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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If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun.
Birds, Birdhouse, Guttenberg, Iowa, Purple_Martins
Jun 04, 2026
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
Birds Camping Everglades Galleries Nature Travel 2026
This was my 30th trip to the Everglades—different from all the others in several respects. First I was trying out new equipment (a sit-inside folding kayak). Second, I planned to just camp on a desert island, read, and take it easy. Third, I left from the Smallwood Store on Chokoloskee Island because the actual Ranger Station was closed for long-awaited hurricane repairs. I was also alone as there were no takers to join me this year.
Camping Hammocks Reviews 2026
I recently bought a Ridgerunner Hammock from Warbonnet Outdoors. These are my first impressions. I'd been aware of this type of hammock for a few years and I was curious about them. Online descriptions and 2D photos don't really help much. This design makes much more sense when you actually lay in one.
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've decided to 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).
Birds Flowers Galleries History Road_Trip_2026 Travel 2026
My target for this segment was inspired by a used book I came across while working at my local Friends of the Library—Sinagua Sunwatchers
by Kenneth Zoll. At first I had a bit of trouble finding the site online because the name has been changed very recently to better reflect its Native American origins. [The old name V Bar V
referenceed the now defunct ranch on the property.]
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.
Birds Flowers Galleries History Panoramas Road_Trip_2026 Travel 2026
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.
Camping Everglades Galleries Travel 2015
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.
Galleries Hdr Photography Travel 2010
I had the pleasure of visiting Philadelphia multiple times during my career in support of the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME). In 2006 I even lived there for five months during a sabbatical. The gallery below contains a number of architectural/urban environment studies, and my earliest attempts at High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography. I took most of the sculpture and fine art photos at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and long walks along the Schuylkill River.
Books History Reviews
Barbara Tuchman (1984)
With America “at war” [2006 & 2026] on several fronts, I was stimulated to recall this wonderful and important book by the eminent historian Barbara Tuchman. The first line says it all…
Art Galleries History Travel Turkey_2016 2016
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!
Audio Galleries Kist Projects Video 2026
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!
History Science Video
Hans Rosling (2010)
This spectacular section of 'The Joy of Stats' tells the story of the world in 200 countries over 200 years using 120,000 numbers - in just four minutes. Plotting life expectancy against income for every country since 1810, Hans shows how the world we live in is radically different from the world most of us imagine. [source:youtube]
Birds Bwca Camping Galleries Travel 2008
I learned to canoe in Northern Minnesota and the BWCA. I recently returned for a five day trip with an old friend. We went to the extreme northeast corner along the Canadian border. The lakes in this area are mostly long and narrow, running west to east between steep hills. The water clarity was remarkable. We saw bear, beaver, loon, eagle, osprey, and many smaller birds. Our route included the Royal River, which was beautiful and very different from the large lakes. Wild Rice was falling into our canoe as we passed. At one point we even had to pull over a Beaver Dam.
Flowers Galleries History Road_Trip_2026 Travel 2026
I originally ventured into Arizona to visit the Crane Petroglyphs Site so I took in other sights as they appeared. The first of these was Montezuma Castle—a Ancestral Puebloan cliff dwelling site.
Birds Galleries Hdr Travel Video 2017
I had the opportunity to travel through Southern Illinois on my way back from Iowa in June. I large part of this hilly country is contained within the Shawnee National Forest There are miles of trails, several wilderness areas, and many points of interest. I stopped for the night at The Garden of the Gods (not to be confused with the area in Colorado by the same name!).
Birds Galleries Nature Photography Travel 2015
I was the trailing spouse for a meeting on Amelia Island. I spent most of a morning taking these photos of the local birds—including some spectacular flying by a pair of Ospreys! Right at the limit of my equipment.
Boats Camping Reviews Technology 2025
Oru kayaks started out small. The first one I saw in a sporting goods store several years ago looked like a toy. Since then they have developed several larger, more serious designs. Here is a summary of my experience with the Coast XT, their longest and most ambitious model—a 16ft sea kayak that weighs in at 32 pounds.
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!
Projects 2024
BLIS is an alternative to Wordpress and other database-dependent online publishing environments. One obvious problem with such systems is portability. They generally store text in a database—while media such as images are stored in nested directories by date. It can be daunting to put all these scattered parts back together again outside the original site. (I'm working on converting my WP materials now…it may take several months!)
Birds Camping Everglades Galleries Hdr Travel 2011
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.
Camping Everglades Galleries Travel 2000
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.
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.
