Here we Grow

Thanks to the elephant of the heads up. If you are around Boulder, CO this new documentary is being shown at the Boulder Theater tonight.

Cornell Lab of "O"

The Cornell Lab of O was a social network before social networks were cool. Carl Zimmer over at the Loom recently posted this unique bird song inspiring me to take a virtual trip back to that magic little spot in Ithaca.

The Department of Mad Scientists

The preceding conversation on NPR reminded me of this wonderfully put together video that I saw last March.

Nader has a New Book

My father called and told me to watch this speech by Ralph Nader at the Miami Book Fair. He Saw it on C-SPAN2.   As much as Nader has polarized people with his "spoiler" role in the 2000 and 2004 elections I find myself agreeing with him on so much despite the controversy.  Especially his opposition to nuclear power!

If you liked this bit you can find the whole 50 minute clip here.

Mad in Moab

I took this photograph of the Colorado River one week ago and anger has been drumming up inside me ever since.  This image shows browned water leaching into the river from the old altas uranium mine site less than a mile north of Moab, Utah.  The Department of Energy working with hundreds of millions of US tax dollars now toils to excavate and relocate radioactive waste perturbed from this site  by a private company over forty years ago.  Is this the fate of Northern Colorado south Texas and southwestern South Dakota?   How can we stop it?   If you want to argue for uranium mining please look closely at this image first!

More Fun with Water Drops

Post with the Most on Tom Paine's Ghost!

The competition is brewing up some interesting conversation. In contemplating her entry Kristianne of The Woolly Mamas writes in response to the Astronomist...

"I think exploring the analogous potential of cosmic re-ionization and the cultural renaissance is a brilliant idea. However, I would deduce that they are analogous because the periods of time they both succeeded have been mistakenly understood to be "dark" and empty and void of "knowing." I think it would be more interesting to argue that the smeary, rewritten, consciously contrived version of mediaeval history that has sunk deep in our collective cultural understanding is much like the time on Earth that preceded the first appearance of stars and galaxies, that both were periods of profound holism, unsensationally brimming with the foundations of all matter and knowledge--a richly saturated but star-less sky supplanted by glistening heavenly bodies in perfect geometry, and likewise fame-less monks who healed the cancerous and lame, premier decipherers of universal truths credited to later "light"-dwellers Copernicus and other great men of fame who's discoveries survived the careful revision and distortion attempts of the (re)written-record-makers."

~ I see what you are saying Kristianne. Useful knowledge has certainly emerged from unlikely places and often gone with no assigned credit. In the end you say (re)written-record-makers have made attempts to distort truths. I heartily agree with your assessment and see that as the beauty of living at this moment in history, where all literate people are the authors of history. Literacy has never been more essential for survival and your argument provides the reason. If only those in power write the record books they will be inevitably biased on the side of the superpower.  Our sustained ability to freely and openly communicate is the cytoskeleton of democracy.

Thank you for your wisdom and insight!

Words of Wisdom from the Tallest Man in the World

Perspective

A scientific understanding of the cosmos begins by gaining a sense of perspective.  Thanks to Mary and Claudia for digging this out of their memory banks.

Beauty in the everyday: water drop