LJ pointed out on my dashboard that I haven't updated in like 18 weeks. Ok, I'm shamed. I'll post something.

Ever since gwynny and I ran across a motherlode of red huckleberries up on richy California street I've been obsessed with finding more free berries. Today I hit paydirt (paysoil?) - I found a nice thimbleberry bush on campus today. I ate a handful of sweet red fruit with a tangy finish. There's a couple of thimbleberry and huckleberry bushes producing outside our apt, but the bushes are growing out of a treacherous hillside and I can't get them. Gomez Cat and I watch each morning as birds pick out the ripest berries - just beyond our reach. Luckily our farm share is providing a half-pint of loganberries and raspberries every week.

I was talking to Dr. Pinch about this free berry thing and a plan is hatching for geolocating the fattest Arcata berry bushes in a KML file or on Google maps. Hasn't happened yet, but it might. Maybe we'll be low tech and just post coordinates on a text file. I'm leaning towards the middle road (like usual) and posting fat bush pics on flickr with a georeference.

I finished the socio-spatial poster on sea level rise for Arcata. I've submitted it to a conference and feel pretty good about it, but haven't heard back yet. HSU GIS submitted the work-up we did for the proposed Palomar Pipeline that's slated to cross the Mt. Hood wilderness. 160+ acres of old growth Doug-fir (and some prime Spotted Owl habitat) for a liquid natural gas pipeline is a lousy deal. I hope BARK can block it. LNG - especially Russian LNG - is a dumb idea anyway. Let's increase our dependence on foreign fossil fuels, shall we? Eventually I'll get the Arcata poster up on Snakecharmer.

In other news: I think I fucked up my back doing deadlifts today. Stupid mistake. Fortunately my RC injury in my right shoulder is improving. I like to only have 1 lifting injury at any given time.

This is a climate change and GIS nerd post. You've been warned.

An interesting development for our local student ASPRS chapter - we're looking at adopting a glacier (actually, a remnant snowfield) in the Trinity Alps. There's a glacier monitoring project based out of Portland State - we're hoping to meet with the program managers at a conference in April. As I understand it, they're using thermoimaging and GIS to monitor and model glacial response to climate change. I'm sure there's more to it, but that's the part that got me interested. Apparently, we'd get access to ASTER imaging to do it.

The glacier project complements my 480 project rather well. I'm about 10 hours into an analysis of the social impact of projected sea level rise scenarios on the peninsula communities of Humboldt County. Most of the literature indicates a 1m rise by 2100 under best case scenarios (CO2, CH4, N2O, O3 and black carbon aerosol emissions decrease) and 3m+ by 2100 if we keep our shit up (IPCC scenarios A1B or B2 - insufficient reduction in GHG emissions).* I'm planning on taking a digital elevation map, plotting sea level rise scenarios on it, and overlaying census block data for analysis. It's a lot harder for poor folks to move households (consider the Katrina event), so my hypothesis is that the poor will be hardest hit in the peninsula communities. Yeah, I know, it's obvious heuristically, but telling policymakers something is "obvious" doesn't work as well as pushing a scientific study under their noses. Of course, a lot of times that doesn't work either. It might be moot, though. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to do a good analysis at this point - all the elevation models I've found so far don't have the precision I need to make the project work. I'm wondering if I'm going to have to do measurements myself with a GPS unit; I ain't paying for a LIDAR flyover, that's for sure.

Of course, all bets are off if 1500 sq mile ice sheets keep dropping into the sea. Those models predict as much as a 150+ feet rise in sea level. For reference, that's about the height of the Statue of Liberty.**

Buy a bike...and consider saving up for a good canoe.

* = Hansen, James, et al. 2006. “Global Temperature Change.” Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences 103: 14288-14293.

Incidentally, Hansen (a NASA Climate Scientist) is the same guy that said we have about 10 years to reverse course before we are basically committing to dangerous climate change (catastrophic sea level rise and 60%+ species extinction, etc).

** = Bell, Robin E. 2008. “The Unquiet Ice.” Scientific American 298: 60-67.

So a couple of weeks ago I had a PG&E energy auditor come out to my apartment to do an assessment. Basically, I figured that it'd be hypocritical of me to preach energy efficiency without optimizing my own usage. I'll leave it at that since no other energy nerds read my blog here. Ok.

