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I wrote this song as a gift to a friend, but crazy stuff happened and I never ended up giving it. It’s not a great piece of poetry, but it’s one of the few I’ve written since Eau Claire, so I thought I may as well write it down somewhere. (Oh, and the [chords] aren’t […]

I was lamenting to a friend about the cold this morning when I realized I had a bit of The Little Red Hen story going on — maybe that’s not the right story. I’d said that I didn’t like the cold, but I really liked the snow, and the frozen lake. I guess I’d been […]

The date is set!
Having handed it in before Thanksgiving, I’ve been waiting in painful uncertainty for my advisor to read it, then a senior committee member left the university (and committee), and I had to find a replacement (found a good one!), and finally I had to find a room and date that all could […]

As I’ve been waiting to defend my dissertation proposal, I’ve been reading more place-based education books, like Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods. There’s a lot in it that I agree with, but a few things that I find somewhat disturbing. Perhaps they’re written with a light dose of sarcasm, or with tongue-in-cheek.For example, […]

Yesterday, we went sledding. If the embedded Youtube video doesn’t show up on your browser, you can see it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tYbvCKuHmc.

Yesterday was a great day for Winter recreating! I’d predicted Friday night that Lake Monona would completely freeze by the morning, and it did. Rufus and I woke up to a frozen lake, and immediately investigated.

I pulled a plastic chair from the shore, and set it up on the remains of our dock, and just […]

In the “Whoops!” department, I [cough] deleted some files that were in the same directory as the files I meant to delete.
This caused some consternation for the afternoon, as my blog error’d out and essentially disappeared. And I spent most of the afternoon messing about with it — trying one thing after another; alternately giggling […]

After years of hearing that being married is better for longevity, I have to admit (as a single guy still dedicated to the idea that learning is one of the best ways to go through life) that I’m a bit pleased to hear that education improves longevity.
“If you were to ask me what affects health […]

Just another snippet from the mainstream media that I’m arguing is a harbinger of the returning Age of Place. This one is from a Time/CNN article on the iPhone, that was announced yesterday:
when you swipe your finger across the screen to unlock the iPhone, you’re not just accessing a system of nested menus, you’re […]

You know (or if you didn’t, you will after reading this) that Apple’s going to announce a tablet soon. Why? Because they have a gazillion patents for the Multi-Touch technology (which I remember seeing a demo of last Spring… I wonder if I blogged about it… **UPDATE! Indeed I did blog about Jefferson Y. Han’s […]

Here’s what I see happening:

Global Positioning System devices are flooding the “buzz” of the tech world. MacWorld San Francisco is taking place in the next few days and just about every Apple rumor site mentions the possibility of Apple adding GPS to its computers. It’s not really important that they do, but the fact that […]

Wal-Mart may go with solar power. As the Arctic melts and hell freezes…
one person who saw the proposal said that if completed, it could amount to a significantly large installation–on the order of 100 megawatts of power over the next five years. “To put that into perspective, the solar system currently being installed […]

I want to be an RML.Isn’t a PhD in Educational Technology enough? No.
Here’s why: I want as much flexibility in my career choice as possible so I can move wherever I *want to live* rather than wherever I *need* to move in order to get a job. I’m currently well-positioned to work at what I […]

According to myfootprint.org, my footprint is 12 acres. Here are my results:

Food: 4.4 acres
Mobility: 0.7
Shelter: 3.7
Goods/Services: 3

Total footprint: 12
In comparison, the average ecological footprint in your country is 24 acres per person. Worldwide, there exist 4.5 biologically productive acres per person. If everyone lived like you, we would need 2.7 planets.
12 acres is too big, […]