July 2004 - Posts
an unintended jab strikes true ;-)
well, perhaps not. the only thing “vacated” are these premises. instead, it's a “visit”. so there ;-p
on the other hand, is he saying he felt weird hanging around younger folks ? he is younger folk !
good thing i didn't decide to try and surprise my sister out in maryland, as they are heading to irons. mi to visit my uncle et al. yeah - surprise!
so i'm going to try and meet them along the way somewhere around toledo. their intended route is to keep along the turnpike then head nmorth along the western edge of the state. the maps disagree, but hey, i'm willing to get off of i-75 whenever i can. lived my whole life on that road, it seems.
so time to pack up the toys again and get on the road.
i need to follow up on the last trip just a bit, but i only had a couple days, and the mood to write hadn't struck yet. suffice to say that camp dearborn has been in a time capsule for at least 35 years. i also stopped at an old haunt for the first time in years, sterling state park. man, they bulldozed practically the whole thing and started from scratch. very nicely done, really, but i miss the old broken down place that i spent so much time at. that's another story. yet the new campground on the beach was droolworthy, especially when i spotted the lone 16 foot catamaran pulled up on the beach that morning. now that's camping.
too bad i don't have a picture. in fact, i won't have any pictures for a little while, at least ;-) i misplaced my cheapo camera. i think i left it with my brother's stuff; we'll see. not that i was using it that much. it was pretty frustrating trying to work around its shortcomings. still keepable for its original purpose, however.
anyway, it was the contrast between the very old and the very new that struck me. some sort of balance would be nice.
great day for the beach, though. as i was leaving, there was quite a breeze blowing along the beach:
me: man, are you guys sitting in the wrong place. if i just lift this towel...“
young lady: “oh, i'll move“ gets up. “did you see that weirdo?“
odd question. “which one?“ i made a funny. her boyfriend smirks.
“the guy walking up and down the beach with the headphones.“
“oh, him. what'd he do?“
“he keeps eyeing all the girls. sitting right behind them.“
i'm trying to keep a straight face.
she continues: “not like you, you're normal“.
“how do you know? i could be anybody.“ note that i have a 3-4 day growth of beard at the moment. i don't remember the answer to this, but her boyfriend seems to be enjoying the exchange.
me: “maybe he should've just been less obvious.” thinking of something i thought of earlier: “ i mean, even if you take binoculars to the beach to look at birds, i don't care where you point the things, everyone thinks you're looking at the girls. see ya.”
i wonder what the hell they thought of that.
the other observation that occurred to me on that trip was about reality checks. it is a habit of mine to keep track of such things in my life, as i don't always have anyone around to bounce perceptions off of to see if i'm on track, like most people (seem to?) have. but i never considered the quality of those reality checks, and the phenomena that a person can selectively warp theirs. this seems much worse than no check at all, since they get the impression that their worldview is being validated, when in fact it is a reflection of their own mind, not only defeating the check's purpose, but creating the very feedback loop that the check is meant to remedy in the first place. insidious, that. so me, in my solitariness, am at least aware of the pitfalls, whereas others may be in increasingly warped situations and fully believe that they are in touch.
just a rough formed thought to get down before i forget. now, i've got to get moving.
now here's a blast from the past. my brother and his wife have been taking his young'uns (two boys, 3 & 6) to this nearby detroit area campground. my parents used to take us there back in the late 60's (wow). i remember going to the dances at the canteen in the evenings, trying to ask the hippie chicks to dance. “cherokee people” with an eight year old, anyone ? we'd roam that place night and day (it's about a square mile), getting into all kinds of things.
we (me and some of my brothers & sisters) would also be sent to their “youth camp“ for a week or two at a time. that seems to be a thing of the far past now. is that where the golf course (and trailer area) now is ? i remember some wicked games of "capture the flag" that lasted hours and took place over huge sections of woods and fields. everything seemed so remote back then, and now it's just a suburban park.
anyway, i'll be heading up there to meet them this weekend, maybe do some fishing, just hang out. the old wood frame and canvas tent-cabins are still there, with electricity and stove, etc. here, there are more details at the old camp dearborn site's home page, from google cache, but for now it seems all the other pages are still there. there's also relocated info at the dearborn city website, but there's not nearly as much there. this google search will get what's left of the old site.
2005.04.19 update: the map links broke pretty quickly last year. not sure why; government paranoia ? but there used to be a lot of good information on the old camp dearborn website that is no longer there. however, the internet archive's “wayback machine” has the old stuff still. try this old camp dearborn website link. not all the links will behave as they were once originally designed, but it seems a lot of the site is still there. there are prior versions of the site stored, back to 2002 it seems, with some individual artifacts going back to 2001.
now, the bozos who gutted the first site may be able to get at this stuff too, but i doubt it. and this time i kept a local copy of the camp map, just in case.
my favorite part of the milford township regs re camp dearborn & kensington:
Sec. 12-143. Disorderly conduct.
