tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244080452024-03-12T21:51:06.677-04:00TravelogueMikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05010216520005985436noreply@blogger.comBlogger41125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24408045.post-14961163070142438722010-09-14T14:27:00.002-04:002010-09-14T14:37:57.142-04:00On Water Grand Canyon River Trips (Events Around Arizona)This is the cat's meow as far as Southwestern river trips are concerned, offering adventure, exploration, and discovery. You travel though time on this stretch of the Colorado River, back a billion or so years into prehistory. You can touch and climb rocks millions of years old and visit prehistoric Indian sites. Watch for the wildlife such as bighorn sheep, deer, birds, and reptiles, along with contrasts in vegetation, from desert cacti on precipitous canyon slopes to cottonwoods and thirsty ferns near waterfalls. Retrace the steps of explorers and challenge the rapids.<br /><br />Just about all the <a href="http://www.arizonalodgingexperts.com/#thingstodo">arizona vacation experts</a> agree that the best times of year for the Grand Canyon are April, May, September and October. Be aware that on partial canyon trips, put-in or take-out will require hiking a 5,000-foot-deep trail. Sometimes arrangements can be made for mule-back transportation and there are several guided trips offering helicopter transportation. To facilitate cooperative scheduling, arrangements should be made through your outfitter<br /><br />Only concessionaires licensed by the National Park Service are allowed to run trips through the canyon. A number of tour operators offer Grand Canyon trips, but these are operated through licensed <a href="http://www.arizonalodgingexperts.com/">arizona lodging experts</a>.<br /><br />It probably pays to shop around for the trip that best suits your interests. Outfitted trips are run in paddle- or oar-powered rafts, motorized rafts, and wooden dories. Their duration ranges from day-trips to three-week expeditions.<br /><br />The main boat launching area for Grand Canyon river trips is at Lees Ferry, northeast of the National Park. The boat ramp there also provides access to the trophy rainbow trout fishing waters between Lees Ferry and the Glen Canyon Dam.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.arizonalodgingexperts.com/events.php">events around arizona</a><br /><br />For additional information or reservations for any Grand Canyon river trips, contact the River Subdistrict Office, Grand Canyon National Park, PO Box 129, Grand Canyon, AZ 86023.<br /><br />Rivers & Oceans, PO Box 40321, Flagstaff, AZ 86004, Tel. 520/525-4575 520/525-4575 or 800/473-4576 800/473-4576 , is also a central reservation office for Grand Canyon river trips.<br /><br />For experienced river runners, it is possible to create your own private river trip through the canyon, but start planning early. There is quite a bit of Park Service bureaucracy to wade through for the appropriate permit, and the current wait for private permits is six to eight years. For information, phone the River Permits office, Tel. 520/638-7843 520/638-7843 .<br /><br />The following outfitters offer a variety of river running options through the Grand Canyon:<br /><br />O.A.R.S. Inc., Box 67, Angel's Camp, CA 95222, 209/736-4677 209/736-4677 , fax 209/736-2902, runs five- to 15-day river trips from April to October in wooden dories, oar-powered rafts, paddle-boats, or inflatable kayaks.<br /><br />Colorado River & Trail Expeditions, PO Box 57575, Salt Lake City, UT 84157-0575, Tel. 801/261-1789 801/261-1789 or 800/253-7328 800/253-7328 , fax 801/268-1193, offers rowing through the canyon in April or August and motorized trips of four, six, or nine days from May to September. All trips include opportunities for off-river hiking explorations.<br /><br />ARAs Wilderness River Adventures, PO Box 717, Page, AZ 86040, Tel. 520/645-3296 520/645-3296 or 800/992-8022 800/992-8022 , offers motorized and oar-powered trips through the canyon. Itineraries include four- or six-day trips from Lees Ferry to Phantom Ranch, five or seven days from Phantom Ranch to Bar 10 Ranch, or seven or 14 days from Lees Ferry to Bar 10 Ranch. Also available are one-day float trips from Glen Canyon Dam to Lees Ferry. Customized trips and charters are also offered.<br /><br />Arizona Raft Adventures, 4050 East Huntington Drive, Flagstaff, AZ 86004, Tel. 520/526-8200 520/526-8200 or 800/786-7238 800/786-7238 , fax 520/526-8246, runs river trips with participant involvement in rowing and paddling. The trips include hiking, swimming the small rapids, helping in the kitchen, learning the natural history, or flat-out relaxing; you can do as much or as little as you want. Trips scheduled from April to October begin and end in Flagstaff and include eight-day itineraries in motorized rafts, or six- to 14-day trips with a choice of vessels.<br /><br />Special interest excursions include a Natural History Lab trip, emphasizing geology, origins, botany, climate, and environmental impacts of the Glen Canyon Dam. Also offered are professional seminars and psychologist-led outdoor retreats. Two- to six-day trips are offered from April to September on the San Juan River in Utah. Customized special interest trips may be arranged for groups of 16 or more.<br /><br />Grand Canyon Dories, PO Box 216, Altaville, CA 95221, 209/736-0805 209/736-0805 , runs river trips in dories, a compartmentalized, rough-water, motorless boat made of aluminum, fiberglass, or marine plywood. These vessels ride higher and drier than rafts, don't bend or buckle in the waves, and don't get soft when it's cold. A guide travels in each boat, but you can take the oars and learn to run the rapids. Another option is to test your skill in a two-person inflatable kayak.<br /><br />Groups are limited to a maximum of 20 people per trip. If you're seeking a longer, slower, quieter voyage, as compared with other Grand Canyon river trips, with time to observe, understand and savor the canyon from the water and the land, this is for you. A 277-mile trip takes 16 days. Five- to 11-day trips are also offered from Lees Ferry or Phantom Ranch. You do need to hike in or out of the canyon or arrange for mule-back transportation to participate on a shorter trip. Full-length trips start and end in Flagstaff. Also available: Grand Canyon rafting trips of six, eight or 13 days; six-day trips in June through Desolation and Gray Canyons on the Green River; nine-day trips in June on the Colorado River through Canyonlands National Park; eight-day trips on the San Juan River in May or June.<br /><br />A 47-day trip retracing the complete voyage of John Wesley Powell is offered from Green River, Wyoming to the Virgin River arm of Lake Mead, in Nevada. The Powell trip is divided into four portions of eight, 10, 12 and 17 days that may be taken separately.<br /><br />Grand Canyon Expeditions, PO Box 0, Kanab, UT 87471, Tel. 801/644-2691 801/644-2691 or 800/544-2691 800/544-2691 , fax 801/644-2699, runs the entire 277-mile length of the Grand Canyon from April to September on eight-day motorized or 14-day oar-powered dory and raft trips. Trips emphasize comfort and safety in negotiating nearly 200 rapids while passing through one of the earth's most spectacular geological exhibits. They've had 25 years to perfect their skills while running specialized trips for the National Geographic Society, Smithsonian Institution, and Cinemax, among others. Scheduled special interest trips highlight canyon history, geology, photography, ecology, archaeology, and astronomy. Trips include round-trip transportation from Las Vegas, sleeping bags and pads, ground cloth and rain shelter, waterproof river bags for sleeping gear, cameras and personal items, all meals on the river, cold beer, soft drinks, wine or champagne with evening meals, and ice is available throughout the trip. Customized charters are available.<br /><br />Outdoors Unlimited, 6900 Townsend-Winona Road, Flagstaff, AZ 86004, Tel. 520/525-9834 520/525-9834 or 800/637-7238 800/637-7238 , runs trips from May to October in oar- or paddle-powered boats that hold five to six passengers and a guide. Itineraries include 12-day trips from Lees Ferry to Lake Mead, five-day trips from Lees Ferry to Phantom Ranch, and eight-day trips from Phantom Ranch to Lake Mead. Trips starting at Lees Ferry include overnight accommodations at Marble Canyon. Trips ending at Lake Mead include shuttle service to Las Vegas.<br /><br />Western River Expeditions, 7258 Racquet Club Drive, Salt Lake City, UT 84121, Tel. 801/942-6669 801/942-6669 or 800/453-7450 800/453-7450 , fax 801/942-8514, offers six-day motorized trips through the Upper Grand Canyon, or three- and four-day trips in the Lower Grand Canyon, including helicopter transfers to or from the Colorado River below Lava Falls. Once a year they run a 12-day rowing trip. Trips are scheduled May to September.<br /><br />Museum of Northern Arizona Ventures, Route 4, Box 720, Flagstaff, AZ 86001, Tel. 520/774-5211 520/774-5211 , runs Grand Canyon rafting trips.<br /><br />American River Touring Association, 24000 Casa Loma Road, Groveland, CA 95321, 209/962-7873 209/962-7873 or 800/323-2782 800/323-2782 , runs six-to 13-day Grand Canyon raft trips.<br /><br />Arizona River Runners, Box 47788, Phoenix, AZ 85068-7788, 602/867-4866 602/867-4866 or 800/477-7238 800/477-7238 , runs three- to eight-day Grand Canyon rafting trips.<br /><br />Canyoneers, Inc., Box 2997, Flagstaff, AZ 86003, Tel. 520/526-0924 520/526-0924 or 800/525-0924 800/525-0924 , runs two- to 14-day Grand Canyon trips in motorized rafts or rowboats. Seven-day, six-night trips in powered pontoon boats cover the whole 277 miles from Lees Ferry to Pierce Ferry. Two-day, two-night trips in the same motorized vessels cover 89 miles from Lees Ferry to Bright Angel Beach, near Phantom Ranch. A 14-day, 13-night paddle-powered trip covers 225 miles from Lees Ferry to Pierce Ferry and includes round-trip transportation from Flagstaff.<br /><br />Canyoneers also operates the Kaibab Lodge on AZ 67 north of the North Rim. Among a variety of tours they offer are winter cross-country ski trips.<br /><br />Canyon Explorations, Box 310, Flagstaff, AZ 86002, 800/654-0723 800/654-0723 , runs six- to 15-day Grand Canyon raft trips.<br /><br />Diamond River Adventures, Box 1316, Page, AZ 86040, Tel. 520/645-8866 520/645-8866 or 800/343-3121 800/343-3121 , runs four- to 12-day motorized and oar-powered river trips through the Grand Canyon.<br /><br />Expeditions, Inc., RR 4, Box 755, Flagstaff, AZ 86001, Tel. 520/774-8176 520/774-8176 or Tel. 602/779-3769 602/779-3769 , runs five- to 18-day Grand Canyon river trips. Five- to six-day trips cover 87 miles and entail a nine-mile hike out of the canyon at the end. Eight- to nine-day trips cover the second portion of the Grand Canyon for 139 miles and require a seven-mile hike to the put-in spot. Twelve- to 18-day trips cover 226 miles on the river<br /><br />Trips are in oar-powered rafts with options available for those who prefer paddle boats or kayaks. All trips include leisure time and hiking time for exploring side canyons. Also included is transportation from Flagstaff to Lees Ferry or the Grand Canyon, depending on the put-in point. Return transportation from Diamond Creek is provided at the end of the full Grand Canyon trip to Flagstaff. All trips include a sleeping bag and foam pad, vehicle and valuables storage at a Flagstaff warehouse, all meals, plus hotel and motel pick-up in Flagstaff.<br /><br />Complete outfitting services, tent and pack rentals, and shuttle services for vehicles to the South Rim or Diamond Creek are available. Customized trips for special interests, such as kayaking clinics, management training seminars, art and photography workshops, and experiential education programs are also offered.<br /><br />Georgia's Royal River Rats, Box 12057, Las Vegas, NV 89112, 702/798-0602 702/798-0602 , runs three- to eight-day Grand Canyon river trips.<br /><br />Moki Mac River Expeditions, Box 21242, Salt Lake City, UT 84121, Tel. 801/268-6667 801/268-6667 or 800/268-6667 800/268-6667 , runs six- to 14-day Grand Canyon oar-powered raft trips, or eight-day motorized raft trips.<br /><br />Sleight Expeditions, Box 40, St. George, UT 84770, Tel. 801/673-1200 801/673-1200 , offers five- to 12-day Grand Canyon raft trips.<br /><br />Ted Hatch River Expeditions, Box 1200, Vernal, UT 84078, 801/789-3813 801/789-3813 , or 800/433-8966 800/433-8966 , offers seven-day Grand Canyon rafting trips.<br /><br />Tours West, Inc., Box 333, Orem, UT 84059, Tel. 801/225-0755 801/225-0755 or 800/453-9107 800/453-9107 , offers three- to 12-day Grand Canyon rafting trips.<br /><br />Wild & Scenic, Inc., Box 460, Flagstaff, AZ 86002, Tel. 520/774-7343 520/774-7343 , or 800/231-1963 800/231-1963 , runs trips of a half-day to 13 days in rafts or sportyaks on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon.<br /><br />Hualapai Tribal River Trips & Tours, PO Box 246, Peach Springs, AZ 84634, Tel. 520/769-2219 520/769-2219 or Tel. 602/769-2210 602/769-2210 , runs one-or two-day raft trips from Diamond Creek on the Colorado to Pearce Ferry on Lake Mead. Two-day trips include one day of rapids.<br /><br />If the number of rafting tour operators on the Grand Canyon seems daunting, a one-stop free booking service known as River Travel Center, 800/882-RAFT, represents 16 Grand Canyon river outfitters with three- to 18-day itineraries in oar, paddle or motor rafts. The service can provide information, brochures and confirm reservations for a variety of departure dates. Also available: Utah river trips.<br /><br />The national park's River Permit Office (520/638-7843 520/638-7843 ) can provide a complete list of licensed river concessionaires.Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05010216520005985436noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24408045.post-50566338510488675602009-08-20T13:07:00.002-04:002009-08-20T13:15:57.712-04:00Smart Investors Hire Attorneys Before Buying in MexicoBeachfront property and investment opportunities continue drawing American real estate buyers, mining companies and utility firms to Mexico.<br /><br />But novices, unaware of local business practices and pitfalls, run the risk of getting caught up in a bad deal or a legal tangle.<br /><br />Smart investors hire an attorney to review the soundness of a transaction before signing on the dotted line. Now, a cross-border company is helping businesses and individuals navigate their way -- legally -- through Mexican ventures.<br /><br />"Nobody is looking out for the buyer (or investor) here in Mexico," said John C. Buette, END OF PAGE president of Icon Land Services Inc., which has offices in Tucson and Hermosillo. "We're trying to take care of the buyer."<br /><br />Icon bills itself as an "intercontinental property acquisitions and marketing" firm that specializes in serving mining, comunications and utility companies seeking to operate in Mexico. Real estate transactions for individual homeowners and commercial clients is another specialty.<br /><br />Buette, whose background is in negotiating land agreements for mining companies, manages the Tucson office. His partner, Ernesto Elias Elizondo, a bilingual Mexican attorney experienced in serving for eign clients in commercial and real estate transactions, runs the Hermosillo office.<br /><br />Recently, Elias was hired by a group of Americans with vacation homes in the <a href="http://www.realtyexecsmexico.com/">playa encanto real estate</a> in <a href="http://www.realtyexecsmexico.com/">las conchas rocky point</a> to help them secure legal property rights.<br /><br />Some of the homeowners "had been trying for 20 years to get land rights" only to find themselves mired in legal disputes and bureaucratic obstacles, said Al Ciasca, a Tucson resident who is the Playa Encanto Homeowners Association president. "Ernesto Elias made it possible for us to get through all the red tape."<br /><br />Icon performed the tasks required for each homeowner to obtain a bank trust, the legal agreements that allows non-Mexican citizens to <a href="http://www.realtyexecsmexico.com/">hold encanto beach</a> front property in Mexico.<br /><br />"I wouldn't know where to begin if I had to do this. They are qualified and geared up to provide the service," Ciasca said.<br /><br />According to Buette, it's frustration with a lack of understanding of the Mexican way of doing business that leads many clients to Icon.<br /><br />"There's a lot of people closing deals without doing 80 percent of what needs to be done and then they get into a mess and end up calling an attorney to say `fix this,' " he said.<br /><br />Ideally, Icon hopes clients will seek their services at the outset.