I cannot remember a time when school districts across the nation were not cutting back on their arts curricula, because shrinking school budgets and increasing focus on standardized testing were forcing them to focus only on “core subjects.”

Lately I have been thinking that these phenomena are related by more than just money and America’s bizarre lack of focus on school funding. With the stimulus bill now signed into law and the mathematics education in America promising to bring our schools into the twenty-first century, this has been on my mind lately.

We tend to view students in two very broad categories: “artistic” kids and “intellectual” kids. This is a crass generalization, but it’s true. Society, by and large, expects people to be one or the other. Rarely both.

Which is to say that there is not an expectation that an artistic kid will be any good at math, science, or engineering. Nor is there any expectation that intellectual kids should have any interest in or aptitude for art.

Frankly, I think that’s crap. I think that every kid has a creative side regardless of their skills in the sciences. And I think that every kid has an analytic side, regardless of their skills in the arts.

And I know, because I’ve lived it myself, that math and art can reinforce one another. Math can be used to teach art and strengthen one’s creative side. The desire to make art can be used as a springboard from which to teach math.

I suspect that my school experience as regards math and art was pretty typical. We didn’t have any art classes after about the fourth grade. And math class was, well, dull. The typical kid argument, “I don’t see how I’m ever going to need this in my life,” resonated with me just as strongly as anyone else.

This was back in the Dark Ages, when I had the free time of a high school student and my computer’s speed was measured in kilohertz rather than gigahertz (think about that for a second).

But after school, the situation was entirely different. I was a latch-key kid, so when I would come home at the end of the school day the choice was mine for how to spend my time. I could watch daytime TV, or play around on my computer. I don’t know about you, but there were only so many Magnum, P.I. reruns I could take.

For fun, I did a lot of messing around with plotting math formulas.

Sounds geeky, but there wasn’t much else you could fit into the computer in those days. I plotted all kinds of functions, just to see how they behaved and what cool patterns I could put onto the screen.

In algebra class, we learned that irrational numbers were the square roots of negative numbers. We learned that recursion was primarily a trick for generating Fibonnacci numbers. Ooh, yippee. I couldn’t have cared less. But when the great fractal craze of the late ’80s and early ’90s hit, it led me back to irrational numbers and recursion as a means to draw cool stuff on the screen.

In trigonometry, they drilled into us the definition of sines, cosines, and tangents as the ratios of the sides of right triangles. Drier than the Sahara, that. But at home, trigonometry functions became endlessly fertile ground for creating swirly patterns ranging from spirographs to models of planetary motion.

In pre-calculus, we learned about derivatives as the slopes of mathematical formulas, and how to relate the slope of a curve to the direction perpendicular to that, it’s “normal” direction. You have no idea how full the margins of my notebooks were with aimless doodles during those lectures.

But when the concept of ray tracing hit the scene, suddenly derivatives, slopes, and surface normals were good for something – they are indispensable in realistic ray tracing.

Every one of those subjects was dull as dirt in the classroom, but interesting at home. And the visual results of each were beautiful in their own ways, even rendered in the shockingly crude graphics of the day.

It was all math in service of pretty pictures.

I learned more trig, algebra, and even calculus from my trusty old Radio Shack “trash-80″ computer than I ever did from a classroom.

In hindsight, the reasons are obvious. Because it was fun. Because it was undirected, free exploration without rules or boundaries. Because it engaged both the creative and the intellectual sides of my brain at the same time.

I learned the math because I needed to learn it to solve problems that were exciting to me, for my own reasons, and on my own terms.

My experience was certainly atypical for that era. At the time, few people had computers at all, let alone ones with any graphics capabilities. I was lucky. But today that’s just not true.

Today, computers that would kick the transistors out of my clunky old TRS-80 are increasingly ubiquitous in schools. Today, there is a wealth of free software available that serves this particular intersection of math and art, Processing being my latest favorite new toy in that respect.

The march of technology has made it possible now to replicate in the classroom the experience I had from playing around with my computer in high school.

And to do it for cheap.

So while we’re busy spending some of that stimulus money – and hopefully a lot more to come in the near future – to rebuild aging school buildings, let’s not lose sight of the fact that we need innovative, 21st century curricula and teaching methods as much as we need those 21st century school.

My own experience tells me that we could do a lot worse than to start with some type of integrated math-and-art program. We have the computers. The software is free. We just have to do it.

