Starting a new category on this blog. The Stone is for things that don’t make it onto my other blog, The Gizzard Stone. The Gizzard Stone is a blog for parents so show their kids cool stuff on the web. So it’s a place for the overlap of interests. But it also has to be kid appropriate.

It really wanted to be able to post this over there, but it just doesn’t fit. First, there’s some Eff Bombs. Second they’re trespassing. But it is really interesting. So do give it a look:

-Mike

Finally got around to editing this video of my Ignite Reno presentation. Enjoy.

-M

That’s right. I’m posting a recipe to this blog. There’s a first time for everything (except that).

For the Reno Collective Holiday Party and Cookie Battle, I made what Danielle says is the best cookies I’ve ever made (and I’ve made my fair share of cookies). These cookies start out with the standard Snickerdoodle recipe from the better homes and gardens cook book. If you do not own the Better Homes and Gardens Cook Book, click here to order it. Otherwise you have no business cooking anything.

Maple Sugar

I picked this maple sugar up at Whole Foods. It was about $16 for 2 cups. The exact amount I needed to make a double batch of the modified Snickerdoodle cookie recipe. Maple sugar is what’s left of maple sap after all the water is boiled away. It has a good maple flavor and is not super sweet. This product is fine grained, almost a confectioner sugar, but it worked just fine for the cookies.

Maple Bacon

For this purpose I wanted a thin sliced bacon that would crisp up nicely. Smoked bacon usually stays chewy. Farmer John is the bacon of choice for a nice light, crispy strip of bacon. The maple flavor is tasty. Its not organic or fancy, but it doesn’t need to be for a cookie. I used 7 strips which is about half the pack.

I fried it up crispy, then chopped it into bits and added it to the batter at the same time as I added the flour.

Rolling the Dough

Snickerdoodles are not rolled out and cut like a christmas cookie. That’s too much effort for me. For these you just get a glob, roll it into a ball, roll it in sugar without cinnamon for this purpose. I used a turbinado sugar for these.

Then you place them on the sheet and mash them down a bit and bake for 10 minutes at 375 degrees.

Apple Butter Frosting

This is a modified butter cream frosting. Butter cream frosting is butter, cream or milk and powdered sugar. Apple butter frosting is apple butter (I used 1 16 oz jar of R.W. Knudsen Organic Apple Butter), maple syrup ( just a splash) and powdered sugar.

The Cookie

You want to take the cookies out after they deflate a bit, but before they start to brown. The maple and turbinado sugar makes the color change hard to see, but the deflation is easy to spot.

The icing came out thin since I ran out of powdered sugar, but it is very tangy and tasty. To ice the cookies I spooned a small amount on the cookie and let it flow out. They turned out well. I plan to win the Cookie Battle!

-M

If I thought about it long enough, I might be able to recall his name. Mr. Hawley, Mr. Chatsworthy… Neither of those are it, but it’s something old world sounding like that. Like someone who had had his name changed when he entered the country or had left it spelled wrong, pronounced phonetically, half deaf.

Drath was the name of the teacher who he was substituting for. English was the subject. It was a cold day. Nothing particularly noteworthy about it. Substitutes are loved for their pliability, their targetability. The advantage they have to be taken.

He was small and dark clothed. He wore a hat and an overcoat and a scarf. It was formal, and though he was in the room before we came in he took off outer vestments and laid them over Mr. Drath’s chair. It took a full minute and we watched him silently. He introduced himself to the class. Some students in the class recognized him. He’d been around, substituting for other subjects at other schools and other grades, though I’d never seen him before.

He wrote his name on the board, something longer than Hall, shorter than Habisham. Then, before we could really settle into misbehaving, working at the chinks in his armor, he started writing something none of us could make heads or tails of. The following is what he wrote:

James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher.

He gave us a few seconds to soak it in as he made his way up to the lectern, or the front of the desk, or whatever was in that classroom (I don’t recall). Nor do I recall how many commas he said were necessary, or if he gave a number. All he said was that the sentence could work, if properly punctuated.

