Maybe it’s just me, but those tip jars mostly say “hey, we know you don’t care enough about that change to want to carry it around, we’ll take it!”

And honestly — I do tend to use it for that some of the time….

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First — the eBook reality. the first Kindle intrigued me, but I’ve seen the “future of electronic books” before, and so I decided to wait and see. the Kindle actually surpassed my expectations, and now Amazon has introduced Kindle 2, and it’s much better. My primary interest here is to have a good, easy to use/read electronic library, especially of technical stuff, that I can carry around. Reading for recreation on an eReader is less insteresting to me, but couldn’t hurt.

Unfortunately, even thought the new Kindle comes closer, at its current price point, it doesn’t make the cut. I’ll keep waiting. Maybe the rumored Kindle software on mobile phones? We’ll see. but we’re nearing a tipping point where electronic books will make sense, which three years ago, I wasn’t sure we’d ever see. Kindle at half the price? I’d buy it. Today? I am staying on the sidelines.

Second — the convergence of electronics in the living room. I keep waiting for Apple to upgrade the Apple TV to be a real living room dominator. And I guess I’ll keep waiting a while. They’re doing a survey on possible features to a limited audience right now, which indicates to me that they’re now trying to figure that device out and get serious about a “non hobby” product — and I honestly expected to see that product at the last Macworld. So Apple’s product timelines and my expectatons are still in sync. The big limiter here is availability of content, still; for netflix streaming to my Xbox, only about 10% of the items in my queue are avaialble for online delivery. A quick look at iTunes shows that’s not any better. That makes this convenient — but not an option. Yet. And whatever Apple does needs to have 5.1 built in so I don’t need a separate home theater box to drive the speakers…

Something tells me this year is the year companies dive in and seriously try to own the living room. My short list: Apple, Microsoft and Nintendo. One of them will get it right in the next couple of years. If someone else wants to come in and distrupt the market, the window is closing.

Third — For the last few years, we’ve had internet in the house via DSL. This is our third generation of network in the house, going back to 1998 or so when that means leased lines and expensive routers, so it’s amazing how far it’s come. But now, I’m starting to look at what comes next. And what I want is a home network based on EVDO or 3G, a dongle I can carry iwth me when I travel and plug into a device at home to drive the wireless network, with real broadband speeds and reliability. This would allow me to finally dump the landline/DSL (and their monthly payments), and carry my network with me, since when we’re not home, do we really need the netowrk there? Not really. Unfortunately, I’m just not convinced this is ready for prime time — the dongles are there, but the home network interfaces aren’t yet. Unless you know something I don’t know, of course.. I mean, seriously. We use (and are really happy with) DirecTV. The idea of installing cable just to get a modem and fast cable modem speeds instead of DSL irritates me — but that my mom’s home network is faster than mine annoys me. Even though, in reality, I rarely notice my network’s speed, which implies it really isn’t “slow” as much as I’m realizing it’s been a few years since I upgraded….But isn’t that part of being a geek? Oh, and I’d love to do the portable dongle, but I just don’t want to add one more monthly charge to my budget. Unless I can remove one I don’t need, and the logical one seems to be the DSL line, no?

Honestly, I’ve been waiting for Wimax for a while, but the rollout is — problematic, painful and slow. So maybe I’ll stop waiting.

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Tonight’s gem was Hellboy II with Ronald Perlman with a suntan. Very well done, good humor, don’t think about the plot too damn hard. Extra credit for the sheer steampunkiness of the movie. I can give it no greater honor than to say that I liked it as much as the original. Sequels rarely do that for me.

A few others we’ve seen recently that I liked include Tropic Thunder, which was just wonderfully gonzo, Groundhog Day with Bill Murray showing an ability to handle a surprisingly complex character long before anyone really believed he could act, and Wall-E — how did it NOT win best picture? Just a stunning piece of work.

We’ve started experimenting with the live Netflix streaming to the Xbox. It seems to work great; the only two complaints are (surprise surprise) the relatively limited selection, and that if a work is episodic (like TV shows), you can’t currently see them on Xbox even if they’re available for instant watch on other platforms. Which means I need to get my Billie Piper fix elsewhere for now.

Chuqui-bob says “check ‘em out”

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Over the sixteen years I’ve lived in the Bay Area, I have driven past Olompali State Historic Park — on US 101 about fifteen miles north of the Richmond Bridge — over 150 times. At least thirty of those times, my wife and I have agreed that “we really have to stop by this place sometime.” Yesterday, we finally did…and I’m sure we’ll be back a few times every year from now on. There are some historic buildings ranging from 80 to 150 years old, with several interesting stories attached…that alone would be enough to make a single visit worthwhile; for example, there are some remains of the adobe house of the last Miwok Indian leader, dating from the mid-1800s.

This one is now on my “must visit” list.

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Case in point, we are talking about taking a family vacation to San Diego early next year (look out Kedrosky!) and decided that renting a minivan and driving down would be cheaper than flying and less hassle to boot. It’s a lot of time behind the wheel but no worse than trudging through an airport pissed off about having to pay $150 to check bags.

Whenever Laurie and I do our driving vacations — which we’ve done since before they made airports so damn painful — friends and co-workers have always wondered if we were insane. Now that airports have become so insane, people are starting to realize that plopping on a plane isn’t the only option, and in many cases, not the best.

