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The first rocket has been completed. A new bigger rocket is being built which is 90% done. The video from the first rocket is at: http://www.eng.uah.edu/~sli/

Amazing you was not the point. The rocket is made with two layers of carbon fiber and cement that, instead of gravel, has small micro-bubbles, which are filled with air, making it light, and has some latex mixed in it. The carbon fiber keeps the concrete from breaking and crumbling and there is a light layer of epoxy on the outside so that it will be nice and smooth. Find out more: http://www.eng.uah.edu/~sli/

The rocket was launched on a White Lightning E motor from Aerotech. The rocket is very light and this was only a test launch. We didn't want to go overkill. Because we are a university we have to have our own safety procedures and are not required to follow NAR rules, etc. We do however adhere to those rules as much as possible. Also, this concete is not any going to hurt any more than a normal phenolic/cardboard tube! http://www.eng.uah.edu/~sli/

The concrete rocket was not launched on Federal Property, but the much larger rocket that was built (not of concrete) was: http://www.eng.uah.edu/~sli/

That is how the project started actually. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center wrote a proposal to our university to build and launch some very large rockets. The concrete rocket was built as a side project to experiment with using the concrete as a building material. The concrete is actually lighter and stronger than what we have used already.... http://www.eng.uah.edu/~sli/

I can assure you that the rocket was not made to get around any laws. If we wanted to make a rocket out of metal we could have. As a university we are immune of the laws regarding model rocketry when used for experimentation. Visit UAH's Student Launch Initiative's official website: http://www.eng.uah.edu/~sli/

http://www.eng.uah.edu/~sli/

Ok I know there are alot of people who think that the whole concrete rocket thing is stupid. In fact it was done just to see if it could be done. The real project that this team works on is much bigger. I helped. Student Launch Initiative of The University of Alabama in Huntsville's official website is: http://www.eng.uah.edu/~sli/ You can fins the videos and such there. The newest videos of our launch to 11,000 ft should be posted soon.

Calling it a concrete rocket is a bit misleading however IMHO - if it is like the boat, it's got a very thin layer of concrete ( < half an inch) over the top of a structure made from another material.

And IMHO, you should read more about the current state of concrete boat races. The boat raced in 2001 is a concrete hull. No support structures, just the concrete. Granted, the fill components are anything but mundane, being far more advanced than basic crushed stone. From the website:

UAH's flexible concrete is the end product of more than 200 different combinations that were mixed and tested. It is made of Portland cement, glass microbeads (microscopic hollow spheres), latex, acrylic fortifier and water. Mix in the right proportions, then dry for 12 hours. The end product is concrete so light that a solid block will float in water, and so flexible it can bend without breaking.

The canoe itself flexes and is tuned to the harmonic wavelength it travels at in the races. I suggest reading their old press release from the 2001 races.

Ok, I see it now... rocket launch

It's easy to make up 'theories' to explain phenomena... before Descartes and the Scientific Method theories were accepted based upon how good a story they were and how they appealed to various people -- reinforce existing beliefs and your theory is accepted. Descarte realized that hypotheses must be testable in order to decide if they're true or false.

There are lots of neat ideas out there to explain various physical phenomena, but its hard to come up for tests for many of these... How would you test to see if matter is popping in and out of existence? What do you mean by existence anyway? What exactly does the word matter mean? ...hmm and this idea has an implied conception of time that must be defined as well.

My point is, scientific facts must be tested and verified by experiment. Sure there are lots of other ideas that can't be tested.... but these fall in the same realm as religion and require faith. The so called Copenhagen interpretation is a prime example of this.

The Copenhagen interpretation claims that wave functions in Quantum mechanics collapse because they are effected by being observed by an intelligent observer. Supposedly you can see this by taking a large number of observations of photons or electrons or whatever and seeing the 'spike' from the wave function collapse. But wait, statistic's Law of Large Numbers says that if you take a large number of observations with random error you'll get this spike no matter what just because of the math - not because of some interaction between the particle and the observer.

