Richard Rathe's Reflections

Where I've been and what I've learned along the way…

Welcome!

Remain calm, be kind, and carry on regardless!

id photo 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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Food for Thought

You grow up on the day you have your first real laugh at yourself.
Ethel Barrymore

Featured Photo

Photo by Richard Rathe Bison, Badlands, National, Park, Sunset

Bison, Badlands, National, Park, Sunset

Social Media (Mastodon)

@zutalorz🤕 (@zutalorz@haunted.computer)

Jul 16, 2026

See original post on mastodon.

"Those little white flowers you see here are known as the Arctic mountain heather, and they are highly toxic to this little pika. Collared pika create what we call haypiles under the rocks that will serve as food for the 9 months of winter they endure beneath the snow. That’s 9 months of dead rotting plants for fungi, bacteria, and other parasites to completely destroy. That is, unless the pika layers toxic species like this arctic heather through the haypile. This particular species of flower releases its toxic brew of phenolic compounds into the the pika's cache of food as it begins to break down. Those very same toxins, it turns out, are a natural food preservative that kills the very fungi and bacteria that would otherwise ruin an entire winter’s worth of food for the pika. And amazingly, by the time the pika makes it down to these layers, those toxins are completely harmless to the little mammal. None of this is by accident. Researchers have documented that not only are pika meticulous at how they layer toxic plants into their haypiles, they use different species, with differing levels of toxicity, at specific levels through the cache to ensure that their food is not only well preserved but also timed to be edible for themselves as they work their way through it. This is the most sophisticated pharmacological knowledge and behavior ever documented outside of humans." photo and text by jaredlloydphoto #Photographie #Photography #Fotografie #Nature #Wildlife #NaturePhotography #WildlifePhotography

Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest

California Galleries Plants Travel 2025

Old Guys on a Hillside

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!

Bicentennial Thoughts on the Semiquincentennial

Books Commentary History Music 2026

Preparing to Fly the Flag (July 4, 1976) [source: DC Public Library]

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).

Road Trip West 1, Westward Bound

Birds Flowers History Road_Trip_2026 Travel 2026

Roadside Pitcher Plants After Dark

I was called to California for a family wedding. The first part of my journey took me through several southern states, the Florida Panhandle, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, New Mexico, & Arizona. I left about two in the afternoon so I arrived in Pitcher Plant territory after dark. Fortunately I knew where there was a patch just off the shoulder of a county road.

Sick Around the World

Commentary Medicine
T.R. Reid (2008)

DVD Cover

This PBS Frontline Documentary from 2008 explores the healthcare systems of the U.S. and several comparable countries.[1] The corespondent T.R. Reid visited five capitalist countries that provide affordable, nearly universal coverage for their citizens. How do they do it? He observed that here in the U.S. we have the British model for veterans (socialized medicine), the Taiwanese model for seniors (single payer), the German model for some workers (private insurance), but for the rest we are just another poor country. His conclusions…

Road Trip West 2, New Mexico

Flowers Galleries History Road_Trip_2026 Rock_Art Travel 2026

Desert Sunset

I established my campsite and went for a walk about an hour before sunset. It was a magical time to be out in the desert. Some of the rocks are volcanic in origin. I think that may be a cinder cone in the distance. There is a large abstract petroglyph on the right (click to enlarge).

Road Trip West 10, Arches National Park

Birds Flowers Galleries History Panoramas Road_Trip_2026 Travel 2026

Brothers at the Partition Arch

We entered Arches National Park about 8am the next day. This was a great time for photographing the rock formations in the southern part of the park (near the entrance). Our plan was to take a leisurely drive north—exploring along the way—until we reached the Devil's Garden area. This is where the majority of the notable arches are. You might also like to view photos from My November 2024 Trip.

Lake Powell 2010

Flowers Galleries Hdr History Panoramas Travel 2010

Our Campsite in Slickrock Canyon

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.)

The Evolution of the Human Capacity for 'Killing at a Distance'

History Technology 2010

Author with Atlatl

Anthropologists Steven Churchill & Jill Rhodes recently wrote a fascinating article on the development of projectile weapons by early Homo sapiens and subsequent effects on large carnivores (extinction!) and human evolution.