We almost always drive vacations (and we never, ever fly to SoCal) for a few reasons: first, we tend to carry a lot of gear, including the computer stuff and cameras and etc. So under most circumstances, flying generates compromises we can avoid by driving. Second, driving is almost invariably cheaper. Third, in many cases, especially these days of three hour waits for connections and flight delays, TSA delays, baggage delays and rental car delays, it’s not significantly slower to drive. And finally, not only does it give us a chance to just sit and talk and be with each other, there’s a whole bunch of stuff between here and there worth seeing and looking at you won’t see at 30,000 feet. The journey CAN be the reward; hell, sometimes the destination is the excuse, not the reason.

When we did our Yellowstone trip this fall, I kept notes on costs and timing. Yellowstone is about the limit of what I’d consider reasonable for a “normal” vacation. Two days driving each way, with rational driving times each way. Silicon Valley is about 16 hours driving from Silicon valley; I prefer to keep each leg about 8-10 hours. That takes you through a lot of territory, though: from silicon valley, it’ll get you to Vancouver, Yellowstone, Salt Lake, Denver, Taos, and all points east. By limiting driving to 8-10 hours, you don’t have to play the “crack of dawn” patrol, you can stop and explore places of interest, eat without a drive-through window, and get into a hotel at a rational hour for a rational sleep. You’re not stressed or harried or exhausted when you get there.

(hint: it’s even MORE interesting to find spots along the way and make the entire journey part of the trip, but we wanted to maximize our time in the park, so we hustled out way each way; I did, however, flag four or five places as future photography locales… But for us, a typical trip to Victoria or Vancouver would involve a day or two in Portland and a couple of stops up and down the Oregon Coast, rather than putting all of our time into one place. Once you get into this “along the way” type of travel, lots of things open up, especially areas you’d have real issues getting to via an airport…)

Here’s a comparison of what it’d take to drive to Yellowstone, versus flying. In many ways, this is the extreme case: Yellowstone is about as far as I’d want to drive on a ten day trip (week off plus two weekends), so you’re spending the maximum amount of time in the car, which you’d think would benefit the airplane. Not necessarily.

For the driving, we left Saturday mid-morning, and arrived in Yellowstone around dinner time on Sunday, stopping overnight in Winnemucca, roughly half way. At the time, gas was headed down but we still paid an average right around $3.70 a gallon. The drive to Yellowstone is almost exactly 1,000 miles.

We drove 1,000 miles getting there, 1,000 miles around the park in the days there, and 1,000 miles coming back, spending a total of $400 for 107 gallons of gas. 2/3 of that gas was used in transit, so the fuel cost for travelling was around $250. Factor in car maintenance to be fair: $70 for the 3,000 mile lube, and some percentage of the 60,000 mile service and tire costs; practically speaking, that’s probably another $70, and I’m probably being generous (my last major service plus 2 new tires ran a grand. factor that cost into 30,000 miles, and you get about $70 for 2,000 miles).

So, the total cost of driving to and from Yellowstone is about $400.

Flying? I did some checks on flight costs at the same time we travelled. For Yellowstone, that’s either West Yellowstone or Bozeman. A typical flight to Bozeman at the same time would have cost you about $500 per person round trip and take 8 hours, flying through Denver or Salt Lake. I just checked, and today it’s about $400ish in December, but next June, we’re back at $450-$500 for a time when a rational person would take that trip. West Yellowstone is slower and more expensive, with only a couple of flights (totalling 90 seats) a day, and it’s seasonal. Then add in a rental car, which when I checked in September was averaging $130/week out of those cities.

So your travel costs end up running you at best about $1,000-$1,100. And if you fly to Yellowstone, you’ll arrive just in time for dinner Saturday — in Bozeman. It’s late enough you won’t actually get into the park until Sunday morning. Leaving? you either get the crack of dawn patrol for a flight out around 7AM, or a late flight out and get home at midnight on Sunday.

Net result? If you fly, you get a Sunday in the park coming in, and a Saturday in the park going out that you don’t get driving. And for the privilege, your cost goes from about $400 to $1,100, over 2X. I’m not counting hotel or food costs here because the same meals get eaten (only in different places) and hotel rooms get used — although most likely, the room on the road while driving will likely be cheaper (ours were about half the cost or more).

As to the hassle factor of driving? you can’t tell me that the joys of the TSA, of flight delays, of 3 hour connecting flight waits, of checking and retrieving luggage and renting cars — and airport food — is any great shakes. It’s all in the attitude; getting into the mindset that the trip is part of the journey and not just a way to the destination opens up many options. And, well, having time to unplug and just talk to the people you’re with? Or heading off a side road and exploring? (well, laurie calls it “getting lost again”, but I prefer to see it as adventuring into the unknown). Massive fun.

Flying options options; I wouldn’t want to drive to chicago or tampa, not unless it was part of a longer, extended trip. OTOH, a two day drive from where you live opens up many places — from silicon valley, pretty much everything west of and into the rockies.

And if you stop and think about it a bit, there is basically no way you can do an airport run from northern california to southern california faster than driving these days, not once you factor in the time getting to and from airports, TSA lines, renting cars, etc. etc. At best, it’s a wash. and driving’s much cheaper. I can’t see why anyone flies back and forth on that shuttle, honestly.

so for me, it’s car first. We’ve done flying trips to Vancouver and Victoria in the past (flying into Victoria directly, into Vancouver, and into Seattle and crossing the border), and you know what? Have fun in the plane (hah). I’ll just hop in the car. You may get there a bit sooner, but I’ll be relaxed and happy when I get there, and I’ll have all of my stuff. What did you decide not to bring to fit into the overhead and checkin restrictions, anyway?