No one had anything to say. It was pretty simple. He challenges us to punctuate it properly, then regailed us with weird stories and asides. Like a carney or a magic shop owner.

I can’t explain why I still remember that sentence, except that it’s sheer improbibility, and the idisyncratic way Mr. Hoeverhewas recited it. So matter of factly. like Bob Costas analyzing two responses of past perfect sentence construction.

“Welcome back, this is Bob Costas and what we just saw here in Mr. Hastington’s english class, made all the more incredible (a true head spinner) by the fact that he’s just a substitute teacher (of all things) is a sentence the likes of which we haven’t seen in years, if ever: James, while John had had “had,” had had, “had had,” “had had” had had a better effect on the teacher. Sports fans, I didn’t see that one coming, and I honestly have no idea how this class is going to react.”

But I do remember it, though I remember little else about the class. Not the room number, not the building name, not the name of a single other student who was in that class.

It comes to me at times when my active brain is doing some wrote task or droning activity and the pensive part of my brain needs to be occupied so it doesn’t start trouble. It comes to me. The single conjugation. Inflected by a quirky looking man and spoken like a side show barker at a carnival. Like what he was telling us with this uselss sentence was interesting, meant something or taught us a lesson that would last our whole life.

It didn’t for me, it didn’t for any of the other nameless people in that class room. I have to assume that. I don’t know. Maybe if I post this on Facebook one of my former class mates will comment and tell me their thoughts on the matter. That is if any of them remember.

For whatever reason, the sentence comes to me when I’m hiking up a hill through snow, grinding up a long climb on my bike. Taking step after step under a loaded pack. For some reason it comes to me then. When my brain has nothing to do but twiddle it’s thumbs. When what I’m doing is just basic mechanical motion, and my higher functioning brain starts to churn again on this meaningless little sentence.

The way Bob says it above is my best attempt to punctute this. It’s based on the way Mr. Hangnail said it, though slower and more nuanced. Several of us tried to get up and place the commas, just pinning tails on the donkey.

When he said it, he spouted it quickly. He had had to say it several times. He threw some commas up on the board, but it was still just a mess of hads to our eyes. We left class that day confused and disatisfied. Nothing bad happened, no one got to make the substitute squirm. No one tested his resolve. No one got the commas right. We felt we’d been cheated, in more ways than one.

Question:

Have you ever heard this sentence before? Can you punctuate better than i have above?

At long last Fahrenheit 451, one of Ray Bradbury’s master works of futurism, fiction and sci fi are finally available on iPad, Kindle, and other eReaders. This is great for those of us who love Bradbury’s stories and have longed for years for a way to simply and easily have one of his stories or a passage from Fahrenheit 541 at the ready.

This article on Cult Of Mac shows a bit of surprise that Ray Bradbury would be distrusting, and even hostile towards technology on the occasion of this book now becoming available on digital devices. They seem surprised that one of our most beloved futurists would feel this way. But to me it makes perfect sense. Other than the fact that he named his character in F451 after a pencil rather than a typewriter, here’s why Ray Bradbury hates technology based on some of his stories:

The Veldt: The Illustrated Man, 1951

In this story, parents use technology, a room that can take their children anywhere they like (think Holodeck…), to take care of their children for them. Technology replaced parental attention. Without spoiling the story for you, that goes horribly wrong.

In A Season Of Calm Weather: A Medicine for Melancholy, 1959

This is not a sci fi story, but it does show Bradbury’s trust of the human, emotional and ephemeral, at the expense of the mechanical, documentary and permenent. Which rings true when you experience the master art works at the Louvre among a throng of pushy tourists who spend enought time to snap a camera phone pic of the Mona Lisa before pushing their way out.

The main character is a huge fan of the work of Pablo Picasso who takes a trip to the south of france to soak in the atmosphere and works of Picasso.