<br /><br />Teck Resources, a U.S. subsidiary of a large Canadian mining company, has begun relying on Icon to secure the permits needed to extract precious metals and minerals from several mines in northern Mexico.<br /><br />"Everything is done according to U.S. or Canadian standards as opposed to hit or miss with no follow through," said John Lunceford, regional manager for Teckin Northern Mexico. By working through Icon, Teck Resources found there was "not a lot of wasted time, effort and money."<br /><br />The services offered by Icon cover a wide spectrum including setting up corporations, title searches, property appraisals, negotiating land rights, surveying property, digital mapping, aerial photography, acquiring enviromental permits and water rights.<br /><br />Beyond the technological and legal services, Icon principals also help bridge the cultural gap between their clients and Mexican partners or officials.<br /><br />Meetings with clients can be conducted in English or Spanish, as the client prefers, and copies of contracts and key documents translated into English are also offered.Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05010216520005985436noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24408045.post-62394165563608992762009-05-28T03:36:00.003-04:002009-05-28T03:49:01.772-04:00Should Every Day Be Dress Down #3When Paine conceived The Delahaye Group 10 years ago, she wanted to include the good features of all the places she'd worked. One of these was the dress code -- or more precisely, the lack of one. She doesn't need a dress-down Friday. At Delahaye, it's dress-down all year long.<br /><br />Delahaye is a reputation-measuring company. "We provide quantitative and qualitative research around corporate reputations. We measure the effects of what PR agencies do. The short version is that we're image consultants."<br /><br />Paine's policy, in an overnight bag: "We wear whatever we can be most productive in. For some, that's a dress or suit, and for others it might he shorts and a T-shirt."<br /><br />Paine expects her staffers to use their judgment, and, she says, they do. "When we know there's a client coming in, it's dress-up day." But there isn't a lot of drop-in trade at Delahaye. "We usually know when a client is coming."<br /><br />So far, no one has taken advantage of Paine's laissez-faire policy. She credits employees' common sense. "It's downtown Portsmouth -- nobody is going to show up in a bikini. But we're all grown-ups here. If someone was inappropriately dressed for a business meeting off-site, I might say something. But it hasn't happened."<br /><br />Delahaye now has 52 staffers in-house. Most opt for comfort, and outfits range from business casual to jeans and sweats. "Five or six still dress up, and they're all women. The guys are more casual," she says.<br /><br />Banks and other financial institutions are Delahaye's polar opposite. Maureen Donovan, human resources director for Bank of NH, Manchester, says the company has a dress code, and it's dressier than most.<br /><br />"We still prefer the more formal business attire," Donovan says. This means skirt suits for women, or possibly an upscale pantsuit. Men must wear ties and jackets when in the public eye; in the privacy of their offices, they can ditch the jacket, but the tie stays.<br /><br />There is no regular "dress-down Friday." Staff members may dress in casual clothes occasionally, for special promotions or holidays. But formal is normal for the 85 employees in the bank's main Manchester office.<br /><br />Donovan adds, though, that even bank attire has changed with the times. "It hasn't changed dramatically, but what's acceptable has loosened up a little."<br /><br />For example, women don't have to wear suits all the time. What is Donovan wearing? She practices what she preaches.<br /><br />"Today I'm in a dressy dress, with a jacket and scarf."<br /><br />Other companies also prefer the older formal style of dress. Steve Griffin, vice-president of Isaacson Steel in Berlin, says his company opts for traditional business attire four days a week. "The account and administrative departments meet with the public every day. It's expected."<br /><br />He and the other male staffers wear coats and ties; for the women, skirts are in order.<br /><br />But Isaacson's staff can romp through a casual day every Friday. It's corporate casual, which means no jeans. "I get to take the tie off," Griffin says. "It's not as stuffy, but it's not grubby, either."<br /><br />"Casual Friday" came into being in June 1995. "The president and I got tired of wearing ties. There was a `stuffiness cloud' over our heads."<br /><br />Isaacson's professionals try to schedule client meetings Monday through Thursday, and save Friday for a catch-up day. It's Thursday afternoon, and Griffin is wearing a white shirt, blue slacks and a blue "teardrop" tie. "There's a sport coat on my coat rack."<br /><br />Will "business casual" replace traditional business dress? Griffin enjoys it, but he hopes not. "The `uniform' of the '70s went too far. Everybody looked like a banker. But if you dress too casually, your mind-set will be too casual toward your work. For some reason, I have to have a coat and tie on most of the time. It's something between my ears, I guess."<br /><br />But PSNN's Murray believes business casual represents a "loosening up of society, of how we communicate. A shirt and tie doesn't necessarily demonstrate your expertise and abilities. But an appropriate level of dress is a reflection of the company in the eyes of the customer."<br /><br />Whatever your sartorial style, there's a company out there for you. And if it's an unstructured dress policy, like Paine's, there's an unexpected side benefit. "You can tell when people come to the last of their clean laundry," Paine says. "The fancier clothes are all they have left."Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05010216520005985436noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24408045.post-61863737413671828202009-05-27T16:22:00.003-04:002009-05-28T03:45:15.383-04:00Should Every Day Be Dress Down #2Forbidden footwear includes sandals, flip flops, clogs, athletic shoes of any kind, work boots or hiking boots. Casual <a href="http://www.thewalkingcompany.com/Common/sitesearch.aspx?criteria=All&text=walking&pagetag=All">walking shoes</a> and flat shoes/loafers are acceptable.<br /><br />What is he wearing on a September Monday? "Oxford <a href="http://www.thewalkingcompany.com/Common/SiteSearchViewAll.aspx?criteria=All&text=comfort&pagetag=All&SizeID=0&Sizename=">comfort shoes</a>, navy blue slacks, a striped Oxford shirt" and no tie.<br /><br />"Casual dress days" are becoming quite prevalent around the Granite State, according to a recent survey by the NH affiliate of the National Human Resources Association. Of the companies responding to the survey (mostly manufacturing/distribution firms) 83 percent have designated casual days, although only about one-third have a written policy. Just over 80 percent permitted denim jeans at work, and all permitted open-toed shoes in areas where safety is not a concern.<br /><br />Business casual is also the year-round policy at Public Service of New Hampshire, according to Martin Murray, a spokesman from the Manchester headquarters. PSNH follows the dress code of its Connecticut parent company, Northeast Utilities.<br /><br />PSNH formerly had a "casual Friday" and dressed up the rest of the week. One summer the company tried the casual mode day-by-day. After Labor Day, Murray says, a corporate decision was made to keep "casual" 12 months a year.<br /><br />But the policy isn't as detailed as Associated Grocers'. "The employee is asked to use his/her best judgment to select appropriate attire for his or her job," Murray says. However, "it's strongly suggested that jeans, shorts, T-shirts and sneakers are not appropriate. But the onus is on the employee."<br /><br />Murray cites two of those advantages. First, casual business dress is less expensive than traditional office wear. "I know I kept one dry cleaner in business by myself. Now my dry cleaning bill has gone down."<br /><br />And people have told him they're more comfortable in the casual attire, and this makes it easier for them to do their jobs.<br /><br />What is Murray wearing as he talks to a visitor? "I have on a golf shirt and pants -- I think they're Dockers, but I can't see the label. They're not khakis, because they're black. And my <a href="http://www.thewalkingcompany.com/Common/sitesearch.aspx?criteria=All&text=dress&pagetag=All">comfortable dress shoes</a> are interesting --they're those lace-up things from Timberland. They're like a short boot."Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05010216520005985436noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24408045.post-28734595842548691332009-05-26T15:33:00.001-04:002009-05-28T03:39:21.828-04:00Should Every Day Be Dress Down #1The Do's and Dont's of business fashion are changing.<br /><br />Robert Molloy was very clear in the first edition of his bestseller "Dress for Success." Never wear brown. Women should wear suits, not dresses, and certainly not pants. Forget dangling earrings, colored nail polish and colored nylons. Men with an eye for the fast track should only wear blue, light gray or charcoal gray suits. No one ever heard of corporate casual.<br /><br />Now the dress debate is not suit versus sports coat, but how far down is "dress down"?<br /><br />When Katharine Delahaye Paine, owner of The Delahaye Group, Portsmouth, worked in California's Silicon Valley, she found "casual dress" took on a new meaning. "My ax-husband was actually asked to wear ties less often. It's much less formal than the East Coast."<br /><br />But the East is catching up. When Molloy wrote his first primer in the 1970s, many professionals scrambled to acquire the "correct" office look for the upward climb. But the robot look eventually lost its charm, and now '90s companies are striving to find a middle ground between comfort and the image they hope to present.<br /><br />Norm Turcotte, CEO of Associated Grocers, Manchester, chuckles a bit when asked about his company's experience with "dress down" Fridays. "The results were, by and large, pretty good ... with some notable exceptions" because some employees' definitions of dress down were "vastly different" than others.<br /><br />Rather than scrap the whole dress down idea, however, an employee committee recommended a policy of "business casual" all year round --and the dress down days were dropped.<br /><br />AG's 150 office workers now have a detailed five-page dress code to guide them as they shop for work attire. On the "do" list: polo shirts, Oxford shirts, sweaters/cardigans, blazers/sport coats, casual pants such as Dockers, business skirts no shorter than four inches above the knee, and tailored dress shorts for women, worn with tights or nylons. Ties are optional.<br /><br />On the "don't" list: T-shirts, flannel shirts, sweatshirts and tank tops unless covered. Stirrup pants and leggings are out, and shorts for men are verboten. Denim of any sort, top or bottom, has been relegated to home and garden to Turcotte's dismay, who laments that he can't wear his favorite Ralph Lauren denim shirt to the office.<br /><br />The "denim issue" apparently generated heated discussion among the committee members. But, while he wishes he could work in his favorite shirt, Turcotte says the committee pondered the wide variety of denim clothing today -- from pricey, tailored designer jeans to someone's favorite well-worn holey relics from college -- and decided to nix the whole fabric. And he agrees.Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05010216520005985436noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24408045.post-9341262631710758702009-05-16T16:13:00.000-04:002009-05-28T04:24:47.900-04:00Left Brain, Right Brain. Game Review<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000V6I7TE?ie=UTF8&tag=kidgamblo-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B000V6I7TE"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 337px; height: 307px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Dn7EMLeE3gc/Sh5Jlp9zRwI/AAAAAAAAABM/PcWzI4MsHXs/s400/Left-Brain-Right-Brain-Game.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5340787119377041154" border="0" /></a>A better title, "Left Handed, Right Handed", this unusual title asks you to compare the fine motor abilities of your left and right hands, by doing identical tasks with both, and then comparing the scores. To put it another way, it measures your ambidexterity. To play the game, you turn the Nintendo DS on its side, book style, to test your ambidexterity -- in other words, the fine motor skills that you have in your right hand vs. your left hand. Note that this isn't a game per se. Like Brain Age, it is more of a collection of fine motor drills -- some fun and some more like work.<br /><br />There are 15 mini-games that start with asking you to touch a moving box, first with one hand, and then the other (you turn the DS 180 degrees). After you do the same task with both hands, the computer tells you your percent correct on both sides of your body.<br /><br />The idea is that you can work to exercise your least dominant hand in order to become stronger. Other activities ask you to connect dots, flick moving asteroids from hitting the Earth, play a game of whack-a-mole, and move a dot through a maze. This latter activity replays your prior performance, and challenges to you beat yourself. Or, you can race against another player using the DS wireless play mode. So does it work? If nothing else, it is an interesting example of creative design, measurement and assessment, using the DS pen based interface. Note that reading is required. Records for up to four people can be saved on the cartridge. Created by Japan Art Media for Majesco.<br /><br />Link to buy <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000V6I7TE?ie=UTF8&tag=kidgamblo-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B000V6I7TE">Left Brain, Right Brain Game</a>Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05010216520005985436noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24408045.post-69084478494200325872009-05-11T00:53:00.000-04:002009-05-28T04:57:08.873-04:00Math Challenge<object width="367" height="300"><br /> <param name="movie" value="http://kidsgamesblog.com/online/arcade/Math Challenge.swf"><br /> <embed src="http://kidsgamesblog.com/online/arcade/Math Challenge.swf" width="367" height="300"><br /> </embed><br /> </object><br><br />more <a href="http://kidsgamesblog.com/free-math-games/">online math games for kids</a>Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05010216520005985436noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24408045.post-18373547287301267372009-04-07T01:03:00.000-04:002009-05-28T04:35:50.163-04:00LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga Game Review<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000R3BNDI?ie=UTF8&tag=kidgamblo-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B000R3BNDI"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 124px; height: 175px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Dn7EMLeE3gc/Sh5MLPJY5aI/AAAAAAAAABU/hjqDIom_p0Q/s400/LEGO-Star-Wars-The-Complete-Saga-Game.jpg" alt="LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga Game" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5340789964036171170" border="0" /></a>Now available on a variety of platforms, the game console version of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000R3BNDI?ie=UTF8&tag=kidgamblo-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B000R3BNDI">LEGO Star Wars</a> offers one of the finest two-player experiences to date. Don't be fooled by the E 10+ rating -- even children as young as five can play the game -- although it helps if they're paired with an older brother, sister or parent. It features a unique interaction style called “drop in, drop out cooperative mode.”<br /><br />This edition contains content from 160 LEGO Star Wars characters, with content from all the movies. There's a variety of problem solving opportunities in the 36 unlockable levels. Unlike most games where players compete, this game goes out of the way to create a cooperative problem solving setting. Because each Star Wars character has different abilities, working together is mandatory to getting through the game to solve the puzzles and unlock all 160 characters. It’s like you and a friend exploring a dark cave, but your friend has the only flashlight. Discussion is mandatory.<br /><br />So what if your friend has to go? The computer’s AI sniffs that nothing is happening with the other controller, and takes over in autopilot mode, so it is possible to continue to play by yourself. At any time, a new player can pick up the controller, and join the game.