Now, add another bit, and you have to use a trinary distribution, which I'm sure exists but isn't very common (and not surprisingly, I can't recall that one either).

Well, I don't think that the probability is really much worse. Instead of binomial, we have in general multinomial, and here trinomial: pdf=(n!/(x_i!*x_j!*x_k!))(p_i^{x_i}*p_j^{x_j)*p_k^ {x_k)).
See Berger's Statistical Decision Theory and Bayesian Analysis. Or here or here.

There are some hardware problems; I posted a possible solution . (It's a joke, mostly!)

A more serious problem is mentioned by anohter poster: floating point is where we really, really care about speed and efficiency, and it seems that binary has that sewn up.

... we'll never see large scale use of ternary computing. There's just too much overhead involved in switching over the way of doing things at such a fundamental level.

Quite right. This is the only argument against it which doesn't have an answer, I suspect.

In any case, to be fair these are Engineering students and their job isn't to decide the politics of the unit.

As an engineering student myself, I disagree. I think it's our job when developing products to consider the ethical results. I think we're past the point when we just build something and hand it off to marketing.

Of course, I work in a group where we have to do a lot of self-marketing, so maybe I see things a little differently than you do.

Actually, they are.

The other day, I was on the hall where a good chunk of my professors have offices. I got into a discussion with a few of them, and the gist was this:

"We've been telling folks around here for a while that we don't like Microsoft products, but because they're the de facto standard, we're forced to use them. Thank God for all the hackers that find holes and the real jerks that exploit them.

Of course, I got to wondering about that; we talk about White Hats and Black Hats, but even the Black Hats serve a purpose, if your goal is to rid the world of Microsoft. I'm not sure that it is for me--I'd be happy to use their products if they would code good stuff. [Posted from IE6 on Win2K, but only because I have to have a Windows box to do my school crap...]

But to the point, the end users are getting frustrated with all the security holes. In this case, these guys don't want their research exposed by something like SirCam, which could very easily happen. I think they'd happily go for a switch if solid interoperability with those Left Behind in the Microsoft world could exist.

And hey, remember that these are aerospace engineering professors, who aren't always at the vanguard of computing technology. I mean, I've had to do research with them using F77...

It's late in the game but here is my 2 cents. Katz didn't really weigh in one way or the other on global warming. It seems like his main point was that global warming will be a big techno-political issue, which seems like a no brainer since it has been for years now.

I am of the mind that we know jack-shite about how much impact we have on our environment and its a waste of time to endlessly debate these issues until more conclusive evidence is found. There are so many real CURRENT problems the world faces that should be addressed that it seems almost criminal for politicians and world leaders to even bother with it.

I'm not saying we shouldn't continue researching climate change, hell, spend more money on it. We need people and ships in orbit, colonies on the moon, people going to Mars to study its climate - real research yielding real scientific knowledge, not a bunch of rhetoric that accomplishes exactly NOTHING. The real problem with the global warming debate is that it shouldn't be a debate, there isn't enough knowledge to justify debate. It is just another hot button issue like abortion and confederate flags that serves no purpose other than to make our elected officials/world leaders look like they care and are really working hard to solve the problem when in fact all they are doing is avoiding the real work of solving the real problems that people face.

There is civil injustice all over this planet, third-world wars, poverty, government corruption, hunger, AIDS, ebola, breast cancer, colon cancer, snakes, poisonous spiders, you name it! But it is almost as if these fronts have been abandoned; deemed unsolvable by the powers that be. And now they are just trying to look busy.

Anyway, here are the links I mentioned. Both concern John Christy and atmospheric scientist and member of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

http://www.discover.com/feb_01/featgospel.html

http://www.atmos.uah.edu/atmos/christy/march11_01. html

--
I'm terrified beyond all capacity for rational thought.

If you're interested in more details, swing by the UAH concrete canoe team homepage. It even talks a little about their recent launch of the world's first concrete-reinforced rocket!

If you're interested in more details, swing by the UAH concrete canoe team homepage. It even talks a little about their recent launch of the world's first concrete-reinforced rocket!

You're right - I was curious about the composite ratio in the rules.. I've now found out - The official rules state that the mix must contain 75% portland cement, and the UAH pdf list their mix as containing 80% portland cement. In fact they are using the same mix as the team from the previous year. I must admit I am suprised that a composite with 80% Portland cement could be that flexible. br>

strangely, Wired didn't include the homepage for the UAH Concrete Canoe Team:

http://www.uah.edu/student_life/organizations/ASCE /

There's a pretty good shot of the canoe on the first page.

_f

The Bill text has yet to be posted to the web, but should be up in a week or so.

Back when I was still an SGA Officer at UAH, I usually kept Senate's stuff updated all the time. But it kept me from doing other things [biggest complaint was that the University wouldn't let me even run basic CGI, so I was forced to build static HTML pages...ugh].

But if the Feds can't have a group that rushes stuff up on the Web quickly enough, isn't that a sure sign that we need it?

You know, this idea isn't entirely bad. I build all my sites by hand with templates and such that are W3C compliant. [If you look at TOTK.com, you'll see that it's not, but *I* don't build it.] I encourage others to do the same, for two reasons:

1. Streamlining of HTML markup. [I have too many friends who build a site in MS Word and save it as HTML, then upload. I'm not kidding. I challenged one guy to build a page from start to finish, time himself, show me the end result, and let me build a similar page from scratch by hand. I beat his time, and my file was about 25% smaller. Heh.]
2. Knowledge of what you're actually doing. I'd rather see people understand the structural elements of HTML and how UA's represent them than just say, "It works, so I don't care." A little knowledge goes a long, long way.

That said, the adoption rate is either going to help this or harm it. I would have no problem adding something like this to some of my sites. However, I've got one problem: one of them, our SGA Web site, is most often viewed by students on campus. This usually means labs, and lab techs are loathe to take labs down while they upgrade the Web browser, especially when it's not a high-demand item.

It would actually be better if a couple of big sites would do this, but guess what? They won't.

It appeals to the windmill-tilting standard-bearer in me, but I'm not going to rush out there to be the first Don Quixote...

What do you mean, my dorm room is not my personal residence? I live here, and pay for the privilege.

It all depends on how your "leasing" arrangement works. You might want to look at it.

I know that at my school, The University of Alabama in Huntsville, the state is the lessor and the student is the lessee. In that arrangement, all the lessor has to do is perform routine health inspections--which my current apartment complex can do, too, if they feel the need.

At UAH's dorms, folks can do lots of what they want with their connection, but running servers usually gets you pzapped, because our bandwidth really is in short supply. UAH also kadinked Napster for the same reason [officially]. I do know I saw the effect of Napster on our network personally, because my computer in the SGA Office would slow to a crawl, connection-wise, when all the students got out of classes and fired their downloads back up.

But back to my original comment, your privacy questions mainly have to do with the way your leasing/rental arrangement works. If you're signing a lease, read the lease. If you're paying a fee [and there can be a difference], there's a big difference. Varies from school to school and lease to lease, just like the rest of the world.

...it's the administration in most cases, or namby-pamby "student leaders".

As a student leader myself, this sickens me. Personally, I'm a WASP male from a mainline Christian church. That hasn't stopped me from denonuncing those in our SGA who would seek to deny the rights of students with differing viewpoints. If such a proposal as described by this article showed up at UAH, I would be on it like white on rice, and I would transfer if it held.

If something ludicrous like this is going on at your school, you have a right to complain about it. Pester your student government representatives--they usually don't hear directly from students and are easily swayed with good logic. Flood your student newspaper--most of them are staffed by liberal idealists who will be sympathetic to your cause and should believe in the cause of free speech.

Most importantly, do anything you can to make your voice heard. Colleges and universities have three customers: the private sector, their monetary donors, and the students. In serving the students, they serve the other two customers well. In failing to serve the students, they will go bankrupt--morally and fiscally.