The main character ends up finding Picasso creating free form frescoes with a stick in the wet sand of the beach as the sun is going down and the tide is coming in. The MC is faced with the choice, run to get his wife and a camera and attempt to preserve these master works, or simply enjoy them for what they are as they transit the short span of their existence.

This is a beautiful story that shows the sublime perfection of a moment, and an experience that is meant simply for you and you alone, that you can’t possibly share with anyone else. Technology has no place in these moments, and in-fact, destroys them.

The Time Machine: Dandelion Wine, 1957

This story shows how Bradbury feels that the synapses are always going to be greater than the circuits. It’s not what you think.

Two boys go to visit an elderly man in their town to hear his old stories. He is a time machine. They shout out a word and the man becomes a story, relating the past through his words and bright eyes as powerfully as being there yourself. Technology can not improve on what it means to remember, and share those memories directly with others.

The Pedestrian: Golden Apples of the Sun, 1951

I think we’ve forgotten in recent years, as many of the things predicted by scienc fiction over the last century have been realized, ipods, tablet computers, submarines, mobile phones, that most of science fiction has not been exhaulting of a utopic future, but a cautionary lesson not to proceed recklessly.

The pedestrian is a story about a man who decides to go for a walk. But in his world of the future, no one walks. Everyone stays inside their climate controlled homes, offices or automobiles comfortable, safe and convenient. It only makes sense.

But humans are goverend by emotion, spontenaity and irrationality, and Bradbury feels that that love/hate relationship with logic is where the spark of genius is in our design. So The Pedestrian decides to go for a walk at night. He is met by a police man who can find no other reason for such an activity besides malovelence, and so arrests him.

The fear is that

Technology robs us of our connection to our core humanity. Or at least it has the potential to. Simple as that. I am very conscious of this. As a person working in marketing and social media, a tech addict and a creative person, I make a conscious effort to subvert my own techno tendencies regularly and simply check out. It’s good for the soul and good for the mind.

That said, I’d buy a kindle just to have all of Bradbury’s work at my finger tips. Not as a way to preserve it from fire, as suggested in the above article. If someone wanted to rid the world of eBooks, in this connected environment, I’m sure a program could be written that could exterminate much of the content in the blink of an eye, without firemen. Not to mention that we know Amazon could easily recind our license to the work should Bradbury ever change his mind.

In the end, I don’t think Bradbury or any other author should get to dictate how the public consumes their content. A lot of Bradbury’s stories are already available online typed out and posted to the web by fans. That’s much more powerful, and hard to subvert than either physical books, or DRM controlled digital files. Even music can be ripped and played on any device we like. Only because books are hard to duplicate at home is this not posible with literature.

And I think if Bradbury were to be completely honest with himself he’d agree. Literatur is too important to dominate that way. If he fears a world where those works are targeted and destroyed at the detriment to society, then the conditions of royalties and publishing deals become meaningless. I’m happy to pay him a royalty for every copy I acquire, he deserves it. I just want to be able to hold it all in my hands at once.

-M

More Info

“Bradbury is far from the last digital holdout. Another K-12 classic, Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, is only available in print. None of Thomas Pynchon’s novels are available as e-books, although Pynchon has been characteristically quiet on the subject. Nor are any English translations of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and only a few of Marquez’s story collections and none of his classic novels are even available in Spanish. Early editions of James Joyce’s books are in the public domain, but Finnegans Wake, whose rights are tightly controlled by Joyce’s grandson, is not.” Wired Mag

“In the past, the outspoken Mr. Bradbury, now 91, has lambasted the Internet, e-books, “giant screens,” and the “moronic influence” they have on our culture. In 2009, he told The New York Times “the internet is a big distraction.” Yahoo!, he explained, had contacted him about putting one of his books on their site. “You know what I told them?” he told the Times. “’To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the internet. It’s distracting. It’s meaningless; it’s not real. It’s in the air somewhere.’” The Monitor

