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…
Click or tap on any Article or Social Media Post to see more. You can also Search by key words.
The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.
Doorknob, Merida, Yucatan, Mexico
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
Galleries Nature Photography Travel 2018
My brother-in-law Rick flew out from Colorado so we could go on a road trip together across South Dakota and beyond. We entered the Park via the Northeast Entrance (extreme right on map) and spent most of our day slowly moving west, stopping frequently—sometimes to take photos, sometimes due to bison migrating across the road. We ended up at the Sage Creek primitive camping area (upper left).
Commentary Protest 2026
Visiting the Iowa branch of my family for the fourth No Kings Protest against Trump and his Lickspittle Poltroons in the GOP. The Orange Man is more unpopular than ever. It is very important that we get out the Vote!
Commentary
Frank Wilhoit (2018)
There is a quote from a few years ago that adds political framing I find useful. I propose using it as a test or razor
(à la Occam) when evaluating political actions and legislation:
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.
Birds Flowers Galleries Iowa Travel 2026
Late Fall excursion to Pikes Peak (the original!) for a bit of color and a long walk in the woods. In the panorama below, the city of Prairie du Chien is in the upper left, north of the Wisconsin River outlet near the center. Wyalusing State Park is on the opposite bluff. The sumac in the foreground is near its peak. There were White Pelicans down on the river (too small to see here).
Commentary Science Technology 2026
Forty percent of America's corn crop — 36 million acres — goes to producing ethanol, a fuel that barely breaks even on energy and may be worse for the climate than gasoline. Billions in subsidies keep the machine running.
Panoramas Photography Technology 2016
I've always been fascinated by 360° spherical photographs (sometimes called mirrorballs, planets or wormholes
). These are some of the first photos I took with a Ricoh Theta S (basically a black slab with two 180° fisheye lenses pointing in opposite directions.
Commentary Video 2016
Most are familiar with the concept of FUD—short for Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt. It summarizes a strategy often used in marketing and political propaganda. Its effects are pernicious, divisive and lead to exploitation. Examples abound. Fear is a strong motivator! To resist FUD one must understand how it is practiced using the principles of Deception, Obfuscation and Misdirection.
Galleries Hdr History Travel 2015
This fortification along the Florida/Georgia border dates from the era of the Second Seminole War (1847) and served the needs of both the Confederacy and the Union in the Civil War. It is a asymmetric pentagon built out of red bricks with gun emplacements on the top of four walls. There are several lovely internal architectural features such as arched ammunition magazines and spiral stairways. No shots were ever fired here!
Camping Hammocks How_To Reviews 2025
There are various configurations of camping hammocks that I'll outline below. Most are gathered
with single tie-on points at each end. Some have integrated bug nets. Complete packages come with both nets & rainflies. After a brief survey of the different types, I go on to propose my criteria for the Ideal Hammock
.
Birds Flowers Galleries Iowa Travel 2025
Pikes Peak is a state park in Clayton County, Iowa, United States, featuring a 500-foot (150 m) bluff overlooking the Upper Mississippi River opposite the confluence of the Wisconsin River… The Iowa incarnation of Pikes Peak, a particularly high point overlooking the gorge of the Upper Mississippi, and like Pikes Peak in Colorado, is named for Zebulon Pike. Pike visited the area in 1805 during his first expedition.
[wikipedia]
Commentary Galleries Iowa Travel 2025
It just happened that this year's RAGBRAI ended in Guttenberg, which is homebase for us. I joined my Sister and Niece on day three in Forest City. We camped under the town's windmill which chirped like a bird all night. The presence of so many windmills was an ominous sign. The next day developed into a slow trudge against 20 mph headwinds and 106° heat index. I got heat exhaustion and had to be picked up after about 40 miles.
Galleries History Panoramas Photography 2015
Panopainting (verb, noun) — Panoramic photographs captured in real-time with unpredictable, non-deterministic distortions due to movement of the camera and subject. The aesthetic value of these images depends on the camera's stitching
algorithm and the physical brush stroke
performed by the photographer. A degree of glitching
is expected and often leads to cubist or impressionistic effects. Each exposure is unique due to inevitable variation in subject and technique.
Camping Everglades Galleries Travel 2020
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.
History 2025
In the late 1970s two friends and I invested in a three room cabin on thirty acres embedded in Superior National Forest in Northern Minnesota. That cabin and other buildings are no more after the Camp House Road forest fire swept through.
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.
History Technology 2010
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.
Camping Hammocks Reviews Technology 2016
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!
Galleries History Rock_Art Southwest_2024 Travel 2024
Photos of Petroglyphs (pecked
into the rock) and Pictographs (painted onto the rock) from my most recent trip to Arizona and Utah. In some cases the panels are Palimpsests (newer inscriptions covering older, faded work).
Medicine Medinfo 2017
The History of Present Illness (HPI) has not changed appreciably since the introduction of the Problem-Oriented Medical Record in 1968. Until recently most medical documentation was created via dictation or handwritten notes. Narrative was the natural format for the HPI. This is no longer true in the era of online forms and computer-generated text.
Projects 2022
I developed this todo list format in 2016. It allows you to easily translate from paper to digital—and back again! This approach is compatible with other journaling formats such as KIST, Bullet Journaling
and GTD.
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.
