during that time we had to move, partially, into the RV.
We had a traumatic failure of our sewer system and it
took more than 3 weeks to get it all fixed. Fixed it
is now and we are back in the house and the kitchen
floor has been thoroughly scrubbed. The problem was
under the kitchen floor and the comings/goings from
the crawl space made the kitchen floor resemble a
dirt floor by the time all was finished.
This week has been much better. We went to the
Conference on World Affairs (CWA) held at the University.
This is a fantastic affair with people from all
disciplines coming from all across the country. They
pay their own way and our housed in people's homes
in Boulder.
On Monday we left here at 7:45 AM and didn't get
home until after 6 PM and we were exhausted. We
drove to the 29th Street shopping district where we left
our car and took a bus (free for conference attendees)
back to the campus. We attended a panel discussion
at the UMC Center Ballroom on "Electrifying Detroit:
Where Are We going?" The panelists were interesting
and the discussion lively. From there we went to the
Keynote speech by former Senator Chuck Hagel. This
was disappointing. He didn't seem to have anything
much to say. The title of his address was: "Twenty-
first Century International Relations.
After this talk we had 10 minutes to trot across
campus to the Law School (about 1/2 mile). The
panel was a good one and worth the trot. Its
title "Energy Conservation is a Waste of Time."
Then back to Macky for the Plenary session: "Finding
Greener Pastures for the Auto Industry." And I guess
I was out of it because I remember nothing about that
talk by Bill Reinert. Bill is an engineer with Toyota
and heads the design team for the Prius. He's an
interesting person and I can't figure out why I
don't remember anything of his speech.
The final talk for the day was ARIA Hearts of Darkness:
Black Holes in Space." The speaker was Alex Filippenko
who is on the faculty at UC Berkeley. We have listened
to his Astronomy Lectures from the Teaching Company.
He is a fantastic lecturer and makes obtuse concepts
sound understandable.
Tuesday we took it easy. We went to two lectures/
panels. The first was "The Future of the UN and Why it
Matters. Tim Wirth, former Senator from Colorado was
on that panel and he is very knowledgeable and speaks
well. The second one was a panel on "Brain Quirks."
All of the panelists on this panel were excellent.
Entertaining and knowledgeable.
After that Robert stayed at the conference for one
more session while I took the bus back to pick up
my car and go to Jared's office where I am writing
a handbook for the cadre of Interns who will be
working in the office this summer. I am retiring
the 30th of April to make room for a young intern.
Again on Wednesday we went to only 2 panels. The
first was "Global Warming: Too Little, Too late."
This was an interesting panel because of the
panelists. Filippenko, Koromzay, Jahajan and
Norstrom. Mahajan is a mathematician from MIT;
Koromzay recently retired from the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development. Nordstrom is
involved with the group advocating a Nuclear free and
Carbon free energy system. She is very excited with
her job and a strong advocate for the premise that we
can be both carbon free and nuclear free.
The second panel was "Cyborgs: Aliens Among Us."
This was a fun panel and pretty much tongue in
cheek.
I again headed for Jared's and Robert headed home.
On Thursday Robert stayed home and I worked all
day at Jared's.
Wow, on Friday it was really a TGIF day. I love
going to all these things, but I do get very
tired. I don't seem to get tired from working
at Jared's as I did going to the Conference.
In any case, now it's Saturday and I finally put
the pots and pans back in the cupboards and
have caught up on the ironing..7 shirts for
Robert and several pairs of pants for each. I
tend to wear turtle necks so they don't require
ironing.
On Monday Stuart and I are going to visit
The LENA Foundation. These folks have come up
with a computerized scheme to track the word
count of parents with their children. What
they have found is the less TV and the more
face-to-face conversations kids have with
adults the faster and more complete are their
language skills and the earlier research shows
that children with a high word count by the
age of 3 years do better, on average, in school
by age 10 than their peers who had less.
I guess this doesn't surprise me. I'll be
interested in seeing more of their research and
the hows and whys of it all. I assume they
want Jared to do something for them. More
later.