“However, to be fair, thanks to the Internet no one will ever be able to burn – or ban – a book ever again.” TechCrunch

Books referenced in this post

• Dandelion Wine
• Golden Apples of the Sun
• A Medicine for Melancholy
• The Illustrated Man
• Farenheit 451

-M

I’m not good at Haiku, but this popped out yesterday:

Heard fireworks last night
Thought the city was being bombed
Nice living in the hills

We used to live near downtown Reno. Reno has become a town addicted to fireworks. As if the casinos need to make their presence known. I think most of them in the summer time come from the Baseball games. Not sure why minor league ball games warrant fireworks at every game.

Reno fireworks come around 11:00 PM or so. About the end of an infant’s sleep cycle when it doesn’t take much to arouse them. We dealt with that a lot living down town. Now we live at the south end of town up on the hill. Close to the ski resort, close to trails, far from down town.

We used to sweat under our breath and cringe for the crescendo of fussing. Now we get agitated and look out the windows for plumes of smoke rising from town.

-M

I’ve spent a fair bit of time in the saddle. In the saddle of a horse, that is. I spend 2 weeks on a horse packing trip at the Adventure Unlimited Ranches in Colorado when I was in high school. It was great fun. We packed up the shoulder of Mt. Harvard in the amazing alpine passes and forests. And we spent time across the Arkansas River Valley in the big meadows and valleys. We even spend a day helping round up cattle. And after all that, I’d still ask for ketchup on my horse burger.

 Slaughter opponents pushed a measure cutting off funding for horse meat inspections through Congress in 2006 after other efforts to pass outright bans on horse slaughter failed in previous years. Congress lifted the ban in a spending bill President Barack Obama signed into law Nov. 18 to keep the government afloat until mid-December. Huffington Post

This month Obama signed a spending bill that included language lifting a ban, not on butchering horse meat, but on allowing federal funds to go into inspecting horse meat packing operations. A lot of people might have some misconceptions about this. From what I’ve gathered, horse slaughter is not illegal in the US, though it is not currently done because of the bans on transportation of horses for slaughter in most states. In fact, the last horse slaughter facility was closed in 2007 in Illinois.

The last U.S. slaughterhouse that butchered horses closed in 2007 in Illinois, and animal welfare activists warned of massive public outcry in any town where a slaughterhouse may open. Huffington Post

There is no market for human consumption for horses in the US as even for those of us who don’t think feral horses are “wild” still have a negative gut reaction to the thought of eating Mr. Ed.

Horse meat is rarely eaten in the United States. Horses are raised instead as pets, for working purposes (Farming, police work, and ranching), or for sport. Horse meat holds a very similar taboo in American culture, the same as the one found in the United Kingdom previously described, except that it is rarely even imported. read more

Although there are reports of Americans dining on horse meat a recently as the 1940s, the practice is virtually non-existent in this country, where the animals are treated as beloved pets and iconic symbols of the West.  Huffington Post

It probably wouldn’t get much play as human consumption is not a viable market for horse meat here and couldn’t be relied on as a use for the excess horse population. read more

The US horse population is estimated at 6.9 million, with an average age of 10.4 y (11). Assuming a 5% to 10% annual population replacement rate, at least 500 000 horses must leave the US horse population by death each year. Clearly, in recent years, slaughter for human consumption has not been the primary method of stabilizing the equine population in the USA. read more

Since I live in Nevada, “wild” horses feature heavily in the cultural fabric of the state. Wild horses are considered “Majestic,” and “icons of the west.” Which they are. Majesty and iconism are constructs of human emotion, and emotion is a basic human instinct. Just like anger, joy and hunger. Check out this video I produced when I worked for Twelve Horses.

This video is one sided. That’s all it was intended to be. It’s not a news video. It’s a promo to tug at your heart and make you want to help save wild horses. At a company that used horses are part of our brand, it worked for us. Hopefully some of my ecologist friends will chime in in the comments with a more reasoned view.

