Andrew R Gross

Today, Julie, Jack, and myself participated in a muckrun to raise money to fight Multiple Sclerosis.  We were originally planning on doing it with a group, but everyone else flaked. It was really fun.  Enough talking.  The pictures:

I went on vacation several weeks ago and I intend to write about it soon.  In the meantime, Julie has already done so and posted lots of pictures, so you should check them out over at her blog, ialbatross.com . I actually need to leave for work in a few minutes but I thought I'd give a quick shout out to my recent media picks. The first is "The Martian", by Andy Weir.  I haven't seen the movie but I intend to.  The book is pretty fantastic.  It has that wonderful quality of good science fiction where you want to try living in the character's world.  It also inspired me to resume my secret project.  All the talk of engineering and ingenuity made me want to make a thing I've been planning for a few weeks.  I'm going to continue to keep it a secret however until I've actually started.  Right now I'm in a lengthy design phase. Secondly, Julie and I have been watching the first season of "The Knick".  "The Knick" stars Clive Ow...

Lazy? You bet. Enjoy some pictures showing off what I did in August. Diving Jack and I went diving. We didn't get any good underwater pictures, unfortunately.

I'm reposting an answer I wrote in reply to the following question posted on Reddit: "What's the biggest scare you've ever gotten?" I was surprised by how proud I was of my response, so I decided to share it here. Broomball. Broomball is a made up alternative to hockey where you replace the puck with a ball, the sticks with brooms, and the skates with  shoes . I have no idea who came up with this, but I was invited as part of a youth group event in high school. It was actually an inter-youth-group event: my  BBYO  chapter was invited to play against our local  USY  chapter. Of course it was their idea. We tended to think of ourselves as a lot cooler than the USY kids (which is funny if you have any idea what these acronyms stand for). We would've suggested paintball or something. Mind you, I sucked at paintball and I certainly had no idea how to play hockey, but the idea of broomball seemed literally insane. Disregarding that pee-wee bastardizations o...

EDIT: I wrote this a few weeks ago and didn't notice that I never published it.  I'm publishing it now because I intend to give more DnD updates and need to provide context. The last I mentioned of our heroes, they'd sailed off after stealing a cache of weapons from some bad guys to sell to other bad guys in order to advance in the criminal underworld.  They stopped over on Dreadwood Isle along the way, since everyone had something they needed to do there.  Honton, the captain, needed to hire additional hands.  Sincey, the monk, had agreed to capture a wanted outlaw of the empire named Beyrin Teth in exchange for a relic of his order.  Lucious, the muscle, was set on finding the infamous warlord who'd maligned his reputation.  He'd heard that Dreadwood was ruled by a despot that paid tribute to his quarry. We met Lady Yin and Jim Lee, our two new players.  We've actually been playing with them for a few months now, but this campaign was established...

There is a very public discontinuity between the federal ban of marijuana and the many states which have decriminalized it in one form or another.  This is about something else, though.  A friend posted an article highlighting the irrationality of the Drug Enforcement Agency declaring cannabis to be without any known medical benefit while the National Cancer Institute includes information on its website recognizing benefits attributed to cannabis.  Here is the article: "National Cancer Institute Quietly Confirms Cannabis Can Cure Cancer" It's a pretty sensational headline, so I followed it.  What I found was worth making a blog post about.  The short version is that the article is predictably misleading, but there is an element of truth it it.  Remarkably, this truth is somewhat encouraging. Some quick context: the DEA rates drugs in "schedules" based on their potential for abuse versus their potential for benefit.  Marijuana has long been a...

Here are pictures from a camping trip last month.  Julie and I took Ruby camping for the first time.

My neighbor recently invited me to attend a meeting of a civic action group called the Citizen's Climate Lobby.  I was impressed enough to share their proposed goals, which I wasn't previous familiar with.  If you're anything like me -- an American who cares about the environment but often finds Environmentalists alarmist and feckless -- then you'll find this pretty impressive. The Citizen's Climate Lobby is -- as its name suggests -- a lobbying group designed to encourage the adoption of a carbon reduction plan called "Fee and Dividend".  Fee and Dividened would place a fee on each ton of carbon produced.  Mining and drilling companies would be required to pay what is essentially a tax on each ton, however that money would then be divided evenly and repaid to every American. What? Yeah.  Charge carbon producers and give the proceeds away.  If this makes immediate sense to you, congrats.  I had to have it explained a bit. First, lets consider t...