BAH! When I was your age, I walked to school--uphill, both ways, barefoot [but only because this was Mississippi]--and I LIKED IT!

Seriously, though; I traversed an environment that I'd love to really see become a geek-producing powerhouse: The Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science. Yeah, there were geeks there. Yeah, we ran Linux [remembers Slackware, remembers screaming, proud Debian user now]. Yeah, we ran our own BBS's. But we--or at least I--weren't cognizant of the totality of what was going on outside. I wish I'd read /.--or had it to read--when I was there [1995-97]. I probably would have chucked this aero eng thing and gone into that. Damn the guys that were smart enough to go into CS--especially the one or two who combined it with biz degrees. Bah!

But seriously, I'll rant that activities are very good for the soul. Student government can be one, if you're at a school where it does anything besides play pretty. Yeah, yeah, politics--but you learn lots of interpersonal skills, teambuilding, etc. Actually, you learn how not to do it most of the time.

Ramblin' a bit...but then hey, my boss is gone and he didn't leave me with anything to do for the next, uh, four hours. Heh.

My best friend just left the same contractor I work for to go work for the U.S. Army. While he was slowly slogging through grad school in engineering management, he now has enough time to really pursue his Ph.D. in EM at our alma mater. They're paying for it, and they'll give him a paid year off to work on his Ph.D. stuff. Cool.
--

My, my, a lot of invective here. I know a response won't probably make much difference to you, but it might to some lonely, undecided /. reader. So here goes:

Ralph Nader does not evade questions and spout insultingly obvious attacks on opponents in order to deflect attention from himself.

Nader is not a politician. He's a consumer rights advocate who happens to be running for President. You speak later of Bush being "unfit for office". What makes Nader fit for it? What positions has he held in government? Has he ever dealt with a legislative body controlled by the other party? Has he ever served a day in the military? What is his knowledge of foreign policy?

People talk about not knowing enough about the two we've got--the biggest argument for a two-party system is that two choices are about all we're able to handle. If we had three, six, or ten parties with significant polling, we'd never get past the main party platform and spin they have. The information overload on just the two is bad enough.

This is not to knock third parties. They are vitally necessary to American government. They smack down one party when the two are growing together. In about forty years, one of the two parties will go away. It will probably be the Democrats, since they keep moving to the right. The American Left will probably rise again.

This is the man whose rhetoric consistently appeals to shortsighted wealthy WASPs, with his emphasis on his tax cut, and his Christian posturing.

I ask, what's shortsighted about raising the bar for the minimum gross annual adjusted income you have to bring in to pay taxes, or about making that lowest tax bracket be 10% instead of the 15% it is now? Little, if you ask me. Under Bush's tax cut, I don't think I'll pay taxes next year, because I'm going to school and working part time. I won't mind the refund check.

As for the "Christian posturing", yeah, it's there. The man is someone that has faith. Is that so bad?

This is the man who has little experience, has no noteworthy accomplishments, and has had a free ride through life in the old boy's club.

Yeah, Gore has had a really easy life, too. Hard life growing up in D.C. and going to private school. Hard life starting both divinity school and law school at Vanderbilt and finishing neither. [Did you know, by the way, that Bush has an MBA from Harvard? They don't pass those out to just anyone.]

How can you profess to want electoral reform and then support Bush?

I am a student of American political history. I recognize that the third party just kills one of the two major ones, then becomes a major party itself. Americans want simple, easily-identifiable choices. This is a country that runs about 40% Democrat, 40% Republican, and 20% in the middle. You shoot for that middle. Right now, that middle is pretty conservative. Thirty years ago, it wasn't.

What's wrong with the system right now is the money. PAC's are abusive. "Soft" and "hard" money are ludicrous. Simply allow only personal donations--with no limits--and require full disclosure of all donations. You fail to disclose, you are disqualified. Simple. Fair. Honest. There will be big and small donors lined up on both sides, and since the media will have access to all the records, sniffing out favoritism will be rather easy.

