mt. sunflower

It's popularly believed that my home state of Kansas is flat. OK, it's not just a popular belief: It's a proven fact that Kansas is flatter than a pancake. Nonetheless, the western edge of the state is actually higher than the average peak in the Appalachian Mountains.

In 1998, five men climbed to the summit of Mt. Sunflower, the highest point in Kansas at over 4,000 feet. Read Into Thick Air, the story of this historic ascent.

does the washington, d.c. blizzard disprove climate change?

According to the legend, Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Last week, while a hundred thousand Washington, D.C. residents found themselves without heat or electricity in the aftermath of a massive blizzard that some have labeled the "snowpocalypse," climate change deniers rejoiced.

from my newly published article, "Snowpocalypse" and Global Climate Change, at Associated Content.

haiti: roots of the problem

When a disaster hits the poorest nation in the hemisphere, should we simply take up a collection and send aid, or would it be better to confront the reasons they are so poor?

Rick Steves:

We can blame Haiti’s squalor on voodoo, on its heritage of slavery, on corruption, on the fact that its main export is topsoil (in a treeless land, each rainstorm flushes precious soil into the sea), or on many other factors. But we must also look at American and European trade policies that help keep nations like Haiti underdeveloped—tariffs that help keep them "banana republics."

how was stonehenge built?

Wally Wallington thinks he has the answer. To demonstrate, he's building a life-sized replica of Stonehenge in his back yard: