deviantART: by:Neil-Thompson

deviantART: by:Neil-Thompson http://search.deviantart.com/?q=by:Neil-Thompson&section=today deviantART RSS for by:Neil-Thompson en-us Copyright 2009, deviantART.com Mon, 21 Dec 2009 14:17:40 PST deviantART.com http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://s.deviantart.com/minish/widgets/apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png The Way Life Should Be http://Neil-Thompson.deviantart.com/journal/29035507/ http://Neil-Thompson.deviantart.com/journal/29035507/ Sat, 19 Dec 2009 08:34:44 PST
It was cold as a witch's teat in the plains, the radio said -55 C with wind chill, 218.15 degrees Kelvin if that makes it feel any warmer...

I passed all my courses at UNBC, I might have even done well in some. College level bio and chem with no prior experience in either, I passed both (99% sure, I haven't actually seen my chem final grade but it felt good), thankyouverymuch.

Now I have a month off to actually learn things before I go back to school. Reading guides to trees and forestry journals, carving canoe paddles, eating (trying to put some weight back on, freshman 15 my ass), etc etc.

I might have to get up into the White Mountains pretty soon, I haven't had a good winter climb in a whole... month? yeah definitely too long. Dunno which peak I'll go for, but something rugged and beautiful I'm sure.

Books: The Future of Freedom by Fareed Zakaria is excellent so far, a very enlightening history of democracy. Zakaria analyzes how successful democracies came to be, how and why unsuccessful democracies failed, the factors that contributed to success and failure, where the road splits between the two and how we're fucking it all up with our nationbuilding shit (he hasn't come out and said it like that yet, but it's very easy to pick up the implications). There's a lot more to it than that summary, and Fareed Zakaria is one of the best damn journalists out there, his words can't be condensed any more than they already are without losing their power, so give him a read eh?

Movies: The Wind That Shakes the Barley was a powerful movie about a flying column in the Irish revolution. The film begins in 1920 and ends a year or two later, after the treaty. If you're interested in the subject, the movie is very strong, definitely worth watching.

That should do it for now, off to sand the handle on my paddle...

]]> *Neil-Thompson The Short Journal Entry http://Neil-Thompson.deviantart.com/journal/28690879/ http://Neil-Thompson.deviantart.com/journal/28690879/ Tue, 01 Dec 2009 13:14:22 PST

If anybody's wondering, I'm leaving on the morning of the 12th on my way back home to Maine and UMO, I haven't decided on my route yet, I just have to be home by Christmas, if the weather looks decent I might take the scenic route to take the edge off leaving everything that's great here.

Only guarantee: there will be pictures. I might do a kind of photojournal to put in my scraps, how many people can say they've crossed the country in the middle of december? Might as well have the visual, and my dirtbagging setup is going to be an epic rig.

And that's it.

]]> *Neil-Thompson The Global Warming Journal Entry http://Neil-Thompson.deviantart.com/journal/28572682/ http://Neil-Thompson.deviantart.com/journal/28572682/ Thu, 26 Nov 2009 21:14:11 PST

Okie dokie, this one's been a long time coming. I'll try to keep it short, I can go into some detail on any of this (for hours... and hours...) if anybody cares. Paraphrasing Einstein, I write as if I knew for the purpose of clarity. He said something about not being offended, but if I offend you then great, let's talk about it. This is NOT religion, it's science (or so they tell me), it can be discussed and positions can be changed without offending some vengeful God. Al Gore doesn't look that tough. This isn't meant to be any kind of literary masterpiece, more of a brain dump... Gotta get it out sometimes, you know? Fire in the hole!

Glaciers, generally speaking, have been retreating since the little ice age ended in the early 1800s. This [link] is a link to James Balog's presentation of his time lapse photography in, among other places, Wrangell St Elias National Park in Alaska. What he neglects to mention is that the calving face of the glacier he focuses his presentation on has been retreating since the little ice age. Local atlases show the actual rate of retreat, but aerial photos found on Google Earth provide a decent visual, search for "Columbia Glacier Alaska" and switch it to satellite. Zoom out and explore the area, and see how much more of it used to be glaciated. Most of those narrow inlets were much more full one or two hundred years ago, and I'm assuming that the larger trenches were gouged out during the last real ice age.

