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Mexico Calling
An edited version of this article appeared in the The Shaft, newsletter of the Washington State BMW Riders, in May and June 2007.
I spent February 2007 on the road, riding from Seattle deep into Mexico and back again. Along the way I collected over a thousand photos, five hundred waypoints, and several hours of voice memos. This article tells part of that story.
I wake up at 03:00 and open my eyes and realize that my dog is one inch away, breathing on me. She wants to be let out into the back yard. Probably there's a possum or a coon out there. I get up and let her out, and go back to bed, but I can't go to sleep because I know that this is the morning I head to Mexico. After a few minutes I realize that I'm going to be getting up and leaving now. I spend that few minutes savoring the last time that I'll sleep with my wife for a while. Then I get up, make final preparations, and hit the road.
(Final preparations become routine for the next month. Check the bike, a 1996 R1100RS with a few farkles; make sure it still has wheels & etc. Then plug in and turn on the GPS, a Garmin eTrex, small but adequate for Mexico, where decent GPS maps are not yet available. Then zip on the tank bag, bungee on the duffle, jack in my electric vest, don my two-piece Aerostich suit, put in my earplug/headphones, put on my full face helmet, and finally my gloves. Ready for ignition.)
At 04:25 I'm on the move. Its frosty, and the nearly full moon still casts plenty of light. I'm glad of the light cast by the new PIAA driving lamps. I'm wearing nearly all the clothing I bought on this trip - two polypro t-shirts and poly/wool longjohns under heavy jeans and cotton shirt, with a face fairing to keep my neck warm. I'm still cold but the highway is nearly empty, and fast.
I am writing on an ancient (20th Century) computer in the lobby of the Hotel Acosta in Hidalgo del Parral, Chihuahua. The trip has been going pretty smoothly, not quite as planned but not bad. February 3 was a freezing blast down I-5 to redwood country, where friends fed me and beered me and warmed me and we talked science and that was great. Up at the crack of dawn on the next day, another cold one through valley fogs and over frosty twisty roads to north of San Fran, where I gave a little workshop on forest ecology to some people whose land trust owns a redwood grove near the Muir Woods. Then, just as the Super Bowl was starting, I blasted off across the Bay area on I-580 for a fast and boring run that burned me out around sunset on I-5, where I got off and followed a lean empty two-lane across the Valley to CA-99, and then south another hundred miles or so to finally call it quits in a field northwest of Visalia, where I crashed for the night under a clear cold starry sky.
I set forth the next morning - still cold, wearing every stitch I brought - at 0430, through Bakerfield to Mohave to Barstow, then off on old Route 66 - shades of Cars (the movie), desolate little ghost towns in the stark desert, and along the way I found the Baghdad Cafe - I guess the Hollywood crowd like to cruise old 66. From there I went on even emptier 2-lanes, hours without seeing a car, until eventually down to cross the Colorado at Parker, Arizona where it was finally WARM. Spent that night in a little campground north of Gila Bend, under a million stars, only to rise and again hit the road well before dawn and blast through Casa Grande and Tucson to cross the border (not even a stop sign for those entering Mexico) at Nogales.
Nogales is a short sharp shock of Mexican traffic. It's two years since I've been in country and it takes a few minutes to recall the distinctive style of Mexican driving, but then I'm weaving around trucks and buses and paying scant attention to traffic lights as well as the rest of the crowd, and so I manage to move with the flow and in a few minutes I'm out of town.
Twenty kilometers (now that I'm in Mexico I'll be on the metric system) south of Nogales is a station where gringo motorists go through the vehicle entry process, which involves getting things stamped and copied and certified, standing in lines - bureaucracy, in a word - but it didn't take long. Maybe I was there for an hour. After getting stamped and copied, I got all packed up ready to go, and the bike didn't start. I looked down to see a rapidly growing pool of gasoline washing up against my boots. So I shut everything off, unpacked the tools, and pulled off the left fairing cover to find that the left fuel injector hose had somehow come unclipped while sitting there in the sun. I reattached it, put everything back together and I was on my way.
The highway south from Nogales to Hermosillo was not what you'd call scenic. There are some big barren rocky mountains in the distance, kind of like in southwest Arizona, but the area around the highway - which is mostly a cuota, Mexican for toll road, costing 89 pesos (11 pesos to the dollar, by the way) - is flat and covered with thorn scrub. There was one small area of saguaros near a town called Saguaro. Riding through the Sonoran desert near Tucson and from Tucson down to Nogales, in contrast, had a lot of saguaros and more cactus diversity in general and more vegetation diversity overall. The Arizona landscape seems to have been a bit less hammered by cows and other human influences, notwithstanding the road does pass a huge strip mine and some massive housing developments.
Hermosillo, on the other hand, is a pleasant enough town. Like almost every town in Mexico, it has a town square or two, also called a plaza or zocalo, which is the center of town - lots more pleasant than a bank. The plaza always has a church and some sort of garden, and it usually is also the place to find interesting restaurants and hotels. It's also the place to hang out. In Hermosillo, that mostly means old guys in cowboy clothes, sleeping in the sun. My hotel in Hermosillo, the San Andres Hotel, 420 pesos, is about a block from the plaza. It has comfortable beds, and a secure place to put the bike, and that's enough for me.
Hit the road early the next morning, the road being Mex-16. For 130 km nothing happens except fast riding on a straight road with a few sweepers, through the chill clear morning. Then it hits the Sierra Madre and the next 350 km is twisty, beat-up Mexican highway to the max, endless hairpin curves replete with giant potholes, loose gravel, big trucks, wandering cattle, and the occasional rig broken down in a blind curve. It took two days to get through. The first part was lazy, which was good because I needed some time to wake up. At km 72 out of Hermosillo is a little village called San Felipe, where you can get groceries but not gas. A stream there had water in it, the first I've seen since crossing the Colorado River. Then came the village of Tecoripa at km 119, where I stopped off at a little grocery for some faux orange juice and pan dulce, and waved at some kids in the town square. That was breakfast. Cost 10 pesos.
At about km 130 the road becomes exceedingly twisty, mostly third and fourth gear curves, sometimes down to second, always either climbing or descending through the the Sierra Madre. Mostly there was no other traffic. I'd see a car, or more likely a truck or bus, maybe every 15 minutes.
The highway crosses the Rio Yaqui at km 165. The Yaqui is a serious river, bigger than the Colorado and flowing fast. There's a spot there to pull off and ride down by the water. I saw cormorants, great blue herons, flycatchers, shorebirds, and a tiny bright red bird. I wonder what the hell it was. There was no settlement; apart from the highway, it felt like wilderness.
After about 200 km the road enters the pine forest. I crossed the mountain crest at an elevation just under 2000 m and there was snow along the sides of the road, and some bits of ice on the road. It was slow going. The road is really twisty, and a lot has pretty bad pavement and a lot has gravel on it, washed on by streams or laid down by trucks in the icy bits.
I camped where Mex-16 crosses a ravine and a little stream, about 50 km west of the Sonora-Chihuahua border. The stream looks clean and is cold, coming down out of the pine forests. Little fish were jumping for bugs in the twilight. I think the place was originally built as a rest area because it had a transportation department trash barrel, but as with most Mexican infrastructure it was left to maintain itself. Occasional passing trucks made great roaring noises with their Jacobs brakes. I was well off the road and not visible from the highway, so it made a pretty secure campsite. Just downstream, the stream descended into the northern part of the Barranca del Cobre area. The highway offers great views south into the barrancas. The stream itself is lined by a forest of oak and cypress with an occasional pine and some junipers.
I hit the road this morning when it was still dark but getting light in the east. I immediately noticed that my speedometer was not working. I think it broke on the bumpy descent and stream ford to get to last night's camp. Oh well, it's hardly critical. Good thing, too; the last BMW dealer was in Hermosillo, and there are only six in the whole country. No matter. The highways have km markers, and the GPS tells me my speed and lets me pick waypoints.
At about 350 km from Hermosillo the road crosses a pass and enters Chihuahua. Road quality immediately improves - it has lines, sometimes guard rails, and is a bit faster but still plenty twisty. This really is a world-class motorcycle road overall. Beyond it climbs to over 2250 meters. The way is very twisty and gravelly in places because of gravel that has been spread for the ice. At one point there is ice all the way across the road, in a very shady area, and here I found white pines.
The highest point on the whole highway is reached at a pass overlooking the plains of Chihuahua. Starting about 20 km before that point the road starts to straighten out, and there are some long sweepers. After that, it's goodbye to the twisties and there's a long straight run down into the grassland and the plains of Chihuahua, the very, very, wide open spaces of Chihuahua. From there I quickly rolled off the 300 km to here, Hidalgo de Parral, a small, historic bustling city in the desert. Tomorrow ... Durango!
At 8:00 or so I finally rolled the Beemer out of the lobby of the hotel and rolled off the 400-odd kilometers to Durango. It was mostly a very unremarkable road. One stretch did not have a curve for over a hundred kilometers, though other bits had some very good curves. Along the banks of a river that runs, among other things, through the town of Rodeo, there was a magnificent stand of baldcypress. A lot of trees were over 7 feet in diameter.
The city of Durango is said to have about a half million people. It's small enough that I didn't have any problem finding my hotel, the Hotel Roma, about a block off the main plaza. As for the traffic, well, I'm getting pretty blasé about Mexican traffic.
When I got to the hotel, they carved out a parking place for me right outside the front door, fitting into a narrow space between two parked VW Beetle taxis; I had to remove the saddlebags to get in. Actually the Beemer ended up spending the night locked inside a nearby garage. In the evening I strolled around the square and the market district. It's a very clean, popular square. Old men in cowboy hats talking or just sitting, families with ice creams, young couples strolling. I should have taken more photos but I always feel self-conscious taking pictures of people. Maybe its because I'm the only gringo I've seen the whole trip, so far. There was one picture I wish I could have gotten. About 20 people were waiting for a bus, and they were all standing, one by one, against an old stone wall of the cathedral. They represented a perfect cross-section of Durango society, from fashionable young women to grimy urchins to old cowboys to men in suits. Durango is an old city with lots of character, far nicer than Hermosillo. My hotel is very pleasant - an historic old building with tiled bathrooms and comfortable beds, tall ceilings, old furniture, interesting architecture, and all for the princely sum of $21 a night. However, I will be happy to leave tomorrow because the journey toward Mazatlan should be one of the best stages of the whole trip, both botanically and from a motorcycling standpoint.
I was soon to find that much of the state of Durango has dramatic, if austere, landscapes - mountains rising skyward in huge broken planes of yellow and red volcanic rock, only a few cacti and scraggly bushes clinging to the precipices, and atop - sometimes - extensive forests of towering pines. Leaving the old city at dawn the next morning I rode upward to El Salto, a classic logging town of sawmills and bars, where the smells of resin and sawdust pour out of a dozen mills. The highway was cluttered with log trucks hauling pretty big timber, comparable to the usual Northwest second growth, and a rusty Heisler locomotive welcomes visitors at the town's entrance. The forests are managed well here - selective cutting, carefully done - though a total fire exclusion policy will lead to troubles if it works for more than a few decades, as it has in our country.
At about km 150 the road transforms from a line of sweepers and straightaways across a high forested plateau, to extreme twisties in a rough and jagged mountain range. Here began what I think is probably the finest motorcycle road I have ever ridden. The road winds along the summit ridges of spectacular mountains, sheer cliffs to both sides, and as one crosses the range toward the Pacific the vegetation changes from dry pine forest to fir forest, pines and oaks cloaked in epiphytes, then weird tropical pines like Lumholtz pine with long needles all hanging lax and limp. The most spectacular section crosses La Espinoza del Diablo - the Devil's Backbone. This is a knife-edge of stone along the mountain crest, with spectacular overlooks down canyons thousands of feet deep on both sides. The governments of Sinaloa and Durango are very proud even to have built this road - it would be seen as an engineering feat by anyone - and the fact that it so twisty (50 kph is a blistering speed) only makes it more fun.
Darkness caught me a few kilometers farther. I found a logging road just past a small village and went up it about a kilometer, and then went up a washed-out spur that trucks couldn't get up but motorcycles can, and drove down that to a peaceful spot in a forest of oaks and pines. The oaks were full of bromeliads and there were even a couple on the pines. I cooked a simple meal and slept well.
Morning, again, I was up and on the road by sunrise. It took me three hours to ride the twisty 6700 foot descent to the Pacific coastal plain near Mazatlan. It was an idyllic ride. Being early on Sunday morning, there was almost no traffic. The sun was behind me, strange tropical vegetation lined the road, and ahead were ever-widening vistas out toward the Pacific. In the last part of the descent I passed a variety of bikers. At one point I passed a group of 10 or 12 small Mexican street bikes (meaning the largest were probably 250cc), and then a bit later I passed a comparable group on big bikes that included new-looking large-displacement Japanese bikes, an R1200RT, and a couple of cruisers. I think they were Mexicans as well, a group of upper middle class Mazatlan guys out for a Sunday morning ride. That was to be the only time in Mexico that I saw what I would call sport riders. The twisties started to fade out at about km 155 (counting down into Mazatlan now), but turn into high-speed sweepers, 4th and 5th gear, that'll take you down to Concordia at which point you're pretty much in the flats and the curves disappear. I go past Concordia to the junction with Mex-15 (the free road, not the cuota).
After reaching the flatlands, the glamor pretty well went out of the ride. I followed Mex-15 south for a couple hundred kilometers, and then took a small winding rural highway out to the coast and the town of San Blas. Here I finally found a population of gringos. San Blas used to be known as a good place to get malaria, which means today that it's a good place for ecotourism - the coastal swamps there are home to an incredible diversity of birds, plants and fishes, along with certain exotica such as the 'crocodilas' which, if a bit small for crocodiles, are still pretty exotic critters to see hanging out on the riverbank. I'm staying at the Hotel Hacienda Flamingos, the fanciest place I've found in Mexico. It costs about $70 a night, but what a hotel - all the modern conveniences in a beautifully restored hacienda with thick oak doors, tiled hallways, and a lovely courtyard with palms and a fountain. San Blas has gringos (all of them Canadians, as far as I can tell), so I can go out to restaurants and meet people who speak passable English and have interesting tales to tell about their Mexican travels while we eat great food, drink margaritas and otherwise do the usual stuff that most people do on their Mexico vacations.
This is my second day in San Blas. This morning I was again out riding at the crack of dawn, taking a little time to visit nearby Mexcaltitan, the legendary origin-place of the Aztecs. A long time ago in the Whole Earth Catalog I saw an aerial photo of Mexcaltitan taken by Georg Gerster. At that time I thought it was the most amazing, exotic-looking place I'd ever seen, and I would dearly love to come here. I put it on my list of things to do later on. Now its 27 years later on and I was thinking as I rode out there, that it didn't carry nearly the significance that it would have in 1980, and that seems to mark how my priorities have changed over time. I was thinking that I'd rather be doing something with a wife or a close friend, for instance, rather than being in this exotic place and going alone to see a town that once looked really nice in a picture. Having been there now, all I can say is that it's a nice enough little town, not much happening there, it's just a bit unusual in that you need a boat to get there, and the streets are all built like canals because during the rainy season the water comes up 5 feet and you need a boat to get around in town. This is the dry season, though, so the canals are all dry and sandy (and the mosquitoes are absent).
The trip back from Mexcaltitan was uneventful. I was irresponsible and rode without a jacket, because it was pretty hot and humid. I left the bike at the hotel and went to a place called McDonald's - no golden arches - where I had lunch and chatted up another gringo, a guy about my age, who was nearly at the end of his tour. He'd mostly done the Barranca del Cobre and San Blas. Now I'm at the local beach, Playa Borrego. This is what most gringos come to Mexico for. There seem to be a fair number of them here. There are mountains and palm trees and a vast expanse of beach backed by cabañas that serve mariscos (seafood) and cervesa (beer), with a few mostly elderly gringos sitting around absorbing photons. Anyway, no paucity of gringos in San Blas. I just don't get it. It's kind of nice, I'll take a picture or two, but there's not really anything to do here except drink and eat, sit in the sand, talk.
I got out of San Blas early in the morning and followed the coast highway down through Puerto Vallarta, which was my least favorite place in the entire country. It reminds me of Las Vegas, with tour ships instead of casinos. Dozens of American chain stores are there (and nowhere else), the streets are thronged with Americans, the prices are in dollars. It took two hours to get through. About 20 km south, though, I had a wonderful few hours at the Puerto Vallarta Botanical Garden, a new institution set in a wonderful dry tropical forest, the trees hung with lianas and filled with bromeliads, exotic colorful birds flitting through the forest, and a clear cool stream babbling through a rocky canyon. The garden itself is particularly strong on orchids and bromeliads. South of there I saw Jalisco pine, a very rare species, and celebrated the discovery with a cold cervesa in the cantina at the foot of the largest pine I found. Noodling on down the line, night finally caught me at the little seaside village of Tenacatita.
Tenacatita was the first and almost the only place on the trip that I had seen before. When I came here in 2005, we visited Tenacatita and snorkeled the reef there. So, I knew about a perfect little out-of-the-way camping area full of gringos on a little tombolo where you can see the sun set into the Pacific Ocean - and then see it rise out of the Pacific Ocean the next morning. After a dinner of ceviche and cervesa I did just that, and under the warm tropical sky, sleeping out on the beach, I also got to see the Southern Cross rise, a couple of hours before sunrise.
