Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Tiger Scout Meeting #2
So Jono and I hung out at the playground until dark. I pushed him on the swing for a long time and internally delighted at a chorus of sounds that danced on my ears: sneakers dragging through pea gravel, a squeaky chain, and the genuine belly laughter of my seven year old son soaking up concentrated attention. We played in the pebbles and climbed on the whatchamacalit.
Maybe God knew Jono needed some one-on-one time with his Papa. Maybe God knew Papa needed some one-on-one time with Jono.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
The Symposium
Prompted by God's call to meet the needs of the poor, marginalized, and oppressed, Christians can respond sensitively and productively to poverty though faith-inspired practices of appropriate technology and social entrepreneurship. The former draws on a community's existing talents and resources to produce technology that is simple, inexpensive, easily maintained, culturally acceptable, and responsive to genuine human needs. The latter finds alternative approaches to corporate structures that provide opportunities to improve the physical and social conditions of the poor.
Instead of rivals at cross purposes, these three forces-local church, appropriate technology, and social entrepreneurship-hold enormous promise when they converge, for they have the potential to create genuine social change and express Christian faith and witness.
Want more information? click here.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Books A Meeleeon
First I looked for a magazine on alternative energy called Home Power. They didn't have it. They did have thousands of other magazines on subjects as diverse as remodeling, knitting, and personal fitness. But after spending twenty minutes looking for it I finally asked an employee. We don't carry that. OK, I said, how about books on alternative energy? I was hoping to find something on solar power, biogas, wind power, and micro hydro power. The girl led me to the Green Living section where they had Solar Power for Dummies and something else. But most of the books were about organic eating, recycling, or living off the land. I thought alternative energy was a hot topic. Are my interests really less common than knitters? I think not, what with Al Gore and the price of oil and all. Where were the good books?
In the Green Living section, I used my camera phone to take a picture of the two books below.
The first book implores you to keep your junk and reuse it for something else. Make wind chimes out of your naval lint, that kind of thing. The second book was about throwing it out and getting organized. I was confused by these mixed signals. So I went home and threw away all our food so I could reuse our refrigerator as a planter box. The M told me I could reuse the couch as a bed.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Commentary by Henry the Cat
to bed early tonight, so I sat down at the computer to check my portfolio and catch up on the news.
Well, for those of you who may not know, the fat man works for Baylor University. And once again, Baylor is in the news. And it's not good news. Bad press. Us cats call it "befouled litter". Don't worry, there have been no more murders on the basketball team, nor have they changed presidents again. This time it's because someone decided it was a good idea to pay students, already accepted and enrolled in the university, to retake the SAT. If they improved their score by 50 points or more, they got a bonus.
Why would Baylor do this, you ask? Because it inflates the statistics used by US News and World Report when they compile their annual ranking of universities, and Baylor is drooling like a dog to increase its ranking.
Now, I'm just a cat, and the fat man would probably not like it if he knew I was writing this, because he would worry about biting the proverbial hand that feeds him. But lest you misunderstand my criticism, please understand that I don't think they did anything wrong. Short sighted, maybe.
We shouldn't be shocked by this. It is not certainly not criminal, and I say it is not even unethical! Instead, it is a clever, though unwise, attempt to manipulate an ARBITRARY standard imposed by US News and World Report. It is actually sad that Baylor cares too much about the rankings. They are like an insecure high school girl wearing rediculous green lipstick because it's what the "popular" girls wear. Never mind it makes them look like idiots.
I am all in favor of them increasing the quality of students, whether feline or human, and for them increasing the quality of the faculty (unless that involves replacing my human). I am even in favor of Baylor increasing its research reputation and expanding the frontiers of knowledge itself. But making the goal to be on someone else's list is reminiscent of high school popularity contests. Baylor should decide who Baylor wants to be, and strive to achieve THAT. Otherwise they're just wearing green lipstick. PPPTTH! I cast my used litter towards that idea.
