Fall in Mystic

(not to be confused with local color....)

Roxanna singing Walking After Midnight

http://www.airforce.com/training/enlisted/index.php

Check your Footprint!

Cool Climate Calculator, http://bie.berkeley.edu/calculator.html; 

EarthLab, www.earthlab.com; 

CarbonFootprint.com, www.carbonfootprint.com; 

CarbonCounter.org, www.carboncounter.org; 

Conservation International, www.conservation.org; 

The Nature Conservancy, www.nature.org; 

BP, www.bp.com.

Last night's sunset

Warming scenerios...

http://http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19463513/

af-flu-en-za n. 1. An epidemic of stress, overwork, shopping and debt caused by dogged pursuit of the American Dream. 2. The bloated, sluggish and unfulfilled feeling that results from one's efforts to keep up with the Joneses. 3. An unsustainable addiction to economic growth. 4. A book and films that could change your life. http://www.simpleliving.net/main/item.asp?itemid=498

pro·cras·ti·vi-ty [proh-kras-ti-vi-tee, pruh-] noun, -vat·ed, -vat·ing. –noun (used with object) Significantly enhanced productivity achieved through intelligently and creatively applying intentional procrastination: Her habit of procrastivity netted her much better results, more free time, greater satisfaction, and improved engagement of her potential.

~Half-Full!!!

this, from yesterdays CHI-EVV flight:

Looking East over central Indiana.

The view West was water as far as you could see.

Alcoa's Warrick Power Plant Turns on First Scrubber A $500 million project to improve the environment with the installation of Wet Flue Gas Desulphurization technology (scrubbers) at Alcoa's Warrick Power Plant took a significant step forward in May when the first of four units went online. Construction started in 2005, and once completed later this year, the scrubbers will provide for a:
98% reduction in Sulfur Dioxide (SO2)
99% reduction in Hydrochloric Acid (HC1)
60% reduction in mercury (Hg)
50% reduction in Sulfuric Acid (H2SO4)
49% reduction in Particulate Matter (PM) During this time, hundreds of local contractors have worked at the site constructing an integrated environmental control system at the Warrick Power Plant that will ultimately include Wet Flue Gas Desulphurization spray/absorption towers, flue gas booster fans, and support facilities. Major physical changes at the plant include new stack configurations, slurry handling and preparation facilities, water treatment facilities to reuse Warrick Operations discharge waters, dry fly-ash handling, an electrical sub-station, and improved control facilities for the entire system. More than 25 new, permanent employees have been hired to operate the new equipment. "This is a significant investment to reduce emissions well beyond anything required by regulation while increasing the global competitiveness of the Warrick Operations," said G. Royce Haws, Primary Metals Location Manager. "It is a strong demonstration of Alcoa's commitment to sustainability and to the future of Warrick Operations. It is securing jobs at Alcoa, increasing work for the area's construction industry, and significantly contributing to a cleaner local environment. The benefits to the region are immense." The Warrick Power Plant Unit 2 had been taken out of production in April to allow the scrubber to be tied-in to the unit. Now that the scrubber is an integral part of the unit, it will not be possible to operate Unit 2 for production of power without also operating the scrubber. Area residents can visibly see the work of the scrubber as the process creates a white water vapor plume coming from one of the new, gray chimneys constructed alongside the familiar red and white stacks. The Warrick Power Plant is a four-unit, 742 megawatt (MW), coal-fired, steam-electric generating facility. Units 1, 2 and 3, rated at 144 MW each, and one-half of the 300 MW Unit 4 are owned by Alcoa. Vectren, provider of natural gas and electricity to the region, owns the other half of Unit 4. All of these units were placed in service between 1960 and 1970. Of the Alcoa-owned generation, nearly all of the power is provided to Warrick Operations.
(and I helped!)

The Big Race

2008!

Just~
http://www.vh1.com/video/play.jhtml?artist=2998905&vid=218152
a bunch!

...

nothing like the last minute

Bump Day

Weekend!!!

Coolio

Wonderful

enamels

to

wear

anywhere

you

like?

I didn't feel it...

some

things

are

better

left

undone.