The next day was, in a word, halcyon. I took breakfast just down the line in Barra Navidad, where I shared huevos rancheros with a couple of Canadian bikers - from Vancouver - the first gringos on bikes that I met all trip. One was on an R90/6, the other on a 1974 Yamaha 250 enduro. He said he had 90 pounds on that little bike besides himself and he could still do 65 on the freeway. Later in the day, winding through a small city farther south, I met another Canadian - this one on a Kawasaki KLR650, bound for Chiapas - and he was the last gringo biker I met, though in fact I also saw him one more time, farther down the coast. Otherwise, the day was spent riding the winding, nearly empty coast highway, eventually spending the night at a tiny village in Michoacán, where I had another dinner of cervesa and ceviche, watched the sun set and the Southern Cross rise, and slept on the empty beach with the sound of crashing surf.
There's another thing. This is the first day on which I really feel that I'm just traveling by motorcycle through Mexico. All of the separation anxiety, acclimation to the new experience, worries about the language and the equipment, how to pack, how to spend the day, what pace to travel, and all the other niggling details, have all dropped away. This morning, riding a very twisty and totally deserted Mex-200 on the coast of Michoacán, I was just riding Mexico. I feel as if I could go on this way for months. It's taken almost two weeks, but I'm finally shuck of Seattle and work, and I'm back in the bush—all of me.
Today was my last taste of riding the Mexican seacoast. Some of it was pretty rough road, but most was good, smooth and clean, and pretty twisty - generally third gear. I also passed my southernmost point on this trip, following down the coast to Lazaro Cardenas near the Michoacán-Guerrero border and then turning north on Mex-37 towards Patzcuaro. Not without a sense of regret. The seacoast is a beautiful area, the most inviting part of Mexico I've seen. But, I came on this trip mostly to pursue some botanical goals, and lately I haven't been spending too much time on that, so I guess it's time to head out and find some more trees.
Today, after I bade farewell to the slothful coast and turned inland, I rode fast toll roads and twisty mountain highways to the old mountain town of Patzcuaro. In the process I gained 2000 meters of elevation and made a shocking discovery - it was February! My ride from Mazatlan down the coast had been warm, even hot, the nights balmy - but Patzcuaro is on the Central Volcanic Plateau, and it's a chilly place. It's a colorful place, though, filled with narrow streets, classic Mexican architecture, shops selling native handicrafts, good restaurants. I'm spending the night at the Hotel San Gabriel, where for the princely sum of 200 pesos I get a quiet, spacious, clean but well-worn room, and the bike gets a nice secure courtyard outside my window.
Riding out of Patzcuaro was bloody cold. A heavy frost covered the fields and reached out across the road, and I was wearing all the clothes I brought for what proved to be a very long and uneventful day's ride across central Mexico. At the end of it, though, I made it to the mountains of Guanajuato. Following another incredibly twisty mountain road high into the mountains, I made it to the little village of San Joaquin, and here encountered the rare Gregg's pine. This tree is first cousin to a group of pines that otherwise live only in California - the knobcone, Bishop and Monterey pines. How and when it got to Guanajuato is a mystery of biogeography. Here I also saw the only ruin of the trip, Ranas, a mountaintop city inhabited from A.D. 600 to 1200. The mountaintop in question straddles the Divide, and warm moist ar from the Gulf of Mexico rises on the east side to shroud the peaks in fog much of the time, while cold dry air from the central plateau keeps the western side of the mountains in desert. The ancient city sits on the borderline, and as I sat there, the cold mists swirled around me while the sun shown bright in a cloudless sky. The sun was lowering in that sky, though, so I beat a retreat down the long twisty road to spend the night as the only guest in a tiny trucker's hotel, in a little village at the foot of the winding road.
The next day started with what might be the second best motorcycle road I've ever ridden. The first fifty kilometers was a winding decent into and climb out of a desert canyon. Weird columnar cacti and giant agaves cloaked the mountain slopes, and at long intervals the road passed through a tiny village where goat herders and irrigation farmers eked out a living. Then the road started to climb, first into the piñon-juniper woodlands and then into a full continuous pine forest. Here again I noticed something that also stuck me the day before, which is that while the desert valleys are almost empty, the forests are filled with people. The increased rainfall at higher elevations, coupled with the sustenance opportunities of timber and piñon nut harvest, make the high mountains a relatively benign and desirable environment, and so not only the ancients but also the poor people of today site their villages on the bounteous summits. At 3000 m elevation this road crossed to the east side, and though the day was clear and bright, the roads were wet from the night fog, and water still dripped from the trees. On this side the mountains were thickly forested, streams cascaded down the mountainsides, and springs burst forth here and there. At one spring, on a steep mountainside, I found an ancient gnarled baldcypress close to 10 feet in diameter. In the valley bottom, a clear river ran through prosperous villages, its banks lined also with baldcypress.
Climbing out of that valley, the road again turned inland, and within a span of 50 km I was in a desert again, surrounded by dry shrubs and tall cacti. The rest of the day I simply rode fast and hard into the north, bound for the tall mountains of Nuevo León. I made it as far as Matehuala, a nice enough town but I was dead beat, and only had a dinner (where 75 pesos got me a steak a foot across) and a shower before going to sleep in a my room at the spare but pleasant Hotel Alamo, half a block from the plaza.
This morning I rode fast, east into the rising sun, to the town of Doctor Arroyo near the sounthern tip of Nuevo León. A little ways out of town I found the turnoff for San Miguel de Peña Nevada, and shortly afterward left the pavement behind and began the long climb, on an endlessly twisting and turning sand and gravel road, into the mountain range, the Cerro Peña Nevada. This time, both the mountains and the desert were nearly empty of people. I started seeing the trees, though, as soon as I left the bajada and started onto the mountain proper. There was a remarkable array of conifers, including a number of rare and remarkable species I had never seen before, such as Nelson's piñon, the Johannis piñon, Vejar fir and the Mexican yew.
The road was not bad, at first. Then it was bad. It was a track blasted out of the limestone bedrock, with a few blasted chunks thrown back on to sort of level it out. The bike chuffed and backfired and now and then a smell of burning clutch scented the piney woods, but we still climbed upwards (I never got out of first gear for nearly two days) to finally crest the Sierra at nearly 3000 m elevation. Snow carpeted the north slopes, and alpine pines lined the road. I was really out there. I rarely saw another vehicle and when I did it was a local who looked at me as if I'd just gotten out of a flying saucer. On that high divide, I really felt as if I'd ridden to the end of the earth. To do a road like that on a heavily loaded R1100RS is a bit of an adventure in its own right. I rather doubt anybody else has ever taken an RS over that road.
I should emphasize that throughout this adventure I knew exactly where I was. After all, I had a GPS. However, I had nothng even vaguely resembling a map. The whole of the Sierra Peña Nevada is a blank space on the best map I have. So I noted the locations of any road junctions I passed (there weren't many), and I watched my back trail, and I watched the gas gauge slowly sink. It all worked out. After I passed the crest, the road improved a little (a very little) and I encountered some tire tracks. Then a tiny village. Then a microwave tower. By this time the sun was setting, so I headed down something that had once maybe been a road, found a spot with a wonderful view over the valley to the east, and made camp. Here I sit. The mountains across the valley are red in the sunset, I have a dinner of water and peanuts, and my camp will catch the rising sun's rays. All is well with this world.
I woke up at 4:30. Its not that I wasn't sleepy. It was a truck grumbling up the road. If there is one sound that will always remind me of Mexico, it is that of an unmuffled diesel. They are ubiquitous. In this case, it was in a logging truck, going to work at the same time logging truck drivers everywhere go to work, on a Monday morning. The next logging truck came by - moving about 5 kph on this very steep road, so it takes 10 minutes for one to pass - 15 minutes later. And the next, in another 15 minutes. I put in my earplugs and listened to Beethoven until first light, and then I packed camp and hit the road.
It only took 3 hours to get back to a paved road. It was a very small one, but it led to a larger one, and pretty soon I was rolling down the highway again. There were a lot of straight stretches but also some good sweepers, mostly 4th and 5th gear stuff, through scenery of mountains clad in piñon forests and valleys filled with pastures, with an occasional village. In time the highway led to a town called Galeana, in the shadow of Nuevo León's greatest peak, the Cerro Potosí. Potosí is a mammoth hulk of a mountain, rising from Galeana at 1500 m to a summit at over 3700 m, and standing alone and apart from every other mountain range. It is solid limestone, and it has a hell of an interesting flora, and on top grows one pine that grows nowhere else, and another that only grows in the far-off Rocky Mountains. So at 12:30 I started up Potosí, in first gear again, but this time on a paved road. It was made of a pavement of placed rocks, sort of like what they use to pave village streets but instead of rounded cobbles in neat rows, this road was a mostly random jumble of sharp angular cobbles. In places, fines filled the interstices to provide a reasonably level driving surface, but elsewhere water had eroded away all the fines leaving a road of highly angular big rocks. My tires survived it, but they are definitely looking pretty beat after close to 4000 miles of Mexico. It was a very warm day. I took off my suit and my helmet and I just bounced up the road. I figured things can't go too far wrong riding absolutely at the lower limit of first gear, 1200 rpm. Meanwhile the scenery was gorgeous, with vast views reaching out at least 100 km, and lovely pine forests all the way.
At 5:00 I finally bumped to a stop a few yards below the summit, where a drift of snow blocked the road, and I walked on to the top. Gnarled and stunted pines grew up there, and jays flitted about scavenging nuts from them. One of them, Potosí pine, grows only there - nowhere else. It's the shortest pine in the world, never more than 10 feet tall. On the summit it forms mats 50 feet across, and it grows all over the place. The summit has a microwave station and a giant golf ball, about 50 feet tall. Don't know who owns the golf ball but it looked sort of military, probably has some fancy antenna on the inside.
After awhile I started down again, but not too far, making camp at a fine spot at 3400 m, by far the highest campsite of the trip. At my arrival in camp, I was bushed. I have never ridden such strenuous roads in my life. Wrestling the R1100RS up and down that mountain qualifies as an epic, if anything on this trip does. Anyway I set up camp, snuggled down ino my sleeping bag, started brewing cups of hot tea, and watched the sunset steal over the land until the ridge crest of Potosí was the only thing illuminated for as far as the eye could see. Then I slept.
It was, of course, a cold night and a frosty dawn. Fortunately the campsite caught the morning light. I spent a couple of hours up there, doing botany-ecology stuff, and then came the long bumpy ride down the hill. From Galeana I rode into the hills again, just for a couple of hours, until I found one last species on my list - the northern variety of Gregg's pine - and then it was done.
No more trees to see. No more mountains to cross. No more surf to lull me to sleep. Only a thousand miles of craggy Mexican blacktop between me and Douglas, Arizona - time to ride.
So I rode. I rode 400 km in what remained on the day, blasting 150 kph across the vast empty plain between Saltillo and Torreón racing the setting sun, reaching Torreón just as full dark fell. Damnéd Torreón. Torreón of the stinking chemical fctories, freeways, chain stores. Riding through nighttime rush hour frenzy on highways under construction, maps useless, GPS useless, I finally spotted a MOTEL sign. It turned out to be a sex motel, where each room has its own garage so people won't spot your car and know that you're in a sex motel with your mistress. Where TV carries the Playboy channel and room service carries nothing but hard drinks. I don't care, it got me off the dark crazy highway. I checked in and slept.
At 6:00 I'm awake and bored so I leave. It is still totally dark but there's no traffic so I wander around for half an hour and finally find the highway to Chihuahua. I ride and ride and ride, vast empty desert spaces on high speed highways. 800 km later I reach Nuevo Casas Grandes, 200 km from the border, and I stop. Here I am. Time to go find dinner.
That's sunset. The sun just disappeared behind the mountain ridge.
I am out here 10 miles or so north of Gila Bend, Arizona. I was scanning the roadside industriously for the last 30 miles or so because we're in saguaro country still, and I haven't camped out among the saguaros for many years. I thought it would be nice to find a totally isolated place out there with the saguaros and the desert stars for what might be my last night in the bush this trip. I'm a pretty good distance from Tucson and Phoenix, with a mountain range or two between me and them, so I should see some decent stars. By some old abandoned houses on the east side of the road, I spotted a dirt road winding off toward the Maricopa Mountains, and I followed it. That led me to another dirt road, which led me to a powerline corridor, and finally a turnoff led me here to near the base of the mountains, a campsite where spent cartridges litter the desert floor. I don't reckon anyone's been here since last weekend at least, and probably won't be until next, so I've got the place to myself.
This campsite is backed up about a half mile from the foot of a couple of little mountains, comparable in stature to the Tucson Mountains, so while the sun was setting I hiked out nearly to the base of one of them, photographing saguaros and scenery along the way. Now the sun is behind the rock and I'm going to go set up camp before full darkness falls. I expect it'll be another long night, hopefully not too chilly, though there is not a vestige of a cloud anywhere in the sky, nor has there been since around Benson.
It was a pretty good ride today. Immediately after I signed off my last entry, I walked out, loaded the bike, got all suited up, tried to back out of the parking spot and the bike wouldn't move. Applying my keen mechanical skills to the problem, I soon discovered that the rear tire was flat, thanks to an embedded screw. So, I returned my riding suit and all the luggage to the hotel room, got out the tools, removed the rear wheel, and got a taxi to take me to a tire repair place. It took a little looking to find one open at such an early hour. The repairman wanted to plug the hole but I forbade him - I could have done that myself, and it would have lasted about 50 miles. Of course, he spoke no English and I damned little Spanish, but through gesture, grimaces and such, I managed to persuade him to actually remove and patch the tire. Some more animated gesticulation was needed on that point in order to ensure that his labors did not damage the soft aluminum alloy of the rim. He had an interesting bead breaker, which is a steel spoon on one end and has a long steel handle covered by a heavy steel pipe, which makes a sliding hammer. It worked really well. Then we used my tire irons, wrapped generously with duct tape, to lever the tire off the rim. He put on a proper patch, using a grinding tool and plenty of rubber cement. Anyway I've covered about 300 miles since then and the patch seems to be a good one. Maybe I'll make it home on this tire, which would be nice. It would be unusual to actually wear out a rear tire for a change, instead of replacing it due to punctures.
After that it was time to leave town, and true to form, the Mexicans have put many signs leading in to Nuevo Casas Grandes, but none leading out. It's a big place, and it took me about an hour to find the completely unmarked road leading north and west out of town toward the town of Janos. At Janos I got gassed and intercepted Mex-2, which took me west 150 km or so to Agua Prieta. There was not a curve in the road between Nuevo Casas Grandes and Janos, but the road from Janos to Agua Prieta is actually a pretty fun ride once you get to the hills. There are some fine twisty bits in there, both tight lines of linked curves and long bits with big sweepers. The ride up the pass was particularly fine, although cold, and the adjacent mountains had snow on their north sides.
The border crossing from Agua Prieta into Douglas was uneventful. A cheerful lady customs official asked a few perfunctory questions, said "welcome home" and waved me in. You know, it didn't look like a different country, but right away I noticed that the roads were a lot smoother. I rode out through Bisbee to Benson. Bisbee has changed quite a bit in the twenty-odd years since I last saw it. It's been yuppified, and mostly that seems to be a good thing. Gone is the dilapidated decaying ex-mining town of broken windows and broken homes; now the hillsides are covered with art galleries, coffee houses and restored Victorian houses painted in pastel hues.
At Benson I picked up the 75 mph Arizona interstate with everybody driving 80-85. I don't like riding that fast; I sort of get blown away. I can ride farther between breaks at 75 than I can at 85, and end up maintaining a higher average speed. The Interstate led me to Tucson, which I hadn't really seen since 1994. I was surprised at how little Tucson had grown in the past 13 years. I guess the Depression.com was not kind to Tucson. When I lived there in the mid-80s Tucson was growing, as Edward Abbey said, like a cancer - 10% to 15% annual growth, just like it had been ever since air conditioning was invented. But it seems now to not even be twice as big as it was 20 years ago. The downtown has hardly grown at all, but there are noticeably more cars on the road. Anyway I got a new speedo cable at the BMW dealer, and picked up a new face shield while I was at it. Then I rode on up the interstate to Eloy, where I had an early dinner at a truck stop, where the food was forgettable but the maitre d' and I talked motorcycles for awhile. His dad used to have an R50 with a Steib sidecar, and he had a Harley and a Suzuki. After that it was a fast ride west on I-8 to Gila Bend, and then up to here. Could have kept going, but I wanted to be with the saguaros and enjoy an Arizona sunset. Here I am.
I could go on with the trip narrative - I had a hell of a nice ride back, twisties across southern California, more twisties up the California and Oregon coasts, visits with friends, great food, great beer, a little culture. Anywhere else it would be a good story. But after Michoacán? After Cerro Peña Blanca and Cerro Potosí? No, it can wait for another time. Suffice to say then that I was happy, after my month on the road, to see home again: to see my wife, my daughter, my dog. The tires were threadbare and the bike was dusty and I was brown. Seattle is home, but I'll be going back to Mexico again.
Last Modified 2017-11-08


