Ursus Pacificus

This slashdot story tells of yet another e-voting system that has fallen on its face… this time in Finland… Yes, the land that Linus Torvalds called home can’t figure out how to add one to a number.

I wish someone would explain to me why e-voting is so freaking hard to implement. I mean we have computers doing all sorts of other things, like counting our money, controlling our ICBMs, landing the space shuttles, and delivering our porn… why can’t they simply tally a few simple selections?

Jiminy Christmas!

Here’s how you do it:

1. Voter arrives at polling place
2. Voter’s identity is verified by octogenarian polling-place volunteer
3. Volunteer presses button on modified parking garage ticket machine
4. Ticket machine dispenses a ticket which has a unique serialized number
5. Volunteer gives ticket to Voter without associating the ticket to the voter on any documentation
6. Voter goes to voting machine
7. Voter inserts ticket into voting machine, which authenticates the voter’s unique opportunity to vote and logs the unique ID
8. Voter votes
9. Voting machine echoes back selections for verification
10. Voting machine dispenses a paper receipt logging Voter’s selections and ticket number
11. Voting machine also tallies selections and ticket number to internal paper record
12. Voter keeps ticket and receipt

In the event of a recount, paper logs from voting machines are used. Failing that, voters who kept their receipts (civic duty, kids) can bring them back to be tallied.

Yet another patentable idea I turn over to you, the people.

I’ll tell you what… if people are having trouble writing computer programs that simply increment a number, maybe it’s time to start moving away from all these Integrated Development Environments and High-Level, Object Oriented programming languages, and just write the frickin’ thing in C or something. Deep down, it would look something like this:


#include<stdio.h>

main( )
{
int cand;
cand = cand++;
printf("Candidate Fred Foobar has %d votes",cand);
}


Obviously, you’d have to have structures in place to store the votes (of more than one candidate, no less), print the receipts and the logs and so on… but… you can get most of that stuff from “cookbooks” for your chosen language.

Damn it, people… the code’s already mostly written.

I have an idea. Hear me out.

You know how we have all these large sectors of the economy that depend on Federal subsidies and/or price supports… like farming, nuclear energy, petroleum exploration, education, basic research… business ventures that will never be profitable…. Know what I mean? There are activities on which we all depend… like farming, or certain energy production methods… but which are not viable or sensible for any prudent business, no matter how large, to pursue. In the past, Federal subsidies have been paid out either as price support for an activity with too low a market value, and too high an expense to justify engaging in it (farming), and to support the use of services which are needed but priced way out of reach for the target market (healthcare, education, aging, housing and so on).

Here’s what I think we should do:

Make a list of everybody that currently gets any kind of subsidy. Of those, you separate them out, based on whether the recipient of the subsidy is the supplier (a business) or the end-consumer ( a poor, old or unfortunate individual). You take all recipients of the supplier subsidies, and you send them each a letter. The letter would say something like this:

Dear leech:

As you know, The economy is in rough shape, and the fact that the Federal Government is paying billions of dollars in subsidies to operations like yours is not helping. Here’s what we’re going to do to remedy the situation:

1. Effective immediately, your subsidy payments will stop.
2. If, at any time, you cannot operate the activity without gouging your consumers (i.e. raising prices no more that the annual rate of inflation), or if the activity fails (or more accurately, you fail at it), the Federal Government will nationalize the activity and operate it as a public utility.

Thank you for your cooperation,

Uncle Sam

Oh… and to make sure all the utilities can operate as cheaply as possible, you’d need to have a cheap labor pool…. Oh, how would you do that?!…. Oh, I know… The US Military’s been underpaying its people since the dawn of time, and they can’t quit. Wow! What an idea! So, here’s what you do… You make it mandatory that before the age of 27 all physically and mentally able people must have satisfied a 6-year NESO (National Education and Service Obligation)… some people would call it a draft or conscription, but it’s not that at all…

