I don't think so - I believe its actually the beginning of the Zombie Apocalypse!
I am putting together my Zombie survival kit now!!!
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
My summer goal
http://www.fotp.com/ringthepeak/index.html
I am going to hike the Ring the Peak trail system counter-clockwise in a single trip. I will backpack it, to be precise, and, as it's 63 miles, my goal will be to do so in approximately a week, camping at the end of each day.
So now my thinking is on the logistics involved, namely, packing enough nutrition to finish the week strong, whether or not to try and bring my son, even whether or not I could manage to haul enough weight to bring the dogs.
Looking at the trail maps (linked above), there are several spots where I could simply cache additional supplies, however, I think the greater challenge (and more appreciable one) would be to carry everything that I need with me.
Then there's the one section of non-existent trail from Gillett to Forest Service Road 376. DO I make like the pioneers and simply hoof it, making sure I'm on the right side of the Forest Service road before I decide to camp? Or do I simply forgo that section of trail, arrange to be picked up and ferried to the next finished segment? My gut says hoof it - make the walk - it is Public Land, just no right of way agreement with the city of Colorado Springs, and be sure I camp back on Forest Service land.
Other logistical questions are easier to answer - Brita makes an outstanding backpacker's water filter, and I own a super lightweight backpacker's stove should it come down to boiling my drinking water. A pack, clothing, tent and sleeping bag are all simple, too. Should I bring the boy, a second pack so that he could carry his share would certainly not be a problem, either. Convincing him that he's capable of 10 or so miles per day is another matter - but we'd be averaging 2.5-3 miles per hour, barring stops for photos and the like, so I doubt it would be too big an issue for him.
Thinking about it, I doubt I would bring the dogs. Too much trouble for a first time trek like this - it would be best to know the trail and the capabilities of both me and the boy before I made the hike.
Hmm ... I like the idea of making this trip ...
I am going to hike the Ring the Peak trail system counter-clockwise in a single trip. I will backpack it, to be precise, and, as it's 63 miles, my goal will be to do so in approximately a week, camping at the end of each day.
So now my thinking is on the logistics involved, namely, packing enough nutrition to finish the week strong, whether or not to try and bring my son, even whether or not I could manage to haul enough weight to bring the dogs.
Looking at the trail maps (linked above), there are several spots where I could simply cache additional supplies, however, I think the greater challenge (and more appreciable one) would be to carry everything that I need with me.
Then there's the one section of non-existent trail from Gillett to Forest Service Road 376. DO I make like the pioneers and simply hoof it, making sure I'm on the right side of the Forest Service road before I decide to camp? Or do I simply forgo that section of trail, arrange to be picked up and ferried to the next finished segment? My gut says hoof it - make the walk - it is Public Land, just no right of way agreement with the city of Colorado Springs, and be sure I camp back on Forest Service land.
Other logistical questions are easier to answer - Brita makes an outstanding backpacker's water filter, and I own a super lightweight backpacker's stove should it come down to boiling my drinking water. A pack, clothing, tent and sleeping bag are all simple, too. Should I bring the boy, a second pack so that he could carry his share would certainly not be a problem, either. Convincing him that he's capable of 10 or so miles per day is another matter - but we'd be averaging 2.5-3 miles per hour, barring stops for photos and the like, so I doubt it would be too big an issue for him.
Thinking about it, I doubt I would bring the dogs. Too much trouble for a first time trek like this - it would be best to know the trail and the capabilities of both me and the boy before I made the hike.
Hmm ... I like the idea of making this trip ...
Thursday, April 02, 2009
The story of the volcano and how Raven grieved for his old friend
In the woods of the great Northwest lived a man and a teacher. His many years imparted wisdom to him and he, in turn, shared this wisdom with his children and the children of his children.
This teaching man liked to teach his grandchildren best of all. He taught them how to speak, how to write, how to listen and how to hear. He taught them how to fish, because fishing is the way of the people of the woods of the great Northwest.
This teaching man taught Raven's people as well. He made a way for them to have magical boxes which connected them to all of the world even when they lived so far North that in the summer the sun never set and in the winter the sun never rose. The teaching man sent his daughter to deliver the boxes. With these boxes the world of the people of Raven grew smaller, and their reach across that world grew larger.
Raven often visited the teaching man, sitting high in a tree by his house, croaking and cackling as he watched over this friend who helped make the world smaller. Raven wondered at the man's patience and caring. Raven admired his dedication to his children and his children's children and in time, even their children.
One day, the teaching man began to feel the weight of his wise years. Raven noticed that the man walked less and had to sit more, yet still the man cared and taught and he would even take sweats in a tee-pee next to his house, to talk to Raven and the other spirits. Raven smiled, knowing that the man was a wonderful man, but a man nonetheless, and that his time grew short on the earth.
