I've spent the last couple days holed up with energy policy papers from Carnegie Mellon. One of their professors just got a giant grant for a carbon sequestration project, and he sent me the proposal. I like how the project will focus on everything from geology (where in the ground can you pump the CO2 so it'll stay put) to the infrastructure (how much new pipeline will you have to build to transport the CO2, or can you just use the huge network of natural gas pipelines already there) to the economics (can you sell the CO2 to anyone, like oil companies so they can squirt it into reservoirs to push more oil out) to legal issues (if you want to pump the CO2 deep under somebody's house can they complain, and can you claim subsurface space by eminent domain). I don't like how carbon sequestration seems to be a short-term stopgap, just until we stop burning coal (how the US still gets half its energy). My intuition is that I'd rather focus on something more far-reaching, like policy for developing and implementing technology that doesn't make so much carbon in the first place. I think CMU undershoots my idealism by the same small amount that Berkeley overshoots it, but I also think I'd be happy at either place. It's been nice how the CMU profs are encouraging and willing to talk about their research and interested in the CV I sent them. Berkeley are rock stars and ignore you until they decide if they like you. They also have half the acceptance rate.

Natasha's only made borscht twice, and just after the first time she finally got Russian citizenship, and after the second time her boyfriend got into the police academy he really wanted to go to. She promised me grad-school borscht in a couple weeks.