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Author Archives: Steve Mays
William Gibson’s drones
Yesterday’s drone flight has me in a drone state of mind. My first (of 25) blog post mentioning drones was in 2005, but some of those are references to military drones so not sure when I became aware of consumer drones. Last night I started reading (for the 10th time?) William Gibson’s 1988 novel, Mona Lisa Overdrive and found this passage:
“She was accompanied, on these walks, by an armed remote, a tiny Dornier helicopter that rose from its unseen rooftop nest when she stepped down from the deck. It could hover almost silently, and was programmed to avoid her line of sight. There was something wistful about The way it followed her, as though it were an expensive but unappreciated Christmas gift.”
The man has been incorporating drones into his stories for 30+ years. And this might not be the first instance.
What the birds see
My buddy George has been playing with drones for about eight years. (You can see some of his amazing video here, here and here.) In 2015 he got his drone snagged in a very tall tree while shooting some video of our place. So I was a little surprised when he agreed to come back and shoot some video of our recently expanded homestead.
As you might imagine, the technology has gotten a lot better in the last half dozen years and George has gotten even better at flying the things. The video below runs right at 2:30.
This was shot from an altitude of about 400 feet so the drone was just a black dot but the quality of the video was even better than what I’m streaming here.
I love trees. I love being surrounded by them. And I’ve tromped around our acreage over the years so I know there’s a bunch of them. But it took this birds eye view to give me a real sense of just how many trees surround us.
More big rocks
A couple of weeks ago I posted some photos of a big rock on our newly acquired property. The previous owners built their house around this formation. Since then we’ve discovered another big rock on the other side (and behind) of the house. Hard to see because it’s covered in about forty years worth of dead leaves, Honeysuckles, and brambles.
We still have work to do but Rock #2 is finally getting some love.
The 20 second clip below shows what the formation looks like before and after some clean up.
Elevation: How Drones Will Change Cities
Chiropractic: Essay by H.L. Mencken
The following is an excerpt from a 1924 essay by H. L. Mencken. It seems relevant in light of the stupid quackery that’s killing hundreds of thousands.
Any lout with strong hands and arms is perfectly equipped to become a chiropractor. No education beyond the elements is necessary. The takings are often high, and so the profession has attracted thousands of recruits — retired baseball players, work-weary plumbers, truck-drivers, longshoremen, bogus dentists, dubious preachers, cashiered school superintendents. Now and then a quack of some other school — say homeopathy — plunges into it. Hundreds of promising students come from the intellectual ranks of hospital orderlies.
“Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956) was a controversial American journalist, essayist and literary critic. During the 1920s, he became famous for his vitriolic attacks on what he considered to be the hypocrisy, stupidity, and bigotry of much of American life. For obvious reasons, his critics considered him highly skilled at satire but intolerant and often crude. This essay was published in the Baltimore Evening Sun in December 1924. Although the medical knowledge of his day was still quite primitive, Mencken knew enough to realize that chiropractic theory was preposterous.”
BBC’s Top Gear Lost Segment – Greatest Car Vote
“The greatest car vote segment was cut out of all re-airings and streaming versions of BBC’s Top Gear. It was aired only once in 2003, and most of the recordings of it were lost.” Segment 5: Land Rover (5:45)
We got our third shot of the Pfizer vaccine
They’re calling them booster shots but I’ve read a few articles that say it was always the plan to give three shots. Not something you want to publicize when you can’t get so many to get one shot. Barb and I got our shots eleven days ago. From CNN:
For individuals 65 plus, we saw significant declines in VE (vaccine effectiveness) against infection during Delta for the mRNA products,” Link-Gelles told CDC vaccine advisers this past week.
In a study of 4,000 healthcare personnel, first responders, and other frontline workers in eight places who were tested every week regardless of symptoms, vaccine protection against any infection declined from 91% pre-Delta to 66% during Delta.
Pfizer says its studies show booster doses bring people’s immunity back up to what it was right after they got their second shots, or to even higher levels.
How much higher? From the New York Times:
At least 12 days after the booster, rates of infection were elevenfold lower and of severe disease nearly twentyfold lower in those who received a booster compared with those who had received only two doses, the researchers found. The researchers acknowledged that their results were preliminary.
I like those numbers. And if I have to get a “booster” ever six months? BFD. I see my dentist every six months. While we’re on the subject of vaccines… My doctor recently suggested I get a shot of the new and improved shingles vaccine, Shingrix. Shingles is bad shit so I headed for the pharmacy. Turns out there might be a bonus benefit:
RZV (Shingrix) vaccination was associated with a 16% lower risk of COVID-19 diagnosis and 32% lower risk of hospitalization, suggesting RZV elicits heterologous protection, possibly through trained immunity.
At this point I’m masking just to piss off the anti-vaxxers.
Goodbye old pine tree
We had a few trees removed today. Couple of dead/dying cedar trees and the big pine tree shown above. About half the limbs on this tree were dead and it was too close to the power line to take a chance. Once down we could see the tree was rotting from the inside so we made the right call.
On another part of the property there was a big (ugly) cedar tree in the middle of some gorgeous oak trees. It won’t be missed.
Our thanks to Cedric and his crew from Korte Tree Care. If you’re wondering, he’s wearing a “hard” cowboy hat.
Rocks and Trees
The Annex was designed as an earth-contact home with a big ass rock as the defining feature. It is a cool rock and serves (for me) as a reminder of the impermanence of my existence.
But those giant oak trees. For years the previous owner allowed ivy vines to cover these beautiful trees. Very damaging to the trees over time.
So my first task after closing was to cut the vines. The tree guy we use assures me the vines will die in coming months and within a year the dead vines and leaves will fall from the tree.
We’ve been calling the rock “Dwayne.”