Fireside Chats

I recently volunteered at a new Columbus, OH area metro park. The first volunteer update I received mentioned they were interested in knowing when articles about the center appear. Here are a couple methods of tracking such information that I shared with the volunteer coordinator:

A google search on Scioto Audubon Metro Park finds quite a few older articles.

If you would like to receive email whenever a new story about the audubon center shows up, do the following:

1. Set up a gmail account (I will send you an invite if you request me to do so)
2. Experiment with google query that you want to use, something like: columbus audobon metro park
3. Go to: http://www.google.com/alerts
4. Enter your search string under Search terms:
5. You will receive email on your gmail account every time something new shows up

If you know about feed readers like Google Reader, here is another approach:

I created a Yahoo Pipe to look across numerous Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds for Columbus area newspapers.
This link should be placed in an RSS Feed reader like Google Reader. It creates a whole bunch of text that can be parsed by your favorite feed reader.

It looks for any of the following:
audubon center
scioto audubon metro park
audobon metro park
columbus
(I threw in columbus so that it would always return something – I may take it out or use something a little less likely to cause a match)

I love finding new ways to get information out of the Internet.  Anyone reading this who has a better idea, please leave a comment.

Here’s the Columbus, Ohio publications  it checks:

http://www.dispatch.com/live/static/crt/2_rss_now.xml
http://www.dispatch.com/live/static/crt/2_rss_weekender.xml
http://www.dispatch.com/live/static/crt/2_rss_localnews.xml
http://blog.dispatch.com/EverydayAdventures/atom.xml
http://www.dispatch.com/live/static/crt/2_rss_science.xml

http://www.thisweeknews.com/live/static/crt/104/2_rss_homepage.xml
http://www.thisweeknews.com/live/static/crt/104/2_rss_germanvillage_all.xml
http://www.thisweeknews.com/live/static/crt/104/2_rss_west_all.xml
http://www.thisweeknews.com/live/static/crt/104/2_rss_bexley_all.xml
http://www.thisweeknews.com/live/static/crt/104/2_rss_upperarlington_all.xml
http://theotherpaper.com/?rss=front
http://theotherpaper.com/?rss=blogs/the_other_blog
http://www.columbusalive.com/live/static/crt/108/4_rss_allstories.xml
http://www.snponline.com/?rss=multiple_papers/news

Just saw “Cider House Rules”. The story investigates the people who spend their lives dealing with the consequences of bad decisions. Privileged people amuse themselves with the notion that they make the rules, but the Victorian rules of conduct have little application to real life, especially to the poor and dispossessed. People make up rules of conduct as they go along, sometimes resulting in liberation, sometimes in disaster.

The first half of the story is set in an orphanage with observations of young minds yearning to be loved, trying to make sense out of chaotic brushes with death and hope. Childhood innocence is contrasted with the hard realities of abortion and abandonment, and a woman’s lack of control over the forces at work within and upon her own body.

The second half of the story examines the initiation of Homer Wells, a young man whose moral compass was formed strictly within the confines of the orphanage. He finds friendship and temptation and learns about the moral confusion that leads so many women to the doors of the orphanage. Only by giving in to his own temptation does he gain the insight to deal with the consequences of other people’s actions without passing judgement.

As the protege’ of the gifted but flawed doctor of the unwanted, Homer eventually surrenders to necessity to take his unique place in the world.

“Goodnight, you princes of Maine, you kings of New England”

On a strangely related note, this article about a water test kit, “so easy that even a kid can use”, would have been nice to have during those science project days.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2005/1209-testing_water.htm

Young minds need guidance and encouragement to see the rewards that can flow from “doing the hard stuff”.

On Saturday, October 10,  my wife and I  were at U of Rochester to see Steven Chu and our freshman student. Chu gave what seemed like a major speech. He said the 2nd Industrial revolution must replace fossil fuels with renewables. Otherwise global warming is set to raise temperature by 5 degrees celsius which will melt glaciers and raise ocean levels. He said, “George Will and other global warming deniers are allowed to have any opinion, but they are not allowed to have their own data.” He examined the data (with error bars) and gave a convincing argument. He then proceeded to show how gloom and doom predictions from the likes of Malthus and Ehrlich have been mitigated by inventions of the likes of Norman Borlaug who ushered in the Green Revolution with high yield grains. He then urged us to invent renewable energy sources to offset the crisis of releasing too much fossilized carbon into the atmosphere. He is starting Bell Lab-lets around the country to fund research. This is a major announcement, but it didn’t get covered as far as I can tell.

Update:

Other topics covered in the Steven Chu speech:

Besides using heat reflecting colors for rooftops, energy efficiency in homes is one of the lower-cost means of lowering our carbon footprint. Banks should make money available for new home buyers to insulate their homes and buy double-pane windows. A few thousand dollar investment could be recouped in a few years through reduced heating and cooling costs. By documenting energy efficiency improvements, the homeowner may receive a higher sales price for the property.

Chu told the story of how increased appliance efficiency reduces energy demand and can save money. Once the lawyers and lobbyists got out of the way, engineers designed refrigerators with better insulation. The added R-factor led to such  high efficiency gains that smaller compressors requiring less power could be used.

Steven Chu mentioned that increased reliance on nuclear power should play a role. He flashed up a picture of newly design Westinghouse nuclear power plant, and stated that he personally feels that the nuclear waste problem can be dealt with. He didn’t state how this is to be done. I wondered if he really meant it.

References:

Steven mentioned a book called the Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlichin 1968 that predicted that hundreds of millions would starve in the 1970’s and 1980’s because population growth is out stripping agricultural production. Although population has increased from 3.2 billion in 1968  to 6.5 billion in 2005, the dire predictions of starvation were staved off by the Green Revolution which is often credited to Norman Borlaug for increasing crop yields. Borlaug died Sept. 2009 and is credited for saving a billion lives. Another important innovation was the development of artificial means of fixing nitrogen in the soil through the use of fertilizer. Carl Bosch won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1931.

http://physics.syr.edu/courses/modules/ENERGY/ENERGY_POLICY/tables.html

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