Kevin D. Hendricks

We’ve been having air quality alerts in the Twin Cities for the past several days. I don’t entirely understand it, but it has something to do with the weather not blowing our smog away like it usually does. Something to do with the temperature, the wind, etc.

So let me get this straight: The air quality in the Twin Cities is normally so bad that we’d be having pollution warnings all the time? Our only saving grace is that the weather blows our dangerous, polluted air somewhere else? Yikes.

There can only be so much diffusion of polluted air to “somewhere” else before we’re all staying indoors. Seems to me we should be thinking about ways to cut down on the pollution, rather than just hoping the weather will save our neck.

The Muppets’ Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and his assistant Beaker trounced Dr. Spock from Star Trek, Dr. Emmett Brown from Back to the Future and Q from James Bond to be voted Britain’s favorite screen scientists. The explosive pair won by a 2-to-1 margin, defeating Spock in second place and The Doctor from Dr. Who.

“They are accessible, humorous and occasionally blow each other up,” said Roland Jackson, of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BA).

“They’re the kind of scientists you would like to be but never quite dared to,” said Alan Slater, a scientist at the University of Exeter in southwestern England.

Intriguing account of Elena’s motorcycle rides through the dead zone left in the wake of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. (link via Kottke)

Of course during the State of the Union address that I just so eloquently blabbered about, I was reading about Mars. As you probably know, U.S. President George W. Bush gave this sweeping vision for a manned-mission to Mars. He basically proposed junking current NASA missions that involve things like the lame-o space station (what does that thing do anyway?) and robotic exploration, in favor of expensive, dangerous, and headline-grabbing adventurous manned exploration.

It’s a pretty bold vision, it costs a lot of money, and who knows if it’s going to happen. But either way you come down on the issue, I find it incredibly fascinating to think about.

Time gives an overview of the proposed mission, including an overview of how possible moon missions fit in, how Bush plans to pay for it, and an opinion piece about why we shouldn’t go to Mars.

The whole Mars discussion has prompted all sorts of out-there thinking, including proponents of a one-way mission to Mars and thoughts about what we might do on Mars (like use plutonium to heat the atmosphere to more human-friendly temperatures).

Despite how out-there it might be, I love all the sci-fi theorizing. What would a colony on Mars look like? What would they do? Is it just a bunch of boring scientific experiments, or would they actually be mining minerals and things of use. Would Mars become a scientific mecca, or another example of humans mucking up nature (or would our pollution efforts finally meet their match — a planet so inhospitable a little bit of carbon monoxide won’t make any difference)?

It’s especially interesting to compare all the challenges and dangers of space exploration to early exploration on our own planet. Sure, Arctic expeditions are dangerous, but at least you don’t have to bring your own oxygen.

Today I read an article about the world coming to an end. Well, not really. At least an article talking about environmental gloom and doom. It basically said if the entire world consumed the volume of natural resources as the average American than we’d need to colonize two planets to be able to sustain that sort of lifestyle.

Whoa.

That’s what part of me says. The other part says that scientists have been predicting an apocalyptic environmental future since the 1970s. Of course this article was using 1970 as a baseline, and judged environmental decline since then. To be blunt, we ain’t doin’ so hot. But then again it seems like we should know that. There’s so many people in the world, and there’s only so many square miles of earth. And there’s only so many square miles of hospitable earth. It only makes sense that if population growth continues, eventually the number of people will out-pace the number of square miles, and eventually the number of acres, and if it really got out of hand, the number of square feet. Then we’d really be in a pickle.

It just seems like we could be smart and be a little more conscious of the resources we use. But I suppose that’s not the American way.

When you turn on the faucet, where does the water come from? When you flush the toilet, where does everything go? When you plug something into the outlet, where does the electricity come from. When you buy an cereal at the grocery store, where does those oh’s come from?

We’re a little disconnected nowadays. We don’t even realize what’s under all the asphalt and concrete. We grow grass and think it’s natural. We let fumes escape into the air and don’t think about where they go or what they do. We eat foods with all sorts of chemicals and never bother to think if it’s okay. We poor chemicals onto our lawns and then sit the kids free to think, never pausing to think what’s seeping into our water.

I don’t mean to be an alarmist. I’m not much of a tree hugger. But these odd little inconsistencies worry me. What would happen if one day power didn’t come from the outlet? What if water didn’t come from the tap? What if the grocery store ran out of everything? Would we even know what to do?

We’re so modernized and technified that we’re completely clueless.

Strange world.

Why is it so difficult to care about the environment? You’d think we’d realize that protecting our natural resources and keeping the planet from going belly up would be important. But I guess it’s not that surprising. Do you have any idea how dislocated the average the American is from nature? Not only do we spend most of our time treading on asphalt or concrete (or at best a harsh, one-species dominated ecosystem–the closest thing to a dead ecosystem–your lawn) but we’re completely disconnected from the food chain. Most people probably think the food chain is a long line of people at the grocery store. We buy so much packaged, frozen, precooked, processed food it just as well be pre-eaten. Why don’t we just get calorie injections and forgo the whole eating thing altogether?