John Fulwider's Travels

Jellyfish

2010-04-12T15:42:00.001-07:00

A jellyfish on Lido Beach in Sarasota, FL.

Sunset on Lido Beach, Sarasota, FL

2010-04-12T15:29:00.001-07:00

It was a chilly evening, as you can see from the underabundance of people in the photo.

Parting a Sea of Sheep

2009-09-02T08:54:00.000-07:00

We were walking on a trail in Bavaria, Germany, when we found our path blocked by a bunch of sheep. The shepherd told us to just walk on through, so we did. It was squishy. And there's video:

Taking the Waters at a Budapest Thermal Bath, in 15 Easy Steps*

2009-08-02T03:43:00.000-07:00

* It's worth it.

Budapest, Hungary, has a number of thermal baths—spas, really—fed by natural hot-water springs. They are fun and relaxing to visit, after you figure them out, which is no easy task.

The system is complicated enough that I don't think it would be straightforward even for someone who spoke Hungarian. Therefore, let my confused wanderings and my getting lost in a steamy spa basement be to your benefit as I present these step-by-step constructions.

1. Go to Széchenyi, and only Széchenyi. Rudas is men-only, and was closed for renovation during the alleged mixed-gender weekend hours. It is forever dead to me. Gellért has enough stairs to give a teenage athlete knee problems. Palatinus, on Margaret Island, is pretty, with cool slides, but it's more of an outdoor water park. Go to Széchenyi. The subway lets you out about about 100 meters away. (Curiously, however, the directional signs for tourists, posted in English outside the subway stop, do not point to Széchenyi.)

2. Enter the baths side (southeast). I can't be held responsible for what will happen to you if you enter on the opposite side of this rather large complex.

3. You will see many signs on the wall and on sandwich boards. A few are translated in part into English. Ignore them and march confidently through the vestibule into the lobby, where you will see a number of cashier windows. Near the cashier windows you will see a lengthy price list, offering various things you don't need and which could very well injure you if mistakenly applied/ingested/undertaken. Ignore the price list, which seems deliberately designed to confuse you (or at least me).

3. Take 6,400 forints out of your wallet or Everfull Purse and approach the youngest cashier, who is most likely to speak English should difficulties arise (which they should not if you follow these instructions). Hold up a thumb and say, "one Kabine" (pronounce it KAH-bean-ah). Briefly retract and then re-present the thumb and say, "and one locker" (pronounce it LOCK-er). Plunk down your money (you did count out the right amount, yes?), smile broadly, stroke the lucky totem of your choice, and hope for the best.

5. If all goes well, you should receive two plastic cards and one paper receipt. All three are crucial, young and soon-to-be-steamy grasshopper; guard them zealously from any folding, wetting, mutilation, or other misadventure. Take them and proceed forward to where a line should be formed in front of a gate operated by a spa employee.

6. Stand in this line patiently, with a smile on your face and a song in your heart, as the employee lets through random people whose cards look just like yours and who cut to the front of the line. Make no attempt to understand the system, and for heaven's sake don't become frustrated; the cortisol stress hormone you'll generate smells terrible when mixed with 38-degree Celsius thermal bath water.

7. When your turn comes, present your card to the gate attendant, who will run it over an optical scanner. Take the card back. Proceed forward and follow the sign to the Kabine. Look for a woman dressed all in white; she's the Kabine room attendant. If necessary, say "Kabine?" with an interrogatory look on your face (it may be wise to practice this look beforehand; one must always be prepared).

8. Present your paper receipt to the woman in white; it is proof that you followed these instructions and shelled out the extra buck fifty (equivalent) for the comfy Kabine. She will give you a round metal chit on a loop of string. On the chit is a number. You would think this number would be the number of your Kabine; if you thought that, you would be wrong. The woman in white will write that number on a chalkboard inside the Kabine, then gesture meaningfully to a different number on the outside of the door and say, "Remember." (It would be helpful here if a Vulcan mind meld were applied, as Spock did with McCoy while Khan's wrath was in process, but our woman in white possessed no such skills.)

9. Remember the number on the door.

10. Enter your comfy Kabine and change clothes. Consider carefully the items you want to take with you, such as sunscreen and sunglasses, and the items you want to leave behind, such as your sweat socks and soccer pads (if any). Your left items will be quite secure, never fear (and you won't fear if you ignore the many, many signs disclaiming responsibility for valuables left in the (locked!) Kabine.

11. Exit your Kabine and gently gain the attention of the woman in white, which may involve waiting as she performs locking or unlocking services for others. It should go without saying that one should not irritate the woman in white, as she possesses the only key granting access to your delicate underthings and such. The woman in white will lock your Kabine, and off you will go.

12. Follow the signs to the baths. (The signs seem to improve in quality and quantity as you proceed farther into the complex, perhaps as a reward for making it this far.) Upon locating a shower, use it; if you walked through a typical Budapest summer day to get there, you'll have lots to rinse off. Besides, there are signs everywhere saying showering is compulsory, and you would not want to be growled at by a bath employee. In Hungarian.

13. Now the relaxation finally begins. It is really fun exploring and trying out all the baths. Each bath's temperature is clearly marked on plaques placed in fairly obvious locations. Thirty-eight degrees Celsius is the hottest you'll find. That's about American hot tub hot; in other words, it will make your forehead sweat, and if you're like me, you won't want to stay in more than five minutes. The 34-degree and 36-degree baths are just lovely, thank you. There are also much colder waters, such as 20 degrees and 24 degrees. Why someone would want to plumb those depths is beyond me, but hey, whatever floats your boat.

14. You can stay as long as you'd like, which in my case was seven hours. When it's time to go, attract the attention of the woman in white, and answer affirmatively when she asks, "Finish?" (Do not say, "I'm not Finnish, I'm Danish!" That's only funny in Genoa.) Dress, and proceed to the exit (which as I recall was fairly clearly marked). There you will find another gate attendant to whom you must present your plastic card (you did guard it zealously, yes?). He will scan it, present you with yet another paper receipt, and off you will go.

15. Use caution on the subway escalator, which runs twice as fast as American ones and is treacherous in any situation, but especially when you're all relaxed and rubber-legged.

The ultimate in car camping

2009-07-31T22:45:00.000-07:00

Oh, serious gear lust. Watch the video..

Free lodging on vacations?

2009-07-31T22:31:00.000-07:00

The author uses this newsletter to live rent-free, but I'd like to try this for a free place to stay on vacation:

I've used the Caretaker Gazette to live rent-free for the past three years. A friend told me about this publication, which has been around since 1983, and I’ve used it to find positions living as a caretaker in California and Idaho. In exchange for my accommodations, my duties have included keeping trespassers off the property, taking messages, mowing the lawn, cleaning the pool and generally watching over the home when the owners are away.

via Cool Tools: Caretaker Gazette.

IKEA and Trader Joe's delivery services

2009-07-29T23:39:00.000-07:00

ModerNash seems to actually be delivering IKEA goods to Nashville from Atlanta (249 miles) while KCGroceryService.com seems to have been trying since June to start up a Trader Joe's delivery service from St. Louis to Kansas City (also 249 miles, I kid you not, according to Google Maps).