Everglades Trip 2009

Camping Everglades Galleries Travel 2009

Everglades

This is a quick-and-dirty gallery of my Everglades photographs. Only a placeholder for now while I work on converting my older sites. See my Everglades Wilderness Guide for more trips, maps, & photographs.

Through the Fray (1886)

Bookhouse Books History Reviews
G. A. Henty (1886)

Ned’s Horror at the Dreadful News

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.

Lake Superior Sea Caves

Apostle_Islands Galleries Hdr History Panoramas Photography Travel Video 2022

Lake Superior Sea Caves

Over the past eight years I’ve walked along the Lakeshore Trail to admire the Cliffs and Sea Caves from above.

Keep It Simple Text (KIST) - Users Guide

Audio Galleries Kist Projects Video 2026

KIST Banner

KIST combines the best elements of various markup formats I've worked with over the past forty years. The original purpose of these tools was to generate valid HTML without special editors or technical knowledge. The plain text source files are nearly universal, portable, and reusable!

Everglades Trip 2011 (Sail Canoe)

Birds Camping Everglades Galleries Hdr Travel 2011

Everglades

This is a quick-and-dirty gallery of my Everglades photographs. Only a placeholder for now while I work on converting my older sites. See my Everglades Wilderness Guide for more trips, maps, & photographs.

KIST to HTML Conversion Notes

Kist Projects 2026

Reference Link Example

Kist.pl renders documents as plain vanilla HTML by default. Generated pages will degrade gracefully to the degree possible. These pages contain a minimal set of CSS styles and javascript in the <head> element. (This helps make each kist-generated document self-contained.) Authors are free to override these styles with their own custom styles (using the -s flag).

RFK Jr. & the Pasteurisation Controversy

Commentary History Medicine
Lawrence P. Garrod (1944)

Coutry Life Cover (1944)

Consider the so-called War on Raw Milk. I was amazed to discover in my Grandfather's scrapbook an article from 1944 debating the benefits of unpasteurised (raw) milk. These are echoed today by the public health nihilist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Florida Manatees

Birds Critters Galleries Nature Video 2024

Friendly Manatee

A recent cold snap in the Tampa Bay area forced hundreds of manatees inland in search of warmer water. One ready source is the outflow from the TECO powerplant. To their credit, the company provides a dedicated viewing dock and surrounding wildlife preserve for birds and other critters.

Everglades Trip 2015 (December)

Camping Everglades Galleries Travel 2015

Everglades

This is a quick-and-dirty gallery of my Everglades photographs. Only a placeholder for now while I work on converting my older sites. See my Everglades Wilderness Guide for more trips, maps, & photographs.

Sand Island Camping Trip (Gallery)

Apostle_Islands Galleries Travel 2025

Captain Ross & Crew

This year we boated to Sand Island in the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. It is the western-most island where camping is allowed. It also has a historic lighthouse and was the site of a small fishing village. We took the campsite overlooking Justice Bay and a small set of sea caves.

My First Hammock Tent

Camping Hammocks Reviews Technology 2016

My Campsite in the Swamp

I went out last night to get some experience pitching and sleeping in my new hammock tent. It came with no instructions and there is only limited info available online. I’m getting better using a bit more tension and added a small relieving line to the fly so it can hang along the side (keeping the netting clear for viewing the trees and stars!). In future I’ll keep it rolled so it stays off the ground. I paddled in the dark to a place I’d picked out. Once you find two trees the rest is pretty easy. In fact, it’s trip-over-a-log easy compared with a surface tent! Plus everything stays dry!

Everglades Trip 2006

Camping Everglades Galleries Travel 2006

Everglades

This is a quick-and-dirty gallery of my Everglades photographs. Only a placeholder for now while I work on converting my older sites. See my Everglades Wilderness Guide for more trips, maps, & photographs.

Rebuilding the Food Pyramid

History Medicine Science
Willett & Stampfer (2003)

Food Pyramid 1992

For more than ten years the U.S. Department of Agriculture has promoted its food pyramid as a guide to proper nutrition. The only problem is that it isn't very good advice! The authors of this January 2003 article in Scientific American provide much better guidance. But first a little history…

There is No ‘I’ in AI

Commentary Technology 2026

Tales from the Claude Crypt (from original post, uncredited)

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.

Good Morning Doctor!

Books History Medicine
W.A. Rohlf (1938)

W.A. Rohlf ~1910

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.

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