...definitely not heaven, anyway. I found them whilst digging dirt out for paving stones.
I strongly suspect that I'm responsible for the extreme pits in the most mangled one. I tried cleaning it up in CLR, and I'm guessing that the metals in the penny were so strongly bound to the stuff the CLR was eating that it just ate them all. The one in the best shape seems to have been coated in red paint, for no obvious reason. Presumably the paint protected it and kept it from accumulating as much junk. The other one I was more careful cleaning. It did get CLR treatment, but very briefly. Also 2% hydrogen peroxide (on all of them).
I have no idea how long they were buried. The legible dates are 1980 and 1983, so at most 25 years. I thought that the most deteriorated one said 1984 shortly after I pulled it out of the CLR, but it's now completely illegible past the '19', so it's quite possible I imagined it. It's also possible that the pennies were dropped at separate times, but as they were fairly close together in the digging, it seems likely that they were dropped at the same time.
By digging in the backyard, I've realized that the reason that artifacts get buried has less to do with more soil being blown in and more to do with the yearly freeze/melt cycle. There are probably places where loess is also important, but in my backyard, an item will simply sit on the earth while it's dry. Then the winter snows come. When the ground thaws, it is soft and wet, so items tend to sink. Heavier items seem to sink more than lighter items. Or maybe weight distributed over surface area is more important. *shrugs* At any rate, that paving stone I found in the same general area had sunk maybe 2-3 inches below the soil surface (roughly 5 years since I put it in). The pennies were about 4 inches down, which suggests a longer time period.
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I stopped at the rest area at Hell's Half Acre on the way back from IF today, specifically to see if the prickly pear were in bloom. They were. Lots and lots of good pictures, but I thought the grasshopper was rather cute in this one. Plenty of other bugs in other pics, but I have no clue what most of them are (beyond "beetle").
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woodpecker
in the elm
chirruping
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Most people have probably heard that George Carlin died just a few days ago. I haven't seen much of his stand-up, though I've run across rather poignant quotes from him. Mainly I remember him from the Bill & Ted movies and Dogma. But I ran across this post and thought the link worth sharing. A few excerpts:
In the first world war, that condition [PTSD] was called shell shock. Simple, honest, direct language. Two syllables, shell shock. Almost sounds like the guns themselves.
...
Then of course, came the war in Viet Nam, which has only been over for about sixteen or seventeen years, and thanks to the lies and deceits surrounding that war, I guess it's no surprise that the very same condition was called post-traumatic stress disorder. Still eight syllables, but we've added a hyphen! And the pain is completely buried under jargon. Post-traumatic stress disorder.
~George Carlin
And from Juan Cole:
I have concluded that Carlin was right about that issue. Being traumatized by war is not a disorder. In fact, if you are not traumatized by the sight of body parts flying all around you as you are splattered with the blood of people you know, then you would have a disorder.
And from me: No sane person chooses war when there is any other reasonable option available.
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This is the Earth:
This is the Earth on petroleum-guzzlers:
Any Questions?
H/T to Matt. The second image was made by his brother. I just couldn't resist putting it in this format.
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Yesterday I went up to Gibson Jack and took a turn-off at the Slate Mountain trail, then another turn-off at the Dry Creek Ridge trail. I didn't go all the way along the ridge, as it was starting to go downhill and I really didn't feel like doing too much climbing-back-up at that point, but it was quite a lovely hike, and there are some awesome views from the Ridge. Anyway, an estimate of my route (pinkish dots) is below. I'm not sure where, exactly, I turned around, but it did require some altitude gain. Below the fold are a few scenery shots.
This is the view not too long after turning off of the Gibson Jack trail onto the Slate Mountain trail. To get there, go up the motorized side (to the left; the one that crosses the stream immediately), and right around where the third switchback begins, there's a sign.
Here's the view at the turn-off for Dry Creek Ridge, looking toward the Slate Mountain side. The Dry Creek trail doesn't seem to get as much use, but it's still in pretty good shape. Incidentally, I was pretty tired on the way down, saw the turn-off back to Gibson Jack and didn't take it... Flax saved me from too much back tracking. I hadn't seen any flax on the way in, but I was seeing tons of it on my little detour. Suddenly it dawned on me that, hey, that turn-off I saw a ways back must be my turn-off to get back to Gibson Jack. I had gone less than 500 feet in the wrong direction, thankfully.