You see, education is another one of those areas that sees a lot of subsidies. More than a little of that money goes to things that do nothing to educate the students, but go a long way toward elevating the prestige of the school and its staff. So instead of subsidizing these schools, you send them the same letter you sent the farmers and the nuclear power plant operators. If any of them become non-viable without subsidies, the government nationalizes them, and suddenly you have a nationally accredited national university system. What you do this these universities, though, is you compress the learning schedule, weed out all the time and attention wasting junk like sports, fraternities, shopping, drinking, TV, having a job, raping each other and so on. The only focus is learning the material. That’s the student’s JOB, and it’s obligated by law under the new NESO plan. Here’s how it works:

You have two obligations, totaling six years, and to be completed by the age of 27.
1. You must get an education. At a minimum, you must get an AS in something viable for employment (sorry, basket-weaving and rock stacking don’t count). You are not obligated to use the National University System, but it is available, free of charge.
2. You must serve your country. Not necessarily in the military, you could serve in the Peace Corps, or with a number of government agencies, like the Department of Interior, or NOAA, or FEMA. The NESO plan would also have arrangements with organizations like Habitat for Humanity and Doctors Without Borders. The pay would only be a stipend, like in the military, but they would feed, clothe and house you, like in the military.
3. The ratio of time spent in service versus education is variable, based on the member’s intentions (which must be established at enrollment), however, each individual must complete a 6-year obligation, including no less that two years service and two years of education. The order is also variable based on the member’s plan
4. If you’ve started but have not completed the second phase of your obligation by your 27th birthday, you stay until it’s completed. If you haven’t at least started phase 2 by your 27th birthday, there’s a nice bed for you in Leavenworth, KS.

Why on Earth would the American people support such a whacked-out program as this? Well, yes, it would cost money, but if the operations of these formerly subsidized activities can be made to break even, or better still be profitable under government control, and with a low-paid work force, then that’s saving taxpayer money, isn’t it?

By making college-level education and national service mandatory for all sound-minded, able-bodied people, we help to advance the country, because, if there’s one thing that someone can pick up in the military (and similar experiences), it’s discipline. Discipline is not about marching straight or saying “SIR, YES SIR!”, it’s about 2 things: 1) Knowing what needs doing, and doing it, and 2) Remaining calm, observant and responsive. There’s not enough of that kind of discipline in this country. The population is growing more ignorant, irrational and chaotic with each passing day. The generations currently in the workforce and on the voting rolls are already lost (me among them), in terms of being helped by a program like this, but the ones coming up behind us could be helped immeasurably. Austria, Mexico, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Israel, Malaysia, the Republic of China (Taiwan), Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland all have compulsory military service. We could make military service just one option on a menu of civil and (secular) charitable directions in which a member could satisfy his or her obligation to serve. Park rangers are needed, border patrol agents, air traffic controllers… you name it… in fields like these, the service side of the obligation could be like a paid internship… a foot in the door they would not otherwise have gotten.

Another thing a program like this would do for the country… it would tend to break the cycle of poverty, because it would gently but firmly remove people from an unfavorable situation, give them an education and a job, as well as a chance to see life from a perspective other than “the streets” (y’know, where Vanilla Ice grew up). Even if the education doesn’t stick and they hate the job, at least it gets them out of the routine of shootings, rapes and drug deals long enough that they might see another way to conduct their lives.

Certainly, not everyone can be saved by a program like this, but I think it would serve the country (and the people) in several important ways:

1. Use Federal money (your money) to advance the lot of the poorest among us, rather than lining the pockets of people whose pockets are already thoroughly lined
2. Reduce the corruption of the Federal Government by reducing the routes by which Representatives and Senators become beholden to special interests. If you can’t operate your farm at break-even point without Federal subsidies, then why are you in the middle? We’ll pull you out of the mix, put a bunch of college-educated kids in there, earning half what you are, and get the job done.
3. Reduce crime and poverty. I’m convinced that one of the biggest factors perpetuating poverty in this country is that the upper and middle classes have given up on the poor, and have taken to looking out for themselves (however well-off they might be). If you can take people out of the poverty feedback loop (and isolate them from it), give them a marketable skill, the ability to socialize, a respectable work ethic, and a decent job, when they’re done, they stand a better chance of carrying on in that vein, than falling back into their old ways.
4. Reduce the Federal budget deficit (and maybe… just maybe… pay down the frickin’ debt). Subsidies are pork. No two ways about it. Subsidies prop up businesses which are inherently not profitable. Rather than propping up executives, prop up the poor and give THEM a chance to be executives. Vertically integrate the process, and run it as efficiently as possible, but ensuring the real ends are served.
5. Serve the real purpose of government. The big difference between running a business and running a government is that a business has to be profitable, at any and all costs, while the government is charged with “form[ing] a more perfect Union, establish[ing] Justice, ensur[ing] domestic Tranquility, provid[ing] for the common defense, promot[ing] the general welfare and secur[ing] the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity” at any and all costs. The goal is not for the government to make a profit, itself, but to make the lives of its people — ALL its people — as just, tranquil, secure and blessed with liberty as possible. The nation as a whole profits, and that’s the point.
6. Others I just don’t have time to write. If you don’t get the point by now, you’re probably voting McCain-Palin, and for all the wrong reasons.

I dunno… I mean there’s lots of details that need to be worked out (and I’m neither a sociologist nor a business man… hell, I never graduated from college. There are certainly people out there with the skills, experience, and education to make this work and get the kinks out)… this would be a massive venture… probably on the scale of the Manhattan Project or landing Neil Armstrong (and Buzz Aldrin) on the moon… but it is a peaceful endeavor, it means no harm to anyone, it gives everybody a fair shake to do something positive with their lives, and, best of all, it puts this country (the government AND the people) on a path to reduced corruption and fiscal responsibility.

What do you think?

Well… Since I put up this blog (the Wordpress-based, new and improved Ursus Pacificus), I’ve been getting more and more junk comments from questionable entrepreneurs (obviously posted by bots).

This morning, I found a bunch of identical comments from a bot at nofacesbook.com (I’m not providing a link… if you want to see it, you should be able to figure it out). This site (nofacesbook, not mine) appears to be, based on its splash page (partially obscured by a Javascript “are you 18 and not easily offended” dialog), an amateur porn site roughly patterned on facebook (the popular social networking site). The comments all start with the subject “adult friend…” and contain, “Great Blog! Your post was very interesting! I think your points are excellent and I look forward to reading more of your posts! … ”

Gee, thanks, adult friend!

Most of the comments I see are bot spam… but most of them say things like, “X@nAx - no scrip!” and have a thousand links in them. Those are pretty easy to pluck out and mark as spam… so are the ones that say, “Online Discounts Online”.

If you operate one of these bots, and you actually DO read (and spam) sites like mine, I’d like to share something with you: I have your IP and will will block it. If you don’t read my blog you won’t care, obviously.

I’m not here to promote your business, shady or legitimate. In this day and age, it seems the marketing pimps have overtaken all other forms of traffic on the Internet, and nothing is sacred. If, through my own travels, I have found a product or service which I truly endorse, I’ll post something about it… but I will not approve any commercially promotional comments.

If you read my site and don’t send spam comments, please feel free to comment. This is kind of a community thing… if you agree (or disagree) let it be known. Tell a friend, spread the word… even if you’re a fundamentalist reconstructionist evangelical Christian (I’m sure your comments will be disagreeable, but hey… ) I post mostly to spark thoughtful discussion (and occasionally to trumpet some cool happening in my life).

If you have something to say about what I’ve written, say it here. Tell a friend.

If you are an entrepreneur, please bear in mind: I will not be your mule.

America is a big country. With an average population density of 31 people per square mile. Put another way, there’s enough land for each man woman and child to have an 897,000 square foot (20 acre) buffer zone around them if they were evenly spread out. New York City, on the other hand, with its population of over eight million, and an average population density of around 26,000 per square mile, is certainly an aberration, but it does show that people tend to cluster together in this country. So… there’s a lot of open space out there. Most of the land area of Arizona, New Mexico and Texas are utterly barren. No farms, no nothing. How is it that we have not begun, in earnest, to deploy wind and solar energy collection? Is it the cost?