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DeLaval® Voluntary Milking System (VMS) units can now be offered with ISO identification. The product which is based on several years of development and testing is in line with expected lifetime traceability legislation and will enable farmers to take advantage of the cost efficiency of the ISO identification system.
In recent years animal lifetime traceability has become an important issue in dairy farming. In a number of countries legislation has already been passed that requires cows to be fitted with ISO ID ear tags. Furthermore, animal lifetime traceability legislation is expected to be implemented in more and more countries the coming years. In view of such legislation and to increase customer savings, all DeLaval VMSTM units can be offered with HDX (half duplex) ISO identification as from January 2012. In practice this means that a cow can have the same ISO ID ear tag throughout her entire lifetime.
DeLaval VMS Business Development Manager, Jouko Tiainen says, "In order to launch the system we had to make sure that it works at the same performance level as our existing identification systems as nothing else is acceptable with a robotic milking system. After several years of development and testing at large scale farms, we are now in a position to release it to the market."
It's not only the DeLaval VMS unit that is ISO compatible. All related products in the VMS barn system such as feeding stations, calf feeders and cow traffic control solutions can also be delivered with ISO identification. Existing DeLaval identification systems for VMSTM farmers will continue to be supported, however those farmers can over the long term also benefit from the introduction of ISO identification into their systems.
"The ISO identification VMS units can be installed in both existing and new VMS barns, and be integrated with the DelPro herd management system," continues Tiainen. "With this system, farmers get an accurate and cost effective way to identify their animals," he concludes.