<br /><br />This game was developed by Giant Software/Traveller’s Tales (both of the UK), and is distributed in the US by LucasArts. The DS version has a different design. Created for LucasArts by the UK-based Traveller’s Tales.<br /><br />Link to buy <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000R3BNDI?ie=UTF8&tag=kidgamblo-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B000R3BNDI">LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga Game</a>Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05010216520005985436noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24408045.post-68813756692444855912008-08-19T11:14:00.001-04:002009-05-13T14:14:38.737-04:00Portable, Remote Technology Aids Escape from Arizona's Summer HeatAs reported <a href="http://www.arizonavacationexperts.com/">vacation rentals in Arizona</a>, portable computers, high-speed modems and fax machines make it possible for Valley residents to get out of the sweltering heat and telecommute from their second homes or <a href="http://www.arizonavacationexperts.com/">arizona vacation rentals</a> in the cool pines of Flagstaff, Greer or Pinetop.<br /><br />It's amazing how much work you can get done without all the interruptions, said Tom Lewis, president of T.W. Lewis Co. Lewis often runs his Tempe home-building business from the den of his Forest Highlands home eight miles southwest of Flagstaff.<br /><br />"I'm not a modem cowboy," he said, "and I basically come here to relax and get away from work. But I always take a laptop with me and plan on doing some work," he said.<br /><br />He's not alone. The Forest Highlands community and country club is a haven for Phoenix business people during the summer, and many of them are working in between rounds of golf and hikes in the woods.<br /><br />Tom Smyth regularly telecommutes from his Forest Highlands home with his office at Scottsdale's Independent Newspapers Inc.<br /><br />"I see more Phoenix people that I know at Forest Highlands than I do in Phoenix," Lewis added.<br /><br />R.L. Brown runs his Phoenix-area real estate consulting business from his home in Munds Park, 20 miles south of Flagstaff.<br /><br />Brown and his wife, Joann, have never regretted moving their business permanently to the pines in 1991. While they work regular hours inside their 3,800-square-foot home, they often take a break at lunch and go for a hike or, in the winter, a cross-country ski trek.<br /><br />At first they worried they might lose touch with the Phoenix market and their customer base. But that wasn't the case.<br /><br />"We never lost a customer," R.L. Brown said.<br /><br />A Phoenix phone line lets customers reach the business with a local call, and a computer network allows the Browns' computers in Munds Park to communicate with those at employees' homes in the Valley.<br /><br />Brown also spends about two days a week in the Phoenix area, flying into Deer Valley in the morning and back to Munds Park at night.<br /><br />For heat-weary Phoenicians who aren't into telecommuting, there are hundreds of summer jobs available in the north country. Hotels and restaurants generally hire extra help in the spring.<br /><br />The Little America Hotel, which employs about 300 people, usually adds employees in the spring when it gears up for its busy season, which can run through October. The hotel doesn't lay off people during the slow season. Instead it doesn't replace, untilspring, those employees who leave during the winter, especially when it starts to snow.<br /><br />The U.S. Forest Service also hires summer help. Darla Flores, the Forest Service's personnel management specialist in Flagstaff, said the agency typically has about 250 seasonal openings for firefighters, tourist information workers and maintenance personnel.<br /><br />The positions are in Tonto, Prescott, Coconino and Kaibab national forests and usually last four to five months. Pay ranges from $7.35 to $9.02 per hour. The agency typically advertises the openings in mid-December and can receive more than 2,000 applications.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.arizonavacationexperts.com/">arizona vacation homes</a>Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05010216520005985436noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24408045.post-47887733707444431572007-07-26T22:23:00.000-04:002007-07-27T09:53:25.087-04:009 Great Family Getaways<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><a style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" href="http://www.ireland.travelphotoguide.com/">IRELAND</a> WITH THE KIDS, GALWAY, <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">IRELAND</span></span><br /><br />Bike along Connemara's white-sand beaches, tour the ruins of a 17th-century fort, and see a falconry demonstration. There's also storytelling and dance performances for the kids, whiskey tasting and golfing for the adults, and sing-a-longs for all in the pubs. July 30-Aug. 4; $5,996; includes all meals, lodging, equipment and admission to events. Minimum age: 8. <a href="http://butterfield.com/">butterfield.com</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">ISLAND-HOPPING ON THE VINEYARD AND NANTUCKET</span><br /><br />Cycle on car-free bike paths, pedal past rolling farmland and build sand castles at Katama Beach. Highlights include a sunset cruise on Nantucket Harbor and visits to the Black Dog Bakery. July 22-26; $1,980; includes meals, lodging at historic inns and bike rental. Minimum age: 6. <a href="http://bikeriderstours.com/">bikeriderstours.com</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">LOIRE VALLEY WITH THE KIDS, MONTBAZON, <a style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" href="http://franciya.net/">FRANCE</a></span><br /><br />After a day of cycling through forests, orchards and sunflower fields, retreat to a chateau. Kids can try ropes courses, horseback riding and fencing, and adults can enjoy a wine tasting and a sumptuous dinner. July 29-Aug. 4; $5,495; includes lodging, concierge services, most meals, all wine and bike rental. Minimum age: 5. <a href="http://butterfield.com/">butterfield.com</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">MONTANA'S BIG SKY, YELLOWSTONE AND PARADISE VALLEY FAMILY ADVENTURE</span><br /><br />Cycle past dude ranches, ride a gondola and take a dip in natural hot springs. Pizza parties for kids, candlelight dinners for adults. Aug. 12-17; $2,198/$1,758 (under 15); includes all meals, lodging, bike equipment, and all taxes. Minimum age: 7. <a href="http://austin-lehman.com/">austin-lehman.com</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><a style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" href="http://netherlander.org/">NETHERLANDS</a> BIKE AND BOAT HOLIDAY GOLDEN CIRCLE</span><br /><br />Cycle past windmills, tulip fields and beaches, then board a houseboat, which takes you to the start of the next day's journey while you sleep. Aug. 18-Sept. 1; $867; includes meals, bike rental and lodging. All ages. <a href="http://cycletours.com/">cycletours.com</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND MULTISPORT, CHARLOTTETOWN</span><br /><br />Pedal past lighthouses, visit a colony of seals or go to an old-fashioned amusement park. Aug. 5-10; $2,798-$3,098; includes all meals, lodging, bike equipment and trail-a-bikes. Minimum age: 3 to attend, 6 to ride own bike. <a href="http://backroads.com/">backroads.com</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">REDWOODS NATIONAL PARK FAMILY BIKE TRIP</span><br /><br />Visit Northern California's most remote beaches, bike along the Coastal Trail--closed to cars--and see the Redwood Forest's 350-foot trees. Tours from mid-June to mid-Aug.; $975/$875 (under 14); includes meals, excursions and camp gear. Extra: Bike equipment and sleeping-bag rental. All ages. <a href="http://westernspirit.com/">westernspirit.com</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">SAN JUAN ISLANDS FAMILY CAMPING, SEATTLE, WA</span><br /><br />Between ferry rides, crafts and visits to a whale museum, bike on nearly traffic-free roads. Aug. 5-9; $1,358, with kid discounts available; includes meals and camping equipment. Extra: Bike rental. All ages; minimum age for kayaking: 6. <a href="http://bicycleadventures.com/">bicycleadventures.com</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">WHITE RIM TEENAGER TRIP, MOAB, UT</span><br /><br />Canyonlands National Park offers some of the best mountain biking in the United States. This trip is timed for spring break, and is structured so you and your teen can enjoy biking down switchbacks together or with your individual peer groups. April 2008; $865/$764 (under 14); includes all meals, excursions and camp equipment. Extra: Bike equipment and sleeping-bag rental. <a href="http://westernspirit.com/">westernspirit.com</a><br /><br />By Jennifer Mack</div>Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05010216520005985436noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24408045.post-64586887694462336832007-07-20T22:26:00.000-04:002007-07-27T10:34:20.390-04:006 ways to tone up, trim down, and get some Me Time, too.<div style="text-align: justify;">We've rounded up and tested out six sensational get-moving destinations--some far-flung, some close to home--to help you get a jump-start on fitness. So whether you're on a budget or set for a splurge, turn the page and get ready to have a great time getting fit.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Get a boot-camp boost</span><br /><br />Splurge: If you want a fitness jump-start that burns a ton of calories, there's nothing better than a boot camp. Put some exotic spice into your basic training at <a href="http://www.amansala.com/">Amansala Eco Chic Resort's Bikini Boot Camp in Tulum</a>, <a href="http://www.mexico.travelphotoguide.com/">Mexico</a> (a 2-hour drive south of Cancun). Your daily power walk won't be around the block--it'll be through the Yucatan jungle. In the morning, your body-sculpting class will be on the beach. In the afternoon, you'll bike to a freshwater swimming hole. And your cross-training will be flamenco and salsa dance lessons. A week in a beachfront cabana won't hurt either. Six-night boot camp ($1,842 per person, double occupancy) includes accommodations, meals, fitness classes, kayaking, two bike excursions, and three spa services.<br /><br />On a budget: Get the boot camp experience closer to home with classes at a local gym. National-chain clubs <a href="http://www.equinoxfitness.com/">Equinox Fitness</a> and <a href="http://www.24hourfitness.com/">24-Hour Fitness</a>, for example, have several cool camps to choose from. Get all wet at Equinox's Aqua Boot Camp and bikini ready in its Boot Camp Intervals class.<br /><br />Stretch out<br /><br />Splurge: At the <a href="http://www.aspenclub.com/">Aspen Club</a> and Spa in Aspen, Colorado, your own wellness guru will create a 1- to 3-day getaway that includes a daily dose of two private yoga or Pilates sessions, lunch at the spa, and an 80-minute spa treatment. Offered year-round, the $450-per-day rate doesn't include lodging, but the spa is a short walk from several downtown Aspen hotels.<br /><br />On a budget: Many <a href="http://yogafinder.com/">yoga centers</a> offer free or reduced-price, first-time classes, and many Pilates instructors will give you an introductory session gratis. To find yoga classes close to home. For local Pilates classes, see <a href="http://www.gympost.com/">www.gympost.com</a>.<br /><br />Take a hike<br /><br />Splurge: Put hiking center-stage at <a href="http://www.newlifehikingspa.com/">Jimmy LeSage's New Life Hiking Spa</a>. Take a low-key ramble along country roads or a climb up one of Vermont's highest peaks in the Green Mountains. To fill out your day, try a before-breakfast stretch class, an afternoon core-training or yoga class, and an evening massage or facial. New Life's 2- to 4-day Mini Vacation ($229 per person per night, double occupancy) in the charming Inn of the Six Mountains in Killington includes all meals and fitness activities, plus one massage or facial per 3-night stay.<br /><br />On a budget: Keep your trek local by using www.trails.com. Take advantage of its free 14-day trial to find reviews of more than 30,000 trails nationwide, along with all the information you'll need to get out there (including maps and campground sites, if you're planning an overnight). Start at the site's "Top 100 Trails" for inspiration, and you'll be lacing up your lightweight hikers in no time.<br /><br />By Tracey Minkin</div>Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05010216520005985436noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24408045.post-9949918968479835062007-06-11T13:13:00.000-04:002007-07-27T09:56:47.489-04:00A trip to Antarctica reveals some completely new life under the ice<div style="text-align: justify;">The icebreaker Polarstern arrived in <a href="http://www.antarctica.travelphotoguide.com/">Antarctica</a> last December packed with 52 scientists and a remotely operated submersible called Cherokee. The mission: to survey the ocean life under the former Larsen B ice shelf, the 720-billion-ton mass of ice that disintegrated in 2002. After 17 dives as deep as 2,800 feet by Cherokee, the scientists had observed approximately 1,000 marine species, many of them recent arrivals to the newly uncovered ecosystem and some completely new to science. "The only species that were able to make a living under that much ice were those typically found in the deep sea," says Terry Collins of the Census of Antarctic Marine Life. "They're still there, but you can see the signs of colonizing species as well." The trip was the first of 14 Antarctic voyages aiming to document how climate change is affecting the poles.<br /><br />By Kalee Thompson</div>Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05010216520005985436noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24408045.post-85630610056006434322007-05-30T06:58:00.000-04:002007-07-27T11:02:06.256-04:00Got big travel plans? Here's how to stay in shape and feel great over the long haul.<div style="text-align: justify;">One of the best things about a vacation in a far off locale is that it whisks you away and lets you forget the daily grind. For a few blissful days, you don't have to think about wake-up times, workout schedules and what to eat or drink… or do you?<br /><br />Turns out that break from routine is the very thing that can leave you with postholiday regrets. Recuperating from travel fatigue and getting enough exercise often takes a backseat to fun--after all, who wants to be at the gym doing crunches or lifting weights when you can be sitting in the sun lifting Mojitos? Add a few rich restaurant dinners and the gotta-get-energized jetlag munchies to lack of exercise, and you could end up wishing you'd never left when you trade in that elastic-waist grass skirt for fitted pants once again.<br /><br />The solution? A few easy, preventive measures that can help you feel fit and well rested both during and after your grand getaway.<br /><br />TO STAY IN SHAPE<br /><br />MAKE YOUR HEART GO PITTER-PAT<br /><br />Doing some cardio exercises every third day burns a few of those cocktail-hour calories and keeps stamina at pre-vacation levels. "You can retain a relatively high level of both aerobic power and strength with just two exercise sessions per week," says William J. Stone, EdD, professor in the department of exercise and wellness at Arizona State University. Shorten the workout time if you want--for example, if you normally jog for 45 minutes, you can scale back to 30 minutes--but don't slack off on the intensity. Another good way to get your heart pumping is to integrate aerobic exercise into your vacation fun. Rent a bike for one or two afternoons and pedal as you sightsee. Try swimming a few laps each time you cool off in the pool, or turn your saunter down the sand into a 10-minute jog. Bring along a jump rope and do three to four two-minute sets, advises Los Angeles-based personal trainer Alison Copeland. "You can jump anywhere, and it's an amazing way to get your heart rate up in a short time," she says. "Plus, I don't know anyone who can't find room in a suitcase for a jump rope."<br /><br />GIVE YOUR MUSCLES A LITTLE LIFT<br /><br />Got a weight-training program going at the gym? Practice it once a week while you're away. "Strength gains, in the form of stronger muscles, last a bit longer than cardio fitness, but you can lose an appreciable amount in eight to ten weeks," explains John J. Duncan, PhD, CEO and founder of Texas-based Via Scan, a preventive wellness and heart-health center.