(a) No person shall engage in any drunken, loud, boisterous, disorderly or indecent conduct, nor shall any person or group of persons commit or engage in any assault or other activity which shall endanger or annoy other persons or disturb the peace or good order within the boundaries of Kensington Metropolitan Park.
(b) No person shall within the boundaries of the park:
(1) Intentionally expose the male or female buttocks or genital areas or the female breast; or
(2) Observe or attempt to observe persons of the opposite sex while occupying a bathhouse or restroom facility.
so whipping down one's pants to let rip with a monster bare-assed fart will likely result in a ticket ;-) it may violate sections of the fire code as well.
quick observations:
- isn't most drug use (and the attendant necessary production and distribution) a ”victimless crime” ? as if it was intrinsically a crime in the first place. prosecute for actual damage caused, perhaps. drugs or alcohol is a side issue. what about other substances that affect our physical and mental states ? “ten years for driving under the influence of turkey coma.“ maybe i better just shut up before i give someone ideas.
- i would almost claim that it seems our society is ok with anything that narrows the bell-curve, and criminalizes anything that widens it. that applies to performance enhancing and impairing substances equally. ok, so what about behaviors ? why is it ok to train or work out ? then again, we may quickly get to the point where _not_ exercising, or partaking of other “negative“ behaviors will be regulated. that's already the case in risky activities. why are we ok with this “nanny state“ attitude ? “if we pay for it (taxes), we get to regulate it“ - ?
- what about enhanced diets ? we eat steak. is high protein unfair to nations without such luxuries when it comes to itnernational competitions ?
- what about enhanced education ?
- what about technology ? military budgets ?
and so on. hey, let 'em use drugs. let's modify genes. let's train, experiment, loaf, destroy, create. don't want to incur the risks ? ok, fine, your choice. but that doesn't mean we should intentionally handicap others to match our own levels of risk averseness.
well, ok, i suppose a man-car can't reasonable compete in the 100m dash (the borg olympics). so have rules, fine. but that's no reason to condemn anyone. oh - it's the cheating, not the drug use per se, that we're complaining about ? i guess if events have to be so artificially contrived that the constraints exclude what have become reasonable (or at least common) practices, then the value of the events is questionable anyway. such “sports” will die. and y'know, if certain practices are used by the majority anyway, it seems the competitors have voted by their actions. what's this minority imposition all about ? back to the the bell-curve arguments.
will it become illegal for business people or students to use intellect enhancing drugs, or other techniques ? what are reasonable limits ? the rules we have are archaic. and our “methods“ (if we can properly use such a term in a case like this) of changing the rules are even worse (ie, our metaprocesses really suck).
what was that vonnegut story again ? oh, yeah: Harrison Bergeron. damn, he's good. vonnegut was a far more terrifyingly accurate visionary than huxley or orwell, in all his works. then again, he didn't have to be a visionary - merely perceptive and descriptive.
and if you think this is ridiculous, go and take a look at youth sports these days.
fine, i'll let this go for now. there's a helluva lot more bitching about this stuff, but you get the drift. it's pervasive, it's insidious - and we do it to ourselves.
i think this relates to an earlier post on active speciation.
amazon ! with its new “plog” on one's entry page. as if trying to frame advertising with some superficial logging trappings somehow validates it or something. sheesh, what next ? they'll be sending my bank statements with a “cash log” - a “clog” - instead of a list of transactions.
grumble, grumble... “plog”... grumble, grumble...
see, post titles are not overrated ;-) that was an example of the types of internet searches that are finding my website. what a question ! and funny that he landed there. i wonder what drunken physicist typed that one into the search field.
actually, that's just because of search engines that index my amazon wishlist page (which is currently a bit broken due to ongoing amazon web service problems). it's pretty misleading, as that page is about 2mb (yeah, way oversized, tell me about it, i'm still on dial-up [waiting for wireless broadband service]), and contains a wide variety of terms from various science, math and fiction books, among other topics. i'm considering putting a robots.txt file there to cancel the red herring effect, but then, what would i do for a hobby ? on the other hand, maybe they end up locating a useful book that way, but that presumes they will both load the entire page, and then search it to find exactly where their search terms appeared. good luck, as they are by far most likley to be buried in the reviews, which need to be expanded to be seen. hmm, maybe i could help 'em out with an “expand all reviews” button or something.
in the meantime, i would suggest that the original query be directed to the intra-universal dns service. and as an interim solution, 127.0.0.1 should work, since he is currently local. but that doesn't help if he was planning on giving out his address to some interdimensional babe on another brane. hmm, there's a poem in here somewhere...