Anyway, Mr. Auditor is pretty impressed with how neuroti..er, efficient our apartment is, but he has one last place to check: the attic. Now, I've never actually been *in* the attic at Presidio Gomez, but I didn't think there would be any real surprises up there. So dude climbs up in the attic and I'm waiting patiently below, and he starts talking about how it's none of his business whether or not someone grows pot, and he smokes the occasional joint himself on the weekend. This strikes me as a bit weird, so I ask him why he's bringing it up. He says that the "grow operation" in the attic should be set up on planks and not on the ceiling - that way the insulation can be left in place. So, apparently the guy that lived in there before us was a grower - that much I knew, but I thought he'd confined it to the 2nd bedroom. Apparently not, and he did such a lousy job moving out his operation that the auditor dude thought that we'd moved the equipment and stashed it with the idea of putting it back after he left. So it appears that the grower had shoveled about 10'x10' square of R39 cellulose insulation off a section of the ceiling and didn't put it back. This pretty much explains why our heating bills suck from November to March.

At least it wasn't more fucking mold.

glassbooth is a useful tool for sorting through the primary presidential candidates. it works in two steps: first, you tell glassbooth what issues matter to you. glassbooth then generates a poll around your issues and matches you to candidates who think (or claim to think) along your lines. this is a decent way to do an end-run around the cult of personality garbage that comes with mass media democracy.

my highest match (94%) was kucinich. progressive environmental policy? check. universal health care? check. equal rights? check. totally unelectable? check.

speaking of unelectable - can't believe huckabee won iowa. don't evangelicals have jobs? who bussed them to caucus? frankly, i'd like to see a california proposition for secession.

glassbooth

So, for those of you interested in seeing photographic (albeit low quality) evidence of my trip up Hanson Ridge, you should direct your browser to my flickr account.

I wrote a trail narrative for my nature writing class, and will be posting it in segments both here and at myspace.

Incidentally, for those of you who don't know me, the reedy albino sasquatch perched on the roof of the hut is Gabe, not me.

Tomorrow morning I am heading into southern Humboldt for some "survival camping." This is supposed to be experiential fodder for a nature writing class I'm in right now. It seemed like a good idea in October, but December is looking like a different story. Last weekend, the ridge we're heading for received 5 inches of rain in 48 hours (not unusual in a temperate rain forest*) and the night time temps drop into the 20s - the textbook makings of A+ hypothermia. Ideally, we'll be building debris shelters and gathering food, but it's late in the year and food will be in short supply and the weather will suck. As a contingency, we're taking food and emergency shelter (i.e., a tarp). My trekking partner grew up in an orthodox commune in Sonoma county, flintknaps, and makes his own bows/arrows. He also has Lyme Disease - which has been acting up lately. Whatever happens, we certainly won't die of boredom.

* more temperate rainforest trivia: The tropical rainforest has greater species diversity, but in terms of raw biomass/acre, we Cascadians come out on top. It's tough to compete with 18,600 cubic feet of living wood in a single tree. (more on redwood ecology)

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Hey Johnny,

I know you read LJ occasionally, so maybe you'll run across this. I hope your birthday is good, wherever you are these days. Get a message to somebody and let us know you're ok, even if you don't want to tell anyone where you're at. Take care of yourself, and call me some time.

a happy update on my missing brother:

he showed up at the excalibur looking for the bag he'd forgotten there last week, and they informed him that he'd been tagged as a missing person. LVPD was notified that he had been "found," and he called his girlfriend to let her know he where he was and that he was heading for the bus depot post-haste.

i won't get into details here in a public forum* , but he's had intermittent problems with dissociative behavior in the past, and i think this one just took it up a notch. he's on his way back home to colorado, basically in one piece. thanks for all the concern and help spreading the word. i really appreciate it, and so does the rest of the family.

* (although i might expand on it a bit behind a friends cut later)
(xposted to myspace)

this is a long shot, but it's easier than emailing everybody and hoping it makes it through spam filters.

my brother john disappeared in las vegas on june 13. his bag was recovered from his room at the excalibur hotel. last we heard he was heading to the stratosphere to ride a roller coaster or something like that, but we don't know if he made it there or not. a missing person report has been filed with LVPD.

a few of my old friends from reno have migrated down to vegas in the last few years, and maybe you guys might have seen him. others of you know him, and there's a chance that he might come by looking for a place to crash, depending on his state of mind. he's going through a really tough period in his life, and he's had intermittent mental health issues since he was a teenager; i'm concerned that he's in some sort of a dissociative state and wandering vegas - not the best place to be if you're out of sorts. if you see him or hear from him, please leave me a message and ask him to call me, his mom, or his father. thanks.

not my favorite picture, but the best likeness i have of him:

( behind the cut )

oakland:



* from: nation of thizzlam

taken from mindmedia, inspired by weebleeds and ellyjonez.

