Saturday, December 21, 2013

Pater: Boulder Creek Road...

Pater: Boulder Creek Road...  At right, my dad at Rice Creek, near Mt. Lassen National Park, in June 2007...
Boulder Creek Road...

Stretching from Descanso to Julian along the west-facing slopes of Cuyamaca Mountain is a mostly gravel road, Boulder Creek Road.  The map at left shows one stretch of the road; you can expand it to see the rest of it.

Debbie and I took a drive along this road yesterday afternoon, curious to see if our recent rains had started the creek flowing (they had) and if the deer had moved down to the lower elevations yet (they had not).  Taking that drive brought back some memories of the drives we took along this same road with my dad.  It was a favorite destination for us in the spring or summer because there are several particularly nice wildflower patches along it.  I don't have records of our first trip with him out here, but it was probably in the late '90s.  When he last visited us, in 2007, we also made the trip, for perhaps the 3rd or 4th time with my dad.

I have several very vivid memories of these trips.

On the very first trip we took along that road, my dad was still physically in good shape, and could still easily out-hike me.  At one particular point along the road, he spotted some unusual looking shrubs and trees on a little ridge, about a half mile from the road.  We stopped and bushwhacked our way over to these unexpected plants, and my dad went into “botanical detective” mode.  First he was able to identify some of the plants from memory, and knew that they weren't native plants – which meant that someone must have planted them.  I might have noticed that a few of them looked out of place, but I couldn't have identified any of them.  Then he spotted two overgrown shrubs, about 8 feet high and planted about 10 feet apart, and identified them as something often planted alongside stairways or porches, and speculated that there used to be a stairway between these two (now grown together, but would have been much smaller in the past).  I've forgotten what any of those plants were, but I remember that I was skeptical at that point.  Then he noticed that some of the other non-native bushes (and some irises) we'd found formed a rough rectangle, with the two “porch bushes” in the center of one of the small sides.  That was definitely suggestive of a man-made building here, and even I could see it.  My dad kicked at the dirt in the center of this rectangle, and immediately turned up a few man-made artifacts: an old bolt, an old piece of broken green glass, and some other junk.  One of the prominent trees nearby my dad identified as a species often planted for shade, but it needed more water than we had – but it was thriving, so he speculated that there was a well nearby its trunk.  We walked over to it (maybe 50' from the rectangle), and within a couple of minutes we found the remains of a circular stonework about 4' in diameter.  It was certainly suggestive of a well, albeit a filled-in one.  Then for a grand finale, he spotted a couple other non-native shrubs that were larger than they normally got.  These were about 100' from the rectangle, and my dad immediately speculated that they were on the site of an outhouse, and the extra “fertilizer” there accounted for the bushes' unusual size.  He concluded from all this that someone had once built a home there, probably in the 1800s.  It was a beautiful site for a home, with a gorgeous view of both Cuyamaca Mountain and the large valley just to the south.

When we got home that night, I dragged out my topo map (this was before the days of topo maps on iPads :) of the area, and we pored over it looking for a clue.  We didn't have to look long: exactly where we'd found the rectangle, there was a building marked (from a survey in the '20s).  It was a one-room schoolhouse, probably much like the different one at right, not a home – but otherwise my dad had it right.  The well was marked on the topo map as well, also exactly where we found it.  The outhouse wasn't marked, but I have no doubt he was correct.  Later, in a book I have on the history of Cuyamaca Mountain, I discovered that this schoolhouse was established in the 1870s, and that it served the children of the ranchers then in the area (there were many more people living there then than today).  That was pretty impressive detective work on my dad's part, and almost entirely from his knowledge of the plants we saw.

On another trip, we hiked for a mile or so upstream along Boulder Creek from where it crosses Boulder Creek Road.  This must have been in April or May, because the wildflowers were prime.  We clambered together all over that valley and its sides, seeking out wildflowers we'd spied from a distance.  Many of those wildflowers were new to my dad, and in a few cases they were ones that I could identify.  I suspect you'd have to grow up in my family to know what an unusual occurrence that was – between my dad and my mom, it seemed like they could identify anything with chlorophyll – and my Uncle Donald (my dad's brother) could identify all the fungi.  It was a rare occasion indeed for me to be able to identify a plant that my dad could not :)

There's one visual memory I have of my dad on that hike.  He was sitting on a nice flat rock, with Boulder Creek burbling along at his feet, the sun pouring down like butterscotch (thank you, Joni Mitchell), and beautiful blue wildflowers growing alongside up to the height of his head while he was sitting.  He was pulling one of the plants toward him and inhaling deeply of its perfume.  A happy dad...

