28 April 06
The Lure Of Morse
Since we’ve gotten into pandemic preparedness mode here, I’ve renewed my interest in radio. Several years ago, I got my technician class amateur radio license, but haven’t done much at all with it. The next step after the technician class is the general class license, which allows you to transmit on shortwave frequencies. One requirement for this license class is passing a Morse code receiving test, which takes a good bit of study, though the copying rate of the test has been reduced to a very slow 5 words a minute.
Despite its antiquarian aura, Morse code is very practical in the land of ham radio. Basically, it’s an incredibly efficient way of getting a signal out to the world if you don’t have much transmitting power or a good antenna setup. Since we live in a very small house and can’t exactly be erecting a 40’ antenna tower, that kind of describes my situation for the foreseeable future. There’s also the appeal of going lightweight and portable, as the Adventure Radio Society folks do.
5 words a minute may do for passing the test but it is not acceptable for actual communication. I’ve started studying using the Koch Method, where you start out learning two letters at a reasonably fast rate (15 wpm overall, with each character coming in at 20 wpm), and then add another letter when you master the characters you have so far. It’s aural reflex training—you bypass thinking about the letters (“oh, dot-dot-dot, let’s see, that’s ‘S’, right?)
Anyway, good Morse code operators routinely defeat expert texters in text messaging contests. If I ever get a cell phone, it’s going to be a Nokia Series 60 job, which is readily programmed (happily even in my favorite programming language, Python), so somebody has even whipped out a Morse texter for these types of phones.
26 April 06
Blog Against Disablism Day: May 1
Thanks to Chris of Creek Running North for the link to this event. Please join in if you feel so inclined…
I was just at a Code Pink meeting; one of the things we discussed was the fact that a lot of disability attorneys are pushing hard for Debold voter technology for the vision impaired. Natalie says she feels a bit like a traitor to the disabled community in standing up against voter fraud for ALL citizens.
Rock and a hard place: this is why this is an important issue, and why there are no easy answers…
25 April 06
Seeds Of Resistance
I just heard Vandana Shiva give a wonderful talk about sustainable agriculture and globalization in a presentation organized by the California Student Sustainability Coalition. She is a sustainability activist and ecofeminist who has been working on agricultural issues in India for over 25 years, her original field being physics. She described two waves of industrialization in India, the first being the Green Revolution, which left much violence in its wake due to people’s loss of empowerment, particularly in the Punjab, and the second being globalization, exemplified by a recent US-India bilateral agreement rather frighteningly entitled the “Knowledge Initiative On Agriculture”.
Not surprisingly, such knowledge refers mainly to intellectual property (a term, she notes, only came into use after WTO; before then patents, trademarks, copyrights, etc. were quite separate concepts) and the most egregious misappropriation here being the patenting of seeds. It is simply morally wrong and ontologically suspect for thousands of years worth of human creativity that has gone into crop selection to be sequestered away in a corporate patent, leading to the absurdity of it being a crime for farmers to save their own seeds.
But such an absurdity has within it an obvious path of resistance. She is the founder of a movement called Navdanya which aims to promote biological and cultural diversity through nonviolent agriculture. One major project of this movement has been saving seeds, and they have established 34 seed banks in 13 different states across the country. Next year, in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Revolt of 1857, they will be burning Bt cotton seeds and distributing seeds from their own banks! (She told an enlightening anecdote from the time of the British: it’s curious how all the English names for the pulses of India have to have an animal in them—why, there’s chick peas, pigeon peas, horse gram…The English just couldn’t get their brain around the idea of diverse vegetarian protein crops.)
At the end she quoted Wendell Berry—eating is a political act. My favorite question response concerned how do you keep up hope? By engaging, she said. Be less concerned with brutal dominating power structures, but more with the creative power within each of us.
24 April 06
Doodling in the Morning
Danny Gregory recently did a lot of work on brown paper. I like the middle ground, the fact that this paper is really cheap (so not intimidating), and the fact that you have to find the mid-tone and work up and down from that.
I haven’t done this too successfully, here, but it was fun.
24 April 06
New Medium
Wanting to have a go with painting in a medium other than watercolor, the other day I went to the campus bookstore and picked up the cheapest acrylic set they had there. At left is the first acrylic painting I’ve ever done. The view is looking west from our house, towards Berryessa Gap.
22 April 06
Rubber Ducky Washing
Picnic Day was today; there was no rain. I calligraphed certificates for all the junior ducky washers (in the absence of a real oil spill, the vet students had covered the ducks in paint) and we moved along to see the Dachshund races (the Doxie Derby).
Instant replays ruled out any controversy on the part of overzealous doxie owners and there was the usual assortment of sausage dogs—well over half—who wandered off, distracted, never getting to the finish line. The Rec Hall had at least 4,000 people in it while we were there.
On to the baseball, where the Aggies were getting soundly thrashed by Cal State Long Beach, and a trip to the Memorial Union for a cup of tea. It’s so hokey. It’s so fun. It’s so… Davis.
21 April 06
Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Cat
Last month when I did my illustration of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Diego decided to try his paw at monoprinting.
20 April 06
April
Floods? Check. Taxes? Check. Ceanothus? Check. Kingbirds? Check. What’s left? Picnic Day!
Once again drawing about 50,000 people to Davis this Saturday with a good chance of rain, the Doxie Derby followed by the cockroach races and about 400 other events will keep us busy. This year we’re going to try and get both our soil and water tested by volunteers from the department of Land, Air and Water Resources. We have only sampled a tiny portion of it in the six years we’ve been here, but it’s a good portion.
If we don’t get rained on I may do some sketches. And the Aggies are scheduled to play Cal State Long Beach at baseball so we may end up there… Our outing to Raley Field last Sunday was rained out.
19 April 06
Mapping Religion In America
Since the Census Bureau does not collect information on religion, it is often hard to find information on religious affiliation across the United States. The Glenmary Research Center several years ago published a study of religious congregations and membership, and the patterns from this dataset are mapped here as part of a course on the cultural geography of United States and Canada.
(From Slashgeo.)
18 April 06
Good Year for Beavers
We went for a walk this evening. The wind had died down and the sun was setting over the coast range—such a pleasantness after all the rain we’ve been getting.
The creek is still well over its banks, making the eucalyptus trees wonder whether they’re mangroves. The water is turbid and fast, and there were a few lads fishing as we walked across the bridge.
Just before the railway undercrossing, we spotted a beaver swimming around an “island” of willows—normally well up on the bank. There’s so much for them to eat this year. I hope they do well. It’s a splendid thing to see almost in your yard…