Environmental Policy

How bad do your environmental policies have to be that an 80 year-old bed-ridden third world dictator will bitch you out over them?

Seriously, that's one hell of a bitchslap when you think of it. It seems that Fidel Castro has written an open letter condemning Bush's idea to mass-produce biofuels. And frankly, I think Fidel is right. The idea of getting ethanol for fuel from plant sources, such as corn, is good in theory. In practice this should allow you to recover the carbon dioxide that is produced through combustion in the form of new plant growth. In reality there are two problems; the fuel costs to produce agricultural ethanol (tractors, shipping, processing...) and the conversion of food to fuel. The latter is the point that Castro hits on, and has already been seen in rural areas of Mexico. If farmers can sell corn for ethanol for more than they can get as a food source problems start to happen. In the case of the Mexicans, the cost of tortillas, a staple food, has risen dramatically in the past few months roughly 400%!

So it's clear even to "cruel" dictators that the US policy of driving towards ethanol fuels is a foolish proposition and has clearly lacked in any kind of real longterm planning or thought beyond US borders.

Incidentally today the Union of Concerned Scientists announced second annual "Scientific Idol" contest; a contest to draw an editorial cartoon about political interference in science. The image in this blog is from one of the entries last year. Having no artistic talent I'm not likely to do anything for it, but if you have any skill for either satire or comics, give it a shot.

Bathroom upgrade

So the other day they were doing some repairs to the bathroom on my floor at work. It turns out that they were installing some new lights. As it was there had only been a single light source and a pair of frosted windows, but keep in mind it’s in the basement. So before the new lights were in place the bathroom really kind of felt like some kind of dank sewer, so the lights are a welcome change…well, maybe not quite so welcome, now I can see how nasty the place is.

Consequently I decided to take a trip up to the first floor yesterday afternoon. There I noticed a stark difference between the two floors. There aren’t many undergrads that come to the basement and as a result there really isn’t any graffiti in the stalls. It’s really kind of shocking to realize that the people writing this crap are supposedly getting a higher education. Clearly they are lacking some of the fundamental aspects of knowledge and decency.

What really disturbs me is not the graffiti itself. It’s a form of expression and sometimes they are almost works of art. However the infantile drawings of penises and shit really don’t qualify as meaningful expression. And the stuff that is written is just as bad; insults of gays and racism and very crude comments. I mean seriously, what ever happened to the dirty limerick? Can’t someone come up with a good dirty joke? I’d even be happy with a haiku. The kids today, I blame the lack of creativity on TV.

Bus rides and research

So is it a good sign when you get on your bus and hear the driver asking one of the passengers to sit up front and help when he gets on the freeway? I have to admit I was tempted to wait for a later bus this morning when I heard that. But unlike the Thai dinner I had on Thursday night the ride was uneventful and I didn't lose six pounds over four days; I'm guessing nobody needs details on that one.

Recently I've been trying to figure out how I want to set up the lab space I'll be getting with my position this fall. It's a fun challenge but also one that carries a lot of burdens; anything that I mess up now I'll be stuck with for years unless I want to use the limited funds I have to redesign things. Though seeing as I've spent the better part of the past decade in one lab or another I should be able to come up with something halfway workable. So far the design that I have in mind is below, the empty wall will probably have more desks and book shelves.

I'm just glad that I ended up choosing to go into chemistry rather than math like I had once thought I would. I read an article today about a team of mathematicians solving some 120 year old math problem. Apparently it had something to do with mapping a theoretical 248 dimensional object dreamed up by Sophus Lie in the 19th century. And to get an idea how abstract this thing is the project leader claims that"To say what precisely it is is something even many mathematicians can't understand." Yet despite this (and the lack of any utility for the solution) the team spent 4 years figuring it out and creating a solution that played as an MP3 would run for 45 days straight. Anybody else out there want to call bullshit on them? I mean is there even any way that you can look at the written solution to this problem? Ah well, it just makes me that much more confident that I should be able to get funding for research that can actually be understood and presented in a few written pages.

Cruel cruel winter

One of the joys of living in Minneapolis is the number of bad drivers. It's a constant source of amusement and wonder to watch them go; throw in some adverse driving conditions and you're set for the week. Now as I mentioned earlier this week there were a couple of big snowstorms that hit town while I was in Chicago. These were some pretty serious snowfall, businesses and the university were closed down, overall about 3 feet or more of snow fell. Of course by the time I got back I'd missed most of the fun, only the secondary roads hadn't been cleaned up. Sure the cabby was nice enough to take us sliding along a few of them as we made our way back from the airport, but it just doesn't compare to those conditions on a highway.

Well, I've been back about a week now and all the roads are clear, but the snowbanks are still there. But who needs snowbanks now, without the snow on the roads the shitty drivers don't have a chance of hitting pedestrians until they step out into the street, and that's just making it harder on them and less entertaining for me. Or course the sidewalk surfaces that vary from bare cement, to hard or soft packed snow and slick ice so there is plenty of falling to be witnessed. On top of that almost nobody thought to shovel out a path to cross the street. It's like the people that live on the corners only walk around the block. As a result there are paths made by people walking up and over the snowbanks, these get really slick and are far from level, but that's just the way it is.