What I don’t understand is why when airlines decided on what business model they were going to follow, they chose “greyhound bus” as what they wanted to be when they grew up….

Update: One of the commenters made an important comment:

It’s hard to argue with most of what you wrote, but flying does allow me to take do a trip like a 4-day weekend in Vancouver from time to time.

And that’s an important thing to keep in mind: the trade-off between time and money. If your time is short, then spending money to minimize travel time, but when you do, it’s knowing that you’re taking a more expensive option for speed. That’s fine; I certainly wouldn’t drive a 4-5 day trip to Vancouver.

Ditto a day trip to SoCal; if I had to go to SoCal and return same day for a meeting (first, I’d try NOT to, but that’s a different issue), then I might fly, because otherwise it’d be a really long day; in that case, sitting in a plane or airport might be preferable to driving. But if I could schedule it to drive down, take in the meeting, overnight, and drive back while stopping at, say, Morro Beach on a Saturday, well, sign me up…

So ultimately, NONE of this is absolute. And if your idea of a perfect vacation is to sit on a beach in Cancun drinking margaritas — that’s great, too. But heck, you could sit on a beach near San Diego and drink for a lot less, I bet, and have pretty darn good weather, too. Or Phoenix, for that matter.

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I’ve been trying to come up with a single photograph that to me sums up what Yellowstone is — and I find I can’t. Yellowstone is really three things, each independent and yet all of them intertwined. The first is the thermal areas: geysers, springs, paint pots. Sometimes take-your-breath-away beautiful, sometimes starkly unearthly, sometimes just raw power unleashed:

Without these thermal features, Yellowstone wouldn’t exist, on a number of levels — the supervolcano that underlies Yellowstone carved not only created the land the park sits on, but over millions of years carved out the mountains to the west of the park which funnels in the weather and the rain and snow, giving the area the water needed to fuel the thermal features in the first place.

Beyond that, before our society really understood the need to protect areas like this, if it hadn’t been for the thermal areas, this land simply wouldn’t have been protected. It would have been just another set of ranches and cattle pastures.

By creating the park, however, they created a place where the wildlife can survive and (mostly) prosper. And the wildlife is a huge part of Yellowstone, as you could tell by the traffic jams that happened along the roads any time something larger than a squirrel appeared (and we happily joined in on those…). Elk and Bison were everywhere, and usually in the way; Laurie and I saw coyotes twice, beavers, two bears (one black in the far distance, and our young grizzly near Fishing bridge), and a flock of mountain goats systematically raising havoc around Tower — we saw them one day using the roadway as a travel path, and a second day eating a traffic pullout (to the consternation of rangers). The major “misses” for us in wildlife were moose and wolves, and the wolves were active up near Mammoth but we didn’t hear about it until later….

But to me, after hiking around the various geyser basins and spending mornings and evening’s up in Hayden Valley looking for critters, what kept drawing me back was the landscape. And I knew as soon as I took this shot that it was going to be MY shot of Yellowstone.

And so it is. If there’s a single image from the trip that I’d have to pick out of all of them, I’d say it’s this one. It’s going up on my wall soon…

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One little amusement was that I read this piece in the hotel room in West Yellowstone, before we moved into grant’s village for a few days and completely off the net. It really echoed what we saw in many ways.

Musings From Yellowstone National Park | National Parks Traveler:

Despite all the issues that constantly swirl around the National Park System — funding constraints, staffing woes, rising fees — there’s still more to be proud about than disappointed.

For instance, after 136 years you can still find more than enough room in Yellowstone National Park that feels raw, wild, and untrampled by humans. True, the front country can feel over-run, particularly if you’re there in July or August. But during my week-long trip earlier this month the crowds were not suffocating, the bison jams not too plentiful — although, we did wonder about the folks parking partway on and off the road to view a single mule deer — and the insects wonderfully vanquished by the frosty overnights.

Definitely. We had a herd of bison around fishing bridge for a few days that made traffic really interesting, but they finally moved a bit off the road. there was also a small herd of mountain goats that decided that the road was a LOT less work than the back country, and was wandering around the Tower area — we saw them one day just walking up the grand loop, smiling at cars, and the next day, in a pullout attempting to weed it for the rangers. The rangers weren’t amused.

Ditto lone bison, who we saw frequently using the grand loop to get from here to there — slowly — with that “and what the hell are you going to DO about it?” attitude.

More on Yellowstone as I get it written up, but I had to point out this piece:

* Never underestimate a raven. In the parking lot at Norris some travelers in a Toyota Tacoma had left their soft-shell cooler in the bed of their truck. It didn’t take long for a pair of ravens to find it, open it, and settle down to lunch. Even after someone placed a case of water bottles atop the cooler the birds found a way in. Note: Ravens don’t like cold cuts; they pulled out and dropped to the side both ham and turkey.

* Some Americans can be truly baffling. One drove up to us in the Norris parking lot and asked whether there was anything interesting to see.

I kid you not. I read this post, and then the next day, we went exploring Norris Geyser Basin. When we got there, we heard the cawing of a raven, and there it was, sitting on the back of a pickup truck which was full of stuff and covered with a tarp:

we saw and watched it for a good five minutes as it explored the back of the truck. It finally located the cooler, and made a concerted attempt to uncover it, including pulling at the ropes and working on the knots to see if it could get anything loose. Every so often, it’d stop and stare at us watching it as if wondering if we were going to try to stop it (nope, we were too amused). We finally decided it wasn’t going to succeed and went off for our hike around the basis, but as we were leaving, it let out a series of vocalizations, which were answered from another part of the parking lot. As we headed towards the boardwalks, we passed a second raven walking up the parking lot asphalt in the direction of the pickup truck.

