Cow compasses

Next time you get lost while out hiking, look for the nearest cow. Odds are, she'll be facing north, according to a German study reported in this week's Economist magazine.

After studying scads of satellite images from Google Earth, Sabine Begall of the University of Duisburg-Essen reports that herds of cows tend to face north (or maybe south?). This is true, statistically, even controlling for wind direction and warmth from the sun. She hypothesizes that cows, like some smaller animals, may have magnetic receptors in their brain that affect behavior in some unknown way. Interestingly enough, the cows (the article consistently refers to "cows" -- I'm not sure whether this is a sex-related feature) align themselves to the magnetic north pole, not the true pole.

Obviously, the effect is subtle. Cows don't snap automatically into a north-south configuration while they graze. If one cow wants to head for water, the magnetic north pole doesn't drag her back. But, as I read the article, in the absence of any strong external influence or internal desire on the part of the cow to do otherwise (assuming cows have internal desires!), they will more likely than not line up north-south.

Don't depend on the alignment of just one lonely cow to get you safely back home to Dubuque. She may just be staring at that cute young bull on the other side of the fence. But if you see an entire herd lined up, facing the same direction (and not watching an outdoor movie) with their usual expressions of bovine stupidity, you may want to consider them as a compass needle made up of so much prime rib.

For best results, I guess, you'd grab one cow, tie her onto a cork platform, and float her on a motionless pond. After an hour or so, she should eventually swing around to be pointing north.

If you find all this too complicated, the price of GPS units does continue to go down.

Seventy-two year old John McCain chooses Alaska Gov. Palin to be heartbeat away from Presidency

In 1984, Palin won the Miss Wasilla beauty contest, then finished second in the Miss Alaska pageant, in which she won a college scholarship. In the Wasilla pageant, she played the flute and also won Miss Congeniality.
--Wikipedia




Those whom God wishes to destroy, he first drives mad.
--Euripides

Au revoir, les éléphants

Democratic and Republican rhetoric this week and next will call our attention to national and international problems that are difficult and complex, and that require tough decisions by the next administration. The politicians will propose their conflicting solutions.

Those are the "feel-good" problems, however. Far more emotionally devastating are the problems that seem to have no solution, problems that will inevitably grow worse as the years pass.

Take Africa and African wildlife, for example.

Despite the ravages of AIDS, which is killing millions of Africans (in Botswana alone, one of Africa's more properous countries, 35 percent of the adult population is HIV-positive), population growth in Africa is the highest in the world. Forty-three percent of the population is younger than 15. African food production per person is now 30 percent less than it was 40 years ago. The population of Africa will rise from 800 million now to 1.8 billion in only 40 years.

Where are all those sick, starving people going to live? Necessarily, in areas now inhabitated by wildlife, from the tiniest gazelle, to the quirky lemurs, to the iconic lions and great apes. Say your good byes. Our grandchildren, if lucky, can see surviving specimens in a zoo somewhere.

Most of these animals will die of starvation, thirst, and human poaching. South Africa is one of the more progressive African nations when it comes to wildlife management, and it has now returned to the culling of elephants in order to reduce those animals' devastating impact on fragile and shrinking habitat. Culling will grant these intelligent mammals a quick death, instead of slow starvation.

But do you know what "culling" an elephant herd really means? Here is a description by Karen E. Lange, from this month's National Geographic.

Toward the cool of evening, the helicopter took off, vultures trailing in its wake. The pilot approached the elephants from behind, coming in low over their backs to give the marksman a clear shot to the brain with his semiautomatic rifle. One bullet was usually enough. First the matriarch -- the group's leader, the repository of collective wisdom -- went down, and then the younger females and calves were picked off as they huddled around her body. Every member of the group was killed; any survivors would be too devastated by the loss of their closest companions to function normally. Immediately after the aerial assault, a ground crew arrived to shoot the rare elephant that was still alive.

Elephants are intelligent, and known for their emotional attachments. These culled elephants were the lucky ones, in today's Africa. Their lives ended quickly.

