On Understanding Complexity (or, Looking Inwards)*

As a scientist**, I often find myself turning to works of philosophy to consider questions that science cannot answer.  Contrary to popular belief in some corners, we freely admit that those questions exist -- because, by necessity, there must be first principles and science only deals with matters that follow from them.

For example, what does it mean to live a correct life?  This is partially a question of morality, but what is morally correct?  Why, for example, is the Golden Rule any better, from a moral standpoint, than Might Makes Right?  There is no easy answer.  One's choice is simply a preference than cannot be "proven" to be superior.  The christian bible is essentially an historical collection of first principles (the Old Testament) with errata and appendices (the New Testament) that provides a convenient starting point, but one which is not really usable by anyone who does not accept that morality is what God says it is, particularly when He had such a penchant for contradiction and His Children have such a tendency for picking and choosing.

Lately I've been reading a lot of Dennett, particularly his musings about determinism and free will.   The nice thing about Dennett, beyond his readability, is his thoroughness.  It's not enough, for example, to say that we have free will because we can make personal choices -- Dennett probes the source of those choices.  He uses the clever example of the spex ichneumoneus wasp, which lays eggs next to a paralyzed cricket.  When the time comes for egg laying, he quotes a biologist, the wasp Spex builds a burrow for the purpose and seeks out a cricket ... She (then) drags the cricket into the burrow ... and the wasp grubs feed off (it).  To the human mind, (this) seemingly purposeful routine conveys a convincing flavor of logic.  He then goes on to describe how the nefarious biologists vex the poor wasp by moving her paralyzed cricket around, to which the wasp can only respond by going through apparently preprogrammed biological actions that -- had she actually been using logic and reasoning -- she would not have done, for apparently the wasp inspects the burrow first, before dragging the cricket inside.   If the cricket is moved a few inches away while the wasp is inside making her preliminary inspection, the wasp ... will bring the cricket back to the threshold, but not inside, and will repeat the prepratory procedure. ... On one occasion, (the biologists moved the cricket) forty times, always with the same result.  "The poor wasp is unmasked," writes Dennett: "she is not a free agent, but rather at the mercy of brute physical causation, driven inexorably into her states and activities by features of the environment outside of her control."

There was a time, long ago during the Age of Reason and the young ascendency of empiricism, when it was thought that the time would come when the future could be predicted through mathematics.  Physics, went the reasoning, was guided by fixed laws, and hence the path of a particle through space (and thereby its future) was predetermined by the position and velocity of of every other particle in the universe.  All that was needed was the precise identification of the latter two quantities.

Today, we know that prediction of the behavior of something as simple as a quadratic mapping -- practically the 2nd most simple type of nontrivial equation known to mathematics -- is fundamentally unknowable, given the basic limits on precision in the real universe and our inability to capture anything except the finite in an empirical sense.   Long ago, I once wrote something along these lines regarding the number of problems in the universe: how not only that the number of provably solvable problems is finite, but that the number of humanly indescribable (much less solvable) problems is uncountably infinite***.

We are meek and small animals, we are.  Well, small, anyhow.

*This line of thought actually has a point and is going somewhere, I think, someday, although the ride may take innumerable side trips.  Who knows.  It makes some kind of weird sense to me.

**I use that term loosely these days, given that I have long since sold out, as it were.

***That particular statement is provable, too.

Six Days then Two Trains

I'm home alone for a few days, then off for the New Year down south.   Just in time, Seattle's Sound Transit has opened a light rail link from the International District station directly to SeaTac airport that costs a total of $2.50 one way.  A far sight better than the $35 cab fare from King Station or $200 for five days of long-term parking at the airport!  I am looking forward to peering down on the I-5/405/Int'l Blvd snarl from the comfort of the Central Link rail this time, instead of from behind a wheel.

So I would like to take this moment to offer thanks for living in a place where I can park for free and then board a coast-hugging train in the morning, switch to a frequent light rail, and then be at the airport without parking, driving hassles, or worry (and having read a few chapters of an engrossing book, to boot!), all for about a tenth of the cost of gas and parking that I used to pay.  

Saturday Skiing

Mt. Shuksan, from the Heather Meadows Lodge

12/19/2009

Yeah.  Yeah.  Hard to argue with that.

Apparently I Can't Help Myself

                                 Don Ryan / AP

So here are some thoughts on Mountain Rescue in light of the recent loss of life on Mt. Hood, after all.  No ranting I hope.

1. Carrying a locator beacon is indeed a good thing.  Climbers have traditionally rejected this idea, for a variety of reasons ranging from the weight (the early models were clunkers), their lack of reliability (they were awful), the changing standards (a beacon bought one year was useless the next), and their "techiness" (mountaineers generally disdain things that use batteries, other than headlamps, because batteries get cold and die within a matter of hours).  But let's face it, the newer Spot2 models are pretty good: they're lightweight, inexpensive (relative to other mountaineering gear), and they include both an automatic tracker that makes it possible for someone with web access to see a trail of breadcrumbs indicating the climber's path of travel, as well as an "I'm OK" button that climbers can proactively press to leave a marker indicating that (at least at that moment) they were/are fine and a panic button to call in the troops if necessary.  And finally, a beacon helps locate bodies faster.  This is the reason why I ski with an avalanche transceiver when I ski alone -- not so that I can be saved, but so that my family could have some closure, were I swept away.  (FWIW, I don't buy the idea that mountaineers take greater risks if they carry a beacon.   A rescue is a last-ditch call for help; we all know that.  We also know that rescues take hours or days, in the best case.  I don't know anyone who would take an unwarranted risk just because they have that beacon -- who wants to lie in the snow with a compound fracture, for days?)

2.  That being said, charging for rescues is a bad idea. I can think of scores of reasons why it's bad, but a few stand out:

