Ryan's Journal

The site has message boards again, and it is now possible to comment on these journal entries by clicking the comments link in the header of each entry. Feel free to flame me to a crisp for not supporting Michael Moore or for failing to give enough credence to theories of cow flatulence causing global warming.

Be aware that the message board code is still rather buggy. If you find problems please either post something about it or contact me and let me know what’s wrong so that I can fix it. Once the kinks are worked out I’ll release the code on the software page.

Mt. St. Helens had a “minor” eruption this evening.

Here’s an AP article on the latest attempt to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling. Two points about this article are worth mentioning: first, it seems that in recent years oil companies have shown “only modest interest” in drilling in the Arctic Refuge, and BP, Chevron/Texaco, and Conoco have pulled out entirely from the lobbying group that is pushing for drilling. Second, Interior Secretary Gail Norton, who is supposed to be protecting the environment and who the White House’s own biography describes as “a lifelong conservationist”, is quoted in this article as saying “You’ve got companies that have facilities 30 or 50 miles from ANWR. It seems like a natural extension”.

Apologies for posting politics again, but this is something that I’ve been writing about since I visited the Arctic Coastal Plain in September 2002. If you would like to contact Congress about this issue you can do so here or here.

This photo is here solely because I thought the page needed something colorful.

One thing about engineer-types is that they almost always harbor some hidden inner desire to be an artist. Whether it’s the geek in math class who wants to draw comic books or the folks like myself playing with photography, it seems to be fairly universal. Sadly, the vast majority of the time it seems that the analytical and creative sides of the brain are doled out disproportionately; anyone who reads this journal can tell I have the writing skills of a medium-sized rock, and I’m pretty sure that if given a camera, a monkey who shot thousands of photos would probably have the same handful of quality photos as I do.

That said, a few engineering-types actually do have some artistic talent. A friend of mine from college graduated near the top of his chemical engineering class, but along the way discovered that he really didn’t want to be an engineer. He went to Paris for a while, and I still have a drawing of the Eiffel Tower that he gave me while visiting (a downside of the art world is that the pay isn’t great, so gifts also become more creative). His girlfriend emailed the other day after discovering this site, and it turns out that he also has an online journal. Not only can the guy draw, but his ability to translate the stories from everyday life into words is pretty impressive. He’s no Steinbeck, but for an engineer it’s about as close to an artist as one could hope to be.

Apologies in advance for posting politics again, but this issue is one that seems like it should be getting a lot more attention and I’m baffled as to why it isn’t. In the past week several membes of Congress announced plans for a Count Every Vote Act whose goal is to improve the electoral process by providing greater transparency and making the voting process more consistent. This issue seems like one that any politician could use to make themselves look good, yet there is an eerie silence surrounding it. I’m stumped as to why there isn’t a ton of media coverage and political support for this bill; if anyone objects to this idea I’d love to hear your reasons for doing so, as I can’t see any reason why it would be a bad thing.

Alaska is my favorite state for a number of reasons, one of which is that the people up there are a little… I guess different would be putting it mildly. Anyhow, the Alaskan Alpine Club decided that ice climbing would be more convenient if there was a large ice tower close to Fairbanks, so they are building their own. At last measurement they were at 136 feet, which is taller than the tallest building in Fairbanks. A red strobe was added to the top to alert aircraft, and still it grows.

Two money quotes (and there are many):

• “If I’d ah knowed it were gonna get this high, I would not have been so impressed back when it was not so high.”
• “We found some bones, feathers, a climber’s helmet and part of an airplane wing at the bottom of the ice. Tell no one.”

The journal is going to remain dull for a bit longer — I’m still planning on a long roadtrip in the near future, but I’ve promised myself that some work I’m doing will get finished before I leave. The golden rule of estimating how long it will take to complete a software project is to make your best estimate and then triple it, something I obviously forgot to do; hopefully soon things will be finished.

In the mean time, check out Notes from the Road for some great travel photography and stories. This guy’s writing is so good that he can describe the stench and decay around the Salton Sea and still make you want to visit.