<br /><br />If you have a personal trainer, ask him or her to design a travel fitness program using rubber tubing. These giant, stretchy bands are inexpensive, weigh just a few ounces, fold up like belts, are available in a variety of resistances and can be found in the fitness section of most sporting good stores. (Note: if you don't have a trainer-designed regimen to take along, the tubing comes with exercise examples that are safe for most workouts.) Tubing also gives you the freedom to work out in your pj's in your hotel room instead of having to put on fitness gear and go to a gym. Another option is a set of Aqua Bells, collapsible plastic dumbbells and ankle weights that offer up to 15 lbs. of resistance when filled with water (dumbbell and ankle weight set, $80; aquabells.com). Or just grab a couple of full one-liter water bottles and use them---one liter of water weighs 2.2 lbs.<br /><br />DON'T FALL OFF THE WAGON<br /><br />Even if you end up taking a break from exercise during your time away, try to avoid letting your vacation be an excuse to allow your regular fitness routine to slip. Return to your schedule the first week you get back so you won't lose strength or endurance. "Ten percent of your cardiovascular stamina is lost after two weeks of not exercising, and after four to eight weeks, you're starting over," explains Duncan. In other words, if you trained for 20 years and then take off one to two months, your aerobic fitness goes back to what it was 21 years ago.<br /><br />TO FIGHT TRAVEL FATIGUE<br /><br />FIDDLE WITH YOUR 40 WINKS<br /><br />Because the body functions on a 24-hour time frame (called circadian rhythms), small alterations in your sleep schedule can reduce the effects of changing time zones. "Making big changes in sleep cycles is like jamming on the brakes when you're on the freeway. It's much better to switch speeds gently," says Vicki Rackner, MD, one of the authors for Chicken Soup for the Soul Healthy Living Series. "I begin adjusting my schedule days before I actually have to leave." For example, if you plan to travel east, start going to bed an hour earlier every day and getting up an hour earlier to sync up with the time zone. Rackner also recommends avoiding red-eye flights. "Quality of sleep on a plane is never as good," she explains. You may think you gain a day, but you could end up losing more because of exhaustion.<br /><br />DRINK UP<br /><br />Sure, you've been told a million times to down eight to ten glasses of water a day, but it's more important than ever if you're getting on a plane to travel long distances. "Staying hydrated while flying is important because dehydration may be linked to jet lag," says Rackner. But consuming your fill of fluids doesn't mean you have to forgo a glass of juice or even a cocktail when the beverage cart comes by. Just ask for a glass of water and whatever beverage you'd like to have. On longer flights make a point of taking water breaks. Water is always available at galley stations in the plane and pouring yourself a glass or two is a good excuse to get up and stretch your legs. Try to drink one cup of water for every hour in the air.<br /><br />TAKE IT SLOW<br /><br />As tempting as it is to hit the ground running at your destination, allow yourself a couple of days to acclimate to a new time zone. It typically takes 24 hours or more to recover for each time zone crossed and you'll enjoy the scenery more if you're not feeling sleepy. Plan busy mornings of sightseeing and long day trips toward the middle or the end of the trip rather than in the first days. To keep from waking up at 3 a.m. (long before you can hit the beach or even order breakfast) and dozing off right after dinner, help your system adjust with melatonin supplements. "Melatonin is produced naturally by the body and regulates sleep patterns without the hangover side effects some sleeping pills may have," explains Vibhuti Arya, PharmD. She recommends taking 0.5mg to 5mg melatonin for two to five days.<br /><br />Whether your dream vacation centers around tiki lights and tropical destinations or sightseeing in foreign lands, take along these fitness and fatigue-fighting schemes. They'll ensure you get the most out of your great escape and make re-entry into the real world a bit easier to take.<br /><br />tip<br /><br />When choosing a carry-on bag, check handle height. Handles that are too short to pull at a comfortable angle put undue strain on shoulders and back.<br />safe AND SECURE<br /><br />Is airport anxiety creating extra travel stress? Anne McAlpin, packing expert and founder of packitup.com, offers the following tips:<br /><br />Protect your privacy. Use your work address instead of your home address on your luggage tag.<br /><br />Share the load. If you're traveling with someone, put a few of each other's clothes in both suitcases in case one gets lost.<br /><br />Double-check travel sizes You can carry on all your toiletries as long as each bottle is 3 oz. or smaller and all items fit into a 1-quart resealable plastic bag.<br /><br />Wear socks Flip flops may seem like the right choice for an island escape, but they leave your feet exposed to the bare floor when passing through security. Comfy, easy-to-remove shoes with socks are your best bet.<br /><br />Pack snacks Nuts, granola bars and healthy nibbles are allowed through security and help avoid overpriced fast food and nonveg airline offerings.<br /><br />Stay informed For up-to-the minute security information, log on to tsa.gov.<br /><br />TROUBLE SPOTS<br /><br />Sure, ab exercises are great and your belly can always use an extra crunch or two, but traveling takes its toll on multiple body zones, especially your feet, neck and torso. Here are a few exercises you can do anywhere (even sitting at the gate in the airport!) to help keep them limbered up and tension free.<br /><br />FEET<br /><br />Toe curls Sit with legs forward, heels resting on the floor. Flex toes, then curl tightly and hold 5 seconds. Release; repeat 5 to 10 times.<br /><br />Ankle circles Sit with legs forward, heels 12 inches off floor. Point toes, flex and rotate feet clockwise 5 times, then counterclockwise 5 times. Repeat 3 times.<br /><br />NECK<br /><br />Head tilts Let arms hang loosely at sides. Tilt head to one side until you feel a stretch in opposite side of neck. Hold 10 seconds, then tilt neck to other side. Repeat 3 to 5 times.<br /><br />Shoulder stretches Extend right arm across body so it crosses left shoulder. Crook left arm under right arm next to elbow, and pull to feel stretch in shoulder blades and upper back. Hold 10 seconds, then repeat with left arm.<br /><br />BACK<br /><br />Low-back stretch Sit with legs slightly apart. Place head between knees, wrap arms around legs and gently hug calves. Hold 10 to 20 seconds. Rest 5 seconds, then repeat.<br /><br />CHEST<br /><br />Chest stretch Stand or sit up straight. Reach arms behind your back. Clasp hands together, and push arms down and back. Hold 10 to 20 seconds. Rest 5 seconds, then repeat.<br /><br />By Linda Melone</div>Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05010216520005985436noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24408045.post-70483758528975255672007-04-22T15:31:00.000-04:002007-07-27T11:05:48.596-04:00The inhospitable side of the galaxy?<div style="text-align: justify;">The solar system's periodic visits to the northern side of the Milky Way expose life on Earth to extra cosmic rays that have caused catastrophic mass extinctions, two astrophysicists propose.<br /><br />Biodiversity has had well-known ups and downs over the eons, with major extinctions followed by rebounds. In a 2005 study, Robert Rohde and Richard Muller of Lawrence Berkeley (Calif.) National Laboratory found that these swings were surprisingly regular, most of them taking place at intervals of about 62 million years. The researchers reached their conclusion after examining one of the most comprehensive long-term biodiversity surveys, a compilation of fossil data that charted the number of marine-life genera over the past 500 million years.<br /><br />The extraordinary dinosaur kill 65 million years ago doesn't fit in the cyclic pattern, and experts widely blame it on the impact of a large asteroid.<br /><br />To explain the cyclic pattern of mass extinctions, Rohde and Muller considered a phenomenon that has just about the right periodicity. As the solar system orbits around the galaxy, it swings from one side to the other of the galactic plane every 63 million years. Gravity from the rest of the galaxy's mass pulls the solar system back each time.<br /><br />Perhaps when the sun is at the maximum distance from the galactic plane, Earth's biodiversity is at greatest risk, Rohde and Muller speculated. But that would put mass extinctions every 31.5 million years, not every 63 million. It wasn't clear why one side of the galaxy's plane would be more dangerous to life than the other.<br /><br />Mikhail Medvedev and his colleagues of the University of Kansas in Lawrence now propose an explanation that rests on variations in the number of high-energy particles, known as cosmic rays, that strike Earth from space. They argue that because the galaxy is moving toward a large cluster of galaxies in the direction of the Virgo constellation, cosmic rays would be more abundant on the galaxy's north side-according to the view from Earth.<br /><br />A particle flow similar to the solar wind emanates from the Milky Way as a whole, and as the galaxy moves, that wind runs into the tenuous medium that pervades intergalactic space. The collision creates a shock wave. The Kansas team calculates that when electrically charged particles rebound within the shock wave, they gain enough energy to turn into cosmic rays.<br /><br />When a cosmic ray hits the upper layers of the atmosphere, it triggers a shower of millions of energetic electrons and other particles, some of which can penetrate to land and into the oceans. The particles have a variety of effects. For example, they may alter cloud coverage or damage DNA, with potentially fatal consequences for entire species.<br /><br />"Drops in biodiversity correspond to peaks in cosmic rays," Medvedev says. However, he and his colleagues stress that they haven't identified the mechanism linking cosmic rays and extinctions.<br /><br />"I was stunned when I learned that [Medvedev's team] had succeeded where we had failed" at explaining the 62-million-year cycle, Muller says.<br /><br />Charles Dermer, an astrophysicist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., says that the new explanation is "very tantalizing" but that it rests on Rohde and Muller's biodiversity cycles, which are not firmly established.<br /><br />Medvedev and his colleagues say that the cosmic ray bombardments would also increase gamma rays from the north side of the galaxy, a prediction that new gamma-ray observatories may test in the next few years.<br /><br />The researchers presented their work this week, in Jacksonville, Fla., at a meeting of the American Physical Society. The report is also due to appear in Astrophysical Journal.<br /><br />By Davide Castelvecchi</div>Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05010216520005985436noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24408045.post-70817812830425633132007-03-30T11:06:00.000-04:002007-07-27T11:14:35.356-04:00Gassing Up With Hydrogen<div style="text-align: justify;">Researchers are working on ways for fuel-cell vehicles to hold the hydrogen gas they need for long-distance travel<br /><br />On a late summer day in Paris in 1783, Jacques Charles did something astonishing. He soared 3,000 feet above the ground in a balloon of rubber-coated silk bags filled with lighter-than-air hydrogen gas. Terrified peasants destroyed the balloon soon after it returned to earth, but Charles had launched a quest that researchers two centuries later are still pursuing: to harness the power of hydrogen, the lightest element in the universe, for transportation.<br /><br />Burned or used in fuel cells, hydrogen is an appealing option for powering future automotive vehicles for several reasons. Domestic industries can make it from a range of chemical feedstocks and energy sources (for instance, from renewable, nuclear and fossil-fuel sources), and the nontoxic gas could serve as a virtually pollution-free energy carrier for machines of many kinds. When it burns, it releases no carbon dioxide, a potent greenhouse gas. And if hydrogen is fed into a fuel-cell stack--a battery-like device that generates electricity from hydrogen and oxygen--it can propel an electric car or truck with only water and heat as by-products [see "On the Road to Fuel-Cell Cars," by Steven Ashley; Scientific American, March 2005]. Fuel-cell-powered vehicles could offer more than twice the efficiency of today's autos. Hydrogen could therefore help ease pressing environmental and societal problems, including air pollution and its health hazards, global climate change and dependence on foreign oil imports.<br /><br />Yet barriers to gassing up cars with hydrogen are significant. Kilogram for kilogram, hydrogen contains three times the energy of gasoline, but today it is impossible to store hydrogen gas as compactly and simply as the conventional liquid fuel. One of the most challenging technical issues is how to efficiently and safely store enough hydrogen onboard to provide the driving range and performance that motorists demand. Researchers must find the "Goldilocks" storage solutions that are "just right." Storage devices should hold sufficient hydrogen to support today's minimum acceptable travel range--300 miles--on a tank of fuel in a volume of space that does not compromise passenger or luggage room. They should release it at the required flow rates for acceleration on the highway and operate at practical temperatures. They should be refilled or recharged in a few minutes and come with a competitive price tag. Current hydrogen storage technologies fall far short of these goals.<br /><br />Researchers worldwide in the auto industry, government and academia are expending considerable effort to overcome these limitations. The International Energy Agency's Hydrogen Implementing Agreement, signed in 1977, is now the largest international group focusing on hydrogen storage, with more than 35 researchers from 13 countries. The International Partnership for the Hydrogen Economy, formed in 2003, now includes 17 governments committed to advancing hydrogen and fuel-cell technologies. And in 2005 the U.S. Department of Energy set up a National Hydrogen Storage Project with three Centers of Excellence and many industry, university and federal laboratory efforts in both basic and applied research. Last year alone this project provided more than $30 million to fund about 80 research projects.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Infrastructural Hurdles</span><br /><br />One obstacle to the wide adoption of hydrogen fuel-cell cars and trucks is the sheer size of the problem. U.S. vehicles alone consume 383 million gallons of gasoline a day (about 140 billion gallons annually), which accounts for about two thirds of the total national oil consumption. More than half of that petroleum comes from overseas. Clearly, the nation would need to invest considerable capital to convert today's domestic auto industry to fuel-cell vehicle production and the nation's extensive gasoline refining and distribution network to one that handles vast quantities of hydrogen. The fuel-cell vehicles themselves would have to become cheap and durable enough to compete with current technology while offering equivalent performance. They also must address safety concerns and a lingering negative public perception--people still remember the 1937 Hindenburg airship tragedy and associate it with hydrogen, despite some credible evidence that the airship's flammable skin was the crucial factor in the ignition of the blaze.<br /><br />Why is it so difficult to store enough hydrogen onboard a vehicle? At room temperature and atmospheric pressure (one atmosphere is about 14.5 pounds per square inch, or psi), hydrogen exists as a gas with an energy density about 1/3,000 that of liquid gasoline. A 20-gallon tank containing hydrogen gas at atmospheric pressure would propel a standard car only about 500 feet. So engineers must increase the density of stored hydrogen in any useful onboard hydrogen containment system.<br /><br />A 300-mile minimum driving range is one of the principal operational aims of an industry-government effort--the FreedomCAR and Fuel Partnership--to develop advanced technology for future automobiles. Engineers employ a useful rule of thumb in making such calculations: a gallon of gasoline is equal, on an energy basis, to one kilogram (2.2 pounds) of hydrogen. Whereas today's average automobile needs about 20 gallons of gasoline to travel at least 300 miles, the typical fuel-cell vehicle would need only about eight kilograms of hydrogen because of its greater operational efficiency. Depending on the vehicle type and size, some models would require less hydrogen to go that far, some more. Tests of about 60 hydrogen-fueled prototypes from several automakers have so far demonstrated driving ranges of 100 to 190 miles.