Sunbeams illuminating a coastal forest in Port Orford, Oregon

Chuggnutt!

Tag: Random

  • Exploding Whale Memorial Park

    This weekend I discovered that Florence, Oregon has a park dedicated to the infamous exploding whale incident, which took place in 1970:

    Sign at the entrance of the Exploding Whale Memorial Park in Florence, Oregon

    If you’re not familiar with the story, the Oregon Encyclopedia has an article on the Florence Whale Explosion you can read up on:

    On November 9, 1970, a forty-five-foot, eight-ton sperm whale washed ashore near Florence on Oregon’s south coast. In addition to the stench and the possibility that the body would burst, local officials were concerned that people curious about the carcass might climb on it and fall in. The agency responsible for Oregon beaches, the Oregon State Highway Division (now the Oregon Department of Transportation), was called in to remove the whale. After consulting with U.S. Navy and munitions experts, Assistant District Highway Engineer George Thornton decided to treat the carcass as a boulder and to use dynamite to dislodge it.

    Hijinks ensued. The Wikipedia article “Exploding whale” offers up some additional details, including this fun bit:

    A military veteran with explosives training who happened to be in the area warned that the planned twenty cases of dynamite was far too much, and that 20 sticks (8.4 lb or 3.8 kg) would have sufficed, but his advice went unheeded.

    Anyway, it’s a lovely little park that provides access to the Siuslaw River just off of Florence’s Historic Old Town, with a small covered picnic area and benches interspersed throughout. But to my disappointment it’s not where the whale explosion actually occurred, nor is there any sort of commemorative plaque or information about the whale to be found in the namesake park.

    Good views of the river, though!

    View of the Suislaw River Bridge and Suislaw River from the Exploding Whale Memorial Park in Florence, Oregon
    View of the Suislaw River and sand dunes from the Exploding Whale Memorial Park in Florence, Oregon
    Bench sculpture/art at the Exploding Whale Memorial Park in Florence, Oregon
    Forest for the trees, in the Exploding Whale Memorial Park in Florence, Oregon
    View of the Suislaw River from the Exploding Whale Memorial Park in Florence, Oregon

  • Does North Dakota even exist?

    This started as a humorous conversation with coworkers; I don’t remember exactly how it came up, but one coworker talked about a family trip to visit all the states but somehow missed North Dakota. This of course prompted doubts as to its actual existence.

    The rest of us confirmed that we, also, have never been to North Dakota, and to further cast doubts, nobody knows anyone from there either.

    But then I googled “does North Dakota exist” and it got, well, weird.

    Who, what, why: Is North Dakota really a US state? (From 2011):

    North Dakota is amending its constitution because of a long-standing technical omission that some claim makes its statehood invalid. So does that mean it’s really just a US territory and not a state at all?

    Every American child is taught there are 50 states in the US.

    But an 82-year-old care home resident in Grand Forks, North Dakota, is throwing the truth of that universally held statement into some doubt.

    While reading the state constitution, which is 40 years older than he is, John Rolczynski noticed it omitted to mention the executive branch when explaining which new officers need to take the oath supporting the US Constitution.

    This, he says, makes the state constitution invalid because it is in conflict with the federal constitution, which requires all officers of the three branches of state government – executive, judicial and legislative – be bound by the oath.

    Mr Rolczynski’s detective work began in 1995. Sixteen years later, state senator Tim Mathern of Fargo has successfully introduced a bill to amend section 4 of article XI of the state constitution.

    The amendment has been passed by the state legislature and must now be approved by the people of North Dakota at the general election in 2012.

    So North Dakota was arguably not legally a state until ten years ago. Who knew?

  • There’s a Steampunk Festival in Weed, CA

    There’s a Steampunk Festival in Weed, CA

    Chalk this one up under “events I did not expect”: Weed, California has an annual Steampunk Festival, and it returns this year on May 21-22. Yep, the same town that hosts an annual 420 Festival (on April 20, naturally) somehow has a festival celebrating steampunk. Because of course it does.

    Weed has about 2,900 people, give or take, and is located in the far north end of the state, near the base of Mt. Shasta. It’s a relatively diverse town, compared to the rest of that region of northern California, but geographically speaking this still seems unlikely.

    If there weren’t still a pandemic, I’d consider checking it out.

  • WTH?

    Zoom in on the Google Map of Corvallis, Oregon, near downtown and this is what you’ll see:

    Corvallis Map WTH

    Er, what? How on earth did “Illinois” and “Nebraska” get in there?

  • Cascadia, State of Jefferson and other secessionist movements

    Being in Portland several times over the past several weeks for beer happenings got me thinking about the (mostly inconsequential) debate about “Cascadian Dark Ales” (versus the other names of “Black IPA”, “American Black Ale” and so on) and about the “Cascadia” part of that name. See, here in the Pacific Northwest “Cascadia” can refer to the Cascadia independence movement, which according to Wikipedia:

    Cascadia is the proposed name for an independent nation located within the Cascadian bioregion of the Pacific Northwest region of North America. Proposed boundaries differ, with some drawn along existing political state and provincial lines, and others drawn along larger ecological, cultural and economic boundaries.

    The nation would be created by secession of British Columbia from Canada, along with Oregon, Washington and portions of other states from the United States. At its maximum extent Cascadia would extend from the coastal Alaskan Panhandle to the north, extending into Northern California in the south, and inland to include parts of Alberta, the Yukon, Idaho and Western Montana.