On one of our earlier trips along Boulder Creek Road, as we were driving north near the Inaja Indian Reservation, my dad cried out “Blagh!” (or something much like that :), and asked me to stop.  Anyone who has traveled with my dad (or with me, for that matter) is very familiar with this behavior.  It meant that he had spotted something interesting, and wanted to get out and go see it.  In this case my dad had spotted some heather, growing in and around a large exposed piece of rock.  As you can see at the preceding link, there are a lot of heather species, and some of them are native to the Americas.  The one my dad spotted, though, was a European heather, almost certainly one of the Erica genus.  It was definitely not a native plant, which meant that someone had planted it.  It was thriving in a shady, west-facing spot; the rock it was on or near was wet from a nearby seep.

If the heather had been in bloom (as in the photo at right, not mine), I'd certainly have spotted it – but I would never have been able to identify it as a non-native heather.  Once he pointed it out to me, and we walked over to the patch, it was obvious – different than anything around it.  My dad had picked it out of the understory growth flying by his window when it wasn't in bloom, as we drove through at perhaps 15 or 20 MPH.  He was incredibly good at doing this: plants that to me formed a green blur were as good as an illustrated book from his perspective.  He routinely picked out interesting plants, often at a great distance, when I saw nothing interesting at all.  That's a lifetime of plant-hunting experience at work, and very impressive to watch if you were paying attention.

On every single drive I've subsequently made along Boulder Creek Road (dozens by this point), including yesterday afternoon, I've searched for that patch of heather.  I've never found it again...

Tinni and Sniffer, BFFs in Norway...

Tinni and Sniffer, BFFs in Norway...  Via my lovely bride.  Much more here, including still photos...

Dolphins helping fishermen...

Dolphins helping fishermen...  Friend, former colleague, and Idaho mogul-of-everything Doug S. passes this along: a group of Brazilian fishermen who fish in cooperation with a group of dolphins.  The relationship between these particular fishermen and the particular dolphins appears to be a unique one – but very well-developed.  It's been going on for at least 15 years, but there's no mention of how it got started.  What an amazing world we live in!

ObamaCare debacle update...

ObamaCare debacle update...  Because it's a fine Saturday, and we need a little schadenfreude to spice things up!

ObamaCare initiates self-destruction sequence.  Megan McArdle reads the latest tea leaves and concludes that ObamaCare as enacted is basically doomed.  Oh, I so want her to be right on this!

ObamaCare = CompuServe.  Rob Long, at Ricochet, also predicting the end of ObamaCare...

Obama repeals ObamaCare.  The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board says Obama's recent actions amount to a kinda-sorta repeal of the whole darned thing.  Then there's this:
Pulling the thread of the individual mandate also means that the whole scheme could unravel. Waiving ObamaCare rules for some citizens and continuing to squeeze the individual economic liberties of others by forcing them to buy what the White House now concedes is an unaffordable product is untenable. Mr. Obama is inviting a blanket hardship amnesty for everyone, which is what Republicans should demand.

The new political risk that the rules are liable to change at any moment will also be cycled into 2015 premiums. Expect another price spike late next summer. With ObamaCare looking like a loss-making book of business, a public declaration of penance by the insurance industry for helping to sell ObamaCare is long overdue.

The only political explanation for relaxing enforcement of the individual mandate—even at the risk of destabilizing ObamaCare in the long term—is that the White House is panicked that the whole entitlement is endangered. The insurance terminations and rollout fiasco could leave more people uninsured in 2014 than in 2013. ObamaCare's unpopularity with the public could cost Democrats the Senate in 2014, and a GOP Congress in 2015 could compel the White House to reopen the law and make major changes.

Republicans ought to prepare for that eventuality with insurance reforms beyond the "repeal" slogan, but they can also take some vindication in Thursday's reversal. Mr. Obama's actions are as damning about ObamaCare as anything Senator Ted Cruz has said, and they implicitly confirm that the law is quarter-baked and harmful. Mr. Obama is doing through executive fiat what Republicans shut down the government to get him to do.
That One is ducking, weaving, and dodging, doing whatever it takes to get through the current news cycle with ObamaCare intact.  This tactical behavior is, however, endangering his apparent strategic initiatives as led by ObamaCare.  He's losing, and losing ugly...

Who says Obama hasn't united the country?  John Fund points out that nothing Obama has done tops ObamaCare for getting citizens of every political stripe on the same page – the repeal ObamaCare page!

ObamaCare is falling apart before our eyes.  James Capretta rejoices...

Postum hokum...

Postum hokum...  I wonder how many of my readers remember Postum, the breakfast drink?  We had it in our home when I was growing up, and my parents would allow the kids to drink it.  We were not allowed to drink coffee – they told us that coffee would “stunt our growth”, so we got Postum instead.  I don't recall either loving it or detesting it, but I did drink it occasionally.