Gorgeous view not very far down the Dry Creek Ridge trail at all. On the one hand, the haze made it difficult to make out details; on the other, I love the way the back-most mountain just shades into blue. The haze may be from the California fires. There's a weather service statement warning that some of it may be in the area.
Lastly, a feather that I saw when I stopped for a picnic at a convenient rock. Oh, and my hand. And some junipers and mountains in the background. Not too long after I sat down to my picnic, a white-tail deer came bounding out of the juniper. I went to see if I could get a better look, and either a second deer bounded out or the first one had chosen different cover and bounded clear out. Either way, they/it were gone too quickly for me to get my camera out.
Now at some point I suppose I should take the Slate Mountain side of the trail...
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I think I've finally figure out why my asthma's been so bad this summer. I had been assuming it was due to the kittens and their dander. That might be contributing, too, but it's not the primary problem. It was getting bad enough that I looked for asthma specialists in Pocatello, and found one who had a double specialty: asthma and heartburn. At the time this struck me as odd.
Then I started paying attention to other sensations that I had assumed were unconnected. In the fall, I started having frequent cold-twisting sensations in my chest (there aren't good words to describe them). Not pain, and not in the heart. At first, they seemed to be associated with the onset of a cold, but then they started showing up at other times. In the past few weeks, I've also had mild pain in the same area. This, strangely enough, is referred to as "heartburn." No burning, and not actually at the heart.
A bit of research turned up a link between acid-reflux (which causes heartburn) and asthma. The acid getting into the esophagus can also get into the breathing apparatus, with suffocating results. The mechanism at fault is a muscle that is supposed to keep the acid from getting out of the stomach. It gets week or too relaxed or something, and so acid can escape upward. This is particularly problematical when in a prone position, and worse if in an inverted position.
So I have a projection for the course of events. The Advil I was taking for my knee last summer may have compromised that muscle flap (the LES, I think), and my insane fall schedule had me often eating dinner very near to bedtime. That ups acid production just before going to a prone position. That doesn't explain why it would suddenly get worse in the summer, but I started increasing the amount of yoga in my daily practice, and many of those are inverted or prone postures. Incidentally, about 15 minutes after taking a generic-equivalent-to-Pepcid, my breathing started to calm down. The trick will be getting things to calm down without becoming dependent on the medication, as taking it for too long can result in an acid-rebound-effect.
Here is where I got information from a recent study on acid reflux. There was no consistent correlation with the various foods that most of the literature insists you should avoid. The only things that consistently helped across the board were (1) not laying down too soon after eating, and (2) Sleeping with the head of the bed elevated. Incidentally, I just put 5-inch risers under the head of my bed, and that seems ridiculously slanted. The article recommends 6-8 inches, which would have me and my mattress sliding clean off, methinks.
I did notice that the orange juice I had today made my throat sore, so I'm thinking citrus drinks are out until the esophagus can heal a bit. I'll just keep an eye out for what foods irritate my symptoms and avoid them rather than follow someone else's list. Tea, for instance, seems to improve my breathing, but is on most of the lists as "to avoid." Anyway, I'm rapidly losing coherency, so that's all for tonight.
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As in the newest edition to the James Bond canon, not the parody movie which somehow got away with using the name "James Bond." That one was fairly entertaining, if rather corny.