May 10, 2008 is Pangea Day!
What is Pangea Day?
Pangea Day taps the power of film to strengthen tolerance and compassion while uniting millions of people to build a better future.
In a world where people are often divided by borders, difference, and conflict, it's easy to lose sight of what we all have in common. Pangea Day seeks to overcome that — to help people see themselves in others — through the power of film.
On May 10, 2008 — Pangea Day — sites in Cairo, Kigali, London, Los Angeles, Mumbai, and Rio de Janeiro will be linked live to produce a program of powerful films, visionary speakers, and uplifting music.
The program will be broadcast live to the world through the Internet, television, digital cinemas, and mobile phones.
Of course, movies alone can't change the world. But the people who watch them can. So following May 10, 2008, Pangea Day organizers will facilitate community-building activities around the world by connecting inspired viewers with numerous organizations that are already doing groundbreaking work.
Check it out.

from Utne & Ecologist:
Environment
Crunching Numbers for the Planet(Green Living, Global Warming, Energy) Permanent link
The kernel at the core of every conventional economic model is alluringly simple: Growth is good. But due in large part to our planet’s finite resources, this premise is fundamentally flawed, the April issue of the Ecologist points out in an enlightening group of stories dubbed “The Earth vs. the Economy” (articles not available online) that call into question everything we’ve been taught about goods and services, supply and demand.
“When Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations, life was hard, the world vast and the supply depot of nature seemed without limit. . . . How could goods lead to anything but good?” writes Jonathan Rowe in the leadoff article, “The End of Economics.”
“More than two centuries later, that assumption no longer works. . . . The connection between wealth and weal, goods and good, has become increasingly frayed,” he posits. Rowe goes on to construct a withering critique of prevailing economic thought and describe the “epidemic of market-related disease” that is sickening both humans and the planet.
In subsequent articles, ecological economist Herman E. Daly puts forth the framework of a new economic model, and Andrew Simms points out that the current British recession (sound familiar?) may present “a good time for a rethink” of old assumptions. Simms reminds us that such thinking isn’t entirely new, or even all that radical: Forty years ago, he notes, Robert Kennedy famously pointed out that the GNP measures everything “except that which makes life worthwhile.”
—Keith Goetzman

p.s.full text of RFK quote:

“Too much and too long we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values to the mere accumulation of material things…The gross national product measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile, and it can tell us everything about America—except whether we are proud to be Americans.” (Robert F. Kennedy BiographyPolitical Figure and Government Official, 1925-1968 Address, University of Kansas, March 18, 1968)

~A.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mnNAB0lPsg

threatening
rain

MidAir Views South

4!

Yup, The Flood
and now
The Quake.
no tidal wave(s) that I know of...!

Wabash running backwards

Evansville Greyhound Bus t.

Willy....

Oh,

Patriots

...

Happy Holidays

from Newburgh

Catch you in 2008!

"If a man loves the labor of his trade apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called him." Robert Louis Stevenson

a2b

Cupola sunset

from the 2 stacks going up in the middle...

CT Typhoon

3M (f)bites the dust at burning man...

What is the Singularity? The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence

The Singularity is the technological creation of smarter-than-human intelligence. There are several technologies that are often mentioned as heading in this direction. The most commonly mentioned is probably Artificial Intelligence, but there are others: direct brain-computer interfaces, biological augmentation of the brain, genetic engineering, ultra-high-resolution scans of the brain followed by computer emulation. Some of these technologies seem likely to arrive much earlier than the others, but there are nonetheless several independent technologies all heading in the direction of the Singularity – several different technologies which, if they reached a threshold level of sophistication, would enable the creation of smarter-than-human intelligence.

A future that contains smarter-than-human minds is genuinely different in a way that goes beyond the usual visions of a future filled with bigger and better gadgets. Vernor Vinge originally coined the term "Singularity" in observing that, just as our model of physics breaks down when it tries to model the singularity at the center of a black hole, our model of the world breaks down when it tries to model a future that contains entities smarter than human.

......

Combine faster intelligence, smarter intelligence, and recursively self-improving intelligence, and the result is an event so huge that there are no metaphors left. There's nothing remaining to compare it to.

The Singularity is beyond huge, but it can begin with something small. If one smarter-than-human intelligence exists, that mind will find it easier to create still smarter minds. In this respect the dynamic of the Singularity resembles other cases where small causes can have large effects; toppling the first domino in a chain, starting an avalanche with a pebble, perturbing an upright object balanced on its tip. (Human technological civilization occupies a metastable state in which the Singularity is an attractor; once the system starts to flip over to the new state, the flip accelerates.) All it takes is one technology – Artificial Intelligence, brain-computer interfaces, or perhaps something unforeseen – that advances to the point of creating smarter-than-human minds. That one technological advance is the equivalent of the first self-replicating chemical that gave rise to life on Earth.