subset: commoncrawl


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RefDB is a reference database and bibliography tool for SGML, XML, and LaTeX documents. Command-line tools allow interactive or scriptable access to the data which are stored in a SQL database. RefDB can also be accessed through a Web interface, a SRU interface, or via editor extensions (Emacs/vim). Libraries for Perl and PHP are available for programmers. RefDB provides sophisticated character encoding handling, using Unicode by default.
refbase is a Web-based bibliographic manager that can import and export references in various formats (including BibTeX, Endnote, ISI, RIS, PubMed, MODS XML, OpenOffice, and Word 2007 XML). It can make formatted lists of citations in HTML, RTF, PDF, or LaTeX, and offers powerful searching and RSS support. Its OpenSearch and SRU/W services and support for unAPI and COinS metadata allow for easy access by clients and search engines.
SimplyBibTeX is an application to share and hold BibTeX bibliographies. One can add, edit and remove entries from bibliographies online or upload complete collections. The system uses a very simple but effective template mechanism. Users and coworkers can subscribe to RSS 2.0 or Atom feeds in order to get notified about changes.
KBibTeX is a BibTeX editor for KDE to edit bibliographies used with LaTeX. Features include comfortable input masks, starting Web queries (e. g. Google or PubMed), and exporting to PDF, PostScript, RTF, and XML/HTML. As KBibTeX is using KDE's KParts technology, it can be embedded into Kile or Konqueror.
scbib is a bibliography manager written in Scheme. It handles bibliographic data written in simple S-expressions and generates a bibtex file and an HTML file from the S-expressions file. It is capable of obtaining bibliographic data using the Amazon Web service. A simple converter for importing a bibtex file is also included.
refdb-mode is a minor mode for Emacs that implements an interface to RefDB, a reference management and bibliography tool for SGML, XML, LaTeX, and Muse documents. It integrates nicely with psgml, nxml-mode, AucTeX, and muse-mode. refdb-mode provides the complete functionality of the RefDB command line clients from a graphical interface. You can add and edit references, notes, and styles, run queries, and insert the results as citations into your DocBook, TEI, LaTeX, or Muse documents. You can also look up cited references in the database right from your document. You can create, transform, and view these documents with a mouse click. This amounts to an integrated authoring environment for markup languages with reference management and bibliography support.
Bibliographer is a bibtex bibliography database editor which aims to be easy to use. Its features include linking files to your records with indexing and searching support. The interface is designed for the easy navigation of your bibliography. Double clicking a record will open the linked file.
A camera app for Android.
A command-line network analysis workbench.


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Welcome to Radio Feedback, Radio.com's weekly feature where we ask artists to wax nostalgic on the first time they heard themselves on the radio.
Imagine Dragons can chalk the first time they heard themselves on the radio up to some very fast, and most likely unsafe driving.
The band was filming their music video for "It's Time," from their 2012 debut, Night Visions, out in Barstow, a city in California that is located halfway between Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
They knew that "It's Time" was going to play on the radio that day, but they weren't quite sure when. They weren't even sure if they'd be able to get the station on their car stereo since they were so far out of range.
Immediately after the shoot wrapped, the four guys got into a car and booked it back to Los Angeles.
"We were driving as quickly as possible and we managed to hear the second chorus through the static," bassist Ben McKee told Radio.com hours before the band took the stage at Lollapalooza. "It's a moment I think we'll never forget."
Frontman Dan Reynolds agreed: "I don't think any of us expected last year to blow up exponentially like this, but I think we're all just delightfully surprised."