In a world of global starvation, of ethnic cleansing, it's perhaps perverse to worry about elephants, lions, monkeys, and giraffes -- not to mention trees and forests and jungle habitat -- when so much human suffering calls out for help. But we're all in it together. If we have to choose between the life of an elephant and the life of a man or woman, we of course will sacrifice the elephant. But we have to ask ourselves how we ever reached the point that such choices needed to be made. Why in this vast and often beautiful world, were we unable to find enough room for all species to live together?

Meanwhile, throughout Africa, families of elephants will be shot down one by one, while grieving over the bodies of their mothers. We can only stand by, and watch, and grieve ourselves.

And so does Hillary

Thank you, thank you, Hillary. Fox News thinks you gave Obama a wishy washy endorsement. That's typical of Fox, and follows their party line. MSNBC calls it "a grand slam home run, out of the park and across the street." Which is what it was.

Any Hillary supporter who still sits on his or her hands during this election, after hearing tonight's speech, would have done so no matter what Hillary said. She gave the ticket her full endorsement, and aroused the party faithful to cheers and tears with the first really satisfying attack, during this convention, on the disastrous Bush/Cheney legacy.

In years to come, if Hillary Clinton should again come before the voters, I'll certainly remember with gratitude her performance tonight.

Michelle hits a homer

Is there anything Michelle could have done better last night, at the Democratic convention? Yes, her speech was carefully scripted. Sure, she pulled out every emotional stop. Of course it was hokey to have her beautiful daughters come on stage at the end and joke with their doting father. Gawd, I loved it all, and, like many of the delegates, had tears in my eyes! If some males felt inclined toward George W. in 2000 because he was a guy they'd like to go have a drink with, I feel attracted to the Obamas as a family I'd love having next door, folks to talk over the fence with.

As many of the analysts pointed out, following Michelle's speech, she did nothing to answer the doubts that they, and presumably many Americans, continue to have regarding Obama's political agenda. That's ok. To me, a major concern has been those voters -- the Appalachians, the union workers, the traditional rank and file Democrats (the Hillary voters, to use a shorthand) -- who fully agree with Obama's policies, but have just felt that Obama "isn't one of us." Not just because he's black, but because he seems too foreign, too educated, too exotic, too analytical and detached.

Michelle's speech, and the video presentation that preceded it, were major steps forward in showing that the Obamas are "one of us," that they share the same dreams and hopes for their family and their country as those felt by the average voter.

Compliments also to former Iowa Republican congressman Jim Leach, who told the Democrats in Denver why he is supporting Obama -- because today's Republican party has drifted far from its historic principles. His speech set forth basic beliefs with which both moderate Republicans and moderate Democrats should be able to agree. His speech reminds me that, while driving through Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire a week or so ago, I saw countless Obama bumper strips, yard signs, and campaign buttons, but just one McCain bumper strip. These states formed the traditional heart of the Republican party -- "New England Yankee" and "Republican" were once almost synonymous. Maine and Vermont were the only states to vote for the Republican nominee at the time of FDR's 1936 landslide.

Today's Republicans have kisssed off New England as unimportant and irrelevant, just as they have kissed off Jim Leach's brand of moderate Republicanism, and as they are in the process of kissing off their traditional suburban voters. George W. has limited the appeal of the Republican party to corporations and their lobbyists, and a majority of evangelical voters. It is becoming a regional party of the South and Midwest. Is that enough to win an election? Maybe the presidency, where personality can still trump issues. Not Congress, in my opinion

Steel on steel

Amtrak is often viewed as the poor, down-at-the-heels cousin in the vacation travel family. Republicans hate it -- it provides subsidized travel to the undeserving un-rich. (Forget about who pays for those freeways that their Porsches and BMWs glide along so genteelly.) Average American families ignore it -- they have only two weeks to enjoy a vacation, and Amtrak creaks along slowly on ancient tracks that America's freight trains begrudgingly share with it. Europeans are incredulous -- compared with their own sleek 200-225 mph TGV's and Talgos -- high velocity trains riding on dedicated track -- a trip on Amtrak feels like travel by rail across India or in some other third world country.

Yes, but. But, if you have the time, if getting there is as much fun to you as the destination, if you're sick of gas prices and crowded freeways, not to mention the total insanity of today's airlines and airports -- then Amtrak's the ticket.