For me, this has been a life-long process. The joy and satisfaction of using math to make art has never left me. These days, it’s easier than ever to indulge. Wikipedia is an awesome resource for re-learning concepts and formulas that I was exposed to in school but which never had any appeal until I find that I need them in order to play around with one creative idea or another.

The image I used above to illustrate this post is the result of just such an exploration, this time into matrix math and least-squares estimation.

Not because I wanted to geek out over the math, but because the math is a tool to answer the creative question “what do you get if you draw lots of short, random little lines over the interesting features of an image, and color the lines the same as the underlying image?”

And yeah, they supposedly taught me matrices and least-squares in the U.W. College of Engineering. But it wasn’t any fun back then.

If we can use modern tools to give every kid the chance to discover the joy in math, and thereby give them a life-long zeal for learning, we will be miles – no, make that kilometers – farther along in our goal to raise our kids’ education up to the levels they’ll need to compete in today’s global economy.

About Jason Black

A staff member at Northwest Progressive Institute, a strategy center fighting to restore the American promise.

Even as the inauguration of President Barack Obama got underway in Washington D.C. today, the new White House website, www.whitehouse.gov, was up and running.

It’s an impressive site, building on and expanding the technology and communication systems that tech-savvy Obama used in his presidential campaign. It went live at noon, January 20.

On first click, the headline reads “Change has come to America.” On three subsequent pages, we read: “Revitalizing the Economy,” “Welcome to the new whitehouse.gov,” and “A New Era of Public Service.”

Dynamic is the best way to describe www.whitehouse.gov, which will, in coming weeks, feature a weekly video address (every Saturday) by President Obama. The site includes “briefing room” of slide shows, a White House blog, proclamations, executive orders, and general news (appointments, nominations). Users will also be able to subscribe to e-mail updates. Visitors can e-mail President Obama and his staff with a character limit set at 500.

Macon Phillips, the Director of New Media for the White House, posted the first blog on the site, an announcement that said:

“Millions of Americans have powered President Obama’s journey to the White House, many taking advantage of the internet to play a role in shaping our country’s future. WhiteHouse.gov is just the beginning of the new administration’s efforts to expand and deepen this online engagement.”

Phillips said the site has three priorities: communication, transparency and participation. Each section has a specific function.

Communication: Timely and in-depth content. This is where viewers will find the  “briefing room,” the blog/RSS feed, learn of major decisions and announcements, and sign up for e-mail updates. Topics include the economy, national security and more.

Transparency: President Obama’s  executive orders and proclamations will be published for everyone to review.  Also on tap here: presidential agendas and policy priorities.  Phillips calls this area “a window into government.”

Participation: Citizen participation will be a priority for the Administration, and the internet will play an important role in that. This section will include all non-emergency legislation to be published for five days, allowing for public review and comment prior to a presidential signature.

Dynamic is the best way to describe www.whitehouse.gov, which will in coming weeks feature a weekly video address (every Saturday) by President Obama. The site includes “briefing room” of slide shows, a White House blog, proclamations, executive orders, and general news (appointments, nominations). Users will also be able to subscribe to e-mail updates. Visitors can e-mail President Obama and his staff with a character limit set at 500.

Phillips wrote:

“Millions of Americans have powered President Obama’s journey to the White House, many taking advantage of the Internet to play a role in shaping our country’s future. WhiteHouse.gov is just the beginning of the new administration’s efforts to expand and deepen this online engagement.”

In our initial view of the site, we found detailed information on all the key issues concerning Americans, from foreign policy and the military to family, women’s health, education, ethics, economy, civil rights, technology, immigration and more. With each topic clicked, a concise summary states the issue and policy directions to address each issue.

Another section defines the administration, with a who’s who of biographical information on all the key players.   Another section covers the history of the White House, Camp David, Air Force One, and even White House and legislative internships.

The initial offerings are tantalizing, and given the track record of cyber-communication to date by candidate-now-President Obama, it’s a certainty that this 21st century website will just keep getting better. There’s even a section for citizen input as to what they would like to see on the site.

Check it out. www.whitehouse.gov.  It’s well worth your time.

Your vote is your voice

I know you’ve all been volunteering tons of time for a long, long time now.  But, I just read something from Barack Obama that I think we should all take to heart!