The problem, I believe, lies with US News' rankings themselves. Why does US News even compile these rankings? Is it from some altruistic motive to improve our education as a nation? Or is it to sell magazines? Can we really judge the quality of a university using the metrics of research dollars obtained or average SAT scores? Are not factors such as faculty morale and the institutional valuation of quality teaching more important than standardized test scores? These things can't be measured. But if you can't measure it, you can't rank it in a magazine!
I'm getting too wound up about this. I'm going to go play with my catnip mousy.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Tiger Scout Meeting #1
I forgot to bring my camera, so I had to illustrate the meeting with Paint. This is what it looked like from my perspective: lots of uniformed boys looking at me like I know what I'm doing. I call it "Send in the Clones".
Miscellaneous Images from Hurricane Ike
This is a pine tree laying on a house in Mom's neighborhood.
This is a metal awning wrapped around a telephone pole by a guy who hates metal awnings.
This is evacuation traffic heading in the opposite direction that I was. My lanes were clear! Imagine that.
I saw this sign on my drive into Houston. Imagine if this was the first news you heard of it.
OK, this very cool picture I took in the middle of the night. It is a 15 second exposure. You can see the amber colored lights causing the clouds to glow. Also notice that the trees are all blurry because of the winds. I took this picture out of the back window of the house.
This is the same pine tree as in the first picture, repeated here to make things look worse than they were. OK, they were pretty bad, but I have a limited number of pictures.
After the storm passed everyone went out to clean up and/or take pictures.
I don't understand why we lost power for 12 days... ?
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Wind Turbine Project Part 12: Anna and the Alternator
Anna had the opportunity to live and work at the World Hunger Relief Farm this summer. I found a video about them made by a local news group focusing on non-profit organizations. In the video you will see a little house called the Nicaragua House at 1 minute 11 seconds into the video. This is a house built in the style of Habitat for Humanity houses that are constructed in Nicaragua. It has no power at this point, and the power generated from our wind turbine will provide electricity for it. Hopefully.
If this project is a success, we may try to build a biodigesting toilet facility for them next spring. Raise your glass for poop-power!
Hurricane Ike: Galveston Photos
More Pics From the Fair
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Unexpected Notoriety
Play Video
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Multimedia message
Friday, October 10, 2008
Fairly Expensive, Fairly Fun
I didn't have my camera, so I took pictures with my cell phone. I think they're kinda cool and trendy, like a movie shot with a giggly camera.
Here are some of the rides at the midway. Why is it called the midway, anyway?I didn't get on this one on account of puking being not fun.
Jono and I rode several rides together. He enjoyed the bumper cars and the hall of mirrors, but the goes-up-and-down rides he was not so fond of. Well, actually, he liked them once he got off, but not while he was still riding!We told David he could bring a friend. Although we were expecting a guy, we all had a great time with his friend Katie. She was fun and polite and confident and we like her.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Sucking Up Free Wi-Fi in Houston
I feel like a hacker.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Coming Home
Here is the status: the diesel generator will be turned on from 6 to 9 PM every day. It feeds the grid, so the user won't be able to tell a difference. Buying enough diesel fuel to make this happen will, unfortunately, not be sustainable because we will not collect enough to recover our employee salaries and the fuel. But with $50-100 per month, we can keep it going until we get the inverter repaired.
We also fixed a fuse problem and reconfigured the batteries (for 12 volts) so that we can put a "trickle charger" on them. Every time the generator is powered up, it will charge them a bit. That way they won't loose charge and die prematurely.
The exciting news is that Adolfo has begun a pulperia in his house, and is selling a few things like snacks and groceries. He has plans to buy a cooler so he can sell cold drinks and ice! That is the kind of entrepreneurship we are hoping to see. It will likely help us attract more donors too.
