Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
The New Flume Trail Out of El Monte County Park
olderugger, Yes, you can see at the mouth of the El Monte Valley the staging area for the construction of the Sunrise Powerlink. For me, this is a tough one to be favor of or against. On the one hand we have new ways to tap into alternative energy. On the other, we have the marring of landscapes such as El Monte Valley. I am at least happy that the route has been changed from the one that would have crossed the middle of the Anza-Borrego Desert and the Santa Ysabel area.— April 28, 2011 4:38 p.m.
The New Flume Trail Out of El Monte County Park
SDParrothead: Not being a hydraulic engineer, and being lazy enough to not look this up ... I can still make an off-the-cuff educated guess. There's a certain amount of friction associated with gravity flow of a liquid through any conduit. Depends on the viscosity of the liquid, how rough or smooth the bottom of the channel is, and the slope, which determines the downward component of gravity, which of course keeps things moving. Plus there are myriad fine points such as slow (laminar) flow versus fast (turbulent) flow -- you don't want the latter. All of this is modeled by theoretical equations these days, but the practical knowledge has been around since antiquity based on experiment. Maybe some hydraulic engineer will jump in at this point and complete the story.— April 28, 2011 4:33 p.m.
Cross-Country Skiing, Christmas Berry, and Tree Aloes
Nan, The snowfall in our local (SD County) mountains is highly variable. It's often of high quality for cross-country skiing when it's fresh, but it melts quickly. I've gone x-c skiing in the Lagunas or Cuyamacas an average of about two times a year for more than 30 years.— December 30, 2010 10:18 a.m.
Sunrise, Sunset, Ripening Palm Fruit
taschenck and SurfPuppy, Compared to Mexican fan palms, the native California fan palms have thicker trunks. The outermost tips of the fronds also get "frilly." The scientific name for the California fan palm is Washingtonia filifera.— December 24, 2010 6:36 p.m.
Total Lunar Eclipse Tonight
It would have been easier to travel overland to some part of the United States or Mexico that was experiencing clear skies. Lunar eclipses are visible from Earth's entire night hemisphere, and San Diego was nearly centered on the zone of visibility for this last total one. I, for one, was pleased that although the eclipse was rained out, at least we are getting some nice rainfall to nourish our parched Southern California landscape. Our next total solar eclipse takes place about a year from now (December 10). Below is some copy excerpted from a list of yearly celestial events that I prepare and hand out to my astronomy and physical science students. December 9-10, 2011: On the afternoon of December 9, the full moon rises from the east horizon at around 4:11 p.m., about one-half hour before the sun sets. The next morning, near dawn on December 10, there occurs 2011's most interesting astronomical event -- a TOTAL LUNAR ECLIPSE. At San Diego, we will only see part of this eclipse. Partial phases of the eclipse begin at 4:46 a.m., with the moon sinking in the western sky. Over the next hour and twenty minutes, Earth’s shadow will take an increasing “bite” into the sunlit moon. Totality begins at 6:06 a.m., with the moon low in the west and dawn’s glare well underway in the east. Use binoculars to track the totally eclipsed moon, which will look practically like a ghost compared to its normal bright self. Soon after totality begins, the moon will become invisible due to the strengthening light of dawn.— December 21, 2010 9:08 a.m.
East Balboa Park
Thanks, BlueSouthPark, for your comments. Just as a general point of information about these online Roam-O-Rama columns ... Captions for the each photo never appear online, but they do appear in the printed issues of the Reader. This column's photo is a close-up on something that can be seen in many parts of Balboa Park, and especially along the park's east side.— December 1, 2010 4:54 p.m.
Explore Mission Gorge by Foot, Bike, Skates, or Car
Budget cuts to the city parks department, very likely. Campground hosts are not the only people staffing the park and its facilties.— October 12, 2010 11:36 a.m.
Venus's Elongation and the Effect of Thunderstorms on Ocotillos
Jupiter!— August 27, 2010 10:32 a.m.
Geminid Meteor Shower
Oops ... in the previous comment, I meant to say 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. (in two places), not 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. See what staying up late in the subfreezing mountains will do to you the next day!— December 14, 2009 3:04 p.m.
Geminid Meteor Shower
The "global" peak of the Geminid meteor shower last night was predicted to be around 9 a.m. Pacific Standard Time. However, the radiant of the shower in the constellation Gemini was at that same time only about 30 degrees above the horizon seen locally, which means that the meteors were coming into the atmosphere obliquely and not directly straight down. That means fewer of them, on average. The radiant reached its highest point in the sky, nearly straight up, around 1 a.m. My estimate of the maximum rates (for San Diego specifically) of around midnight was developed with a consideration of these two factors in mind. BTW, last night I observed the Geminid shower from Sunrise Highway through clearing clouds, and saw a nice display between approximately 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. Hopefully others enjoyed good results elsewhere either early or late in the evening.— December 14, 2009 2:54 p.m.