Would a St. Louis to Lincoln (447 miles) Trader Joe's service work? I'm guessing not, but one can dream ...

Five Europe Photo Albums

2009-07-25T04:56:00.000-07:00

Apologies, dear three readers, for the paucity of blog updates from Europe. I had not counted on the keyboard on my friend's laptop being as hinky nor as blazingly hot as it is; this has diminished the amount of typing I am able to do without burning off my fingerprints.

To whet your appetite for more, here are links to five photo albums I have posted from our trip. You'll see they are hosted on Facebook, but rest assured that you can view the photos without having an account there.

Europe Album 1:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2236843&id=17220214&l=5a84a0e847
Europe Album 2:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2238800&id=17220214&l=75f361e77c
Europe Album 3:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2240114&id=17220214&l=271410ee7c
Europe Album 4:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2240232&id=17220214&l=738c53c788
Europe Album 5:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2240380&id=17220214&l=202359f2ab

Update from Vienna

2009-07-17T22:43:00.000-07:00

[caption id="attachment_451" align="alignnone" width="800" caption="The cathedral in Passau."][/caption]We have arrived in Vienna by train, the rain having cut short our bicycle adventure along the Danube. But that's not such bad news because ... we are in Vienna! The pouring rain is giving us time to update Facebook and this blog, back up photos, and check e-mail, all for the low, low price of €2.50 per hour. Really, that is very low for an Internet cafe.

Here is another of the soon-to-be-famous bullet lists of our adventures:

To see more photos, go to ...
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2238800&id=17220214&l=75f361e77c

Update from Germany

2009-07-12T19:22:00.000-07:00

[caption id="attachment_444" align="alignnone" width="1024" caption="John and Jami in Rothenburg."][/caption]We are in Ingolstadt using the first cheap Internet, with a USB port for uploading photos, we have found since Frankfurt. Facebook photo upload is not working on this computer, so we can only post this one photo. Here we are in the town square of Rothenburg ob der Tauber, a magical medieval walled city. We arrived there without a reservation, went to the tourist bureau, and immediately had a 40-euro room reserved for us not 50 paces away in the town square. All our travel guides warn of death, destruction, and general lack of fun should one fail to reserve days ahead of time, but we have found this to be entirely not the case. Our advice: Just go where you want, when you want, and then smile broadly at the tourist office clerk.

Here's a short list of what we have done:

That's all for now! Thanks for following our adventures. Please send us e-mails to let us know what you are up to, as well. We'd love to hear from home.

First day in Germany

2009-07-08T11:40:00.000-07:00

[caption id="attachment_438" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="John and Jami outside the Frankfurt Zoo."][/caption]

UPDATE: Ten photos on Facebook.

The first day in Germany is done and it's been a good one. Our hotel is just two blocks from the train station. We spent the day just walking around Frankfurt, with our only two goals being to try Apfelwein (apple wine) and to try to find the hotel near the zoo where I used to have Sunday brunch with my parents. Accomplished the first; nit certain about the second. Had a great dinner of pork sandwich, Schnitzel and potato salad at the train station. Enjoyed buying beer and wine at a minimart and drinking it at a table in the train station. Jet lag isn't too bad, although those of you inclined to do the math will note that it's 2:48 here in Germany ... a little hard to sleep.

By the way, I'll be writing most of these updates on an iPod Touch, so don't expect great works of literature.

Packed to Go to Europe!

2009-07-07T08:24:00.000-07:00

[caption id="attachment_434" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Jami and John wearing our backpacks packed to go to Europe."][/caption]

We're packed to go for Europe. We leave from Lincoln at 6:40 p.m., then from Chicago at 10 p.m. After that, Frankfurt and a whole lot of beer, brotchen, and bratwurst. There are some more photos of us and our packs (!) on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2236531&id=17220214&l=8adc24145c

Cozy Inn, Salina, Kansas

2009-06-28T04:54:00.000-07:00

[caption id="attachment_428" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Two slider-style burgers from Cozy Inn in Salina, Kansas."][/caption]

"When you go to the Hole, you smell like the Hole." It's a reliable prediction regarding The Watering Hole in Lincoln, Nebraska. But the Hole's clingy aroma of grease pales in comparison to that of Salina, Kansas' Cozy Inn in both pleasantness and potency. When you go to the Cozy, you smell like the Cozy ... as do your clothes, your car, and any room you enter for hours thereafter.

Cozy Inn's been around since 1922 and they're still using the same tiny grill to fry up slider-style burgers. In the tee-niny cooking area behind the six-stool counter, the cook presses small balls of fresh hamburger meat into a bed of sizzling onions. The resulting odor is captivating, but will stick to you like glue. Do not eat there prior to a business meeting. Four sliders, chips and a pop will run you $5.74, if I remember correctly. There's nothing else on the menu. Highly recommended.

A Special Message from the Tarp o' Hugeness

2009-06-15T23:58:00.000-07:00

The Tarp o' Hugeness has room for you tonight.

We're going to Europe!

2009-06-11T10:51:00.000-07:00

We bought the tickets last night for a July 7-28 trip to Europe. We fly into Frankfurt from Lincoln (it was $45 cheaper than leaving from Omaha or Kansas City, if you can believe that), then possibly head to Heidelberg to stay with a friend of a friend. After that it's Munich for joy by the liter in the Biergarten, then Passau to rent bicycles for a 200-mile mosey along the Danube to Vienna. From there we finish in Budapest, where a friend has graciously loaned us his apartment.

North Table Mountain Decorations

2009-05-31T23:01:00.000-07:00

The trailhead sign at North Table Mountain in Golden, Colorado, is festooned with ceramic art. This is a picture from our early-season April climbing trip.

Nice 'N Spicy, Best Flavor: Thai-Laos Kitchen Restaurant

2009-05-31T09:10:00.000-07:00

Jami and I found ourselves in South Sioux City, Nebraska at lunchtime recently and figured we had a good chance to find a great local Mexican restaurant. So we took a random turn off the fast food-festooned highway and after just a couple of blocks ran into something even better: Thai-Laos Kitchen Restaurant.

Just the idea of Thai food in South Sioux City drew us in. It wasn't until we left the restaurant we saw the delightful "Nice 'N Spicy, Best Flavor" sign in a far window. That sign would've sealed the deal had we been wavering. But we wavered not, and entered confident in the notion that if a Thai restaurant advertising a specialty in vegetarian food could remain open in South Sioux City -- indeed anywhere in Nebraska -- it had to be good.

And oh, how it was. While the Thai version of the Home Shopping Network blared loudly from across the gigantic dining room, Jami tucked into the Gai Himapan ($6.95), sliced chicken sauteed with pineapple, onion, scallions, and roasted cashews. Actually, both of us tucked into it because the waiter, who was well-meaning but quite rushed preparing what must have been a takeout order for a small banquet, brought us a double order by mistake. (He didn't charge us for the extra order). The thin, complex sauce permeated the moist chicken and the crisp-tender onions to the point where I resorted to holding the plate up to my mouth, the better to push food into my mouth with the chopsticks rather than take the slower route of grabbing individual pieces. Even this soon proved an inadequate way to consume the delicious sauce fast enough, so I tipped the plate to pool the sauce and scooped it up with a spoon. It was that good.

