What Science Has Done for Hawaii

With the current debate about the Thirty Meter Telescope raging on in and out of the real and digital world, a coworker and myself sat down to refute a sign that he saw located at the University of Hawaii at Hilo.  Located near the library is a sign that simply reads: "What has science done for Hawaii?"

This has to be one of the most infuriating statements made during this debate about the telescope.  While I realize that people are entitled to their own opinions about the placement of the new telescope, the only reason that we have such a high standard of living in this state is due to the impact of science.

Odds are, many people reading this list are only alive today thanks to the impact of science on their lives. Did you ever catch a cold? Take antibiotics? Have blood-sugar issues? Etc. Science has quite literally saved you.

I realize that not all of the protestors are against science, but we have to drop this black and white polar-opposite bullshit. You can be for the telescope and still respect Hawaiian history just as much as you can be for Hawaiian history and still love science and exploration.  The world is full of grey areas and we are sliding back to a time where we have to choose sides. This is beyond rediculuous. 

We may never live to see a time where the knowledge that we learn from such an impressive scientific instrument as the Thirty Meter Telescope is useful to our everyday lives, but how dare we not think of our children and advance science for them?

All this being said, my coworker and I sat down and came up with a quick list of what science has done for Hawaii. In no order of importance, here goes:

Diabetes Medication
Hanson's Disease - Cured
Birth Control
Better Agricultural Methods
Electricity
Plumbing
Sailing Technology
Nails
Sewer Systems
Architecture
Epidemiology
Subsidized Healthcare
Tsunami Warning Programs
Volcanology
Earthquake Safety Measures
Animal-transferred disease control
Sterilization - milk
Sterilization - medical (surgery/hospital)
Refrigeration
Travel/transit
End of life care
Cancer treatments
Internet
Lowered infant mortality rates
STI prevention and treatment
Engines and Generators
Alternative Energy
Buoys and Water Systems
Water treatment plants
Desalinization
Firefighting
Polio - Cured
Vaccines
Crop Rotation
Trash Incinerators
Bio-diesel
Weather Reports
Weather Proofing and Rust Proofing
Endangered Species Act
Diet Diversification
Telecommunications
Wire Transfers
Employment
Geology
Invasive Species Control

Hot Water

Soap

Dentistry

Mixed fabrics

Genetic Diversity 

Gunpowder

Literacy and Education

Environmental Protection

Economic Diversity

Radar and Sonar

Global Positioning System

Cartography

Printing 

Social Media

Television

Theater and Diversified Entertainment

Feel free to let me know if I missed something.

There are plenty of places on this earth and in the pacific in particular where the light of science has not reached. Visit one of those places, see how people live. I for one am quite glad that I have many things on the list from above. 

For all of you out there who are protesting the telescope, please find better arguments than the aformentioned "what has science done for hawaii" method. The only reason that the protest has gained any support outside of Hilo is soley due to science, and the only reason that many people will live to tell their grandkids about the time they protested to protect what they held dear is due solely to science.

Don't mistake your enemy, because you will lose support because of rediculuous claims. You don't want to be labeled as just anti-science protestors and thus dismissed as anti-establishment disenfranchised wash-outs of the system. 

Why Tortoises are Sociopathic Murder Machines

We had the opportunity a few months ago to take care of a pet tortoise for a few weeks.  For anyone who thinks that this is a good or cute thing, let me tell you now, it is far from that.  Tortoises seem super cute, they look like they would just putter around, making for cute pictures and taking up space in the corner of a room.  They straight-up suck at life.  They are the hell-spawn of reptiles.  Seriously.  I have no clue how something that slow can be such a terror, but what they lack in speed is made up in sheer terror inducing looks, sounds, and actions.

