dr. de Blij (duh-BLAY) made this statement mainly in reference to human geography, because of the tendency of superpowers to involve themselves in conflicts that could have been avoided with a bit better understanding of the geographies of politics, economies, religion, and language. The statement is equally applicable to environmental geography, however, and specifically to the geographies of vulnerability to climate change. Excellent reporting by Nicholas Kusnetz reveals that with regard to climate change, ignorance is sometimes a conscious choice. Rising Seas Are Flooding Virginia’s Naval Base, and There’s No Plan to Fix It was join