when I am lonely the mountains call me

What a cool paper name! How could I resist tracking down and reading an article entitled "When I am Lonely the Mountains Call Me": The Impact of Sacred Geography on Navajo Psychological Well Being?

I came across it while googling "wellbeing" and "geography." And it took quite a long time to find an electronic version of the paper, which is very unusual. Most things are at the tips of my fingers and available within seconds. But this took around 45 minutes to track down. Of course I was also multitasking and doing other things at the same time.

Anyway. You can find the pdf here at the National Center for American Indian and Alaska Native Mental Health Research.

As a result of the difficulty in tracking down this somewhat obscure article I have started a list of journal links. I think I will only add the obscure and less easy to find instantly journals though.

And no I haven't read the article yet, but I think it's about homesickness...

conference deadlines

Gosh it is busy. Abstract after abstract after abstract...

The Australasian Transport Research Forum 2008 abstract deadline was yesterday. Managed to get something in on time. Although if it gets accepted, then I only have a month to do the analysis AND write the paper. On top of everything else. Hmmm.

The GeoCart 08 paper is due next Monday. Have lots of ideas relating to the Mauri project, perhaps too many, but I haven't written anything, so I think I might have to give the full paper thing a miss, and settle for just an abstract and presentation.

Then the New Zealand Geographical Society 2008 conference abstracts are due the following week. Still thinking about whether to do something for this conference. Maybe two or even three things. That would be efficient. Two birds. One stone.

And all the papers to write as a result. Hmmm... I'm not even going to many conferences this year!

What to do with old business cards

During the four years in my previous job my company changed it's name once, and changed it's branding four times. So I have piles of old business cards. The other day I discovered a use for them: write down potential paper ideas on the back. This is extremely useful for me cause it seems that whenever I read a paper I frequently get lots of ideas for other papers and/or questions to research in the future. Having paper ideas on small cards is great cause not only do I have a record on them, but I can also lay them out and shuffle them around to organise them.

[gallery]

little plane flies through lightning

Yesterday I got to fly in a little plane that was being jostled from side to side almost continuously. Just as well I was still half asleep. But more interestingly, I got to fly in a little plane right through a thunder and lightning  storm. "Electrical activity" doesn't look that much different at x-thousand feet than it does at 0-thousand feet, aside from perspective and the just seeming closer thing. But it certainly feels different at altitude.

The pilot said it was perfectly safe. I'm not convinced about that. But it was certainly dramatic.

This is kind of related to research/work in that I sometimes have to fly in planes to do research and work.

Sustainability: Paul Weaver Seminar & NZSSES Conference

I thought about submitting an abstract for this years NZSSES (New Zealand Society for Sustainability Engineering and Science) Conference. It's on "Blueprints for Sustainable Infrastructure". Of course I've never actually studied or researched or read about sustainability in particular. I've just heard the word used everywhere.

So in the interests of a crash course in sustainability I went along to the Paul Weaver lecture on the MATISSE project. Very interesting! And my goodness the seats in the new Business School building are comfortable! Anyway. The lecture which was scheduled for half an hour went on for over one and a half hours!!

Sustainability seems to be an interesting idea. More so because it seems kind of obvious to me, yet it also seems to be a problem and lots of people seem to be very concerned about it and are looking for ways to solve the problem (again it seems obvious, but maybe I'm naive and don't know all the intricacies).

Paul was an interesting and enthusiastic speaker and because it was all new to me, he sparked lots of ideas. I will write about them later.

Anyway, thinking about submitting an abstract for the conference (I didn't) and going to the lecture made me very curious about what all this sustainability fuss is about. My PhD probably relates to it. But then it seems that everything relates to it.