“Don’t underestimate the capacity of Democrats to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory …  I want everybody running scared. Over the next 18 days, other than your family and your job, I want you to make a decision that there is nothing more important than bringing about this change that we need.” — Barack ObamaNow it is the time!   Only 18 days left for you to volunteer.  We must stay focused and fight as hard as we can until every vote is counted!  The next four years depend on whether we will stand up and demand change!  Can we afford four more years of more of the same?

Get Involved Today!

Please click on the following links today and get a list of people in your neighborhood who you can visit or make phone calls to and help get Barack Obama elected! The power of technology which has been the main staple of this campaign has allow everyday people like you and me the power to be involved in helping take back our country!

Please click on the following links today and get a list of people in your neighborhood who you can visit or make phone calls to and help get Barack Obama elected!

The power of technology which has been the main staple of this campaign has allow everyday people like you and me the power to be involved in helping take back our country!Barack Obama has even designed a video showing how you can help in the campaign right from the comfort of your home. It’s just that easy to get involved today. Just click on the following links to connect:

Volunteer. Knock on Doors. Make Calls. Find events to attend or support. Log in to My Barack Obama.

The Montgomery County Democratic Party needs your help; to volunteer, call 931-552-5523.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

Those who warned of the civil liberties issues with these cameras were 100% correct that they could be used to track and database the movement and associations of law abiding citizens. Why is this dangerous? Let’s say one day the government does something that you don’t like. Then, lawfully exercising your right to free speech and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievance, you protest it. Suddenly you have popped up on the government’s radar screen. The government can then check the voluminous records they have already started keeping on Americans, such as travel and flight records.

The government can go back and go through your call logs, Internet traffic, movement logs, and other electronic traces with a fine tooth comb looking for things that woud allow them to harrass or intimidate you.

There are millions of laws on the books, many of them complex and hard for the average person to understand and follow. How many of these laws are you aware of? How many of them have you inadvertently broken? How many others exist that you don’t even know about!

Tracking movements and associations is especially useful when turning the power of  government against it’s citizens.

In order for cyberspace to be policed, Internet activity will have to be closely monitored. Ed Giorgio, who is working with ( Michael “Top Spy”) McConnell on the plan, said that would mean giving the government the authority to examine the content of any e-mail, file transfer, or Web search. “Google has records that could help in a cyber-investigation,” he said. Giorgio warned me, “We have a saying in this business: ‘Privacy and security are a zero-sum game.’” – Wired Magazine: NSA Must Examine All Internet Traffic to Prevent Cyber Nine-Eleven, Top Spy Says

For example, after checking on your life, they may find out that your best friend is a member of several environmental groups, one of them suspected of links to environmental terrorism. You or someone you know were in close proximity to a drug dealer, or that mafia guy, or while at the local convenience store you spoke with a guy who recently got busted for breaking into homes.

Even though you are a law abiding citizen, can you be sure that every single person you ever have come in contact with is, or was, as well? That is the true danger of this: guilt by association or proximity.

It is time for the Clarksville City Council to rescind their red-light camera program and not install these spy cameras in our community.

Vendors plan to add spy technology to existing red light camera and speed camera installations.

Private companies in the US are hoping to use red light cameras and speed cameras as the basis for a nationwide surveillance network similar to one that will be active next year in the UK. Redflex and American Traffic Solutions (ATS), the top two photo enforcement providers in the US, are quietly shopping new motorist tracking options to prospective state and local government clients. Redflex explained the company’s latest developments in an August 7 meeting with Homestead, Florida officials.

“We are moving into areas such as homeland security on a national level and on a local level,” Redflex regional director Cherif Elsadek said. “Optical character recognition is our next roll out which will be coming out in a few months — probably about five months or so.”

The technology would be integrated with the Australian company’s existing red light camera and speed camera systems. It allows officials to keep full video records of passing motorists and their passengers, limited only by available hard drive space and the types of cameras installed. To gain public acceptance, the surveillance program is being initially sold as an aid for police looking to solve Amber Alert cases and locate stolen cars.

“Imagine if you had 1500 or 2000 cameras out there that could look out for the partial plate or full plate number across the 21 states where we do business today,” Elsadek said. “This is the next step for our technology.”

ATS likewise is promoting motorist tracking technologies. In a recent proposal to operate 200 speed cameras for the Arizona state police, the company explained that its ticketing cameras could be integrated into a national vehicle tracking database. This would allow a police officer to simply enter a license plate number into a laptop computer and receive an email as soon as a speed camera anywhere in the state recognized that plate.