All this time the entree I'd ordered, Drunken Noodles, competed for my attention. The wide rice noodles were almost meaty to the tooth, tossed with bok choi, cabbage, perhaps some Chinese cucumber, and a few other ingredients that escape my memory now but were tasty and generous in portion at the time. The waiter asked our heat preference on a scale of 1-10, and I ordered a 7. I'll go for a 6 next time. I think the price for this was $6.95 as well. Oddly, the takeout menu I grabbed doesn't list it.

A couple at another table ordered the soup, served in a tureen with flames shooting out the top. There are also a number of appetizers, including the Stuffed Chicken Wing: "Chicken wings stuffed with ground pork, silver noodles, mushrooms and deep-fried peppers and served with sweet and sour sauce." I have no idea how they fit all that into a chicken wing, but I want to find out next time I'm there.

Thai-Laos Kitchen Restaurant, 1215 Dakota Ave., South Sioux City, NE, (402) 494-7625

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Gear Tent

2008-05-28T23:27:00.000-07:00

I brought the backpacking tent as a backup in case our ancient Coleman dome tent gave up the ghost. Turns out the REI Half Dome serves ably as a gear tent, freeing us from the morning ritual of digging out from under piles of stuff and things in the sleeping tent.

It's Cicada Season in Kentucky

2008-05-28T23:20:00.000-07:00

Cicadas are everywhere in Red River Gorge, Kentucky. I caught this one molting on our tent Wednesday morning. When we moved our tent to a better spot the other morning, we left behind an outline of cicada shells where we'd flicked each day's visitors off our tent.

Double Arch

2008-05-26T11:00:00.000-07:00

It's a bit hard to tell from this angle, but this is a natural double arch in Daniel Boone National Forest. It's called, you guessed it, Double Arch. We only had time for one photo because it was raining and we were shielding the camera with my hat. A minor thunderstorm made the hike out exciting, but we were well-equipped as always with rain gear, headlamps, extra food, 20 bottles of MRE-size Tabasco sauce, etc. A fellow hiker had forgotten his emergency poncho, so we gave him ours and were rewarded with two replacements in stylish green and blue when we happened to run into him again back at Miguel's. This was good all around because we remarked to each other after giving away our one emergency poncho that we, being two people, really should have two emergency ponchos. Now we do.

Kentucky Flowers

2008-05-26T10:54:00.000-07:00

Can anyone identify these flowers? They're everywhere in Kentucky's Red River Gorge and seem to come in two colors, white and pink.

Update: They're laurel. Identified thanks to p. 43 of John W. Snell's book, Red River Gorge: The Eloquent Landscape.

What? The Glutes?

2008-05-25T23:44:00.000-07:00

Jami's First 5.10?

2008-05-25T11:09:00.000-07:00

Jami shows Bethel (5.10a) who's boss. We both top-roped this route at Johnny's Wall in Muir Valley thanks to some nice German BMW engineers (really!) who let us hop on their line while they ran our rope up another. Jami thinks this is her first 5.10, but I'm pretty sure she's crept ever so carefully up Mighty Thor (5.10c) in The Garden before.

Rock-Climbing Animals

2008-05-25T10:55:00.000-07:00

Ahh, iced-animal cookies. The perfect road-trip food: never go stale, icing doesn't melt, and when you finish them the resealable bag serves as a great trash receptacle for gooey banana peels and such to help you Leave No Trace.

Bike Meadow

2008-05-24T01:19:00.000-07:00

This pretty blue bike was just sitting in a meadow behind our campsite at Miguel's. I was exploring a short winding path through a stand of bamboo when this magical scene suddenly appeared.

Rock-Skipping Butterfly Island

2008-05-23T10:43:00.000-07:00

We found a sandbar island in the Red River (at least we think it was the Red River) swimming with beautiful butterflies (one of which can be seen in the upper right) and covered with the world's most perfect rock-skipping rocks. After a lunch of Stroganoff noodles cooked in our trusty JetBoil, and ample rock-skipping, we took a well-deserved if slightly bumpy nap.

Kentucky Waterfall

2008-05-22T11:56:00.000-07:00

Here we are enjoying the view at a waterfall in Muir Valley, Red River Gorge, Kentucky.

On the Road to Kentucky!

2008-05-21T11:46:00.000-07:00

We're on the way to a 10-day climbing vacation in Red River Gorge near Slade, Kentucky. We found this sign not in Kentucky but in Indiana.

Sanaa's 8th St. Gourmet

2006-12-31T11:10:00.000-08:00

Sanaa's is a revelation. Syrian, French and Italian influences combine to create a meal that is exotic, yet accessible because most of the scrupulously fresh food is on display in cases outside the immaculate half-open kitchen in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The first items to catch your eye are the fatayer, which the menu calls "pita pocket sandwiches" but I think of as vegetable and meat turnovers. I consulted with the outgoing and enthusiastic owner and chef herself, Sanaa Abourezk, and chose the laham b'ajeen, stuffed with beef, onions and pomegranate molasses, and the even more intriguing eggplant fatayer, with broiled eggplant, roasted red bell pepper, onions, tomato sauce and feta cheese. Sensing accurately that I'm the kind of person who goes for that sort of thing, she noted twice that it was her unique creation and could not be found anywhere else.

Discovering Sanaa's was a pleasure for other reasons. She is related to Kevin Abourezk, a talented colleague of mine when I worked at the Lincoln Journal Star; is married to James Abourezk, the first Arab-American to serve in the U.S. Senate; and is the accomplished author of several cookbooks and a column in one of America's best small newspapers, the Sioux Falls Argus Leader.

But back to the food. I had to stop myself from hopping in place as I debated which of the glorious and inexpensive items to try. On the one hand, stomach space was unfortunately limited; but on the other hand, I was fortunate to have two companions with me willing to let me sample their selections. The three of us ended up with the aforementioned fatayer, which ran somewhere around $3.50 to $4 each; the soup of the day, a vegan vegetable and bulgur wheat delight for $3.25; the muhammara dip of pureed red bell pepper, walnuts, pomegranate molasses and coriander, accompanied by all the freshly baked pita bread we wanted (which was a lot); and one entree, the shish tawook -- chicken breast pieces cooked in red sauce with cumin, mustard, garlic and sesame seed paste ($8.95, includes basmati rice pilaf, salad and pita bread).

Abourezk told me she grinds her own spices just before cooking and prepares everything fresh -- "no boxes." Trained at the Cordon Bleu Baking School in Paris and the Masha Innocenti Cooking School in Florence, she believes in healthy food and this is reflected in her two published cookbooks, Oh Boy, I Can't Believe It's Soy and Secrets of Healthy Middle East Cuisine. She told me she has another cookbook coming out, this one with gluten-free recipes.

I've passed through Sioux Falls countless times on the way to Blue Mounds for rock climbing. Sanaa's is now a mandatory stop.

