Remain calm, be kind, and carry on regardless!
You've reached the online journal of Richard Rathe — online since 2004! In this iteration I'm trying a few new ideas: minimal markup, working with mostly plain text, and moving beyond the timeline. I call it BLIS (BLog It Simple). Find me online…
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He who knows when enough is enough will always have enough.
Birds, Spoonbill, Chicks, Nest, 2012
Sep 18, 2026
Just learned about this from a podcast interview... Phoebus (Lightbulb) Cartel "The Phoebus cartel was an international #cartel that controlled the manufacture and sale of incandescent #lightbulbs in much of Europe and North America between 1925 and 1939. The cartel took over market territories and 👉 lowered the useful life of such bulbs👈 , which is commonly cited as an example of #plannedObsolescence." Good to know corporate greed hasn't changed in 100 years! #SSDD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel #Corporations #Collusion
California Galleries Plants Travel 2025
We recently visited the Bristlecone Pines within Inyo National Forest in the White Mountains of Eastern California. While there we took a five hour hike on the Methuselah Trail amongst some of the oldest trees in the world!
Books Commentary History 2026
I've reworked these extended quotations from The March of Folly by Barbara Tuchman (1986) for today's wannabe King
Trump. In a few pages she describes the bad policies and attitudes of the French King Louis XIV. I was struck by the deep parallels with the policies and attitudes of the current administration and the flock of Lickspittle Poltroons that compose the current GOP. Tuchman's words speak to greater truths. My words are my own and speak for more immediate truths in desperate times.
Boats Nature Photography 2026
We have a small herd of White-Tailed Deer in our neighborhood. They usually give birth to the new fawns in the spring. That's why I was surprised to encounter this newcomer in October. We started having a piebald individual every year. This is the fourth or fifth I've counted. Less obvious color pattern than the others. None have survived more than a year to my knowledge. 🙁
Bookhouse Books Camping History
Ed Dodd (1971)
This little book brings back memories of reading the Sunday newspaper when I was a teen. There would always be a non-humorous cartoon by and about the fictional Mark Trail
promoting life outdoors. These cartoons often depicted humans and wild animals in close proximity. This book of camp cooking tips borders on the whimsical.
Camping Hammocks How_To 2026
It has taken me a couple of years to fully understand this knot. The Becket Hitch provides a strong but temporary way to tie a rope or webbing onto a fixed loop (such as a hammock). It is basically a slipped
version of the venerable Sheet Bend (shown below).
Books Commentary History Music 2026
![Preparing to Fly the Flag (July 4, 1976) [source: DC Public Library]](commentary/america_at_250/img/bicentennial-1976.jpg)
I put out my American Flag today. 🇺🇸 I only fly the flag on special days and this is one of them. Thinking about what makes this day special is what gives the act meaning. One cannot be patriotic every day, but that's not required. We need days like this to think hard about history (those actions and actors who mattered), the present (our current situation and how it differs from what it should be), and the future (the history we might make during the time remaining to us).
Music Reviews Video
Jean-Michel Jarre (1978)
IMO Équinoxe is one of the best original synthesized orchestral pieces out there. His preceding album Oxygène (produced and recorded at home!) is also good, similar in form—but Équinoxe remains my favorite.
Critters Galleries Medicine Nature Science 2026
Horseshoe Crabs (Limulus polyphemus) evolved some 450 million years ago.[1] They have no close relatives in the world today. They are true living fossils and generally fascinating. First, they are not crabs—but remotely related to spiders. They have nine eyes, two underneath near the legs. They have twelve legs, including specializations for pushing, feeding, and mating (males). They breathe and excrete using book gills just behind their legs. And here's the best part—they chew with their knees!
Bookhouse Books History Reviews 1970
Turns out I had volume two of a three part report on a decade of radiation research done in a national forest. There is an official Fact Sheet for this program which reads in part…
Bookhouse Books History Reviews
Theodore Roosevelt (1914)
This book records an expedition lead by Teddy Roosevelt in 1913-14 after he was president! It has the most amazing cover… embossed, leather (I assume) with a Golden Anteater?!
Boats Camping Reviews Technology 2022
I’ve used a “traditional” inflatable kayak for several years, mostly in special situations such as houseboat camping or floating down rivers. They can be very practical and lots of fun in these settings. They are bouncy and sit high in the water, more like life-rafts than kayaks. The one thing they are NOT good for is a windy day on open water! So I was intrigued when I read about newer designs that approximate the capabilities of hard-sided kayaks. Advanced Elements produces several models including the Expedition Elite reviewed here.
Galleries Photography Southwest_2024 Travel 2024
Fantastic Rock Formations in Utah
Galleries History Panoramas Travel Turkey_2016 2016
Here is a gallery of all the panoramas from our 2016 trip to Turkey and the The Turquoise Coast. We started in Istanbul and ended at Ephesus. Best viewed on a large screen!
Birds Galleries Travel 2025
Out with friends to canoe down the Santa Fe River in north Florida. We saw many large turtles sunning themselves along the way plus a juvenile bald eagle! Stopped for lunch in the outflow from Blue Spring.
Flowers Galleries Hdr History Panoramas Travel 2010
This was only my second trip to Lake Powell with my friend Rick. We had made a multi-stop journey across western Colorado and Utah, stopping in Moab and Colorado National Monument. (I returned to the area once again for a houseboat trip in 2020.)
Kist Projects 2024
There is one caveat when creating the final zip archive. The mimetype
file must be uncompressed and positioned first in the archive. This is so reader and other software can confirm the format (application/epub+zip).
Commentary Galleries History 2017
I’ve become a real fan of @MobyDickatSea, a bot-based feed of random quotes from the book. It’s amazing how well some of these fragments stand up as individual thoughts!
Bookhouse Books History Reviews
G. A. Henty (1886)
The original Luddites were millworkers who rebelled against factory automation back in the 1800s. They had a lot to lose. In the present time, to call someone a Luddite
or Neo-Luddite
is to write them off as a kind of techno-hermit, using a non-smartphone and writing in a paper notebook. This is a mischaracterization. The full text is available at Project Gutenberg.
Birds Nature 2026
Consider the Black-Bellied Whistling Duck! (One of the better bird names IMO.) Larger than average ducks, longer neck, pink bill & feet, used to be called tree ducks
. I see these very early in the morning and occasionally a pair on a nearby dock. Only learned recently that they are mostly active at night, which is why I wasn't aware they were around.
Camping Reviews Tents 2025
This nominal Three Person Tent from Sierra Designs is an asymmetrical, rectangular, wedge design. The asymmetry shifts the maximum interior height towards the head end where it is most useful. The sides (and doors) are nearly vertical thanks to a short spreader
pole across the top. (Note that the tent reviewed here has been discontinued. The newer lite version costs twice as much 🙁 and has a bright orange fly.)
Nature Photography Plants Travel 2017
We decided to take a week-end trip to the Panhandle to see if we could find Pitcher Plants. We were not disappointed! Here I am standing along Highway 65 in the Apalachicola National Forest…
Commentary Technology 2026
My Critique of: Your Voice, Your Choice
— A Guest Post by Claude Sonnet 4.5
The ELIZA Effect is a tendency to project human traits—such as experience, semantic comprehension or empathy—onto rudimentary computer programs having a textual interface.
This little book was conceived neither as a medical history nor as a technical discussion of surgery. It is instead a story of people, of friends with whom I have shared joy and sorrow, in short, bits of the day-to-day drama which is the life of a country doctor. Many of the incidents are trivial, in one sense of the word, yet each has had in it something which appealed to me enough to make me remember it as a highlight in my forty-five years as a country doctor.