Such programs would be fully consistent with existing law on searches and seizures. In the 2003 case Washington v. William Bradley Jackson, the Washington State Supreme Court ruled that police could not use a physical GPS tracking device to monitor a suspect’s movements without first obtaining a warrant. No warrant would be needed or restrictions applied to license plate tracking systems which do not require any physical contact. Instead, individual police officers could monitor the movements of suspected criminals or even their wives and neighbors at any time.

In the past, police databases have been used to intimidate innocent motorists. An Edmonton, Canada police sergeant, for example, found himself outraged after he read columnist Kerry Diotte criticize his city’s photo radar operation in the Edmonton Sun newspaper. The sergeant looked up Diotte’s personal information, and, without the assistance of electronic scanners, ordered his subordinates to “be on the lookout” for Diotte’s BMW. Eventually a team of officers followed Diotte to a local bar where they hoped to trap the journalist and accuse him of driving under the influence of alcohol. Diotte took a cab home and the officers’ plan was exposed after tapes of radio traffic were leaked to the press. Police later cleared themselves of any serious wrong-doing following an extensive investigation.

In the UK, officials are planning to dramatically expand the use of average speed cameras that track cars over distances as great as six miles. Records on all vehicle movements taken from a nationwide network of cameras will be stored for five years in a central government Automated Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) server, allowing police to keep tabs on criminals and political opponents. Work on the data center in north London began in 2005 and officials expect real-time, nationwide tracking capability to be available by January.

Source: The Newspaper, Photo Ticket Cameras to Track Drivers Nationwide

About The Newspaper

The Newspaper is a journal covering motoring issues around the world from a political perspective.

James Hansen, director of Nasa's Goddard Institute

As the world hots up, so does the market for books about climate change. Tim Flannery, author of The Weather Makers, looks at the latest works on the crisis, and sizes up their solutions, from nuclear energy to genetically engineered trees.

(August 9) — Most of those interested in climate science nowadays access information online, and one of the most significant of such contributions was recently posted by James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute, and his colleagues, who have provided a partial explanation for these changes. They revisited a key piece of science underpinning the IPCC’s work – the findings about how much warming a given amount of atmospheric CO2 pollution would produce – and discovered that, when viewed over the longer term, Earth’s climate system is about twice as sensitive to CO2 pollution as is illustrated in the panel’s century-long projections.

One conclusion they drew is that there is already enough greenhouse gas pollution in the atmosphere to cause 2°C of warming – bringing about conditions not seen on Earth for 2m to 3m years, and constituting, according to the authors, “a degree of warming that would surely yield ‘dangerous’ climate impacts”.

Hansen and his colleagues pointed to a new understanding of how long it takes for the full warming consequences of a given amount of greenhouse gas to be felt. They concluded that we could expect to feel a third of any warming in the first few years. As Hansen and his colleagues put it: “Sea-level changes of several metres per century occur in the palaeoclimate record, in response to forcings slower and weaker than the present human-made forcing. This indicates that the ice may disintegrate and melt faster than previously assumed, and that the warming may be delayed less by the ice than assumed.”

They also make a useful discrimination between climatic “tipping points” and “the point of no return”. A tipping point is that at which the greenhouse gas concentration reaches a level sufficient to cause catastrophic climate change, while a point of no return is reached when that concentration of greenhouse gas has been in place sufficiently long to begin an irreversible process. Humanity is currently suspended between a tipping point and a point of no return, and the point of no return is likely to be reached within two decades.

Oliver Tickell’s just-published book Kyoto2 (Zed Books), provides a big-picture approach to the prevention of climatic catastrophe. In essence, Tickell provides a blueprint for a global climate treaty. He documents the failings of the Kyoto protocol, then goes on to summarise the latest climate science, including the work of Hansen and his colleagues. The replacement to the Kyoto protocol, Tickell writes, must work effectively to achieve a level of atmospheric CO2 below 350ppm. At the heart of the proposal is a global trade in carbon with a series of reducing caps sufficiently rigorous to bring about such an outcome.

For more information, refer to guardian.co.uk

Click here to view the embedded video.

It’s interesting and highly entertaining to watch, and might give some people who support draconian copyright regimes reason to rethink their support.

Click here to view the embedded video.

