Artificial Trees

I was listening to BBC news on my NPR station as I drove home from class tonight. They had a story about artificial trees to remove carbon dioxide from the air. Apparently they cost about $20,000 to build.

Of course, my initial reaction was "what's wrong with real trees? Twenty grand will plant quite a few trees."

So I looked up some stuff. Apparently this idea has been around and in development since 2003 (maybe earlier) and is just now getting to the point where it may work. A couple of different places said that the artificial trees can remove CO2 about one-thousand times faster than real trees.

1000 times faster. That's pretty great!

Isn't it?

Well???

Hmmmm.... I suppose that carbon removal isn't all there is to it.

A real tree can help to moderate temperature in an immediate way--not just by contributing a little bit to long-term climate stabilization.
A real tree is almost certainly going to be more aesthetically pleasing.
A real tree provides habitat for wildlife.
A real tree doesn't usually require much upkeep or maintenance after getting established--I don't know exactly how much the artificial trees need to be worked with, but a couple sources indicate that they will get full in some way and need to be emptied--and have the carbon stored. Real trees just store the carbon without human intervention.
A real tree can help prevent erosion, benefiting a watershed as well as the atmosphere.
A real tree can be cut down (GASP!) and used as a commodity/building material/fuel source. (Yes, burning wood does, re-release the carbon, but I read somewhere that burning wood in a high efficiency wood stove releases less carbon than if the same wood were allowed to decompose naturally. [sorry I don't have the exact reference--but I do remember it was on a website selling/advocating for wood-burning stoves, so it was probably a little biased.])

For $20K one could certainly plant 1000 trees. They may be small at planting time, but the neat thing about living stuff is that it can grow!

I vote for real trees.

Let me make a concession though. I would say that there may be a perfectly good use for the artificial trees in highly urbanized areas. Since the point of these trees is to help sequester non-point-source pollution (like automobile exhaust) there may be a good way to deploy them in cities where it would be difficult or impossible tofind a place to put any new real trees.

Links:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2784227.stm
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30251856/
http://www.oilgae.com/energy/nn/b/2009/07/artificial-trees-capturing-co2-thousand.html
http://www.otakuden.com/fashion-main/tech/615-artificial-tree-co2-beware.html
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/06/artificial-trees-are-they-better-than-real.php

I almost fell for some spam

I just got an email that said:

"Can you figure that out - that is how Mike dealed with his health situation"

It was followed by a link. You know--the usual kind of stuff.

Okay spammers, I understand that you need to misspell pen1s, vigara, and hottt nekkid gurlz to get your messages through the filters. But this is just being sloppy.

I mean, you really had me going for a moment.
Here is how is went down/what I was thinking.

I like to figure things out.
I know someone named Mike. (Several Mikes, actually.)
"Health situations" are a serious matter.
If any of my Mikes have had health situations I would want to know.

Then I realized that none of the Mikes I know would have misspelled "dealt" as "dealed."

But... Then I thought: "No. this message is not from Mike. It is about Mike. Maybe Mike had a health situation going on, and I should find out what happened to him."

Then I realized that none of the people I know who might want to say something to me about a Mike with whom we are mutual acquaintances would have misspelled "dealt."

Then I realized that I don't think I know anyone who would have misspelled "dealt." At least not anyone who would actually send me an email message.

And that is when I realized that the message must be spam, and decided not to click the link.

Whew! So close, but disaster averted.

Does anyone mind of I rant?

Of course you don't care if I rant. Nobody is reading this anyway.

So here is the deal. I'm a little annoyed by something that has been going on for a while now. It's related to my job (surprise.) In the last few months I've been inundated with messages and letters and emails and phone calls etc. from students and parents in my region about a particular issue.

Oh! In case you don't know, I work in admissions for James Madison University and I am responsible for applications from (part of) Fairfax County. Knowing that is pretty much required to make this make sense.

"What is the issue?" you might ask.

I will tell you.

Fairfax County Public Schools currently uses a grading scale in which the lowest A is a 94. And, presumably, grading scales where the lowest A is a 90 are more common.* Furthermore, FCPS has recently changed their policies on calculating GPA, and they are considering options to change their grading scale as well. (Realistically speaking they have already decided that they will change the scale, and it is only a question of exactly where the cutoffs between the + or - divisions fall in the new scale.)

