Glenn McDavid

I rode my bicycle to and from the Rosedale park-and-ride (about three miles each way) both Monday and Tuesday. From there I took an express bus to work in downtown Minneapolis as I usually do. I gave my knees a break yesterday and drove to Rosedale, but I was back on the bike this morning. I hope to manage 3-4 carless commutes each week through the summer and early fall.

Long ago I read an article arguing that per passenger mile the bicycle was the most energy-efficient form of transportation known, not only to homo sapiens, but throughout the animal kingdom. It was in a reputable scientific publication, Physics Today IIRC, with plenty of numbers, equations, and graphs. I wonder if I could track down a copy of it.

( Saturday )
( Sunday )

( Read more... )

I just looked at a jug of milk in our refrigerator. The label says

Milk from cows not treated with rbST.

No significant difference has been shown between milk derived from rbST treated and non-rbST treated cows.

I have often thought that phraseology sounded odd, and wondered why. I found out today when I read Monsanto's Harvest of Fear, which begins

Monsanto already dominates America’s food chain with its genetically modified seeds. Now it has targeted milk production. Just as frightening as the corporation’s tactics–ruthless legal battles against small farmers–is its decades-long history of toxic contamination.

Via Slashdot

Today's snowstorm (this is Minnesota) meant that I was an hour late getting home. Also cold and wet. I immediately had to load some dead computer stuff (4 computers, 1 monitor, and 1 scanner) into the car for recycling tomorrow. Then I had to type up, edit, and submit the minutes of colgaffneyis last Board meeting--the next one is Tuesday. I finished that just after 8PM. Next I had to do taxes. I had done most of the work last week so I was able to finish a little after 9. And I think it is finished. The returns (one for us and one for J) have been submitted electronically and I have saved backup copies of the files (I work in systems administration--paranoia is my profession). The only possible issue is that a return might be rejected by either the IRS or Minnesota. This is unlikely. TurboTax is quite good and our tax life is not that interesting. Just sometimes painful.

Awareness of the problem with biofuels is spreading, but Sean Carroll speaks more to this geek than Paul Krugman or the editors of Time:

Funny thing about energy: it’s conserved! .... We bring you this reminder because a knowledge of basic physics can occasionally be helpful when formulating public policy.

In particular, biofuels (such as ethanol) and hydrogen are not actually sources of energy — given the vagaries of thermodynamics, it costs more energy to create them than we can get by actually using them, as there will inevitably be some waste heat and entropy produced.

From Energy Doesn’t Grow on Trees.

If You Watch FIVE HOURS of Cable News, Expect to Find ONE MINUTE of Coverage Devoted to Either Science or the Environment

Via Slashdot

California Seeks Thermostat Control

Next year in California, state regulators are likely to have the emergency power to control individual thermostats, sending temperatures up or down through a radio-controlled device that will be required in new or substantially modified houses and buildings to manage electricity shortages.

via Slashdot.

(See yesterday's post.)

Buy Nothing Day. From my old friend Sister Edith at Monastic Musings.

Looks like I will not be driving to Bloomington today to recycle our old computers. The event shut down early because of an overwhelming community response.

( Read more... )

As mia_mcdavid wrote, we are OK.

The bus I take to work had not been using the 35W Bridge across the Mississippi, so I was able to ride it to work downtown as I have been doing. It was slower than it had been: There was a lot more traffic on Central Avenue and the 3^rd Ave. bridge than before, as you might expect with one of the other major bridges gone. Looking out the bus window I could see the cars were bumper-to-bumper. I could only see one with more than a single occupant. Sigh....

A few yards away from my cubicle here I can look out the window and see the broken bridge in the distance.

Hummer Owner Gets Angry Message via Beaten to death: a Hummer in a Prius neighborhood

I suppose I should feel outraged about this, one way or the other, but I actually think it is rather funny.

As I wrote Friday, I had to work until 4 PM that day, and so was late to Gaeltacht Minnesota's Weekend in Winona. I would have been even later, except for some planning ahead.( Read more... )

Vivoleum, Solves Global Warming and Peak Oil

It’s new, it’s disgusting! And it fooled an oil industry group

Yes Men charged with trespassing after hoax at energy conference in Calgary

Some interesting follow-up at Slashdot

I spent the day at a SQL Server Class in Edina, on the other side of Minneapolis. The commute actually was not too bad. That area of the Metro is notorious for bad traffic, but coming from the Northeast I avoided the worst both morning and evening. The really bad traffic was all going the other direction. Still, it was a lot of driving. I would really hate to live in that area and need to drive through it routinely every day. There is something fundamentally wrong about how modern American urban areas are constructed, and at a deeper level, the decision processes by which we got there. We, or our children, are going to pay for it.

Fat Car: Originally uploaded by Edith OSB. Digital art by Frieke Janssens portraying a car in terms of its energy use. From Monastic Musings.

From a Carleton classmate:

....big news from the Arb! M spotted a short-eared owl twice this week in the arb. This is a fairly big deal – he’s a pretty fair birder & has only seen one once – in Hawaii! He says that they are really ungainly flyers. He said it looked like it was flapping two ironing boards.

It looks like the restoration efforts are paying off – they’re beginning to see the return of new & fairly uncommon animal species.

My brief note last night concluded with a physics joke; perhaps my subconscious was looking ahead to the next day.( Read more... )

See It's not just us on mia_mcdavid's LJ.