• 0:00 Introduction, YouTube’s Big Numbers
• 2:00 Numa Numa and the Celebration of Webcams
• 5:53 The Machine is Us/ing Us and the New Mediascape
• 12:16 Introducing our Research Team
• 12:56 Who is on YouTube?
• 13:25 What’s on Youtube? Charlie Bit My Finger, Soulja Boy, etc.
• 17:04 5% of vids are personal vlogs addressed to the YouTube community, Why?
• 17:30 YouTube in context. The loss of community and “networked individualism” (Wellman)
• 18:41 Cultural Inversion: individualism and community
• 19:15 Understanding new forms of community through Participant Observation
• 21:18 YouTube as a medium for community
• 23:00 Our first vlogs
• 25:00 The webcam: Everybody is watching where nobody is (”context collapse”)
• 26:05 Re-cognition and new forms of self-awareness (McLuhan)
• 27:58 The Anonymity of Watching YouTube: Haters and Lovers
• 29:53 Aesthetic Arrest
• 30:25 Connection without Constraint
• 32:35 Free Hugs: A hero for our mediated culture
• 34:02 YouTube Drama: Striving for popularity
• 34:55 An early star: emokid21ohio
• 36:55 YouTube’s Anthenticity Crisis: the story of LonelyGirl15
• 39:50 Reflections on Authenticity
• 41:54 Gaming the system / Exposing the System
• 43:37 Seriously Playful Participatory Media Culture (featuring Us by blimvisible)
• 47:32 Networked Production: The Collab. MadV’s “The Message” and the message of YouTube
• 49:29 Poem: The Little Glass Dot, The Eyes of the World
• 51:15 Conclusion by bnessel1973
• 52:50 Dedication and Credits (Our Numa Numa dance)

For more info: http://mediatedcultures.net

Warming so far, about two degrees Fahrenheit over land areas, seems almost innocuous, being less than day-to-day weather fluctuations. But more warming is already “in- the-pipeline”, delayed only by the great inertia of the world ocean. And climate is nearing dangerous tipping points. Elements of a “perfect storm”, a global cataclysm, are assembled.

Climate can reach points such that amplifying feedbacks spur large rapid changes. Arctic sea ice is a current example. Global warming initiated sea ice melt, exposing darker ocean that absorbs more sunlight, melting more ice. As a result, without any additional greenhouse gases, the Arctic soon will be ice-free in the summer.

More ominous tipping points loom. West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are vulnerable to even small additional warming. These two-mile-thick behemoths respond slowly at first, but if disintegration gets well underway it will become unstoppable. Debate among scientists is only about how much sea level would rise by a given date.

In my opinion, if emissions follow a business-as-usual scenario, sea level rise of at least two meters is likely this century. Hundreds of millions of people would become refugees. No stable shoreline would be reestablished in any time frame that humanity can conceive.

Special interests have blocked transition to our renewable energy future. Instead of moving heavily into renewable energies, fossil companies choose to spread doubt about global warming, as tobacco companies discredited the smoking-cancer link. Methods are sophisticated, including funding to help shape school textbook discussions of global warming.

CEOs of fossil energy companies know what they are doing and are aware of long-term consequences of continued business as usual. In my opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.

Conviction of ExxonMobil and Peabody Coal CEOs will be no consolation, if we pass on a runaway climate to our children. Humanity would be impoverished by ravages of continually shifting shorelines and intensification of regional climate extremes. Loss of countless species would leave a more desolate planet.

If politicians remain at loggerheads, citizens must lead. We must demand a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants. We must block fossil fuel interests who aim to squeeze every last drop of oil from public lands, off-shore, and wilderness areas. Those last drops are no solution. They yield continued exorbitant profits for a short-sighted self-serving industry, but no alleviation of our addiction or long-term energy source.

A price on emissions that cause harm is essential. Yes, a carbon tax. Carbon tax with 100 percent dividend is needed to wean us off fossil fuel addiction. Tax and dividend allows the marketplace, not politicians, to make investment decisions…..

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/TwentyYearsLater_20080623.pdf

Accompanying slides:

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/TippingPointsNear_20080623.pdf

About the author: Dr. James E. Hansen, longtime director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said in a January 29, 2006, New York Times interview that officials at NASA headquarters had ordered the public affairs staff to review his coming lectures, papers, and postings on the Goddard Web site and requests for interviews from journalists. Since 1988, he has been issuing public warnings about the long-term threat from heat-trapping emissions, dominated by carbon dioxide, that are an unavoidable byproduct of burning coal, oil and other fossil fuels.

On the Road in America is an occasional and serendipitous column about people, places and observations, with publishing predicated on the random availability of internet access or lack thereof.