Raven decided, as this man's time on earth waned, that he would wake the volcano to commemorate the greatness of the teaching man. Flapping his mighty wings, Raven flew down to the volcano and spoke to it of the great love which the teaching man shared with his family. The volcano awoke and began to shudder with tears, for the words of Raven about the teaching man touched his heart. As Raven left, the volcano promised that it would commemorate the teaching man appropriately, and the ash from his tears as they roiled inside the mountain began to kiss the sky of the world of men in commemoration of the waning of the teaching man.
This is why, whenever a great friend of Raven begins to pass, the volcano awakes and begins to mourn, and even the snow which falls from the sky carries a gray pallor. Because Raven gave the gift of his memory of the teaching man, Raymond, to his friend the volcano as Raymond's life began to slip away from his body. This is why Mt. Redoubt is erupting and showering the people with ashes. Soon, Raymond's ashes will join those of the volcano and the Raven will enjoy his friend's company forever.
Grandfather, I love you and I thank you for the years of wisdom you shared with me. I pray that I can touch as many lives during my life as you have during yours.
Joaquin
This teaching man liked to teach his grandchildren best of all. He taught them how to speak, how to write, how to listen and how to hear. He taught them how to fish, because fishing is the way of the people of the woods of the great Northwest.
This teaching man taught Raven's people as well. He made a way for them to have magical boxes which connected them to all of the world even when they lived so far North that in the summer the sun never set and in the winter the sun never rose. The teaching man sent his daughter to deliver the boxes. With these boxes the world of the people of Raven grew smaller, and their reach across that world grew larger.
Raven often visited the teaching man, sitting high in a tree by his house, croaking and cackling as he watched over this friend who helped make the world smaller. Raven wondered at the man's patience and caring. Raven admired his dedication to his children and his children's children and in time, even their children.
One day, the teaching man began to feel the weight of his wise years. Raven noticed that the man walked less and had to sit more, yet still the man cared and taught and he would even take sweats in a tee-pee next to his house, to talk to Raven and the other spirits. Raven smiled, knowing that the man was a wonderful man, but a man nonetheless, and that his time grew short on the earth.
Raven decided, as this man's time on earth waned, that he would wake the volcano to commemorate the greatness of the teaching man. Flapping his mighty wings, Raven flew down to the volcano and spoke to it of the great love which the teaching man shared with his family. The volcano awoke and began to shudder with tears, for the words of Raven about the teaching man touched his heart. As Raven left, the volcano promised that it would commemorate the teaching man appropriately, and the ash from his tears as they roiled inside the mountain began to kiss the sky of the world of men in commemoration of the waning of the teaching man.
This is why, whenever a great friend of Raven begins to pass, the volcano awakes and begins to mourn, and even the snow which falls from the sky carries a gray pallor. Because Raven gave the gift of his memory of the teaching man, Raymond, to his friend the volcano as Raymond's life began to slip away from his body. This is why Mt. Redoubt is erupting and showering the people with ashes. Soon, Raymond's ashes will join those of the volcano and the Raven will enjoy his friend's company forever.
Grandfather, I love you and I thank you for the years of wisdom you shared with me. I pray that I can touch as many lives during my life as you have during yours.
Joaquin
Thursday, March 05, 2009
Digital Natives
This is what my children are - digital natives. Think about it - my generation, "Generation X" - we're the first settlers in the newly discovered digital world. We grew up with satellite TV, satellite communications, the very beginnings of the Internet, and pretty much every home eventually had a computer in it - our first was an Epson that had a tiny 4-inch green screen and folded up into a suitcase.
My parents were missionaries in the digital environment. My mother worked for a while as a computer networking technician for Alaska Pacific University. She set up computers in villages the Alaska bush, which were networked to the University in Anchorage via satellite, and then to the central hub for the company which was running the program, Control Data. These are the very basic underpinnings of the tool we know and share on a daily basis, the Internet.
Mom's parents, my Grandparents, were the discoverers of this amazing new digital world. Grandpa ran the program at APU (nepotism, I know). People of his generation built the first actual computers - from ENIAC to the invention of the microchip. These were the Columbus's of their time - those who dared posit that the world was not flat at all ...
Which makes me and my generation the proud parents of the first generation born fully immersed in the ever-changing world of digital technology.
Think about this: since my daughter was born in 1991, cell phones have shrunk from the size of a walkie-talkie almost down to the size of a credit card. The computer has shrunk from a box the size of a suitcase and a monitor the size of a house to a thin notebook which you can fit in an envelope or a hand-held device 1,000 - times more powerful than that first Apple IIe I was so very proud of in the 7th grade. For her, technology ebbs and flows like the tide does for us, and she's used to instant information, instant entertainment and instant gratification. Why not? All she has to do is Google it if she wants to find something out.
