EE break —> off to the Land of Oz

I've just returned from an intense week of doing Environmental Ethics at the University of Montana Environmental Ethics Institute (http://www.umt.edu/ethics/). This topped off an equally intense month of online discussion with an immensely talented, diverse, and warm-hearted group of people that included professors and students of philosophy, education and resource management, a bioremediation entrepreneur, an environmental, lawyer, and a Ph.D. ecologist.

Then there was me — defying categorization.

I'm taking an involuntary break from the world of EE -- that's Environmental Ethics, not Electrical Engineering -- trying to catch up with my paying job at Stanford and getting ready for a trip Down Under to a bioinformatics conference. I've managed to hook up with what looks like a quite wonderful wildlife tour that goes out of the conference city of Brisbane after the meeting:

http://www.learnaboutwildlife.com/index.htm

The proprietor (Dr. Ronda Green) reports that she's a research ecologist who is now planning to study philosophy. Go figure.

I still have 5 days free after that tour. Please give me suggestions for making good use of them!

Stanford posts the fall course offerings next Monday. When that happens, I'll be able to figure out whether or not I can take Peter Vitousek's Intro Ecology course. Last year's offering was at a time that would work for me. So I'm pretty hopeful. I feel that I really need some of that science — at least on a basic level — to understand something of what experts such the ecologist in the UM EE course and Dr. Green have to say. These people are in the vanguard of those who have figured out that narrow thinking in the traditional disciplines cannot begin to address the environmental problems that face us.

It's very, very fun and rewarding for me to be in "sponge mode" once again.

I promise to stay in touch, though there will likely be some lapse September 1-17 when I'm in the land of Oz.