Ever since I moved to Nevada, one of the most seismically active states in the U.S., I've had the habit of checking the USGS recent earthquake map nearly daily. For the past two months or so, I had noticed an uptick in earthquake activity near Reno, but since I hadn't felt anything I thought it was nothing unusual. There indeed was a 6.0 earthquake in northeast Nevada that happened right before the recent activity here, but it occurred more than 300 miles away from here, so a connection is possible but unlikely.

This past Thursday, we finally started to feel this recent swarm of earthquakes, the only earthquake experiences in my life where I've been near the epicenter. (I was once woken up by a 5-something earthquake in Boston, but it was epicentered in the middle of the state of Massachusetts.) I was working at my desk at home, and noticed it swaying back and forth. Flea was on the phone in the kitchen, and I told her what I was experiencing, but she waved me off as she didn't feel it herself.

A few minutes later, a 4.2 hit just five miles from our house. This one was impossible to ignore, as the house shook consistently and unpredictably for three to five seconds. I enjoyed it, as it was too mild to be scary -- it was a minor earthquake, as looking at the USGS California map daily I see 4-something earthquakes all the time.

But last night the tectonic activity upped the ante in a much more notable way. We were in the movie theater, perhaps 15-20 minutes away from the end of Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Suddenly, the entire theater started shaking violently, and I grabbed the rail in front of me and held on. It lasted a solid 10 seconds at least, and this time I definitely started to get scared. (How reliable are the ceilings in a movie theater?) It was also a communal experience, as during the event everyone in the theater was gasping and looking at each other. When it was over, my heart was racing, and I probably enjoyed the rest of the movie more for it. (In general, I enjoy Dracula musicals and puppets.)

This one was a 4.7 -- again, not something that is considered a major earthquake, but big enough to do some minor damage. But my heart was racing because I knew that 6 and 7 Richter scale earthquakes are not unheard of in Nevada, and with the build-up of activity on Thursday, such a major earthquake was feeling possible. In fact, this morning I read the following in an article about last night's event:

Ken Smith, a seismologist at the university lab, said the recent activity around Reno is unusual in that the quakes started out small and continue to build in strength..."If the pattern continues we may be looking at a larger event" in the Reno area, Smith said Friday. “We wouldn’t be surprised to see it (swarm) end at any time and it also wouldn’t be surprising to see a large earthquake. The bottom line is we don’t know what will happen.”

So the fact that what we're experiencing is "unusual" is indeed a little frightening. We'll see how the weekend goes, but I'm hoping that a supervolcano isn't in the making. That's an exaggeration, but certainly a major earthquake in the near future wouldn't be a scientific surprise.

Here are some pictures taken at Vaughn Middle School today, where I participated in the Nevada caucus. (All photos taken by flea.)

I got there a little early, helping the Obama campaign give out stickers as caucus-goers walked in. (This is where I had my unfortunate encounter with a Clinton supporter.) There were four precincts voting at the school, so there were quite a few people filing in.

At noon, you had to be signed in and inside your precinct's room. They explained the caucus rules, computed the viability threshold at 13, and then had us gather in the parts of the room that represented our first choice candidate. The Edwards group barely made viability, but they were in. It was immediately clear that Obama had more people than Clinton, but there was still the "realignment" round. Only two candidates with any voters did not make viability: Dennis Kucinich and Bill Richardson. Most of those people realigned with Obama, but a couple went to the Clinton camp.

They counted up the realignments, put the final count on a white board, and started assigning the delegates. Obama got 7, Clinton 4, and Edwards 3. Right after this, each group was responsible for electing the delegates who will attend the county convention and cast their votes. It was a bit of a chaotic process, but I was glad that we sent a diverse group.

Our room started to empty out, so we started wandering around the school to see how the other precincts were doing. The picture in the upper right above was from one of the other rooms, held in the school gym. It was the only room in the school that Clinton took. (Obama was up three overall.)

After the results in our local precincts were settled, we went back home where the networks were already calling it for Clinton. Overall, I enjoyed the process, but was depressed by some of the reasons people had for choosing their candidates. And although I liked the community aspect of caucusing, I still feel that primaries are a fairer system.

One last interesting thing of note: it looks like the results here in Nevada are breaking down the same lines as the Question 7 campaign in 2006 (which I worked on). Notably, Question 7 did very poorly among older voters and Hispanic voters, exactly where Clinton did her best. Additionally, it looks like Obama beat Clinton by 10 points in Washoe County (Reno), and lost badly in Clark County (Vegas). Similarly, Question 7 did poorly in Clark and had its best performance in Washoe. I'm not sure what this says, but it's an interesting observation.

All right, time to go get some food after a long day of politickin'.