The problem with this - and I see it as a generational problem from which even my generation suffers to a degree - is that in learning that she can find it now, she has failed to learn the PROCESS. She doesn't understand, and we're, as a generation, as two or even THREE generations, failing to teach, to train her generation in how the PROCESS is as important as the RESULTS.
Why learn to exercise when you can get liposuction or lap-band surgery? Who cares about learning to take care of ones self when all one has to do is get a pill to fix it?
Why learn how to perform long division when you can just pull up your calculator on your laptop?
Why balance your checkbook? Why even HAVE a checkbook? Just log on to the bank and look at your account balance!
But when they don't understand the need for Process, the need for learning the steps, they don't truly learn the hows and whys as to the way the world (OUR FAULT, not THEIRS), they feel entitled to the benefits of that process even though they didn't go through it.
And now the government is following through and entitling their entitlement. Let's bail out the economy! Let's socialize medicine! Let's tax the rich and give to the poor not because they deserve it, but because we CAN.
We no longer have to work to earn our living - we can be guaranteed housing, medical care, food - why bother working? We are ENTITLED to these things, according to the president. We needn't EARN them!
I, for one, am going to teach my children how to EARN what they need, and how to protect what they EARN. It's the only way we, as a society, are going to survive - the way our forefathers built this nation, and something we need to return to.
My parents were missionaries in the digital environment. My mother worked for a while as a computer networking technician for Alaska Pacific University. She set up computers in villages the Alaska bush, which were networked to the University in Anchorage via satellite, and then to the central hub for the company which was running the program, Control Data. These are the very basic underpinnings of the tool we know and share on a daily basis, the Internet.
Mom's parents, my Grandparents, were the discoverers of this amazing new digital world. Grandpa ran the program at APU (nepotism, I know). People of his generation built the first actual computers - from ENIAC to the invention of the microchip. These were the Columbus's of their time - those who dared posit that the world was not flat at all ...
Which makes me and my generation the proud parents of the first generation born fully immersed in the ever-changing world of digital technology.
Think about this: since my daughter was born in 1991, cell phones have shrunk from the size of a walkie-talkie almost down to the size of a credit card. The computer has shrunk from a box the size of a suitcase and a monitor the size of a house to a thin notebook which you can fit in an envelope or a hand-held device 1,000 - times more powerful than that first Apple IIe I was so very proud of in the 7th grade. For her, technology ebbs and flows like the tide does for us, and she's used to instant information, instant entertainment and instant gratification. Why not? All she has to do is Google it if she wants to find something out.
The problem with this - and I see it as a generational problem from which even my generation suffers to a degree - is that in learning that she can find it now, she has failed to learn the PROCESS. She doesn't understand, and we're, as a generation, as two or even THREE generations, failing to teach, to train her generation in how the PROCESS is as important as the RESULTS.
Why learn to exercise when you can get liposuction or lap-band surgery? Who cares about learning to take care of ones self when all one has to do is get a pill to fix it?
Why learn how to perform long division when you can just pull up your calculator on your laptop?
Why balance your checkbook? Why even HAVE a checkbook? Just log on to the bank and look at your account balance!
But when they don't understand the need for Process, the need for learning the steps, they don't truly learn the hows and whys as to the way the world (OUR FAULT, not THEIRS), they feel entitled to the benefits of that process even though they didn't go through it.
And now the government is following through and entitling their entitlement. Let's bail out the economy! Let's socialize medicine! Let's tax the rich and give to the poor not because they deserve it, but because we CAN.
We no longer have to work to earn our living - we can be guaranteed housing, medical care, food - why bother working? We are ENTITLED to these things, according to the president. We needn't EARN them!
I, for one, am going to teach my children how to EARN what they need, and how to protect what they EARN. It's the only way we, as a society, are going to survive - the way our forefathers built this nation, and something we need to return to.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Robots of war
.Military’s killer robots must learn warrior code
Creating devices to do our dirty work for us, in my opinion, would create a particular heartlessness that I believe would actually INCREASE our proclivity for violence. If all I suffer is a robot destroyed while you lose villages and people, what difference is that to me? My people didn't die, my land was not over-run ... It seems a dark road to travel down.
As it is, human suffering, ours and theirs, gives us, the U.S. reason to think twice before sending in the troops - at least, I hope it does. In my mind, if a situation could be avoided by diplomacy then it is worth far more to pursue that avenue than to send in the military. That being said, there are certainly good reasons to send in the military - with the understanding that it will cost us, most likely as dearly as it will cost "them".
But if we were to send in machinery to do the dirty work, where is the cost? Money for more machines. Where is the human suffering? Not in MY hometown ... Who would benefit? The contractors who build the robots and their employees - hell, it would be a boon to the economy. But what would stop us or any other nation from pursuing war as a solution when we don't stand to lose much at all? And what IF those machines develop "minds of their own"?
