scott's blog

Back around 1980, I worked as a professional cartographer for the US Army Corps of Engineers, Portland District, Photogrammetry Section. I loved the job but didn't fit in with the culture there, being the only "longhair" in residence. Before my position was eliminated I was asked to submit a proposal for a GIS project. CRREL was looking for demonstration projects to evaluated Geographic Information Systems. GIS was brand new at the time and data crunching was done on mainframe computers such as the Burroughs at the EROS Data Center in Sioux Falls, SD.

Here is an issue I was unaware of until a thread appeared on the anthro-l mailing list, coltan mining in the Congo. Coltan is a mineral that is refined into tantalum which in turn is used in the manufacture of capacitors and other hi-tech products. The mining of this mineral has caused rather severe environmental and social issues and plays an important role in the financing of the African civil wars. We all too often assume that our electronic existence is clean because it doesn't appear to emit pollution and too easily forget or ignore what makes it all possible.

I have expanded the application of my One Pagers site to include discussions of business locations and business types. I welcome comments, essays and other form of information to augment the utility of this site. I have been concentrating on the San Fernando Valley as this is my home and where I grew up, albeit not my favorite place on this planet. Since I do live here I would like to do what I can to improve economic conditions here so I am listing as many local businesses as I can categorized by business type.

I just noticed that the Bogart/Bacall film, To Have and Have Not, is a hot search topic. I can't really imagine why. After all, it's been around for a few years now. I own a VHS copy and like all my other Bogart films it gets played every few months. I've often wondered if making the film was an attempt to duplicate the success of Casablanca. Unfortunately for that, no one has ever come close to Ingrid Bergman. I think that one stand out aspect of this film is Hoagy Carmichael. Howard Hawks knows enough to let him play his tunes all the way through.

What follows is a brief exchange from the anthro-l email list. I'm including it here because it sums up why so little is actually being done to reduce the factors causing out current climatic changes and I believe it needs a wider audience than just the list.

Eiríkur Hafberg:
>> What has become of the modern man? Wasn't he/she/it supposed to be
>> educated? Has the education system failed? Or is the market oriented
>> media to blame for being too strong and loud and misleading? What has
>> become of the Homo sapiens sapiens (did he ever exist?)?

jan matthieu

I truly love the city of Portland, Oregon but it seems Portland didn't like me much. I moved there, with my college girl friend, in March of 1978, upon taking a career job with the US Army Corps of Engineers. The position seemed an ideal fit with my recently acquired Masters in Geography. The move proved disastrous, however, for my relationship. I stayed with my new found career and she returned to Los Angeles. It's impossible to tell from this distance but I suspect my life would have been much more stable had I stayed with the relationship rather than the job.

Daniel Craig is not James Bond and this is not really a James Bond film, only the names have been used for marketing purposes. The film has high action scene production value but low story line value. I would say that it is fun to watch, as a series of set pieces. I admit up front that Sean Connery remains my preferred Bond and From Russia with Love my favorite film from the series. This latest Bond lacks any degree of sophistication, a trait that provided most of the humor and character found in earlier Bonds.

I have added to my web site a spinning wheel of I Ching trigrams with the classic yin yang symbol in the center. Click the image and a random I Ching hexagram is selected and displayed in a pop-up window along with it's description and commentaries. I did this initially to practice animating gif images as well as incorporating javascript and ajax into a drupal site. I chose the I Ching because I've always found it to be a source of good advice on how to conduct myself, not as a religious tract nor as a soothsayer.

I'm not particularly fond of small dogs as it's been my experience that all they do is eat piddle and poop. I was dealing with a lady today who wanted to put up a fence around her cockapoo in order to prevent it from "doing it's business" in inappropriate locations. It's been my thought that they were appropriately named creatures. Anyway, a few minutes ago I thought to lookup cockapoo and kakapoo and discovered that the name had already been taken, by a flightless parrot in New Zealand. See http://www.kakapo.net/en/index.html for more information on this bird.

This book was recommended by a member of the Anthro-L email list. I've subscribed to this list for more years than I can remember now. It's part of my effort to keep my brain active. This book was described as very readable with a lot of insight into the processes and conditions associated with those critical moments for life on this planet when everything changes. This link is to Google Books and not all of the book has been made available.

http://books.google.com/books?id=jYSZgaaxRv0C&lpg=PP1&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q...