People in this country bitch ceaselessly about the expense of the space program. Generally, they don’t bitch about spending a trillion dollars over five years on a failed war we started. They hear about social programs that will cost 20 million dollars over 10 years, and they soil themselves with disgust. How does that work, exactly? … and where does the money for the war or the social programs come from, anyway?

Conservatives in the country (and they seem to operate the loudest, most obnoxious and inescapable media outlets) complain about “tax and spend liberals”… as opposed to what?… “print and spend conservatives”? I’m sick to death of people complaining about taxes, and then expecting the government to fix the roads, educate the children, provide health care, cover retirement and prosecute wars. The money has to come from SOMEWHERE… Where does it come from? Mostly taxes. Sorry kids, but if you want to have roads and schools and a standing army, all that costs money, and the money has to come from you.

People are living in a lopsided bizarro fantasy world, where it’s OK for the head of your company to pull a seven- or eight-figure compensation package, while he (or she, but most likely he) drives the company in the ground, but it’s not OK to tax him (or her, but most likely him).

People throw all these economic indicators around like they mean something… like what the “Dow” is at… or what the GDP of the country is… or what the minimum wage is or should be… Most people pull these statistics out and make comparisons over 30 or 50 year periods, but never adjust for inflation. The dollar is worth less than a sixth of what is was when I was born. If you’re making $6.00 an hour now, that’s the equivalent of making $1.00 an hour in 1968 (average inflation rate of 4.66%). Is no one alarmed by this? How does this come to pass? Well, the fact that the government keeps borrowing money to cover expenses that should be covered by taxes doesn’t help. Our leaders borrow to cover expenses… why is anyone surprised that we’re in a financial meltdown, now? The people are following the example set by the leaders… Apparently, it’s perfectly fine to run a 400 billion dollar deficit on a budget of about 3 trillion dollars. What happens to the deficit? it gets piled onto the national debt, which by some estimates is over 10 trillion dollars.

What’s wrong? A few things… People have no sense of scale for numbers in the millions, billions and trillions. It’s just a bunch of zeros at that point. People in this country don’t take a minute, step back and see the big picture. All they know is their taxes are too high, and somewhere, some liberal is performing an abortion. Wake up, people. Our economy is a sham, and no one really knows how the sham works. The people in charge are very strongly motivated to stay there, and at your expense, and it’s not just the folks in Washington, or city hall or the state capital you have to look out for. It’s the captains of industry, too… because they’re the ones pulling the strings in Washington, city hall and the statehouse. Not you. You just get to pick WHICH slimy politician gets to be stroked by the conniving captains of industry. Once they’re in, and they get their first “gift” or “contribution”, they’re pwned… because… well…. look at what a U.S senator or representative gets for a salary…. about $170,000 a year. All the travel and the houses and so on… that doesn’t come cheap. Nor does getting re-elected. Do you figure that Joe Biden spent more than $170,000 getting re-elected last time? I bet he did. Where does THAT money come from? I don’t mean to pick on Joe alone… all of ‘em. They’re all whores, and we’re not paying them what they think they’re worth… GM is paying them what they think they’re worth. I don’t mean to pick on GM… All of ‘em.

Oh, and a thought about Congressional salaries… here’s how out of touch and uninterested these people are. They manage to keep voting in pay raises for themselves… never fear… they won’t go hungry. Somehow, it’s escaped their notice that the minimum wage in this country is not (or was not until very recently) adjusted for inflation, and had no mechanism in place to do anything about it… Now I don’t know where you can live reasonably on $6.55 an hour, especially considering that jobs paying that low have no health coverage and are tenuous at best.

So this year, on November 4, I have one bit of advice: Throw the bums out. Incumbent = Fired. From the zoning board to US representatives and senators and everyone in between.