• People who think that they will have to pay money to call for help will probably not do it until their situation is dire.  I can think of a dozen missions off the top of my head in which our patients (what MRA folks call the people they're rescuing) called in early and the resulting search and rescue went well, but in which if they had delayed by even an hour, they would have been dead and the rescue missions would have been extended by days -- if not weeks -- with all the resulting increased danger and expense.
• Mountain Rescue teams are almost exclusively volunteer.  We are funded via donations (read: United Way), so we couldn't charge a victim even if we wanted to do so.  Naval and military support helicopters, too, have mandatory training schedules and are obligated to log a certain number of flight hours -- which they would much rather do in support of a real rescue mission instead of winching a locator buoy out of the water somewhere, so their time is "free" in the sense that they would have logged the airtime, anyway.  (In fact, they even monitor our frequencies here, and have even been known to show up unannounced overhead, "just to see if the search teams could use some aerial reconnaissance support.")
• Charging money implies a mandate and/or a requirement to provide service.  As it stands, signs at trailheads loudly proclaim that no rescue is ever guaranteed.  However, if we charge hikers and climbers a fee, then it's not inconceivable in our litigious culture that the family of a victim might take a rescue team to court, to recover rescue fees (and more!) in the event that the victim was never saved or even located.  When that happens, liability insurance will probably become mandatory for these teams, to be followed shortly thereafter by team members quitting, as we will have "professionalized" the mountain rescue business.  And here's the thing: we are in this as volunteers because we care about our community and want to give back to it.  Helping to save lives in distress makes me feel like I've done something worthwhile.  I won't do it for money, were salaried professional rescue teams proposed, and I won't do it all, if that's the direction we're going.
• Asking desperate families to pay for rescues is just as bad as asking the victims.  I'll support this with an anecdote.  We were once on a big, glaciated peak, searching for a lost backcountry skier, and we had a naval blackhawk in the air to support us.  We'd been out there for a week already, and the family was freaked at the pace, so they paid two separate, private, commercial helicopter pilots to fly in and join the search.  Problem: the two new choppers were not on our MRA frequencies, since they weren't licensed to use them, so now we had two birds flying around randomly with no way to talk to them (since we also weren't licensed to use their commercial flight frequencies).  Only the navy boys could talk, and they became instant middlemen.  The naval helicopter -- the only one with a winch that could be used to retrieve the skier, or his body -- returned to base, given the danger of that aerial and ground situation.  Conclusion: when families are allowed or forced to make payment, they generally agree to do it -- but on their own terms.  In the above situation, we were able to force the commercial pilots to leave the area since we had mission responsibility for it, but if the families had paid for the whole thing we would have been helpless.
• The "expense" of a rescue is already covered by taxes that all mountaineers pay.  Specifically, it comes from the law enforcement folks who liason with the MRA teams, act as the PR interface with the media and families, and generally oversee operations (although they are not the incident commanders and not running the rescue, just running interference for the entire thing).  That's usually where you hear about the cost of a rescue, since the deputies are salaried and they often call in police helicopters for low-altitude searches.  But if we're going to require one group of people (mountaineers, who have an extremely low accident rate compared to unprepared summer hikers) to pay an additional fee beyond taxes for the local constables in the event that they need them, then we should really look into charging everyone else, too, because those dreamy-eyed cotton-and-flipflop-wearing day hikers are the ones who really consume the department resources on a week-to-week basis, at least when it comes to searches and body recoveries.  Alternatively, we could ask only those helped by the police to pay for police services.  Why should I have pay the salary of an officer who saves a child from being beaten?  I mean, it's not me, right?  (Yeah, that's a callous way to look at the world, alright.)

3. People climbing a mountain in winter do not "lack common sense." This meme sure does come up a lot.  People who don't climb often seem to think that although climbing is dangerous, it's at least acceptable in summertime with banner blue skies, and that we should sit in front of our fireplaces recounting stories during the winter.  Were that to be the case -- that we, as humankind, should only venture out into the world when conditions were pristine and outcomes known -- then I certainly wouldn't be typing this in North America, if at all.  In reality, the ability to push our limits is a fundamental human quality, and the slow advance of knowledge has today made winter mountaineering an everyday and practically mundane occurrence that is almost always undertaken safely, and with quantifiable benefits.  A crashed airliner in the Indian Peaks range of Colorado, for example, would have been written off as lost, were this 1950 and in the winter time, but today the Rocky Mountain Rescue team would be responding, at the site, and saving lives within hours of the first report, purely because of advances in winter mountaineering knowledge that have only come about as a direct result of people doing it.

I'm sure that next year, another group will be lost in the mountains, if not Mt. Hood itself, and this debate will repeat itself.  And I'll probably get sucked into it again.

Oh, No You Don't

Exhibit A: Infinite Depth of Kitteh

So, I had a huge rant ready to post about the latest Mt. Hood climber disaster and the usual laymen response to it (blah blah "they're insane" blah blah "ought to force climbers to pay for rescue insurance" blah blah "ZOMG MAH TAX DOLLARS!" blah blah "danger to themselves and the valiant rescuers!" blah blah Blah BLAH), but after about ten pages of fuming I got it out of my system and decided: be it resolved that (a) daring people aren't going to stop pushing their boundaries, and (b) whiners aren't going to stop whining, and (c) there are enough infuriated people around already: then, why, I suppose I'll just shut up. Perhaps have another glass of wine and ponder how spaghetti is harvested:

UPDATE 12/18/2009: Here ya go, Wombat--

Tick List I

• Mt. Baker (My back yard)
• Chopicalqui (Peruvian Andes)
• Mt. Rainier, Kautz Glacier route (My extended back yard)
• Artisanraju* (Peruvian Andes, the mountain in the Paramount logo)
  

That's enough for now, we're probably looking at 2-4 years of vacation and retraining there.  Artisanraju in particular is going to be a bitch, but more fun than you can shake a stick at!  Kautz should be easy; I almost made it up that one once already, were it not for an ill teammate.  Chopi is probably pretty straightforward, depending on the conditions (of course).  The one that intrigues me the most, believe it or not, is Baker: I've been on her slopes many times, in the form of rescue missions and skiing, but never tried to go for the summit.  I would be arrogant to consider the climb easy, considering how many bodies we've pulled off that mountain.

* "Raju" is apparently a native term for "mountain," in Quechua, the modern derivative of ancient Incan.  "Artisan" is clearly latin-based.  So perhaps it means "artist mountain?"

Thursday Night Music

Once while driving through Texas, I found an AM radio station that played this song on an infinite loop. I listened to it for four hours*, through the night, before it faded into static. Find the album version**, it's better than the live videos (with its spanish guitar interlude; I'm such a sucker for spanish guitar).

"Now when I talked to God I knew he'd understand, he said 'stick by me, I'll be your guiding hand, but don't ask me what I think of you, I might not give the answer that you want me to...'"

*Texas is BIG.
**"Then Play On" - ping me if you can't find it.

Geekiness

(T-shirts can be found here)

Laura comes home tomorrow after a few days out of state, so of course I'm not cleaning up the house or getting anything ready for her because I'm totally geeking out with my brand new weather station! Just FYI, it's currently 22ºF and 80% humidity in my garden.  The dew point is 16ºF, and the barometer is reading 30.31 inches of mercury.  Ooh, update: now it's 21º and 81%!

This kind of stuff makes me smile.  I dunno why, I just love playing with gadgets.  Whenever I get in this way, L says something along the lines of "OMG you are SUCH a superdork!" which might sound bad, but when it's followed by her exclamation that "dorks are so sexy *wink*" it's enough to make a man smile even wider.

There was a time when "nerd" was a pejorative term, and I somehow missed when that changed.  When did it happen?  There seem to be hordes of women who like dorks -- my friend Jamie has a crush on the entire cast of "The Big Bang Theory," for example, and she's just one of many.  And don't even get me started on geeky women, who almost universally seem to wear those sexy librarian eyeglasses.

Not that I'm complaining, mind you.  It's awfully nice to be admired & desired for just being who you are.

UPDATE: 19º, 86%, 15º dewpoint @ 8:41pm.  Yes yes, I know, you're on the edge of your seat just like me!

On Being Thankful

My sister and her boyfriend are visiting us this weekend, from faraway North Carolina. That seems odd to write: "faraway North Carolina." But it's accurate. Sometimes the people on the other side of this nation are like aliens, in their manners, their habits, and especially their speech. From my travels around the world I got the distinct impression that people think that the "USA" is one country, but it doesn't take much wandering around these states to realize that though they might be united in some sense, they are still very different states. I can no more understand a native from the hills of carolina than I can someone from the hills of Wales.

Finn decided to go AWOL upon their arrival. As soon as sis+BF walked through the door, he was nowhere to be found. It turned out that he'd burrowed underneath the duvet on the bed in the master bedroom and -- in lumplike form -- was hiding there. Slowly, over the course of hours, we finally coaxed him out. Perhaps he was filled with scared memories of the recent move, and of riding in a moving car for two days, or perhaps he just got frightened because his newly secure world in my home was suddenly disrupted again -- whatever the cause, he was terrified. But he came out, finally, and made friends. Perhaps because we were in the living room sipping wine for hours, and laughing and chatting together like family do.