Your Brain Usage Profile:

Auditory : 56%
Visual : 43%
Left : 29%
Right : 70%

christobal, you show a slight right-hemisphere dominance with a moderate preference for auditory processing, an unusual and somewhat paradoxical combination of characteristics.

You are drawn to a random and sometimes nonchalant synthesis of material. You learn as it seems important to a specific situation, and might even develop a resentment of others who attempt to direct your learning down a specific channel.

Your right-hemispheric dominance provides a structure that is only loosely organized and one which processes entire swatches of reality, overlooking details. You are emotional in your reactions and perceptual more than logical in your approach, although you can impose structure and a language base when necessary.

Your auditory preference, on the other hand, implies that you process information sequentially and unidimensionally. This combination of right-brain and auditory modes creates conflict, as you want to process data more rapidly than your natural processes allow.

Your tendency to be creative and free-flowing is accompanied by sufficient ability to organize and be logical, allowing you a reasonable degree of success in a number of different endeavors. You take in information methodically and systematically which can then be synthesized rapidly. In this manner, you manage to function consistently well, although certainly less efficiently than you desire.

You prefer the abstract and are a theoretician at heart while retaining the ability to be practical. You find the symbolism in a great deal of what you encounter and are something of a "mystic."

With regards to your lifestyle, you have the mentality which would be good as a philosopher, writer, journalist, or instructor, or possibly as a systems designer or social worker. Perhaps most important is your ability to "listen to your inner voice" as a mode of skipping over unnecessary steps to achieve your goals.

---

a couple of the observations are spot-on: tagging me as a mystic, prone to favor abstraction and theory over mechanics, and frustration with my inability to process data as quickly as i would like. there's a lot there that explains my rejection of Platonism and my obsessions with ecology, relativism, and system dynamics. i like that it picked up on the dichotomy of my linear learning style and my right-brained synthetic processes; that particular combination can be really frustrating.

tangent: i've been working through lee smolin's the life of the cosmos, which deals heavily with relativism as an underpinning of his (proto)theory of cosmological natural selection. if you're a fan of atheism, evolution, cosmology, ecology, or quantum physics you should find this book and read it.

i've also got a diatribe brewing about humanity's approaching evolutionary bottleneck, but i haven't decided whether to post it here. i think about it every time i see a michael franti "stayhuman" bumper sticker. will we? do we even have a say in the matter at this point?

those who know me well know that i have a mild ocd that prompts me to compulsively make lists and wash dishes. the dishes are washed, so that leaves the list: ( (cut for the tin-ears) )


that's all i got right now. spring on the redwood coast: grey rainsoaked days spaced by bright sun and high clouds. hiking season is upon us! we've already hatched a plot to return to the turkey crossing near petrolia and then hike in the lost coast wilderness between the ocean and the king range. i have a weakness for the transitional seasons. summer plans: cross the mojave for a mexican wedding! good things are stacking up around here lately. well, always, but i've been noticing them more lately.

happy spring, folks.

1. the redwood transit system is a sensory bomb. the stink on the morning bus is palpable: stale smoke, sharp stench of drunks' puke, dog shit ground into boot heels, and the cheese-funk of hippie drifter dreads. there are lots of sounds as well: endless babble from the mild tourette's cases, slackjawed boasting from the babythug contingent, snores from the winco night shift guy. i don't mind the sights so much: wan junkies wrapped in filthy tee shirts, shiny new-eyed babies, three-fingered fishermen with salt-and-pepper whiskers (highlights by high life, i'm guessing). it is a filthy, fascinating show.

2. i forgot.

3. day 2 of 27 straight. saving the world = death by exhaustion. apologies to those who should've heard from me by now. i'm feeling a bit walking-dead right now. rest assured that you're in my thoughts.

4. the cat has ringworm, probably. gross.

5. mariokart + bed now.

(with apologies to the estate of j.l. borges if this is not in the public domain; i doubt borges himself would care)

Delia Elena San Marco
Jorge Luis Borges

We said goodbye on one of the corners of the Plaza del Once.*

From the sidewalk on the other side of the street I turned and looked back; you had turned, and you waved goodbye.

A river of vehicles and people ran between us; it was five o'clock on no particular afternoon. How was I to know that that river was the sad Acheron, which no one may cross twice?

Then we lost sight of each other, and a year later you were dead.