Evidently he called in some help.

No, we don’t know if they got in — probably not — because the truck was gone when we got back.

And got help us, this was ALSO true. After our walk through the basis and along the upper edges of Porcelain basin, I huffed my way up to the museum area and was standing there catching my breath (the altititude KICKED MY BUTT, but we’ll talk of that later), someone walked up to another person in the museum and said “hey, is there anything to see here?”

Um, no, not really. but check my photo stream for proof — I’m starting to work through my Norris photos now, although the mountain chickadees were shot at Steamboat Geyser…

It’d been over 15 years since we’d made our first visit to Yellowstone, and damn, was it a wonderful week — but I’m not going back until I lose 100 pounds, because at 8,000 feet and trying to get some serious walking in, it fought back. But it was worth it…

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Please God, never let me have a book cover whose images would be equally at home airbrushed onto a van.

Have I said recently how much I’ve come to enjoy John Scalzi’s writings?

Oh, dear. it seems I haven’t. Must fix that.

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if you don’t read xkcd, you really should. Well written, funny, sometimes poignant, and one of those that understands that all this tech stuff really doesn’t replace people, much as we sometimes want to convince ourselves.

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We visited Yellowstone a few years after the fires and were stunned by the damage. It’s been on our list for a couple of years to get back, but life hasn’t cooperated (yet).
But what struck me reading this is that this explains — almost exactly — what’s going on in California this year. Early wet winter, and then it stopped. And now the fires, which have been scary in their number and intensity. I remember watching the foothills around the bay area go golden, weeks earlier than usual, and thinking to myself “this is not good”.
Unfortunately, I was right. And it looks to me to be something that’ll get worse before it gets better this year.

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I got to know Clarke a little back when I was involved in SFWA, to the point where we exchanged christmas cards for a while, and a letter or two, and he was an occasional commenter on the zine I was publishing back then. He was one of those pros that was always accessible and friendly and willing to stop and talk to people (and trust me, not all pros are like that). Fascinating writer and interesting person, one of the key writers who got me involved with science fiction as a kid, so getting to know him later on was a real trip.

I don’t think we can under-estimate the impact he’s had on our lives and society. Not necessarily for the things the obit writers are going to talk about — yes, he wrote about things we take for granted today, like geosynchronous communication satellites, but others had those ideas, too. it’s that he inspired a generation of people to actually go out and figure out how to build them and make them happen.

In many ways, Jack Kennedy got us to the moon, but it was Arthur Clarke who got the bodies on the ground who could build the rocket when it was time to build it. There are very few bigger names in the field and in society in general. And now he’s moved on to whatever’s next.

Knowing him, he did it smiling.

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an indication of how electing Burt will not do wonders for SFWA’s relations with the public, or its potential future membership. And here we pause for a sigh and a sad headshake.

I have to admit that if I were still a member of SFWA (which I’m not), I’d be tempted to vote for Burt. Not because Burt is the best candidate (he’s not), or even a good candidate, or even an acceptable one.

I’d consider it because it’s very likely to cause SFWA to fall apart and die, and I long ago came to the conclusion that while the field needs a good writer’s group to support SF/F writers, SFWA ain’t it, and you can’t fix it. So voting for Burt might be the way to cause SFWA to go away, allowing the people within the field with a clue to have a chance to start fresh and maybe build something decent. Unfortunately, it looks like as long as SFWA exists, there’s not enough motivation to create that new organization and get enough people behind it to make it work.

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The National Park Service has released their plan for overhauling the Tunnel View Overlook, one of the most popular tourist destinations in the park, but some of the ideas presented may not be that popular with locals including removing trees so visitors can see better.

This is, of course, silly. This “it has to always be the way I remember it always has been” concept ought to be dead by now. The only true constant in a natural setting is change; in fact, the reason the trees need to be removed is because they’ve grown…

This “don’t touch it” idea is what led to the idea we had to strongly fight forest fires and prevent “damage” — which led to the overgrowth problems and massive fuel loads that today are part of the problem of the massive forest fires we have today. Fortunately, we now better understand the life cycle of a forest, and generally work more compatibly with it.

And I’m old enough to remember when they used to DREDGE Mirror Lake, in the name of “keeping it natural”, and added sluice gates and the like to keep it from silting. Think about that phrase a bit, about having to bring in heavy machinery and doing major reconstruction, all in the name of keeping it as nature intended.

There are bigger issues in Yosemite than a few trees that are blocking the view at a place built to allow people to look at the views.

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Fake acupuncture works nearly as well as the real thing for low back pain, and either kind performs much better than conventional care, German researchers have found.

Almost half the patients treated with acupuncture needles felt relief that lasted months. In contrast, only about a quarter of the patients receiving medications and other Western medical treatments felt better.

Even fake acupuncture worked better than conventional care, leading researchers to wonder if pain relief came from the body’s reactions to thin needle pricks or, possibly, the placebo effect.

“Acupuncture represents a highly promising and effective treatment option for chronic back pain,”

Hmm. Very, very interesting, that the faux treatment is still more effective than the standard ones. Says a lot about how we treat back problems, no?

