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Least, most, greatest, best, worst, biggest, smallest, fastest, coolest, maximization, minimization, optimal, etc. |
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The recycling slogan of "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" is the very heart of optimization: why waste what can be used again? In addition, recycling demonstrates the idea of killing two birds with one stone: when an object has two roles to play in its life -- when a plastic sack that delivered clean drinking water is later used to grow a tree, then we're doing something right. 
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| (what impact does a number system have on how one thinks?) |
- Nice photo gallary of Ranquitte, where we spent the year 2006-2007.
- Human Development Report 2006, which represents the United Nations Development Programme's best picture of the world's water situation (with lots of information on Haiti).
- Earth 911: -- "The Nation's Premier Environmental Resource" -- has great recycling information, by city or zip code.
- My "optimized" plan for the campus where we lived during our stay. My objective was to turn the place into a better integrated place -- where everything fit together into a beautiful whole.
- Booker T. Washington (founder of the Tuskeegee Institute) was an
inspiration in many ways during this sabbatical; especially important was his
autobiographical Up from
Slavery (local copy).
Mr. Washington could have been writing about Haiti when he wrote that "...one of the saddest things I saw during the month of travel which I have described was a young man, who had attended some high school, sitting down in a one-room cabin, with grease on his clothing, filth all around him, and weeds in the yard and garden, engaged in studying a French grammar."
- Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research