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Just a few tidbits about the Phoenix Monsoon season as provided by the Weather Underground, just good to know:

Precipitation statistics for the Arizona monsoon season (june 15 to
September 30):

… Phoenix…
normal rainfall 2.76 inches (1971-2000)
wettest season 9.56 inches (1984)
driest season 0.35 inches (1924)
average number of days with measurable rain 12 days

… Yuma…
normal rainfall 1.29 inches (1971-2000)
wettest season 7.22 inches (1909)
driest season 0.00 inches (1962/1914/1878)
average number of days with measurable rain 5 days

Weather Underground – go to bottom of the page

Commuting is big news now that gas is getting more and more expensive. I have been writing about taking the bus, setting up a commuter shop, and the federal budget for public transit. Now the eggheads have confirmed what I have been feeling:

Mass transit use increased by more than 2 percent in 2007 to the highest level in 50 years. Americans took more than 10 billion trips on public transportation, while the number of vehicle miles traveled was flat in the first 10 months of the year.

Public transit use climbs as gas prices rise – The Business Journal of Phoenix:

Those that know me know that I have had a serious itch for Dubstep for a few years now. The stuff just gets right under my skin almost as much as Drum and Bass does. XLR8R is a cool music magazine for all electronic stuff and their recent podcast has an interesting take on this sound:

São Paulo-born DJ, producer, and party king Bruno Belluomini reminds us that dubstep isn’t just for the pale faced Brits and California hippies. This selection of tracks, many of the unreleased, showcases how producers near and in the Southern hemisphere are interpreting the dubstep sound.

Exclusive Mix: Dubstep Goes South

Happy Monday, how many drugs have you already had this week?

And while drugs are tested to be safe for humans, the timeframe is usually over a matter of months, not a lifetime. Pharmaceuticals also can produce side effects and interact with other drugs at normal medical doses. That’s why — aside from therapeutic doses of fluoride injected into potable water supplies — pharmaceuticals are prescribed to people who need them, not delivered to everyone in their drinking water.

“We know we are being exposed to other people’s drugs through our drinking water, and that can’t be good,” says Dr. David Carpenter, who directs the Institute for Health and the Environment of the State University of New York at Albany.

AP probe finds drugs in drinking water – Yahoo! News

I want, I want!

LiveJournaller Capt. Sideburns has posted the results of his experiments in making a Space Invaders pixel-art cutting board — it worked superbly, as you can see. He’s promising Zelda next.
Link

Space Invaders cutting board

No real surprise here but we can rest easy now that the smart folks down in Tucson has determined that Phoenix is not a big terrorism target:

Phoenix and Tucson residents can rest easy, according to University of Arizona research that ranks the nation's 132 largest cities by their vulnerability to terrorism.

UA research on terrorism gives low-risk rating to Phoenix, Tucson

Gas is at an all time high and only going higher. We are spending millions a day on a war over oil with no real solution in sight. The auto industry is making no real strides towards alternative solutions. Well at least we have public transit, oh wait, maybe not:

U.S. PIRG strongly criticized President Bush’s proposed 2009 budget for reducing transit spending and raiding the Mass Transit Account at a time when national trends show the need for aggressive new investment in public transportation. The President’s FY09 budget proposed cutting $202 million from transit spending and transferring $3.2 billion from funds dedicated to transit.

With more than 10 billion trips taken annually, the growth rate of public transportation has outpaced the growth rate of the population and vehicle miles traveled on our nation’s roads over the past decade. According to a Zogby poll released last month, a majority of Americans (53%) say they would use mass transit if it were easily available where they live and work. Forty-seven percent (47%) of those who travel alone by car to work hold the same opinion.

You elected the guy.

Invest in Transit, not Cars, Says PIRG : TreeHugger

Interesting piece on the Singularity by Rudy Rucker, famed sci-fi writer:

if you want to smoothly transform a blade of grass into some nanomachines simulating a blade of grass, then why bother pulverizing the blade of grass at all? After all, any object at all can be viewed as a quantum computation! The blade of grass already is an assemblage of nanomachines emulating a blade of grass. To the extent that you can realize an accurate VR world, the exercise becomes pointless.

Just as she is, Nature embodies superhuman intelligence. She’s not some piece of crap to tear apart and use up.

Rudy’s Blog » Blog Archive » Fundamental Limits to Virtual Reality(via BoingBoing)

This incredible photograph depicts avalanches near the north pole of Mars. Snapped by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, it’s the first ever image of active avalanches on the Red Planet.

Martian avalanches – Boing Boing