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The researchers studied 73 drug-free patients with seasonal affective disorder (SAD) and 70 people without the condition. People with SAD get depressed in the autumn and winter, and often go into remission in the spring and summer. So-called “bright light therapy” – where sufferers stare at brightly lit screens – can also relieve symptoms.

The researchers were interested in these patients’ serotonin transporter (SERT) – a molecule that “pumps” serotonin back into cells. SERT is expressed in blood platelets, so they drew blood at three points in time: in the autumn or winter (when patients were experiencing seasonal depression), after four weeks of light therapy, and again in summer.

They tested the platelets to see how much SERT was expressed there, and found levels were normal in both groups. They then measured how many times per minute the SERT would go to work removing serotonin, and here they found significant differences.

In blood taken during winter depression, SAD patients had significantly more removal events per minute than those in the healthy control group – about 350 compared with 200.

The process “is too efficient”, says Willeit. After therapy, in people who got better, the number of removal events declined. In those who did not improve, the numbers stayed the same. In summer, SAD patients’ removal events slowed to normal levels.

some interesting data on winter depression and possible causes and cures….

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I started out heading to the lighthouse, which was fogged in with a heavy, consistent wind, so I changed my mind and headed off to the area near the rescue boathouse overlooking Drake’s bay. On the Bay were the  typical set of gulls, plus a couple of rafts (about 50 total) of mostly Surf Scoters — with a few other birds mixed in I finally resolved out to be Buffleheads and White-Winged scoters (lifer), all at great distance. Evaluating my photos later, I also found what looks to be a sea otter froclicking in amongst the scoters…

There were turkey vultures everywhere. I counted at least 30 individuals, and at one point, had eight in the sky at one time. I stopped off at one of the historic dairies to watch the vultures and a red-tailed hawk playing in the breezes and occasionally strafing cows.

After that, South beach, where I had a number of fly-overs by Brown Pelicans and Turkey Vultures, as well as one hunting Osprey.

Final stop was Drake’s Beach, where I had a pretty good smoked salmon, chipotle cream cheese and red-onion quesadilla at the cafe (good, but a bit pricey, also 45 minutes or so from the nearest deli; memo to self: pack lunch), where I got a different view of Drake’s Bay and got better views of the White-Winged Scoters. Also along the beach were two Common Loons

As well as various gulls (including a couple I think were Heerman’s but they kept their distance), and a couple of seals sitting offshore and watching the silly humans.

Laurie took one look at this photo and declared: see, loons are simply turtles with feathers, which is why they fly so badly…

The photos from the trip are here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/chuqui/sets/72157605125990295/

Species seen on the trip:

• California Quali
• Brown Pelican
• Osprey
• Marbled Godwit
• Long-Billed Curlew
• Scrub Jay
• Turkey Vulture
• Red-Winged Blackbird
• Surf Scoter
• Pigeon Guilllemot
• Various gulls
• Great Egret
• Great Blue Heron
• various swallows
• Red-Tailed hawk
• Double-crested cormorant
• White-crowned sparrow
• Song sparrow (heard)
• Chickadee (heard)
• Common Loon
• White-winged scoter (life)
• Bufflehead
• Raven
• American Crow

Also — over 30 deer, all hanging out in plain view in the middle of the day. there’s a big controversy about the deer population going on up there, and while I’m going to stay out of that, seeing so many deer along the road makes me think the population is pretty thick up there. Far too often in these cases the “bambi factor” starts kicking in.

Also seen — sea otter (probable — it MIGHT have been a seal, but I don’t think so), harbor seals, one or two dairy cows…

update: heard from a friend at the local audubon, who thought the white-winged scoters were early for migrants. He checked with the local expert up there, and he confirmed the ones I saw were overwintering, they had three there all summer.

This article was posted on Chuqui 3.0 at Birdwatching trip — Point Reyes Seashore. This article is copyright 2010 by Chuq Von Rospach under a Creative Commons license. See the web site for usage policies. Please consider subscribing to my RSS feed so you don't miss a single one of my carefully crafted, emotionally satisfying and Pulitzer-quality words.

That’s the idea behind Pageant of the Masters, a two-month long series of performances in Laguna Beach, California in which famous paintings are replicated by human performers meticulously covered in layers of paint that match the original creation.

The result is 90 minutes of three dimensional, life-size reproductions of masterful paintings. The performers stand absolutely motionless on stage and blend in with the backgrounds of the paintings. The living portraits are accompanied by a full orchestra performing an original score as well as a narrator who tells the story of the paintings featured.

It’s all really quite amazing.

Yes, it is. Growing up in SoCal, I got to go to a number of pageants, and it is truly stunning work. See it if you possibly can.

One year was especially noteworthy — one of the kids playing cherubs in a painting slipped. To suddenly see a part of the painting “come to life” (sort of) as a reminder that these really were people-based, life-sized reproductions was something that burned into my memory.

I keep meaning to take Laurie down to see it, but never have. One of these years…

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The Discovery Channel Team dominated this year’s Tour de France with three riders in the top ten (Contador-1st; Leipheimer-3rd; Yaroslav Popovych-8th) and first place in the team classification. The team used Trek bikes called Madone. Honestly, the most bike riding that I do is to a park less than a mile from my house, but I recently visited Trek.