Being On the Road in America can sometimes be a bore.

Oh, there’s a great deal of beauty to be seen, from the Green Mountains of Vermont to the rolling farmlands across Ohio, from the rugged Rockies and the dramatic coastline of California’s 17-mile drive. That’s not the issue.

As implied in Josh Neuman’s Lemmings (right) ,what is troubling is the growing lack of identity, of uniqueness, of individuality, as one moves from state to state. North, south, east or west makes not a whit of difference. Commerce in America is cloning itself at breakneck pace, mass-producing blueprints for hotels, motels, box stores, shopping malls and restaurants that increasingly lack a sense of their own identity and certainly have no ties to community heritage or culture.

I’m on the road again, as Willie Nelson would sing, and I am heading for one of the few bastions of non-traditional development — via the central midwest to the rural northeast, home of green mountains, clothing optional backwoods beaches, interstate bike paths, and those perpetual golden arches relegated to the outermost borders of some cities.

The “Main Street” of Norman Rockwell fame in Stockbridge MA (Pine is the cross street). Photo by Christine Anne Piesyk

Travelers seeking “something different” often have to search out small little “Main Streets” in small little cities and towns, taking that “road less traveled” literally, if they hope to find any sense of the individuality that America was once famous for. Yes, Norman Rockwell’s Main Street in Stockbridge remains essentially the same — I’ve had mulled cider at the Red Lion Inn there many times, and sat beside their fireplace with its chain of antique keys hanging from the mantle. Some small towns retain and cultivate their Main Streets specifically to draw in tourists and travelers with unique architecture and themes that either reflect their history or re-create themselves as a new destination, as a place people WANT to be. Paducah, Kentucky, just a few hours from Clarksville, has done this, and done it well, redefining itself and its development with art. Yet today, in most cases, moving from point to point across America is to journey through a litter of mass produced economy.

Day by day, America’s unique local vistas are being enveloped in rubber-stamped malls with the same rubber-stamped stores: JC Penney’s, Sears, Blockbuster, Circuit City, Best Buy, Avenue, Gap (and Baby Gap), Macy’s, Kohl’s, Fashion Bug, Foot Locker, and such. It’s not just the Smiths keeping up with the Jone’s anymore; we can’t tell the Smiths from the Joneses.

Not that you can’t find good merchandise or big sales in these stores; bulk buying and and blockbuster sales can produce great deals. It is the lack of uniqueness, the absence of originality and creativity, that quickly becomes boring. This lack of diversity in the cloning of America converts shoppers into clones of one another. My own take on this: if everybody has it, I don’t want it.

It’s the same with eateries; McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Subway (I do favor Subway), and Arby’s are epidemic. Applebees, Cracker Barrel, Pizza Hut, Ruby Tuesday, Chicago Pizza, Pizzaria Uno and others in a slightly higher price range are everywhere. When I travel, I don’t opt for a sure thing — I know what I have had. If I wanted more of the same I could stay home.

I deliberately seek out the non-chains, the mom-and-pop hole-in-the-wall places where the locals eat, a long narrow diner, or a small country inn with unique menus and local foods. It’s why I’ve bought lobsters directly off the boat on Cape Cod, savored deep fried wild turkey tenders, Moose steak, caught my own 23 pound catfish on Lake Champlain, mulled over the taste of venison in a hunter’s stew in northern New England, and savored clam chowder on (again) Cape Cod.

It’s why I like those funky purple potatoes that now grow abundantly in Maine (I first tried them in the Andes of Peru), and the taste of Hadley (MA) asparagus fresh picked from the field. And then there is French Onion soup dressed with fresh apples, or sea scallops on the pier in Monterey Bay (CA). Or chunks of cheddar cheese cut off huge aged rounds (at the Granville Country Store in the Berkshires) as I watch.

Besides grabbing some locally grown fresh fruit for the road, Atkins Fruit Farm also has home-baked goods such as warm Apple Cider Donuts, pure Maple Syrup, and a selection of goodies from regional farms. (Photo by Christine Anne Piesyk.

Loca’Vore (commonly spelled “localvore”) is the Oxford University word of the year, a term coined in San Francisco that defines a commitment to consuming only foods grown within a hundred miles radius. Now that easier to achieve in some parts of the country than others, but where there is an abundance of local produce (including jams, jellies, breads, cheeses, meats) it is a also a strategy for supporting local growers and farmers in a local economy. The products used are always unique to the region. It’s what I look for wherever and whenever I travel. Long trips, regional trips, or just ambling around town.

