I do not intend to take dangerous chances, both because I have no wish to get hurt and because a fall would stop my experimenting, which I would not like at all. The man who wishes to keep at the problem long enough to really learn anything positively must not take dangerous risks.
~ Wilbur Wright
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A great challenge of life: Knowing enough to think you are right, but not knowing enough to know you are wrong.
~ Neil deGrasse Tyson
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Most of us in life are tacticians, not strategists. We become so enmeshed in the conflicts we face that we can think only of how to get what we want in the battle we are currently facing. To think strategically is difficult and unnatural. You may imagine you are being strategic, but in all likelihood you are merely being tactical. To have the power that only strategy can bring, you must be able to elevate yourself above the battlefield, to focus on your long-term objectives, to craft an entire campaign, to get out of the reactive mode that so many battles in life lock you into.
~ Robert Greene
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It was a good book, the student told the 14 others in the undergraduate seminar I was teaching, and it included a number of excellent illustrations, such as photographs of relevant Civil War manuscripts. But, he continued, those weren’t very helpful to him, because of course he couldn’t read cursive.
~ Drew Gilpin Faust from, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/10/gen-z-handwriting-teaching-cursive-history/671246/
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People of a certain age know that cursive is no longer taught and that of course there must be people who can’t read or write cursive. But I certainly wasn’t clear on when the sun actually set. (Hint: Teaching of cursive ended in 2010.)
What struck me in this article was how Faust’s not knowing about the sunset of cursive knowledge sparked an interesting discussion among himself and the students in his class. Rather than rail against the cessation of cursive education, I’m left with interesting questions: I was taught a specific, super–simplified form of cursive. I know there are other styles, even hardcore calligraphy, which I can barely read. While there are lots of reasons trotted out for why cursive should be taught, maybe I should go through the effort of learning another form of cursive to put my efforts where my mouth has always been? If my cursive knowledge—for example—opens up my ability to access certain documents, wouldn’t it be better (my own argument goes) to learn another form, or to practice even more, to access even more?
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There are too many of us and we are all too far apart.
~ Kurt Vonnegut
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Digital gardening is the work we do to make an organic mess less messy and more useful. It’s certainly not a new idea but I think it’s something that is becoming a major problem for may digital spelunkers. We’ve never had a greater variety of information inboxes and it has never been easier to capture new information into these boxes. The problem now is with recalling the information and making connections between it all.
~ Gabriel Weatherhead from, http://www.macdrifter.com/2021/06/on-digital-gardening-blogs-and-knowledge.html
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Weatherhead goes on to list several specific problems, but not much in the way of solutions. And that’s perfectly fine; Having a clearly defined problem, (or two, or three,) demonstrates a lot of thinking and a lot of hard work has been done in search of a solution. We even have an adage for that: A problem well-defined is half-solved. He mentions in passing that a lot of his bookmarking, (saving, marking for later reading, staring, adding to lists, etc.,) is done as an aspiration. Becoming aware of this was a key turning point for me.
At some point, someone will carry the last of my worldly possessions… and deposit them in a dumpster. At some point, all of my digital files will be given a shrug and summarily deleted. I currently aspire to stop collecting things “for later” and instead use, read, compose, share, create and inspire now.
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First to flee in wretched mortals’ life,
~ Vergil
Is ever the day that is best.
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This vignette, seen in a certain way—as though it is happening, but not happening to me—can be just what it is, without any entanglement with my own interests. None of my reflexive moral judgments are present. The angle of the sun doesn’t remind me of everything I still have to get done today. Seeing twenty-year-old students doesn’t make me wish I was younger. Because I’m not here. It’s just life unfolding, and on its own it’s beautiful.
~ David Cain, from https://www.raptitude.com/2019/08/how-to-see-things-as-they-are/
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If you sit still, you can do what he’s describing anywhere. (You’ll have to go at least skim the article.) But if you sit still and do the visualization in nature, you will be immediately rewarded.
The world moves at its own pace. Somehow, it’s neither always faster nor slower than my normal pace. It’s a fundamentally different kind of pace that encompasses all the range of speeds. Regardless of speed, it’s unhurried. Meanwhile, it turns out that I’m completely capable of hurrying at various speeds. But sitting still and noticing the pace of the world always provides me with striking perspective.
There are so many varied speeds; Bees and birds, wind and trees, sun and moon, and there are slower speeds of course, but I can’t see those. If I pay extreme attention, in just the right situation, I can see a shadow cast by the sun moving. But that’s as slow as I can see—something that moves on the scale of one day.