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■ use
-Crime prevention patrols and induction of people or vehicles, various events and in disaster preparedness
■ features
And 14 LEDs with outstanding brightness ( 2 cm pitch, usually twice over six )
Lights up and flashes 2 pattern
-Light Department is made of impact resistant polycarbonate.
Light weight type of battery use less hand fatigue
-Using waterproof rain or even safe
■ product specification
-Material: light-blue LED (14 pieces)
Handle = ABS
• Specifications batteries: battery, 2 book ( sold separately) [preferably use alkaline batteries. ]
-Battery life:-continuous flashing = approx. 100 hours continuous light = approx. 20 hours (with alkaline batteries)
-Size: length = 530 mm and light Department = 335 mm, light, thickness = 30 mm
-Weight: 243 g (battery included)
This product cannot be shipped to United States from the store.
Please contact the store for further information.


text:
La Perla Malizia Flower Lace T-Shirt Bra 905105
This product was discontinued March, 2013 and is no longer available. Please consider one of the Customer-Recommended Replacements above, or try a new search.
This contour bra features light foam padding for subtle cleavage enhancement and lace center panel, sides and back. .
Tomima's Tip
"This is La Perla's Best Selling T-Shirt Bra. IF you like its fit, you'll also like the Spring in NY T-shirt Bra. "
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text:
RCBS Full Length Die Set
RCBS Full Length Die Set For 460 Weatherby
2-Die Sets are for bottleneck type rifle and handgun cases, and consist of a full length sizer die with expander-decapping unit, and a seater die with bullet seater plug. Three die sets are primarily for straight wall rifle and handgun cases and consists of a resizing die with decapping unit, expander die, and bullet seating die.
SPECIFICATIONS:Mfg Item Num: 33101 Category: RELOADING DIES Type :Full Length Die SetCaliber :460 WTHBY


text:
There are lots of books on the financial crisis and some are very good. Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera have entered a crowded market - but they have done what nobody else has yet done. They have produced a book (All the Devils are Here) in which I have yet to find a single factual error. And they have produced a book which did not start with an ideologically driven conclusion. This is a big achievement making this book - above others - worthy of your time.
Just to make it more joyous though they have made a book that looks like it was effortless to write and it is a fun read. The book is thought provoking not because it badgers you but because the story is laid out with nuance - all the devils, ranging from naivety to delusion to criminality are present within realistic characters sketches of many of the key players. This was a human crisis with human causes - not a whirlwind caused by some deity.
If I have a criticism it is that the book is too narrow. The bond insurers are barely mentioned. (Ambac and MBIA are names that do not appear in the index.) The crisis is placed in an American context - and it was a global crisis. (At a minimum it was a North Atlantic crisis.) The role of the British banks (huge players) was not explored. You could read this book and not have an inkling of the crisis now engulfing Ireland. That is a tough criticism though - because if the book were broadened to that it would have either been 800 pages or lost the depth of character displayed.
But my guess is that if someone wrote that book they would find all the devils of the American crisis lurking in the European crisis. Hell may well be empty. Human failings are found amongst the living. All the devils would be there too!


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OCEAN CITY – With a warning up front about what should be a tight budget year, the Ocean City Mayor and Council this week opened bids for millions of dollars in expenditures from new police department uniforms and sewer main replacements to a new fire truck and renovation of the Ocean City Lifesaving Station Museum.
Council work sessions typically include a number of bid opening for various projects and expenditures in the resort and this Tuesday was no different. What was remarkably different, however, was the wide range of expenditures for which bids were opened and the high dollar price tag on many of them.
While all agreed the various projects are necessary and warranted, not everybody was keen on the litany of bids presented for approval this week. Council Secretary Nancy Howard, who opens and reads the various bids to the council, warned her colleagues and the various department heads about curbing unnecessary expenditures.
"Everybody has to tighten their belts," she said. "This is going to be a tough budget year and we all have to be careful."
The Mayor and Council list the various projects and purchases in the budget and assign an estimated amount for them based on the predictions of the department heads. The projects and purchases are then put out for bid and several companies typically submit closed bids. In most cases, the low bid comes in under what was budgeted for, as was the case on Tuesday, but the sheer volume of the combined expenditures was somewhat eye opening.
For example, one of the bid openings was for new police and fire department uniforms to the tune of around $360,000. Next up was the purchase of a new fire engine for the fire department, the low bid for which came in at around $469,000.
Several others were related to public works projects. For example, the council approved a bid for a replacement of 2,200 linear feet of sewer main along Jamestown Rd. at an estimated $342,600. The largest expenditure for which bids were opened on Tuesday was for the installation of a water main along Wight Street from 135th Street to 145th Street for a around $722,000. Currently, a number of blocks in the section have water mains of just two inches and the project will make all of the eight inches in diameter.
Another significant expenditure included 10 locations for bay crossings for utilities. Public Works director Hal Adkins explained 10 were done last year and another 10 are expected to be done this year. The low bid came in at around $378,000.
Bids were also opened for the installation of brick pavers at 94th Street at around $33,000. In addition, bids were opened for the restoration of the Ocean City Life Saving Museum, the lowest of which came in at just over $62,000.


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© 2010 MLB Advanced Media, L.P. All rights reserved.
Tribe beats deadline to ink top Draft picks
Pomeranz, Washington, Wolters signings go down to wire
By Anthony Castrovince / MLB.com
CLEVELAND -- As expected, the final day before the Draft pick signing deadline was a busy one for the Indians, and it was not all talk. There was plenty of ink on paper and plenty of money trading hands. The Tribe agreed to terms with No. 1 pick Drew Pomeranz ($2.65 million), No. 2 pick LeVon Washington ($1.2 million) and No. 3 pick Tony Wolters ($1.35 million) mere minutes before the midnight ET Tuesday deadline. It was an impressive accomplishment for the Indians, given speculation heading into the day that they might have to settle for signing just one or two of those highly touted picks. And that wasn't all. Earlier in the day, the Indians came to terms with No. 4 selection Kyle Blair ($580,000 ) and No. 8 pick Alex Lavisky ($1 million), a local product. Needless to say, the coffee was brewing and the calculators were churning in the Indians' front office. The main objective, of course, was to sign Pomeranz, who, at No. 5 overall, was the Tribe's highest Draft selection since Paul Shuey was taken second overall in 1992. Pomeranz, a 6-foot-3, 230-pound lefty, is coming off his junior season at Ole Miss, where he was 9-2 with a 2.24 ERA, 139 strikeouts and 49 walks in 100 2/3 innings over 16 starts this year. At the time he was drafted, Pomeranz, who opted to go to college after the Rangers drafted him out of high school in the 12th round in 2007, made it pretty clear he felt ready to turn pro. And all along, there seemed to be little doubt the Indians would find common ground with him on a signing bonus. But as was the case with several other top picks (only three of the top 10 overall had signed, heading into Monday), negotiations with Pomeranz didn't truly heat up until the final hours, and a deal didn't get consummated until the final minutes. Pomeranz was not expected to pitch for a Minor League team this season, so his holdout likely didn't cost him any true developmental time. Last year, top pick Alex White signed minutes before the deadline and officially began his professional career with a short stint in the Arizona instructional league in the fall. Washington, a product of Chipola (Fla.) Junior College, is a Scott Boras client who was the 30th overall selection by the Rays in the 2009 Draft and opted not to sign. Now that he's in the fold, the Indians, who took Washington 55th overall, hope to groom him into a potential leadoff hitter. Washington is speedy and athletic. Wolters, a shortstop who recently finished playing for Team USA's 18-and-under national team, had committed to the University of San Diego but will instead begin his pro career with the Tribe. The 21-year-old Blair, a right-hander out of the University of San Diego, is coming off a junior season in which he went 8-4 with a 2.84 ERA over 15 starts, striking out 126 and walking 28 in 98 1/3 innings. His 126 strikeouts were tied for the 10th most of any NCAA Division I pitcher. Blair was named West Coast Conference pitcher of the year and selected as a third-team All-American. The 19-year-old Lavisky, a catcher, just graduated from St. Edward's High School, only a few miles from Progressive Field. Listed at 6-foot-1 and 210 pounds, he batted .450 (36-80) with nine doubles, 13 home runs and 40 RBIs while scoring 33 runs for the OHSAA Division I State Champion Eagles. He had signed a letter of intent to attend Georgia Tech. All told, the Indians signed 26 of their 50 selections from the 2010 Draft.
Anthony Castrovince is a reporter for MLB.com. He blogs about baseball at CastroTurf. Follow @castrovince on Twitter. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.


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• The Children's Medical Center of Dayton now has 350 followers on Pinterest, and has received roughly 100 visits from its pins. Certainly some early signs of local engagement for a new social network, but what's the outcome?
• Yogurt company Chobani has 2,000 followers and is driving user engagement from Pinterest. OK, again, good top-of-the-funnel activity, not massive, but good for a core loyalist group. But what are the loyalists doing once they get to the Chobani site?
• Probably the most likely to have real ROI occurring is online retailer Etsy with its 43,000 pinners. But the case study I saw discusses retail branding and empowering users to build shopping ideas, not sales, store click throughs, conversions, or any other statistic close to ROI.
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text:
The InnoPort from Innovia LLC is a sterile, disposable port for laparoscopic surgery which allows three instruments to access the abdominal cavity, preferably via the umbilicus, while maintaining pneumoperitoneum and fully clinically relevant range of instrument motion. It consists of a rubber Body, three soft silicone Valves, an Insufflation Tube, and an Exhaust Tube. The Body includes a rigid component at the top to facilitate suture tie-down to the abdominal surface. It is intended for use by laparoscopic surgeons doing Single Port Access surgeries such as cholecystectomy, hernia repair and total laparoscopic hysterectomy.
For more information, visit www.theinnoport.com [1]