And now I search out that memory and gaze at it and think that it was false, that under the trivial farewell there lay an infinite separation.

Last night I did not go out after dinner. To try to understand these things, I reread the last lesson that Plato put in his teacher's mouth. I read that the soul can flee when the flesh dies.

And now I am not sure whether the truth lies in the ominous later interpretation or in the innocent farewell.

Because if the soul doesn't die, we are right to lay no stress on our good-byes.

To say good-bye is to deny separation; it is to say Today we play at going our own ways, but we'll see each other tomorrow. Men invented farewells because they somehow knew themselves to be immortal, even while seeing themselves as contingent and ephemeral.

One day we will pick up this uncertain conversation again, Delia - on the bank of what river? - and we will ask ourselves where we were once, in a city that vanished into the plains, Borges and Delia.

I am beginning to get my head around the prison-industrial complex a bit now that my brother is in the belly of the beast.

First off - it is not easy to figure out where exactly he is at any given time. According to Colorado DOC, there's an online locater for inmates once they've been processed through intake and assigned to their initial* facility. Prior to intake, however, inmates are usually in county jails waiting for processing. The county does not let inmates or their families know if they intend to transfer the inmate to another facility in the same (or different) county. Incoming mail is sorted and examined for contraband, and can delay mail delivery to inmates for over a week. If an inmate is transfered during this time, his or her mail is not forwarded.

Contact between the inmate and family/friends is limited to plate-glass teleconferencing or video conferences. Phone calls by the inmate are routed through the DOC (county doesn't always allow outgoing calls) and are placed collect at high rates. It's difficult to coordinate phone calls between the inside and outside as well.

I understand the need for security and surveillance in contact between the inmate and the outside world. However, it also seems like mitigating factors should be considered - the nature of the crime, previous or current involvement with organized crime, etc. I figure that two factors must come into play:
1. treating all inmates the same cuts down on accusations of bias, and
2. it allows for the isolation and institutionalization of the inmates - getting them into "the system," where the DOC becomes very much home, and contact with the outside world is anomalous and foreign.

I haven't heard from him directly since before sentencing, but family tells me that he's adjusting - reading, working out, sobering up, etc. I know any real rehabilitation will have to come of his own will and desire - the prison system hardly even pays lip service to rehab, especially in a red state. He has no shortage of will; it is simply a matter of direction.

* I say initial because it is very rare for an inmate to spend any real length of time at a particular facility. Ostensibly this is because of security measures (preventing networking - particularly by gangs), but it also serves the purpose of keeping inmates uncomfortable and insecure in their environment.

the powers-that-be at uc berkeley think cutting down a grove of old coast live oaks is a good idea. apparently they need to build an athletic training center on the grove site, and have promised to plant three oak saplings for every mature oak they fell. this sounds well and good, but greenwash usually does.

1. all trees are not created equal. a mature oak is a keystone in its ecosystem - providing food and habitat for many other species. a young oak cannot provide the same services.
2. cal does not need to build their athletic facility on the grove site - several alternative sites have been proposed that meet the university's needs as well as the needs of the city of berkeley.
3. the city has an environmental ordinance that forbids the felling of a coast live oak that is more than six inches in diameter at chest height. uc berkeley claims that as a state entity they are exempt from the local ordinances - essentially thumbing their noses at the city.

tangental:
this whole affair is turning into a PR debacle for cal - good. there is a pervasive attitude in academic administrators in this state that they are beholden to no one other than themselves and their respective boards of regents - this seems to hold true for both the CSU and UC systems. it is (long past) time for students, staff, and faculty to join with citizens of the community at-large and hold the administrations of offending institutions accountable for their lack of vision and stewardship. they work for us - not for themselves.

a grassroots effort to save the cal oaks grove is underway; you can find out more at save oaks. this issue goes beyond berkeley - it's about intelligent, conscious community planning. the east bay (and califas in general) has enough sprawl and concrete - preservation of the last remaining bay area green belts and habitat islands is critical.

as requested by physedluver, a friends list ( quiz meme )

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*(img courtesy of sarracenia northwest)

i met the most beautiful carnivorous plants last night: cape sundews (Drosera capensis)! i was fired up about growing some of my own, but after some interwebbing i discovered that they won't live happily in our heavily shaded apt without grow lamps. fortunately, grow lamps aren't hard to come by in humboldt county. the sundew was a good find for me - d. capensis is supposed to be easier to care for than our native cobra plants, and i'd like a biological control for our summer medfly problems here in presidio gomez.