Sanaa's 8th St. Gourmet

401 E. 8th St., Suite 100, Sioux Falls, South Dakota

650-275-2516

Lunch Monday-Friday 11 a.m. - 4 p.m., Saturday buffet 11 a.m. - 2 p.m.

Falls Park Family

2006-12-28T23:04:00.000-08:00

Richard, Jami, Sue and Chris on the observation tower at Falls Park in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Cardinal Tea

2006-12-28T22:51:00.000-08:00

Saw and loved this outdoor sculpture in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where the main downtown shopping street boasts public art every half-block or more.

Arrr!

2006-12-28T13:32:00.000-08:00

An outdoor sculpture gets mouthy with Jami in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

We're Back ... You're Welcome!

2006-08-06T10:08:00.000-07:00

We hear it's been miserably dry and hot while we've been gone. We're back now, and the temperature's dropped 19 degrees and it's raining.

You're welcome!

Day 14: Highlands

2006-08-01T13:00:00.000-07:00

We took lots of pretty walks through beautiful, lush Highlands, which gets enough rain most years to qualify as a rainforest. One walk led us to the Highlands Biological Station, where I was ferociously attacked by a squirrel. I wish Squirrel Rangers Doug, Joe and Junk had been there to save me.

Day 13: Travel Day to Highlands

2006-07-31T13:00:00.000-07:00

We spent Day 13 on the road to Highlands, North Carolina, stopping in Atlanta for a three-hour shopping spree at Ikea and dinner at my favorite fast-food burger joint, Checkers.

Day 12: St. Augustine

2006-07-30T13:00:00.000-07:00

Here was the day I'd been waiting for, when my cousin's daughter Krista would show up. Aunt Laura made some fantastic BBQ beans, potato salad, deviled eggs, ham ... the list goes on.

Day 11: St. Augustine

2006-07-29T13:00:00.000-07:00

The end of our first full day at the Fulwider Party Barn in St. Augustine found us at Outback Crab Shack, where the boiled dinner gets you a platter groaning with crab, crawfish, clams, potatoes, sausage, corn, shrimp, and other goodies. Here James grabs the first bite o' crustacean. Outback is so popular that we had to park a quarter mile away and take a shuttle van the restaurant provided.

Southeast Road Trip Slideshow Rough Draft

2006-07-29T00:50:00.000-07:00

Friends and family, you've been clamoring for more photos, so here is a rough draft slideshow with 139 photos from our trip. No titles or captions yet, so you'll just have to guess at what we're doing.

To get you started: Above I'm at the top of a climb at Summersville Lake, West Virginia. I'm just a one-minute rappel and walk from a cool, refreshing swim in crystal-clear water. Can't get that at many crags!

Day 10: Travel Day to St. Augustine

2006-07-28T13:00:00.000-07:00

We arrived at the Fulwider Party Barn Friday afternoon, where the world's longest dock led out to a beautiful sunset we enjoyed after wearing ourselves out playing with Gareth, setting crab traps and scoping for gators.

Day 9: Travel Day to South Carolina

2006-07-27T14:00:00.000-07:00

We took a slow travel day to South Carolina, stopping at the Welcome Center in the rain (note lens cap captured in this hastily taken photo). We stayed at the halfway point to Florida in Summerton at the Deluxe Motel, a place whose name was half accurate. Coming up on Day 10: Partying with the entire fam for the whole weekend at Camp Fulwider in St. Augustine, Florida. I can taste the seafood boil already.

Day 8: Climbing, Deep-Water Soloing and Diving at Summersville Lake, New River Gorge

2006-07-27T12:00:00.000-07:00

Feeling a tad sticky, we headed for Summersville Lake in West Virginia's New River Gorge. There you climb right next to a sparkling-clear lake and can take a dip after a tough send. Also available are deep-water soloing, ropeless climbing where falling is refreshing, and cliff-diving. Above, Jami leaps off a 40-foot waterfall in Pirate's Cove.

Day 7: Travel Day to West Virginia

2006-07-26T23:30:00.000-07:00

We spent a long lazy morning packing up and saying goodbye to Miguel's, the coolest climber's campground ever, before hitting the road for West Virginia.

Day 6: Dog Tired

2006-07-25T14:05:00.000-07:00

After four straight days of climbing (with no Fulwider epics!), we were tired. But not as tired as this dog, the mascot of Mike's Mountain BBQ in Torrent Falls.

Day 5: Muir Valley at Red River Gorge

2006-07-24T15:00:00.000-07:00

Muir Valley boasts excellent sport climbing you can approach with a light pack because your lunch lies ready to pick along the trails. Fueled by blackberries, Jami did her second lead -- on a 5.8! -- and Jamie did her first at Rebel Camp Hollow. Later we drove down a long and winding road (da da) to Solar Collector and Gold Coast in PMRP, where the real climbers go to feel the pump on ridiculously overhanging 5.12, 5.13 and 5.14 (!) routes. We saw the route on the cover of the Red River Gorge climbing guide, which we'll definitely have to try sometime when they invent antigravity boots.

Day 6: Military Wall at Red River Gorge

2006-07-24T14:00:00.000-07:00

We took advantage of our laid-back non-plan to stay an extra day at Red River Gorge, this time climbing with new friends Scott and Jens from Michigan at Military Wall. Jami climbed two 5.9s and Scott busted out with the JetBoil, making stroganoff noodles at the crag for lunch while the rest of us ate trail mix. Above, Scott masters Possum Lips (5.10d).

Day 3: Left Flank at Red River Gorge

2006-07-23T14:00:00.000-07:00

We had so much fun climbing at Left Flank in Red River Gorge on our first climbing day that we took rather a paucity of pictures. Here's Jami on a route, the name of which and other details I will add later. The Red is paradise, and the best climbing we've ever experienced. We may just have to cut short other parts of our trip to extend our stay here. No, not the family visit portions! We might skip some country music time in Tennessee or the end-of-trip climbing at Sam's Throne.

Day 4: Roadside Crag at Red River Gorge

2006-07-22T14:00:00.000-07:00

Jamie drove down from Indianapolis to join us for two days of climbing at the Red. Here she climbs Roadside Attraction the right way, as opposed to the wrong way, which involves fist jams, trying to conserve cams, and a flat-on-both-feet groundfall when a hex pops. Three guesses as to who climbed it wrong, and the first two don't count. Note to self: First placement is a cam. No excuses.

The four #2 Camalots I've managed to accumulate came in plenty handy on this route, the last of the day before some tasty Thai tuna wraps courtesy of Jamie. (Note the irony in my trying to conserve cams.) Earlier it rained constantly but we stayed dry and climbed all day because the Red River Gorge crags have abundant huge roofs hundreds of feet up to keep things bone dry.