<br /><br />Aiming for a practical goal that could be achievable by 2010 (when some companies expect the first production fuel-cell cars to hit the road), researchers compare the performance of various storage technologies against the "6 weight percent" benchmark. That is, a fuel storage system in which 6 percent of its total weight is hydrogen. For a system weighing a total of 100 kilograms (a reasonable size for a vehicle), six kilograms would be stored hydrogen. Although 6 percent may not seem like much, achieving that level will be extremely tough; less than 2 percent is the best possible today--using storage materials that operate at relatively low pressures. Further, keeping the system's total volume to about that of a standard automotive gasoline tank will be even more difficult, given that much of its allotted space will be taken up by the tanks, valves, tubing, regulators, sensors, insulation and anything else that is required to hold the six kilograms of hydrogen. Finally, a useful system must release hydrogen at rates fast enough for the fuel-cell and electric motor combination to provide the power and acceleration that drivers expect.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Containing Hydrogen</span><br /><br />At present, most of the several hundred prototype fuel-cell vehicles store hydrogen gas in high-pressure cylinders, similar to scuba tanks. Advanced filament-wound, carbon-fiber composite technology has yielded strong, lightweight tanks that can safely contain hydrogen at pressures of 5,000 psi (350 times atmospheric pressure) to 10,000 psi (700 times atmospheric pressure) [see box above]. Simply raising the pressure does not proportionally increase the hydrogen density, however. Even at 10,000 psi, the best achievable energy density with current high-pressure tanks (39 grams per liter) is about 15 percent of the energy content of gasoline in the same given volume. Today's high-pressure tanks can contain only about 3.5 to 4.5 percent of hydrogen by weight. Ford recently introduced a prototype "crossover SUV" called Edge that is powered by a combination plug-in hybrid/fuel-cell system that stores 4.5 kilograms of hydrogen fuel in a 5,000-psi tank to achieve a total maximum range of 200 miles.<br /><br />High-pressure tanks would be acceptable in certain transportation applications, such as transit buses and other large vehicles that have the physical size necessary to accommodate storage for sufficient hydrogen, but it would be difficult to manage in cars. Also, the current cost of such tanks is 10 or more times higher than what is competitive for autos.<br /><br />Liquefying stored hydrogen can improve its energy density, packing the most hydrogen into a given volume of any existing option. Like any gas, hydrogen that is cooled sufficiently condenses into a liquid, which at atmospheric pressure occurs around –253 degrees Celsius. Liquid hydrogen exhibits a density of 71 grams per liter, or about 30 percent of the energy density of gasoline. The hydrogen weight densities achievable by these systems depend on the containment and insulation equipment they use.<br /><br />Liquefied hydrogen has important drawbacks, though. First, its very low boiling point necessitates cryogenic equipment and special precautions for safe handling. In addition, because it operates at low temperature, the containers have to be insulated extremely well. Finally, liquefying hydrogen takes more energy than compressing the gas to high pressures. This requirement drives up the cost of the fuel and reduces the overall energy efficiency of the cryocooling process.<br /><br />Nevertheless, one carmaker is pushing this technology onto the road. BMW plans to introduce a vehicle this year called Hydrogen 7, which will incorporate an internal-combustion engine capable of running on either gasoline (for 300 miles) or on liquid hydrogen for 125 miles. Hydrogen 7 will be sold on a limited basis to selected customers in the U.S. and other countries with local access to hydrogen refueling stations.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chemical Compaction</span><br /><br />Searching for promising ways to raise energy density, scientists may be able to take advantage of the chemistry of hydrogen itself. In their pure gas and liquid phases, hydrogen molecules contain two bound atoms each. But when hydrogen atoms are chemically bound to certain other elements, they can be packed even closer together than in liquid hydrogen. The principal aim of hydrogen storage research now is finding the materials that can pull off this trick.<br /><br />Some researchers are focusing on a class of substances called reversible metal hydrides, which were discovered by accident in 1969 at the Philips Eindhoven Labs in the Netherlands. Investigators found that a samarium-cobalt alloy exposed to pressurized hydrogen gas would absorb hydrogen, somewhat like a sponge soaks up water. When the pressure was then removed, the hydrogen within the alloy reemerged; in other words, the process was reversible.<br /><br />Intensive research followed this discovery. In the U.S., scientists James Reilly of Brookhaven National Laboratory and Gary Sandrock of Inco Research and Development Center in Suffern, N.Y., pioneered the development of hydride alloys with finely tuned hydrogen absorption properties. This early work formed the basis for today's widely used nickel–metal hydride batteries. The density of hydrogen in these alloys can be very high: 150 percent more than liquid hydrogen, because the hydrogen atoms are constrained between the metal atoms in their crystal lattices.<br /><br />Many properties of metal hydrides are well suited to automobiles. Densities surpassing that of liquid hydrogen can be achieved at relatively low pressures, in the range of 10 to 100 times atmospheric pressure. Metal hydrides are also inherently stable, so they require no extra energy to maintain storage, although heat is required to release the stored gas. But their Achilles' heel is mass. They weigh too much for practical onboard storage. Metal hydride researchers have so far attained a maximum hydrogen capacity of 2 percent of the total material weight (2 weight percent). This level translates into a 1,000-pound hydrogen storage system (for a 300-mile driving range), which is clearly too heavy for today's 3,000-pound car.<br /><br />Metal hydride studies currently concentrate on materials with inherently high hydrogen content, which researchers then modify to meet the hydrogen storage system requirements of operating temperatures in the neighborhood of 100 degrees C, pressures from 10 to 100 atmospheres and delivery rates sufficient to support rapid vehicle acceleration. In many cases, materials that contain useful proportions of hydrogen are a bit too stable in that they require substantially higher temperatures to release the hydrogen. Magnesium, for example, forms magnesium hydride with 7.6 weight percent hydrogen but must be heated to above 300 degrees C for release to occur. If a practical system is to rely on waste heat from a fuel-cell stack (about 80 degrees C) to serve as the "switch" to liberate hydrogen from a metal hydride, then the trigger temperature must be lower.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Destabilized Hydrides</span><br /><br />Chemists John J. Vajo and Gregory L. Olson of HRL Laboratories in Malibu, Calif., as well as researchers elsewhere are exploring a clever approach to overcoming the temperature problem. Their "destabilized hydrides" combine several substances to alter the reaction pathway so that the resulting compounds release the gas at lower temperatures.<br /><br />Destabilized hydrides are part of a class of hydrogen-containing materials called complex hydrides. Chemists long thought that many of these compounds were not optimal for refueling a vehicle, because they were irreversible--once the hydrogen was freed by decomposition of the compounds, the materials would require reprocessing to return them to a hydrogenated state. Chemists Borislav Bogdanovic and Manfred Schwickardi of the Max Planck Institute of Coal Research in Mülheim, Germany, however, stunned the hydride research community in 1996 when they demonstrated that the complex hydride sodium alanate becomes reversible when a small amount of titanium is added. This work triggered a flurry of activity during the past decade. HRL's lithium borohydride destabilized with magnesium hydride, for example, holds around 9 percent of hydrogen by weight reversibly and features a 200 degree C operating temperature. This improvement is notable, but its operating temperature is still too high and its hydrogen release rate too slow for automotive applications. Nevertheless, the work is promising.<br /><br />Although current metal hydrides have limitations, many automakers see them as the most viable low-pressure approach in the near- to mid-term. Toyota and Honda engineers, for example, are planning a so-called hybrid approach in a system that combines a solid metal hydride with moderate pressure (significantly lower than 10,000 psi), which they predict could achieve a driving range of more than 300 miles. General Motors has teams of storage experts, including Scott Jorgensen, who are supporting research on a wide range of metal hydride systems worldwide (including in Russia, Canada and Singapore). GM is also collaborating with Sandia National Laboratories on a four-year, $10-million effort to produce a prototype complex metal hydride system.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Hydrogen Carriers</span><br /><br />Other hydrogen storage options have the potential to work well in cars, but they suffer a penalty in the refueling step. In general, these chemical hydride substances need industrial processing to reconstitute the spent material. The step requires off-board regeneration; that is, once hydrogen stored onboard a vehicle is released, a leftover by-product must be reclaimed at a service station and regenerated in a chemical plant.<br /><br />More than 20 years ago Japanese researchers studied this approach using, for example, the decalin-naphthalene system. When decalin (C10H18) is heated, it converts chemically to naphthalene (a pungent-smelling compound with the formula C10H8) by changing the nature of its chemical bonds, which liberates five hydrogen molecules. Hydrogen gas thus bubbles out of the liquid decalin as it transforms into naphthalene. Exposing naphthalene to moderate hydrogen gas pressures reverses the process; it absorbs hydrogen and changes back to decalin (6.2 weight percent for the material alone). Research chemists Alan Cooper and Guido Pez of Air Products and Chemicals in Allentown, Pa., are investigating a similar technique using organic (hydrocarbon-based) liquids. Other scientists, including S. Thomas Autrey and his co-workers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and chemistry professor Larry G. Sneddon of the University of Pennsylvania, are working on new liquid carriers, such as aminoboranes, that can store large amounts of hydrogen and release it at moderate temperatures.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Designer Materials</span><br /><br />Yet another approach to the hydrogen storage problem centers on lightweight materials with very high surface areas to which hydrogen molecules stick (or adsorb). As one might expect, the amount of hydrogen retained on any surface correlates with the material's surface area. Recent developments in nanoscale engineering have yielded a host of new high-surface-area materials, some with more than 5,000 square meters of surface area per gram of material. (This amount equates to about three acres of surface area within just a teaspoon of powder.) Carbon-based materials are particularly interesting because they are lightweight, can be low cost and can form a variety of nanosize structures: carbon nanotubes, nanohorns (hornlike tubes), fullerenes (ball-shaped molecules) and aerogels (ultraporous solids). One relatively cheap material, activated carbon, can store up to about 5 weight percent hydrogen.<br /><br />These carbon structures all share a common limitation, however. Hydrogen molecules bond very weakly with the carbon atoms, which means that the high-surface-area materials must be kept at or near the temperature of liquid nitrogen, –196 degrees C. In contrast to hydride research, in which scientists are struggling to lower the hydrogen binding energy, carbon researchers are exploring ways to raise the binding energy by modifying the surfaces of materials or by adding metal dopants that may alter their properties. These investigators employ theoretical modeling of carbon structures to discover promising systems for further study.<br /><br />Beyond the carbon-based approaches, another fascinating nanoscale engineering concept is a category of substances called metal-organic materials. A few years ago Omar Yaghi, then a chemistry professor at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and now at the University of California, Los Angeles, invented these so-called metal-organic frameworks, or MOFs. Yaghi and his co-workers showed that this new class of highly porous, crystalline materials could be produced by linking inorganic compounds together with organic "struts" [see box at right]. The resulting MOFs are synthetic compounds with elegant-looking structures and physical characteristics that can be controlled to provide various desired functions. These heterogeneous structures can have very large surface areas (as high as 5,500 square meters per gram), and researchers can tailor chemical sites on them for optimal binding to hydrogen. To date, investigators have demonstrated MOFs that exhibit hydrogen capacities of 7 weight percent at –196 degrees C. They continue to work on boosting this performance.<br /><br />Although current progress on hydrogen storage methods is encouraging, finding the "just right" approach may take time, requiring sustained, innovative research and development efforts. Over the centuries, the basic promise--and challenge--of using hydrogen for transportation has remained fundamentally unchanged: Holding onto hydrogen in a practical, lightweight container allowed Jacques Charles to travel across the sky in his balloon during the last decades of the 18th century. Finding a similarly suitable container to store hydrogen in automobiles will permit people to travel across the globe in the coming decades of the 21st century without fouling the sky above.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Overview/Hydrogen Storage</span><br /><br />• One of the biggest obstacles to future fuel-cell vehicles is how engineers will manage to stuff enough hydrogen onboard to provide the 300-mile minimum driving range that motorists demand.<br /><br />• Typically hydrogen is stored in pressurized tanks as a highly compressed gas at ambient temperature, but the tanks do not hold enough gas. Liquid-hydrogen systems, which operate at cryogenic temperatures, also suffer from significant drawbacks.<br /><br />• Several alternative high-density storage technologies are under development, but none is yet up to the challenge.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">MORE TO EXPLORE</span><br /><br /><a href="http://www.nap.edu/catalog.phprecord%26#x2013;id=10922">The Hydrogen Economy: Opportunities, Costs, Barriers, and R&D Needs. National Research Council and National Academy of Engineering. National Academies Press, 2004</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/annual%26#x2013;review06%26#x2013;proceedings.html">Hydrogen Program: 2006 Annual Merit Review Proceedings. U.S. Department of Energy</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.uscar.org/">United States Council for Automotive Research</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.ieahia.org/">International Energy Agency's Hydrogen Implementing Agreement</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.iphe.net/">International Partnership for the Hydrogen Economy</a><br /><br />By Sunita Satyapal; John Petrovic and George Thomas</div>Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05010216520005985436noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24408045.post-23865500318962136642007-02-03T10:35:00.000-04:002007-07-27T10:25:48.321-04:00Mother of All Paradoxes<div style="text-align: justify;"> The notorious mother paradox (sometimes formulated using other familial relationships) arises when people or objects can travel backward in time and alter the past. A simplified version involves billiard balls. A billiard ball passes through a wormhole time machine. When it emerges, it hits its earlier self, thereby preventing it from ever entering the wormhole.