Kermit playing

Originally uploaded by The_Gut.

Just adding a spot of color. Kermit playing on the play stand.

There are at least two items worthy of note in this article about Abby Sunderland.

First, her Father was spot on with this comment

Her father rejected criticism that it was far too dangerous to allow a 16-year-old to sail around the world by herself.

“Sailing and life in general is dangerous. Teenagers drive cars. Does that mean teenagers shouldn’t drive a car?” Laurence Sunderland told the AP. “I think people who hold that opinion have lost their zeal for life. They’re living in a cotton-wool tunnel to make everything safe.”

Exactly.

And

The Australian maritime authority did not say how much the rescue mission would cost but said it would not be seeking compensation for the search, which initially fell just outside of Australia’s search and rescue region.

“That’s the way the system runs,” search coordinator Kinley said. “It’s our obligation to do this and we’ll fulfill those obligations as Australia does.”

(For some reason, I can’t block quote the above).

Anyway, thats exactly right too. Search and Rescue is there for Search and Rescue.  People should NOT be charged for this function, for various reasons.

There are at least two schools of thought about tours.

One holds that they are a waste of time, and money. That you are straight jacketed by the dictates of the move – speech – move again formula. These folks tend to want to just wander, and absorb at leisure. (Thats the second school of thought, about tours).

Both views are correct, for the most part. The problem with wandering without guidance, or disdaining it, is that its shallow. You don’t learn much about the area, or come to appreciate its depths. Then again, too many folks, knowing the surface appearance of an area is enough. (Make no mistake, it IS important). My friend Carmen is like this. I remember when she was enamored of the appalachian mountains, several years ago. We went to the Chattanooga aquarium (this is before they had the saltwater building). She went though the building in under two hours, and later complained about how the price wasn’t worth it to look at a bunch of fish. Thats a wonderful example of valuing the surface over the depths. The aquarium peels back a bit of the surface, and gives you a glimpse of what makes the land tick. It is experience, distilled. Thats a bit of what a tour is (though tours tend to be shallower than that).

Books can also serve to peel back some of the surface. Again, they are experience, distilled. Thats part of the value behind websites like yelp, too. They let you test your experience against the experience of others (thus peeling back some of that surface).

The proper thing to do, of course, is to value both. The surface is important, and it can be appreciated for its own sake. Knowing what makes a rose work for the plant is not needed to appreciate the rose, after all.

Did the native Hawaiians have vampire legends? Or any of the south sea polynesian peoples for that matter?

Alright, I will have to return to Maui one day, to explore it at a bit more leisurely pace. There is a LOT here that interests me.

I can see myself living here, or in Honolulu for that matter. Practically though, both would be very difficult to make work. Guess why? Parrots! Could I even get them into Hawaii? I’m not sure. Assuming that I did, parrots are just a wee bit noisy, so I would need either land, or one hell of a well built sound resistant bird room. Both equal expensive, and I don’t make much money. But, its fun to daydream.

Anyway – Maui – come back to explore at leisure. Check. Mind, I also want to visit Costa Rica. I also want to go to the Macaw clay licks in Peru.

On the tour today, I recorded a movie on husking a coconut. I’ve wanted to buy a coconut for the birds for a while, but I’ve never gotten around to it, because I’ve been too lazy to look up how to open one. Now I know, and I’ll be able to broaden the birds horizons some. Hopefully the birds will like Coconut. (I despise Coconut myself). Perhaps I can use the shell for the hermit crabs.

Economists tend to judge in absolute terms. If my real income doubles that’s a big win for me—even if yours triples. We find it odd and annoying that other people often prefer to look at relative measures. If the income of poor people doubles and the income of rich people triples, many will see that as the poor losing out, or at least falling behind.

A perceptive comment.

Alright, this is wild.

This week in New York, the American Museum of Natural History unveiled something never before seen: an 11-by-4-foot tapestry made completely of spider silk.

And…

A very careful person simply pulls the thread out of each spider and wraps it on a spindle. It’s then put on a hand loom and woven.

Read the article. This is utterly wild.

Darn it, I have temporarily misplaced my timer, and its annoying the hell out of me. Its a nice hardware one – counts up, down, and can be used as a stopwatch. Its got a magnetic back. I got it for playing Everquest – tracking spawns, and the like. I haven’t seen it for a couple of weeks, and I have uses for it. I need a good software one too. I need to look on the cover of the hermit crab tank, come to think of it. Thats really near where I would have been using it last.