Day 2: On the Road to Kentucky

2006-07-22T01:00:00.000-07:00

After our morning in storm-tossed St. Louis, we spent most of the day on the road to Slade, Kentucky and Red River Gorge. Car and rope troubles slowed us down somewhat. On the former, our car security system must have decided we were stinking thieves! because it cut off the fuel pump, leaving us unable to get our motor runnin' after stopping at the above-pictured Kentucky Welcome Center for a map and a loo. Kind Welcome Center greeters loaned us phone books and tools, and eventually we convinced our car we were not stinking thieves! and were on our way. On the latter rope troubles, we had set off on a 20-day climbing trip without a rope for various reasons I shall not entertain you with. So we were trying to find a new one and after Herculean efforts to find gear shops and interview their employees about the state of their inventory, we drove to the northern Loo-a-vull, Kentucky burbs and purchased an exceptional Sterling 9.8mm rope. She's a beaut. All these adventures put us at our intended late-afternoon destination, Miguel's Pizza (and $2 a night camping, and $1 showers), at 10 p.m., where we collapsed.

Day 1: St. Louis

2006-07-21T03:00:00.000-07:00

On the first day of our 20-day climbing-rafting-family visit-family visit-climbing adventure, we arrived in St. Louis the same day a historic severe storm hit the city, knocking out power to hundreds of thousands, flinging an airport terminal roof onto I-70, and trapping us in a mall parking garage for several hours. It was all good, however, because we made it to Trader Joe's just before they lost power and closed the doors. We purchased ample tasty provisions for the road ahead, including a picnic breakfast we enjoyed the next morning in the branch-strewn Gateway Arch park.

Safer than Fireworks

2006-07-05T21:15:00.000-07:00

What's safer and cheaper than fireworks and perfect for celebrating our nation's independence? Why, Diet Coke shooting six feet in the air after a violent chemical reaction with Mentos! This is my first YouTube video, just press Play.

Doorbird

2006-07-04T10:09:00.000-07:00

Minutes before the open house was to start Jami exclaimed, "There is a nest in there!" Sure enough, and with five speckled eggs therein to boot. Does homeowner's insurance cover lawsuits from potential buyers dive-bombed by an enraged mama bird?

Heather's Birthday

2006-07-01T23:48:00.000-07:00

Heather extinguishes a three-alarm fire at her Shakespeare on the Green birthday celebration. Note the billowing cloud of smoke.

Jazz in June

2006-06-27T13:23:00.000-07:00

Mark and Molly ham it up at Jazz in June.

Shakespeare on the Green

2006-06-25T14:50:00.000-07:00

Jami and Stacey at Shakespeare on the Green before the start of Taming of the Shrew. At lower right is Meredith's thumb, the only part of her she will allow to be photographed.

Housewarming Gift: Cookie Dough

2006-06-25T00:46:00.000-07:00

I thought I had a pretty good idea for a housewarming gift the other day. I bought three tubes of Pillsbury cookie dough in chocolate chunk, peanut butter and sugar cookie flavors and bound them together with some ribbon. Total cost: Less than $10 for a gift that both smells better and tastes better than the default option, a scented candle.

Aiee! Flamingos! (aka Graduation Slideshow)

2006-05-13T12:19:00.000-07:00

So Jami was driving me to graduation last weekend when we passed a house on the way out of the neighborhood, its yard festooned with flamingos. Figuring it was party of some party prank for someone who lived there, I told Jami we should talk to the owners later that day and see if we could borrow some flamingos to play a prank on Dave, who has an unnatural fear of pink plastic. Jami got a call from her sister about the same time, and it sounded like she was giving her directions to get to our place.

Graduation came and went, and so did the flamingos ... into my yard. It turns out the flamingos were placed (as part of a fundraiser) by a local cancer society's volunteers ... in the wrong yard. They were supposed to be in my yard when I woke up. So Heather and Erwin had to don their sunglasses, hum the Mission: Impossible theme, and race over to my neighborhood to move the flamingoes and still get to my graduation on time. It was a lot of fun, as you'll see in this slideshow.

Master of Political Science?

2006-05-13T01:59:00.000-07:00

I graduated May 6 with a Master of Arts in political science from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. There's a lot left to learn.

Jami Rocks the Lincoln Half Marathon

2006-05-13T01:27:00.000-07:00

Jami ran her first half marathon last weekend, setting a 9:49 pace and beating the average finishing time of 2:09:54 with a 2:08:25 finish. At left is Heather.

Graduation Party

2006-05-03T11:43:00.000-07:00

Some friends helped me celebrate, in advance my graduation from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with a master's degree in political science. If only they'd eaten all that pasta salad. Here's a slideshow. All photos by Javal.

The Bottom of the Barrel

2006-01-16T04:29:00.000-08:00

On the last day of our trip to Vegas for climbing in Red Rocks, Wyatt uses a tent stake to eat his oatmeal from the packet. The latter's not so unusual -- it's a great way to avoid doing dishes -- but usually we use plastic spoons. Except when a New Year's Eve storm blows them, and everyone's underwear, far, far away.

Getting Crowded Up Here

2006-01-16T00:45:00.000-08:00

Jamin, Wyatt and Joe tangle up at a belay station on Cat in the Hat, Red Rocks, Las Vegas. Later, after nightfall, things got considerably cozier as six of us set up our double-rope rappel at this very station, with just three headlamps between us.

Statistics and Rock Climbing

2005-10-29T10:44:00.000-07:00

Rock climbers, in my experience, are not especially given to discussing statistical factor loadings. For climbers, figuring out the loads on each element in the rope system has, shall we say, more grave and immediate consequences.

Straddling the worlds of p-values and Yosemite Decimal System ratings, as I do, and being given to a predilection for imposing my geekiness on others, I fairly squeaked with joy when I found today a rock-climbing illustration of a statistical concept. It is (tum ta tum!) the scree test. It's a graphical way of deciding which factors to retain following a principal components analysis. You plot your eigenvalues on a line plot, which ends up looking at the left like the steep mountains we climbers so enjoy surmounting, and on the right like the more gently sloping (but still arduous to traverse) scree fields (piles of jagged rocks just right for ankle-twisting) you typically find at the base of a big, juicy rock face. You then dump the factors that form the scree field because they're, well, scree, and nobody likes it.

Pictured here is the one person in the world I can think of who'd be likely (p <.05) to be just as excited about this as I am.

Methods: Make Stata Do-Files Faster with a Spreadsheet

2005-09-25T05:25:00.000-07:00

Say you've got a long list of feeling thermometer results in a data set like the National Election Study and you want to run Chi squares on all of them with your favorite independent variable. A Stata Do-file makes it easy, but composing your Do-file in a spreadsheet program makes it even easier. NES runs its similar variables all together, so in NES 2004's post-election study, the 45 (!) feeling thermometers are in variables V045043 to V045088. One way to get results is to type your first command ...

tabulate V045043 V043116, chi2

... then copy and paste it a bunch of times ...

tabulate V045043 V043116, chi2
tabulate V045043 V043116, chi2
tabulate V045043 V043116, chi2

... then go through with the arrow keys and delete key to increase the first variable by one another bunch of times -- say, 45 in all.

Or, you could let a spreadsheet (such as the free, open-source, completely Microsoft Excel-compatible OpenOffice Calc) do the work for you.