That being what it is, human activity has augmented the trend, giving it more momentum. The whole CO2 emissions causing global warming thing is bullshit. Sped it up? hell yes. Caused? no. That's just ridiculous. I can't believe people are THAT gullible. There's a myriad of other compounds in addition to CO2 that are also augmenting the trend, some that we have control over, some that are being released from the permafrost in a nasty little positive feedback loop that's going to nullify anything they decide at Copenhagen. Assume that we do have the capacity to add momentum to a preexisting trend (I do). That's like pulling a trigger. The arrogance it takes to think that we can call that bullet back is disgusting.

There was a slight cooling in the 40s and 50s where the glaciers stayed put or even advanced a bit (illogical considering wartime production and all the burning oil from the war, but who knows), which can be used as a reference to make it look like the sky is falling. That was an exceptional period in a larger trend. Comparing the situation to the anomaly instead of the main trend is shady at best.

Researchers have been finding human artifacts from three distinct time periods from under the melting glaciers. It's been this warm before at least three times since we've been wearing clothes and hunting with weapons. Ask Google for more info, I have some reports I could dig up for you if you're not having any luck.

The East used to be full of glaciers, the Knife's Edge on Katahdin (Maine) was carved out by a pair of them (one on each side). Fascinating history, and god knows our environment is just fine. The chestnut blight destroyed the finest parts of that ecosystem, but I'll get on that later. The West used to have many, many more glaciers, and the ones that are still there used to be much bigger. If they all go away, the world is not going to end. Things will change and people will adapt, but I'll finally be able to use my damn water filtration pump in the west without clogging it up with that glacier grit. Score!

Can all these people talking about global warming possibly be wrong? Eat shit for breakfast lunch and dinner, 50 trillion flies can't all be wrong. Groupthink is one of the most dangerous things in society, like Ed Abbey says, "One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain't nothing can beat teamwork." That mixed up with the validity effect, where the most repeated sentiments are taken as truth, was the modus operendi of the Naz... ]]> *Neil-Thompson Update and Thanks http://Neil-Thompson.deviantart.com/journal/28075337/ http://Neil-Thompson.deviantart.com/journal/28075337/ Sat, 31 Oct 2009 22:06:10 PDT

If you talk to me daily/weekly ignore this part...

I've been at UNBC since September and for various reasons I've decided to transfer back home to the University of Maine at Orono. The forestry program there is much better, especially since I'd planned to move back home for grad school (if I go that route). I'm thinking about doing a round with the Peace Corps between undergrad and grad school, it seems like my kind of thing, a great experience and a break from academia to get my priorities in order. It doesn't make sense to learn all the ins and outs of British Columbian forestry just so I can go back home to Maine where it's a whole different ballgame. I can also take many more classes on the same budget, I was paying a little more in international student fees than I'd thought... like Pete Seeger says, an education is what you get when you read the fine print, experience is what you get when you don't. I'm taking my experience and going back to where I've got my motorcycle, my dog, my family, my mountains, my trail, my home. I'm looking forward to learning from the professors at UMaine, there's some great people up there, I think it's going to be a much better fit. There's also no mountain around this continent that stacks up to Katahdin. It's time for me to go tempt Pamola some more.

Book list:

Weapons of Mass Instruction by John Taylor Gatto. This is an even more urgent "READ THIS" than the Autobiography of Malcolm X. This is everything I've been trying to say for years, with research and experience to back it up. It really gives it to you straight. Pick it up, even just for the first twenty pages. Do it for me? Please? It just took over the "one book everybody in America should read" spot that the Autobiography of Malcolm X used to have. It's that damn important. How many people don't find time to read at all, and how many people don't luck into this book? hopefully a few less now.

The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz. This man is a competent author. One idea flows into the next, each sentence is just right, it took me a few dozen pages to find something he messed up on. That's the highest praise I've given an author on his authorship... ever? Ed Abbey doesn't count, he does it on purpose. The content of the book is also interesting, if you've taken introductory psychology courses you've probably heard a good bit of it, but it's still a very good read that makes some important points about society. Nowhere near as much subversive goodness as John Taylor Gatto though, that one's a gold mine.

Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey. Of course the second coming is going to recommend the original.

Overthrow by Stephen Kinzer. I've only flipped through this one for the sections relevant to current events, but it's an analysis of United States direct intervention from Hawaii to present. It gives the most relevant (and forgotten) backstory to the Afghan occupation. Find a copy and read it, this is need to know information for anyone who gives a damn.