Have you ever stopped to consider the speed of a bee? Do bees even notice we are moving? Are we just these large-ish pieces of their environment which are always in different places when they return “tomorrow” (aka, a minute later in our timeframe)? It seems obvious to me that the bees are going too fast and are missing EVERYTHING. (Well, sure, pollination and bee-production they’ve got.) But from my enlightened, lofty perch of slower-than-the-bee, I can see so much more.
Which makes me wonder: From my lowly perch of faster-than-a-lot-of-other-things, what am I missing?
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This means that STEVE is not likely to be caused by the same mechanism as an aurora, and is therefore an entirely new type of optical phenomenon – which the team refer to as “skyglow”.
~ Matt Williams from, https://www.universetoday.com/139809/that-new-kind-of-aurora-called-steve-turns-out-it-isnt-an-aurora-at-all/
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Aside: “Steve” started as in-joke reference by some dedicated Aurora photographers. It was later backronymed.
I particular love this type of discovery. Looking at the shape of the visual phenomenon—it’s a straight-ish thin streak—I bet this is realated to certain types of mythologies and stories…
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(Part 52 of 104 in series, 100 Days of Training (2017))
Recycling a photo because I forgot to take one. Lawn work and a walk today. Super sore from Sunday’s conditioning with @pkgenlehighvalley
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(Part 1 of 72 in series, My Journey)
This post presents a gallery of ALL images in this series. You can click on any to enlarge; you can even click on the first, sit back, and it’ll run them all as a slide show. The gallery is dynamic so it will automatically grow as I add more posts to this series.
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This post presents a gallery of ALL images in this series. You can click on any to enlarge; you can even click on the first, sit back, and it’ll run them all as a slide show. The gallery is dynamic so it will automatically grow as I add more posts to this series.
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This post presents a gallery of ALL images in this series. You can click on any to enlarge; you can even click on the first, sit back, and it’ll run them all as a slide show. The gallery is dynamic so it will automatically grow as I add more posts to this series.
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This post presents a gallery of ALL images in this series. You can click on any to enlarge; you can even click on the first, sit back, and it’ll run them all as a slide show. The gallery is dynamic so it will automatically grow as I add more posts to this series.
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What do you at 1am when you’re on the way to the airport for a 6am flight?? …got off the highway at the airport exit and BAM!!
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Out of about 2,000 photos that Mike and I took, I think this is the only one that shows both of us. Here are a few more non-climbing shots showing just how incredibly awesome the scenery is.
Links to the full size, wide panorama.
Ok, well, one more climbing photo. I’m sorry, but this photo is just off-the-charts awesome.
When you park at Lily Lake, the first thing you see is this hillside that looks like Godzilla. We arrived before the sun was fully shining into the valley, and it was eerily quiet. it’s the perfect first-look when you’re about to hike into something called “Jurassic Park”.
Just to the east(left) of the epic “Edge of Time” route, lies “East of Eden”. I had given up on the hardest part of Edge of Time, very near the bottom, and so I shuffled over to East of Eden. From East of Eden I climbed up above the crux and worked my way back over to finish out the Edge of Time.
True story bro’: I started up one of the trees at the base of East of Eden for about 8 feet, and one of the guys we were climbing with goes, “Craig, I love your attitude!” (Because I refused to give up on getting to the top of the Edge of Time.) Halfway up the tree I shouted back, “up is UP!” …all of which I thought was hysterical, because if you know me well, you know that generally you’d say I have a “bad attitude.” What can I say, Colorado brings out your best!
words words words photos words words Awesome words words Spectacular words words ‘Nuf said.
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Even journalists get tripped up into thinking this is photo from the North Pole. At the real North Pole, history shows this to be a relatively common occurrence.
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You see while they were busy lecturing the faithful, they forgot the one teensy-eeensy little detail about the source of this photo. It is from camera on top of the sea ice, and sea ice isn’t static, it moves. In fact according to the University of Washington who manages and tracks these floating cameras and weather stations, while they started out near the North Pole, they aren’t anywhere close to it now.
~ Anthony Watts from, http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/29/al-gores-reality-minions-think-the-north-pole-is-melting-except-thats-not-a-photo-of-the-north-pole/
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Al Gore’s “Reality Minions” think the North Pole is melting – except that’s NOT a photo of the North Pole.
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