Month: August 2006

Categories
Critters outdoors Photography Places

Outdoors

The weather actually cooled sufficiently to go outside on both Friday and Saturday. The humidity was high, but with the car windows down, driving was very pleasant.

Now is the best time to take photos of butterflies in this area, and so I packed up the gear and headed to the Busch Nature Center on Friday to take pictures of butterflies. We’re not a natural enemy of butterflies and dragonflies, and if you stand still and don’t let your shadow fall on them, it’s really quite easy to take photos. More, they’ll fly about, and even occasionally land on you–a fun experience when one lands on your glasses frame.

Blue Wing Butterfly

I decided to drive around when I was finished, to enjoy the sun that wasn’t trying to kill and just being outside. I love listening to cicada from a car, sound rising and falling as you approach and then pass. I enjoy being on a gravel road when no one’s about and the only thing you have to watch for is a pothole or rut in the road.

There were no one out fishing in the bright of day (the best time to take butterfly photos), and I walked around a couple of the larger lakes. Typically the fishing boats are used by fishermen, but I’m thinking of renting one just to explore. To be out on the water. It’s been so long, though, since I’d been in a rowboat.

Going past the wetlands, I spotted a great blue heron in a tree, fairly close to the road. I rarely get a chance to take photos of birds in the summer here–too much growth. I didn’t think he’s stay long enough for me to frantically put on my longer lens with the 2x converter, but he did. Most of the photos didn’t turn out because the light was too harsh and the background too busy. A few worked well enough.

Great blue heron

When I had stopped to take photos of the heron, I stopped dead, right in the road. A few people passed while I was taking pictures, fishermen most likely, but they didn’t honk or sit behind me, getting impatient. They just carefully moved around me. That’s what I like about people who fish: they understand these things.

Yesterday I decided to go ‘milling’. The weather was going to be overcast, which makes for better mill pictures. I took I-44 to Cuba to head down highway 19 to Dillard Mill. The expansion construction is still ongoing, which makes the I-44 corridor a bit like damnation alley at times. Still, most people weren’t too terribly impatient at the slowdown.

A SUV in front of me had it’s back door lid pop open, immediately dropping a shoe–a pink flip flop–on the road. That car was packed with people and vacation gear, suitcases crammed behind the last row of seats. Two young women seated in the back tried to shut the latch but couldn’t. We all watched as the driver moved forward again, and a bright red camisole top floated down and eventually underneath my car (we were all going about 10-20 miles per hour). A young man sitting in the second tier of seats undid his seat belt and tried to reach up to shut it, and that was enough for me. With visions of the car being rear ended and the kid flying out the back, I hit my emergency lights, put the car in park and got out, gesturing at the cars behind me that there was a problem and not to pass. I got to the back of the SUV just as the driver reached it and we both slammed the lid shut.

We did not, though, attempt to retrieve the pink flip flop or bright red camisole.

Once off I-44, the driving was really lovely. It was still overcast, more of a misty, humid fog than anything; cool enough, though, to allow driving with the windows down. I stopped in Steelville at the Mobile for gas, as I always do. The first time I stopped there, I was waiting in line to pay for something I had bought in the convenience store. I noticed how the clerk exchanged friendly banter with each person in front of me, and remembered thinking to myself that everyone in town must be buying gas at the same time. When my turn came, she was just as friendly and happy to see me, and I realized she probably didn’t know any of these people.

Ever since, I always make it a point to stop at the Mobile station in Steelville on my way into the Ozark interior. I think next time through, I’ll stay a while and take pictures.

goose on log

My first mill was Dillard Mill in Cherry Valley. There was no one about, which wasn’t surprising because of the high humidity. Luckily I remembered to bring a couple of paper towels to ‘dab at my perspiring brow’. Sounds better than sweat running in rivers down my cheeks, doesn’t it?

Speaking of sweat and dabbing, a few weeks ago, I tried to find a store that sold handkerchiefs. No such luck, I couldn’t find a one. Do people not use handkerchiefs now? At one store when I asked about them, the young woman looked at me, puzzled, and said, ‘Do you mean scarves?’ No, I meant handkerchiefs.