Correction: It's been a year since the 2006 elections, so I got some facts wrong. First, Question 7 did the best in Storey County, not Washoe, although it did very well in Washoe. Second, Question 7 did very well among Hispanics and not so well among African-Americans, so I completely reversed that trend. I guess that makes the above a less interesting observation.

Quick update: just got back from caucusing here in Reno, Nevada. Obama took 50% of the delegates in my precinct compared to Clinton's 29%, but CNN is calling it for Clinton. I'll be back in a bit with pictures and more details, but I'll just say one thing: if you don't think those Muslim emails going around are hurting Obama, you're wrong. One elderly woman with a Clinton sticker shouted at me nastily: "I won't vote for a Muslim!" I spoke with another person who had the same belief, and I later saw her in the Clinton corner. Very depressing.

Yesterday's New York Times Magazine article about the worsening water availability issue affecting American Western states is excellent. While global warming is expected to make the globe generally wetter, decreased snowmelt, reduced precipitation, and population growth is having the opposite affect here in the West:

[NOAA climatologist Roger] Pulwarty is convinced that the economic impacts could be profound. The worst outcome, he suggested, would be mass migrations out of the region, along with bitter interstate court battles over the dwindling water supplies. But well before that, if too much water is siphoned from agriculture, farm towns and ranch towns will wither.

The article also has a section on the water situation in and around Las Vegas, where Lake Mead -- a product of the Colorado River and the Hoover Dam which provides much of the water for Las Vegas -- is at its lowest levels ever, and still dropping:

It is all but impossible to look into the future of the Western states without calling on Pat Mulroy, the head of the Southern Nevada Water Authority. Mulroy has no real counterpart on the East Coast; her nearest analog might be Robert Moses, the notorious New York City planner who built massive infrastructure projects and who almost always found a way around institutional obstructions and financing constraints. She is arguably the most influential and outspoken water manager in the country — a “woman without fear,” as Pulwarty describes her. Pulwarty and Peter Binney respect her willingness to challenge historical water-sharing agreements that, in Mulroy’s view, no longer suit the modern West (meaning they don’t suit Las Vegas).

(I love how similar her last name is to Chinatown's Hollis Mulwray.)

Water restrictions didn't affect me much when I was in Vegas since I lived in an apartment complex, but here in Reno I'm constrained to water the vegetation in front of my house on only Thursdays and Sundays. I haven't done enough research to know whether Nevada golf courses have to follow the same rules, but somehow I doubt it.

But with millions of people still moving into the West, and with the water situation not even maintaining status quo but worsening, I wonder what the future has in store for a state like Nevada, both the driest and the second fastest growing state in the country.

Photos by ChrisMRichards (left) and Roadsidepictures (right).

Last night, 90 minutes before the scheduled time, the Nevada Supreme Court stayed the execution of convicted murderer William Castillo, pending a fuller review of the issues brought to the court by the ACLU of Nevada in an emergency hearing yesterday afternoon.

It was a tricky situation, because Castillo himself refused to file any appeals for his execution and was willing to die last night. The ACLU of Nevada decided to go forward anyway, with a two-pronged argument:

1) A lethal injection execution should not take place because the U.S. Supreme Court took a case several weeks ago to look into whether the three chemical cocktail used in such executions constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment," as interpreted from the 8th Amendment of the constitution. There is no emergency reason why the execution cannot wait until that issue has been resolved by the highest court.

2) The second chemical used in lethal injection serves no purpose but to mask the effects (by muscle paralysis) of the third and lethal chemical. This violates the 1st Amendment right of the press to witness the full effects of lethal injection, especially in a time when its potential to be "cruel and unusual punishment" is in review. Courts in the past have prohibited such things as hiding executions with curtains, etc.

I think the arguments are sound, but the trickiness mostly lies in whether or not the ACLU of Nevada has legal standing to bring the issue to the court. Such determinations are beyond my legal understanding, but are what the court is hoping to work out during the upcoming briefings and further arguments. I'm hoping that Nevada continues to follow the examples of other states in not executing anyone until at least the Supreme Court has resolved their issue. (Although I personally would prefer that the death penalty be banned altogether.)

Lastly, I should mention that Flea was the one who argued this case for the ACLU of Nevada (along with her colleague Allen, who argued the 1st Amendment portion remotely from Las Vegas), and I went down with her to Carson City yesterday to watch. She did a tremendous job, especially considering that she's been licensed as a lawyer for less than a year, and more than held her own in front of all seven Nevada Supreme Court justices and the representatives of the state on the opposing side.