<br /><br />Resolution of the paradox proceeds from a simple realization: the billiard ball cannot do something that is inconsistent with logic or with the laws of physics. It cannot pass through the wormhole in such a way that will prevent it from passing through the wormhole. But nothing stops it from passing through the wormhole in an infinity of other ways.</div>Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05010216520005985436noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24408045.post-86293496664402296162007-02-03T10:34:00.000-04:002007-07-27T10:25:42.542-04:00A Wormhole Time Machine in Three Not So Easy Steps<div style="text-align: justify;">1. Find or build a wormhole -- a tunnel connecting two different locations in space. Large wormholes might exist naturally in deep space, a relic of the big, bang. Otherwise we would have to make do with subatomic wormholes, either natural ones (which are thought to be winking in and out of existence all around us) or artificial ones (produced by particle accelerators, as imagined here). These smaller wormholes would have to be enlarged to a useful size, perhaps using energy fields like those that caused space to inflate shortly after the big bang.<br /><br />2. Stabilize the wormhole. An infusion of negative energy, produced by quantum means such as the so-called Casimir effect, would allow a signal or object to pass safely through the wormhole. Negative energy counteracts the tendency of the wormhole to pinch off into a point of infinite or near-infinite density. In other words, it prevents the wormhole from becoming a black hole.<br /><br />3. Tow the wormhole. A spaceship, presumably of highly advanced technology, would separate the mouths of the wormhole. One mouth might be positioned near the surface of a neutron star, an extremely dense star with a strong gravitational field. The intense gravity causes time to pass more slowly. Because time passes more quickly at the other wormhole mouth, the two mouths become separated not only in space but also in time.<br /></div>Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05010216520005985436noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24408045.post-81935406412536286422007-02-02T23:17:00.000-04:002007-07-27T10:21:46.347-04:00How To Build A Time Machine<div style="text-align: justify;">Time travel has been a popular science-fiction theme since H. G. Wells wrote his celebrated novel The Time Machine in 1895. But can it really be done? Is it possible to build a machine that would transport a human being into the past or future?<br /><br />For decades, time travel lay beyond the fringe of respectable science. In recent years, however, the topic has become something of a cottage industry among theoretical physicists. The motivation has been partly recreational--time travel is fun to think about. But this research has a serious side, too. Understanding the relation between cause and effect is a key part of attempts to construct a unified theory of physics. If unrestricted time travel were possible, even in principle, the nature of such a unified theory could be drastically affected.<br /><br />Our best understanding of time comes from Einstein's theories of relativity. Prior to these theories, time was widely regarded as absolute and universal, the same for everyone no matter what their physical circumstances were. In his special theory of relativity, Einstein proposed that the measured interval between two events depends on how the observer is moving. Crucially, two observers who move differently will experience different durations between the same two events.<br /><br />The effect is often described using the "twin paradox." Suppose that Sally and Sam are twins. Sally boards a rocket ship and travels at high speed to a nearby star, turns around and flies back to Earth, while Sam stays at home. For Sally the duration of the journey might be, say, one year, but when she returns and steps out of the spaceship, she finds that 10 years have elapsed on Earth. Her brother is now nine years older than she is. Sally and Sam are no longer the same age, despite the fact that they were born on the same day. This example illustrates a limited type of time travel. In effect, Sally has leaped nine years into Earth's future.<br /><br />Jet Lag<br /><br />THE EFFECT, KNOWN AS time dilation, occurs whenever two observers move relative to each other. In daily life we don't notice weird time warps, because the effect becomes dramatic only when the motion occurs at close to the speed of light. Even at aircraft speeds, the time dilation in a typical journey amounts to just a few nanoseconds--hardly an adventure of Wellsian proportions. Nevertheless, atomic clocks are accurate enough to record the shift and confirm that time really is stretched by motion. So travel into the future is a proved fact, even if it has so far been in rather unexciting amounts.<br /><br />To observe really dramatic time warps, one has to look beyond the realm of ordinary experience. Subatomic particles can be propelled at nearly the speed of light in large accelerator machines. Some of these particles, such as muons, have a built-in clock because they decay with a definite half-life; in accordance with Einstein's theory, fast-moving muons inside accelerators are observed to decay in slow motion. Some cosmic rays also experience spectacular time warps. These particles move so close to the speed of light that, from their point of view, they cross the galaxy in minutes, even though in Earth's frame of reference they seem to take tens of thousands of years. If time dilation did not occur, those particles would never make it here.<br /><br />Speed is one way to jump ahead in time. Gravity is another. In his general theory of relativity, Einstein predicted that gravity slows time. Clocks run a bit faster in the attic than in the basement, which is closer to the center of Earth and therefore deeper down in a gravitational field. Similarly, clocks run faster in space than on the ground. Once again the effect is minuscule, but it has been directly measured using accurate clocks. Indeed, these time-warping effects have to be taken into account in the Global Positioning System. If they weren't, sailors, taxi drivers and cruise missiles could find themselves many kilometers off course.<br /><br />At the surface of a neutron star, gravity is so strong that time is slowed by about 30 percent relative to Earth time. Viewed from such a star, events here would resemble a fast-forwarded video. A black hole represents the ultimate time warp; at the surface of the hole, time stands still relative to Earth. This means that if you fell into a black hole from nearby, in the brief interval it took you to reach the surface, all of eternity would pass by in the wider universe. The region within the black hole is therefore beyond the end of time, as far as the outside universe is concerned. If an astronaut could zoom very close to a black hole and return unscathed--admittedly a fanciful, not to mention foolhardy, prospect--he could leap far into the future.<br /><br />My Head Is Spinning<br /><br />SO FAR I HAVE DISCUSSED travel forward in time. What about going backward? This is much more problematic. In 1948 Kurt Gödel of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., produced a solution of Einstein's gravitational field equations that described a rotating universe. In this universe, an astronaut could travel through space so as to reach his own past. This comes about because of the way gravity affects light. The rotation of the universe would drag light (and thus the causal relations between objects) around with it, enabling a material object to travel in a closed loop in space that is also a closed loop in time, without at any stage exceeding the speed of light in the immediate neighborhood of the particle. Gödel's solution was shrugged aside as a mathematical curiosity--after all, observations show no sign that the universe as a whole is spinning. His result served nonetheless to demonstrate that going back in time was not forbidden by the theory of relativity. Indeed, Einstein confessed that he was troubled by the thought that his theory might permit travel into the past under some circumstances.<br /><br />Other scenarios have been found to permit travel into the past. For example, in 1974 Frank J. Tipler of Tulane University calculated that a massive, infinitely long cylinder spinning on its axis at near the speed of light could let astronauts visit their own past, again by dragging light around the cylinder into a loop. In 1991 J. Richard Gott of Princeton University predicted that cosmic strings--structures that cosmologists think were created in the early stages of the big bang--could produce similar results. But in the mid-1980s the most realistic scenario for a time machine emerged, based on the concept of a wormhole.<br /><br />In science fiction, wormholes are sometimes called star-gates; they offer a shortcut between two widely separated points in space. Jump through a hypothetical wormhole, and you might come out moments later on the other side of the galaxy. Wormholes naturally fit into the general theory of relativity, whereby gravity warps not only time but also space. The theory allows the analogue of alternative road and tunnel routes connecting two points in space. Mathematicians refer to such a space as multiply connected. Just as a tunnel passing under a hill can be shorter than the surface street, a wormhole may be shorter than the usual route through ordinary space.<br /><br />The wormhole was used as a fictional device by Carl Sagan in his 1985 novel Contact. Prompted by Sagan, Kip S. Thorne and his co-workers at the California Institute of Technology set out to find whether wormholes were consistent with known physics. Their starting point was that a wormhole would resemble a black hole in being an object with fearsome gravity. But unlike a black hole, which offers a one-way journey to nowhere, a wormhole would have an exit as well as an entrance.<br /><br />In the Loop<br /><br />FOR THE WORMHOLE to be traversable, it must contain what Thorne termed exotic matter. In effect, this is something that will generate antigravity to combat the natural tendency of a massive system to implode into a black hole under its intense weight. Antigravity, or gravitational repulsion, can be generated by negative energy or pressure. Negative-energy states are known to exist in certain quantum systems, which suggests that Thorne's exotic matter is not ruled out by the laws of physics, although it is unclear whether enough antigravitating stuff can be assembled to stabilize a wormhole.<br /><br />Soon Thorne and his colleagues realized that if a stable wormhole could be created, then it could readily be turned into a time machine. An astronaut who passed through one might come out not only somewhere else in the universe but somewhen else, too--in either the future or the past.<br /><br />To adapt the wormhole for time travel, one of its mouths could be towed to a neutron star and placed close to its surface. The gravity of the star would slow time near that wormhole mouth, so that a time difference between the ends of the wormhole would gradually accumulate. If both mouths were then parked at a convenient place in space, this time difference would remain frozen in.<br /><br />Suppose the difference were 10 years. An astronaut passing through the wormhole in one direction would jump 10 years into the future, whereas an astronaut passing in the other direction would jump 10 years into the past. By returning to his starting point at high speed across ordinary space, the second astronaut might get back home before he left. In other words, a closed loop in space could become a loop in time as well. The one restriction is that the astronaut could not return to a time before the wormhole was first built.<br /><br />A formidable problem that stands in the way of making a wormhole time machine is the creation of the wormhole in the first place. Possibly space is threaded with such structures naturally--relics of the big bang. If so, a supercivilization might commandeer one. Alternatively, wormholes might naturally come into existence on tiny scales, the so-called Planck length, about 20 factors of 10 as small as an atomic nucleus. In principle, such a minute wormhole could be stabilized by a pulse of energy and then somehow inflated to usable dimensions.<br /><br />Censored!<br /><br />ASSUMING THAT the engineering problems could be overcome, the production of a time machine could open up a Pandora's box of causal paradoxes. Consider, for example, the time traveler who visits the past and murders his mother when she was a young girl. How do we make sense of this? If the girl dies, she cannot become the time traveler's mother. But if the time traveler was never born, he could not go back and murder his mother.<br /><br />Paradoxes of this kind arise when the time traveler tries to change the past, which is obviously impossible. But that does not prevent someone from being a part of the past. Suppose the time traveler goes back and rescues a young girl from murder, and this girl grows up to become his mother. The causal loop is now self-consistent and no longer paradoxical. Causal consistency might impose restrictions on what a time traveler is able to do, but it does not rule out time travel per se.<br /><br />Even if time travel isn't strictly paradoxical, it is certainly weird. Consider the time traveler who leaps ahead a year and reads about a new mathematical theorem in a future edition of Scientific American. He notes the details, returns to his own time and teaches the theorem to a student, who then writes it up for Scientific American. The article is, of course, the very one that the time traveler read. The question then arises: Where did the information about the theorem come from? Not from the time traveler, because he read it, but not from the student either, who learned it from the time traveler. The information seemingly came into existence from nowhere, reasonlessly.<br /><br />The bizarre consequences of time travel have led some scientists to reject the notion outright. Stephen Hawking of the University of Cambridge has proposed a "chronology protection conjecture," which would outlaw causal loops. Because the theory of relativity is known to permit causal loops, chronology protection would require some other factor to intercede to prevent travel into the past. What might this factor be? One suggestion is that quantum processes will come to the rescue. The existence of a time machine would allow particles to loop into their own past. Calculations hint that the ensuing disturbance would become self-reinforcing, creating a runaway surge of energy that would wreck the wormhole.<br /><br />Chronology protection is still just a conjecture, so time travel remains a possibility. A final resolution of the matter may have to await the successful union of quantum mechanics and gravitation, perhaps through a theory such as string theory or its extension, so-called M-theory. It is even conceivable that the next generation of particle accelerators will be able to create subatomic wormholes that survive long enough for nearby particles to execute fleeting causal loops. This would be a far cry from Wells's vision of a time machine, but it would forever change our picture of physical reality.<br /><br />Overview Time Travel<br /><br />* Traveling forward in time is easy enough. If you move close to the speed of light or sit in a strong gravitational field, you experience time more slowly than other people do--another way of saying that you travel into their future.<br /><br />* Traveling into the past is rather trickier. Relativity theory allows it in certain spacetime configurations: a rotating universe, a rotating cylinder and, most famously, a wormhole--a tunnel through space and time.<br /><br />MORE TO EXPLORE<br /><br />Time Machines: Time Travel in Physics, Metaphysics, and Science Fiction. Paul J. Nahin. American Institute of Physics, 1993.<br /><br />The Quantum Physics of Time Travel. David Deutsch and Michael Lockwood in Scientific American, Vol. 270, No. 3, pages 68-74; March 1994.<br /><br />Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy. Kip S. Thorne. W. W. Norton, 1994.<br /><br />Time Travel in Einstein's Universe: The Physical Possibilities of Travel through Time. J. Richard Gott III. Houghton Mifflin, 2001.<br /><br />How to Build a Time Machine. Paul Davies. Viking, 2002.