A blog from a science nut, computer geek, sometimes philosopher, and a human. Based out of Denver, with a love of Antarctica, I seem to wander the world so who knows where I'll be in 6 months.
So I know, I'm spoiled, but where do American get this coffee? I was "raised" on coffee over the last year an a half in Eastern Africa as except for the smell of coffee in the morning, I used to hate coffee, preferring instead hot chocolate. I thought it was bitter disgusting water, and couldn't … Read more
I've still got the last of my burundian water posts to put up, and it's more or less finished, but needs some rethinking due to problems with the filter and original line of thought. In the meantime I was asked by Tripbase.com to give some advice, due to my notorious traveling, to write a … Read more
Previously I talked about what I was doing in Burundi talking about CAWST and the stages of clean water. I want to back up a bit and talk about Burundi for a bit in order to give you a context for the CAWST water filter project in Burundi and why it has to be cheap, … Read more
Three years ago I wrote an blog based on my research around water and making it clean. Coming up in the next several days are a few follow ups on that idea, followed by my first solo attempt at building a cheap filter. If you've been keeping up with me, I'm in Eastern Africa … Read more
I have to say the Netherlands screwed the cup, but that's not the blowing I was thinking about. It's about 2:30am as I start writing this, and here is what I know. At least 23 people probably closer to 50 people have died in what looks like 2 probably 3 bomb blasts of an unknown … Read more
I'm a cheap date, all I want is a $12.50 phone, okay so I can't eat it and it might not be as tasty as a Burundi Royale with Cheese, but it might help calm things a bit here in Burundi. We've got 75 more phones to purchase for the Burundi election monitoring HROC is doing. Donate … Read more
Without going nuts and writing a dissertation like I normally seem to get into, I'm going to try and talk about one of the projects what I've been doing for the last several days. As I mentioned, I've got several going on while I'm here in Burundi, the primary of which is implementing a mobile … Read more
I'm in Burundi again nearly a year after I first arrived on the African continent. I'll be here for about a month (till late June), working on a bunch of different things. Primarily I'm here to help Healing and Rebuilding Our Communities (HROC) as a technical consultant for the Frontline SMS implementation they are using for … Read more
In my previous blog I talked about the effectiveness of the RILA on lobbying congress and how it illustrates the methods that FCNL and others teach about changing the face of our legal/policy reality. Something that bothers me about this though, which I did not mention in the blog, is the fairly obvious reality that … Read more
Two blogs in one week after such a dry spell, it’s crazy I know, but I’m feeling in the mood to write these days. I wanted to highlight a few things based on my experience at FCNL, in DC/Congress, and in my understanding of human nature from this excerpt of this article in the NY … Read more