For whatever reason, it's gotten me thinking about language. Perhaps it's the Carolina factor, or the introduction of the new and the strange to a little fellow who did not expect them. Regardless, I'm chuckling at it now, before I go burrow under that same duvet myself. Chuckling at how my 5-year-old nephew sternly corrected me for calling a "torch" a flashlight, or how he broke out in peals of laughter when I declared that I "can't find my pants" one morning at his mother's (my sister's) home. How "brilliant!" is such a multifaceted expression in England and Australia, meaning everything from surprise and joy to irony and disgust.

But mostly just happy that there's black cat flying around the house, a sleepy girl under that duvet, my sister in town, the downtime to think about ridiculous things, and a few days of sunlight in the forecast. What a big change from a couple of years ago!

Late Friday Night

Plans

Getting ready for a mountain rescue team meeting tonight, after a fruitless day of beating on an experiment that just would NOT cooperate.  Fiddle fiddle, start it up, watch it run for 30 minutes, and then die.  Fiddle fiddle fiddle, restart it, watch it run for 45 minutes and then die.  Gack.  Eventually this thing has to run for eight hours!  I really just want to drink beer and watch movies, not go to a team meeting and training.

But on that note, I have been far too removed from the mountains (as I've already noted) and from community service in the form of mountain rescue for far too long.  This will be the first training that I have been to in months, and I haven't been on a rescue in far longer.  Teams like this are like platoons of soldiers -- if you're not there, taking part all the time, you're an outsider.   So, time to get back into the thick of it before the summer season comes back around before everyone forgets who I am.

After that, I'll come home, plant a smooch on Laura, crack open a bomber, light a fire, and chill out with something ridiculous on TV, and try to forget that tomorrow I will be banging my head into a bloody pulp from frustration with this stupid pile of electronics and cables again.  Which doesn't actually matter, anyway.

Besides, soon I'll be skiing.  Damn, I love me some snow and steeps!  It's always easy to get sucked into meaningless drivel and routine, so it is important to do something every week to break the routine and reestablish that connection with life that we all know that we have.  Today, this week: get back into the rescue group, and learn about those last three heinous missions.  Next week: load up the skis and hit the slopes that I haven't been on for over two years.  The week after that?  Who knows.  Maybe sex on a fauxfur rug in front of the fireplace.

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig. Good Evening, J.F.

Cat Tower, Fireplace, Open Box, and Window Sill: Ready for kitties before they arrive

We're back from Denver after two long days on the road, a day of packing and loading the truck the day before them, and a couple of days of decompression upon return.  Driving halfway across this country (in any direction) is always enlightening; America is not only not just a single entity, but its various components aren't even the same over even small periods of time.  To drive across such a great distance, without staying more than a few hours (or days, or weeks, or years) in the same place, is to see nothing but the transience of endless road and the imperative meanness of the intermittent stops that punctuate it, but we can still sense the gulf between who we are, and who they are, whoever they are where we stop.  It is dangerous to one's sense of perspective to grow too comfortable in one place, I think.

There were great changes along this road that I've already traveled four times before.  For example, where once there were only coyotes and antelope, I found endless acres of wind generators in the high mesas of Wyoming and Idaho to share their company.  In Boise, the endless road construction along I-84 has resulted in tasteful walling with graceful artwork along the interstate highway.  And, if it were possible, there seemed to be even more power lines leading out of the Columbia River Gorge, more vines in the Yakima Valley, and more tailgating hummers going up I-90 towards Snoqualmie Pass.

Laura driving somewhere ahead of me in the desolate wastes of southwestern Idaho

People say (and I also believe) that traveling with someone is a true test of a relationship, be it anything from a friendship on up.  We had FRS (Family Radio Service) radios, she in her Saabaru, and I in the moving truck, and we chatted back and forth, laughing at the ridiculous, marveling at the marvelous, and bitching at the hummers, with long intervals of silence as we drove in independent thought.  Once or twice, there was an emergency: Zooey just puked all over the front seat, stressed out as she was, which necessitated a roadside cleanup.  "Oh well," said Laura, "I'll buy myself a car detailing for christmas."

We pulled into B'ham relatively early in the day (5:00pm-ish) after an uneventful trip over the pass (thank the gods), but of course it was pitch dark at this latitude.  We let the stressed animals out into the house, which they immediately began to explore, and we moved the few things that we really needed out of the truck cab and the car into the house.   Sleep follows quickly on the heels of a couple of 12-hour driving days.

Now, two days past that, Laura is settling in and the kittehs are acting much more like playful animals, and less like freaked out spasmotrons, and it seems like a good thing.  Now begins the harder task of Figuring It All Out, which I am beginning to think might not be as hard as I thought.  It is dangerous to grow too comfortable in one's sense of perspective, I would say, to paraphrase myself.

Finn's laser eyes weaken your resolve

Impending Radio Silence

Getting ready to head to the airport to fly to Denver, and thence overland back to Washington with Laura, Finn, Zooey, and a truckload of gear.... back friday.  Road trip, w00t!

In Which I Prove Myself To Be a DFH

I guess I have a weakness for lists.  This one is ostensibly about trains, but in the end I will prove myself to be a DFH, just you watch:

• I just scored a first-class upgrade for my flight to Denver.  I stand 6'00" and weigh in at 190; Economy is Torture, and Economy Plus is Reduced Torture.  It's not like I'm fat, I fit more than comfortably width-wise into an Economy seat; it's the my-knees-in-my-face that I can't take, especially when the sleepy person in front of me reclines that seat backwards.  First Class today is what we all remember airlines offering as Coach back when we were kids, am I wrong?  Free decks of cards and little lapel-pins in the shape of the airplane?  Food?  served with silverware?
  
• On that note, I swear that this is going to be the last time I ever fly within the continental United States.  Trains are just so much nicer, in every possible way.  The plan for New Years (tentative) is to go to California, a straight shot south on Amtrak Cascades.  So what if it takes me 16 hours, I can deal with that on a train.  Heck, I could even split the trip into two or three segments, and chill out in cities along the way.  Maybe meander back for a beer or two in the dining car.
  
• Of course, in Europe, the above train trip would take two to four hours by the fast rail.  That's because the rail system in the USA is a redheaded stepchild to even the crappy Italian regional rail.  Here in the US, our passenger trains pull over and let every freight train pulling a load of chinese drywall and diapers go past, because that stuff is what paid for the (single set of) tracks, not to mention stopping at every single two-light town, because there's only one passenger train a day going either direction on the Cascades route.
• People in Seattle are all worked up about the viaduct, the cost of living, and parking.  I wonder how many of them would live here in B'ham if they had reliable high-speed commuter rail that took them to King Station in an hour... or 45 minutes... or even 30 minutes?  Heck, I've waited in stalled traffic on I-5 for a couple of hours before, no big surprise.  Two miles in two hours, and whup!  There went the Amtrak, zipping past on the right.
• For anyone who hasn't traveled between major cities by rail in Europe, allow me to enlighten you, for I used to do it all the time.  I lived in Nürnberg, Germany once, and I often had to travel to Munich or London.  Now, going to London takes a little preplanning, but within the continent itself, not so much.  If I had an appointment in Munich at noon, I would get up at 8:00am, get dressed, and show up at the Hauptbahnhof (main station) around 9:00am after walking  a couple of blocks to the U-Bahn (subway) and a pleasant 10 minute ride there.  Then I'd look for the next train, which I hadn't bothered to look up in advance.  I was never late.  They ran often, and fast, and the system they set up to find the next one was a no-brainer: a big board shows destination, platform, and departure time.  You buy a ticket from a machine; it tells you the platform and the car to board.  There are no security checks: you go from front door to comfortable train ride in a matter of minutes, without taking off your shoes or having your hair gel confiscated.  The worst part about it was figuring out which of the Straßenbahnen (street cars) I needed to board to reach my ultimate destination, but that took all of 5-10 minutes to figure out.  9:00am -> 11:00am.
  
