Aelscha is going to be working on this coming Saturday (June 4th, 2005) and since the weather looks like it will be nice I was hoping to get in more hiking. If you’re interested in joining me, please drop a comment or send an email as soon as possible so I can plan. Thanks!

On Sunday Aelscha and I hiked Mt. Flume with her family. The weather was nicer than last week’s climb of Moosilauke, but we didn’t spent much time at the summit ridge due to approaching rain and thundershowers. Once again, Gennie took photos although I did not. I promise on my next hike I’ll take some pictures with my own camera. What I need to do is make sure I don’t pack it in the bottom of my pack next time!

Because of the impending thunder showers and an accidental detour which took an hour , we didn’t continue on to Mt. Liberty. However, our hike was substantial, over 12 miles. The approach we took was from the Pemigewasset wilderness side (Osseo Trail), so there was substantial hiking across relatively flat ground before beginning the vertical climb.

Yesterday aelscha and I climbed Mt. Moosilauke with her family. The weather was pretty rough, raining at the bottom and sleeting/snowing up top. Thus, no views, but a successful hike nonetheless. The weather lately has been absolutely dismal, especially on the weekends. Next week we’ll be climbing Mt. Liberty/Mt. Flume. Hopefully the weather will cooperate then. Hiking in the wet isn’t a huge problem, but not having a view from the summit is a bit of a letdown.

The Moosilauke trail we took (Gorge Brook Trail) was very pleasant, and I would like to do the hike again in warmer, nicer weather. We didn’t get to see any of the nice views from the summit. Despite carrying my camera I never took any pictures. Aelscha’s sister Gennie brought her new waterproof camera and took lots of pictures, including those below.

The House has approved a bill altering homeland security priorities for next year. Amongst the many changes, the bill would scale back the color coded terror alert system that has been thoroughly mocked since its debut after September 11th.

It is about time. The color coded alert was the most useless piece of information ever dispensed by our government. The terror alert has been raised several times, without an inkling of information about why or what the public should do about it. The House bill would require DHS to tailor warnings to specific locations and events. This is a step in the right direction. One of the biggest problems about the previous alert system was it did a good job of instilling panic and fear without ever dispensing useful information. The problem was so bad that the terror alert scheme turned into a big joke. To add insult to injury, DHS director Tom Ridge admitted the warnings often had little basis in reality.

I hope that the new system will work better. Getting the general public to raise awareness during times of potential attack is probably one of the most valuable resources the United States has. However, any sort of “terror alert” is very prone to suffer from “crying wolf” issues if misused.

I took some photos at aelscha’s frisbee game this afternoon. I wish it had been brighter, but some of the shots are still pretty cool.

nchanter suggested that I set up Livejournal syndication for this site and offered to set it up (a paid account is required), so our feed is now listed on livejournal. If you are Livejournal inclined, you can add this to your friends list and use your friends list to read the blog.

Of course, you could also use a real RSS reader to read your livejournal friends, blogs, and news sites.

The New York Times has another one of their excellent interactive graphics about class and class mobility. Fascinating data, thought provoking, and arranged in a very unique way. I think the most interesting part is how different income classes responded to questions about what it takes to get ahead in life. The richest demographics thought that natural ability and a good education were more important. The poorest demographic considered “coming from a wealthy family” to be more important than any other demographic.

Via Kevin Drum, who has made his own observations.

Today was an absolutely gorgeous day. I biked to UNH and back, and it felt excellent as usual. I only hope the weather will hold up so I can get some hiking in this weekend. I also received my new memory card for my camera (purchased for our Africa trip this summer). So, I took some pictures to test it out. As usual, you can click on each picture to see a full size version in the gallery.

Yeah, that really is a cat in a stroller. Two women were “walking” the cat in the stroller.

For people who SSH to threepwood.isomerica.net and use SSH’s public key authentication, support for the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys2 has apparently been completely dropped. The file has been deprecated since 2001, but personal experience shows that as of recently sshd no longer considers the deprecated file. The solution is simple: All of your authorized public keys now go into one file, ~/.ssh/authorized_keys.

I have upgraded the website to Wordpress 1.5. A few additional changes have been made. The CAPTCHA for commenting is gone (huzzah!) replaced by the WP-Hashcash plugin. This plugin requires the commenter’s browser to compute an MD5 hash of a random value and return it along with the form. It is transparent to the commenter, but it does require JavaScript. I still think this will be a better solution, if it works. I’d like to set it up so users can register, which will enable them to bypass all the hurdles, but this is a secondary goal.

MSNBC has a fascinating set of articles about the future of evolution. I think the article about diet is especially interesting. I’ve always seen lack of regular physical activity to be a major factor in our “obesity epidemic.” The difference between lean meats from hunted game and meat from lazy domesticated animals did not occur to me. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors also spend a full day’s work being active. This is something few Americans do these days.

Here is my bike route to UNH. It is exactly eight miles, according to the car odometer.