Still if I saw some horseburger at Whole Foods, I’d grab a pound and make a burger, or maybe some burritos.

-M

photo at top by RenoTahoe on Flickr

A few Weeks ago I posed this question on the social Q/A site Quora.com:

Assuming that “The Sneetches and Other Stories,” by Dr. Seuss has a theme that the 4 Stories adhere to, what is that theme and how does “Too Many Daves” fit that theme? The Sneetches, The Zax and What was I Scared Of all deal with prejudice, either institutional, self imposed or spontaneous, while Too Many Daves is just silly and amusing.

I have yet to get an answer.

I asked my mom, who can recite all of the stories from memory (which is necessary since the final story, “What Was I Afraid Of” is dark type on dark background and is impossible to read in dim light that lets a kid fall asleep). Her thinking is that it was just comic relief. I agree, to a certain extent, but I think that comic relief happens for a reason and that reason is the theme that binds them all together.

It doesn’t make sense

Too Many Daves is the the theme, here’s why. Sneetches, The Zax and What Was I Afraid Of all deal with real world issues in non-sequitor ways.

Sneetches is a story about racism.

• Assumption: the value of a person can be determined from superficial physical characteristics.

The Zax is about Fear of Change.

• Assumption: The way I have been doing things my whole life, and generational knowledge of my ancestors is all I need to get by and if i deviate from that I am less of a person, or Zax.

What Was I Afraid Of is a simple cautionary tale warning agains xenophobia. The book was published in 1961, a time when the US was in and out of wars with people who looked and acted very differently from Americans.

• Assumption, people who look different from me are to be feared.

The role of Too Many Daves is to illustrate the folly of the assumptions in the other stories.

• Assumption: having 23 boys and giving them all the same name could save trouble when writing names on the inside collars of shirts.

It’s a silly book. All of Dr. Seuss’ books are silly. Kids aren’t interested in real things, not because they are boring, but because real things take a lot more consideration and thought and invoke certain parts of the brain that deal with anxiety and fear that would overwhelm the theme of the story. With Sneetches, Zax and self animating pants, even very young kids understand that the basic universe of the book is not real. But, with enough repitition, they’ll recognize the theme when it popps up IRL later on. And the theme is that some of the cultural assumptions that inform the way we deal with other people are as silly as naming all your kids Dave.

-M

There’s nothing better than a nice morning hike. The early sun, for an hour after sunrise at least, is still between worlds. Most people are the same at those hours. Like someone hit the dimmer switch and you crank it up slowly. If it stayed too long you’d always be looking for a chain to pull to make it brighter. It’s like that in the higher latitudes. The transitions go on and on in low slow angles.

It’s not really like that of course. You get what you get and you don’t get upset. You live in a place long enough, you get accustomed to being where you are and you don’t notice it. It is night, and then it becomes day. A bike tire is much the same. At point A you have 35 lbs of pressure, and at point b you have just 5. At some point you break the seal and everything is the same.

Most things aren’t truly emergent. If you’re fast enough, or slow enough there is always a lengthy transition. If they found nutrinos that can travel FTL (Faster Than Light) then maybe the Department of They can locate a particle and/or a wave that is A and becomes B without spending time as either, neither or both. Until then only bike rides become hikes instantaneously with a simple realization that it can’t be fixed on the trail.

-M

The below is an article i wrote for the Family Pulse for June 2011. It’s either in your mailbox (if you have a kid in school) or it’s on it’s way.

Todd Kristie and Ginnie backpacking

One of the awesome things about living where we do is the proximity to the epic alpine terrain of the eastern Sierra Nevada. Now that I’m a dad, my definition of “epic” has changed from long backpacking treks, to nice casual hikes in the backcountry. Tahoe has a ton of great short hikes that once were nice snack stops on the way to a farther destination, but are now about as far as we can get before the little dude needs a break, nap, food, change, etc…

We missed the boat last year. Our son, Bowie, was born on mother’s day so by the end of backpacking season, he was only 6 months old and not quit up for an overnight on the trail.