• Now think about how we travel by air between major cities in the USA.  My flight leaves at 3:00pm.  This means that I need to be at the airport at 1:00pm, according to the airline.  It's a two hour drive from my house to the airport parking, and add another 15 minutes for the shuttle since I choose the cheaper off-airport parking.  I'm lazy, so I don't allow two hours, so let's ignore the 15 minutes.  At any rate, now I'm leaving the house at 11:00am, but oh crap, there's a closure of I-5 in Everett: down to one lane.  Okay, now I'm leaving the house at 9:30am.  When I finally land in Denver, it's 6:30pm local time, but the airport is way out in bumfuck nowhere not in the middle of the city like a sensible train station, so it's more like 7:30pm by the time I'm at my real destination in the city.  9:30am -> 7:30pm.
• Okay, granted, Denver is a little farther away from B'ham than Munich is from Nürnberg.  But I bet you get my point.  Train: no worries about parking, no security crap, comfortable seats, smooth going.  Flying: hell all around.  (FWIW, the German air security was 10x what we had in the USA back in 1995, when I was there: they were confiscating fluids et al. even back then.  It's just so easy to kill hundreds with a downed flight, not so easy with a train.)
  

Finally, and in summation, allow me to sum up, with a summary:

• There was once a time when the train system in the USA rivaled anything in Europe.  The early part of the 20th century, in fact.  Then a man named Ford and another man named Firestone teamed up to kill the rails, and kill them they did.  (Do not click that link if you hate auto-starting music, which I do -- I just couldn't find a better link.)
• Around that time, and for a long time afterwards, getting ill did not necessarily imply that you would be financially ruined.  No, that started with Nixon and his embrace of privatized for-profit health care.
• Conclusion: there are, in fact, some areas of life and living in which freewheeling capitalism might be a bad solution for those of us who actually have to use the resulting systems.  (N.B.:  I never actually thought I'd find myself writing those words, after having lived with the German health care system.  The difference now is, I was earning less than 1/5th of what I am now, and I paid the Germans $80/year for comprehensive health insurance.  Now, the same level of insurance here in the US would cost me half of my monthly income.  So of course, I have no health insurance.  I was pissy then because I had to wait in line for a few hours when I needed to see a doctor.  Sigh.  Would but that I could see a doctor for anything less than $200 now, and the delay is the same.  Add in lab fees, and I'm looking at $300-$500 for a single visit.  For the fucking flu.)
  

So, an alternate summary, with no mathematical summation signs, even:

• Yep, I understand that the Europeans pay a hell of a lot more in taxes than we do here in the USA
• Nope, I don't think that Libertarian bravado is worth the shitty health system and useless travel setup that we have to put up with here, and I will posit that perhaps the evil socialist Euros have in fact figured something out on those two points that perhaps we could take under consideration.  I'm not saying that we have to be exactly like them, I'm just saying that we could see how they do things, and see if maybe we can't do something that is isomorphic, for about the same price.  I mean, seeing as how Americans pay a shitload more for everything than everyone else, with only a fraction of the benefits, and all.  Just saying.  Sure would be nice to pay less for more.  Eh?
• No, I don't think that looking at the way that other countries do things, and trying to fix our own shit, is going to cause us to become some kind of Socialist Nightmare.  Call me crazy, but I think that looking at how functional systems work and trying to emulate them might be helpful.
• Yes, I think that government is for the people.  Not for the corporation.
  
• Hence, I am a Dirty Fucking Hippie.  QED.  Oh, also, I opposed the invasion of Iraq at the time.  Double the credentials, at no extra cost!  Call me stupid, but invading countries for no real reason seemed like a stupid idea.  Stupid is as stupid does, right?

Retrospective

The Maroon Bells

Elk Mountain Range, Colorado

"Dude, please--they're called long-term bivy sacks."

-- A Mountain Rescue colleague who objected

to my use of the word "body bags"

"In my end, is the beginning."

-- Mary, Queen of Scots, 1542-1587

"When you die it negates the whole game: you haven't just fucked yourself, you've hurt lots of other people--that's when it becomes irresponsible and tragic."

-- Greg Child, famous Australian climber

We recently did a mission out here, a vanilla search and rescue for a missing skier.  They disappear all the time out in the Mt. Baker Wilderness, especially in autumn, winter, and spring.  This poor guy had skied up onto a cornice, and it had collapsed underneath him; his wife said that he was 20 meters from her and "just disappeared."   We found his body two days later.

Then there's the friend of my dad's, back in about 1977 or so.  He was a peak-bagger in Colorado, and more particularly, a bagger of 14'ers: someone who tries to summit every one of the 54 Colorado peaks that are higher than 14,000 feet.  One weekend, he'd topped out on one of the two Maroon Bells, which are renowned for their awful, crappy rock.  He was walking back down the trail, far past the difficult and dangerous sections, when the part of the trail that he was on sloughed off and slid down a vertical face, 1000 feet.

Trail in the Mt. Baker Wilderness,

in summer

A friend of mine was climbing a difficult route in Eldorado Springs and got off route.  Instead of downclimbing, she kept going, onto territory far out of her ability.  She told me later that she put in two pieces of protection, a good microcam (a kind of spring-loaded device that goes into parallel cracks), followed by a brassy (very small brass nut) in a suspect notch.  She climbed five feet higher, and then fell.  The brassy pulled out, spinning her sideways and upside-down, but the cam held.  She impacted the rock wall on her side, and her belayer reported on the 911 call that "she's unconscious and blood is streaming out of her helmet."  She survived that one.  Barely.

The worst climbing accident to ever happen to me occurred when I was ten years old.  I lived in a valley, and sandstone cliffs marked its boundaries.  A friend and I decided to friction up one side, which (looking back on it now) was an easy climb, but somewhat silly for a couple of preteens to attempt.  We got about halfway up when my friend started lobbing down loose rocks; one hit me on the forehead.  I said "OW!" and put my hand to my head; he looked down, freaked out, and took off.  I looked at my hand and saw blood all over it.  Funny, it didn't even really hurt.  I almost bled out that day, but managed to make it back to the house (and completely freak out my mother, for what it's worth).  Since then I've taken a lot of truly epic falls, but never been as badly injured as that.