When I was a kid, a favorite Christmas present to make and give was personalized handkerchiefs. My mom would buy plain, white handkerchiefs–the really nice white cotton ones–and I would embroider them for gifts. Men usually got a bird or a tree or a leaf; women would get flowers. All would get their initials. Others who were more talented than me would crochet edges on their handiwork–or border the entire sheet. Others less skilled would buy them already daubed about with finery. They really are the epitome of grace–a marriage of beauty and utility.

Now, you can’t buy even plain handkerchiefs in most stores. Is it that people don’t sweat anymore? I must confess that I do when I’m out in the humidity taking photographs. Paper towels might work, but they also irritate. As for cloth towels, they’re not the same and far too bulky.

suspicious lizard

Back to milling. At Dillard, I walked to the river’s edge near the mill to take photos, enjoying the critters along the way. Now is when Missouri’s wildlife is at its most active. Wherever you go, there’s scurrying about, underneath or in the air. Unfortunately, as fun as it is to watch, it also makes it risky to walk in the woods. Ticks, chiggers, and mosquitoes: oh my! However, I managed to only suffer limited grazing yesterday.

(Checking legs and feet…)

Well, relatively limited grazing.

After Dillard, I stopped by Alley Spring, but didn’t stay long as I was going to take the long way home. It was nice to be out and about, but it’s still August and the best time to visit the Ozarks is starting in mid-September. I can’t wait, because I’m really anxious to hit the trails again.

Dillard Mill

Categories
Just Shelley

Perpetual State of Fear

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I grew up with duck and cover, fear obsession culminating in that abysmal, overdone, excessively histrionic Day After miniseries years ago. I grew up afraid; made more so, nay encouraged, by my own government. My government, which feared communism more than plague, hurricane, or other phenomena if one judges the amount of energy and wealth expended in defense.

After a while, people got tired of being afraid. We got tired of silly wars with very unsilly death counts. We got tired of being afraid, and turned that fear into laughter and even derision. We watched movies such as Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, we protested in the streets, and we created art–book, paintings, photos–in defiance not of government so much, but against fear.

Then the best possible thing happened: The Soviet Union collapsed. The walls of Berlin came down. The hand of friendship was extended to the west, and didn’t we rejoice in the streets?

Not our government, though. The enemy without that we had depended on for so many years was now gone. How can you control a population, if you don’t give them something to fear? Not to worry, though–those in Washington DC are nothing if not creative. We now have a new government-mandated fear. This time the enemy won’t let us down: it won’t take down the walls. It will be nebulous, and undefeatable, made more so by our own actions. We, the last of the generation of ‘duck and cover’ can now rest safely at night knowing that our children, our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren, will know fear. Every damn day of their lives.

You see, it is to our government’s advantage to have us be afraid. When we’re afraid, we don’t look around us and see how 43 million Americans still have no health care coverage; the middle class is dwindling while the ranks of the poor are increasing; there are jobs, but too many at wages that can barely cover subsistence living. You can get a happy meal for less than a gallon of gas now, and buying both feeds the same corporate machine which is raking in record profits at a time when our country is teetering on the edge of a major climate and economic shift.

When we, the people, are afraid, we’re so easy to manipulate. People concerned about cost of living? Just parade a few gays around, mention the sanctity of marriage. If that doesn’t work, show an Arab.

Take the events of this past week. The members of the Democratic party in Connecticut did a very rare thing: they kicked out an incumbent candidate in favor of a relative unknown. Why? Because the incumbent no longer represented the views of the people in Connecticut. He, Joe Lieberman, supported the war in Iraq; almost fanatically. They, the voters, do not.

What was the result of this action? Leading Republicans come out saying that the Democratic party was being manipulated by the ‘extreme’ element, and that it was soft on security; completely forgetting that many members of the Republican party itself are against this war in Iraq now; completely disregarding everything that’s been uncovered the last few years that proved–proved– that iraq was not a threat; absolutely ignoring the growing belief that rather than make our country more secure, we’re just creating more support for those who would have been most likely eliminated if we had just focused our energies in the correct direction.