In looking for it, I searched around my bed. I really need to clean up this sty of a bedroom. I should count myself lucky that the coke cans under the bed don’t dump me out into the floor one night, for the paperback book floorcovering to eat.

I did find my passport. It wasn’t even close to where I distinctly recall it being.

I wonder which dog has the chewhoof stash in the closet, under a folded blanket. Or had, anyway, since I tossed em back out to the middle of the floor.

This isn’t my full writeup on this issue – its another thing I find fascinating. This is just some preliminary thoughts on one specific article from Slate, and some asides.

Another factor undermining the FSA study is the fact that the terms “organic” and “conventional” encompass a wide spectrum of practices. It’s so wide, in fact, that accurately comparing the categories is virtually impossible. For example, it’s well-known that large, industrial farms overuse pesticides and fertilizers, but many conventional family farms practice integrated pest management, selectively employ advanced fertilizers to reduce runoff, spray very selectively, and establish grazing systems for livestock that rely on environmentally sound rotational schedules. Likewise, the environmental virtues of organic agriculture are conspicuously (and deservedly) touted, but the glowing reports rarely note that most organic food comes from large corporate operations, that some organic farmers rely heavily on natural pesticides that are toxic in high doses, that organic compost can contain more contaminants than conventional fertilizer, and that soil erosion can be as bad or worse on organic farms. There is no standard “organic” or “conventional” farm, so any broad comparison is little more than speculative.

That paragraph does mention one of my pet peeves – that “natural” is somehow inherently superior to “man made” (remember, arsenic is natural). It also fails to note one caveat about the environmental virtues of organic agriculture, that it typically results in a lower yield per acre. This impacts the amount of wilderness in an area, which is wildlife habitat.

To choose one study and declare a position on the debate, as so many advocates do, is not only intellectually dishonest; it ignores the underlying complexity of agriculture itself—a complexity that includes variables that transcend the organic/conventional divide, including plant genetics, cultivars, soil type, farmer skill, harvest methods, timing of harvest, place, and climate. To pick one example, the use of seeds with high yields (by both organic and conventional farmers) may have much more to do with the decline in the nutritional content of produce since World War II than any other factor in agricultural production.

Now, this paragraph links to an interesting study of the decline in nutrition in many foods since WW II. Basically, it could be the result of emphasizing yield over quality, in terms of breeds. It would be interesting to compare heritage species (and breeds) to modern, high production types.

Anyone who has looked at the original documents from when the Lake was built isn’t going to be surprised by this decision. I’ve wondered for several years what the hell Georgia officials have been thinking, when it comes to water. Link

U.S. District Court Judge Paul Magnuson said Lanier wasn’t built for water supply and the state’s withdrawals are illegal. He acknowledged it would be impossible to immediately stop using the lake because it is metro Atlanta’s main water supply. But he said if the state can’t get permission from Congress within three years, the withdrawals must end.

“The Court recognizes that this is a draconian result,” Magnuson wrote. “It is, however, the only result that recognizes how far the operation of the (lake) has strayed from the original authorization.”

So now its kicked up to Congress, which is where it should have started.

Update: Read the 97 page ruling here.

Additional note: Resolving this in Congress is going to be BRUTAL – a republican state (a powerful republican state) needing a major, major favor from a Democratic congress. And its something our politicians should have resolved decades ago.

Edit again: There are going to be a lot of “opinions” floating around on this one – and you can bet that virtually no one will have read the decision. “What? Read 97 pages? Why would I do that? Thats like, work!” I despair, sometimes.

Hey! I see you!

Originally uploaded by The_Gut.

Well it looks like that young couple who built the penthouse apartment between my house and my folks have at least one kid. No doubt I’ll be yelling at the brat to get off my lawn before too long….

(This is a young red shouldered hawk, on a nest between my house, and my folks. Which is about 250 feet away.)

Lets see – first game of Mutants and Masterminds… using the free module Dr. Null, Battle on Bay Bridge.

Not bad. We didn’t get started till late, and didn’t get to game that long, but we had….

Car sized bug bots being blasted into mushroom clouds of confetti

A pterodactyl winging in from the side of the bridge, and then suddenly shifting to a Tyrannosaurus Rex (while still airborne) to knock a bugbot off a gasoline tanker. The (not very bright) bugbot had been about to cut into the tanker with an arc welder.

A minivan being thrown through one of the bridges suspension cables. A bug bot being punched a couple of miles out to sea.

While we do have work to do….. its got potential.