Once, though, I almost walked off a cornice.  On a big peak.  I was leading the ropeline: me, my friend Bob, and my Colorado rock/ice climbing partner Gabrielle.  We were on the summit of a "little" peak in Ecuador: at a mere 19,500', it didn't really count for much as Andes peaks go.  There were really good views up there, or so I'm told: we were in a total white-out at the top.  We enjoyed our rest at the top, and then started for the first rappel.  It seemed like we walked for a long time, and I paused.  Bob called out "stop.  stop.  This is too far."  The fog and mist and blowing snow parted for a moment -- just a moment -- and I saw clouds below me, directly in front of me, not 20 feet away.  I was standing on a cornice, Bob was on the border, and Gabrielle was the only one on firm land.   We high-tailed it back, got our bearings, and made it off that mountain.

We think we've got things figured out, in our daily lives, but if there's one thing that these experiences have taught me, it's that we don't.  We just don't.  I suppose that's yet another reason why climbing is so vital and real to me:  it's a simple thing, to put a foot up another few inches and stand upon it, but in that motion lie some deep truths and pressing realities that are all too easy to lose sight of in the repetitious grind of daily life.

Be safe.

Going Back

There are only three sports: mountain climbing, bullfighting, and motor racing -- all the rest are games.

-- Ernest Hemingway

The best climber in the world is the one who's having the most fun.

-- Alex Lowe

I can't understand why men make all this fuss about Everest--it's only a mountain.

--Junko Tabei (first woman to summit Everest)

It has now been nearly three years since I have made any kind of serious attempt on any serious mountain -- much less thought about an expedition -- and I'm starting to get itchy.  I led a route up a 5.easy this summer so that Laura could get out on the rock, and it was fun -- but my lead head is definitely gone.  This is a dangerous combination: rusty on technique, but itching to get out on some steeps.  So I'm telling myself to calm down and just wait until she gets out here, and then we can get out on a more regular basis and start the process of reacquiring lead confidence.

The deal is, everyone is afraid of heights.  Everyone.  You show me a person who can look at 2000 feet of air between her legs while she stands on dime-sized toeholds with her last piece of protection 30 feet below her without feeling some trepidation, and I'll show you someone with a mental disorder.  No, the point is that the fear is there, but after enough time on the rock, or ice, or steep snow, or whatever, you learn to compartmentalize it.  The next move is what matters, and even if you're at a rest stance, you know that you need to make it soon.  Carefully and confidently, but soon*.  And if you're not at a rest stance, you know that your muscles are going to fail in short order, so "soon" takes on a whole new meaning.  Nobody can stand on a flexed calf, or stick to even a straight-arm hang, for more than a couple of minutes.  If it's taking you that long to figure out the moves, you'd best french free the thing and recover.

So I'll get it back.  A goal of mine for several years now has been Chopicalqui.  The Andes (and the Cordillera Blanca in particular) are simply amazing, and I need to get back there.  Huge, huge mountains in desperate wilderness, but perfect weather (mostly) and not too far away from me!  Peruvians are pretty awesome people, too (the spanish elitists notwithstanding).  And I know where the good pizza joint in Huaraz is, as well as the gear store.

Patience and practice, patience and practice.

And now for your weekly Finn.  Laura sends me these things on a regular basis, and I die from Teh Cute, so I take every opportunity to kill others as well.  He's like Medusa, slaying the hordes with his very appearance.

*My first lead was a vertical wall, about one pitch, with a ledge halfway up.  The crux move was off the ledge.  I psyched myself out, and sat on that ledge for nearly an hour while I tried to summon the courage to make the move; my belayer had godlike patience.  I went back to that climb, a few years ago, and climbed the entire pitch in 10 minutes.  I remember moving over the crux and thinking "wow, this used to be hard."  Proper perspective with experience.

UPDATE:  Oh, I forgot.  I did make an attempt not long ago on a moderate route on Rainier, but a guy on my rope bonked and so I turned the rope around.  I guess I just blanked that from my memory because (a) I was pissed off that we turned around 1000' from the summit after all the hard climbing was done, and (b) I had to leave behind $150 in ice screws in the rappels back to camp.  Grumble.

Curious Facts About Time

Years ago, I wrote a dissertation on the synchronization of clocks to earn my Master of Science degree, a fact that has come in handy for some work that I'm currently doing now.  Also, it's just freaking interesting stuff.  Some thoughts:

• Every few years, scientists at NOAA introduce a leap second into the official time.  Why?  Because the rotational speed of the earth is slowing down due to tidal friction.  There have been 24 leap seconds added since 1972, which comes out to about 0.65 added leap seconds each year.  At this rate, the day will have 25 hours in about five and one-half millenia.  If you can wait the same span of time since Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon in his coup d'etat against the Senatus Populusque Romanus (SPQR), then you'll get an extra half hour for your lunch break.
  
• Those same kind folk at NOAA broadcast an AM radio signal from station WWV that reports the current time, accurate to within about a second or so.  That's what all those self-setting clocks listen to, and it's how they set themselves.
  
• There is no such thing as simultaneity, at least not for everyone.  This is a consequence of relativity.  Events that I perceive as being simultaneous may not appear the same way to you, with one or the other happening first.  This has deep implications for cause-and-effect, and it places fundamental limits on just how synchronized two clocks can be. 
  
• Einstein's investigation into relativity began in his childhood.  He reports that he wondered what he would see in a mirror, were he to hold it and go faster than the speed of light.  The fundamental insights of Special Relativity are nothing more than simple algebra problems that follow from the assumption that the speed of light is fixed and the fact that the hypotenuse of a right triangle is longer than its other two sides.  From these two facts, Einstein deduced gravitational lensing and the bending of light itself, time dilation between reference frames moving at wildly different speeds, and the heady conclusion that space itself can be warped and bent.
• Before the Big Bang, there was no time.  Hence it makes no sense to say "before the Big Bang."  Astronomers now know the structure of the universe after only the tiniest of increments after the Big Bang, but nobody can yet say what was there "before," and they never will because there was no before.  The $1,000,000 question is: what started time?  Who wound the clock?
  
• The universe is now bigger than there is time enough for light from one end to reach the other, and it's still expanding faster.  Hence light from the most distant star on your left will never reach the most distant star on your right.
• Buddhists have a saying that the only time is the Now; everything else is simply noise in our minds.  That to find happiness, one need only quiet that noise and live in this moment, the one right now.
• Although today we keep track of local time via standardized time zones, these are only rough approximations.  There exists the notion of a true local time at every point on the globe.  The local time for you, a few miles away from me, is a few minutes different than my own.  Mariners once used this notion (along with a sextant) to find when the sun reached its apex at noon, and by comparison to a known standard (GMT) could compute how far east or west they were of that standard based on the difference between local noon and GMT noon.  Every 15º change in longitude represents one hour's difference in local times.
  
• To make that computation, they needed accurate clocks.  Even a small drift in the clock time could lead to many miles of error in the longitude calculation.  Pendulum clocks -- the most accurate of mechanical land-based clocks -- are useless on a pitching and rolling ship.  In 1714, Britain announced a prize of £20,000 for the first person who could design a non-pendulum clock that would be accurate enough for longitude calculations at sea.  The winner, John Harrison, labored until 1761 before finally succeeding.  The golden age of the British Navy followed shortly thereafter as they used this new tool to build (and later defend) an Empire.
  
• Pendulum clocks placed in proximity on the same wall will eventually synchronize their pendulum motions due to subtle physical feedback motions imparted to the wall.  What appears to be a solid wall is in fact an elastic medium through which the two clocks find a common harmonic swing.
  