The newer Casino Royale, though, is extremely well done, if a bit problematical for the established canon. See, it's an origin story. Bond's only just been promoted to "double 0" status. However, it's set in the modern era with cell phones and computers and implantable microchips, etc. Once I got over the whole "Er, did the earlier films with older Bonds regress technologically?" thing, I quite enjoyed it. (There are no major spoilers ahead, but possibly a few hints at things)
I will note that there were two places where the movie could potentially have ended, but I'm just as glad that it didn't. Most of the plot loose ends did get tied up by the end. There were a few places where I just wanted to applaud the villain(s). Seriously awesome badness. I mean, tying a girl to a railroad track just doesn't compare (if you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about; if not, you'll figure it out when the scene comes up). Also, there was no "lock the hero in a room and wait for a complicated device to kill him" shtick. There was a locked room, but the villain kinda needed him alive at that point. `/^
*pauses* I just noticed a bit of a plot hole... which renders that entire scene unnecessary. Ah well. It still beats the locked-room-death-device, even if torture is not an intelligent way to gather information. I can think of much better ways to get the needed "password," assuming it was genuinely needed. Probably not as spectacular on screen, however. `/^
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There's a good article up on Science Blogs about quantum mechanics. It is written for the lay-reader, which makes it rather long, but most people should be able to follow it. I wish there had been a few more technical details. In a nutshell, if quantum mechanics is correct either locality (localization of phenomena; "distant events do not affect one [an]other") or realism (properties exist before they are measured) must be incorrect. Someone finally came up with a test for realism, and the results were many orders of magnitude off from what a theory preserving realism would predict.
One quote from the end of the article:
Late last year Brukner and Kofler showed that it does not matter how many particles are around, or how large an object is, quantum mechanics always holds true. The reason we see our world as we do is because of what we use to observe it. The human body is a just barely adequate measuring device. Quantum mechanics does not always wash itself out, but to observe its effects for larger and larger objects we would need more and more accurate measurement devices. We just do not have the sensitivity to observe the quantum effects around us. In essence we do create the classical world we perceive, and as Brukner said, "There could be other classical worlds completely different from ours."
Read the
whole thingOne thing that I'm not following. If the way we observe things as human beings determines how we see them (a blue couch is always blue is the example in the article), and quantum effects remain but we just can't see them, why is the couch always blue? Fine, our eyes "collapse the wave function" in some predictable manner, but, lacking realism, there doesn't seem to be any reason why they would always collapse it to the same value. Yet we observe couches that, most of the time, have the same color from moment to moment and day to day and year to year (minus fading, etc.) and we are surprised by exceptions. As the article is written for the layman, it may just be that some crucial aspect got left out, or it may be that no one's quite sure yet.
Ah, I found a few more details
here, from someone advocating a "Transactional Interpretation" of Quantum mechanics. If you've got a Powerpoint viewer, there's a nice presentation of it
here, or there's a much shorter discussion on
Wikipedia. The interpretation argues for energy waves travelling both backwards and forwards in time. It seems to utilize non-locality, and argue that results are determined atemporally by "handshakes" between all entities involved in a quantum mechanical system. It's one that I hadn't encountered before.
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Tons of pictures below the fold, and I even left out a few! I didn't get a picture of the hot-rock-penstemon, and I'm not posting pics of the blue penstemon or the cinquefoil, mainly because the ones I had weren't very good. But plenty of others below the fold. Some of them I already knew from prior trips, some were identified by Brina, the ranger who guided the morning hike, and some I found in a little 94-cent booklet of flowers that grow in Craters, found in the visitor's center.
The ranger called this one "blue-eyed mary". Interestingly, it's not in the little pamphlet. But it is in my Falcon Guide to Great Basin Wildflowers(FGGBW)*. Apparently it's in the snapdragon family, but the usual third lower lobe (with the blue petals) gets folded in and hidden.
*I somehow wound up with two of these... Anyone in need of one?
Desert Parsley, according to both the ranger and the pamphlet. The leaves are edible, and Native Americans ate them as "salad greens." As with any member of the parsley family, do not eat it unless you are absobloodylutely certain of what it is. They're easier to distinguish in bloom, but never get careless.
I'm not sure about this one, but I'm pretty certain it's in the mustard family and most likely a rock cress. The closest match I've found is the elegant rock cress, which has a similar plant structure and is described as having a "pink-purple" color (FGGBW). The picture is much pinker than this one. *shrugs*
Sulphur buckwheat, according to the ranger. I'm not sure that the flowers have opened all the way yet on these... It doesn't look like it in the picture, and the ones pictured here seem to be a bit fuller.
Dwarf buckwheat, according to both the ranger and the pamphlet. Wow. According to Idaho Mountain Wildflowers, there are about a dozen varieties referred to as "dwarf buckwheat". Assuming that the park's pamphlet is accurate (and that only one variety by that name grows in the park), this one should be Eriogonum ovalifolium.
