A little river walk in the Siskiyous

Posted on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 by nosleepingdog

This morning before the day heated up too much we took the more spry of our two old dogs and headed out for a little walk. The border between Oregon and California is only about 15 miles from us by road; after crossing into California the roads are unpaved but not bad, and follow various river branches up in the Siskiyou Mountains.

The place where we parked was just before a bridge over a small river and then we hiked up along that river, crossing to the other side when our way was blocked. In August the water is low, but we saw plenty of winter driftwood lodged nearly ten feet above the current water level.

View upriver, from the bridge

It was mostly shady and cool and the rocks were great: huge outcroppings of basalt that may have continued down and under the river into the very roots of the earth, and smaller boulders of other types. We thought they were great; our dog Brook found them rough going at some points but did fine, finding her own route uphill from us at some points. Crossing a river, even such a small one, was new to her; I think she was a city dog before we got her as a rescue at age 5, and in the 6 years since we have seldom gone hiking with the dogs. Dan goes goldpanning, for fun, and has forded many a river in that pursuit, so he led the way and helped Brook out when she got too close to strong currents. She was nervous, though not too nervous to stop each time in midstream for a drink.

We saw an unusual plant in a flat dry area above the river: the “Ground cone” (Boschniakia species, perhaps hookeri or strobilacea). This is a parasitic plant that forms a tuberous growth upon roots of trees or shrubs, deep underground, then sends up a long flowerstalk with this pine-cone-like flower. Only the flower appears aboveground; there are no leaves.

There was a group of perhaps ten such cones within a circle ten feet in diameter. I looked and photographed from a distance because there was poison oak around and I’m very sensitive to it. But I got one shot that shows the dry flower petals, and the seeds.

According to descriptions I found on the web, the petals are purple, and the plant is a prolific seed-producer–“a single plant may produce more than a third of a million seeds.” [from The Natural History of Puget Sound Country, by Arthur R. Kruckeberg, in Google Books] The ten or so cones we saw may all have been from the same plant. The flowers are said to be hermaphroditic, having both male and female parts, so they can self-fertilize.

Not far away was a very robust Douglas fir with a branch that was almost another trunk, in size. Below, within the reach of idiots with spray paint, “Felix” had immortalized his contempt for nature in bright red letters (hidden by shadow and rough bark, in the photo). If I had surprised him at his little task, could anyone blame me if I tied him to the trunk and carefully spraypainted him?

In open areas there were madrones, which have bark that peels in gorgeous patterns and colors.

Back at the road, we went past the car to take a look each way from the bridge. In one direction, traces of old hydraulic mining could be seen.

In Gold Rush days, and again in the 1930’s, gold miners of all sorts were around here, from humble individual panners to gangs that tore aside mountain-sides with pumps and hoses to sort out gold from the dirt and rock. The damage to this hillside must have been done at least 70 years ago; a few trees have managed to take root but the slopes remain mostly bare and prone to further erosion or landslide. This is public land and I think hydraulic mining is restricted, but with the high price of gold we are seeing more dredgers in the rivers. They use a big suction hose to vacuum up sediment and small rocks for sorting; one person runs the hose while another often works underwater moving big rocks to get at what’s underneath. Dangerous and destructive, a double thrill.

But down below this little river carried on, looking just fine.

It’s hypnotizing to watch the water go over the rocks. But our dog Brook felt she’d scrambled over enough rocks for one morning. As soon as she determined we were just loitering on the bridge, not continuing across it, she waited in the road between the bridge and the car, and we finally gave in and headed home.

Little Blue Books

Posted on Friday, August 8, 2008 by nosleepingdog

Before Project Gutenberg, there were Little Blue Books. Before paperback books (not pamphlets, but books) came along in the 30’s, there were Little Blue Books. My remaining library of them is shown above, and below are a few with a paperback of the same period.

“Little Blue Books” was the popular name for a series of tiny publications printed on pulp paper, with slightly heavier paper covers, by E. Haldeman-Julius between 1919 and 1951. Emanuel Julius was the son of Russian immigrant Jews; he said his life was changed when, as a boy, he got hold of a 10 cent publication of Oscar Wilde’s grim poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol, and read it straight through oblivious to the freezing weather in which he sat. At that moment, he thought “how wonderful it would be if thousands of such booklets could be made available.”

All of us who were bookworms in childhood can identify with that experience. I don’t remember much of my youth but I can still recall exactly where I was when I read the end of To Kill A Mockingbird: sitting on a log in some neighbor’s front yard, having put the paperback in my pocket before setting out ostensibly to take the dog for a walk. And on a difficult bus trip to San Francisco, I buried myself in the Little Blue Book of Macbeth and came across the encouraging lines “Time and the hour/run through the roughest day.” I was on the bus with my parents, but seated separately; they were barely speaking to one another, having had another of the fights over my father’s extreme stay-at-home habits–this one followed by “Well, maybe you’d like to go to San Francisco (about 40 miles)?” “Driving and parking there is too awful.” and so on, until we ended up a silent trio on Greyhound.

I still have that 15-cent copy of Macbeth, and most of the other LBB’s that I acquired. The titles in this line included a lot of classics, not just because they were copyright-free, but because Haldemann-Julius had an agenda: a mixture of the classical, the progressive, and the useful.

