hobolog :: Rock Soup

I just learned what a freegan is. For me the interesting part is the proposition that we’re ignorant of most of the detrimental consequences of our actions. I think that’s true.

A post at outdoorsmagic notes that outdoor blogging is catching on in the UK, and provides some URLs to get you started:
http://www.alansloman.blogspot.com/
http://walkaboutuk.blogspot.com/
http://londonbackpackers.blogspot.com/
http://aktoman.blogspot.com/
http://bgontheweb.spaces.live.com/
http://www.skunkbag.co.uk/blog/index.php
http://mikepitt23.spaces.live.com/
http://maverickapollo.blogspot.com/index.html
http://www.cameronmcneish.co.uk/diary/
http://www.alpinechallenge.info/
http://www.andyhowell.info/trek-blog/

A GPS receiver with a built-in solar panel is reviewed at Vector One and sold at KEOMO.

(Via Free GeoTools

As housing prices continue upward on the beachfront, they’re finally taking some action to get the homeless people living there out of their tents, to someplace where they are aren’t visible.

This radio story about the annual hobo gathering in, strangely enough, Brit, Iowa, is pleasantly free of hype. I guess Americans don’t care for such fare.

A “high-end” store owner in New York files a million-dollar lawsuit against a homeless man who habitually got warm on the grate outside his store. “”As long as he’s not a nuisance, live and let live,” says the magnanimous owner, who dropped the lawsuit when cutting off the warm air supply did the trick.

I like the tent-city method of civic demonstration. I’ve heard of a few of these, most recently the Paris canal tent city. The message that investment in preventing homeless problems is much cheaper than the alternative is worthy of more press.

I suppose it’s to be expected from bloggers who reject society and civilization, but I’m sad to see that Casemeau’s excellent blog Living In A Van Down By The River has disappeared. I’ll miss it.

Climbing doesn’t make the sports page very often, but it tends to entertain me when it does. This article from an english paper in Turkey is no exception. I would truly love to visit the sport crags outside Istanbul, covered with climbers old and young.

This time Japanese fishers hauled up a goblin shark, and again it died shortly after. There seems to be some head scratching going on about why these animals are being caught so close to the surface.

A mashup of outdoor routes for “rock and ice climbing, caving, canyoning, hiking, skiing, snowshoeing, mountain biking”. Most of the points are in Europe currently. I like the idea of quick map access to route diagrams, but none of the “route diagram” links I tried actually contained any diagrams. Maybe it will get better.

I’ve been inspired by recent reading to eat more locally produced food. Apparently the UK is really getting into it. Here’s a sample of what African farmers have to say about that:

“With the deepest respect, the farmers in the villages where I come from don’t have televisions, they don’t have refrigerators, they don’t have even one car, let alone two, they don’t have motorbikes, they’ve never even been to our country’s capital let alone flown all over the world on holiday — so don’t ask those farmers to pick up the cost of environmental problems you in the industrialised West have caused.”

I’ve been pondering lately whether I experience time directly, or whether my concepts of time are completely metaphorical. Studies of the brain’s time measuring mechanisms could be applicable to this question.

Warren Meck, a Duke University neuroscientist agrees: “This paper has important implications for our every day perception of the temporal relationships among all of the sights and sounds that we process.”

Hopefully someone will write a better headline for this story. And someone will work it into a movie scene for sure. There have been more mountain lion attacks near California’s urban areas in recent years, leading me to theorize about the animal kingdom battling our encroaching civilization, but this happened way up north in Prarie Creek State Park, a place where I’ve hiked and camped alone…

Attention is being paid to the situation of homeless residents of Paris, France due to the 200 tents erected along a canal for the holidays.

WILDCAT is preparing for a CDT through hike by cutting extra firewood so he doesn’t freeze when he comes home. He accompanies this with some thoughts about the environmental aspects of using wood for heat. Looks like it may be a good journal.

For two decades now, Larry and Donna Charpied have battled Los Angeles county to prevent them from building a giant garbage dump outside Joshua Tree National Park. Living an hour from the nearest grocery store in their 1954 Airstream, they are the makings of desert mythology.

National Parks Traveler does some analysis of the whopping National Park Pass fee increases for 2007. This, as just this weekend I discovered a fourth type of park pass in my area: in addition to the national, state, and county parks surrounding us, each with their own pass, the city of Fort Collins sells its own pass for at least one park near the city. Enjoy your public lands, if you can afford them.

Now I see my mistake - I bought a fifth wheel that required a big diesel truck to pull it instead of one of these.

As part of Gwinnett County’s new ban on “urban camping” and panhandling, if you lie down for more than an hour on county property, you qualify for $1000 fine or 60 days in jail!