As discussed last month, I took Amtrak's Empire Builder from Seattle to Chicago, connecting with the Lake Shore Limited to Boston, to begin my Maine vacation. Lots of other travelers joined me -- the train was sold out, at least as far as Glacier National Park, where hordes of hikers and backpackers got off with their camping gear. The ride was smooth, food in the diner was decent and the service was excellent, and the company at each meal was interesting and congenial.

We had one unscheduled event which, at least in retrospect, added to the interest of the trip, even though causing some inconvenience. At Libby, Montana, just west of the national park, we learned that a serious derailment by a freight train had torn up the track. After a short period of indecision, we were loaded onto buses and bused around the southern edge of the park to Shelby, where the westbound train arrived and exchanged passengers with us. This caused us to miss the scenic route through Glacier Park itself, which was unfortunate, and delayed our arrival in Chicago by about eight hours. However, it did give us time to relax outside the train, enjoy the Montana air, and watch the trains being reconfigured to reverse direction.

As a result of the delay, I missed my connection at Chicago with the Lake Shore Limited, and other passengers missed other connections. If Amtrak had been an airline, they would have announced to their angry passengers that the delay was the fault of Burlington Northern & Santa Fe, and not of Amtrak, and that they therefore had no responsibility for our inconvenience. Instead, at 1 a.m., Amtrak found a room at the Hyatt Regency, at Amtrak's expense, for each and every passenger who missed a connection, and provided us each with $50 for taxi and meals during our delay.

After years of dealing with with airlines, I was astounded.

Fortunately, I had allowed myself a free day in Boston before meeting up with family members who were flying into town, and I used this free day instead in Chicago. Instead of exploring historic Boston and wandering around the Boston Commons, I explored the Art Institute of Chicago and wandered around the Loop and Grant Park. It was a fair trade-off.

I have nothing but praise for Amtrak's handling of the unfortunate delay, and for the rail experience in general. Let me put this plug in for them: We should be embarrassed as a nation that we have provided so little money to develop a decent rail system, and that we have paid so much to subsidize a highway system that encourages prodigious gasoline consumption. Until the 1950's, we had a superb passenger rail system that was the gold standard for the world. Our love for the auto caused us to toss it away, both by our individual decisions to drive or fly rather than take the train, and by our government's refusal to provide sufficient funding for Amtrak.

The airline system is broken, and our airlines are on the verge of bankruptcy. We are running out of gas for our automobiles. Rail travel -- steel wheels on steel tracks -- is the most energy efficient form of travel. It is also the most pleasant.

Let's rebuild our passenger railroads.

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PHOTOS (top to bottom): (1) Empire Builder ready for boarding at Seattle's King Street Station. (2) Outside station at Libby, Montana. (3) Train waiting at Libby. (4) Train passengers boarding buses. (5) Reversing direction of train in Shelby by repositioning engine. (6) Southern Pacific poster from 1950's.

Fog and Granite

Mount Washington, at 6,288 feet, towers above the other "Presidentials" (Mts. Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, Eisenhower) in New Hampshire's White Mountains. It is the tallest mountain in New England. And yet, for us Westerners, its elevation appears laughable -- Oregon and Washington are dotted with snowy volcanic cones ranging from 10,000 to 14,000 feet. Colorado alone boasts of fifty (50!) peaks over 14,000 feet.

Nevertheless, the mountain is a challenging, non-technical climb, as I discovered Sunday. After leaving Doug's wedding a week earlier, I spent a number of days driving about Maine, and found myself spending the night just across the state line in Gorham, N.H. I discovered that Gorham was only eleven miles from Pinkham Notch, the Forest Service trailhead for Mt. Washington, where you can also find a large Appalachian Mountain Club lodge that provides accommodations and three meals a day to passing hikers

What the heck, I thought. Who knows when I'll be in Gorham next? I crammed several layers of warm clothes into a daypack, together with a convenience store sandwich and a couple of Snickers. Thus prepared, I set out at 9:00 a.m. for a 4.2 mile hike to the summit, a climb of 4,270 feet.