Fire up a blank sheet and type your command in Column 1, your dependent variable in Column 2, your independent variable in Column 3, and ",chi2" in Column 4.
Highlight the dependent variable you just typed and use the drag arrow (or whatever that thing's called) at the bottom right of the cell to generate a list of variables as long as you want that increases by one in each row.
Finish by copying each of the other three elements, highlighting the empty cells where they're needed, and pasting.
Highlight the whole thing and paste it into Stata's .do file editor, or your favorite text editor, and you're done. Stata doesn't care about the extra spaces.

Be careful that some "helpful" auto-capitalization feature doesn't capitalize your tabulate command, because that will mess things up.

Something similar would probably work to generate SPSS syntax, too, but I haven't tried it yet.

LibraryThing | Catalog your books online

2005-09-16T02:49:00.000-07:00

I'm hoping LibraryThing will be a better way to keep track of my political science books. You type in the ISBN, and it quickly sucks down the bibliographic information from the Library of Congress (first try) or Amazon.com. It's much faster and far less kludgy than that bane of my existence, the terrifically horrible EndNote.

EndNote note: One of my main complaints with EndNote has been the lack of a "reference autocomplete" function -- that is, a facility for searching your EndNote library for incomplete entries, then filling them in using the external libraries EndNote offers. I talked with the EndNote sales rep at the recent American Political Science Association annual meeting about this, and his response was essentially, "No soup for you!"

LibraryThing | Catalog your books online:

Save your favorite PocketMod

2005-09-09T07:16:00.000-07:00

PocketMod lets you create a your own pocket-size organizer using a Flash applet. You can customize it to your heart's content. But what happens when you settle on a design you like? You can't save your layout -- unless you're one of those smart people who uses a Macintosh. Then you just hit "Save as PDF" when the print dialog comes up, and voila! (not "viola) you've got your permanent copy for endless reprinting.

Note that it seems important to go into Page Setup, select "Page Attributes," and format your document for printing on a laser printer. I just select the HP Laserjet 4100 I have in my office. If you don't do this, the bottom of the page seems to get cropped off.

Link:
PocketMod: The Free Disposable Personal Organizer

Unacknowledged convergence of open source, open access, and open science

2005-09-07T03:05:00.000-07:00

A fine piece in First Monday looks at how open source and open science are converging. Among other things, the article explains one of the many reasons the business of academic journal publishing can be so frustrating for scholars. As in other concentrated industries, business models do not allow for meeting some customer demands (such as for more open and easy access to scholarship), even though desired services or products could be delivered for a vanishingly minimal additional cost.

Unacknowledged convergence of open source, open access, and open science:

The great increase in journal subscription prices over the last two decades, largely as a result of corporate concentration in scholarly publishing, has led to what economists would term the "dead–weight burden of monopoly," in which "some people’s desires will remain unsatisfied even though they could have been fulfilled at virtually no additional cost"

Assorted Stanford Photos

2005-07-27T08:31:00.000-07:00

I've been tooling around Stanford University and Palo Alto on my bike after the day's Summer Institute in Political Psychology lectures let out, and taking photos galore with my new camera. Here's a slideshow featuring photos with nothing more in common than that they were taken in California.

Warning: The slideshow features photos of a pickup truck festooned all over (hood, doors, roof) with anti-Bush stickers. Some of them are profane.

Mount Tam Climbing

2005-07-25T05:26:00.000-07:00

Took some of my SIPP colleagues on a climbing trip to Mount Tam in Marin County.

More details later. Until then, here's a slideshow.

Caption: (Left to right) Alex, Matt, Theo and Nathan at the base of the crag.

San Francisco Unedited

2005-07-11T03:31:00.000-07:00

It's a whirlwind of activities here at Stanford, where I'm attending the Summer Institute in Political Psychology. The time to edit photos has not presented itself, so here is a slideshow of 159 photos (!) in all their unedited and in some cases rather quite duplicative glory.

The photos are from my pack-everything-into-a-day San Francisco adventure, wherein I had dim sum in Chinatown, rented a bike and rode across the Golden Gate Bridge, ate a crab sandwich on Fisherman's Wharf, visited the Apple Store near Union Square (natch), had a lovely bowl of French onion soup at Cafe Claude down some alley nearby, then collapsed in my humorously tiny room at the amazingly clean and safe, $59 a night Grant Plaza Hotel just a block from the Chinatown arch on Grant.
More bulletins as time permits, meaning not often.

Some Politics May Be Etched in the Genes - New York Times

2005-06-21T06:36:00.000-07:00

My thesis reader, Dr. John Hibbing, made the New York Times today. It's not often you see the word "dizygotic" in APSR.

Some Politics May Be Etched in the Genes - New York Times:

Political scientists have long held that people's upbringing and experience determine their political views. A child raised on peace protests and Bush-loathing generally tracks left as an adult, unless derailed by some powerful life experience. One reared on tax protests and a hatred of Kennedys usually lists to the right.

But on the basis of a new study, a team of political scientists is arguing that people's gut-level reaction to issues like the death penalty, taxes and abortion is strongly influenced by genetic inheritance. The new research builds on a series of studies that indicate that people's general approach to social issues - more conservative or more progressive - is influenced by genes.

...

In the study, three political scientists - Dr. John Hibbing of the University of Nebraska, Dr. John R. Alford of Rice University and Dr. Carolyn L. Funk of Virginia Commonwealth - combed survey data from two large continuing studies including more than 8,000 sets of twins.

Polaroid-o-nize johnfulwider dot com?

2005-06-20T02:42:00.000-07:00

Here's what my front-page photographs would look like if I used the free Polaroid-o-nize service to, you guessed it, make the photographs look like old school instant photos.

The service lets you select the angle of tilt and the caption, among other things. I could alternate the tilt for variety so today's tilts to the left, tomorrow's (or, at my blogging pace, next month's) tilts to the right.

The pictures seem pretty blurry and pixellated, which I can completely understand. The server load to accept image uploads of varying sizes and then send a modified image back must be astonishing.

Valued five readers, consider your feedback solicited.

Blue Mounds Blue Skies

2005-06-16T08:09:00.000-07:00

The summer Minnesotaclimbing.com gathering drew more than 70 people this year, including an impressive Nebraska contingent: Doug, Jake, Tim, Jami, Javal, Shannon, Mark and ... and ... that guy whose name I can't remember right now! Anyone who was there knows the title of this entry is ... well ... optimistic. But that's water under the bridge. Next time we face climb on dry sandstone, we'll look back to the wet and mossy Sioux quartzite and think everything else is just a piece of cake.

Here's a slideshow.

Firewire Network Transfers

2005-06-01T04:29:00.000-07:00

Found on Lifehacker:

After stringing a firewire cable between my two machines, adding internal IPs, and mapping the mac drive on my PC desktop, my transfers are 20-50x faster over firewire than they ever were over the network. What used to take hours now takes seconds.

Transfering files between two computers on your network FAST!:

Get Help with Priceline Hotels at Betterbidding.com

2005-05-25T03:48:00.000-07:00

A while back I used Betterbidding.com to help me make the best bid on Priceline Hotels and ended up getting about $99 $75 a night for a Club Quarters room in Chicago when the conference rate at the nearby (four blocks away) Palmer House Hilton was over $160 $169 a night. I saved $282.

