voluntaryXchange

Influencers WTF

People are getting sick from swimming in a toxic lake in Spain … just to get that great picture.

I have a couple of observations from Utah.

• Lakes that are naturally mineral-rich, Caribbean blue, and not poisonous, can be found. But none of these influencers seem smart enough to find them. Sheesh. (I won’t name the one I’m thinking of, but a search on Google Images shows very few bikini shots there). Have these people really convinced themselves that finding that secret lake was a good idea??
• We have our own presumably toxic former-quarry nearby. First off, I’ve never even heard of someone considering swimming in it. I have heard of people rolling old tires down the hill into it. That’s dumb, but in a much better way than swimming in it.
• Secondly, I just looked for it on Google Maps and could not find it. It was definitely there several years ago. So I wonder if Google is intentionally hiding that content (like they had to do with the cabins from The Last Alaskans)?

American Mongolia

I once asked an exchange student how my part of southwestern Utah compared to Mongolia. She said it was exactly like Mongolia.

Cold Spring Shops pointed me to these two posts (here and here) at I Ride the Harlem Line. Those posts have great photos of Mongolia, including panoramic vistas (and trains) like this one:

I drove up and back to Salt Lake City he other day along U.S. 89, and this would have fit in perfectly along the route.

Tidbits Learned from the Strata Public Lands Ride

Strata organized a group ride through public lands for conference attendees in Salt Lake on October 12th.

Most of the group were public lands professionals. So I was a bit out of place, but it was a good opportunity for extending my network.

Here’s some stuff I learned:

• Costs of the National Park System would be completely covered if the user fee was $13 per person per day. Think about that next time you think it’s expensive to bring your car into the park.
• National Forests aren’t run the same way as National Parks. With parks, management is done by rotation, so parks get new blood. Forests aren’t like that. The tenure of managers can be quite long. This has advantages and disadvantages, but might go some way towards explaining why many people find the management of Dixie National Forest to be poor.
• I knew the deferred maintenance budget of the National Parks System was up to $12B. I did not know that this is an old and ongoing problem that is not related to any particular budget cuts or policies out of D.C.
• Somewhat unfortunately, now that parks have learned that deferred maintenance listings are a way to get one-time funds from D.C., they do add any old thing they want to their to-do list. Can you say moral hazard?

The ride went through Wasatch Mountain State Park, above Heber and Midway.

That’s the group above Provo Duck Creek valley, with Mill Canyon Peak in the background. I’m the dork who needed a helmet so big the vendors only had one … slim stems though.

Super Pretty

Saw this in National Geographic:

It’s an ice maze at the Harbin International Ice and Snow Festival.

I want one for the backyard …

Technorati Tags: harbin,international,ice,snow,festival,maze

Christmas Cheer from Canada

Every winter, a Christmas train crosses Canada (and parts of the U.S.) for charity and entertainment. These are from last year's trip.

Via Cold Spring Shops who spotted the Neal Zeller article(s) in Exposure.

Weird Coincidence–Yosemite Rockfall Edition

There’s a free calendar we got from our State Farm agent in our sewing room. It featues stock photos of national parks.

For September, it shows the southeast face of El Capitan in Yosemite.

This is where the fatal rockfalls on September 27-28 occurred. Here’s a photo from Vallejo’s Fox40 TV stations website:

Here’s the image from my calendar. The rockfall occurred along the right hand side in the area with foreground  leaves.

The shadow in the center left of the top image is brightly lit in the center left of the calendar image. The calendar image appears as though it was taken from the meadow in the lower left of the top image, looking up and to the right.

Weird.

Technorati Tags: el capitan,yosemite,rockfall,calendar

Old Florida In Video

The vXmom retired near McKee Botanical Garden.*

When I visited the gardens they showed parts of a black and white movie filmed there.

I searched it out and here it is: it is a 1939 entry from a series of movie shorts called “Going Places”.