What reminded me of such an obscure childhood thing was this article debunking the notion that coffee would stunt kids' growth.  That article mentions the role that Postum's advertising played in promoting the notion that coffee affected kids, and on further reading I discovered that Postum was a staple of Mormon culture (Mormon's don't drink coffee or tea).  Kraft foods (who had acquired the Postum brand through a chain of acquisitions) discontinued Postum in 2007, leaving a wake of disconsolate Mormons behind them (there are hundreds of articles and posts still on the web from 2007/2008 on this subject).  But in 2012, Kraft resurrected a modified version of Postum, and there are quite a few articles and posts from the Mormon community on this.

I think my dad would have been amused by the connection between Mormon culture and a practice in our own (very much not Mormon) home :)

$558 million? What?!? Where's my share???

$558 million?  What?!?  Where's my share???  This study, and especially the graph at right showing the sources of this funding, is getting a lot of press right now.  It makes the startling claim that between 2003 and 2011, $558 million dollars was distributed to “the powerful climate change countermovement” – in other words, the anthropogenic global warming skeptics.

My first thought was “Hey!  Where’s my share of that $558 million?  Nobody donated a penny to me!”

My second thought was to wonder exactly what organizations they're claiming are part of this “powerful climate change countermovement” – because intuitively that claim of over a half-billion dollars in funding is just nonsense.  The study itself (at the link above) doesn't give a precise definition, but it does discuss their methodology.  On reading that, I discovered that this study concludes that major portions of the funding for groups such as the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Cato Institute are all major players in this supposed “powerful climate change countermovement”.  Only by including their funding do they arrive at the study's figure.

I'm very familiar with the work of all three those organizations.  They are all three very general conservative think tanks, and each has occasionally done some work on the climate change question.  None of them are in any sense primarily AGW skeptics.  And yet here's an apparently serious academic, publishing a study in a peer-reviewed journal, that is making precisely that claim.  The intellectual dishonesty of that claim is breathtaking, and frightening.  It immediately brings to mind the political control mechanisms so deeply embedded in the world of 1984.  Or, for that matter, North Korea.

I cry for my country...

The sun, as imaged in various wavelengths...

The sun, as imaged in various wavelengths...  Via APOD, of course.  The colored wedges show longer-to-shorter wavelengths as you move clockwise from the 10 o'clock to the 2 o'clock wedges.  Full resolution image here.  We're starting to accumulate a rather impressive set of solar observational technology, much of it in space, but some still on Earth...

The NSA bought RSA's collusion...

The NSA bought RSA's collusion...  And for just $10 million, apparently.  From the story (which is missing much detail), it appears there may also have been some deception on the NSA's part.

Yet another thing we wouldn't have known if it weren't for Snowden...

No margin for error here...

No margin for error here...  I used to skydive (and would love to again), but I would never consider doing this...

Early photos of Japan...

Early photos of Japan...  These are hand-colored albumen prints, thought to be from the 1880s.  One example at right, ten more here.  They provide a fascinating glimpse of a long-gone Japan – though remnants (including traditional gardens basically identical to the one at right) still exist...

Merry Christmas from KHS...

Merry Christmas from KHS...

Stereotype fail...

Stereotype fail...  The young woman at right recently graduated at the top of her medical school class.  She happens to be an Arab and a devout Muslim.  The school she graduated from?  Technion, Israel's equivalent of MIT.  That's right – Israel.

The Middle East country with the most freedom, safety, and opportunity for Arabs is Israel, and that's been true for many years now.  You'll have to search hard in the lamestream media to uncover this little factoid, but it's widely known in the Middle East itself – which is why Israel has a persistent illegal immigration problem.  It's where everybody over there – including Arabs – would really like to live...

Curiosity's wheels are wearing faster than expected...

Curiosity's wheels are wearing faster than expected...  Nothing this administration does seems to work well, or as expected :)

The Age of Intolerance...

The Age of Intolerance...  Mark Steyn, describing current times.  A sample:
It is not enough to have gay marriage for gays. Everything must be gayed. There must be Five-Year Gay Plans for American bakeries, and the Christian church, and reality TV. There must be shock brigades of gay duck-hunters honking out the party line deep in the backwoods of the proletariat. Obamacare pajama models, if not yet mandatorily gay, can only be dressed in tartan onesies and accessorized with hot chocolate so as to communicate to the Republic’s maidenhood what a thankless endeavor heterosexuality is in contemporary America.

Surprised? Not me...

Surprised?  Not me...  The NSA domestic spying thwarted exactly zero terrorist attacks.  The administration's justifications for this outrageous violation of American citizen's civil rights are unraveling, and quickly.

If it wasn't for Snowden, we wouldn't know any of this...

On the other hand, we've known for ten years now that the TSA was completely ineffective (it's legions of unionized “officers” and multi-million dollar machines still have not even detected a single terrorist, much less thwarted him), and it's still there, annoying the hell out of us on every flight we take...