While I was home I

While I was home I got a scan of this photo that my parents got from my grandparents. It's of a mountain man called Skookum who used to show up in the Lolo Valley where my great-grandfather, Jay Gitchel, was a homesteader. I don't really know anything about Skookum but Jay wrote a book called "We Bet Our Lives" about his homesteading experiences. I read it in sixth grade and thought it was quite entertaining then. There's a copy on Amazon.

I’m on vacation this week

I'm on vacation this week so don't expect much from me.

I got to my parents' house at about 11:30 on Saturday night. I stepped out of my car and stood in the driveway looking for Leonids. Almost immediately I saw a spectacular orange fireball that left a trail (an earthgrazer, I assume, but it didn't have a colorful trail). I went back out after midnight and saw a few more regular old meteors. After that I didn't really feel the need to get up at 4:00 but my parents were up and said that they were coming every few seconds.

The true battlefront of the

The true battlefront of the 21st century
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"Then on September 11th, [Barlow] said he had a realization — that the 21st century would be one great struggle between open and closed systems across the planet — systems of belief, of national organizations, of boundary conditions (both real and virtual), of the ownership of ideas, etc. And these struggles would be intensified by technology, which tends to undermine elites and move communities towards democratization."