Rarely does a legal motion such as this get written, filed, argued, and decided within several days, and I was lucky to be a witness. Congratulations go to the entire ACLU of Nevada, and their allies, for making this happen. (And for having an emergency cert prepared for the U.S. Supreme Court ready to go in case of a loss.) The public has a right to ensure that its government is handling this grave and irreversible duty in an ethical, responsible, and constitutional manner.

When I changed my address at the DMV today, I registered to vote as a member of a political party for the first time in my life.¹ I took this step in order to vote in the Nevada Democratic primary this January, which is scheduled to take place after the Iowa caucus but before the New Hampshire primary.

My plan is to switch back to nonpartisan status after the primary, because even though I am more politically aligned with the Democrats than the Republicans: 1) the mainstream Democratic platform diverges from my personal beliefs on several key issues; and 2) I have general frustrations with the American two party system.

In any case, I'm looking forward to participating in the caucus process.

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¹ This isn't entirely true, since I was automatically registered as a Democrat when I voted in the 2004 Massachusetts primary, but I switched back to independent status within days.(return)

Having just moved to Reno, Nevada two days ago, I woke up today to find an email from my brother linking to this news story about a "Flag of Mexico Flown Illegally Over Reno Business," which linked to this part of the Federal flag code. The story has caught on nationally, and has since been reported by the Drudgereport and CNN. (Although CNN is more interested in the fact that a veteran was caught on video tearing down the flag with a large knife.)

My initial reaction to the headlines was that there was no way that Federal code legally compels private residences and businesses to display their flags in a particular way, especially since the First Amendment gives Americans the freedom to burn the flag if they so wish. It turns out that I was right: courts have ruled that the laws here are merely advisory:

Federal flag code is not intended to proscribe behavior but is fashioned as expression of prevalent custom and usage regarding display of American flag. Lapolla v. Dullaghan, 1970, 311 N.Y.S.2d 435, 63 Misc.2d 157.

Still, the damage has already been done, and there's no telling how many people now believe that their First Amendment rights don't include flying flags in the manner of their choosing. Indeed, when I dropped off my rental truck this morning, the clerk and I got in an argument over this story, with him insisting that it's illegal (he saw it on Anderson Cooper last night), and that I should leave the country if I believed otherwise.

I know through my sources that the local news agencies are now being contacted about their error in reporting the story -- I will keep you updated about any retractions.

Update: KRNV has posted the ACLU of Nevada's press release regarding their storey.

Later Update: It's beginning to get out there that disregarding the Federal flag code is not illegal. The Reno police say as much in this Reno-Gazette Journal article. So far as I know, neither KRNV nor the Drudgereport has retracted the original story.

Last November, I briefly mentioned Michael Heizer's City, a massive earthworks project under construction in the remote desert of Nevada, three hours north of Las Vegas. He's been working on it since 1970 and does not expect it to be finished for several more years, when it will be opened to the public. Since I wrote that post, I've found some more interesting information about the project, including the most detailed satellite map I've seen, pictured above.

First, here's an excellent article from the New York Times Magazine about the project. Michael Kimmelman, art critic and the writer of that article, visited Heizer and his wife at his ranch near the sculpture, becoming one of they lucky few allowed on his vast tract of land, aside from his construction crew. He captures the beauty and remoteness of the area, describes Heizer's rancher's life far from any major population centers, and gives a sketch of the awesome structure taking shape. Heizer is a fascinating and ambitious character, more interested in how his work will be viewed in thousands of years than by his contemporaries.

I found that article on City's Wikipedia page, which led me to something even more interesting: the latitude and longitude of the project. I looked up the coordinates on Google maps, and was surprised to find the most detailed and recent satellite photo of the sculpture I've seen. Click on that link, and zooming into the northwest corner of the sculpture, you'll see the "45º, 90º, 180º" sculpture which was featured in this photo in the NYTM article:

The satellite photo also gives a clear indication of the scale of the project -- it looks to be a little over a mile long, and about 1000 feet wide, oriented SE-NW. The original section of the sculpture, the building in the southeast corner, is just a small part of the layout. You can see some interesting new features, such as a cross-shaped segment, and it's clear that when the photo was taken, there was active construction taking place right near the City center.

For those interested, I dug up which USGS quadrant City is located in, so that you can order your own $6 copy of its 7.5 Minute Quadrangle Map (1 inch = 2000 feet) from the USGS store. Its official number and name: 83545 - WATER GAP WEST, NV. I ordered the map, dated 1985, and even then the sculpture was clearly marked by the government's cartographers.

Since the location is known, it wouldn't be too hard for someone to get to the site with the help of Google maps to find the unmarked roads. But despite the coolness of it all, I wouldn't recommend using the coordinates to make an early visit to the site -- according to the NYTM article, "anyone trying to show up uninvited will be arrested for trespassing or shot at." Better wait until the public unveiling, whenever that happens.