As fate would have it, the very next day we had another terrorist scare. This time dozens of people from throughtout the world were arrested for a plot to create untold numbers of dead. What were the headlines? “Unimaginable death and destruction?” Yet, this is a world that watched as a tidal wave killed a quarter of a million people a little over a year ago because there were no early warning systems in place. This not counting the thousand who died from Katrina last year, the hundreds from the heat this year, the thousands who die daily from something as simple as hunger.

(Unimaginable death and destruction. Tell, me: how many planeloads of people does it take to equal the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq? Now, how many to equal the number of civilians killed in Iraq and Lebanon? If they were on planes, would their deaths ‘mean’ more?)

Exactly how far will this newly refreshed fear be driven? All the way to November? Let’s see how this impacts on flying. The following are the restrictions for carry-on baggage from American Airlines:

Passengers Transiting In The United Kingdom Only
All U.K. transiting passengers will be required to check any carry-on items they bring to the airport regardless of origination. Passengers who have already departed the U.S. and will be connecting in the U.K. will not be allowed to use the transit area within U.K. airports and will be routed back to the ticket counters to check their carry-on luggage.

All Flights Departing From The United Kingdom
All carry-on baggage must be processed as checked baggage for all flights departing from airports in the United Kingdom (U.K.). American Airlines will waive excess baggage charges through August 17, 2006, for those passengers who need to check their carry-on bags due to these new restrictions, up to a maximum of two excess pieces. All other baggage rules apply.

Nothing may be carried in passengers’ pockets. Passengers may only take the following items through the airport security checkpoint, in a single transparent plastic bag:

* pocket size wallets and pocket size purses plus contents (money, credit cards, identity cards, etc. but not handbags or purses)
* travel documents essential for the journey (passports and travel tickets)
* prescription medicines and medical items sufficient and essential for the flight (a diabetic kit for example), except in liquid form unless verified as authentic.
* eye glasses and sunglasses, without cases
* contact lens cases, without bottles of solution
* for those traveling with an infant: baby food, milk (the contents of each bottle must be tasted by the accompanying passenger) and sanitary items sufficient and essential for the flight (wipes, creams, disposal bags)
* female sanitary items sufficient and essential for the flight, if unboxed
* tissues (unboxed) and/or handkerchiefs
* keys (but no electrical key fobs)

If an item does not appear in the list above it is NOT allowed. Additionally, no liquids, gels or other items of similar consistency are permitted to enter the sterile areas. This also includes liquids and gel products purchased as duty free.

There’s nothing I would like better than to be a woman having to board a plane holding tampons in hand. How about holding tampons in one hand, baby in another, and having to taste my own pumped mother’s milk, just to verify that it isn’t nitro. Better yet: having to do so while checking in my laptop and camera, so that the baggage handlers can use them as footballs just before they get stolen. Actually, there’s some comfort in this: the camera and laptop will be so badly damaged, the thieves won’t be able to sell the items.

Personally, I’d love to see a policy severely limiting carry-ons. I get tired of people who bring their entire household with them on the plane. But until airlines realize you have to get baggage handlers who actually give a damn about their jobs, and then pay them accordingly, as well as actually developing consistent global security policies that are worth something more than news bites, forgive me if I look at all this recent fooflah as nothing more than political maneuvering.

As for this new round of fear, just like in the 1960’s you can only push fear at people for so long before they push back. It’s time for our government to be afraid, very afraid. Not of terrorists, but of laughter.

zeFrank’s Be Afraid–funny and serious, an explosive combination. Don’t take this man on a plane in your carry-on.

Mr. Science says Let’s all pour our liquids into the same container in a crowded airport terminal and see what happens, shall we? (Don’t try this at home, kids.)

And you know what’s really funny? Laughter scares the shit out of the terrorists, too.

Categories
Weblogging

Barrel Report: A tired third edition

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I went searching for anything of news to post here in the Bb Gun, but all I kept thinking as I reviewed the stop stories is: God, I’m bored.

