Botony 101

Finished 5 week introduction to local plants offered by the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.  I had the privilege of listening to the two individuals pictured above share their prodigious knowledge with a group of about twenty.  I was reminded of how much there is to know.  Maybe more importantly I was impressed with the ongoing work to maintain and expand the protection to the wonderful but fragile ecology of the area.

For Your Late Night Viewing Enjoyment

This is for my buddy Joe.

Form v. Substance

This is what I'm talking about! Thanks to the folks at EcoGeek.org for sending me to this.

Groundhog Day

Well, the groundhog didn't see his/her shadow around here, but you can't tell by the weather over the past couple of weeks. We've been under a "Flood Warning" continuously for two weeks now due to some heavy rains. Tom Skilling has been going slightly mad on the evening weather! I've already got four February bicycle commutes in February, compared to none last year. One commute left my regular cycling shoes wet enough so they didn't air dry for two days. Last night I slid home on three inches of new snow. It was an adventure! I'm learning to commute in colder, winterier (is that a word) weather this year. As Richard Dreyfss would recommend-baby steps.

My old Nissan was put to rest a week ago. The repair bill of $2000.00 was just too much. I was hoping to get 300,000 miles but 226,000 is not bad. I'm reminding myself and anyone who reads this blog (both of you) that the greenest way to use a car is to buy used, keep it maintained, and run it as long as you can. It seems like Earth-friendly environmentalism has become trendy these days (For example, I saw a hybred Ford Escape SUV on the way to work the other day). But as with many other things in our whacked-out society, this seems to be more form than substance. President Bush did sign an energy bill that will finally mandate higher fuel economies but we lag behind much of the world in this.

January bike commute miles:163.2
February bike commute miles (so far):81.6
Total for 2008: 244.8

Distributed Computing

I wrote about my crashing desktop computer awhile back. I eventually bought a Dell Dimension 8200 desktop on eBay for $65.00. A great deal and the computer just hums along. The only downside I can see so far is that memory upgrades must be done in pairs of memory sticks that make the process more costly. Anyway, I started to get back to some of the interests I had on my computer before the whole blue screen of death episode. One of my recent things is to go back to running SETI@Home. SETI@Home is a distributed computing effort to sift through huge quantities of data in search of extraterrestrial signs of life. As a die-hard X-Files devotee this idea appeals to me. Now the software used to accomplish this feat, BIONC, is also used for several other distributed computing applications. There are many worthy projects going on but I settled on Rosetta@Home for now. Here's an interesting description of this project:

As a person who's trying to always become more socially responsible (a life long quest). The concept that my eBay computer might actually share some small credit for truly historic scientific breakthrough is exciting. Since my computer sits idle most of the time, I'm giving it something to do.

Local Impact of our Unquenchable Thirst for Oil

It looks like our love of the car will trump common sense in "The Region." British Petroleum (BP) gets to dump more pollutants into the lake for the sake of increasing their refining capacity at their Whiting plant. The best they can do is to assure everyone that they've complied with existing laws. If that's true, maybe the laws need re-examination. Indiana officials seem content to inform us it could be worse and that it will create jobs (the article says 80). Here's the link.

An Inconvenient Truth

I took several pictures of the breathtaking sunset last night. The reality of living around here is no matter how awesome the natural beauty is, we're never too far remove from reminders of heavy industry. In the center of this shot is a coal fired generating plant. Tonight I watched An Inconvenient Truth and realized again that it's not enough to carve out a small oasis of natural beauty like the dunes because pollution from that plant looms over it all. We're killing ourselves by degrees (pun intended). It gives me a higher purpose to do as much bicycle commuting as I can. See this movie if you haven't done so already.