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Pictures of presidential candidates in Clinton, IA and nearby campaigning for the 2008 Iowa caucuses

That is not really my world, of course.  It is sunset at the Grand Canyon, and I am from the midwest.  But I did go there and take that picture.  Continue on below for a few selected parts of my real world.

Glaciers Global Warming (Just a start toward a look at this topic) Mississippi River Flood Old Train Pics Short Story (Hookworm) (Version to Print) Short Story (POTUS) (Version to Print) Venus Transit War and Its Technology (Another beginning - more to come)

LINKS TO INTERESTING STUFF -- RIGHT HERE TO THE LEFT - MORE INFO BELOW.

A glacier is a big river of flowing ice which can thrill you with its scenic grandeur, daze you when big chunks fall off with a sound like thunder, and worry you when you realize that most of them are retreating.  I have managed to visit one in Colorado and a whole bunch of them in Alaska.  So if you click my glacier link, you can find pictures and information about St. Mary's Glacier in Colorado, and about the following glaciers in Alaska:  Kahiltna, Exit, Hubbard, Margerie, Meade, Mendenhall, and Northwestern.  Among other things, I got some pictures of a couple of them calving.  That is what they call it when chunks fall off.  Those are not the only ones I have visited, and I will try to get some pictures of more of them up later.

Mendenhall Glacier near Juneau, AK (Click the pic to enlarge.)

Heating up the world -- Global warming. Are we humans really doing this? I am trying to look at the actual science of this in a simple way, only a minimal dose of politics,  just a look at what is happening, and I hope a resource for anyone who wants it.  By the way, the answer is this:  Yes we are warming the planet and changing the climate in some other ways that could easily become dangerous if allowed to continue.  I will try to answer some of the skepticism and provide links to other such discussions.  And if any of the skeptics manage to persuade me otherwise as I work on this, then I will change my tune in this paragraph and rewrite it.

Well, of course a picture that I took of a thermometer in Death Valley does not really say anything about global warming.  But I like the picture.  And it was hot. (Click the pic to enlarge and see how hot it was.)

Not the flood -- just a picture out on the river looking downstream in 2003.  (Click the link to the left for the flood and this pic for a larger version.)

I live in a town along the Mississippi River (Clinton, IA).  Sometimes this river wants to drown us all, but we have a big levee to get in its way.  It made one such attempt in 2001, and I got a few pictures of it along the levee.  Check them out here.

An Amtrak Chicago to Carbondale train, The Illini, arriving in Mattoon, IL. In Mattoon Leaving Mattoon (Click pics for larger versions.)

Do you like train pictures or train watching?  I have sometimes had fun doing this, and that goes back to when I was a little kid (a very long time ago.  Check this).  Anyway here are some of my old train pictures in Mattoon and Effingham in Illinois and also from Athens Ohio.  These really are old pictures.  They include trains on the New York Central, Illinois Central, Pennsylvania RR, and the Baltimore and Ohio.  That would include the Knickerbocker, the City of New Orleans, the Penn Texas, and the Metropolitan.  How is that for old?

Here is a short story that I wrote a couple of years ago  called "The Great Hookworm Humpfest of Hogwash Heights".  It might sound as if I was trying to write about real people and didn't quite get it all right, but remember, it is only a story.  You know how it goes: any similarity with real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.  Besides, if it were about real people, I would go back and change the ending to get one of the characters hanged.  By the way, it is a little ribald, but only a little -- at least for the reader. Here is a version to print.

And here is another short story that I wrote more recently.  This one is called "Spaced out POTUS".  Any similarity etc., etc.  Only a story.  By the way, my apologies to the Chicago Cubs and their fans.  Actually, I like the Cubs too, but the only characters laughing at them are Sox fans, and that probably reflects reality. Here is a version of this one to print.

My first rather fuzzy picture of Venus in front of the sun.

I also fool around with a telescope sometimes.  On June 8, 2004, the planet Venus got right in the way of the sun and could be seen as a small dot in front of it.  That is called a transit of Venus. Actually, you had to go to Europe to see the whole thing, but here in Clinton, IA we got to see just the end of it at sunrise.  Click HERE to  see a few pictures that I took of this event.

My later pictures were better, but by then Venus had partially made its exit. (Click pics to enlarge.)

Will the next big war be like your father's war? Or are the weapons just getting so good at what they do that warfare can never be the same.  Anyone exposed might just be wiped out.  It might be necessary to fight the next big war without exposing anyone to it if we expect anyone to survive.  Among the ways of fighting a war without exposing anyone to it are adopting guerrilla warfare tactics, fighting it by remote control from California even though the war is in the Middle East, and building robots to do all the fighting.  Have any changes like this happened before?  Are they happening now? I am placing materials in this section based on a once-per-semester talk on the history of war technology that I gave while I was teaching and which I am still giving as a guest speaker even though I am now retired.  However, I am revising and updating everything, so this is probably always going to be a work in progress.

Looking right into a Civil War cannon at the Civil War Visitor Center In Richmond, VA (Click pic to enlarge)