His speeches consist of prememorized responses that he utters regardless of whether it really addresses the question. He is a cardboard man, a straw dummy with a "republican agenda" recording on repeat behind that oh-so-sincere-and-heartful face. His posturing in speeches of "well I don't know much about that but I've got a good heart" makes me sick.

That's damn near every politician I've met. They have a message. We're in a sound bite culture, and we rememebr sound bites. We remember "invented the Internet"--and that's completely out of context! In an era of increasing complexity, we desire simplicity.

I guarantee that any politician who gave a specific answer to any debate question--where he'd start and what all she'd do--would put those people to sleep. I know I put people to sleep here at UAH's SGA on giving them a long but full answer. People want "yes", "no", or "I'll get back to you on that".

Gore would be a competent choice for the continuation of moderate policy that caters to the largest common denominator on most respects.

Large government solutions are moderate policy? Gore's an LBJ Democrat.

But for a candidate you can believe in, Nader truly is the only one with any balls. His website has so much more clearly stated, non-obfuscated, non-pandering platform information compared to the big two.

I actually belive in Bush for what he says that he's going to do. Nader has a simple platform, and that scares me. Politics is a highly complicated business. Each decision--foreign or domestic--affects all others. Simple, five-sentence solutions work fine as principles, but that's not how you govern.

And his pro-choice, anti-death penalty stance is so *right* for anyone who objectively reasons out the pros and cons of both situations.

Not for me, they're not. I have given a long, hard thought to both. I am personally pro-life--vehemently so--but I recognize that the majority of Americans don't feel the same way. While I'm personally opposed to the death penalty, it does, in some ways, serve to hold a society in check.

But that's just me. I had my idealistic time. I'm into pragmatism nowadays.

As the President of the UAH LUG, I'll second everything TOTKChief has said. (Before I start, the UAH LUG has only been around since April 1999 and has not had a guest speaker yet, but will soon.) There are many folks around here who do research on Linux machines and, in fact, research Linux itself, and some of them have shown interest in speaking with us (in particular, the admin of our 16-node research cluster). My guess is that Lehigh would be the same. Speaking is an excellent opportunity for a prof/grad student to pitch their life's work, and what he/she says will probably be doggone interesting, as they're likely to research things that most folks don't know much about. My other suggestion is that you talk to Lehigh's web/email sysadmins; they may not have specific experience with Linux, but there's a chance they're loaded with awesome UN*X info that Linux folks would find interesting. Good luck! w|f

As the President of the UAH LUG, I'll second everything TOTKChief has said. (Before I start, the UAH LUG has only been around since April 1999 and has not had a guest speaker yet, but will soon.) There are many folks around here who do research on Linux machines and, in fact, research Linux itself, and some of them have shown interest in speaking with us (in particular, the admin of our 16-node research cluster). My guess is that Lehigh would be the same. Speaking is an excellent opportunity for a prof/grad student to pitch their life's work, and what he/she says will probably be doggone interesting, as they're likely to research things that most folks don't know much about. My other suggestion is that you talk to Lehigh's web/email sysadmins; they may not have specific experience with Linux, but there's a chance they're loaded with awesome UN*X info that Linux folks would find interesting. Good luck! w|f

As the President of the UAH LUG, I'll second everything TOTKChief has said. (Before I start, the UAH LUG has only been around since April 1999 and has not had a guest speaker yet, but will soon.) There are many folks around here who do research on Linux machines and, in fact, research Linux itself, and some of them have shown interest in speaking with us (in particular, the admin of our 16-node research cluster). My guess is that Lehigh would be the same. Speaking is an excellent opportunity for a prof/grad student to pitch their life's work, and what he/she says will probably be doggone interesting, as they're likely to research things that most folks don't know much about. My other suggestion is that you talk to Lehigh's web/email sysadmins; they may not have specific experience with Linux, but there's a chance they're loaded with awesome UN*X info that Linux folks would find interesting. Good luck! w|f

As Executive Vice-President of the University of Alabama in Huntsville's Student Government Association (*waves to all the UAH /.ers*), I'd give you this to-do list:

1. See if the Lehigh SGA pays for speakers' fees and travel. Many do. If yours doesn't, give me an email address for the appropriate jacka$$ and I'll send them a sweet letter about how defraying the cost of (your speaker here) coming to speak will improve your university, blah blah blah.
2. Bother the appropriate departments. Faculty are there to help. Drop by the EE department and tell Dr. Stephen Kowell howdy, and tell him how much UAH misses him. He'll freak.
3. See if the local honors college or whatever will be willing to fund some stuff. They're cool about things like that--especially if there are enough open source revolutionaries that are in the HC. (UAH: check).
4. Lastly, after you have a package together, start talking with speakers. If you can do some up-front planning for them--and if you know where they live, try to work out a basic itinerary (not only for budgetary planning, but to show them that, by God, you want them to come), and you'll probably lay a big enough guilt trip that they'll come running.

Remember, just ask a poor, tired SGA EVP if ya need some help.

As Executive Vice-President of the University of Alabama in Huntsville's Student Government Association (*waves to all the UAH /.ers*), I'd give you this to-do list:

1. See if the Lehigh SGA pays for speakers' fees and travel. Many do. If yours doesn't, give me an email address for the appropriate jacka$$ and I'll send them a sweet letter about how defraying the cost of (your speaker here) coming to speak will improve your university, blah blah blah.
2. Bother the appropriate departments. Faculty are there to help. Drop by the EE department and tell Dr. Stephen Kowell howdy, and tell him how much UAH misses him. He'll freak.
3. See if the local honors college or whatever will be willing to fund some stuff. They're cool about things like that--especially if there are enough open source revolutionaries that are in the HC. (UAH: check).
4. Lastly, after you have a package together, start talking with speakers. If you can do some up-front planning for them--and if you know where they live, try to work out a basic itinerary (not only for budgetary planning, but to show them that, by God, you want them to come), and you'll probably lay a big enough guilt trip that they'll come running.

Remember, just ask a poor, tired SGA EVP if ya need some help.

...if you don't vote, you shouldn't bitch about what your elected officials do.

Why?

If you vote, and another guy wins, you can say, "I didn't vote for him...I'm not responsible for his actions." If you did vote for her, and you don't like her actions, you can say, "I voted for her, and I don't like what she's doing." But if you don't vote, you pretty much said that "I don't care". If you're too apathetic to vote, why should you complain about the political process?

I'll tell you all that I'm voting for Bush. My reason isn't that I can't stand Al Gore (I really can't stand him), and it isn't that I don't think a third party candidate can win, so I won't "waste my vote" (in any election, no vote is wasted, even a vote for Mickey Mouse). No, it's because, of all the candidates, I agree most with Bush's stated positions on things that I care about.

Does this mean I agree with everything he says? Nope. I never agree with everything anyone says, much less what any politician says. I should know--I'm into politics myself. But I have taken a look at all the candidates and their platforms--including running through BetterVote.com's BetterMatch survey. When I ran through it, I agreed about 80% of the time with Bush--and several third-party candidates were well above 50% with me. That's fine.

I encourage every American /.er to get out and vote. If you vote, your voice is heard in that one very special way. If you're dissatisfied with both of the major parties, find some third party candidate that you most agree with, and vote with them.

Why?

Politicians will look at what will get them elected. Hell, I looked at it in last year's SGA election, and I'm already looking at it for next year's SGA election. (Note to all UAH /.ers: yeah, I'm running again.) There are certain issues that are highly important to our citizenry, and politicians will work hardest on those issues. That's how you earn people's trust in politics--you listen to their problems and work for a soultion.

Politics is the process of compromise and the art of the possible. The squeaky wheel gets the oil, folks, and if you want some lubrication, start squeaking. You can start 11/07/2000.

Haha! Is that a crack on Alabama?

