Blackcap Blog

Published at 14:14 on 21 July 2014

Really, how can anyone believe the hogwash about destroying the infiltration tunnels being the reason for Israel’s attacks on Gaza? Those tunnels have been being built for years. I’m sure the tunnels are being destroyed by Israel as part of its current military operations, but it wasn’t existence of the tunnels that prompted this latest round of attacks: it was the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers last month.

So, it’s effectively a form of blunt retaliation, whereby over 500 Palestinians — none of whom have been proven guilty of the crime being retaliated for, mind you — have been murdered in return for the murder of the three Israelis. Collective punishment at its worst.

Published at 17:18 on 18 July 2014

They’re pure garbage.

Really, all they mean is that some Bozo somewhere registered a Twitter account while claiming to be a pro-Russian rebel in the Ukraine, and then used said account to post something boasting about shooting down a plane. And then later removed the post.

Maybe it was an actual rebel who actually shot down the plane and then realized it was bad PR to boast about it. Maybe. Or maybe it was someone pulling a joke who decided the joke was in bad taste and should be removed. Or maybe it was someone on the pro-Ukraine side who was posting “black propaganda” designed to make the enemy look bad. Or someone connected with the US military-industrial complex who wants a new cold war with Russia. Or one of dozens of other plausible possibilities.

If, that is, such a post was even made in the first place. Curiously, I haven’t seen so much as a purported screen shot (itself an easy thing to fake) of it. Just an assertion that it was there and then later vanished.

Unless some far better evidence comes up, the only prudent response to such reports is to wave them off as the unsubstantiated rumors that they are.

Published at 16:53 on 17 July 2014

The immediate response to the shooting down of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 shows that when an adversarial nation shoots down an unarmed passenger jet, the rhetoric is that there is absolutely no excuse for such barbarism and that it proves beyond a doubt the moral depravity of the attacking nation.

The response to the shooting down of Iran Air Flight 655 shows that when the US itself shoots down an unarmed passenger jet, the rhetoric is that even the finest militaries in the world sometimes make mistakes, therefore such things regrettably sometimes happen, and they cannot be construed to say much about the character of the nation which did the attacking.

The response to the terrorist attack against Cubana Flight 455 shows that attacks by non-state actors against civilian aircraft, too, aren’t a super-big deal if the aircraft is owned by the national airline of an adversarial nation, and certainly aren’t reason enough to deny political asylum to anyone responsible if you agree with their political aims.

Of course, if it’s a hostile terrorist organization, then it just shows what a menace terrorism is and why it must be stamped out.

Keep those in mind in the next few days as the news of the most recent tragedy evolves.

 

Published at 11:23 on 14 July 2014

I normally work out of my home office, which like the rest of my home, and most homes in Western Washington, does not have A/C.

I didn’t use it when camping, of course. I neither have nor want one of those monster RV’s, nor do I want to confine myself to camping those misnamed RV “parks” that are more like parking lots where RV’s sit cheek-by-jowl.

And, as I wrote before, if I wasn’t engaging in physical activity, the warmth was actually pleasant. It’s great to be completely warm, even in one’s extremities, while being able to wear little or nothing. All that’s needed is to get over any hang-ups one might have about being in some state of undress. So I didn’t use the A/C in my truck on the way back, either. The breeze from the open windows on my bare chest kept me plenty comfortable.

Cut to today, when I have to don a sweatshirt against the assault of overchilled air pouring forth from the registers, and my fingers and feet are still chilly.

Sure, if this were a baking-hot Phoenix day or a steamy, muggy Atlanta one, some A/C would be most welcome. But this is Seattle, the temperature today is forecast to peak only in the mid-80s Fahrehneit, and it’s not even out of the 70s yet.

Natural ventilation would easily suffice, maybe with a dash of artificial cooling later in the afternoon, were this building built for it. And, coupled with a few cultural changes (i.e. loosening “business attire” standards), would be more, not less, comfortable.

Too add insult to injury, as a result of spending the day inside I will now become less acclimated to the heat outside, so the artificially-generated discomfort will not end when I leave the convention center this evening. Not to mention the environmental impact of all this over-cooling.

It’s not just me, either. Others have made similar observations.

Published at 10:30 on 14 July 2014

I survived. Actually, the warmth was quite nice — provided I was sitting in the shade doing nothing and wearing nothing but a pair of shorts. The rub is, I was often hiking off-trail wearing enclosed shoes and long pants to protect me from thorny shrubs (of which there are many in that area).

This is the week of a big annual convention put on by my employer. Today’s attendance is being made unpleasant by two facts:

1. The sandals, which I had thought were not provoking my tendonitis, proving that they actually were this morning. (I hadn’t worn them for the past few days, going barefoot when not wearing enclosed shoes, and my sore toe had gotten better all the while. This morning, on the walk from the ferry to the convention center, it stared getting sore again.)
2. The pissy and uptight staff at the convention center, who are continually trying to order me to put shoes on. Sorry, not gonna happen. I’ll be damned if I re-injure myself and jeopardize my ability to lead a weekend hike just to comply with some uptight firms’ prejudice against bare feet. They can take their prejudice and stick it where the sun don’t shine.

Published at 09:32 on 9 July 2014

We’re in the middle of a long run of forecast above-normal temperatures and it’s absolutely delightful to be able to wear shorts and a sleeveless shirt and not feel the least bit cold.