The users and especially the site manager there will bend over backwards to help you find the best rate, even going so far as to post a detailed multi-step bidding strategy to take advantage of some quirks of Priceline bidding. Basically, a rejected bid is not the end.

Here's a link to the discussion thread on the forum for the Chicago trip, which includes the bidding strategy they posted for me.

Florida Wedding Odyssey, Day Three: The Big Event

2005-05-24T06:36:00.000-07:00

I've been writing journalistic and academic articles for a decade, yet words fail me to describe James and Laura's wedding. It was perfect for them and for their guests. I hope you, dear five readers, will join me in wishing them all the best.

Here, as you can imagine, is a slideshow. Credit for the photos goes to my dad Randy, who had the presence of mind not to drop his camera in the sand on the day of his cousin's wedding.

Update: Fixed the captions on two photos. Laura's dad is Ben, not Ken.

Florida Wedding Odyssey, Day Two

2005-05-22T01:54:00.000-07:00

A beautiful rehearsal dinner capped Day Two of the Florida Wedding Odyssey (so called for its four-day length and multiple events, each requiring a separate outfit). My cousin James and his fiancee Laura looked great and James' parents, Rick and Deb, redeemed my opinion of country clubs by finding one with really quite good food. I ended the evening buried underneath a dogpile of little kids, which suited me just fine.

Here's a slideshow.

Florida Wedding Odyssey, Day One

2005-05-20T14:12:00.000-07:00

We're down here in Florida attending my cousin James' four-day wedding. Today was the BBQ, tomorrow's the rehearsal dinner, Sunday's the wedding and Monday's the brunch. First stop as always was The Crab Trap, which overlooks a lake containing actual gen-u-wine gators. You'd think there'd be alligator on the menu, but instead you have to settle for Three Crab Soup, which is just about the tastiest thing you could imagine.

Somehow I managed not to get a good shot of the bride and groom, so look for a shot of James and Laura later.

Here's a slideshow of some photos from The Crab Trap and the BBQ.

Best. Birthday. Ever.

2005-05-19T06:49:00.000-07:00

My youth is passing into history as the yawning abyss of 30 rolls forebodingly toward me from just over the horizon. Nevertheless, I maintain the ability to act like a total goofball, with the always-essential assistance of Jami, who bought me the birthday-cake hat.

Many thanks to the many friends who made my party at The Watering Hole such great fun. To the many other friends who didn't hear about the party because it was put together at the last minute -- sorry. I'll make it up to you with another party mid-summer, and probably yet another when everybody gets back to Lincoln this fall from points far and away.

Look for a slideshow of photos soon. Here's a slideshow of photos.

Comments Back Open

2005-05-15T09:13:00.000-07:00

After a long hiatus, comments are now open again. WordPress 1.5, my blogging software, appears to now have fairly bulletproof comment spam management built in. If all goes well, there will be no more ads telling you to sprout horns and pop a Levitra (no prescription required).

Shelf Road 2005: 60 Degrees, Then 60 Inches

2005-05-14T10:29:00.000-07:00

This year's Shelf Road trip went great on Day 1, with 60-degree-plus temperatures and bright sun-shiny conditions. Then the freak snowstorm (which wasn't really 60 inches, more like 16 -- which is still nuts!) hit, and Day 2 got canceled. Consequently, not a lot of photos to share. Someone needs to remember to buy Mother Nature another round of drinks before next year's Canon City conclave.

Thanks for the Mountains

2005-05-14T10:09:00.000-07:00

Credit for the pretty mountains header image goes to "pguler," whoever he or she is. Found the image on Digital Westex Image Gallery.

Ack! What Happened to the Orange and Green?

2005-05-14T09:32:00.000-07:00

Gentle five readers, you may be looking with trepidation upon johnfulwider dot com sans its gorgeous Orange and Green color scheme. Never fear, it shall make its return in somewhat different, but still shockingly handsome, form once my long-overdue upgrade to WordPress 1.5 is complete.

Red Rock Canyon and First Flatiron

2005-03-12T00:26:00.000-08:00

Chris, Devin, Jon and I took a great early-season climbing trip to Colorado the weekend of March 4.

Day One was some challenging slab climbing in a new area near Garden of the Gods called Red Rock Canyon Open Space. I led three 5.9's, which felt like 5.10's owing to the almost complete lack of hand- and footholds. Jon, our calendar boy for this update, took more than 30 minutes to lead a 5.10b and cried like a little girl most of the time. We all had a great time doing the running dyno start to a small jug on the last route of the day.

Day Two featured my first climb of the First Flatiron, a 1000-foot face that took us eight pitches. Free soloists were passing us constantly, but we stayed roped up. It got a tad chilly on the summit ridge, with sustained wind speeds of 30mph+. I'd do it again with a lot less gear on a much warmer day.

Here's a slideshow.

Colorado Climbing and Snowshoeing

2005-01-10T21:40:00.000-08:00

We went to Colorado after Christmas for our annual snowshoeing trip and managed to get some outdoor climbing in as well, owing to the fantastic 45-degree weather. I got to use the Black Diamond nut set I opened just days earlier, which made me giddy as a schoolgirl ... umm, that is, happy as a clam.

Here's a slideshow.

Have Your Cake

2004-12-26T12:08:00.000-08:00

My friends Heather and Brian got married Dec. 22. In this photo, they have not yet succumbed to the temptation to smear each other with frosting.

Blue Mounds Climbing October 2004

2004-10-24T01:37:00.000-07:00

My photos of three-fifths of the Nebraska contingent's October Blue Mounds trip are now up. More personal details will have to wait until this graduate student has time to write them, likely in 2007. Until then, this trip report on MinnesotaClimbing.com has all the news about the trip most people thought would be too cold -- but actually was perfect.

Great Study Music, for Free

2004-10-20T13:06:00.000-07:00

My definition of great study music: Loud enough to drown out the people around me at the coffeehouse/student union/bar, no words. This makes your standard orchestral classical music (or at least the Beethoven and Handel to which I listen) inadequate, as there are too many quiet passages even in compositions like Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

The solution: harps and hammered dulcimers. And it's free anywhere you've got a WiFi connection.

The provider: Magnatune. (Motto: We Are Not Evil.) It's an online source for paid music downloads and free audio streaming that splits album revenues 50-50 with the artists.

The artists: Cheryl Ann Fulton on Welsh triple harp and Jamie Janover on "innovative" hammered dulcimer. Tasty tunes.

Birthday Party

2004-09-13T12:21:00.000-07:00

Grad school is hard, m'kay? Javal's birthday party was back in August and I'm just now getting around to posting the photos. Enjoy the slideshow.

Paying Attention Doesn't Pay

2004-09-13T06:08:00.000-07:00

Today I read one of the better explanations for American political apathy: It doesn't pay to pay attention.

Time spent on public affairs competes with time acquiring information on more personal matters -- like the price and quality of cars or houses. In these cases, each of us suffers a direct cost for ignorant decisions -- I may buy a lemon unless I am careful to analyze options ahead of time. In contrast, nobody pays a price for voting ignorantly since the outcome of a major election never hinges on a single ballot. ... As a consequence, it may well be "rational" for individual voters to remain ignorant about public matters.