But some of our friends were able to get out for overnight trips with young kids. I surveyed them and here are some tips for getting youngsters out on the trail overnight.

Todd and Ginnie crossing a creek

Pack and Packing

We use the Deuter Kid Comfort pack. My friends are equally split between that and the Kelty FC pack. Both are light weight, comfortable aluminum frame packs that hold a kid and a bit of gear. Tennile O’Meara and her husband Shawn took their daughter Sidney out to Winnemucca Lake last year and used the Kelty pack. “It was not easy to pack,” she says. “First we got out all of the gear we usually bring and all the gear we thought the baby would need (almost gave up right then).” They then whittled their gear down, setting aside luxury [heavy] items and, “continued on packing and repacking until we got it right (or at least right enough).”

Todd and Ginnie on the trail

Usually one person carries the kid and all the kid gear, amounting to a standard to heavy backpacking load. Then the spouse carries all the gear for the couple, which amounts to a heavy to really heavy pack.

Meals and Snacks

Unless you give your kid a lot of cheese and perishables, the normal snacks and food will work as backpacking food. If your kid is still nursing, ore on on formula, that’s a super easy (and light) solution. Kristie Connolly gave her daughter Ginnie gold fish, nuts and kid cliff bars for snacks and shared their freeze-dried backpacker food from REI for meals. Barrett and Dawn Donovan brought their son Caleb’s regular food and Formula for snacks.

Tips

“I would have not done such a long trip in such a short time.” Says Connoly. She recommends doing just a few miles a day so your kid can get down and play more.

Ginnie having some fun!

“Have a backup plan.” says Donovan. They had to bail on a backpacking trip in favor of car camping and day hikes when a last minute melt-down made an extended hike impractical.

“Pick a location you are already familiar with,” suggests O’Meara. “Don’t go when you think it will be buggy, don’t bring (many) toys, relax.”

Where to go

The Tahoe area is filled with great short hikes that are a mellow Micro-backpacking excursion for families with small kids. As the Sierra snow melts off, here are a few close by as well as one more further afield.

Lake Margret

• Mileage: 2.5
• Region: Carson Pass
• Map: National Geographic Lake Tahoe Basin
• Activities: When it’s hot, this is a great swimming hole with rocks to jump off into the water.

Winnemucca Lake

• Mileage: 2 – 3 (depending on where you start)
• Region: Carson Pass, Caples Lake
• Map: USDA A Guide to The Mokelumne Wilderness
• Activities: Beautiful high altitude alpine lake with many day hikes and landmarks to explore.

Gilmore lake

• Mileage: 3.7
• Region: Tahoe, Fallen Leaf Lake
• Map: National Geographic Lake Tahoe Basin
• Activities: This one is a bit more strenuous, but the high alpine lake is beautiful and you can easily do a day hike from here to the summit of Mt. Tallac at 9745 feet.

Long Lake

• Mileage: 2.8
• Region: Bishop, CA: Bishop Pass
• Map: Tom Harrison Maps: Bishop Pass
• Activities: There are many stops along this hike for resting, exploring and fishing. Also, it’s right below Bishop Pass which crosses the Sierra Crest with stunning views down into La Conte Canyon of the upper Kings River, Dusy Basin and the west face of The Palisade Peaks.

Resources:
USFS Map: A Guide to The Mokelumne Wilderness

National geographic Maps

• Lake Tahoe Basin
• Yosemite SE
• Mammoth Lakes, Mono Divide

Tom Harrison Maps

• Bishop Pass
• Desolation Wilderness
• Hoover Wilderness Region
• Mammoth High Country
• Order Tom Harrison Maps

Mike Henderson is an avid mountaineer, climber and backpacker looking forward to his first summer exploring the backcountry with his son.