A Congressman Responds...

As I mentioned in a previous post, I was going to write my members of Congress about global warming. Representative Leonard Boswell wins the prize for fastest response. He has entered the information age and sent me an electronic reply this morning. Read it after the jump:

I've written my members of Congress before, and it seems that Boswell is usually the only one who responds by e-mail. The other two (Harkin & Grassley) both like to send letters to my house. Kind of silly of them to follow-up with letters when I am sending them e-mails. If I get responses from those guys I'll try to scan them and post as well.

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An Inconvenient Truth

I just finished watching this movie, and it got me fired up to do something. My utility company offers a program called Second Nature, where you pay a little bit extra (2 cents per kilowatt-hour) to get all of your electricity from renewable resources. Back when I was working as an engineer I was enrolled in this program. But after getting laid off from that job, I wasn't sure I could handle the additional expense and dropped it. Looking back, I over-reacted, because I just did the math and it will cost me an additional 8 bucks a month to get all my electricity from renewable resources. A small price to pay, and worth it.

One thing from the movie that was particularly surprising to me was the confusion over the actual existence of global warming. To me global warming is a well-established fact, but to many people it considered simply a "possibility". Fortunately, good ol' Al Gore has his facts straight. In the movie he says that out of 928 articles written on global warming in the last 10 years in peer-reviewed scientific journals, zero (as in: none) of them disagreed with the scientific consensus that humans are causing global warming. What is disturbing is that out of 636 articles in the popular press published in the last 14 years on global warming, 53% of them expressed doubt over the cause of it.

So the scientists agree that we are causing global warming, but the "liberal" media wants it to sound like there is doubt and disagreement.

Please see this movie, and tell your friends to watch it too. Excuse me, I have to go write my members of Congress.

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nature magazine interview

A few weeks back I was interviewed by a writer for nature magazine. He wanted to know my story of how I ended up back in school after working in industry, and what I was working on for my research. Biorenewable resources are hot right now, so you could say that makes me moderately cool. And now, marginally famous....

Read the article online here.

If you want to print it out and hang on your wall, here's a .pdf version.

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George Bush's Speaking Skillz

This video surprised me. Nowdays people make plenty of jokes about how terrible a speaker he is. Ten years ago that wouldn't have happened. Watch him speak quickly and articulately at a gubernatorial debate without notes and without stumbling over his words:



Amazing difference. And yes, there is definitely something happening to him.

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Why We Fight - Documentary

Why do we? The quick and easy answer is "freedom", but there is more than that. Ever since World War II we have had corporations, aka military contractors, whose business is war. If a business wants to keep making its product, it needs to find a market. One thing leads to another, and the next thing you know you have something President Eisenhower called the "military industrial complex".

Go to this website and see the trailer for the documentary: www.whywefight.com

P.S. I'm doing okay. School is busy.

P.P.S. Make sure you vote on November 7th!!!

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Camping Photos

Yikes, it's been a long time since my last post. It's not that I'm trying to let this blog die a slow death. It's just that attempting to finish my research and then write a thesis in the next two month's is very very very very time consuming.

Excuses aside, here are a bunch of pictures from our annual camping trip to the Boundary Water in Northern MN. As busy as I am, this trip is a must....

Enjoy!
My brother, unprepared for a photo.

My brother and me, quite prepared for a photo.

Mid-afternoon on the first day, taking a break from paddling down a long and winding creek (crick). Don't ask me why I'm looking at my brother's legs.

A view from our campsite on the second day. Probably one of my favorite sites ever. A quiet river, with no canoe traffic, and our own swimmin' hole. Dan, Kerri, and I had a great time swimming, swamping the canoes and generally acting like kids (while wearing lifejackets like adults). My brother's head is in the corner of the photo because he is chopping wood.... all blurry with motion.


That's all for now!

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Camera Trix

Videotaping yourself doing something and then reversing it isn't a very complex cinematographic art, but the video below called "Balancing Point" is really well done.



I just love the sounds the rocks make as they are self-assembling. The soundtrack is perfect too.

Hmmmm, not much exciting to report on here. I've been working alot trying to get things done for my professor who likes to remind me how easy it should be for me to finish my thesis, right after he gave me more work to perform for said thesis. I'm trying to stay focused and get it done, but I kinda shot myself in the foot recently (metaphorically of course) when I bought a new video game to play. I am definitely NOT good when it comes to self-control on playing these things....

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