First off, tortoises hiss.  I never knew this.  We went into this adventure with instructions on what to feed the tortoise, how long to let it wander the yard during the day, and to just let it be by itself in the oversize dog carrier during the non-yard time.  Having a tortoise is much like having a convict in a maximum security prison.  The tortoise wants nothing more than to kill you, escape the yard, and probably wear your skin in the course of the escape.  I am pretty sure that when it was marking days on the side of the carrier and putting a poster over the hole it was slowly digging with a rock hammer.  

Yeah, sure, it looks cute.  My wife is holding it and smiling.  Something might be wrong with her.  If you got to close to the head, it would hiss violently and retract into the shell.  Too close to the other end and it might poop on you.  It also had this weird thing that it did every few days where it pooped out while calcium deposits.  No clue what the hell that meant, but yeah, pretty sure it was just possessed by Satan.  

See, the problem with tortoises is they lure you in with a false sense of calm.  They are just slow moving animals, the size of dogs, that will outlive you.  They know they will see your demise.  You know they will slowly dance on your grave.  There is no elaborate symbiosis here, just them using you for food and then hissing at you if you show any affection.  

I am betting they were both born the same year and that tortoise will probably get passed down like a suit of samurai armor.  I can only imagine when the grandson get it in some elaborate ceremony... oh the look of elation as he inherits the noble family tortoise.

Now, of course the tortoise loved to wander the yard, making hissing noises, chomping on plants, and generally terrorizing the neighborhood, but it was the cage that was the scary locale.  

It would throw what I am going to call "turtle temper tantrums" - I love a good alliteration.  

It would spend a half hour out of every few hours trying to climb the side of its cage, making horrible scratching noising and sounding like it was murdering a small animal.  It was terrifying.  It wanted out.  It needed blood.  I am so glad it did not have the ability to use thumbs and open the cage door.  

My wife thought it was cute.  She would let it wander the house.  I remember quite clearly laying on the bed and looking down towards the door.  This is what I saw.  Slowly moving down the hallway, not that dissimilar to a shark going in for the kill, was the damn tortoise.

I am not going to lie.  I stayed on the bed.  Thankfully the damn thing did not know how to climb up on the bed.  It also had a heck of a time attacking the mirror image of itself in our closet door mirror.  What a sociopath!

I swear, for the two weeks we had that damn tortoise, I thought the last thing I would see one night would be it standing over my face, about to dive in for the kill.  I did not want that creepy beak to be the last thing I ever saw.

I can only imagine it saying "nom nom nom Rico blood."

To give you a feeling of just how terrifying they can be when they attack, here is a video I shot of it munching down on some perfectly healthy and defenseless orchids.  

 .

Time-lapse movies sure make a tortoise attack a lot scarier...

Bridge Project - 2014

The Bridge Project in my geometry class of 2014 was nothing short of amazing in both the complexity of some of the designs and the overall success of the students who participated in the project.  The rules were very simple -

1. Use any materials that were provided to span a distance of 18 inches at a width of 4 inches.  

2. You could use any design that you felt would best support the weight of textbooks as they were placed in the middle.

3. A bridge was considered broken when the books hit the floor.  Bending and twisting was fine as long as the bridge survived and held the books up off the floor.  

Of course all the students started off with some simple designs and with some prodding we were able to start to incorporate some of the better geometric shapes that one would see in simple trestle style bridges.  

I warned them that there would be twists and that we would introduce rules that would either simplify or make the bridge building progress more complex depending on their ability to maneuver through the changing environment.

This project coincided with the history class learning about communism and capitalism during the cold war, so of course both the history teacher and myself decided that we had to figure out a way to separate the groups based on east/west and have them act out a bit of the Iron Curtain time period along with the differences between a simplistic capitalism and a simplistic communism style economies.

New rules were introduced.  On an arbitrary day I told the classroom that the west side was not capitalist and the east side was communist and proceeded to give the capitalist side more sticks to solidify them as my "favorite group" and started to foment a bit of discord with the differences in the economies.  I also allowed both side the ability to form "black markets" to sell items such as wood glue, foil, tape, and other construction materials to make their bridges better and stronger.  This led them to having to make a choice between a large amount of sticks "materials" or a large amount of specialty items.  Of course the currency was only in stick, and soon kids were trying to find ways to get more sticks for any little thing. 