[***and no, that's not misspelled “brain“, although that would be interesting as well. “brane“ is a word for an extension of the two dimensional membrane concept to p dimensions, also known as “p-branes“. it seems to have first arisen in the work of string theorists, where the string (a 1-brane) was generalized to higher dimensional objects. but it has since been adopted to describe cosmological objects as well. for example, our classical time-space universe would be considered a 4-brane. there has been speculation in recent years that there are more than one p dimensional “universes“ embedded (?) in the Universe proper, and that these may interact in various ways to give us various phenomena detectable from our particular brane. these include things like the big bang (a brane collision, perhaps) and a place to put the “reality“ of infinite parallel quantum universes. there is speculation that “nearby“ branes may also be detectable through gravitational influences, although experiments to date are inconclusive at best.
the brane term is somewhat analogous to the earlier expressions “another dimension“ or “plane of existence“ and the like, but much less fanciful.
- disclaimer: all the above is strictly an amateur's viewpoint recalled on the fly. there's better explanations out there if you search. i'm too lazy.
and yes, i realize that most readers of this blog (you few) probably could offer a better explanation themselves. this is just in case. i have a small paranoia that some people might think that i'm an idiot who carelessly misspells and misuses words, instead of an idiot who intentionally mangles the language for my own purposes.]
ah, well, i didn't get any farther north than ortonville. would have been nice, but not a big problem. so no camping, no scuba :-(
i did get to do a little bike riding, on paved trails and dirt trails. i think i've decided to dig up the couch potato in me. of course, it helps when people have hot tubs for you to soak in afterwards ;-)
nice to spend time at local beaches up there, kick back, play catch with various things, snorkel, whatever.
went on my first geocache hike. my brother's wife got a new gps, so she had to try it out immediately. now there's two gps's in that family. should make for some interesting outings ;-)
watched a farscape marathon on scifi. i don't have cable, so this was a treat. finally caught on to what was happening in that sequence of episodes.
went to a party hosted by a couple that joins us on the annual shanty creek ski trip. there's no place like an old hippies home ;-)
stopped at a favorite brewpub for dinner. they make a mocha java stout that i want a pipeline to.
how to fix a jeep ? jack in grey,
2x4's in brown, roll bar ends in black.something to whine about: i biffed the spare tire mounted on the back of my jeep when i backed into a phantom telephone pole at very low speed. resulted in a tailgate dented in a couple inches, and a couple slightly out of square back corners. but the tailgate has been overdue for replacement anyway, having rusted out the lower inch or two already. steel ones are under $100 in the catalogs, i think. the big problem is the slight pushing in of the corners that the tailgate mounts to. it's nearly unnoticeable, but is enough to pull the spare tire carrier in an inch or so, which will likely interfere with my hardtop. but i managed to straighten the tailgate out mostly. now i need to take a trip to the store for a hydraulic bottle jack and some 2x4's, see if i can rig a way of squaring out that stuff.
oh, and movies: saw return of the king, the brother bear commentary (hilarious), part of a recent peter pan remake (surprisingly good), and the best: escanaba in da moonlight (info at imdb). it's probably a matter of taste and mood, but it caught me at the right time. one of the funniest things i've seen. most of the michigan in-jokes in the movie are explained, but it might be best to see it with a native. i wasn't impressed with what i saw of miracle; overrated. the movie, not the event.
so that's about it. i never caught up to one brother and his family. they seem to be dodging us. not entirely fair, since they hosted easter, i guess (i didn't make it), but it seems more connected with obligation than desire.
not that big of a deal, just up to visit family. i missed a chance to go wander on some land up near (grayling? gaylord? i always get those two mixed up.) tonight/tomorrow, but i hadn't planned on leaving soon enough for that, so i wasn't prepared.
just in case something else comes up, i'll pack camping / scuba / bike / sailing stuff. one never knows; one brother is taking his family to a local camping spot, and i'm coming along for the ride to drop the other brother's niece off at sailing camp near traverse city. but it would be pretty comical watching me try to squeeze into my old wet suit. well, comical for some, something to be avoided for others. those things shrink over the years, dontcha know ? ;-)
the “real” sailing stuff is at my sister's place on the chesapeake, but i recently learned that their racing rig (a star boat) had the mast broken by my nephew's sailing instructors when they borrowed it. yeah, that's what i thought too. anyway, it's a couple/few thousand $$$ to replace. does homeowner's cover that ? special sailing insurance ? what about those geniuses' parents ? if they aren't older and independent.
but my brother-in-law is a nice guy. i put a good tear in a sail last year, i felt bad, but he was like “no biggie“. well, it was just a sunfish, and at about 12 inches or so i managed to tape it up pretty well.
- - - - - - - -
geez, i forgot how long it takes to load that much stuff. especially when it hasn't been done like that in something like five years. i knew there was a reason i should get a small box trailer, keep it packed, then just hitch-n-go. or maybe just get one of those new stretch jeeps. would it be silly to expect one of those in a rubicon edition ? of course, i could still get all the rack attachments - top, back, etc.
later, y'all.
not my content, perhaps cheating, but i just thought this was pretty cool.
2004.07.16 update: crap, that's what i get for linking to a transient item. it was a cool flash graphic of the orbit, etc., as of yesterday.