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The Shroud of Turin
I'm writing about the Shroud of Turin as evidence for Jesus. Is it? See also here.
Catholic physicist Frank J. Tipler, of the anthropic principle fame, has recently defended the Shroud of Turin as genuine in his newest book.
In his book, if I understand him correctly, he argues that a virgin birth of a male child has the probability of 1 and 120 billion from happening naturally. Given the fact that he calculates there have been 60 billion Homo sapiens who have populated the earth, such a thing becomes somewhat probable. Mary would have been an XXY chromosomal female (Klinefelter's syndrome), except her womb would've been normal. The virgin born male child would have a XX chromosomal structure, just like females. This child might not have male genitals.
Now comes the Shroud. DNA evidence from the Shroud showed that the blood had an XY pair, but Tipler argues this might be from contamination. The full results of the DNA testing of the Shroud were published, he says, in an obscure Italian journal, which included "a computer output of the DNA analyzer." However, "there was no attempt to interpret the data." As soon as Tipler saw the data he was able to interpret it "at once." He says, "They are the expected signature of the DNA of a male born in a virgin birth"--a double XX structure. (p. 184). Thus, "the DNA data support the virgin birth hypothesis," and that the Turin Shroud "is genuine."(p. 187).
Blinded by Science?
by Lawrence Krauss
By the time I was halfway through Frank Tipler's new book I scanned the table of contents and was disappointed to find there would be no explanation of the recently reported miraculous appearance of Mother Teresa's image on a cheese Danish in Nashville. That was unusual, given that Tipler goes out of his way to provide convoluted physics justifications for key Christian miracles, including the image of Jesus on the Shroud of Turin, long debunked as a 14th-century forgery by many experts. Moreover, whenever conventional physics doesn't provide a sufficient explanation for the phenomenon of interest, Tipler re-invents it.
As a collection of half-truths and exaggerations, I was first tempted to describe Tipler's new book as nonsense, but I soon realized that that would be unfair to the concept of nonsense. These descriptions are far more dangerous than nonsense, because Tipler's reasonable descriptions of various aspects of modern physics, combined with his respectable research pedigree, give the distinct illusion that he is honestly describing what the laws of physics imply. He is not. This book provides an object lesson in the dangers of pushing science beyond its domain of validity, and using various scientific approximations as if they are completely valid in all contexts.
The Physics of Nonsense
Tim Callahan
Dr. Frank Tipler really, really — no, I mean really — needs to take a basic, freshman level, course in comparative mythology. He could also use a course in the development of Christian dogma. He could as well use a little knowledge of what the Bible actually says in the original Hebrew (for the Jewish Scriptures) and the original Greek (for the Christian Scriptures).
As is the case of previous works of this sort, Tipler's attempt to shoehorn science into the Bible ignores the disciplines of biblical scholarship. There is an arrogance implicit in this. The author is saying, in essence, that his discipline should be respected, but that the disciplines of linguistics, biblical scholarship, comparative mythology, history, and archaeology are of no consequence.
In past exercises of this sort tsunami's have been used as the explanation for the Exodus story of the Israelites crossing the Red Sea dry shod — when the waters rolled out just before the tidal wave — and for the ensuing destruction of their Egyptian pursuers — when the tsunami proper hit. Earthquakes have been used to explain the collapse of the walls of Jericho, and a multitude of scientific causes have been proposed for the sun standing still at the command of Joshua (see my article "Sun Stand Thou Still" Skeptic Vol. 7, No. 3, 1999). Tipler plays fast and loose with translation of the biblical text and Christian dogma, ignores comparative mythology as an explanation for such things as the virgin birth, and makes bizarre demands on science itself to prove as literally true the Trinity, the Star of Bethlehem, the Virgin Birth and, of course, the Resurrection.
Tipler wades through well-trodden turf in the matter of the Virgin Birth, by trying to make the Immanuel Prophecy in Isaiah 7:14 fit the birth of Jesus, even though it was plainly misused by Matthew. Here is Is. 7:14 as rendered in the King James Version: "Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel." Here is the same verse as rendered in the Revised Standard Version: "Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign; Behold, a young woman shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel."
Notice that the "virgin" of the King James Bible has transmogrified into a "young woman." This is because the Greek of the New Testament and the Septuagint had one word, parthenos, that could be rendered both as "virgin" and "unmarried woman," whereas the Hebrew scriptures used two words. One, bethula, means specifically "virgin." The other, almah, means simply a young woman. The word used in Is. 7:14 is almah. Ergo, it is not a prediction of the Virgin Birth, Q.E.D. Yet Tipler rationalizes (pp. 156-157) that maybe the meaning of almah changed over time, and asserts, without supportive evidence, that there are numerous references to the Virgin Birth in Paul's letters, as well as in Mark and John.
There is an amazingly simple way to cut through all this rationalization and speculation, and that is to put the Immanuel Prophecy back in the context of Isaiah 7. King Ahaz of Judah is being attacked by King Pekah of Israel in alliance with Rezin, prince of Damascus. Isaiah assures Ahaz that God will protect him, saying that a young woman will shortly bear a child named Immanuel, meaning "God is with us." After this prediction Isaiah says (Is. 7:16) that before this child knows how to refuse evil and choose good, that is, before he reaches the age of moral discrimination, 12 years old at the latest, the kingdoms of Israel and Damascus will be deserted. In other words, this prophecy dealt with the period of the Assyrian conquest of Israel and Damascus by Tiglath-pileser III ca. 732 BCE. There is simply no way to honestly stretch this to fit the Matthean Nativity and the Virgin Birth.
While Tipler's attempt to use the Immanuel Prophesy as a prediction of Jesus being born of a virgin is both tired and tiresome, his attempt to make the Virgin Birth compatible with science is novel, if nothing else. He argues that parthenogenesis, whereby a female animal can reproduce without being fertilized by a male, could be a scientific way for a virgin to give birth. There are a number of problems with this. First, parthenogenesis has never been observed in mammals. Second, parthenogenesis results from the female egg not undergoing meiosis or reduction division, which produces a haploid cell that needs to unite with another haploid cell to produce a new individual. In parthenogenesis the egg keeps its full compliment of chromosomes, meaning, in mammals, two X chromosomes. Thus a parthenogenetic birth should only produce a daughter. How do we get Jesus? Tipler argues that Jesus was a double X male, an oddity that appears in one out of every 20,000 births. This might just be possible, though it's still stretching things. However just when you think Tipler's going to be rational, he brings in something weird. In the case of attempting to prove that Jesus had a double X chromosome genotype, it's the Shroud of Turin, from which he hopes to find Jesus' XX genotype in the DNA from the blood on the Shroud. Most people know that the Shroud was radiocarbon dated to the 14th century. Not so says Tipler:
The radiocarbon dating of the Shroud is known to be incorrect, first because bacterial contamination was not taken into account (bacteria add carbon of a later date than the actual Shroud material and thus make it seem younger than it is), and second, because the Shroud samples tested were apparently from a section that had been partially "repaired." The chemist Raymond Rogers has done a careful chemical analysis of linen fibers taken from all areas of the Turin Shroud, and he is almost certain that the linen used to obtain the radiocarbon date was medieval in origin. That is, the particular sample taken from the Shroud to obtain its age by radiocarbon dating was not manufactured at the same time as the rest of the Shroud. This suggests that the linen from the radiocarbon sample was added at a later date, probably to repair the Shroud. The radiocarbon analysis yielded a date between A.D. 1260 and 1390 completely inconsistent with Rogers's chemical analysis of the linen fibers from the radiocarbon area.
It is interesting that the argument that bacterial contamination corrupted the date could be used against accepting the radiocarbon dates of the wrappings of the mummy of Rameses the Great or the beeswax used to seal the paint on the bust of Nefertiti. Of course, it never is because no one is trying to make Egyptian archaeology fit into the narrative of a holy text.
As to the argument that the parts of the Shroud tested were either burned or were patches, consider that in an article on the carbon dating of the Shroud in the February 16, 1989 issue of Nature, P.E. Damon and colleagues reported that textile experts took pains to select samples of the cloth away from areas that were either charred or patched. This was done under the auspices of the Holy See and under observation of the local Roman Catholic archbishop. Not only were samples of the Shroud sent to three independent laboratories, as controls they also sent pieces of cloth that were not from the Shroud. The pieces of cloth were labeled A, B, C, etc., and the laboratories were not told which samples were controls and which were from the Shroud. Also, the three laboratories did not compare results until after they had been transmitted to authorities at the British Museum, which was coordinating the testing. In other words, the samples of the shroud were not charred, nor were they from later patches. Furthermore, rigorous steps were taken to insure that the three independent findings were as objective as possible, with the following results reported by Damon in the Nature paper:
The results of radiocarbon measurements at Arizona, Oxford and Zurich yield a calibrated age range with at least 95% confidence for the linen of the Shroud of Turin of AD 1260-1390 (rounded down / up to the nearest 10 yr.). These results therefore provide conclusive evidence that the linen of the Shroud of Turin is medieval.
Defenders of the shroud's authenticity also claimed that pollen in the cloth could only have come from Israel and that the red brown paint was actually blood. That the heightened defense of the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin in response to the radiocarbon dating by the independent labs is rooted in pseudoscience fueled by faith, can be seen if one considers what the reaction from these sources would have been had the three independent labs found the cloth samples to be from the first century. Then there would have been nothing but praise for the radiocarbon process.
What about the fact that myths of virgin births, along with heroes and demigods rising from the dead, parallel the Christian accounts? Tipler abandons reason and empiricism in favor of what "rings" true to him:
Indeed they were common, but the Gospel accounts of the Risen Jesus have in my judgment (and Pannenberg's and that of most other scholars who have studied the matter with open minds) a ring of reality unlike these myths. Similarly, the accounts of the Virgin Birth in Matthew and Luke have the ring of reality, unlike the equally common ancient myths of the conception of a god born of copulation between a god and a human female. Matthew and Luke describe the Virgin Birth as the result of the action of the holy spirit, not as the result of intercourse between God the Father and Mary.
It is curious that Tipler finds that the accounts in Matthew and Luke of the Virgin Birth "have the ring of reality," particularly since these two accounts disagree with each other in nearly every particular. Matthew says Joseph and Mary were living in Bethlehem, and only left for Nazareth to escape persecution, first from Herod the Great, then from his son Herod Archelaus. Luke says they were originally living in Nazareth, but had to go to Bethlehem to be entered into an empire-wide Roman census (which, by the way, is fictional). Thus, they had to make the 70-mile trek to get to Bethlehem with Mary in the late stages of pregnancy. This piece of melodrama, along with other important details, are missing from Matthew. Missing from Luke are the star of Bethlehem, the Magi, the slaughter of the innocents, and the flight of the holy family to Egypt. As to the supposed differences between the Christian myths and those of the pagans, consider what the early church father St. Justin Martyr (ca. CE 100–165) had to say on the subject in item 21 of his First Apology, a philosophical defense of Christian belief addressed to Emperor Antoninus Pius:
And when we say also that the Word, who is the First-begotten of God, was born for us without sexual union, Jesus Christ our teacher, and that He was crucified and died and rose again and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing new beyond (what you believe) concerning those whom you call sons of Zeus. For you know of how many sons of Zeus your esteemed writers speak: Hermes, the interpreting Word and teacher of all; Asclepius, who though he was a great healer, after being struck by a thunderbolt, ascended into heaven; and Dionysus too who was torn in pieces; and Herakles, when he had committed himself to the flames to escape his pains; and the Dioscouri, the sons of Leda; and Perseus, son of Danae; and Bellerophon, who, though of mortal origin, rose to heaven on the horse Pegasus. For what shall I say of Ariadne and those who, like her, have been said to have been placed among the stars? And what of the emperors, whom you think it right to deify, and on whose behalf you produce someone who swears that he has seen the burning Caesar ascend to heaven from the funeral pyre?
That Justin compares the Christ myth to those of Greek mythology and even to the deification of emperors, saying, "we propound nothing new beyond what you believe," indicates that he saw the virgin birth and the resurrection of Christ in the same light as what he acknowledged to be already existing beliefs, only assuming that the Christian myth was the true one.
Tipler's science behind the Immaculate Conception involves his theory that evil was implanted in our genes (his version of the Fall) in the distant past. Jesus and Mary would both, according to Tipler, be free of this genetic evil. Here Tiper returns to the Shroud of Turin:
Since Jesus and Mary would share the same genome on my XX male theory, if the genes were absent from Jesus' genome, they would be absent from Mary's. Jesus would indeed have been conceived immaculately. A DNA search of the Shroud for the X-chromasome gene just mentioned would be the first step. If this gene were indeed involved in our tendency to commit evil, we would expect to see this gene modified from the human norm in the Shroud DNA. In fact, if the evil gene is connected to bone generation, the amelogenin gene, which codes for the generation of teeth, might be entirely absent from Jesus' genome both in its X form and in its Y form. If so, this gene would be absent from the DNA in the Shroud of Turin if this artifact is genuine. If the Christian tradition that the Fall affected the entire animal kingdom is correct, we would expect to see a similar evil gene complex present in all animals, presumably in the chromosome coding for the sex differentiation.
Moving on to the Resurrection, Tipler claims that skeptics haven't made a strong case against it. One could also argue that skeptics haven't made a strong case against the existence of giant sea serpents. The fallacy in both statements is that it is virtually impossible to prove a negative. Those arguing for the validity of either sea serpents or the Resurrection are the ones bearing the burden of proof. The skeptic's job then is to examine the evidence to see if it can be either verified or falsified.
Tipler goes back to the Shroud of Turin for actual proof. He then compounds this offense with a whole section devoted to the idea that the Shroud is the actual Holy Grail. This is simply nonsense. The Grail is the invention of medieval writers, specifically the French poet Chretien de Troyes, who wrote his Grail story ca. 1180, the Burgundian Robert de Borron and the German Wolfram von Eschenbach, both writing in the early 1200s. Tipler is really reaching to try to make the source of the Grail stories the Shroud of Turin, which wasn't even known to exist until after the Grail stories had been written.