"So what, moron?" you might ask.

I will tell you.

I know about this. I keep up with this. It's my job to know about stuff like this. I have been responsible for some or all of the applications from Fairfax County for the past 5 years. To make a conservative estimate--I have reviewed, on average, about 1,700 transcripts from Fairfax County students each year for the last 5 years-- that's at least 8,500 total.

I have probably given careful consideration to more individual Fairfax County transcripts in that period of time than anyone. (And by "anyone" I mean all people in the entire universe.)

So.... It offends me when people send me a letter or email that says "Did you know that the grading scale in Fairfax is...?" or "My GPA was recently recalculated because my county..."

Yes. It offends me. The people who have sent me these messages might as well be saying "Because you are such a tremendous idiot I need to tell you something."

In case you are wondering--I am not a tremendous idiot. I am only a minor idiot.

In case you didn't notice: the second sentence in last line was dripping and oozing with sarcasm.

If the students who are applying to JMU think that the people who decide who gets in the the university are so stupid then why do they want to come to such a place?

With that said. I am perfectly in favor of the changes Fairfax has made. I know that it won't make a big difference in admissions decisions at JMU. I don't think it will have any long-term effect on the ratio of As, Bs, and Cs that students get in Fairfax. (There may be a short-term difference, but in 3 or 4 years teachers will have adjusted what they do and how they grade so that what they currently consider to be "A" work or "B" work etc will still be "A" work or "B work etc.

Did that make sense?

I would trt to answer questions if anyone asked them.

So. Please stop treating me like I am stupid.

*By the way, I really thought hard about where to put the word "presumably" in this sentence, as well as where to put the commas. I'm not sure if thinking about it actually made it end up the way it ought to be.

I managed to fail my self-appointed task

I challenged myself to post at least once a week.

That was two weeks ago.

For those of you who know me (and, serisoulsy, if you don't know me what are you doing here?) you will understand that this is standard fare for me. Oh, well, I'll just chalk it up as another late assignment.

At work we have been making the final decisions for this year's incoming freshman class. It has felt more difficult this year than usual. I don't know why, but it has just been exhausting. I think we need to automate a lot more of our work and be smarter with technology. Unfortunately the really big gains we could get are dependent on the cooperation of others. This means that what i think would be most helpful is if we could get electronic transcript data from high schools. And a PDF doesn't count. (Nor does any kind of image--I'm talking about data that can be categorized, cataloged, reformatted, sorted, filtered, etc.) And while there isn't anyone out there trying to stop that from happening (at least not anyone I know of) I doubt that it is a high priority for the majority of people who would have to do the hard work to make it a reality.

I can dream though.

One of these days it will happen, and I will be ready.

In the meantime I think it still might be in the best interest of my office, and my university to invest in the manpower to do the data entry off of good old fashioned paper down on our end. I don't know for sure, and, while I would love to do a scientific test I am afraid that by the time there was enough informaiton to draw supportable conclusions the need to do it will have passed.

Oh well, you lose some, and you lose some.

The Beginning

So, I set up this account I don't even know how long ago, and the point was supposed to be to do some research for work on blogging. You know, it's really kind of interesting to me that I am considered the tech-savvy guy at work. I don't feel it. And that is not me pulling one of my sarcastically self-deprecating statements. I seriously don't feel like the tech guru--I think that (realistically) I am someone who is comfortable enough with what I am doing in technology realms to know how to cover my butt and make sure I don't permanently break stuff and that I can usually put things back the way I found, that is, to not make it worse.

But, you know, a blog isn't really a technology thing. (Okay, so it is. But it also isn't.) Being a blog user does not require much specialized knowledge--being a blog administrator (as I hope to be at work) probably does. I haven't really figured that out yet for certain.

I've been thinking that I could probably start a few blogs on different topics of importance/interest to me such as: my family, religion, college/university admissions, and maybe others. So. I'm going to try to make a go at it.

I challenge myself to make a post once a week on something.

So there.