Deer Hunting With Jesus, (Guns, God, Debt and Delusion in Redneck America) by Joe Bageant. A personal view of the effects of the policies analyzed in Gatto's book. Local cartels, how corporations and government have screwed the hardest working people in the country, and all the other fun stuff the subtitle implies. Pick it up; more need to know information.

Must reads from the summer: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and its sequel, Lila, by Robert Pirsig. Must read. The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Bury My Heart and Wounded Knee are two more books of need to know information for anyone in America who gives a damn. The Israel Lobby (I haven't read more than a few pages out of this one but it looks like something we should know about). Sun Tzu's Art of War. Laugh all you want, it's good stuff. If Bush had read it we wouldn't be in this mess. A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean. I'm not particularly haunted by waters, but the snow follows me everywhere I go.

and all those science and math texbooks...

Let's end it off again with the Ten Commandments of Photography as compiled by myself and RuseofPoison

http://Neil-Thompson.deviantart.com/journal/26965049/ Tue, 01 Sep 2009 19:06:46 PDT
I camped out last night on a logging road, got a 7 AM wakeup call from a logging truck blowing past me and then made tracks for Prince George. A few kilometers down the road (I think in kilometers now... the only problem is mileage. You can't say kilometerage, it just doesn't work. Who's so darn smart now, england?) I saw a tail flick into the woods. I stopped about 100 yards away from it and eight wolf pups came walking out into the road. They saw me and sat down right there in the middle of the road looking at me. I took a few pictures that will be up soonish and then put it back in gear and carried on just fast enough to stay out of a stall, can't have them getting used to sitting in the road like that. Logging trucks don't get curious and stop when they see a tail. The brave (or foolish) one of the litter that had been walking towards me to check me out stayed on the road until I was about 10 yards out, pretty cool to see but no pics up close (I'm not that bad).

So that's about all I could ask for on my last morning out on the road. I think I might be the first person to fill the bookshelf in his dorm and lean a homemade canoe paddle against it. And an ice axe. That's the "one of the unique students in forty years" for ya. Just found out Hall's still telling stories about me in his class. It's going on my resume.

So here's my reading list, I read a lot more than this but here's the absolute must-reads:

The Autobiography of Malcolm X. If every person in this country read just one book, that should be it. We'd be in much better shape if the government printed three hundred million copies and sent one or two to every home, apartment, project, street corner, hole in the wall between here and mexico. Hugo Chavez is doing something like that, providing books below cost to his people. Interesting idea. The way X tells about his pilgrimage to Mecca makes you wonder why the hell we're anywhere near that place with our culture (we really can't even call what we propagate around the world "culture" if we have any idea what they've had going for so long) and armies. I started out against the war, figured something was rotten in the state of denmark, this might be it (among other things).

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (ZMM) and Lila (sequel to ZMM). If you have to ask, you wouldn't understand. Just read the first one and if you don't say "yes, that's exactly what I've been trying to say/figure out" don't bother with the sequel. Well, do bother with the sequel, it's got some great ideas that aren't even touched on in the first one.

The Life and Death of Michael Collins. My history teacher at Yarmouth told me to watch the movie Michael Collins when he found out I was mostly Irish. The movie really doesn't do the man justice. It makes a very good effort, but the really incredible things are in little details that couldn't be shown on film. There was also a progression of thoughts that went like this: Michael Collins was from Cork-Michael Collins beat the piss out of the Crown's spy system-English reprisals (burning farms, dairies, businesses etc at random when an Irish ambush went our way) hit Collins' homeland, County Cork, the hardest in 1920/21-my ancestors lived in County Cork-My ancestors left Cork for America in 1920. Wait.... So I need to read a whole lot more about this and figure out just what the hell happened with my family. That's going to take some time and doing, but if anything in this world is worth it... Don't recommended the book or the movie for anyone without a personal interest, it'd be very boring. Instead, watch The Devil's Own with Harrison Ford, it's very good. Less historical, but it gets the feeling across.

A River Runs Through It. It's a classic. Read it. Try and get the copy with USFS 1919 and Logging and Pimping, or Your Pal, Jim. Both are excellent. Especially in the title.

The Grapes of Wrath. So that's what happened during the Depression. Didn't mention that one in school.... whoopsies.