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basket Size: 23.25L x 23.00W x 22.62H
1 cu FT = 1748 cu IN (12x12x12)23.25L x 23.00W x 22.62H = 12096 cu IN / 1748 = 6.9 cu FTminus Agitator and Water depth ...
Trying to figure out the cubic feet of this washer. Thanks!!Model 110.82872800
That will give you the OUTER tub capacity not inner usable tub, back to the drawing board.
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ACHICA / Rachel Riley
Rachel Riley
Rachel Riley
This delightful vintage-style childrenswear collection is an expression of founder Rachel Riley's own rural idyll. The design philosophy is rooted in a traditional lifestyle that reflects country life - freshly cut flowers, chickens and pony rides in the local village. Rachel Riley clothing ties the craft of fine tailoring and needlework with the skill of the seamstress and pattern-cutter. Rachel is enamoured by the creative process, continuing to cut her own patterns, hand-sew, knit and embroider samples herself. Traditionally inspired for modern living, these designs will dress your little treasures beautifully for all occasions.
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Ervin Santana vs. His Critics – Between Rounds
The local media outlets report this morning that Ervin Santana will get another start tomorrow evening at Anaheim against Oakland.
The best reporting was by Curtis Zupke of the Orange County Register, who detailed the mechanical flaw in Santana's delivery discovered by pitching coach Mike Butcher:
The continuing saga of the Angels' young, enigmatic right-hander has had so many ups and downs this season it's enough to make Angels fans twist and turn in their sleep.
But Santana has corrected his mechanics in his hip turn, and the Angels are giving him another turn in the rotation.
In a somewhat surprising move, Manager Mike Scioscia designated Santana as his Monday starter against Oakland. It was speculated Scioscia would give the ball to Dustin Moseley, but the manager said he has confidence in Santana after pitching coach Mike Butcher worked with Santana on mechanics, namely getting his hip turned to help him load his windup.
Amazing what a reporter can find out when he spends a little more time practicing old-fashioned journalism and a little less time trying to smear a player's reputation … not to mention insulting his readers …


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Charles Rotblut recently spoke at the 2017 AAII Investor Conference. For information on how to subscribe to recordings of the presentations, go to www.aaii.com/conferenceaudio for more details.
One of the advantages of putting together our annual Top Funds Guide, which starts here, is that it gives me the opportunity to step back and look at the broader trends encompassing the mutual fund industry. Last year, there were three notable trends: outflows from domestic stock funds, growth in the popularity of target date funds and a push by the financial community to promote alternative funds.
Historically, investors have put money into domestic stock mutual funds when the market is rising and have pulled money out of stock funds when the market is falling. Last year proved to be an exception. Even though the S&P 500 index returned 16.0%, investors moved money out of domestic stock funds. The Investment Company Institute's (ICI) estimation of mutual fund flows reveal net outflows during 47 weeks out of the 53-week period spanning from the week ended January 4, 2012, to the week ended January 2, 2013.
There was some speculation that the outflows represented a shift from mutual funds to exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Though such a shift may explain some of the outflows, the data suggests many investors were reducing their allocations to domestic stocks overall, or at least pure stock funds. Bond mutual funds experienced estimated net inflows for all but one week over the same period of time. Plus, the growth in the amount of assets managed by domestic stock ETFs was not large enough to both offset the total estimated outflows from domestic stock mutual funds and account for rising stock prices.
There is little doubt that all of the uncertainty that existed throughout 2012 caused some investors to be skittish about their allocations to equities. However, it is important to consider why you bought a mutual fund before you pull money out of it. Mutual funds are designed to be long-term investments. A good fund rewards shareholders who stick with it over the long term. Trying to time the market is extremely difficult. Trying to time the market by moving in and out of actively managed funds is even harder.
Some investors are opting for target date funds, rather than pure stock funds. The allure of target date funds is that they offer an "all-in-one" approach to allocation. Rather than worrying about whether to hold a stock or a bond fund, target date funds adjust their allocation relative to their shareholders' age. You simply have to pick a fund with a target date that is approximate to your planned retirement date. Target date funds are also pulling in more assets from 401(k) and similar employer-sponsored retirement plans that utilize default allocation strategies. Though the premise of these funds may sound straightforward, they are complex instruments, as I explained in the October 2012 AAII Journal ("Target Date Funds: A Simple Premise, but Underlying Complexities," available at AAII.com).
Investors are getting an initial look at how target date funds act after their target date has been reached. You can monitor such funds in a new category in our Guide, "Target Date: In Retirement." At the other end of the spectrum, we have new categories for funds with target dates of 2030, 2040, 2050 and beyond.
Finally, you may have heard a pitch for alternative funds. These are funds intended to provide diversification benefits by offering returns that are uncorrelated to the performance of the stock or bond markets. These funds can follow hard-to-understand (and hard to explain) quantitative strategies. They have high expense ratios, which negatively impacts your realized return. Plus, their asset size is small compared to most other mutual funds, a sign that their so-called popularity may be more hype than actual fact. Nonetheless, they are an option and information about them can be found in the long-short category.
Due to the addition of new funds and categories, we pushed the space limitations of the printed magazine. As a consequence, information on our Investor Surveys has been omitted. You can find the latest numbers for our Sentiment Survey and our Asset Allocation Survey online at www.aaii.com/investor-surveys.
Wishing you prosperity
Charles Rotblut, CFA
Editor, AAII Journal
Joseph Kordella from VA posted over 4 years ago:
I have downloaded the All Funds PDF and can't seem to locate NSEIX. Can anyone provide insight into that fund?
Sorry, you cannot add comments while on a mobile device or while printing.


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SEATTLE, Oct. 4 (UPI) -- Police said a "big goat" an officer found wandering in Seattle was actually a ram and has been returned to its owner.
The Seattle Police Department, which initially identified the creature as a "big goat," said the animal was picked up by an officer who spotted it wandering in the Beacon Hill neighborhood Sunday morning, and it was taken to the Seattle Animal Shelter, KCPQ-TV, Seattle, reported Thursday.
Don Baxter, a manager at the shelter, said the animal was actually a ram, a male sheep, and had escaped from a yard belonging to a friend of its owner.
A relative of the owner saw the animal on the news and the owner picked was reunited with the sheep Wednesday. Baxter said the owner paid an impound and microchip fee of about $75.


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Olivia Wilde Curly Formal Updo Hairstyle
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Related quotes
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"The life of whale shark gets endangered as the quantity of small fishes starts diminishing in ocean. It is a business model lesson for big corporate houses."
"Good managers don't set a goal to increase efficiency, but rather an implementation of business process improvements that result in higher efficiency as well."
"For harmony and peaceful success in business: Never make a friend of an employee or an employee of a friend. That's not to say, "don't be kind, but never cross the line of fraternization." In doing so your authority begins to crumble and cannot be regained."
"Sometimes in the of world business we need to lie, be greedy, and be a sinner .... But we are doing it the wrong way... to be successful in business we need to tell the truth, be hardworking, and faith in god..."