• The motion of a pendulum, although described by what may be among the simplest of physical equations, becomes indeterminate and chaotic -- the most complex of dynamic behavior -- when driven by an outside force.  (Hence the unusability at sea!)
• It is possible to determine North if you're lost using only an analog watch.  In our northern hemisphere, point the hour hand towards the sun, and then bisect the angle between the hour hand the the 12 o'clock mark.  That line is the north/south line; north will be the direction further from the sun.  (Same deal in the southern hemisphere, except north is the direction closer to the sun.)  Don't have an analog watch, but you know the correct time, you digital watch wearer, you?  A drawing of an analog watch on a piece of paper works just as well.  Can't see the sun due to overcast?  As long as you can cast a shadow, you do the same thing with a drawing on the ground and a stick.  If all this is too much to remember, then just remember this: wait until noon, and then walk away from the sun.  You'll be walking north.  (Or towards the sun, for you lucky Southern Hemisphereans.)
  
• Not exactly a time fact, but a lost-persons fact: if you are lost, and an aircraft flies overhead and spots you, do NOT wave your arms to attract attention.  That is the "wave-off" signal that signifies that all is well and that you do not need help.
• The Global Positioning System (GPS) that you use in that TomTom navigator in your car works by comparing differential time updates between satellites.  Each satellite is, in effect, an orbiting atomic clock with a radio transmitter.  The GPS you use knows where the satellites should be, and by comparing the differences in reported time from several, it can triangulate its location relative to the satellites.  Commercial and military GPS systems probably have the same precision (i.e., not much variability in their estimates), but the commercial signal is intentionally downgraded in accuracy (i.e., the exact location they decide you're at is not as good).  Even so, the high precision means that even if you don't know where you are to within +/-30 feet, you can still see a two-foot change in position, anywhere on the earth's surface.  Such is the power of the nanosecond.
  

Gardening

So, the new 4'x12'1' raised bed is now in place, and I've tilled the bejeebus out of the inside portion, pulling up innumerable rocks and even one giant tree root.  The clover that formerly covered the base of the bed area is now chopped into a bazillion tiny fine particles, which has turned the clay soil from "sterile gray" to "loamy black," almost by magic.  As I stood back after my exertions, happy and sweaty, I suddenly realized.... that the bed was a foot too close to the patio, and somehow skewed at a funny angle.  D'OH!  Oh well, I'll right those wrongs on saturday, after the snowstorm blows through here tomorrow.  The next step is to pound in some rebar and build a hoop house over the bed, so that the tomatoes and basil that I'm going to plant in there next spring actually have a chance to grow and ripen through the (relatively) short hot-growth season here amid all the hungry deer that skulk into my yard in the mornings intent on turning my herbs and vegetables into piles of deer poop.  The final step will come in the spring, when I order a truckload of compost to fill the bed.

I've definitely turned into a gardening maniac.  Part of it has to do with a distaste for buying produce that has been shipped from Peru (seriously.  Avocados from Peru) or even just as close as California -- if I can organically grow cucumbers and horseradish in my back yard, why should I be supporting an industry that ships the same food thousands of miles?  And why am I eating oranges in december -- just because I can?  They're out of season here.  It's a waste.  I view manicured lawns as a kind of shame now: where there could be a row of dill and calendula, why place a lawn?  Each summer weekend, my neighbors fire up their two-stroke gasoline mowers to perform the chore of trimming, blowing fumes into the air, while I weed my garden beds; they return inside either none the happier or perhaps even frustrated at another hour of another day lost to appearances, while I come inside feeling at peace from the meditation of the connection to earth and soil.

That's the crux, really: it has simply to do with reconnecting with the earth: getting dirt under my fingernails, improving the land, building and creating something living and vital where before there was nothing.  We often hear how modern life is too fast, too hectic -- "life out of balance," as the tagline for the movie Koyaanisqatsi so convincingly portrayed it, way back in 1983.  There are certain unavoidable facts about being human, and one of them is that we cannot live  in isolation from the world, no matter how much we might think we want to do so.

Perhaps this philosophical meandering is stupid.  I wouldn't disagree, were someone to think so.  But I do know that come autumn, my neighbors have bags of lawn trimmings as their crops, while I have horseradish, dill, tomatoes, potatoes, garlic, mint, corn, squash, basil, calendula, rhubarb, blueberries, raspberries, lettuce, cucumbers, spinach, peppers, dandelions, carrots, peas, onions, chives, rosemary.  And we spend the same amount of time out there.

So I till, and plan; I start seedlings and put the autumn bulbs in the ground; I welcome the shorter days as harbingers of a new spring to come, and I'm glad to be covered in mud.

On Santa

He is grotesquely overweight. He is childless. He lives in the chilly and undesirable North Pole. He insists on dressing in a bright-red jumpsuit with fur trimmings. He can only ever find employment on one day a year, and, even then, it is night work.

On every accepted level, Santa Claus is a total loser.

Yet this is a man who heads up a brand that commands 98 percent global recognition. Furthermore, he is universally adored.

How does he do it?

In a controlled research investigation involving uninterrupted surveillance videotaping, a sustained loop of twinkly music, and state-of-the-art ­merriness-determination equip­ment, a Dutch santologist named Hans Bunquum discovered the secret to Claus’s phenomenal success.

“The conclusion is both remarkable and inescapable but also—most importantly—counter-intuitive,” Dr. Bunquum told me over a glass of organic lemonade in his stunn­ing waterstulp, or waterside studio, near Rotterdam. “To become the object of universal love, one must first live with a red-nosed rein­deer, and then gain a premier position as the sole registered employer of elves in the Northern Hemisphere. It’s as simple as that.”

(read more parody of Malcom Gladwell here)

Cute Overload

Finn

Thought For The Day

"When asked by a pagan to sum up the whole of Jewish teaching while he stood on one leg, Rabbi Hillel, the older contemporary of Jesus, replied: "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the Torah -- and everything else is only commentary." His Holiness the Dalai Lama put it even more succinctly when he said: "My religion is kindness."


These traditions have also pointed out that it is not sufficient to confine our benevolence to those we find congenial -- to our own ethnic, national or ideological group. We must have what one of the Chinese sages called jian ai, "concern for everybody." If practiced assiduously -- "all day and every day," as Confucius enjoined -- we begin to appreciate our profound interdependence and become fully humane."

--Author and former Roman Catholic nun, Karen Armstrong

In Other News

I'm back at home, and Laura is some hours gone flying back to Denver.  It was nice to see her off at the airport with a smile on her face this time mind you, but now I am faced once again with the apparently insurmountable task of clearing space in the garage for when she eventually returns with a truck bursting to the seams with cats, mountaineering gear, couches, marshmallow mattresses, purple lanterns, and Wonder Woman paraphernalia (not necessarily in that order).  We've got to unload that stuff somewhere, and if I haven't gotten my piles of old couches, futon mattresses, mountaineering gear, kerosene lanterns, and Asterix & Obelix comics (not necessarily in that order) out of the way in time, then it will all go into a heap in my living room where the cats will be regularly scaling it and using the great height to mount aerial assaults.

So really, I should stop watching old episodes of "Battlestar Galactica," and get my ass out there to the garage.  Seriously.

In other news, I crippled* my Facebook account, for real.  One final wall post, all the others deleted, and new posts disabled.  The irony of it is that my final post is that it was "Martian has decided to return to a simpler time of one-on-one, personalized contact."  Like blogging**, for example.  Haha!

*(Why just "cripple," you ask?  Why not just delete it?  Okay, embarrassing admission: I play some Facebook games when nobody is looking.)