The Arctic and the Antarctic, two of my favorite places on this planet, have been the hardest hit by global warming thus far (average temperatures near the poles have risen several degrees in the past fifty years), so it’s difficult to listen to arguments about how global warming is a myth or that humans aren’t causing it. In a discussion about global warming on Slashdot, one poster nailed my feelings exactly:

“I do find it amusing to see people argue that a large number of experienced, intelligent, educated people are somehow irrelevant because some pundit shoots off his mouth… Seriously, anyone can have an opinion. Opinions aren’t special, how they’re formed and backed up is. I’m going to give special attention to people with the education and knowledge and listen to them if they seem trustworthy. Same reason I listen to my doctor on my health, my auto mechanic on my car, and why I expect people I work with to listen to me on issues of coding, data flow, and application development.”

With the majority of the scientific community now saying that global warming is real, and that it is almost certainly caused by humans, I’m baffled as to why the discussion hasn’t moved on to what can we do and is instead still focused on how can we be absolutely sure. If scientists are wrong about global warming, reducing pollution will still be a net benefit. If scientists are right, inaction will lead to countless extinctions and a vast disruption to life as we know it.

Recently wikis have been gaining popularity on the internet. The idea behind them is that individuals can contribute information in their area of expertise, and as lots of people add to and refine the entries the wiki becomes a valuable source of information. Two of these sites that are particularly interesting are:

• wikipedia.org – An online encyclopedia that has (surprisingly good) entries on a disturbingly vast number of subjects (try searching for your hometown, then check out the number of articles for things within your hometown).
• wikitravel.org – A new site that is still fairly sparse, but with the potential to make Lonely Planet and other travel guides obsolete.

Despite missing ski poles, issues surrounding Golgi apparatuses, and a six AM wakeup, Friday’s skiing with Team Fun was yet another good reminder of why California is such a great place to live. Later that evening the five of us (Nish, Kev, Alaina, Aaron and myself) piled into a cab that already contained a driver and a navigator, mocked the competing Chico independent taxi service, and then spent the remainder of the night in a blissful haze of Michelob. What little I remember for some reason includes Kev expounding upon his theory of leaving society to eat walnuts in Bidwell Park, leading (logically) to arguments over the sensibility of a life spent eating walnuts without good dental coverage.

In equally random news, Peter Jackson has regularly been posting behind-the-scenes clips of the filming of his next movie, King Kong. At the opening of the latest clip I heard a familiar voice (“I think it has something to do with thermodynamics”), and there was Matt Mueller, my roommate from the first Antarctica trip. He works for Weta Digital, but aside from group shots on some of the Lord of the Rings documentaries this is the first I’ve seen him in front of the camera.

I’ve recently been doing some research into Green Certificates, which are basically a way for private individuals to subsidize the production of wind, solar, and low-impact hydroelectric power. The concept is the following:

1. Assume it costs seven cents per kWh to produce conventional (coal, oil, gas) electricity, and eight cents per kWh to produce clean (wind, solar, low-impact hydro) electricity. Only those individuals living in a market where clean energy is available who are also willing to pay a premium will drive demand for clean energy.
2. What a green certificate does is allow someone like myself to subsidize the production of clean energy by paying the one cent cost premium. Now the utility that produces clean energy can sell its energy to individuals for the same price as conventional power.
3. U.S. law requires that, if there is no cost differential, utilities give buying preference to clean energy, so by removing the cost differential I have guaranteed that a certain amount of energy has been produced by clean technology instead of conventional technology.
4. As a result of this transaction, even if the energy I use is produced by conventional means, I will have offset that impact by guaranteeing that clean energy has replaced conventional energy somewhere else on the power grid.

A list of companies offering such certificates is available here.

Strangely enough, one of the new backers of clean energy are the neo-conservatives. Their reasoning is that reducing energy usage lessens dependence on the Middle East, but their support could make for some very strange alliances with environmental groups.

After spending the morning playing tourist in San Francisco (Pier 39, Lombard Street, the whole works — I’m mildly ashamed of myself) I’m now back in the Financial District, less than a block from the skyscraper I used to work in. Just hearing snippets of the conversations around me — “Are you meeting’d out yet?”, “You’re right, I’ll get that document ready as soon as I get back”, “I could barely keep my eyes open during that call this morning” — I’m realizing more than ever how glad I am to have escaped that life. While those folks are now all returning to their cubicles, I’m sitting in Starbucks across from a ridiculously hot Japanese girl enjoying whatever folksy music it is they’ve got coming through the speakers.

In the midst of thinking how good life is at the moment, especially compared to the suit-wearing souls I’m surrounded by, it occurred to me that this time last year I was finishing up five amazing days of hiking around Mt. Fitz Roy in Patagonia. Happiness definitely comes in a wide range of dosages.