Scorpionweed, aka Silverleaf Phacelia (pamphlet and ranger). Apparently the shape of the leaves were thought to resemble the profile of a scorpion's stinger. I'd say that's a bit of a stretch.
Ferns in the desert! I have almost no info on ferns, so I'm not going to try to identify them. There seem to be places where enough moisture collects for them to grow, especially in and around the caves. This one, though, was practically out in the open. It is wedged into a crevice, so presumably there's enough water in the crevice to keep it alive.
I think this one is a Syringa, Idaho's state flower. I know the ranger mentioned Syringa, and the couple who were on the tour with me commented that it was more of a shrub than a flower. ^/^
Two for the space of one! The reddish one, of course, is Indian paintbrush. The smaller one is some sort of aster or fleabane. If it's the one in the pamphlet, it's Fernleaf Fleabane aka Erigeron compositus.
And here we have the dwarf monkeyflower, carpeting a section of the lava. There were many such carpets throughout the park.
This one I only saw at Devil's Orchard, but it is in the pamphlet as Cryptantha, or Cryptantha torreyana. It's in the borage family, which explains the resemblance to stickseed.
Last, a larkspur. The ranger on the morning tour seemed to have larkspur mixed up with blue penstemon, but, as she freely admitted, she's a geologist not a biologist. ^/^ Assuming that it's the larkspur in the pamphlet, it should be Anderson Larkspur aka Delphinium andersonii. I've seen a lot of larkspur this year. I don't know if it's because I got out earlier or if the weird spring we had encouraged it to grow more prolifically than usual.
Anyway, those were most of the flowers I saw at the park. And I saw on the way back from IF yesterday that the prickly pears at Hell's Half Acre are now blooming, so maybe the ones at Craters will soon follow suit.
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Weird dream this morning. It was Saturday. I went to meet up with Melissa to go to taiji, only she'd decided to have a philosophy club meeting...in a room that looked very much like my old bedroom at my dad's house (only many times larger)...that was apparently now part of the university. At about 7:48 am I decided that I'd rather go to taiji and bid her and the club fare well. I went out to find Jean Luc (my car).
There was a huge parking garage (and a random descent into lucid dream territory, but all I got out of it was a better pair of shoes). I couldn't see Jean Luc anywhere, so I tried hitting the "panic" button on the remote (which is supposed to make it honk up a storm until the button is pushed again). No honking. I did hear a sort of buzzing/whirring, and followed the noise to an odd looking police vehicle.
I knew it was a police vehicle because it had the light bar on top, but it was shaped vaguely like a dune buggy. I hit the button on my key-remote again. The lights flashed and the thing buzzed again, so I shrugged and decided I might as well take the thing. I got in, and found what was apparently the throttle...at the bottom right of the single seat. It was a small plastic lever, say one inch by a quarter of an inch. Pulling up on it made the car go forward, but I couldn't get it above about 20 mph. Some guys came along and tried to help, but they couldn't figure it out either.
At that point, I woke up.
PM ADDENDUM: At some point, and I'm not sure if it was part of the dream or after I woke up, I decided that the car wouldn't go because it was an electric one in need of a recharge. Hence, the title.
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This is a Worldle montage of the last post. Interesting little toy to play with. (H/T: C.Orthodoxy via Exploring Our Matrix)
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The dominant (and in many places only) tree at Craters of the Moon is the limber pine. No, not lumber: limber. Its smaller branches are extremely, even ridiculously, flexible. You can bend them just about any which way without hurting the tree, and even tie them in a knot. This is a tree that usually grows near the tree line in alpine environments, not in lava-encased deserts. According to the guide on the morning hike, the seeds were deposited in the area by glaciation during one of the ice ages, and found loess in which they could germinate. Almost all of the soil in Craters of the Moon gets blown in as loess. The rocks haven't deteriorated enough yet to produce soil locally.
