[Originally published at OpenSnow.com, April 3, 2019]

Not long after I moved to Colorado in 2006, I began writing for SKI and SKIING magazines, both based in Boulder, where I live. An awesome perk that came with the job was complimentary lift tickets to most Colorado resorts. For a newbie to the state this was optimal, as I wasn’t ready to purchase a pass until I sampled slopes everywhere. On big powder days, my storm-chasing shenanigans often had me blazing down Interstate 70 in my SUV, past Copper Mountain and toward the more renowned resorts (I won’t name names) farther west. Back then, Copper didn’t have much cachet; nobody I knew raved about it, which I construed as “not worth bothering with.”

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SomaLogic is not the only company exploring proteomics to fix our broken healthcare system. There are a dozen firms whose endeavors I wasn’t able to include in my feature for The New York Times Sunday magazine. It seems biotech has turned its focus on proteomics—and not a moment too soon. We all know that person who was diagnosed unexpectedly with a serious, even terminal illness, despite appearing perfectly healthy. The tragic stories are commonplace and largely unpreventable when doctors rely on symptoms to diagnose disease. Our approach to health is inherently passive—we wait around to get sick before going to the doctor. I’ve always found this baffling, akin to driving my SUV until its tires are bald, and then continuing onward until the rubber tread disintegrates entirely. Evolution honed our bodies to endure despite impairment—we might feel terrific even when we’re gravely ill. Proteomics aims to make medicine proactive versus reactive, a smarter strategy since many diseases are curable if caught soon enough.

Remember when Matthew Broderick hacked into a DOD supercomputer and inadvertently started a simulation that threatened to launch a global nuclear war? I visited the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), where the film purportedly took place, and discovered that Hollywood did a darn good job of mocking up the most secure and impenetrable military bunker in the world. I live in Boulder, about a two-hour drive from NORAD, which sits deep inside Cheyenne Mountain, a natural granite fortress near Colorado Springs. Air & Space magazine sent me into the facility to write a feature pegged to NORAD’s 60^th anniversary. I’m thinking, “60 years?” The place will be dusty and antiquated, with clunky knobs and dials, like the inside of an Apollo Command Module. I was wrong. Every aspect of NORAD has been modernized and upgraded. Its state-of-the-art imaging satellites can track just about every moving object anywhere on the planet—planes, trains, automobiles, watercraft, even my kids riding their scooters down our block. The last thing I expected was to leave NORAD feeling safer. While any lingering expectations of personal privacy quickly evaporated by the end of my tour—these folks can read the label on my jeans from orbit—at least I’ll get a 15-minute heads-up before the ICBMs detonate.

“Time does not fly when you’re having fun,” is what I insisted to anyone who claimed otherwise. Whenever I broke from the mundane, time slowed down, or at least my perception of it. It irked me that nobody else seemed to notice this phenomenon. So I proposed a story about it to 5280 magazine. As it turns out, neuroscientists had been investigating the so-called “vacation paradox” for decades. Hooray! I wasn’t delusional. Time actually does pass more slowly when we’re doing out of the ordinary stuff. For me, it occurs while engaged in outdoor pursuits—skiing, backpacking, mountain biking, trail running. While researching the article for 5280, I learned that a key trigger for altering time perception (that is, slowing it down) is the sensation of “awe”—when we witness something amazing. That discovery led to a second article, for Men’s Health, published in June 2018, about the health benefits we get during awe-inspiring experiences. Apparently having our minds blown is good for us.

I wrote two features last year about variations on the sport of paragliding. In September 2017, for Air & Space magazine, I chronicled a maniacal cross-country paramotoring race over the American Southwest. Paramotoring pilots take to the air with lawn mower-like motors strapped to their backs and huge propellers spinning inches from their heads. Paramotoring engines are loud but useful: they keep pilots aloft when they’re flying over sketchy ground with nowhere to land. Paragliders are braver (or more foolish) because they rely solely on their keen piloting skills to stay airborne. In 5280’s December 2017 issue, I followed a paraglider who attempted to traverse Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. It didn’t work out so well. But he didn’t die, which in paragliding circles is a bonus. Having covered aerospace and aviation for nearly 20 years, I’ve determined that gravity works. I’ve also learned that our atmosphere is inherently chaotic and unpredictable, making it unwise to take flight harnessed beneath an oversized handkerchief. Aviators like to say, “There are old pilots and bold pilots. But there are no old, bold pilots.” Paramotorers and paragliders ought to heed a similar but appended adage: “There are no old pilots.”