Trek so rocks. Way back in the ancient days and I was an active bike rider and lousy road racer, I road a hefty piece of steel, and like most of my compadres, we saw our first Trek bikes. They were using this revolutionary new frame metal called — gasp — aluminum. We all wanted one. I swore to myself I’d have one some day…

Fast forward many years (and pounds…) — and I’m the proud owner of a Trek T1220, which I rarely use because my personal meter is still pointed far closer to the “fat and lazy” side, but it’s going to stay around until that changes, because I’ll be damned if I won’t some day ride a century on that beast…. And until I do, it sits in a place where I have to look at it and be mocked.

But, you know? I never have liked my Univega mountain bike all that much. Maybe I’ll set the goal that if I can get to 50 miles a week on the road and trails, I’ll let myself upgrade…

Hmm…

But man, talk about a success story — I remember when Trek started, and how all the bike geeks drooled. And now, they’re one of the big manufacturers, and still making a hell of a set of bikes. My bike, which is a few years old, cost me a really moderate amount of money (I wouldn’t even call it a prosumer bike), yet it goes way beyond what we dreamed of 30 years ago as even being possible. And the T1220 is an aluminum frame, almost obsolete and decrepit compared to what you can do today with carbon fiber….

man.. thanks, Guy, for the memories…

This article was posted on Chuqui 3.0 at How to Change the World: My Visit to Trek: Two Guys in a Barn. This article is copyright 2010 by Chuq Von Rospach under a Creative Commons license. See the web site for usage policies. Please consider subscribing to my RSS feed so you don't miss a single one of my carefully crafted, emotionally satisfying and Pulitzer-quality words.

Another more subtle alternative has been proposed by the Harvard economist Michael Kremer. This approach to rhino conservation incorporates elements of both of the schemes you describe in your question.

Why do poachers kill rhinos? Because they get well-paid by middlemen. And why are middlemen able to offer handsome rewards to poachers? Because rhino horns sell for huge sums in the Far East, owing to the scarcity of available horns. So it is high prices that ultimately drive poaching activity.

Now, suppose the government were to announce the strict enforcement of anti-poaching laws and higher penalties rhino killers. Rhino middlemen would quickly realize that supply will grow even scarcer – and hence prices even higher – in the near future. So they’ll buy up as many rhino horns as they can in anticipation of this future of low supply and high prices. But this rush to poach before laws go into effect could itself drive rhinos into extinction.

Professor Kremer’s proposed solution is that the government put together its own stockpile of rhino horns, either from seized contraband or from, as you suggest, controlled harvesting.

As it happens, I was down in Southern California last week and spent time at the San Diego Wild Animal Park in Escondido, and one of the topics that came up was the upcoming extinction of one of the populations of black rhinos. Another was some of the success the park has had in working with the Masai on protecting lions.

One of the assumptions made by Kremer is that there’s enough of a stable government that it’s not only willing to take on these issues, but they’re capable of it. In areas where this is true — South Africa, for instance — it has happened, and there’s been some progress protecting lions and elephants and the reserve lands.

But in other places where governments are unstable (at best) or locked in a civil war, not only might they not see this as a priority, it’s rather hard for them to enforce laws in lands they can’t even visit because the rebels have control over it. That’s been a significant problem both with Rhinos and Gorillas in various areas, especially in Western Africa.

it’s hard for the government to stop poaching when they can’t even send troops or workers into an area without them being shot. The civil instability of the area makes these problems exceptionally difficult to solve — at best.

The second problem with the idea of a legitimate stockpile of horn is that it really doesn’t solve the problem, but it creates a legitimate pool of material that the poached material can infiltrate into. A similar attempt was made to disrupt ivory poaching and trading by filling the market with certified ivory; all that does is leave the poached ivory one forged certificate away from being sold safely. you can look at similar situations in blood diamonds and in the antiquities market (where if you can show that the artifact was expatriated before the restrictions were put in place, it’s okay to keep or sell — and hence there’s a thriving market in falsified histories for poached antiquities). The bottom line is, you don’t solve the problem by replacing an illicit trade with a legal one, you simply give the poachers one more avenue for creating pathways for their product.

The alternative? In places where it’s not safe for anyone (government, NGO, etc) to operate — not much. It’s a tough deal, and seems too late for some populations of rhinos, period.

But one thing that came up at the park I found very interesting. The culture of the Masai is based on the cow. Status and wealth is based on how many cows you own. In Masai culture, when a lion killed a cow, the warriors would hunt the lion in return.

The Wild Animal Park as part of a conservation group worked with the Masai, and agreed to pay market value for any lion-killed cow, if the Masai wouldn’t hunt the lions. What they’ve done is change the dynamics of the relationship (social and financial) and worked with the Masai to become protectors of the lions. According to the people I talked to, it’s been very effective.

This seems to be the trick needed. Poachers are, ultimately, trying to feed their family. The best way to change their idea of how to do this is to change the economic views of the value of the animals; make those animals more valuable alive than dead.

For a number of years, I’ve donated money to an organization called RARE. It’s primary purpose is to help preserve endangered habitat by working with the locals to teach them how to use those habitats in sustainable ways — a key tool is eco-tourism, and they’ve had some good success in South American, and in the last few years have expanded into southern africa. The idea is to teach the locals non-destructive ways to use the resources at hand, to give then incentives to WANT to preserve the resources, not exploit them.

That’s a strategy that seems to work well in some situations. Again, however, it’s not something you can do in the middle of a civil war. In some ways, it’s a carrot vs. stick situation. If you create a context that helps the locals WANT to protect those resources (habitats, species, etc), it’ll happen. Solutions that try to force those changes tend to fail.