As for chain hotels and motels, they assure a fairly certain standard of comfort, and for those who need that kind of security or standardization, by all means be their guest…but checking into Red Roof Inn is not half as much fun as walking through a small Canadian village pool hall, paying ten dollars for a third floor walk up room (upstairs from that French-speaking pool hall/country store/post office/feed store) — a fine old room with a bath down the hall, latched but not locked doors, handmade rag rugs, feather quilts and pillows on a an old iron bed and a view of the St. Lawrence River from my window. It is not the same as finding that little cluster of cottages with a lake view to the east and a mountain view to the west and home-cooked community meals with fellow fishermen on the great lakes. It’s not as good an seaside inn on the California coast. Or a rooming house in old Quebec City. Or any small locally owned motel or bed and breakfast.

Along America’s highways, the view is increasingly the same: Motel 6, Red Roof Inn, Hometown Suites, Holiday Inn (not from the Bing Crosby musical), Hyatt, … you get the idea. Get out that rubber stamp.

I see these cloned hotels, malls and eateries as dots on the corporate maps, bottom lines on the corporate profit statements, a push toward standardization that saps individuality from the highways and main streets of America communities, funneling the competition of small business into oblivion.

Don’t “reach out.” Hang up!

It’s hard for some people to get a handle on traveling without a cell phone, not having access to internet, not being connected. It’s hard for some to get a handle on not accessing “the familiar,” not constantly being able to “reach out and touch someone.” It’s hard for some to step back from the manic pace of modern living, to turn off the music and the television and simply be, or be silent. It’s hard for some to turn the key to a hotel or hostel or cabin door and commit themselves the unfamiliar. It’s hard for some to imagine the night without a backlit afterglow of streep lamps, to imagine that the only light on a moonless night comes from the stars, that there is such a thing as “nightblack” — a completely black night.

These cloned corporate chains, this connectedness to technology, this fierce need to be bigger, faster, better, and perpetually linked are ties that bind us to work and home, precluding the kind of getaways in which we really “get away.” It isolates us, and keeps us from experiencing something new. Something different. It keeps us from knowing ourselves, and getting to know the people in other parts of our world.

As I move about the country, I become increasingly determined (moving quickly into adamant) to skip the mainstream, refuse the redundant, and seek out those places and people I don’t know yet … but want to meet. I want to slow down long enough to experience the heritage, the local color and culture,the values, the texture and taste of community. No spoon-fed culture, thanks. I like that “road less traveled.”

We cannot and probably should not always retain or re-create yesterday’s atmosphere exactly as it was. We can take the best of our history, or traditions, our cultural quirks and with careful planning redefine them in a way that anchors us to our heritage and history while moving us forward. That heritage is what gives our cities and towns solidity, and a “destination”stamp that actually means something.

Promote Green, a promotional marketing and logo merchandising firm, launches this month offering a full line of eco-friendly custom imprinted advertising specialties. Promote Green aims to give businesses an environmentally responsible alternative to the traditional promotional product.

While attending a local Earth Day celebration this April, Weiss remembers, “I heard the conservation message many times but saw little evidence of the message in the promotional products and giveaways handed out.” According to Weiss, reflection on the issue led to her realizing the need of a local entity enabling all businesses to easily purchase environmentally sound marketing products for everyday use.

Promote Green arranges custom imprinting eco-friendly promotional products and advertising specialties to make green logo merchandising and green brand marketing accessible to the community.

According to Weiss,

“By utilizing the services offered by Promote Green, businesses will be sending the following message to their clients, their employees and manufacturers throughout the world: we value the environment, we value a sustainable future for all and we are ready to incorporate our values into our logo merchandising and marketing campaigns.” — Amanda Davis Weiss

Promote Green offers company pens, magnets and sports bottles made of recycled material, custom screen printed organic apparel, logo items that are completely biodegradable within months.

Weiss contends:

“These are the types of products environmentally responsible corporations are now using to promote their image. Values driven marketing ensures credibility to the public and, in return, loyalty from the public. By offering only eco-friendly products, Promote Green is hoping to help the local business community market their brands and identities responsibly.”

You can contact Promote Green at 931.220.2991. Promote Green has both print and online catalogs of marketing merchandise and also offers “The Green Book,” a green e-book catalog.

