The Skeptical Liberal: 07/31/2005 - 08/07/2005

The Skeptical Liberal

How can we live together in peace, prosperity, and harmony, while retaining our liberties as autonomous individuals who can, and must, create our own values? -- J.M. Buchanan

8/06/2005

Montana pictures

A few people have asked for pictures of where I am in Montana, so today's blog is just pictures. A list of what's below:

1) The Montana State "M" from the parking lot.
2) Part of the path up to the "M" (this is where the new "intermediate" path departs from the "popular" route up)
3) Me standing beside the "M" (the whitewashed rocks form the "M"")
4) The parking lot and fish hatchery from to "M"
5) Montana State University (my apartment is at the extreme right hand side of the picture, about in the middle)
6) and 7) a couple of pictures from our drive to Bozeman, taken near Niehart, Montana in the Lewis and Clark National Forest

Montana State University: The M
Path to M
Ross Emmett at M
M parking lot from above
Montana State University from M
Near Niehart, MT
Lewis and Clark National Forest

8/05/2005

Killer Whales & Sweet Peas

Never thought you'd see those two words in the same title, eh!

We arrived back in Bozeman yesterday. Today I biked 14 miles in the morning, worked at PERC (finalized the publication version of the paper on the Simon-Ehrlich bet referred to in an earlier blog posting), went swimming, attended a seminar at PERC on noise pollution for orcas (killer whales) in the straits between Washington state and British Columia, and then attended the first events of the Sweet Pea Festival here in Bozeman.

The seminar on orcas was one of the graduate fellows' last seminars (the other four will come next week), and was interesting. We've discussed the problem before, but now had a chance to see the final proposal (although there will probably be a significant change before the final version, after the conversation today).

The Sweet Pea Festival opened with Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, live in the park. We stayed awhile and then wandered around the tents. Saw some interesting work by the artists at pressedleaf.com. Then the Subdudes played. Some of my friends at Augustana had a band called the Subdudes, and I knew that another band had the same name. They were good; lots of fun to dance to.

8/02/2005

Camrose, Again

We're moving today from our friends' house to one of the dorms at Augustana because our friends are coming back from a vacation in Europe. Last night we walked around Mirror Lake and I took a couple pictures. One is included below. The second picture is the Augustana campus. We're staying in the brick dorm on the right hand side of the picture.

I've been editing my Malthus piece for the PERC Policy Series. Need the reduce my use of multi-syllabic words!