https://mdpaths.com/rrr/ Welcome! You've reached the feed for the online journal of Richard Rathe. BLIS (BLog It Simple) v0.1 https://mdpaths.com/rrr/blis_media/richard-rathe.jpg https://mdpaths.com/rrr/ https://richard.mdpaths.com/travel/turkey_2016/hagia_sophia/index.html 1771773707 Hagia Sophia is one of the most historic buildings in the world! It is a strange syncretism of Islam superimposed on top of Orthodox Christianity. Finished in 537 CE, it was the largest building in the world for a thousand years. When we visited it was a secular museum and world heritage site. Since that time a theocratic government has turned it back into a functional mosque. I do not know how the Christian art and iconography has been covered or possibly removed since then. https://richard.mdpaths.com/commentary/no_kings_3_trump_protest/index.html 1774748545 Joined my community to protest the Trump administration. Larger crowd than No Kings 2 back in October. Amazing how much has changed since then: the Demolition of the East Wing of the Whitehouse, the invasion of Minneapolis/St. Paul, the public execution of Renee Good & Alex Pretti, the Kidnapping of the President of Venezuela, the Epstein cover-up, starting an Illegal, Senseless War with Iran. Airlines are shutting down because TSA workers have been unpaid for a month. Gas is headed for $5 a gallon. And those are just some of the highlights. https://richard.mdpaths.com/projects/bread_baking/index.html 1774748481 I've been a novice bread baker over the years, specifically breads leavened with yeast. I've made bagels and pizza crusts from scratch. I have a pizza stone in my oven and a wooden peel for that purpose. My last big endeavor was using my bread machine to make no knead bread (based on the famous NY Times recipe) with some success. All of this pales by comparison with the Five Minute approach outlined in the book discussed here. https://richard.mdpaths.com/travel/everglades/everglades_2026/index.html 1774748421 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. https://richard.mdpaths.com/commentary/rfk_food_pyramid/index.html 1774654084 The history of the food pyramid is complicated (see my analysis from 2004). There hasn't been an official one for maybe twenty years. I grew up with it and I think it is a sound idea, but very political with respect to what foods go where. It may be a coincidence, but anyone who is familiar with the old pyramid will recognize this one as an inverted echo. There are many other ways to lay out these ideas graphically, the choice of an inverted triangle is not subtle. I think it's propaganda for the following reasons: https://richard.mdpaths.com/commentary/no_kings_1_trump_protest/index.html 1774617113 Visiting family and friends in Sacramento California for my third protest against Trump. We had a nationwide No Kings! event to counter Trump's birthday parade in DC. The final estimates were 4-6 million of us spread over 2000 events. Compared with The Orange Man's quarter mil. https://richard.mdpaths.com/music/earth_imogen_heap/index.html 1760709246 I’ve been a fan of Imogen Heap for several years. Her latest album Ellipse has one of my all time favorite songs--Earth [listen]. It describes how a frustrated Mother Earth deals with her rambunctious offspring, homo sapiens. [lyrics] https://richard.mdpaths.com/books/idiot_america/index.html 1767542423 This short confection of a book has a serious message… When cranks become mainstream and large segments of the population take them seriously, our entire society is at risk! He's not against people with unconventional ideas, in fact he considers them to be an asset... a sort of check on the status quo. But an increasing number of cranks have won mainstream acceptance, and this is very alarming! Politics and religion are particularly vulnerable to exploitation. https://richard.mdpaths.com/projects/action_journaling/aj-tasks-projects.html 1656757761 AJ focuses on Action Items defined as discrete activities that can be performed, decided, or otherwise resolved (aka a todo list). This is the lowest level of organization--a shopping list for example. The higher level Task is to go shopping. The shopping list is an aid to complete this task. If you are planning a party with food and guests you must complete several tasks to ensure a successful event. Let's call this top level outcome a Project. As an outline it might appear something like this: https://richard.mdpaths.com/medicine/rfk_pasteurisation_controversy/index.html 1765545915 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. https://richard.mdpaths.com/nature/plants/pitcher_plants_2020/index.html 1767545614 The last time I went hunting for Pitcher Plants was 2017. This year I went about two weeks earlier and learned more about their distribution and lifecycles. I visited six sites in all, moving from Florida into Alabama. I saw mostly pitcher plant flowers as I moved west, apparently the flowers emerge days to weeks before the funnel-shaped leaves. https://richard.mdpaths.com/nature/birds/wrens_singing_duet/index.html 1320392525 Plain-tailed wrens (Pheugopedius euophrys) cooperate to produce a duet song in which males and females rapidly alternate singing syllables. From Neural Mechanisms for the Coordination of Duet Singing in Wrens by Fortune, Rodríguez, et al in Science 4 Nov 2011. https://richard.mdpaths.com/travel/bwca/bwca_2024/index.html 1767632486 This year we decided to base our trip out of Ely. We spent the night in the bunkhouse on Snowbank Lake. The next day we took the short drive to the official entry point #27 to head out into the wilderness. https://richard.mdpaths.com/medicine/rebuilding_the_food_pyramid/index.html 1751458223 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... https://richard.mdpaths.com/travel/okefenokee/okefenokee_2021/index.html 1612807691 I last traveled to the Okefenokee in 2004, and I had been hoping to return sooner. My return was delayed in part by a multi-year drought and Major Fires in 2011. This year the water was high thanks to record rainfall in the late summer. https://richard.mdpaths.com/medicine/medinfo/self_organizing_hypertext_notebooks/index.html 1766168576 Jrju (Chinese for spider) is a Perl program that weaves hypertext 'notebooks' from plain text files. An author creates notebook pages using the JTX markup format. Jrju will process a directory of JTX files into a cross-linked collection of HTML pages. Jrju rebuilds the entire notebook each time so there are no broken links or orphan pages. https://richard.mdpaths.com/camping/boats/inflatable_kayak_review/index.html 1762297064 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. https://richard.mdpaths.com/nature/finding_andromeda/index.html 1248022800 Here's a bit of astronomical lore I picked up a few years ago. I learned the sky at summer camp; I have looked through numerous telescopes over the years; I even took an astronomy class in college--but no one ever pointed out the Andromeda Galaxy (the most distant and largest object we can see with our naked eyes!). So I invented my own way to find it using the triangle in Cassiopeia as my pointer. This is a great target for binoculars! https://richard.mdpaths.com/medicine/pandemic_game/index.html 1767540553 I bought this award-winning board game about three years ago not guessing how relevant it would become. Now that many of us are sheltering in place from COVID19, what could be better than a science-based game where the goal is to cooperate in order to defeat life-threatening viruses! https://richard.mdpaths.com/medicine/medinfo/rational_hpi/index.html 1487378150 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. https://richard.mdpaths.com/travel/turkey_2016/ephesus_turkey/index.html 1767619918 Richard Rathe 2016 (HDR, History, Panoramas)