**(Seriously, though, I think a blog community is somehow more intimate than the weirdly impersonal amalgam of updates from acquaintances who are years removed.  All the people I want to follow I call or email, or they call or email me -- and there is no audience for our connection.  I guess I just don't play well in groups; the teacher would probably write a stern warning to my parents, were I in primary school today.)

On Nothing, Really

So, we've achieved an acceptable but not yet satisfactory amount of Seattle debauchery, on the one hand because a typical winter storm is working its way through the city, and on the other because Laura is going crazy doing classwork.  So after a day of wandering willy nilly from one apparently random destination to another ("flagship REI? CHECK! bodies exposed exhibit? CHECK! sammiches at the market? CHECK!  caffeination with laptops? CHECK!"), we've finally ended up back at the hotel, she taking an online test, and I sipping a glass of wine whilst gently surfing about random websites and shouting "MONORAIL!" every ten minutes as that ancient contraption rattles past the window, for which I am rewarded with a smile.

Now, I might have words about the willy-nilly nature of our travels today, Seattle being laid out in a something less than rational fashion as it is.  But I won't, because I've been to Washington DC.  And I might complain about my "glass" of wine being a corrogated cup that reads "DO NOT MICROWAVE" up one side and "CAUTION HOT" down the other.  But I won't, because it's got delicious white wine in it, and not McDonald's coffee.  What I will do is provide you with some amusing links.

• Shit My Dad Says 
• Nicole Gastonguay's knitted objects shop 
• The ACME Heart Maker
• A collection of George Carlin Quotes for your amusement
• Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About
  

Really, a fairly poor showing, I know.

UPDATE: Bonus limerick!  Sadly, not mine.

A woman in liquor production
Owns a still of exquisite construction.
The alcohol boils
Through magnetic coils.
She says that it's "proof by induction."

Come Back To Seattle, Wombat, You Know You Miss It

I'm headed south to Seattle for an early start to the weekend tomorrow, primarily to gorge on pho and sushi and  dim sum with Laura, but also to relax and escape what has become an aggressive and unrelenting work schedule*.  And to definitively plan out our master plan for her to move from Denver to B'ham, which we will then put into play on November 23: 19 days away.  Also, she's attending some kind of conference or class or something, and taking a test in Introduction to Statistics, about which I've had a lot of fun helping her to figure out lately.  Embarrassing fun, given that I hold a couple of graduate degrees in a field that uses probability notions every single day and that I could not for the life of me remember how to calculate the critical point of a confidence interval when she called me up to ask about it, but hey, that's what Google is for, right?  Thirty minutes later, ta-da!  I'm a genius.  Seven years of grad school, and what separates me from a first-year stats student is the vague memory of what to type into the search field.  "Oh, I remember now!"

On a completely unrelated note, I went to the YMCA today to work out (as I do every M/W/F) and a dude there was staring at me the entire time.  When he wasn't lifting weights, he'd come sit about six feet away from me and stare at me.  The whole time I was chatting with my workout buddy, and admittedly, our conversation was pretty interesting (glaciers, cervical fractures, swimming with dolphins, generational space travel, local mountain rescue, acupuncture, women, men, turkey with stuffing), but this guy was just a liiiiiiitle too interested. When we moved to a different part of the weight room, he'd move with us.

Sometimes I miss Gold's Gym.  At least there, everyone is just showing off and doesn't give a crap about anyone else in the room.  Well, except the cute girls, of course.  Everyone keeps a discrete eye on the cute girls.

*Yes, you read that correctly.  Show me someplace in the USA North America that has better pho/sushi/dim sum than Seattle.  No fair calling Vancouver, San Fran, or LA, because they're too far away from me.  Well, Vancouver isn't, but an hour waiting out the interminable (and apparently inevitable) secondary border search at the Peace Arch (and in BOTH DIRECTIONS, mind you) is enough to sour me on that town. I ♥ me some Seattle!

On Sandwiches

The nail that stands up must be hammered down.

Japanese saying

I've always liked that particular statement, and for various reasons I've been thinking about it a lot lately.  The metaphor is pretty straightforward: the social order will impose its will upon anyone who dares to be different. But the way it is framed is pretty cool: the nail is standing up: an act of will.  Willfulness.  A choice, made in defiance of the consensus opinion.  And it is not just to be dissuaded, it is to be hammered: suppressed by main force; beaten into place; dealt a body blow with the kind of callousness, indifference, and mass anonymity that only the mob can summon.  And particularly powerful given the context of the culture from whence it came.

Not that I agree with the sentiment, I just think that the framing of the language is beautiful in the way that it evokes such powerful images in my mind.  Things can be dark and yet beautiful.  And personally, I think that the truly damaging darkness comes from conformity and endless comfort, cliques and gossip, and the pressure to be that which we are not.

I have never been comfortable with being a part of something, bigger than me or otherwise.  I would have been an awful army recruit, constantly bucking authority.  I'm vulnerable to reverse psychology because it's not what the mob uses: the mass uses direct force and direct pressure, and so that's what I expect; I'm vulnerable to the wiles of being flanked by intelligence.  And for the same reason (probably), I'm drawn to people who rebel in this way.  Give me a woman who refuses to wear makeup any day of the week.  Any day.

I think I'll go make myself an avocado sammich and ponder its Nowness.

How Come...

...nobody ever told me how totally awesome the remade series of Battlestar Galactica was?!  I mean, I liked the original, being a gangly teenage nerdoid and all: lots of fun memories watching Starbuck blasting the evil Cylons to pieces.  But this new one just blows it away, and methinks the new Starbuck is a definite upgrade, hubba hubba.

Reminds me of another one.  What was the name of it?  Remember?  There was a moonbase, and some kind of explosion blasted the moon out of orbit and hurling through space.  All the walls of the moonbase seemed to be made out of plate glass, and they had spaceships called "Eagles" that always seemed to be crashing or otherwise failing at the most inopportune moments.  It had to've been the crappiest sci fi series ever produced, and I remember loving every second of it.  Even tried to make a lego replica of one of those fitful Eagles.

Oh, yeah, I remember now.  SPACE: 1999.  HAHAHAHAHA!

UPDATE: If you've not seen the new BSG and might be inclined towards renting and watching it, I'd suggest that you rent the miniseries that inspired it, first.  There's a whooole lot of backstory that is explained in the the miniseries....

Here Comes Finn

Finn Attacks!

Next week I'm going to be driving down to Seattle to spend a few days with Laura, who is flying in for some class or seminar or something, I dunno.  That woman takes a lot of classes.  And she's got a lot of letters and titles after her name to show for it.  Whatevs, it's going to be FunTime2000™!

A month after that, she's moving up to my town, bringing with her that little fella up above, who will henceforth have the chance to attack not just her helmet (lower right), but also my helmet (upper center).  With his laser eyes.  Guesses about how fast his butt was wiggling at the moment that shutter closed are welcomed.

I see these things as very positive developments, and I'm looking forward to knocking Finn over on a more regular basis.  You wanna stand up, little cat?  No way.  I'm going to push you over.  What're you going to do?  I weigh more than ten times what you do, and I have to maintain the social pecking order.  You lose, blackfurryman.  Until night time, that is, when you leap upon me every five minutes.  Hence we shall call a truce: I don't knock you over, and you don't wake me up.  (Fat chance of this cease-fire holding very long....)