Have you noticed all these cars now with fake vents on the front fenders? I know they’re supposed to look like either exhaust ports or intake ports… or cooling ports… something… but they’re not.

…and now, apparently, you can go to your local car-bling store and buy them to retrofit your older car.

The thing to me is that they don’t do anything. It’s just an appliqué. So… it’s a little chrome-plated plastic sticker-ey thing that damages the paint on your car, and, eventually, will lose its chrome and just be a crummy looking piece of plastic on your fender, OR…. if you don’t clean the paint properly, the glue won’t stick right, and the thing will just fall off, and leave a gooey residue on your fender that’ll never really come off.

I’ve driven over 5,000 miles in the last 2 weeks. I can’t tell you how many Hyundais, Fords, Saturns, Buicks and so on I’ve seen with the factory-installed variety… and … get this… Ford Tauruses… dozens of them… with the aftermarket ones.

Back in the 50’s Buick Roadmasters had the fake ports…. they were supposed to be reminiscent of the old Deusenbergs, Auburns, Cords and other super-cars of the 30’s, that had the narrow bonnets, and the exhaust exited through the sides bonnet and into the fenders… or inline-engined fighter planes… depending on who you talk to.

Of course, now, almost 80 years later, very few car buyers have any idea what what a Duesenberg was, let alone what the point of the ports is supposed to be.

So… I can certainly understand aesthetics… I have 9 tattoos… but I don’t have any “because it looks cool” tattoos. My tattoos may not age as well as my skin… but barring catastrophic injury or infection, my tats should not peel or fall off. … and then there’s the fact that my tats all mean something.

I also have bumper stickers on my vehicles… 3 on my truck, 2 on my car…. but again… they actually mean something… other than, “I wish my car was a lot cooler than it actually is”

I guess what I’m getting at is that the factory-installed fake port things are… part of the design of the car… they’re unnecessary, and dorky looking… but they’re part of the car. To go to Pep Boys and spend $20 (or whatever) on fake plastic stick-on port-ey things… that (to me) says, “I hope you don’t recognize how lame my car is… are you dazzled by my fake port things?” They’re like the plastic hubcaps with the “spinner” things, to make your 14-inch steel rims look vaguely reminiscent of the 22-inch “DUB” rims with the extra bits that continue spinning after the vehicle has stopped. The plastic spinny bits to spin right… they wig out the balance of the wheels, and in a couple months, they look like crap (that is to say, more like crap than when they were new).

The fake vents, when they’re factory installed, say, “Well… we had to keep the fuel economy up, and tooling costs down… so… to make last year’s model seem new, and more powerful, this year, we tacked on these.”

The fake vents from Pep Boys say, “Well, yes, it’s a 10-year-old Cavalier, and the paint is just jumping off it. Sure, it’s 3 different colors, has 5 different tires (at least it has a spare… I wonder if it has air in it…), Oh, and there’s a crack that goes all the way across the windshield… The glove box doesn’t close… and the upholstery smells like…. mildew… and… catbox…. but … it’s a cool ride, and it deserves a little dressing up.”

… and that’s just sad.

So I’ve been on the road now for two weeks… stayed in a bunch of hotels.

I’ve found that about 60% of them have either broken, misconfigured or turned-off DHCP. I have been unable to get IP addresses upon connecting to the hotel’s network.

To make matters worse, the people manning the front desk at the hotel have no idea what a DHCP server is, and have no one to call, other than the manager of the hotel, and chances are, the manager has no idea what’s going on either. I was told the problem was with my computer. No.

Wireless is a cheap and easy for hotels to deploy… especially in a pre-existing property… but for a new property, I say put in wired (100Base-T… Cat5e… like that), and if you want, provide wireless as a convenience.

Wi-Fi is OK as a convenience, particularly in a wide-open space, such as a coffee shop or a park, but for a location with lots of obstructions between the user and the access point, Wi-Fi is sketchy, and should not be the primary means of connection.

