What's Up, Hoh?

I have just returned from the forest moon of Endor my friends. Not the friendly home of the Ewoks, but the Endor that might have been if the Empire had been successful in it’s mission to colonize the entire Universe. (I have to pause to catch my breath as our shuttle nearly hit a black beast. The beast turned out to be a big black cow, so lets get out of here.)

As we drove into Hoh Rainforest in Olympic National Park, Highway 101 was lined with re-growth forests. These are feeble attempts that the logging industry makes to justify its clear-cutting deforestation methods. An overly proud sign along the road told us that the last harvest had been in 1984 and replaced with seedlings. Today, these trees stand not too much taller than I do, shadows of the giants they “replace.” They won’t be able to grow to their full potential until well after I am gone, but when is the next harvest planned for? 2036. Oh, how noble of you Pacific Coast Lumber, letting these majestic plants grow to adolescence only to cut them down for your own profit. And what do they do with the slash that is left behind? Burn it, releasing even more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.


Ironically, this is happening directly across the highway from a massive National Park. I applaud Teddy Roosevelt for establishing the Department of the Interior and the National Park system, but perhaps he didn’t go far enough. Sure, the Parks preserve some of the most beautiful natural parts of our country, but it also introduces humans into these delicate ecosystems. Furthermore, why do humans have the right to set aside this grove for preservation, while the adjacent forest can be abused? What about the millions of organisms that are snuffed out in the process? I’ve seen the other end of the logging industry and it sickens me to think that these plants are going to be mulched and then glued back together and coated with plastic. I would rather have all stainless steel cabinets in my house and brick siding and breathe a little easier.

So, I remind you to keep vigilant Rebels. We may have blown up the Death Star, but we can’t let the Empire win. The fires are still burning and the saws are still running.

The Weather Report

Here I am sitting in a coffee shop (I don't drink coffee) in Seattle (and no it is not Starbucks or Seattle's Best, it's Kaladi Brothers, thanks for asking) to use the internet (a weeks worth of business in a few hours). Dreary. The weather that is. My spirits are high as they can be when I haven't seen the sun in days. I miss you all, especially my sweet Mollypop (guys, snicker if you want to, I don't care). I'm ready to come back. I want to see some snow, it's well past my birthday and I have yet to see those tranquil flakes drop from the clouds. That's all that really makes a good excuse for overcast heavens for days on end for me (of course as far as flakes, California definately has the most of them).

Strangely enough, even though the weather sucks here, the people are really nice. In this case I think Ssack is in good hands. I swear I get more smiles from people walking down the street than I do in Boulder. Perhaps it is because there are a lot of rich, pretentious assholes in Boulder, I don't know (but there are of course plenty of warm, wonderful people too). I guess maybe people in Colorado become spoiled by the sunshine (myself included) and don't feel like they need to brighten anyone's day because our closest star is already doing the job. Either way, many of the people here carry the sun within themselves.

This carries on from a conversation between Ssack, my dad, and I. Ssack had read that Vancouver had the third highest quality of life in the world. We decided that this was true if; you were a multi-millionaire and could afford to have a high quality of life in Vancouver, and weather didn't factor into the equation. It was about the same there as it is here, overcast with constant sprinkles (which are neither rainbow or chocolate as it turns out). I can't imagine what Vancouver has that Denver doesn't (I certainly didn't see it).

Well, whatever, don't let me bring you down, it's just the weather. I'll be back in the sunshine soon to get my color back. Love.

End of the Continent

The Pacific Ocean certainly is humbling. After hacking my way through the Washington rainforest, I stood on the water's edge looking into an infinate stretch of water and fog. The tanker ships floated lost on a horizon of seemingly endless and empty field of tossing water. I stand here at the edge of land and think about how random that it is that I am here today.

Our planet, our "spaceship Earth," as Ssack would call it, is the one inhabitable chunk of iron in our Milky Way galaxy (at least to the extent of our collective human knowledge). The Milky Way is about 100,000 light-years across while the diameter of the Earth is a mere 12,740 kilometers. This planet accounts for far less than 1% of the "stuff" (gases, rocks, other planets) in our immediate galaxy, much less the entire universe.

Now bring it down it even closer to home. The surface area of Earth is about 510,065,600 kilometers squared, and 70% of that surface is covered by water. That leaves about 153,019,680 square kilometers for us humans and the land animals we share it with. Even still a huge amount of that land mass cannot be inhabited by our species effectively.

I turn around and look back at the continent that is nearly 10,000 kilometers across (keep in mind that I can really only see about 20 meters of thick underbrush)and think about how small I really am. I pull off a big impact in my everyday life, but that is really only in human terms. My walk through the forest floor will impact billions of organisms, perhaps even end the lives of millions of them, but won't have anything to do with the other 99.9999999% of this continent, even less of the Earth, and won't even touch the thousands of delicate ecosystems hidden beneath the surface of the ocean. If our planet went the way of Alderon, it would have even less of an impact on the universal level.

