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…

Click or tap on any Article or Social Media Post to see more. You can also Search by key words.

Food for Thought

What we think, we become.
Buddha

Featured Photo

Photo by Richard Rathe Panorama, Sealions, Beach, Galapagos

Panorama, Sealions, Beach, Galapagos

Social Media (Mastodon)

nixCraft 🐧 (@nixCraft@mastodon.social)

Jun 04, 2026

See original post on mastodon.

Bots just officially outnumbered humans on the internet for the first time ever. Cloudflare’s latest report shows AI and agentic traffic has grown so fast its now the majority of online traffic. We crossed a line and most people didn’t even notice 😳 https://radar.cloudflare.com/traffic#bot-vs-human Dead internet theory is now becoming a reality

Picket Wire Canyon Dinosaur Tracksite

Critters History Travel Video 2019

Picket Wire Canyon

On my trip west this year I made sure I had time to visit this unique area. The Dinosaur Tracks are located within and along side the Purgatoire River within the Comanche National Grassland. It is located 35 miles south of La Junta, Colorado off the lightly maintained County Road 25 (upper left in the map above). The last few miles are on a primitive forest service road that ends at the Withers Canyon Trailhead and Campground (four sites with fire grates and a pit toilet).

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.

Is There an Artificial God?

Books
Douglas Adams (1998)

God Creates Adam

This was originally billed as a debate only because I was a bit anxious coming here. I didn't think I was going to have time to prepare anything and also, in a room full of such luminaries, I thought, What could I, as an amateur, possibly have to say? So I thought I would settle for a debate. But after having been here for a couple of days, I realized you're just a bunch of guys! It's been rife with ideas, and I've had so many myself through talking with and listening to people, that I'd thought what I'd do was stand up and have an argument and debate with myself. I'll talk for a while and hope sufficiently to provoke and inflame opinion that there'll be an outburst of chair-throwing at the end.

Binge Watching Great Movies About Real Conspiracies That Affect Us All

Books Commentary History Reviews 2016

The Big Short

I was on a short business trip recently and had a chance to view three new movies about real conspiracies that affect us all. This prompted me to go back and re-watch some documentaries from the recent past. Talk about dark night of the soul! Here are my brief reviews in no particular order…

The Book of Birds (1849)

Birds Books History Reviews
George S. Appleton (1849)

Title Page

Below is a limited sampling of historically significant pages that contain many surprising (and perhaps inaccurate) facts. Alas the Elegant Plates mentioned on the title page appear to be missing. Also missing is any mention of smaller birds such as wrens and warblers?!

BWCA Canoe Trip 2025

Birds Bwca Galleries History Photography Travel 2025

Our Group at Magnetic Rock

This year we decided to visit the big lakes at the end of the Gunflint Trail. We planned to spend the first night in the bunkhouse on Seagull Lake. It was nice weather when we arrived, but the forecast called for thunderstorms, lots of wind, and near freezing temps. We elected to stay at the Trail's End campground and do day trips instead of heading out onto the big Lake Saganaga.

Hammock Camping Guide

Camping Hammocks How_To Reviews 2025

Hammock Bliss

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.

Headlamp Thoughts

Camping Commentary Reviews Technology 2025

BougeRV Headlamp

I hadn't used a headlamp in five years until this one caught my eye. Mostly because of configurability and the price ($9.99). (The price suddenly jumped to $24.99 after I bought mine. (Tariffs kicking in perhaps? It's Nov 2025)

ShortNote Clinical Shorthand

Medicine Medinfo 2016

Short Note Output

I have worked with home-grown and commercial Electronic Medical Records for over thirty years. The use of dot commands (a period followed by a trigger phrase) is about as old as personal computing. (I first encountered dot commands in the WordStar word processing program during the 1980s!) These commands generally fall into three categories:

Everglades Trip 2014 (#1)

Birds Camping Everglades Galleries Hdr Travel 2014

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.

Chaco Canyon 2023

Galleries Hdr History Panoramas Travel Video 2023

Chaco Canyon Entrance

After braving the nearly washed out road from the north I arrived around 9am. I had to walk my Prius diagonally over piles of gravel and exposed rock faces. This was my third attempt over twenty years to visit this important site. (The first two failed because the roads were completely washed out!)

Okefenokee Canoe Trip 2024

Camping Galleries Hammocks History Okefenokee Travel Video 2024

Starting Out at Kingfisher Landing

After doing the Green Trail to Bluff Lake and Round Top three years ago—this year we set out to retrace My First Trip in 2004 on the Red Trail and cut back via Floyds Island. My old friend Peter from Minnesota and youngest brother Bruce from Wisconsin joined me.

Clair Cameron Patterson, The Age of the Earth, & Environmental Lead

History Science 2010

Clair Cameron Patterson (source:nap.edu)

I’m currently reading A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. About a third of the way in he introduces Clair Cameron Patterson who could be the model of the modern citizen/scientist.

The Maze 2019

Camping Canyonlands Galleries Hdr Panoramas Travel 2019

Glen, Richard, Jeff, Bren, Bill, Rick

It would be hard to top our 4WD/bike trip to the White Rim in Canyonlands last year, but entering the isolated subunit called The Maze was a strong contender! This immense National Park is divided into three major areas that are completely isolated from each other. The Maze lies mostly on the western side of the Green River with the southern-most Dollhouse area just below the confluence with the Colorado. As we did last year, we stopped at Fisher Towers and Moab along the way (see photo gallery below).

Équinoxe by Jean-Michel Jarre

Music Reviews Video
Jean-Michel Jarre (1978)

Équinoxe Cover (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.

Action Journaling (AJ)

Projects 2022

AJ on Paper

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.

Ephesus Museum Turkey (Gallery)

Art Galleries History Travel Turkey_2016 2016

Statue of Artemis

In 2016 we had the privilege of touring the ruins at Ephesus and the associated museum a few miles away. The photo above is the symbol-rich Statue of Artemis, which at one time was the centerpiece of the temple to the goddess. That temple is now in ruins but it was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World!

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.

Explore!