Of course, this reflects the times, so don’t be offended by the humanization of the chimpanzees.

It’s very strange watching this, after having seen much the same scenery almost 80 years later.

The backstory here is that in the 30’s, when Florida was still boomtown, this guy named McKee built a tourist trap called McKee’s Jungle Garden. It evolved towards an amusement park, before finally going bankrupt in the late 1970’s.

* I’m a sucker for botanical gardens, so I’m not unbiased. But, if you’re near Vero Beach, I recommend a visit. This place was abandoned for most of the 80’s and 90’s, and it is slowly being refurbished — so I found the small staff very helpful and informative.

Technorati Tags: mckee,botanical,garden,jungle,going,places,1939

Weird Negev Coincidences In Threes

How is it possible to see 3 references to an area in the Negev desert in Israel … in less than 36 hours?

• I’ve been watching Srugim. Yesterday morning I watched the episode where Amir went to live on a farm near Mitzpe Ramon. So I looked it up in Wikipedia.
• This afternoon, while surfing news sites, I followed a link for photos of the Perseid meteor shower. And the first one was from the Makhtesh Ramon outside of Mitzpe Ramon.
• Then just this evening, I followed a link to “World’s Most Amazing Craters”, and # 9 was Makhtesh Ramon.

Weird.

Technorati Tags: negev,israel,mitzpe,ramon,makhtesh,crater

I Wonder If Movies and Books Got It Wrong

I live in the desert. This means something very different in Utah in 2015 than it did just about anywhere else in human history. Consider:

An Afar proverb: It is best, when you are lost or thirsty, to keep walking under the sun, because eventually someone will see you. To be tempted into shade, to drop under one of 10,000 thornbushes, means death: No one will find you.*

And yet every western movie you see, or book you read, constructed carefully by writers probably working in a garret in an urban area somewhere … features characters who bed down in the shade during the day, and walk at night.

The quote came from the first article in the series “Long Walk Out of Eden” that will be published in National Geographic over the next several years.

* Afars are a tribe that lives in Djibouti. The desert there is one of the worst in the world: not just dry, but salty, and often below sea level. It’s probably a lot like Death Valley, only closer to the equator.

Technorati Tags: desert,walk,thirst,afar,djibouti,long,eden,national,geographic

Tyler Cowen Plugs Southern Utah

I’ve had the good fortune of living in some magical places (and taking the salary cuts that go with that hedonic income). Currently I live in southern Utah.

You know … southern Utah … red rock, canyons, mountains, high desert.

Right now I’m sitting on my exercise bike typing, and I can see the mountains out of my window. My basement window!!!

Anyway, Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution is one of the most influential voices on the planet. He travels a huge amount, and solicits suggestions for his blog.

And one of his recommendations for travel is southern Utah:

If you wish to visit the United States, specialize … most of all southern Utah down to the northern rim of the Grand Canyon, much better than the southern rim but book in advance.  That latter part of the country has perhaps the world’s most compelling natural beauty, plus a good look at real American culture along the way.  For all its fame, it remains oddly under-visited (thank goodness).  Toss in San Francisco for good measure, and then drive through some godforsaken parts for a few days, the worse the better.

I’d agree that we’re under-visited. I never came here before I was offered a job in Salt Lake City. We don’t seem to be under-visited by Europeans or Asians. Just Americans. That probably has something to do with the “real American culture along the way”. Americans are taught pretty well that Mormons are freaky, and yes, I think it keeps people away. It shouldn’t (and that’s written by a non-Mormom who’s now lived half his adult life amongst Mormons).

I also like the recommendation to “drive through some godforsaken parts for a few days, the worse the better”. My wife and I did that with our tour of eastern Nevada in 1998: it’s still one of the vacations we talk about the most. Perhaps that’s why that godforsaken country comes right up to the nature trail that starts across the street from the green grass of our suburban front yard.

Read the whole thing.

Technorati Tags: utah,tourism,recommendation,tyler,cowen