General Douglas MacArthur said, "I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a method of settling international disputes."
How true is this? I think of what the ramifications would have been had we sent robots into Iraq - machines have no conscience, no compassion, simply a mission. If robots overthrew Saddam, drove out insurgencies and dismantled the Iraqi military, who would help rebuild the country? I think it would be naive in the extreme to say, "We would."
No, we wouldn't. We already spent x-numbers of billions of dollars sending our robot army over to do our will. Mission accomplished, regime overthrown, now what? We ship the robots home. We vote not to extend our time "over there" or keep wasting our tax dollars "over there". We withdraw from our neighbors and into ourselves and any time someone pisses us off, we simply launch our robots.
And let me ask this: if "THEY" have robots, too, and the robots fight the robots - WHO WINS????? What would be the point in the first place? We'd fall back on the diplomatic routes and eventually end up sending humans, or worse, using bigger weapons (nukes), because, "Hey, 'Kreblakistan', we don't like you, so we're sending our robots to beat up your robots" just doesn't make any sense! The whole point of war, or a fistfight, for that matter, is, "I don't agree with you, so I'm going to beat you until you submit or until you beat ME and I HAVE to put up with your point of view."
I am all for defending those who are suffering and standing for freedom and democracy. I feel that the current war(s) are and were justified and that we will have, ultimately, done some good in this world. But if we start doing that "good" via remote control, we lose yet another piece of our humanity, and if, as the linked article mentions, those robots develop a "mind of their own" and decide to turn their programming and abilities back on their creators, we've done nothing but develop yet another form of human suffering and warfare.
Let's use robots to disarm roadside bombs, fly reconnaisance missions and conduct deep strike missions. But when it comes to feet on the ground warfare, we need to remember that it's the humanity of the mission that keeps us from escalating and ultimately destroying ourselves.
Creating devices to do our dirty work for us, in my opinion, would create a particular heartlessness that I believe would actually INCREASE our proclivity for violence. If all I suffer is a robot destroyed while you lose villages and people, what difference is that to me? My people didn't die, my land was not over-run ... It seems a dark road to travel down.
As it is, human suffering, ours and theirs, gives us, the U.S. reason to think twice before sending in the troops - at least, I hope it does. In my mind, if a situation could be avoided by diplomacy then it is worth far more to pursue that avenue than to send in the military. That being said, there are certainly good reasons to send in the military - with the understanding that it will cost us, most likely as dearly as it will cost "them".
But if we were to send in machinery to do the dirty work, where is the cost? Money for more machines. Where is the human suffering? Not in MY hometown ... Who would benefit? The contractors who build the robots and their employees - hell, it would be a boon to the economy. But what would stop us or any other nation from pursuing war as a solution when we don't stand to lose much at all? And what IF those machines develop "minds of their own"?
General Douglas MacArthur said, "I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a method of settling international disputes."
How true is this? I think of what the ramifications would have been had we sent robots into Iraq - machines have no conscience, no compassion, simply a mission. If robots overthrew Saddam, drove out insurgencies and dismantled the Iraqi military, who would help rebuild the country? I think it would be naive in the extreme to say, "We would."
No, we wouldn't. We already spent x-numbers of billions of dollars sending our robot army over to do our will. Mission accomplished, regime overthrown, now what? We ship the robots home. We vote not to extend our time "over there" or keep wasting our tax dollars "over there". We withdraw from our neighbors and into ourselves and any time someone pisses us off, we simply launch our robots.
And let me ask this: if "THEY" have robots, too, and the robots fight the robots - WHO WINS????? What would be the point in the first place? We'd fall back on the diplomatic routes and eventually end up sending humans, or worse, using bigger weapons (nukes), because, "Hey, 'Kreblakistan', we don't like you, so we're sending our robots to beat up your robots" just doesn't make any sense! The whole point of war, or a fistfight, for that matter, is, "I don't agree with you, so I'm going to beat you until you submit or until you beat ME and I HAVE to put up with your point of view."
I am all for defending those who are suffering and standing for freedom and democracy. I feel that the current war(s) are and were justified and that we will have, ultimately, done some good in this world. But if we start doing that "good" via remote control, we lose yet another piece of our humanity, and if, as the linked article mentions, those robots develop a "mind of their own" and decide to turn their programming and abilities back on their creators, we've done nothing but develop yet another form of human suffering and warfare.
Let's use robots to disarm roadside bombs, fly reconnaisance missions and conduct deep strike missions. But when it comes to feet on the ground warfare, we need to remember that it's the humanity of the mission that keeps us from escalating and ultimately destroying ourselves.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Interesting thought:
Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised.
- Marilyn Manson
- Marilyn Manson
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