How many times must Niall Kennedy change jobs before it gets to be old news?

How is releasing new information, or even searchable databases, from the AOL leaked search results a noble thing?

Even the Technorati weblog count: I had a Karate instructor tell me once that the Japanese word for three is the same as the word they use for 10,000. I can see that Dave Sifry and I shared the same karate instructor.

Scoble is like, Scoble, who?

ValleyWag hires Beth Gottfried as writer/intern, and she does a good job on the now-infamous Through the Green Background, Web 2.0 blogumentary. Still, I would have smiled a happy smile if she had made even an oh so brief mention of the fact that women were pointedly not included in this little cluster fu…excuse me…self-congratulatory, self-promoting piece of tripe.

Sigh. It’s all so innocuous.

Categories
Diversity Technology

Girl Geeks. Fact? Or Oxymoron?

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

In her OPML weblog, Hilary questioned the seeming double standard of calling Dave Winer out for sexist behavior, but not dong the same with Maryam Scoble. She has a good point.

I had noticed Scoble’s original posting related to BlogHer, where she wrote:

Are you a a single male geek wondering why your love life sucks? Are you a married male geek wondering what’s wrong with your marriage? I can tell you what your problem is and there is an easy solution for it too. You should be at Blogher. Or you should send your significant other to Blogher and if at all possible attend the conference with her. If you are mising Blogher conference, I am gonna tell you in my best Dr. Phil voice: What were you thinking?

There are rooms full of beautiful, smart and smiling women here at Blogher. We have exotic brunettes, brilliant blondes and sexy red heads.

I’ve never heard a tech conference described in this way, whereby the members of the conference were called beautiful in dozens of different ways–as if to assure one and all that though the ladies may be independent, they’re still cute as buttons. As for calling all the ‘geeks’ with the assumption that they’re men…well.

Why didn’t I say anything? Because I had already been critical of actions undertaken, or not undertaken, by women associated with BlogHer; actions I thought were more important to discuss than Ms. Scoble’s tossaway remarks. Frankly, I didn’t need to generate a discussion on yet another front.

As for Scoble’s more recent post:

Geek to me stands for someone like my husband, addicted to his gadgets and his email and his Internet connection, very intelligent when it comes to machines, technology, and Internet and not so savvy when it comes to dealing with people, fashion and emotions.

I am lucky enough to know many smart and technologically advanced women, but I don’t categorize them as geeks even though they are as good as if not better than any male geeks I know when it comes to dealing with computers. I guess what I want to say is that women as hard ass as they can be in the technical field still have some RAM left for the soft stuff. They are more than just geeks. Is my logic flawed? What do you all think?

I think your logic is flawed.

First, I want to go on record, right here and now, as saying I don’t see Robert Scoble as a ‘geek’. I see him as a very astute marketing person with a great deal of discretionary income and a short attention span.

So, if Robert Scoble is not ‘geek’, what is a geek? According to the dictionary:

n.

1.
1. A person regarded as foolish, inept, or clumsy.
2. A person who is single-minded or accomplished in scientific or technical pursuits but is felt to be socially inept.

2. A carnival performer whose show consists of bizarre acts, such as biting the head off a live chicken.

I think I can safely say that no woman I know of would want to be a ‘geek’ according to this definition. Oddly enough, I don’t know of any man who would aspire to be the dictionary example of ‘geek’, either. That’s not to say there aren’t men and women who like to bite heads off of live chickens; just that I don’t, personally, know of any.

I like what Wikipedia has to say on ‘geek‘:

A geek is a person who is fascinated, perhaps obsessively, by obscure or very specific areas of knowledge and imagination.

Whether you agree with this definition or not, it’s beautiful, isn’t it? I could accept this as a label. I could live with being a Wikipedia geek.