But I'm probably going to end up leaving the fireplace burning a lot for that little guy, knowing how much he's going to miss his Colorado fireplace (upper right).  A guy can't go from warm soaks in front of the stove every day, to cold floors underfoot, it's just not fair.

Exactly.

A Good Reason to Drink

So, this is just silly, but perhaps it might make you laugh. Well, if you can get past the initial blithering.

Stuck inside on a rainy afternoon, a guy needs some kind of project to keep occupied.   What I'm up to is using cabbage to figure out the pH of my garden soil, because I am trying to produce blue flower blooms (which need relatively acidic soil).  Someday I'll post this wonderfully cheapo (and accurate!) cabbage solution, but right now I'm laughing about hydrogen.  I dunno why I'm so curious about chemistry; perhaps it's simply generalized  geekery.  At any rate, for some reason I know that sodium hydroxide, water, and aluminum, when combined, generate hydrogen.  Sodium hydroxide is common lye, aluminum is the everyday beer can, and water is a relatively common chemical -- bihydrogen monoxide -- that can be found pretty much anywhere.  I've even got some spigots in my house that it comes out of.  Mix'em together, and what do you get?  Fun.  Pure, unmitigated, fun.

Sodium hydroxide is a strong (read: caustic) base.  It's a white solid, which when combined with water results in Na and OH ions in solution with the H20.  When adding aluminum, there is an exchange of oxygen atoms that results in a free H2 which bubbles out as a gas.  Basically, the aluminum dissolves and hydrogen comes out*.

When I was an undergraduate, a buddy and I made a hydrogen generator this way: get a five-gallon plastic bucket, drill a hole in the lid, put a pipe in the hole, and then dump lye, water, and aluminum into it.  We had pre-prepared several balloons made of trashbags taped together, and filled them all with the resulting hydrogen (which comes out fast and furious, mind you).  We had also preprepared a bunch of slow fuses from paper towels and a homemade solution (no reason to describe that, don't want y'all to get arrested†).  We filled a bunch of balloons, tied on fuses, and let them loose from his balcony.  After lighting the fuses, naturally.  It was amusing to watch them float up and away, and then explode over the city.  We probably did about ten of these, and then got the idea of cutting apart and taping together six trashbags to make an enormous überballoon.

The resulting balloon, once filled, was far too large to release off the balcony.  The fireball was going to be epic!  So we floated it downstairs, to his car; stuffed it in, and drove it across town to a ballfield.  I still laugh at how stupid we were, driving across town with the equivalent of the Hindenburg in the car.  But we got to the ballpark and set it loose (fuse aflame) and watched it float off into the nighttime sky.  As we were watching, waiting for the fireball, I happened to glance over my shoulder and saw a police car pulling into the parking lot.  I immediately said "COP!" and we both started walking towards our car, in an extremely guilty/suspicious fashion.  As it turns out, the cop had to make a turn in order to approach us, such that his back was towards the drifting balloon.  As he got close to us, he briefly hit his siren, and then ran his lights.  We stopped, and turned.  As we turned, he was getting out of his cruiser, and we saw the dying remaments of the HUGE hydrogen balloon explosion in the distance -- which he saw reflected in his side mirror.  He spun around, but it was too late: it was gone.

He started asking us standard questions: what are your names, what are you doing out here, etc.  On his radio, we heard the dispatcher report: "All units, report of another fireball over Broadway."  Both of us were trying desperately not to break out snickering.  The cop was about to get our information and possibly even take us in, when a new report came over the radio, "student on the rampage in XXX hall, all available units please respond!"  The cop warned us about illegal fireworks, gave us back our IDs, and sped off in his car.

And so that's how some drunken idiot saved my bacon, 24 years ago.

†Okay, I know that you're just DYING to know how to make a slow fuse.  One word: saltpeter.  Now go google it yourself.  (That wasn't an option in 1985, when we had to figure this stuff out all on our own!)

*Hydrogen is really an amazing atom.  It can leak through solid metal walls, because it's so tiny.  It's the most prevalent substance in the universe.  Certain large-scale rotating machines are filled with hydrogen (instead of ambient air) because a one-atmosphere-pressure of hydrogen is easier to move (turn) than ambient air, which is laden mostly with much heavier nitrogen, and that makes a real energy savings after a year of turning.  It can also escape the gravitational field of the earth: if you create hydrogen as I once did, without blowing it up, it will one day leave the solar system, all on its own.

Not Really a Non Sequitur

The mountains were clamped in a mineral silence that made the pastoral gaiety of my moment seem as fey and foolish as a dream.

I've been looking through old pictures tonight, from expeditions both solo as well as group, towards summits that I achieved or failed, gave up upon or surrendered to, soldiered through or anguished over, all part of a consistent narrative over the last 30+ years of my life: one spent in high and faraway places punctuated by too-long droughts amongst the mundane.  It's been quite the journey.   I keep the traces of everything else, too, not just those old images.  I never throw anything out: all the old letters, pictures, even hastily scrawled notes, they all go into safekeeping.  Why? For moments like this, to remember the complex tapestry that is the past, and to know again what it was that has made me into the man I am now.

Sometimes I think that I should just make a huge bonfire: destroy all those saved things, and perhaps roast a bratwurst or two at the same time.  But what a shame that would be, I always think.  To reject the past, and to willfully forget (for forget we all do, absent these physical tokens of what once was), seems like the worst kind of self-hate, particularly in a time of personal transition -- which I think this might be.

But that's not really what's on my mind right now.

No, what's on my mind is that in about a month and a half, Laura will be moving into my house as an interim step between moving from her city to mine.  With her come two pretty awesome cats, and therein lies the problem.

No, the cats aren't the problem.  They're pretty cool critters, these two, and endlessly amusing.  (Granted, I have threatened in the past to roast Finn, the kitten, in the oven, and subsequently to eat him whole, but that's just my way of saying that he's super freaking cute.  So I don't communicate well.  Sue me.)  Here they are, as a matter of fact; Finn is the little black fella with the white-tipped tail, and the other is Zooey, who has the sweetest cat personality that I've ever encountered, even while she's kicking Finn's ass for swatting at her tail:

No, the problem is that since they're cats, they're going to do catlike things.  And so it should be: I'm smart enough about these things to realize that you don't change someone, be they cat or human; rather, you adapt to them.  Cats like to jump on things, chew things, and generally be catlike.  I think that I've managed to cat-proof most things (move the orchid up to a high window, put the coffee plant in another high window, keep the doors to the office with all its delightfully chewy wires closed, etc.) but there remains one last issue: the couch.  I haz leather couch.  (The couch pictured above is not mine.) And I have yet to find a good way to keep it in relatively good shape, but I'm pretty certain that I'm not the first person to have faced this quandary so I'm betting that there is a solution out there.

So what do I do?  Cover the whole thing in plastic?  Move it to the garage for a while?  Invest in strategically placed scratching posts?  Spray it with deer urine?  Someone who used to read my old ranting must stumble across this and have a good idea, right?

On a completely unrelated note, I've just discovered Teh Awesome™ that represents the Monty Python channel on Youtube, and I believe that I can now die a truly happy man.  Seriously, if you can't laugh at Monty Python, I really have to worry about you.

"Why people who have not committed any punishable offense listen to country/western music is absolutely beyond me. Reminds me of my favorite line in Python: 'Where's the pleasure in that?'"

-- John Cleese