Bruce Ackerman and James Fishkin, Deliberation Day

You can read more on the economic concept of direct costs and the political science and psychological concept of rational choice.

W3 5P3@K 1337

2004-09-08T04:02:00.000-07:00

Continuing along the "political scientists are a weird bunch" thread, a political scientist colleague of mine pointed me today to the 1337 Generator, which lets anyone talk like a script kiddy. For example, this post translates to this in leet:

C0N7!NU!N6 @10N6 7H3 "P01!7!C@1 5C!3N7!575 @R3 @ W3!RD BUNCH" 7HR3@D, @ P01!7!C@1 5C!3N7!57 C0113@6U3 0F M!N3 P0!N73D M3 70D@Y 70 7H3 1337 63N3R@70R, WH!CH 1375 @NY0N3 7@1K 1!K3 @ 5CR!P7 K!DDY. F0R 3X@MP13, 7H!5 P057 7R@N51@735 70 7H!5 !N 1337:

Are political scientists extraordinary ... or just weird?

2004-08-25T02:35:00.000-07:00

Just as people want governmental services without the pain of taxes, they also want democratic procedures without the pain of witnessing what comes along with those procedures. Political observers have failed to understand this situation no doubt partly because many of us enjoy watching the give and take of politics. In this, we are quite different from ordinary people.

-- John Hibbing and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse, Congress as Public Enemy

Political Science Quote of the Day

2004-08-23T05:36:00.000-07:00

[M]ost of the opinions captured by conventional polling are cognitively threadbare.

--Experimenting with a Democratic Ideal:
Deliberative Polling and Public Opinion
James Fishkin, Stanford University

Now that's a spicy meatball.

Western Nebraska, Black Hills Photos

2004-08-19T14:15:00.000-07:00

My friend Javal, a much better photographer than I, produced some real gems on his recent trip up to Sturgis. Included in his latest collection are no growling hogs, but plenty of beauty both natural and unnatural. Take a look.

Black Hills Climbing Trip

2004-08-08T00:38:00.000-07:00

Photos from last month's Black Hills Climbing Trip are up, finally. ("Finally up" would have ended the sentence with a preposition, and that is something up with which I shall not put.)

The climbing season's pretty much over for me and my lame lateral meniscus. Anyone out there who's succesfully, yet inexpensively, treated this apparently quite important piece o' cartilage?

The Firefox Switch Page

2004-08-06T06:40:00.000-07:00

The new Firefox switch site is a good shot at a near-indescribably critical project: Convincing users worldwide to stop using the insecure, user-unfriendly, nonstandard and generally atrocious Internet Explorer, which Micro$haft stopped developing after it won the first battles of the Browser Wars.

Some suggestions for the switch site's improvement, in no particular order of importance:

Rotate the photos atop the page to include more diverse faces, especially in age terms. That is, more middle-aged and old people.

Consider creating separate content for "average Joes and Janes" and "Web professionals." Dumb the former content way, way down and make it relevant.

Create a printer-formatted one-page document with pictorial download and installation instructions. If I ever get time, I might just do this and offer it up for anyone to do with what they will.

Even if they leave the site as is, the Firefox - Switch creators deserve ample pats on the back.

Has Anyone Actually Seen GRIT?

2004-08-03T01:48:00.000-07:00

Remember those ads in the backs of comic books for GRIT, the amazing yet seldom-seen publication with which "fellows" could run their own business and achieve happiness and prosperity and earn (probably) chintzy prizes? "Super Marketing: Ads from the Comic Books" has a delightfully superannuated GRIT ad online, as well as scans of ads for favorites like Charles Atlas (where the muscled bully kicks sand on the 98-pound weakling, motivating said weakling to become a muscled bully himself with help from the Charles Atlas bodybuilding system) and Amazing Live Sea Monkeys ("a BOWLFUL of HAPPINESS").

(Seems like happiness was in general short supply, no?)

So I've seen with my own eyes Amazing Live Sea Monkeys and muscled bullies (both really close up, and one more uncomfortably close than the other). But I've never seen a copy of GRIT.

Have you?

Jami's Second Graduation Party

2004-07-29T02:44:00.000-07:00

Photos from Jami's Second Graduation Party are now up.

The first party was just practice, as Nebraska Wesleyan University walks its grads just once a year through the coma-inducing commencement ceremony. Wednesday's party was more practice, as Jami finished her final class that day but still doesn't have her diploma.

Coming up as soon as the diploma comes in the mail: The real graduation party. It'll be a humdinger.

Thanks, BugMeNot.com!

2004-07-14T23:49:00.000-07:00

BugMeNot.com supplies generic, privacy-saving logins for all those news sites that erect a registration wall between themselves and potential readers. It lets you easily read the odd news article without registering. There's even a Firefox extension that puts a menu item for BugMeNot in your right-click context menu.

Advice Sought on Re-Starting Business

2004-07-14T07:49:00.000-07:00

Loyal seven readers, I'd like your advice on an idea I have for re-starting a computer consulting business I let slip into nothingness a while back. I basically just need you to tell me whether you think the price I have in mind is attractive for the service I want to offer.

My old idea, which didn't work, was to charge $50 an hour for on-site computer repair and software training for businesses, and a $50 flat fee for the same services for home users. My new idea is to charge a $35 flat fee for up to two hours of software and gadget training for anybody, and not do computer repair (instead referring customers to a friend of mine). It could be people who need help with office suites and other standard applications, or, more likely, people who need to learn how to use their new digital camera, printer or CD burner and the like.

I think the old idea didn't work because a) the price was too high and b) I utterly underestimated the torturously severe problems people have with their computers. My repair skills weren't up to the task.

So, would you or someone you know pay me $35 to come to your house or office and teach you how to get the most out of your computer or other gadgets? Would you buy a gift certificate for that amount to give as a gift along with some new gadget you're buying for someone? Please let me know, and be brutally honest. No comments about my ancestry, however. The French and the Germans are nice people. :-)

Bush's Polarity Tops Clinton's

2004-07-14T01:39:00.000-07:00

And you thought the dislike of Clinton among Republicans and his popularity among Democrats represented unprecedented polar opposition in American politics.

You thought wrong. Turns out the like-Bush and hate-Bush crowds are much farther apart than the comparable Clinton crowds, according to the study reported in this article:

Bush is a measurably polarizing figure. Republican Bill McInturff of the polling firm Public Opinion Strategies uses an "intensity range" to show that public attitudes are significantly stronger on this president than they were on President Clinton in 1996 or Bush's father, former President Bush, in 1992.

When McInturff adds the percentage of Democrats who strongly disapprove of Bush (69 percent) to the percentage of Republicans who strongly approve of him (68 percent), the "intensity range" is 137 percent -- almost double the 72 percent range for the elder Bush. The range for Clinton (in this case, Republican disapproval added to Democratic approval) was 92 percent.

"It's stunning. I have never in my life seen these kinds of numbers on the level of intensity on both sides," McInturff said. "We are seeing the largest gap in American history in approval and disapproval by party. The level at which people are locking in is without precedent."