The article also goes on to make some other distinctions on ‘geek’, including the fact that geek is not anchored to technology: one can be a music geek, literature geek, history geek, and so on. As for geek behavior, the article has the following:

Many teenage and college students adopt the stereotypical outward traits of geeks in order to fit in with the so-called geek subculture. It has been observed that many of the classic eccentricities associated with geeks has been due to their social awkwardness and were thus naturally occurring instead of contrived behavior. However, in the recent decade, many geeks have cultivated for themselves a number of behavioral traits that one sports as an indication of being “in the know” and “out of the mainstream”. These range from geek humor and obscure references to t-shirts sporting references to geek culture or interests. Also, many individuals, male and female, in an effort to avoid the dry, academic, no-nonsense stereotype associated with those in the intellectual, technical, and scientific fields (who historically have often been depicted as being quiet and reserved if not socially inept), cultivate personality quirks and eccentricities in order to appear more interesting.

Notice the reference to male and female: the article makes no assumption as to sex of the geek, only behavior. However, if one looks in the discussion page, this wasn’t always so. There, in one section related to geek girls we find:

sigh False hope: this link redirects to the top of the regular Geek page. As the daughter of a NASA scientist (therefore well versed in classical Geek culture) I have a few questions to raise:

* Can a pretty girl be a geek?

Yes. It’s worth pointing out though, that most of the girls who call themselves geeks have very little geek cred, and are actually what are known as scene whores in the Linux community. This would be descriptive of a hanger-on who is attracted to the “culture” of geekdom. Amazingly, there is such a thing as a “geek groupie’.

* What’s the relationship of geekdom and sex?

I have a thoroughly nonscientific theory, probably non-PC as well.

The formative Geek years are adolescence. It’s pretty easy for a guy to become a geek even if he’s fairly good looking. A teenage girl who’s good looking is going to get attention. She’ll also experience far more social pressure to maintain her appearance. This leads toward the social mainstream and away from advanced Linux skills, strangely worded t-shirts, and the Monty Python oeuvre.

Geekery could be called a set of behaviors that people engage in when they can’t have sex. Once a geek persona is firmly established it withstands romance. Developing geeks need abstinence. A young woman with natural geek tendencies who seeks out geek gatherings is probably going to get laid. Or at least get hit on by a huge number of guys. This inhibits the proper development of her geek nature. There are exceptions to this rule…but that kind of proves the rule, y’know?

Thankfully, this person’s attempt to establish a separate ‘geek girl’ page at Wikipedia was halted, and the effort redirected back to geek.

From all of this, do I consider Maryam Scoble to be sexist? Hard to say. I don’t read her weblog and my only exposure to her, online, has been her participation at BlogHer. At a minimum, I’ll say that she’s confused and perhaps lacking in empathy about what’s important to women who are technologists.

Returning, then, to my old standby–the literal meaning of things–according to the dictionary ’sexist’ is defined:

n.

1. Discrimination based on gender, especially discrimination against women.
2. Attitudes, conditions, or behaviors that promote stereotyping of social roles based on gender.

I’d have to say that Maryam Scoble is sexist according to the second definition: for labeling and limiting men. After all, women can be anti-social, spendthrift, goods obsessed slobs, too.

As for Mr. Winer and his disappeared post from yesterday, and the more extensive version posted today–now I do have a long, long history with Dave. If I thought he, and others, wanted a dialog on sexism, in the past I would have tried. In fact, in the past I did try.

Unfortunately I can’t now, because I no longer know how to have a dialog on sexism in weblogging. I don’t know how to separate out the bits that are meaningful from the bits that are tossed out only to seek attention. I don’t know how to make my points without someone taking whatever I say, no matter how indirect, and making it personal. Disagreement is seen as criticism and criticism is seen as flames–you can’t have a dialog with these rules.

Someone else will have to have that dialog with Dave. Perhaps the folks of BlogHer; perhaps no one at all. As to the question that drives all of this: is Dave sexist? Is Dave not sexist? You know, I really don’t care one way or the other.

Categories
Technology

Trifle Architecture

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

When is software architecture like a desert trifle? When it’s in the hands of an imaginative Cal Henderson, software developer at Flickr.

I’m both hungry and inspired to create something.