Nowadays, people are, more and more, depending on hotels to have reliable access to the Internet. What’s more, it’s important to have a means of escalating technical issues to competent personnel, who will be able to take action and correct problems. The “It works for me” answer is insufficient.

Further, if there is any sort of “Windows-only” stuff going on on these networks, that’s just crap. Kinda like “whites-only”… y’know?

For the rest of this trip, I’m going to make a point of testing the Wi-Fi before I register, rather than after.

If you run a hotel property in New Orleans, Orlando or Washington, DC… I’m on my way. Be ready.

Greetings from Beaumont, TX!

1. Day Before Yesterday: Tucson, AZ to Van Horn, TX
2. Yesterday: Van Horn, TX to San Antonio, TX
3. Today: San Antonio, TX to Beaumont, TX by way of Houston, TX.

I visited Johnson Space Center today… well… to be technical, I visited “Space Center Houston”, which includes a tram tour of 3 desperately static places within Johnson Space Center. …in Houston.

Yes, it took me three days to get here from Tucson, AZ. Having traversed Texas I have a few observations I’d like to share:

• Most of Texas (as far as I can tell) is vacant.
• The radio landscape in Texas is (for me) mostly unbearable, consisting primarily of:
  1. Spanish language oom-pah music
  2. Christian broadcasting
  3. Country music
  4. Limbaugh-esque far-right ranting
• Most of non-vacant Texas seems to be populated with towns like Van Horn (barely a wide spot in the road), that make Winslow, AZ look like LA.
• There seems to be a general assumption that everyone is a Christian.
• “Don’t mess with Texas” is, apparently, not just a cute tourist-baIting slogan, like “I love New York”… it’s more of a … not-so-subtle “f*ck you” to the rest of the country.
• Most people I’ve encountered here think Rhode Island is part of New York. It’s not.
• What’s with the flies? About a hundred miles on either side of Van Horn, on I-10, there’s swarms of aggressively stupid flies. As I was bringing my stuff into the hotel room, I ended up letting 5 of these stupid things into my room. Once they were in, they wouldn’t leave, and wouldn’t leave me alone.

Considering it’s taken me 3 days to traverse Texas, I have to admit I’m pretty disappointed. I mean JSC was OK… but…the post-9/11 paranoia is getting old. Bag checks, metal detectors and so on… I mean… come on. The tram tour take you to 3 places: The retired Apollo-era Mission Control Center (which was pretty cool, but, since it’s retired, you’d think they could let us go down and actually check out the consoles and junk), the Space Vehicle Mock-up Facility (where nothing of note was happening, and there was lots of cool stuff in view that was unmentioned by the pre-recorded descriptions), and the Rocket Park (where we were only allowed 10 minutes to check out all the stuff… which was a gyp.)

Don’t get me wrong… I’m glad I went to JSC… but… traversing 800 miles of mostly-barren Texas countryside, listening to ranting preachers and raving fascists to get to it made it a little anti-climactic.

There’s good exhibits, and some good information that, it seems, is unavailable elsewhere (astronaut interviews, artifacts, trivial tidbis…)

I dunno… I suppose if I was already in Houston for some other reason, and I had a day to kill, and I’d never been there before, I’d take a day to check it out. If I had driven 800 miles to get to it, and had seen it before… looking for more insight… it might not be all I’d hoped.

Welp… it’s off to New Orleans… let’s see what’s happening there.

Well, I’m in Tucson, AZ, taking a little breather from driving and seeing, while I get the car serviced.

I’ve been a long way. My first stop was in Grove City, OH. That was uneventful. On the way, I got to drive along the Pennsylvania Turnpike. That’s a fun road. Just before I merged onto the PA TPK, I was passed by a car that had a bumper sticker that said “Paddle faster. I hear banjo music.” That was priceless.

In Indiana, I saw billboards for an RV dealership owned (or founded) by a guy named Tom Raper. Um… “raper”… Am I the only one who… uh… I mean… You’ve head of Dick Trickle. There’s an unfortunate fella. If you’ve got a last name like Raper or Trickle or… Dong… or Scheissekopf… Please, before you have kids, change it to something less… horrifying.