As we walked back to the road, Ssack mentioned that he felt that these forests were made for the dinosaurs. All the ferns and thick growth in a thick, humid, and rainy climate transported us back to the age of what are now but fossils. These massive creatures went extinct through no fault of their own, whether it was by way of a comet impact or a catclysmic climate change. Today we may be standing on the brink of yet another Earth shattering climate change, but this time it very well may be a climate change percipitated by the planet's dominate species. Six billion and counting. Perhaps it was time that we let those tiny organisms that think that we are massive re-inherit the Earth.

The Transitive Property of Drinking

Recent research on subjects who attend house parties and situations were alcohol is present has yielded an interesting theory. This theory states that when a subject comes into contact with peers who are significantly more intoxicated than themselves, they seem to absorb and internalize the behavior exhibited by these peers. Example, a female subject walks into a party. Her friends, who are on the dance floor' immediately begin screaming when the subject approaches them. The subject who has just arrived, immediately begins mimmicking this behavior, thus the Transitive Property. This theory is in no way gender restricted, but has been observed more commonly amongst females.

In order for the Transitive Property to occur, three criteria must be met:
1. The subject must have consumed at least one alcoholic beverage over the course of the night, but has not exceeded the threshold of intoxication (.08 BAC).
2. The subject's friends must have consumed significantly more alcohol than the subject and must exceed the threshold for intoxication.
3. The venue of observation must be deemed a "good time" or "happening place" by both the subject and the subject's friends.

The Transitive Property mainfests itself in many different ways, but the overall effect is a seeminly heightened state of inebriation on the subject. This may include loss of inhabitions such as: loss over volume control of the voice, excessive dancing, inablitity to control one's verbal and body language. Other side effects include those commonly associated with alcohol consumption: slurred speech, inability to control one's actions, inability to control one's body or to stand up, or blurring of one's vision.

All of these side effects are related to the subject's "feeling" more intoxicated, without actually "being" more intoxicated. It is very important not to confuse this theory with what is known as the "Placebo Effect." In the Placebo Effect, the subject consumes a drug and begins to exhibit the percived behaviors associated with that drug. For example, a party where non-alcoholic beer is served and the subjects all act drunk even though no one is actually impaired. The Transitive Property explicitly implies that no more of the drug is consumed, yet the subject begins to feel and act more effected by that drug, seemingly through osmosis.

From Alcohol Studies in the Modern World
by Dr. Suss Oren

New Zero Kananda

I had always wanted to live in Canada, especially to escape the political turmoil of my own country, but I am beginning to think that maybe I was wrong. I'll start at the beginning.

We drove in to the country yesterday afternoon to stay for a few days. Apart from Ssack's nervousness and stress at the border checkpoint (the string of questions was accompanied by menacing stares that seemed to suggest that we were doing something wrong by coming here), the crossing went well. Immediately we were thrown into the metric system, which I would certainly not complain aboot, because come on, it just makes more sense. After getting over the initial excitement that gas was just over a dollar (a litre it turns out), we headed up to Vancouver. Before we even made it across the bridge into the city traffic came to a dead stop. In their infinate wisdom, the planners of the city neglected to have any freeway access into downtown. So we found ourselves crawling through miles of suburban sprawl to get to the city. To make matters worse, in Canada you can park in the right lane of traffic on weekends. That's right, there is an entire lane that you pretty much can't use on Saturday/Sunday because there are cars parked there (in addition to the increased volume of traffic due to weekend tourism). The nightmare continues through town as the main streets are stopped due to a totally inefficient light system. Instead of synchronizing, the lights turn red as soon as you get to them, after you just waited at the last intersection.

I don't know if this goes for all major cities in Canada, but here in Vancouver it is nearly impossible to get into a bar. We walk down Granville (the main street) and just to get a drink you must either (a) wait for a table as if it was a restaurant, (b) pay an outrageous $15 cover (even at 2, before last call, they were trying to get at least $10 out of us), or (c) wait in line for up to half an our for a bar that doesn't even appear to be at full capacity (by which time your buzz has worn off because of the lack of drinks in your hand). A little frustrating, and we even had a guide who had been to the city a few times before.

So we finally do find a suitable venue for drinking in one of the cheaper parts of town. Let me preface this by saying that Canadian people are really nice, maybe a little too nice. We walk up to the bar and instead of a crowd of people all vying for drinks, there is a single file line to get drinks. There are barstools lining the bar, but in order to get served you have to wait in the line. After the initial confusion of deciphering what $5 double highballs were (Canadian for double wells), we got our drinks and I serenaded the crowd with a thrilling version of Psycho Killer, while totally butchering the French verse.

Every bar we went to we were required to provide two ID's. I hadn't even expected to get carded, being that I am well over the legal age and haven't been carded at a bar in a big city on this whole trip. This brings me to my next observation. It seems to me that when you can drink in a bar at age 19, by age 23 it seems like everyone is pretty much over it. I swear I was by far the oldest patron of the places we went. Maybe the older cats hang out somewhere that you can't see from the street.

Finally, this place is ungodly expensive. I spent my entire budget for this trip to Canada in one night on drinks (about $70 after paying for the hostel). Drinks are all over $4 and domestic cigarettes cost about $10. At least I have a free place to stay for the next two nights. To say the least I wouldn't really recommend Vancouver as a vacation spot. Maybe next time I'll try Montreal...