A few ‘blogs back I mentioned recreation.gov. One of the other egov sites linked to from there is byways.org, which is a database of info about the DOT/FHA’s National Scenic Byways.

It works much the same way as recreation.gov, but it has an added bonus: There’s a place to write down your travel experiences on the byways. Also, the maps are excellent.

As a good example, Trail Ridge Road/Beaver Meadow Road, through Rocky Mountain National Park, which is one of the best drives on the whole of the planet.

Also interesting is the way the photos and other digital media are organized. Which is to say, they’re completely organized. You can create personal collections of images you wish to download. The problem is that they haven’t quite worked out how to deal with copyright and licensing issues, so you only ever see ridiculously small thumbnails of images, and you can’t actually download your collection. But it’s nice that the infrastructure is there, accessible to the public, and the licensing stuff will eventually (we hope) get worked out.

I want to form a rock band that’s fifteen guitar players, just so we can cover King Crimson’s ‘Red.’

Spring wakes with a yawn
A long, gusting yawn that lasts all morning
A yawn that pulls the sun over the horizon

Spring hangs out in bed
Warm under the covers
Wishing it weren’t so cold still

She rolls over onto her back and stares at the ceiling
And thinks about what the day will be
What the last few days were like

She ruminates over the ice ages and global warming
Stonehenge and the Tropic of Cancer
And what all that could mean

She pokes one foot out from under the covers
A flash of polished toenails from the darkness
She’s almost ready, but the covers are so inviting

More examples of your tax dollars at work: recreation.gov

I think it’s a great site, but the name’s just too ironic. It’s links to info about recreational-use federal lands from national parks to BLM tracts. Maps and weather forecasts (from the National Weather Service) for each site.

The site says it was last updated on 11/21/2003, which is frustrating since I’ve tried to find a web site that does exactly what this web site does on at least a couple of occassions since that date, and somehow I wasn’t able to. So it’s pretty well hidden.

But it also shows that someone is on the ball in the egov program, which basically wants to make government web sites interoperative, which recreation.gov does admirably.

Read this. It’s really interesting.

This just in…

U.S. Unloading WMD in Iraq

TEHRAN (Mehr News Agency) – Over the past few days, in the wake of the bombings in Karbala and the ideological disputes that delayed the signing of Iraq’s interim constitution, there have been reports that U.S. forces have unloaded a large cargo of parts for constructing long-range missiles and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the southern ports of Iraq.

A reliable source from the Iraqi Governing Council, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Mehr News Agency that U.S. forces, with the help of British forces stationed in southern Iraq, had made extensive efforts to conceal their actions.

He added that the cargo was unloaded during the night as attention was still focused on the aftermath of the deadly bombings in Karbala and the signing of Iraq’s interim constitution.

The source said that in order to avoid suspicion, ordinary cargo ships were used to download the cargo, which consisted of weapons produced in the 1980s and 1990s.

He mentioned the fact that the United States had facilitated Iraq’s WMD program during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq and said that some of the weapons being downloaded are similar to those weapons, although international inspectors had announced Saddam Hussein’s Baath regime had destroyed all its WMD.

[..]

Yeah, but it’s in an Iranian newspaper, so who ya gonna believe, right?

And the award for the most self-consciously misogynistic craigslist houseshare ad goes to…

$5 – Wanted: 3 Hot Girls

I’m thinking about assholes. Motherfuckers. Fuckstains. Those kinds of people. The people who aren’t even pretending to be kind. The people who I’d categorize as not worth the effort of entering and turning, in the Aikido sense. The ones who define the boundaries of non-attachment, a ring of fire around me that must be fueled in the most expensive way possible.

Now, in my defense, I’ll say that I only lump them into this category, not into a monolithic ‘enemy’ status. There’s nothing that they have in common, at least in my mind, except that they’re human beings struggling with the same crap I am, and dealing with it in a way that I find unacceptable. Every slobbering frog and every mangy dog, they’re just frogs and dogs.

This is a tarot card. It’s the four of disks, in the Thoth deck, ‘Power.’ Power comes from boundaries and barriers. The lesson here (for me, anyway) is that your power is defined by the boundaries it pushes against; without the walls and the moat, the card would just display four towers, and these towers would be vulnerable, and much less powerful. The castle can only measure its power against an invading army.

I don’t want invading armies attacking my castle, and I don’t want to be an invading army measuring my power against anyone else’s castle. I don’t want power, then, perhaps. I just want…

To welcome the invading army, and give it a beer, and sit it down on my couch and say, “What’s with the puffed-up invading army attitude?” Maybe that’s the ultimate ‘enter and turn.’

If only it would work.

“Every slobbering frog
And every mangy dog
That crosses my path
Reminds me…

You’re my precious jewel
You’re my precious one
My compensation.

[..]

Every slobbering frog
And every mangy dog
That crosses my path
Conspires to remind me

I love your brain.”

(She also sings that: “Silence can be a beautiful thing/But only when it can be broken/With a kind word/With a soft word/With a word/Our love unspoken”)

The Second Superpower is going to voice its opinion again, on March 20th.

If you’re in Seattle, you can march in March.