I haven’t had a chance to write a post about my experiences at The Amaz!ng Meeting 4 this past weekend.  I lost my notes at the conference, but I think I’ll be able to reconstruct it well enough from memory.  It was a blast and definitely opened my mind.  Keep an eye out on the forthcoming report!

I caught this on Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy blog. Utah is moving its state even farther back into the dark ages, with a clumsy attempt to bring religion into the science classroom.

Here is Phil’s post, and here is the original article.
We’re becoming a nation of ignorant, channel surfing, couch potatos, so ignorant of science that we treat scientific theories like “That’s, like, just your opinion man!”. We’re going to be passed by another country, probably China, before I die, and it’s depressing to be watching the death spiral.

I’m going to the Amaz!ng Meeting this weekend in Vegas, where I’ll be surrounded by intelligent people and my brother. Maybe that’s what I need to get back the “faith”.

Two more West Virginia miners have died due to another accident in a coal mine. Since 1999, 234 people have died because of coal mining accidents, according to USA Today. In addition, there are no definitive studies describing the number of people who die from mining related diseases, but the US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health estimates that 1 million have a risk for Black Lung disease, 100,000 that are high risk, and 59,000 that are expected to have adverse effects. If coal mining hadn’t been around for as long as it has, would we still be doing it?

Enter nuclear power. Wired magazine has done a couple articles on nuclear power in the past year, and how advanced it has become. However, it’s been over thirty years since a nuclear power plant came online in the United States. In Europe, nuclear power plants are common, and there haven’t been any accidents. Events like Cherynobl are unlikley to happen here in this country because of the reactor design, and forget Three Mile Island. That will never happen again here.

As for spent fuel rods, Jimmy Carter made it against regulations to reuse spent fuel rods, even though they retain most of their energy. It was a clumsy attempt to discourage nuclear weapons proliferation. Nuclear waste would still be an issue, however, it’s only a problem for probably a hundred years or so. Right now, we can’t do much with it, but surely technology in the future will.

Don’t believe the “store it for 10,000 years” crowd. We will solve the nuclear waste problem at some point. Right now, we have people dieing from coal mining, we’re dependent on oil from a bunch of corrupt OPEC nation, and we pollute every time we burn coal or oil. I can’t see one logical reason anymore for not having nuclear. It’s time to kick up the research, ignore NIMBY complaints, and get some self-sufficiency.

Well, I decided today, kind of on a whim but mainly at the suggestion of my fiancee Kelly, to stop using blogger.com to drive shanebrady.com, and to instead, use the new version of Wordpress. A few hours later, and here we are. Kelly was kind enough to work up a nice looking logo for the page, as well as the background graphic.

Blogger.com is okay for quick and dirty blogs, but I was getting hemmed in when I wanted to do cool stuff for Hell Food. So even before I worked on www.shanebrady.com, Kelly and I moved my Hell Food site from Blogger.com to its own domain. All graphics done by Kelly of course. You can check out the new Hell Food here. I think it looks great and I’m even more psyched about ramping the site up.

I find there are are a couple bugs in the visual editor for WP 2.0, and I will post a full report later, along with some different options.

I’ve been away from the blogging for a few weeks, and have been busy with a number of things. I’ve been doing a lot of research for my other blog, Hell Food, and that blog is about to pick up. I have a number of articles in the queue, and I might even use a new domain. My brother has decided to finally enter the blogosphere, and you can find his blog here: Soak the Rich. I don’t know how often it will be updated, and if I’ll do a guest post or not. It did give me a chance to look at WordPress 2.0, which is outstanding. My girlfriend Kelly is thinking about starting up a new blog, with less customization than here outstanding www.kellygarbato.com. WP 2.0 will be perfect for it, as it has a new editor, a sweet new interface, and lots of comment spam feature.

I’m still wondering about doing a podcast. I just don’t know what kind of setup to use, where to host it, and if anyone would care. My skeptic podcast idea is so much an also ran. I think it’s been a year since I first thought about doing it, but other podcasts are doing a much better job. I’ve thought about doing a podcast with Kelly, since she keeps up to date on more current issues than I do, and she and I also have some basic philosophical differences. It could make good podcast.

I’ve been listening to the Erik’s Diner podcast for a while, and ever since he tried to claim his podcast was hijacked, I’m finding the podcast less and less interesting. Erik Marcus seems to have an awfully high opinion if his own arguments and critical thinking skills. Combine that with an elitist attitude, and well, you have a podcast that’s less and less interesting. Kelly would do a much better podcast on the same topics. Hmm, now that’s an idea.