But, there’s a caveat. More precisely, I love the sort of summer weather we have where I live. Which, being on an island surrounded by cool salt water is about five degrees cooler in summer than the nearest official reporting station. Which is Seattle. Which, in turn, has some of the coolest summers of any major US city.

The warm spell I’m savoring involves lows in the 50s and highs in the upper 70s to low 80s. Which in most of the USA would qualify as a cool spell or even a record cold spell for this time of the year.

I’ve never really liked hot weather, and the agreeable summers were one of the things that made this region so attractive to me decades ago when I was getting out of college.

Which makes the pending (or should I say impending) botanical survey near Leavenworth a bit ominous. Highs are forecast to be in the 95 to 100 degree range there in the next few days. Yuck. The survey will be at elevations about 1,000 feet higher, but we’re still talking about highs above 90 most days. Still yuck.

There won’t be much humidity, so it should cool off at night and won’t be as hellishly sweltering as, say, a Chicago heat wave. But nothing can make 95 degrees Fahrenheit comfortable, only somewhat less uncomfortable.

Published at 00:15 on 26 June 2014

Berry season has begun. The blackcaps* and best of all the thimbleberries† are ripening everywhere. Salmonberries have been ripe for several weeks now, but they don’t have the flavor of our other berries.

The wide variety of edible berries are one of the things I like best about this region. Many parts of the country are lucky to have one or two good wild edible berries. I can offhand think of nine types of native edible berries found on this island alone (so I’m probably overlooking a few), plus a couple of common introduced species.

* My namesake; I chose it because the species of blackcap they have in the Midwest is probably the first wild food I remember eating.

† A flavor, which together with the thoroughly non-native durian, I probably crave more than any other.

Published at 20:26 on 19 June 2014

This, that is.

I’m not exactly the biggest sports fan in the world, but I’d have to be dead not to notice how much more popular soccer is in the USA than when I was in high school. Back then, there were no professional soccer teams in the USA, and the USA typically didn’t even bother to field a team for the World Cup (an event most in the USA were blissfully ignorant of).

Many of my co-workers are talking about the World Cup, and there’s typically a TV showing matches in the break room. That would have been unthinkable in the USA even 20 years ago. Yes, they’re a young crowd and the demographic from which soccer fans are disproportionately drawn in the USA.

But, so what. 20 years ago, you could pick any age demographic you wanted, and you wouldn’t have found much interest at all in professional soccer in the USA. There’s been literally tremendous growth in the popularity of soccer in this country.Arguing that Americans “don’t like” soccer and that it’s somehow a failure because it hasn’t immediately soared to No. 1 popularity amongst all sports as soon as it was introduced professionally is just plain stupid.

Published at 12:21 on 15 June 2014

It’s more environmentally responsible to use a bicycle than a motor vehicle. It’s also more environmentally responsible to live in multi-family attached housing rather than single-family detached housing.

If you ride a bicycle year-round, your bicycle will get very dirty if you ride it frequently in wet weather (and the weather is typically wet for much of the year in this part of the world). The onus to wash or at least rinse one’s bicycle frequently gets even more urgent if one lives in a cold-winter climate where the local authorities use road salt.

If you live in an apartment or a condo, odds are iffy that you will have access to a hose bibb. If you have no way to wash your bicycle yourself, you have no way to wash your bicycle. Unlike with automobiles, there are not (at least in the USA, at least in the vast majority of cities) businesses that offer bicycle-cleaning services.

This has actually been an issue for me at a number of points in my life. I’ve typically had to beg friends for permission to use their garden hose, and it means my winter bicycle gets far grimier than I’d like in between its infrequent washings.

I recently solved the problem for myself by purchasing a garden-hose adapter for my bathroom sink, which is conveniently located in front a window through which the hose may be routed while in use. But I shouldn’t have to do something that awkward, and such a solution is useless for those who live in large, multi-story buildings instead of a 4-plex like I presently do.

My apartment complex provides a sheltered bike rack (one they recently expanded). That’s nice, and it might even have been required by law. But such requirements are incomplete; they need to be paired with requirements for furnishing some facility for washing bicycles as well.

The regulatory burden of such, whatever it is, will be far less than the burden of existing regulations for minimum automobile parking facilities, and one could negate it completely by pairing the new regulation with a relaxing of the latter.

Published at 21:49 on 14 June 2014

Let me say, they are very tasty indeed. Best described as a mix of baobab and pineapple.

“What?!?” You say? “Philodendrons are poisonous house plants and are most certainly neither edible nor tasty, you moron!”

Not so fast. The common “cut-leaved philodendron” sold as a house plant, also called the “Swiss cheese plant” for the perforations in the large leaves of mature specimens, has the botanical name Monstera deliciosa. That name is a clue.

All parts of the plant are in fact poisonous and highly irritating… with the exception of the fully ripe fruit (unripe, even slightly unripe, fruit is poisonous). They’re also tropical and actually barely survive as a house plant, and need to thrive to bear flowers and fruit. That typically never happens unless they are planted outdoors, which would normally rule out Seattle as a place to ever get a fruit for one.

Enter the Volunteer Park Conservatory, which has a large mature one. Twenty-odd years ago, it was the first time I saw one ever in bloom. It’s still one of the few places I’ve ever seen flowers or fruits on one. Today I noticed one flower open, a bud or two, and lots of developing, unripe fruits. The latter got me thinking if anyone who worked at the Conservatory ever ate them.

And lo, there in the gift shop, sitting on a plate, was a ripe Monstera fruit giving off a most appetizing fragrance. So I helped myself to a few small bits, and it certainly does deserve the deliciosa moniker.