<br />Existing Forms of Forward Travel<br /><br />By Paul Davies</div>Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05010216520005985436noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24408045.post-41907844542560364452007-01-30T10:07:00.000-04:002007-07-27T10:16:56.325-04:0050, 100, 150 Years Ago<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">JANUARY 1957</span><br /><br />BOREDOM --"In this age of semi-automation, when not only military personnel but also many industrial workers have little to do but keep a constant watch on instruments, the problem of human behavior in monotonous situations is becoming acute. In 1951 McGill University psychologist Donald O. Hebb obtained a grant from the Defense Research Board of <a href="http://www.canada.travelphotoguide.com/">Canada</a> to make a systematic study. Prolonged exposure to a monotonous environment has definitely deleterious effects. The individual's thinking is impaired; he shows childish emotional responses; his visual perception becomes disturbed; he suffers from hallucinations; his brain-wave pattern changes."<br /><br />ANXIETY --"In the past year and a half prescription sales of the tranquilizing drug meprobamate, better known as Miltown and Equanil, have jumped to the rate of $32.5 million a year. More than a billion tablets have been sold, and the monthly production of 50 tons falls far short of the demand. Some California druggists herald each new shipment with colored window streamers reading, 'Yes, we have Miltown today!'"<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">JANUARY 1907</span><br /><br />AUTO CHIC --"The improved appearance of this year's cars is largely aided by the considerable increase in the wheel base which, in the case of some of the heavier machines, is now as great as 123 inches. Furthermore, the use of six-cylinder motors has brought with it a considerable increase in the length of the bonnet, and this also adds to the generally rakish and smart appearance of the up-to-date machine. By a judicious attention to these principles, the builders of even the low-powered and low-priced machines have succeeded in giving to their output a style which was altogether lacking in the earlier models."<br /><br />FLYING FOR SPORT AND WAR --"With mechanical aeroplane flight an accomplished fact, we may now look for a diversion of interest from the dirigible balloon to the aeroplane proper. Its field of usefulness will be found chiefly in military service, where it will be invaluable for reconnoitering purposes and for the conveyance of swift dispatches. In all probability its chief development ultimately will be in the field of sport, where it should enjoy a popularity equal to that of the automobile."<br /><br />TEA MONEY --"The queerest use to which brick-tea (tea leaves compressed into a block) has ever been put in the Orient is in the capacity of money. It is still in circulation as a medium of exchange in the far-inland Chinese towns and central Asian marts and bazaars. Between the Mongolian town of Urga and the Siberian town of Kiakta, there is as much as half a million taels (say $600,000) of this money in circulation. At the latter place it ceases to be used as currency, and enters into the regular brick-tea trade of Siberia and Russia, where it is largely used in the Russian army, by surveying engineers, touring theatrical companies, and tourists in general."<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">JANUARY 1857</span><br /><br />REALITY THEATER --"A severe test of the strength of the suspension bridge at Niagara Falls was afforded by the gale on the evening of the 13th of last month, when the toll gatherers deserted their posts at either end, and crowds assembled to see it fall, but it stood like a rock."<br /><br />DR. LIVINGSTONE'S TALES --"The celebrated traveler Dr. Livingstone has been lecturing since his return to England. During his unprecedented march, alone among savages, to whom a white face was a miracle, Dr. Livingstone was compelled to struggle through indescribable hardships--he conquered the hostility of the natives by his intimate knowledge of their character and the Bechuana tongue. He waded rivers and slept in the sponge and ooze of marshes, being often so drenched as to be compelled to turn his arm-pit into a watch-pocket. Lions were numerous, being worshiped by many of the tribes as the receptacles of the departed souls of their chiefs; however, he thinks the fear of African wild beasts greater in <a href="http://england.freetraveler.net/">England</a> than in Africa."</div><br /><br />Scientific American, Jan2007Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05010216520005985436noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24408045.post-50005416015472913532007-01-29T11:04:00.000-04:002007-07-27T10:00:08.657-04:00Happier holidays -- in 5 easy steps<div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Ditch those obligatory get-togethers for new traditions with folks who really matter.</span><br /></div><br />Last year, my girlfriend Betsy and I decided to set the holiday craziness aside and spend an impromptu few hours celebrating Christmas Eve together. No big dinner, no fancy gifts, no huge crowd--just us, our kids, and our husbands, enjoying store-bought hors d'oeuvres, desserts, and eggnog, swapping traditions, and rediscovering why we adore one another. It was a celebration full of sweet memories we won't soon forget.<br /><br />If only all holiday connections were as low-key and hassle-free. Unfortunately, with all the party-hopping and the pressure to cook, decorate, and find the perfect gift, celebrations can end up feeling more like The Nightmare Before Christmas than It's a Wonderful Life. In fact, the National Mental Health Institute says that worrying, partying, stressing, and clinging to unrealistic expectations--all in an overcommercialized atmosphere--can lead to a case of the holiday blues, a condition that can cause insomnia, headaches, fatigue, and even depression.<br /><br />"People focus on the holidays by saying, 'Can I just get through it?' instead of recognizing this as a time to connect with family, reflect on the previous year, and look forward to the New Year," says life coach Valorie Burton, author of Listen to Your Life.<br /><br />It doesn't have to be that way, though. Get more out of this holiday season by saying no to irrelevant obligations and finding more meaningful ways to connect with those most important to you. Here are a few tips to get you started.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">1 Instead of assembling and wrapping gifts into the wee hours to keep the kids from hearing your tools and the distinct sound of tape ripping …</span><br /><br />Take an afternoon off from work and invite a few buddies over for a gift-wrapping party, while the kids are at school. "Put on your holiday music, have cake and tea, talk and laugh--and connect," Burton suggests.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">2 Instead of packing the whole family into the minivan and driving 6 hours across four states to see your parents (or worse, spending thousands of dollars in airfare) …</span><br /><br />Send Mom and Dad tickets so they can visit you during the holidays. "It'll cost you a few hundred bucks. But it's an awfully wonderful trade, compared with what it would take for you to get there and the disruption it would cause," says Jeff Davidson, author of Breathing Space: Living and Working at a Comfortable Pace in a Sped-Up Society. "The gesture alone speaks volumes."<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">3 Instead of attending multiple Hanukkah or Kwanzaa parties to celebrate these weeklong holidays …</span><br /><br />Host a small gathering of friends on one of the days, and enjoy the others with just your immediate family. You can even make your party more special by inviting people whose religions and traditions differ from your own. Cecelia Cancellaro and Eric Zinner, of Maplewood, New Jersey, let their 7- and 4-year-old daughters invite friends over to play dreidels, eat latkes, and participate in lighting the menorah as part of their annual Hanukkah party. It gives her daughters a sense of pride when they share their tradition with friends, Cancellaro says. "It helps all the children feel more connected to one anther."<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">4 Instead of schlepping the kids to the mall to wait (and wait) in an excruciatingly long line to get pricey-but-not-so-great holiday portraits …</span><br /><br />Whip out your home video camera and have your children sing, dance, and share their New Year's resolutions. Then when the holidays arrive, pop some popcorn, pour the eggnog, dim the lights, and sit everyone down to enjoy your own musical. The kids will love seeing themselves, you'll capture priceless memories, and the entire family will enjoy your new holiday tradition. Plan to make it an annual event. And next year, this year's video will be even more fun.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">5 Instead of going to the annual neighborhood-association holiday potluck …</span><br /><br />Help your kids bake a batch of cookies, and then take the treats to your favorite neighbors' homes with handwritten holiday greetings. "These days, people don't connect much with their neighbors," Burton says. "This is a great way to get the kids involved and do something that you wouldn't normally do. It's an inexpensive and extremely thoughtful gesture."<br /><br />Already dreading the holidays? Ease your stress with our Holiday Survival Guide at Health.com.<br /><br />By Denene Millner</div>Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05010216520005985436noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24408045.post-47425558343835812822006-12-09T15:31:00.000-04:002006-12-09T15:34:02.142-04:00Outbound<div align="justify">Bone weary in the wee hours, rolling west out of Colorado. I make it only as far as Green River before pulling off for a nap at the back of an abandoned gas station, easing past a sad toss of weeds and cracked concrete and rusted barrels. The rest of the night plays out to the whine of big trucks on Interstate 70: some running for Denver, others west to 1-15 and then on to California. Every so often one slows and exits, rumbles past me here on the outskirts — pausing barely long enough for a tank of fuel, maybe a microwaved burn to at the Gas-N-Go on West Main. Nearly everyone, it seems, is just passing through.<br /><br />Listening to the engines in the darkness, I'm reminded of the story of an anthropologist from Boston sent west to California in the 1920s, assigned the job of chronicling the language of the Pit River Indians, even then on the verge of extinction. At one point the young researcher asks the elders their word for newcomersrecent arrivals, European descendents like himself. The men get nervous, refuse to answer. Finally, after much cajoling, they give in. The word is inalladui, one old man explains. Tramp. We can't understand how your people travel through without ever stopping long enough to learn something of the land; without ever binding a place to your heart. We think a part of you must be dead inside.<br /><br />I'm up again at dawn, glad to trade the four-lane for Highway 95 — a sweet, lonely path along the San Rafael Swell. Beyond the road, the land is dappled with locoweed and purple vetch, dropseed and cheatgrass and fescue, here and there the occasional huddle of juniper or cottonwood. This was Jane's country. A wind-shorn mix of rock and wind and sky that changed her utterly, turning her at 18 from a Midwest farmer's daughter into an outdoor educator. An Outward Bound instructor. A national park ranger. "You know if something ever happens to me," she said shortly before she died, relighting a conversation we'd had years before, "I want my ashes scattered in my favorite places." Five days later she was gone, lost in a canoeing accident on the Kopka River, in the dark woods of northern Ontario.<br /><br />And so I travel. Journeying across the West with a small brown pottery jar of her ashes, ultimately bound for six perfect pieces of wilderness: Idaho's Sawtooth Mountains, where 25 years ago I stood beside her in a field of camas lilies, me in my gray suit, she in her wedding dress; a certain little cabin in the pine-covered foothills of Wyoming's Absaroka Range; the heartbreakingly beautiful northern range of Yellowstone, where on<br /><br />spring days she knelt beside 12-year-old kids, hearing them catch their breath at the sight of wolves; a couple of alpine gardens near home, deep in the Beartooth Mountains of Montana. And today, Capitol Reef National Park, in southern Utah.<br /><br />These were the essential landscapes of our lives. And though for me right now the joy is nearly gone from them, choked by this jagged pill of grief, Jane's last wish means I cannot stay away. Later in the afternoon on the eastern edge of Capitol Reef, with the sun lighting clusters of rabbitbrush and Apache plume, I grab my pack and walk with tears streaming down my face toward the great maze of the Waterpocket Fold. Barren capes of slick rock. Slot canyons. A lone raven, his voice full of gravel. At one point a slight breeze from the east begins to rise, and that's when I open the lid and release her, watching puffs of ash drift into the upturned fringes of the fold. Even these scant vestiges of her are not long for this world. Soon they'll be disassembled into tiny jots of carbon; those, in turn, feeding the very web of life that so inspired her.<br /><br />What the Pit River Indians understood that the young anthropologist from Boston likely did not, is that to stop moving, to rest on wild land, is to be nudged toward relationship. Or more specifically, toward an urge to weave the stories of relationship. Awaiting us on unfettered lands are exquisite metaphors — images to feed not so much our quest for meaning, as our hunger for place. Even for me, on this somber afternoon, there are notions of kinship. In the silence. In the faint scent of dust. In a frail and lovely patch of sumac withering in the hot sun, dropping leaves, desperate for rain.<br /><br />By Gary Ferguson</div>Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05010216520005985436noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24408045.post-27833130895388114172006-11-08T04:10:00.000-04:002006-11-08T04:11:28.630-04:00Travel Trick<div align="justify">Renewing your passport is an expensive pain, in part because you have to find a place that can take the very specific type of unflattering photos the U.S. government requires. Now you can make them yourself with epassportphoto.com. Snap a headshot against a white wall with your digital camera, upload the photo, and the site will resize and crop it to passport specifications. Print six photos Oh a 4×6 sheet, or order a set from an online photo service.<br /><br />Popular Science </div>Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05010216520005985436noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24408045.post-72077695489581237732006-11-08T03:56:00.000-04:002006-11-08T04:08:06.550-04:00Shoot More Ducks<div align="justify"><strong>Ten fun <a href="http://tiptrick.net/">tips</a> to improve your waterfowl season</strong><br /><br />The basics of duck hunting are the same no matter where you are: decoys, calls, shotguns and shells, blinds, bracing weather and, most important, ducks to work. But over the years you come across a few useful <strong><a href="http://tiptrick.net/">tricks</a></strong>. Here are some of mine.<br /><br /><strong>1. THE EASY-MONEY SHOT<br /></strong>When I was a boy my father would take me with him to a railroad Sack that ran alongside a local lake. Ducks would trade back and forth between the lake and another marsh a mile or so away. When the ducks left the lake, they flew over a steep hill and then the railroad bed, which was even higher.<br /><br />Many of the ducks were well within range when they crossed the railroad track, which made for some excellent pass shooting. I hunted with my first shotgun, a single-shot 16-gauge Winchester Model 37, and my father quickly taught me how to hit the high overhead shot, coming or going. "Start behind the duck and swing through. When the bird is blotted out by your barrel, pull the trigger and keep on swinging," he told me. It was solid advice, and 40-some-odd years later, the high overhead shot is the only one I'd ever bet money on making.<br /><br /><strong>2. AN ICE-FREE HOLE</strong><br />On late-season hunts it's often necessary to knock a hole in the ice for decoys. Always try to break the ice in large slabs and then slide them under the secure ice on the edges of the hole. If you simply break the ice into small chunks and throw the decoys out into the mix, ducks will be reluctant to decoy. I've found that if I can't break the ice into slabs, I'm better off just setting my decoys on the ice. Like some scotch drinkers, ducks don't like ice cubes.