Wherry began June 3 at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif. On Sept. 2, he will begin the fall semester at NASA’s Langley Research Center, Hampton, Va., and remain there until Dec. 12. During the Langley internship, Wherry will work with atmospheric scientist Mike Pitts, whose research focuses on the formation and evolution of polar stratospheric clouds using data known as CALIPSO.

Langley Research Center has a new atmospheric trajectory model that staff would like to use to study how the clouds form and evolve with time. Wherry will help the center run the computer models for a number of different scenarios and possibly interface the model with the CALIPSO measurements. Wherry will return to APSU for the Spring 2009 semester.

Wall accepted the award during a special ceremony held at the 19th International Conference on College Teaching and Learning, April 16 in Jacksonville, Fla. A total of 42 colleges and universities from around the world nominated faculty to receive awards.

Wall came to APSU in 2004. She earned a Bachelor of Science from the University of Kansas, a Master of Arts and Education Specialist degrees from Austin Peay and a Doctor of Education from Tennessee State University.

Dr. Sergei Markov, assistant professor of biology, has developed a prototype bioreactor that uses the purple bacterium Rubrivivax gelatinosus to produce enough hydrogen to power a small motor. He recently presented a paper, titled “Hydrogen production by purple nonsulfur bacterium in a bioreactor,” at the 108th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in Boston.

As a result, his work, initially supported by grant funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, has appeared in a dozen of publications on the Internet, including Science Daily, and on several foreign news Web sites.

“Certain purple bacteria, which usually grow in the mud of various ponds and lakes have the ability to convert water and carbon monoxide into hydrogen gas,” Markov said in the June 5, 2008, edition of Science Daily. “The problem was how to effectively supply each bacterial cell in a liquid bacterial soup with gaseous carbon monoxide.”

Another dilemma issue is that carbon monoxide is not readily available, but Markov said it could be produced easily from biomass using a specific thermochemical process. Also, other bacteria produce carbon monoxide, he said.

Markov came to APSU in 2006 from DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind., where he was an assistant professor. He also has taught at Marshall University in Huntington, W. Va., King’s College London in England and Moscow State University in Russia, where he received his Ph.D. in microbiology and master’s degree in biochemistry and physiology.

Al Westerman has been named the new director of facilities, projects and planning. He began his new duties June 2. His position is part of the University’s Office of Finance and Administration.

Westerman came to APSU following a six-year career as CEO and senior project manager for FM&C Co. He was a longtime employee of Fluor Corp. From 1991-2002, he served as the company’s facility and project engineer and later became project manager and planner. He also was a member of the facility safety team that won the highly coveted OSHA VPP Award for 10 million safe work hours.In addition, he worked briefly as the senior facility and maintenance engineer for Westinghouse Corp. and consulted major companies for about five years.

Westerman has specialized training in contract management and negotiation, root cause analysis, facility inspection and validation, project management certification and occupational and environmental protection.

He has a Bachelor of Arts in communication from Morehead (Ky.) State University and a Master of Science in environmental management from the University of Findlay in Ohio.

Students and mentors in the Governor’s School for Computational Physics being held for the next five weeks at Austin Peay State University talk on the first day of the school June 1. This is APSU’s first Governor’s School.

“The students selected for this program are very impressive,” said Dr. Jaime Taylor, professor of physics and interim dean of the College of Science and Mathematics. “They want to learn, and they are quick-minded.”The Governor’s School in Computational Physics was approved late last summer, long after other Governor’s Schools had begun recruiting for their Summer 2008 programs. Despite this disadvantage, APSU’S Governor’s School received about 100 applications.

Funded by the state, Governor’s Schools are designed for gifted high school students with each school providing challenging, intensive learning experiences in specific disciplines. The Governor’s School in Computational Physics is APSU’s first Governor’s School.

From these applications, only 36 students were selected for the five-week Governor’s School at APSU. Among those 36, eight of the students attending the Governor’s School at APSU this summer are No. 1 in their class, and three rank No. 2 in their class.

Computational physics combines physics, computer science and applied mathematics to provide scientific solutions to complex problems. Taking two intensive courses, participants will earn eight hours of college credit and will take trips to such computational research centers as Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s National Center for Computational Sciences and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.

Austin Peay’s department of physics and astronomy, one of the first in the U.S. to implement a required course in Computation Methods, has earned a reputation for recruiting, retaining and placing students in prestigious fellowships, assistantships and doctoral programs. In 1999, the department had nine majors. By 2005-06, it had more than 60 majors.