Today is Statehood Day, Minnesota’s birthday. 153 years ago today Minnesota became the 32nd state in the U.S. Since then, Minnesota has done pretty well. We’ve had things we can be proud of. Like all places, we’ve had things to be not so proud of. Hopefully, we’ve learned from the mistakes so as not to repeat them.

Today, the Minnesota legislature debated putting discrimination into the state constitution. They also discussed whether climate science is actually valid or bogus. When we celebrate Minnesota’s 160th birthday, or 200th, or beyond, what will our children and grandchildren make of things like these? Will future Minnesotans feel proud about this, or will they be viewed as mistakes that took us away from our traditions and shared values? Our leaders should reflect on how history will remember their actions today and as we move forward.

• Current Mood: Summer
• Currently Listening To: "One of These Days", Pink Floyd

So my nifty SportyPal app on my new phone, which keeps track of my bike ride home, tells me that I pretty reliably burn about 420 calories during the trip. Because I’m a geek, that got me wondering how much less energy is used while biking versus while driving. I crunched a few numbers, and this is what I came up with.

420 kilocalories (1 kilocalorie = 1 food Calorie, yes, it is confusingly stupid) is about 1.8 million joules of energy. My car gets around 22-23 MPG in mixed driving, so let’s pretend that my trip home uses 0.4 gallons of gasoline. One gallon of gas has around 125 million joules of energy, so my drive home uses 50 million joules. That’s over 25 times as much energy expended as biking, which is needed to move all that extra weight around.

Another fun fact: if it took 50 million joules of energy to bike home, that would require using about 4 pounds of body fat as energy. If our bodies used as much energy traveling as cars, people would have a far easier time losing weight! Considering how much waste heat would be generated in the process, though, we’d have to have huge radiators attached to our bodies somewhere.

• Current Mood: Sore
• Currently Listening To: "Red House", Jimi Hendrix