    This also made me think about the State of Jefferson—another proposed secessionist movement that would combine part of southern Oregon with Northern California:

    The State of Jefferson was a proposed U.S. state that would span the contiguous, mostly rural area of southern Oregon and northern California, where several attempts to secede from Oregon and California, respectively, have taken place in order to gain own statehood.

    I find these sorts of movements (ideas? memes?) fascinating on all sorts of levels, partially because they seem so wildly improbable and partially because it’s sort of a glimpse into an alternate reality (which piques my science fiction interest). And yet both Cascadia and Jefferson State are fairly recent phenomenons, which give them an air of plausibility for something that could be accomplished in my lifetime. Wildly improbable plausibility, as I noted, but still.

    For these and other historical U.S. alternate realities, Wikipedia’s list of secession proposals is a fun read.

  • Items of recent awesomeness

    Some of these links aren’t as shiny-new as they were when I started this post, but even so:

    The CDC’s zombie apocalypse preparedness plan: Yes, the CDC is all over the possibility of a zombie apocalypse. For real.

    If zombies did start roaming the streets, CDC would conduct an investigation much like any other disease outbreak. CDC would provide technical assistance to cities, states, or international partners dealing with a zombie infestation. This assistance might include consultation, lab testing and analysis, patient management and care, tracking of contacts, and infection control (including isolation and quarantine).

    Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn move trailer: I knew Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson were making a Tintin movie, but I didn’t realize just how OMGAWESOME it was going to be until I saw the trailer:

    The Javascript PC emulator: pure amazing geekery. This is an x86 processor being emulated in Javascript inside a browser. And it’s running Linux. To be clear: what is essentially a full computer is running independently inside the browser. Which theoretically means you could run, well, anything inside of it.

  • Weird things that I’ve seen lately

    Snickers Charged: with caffeine, taurine, and “other B vitamins”—essentially the same stuff they put into energy drinks like Red Bull.

    Really? Was Snickers not… I don’t know… “loaded” enough? Next thing you know, they’ll be putting guarana and ginseng and who knows what else into them.

    No, I haven’t tried one. There’s a review here, if you’re interested.

    FAIL Blog: This is not so much “weird” as “spastically funny.”

    The horse: I forgot about this til just now. A woman was riding a white horse across the lawn of the Barnes & Noble at 27th and Highway 20 (here in Bend). This was a week or two ago. Right across the lawn and up to the crosswalk at the intersection… waiting to cross, I guess.

    Yeah, one of those things I have a cameraphone for, but I was driving, so I didn’t get the picture.

  • One of those ideas I wish I’d thought up

    The Mount Rushmore Of… is a new blog that is one of those obvious-in-hindsight ideas I wish I’d thought up, because it satisfies the “Top X List” jones of twitchy web surfers everywhere.

    Everyone knows what Mount Rushmore is, right?  Mount Rushmore is a National Memorial featuring the sculptures of the heads of the most influential Presidents of the first 150 years of the United States.  The Mount Rushmore Of takes that same principle and asks the question of who’s head should be carved in stone for other subjects, like:

    • Who is on the Mount Rushmore of Baseball?
    • Who is on the Mount Rushmore of Punk Rock?
    • And so on…

    Debate encouraged. Naturally.

    Incidentally, Neal Stewart, the mastermind behind it, also writes the highly entertaining Turkey Sandwich Report. Oh yeah, he works in beer, too—a marketer, but I don’t hold that against him.

  • Here’s something I bet you didn’t know about Ashland…

    I’m referring to Ashland, Oregon, naturally, and something I found out from this article (via Jack Bog) (emphasis mine):

    Ashland city ordinances allow nudity anywhere in town, but genitalia must be covered in city parks and the downtown commercial district.

    I was pretty surprised when I read that; I don’t remember a single naked person while in Ashland last year. But overall—that’s pretty crazy; I had no idea it was that liberal of a town.

    You can bet I’ll be reading the Bend city code pretty closely the next few days to see what our local ordinances say about the subject.

    (The article overall is about a fruitcake “activist” who likes to wander around around (nearly) nude, and the city of Ashland’s refusal to allow her to be in their Fourth of July parade. She’s claiming “discrimination” against her by the Ashland Chamber of Commerce, claims she’s “not trying to get attention” (riiiiiiiiight), and for good measure even throws in a hint of creepy pedophilia in there. Seriously, she sounds mental. I’d deny her, too.)

  • Braindump

    Just offloading some things and ideas that have been rattling around.

    • CNN ran a story last week entitled, "Nine cool jobs that pay well." (Paying "well" is relative in their article, I guess.) Top of the list? Brewmaster ($42,430).
    • And good news if you want to take advantage of how cool it would be to be a brewmaster: Beer is recession proof.
    • Where are the open source MySpace/Facebook clones? Are there any? In particular, I’m wondering if there is an open source social networking application written in PHP. There didn’t seem to be any last time I checked, so I was half thinking of writing one myself.

      …not with the intent of competing with MyFaceSpaceBook or anything like that; for that matter, anyone can create a free social network on Ning. I was more thinking in terms of, what if I wanted to create a separate, private social network site that didn’t rely on the Ning shared hosting paradigm? Or plop that software down on an intranet somewhere, behind a firewall? Any PHP apps out there I can just download and install for that?

      Hence my thinking on writing one. Mostly just because.

    • "Digital nostalgia." Not sure where I’m going with that yet, but it’s sparked by William Gibson’s comments about eBay in this interview.