You can take a walk down the street to the Botanic Gardens; you can find a little park there; the Paluma Park. And that’s to commemorate the location where a large gunship washed up into the Botanic Gardens in February, 1893. Interesting story, the Paluma was a gunship that was commissioned by the Queensland government. [...]
Continue Reading »February 1, 2012
January 30, 2012
Brisbane 2011: Living with Floods and Dancing with Dugongs: Part 2- A Learning Moment
We really did have a learning moment. This is needed regarding the flooding and the impact of the flooding. We had two kinds of floods. We had the flash flooding that occurred up the Lockyer, and we had the riverine flooding that occurred in Ipswich and in Brisbane. The flash flooding, which is water coming [...]
Continue Reading »November 23, 2011
CRIME DON’T PAY IN THE USA
Having worked as an investigator with the former Queensland EPA in Australia, I was gob-smacked by the progressive way that the U.S. EPA deals with environmental crime. EPA Special Agents are sworn federal law enforcement officers with statutory authority to conduct investigations, carry firearms, make arrests for any federal crime and execute and serve any [...]
Continue Reading »April 5, 2011
Integrating science with people: Creating the corpus callosum connections
As part of the Integrated Water Management Master’s program offered by the International WaterCentre (IWC), a four person panel was convened which included Poh-Ling Tan, a lawyer from Griffith University, Helen Thompson, an anthropologist in the private sector, Dr. Stephen Mahler, an engineer from the University of Queensland, and I was the natural sciences representative. [...]
Continue Reading »January 26, 2011
Investing in math and science education: “Our generation’s Sputnik moment”
Last month, President Obama coined the phrase Sputnik moment in regard to the race for new innovations in science and technology. Last night, he raised this issue again in his State of the Union address. The President asserted that in order to support innovation, advance alternate energies, compete in the new global economy, and create [...]
Continue Reading »December 17, 2010
Chesapeake Film Festival
I was asked by Stuart Clarke, Executive Director of Town Creek Foundation, to participate in an energy panel associated with the third annual Chesapeake Film Festival. The panel was held at the historic Avalon Theatre in downtown Easton, Maryland, immediately following the film “On Coal River“. Previously during the festival, two additional films were screened, [...]
Continue Reading »July 12, 2010
Council for Environmental Deans & Directors summer conference; Boulder, Colorado
The National Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE), based in Washington, D.C., supports a group of university administrators called the Council for Environmental Deans & Directors (CEDD). This group has two annual meetings; a winter meeting in Washington, D.C. and a summer conference in different locations around the country. The 2010 summer conference was [...]
Continue Reading »June 3, 2010
Students learn about Oyster Aquaculture through Documentary Production
This year, Horn Point Laboratory was the host for a High School Science Symposium that has been taking place for several years at the culmination of the Talbot County Public School high school science curriculum. Students must complete a scientific research project that is either experimental or research based, under the tutelage of a professional [...]
Continue Reading »April 19, 2010
July 31, 2009
Beautiful Blackwater
Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge is a gem in southern Dorchester County, Maryland. Covering more than 27,000 acres of mostly tidal marsh, Blackwater is a well-known haven for migratory birds in the winter, but still offers much to see during the summer, including the endangered Delmarva fox squirrel and any number of waterbirds, frogs, and mammals [...]
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