Update:

more on this from Salad is Slaughter:

Salad Is Slaughter – A Gluttonous Curmudgeon and “D” List Blogger » More on Rhinos:

I visited the San Diego Wild Animal Park on the 22nd, and during the Asian Photo Caravan Safari they discussed one of the methods used to save (I think it was) the Southern White Rhino. Instead of putting the poachers in prison, they hired the poachers to protect the rhinos. The poachers didn’t hate the rhinos, they just needed the money. Money from the government or from a conservation society is just as good as from the people dealing contraband. Also, the poachers knew the rhinos’ habits better than anyone, and so knew best how to find and protect them.

One problem they discussed about breeding white rhinos in captivity: the discovered that you need two females before one will go in to heat. That’s because the females actually control their reproductive cycle because they want a girlfriend around to help protect the young.

This article was posted on Chuqui 3.0 at Freakonomics Blog » Saving the Rhinos: an Addendum. This article is copyright 2010 by Chuq Von Rospach under a Creative Commons license. See the web site for usage policies. Please consider subscribing to my RSS feed so you don't miss a single one of my carefully crafted, emotionally satisfying and Pulitzer-quality words.

SF fan writer Mike Glyer, in his fanzine File770 (.pdf link), leads the second wave of fannish horror that a professional writer (that would be me) has somehow been nominated for the Best Fan Writer Hugo (the complaint starts on page 17). His horror is amplified by this fellow, who feels I should withdraw from the field entirely.

In a word: No. I have no intention of withdrawing, because there’s no good reason to, and lots of good reasons to stay in. My concerns about the fan/pro schism specifically are largely assuaged by a look back at the history of the award and the discovery that not only am I not the first person to be nominated for this Hugo after his book was nominated for the Best Novel Hugo, there was a year in which a fellow (Piers Anthony, if you want to know) was nominated for Best Fan Writer and was the author of a Best Novel Hugo nominee. The response to this particular line of argument seems to boil down to “well, it hasn’t been done recently,” but inasmuch as perennial Best Fan Writer winner Dave Langford won a “pro” Hugo in 2001 and was nominated for another in 2006, I don’t think this argument has much merit.

Some things never change…. This all sounds similar to what happened when I got the nomination for Best Fan Writer at Noreascon 3, and OtherRealms made it for Best Fanzine that year (and there were similar rumblings earlier when OtherRealms was close to making the cut, and there was serious discussion about defining it as a semi-prozine rather than a fanzine).

Only back then, it was because so much of the work involved was — gasp — online, and not really part of “real” fandom, whatever that is. I’m happy to announce that I finished above No Award in both categories that year, which tickled me pink — and still does.

The parameters of the discussion change, but the underlying reason for it doesn’t: it’s old-guard vs. new-guard. And if the old-guard guys like Mike were honest with themselves, what John’s doing is nothing different than what Mike Resnick’s done for the last 30 years or so, only he’s doing it online. I don’t think anyone anywhere in fandom would consider Mike anything but one hell of a pro AND one hell of a fan.

It really sounds, honestly, like Mike and a few others have decided that John hasn’t “paid his dues” enough yet, or something.

John — you’re doing the right thing here. Relax, have fun, and just hope you finish above No Award. If you did, it’s a victory. And just enjoy it, and don’t worry about the others. It’s ultimately about politics, and people who want to maintain the old (and dying) “traditional” fandom, while fandom moves forward into the future with or without them.

And yes, you’re fannish enough. Well, for most of us, at least.

This article was posted on Chuqui 3.0 at Still Not Fannish Enough (Whatever). This article is copyright 2010 by Chuq Von Rospach under a Creative Commons license. See the web site for usage policies. Please consider subscribing to my RSS feed so you don't miss a single one of my carefully crafted, emotionally satisfying and Pulitzer-quality words.

A new study out today confirms the antibacterial power of both red and white wine. Apparently, researchers have proven that wine destroys the bacteria responsible for cavities and throat infections. Interestingly, it’s not the alcohol that kills the germs, but rather acids in the wine.

now this is the kind of news I like to hear…

This article was posted on Chuqui 3.0 at Mark’s Daily Apple » Blog Archive » Wine Prevents Cavities. This article is copyright 2010 by Chuq Von Rospach under a Creative Commons license. See the web site for usage policies. Please consider subscribing to my RSS feed so you don't miss a single one of my carefully crafted, emotionally satisfying and Pulitzer-quality words.

“Once a heart attack has occurred and been optimally treated, obese patients switch to a more favorable prognosis compared to normal-weight patients,”

Here’s one that at first glance might make you go Hmm…..

If you are overweight and have a heart attack, you’re more likely to get over it than if you’re normal weight.

Hmm….

But reality is in the details here. This isn’t a hint you should go have another Big Mac.

First, heavier heart attack patients tend to be younger; they’re having them at an earlier age. And those patients also tend to be under treatment for other things already — using ace inhibitors, beta blockers and statins, to name the most common drugs.

All of which may well affect survivability and recovery, much as they found a baby asprin a day did.

To me, if you read behind the headline, that the typical overweight patient is younger is the most telling stat. It’s not so much that the weight is driving the body to failure SOONER — but for a reason unknown right now, if it does fail, it can heal more easily than later in life.

That, of course, probably surprises nobody who’s hit middle age. Nothing heals as fast for me today as it idd when I was 25, whether it’s a twisted ankle or the results of my argument with a rose bush while attempting to prune it. So this doesn’t suprise me, either. But I don’t take it as a reason to stay overweight, not in any rational universe.