Indiana also has lots of Christian radio stations. Yay. …and farm reports. Whee. So do Oklahoma and Texas.

In Illinios, there’s a town called Effingham. You think I’m joking? I’m not. Look at my face. This is my serious face. Effingham, it turns out, has a giant cross of its own. I don’t know when that one went up… but I don’t remember seeing it when I blew through in 2002. Still… it’s horrifying.

Let’s see… After Effingham, there was St. Louis, MO… which… went by quickly. Then it was off to Tulsa, OK… Which … well… There’s not a whole lot I can say about Tulsa, other than … it’s… in Tulsa. On the way to Tulsa, I had an opportunity to stop at the “world’s largest McDonald’s” . How exciting is THAT?!

The plan was to proceed to Socorro, NM fro Tulsa, but I just ran out of steam in Albuquerque. I spent the night there, then continued on to Socorro in the morning. I suppose if I hadn’t dawdled to long at the giant ross in Groom, TX, I coulda made it to Socorro in one go… but… The cross was so scary, I couldn’t pull myself away. I don’t mean that in a good away. From Amarillo, TX to Albuquerque, there’s just about nothing. Also nice are the long stretches of I-40 in New Mexico, where they’re doing construction… so there’s no lines in the road, no lights, no reflectors… That’s just spiffy in the middle of the night. Oh, and the speedlimit drops from 75 to 55 for miles at a time… not that anyone’s actually doing any work there at ten PM… they’re not… Still the speed limit is 55. Thanks. and what is a “safety corridor”, anyway?!

Anyhow, the road to Socorro (I-25) was pretty straight and uneventful… except for the rest stop about 15 miles outside socorro, where I observed a big explosion to the south, in the mountains. Huh.

Socorro, NM is little more than a wide patch in the road. There are plenty of friendly people, but unless you’re there to drink, or using it as a waypoint to visit the VLA or Trinity, there ain’t much going on.

Saw the VLA last Friday. That was pretty cool. Saw Trinity the next day. That was neat. After that, Socorro was burned out for me. I moved on to Farmington, NM. Farmington is a more buzzing metropolis, compared to Socorro… but still not huge. I stayed in Farmington Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. Monday was Chaco day. Chaco is amazing… see my blog post on visiting Chaco for some caveats.

Wednesday, I was off to lovely Winslow, AZ and Meteor Crater. Meteor crater is a hell of a thing. Winslow is almost a ghost town. Socorro, with its Taco Bell has more culture and sophistication going on than Winslow. Still, I managed to stand on a corner, which was one of my goals for the trip. No girl (my lord) in a flatbed Ford slowed down to take a look at me… which is probably for the best.

Thursday (yesterday), I left Winslow for Tucson, AZ. Spent the night and had the car serviced. I’ll be doing laundry… How’s that for a vacation?!

That’s right, I did go to the giant cross just outside of Groom, TX….

A simple evaluation of the cross itself…

At first I thought it was just because I’m a heretical heathen… but…

Awkward…..

All god’s children are welcome… unless..

Meteor Crater is a hell of a thing!

Well, yes, it is an enormous hole in the ground. If that’s all you take away from it, then I suppose you may not be impressed.

If, on the other hand, you look a little deeper, and realize that people tried to figure out what that giant hole in the ground was for the first hundred or so years since it was discovered by caucasoid humans.

Now, the understanding seems to be pretty well clinched: 50,000 years ago (or so), an iron-nickle meteorite about 150 feet across crashed into the rocky plain of what is now Arizona moving at 20-something-thousand mile per hour and bored a 500-foot-deep hole, 4,000 feet wide. That’s a hell of a thing.

It’s hard to appreciate the scale of this giant hole in the ground, but this Astronaut may help:

Here’s me reading from the pamphlet:

Oh, and here’s me arriving in Winslow, AZ