Now it was time to work on the communist side a little bit.  The history teacher came in one day with a bag full of sticks and made an elaborate show of handing them out to only the groups that sided with him.  We had some harsh words, (in jest of course), to build more tension and then he left.  

The next history class I "air-lifted" in sticks to my groups while they were in his class.  Harsh words ensued and the mood started to feel downright nationalistic.  We then decided it was time for a propaganda campaign.  Both sides were encouraged to have their own leaders who of course were paid for their services in sticks, and also worked to create a bit of discord and spy on the opposing sides.  These groups held lunch rallies, and started taping up slogans and signs in the opposing classrooms.  

The game was on.

After a great few weeks of teaching them both how easy it was to build micro-economies and how fast one can give into nationalistic zeal, it was time to do the best part of the project.  Stack weight on the bridges until they gave way in a catastrophic failure that would get caught on slow-motion camera.

The video is about three minutes long and shows all the collapsing bridges.  The winner held an amazing 190 pounds (me standing on it).

At the end of the unit we had a bit of reflection on how they felt about the project and how the economic systems played into it.  Based on the feedback I am sure that the time period in history was much more interesting based on our cross-curricular approach.  

The Correct Way to Feed Chickens

I have no doubt that any reader of this blog has had the opportunity to throw bits of food at animals that are lower on the food chain than themselves, but feeding chickens is a form of art that is lost on many people.  I went to Samoa, thinking that I knew how to correctly feed chickens, sadly I was quite mistaken.  Not only was I throwing the food quite poorly, but I also had the audacity to make the wrong chicken noises.  Little did I know that chickens make different noises depending on their home language.  Go figure?

Well, perhaps it is easier for you to just see what happened.  I am pretty sure that I went from being a level 0 chicken feeder to a master that day.  Win for me!

Status Update: One Month In

One month of writing has gone by and I felt that it was time to take a step back and look at what worked and what did not.  So far I have written about 50 posts and had a total viewership of 2,750.  What started as a quasi-dare by my wife has grown into a bit of a monster and taken on a life of its own in my mind.  While I have recently discovered that writing can be quite fun if done about a subject that one is interested in, I am sure that I would shock any of my teachers if they were to see me producing 50 different posts in the time period of a month.  Seems like writing just took quite a bit of time to take hold in me and is now starting to come to fruition.

The good:
So far I have had a lot more viewership than I thought I would.  I started this more as an activity to vent and put memories to "paper" so to speak.  Granted I have made it public and posts that I thought were actually somewhat decent I have published to both Google+ and Facebook, but I did not expect to have so many people tell me they both enjoy my writing and read my writing on such a regular basis. 

Guess there are a lot of sarcastic assholes in the world.

The bad:
I am still working on how to make posts that have a good length and "feel" to them.  I am sure that this is different for each person, and while I am pretty sure that my "voice" is quite evident in my writing, I still need to work on the presentation.  Thankfully blogger has been a great website to start with and using the various tools on here I have learned how to embed videos, how to start my own page (the one you are now on has a different u.r.l. than the one that was started), and work on formatting to make the page cell phone friendly.

Guess I am slowly figuring out the learning curve, and with travel looming in only a few months, I should be up and running full speed to bring you my adventures during the preparation, moving, and full-time living in a new country.

Here we go!

The Most Brutal Run on Hawaii Island

The second I post this, I know I am going to get a few messages in my inbox stating that I am wrong and there are plenty of brutal runs on Hawaii Island, and there is no way that the Ka'u Coffee Run is the worst out there.  For you naysayers, shush.  My blog, my whining, my opinion.