This article was posted on Chuqui 3.0 at Obesity Cuts Risk of Dying After Heart Attack – Yahoo! News. This article is copyright 2010 by Chuq Von Rospach under a Creative Commons license. See the web site for usage policies. Please consider subscribing to my RSS feed so you don't miss a single one of my carefully crafted, emotionally satisfying and Pulitzer-quality words.

So if you’re still pissed at David Chase for the way he really ended the series just think of the alternative.

I admit this up front: I saw one (count them, one — it involved the race horse) episode of the Sopranos. I felt it was exceptionally well written, exceptionally well acted. I never had any motivation to watch it again, so I’m far from an expert on the series.

But what I’ve seen written about Sopranos over the years has made two things clear: it was a series that played long and hard with ambiguity in various forms, starting with the baseline ambiguity of a mob boss trying to maintain a “normal” family life as if he sold insurance (which, well, he kinda did; sorta). And it was a series that not only wasn’t afraid to ignore convention, it reveled in breaking conventions of drama and story telling.

So, here we have the final episode, and what is it? It’s an ending that breaks dramatic convention by refusing to give a clear end point to the story (while not being set up for the sequel or the spin-off), and it leaves you with ambiguous answers on what happened and how everyone turned out.

Gee, a series that everyone thought was great for ambiguity and not doing it the way everyone else did, and they ended the series with ambiguity and didn’t do it the way everyone else did (as Ken Levine so wonderfully pointed out) — and their fans are pissed at them for it.

Count me amused. Did anyone really expect anything else? I guess so. But is that the fault of the Sopranos?

This article was posted on Chuqui 3.0 at By Ken Levine: If THE SOPRANOS were on a major network. This article is copyright 2010 by Chuq Von Rospach under a Creative Commons license. See the web site for usage policies. Please consider subscribing to my RSS feed so you don't miss a single one of my carefully crafted, emotionally satisfying and Pulitzer-quality words.

“A small rockfall occurred at 2:53 am on Saturday, June 9 behind Curry Village. The release point for the rockfall was ~550 meters (1800 feet) above the Valley floor, at the top of Staircase Falls. A rock about 20 cubic meters in size (60 tons) fell down the path of Staircase Falls, sweeping additional debris down with it.

It’s easy to think of these things as simply entropy in action, until you realize you were there just a few weeks ago, and you know where this happened…

A not-so-quiet (to those there) reminder that Yosemite Valley isn’t tamed, merely occupied.

This article was posted on Chuqui 3.0 at Yosemite Blog » Blog Archive » Late Night Rockfall Rattles Curry Village. This article is copyright 2010 by Chuq Von Rospach under a Creative Commons license. See the web site for usage policies. Please consider subscribing to my RSS feed so you don't miss a single one of my carefully crafted, emotionally satisfying and Pulitzer-quality words.

Glad to see there was such a positive reaction to THE ODD COUPLE. My first staff job was on THE TONY RANDALL SHOW, done for ABC in 1976. In that show he played a judge in Philadelphia. It was produced by MTM and we had quite a writing staff. The creators/showrunners were Tom Patchett & Jay Tarses (who had run the brilliant BOB NEWHART SHOW), Gary David Goldberg (created FAMILY TIES and BROOKLYN BRIDGE), Hugh Wilson (created WKRP and had a long feature directing career), and me and my partner, David Isaacs were the two young schleppers. That was it. No consultants. Just the six of us.

David and I were originally signed to write a freelance episode and from that we got invited to join the staff. Production was well underway when we came aboard. At our first table read Tony stood up with an announcement. He had just been to England during a hiatus and informed us that the British sitcoms were so far superior to ours. There was no contest. American sitcoms were shit. Then he sat back down and we had the reading of the decidedly American script David and I had just written. I thought our staff career was going to last one day.

But happily he liked the script… and us. At the time I was single, bringing dates to filmings (hoping that might help me get lucky) and after the show I would always introduce them to Tony. He would praise me to the heavens, how they couldn’t do the show without me, etc. All total bullshit but the girls were impressed. Say what you will about Tony Randall, he was the best Wing Man I’ve ever had.

Man, I’m actually old enough to remember the Odd Couple fondly. While we don’t watch much network TV these days, one show Laurie and I have really started enjoying is Two and a Half Men on CBS, starring Charlie Sheen as an aging playboy who’s dealing with the reality that his body and his lifestyle aren’t always on the same page, and Jon Cryer as his somewhat nerdy, awkward brother who’s dealing with divorce and trying to rebuild a life.

This show is buttressed by a wonderful supporting cast and absolutely stunning writing, of the “how did the network let them do this?” type. Very sharp dialog and good chemistry. And to me, from the first episode, it was a modern embodiement of the kind of chemistry and interaction that is the essence of the Odd Couple (hence the tie-in to Levine’s piece).

Two and a half men sits up there with me with Odd Couple, MASH, and Cheers, and that’s saying something….

And if you aren’t reading Levine’s blog, you’re missing some wonderful writing….

This article was posted on Chuqui 3.0 at By Ken Levine: Working with Tony Randall. This article is copyright 2010 by Chuq Von Rospach under a Creative Commons license. See the web site for usage policies. Please consider subscribing to my RSS feed so you don't miss a single one of my carefully crafted, emotionally satisfying and Pulitzer-quality words.