However, the limber pines have a parasite: the dwarf mistletoe. It doesn't look like much to start with, but it is rather hard on the trees. What happens is that it sends chemical messages into the host tree, telling it to send more nutrients down towards where the mistletoe is growing. In turn, this causes the tree to sprout massive amounts of small branches around the mistletoe. The collection of branches is known as witch's broom, as it tends to resemble the rough bristly shape of a classic witch's broom. Additionally, the mistletoe draws water, sucrose and other nutrients out of its host. This can sometimes kill the tree, but I saw at least one tree where the infected part had died while the rest of the tree was still viable.
Early in the park's history, the powers-that-be decided that witch's broom should be eradicated. To that end, they cut down or poisoned thousands of infected trees, many of whose carcasses are still standing. Here it suggests that the purpose was "to 'control' a dwarf mistletoe outbreak," but the signs in Devil's Orchard imply that it was more of an aesthetic decision. They didn't think the trees were as pretty with the mistletoe on them. Nowadays, there seems to be more of a live-and-let-live attitude, and an acknowledgement that the mistletoe is a part of the ecosystem, too.
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Wow. Any place with enough dirt to support plants is blooming up a storm! From the sounds of things, this is one of the most spectacular blooms in nearly ten years. I'm too exhausted to post too much about it, but I would highly recommend going on one of the guided 9:00 am tours. I got a lot of good info there. Not so much in the 1:00 pm tour, as a lot of it was repeat, and there were more people in the group. Smaller groups are better for these things. Also, the first ranger had her master's in geology, so she was able to add more info to a lot of things. Anyway, two pictures below the fold.
These are monkey flowers. Purple dwarf monkey flower and, er, dwarf suk-something monkey flower. The purplish one is about the size of most snapdragon blooms, roughly the size of the tip of my index finger. The yellow one is almost impossible to see unless you kneel down in the lava. There were areas just carpeted with the purple ones. Possibly the yellow ones, too, but harder to tell if so.
Just to give you an idea how extensive the bloom is, see that yellow patch that seems to be at the base of the hill at the back there? Those are buckwheat, probably dwarf buckwheat going by the color. Gorgeous plant. I'll have to see if any of my close-ups turned out when I'm less exhausted.
At any rate, if you're in the area, this is a very good time to head up there.
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I'm planning on going to Craters of the Moon tomorrow, so I baked some bread to take along. Despite a few muck-ups, it turned out wonderfully. It's essentially the same thing I made here, but I used almond meal in place of hazelnut meal, and forgot about adding the milk. Now, if only Montina flour were easier to find. It adds such an awesome flavor to bread. *sighs*
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 |
Which Muppet are You?
created with QuizFarm.com |
| You scored as The Great Gonzo You might be far out there, but you sure know how to have fun! People love you for the wacky things you do! Whoopeee!
Rowlf the Dog |
| 100% | The Great Gonzo |
| 100% | Robin the Frog |
| 63% | Kermit the Frog |
| 63% | The Swedish Chef |
| 50% | Miss Piggy |
| 50% | Sam the Eagle |
| 50% | Fozzie Bear |
| 50% | Rizzo the Rat |
| 50% | Statler and Waldorf |
| 38% | Pepe |
| 38% | Janice |
| 38% | Sweetums |
| 25% | Animal |
| 0% |
|
Well, if I had to choose a muppet, it would be Gonzo, so I can't complain about the results here. ^/^ Incidentally, for a disturbing muppet video, go
visit Matt. Without the bleeps, it's safe for work. With them... er... Iffy.
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...unlike the administration of the past 8 years. More specifically, Obama agreed with the Supreme Court decision to reinstate Habeas Corpus. McCain disagreed. So if you'd like your fundamental, constitutional rights preserved, vote Obama. (Via Juan Cole.
Ever notice that "judicial activism" is code for "judges don't do what I think they should have*"? In this case, McCain calls upholding the Constitution judicial activism. Right, so ripping the Constitution to shreds and lying to start wars... what would you call that, Mr. McCain? He'd probably say it's "Just good business." Blech.
*Two cases. California judges ruled in favor of same-sex marriage, despite a majority vote to forbid it. This was "judicial activism". Oregon judges ruled against assisted-suicide, despite a majority vote to allow it. No cries of "judicial activism." Any questions?
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