Tomorrow we drive to San Pedro Sula and fly home. I am supposed to arrive sometime after 10 PM after connecting through Houston.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Central American Men in Hats
Saturday, October 4, 2008
The Mayan Ruins of Copan
The area in the two pictures above was all buried under rubble until 14 years ago! They estimate that only 25% of the ruins have been excavated so far. To get a sense of how big it is, try to look for the little people down in the lower level of the first of these two pictures.
There were a dozen or so Macaws that were kept in the ruins. The Mayans had carved Macaw heads all over the place. They played a sporting event where five players on a team used an eight pound solid rubber ball (made from the sap of a rubber tree) and tried to score points by throwing it at a huge, caved Macaw head target. At this point the audience would yell "Mccaaaaaaaaaaw!" OK, I don't know if that's what they yelled, but get this, the winner of the event won the "honor" of being sacrificed. And the blood of ball players was considered the third most potent for sacrifices, right after virgins and kings. Sounds like America: sports, sex, and power.
This is the market area. In the back of the picture you can see some statues under a metal roof for protection. These are some of the many statues erected by the 13th Mayan king whose name is, get this, Eighteen Rabbits. What the heck kind of name is that? That has got to be the weirdest name I have ever heard. For the rest of the day I called myself Half a Dozen Donuts in honor of my breakfast.
This is Ryan and a statue of the "Dancing Jaguar". Ryan is on the right.
And this guy with the goofy expression is me, thinking that I can't wait to get back to the hotel wi-fi and blog about my day.Friday, October 3, 2008
Ambassador Llorens Likes Renewable Enegy (and me)
So at the next break I walked up to him and introduced myself. I gave him my 20 second talk: who I am, where I'm from, and that we're doing village-level electricity projects using renewable energy and that we're looking for financial partners and other help.
He enthusiastically gave me the name and cell number of a man he knows interested in investing in renewable energy projects here. He said I could tell the man that Ambassador Llorens told me to contact him! Then he said, after you talk to this guy, come see me in Tegucigalpa! Cool. The whole conversation took about one minute.
That conversation alone was worth the plane fare. But I also met a great missionary couple working here. They are about my age and have two girls near the ages of my boys. He is an engineer and is largely doing agricultural work in the area. He has built a dam to collect water for irrigation purposes and would like to install a hydro generator to provide electricity for the people in the area. And on top of that, he has built his own biodiesel processor from a kit and has been making batches from palm oil! We may try to do a prototype system together or something.
You know, for a person that's generally an introvert, I am thriving on making these connections. I really love it. It's almost a game to see how many folks I can meet. I can only attribute this to being married to The M for 15 years now. The scriptures are correct (imagine!) when they say that the two shall become one. The M and I have each been migrating toward the personality-middle-ground for years. She is becoming more introverted, or at least doesn't hate being alone anymore, and I have become a networking schmoozer. Miracles never cease.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Copán Ruinas, Honduras
We spent the night on a mattress on the floor of Walter's kitchen. Shortly before lights out, a huge scorpion (3 inches long) was walking on the floor two feet from our bed. While I was sleeping, a June bug the size of a cat landed on my back, twice. The chickens woke us up at 5:00. We had coffee and tamales for breakfast, and then a second breakfast twenty minutes later. The second breakfast was oatmeal made from fresh milk. When I say fresh, I mean it was in the cow an hour earlier.
We drove to Jutiapa and bought five gallons of diesel for the system. Then we left. After we were gone, Sergio came and directed the first billing time. One family had a 400 Lempira bill; about $20. That's about five times what we expect the average to be. We are unclear about the details, but we think Sergio said they collected 3200 Lempiras since the system went online ($160).
Wednesday: We drove a LONG way to the city of Copán Ruinas, an ancient city built near Mayan ruins. The streets are cobble stones and very narrow. It looks like what I imagine Old Spain to be. The hotel is nice and we are going to the first conference events in a few minutes. See http://projecthonduras.com/conference for information about the conference.
Oh yes, when I registered for the conference Monday, I offered to give a presentation about our work, and they said OK. So we are giving a presentation sometime in the next few days, maybe.