For more information, continue with "Why Work Toward the Singularity?"

...At this moment in time, there is a tiny handful of people who realize what's going on and are trying to do something about it. It is not quite true that if you don't do it, no one will, but the pool of other people who will do it if you don't is smaller than you might think. If you're fortunate enough to be one of the few people who currently know what the Singularity is and would like to see it happen – even if you learned about the Singularity just now – we need your help because there aren't many people like you. This is the one place where your efforts can make the greatest possible difference – not just because of the tremendous stakes, though that would be far more than enough in itself, but because so few people are currently involved.

The Singularity Institute exists to carry out the mission of the Singularity-aware – to accelerate the arrival of the Singularity in order to hasten its human benefits; to close the window of vulnerability that exists while humanity cannot increase its intelligence along with its technology; and to protect the integrity of the Singularity by ensuring that those projects which finally implement the Singularity are carried out in full awareness of the implications and without distraction from the responsibilities involved. That's our dream. Whether it actually happens depends on whether enough people take the Singularity seriously enough to do something about it – whether humanity can scrape up the tiny fraction of its resources needed to face the future deliberately and firmly.

We can do better. The future doesn't have to be the dystopia promised by doomsayers. The future doesn't even have to be the flashy yet unimaginative chrome-and-computer world of traditional futurism. We can become smarter. We can step beyond the millennia-old messes created by human-level intelligence. Humanity can solve its problems – both the huge visible problems everyone talks about and the huge silent problems we've learned to take for granted. If the nature of the world we live in bothers you, there is something rational you can do about it. We can do better with your support.

Don't be a bystander at the Singularity. You can direct your effort at the point of greatest impact – the beginning.

---

Click here: The Singularity Summit 2007

The big ONE. ~A.

---

NYC

Greetings from the land of oystars and lobstars!

<-click on it to see theGreatest Engineering Achievements of the 20th Century....

Miss-tic ;-)

sunrise Plus.

Curtains,
Indiana style.

from the banks of the Ohio

...next stop,

Evansville IN.

ka - ching!

pathos builds muscle....

How do we use technology to create a better future? How do we help people appreciate the awesome process that has produced us? How do we best respond to the fact that humans now wield such enormous power to influence the future? How do we include and connect people who share an interest in creating a better future based upon broad, inclusive thinking?

This website is our answer to these questions. With generous financing from the Foundation for Global Community (www.fgconline.org), an organization with which many of us have been associated, we set out to create an online presence. The alpha site was rolled out in January 2005, the beta site went live in October 2005, and our current iteration was launched in October 2006. With each new revision, participation and interest has increased, giving us all increased hope and energy.

Feedback and collaboration are constantly providing new learning. This site is for you, individuals and organizations alike, who, from a broadening base of thinking, are interested in exploring, connecting and acting on behalf of a better future for all life.

http://www.global-mindshift.org/index.asp

http://picasaweb.google.com/adentex/NYCJune2007

Click here: Technology Review: A Wirelessly Powered Lightbulb

http://youtube.com/watch?v=N2uISwCG3Vw&amp;mode=related&search

"The Engineering byDesign™ Program is
built on the belief that the ingenuity of
children is untapped, unrealized potential
that, when properly motivated, will lead
to the next generation of technologists,
innovators, designers, and engineers."

TECHNOLOGY EDUCATION ASSOCIATION Engineering byDesign™ (EbD)
A Standards-Based Model ProgramThe International Technology Education Association's Center to Advance the Teaching of Technology and Science (ITEA-CATTS) has developed the only standards-based national model for Grades K-12 that delivers technological literacy. The model, Engineering byDesign™ is built on Standards for Technological Literacy (ITEA); Principles and Standards for School Mathematics (NCTM); and Project 2061, Benchmarks for Science Literacy (AAAS).

Built on the constructivist model, students participating in the program learn concepts and principles in an authentic, problem-based environment. A network of teachers (EbD™ Network) has been selected to collaborate and conduct action research in order to better understand the complexities of student learning and to help all students succeed and be prepared for the global society in which they will grow up.