The real fun though comes at the bus stops. Nobody bothered to clear a path for the riders to get on and off. And sure it's fun to watch an old lady try to get from the top of the snowbank onto the bus steps, but have you ever seen a blind guy try to find his way over a frozen snowbank and into a bus? Sheer comic bliss I tell you!

So I was a bit worried when I saw a pair of city workers with shovels at a bus stop the other morning. I was worried that someone was about to do something to stop little old ladies from having to jump from the snowbank to the bus stairs. Fortunately I was worrying over nothing, these city workers weren't there to clear a path to the bus; they were digging out the snow around the garbage cans. Because clearly the wast amounts of pedestrian traffic in the winter was filling the bins at the expected rates. I'm so glad to be living in a city with the right priorities.

"Scooter" deserves to go to jail.

By now I'm sure everyone has heard about the "Scooter" Libby trial, about the leaked information about a CIA agent. So I'm pretty sure most people have heard that he's been found guilty. But that's not the reason I think he should go to jail.

I should remind everyone that I don't watch TV, so I get most of my news from the radio (NPR) and some from the internet. So for quite some time I've been hearing the name "Scooter" Libby, but I never saw a picture of the guy, until yesterday. At that point I realized that "Scooter" or Lewis Libby (real name Irve Lewis Libby - is he ashamed of his name or something?) isn't some 30 year-old! I was shocked!

I mean with a name like "Scooter" I envision one of three scenarios:

- Either rides a scooter everywhere; something highly unlikely for a Republican, it's too fuel efficient

- He's just out of his twenties, and thus young compared to the rest of the fossils that you find in the federal government

- Or he's a dog with a hip problems and needs one of those wheeled things to get around

I did not expect the guy to be 57 years-old! Seriously dude, where's your self respect? Dumbass nicknames like "Scooter" shouldn't be used by adults, and if you are an adult and let someone call you that you're clearly their bitch. It also reflects on the professionalism of the government to refer to someone by such a childish nickname. This makes me think that Bush would probably have referred to Boris Yeltsin as "Tipsy" in the UN if he'd had the chance.

So since "Scooter" clearly likes being demeaned I think he really should be sent to jail. And not one of those white-collar resort jails, a real one where he can earn a new nickname. Though if that happened I doubt it would be much more masculine.

I warned you!

You can't say that I didn't warn you that there would be problems when I went to the conference. Ok, maybe you live in a part of the world that didn't have issues, but anyone in the my neck of the woods was hit by at least one, if not two of the biggest snow storms of the year. As usual though, I got off lightly; my flight back home was delayed a couple of hours. Compared to the rest of the research group that was supposed to arrive in Chicago Saturday afternoon, but only managed to arrive at the hotel at around 1:00 am Monday. Or my boss who was to leave Chicago Thursday at about 6:00 pm, but didn't get out until about 9:00 pm Friday. So all in all I'd say I'm lucky, but very unlucky for others. The only thing I can suggest, travel with me to and from any conference.

So now that life is back to normal, or at least things are less hectic, I'm going to try and post a bit more frequently (yet again). One thing I've been meaning to post about lately is my fridge. I know, like you I'm wondering how I held off on this for so long too.

Now, being an apartment dweller I have the benefit of not owning any real appliances. No stove, fridge, dishwasher or anything larger than a coffee maker or blender. I get the appliances that come with the apartment and live with them. Well, when I got this place I didn't get a dishwasher, I did get a nice digitally controlled gas stove and of course a fridge. Now there wasn't anything outwardly spectacular about the fridge, it was big, white, had two doors and kept things at two different levels of cold and sounded like a Volkswagen minibus stalling out whenever the compressor shut off.

Now being an experienced apartment dweller I took the usual approach to this problem, I didn't care. It kept my food sufficiently cold to prevent spoiling and to be fair the compressor didn't always "stall-out". And since I didn't sleep in the living room it didn't keep me up at night, though I can't say the same for my brother when he came to visit. But a little while back the situation got worse. Not only did the compressor seem to "stall-out" more frequently but the damn thing was running for about 1/3 of the time. And like any good apartment dweller that's when I started to care, after all I'm the one paying the electric bill.

So I called up the building management to have the fridge checked out, sure enough they were willing to replace it. On top of all that they would do it, and transfer all the food for me while I was at work. How could I complain? Oh right, I never had a say in what fridge I got. The new one is about 6 inches shorter than the old one. On top of that the freezer portion is probably about 4 inches taller than the last one. Add these factors together and you get my mini-fridge. The thing is so small that when I open the door I cannot see what's on the top shelf of the fridge, which is the only shelf big enough to hold the gallon size milk container. So now I have a fridge that is quieter, though it sounds disturbingly similar to a microwave oven, but was clearly designed to give my stomach a perfect view of what it's about to ingest.