Brilliant idea and work so far. If they can overcome the collection problem detailed below, this could be the start of the sustainable bio-energy dream, and in such a way as to not make our transportation tech totally outmoded with the eventual scarcity of fossil fuels. As far as the ethics of sustainable development and environmental balance go ( Read more... )

I just found out that the intermittent low pressure my water has been having the last day or so is linked to a wider problem that has resulted in a "boil your water" policy over the last few days that I'd not heard about. I only drank a little tap water yesterday, and brushed my teeth in it, but these were apparently no-nos that I didn't know ( Read more... )

The big theological news of the day - or the last several days - is really the new social justice encyclical that Pope Benedict has published. While my areas of academic interest and competence are more in the historical and artistic kind of things I mentioned in my last entry, I have to sit up and take notice of something this significant. ( Read more... )

Office hours. Wheeeee... I don't know what the deal is: I get semesters where my office hours are like a coffeehouse, with students showing up to hang out and talk class stuff and anything under the sun, and then I get semesters of utter disuse. I would have mostly said that's a spring/fall distinction, respectively, but at least one time I can ( Read more... )

Various articles and such that have caught my eye over the last several days and that I wanted to jot down. Vaclav Havel's unapologetic casting of the climate issue in wider language of morality. I thought this interesting and important because of the strong feelings the cultural Left has in support of environmental issues such as this, but who ( Read more... )

Here's another interesting and apparently-reputable article that makes me wonder about the reliability of some of environmental movement's accuracy in its more doomsday-sounding literature and arguments. As an historian, I'm certainly aware that the climate has been changing toward the warmer throughout the whole of recorded history, and not just ( Read more... )

Some stories I've been keeping an eye on. Tired. Spent the day helping Crip and Lisa move, after about 3 1/2 hours of sleep: filling the U-Haul, taking that to their trucking company, unloading the U-Haul and filling the trailer, repeat. A good tired, though, with plenty of time for fun talking along the way, with the Stephensons themselves and ( Read more... )

This caught my eye as perhaps being an actual discussion instead of the "scientific party-line politics" I usually see in news stories in the United States....

Mirroring wider debate, Vatican seminar on global warming gets heatedBy Carol Glatz ( Read more... )

Well, despite having been behind and wiped out with the flu over the last week, I took time to go listen to Robert Kennedy, Jr. speak on some of the topics he covers in his new book Crimes Against NatureIt really was appalling, and probably the most concise litany that I've yet heard against the abuses and corruption of the Bush administration. ( Read more... )