The interstate that feeds Colorado’s mountain recreation areas is dysfunctional, at least occasionally. Traffic flows smoothly most of the time. But every summer and winter weekend, gridlock invariably snarls I-70. You might wonder what has improved since I wrote about I-70 for 5280magazine in March 2017? Answer: nothing. In fact, the situation is worse when you consider that in the past year about 100,000 more people have moved intoColorado. State legislators attempted and failed to pass sweeping transportation taxes to fix the roads; voters rejected similar ballot measures. Nobody who drives in Colorado wants to pay for actually driving. The situation frustrated CDOT executive director Shailen Bhatt, who stepped down in October 2017 for a job in the private sector. Meanwhile, a bid to host the 2030 Winter Olympic Games in Colorado is making the rounds, a preposterous proposition unless the state magically finds the estimated $20billion needed to upgrade the roadway. Could Winter Games catalyze taxpayer support for an I-70 overhaul? I’m not betting on it.

On December 2, 2016, TakePart published my article on a new national monument proposal in Southeast Utah. Exactly 26 days later, President Obama used an executive order to create the Bears Ears National Monument. I’d like to imagine my article has some teeny tiny impact on Obama’s decision. The new national monument permanently protects more than 1.35 million acres.

Within hours of the announcement, Utah Republicans vowed to eliminate the monument. Utah Republican Senator Orrin Hatch met with Trump in late January. According to the Washington Post, Hatch reported that “President Trump is ‘eager to work with’ Republican lawmakers on undoing new federal protections for Bears Ears.” Trumps interior secretary nominee, Republican Representative Ryan Zinke, from Montana, is apparently eager to undo the monument, which he called “a travesty.” Continue reading →

In his response to my article in The New York Times Magazine, Why Isn’t the U.S. Better at Predicting Extreme Weather?, Bill Lapenta, the director of NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), wrote, “Michael Behar’s article provides a stale narrative about the state of American weather forecasting. He ignores the major investment and effort underway to tackle these challenges. The National Weather Service is in the midst of a technology revolution, bringing new satellites, supercomputers and upgraded models online to provide forecasts and warnings that are among the most accurate in the world. For example, hurricane forecasts have seen drastic improvements, as demonstrated by the accuracy of our Hurricane Matthew track and rainfall predictions. The National Weather Service’s skilled and dedicated scientists work alongside public-safety officials to save lives by warning American and international communities in the path of extreme weather. Their work should be commended, not unfairly criticized.” Continue reading →

[Originally published at Airspacemag.com, June 23, 2016]

Drone pilots are celebrating, finally.

This week the Federal Aviation Administration published its much-belated rule to govern the commercial use of small, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) weighing less than 55 pounds. The new regulation, called Part 107, is great news to the millions of drone users in the United States who have been waiting nearly four years for the FAA to issue its UAV guidelines, ever since Congress passed the FAA Modernization and Reform Act in 2012. The agency came out with a proposed rule last year, and had been reviewing public comments before issuing a final version. Continue reading →

[Originally published at Outsideonline.com, September 3, 2015]

On July 27, the media team at the University of Southampton, in the UK, announced results from a new study concerning a molecule researchers had dubbed Compound 14. When fed to obese mice, it triggered a startling metabolic reaction: In just seven days the rodents shed five percent of their body weight. Even more miraculous, the otherwise healthy mice thinned down while continuing to gorge on a high-fat, high-carb diet—the rodent-equivalent of ice cream and pizza—and all without doing a single bout of exercise.  Continue reading →