Lateral Lines

I've been woefully absent from Lateral Lines for the last couple of months. Between work projects, going back to school myself, and my better half's work on her PhD, my time related to matters of the outdoors has been minimal. While the boat's been out a few times and I've been able to feel a few tugs on the line my time on the water has been less than any spring in the last decade and I don't forsee any tournament fishing for at least the first half of the summer.

If you want to see what I've been up to in my "other life" you can do so here. Here's a few remainders that I've been meaning to blog, but just haven't had a moment to flush out with meaningful content:

Floating Fishing Gazebo

Looking for a unique alternative to your gas guzzling boat? Look no further.

Top Ten Canadian Camping Destinations

Add each one of these to my "someday" list!

Relief for the Rural Broadband Problem?

The gem:

Intel® has announced plans to sell a specialized Wi-Fi platform later this year that can send data from a city to outlying rural areas tens of miles away, connecting sparsely populated villages to the Internet. The wireless technology, called the rural connectivity platform (RCP), will be helpful to computer-equipped students in poor countries, says Jeff Galinovsky, a senior platform manager at Intel.

And quite possibly rural areas of America, I dare say. Maybe my dad can finally get off dial-up.

Stunning Photos of Shipwrecks and Sea Disasters

This one is a bit disorienting...

The Obama Doctrine

What the far-right pundits and their parrots can't stipulate or acknowledge is that, aside from his stirring speeches, what he's proposing as a leader is a stronger and more comprehensive foreign policy stance for this country than we've seen since - well - Reagan's Cold War strategy:

An inextricable part of that doctrine is a relentless and thorough destruction of Al-Qaeda. Is this hawkish? Is this dovish? It's both and neither -- an overhaul not just of our foreign policy but of how we think about foreign policy. And it might just be the future of American global leadership.

McCain's Consistency Problem

I think very highly of John McCain - I still do. His behavior over the last five years, though, has been increasingly erratic as can't seem to resolve his internal conflict of being a good soldier for his party and following his own conscience. I don't think he will be able to resolve that conflict until the Republican party moves back toward the center from it's current far right, one note, no compromise stance.

Online Continuing Education goes 2.0

Pimping my own stuff here, but earlier this spring I completed a code architecture overhaul and major redesign for one of my main clients. I think it turned out pretty nice - and on the technical side the code runs like a scalded dog.

Peeps Show

Save that one for next easter - and watch for another installment of the annual Peeps art competition.

The cost of CAFOs

The photo below is an example of what happens when liquified manure is sprayed on tiled or frozen fields. That brown stuff flowing on top of the ice of this formerly pristine stream is raw, liquefied manure. America has an emerging and growing water quality crisis and it's happening in small streams like the Wolf in South Eastern Michigan and likely much nearer your home than you think.