Maybe. Dunno. But I speak highly of UAH. I should, considering the position I hold.
--

WASHINGTON--Congressman Bud Cramer (D, Ala.) couldn't believe it. "This is scary. All these emails!" An staffer who wished to remain anonymous stated, "It's really frightening. MP3.com starts a campaign to send emails, and all of a sudden, we get all these emails from kids at UAH. They just kept on coming! It's like they had some kind of denial of service thing going on, but by email! We didn't think that many people in Alabama had computers."

Look at one of my replies above. Of course NASA's PR machine advocates the microgravity environment, but so did SSC's PR machine advocate it's own high-energy studies.

The part of your post I had problems with was "and congress chose the boondoggle that will contribute approximately nil to actual science". That's a completely subjective statement. The 'science' that both projects would undertake are completely different. As we both seem to agree, one will advance basic physics knowledge, and another will advance various engineering/technology knowledge.

One aspect of study in microgravity will be astrobiology. Including effects of weightlessness on the human body, which will ultimately be necessary for any future space travel (ie, manned mars mission). Also, strange behaviors of materials without strong grav fields can be studied. Micrograv projects I know are underway are liquid interfaces and lectric arcing. Here's a list of micrograv experiments, but hopefully you don't distrust all of NASA-related reports as PR exaggerations. I'd wager that there are plenty more proposals, too.

YOu may think such studies will contribute nil to science, but many others disagree. I've also heard talks that new semiconductor fab methods may be done in micrograv. So maybe research on the space station can ultimately get you a better front-end detector.

and I do apologize for unsubstantiated claims made in one of the posts above. I posted some hearsay that some HEP physicists told me about LHC being able to do nearly all SSC could have. These physicists were working on the SSC, too. Two other posts responded to mine said SSC would have been higher energy than LHC could deliver. None are substantiated either way, maybe you could also confirm this?

gotta go to math methods class now, we'll talk later.

We've been conditioned to think that global warming is a reality. Unfortunately, those scientists trumpeting GW usually start their "centuries-long" studies of GW starting somewhere in the 1400's -- which, according to the geological constructs that allow us to see back into the past, was one of the coldest times since the last Ice Age.

We have to remember that the Earth is not some climatologically stable planet. There are many, many factors involved in the various warming and cooling periods, and while man is no doubt a factor, it's not as much as some would think. Studies at UAH's and NASA's Global Hydrology Climate Center by Dr. John Christy, et al. have shown that the GW predictions are off by a factor of ten -- the earth has warmed up, but not at the rate even the most conservative models predict.

Am I for being environmentally unfriendly? Nope. Am I for not worrying about rising water levels? Nope. Am I for playing Chicken Little? Nope. We must, through science, strive to understand the situations at hand and try to solve them. This is a case of quod erat demonstrandum, and we've got to just let the facts speak for themselves, rather than trying to extrapolate why it's happening from small statistical samples.

Of course, maybe the George Strait song about "Oceanfront Property in Arizona" will come true . . . -veg-

As an Internet publisher myself, I'm a bit miffed as to what's going on here. Sure, I publish stuff about sports, which is not exactly Earth-shattering in terms of societal impact (though I can argue for its societal worth, mind you), but what seems weird to me is that this is a way to hide behind the computer screen.

Looking at the root of the name of Publius -- familiar with the Federalist Papers myself, because I have to soon explain why we made all those changes in the UAH SGA last year anyway -- I see their point, but societal change is more often brought about by grassroots efforts led by out-in-front, standard-bearing individuals.

To demonstrate my point, could the American Civil Rights movement have progressed without someone like Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., marching? Sure, he could have sat in Atlanta (or Memphis, or Selma, or . . .) and written beautiful works on what was wrong with the oppression of "Negroes" in American society. I dare say his impact was strengthened by his visible action.

Heck, to take it to a whole other level, Jesus Christ himself could have just written a bunch of stuff, but I guarantee fewer people would be affected by Christianity -- whether you have a positive or negative view of it -- without some decisive action in there.

Anonymity breeds a small hair of distrust. If you're going to take over the world, you've got to have people's trust.

"Contest organizers say contestants may stuff the grits in their clothes, eat them, or simply roll around in them."

Yu Suzuki