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The capital of the largest yet most desolate state in Australia, Perth is like an oasis in Australia's outback. Once considered a dull location, a resources boom in the 1960's
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From the Sky, Detroit Looks Like Sarajevo
Chris Hansen traveled to Detroit, Michigan for a Dateline special that aired tonight on the state of what is probably America's most desolate city. And in aerial footage—devastation porn at its best—Detroit's grim plight was revealed. Video inside.
"Today, from the air, parts of Detroit look like a war zone," Hansen said in a voiceover near the beginning of the special, before he listed some of the most shocking facts about the city's current state—the population is less than half of what it was decades ago; there are 400 liquor stores there, but only eight supermarkets—all while panning shots of the consequences of its deterioration flashed on the screen.
Describing Detroit as "a city that is virtually on life support," Hansen then introduced the audience to an ambitious plan by Mayor Dave Bing to bulldoze down more than 10,000 buildings and literally shrink the city's borders in order to save money spent on public services. Again, disturbing aerial shots were abound.
As the special's end drew nearer, depressing music played as even more aerial shots revealed Detroit's desolation—combined with shocking information, like the fact that there are 40 square miles of vacant/abandoned property within the city's limits—and Mayor Bing explained in more detail to Hansen his plan to shrink its size (something he claims will take 10 to 20 years, if it's able to be completed at all).
Will Detroit ever return to its glory days of the first half of the 20th Century? Probably not. Will it even be able to avoid going completely bankrupt and return from the brink of total destruction? Nobody really knows. What is clear, though—especially after seeing the devastation from the sky—is that the Motor City has a long, long way to go to even become a shell of its former self.
(Thanks to Jalopnik's Ray Wert for tipping me off and coming up with the concept!)


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KSAM 101.7 / Dad Country
by CMT News on May 29, 2013
Miranda Lambert, Luke Bryan and Darius Rucker join Healing in the Heartland benefit. Kenny Chesney earns the King of the Road title from Wall Street Journal. Dierks Bentley previews "Bourbon in Kentucky" with guest Kacey…
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Girl Rising: Writer seeks understanding, shuns condemnation
When Academy-Award nominated director Richard Robbins set out to make "Girl Rising" — a film about girls in the developing world struggling to get an education — he enlisted prominent women writers from each of the countries featured to tell the girls' stories.
* * *
Acclaimed Ethiopian novelist Maaza Mengiste chose to tell the story of 14-year-old Azmera — a girl who resisted forced early marriage. She spoke to World Vision about the experience.
What appealed to you about writing for this film?
I liked the fact that the producers wanted to highlight an issue in Ethiopia that was affecting girls' education, and then personalize the issue by relating it to the life of a particular girl. It was really important to me.
Why did you choose to tell Azmera's story?
Because she seemed, at first glance, to be completely vulnerable and shy. But she still managed to say "no" — to stand up to her family when they wanted to marry her off. I felt that was an important thing to show and maybe explore a little bit. What gave her the strength to do that?
Did anything surprise you about her story?
My perception in these types of situations is that the girl is with a family that doesn't really love her and wants to take advantage by marrying her off young. Azmera's case was completely different. She is in a family that absolutely adores her. The story that emerged from speaking to her mother and her grandmother, who were also married off as children, was the fact that they thought this was the only way to save Azmera. The documentary talks about that fear and where it came from.
What gave Azmera the strength to resist early marriage?
They are [starting to] learn in school that you don't have to get married at a young age. You are not supposed to get married that young — it stops you from getting your education. I also think it's because of organizations like World Vision and what they are doing to get this information out. So Azmera sensed: I don't have to do this just because my family says I have to. There is another way.
Were you familiar with World Vision before?
Absolutely. I remember during the dictatorship, World Vision's trucks would go from Addis Ababa to different areas to distribute food and so on. When I was old enough, I started sponsoring a child in Ethiopia through World Vision. I've been doing that for a number years, and I still sponsor a little girl.
Azmera's shyness must have been a challenge?
I chose her as a writer and not as a producer or director. I was looking at where I might have a story; not thinking about how she would be in front of the camera.
Did the producers struggle with your choice of subject?
When I picked her they emailed me and said, "Of course, it's your decision but we would have picked somebody else" [laughs]. I think it scared us all for a while, but it was an amazing experience and an incredible shoot.
In telling Azmera's story, did it help that you are Ethiopian?
I think it was helpful to be Ethiopian. My own grandmother was married at a very young age; my great grandmother had my grandfather when she was 12. I'm aware of how things have happened in Ethiopia, so I believe I approach it — not necessarily with horror — but with understanding. My task as a writer is to try to understand. I think you get the best writing when you are not seeking to just condemn, but to understand. I think an aggressive stance only meets with aggression.
Request a screening of Girl Rising: directed by Academy Award nominee Richard Robbins, Girl Rising tells the stories of extraordinary girls, written by acclaimed writers and narrated by world-class actresses including Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Kerry Washington, and Selena Gomez.
Sponsor a girl today to help educate her for life.


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Search Results
LC Subject Heading: Penobscot River (Me.)
Historical Items Showing 3 of 149 View All
Item 8376
West Branch of the Penobscot River, ca. 1900
Contributed by: Patten Lumbermen's Museum
Date: circa 1900
Media: Photographic print
Item 28031
Penobscot River from Riverside Park, Hampden, ca. 1900
Contributed by: Hampden Historical Society
Date: circa 1900
Location: Hampden
Media: Photographic print
Item 99450
Penobscot River lumber raft at Bangor, ca. 1905
Contributed by: Bangor Public Library
Date: circa 1905
Location: Bangor
Media: Postcard


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1. How did you feel about the change in narrators? Did you like hearing from Jacob's voice? How was his voice different from Bella's?
I was a little disappointed to see the change in narrators. I like reading things from Bellas point of view, and I was secretly hoping it was going to be from Edwards point of view. Hearing things from Jacob's point of view was definetly different, but not bad. We go from a mature young woman, to a teenage boy who has just had his heart broken. It does give us the chance to really see Jacob because we can see exactly what he is feeling and going through, not just what Bella assumes is going on.
2. Did your opinion of Leah Clearwater change at all from this small bit that we got to see with her? Can you understand her pain a bit more when Jacob compares it to his own?
Yes, I can understand what she is going through a little more. But, I still think she is a b****, she really could have been nicer to Jake. She of all people should understand what Jake is going through and she could have been much more understanding.
3. Do you think Edward did the right thing by invited Jacob to the wedding even though Bella didn't want to? Before you read Breaking Dawn, did you think Jacob would show up at the wedding? Why or why not?
I was sort of torn by the whole thing. On one hand, I was impressed that Edward put aside his feelings toward Jake to invite him to the wedding; Edward knew Bella really would want Jake there even if she didn't admit it. On the other hand, I can't help but think Edward sent the invitation as a way to really stick it to Jake; he was showing Jake that he had won. I also wasn't sure if Jake would go to the wedding. I'm sure he would want to see Bella again and make sure she was happy, but at the same time, I don't think I would put myself through that torture so why would he?
4. How did you feel about Jacob running away and deciding to stay in wolf form? Did it break your heart? Or were you glad he was leaving Edward and Bella alone?
I was sad for Jacob because he was so hurt that he couldn't handle it anymore and I was sad for Billy because Jake was leaving. Jake was a little annoying sometimes, but I like him and I didn't want him to be that heartbroke and upset.


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To almost no one's surprise, Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala has announced he will not pursue criminal charges against the three officers accused of beating Jordan Miles during an arrest in Homewood two years ago.
At a May 16 press conference, Zappala said he agreed with federal prosecutors that a case against officers Richard Ewing, Michael Salduttte and David Sisak is not a "prosecutable case."
In January 2010, the officers, working undercover, said they saw Miles, who was then a senior at Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts High School "sneaking around" a house on Tioga Street with a "heavy object" in his coat pocket. They said they identified themselves, asked him to stop and then chased him when he ran.
They said they hit him several times when he resisted, and later charged him with aggravated assault and resisting arrests. Miles, who was hospitalized twice for the injuries he received during the arrest, said the officers never identified themselves as police.
The charges were dismissed by District Justice Oscar Petite when witnesses contradicted the officers and no "heavy object," which the officers later said was a Mountain Dew bottle, was produced as evidence.
Zappala said he based his decision not to charge the officers on reports from the FBI investigators, transcripts of testimony in Miles' civil case against the officers and from several "use of force" experts, all of whom said the three officers acted within the bounds of their training.
"I agree with the federal government," he said.
Last May, US attorney David Hickton said the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division would not prosecute the officers because it could not win at trial.
"The case wouldn't even get to a jury," said Zappala. "The appropriate forum is the civil side."
Jordan Miles' mother Terez Miles said she did not expect Zappala to bring criminal charges.
"I'm just surprised it took (Zappala) this long to admit it," she said.
At a rush-hour protest rally organized by the Alliance for Police Accountability, chair Brandi Fisher said she would seek intervention from state Attorney General Linda Kelly.
"This is not the end," she said. "District Attorney Zappala obviously has no interest in serving justice."
Tim Stevens, chairman of the Black Political Empowerment Project, agreed, saying Zappala should've called in the state attorney general to investigate because he has an inherent conflict of interest.
The district attorney's announcement came one day after Allegheny County Councilman Bill Robinson asked council to investigate possible conflicts of interest in the district attorney's office with respect to cases of police misconduct.
Zappala reiterated that his office had brought homicide charges against Housing Authority police Officer John Charmo and Pittsburgh Police Officer Jeffrey Cooperstein—both White officers who had shot Black motorists. In the last 18 months, he said, the office has investigated 13 cases involving accusations of police misconduct.
In a press statement NAACP Pittsburgh Unit President M. Gayle Moss said she too was disappointed, but not surprised with Zappala's decision.
"Our judicial system of Allegheny County found that there was nothing wrong with the beating," Moss wrote. "The family said they were not surprised at the verdict. Sadly, neither were we. Lynching on trees may not be the order of the day, but senseless beatings at the hands of police that have sworn to protect have not ceased."
Miles' civil case against the officers is scheduled for July before US District Judge Gary Lancaster.
(Send comments to email@example.com.)