<br /><br /><strong>3. JUST A COUPLE OF BLOBS</strong><br />Entire books have been written about the subject of how to set out decoys. Most have pretty drawings, too. I've tried some of them and they do work, but none better than my old "twin-blob spread." Just toss a blob of decoys to the left and a blob to the fight, leaving a sweet spot in the middle. Sounds too easy, fight? Well, sometimes the simplest solution is the best one.<br /><br /><strong>4. DUCKS OUT OF RANGE</strong><br />Many hunters insist upon putting most of their decoys well within range and then putting one or two decoys almost out of range. Such "marker" decoys are intended to serve as a range reference for hunters when ducks come in. What the way-out decoys often do instead is entice ducks to land not only short of the main spread, but short of the markers as well. If you need a range indicator, use a stick or pole stuck in the mud instead of decoys.<br /><br /><strong>5. SWITCH-HITTERS<br /></strong>When my father was in his 40s, he went partially blind in his fight eye and was forced to train himself to shoot lefthanded. Because of that experience, as soon as I became somewhat adept at shooting from my natural side--the fight side--my father insisted that I learn to shoot left-handed as well. At the time I thought it was totally unnecessary, but evening after evening I would stand in the middle of the living room floor, an empty shotgun in my hands, snapping the stock to my left shoulder as Pa tossed my mother's couch pillows across the room. I've got to admit, Pa was fight. Being able to shoot from either side paid off in the duck blind on those hard over-the-right-shoulder screamers that most right-handers, including this one, find nearly impossible. Practicing left-handed won't cost you anything, so give it a try.<br /><br /><strong>6. DON'T OVERCHOKE<br /></strong>I grew up hunting ducks in an era when duck hunters, almost to a man, favored 12-gauge pumps and semi-autos with 30- or 32-inch barrels and full chokes. Many hunters continue to hunt with the same sort of guns today, and in doing so they are unwittingly handicapping themselves. After having tested steel shot from all the major ammunition manufacturers through a variety of guns and chokes, I have never found a fullchoke barrel that did not leave holes in the pattern a teal could fly through. A modified or improved-cylinder choke is best for steel.<br /><br />If you want to stick with Ol' Betsy, spring for the extra bucks and shoot either Bismuth or Kent TungstenMatrix. These nontoxic loads pattern beautifully through a full choke. Federal's popular Tungsten-Iron loads pattern best from either improved or modified chokes. HEVI-Shot, another nontoxic option, patterns so tightly that unless you're in a situation where long shots are going to be the rule of the day, you're better off with less choke constriction.<br /><br /><strong>7. SEEK THE SHADE</strong><br />When hunting flooded timber on a sunny day, always lean against the shady side of the tree. Ducks will have a much more difficult time spotting you in the shade than they will if you're standing in bright sun.<br /><br /><strong>8. WEIGHTED BUNDS </strong><br />The biggest problem with a cloth boat blind is that the cloth can billow and flap unnaturally in a stiff breeze. Ducks often flare from such unnatural movement. My buddy Tommy Akin taught me how to correct the problem. Using short lengths of cord, tie a decoy anchor to the blind every few feet. Adjust the cords so that the anchors hang down a couple of feet into the water but don't touch bottom. You'll have no more duck-spooking flap.<br /><br /><strong>9. PANTYHOSE PROTECTION</strong><br />Stuffed into a plastic bag in one comer of my shooting box are a couple of pairs of women's pantyhose (save the wisecracks). When I shoot a duck I want to save for mounting, the pantyhose afford the protection needed to ensure that the bird will arrive at the taxidermist's shop in perfect condition, just slip the duck headfirst into one leg of the pantyhose. When you take the duck to the taxidermist, cut the pantyhose below the head and lift the duck out. Don't try to back it out the way it went in or you'll bend and break the feathers.<br /><br /><strong>10. DOUBLES AND TRIPLES<br /></strong>Have you ever noticed that some hunters routinely take a pair or even three ducks out of a decoying flock, while others struggle to scratch down a single bird? Hunters who make a habit of doubling or tripling never, never take the easy bird first when a flock decoys. Conversely, hunters who rarely double always take the "candy" bird first. If you want more doubles and triples, pick a drake towards the middle or back of the flock for your first shot. After that, go to work on the lead birds. Usually the lead birds will be stalled out over the decoys and it will take them a second or two to reverse gears. This makes number two--and sometimes number three--much easier pickings.<br /><br /><strong>GREAT GRILLED DUCK</strong><br />If you're successful in bringing home a few ducks this season, you might enjoy this simple recipe.<br /><br />1 Split the ducks in half and marinate them with a couple of quartered onions overnight in your favorite marinade. (Hickory- or mesquite-flavored marinades complement the taste of duck very well.)<br />2 Place the ducks and onions on a charcoal or gas grill and cook at medium heat for about 10 minutes per side. Do not overcook. Anything past pink is too well-done.<br />3 Remove the ducks from the grill, slice the onions over the top and dig in.<br /><br />By Gary Clancy, Outdoor Life, Sep2006</div>Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05010216520005985436noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24408045.post-59534375027224007182006-10-24T22:51:00.000-04:002006-10-24T22:52:05.076-04:00Laying Claim to a Little Paradise<div align="justify"><strong>David Gilmour made Wakaya a posh resort. Now Fijians want it back.</strong><br /><br />Foreigners have always found it hard to resist the siren song of the Fijian isles. And the locals have always found it just as tough to repel them. Take the island of Wakaya, a 2,200-acre emerald of lush jungle greens and chalk-white beaches that rises from the Koro Sea's shark-rife waters about an hour's flight from Suva, the Fijian capital. It is today wreathed in those same lagoony hues of aqua and turquoise that Captain Bligh, cut loose from the mutinous Bounty in 1789, skimmed when seeking refuge in Wakaya's bay. For Bligh, it was not to be. When native warriors aimed their canoes at his small open boat, the captain surmised their intentions -- as he later wrote in his diary, "not necessarily of the most friendly variety" -- and retreated. Now, David Gilmour, the Canadian financier who has owned Wakaya since 1972, has his own troubles with locals: a group of Fijians who argue the island was fraudulently sold two centuries ago, and are laying claim to it.<br /><br />Times have changed since the Fijian islanders ate their interlopers. Rather than warriors, Gilmour, who has converted Wakaya into a luxurious five-star refuge for the extraordinarily rich, may soon be confronted by lawyers. And he is not alone. Mel Gibson recently bought yet another disputed island and is contending with similar claims. But Gilmour is not known to shrink from a fight, especially one with so much at stake.<br /><br />Now in his mid-70s, Gilmour was the long-time partner of Peter Munk, with whom he founded such ventures as Barrick Gold, the mining powerhouse, and real estate giant TrizecHahn. Still, wealth has not always sheltered foreigners in Fiji. A coup attempt in 2000 spread from Suva into the archipelago's far-flung resorts -- including the seizure by insurgents of Laucala Island, then owned by the family of U.S. publishing magnate Malcolm Forbes. And when another group of insurgents raided Turtle Island, they held its American owner and a number of guests hostage for some two months.<br /><br />Even so, Fiji has remained a mostly tranquil island paradise since it first began to boom as a tourist destination in the 1960s. And few resorts can rival the Wakaya Club's guest list of starlets and millionaires. It is where Conrad Black and Barbara Amiel honeymooned, and where Keith Richards suffered his concussive fall from a tree last spring. Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher have holidayed there -- as have Michelle Pfeiffer, Jim Carrey, Céline Dion, Rupert Murdoch and Renée Zellweger. When Nicole Kidman departed Wakaya with old friend Russell Crowe in 2001, she is reported to have just missed her ex-husband, Tom Cruise, who flew in on the island's own private airline just days later.<br /><br />Indeed, the island, which accepts just 24 guests at a time -- each of whom enjoys a 12-to-one staff-to-guest ratio -- is perhaps the most exclusive holiday destination in the world. As the resort's slogan says, this sprawling, thatch-roofed Xanadu is where "people who have it all go to get away from it all." Eight well-appointed, 1,650-sq.-foot cottages sit against the sea or the island's idyllic gardens, and set guests back up to $7,600 a night. A ninth cottage -- the Governor's Bure -- boasts 2,400 sq. feet and is staffed with butler, laundry service, chef and chauffeur. Alcohol is unlimited. The food is largely Wakaya-grown, cultivated from island corners teeming with wild boars and deer.<br /><br />For Gilmour, the resort is just one in a string of business successes. He discovered the island in 1971 during a flight over Fiji, and purchased Wakaya the following year for $1 million. By then, he had already confronted both business zeniths and nadirs alongside his one-time University of Toronto chum Munk. Gilmour -- from Winnipeg, the son of a military man and an opera singer -- was something of an outsider on Bay Street. Clairtone, his first venture with Munk, was a hi-fi manufacturer that by the mid-'60s had turned the pair into the wunderkinds of Canadian business. When it went bust in 1971, the two managed to salvage enough money to start Southern Pacific Hotel Corp., snapping up properties around the world.<br /><br />Gilmour's swashbuckling over the next three decades helped lead to the founding of Barrick Gold, TrizecHahn, and eventually to another Fiji-based triumph. Gilmour was watching Bill and Melinda Gates -- who honeymooned on Wakaya in 1994 -- playing a round on the island's nine-hole golf course, when he noticed them sipping from bottles of French-imported mineral water. Gilmour realized there was likely a purer source nearby. Within days, he'd been alerted to a recently discovered underground reservoir of 450-year-old rainwater on Viti Levu, Fiji's main island. Gilmour arranged to tap the reserve and established Fiji Water, marketing it through word-of-mouth and savvy product placements in U.S. films and television shows. He sold the company in 2004 -- reportedly for about $60 million.<br /><br />He has also seen tragedy. In 1983, Munk's son Anthony found Gilmour's daughter Erin -- the two wealthy offspring were said to have been dating at the time -- in a pool of blood, the victim of a still-unsolved knife attack.<br /><br />Through all the highs and lows, Gilmour's heart always rested with the coral-crested island and his boutique resort for the stars. Though he now spends much of his time in Palm Beach, Fla., and is no longer involved in many of his former businesses, Gilmour continues to operate the Wakaya Club.<br /><br />Now an indigenous group is preparing a case against the Fijian government in hopes of getting the aging tycoon to cough up his paradise (or at least share its wealth). Francis Waqa Sokonibogi, a Fijian activist who is spearheading the legal case, claims the group has documents proving the group's ancestors were duped out of the island, which was sold by a local chieftain in the 1840s for a single shilling. The government of the day, he says, ignored their protesting forefathers. "We are trying to do this to prevent future coups and unrest," says Sokonibogi, who muses that the Wakayans could one day form a partnership with Gilmour. Yet Doug Carlson, the resort's chief executive, holds that at the time of its original sale Wakaya had not been inhabited since Komai-na-Ua, its ruler in the early 19th century, led its people to commit mass suicide by jumping off a 180-m cliff rather than surrender to approaching enemies.<br /><br />That version of events is in keeping with what is known of Fiji prior to its becoming a British colony in 1874, when chieftains engaged in internecine battles to evict the inhabitants of neighbouring islands before selling their land to foreigners engaged in the lucrative coconut and sandalwood trades. "There's historical instances of islands being sold for a couple of hundred muskets," says Cheyenne Morrison, an Australian private island broker. Mago Island, purchased by Mel Gibson in late 2004 for a reported US$15 million, is said to have been originally sold for 2,000 coconut plants. On Mago, according to locals now raising money for another court case, is a cave filled with the bones of those slaughtered for the island. Other accounts say Mago's inhabitants were evicted at gunpoint.<br /><br />Whatever their historical basis, such claims are easily exploited by agitators seeking to fan the rancour of Fijians, many of whom live in Third World conditions even as their neighbours dine on venison. One luxury real estate site now lists Fijian private islands ranging from US$1.25 million to US$38 million. "There's of a lot of resentment in Fiji over the fact that the islands and the resorts are changing hands for astronomical amounts of money -- and the Fijians aren't getting any of it," says Morrison. Yet the legal cases being launched against the Fijian government aren't likely to lead to redress -- particularly when the lands in question belong to two wealthy and connected men. "The court case would be incredibly expensive," says Morrison, "and Gibson and Gilmour have huge amounts of money -- they would just throw money at it."<br /><br />By: Köhler, Nicholas, Maclean's, 10/2/2006</div>Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05010216520005985436noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24408045.post-21108442215401210102006-10-22T09:36:00.000-04:002006-10-22T09:38:09.081-04:00Lassie, Come To Houston<div align="justify"><strong>The pet-friendly city makes it easy for road warriors to take along their pooch</strong><br /><br /><strong>ARE YOU FEELING</strong> guilty about leaving Fido or Fluffy at the kennel while you're away on business? If you're headed to Houston, maybe you should take them along. The American Automobile Assn. rates it the most pet-friendly city in America, at least if you go by the number of AAA-approved hotels that accept four-legged guests.<br /><br />At the 314-room Hotel Derek in the city's tony Galleria area shopping district, dogs and cats get their own beds, water and food bowls, and a gift bag of toys. Pet sitting is available, and room service will deliver cooked-to-order bow-wow and meow chow. "We realize your dog or cat is part of your family," said assistant front office manager George Trevino, who was recently dispatched to get a carpeted kitty condo for Cher's cat, Mr. Big.<br /><br />The Four Seasons, Westin, and St. Regis hotels confer posh pet privileges in keeping with their nationwide policies. Smaller lodging facilities, such as the 14-room Lovett Inn in the museum district, also allow pets but don't serve them treats on silver platters.<br /><br />During your free time you can take your buddy for a romp in one of several canine parks, including the 15-acre Millie Bush Bark Park, named for former President George Bush's late spaniel. It has walking trails, swimming ponds, and paw-operated drinking fountains. Hungry? Stop at one of three Barnaby's Cafes, known for their multi-ethnic menu, decadent layer cakes, and dogs lying under patio tables at their owners' feet.<br /><br /><strong>DOGGIE SHOW</strong><br />YOU CAN'T TAKE a dog to Houston's Museum of Fine Arts, but you can see its new exhibit, Best in Show: The Dog in Art from the Renaissance to Today, which opens Oct. 1 and runs through Jan. 1, 2007 (mfah.org). It features 75 pooch paintings, photographs, and sculptures starting in the 16th century. Among the pieces is Two Dogs in a Landscape by Jacopo Bassano. Cat lovers shouldn't feel left out. The Cat's Meow, a show of 25 feline-related works, is on display until Jan. 21, 2007.<br /><br />By: Murphy, Kate, Business Week, 10/9/2006</div>Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05010216520005985436noreply@blogger.com0