New Hampshire calls itself the "Granite State." Guess why? The trail for the first two miles was unlike any typical Western dirt trail. It was more like a jeep track heading up a rocky creek bed. I danced my way uphill, from rock to rock. At the two mile mark, the trail became seriously vertical. Portions were what I would call rock scrambles, where both hands and feet were required. At this point, I became somewhat concerned about the descent.

About a mile below the summit, I reached Lion's Head, a rocky outcropping that provided excellent views of surrounding peaks and valleys. Pinkham Notch could be seen far below. Lion's Head marked the end of anything I'd consider a "trail." From that point until the top, I was boulder hopping steeply upward, my route guided only by large (5 or 6 foot high) rock cairns or, occasionally, a splash of paint on a boulder. Lion's Head also marked the end of what I would consider "visibility." Last Sunday, at least, the trail from that point to the summit and back was through a dense fog. I didn't worry about a view. I worried about finding the next cairn through the gloom.

Finally, the summit.

I've climbed Mt. Rainier. At the summit, you feel yourself in a special world, far removed from the lives of non-climbers. I've now climbed Mt. Washington. At the summit, you feel far removed from anything you feel at the summit of Mt. Rainer. First -- suprise -- there is a road to the summit that runs up the other side of the mountain, which is totally invisible until you struggle up the path and into the -- into the parking lot! Second, there is also a cog railroad to the summit, an antique device that has carried tourists to the top since 1869. (Wikipedia claims that hikers have a tradition of "Mooning the Cog." I knew of no such tradition, and the icy wind and dense fog would have eliminated any enthusiasm on my part for such a practice even had I known of it!)

Third, and as a result of numbers one and two, the exhausted climber stumbles upon a large modern lodge at the top, similar to a ski lodge, where he can sit down, exchange stories with fellow hikers, smirk at the tourists, and eat wonderfully hot chili, sandwiches, and coffee. Hmm. In some ways, those effete Easterners aren't so dumb. I tossed aside my 7-Eleven sandwich, and dug into the chili.

The hike down was no anticlimax. I recalled that Everest climbers are warned that the climb isn't over until they get back to base camp. I was wearing light, low-top hiking shoes, which I would never have worn if I'd been planning for such a climb in advance. Every step down onto a damp boulder threatened me with a sprained ankle. From top to bottom, step by step, there was no room for daydreaming -- each step required thought. Even so, I had several painful ankle twists, but no real injuries.

My guide book suggested a round trip time of 8.5 hours. I was back at Pinkham Notch 7.5 hours after I set out, including an hour at the summit.

Coincidentally, I had been reading Bill Bryson's Notes from a Small Island, his humorous commentary on life and travel in Britain. He discusses how tiny even the most famous British physical features are, compared with national parks, mountains, etc., in other, larger countries. (The entire Lake District in England, for example, the subject of countless travel essays over the years (not to mention half of Wordsworth's poetry), and the destination of many tours, occupies less area than does Minneapolis-St. Paul.) And yet, a person accustomed to the scale of life in England derives the same pleasure from English scenery as we do from, say, the Grand Canyon. Bryson discusses the struggles he confronted in climbing a 2,960-foot "peak" in the Lake District. His point was that the mountain does not have to be huge to be challenging.

New England is, not surprisingly, like England in some ways. Its mountains are not huge, the distances are not vast, its "wilderness" is not really wild (but beware of moose!). But I know now that I could live in New England and enjoy as many opportunities to hike and climb, to commune with nature, as I would care to take. I met a guy at the summit, with his wife and three children. He has climbed Mount Washington with one or more of his kids every year for 15 years. Every year is a new challenge, every year he tries a different approach. He was a dedicated conservationist, and as enthused about the outdoors as anyone you might run into while hiking the Pacific Crest Trail.

Adventure is where you look for it. New England is cool. So was Mt. Washington.

Yay, recess!

The Northwest Corner will be in recess until August 21, while its incredibly witty and erudite author vacations in Maine. Enjoy your summer (assuming you live in the northern hemisphere)!

No political parties, please. It's an election.

Democracy is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike least.
~Robert Byrne

I just mailed in my ballot for Washington's August 19 primary election. For the first time, Washington's primary is not a means of selecting the Democratic and Republic nominees, who will square off against each other in the general election. Instead, the primary will narrow the field of all candidates to the two receiving the most votes. Those two will run against each other in the general election, even if they both happen to be from the same political party.