However, feel free to email me an article stating why the particular run you did on Hawaii Island is worse and I will be more than happy to publish it on this blog.  

No, anyone who runs knows that there is nothing worse than hills, heat, and loose terrain.  The Ka'u Coffee run met this trifecta and more.  

The best part of this run is just how unprepared I was for the sheer brutality it brought - I had been training for only half-marathons on flat road surfaces.  To put this in perspective, this would be like going from swimming in a pool to jumping into the ocean and expecting to be just as fast, or perhaps to go from running on a treadmill and then thinking you were going to be an all-star at beach running.  There are certain activities within the same sport that just don't translate.  Street running to trail running is one of those things.  

Plus hills suck!

The race started out easy enough, lovely fields of coffee plants, some bushes here and there, and then when the 5k runners cut out and took a nice left back to sanity, it hit the fan.  It was straight up hill.  There was no mercy at all.  

13.1 Miles Seemingly Straight Up

I know that it would seem like it is all exaggeration, but it just kept on going from bad to worse.  There were gaps in the trail to jump, river beads to skirt, rocky hills to climb...

Fun?

Thankfully the views from the top were amazing.  Granted, at the time, I had no clue just how high up the "top" was, nor that there was a false peak.  If you have ever been hiking and thought you made it to the top of the mountain, only to see a new peak appear in front of you, you know how disheartening that can be,

Way Too Damn High

Thankfully I ten to not check out the altimeter on my running program while I am out for a run.  This is one of those times that I would have just been crushed if I was in the habit of looking.  Thank God I avoided that.

Up and Up

My favorite is that last damn bump right before the finish line.  What sort of sadomasochistic person designed this course?  Was that first climb not enough?  How about the second and third?  Of course not.  They decided that they just had to add one more horrific experience to finish off what was bound to be a long and sore day.  God only knows how I did not turn an ankle or die.  

Still My Favorite Run Shirt

Starbucks in Waimea

During the course of writing a blog post I had the opportunity to watch humanity while sitting outside a Starbucks in Waimea.

There will not be pictures as this is a small island and I have no desire to get my ass kicked.

The following observations are totally and completely judgmental because I am an asshole.  There is no point in trying to deny my ways, so sit back and enjoy.

The first person of interest would have to be the very blonde white lady who is wearing a see-through dress and is giving out relationship advice and bragging about her uncle who runs a business.  I am very happy for her placement in society, but also have no need to see her thong.  Thanks for that random white lady.  By the way, if you have been divorced three times you might not want to give out relationship advice.  She also has super-human intuition and her friends follow her blindly.  It must be difficult being so perfect.

The second will get to be a group of teenagers who are wasting time and pretty much wasting air-space near me.  Thanks for your extremely stupid conversation that has made me dumber just by being in your vicinity.  I am starting to think that teenagers should be banned from public locations for reasons of supporting public health and morale.

The third amazing people watching observation would have to be the people on their way to a wedding, possibly the bride and groom in a rental car running in to get coffee.  I have been there and done that.  You will need a lot more coffee.  Trust me.  Also, way to hold open the door for her buddy.  Nothing says classy like holding open the door while holding a soy latte add-shot caramel walled frappuchino.  You win.

The fourth person that got to observe was the guy who was coming down from drugs and wanted to sit at my table with me while I wrote.  He had to be the most pleasant person of the day.  Thankfully he also did not try to hang around too long, as he had to go off and smoke a cigarette.  I would take a drug addict over teenagers any day of the week.

Last group - the teenage girl towing a guy around with her.  Hand holding is cute, but if you are dragging the guy around, he probably does not want to be holding hands with you.  Just so you know, if he wants to be with you at that point, he will be keeping pace.

God, I love Starbucks and being judgmental.  Something about sitting on a laptop, belittling my fellow humans while sipping a black coffee just makes me feel like a better person.  Yeah, pretty sure I am a horrible person, but we all secretly love to do this.  At least I am honest about it.