Paddy's Lament by Thomas Gallagher. This is the one I'm reading now, it makes the Grapes of Wrath look like a picnic. The Irish potato famine. Seventeen million pounds sterling worth of food shipped out of Ireland to england while two million starved to death, millions more forced out of their homes and off their island, any stores they might have had taken to pay the landlord for the land they worked. Much less than half of the cultivable land was planted with potatoes. The other half to three quarters was in grains, completely untouched by the blight but controlled by english lan... ]]> *Neil-Thompson Peace http://Neil-Thompson.deviantart.com/journal/24894789/ http://Neil-Thompson.deviantart.com/journal/24894789/ Thu, 20 Aug 2009 16:37:08 PDT
I'm bringing both cameras and I'll be seeing things that can't be described or imagined, but if a grizz doesn't eat me on the way back there will be photos starting to go up September ish. Everything you've seen up to now is just a warm up act for what's going to be going up here, I'm going to camp out in the most beautiful places on this side of the world, you'll be seeing the north side of the Great Lakes, the Badlands, Black Hills and other spots in the Dakotas, the Wind River Range of Wyoming, maybe the Sawtooths of Idaho and then many many photos of the mountains and rivers and glaciers of British Columbia, the Yukon, and the Northwest Territories. It's going to blow your mind.

So to answer the usual questions, yes I'm going alone (used to that one, the question and the answer), yes I'm going to try to minimize my chances of dying but I make no promises, shit happens, just don't make a goddamn movie about me if I don't walk out (I might be cool with a book), yes I've got bear spray (and yes it's UDAP, the good stuff), yes I expect to use it, no I don't completely expect it to work but it's worth trying, yes I know what I'm doing better than that Into the Wild guy and I think I'm good enough at this to survive (again no promises), no I'm not going to shower much, yes I'm going to grow my hair out and yes it will look hot even if I smell like shit (argue, I dare you), no I don't think I'm going to burn out, if anybody can take it it's me, no I won't have internet or a computer but yes I have a milk crate's worth of books I'm going to be reading, yes I'm going to be very bad and stealth-camp in Wallmart parking lots etc (it's actually allowed there, kinda handy), yes I've got a nice little gas stove and will do most of my own cooking and will probably not lose weight while on the road, yes I've got a converter to charge my camera batteries off the truck, yes I'm going to be one huge bug bite by the end of all this, yes I'll be stopping at laundromats, yes I'll be writing plenty and will probably type some stuff up when it's all over (winters are long up there, I'll probably have time), yes I'll have pictures of the aurora (lots of them) but it won't be until winter since the nights aren't very long where and when I'm going, yes I'm going to blow my 50-hours-without-seeing-another-person record straight out of the water, and yes I'll probably miss you at one point or another during that time, but I'll get over it.

So that's about it, I'll be on and off for the next couple weeks, time to say goodbyes, but after that I'll catch you on the flip side.

Peace.

EDIT: DRAWING REFERENCES/STOCK USE, WHAT'S COOL:

Well I've obviously got the computer now (thanks ma), I've got most of my processing and posting done for what I've taken up to now. I probably won't be prompt responding to comments and notes (sorry, that's road life.), so heres what I've got to say to anybody who wants to use any of my pictures for stock or as a drawing reference:

Drawers: Use anything you like, drop a comment or something with a link if you post it on the internet, I like to see the results. Send me a note if you'd like higher resolution for a wing reference or what have you, the size I post here might not be as useful as it could be.

Stock: If you're just having fun, ie you don't sell your work, and you need something I've put up for part of a larger work, go ahead, but be very explicit about where you got the stock in the artists comments. Contact for higher resolution or color version of a B&W image. No playing with the contrast and reposting, that's not cool. If you want to color in a B&W that is kinda cool, go for it, and I want to see when it's done. Others should contact me by note and wait for a response. Don't really expect that one to come up, but hey, you never know whats going to happen tomorrow.

]]> *Neil-Thompson Field Camera is rolling http://Neil-Thompson.deviantart.com/journal/22731965/ http://Neil-Thompson.deviantart.com/journal/22731965/ Thu, 22 Jan 2009 12:15:37 PST

Those two were just to prove the technology, but I like them, it was some good natural lighting and focusing. The distance from the lens to the ball was about three inches, so getting it in focus was a bear.

Here's two from Spring Point Light in Portland:

Crop from above:

Two more:

Some favorite favorites:

http://Neil-Thompson.deviantart.com/journal/22189309/ Thu, 25 Dec 2008 11:39:06 PST

Autumn Contest a while ago, and I guess I won!! How awesome is that!? So I get to play with all the new features that just opened up to me with the subscription, beta testing, all that fun stuff, I'm still trying to figure out how it all works, but right now I want to try out this putting thumbnails in the journal thing