Monthly Archives: April 2004

Technology, Google, Aliens, Dictators, and Proliferous Links

To sum it up: OpenOffice works better than PowerPoint, Microsoft finally clued in to the open source initiative, and Hell froze over and pigs flew (see the April 7th entry in this link entitled “Runway clear for takeoff”). Okay, so I’m a little behind in catching this stuff, but it’s still noteworthy. Isn’t technology just cool?

Oh, and Google might finally be filing for an IPO (after how long…?)

Well, err, none of that really impacts my personal life. My girlfriend surprised me with a visit this weekend; swore she was going up to Bellingham but came down here instead. One of my good friends came over, and we ended up watching Alien and Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, filmed in 1940.

Anyone else noticed my propensity to link proliferously in this blog so far..? :)

TESC Student Governance

For those who don’t know, I attend The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. There’s been a big movement on campus lately to create a student governance system — for reasons unknown, a college well-known for being liberal and having opinions about everything has never had one.

I do support this movement, but I’d just like to say that I urge caution. There seems to be a propensity for completely misrepresenting the movement; to think that we can affect anything but policy by doing this is just plain dumb (and misleading, besides). We, as students, have been quiet for a long time regarding having a voice in things around here, and my belief is that suddenly being very loud will simply make the administration not want to listen. Small steps.

Hydrogen in California

In California, Governor Schwarzenegger issued Executive Order S-7-04 on April 20, establishing a California Hydrogen Highways Network. It’s been reasonably well known since the Governor took office that he would be big on environmental issues (the clue was his conversion of his Hummer to hydrogen fuel, not to mention that it was a campaign pledge), but is this too big of a leap?

Hybrid gas/electric cars are all the rage at the moment (my particular favorite is the Toyota Prius 2004, highly rated by Consumer Reports, though the Honda Civic Hybrid is also very interesting). Hydrogen, however, has some concerns, such as reliability, accessibility, and safety (specifically, some concerns I seem to remember reading about surrounding the volatility of hydrogen causing highly inconvenient explosions — I could be wrong). Oh — not to mention cost issues. In fact, there was a story by Reuters in March of last year that suggests that hybrids are far more efficient in the long run.

The Governor has taken the first step to help the infrastructure of possible hydrogen-based transportation; the question in my mind: is this a waste of time and money?

An Introduction

Yay! First entry in a new blog!

So, for those who don’t know me, my name’s Peter. I’ll use this space mostly for my own random thoughts, ideas, discussions, and whatnot — think of it as a creative space and a place where I will work out ideas and thoughts, with the added benefit of an audience.

I make no assurances as to whether this will be kept up-to-date or not; this is another attempt at blogging in the hopes that it works out better the second time than it did the first.

Want to find out a little bit about me? Check out Apeiron: Systematic Expansion.