The only concession by the state to party politics is to permit each candidate to designate on the ballot the party that he "prefers." This designation simply provides a piece of information to the voters, assisting them in making their selection. Instead of party name, the rules could just as easily have permitted each candidate to describe himself as "liberal," "moderate," or "conservative."

As far as the State of Washington is concerned, parties no longer play any role in the election process.

How did we reach this point? For years, we had a "blanket primary," where all candidates for each office were listed on the ballot, together with their political party. The Democrat and the Republican receiving the most votes ran against each other in the general election. ("Minor parties" selected their nominees by political conventions.) This method permitted Democrats, for example, to vote for a Democrat for governor, a Republican for lieutenant governor, and so on, down the ballot. Unlike in most states, voters did not register for a political party and vote only in that party's primary. Nor, unlike voters in some states that do not require registration by political party, did they select at the time of the primary either a Republican or a Democratic ballot to cast.

To me, being irrationally rational, the blanket primary never made any sense. A party should be able to select its own nominees by the vote of its own members. If the state is going to mandate use of a primary election, the voters in the primary should at least be forced to restrict themselves to one party, at least for the duration of that one election.

Besides the blanket primary's being illogical, it allowed strong partisans to vote in the opposing party's primary for the sole purpose of selecting the weakest candidate. For example, if the Republican governor had no serious opposition in the primary, devout Republicans could vote for the Democrat who would present the least serious threat to the Republican in November.

Nevertheless, the blanket primary was popular with Washington voters, who've never much cared for political parties, anyhow.

The blanket primary was finally thrown out by the federal courts in 2003, as violating the rights of the political parties to free association. (The U.S. Supreme Court had held a somewhat similar California system void for that reason in 1986.) Voters then approved the present "top-two" system -- which essentially makes all offices non-partisan -- by passing Initiative 872 by a sixty percent margin in 2004. Both political parties challenged the validity of Initiative 872 in federal court. A local federal judge held that the initiative, like the blanket primary, was invalid, and entered an injunction against its implementation. The Court of Appeals in San Francisco affirmed, and the parties asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the matter.

While this injunction remained in effect, from 2004 until this year, Washington used a two ballot system, giving each primary voter both a blue Democratic ballot and a red Republican ballot. The voter could cast one, but only one, of the two ballots. This system maintained the secrecy of each voter's political affiliation. Nevertheless, the overwhelming majority of Washington voters hated it.

The matter reached the U. S. Supreme Court this year. The Court upheld the system by a 7-2 vote in March. In Washington State Grange v. Washington State Republican Party, 552 U.S. __, 128 S. Ct. 1184, 170 L. Ed. 2d 151 (2008), the Supreme Court reversed the contrary decisions by the federal district court and by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The dissent and some of the majority did express concern that allowing candidates to state their party preference on the ballot would suggest to voters that the candidate had been endorsed by the party he preferred, thus, again, violating rights of association of the political parties. But the majority was willing to wait and see how the state actually handled the election. In fact, the state has leaned over backward to indicate that party affiliation as indicated on the ballot shows only the party preference of the candidate, not an endorsement by the party. The voters' pamphlet and the materials that come with the ballots in the mail also emphasize this distinction.

This post has become long and unwieldy, and probably too legalistic, but the history of this month's election reveals the following competing interests: (1) of candidates to be identified by party preference; (2) of the political parties to control the selection of their own candidates; and (3) of the voters to vote for anyone they damn well please, to avoid revealing to anyone their political affiliation, and to be unrestricted in voting for candidates from any political party -- even in the primary. These interests prove to be totally incompatible and logically inconsistent in the context of a political primary election.

The solution chosen by Washington voters, and now declared permissible by the U.S. Supreme Court, is -- in effect -- to protect the political parties' constitutional right of association by removing them entirely from the election process, aside from revealing the candidates' party "preferences." A rather Pyrrhic victory in the end, for the political parties, don't you think?

So, I've cast my ballot. I admit, I have my doubts about this whole scheme. But I'm willing to wait and see how it works out in practice before, like Zeus from a storm cloud, I hurl any general denouncements down to Earth.