Here’s a sampling of titles [my apologies for such a long list, but, I confess, when I started looking at the lists on the Penn State Axe Library site, I found it hard to stop selecting examples!] :

1a. The Ballad of Reading Jail, by Oscar Wilde. First Edition. [Cover title.] People’s Pocket Series. [1919] [

1b. Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Second Edition. [Cover title.] People’s Pocket Series. [1919]

3a. Walt Whitman’s Poems. [1920.]

17c. On Walking, by Henry David Thoreau. [1921.]

60a. Emerson’s Essays. [1920.]

90c. The Mikado, by W. S. Gilbert.

94a. Trial and Death of Socrates. [1920.]

95a. Confessions of an Opium Eater, by Thomas De Quincey. [1920.]

60a. Emerson’s Essays. [1920.]

140a. America’s Prison Hell, by Kate O’Hare. [1920.

1001. Tales of Italian Bandits [by] Washington Irving. [1927.]

1002. A Dictionary of Sea Terms [by] Frank Wells. [1926.]

1003. How to Think Logically [by] Leo Markun. [1926.]

1004. How to Save Money [by] J. George Frederick. [1926.]

1005. How to Enjoy the Orchestra [by] Isaac Goldberg. [1926.]

1006. A Book of Children’s Games [by] Grace Perkins. [1926.]

1008. The Origin of Religion [by] Joseph McCabe. [1926.]

1009. Typewriting Self Taught [by] Miriam Allen DeFord. [1926.]

1010. A Handbook for Amateur Magicians [by] George Milburn. [1926.]

1011. Pocket Dictionary, English-French, French-English [by] Vance Randolph. [1927.]

1014. The Best American Jokes, edited by Clement Wood. [1926.]

1017. Without Benefit of Clergy [by] Rudyard Kipling. [1926.]

1019. Bluebeard and His Eight Wives [by] Clement Wood. [1926.]

1020. Why I Am an Infidel [by] Luther Burbank. [1926.]

1021. Italian Self Taught [by] Isaac Goldberg. [1926.]

1022. An Odyssey of the North [by] Jack London. [1926.]

1162. Mystery Tales of Ghosts and Villains [by] Montague Rhodes James, Katherine Rickford [and] Charles Dickens.

1163. The Policewoman’s Love-Hungry Daughter and Other Stories of Chicago Life [by] Ben Hecht.

1177. Woman and the New Race [by] Havelock Ellis.

1178. The Chorus Girl and Her Lover’s Wife and Other Stories [by] Anton Chekhov.

1179. How to Make Desserts, Pies and Pastries [by] Mrs. Temple.

1182. How to Make Your Own Cosmetics [by] Gloria Goddard.

1183. How to Play Checkers [by] W. Patterson.

1185. The Weather: What Makes It and Why [by] Clifton L. Ray.

1186. A Handbook of the Rules of Golf, compiled by Harold Dix.

1188. Sex and the Garden of Eden Myth, a Collection of Essays on Christianity [by] Maynard.

1189. Pin Money: One Hundred Ways to Make Money at Home [by] Gloria Goddard.

1190. What Price Love? [by] Anton Chekhov.

1286. Do Human Beings Have Free Will? A Debate: Affirmative: Professor George Burman Foster, Negative: Clarence Darrow.

There are some patterns here: how-to and self-improvement, progressive politics and “free-thinking” about religion and society, and, of course, plenty of titles containing the words “love,” “sweetheart,” and “sex.” But there are also the large and small lights of Western Literature: Shakespeare, Goethe, Tolstoy, O. Henry, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Balzac, Ibsen, Mark Twain, Rabelais…there seems no end to Haldeman’s inclusiveness, until one thinks that a complete set of Little Blue Books would make the ideal accompaniment to a desert island existence. And cheap, too; in the beginning they retailed for a nickel; by the early 1960’s the price was all the way up to fifteen cents. So the 39 titles above would have run you a total of $1.95 at a nickel apiece, $5.85 at 15 cents.

Haldeman published some works he’d written himself, including

1287. Brann, Who Cracked Dull Heads [by] E. Haldeman-Julius.

1288. America’s Fakirs and Guides, Surveying the Leaders and Misleaders of Our Day [by] E. Haldeman-Julius.

The Brann of LBB 1287 was William Cowper Brann (1855-1898), an opinionated American journalist and newspaper owner who attacked aspects of religion, social pretense, and anything else that roused his ire. He died in Waco, Texas, after being shot in the back by a man who objected to his vituperative editorials about Baylor College; Brann turned and shot his attacker dead before walking to the jail, from which he was soon released. He died the next day.

I encountered Haldeman’s magnum-opus-in-small-pieces early in my teens. I was questioning religion and social conventions, fascinated with adventure tales, and lived with my nose in a book. Mostly I went to the library, but Little Blue Books were portable, full of surprises and oddities, and felt in some way personal. I must have bought them by mail, because I never remember seeing one in a bookstore or on a drugstore book rack. I now know that J. Edgar Hoover had mounted a campaign against Haldeman and his publications in the 1950’s and forced most bookstores to stop carrying them. The Little Blue Book series was, in its day, “edgy”: marked by progressive politics, including socialism, and consideration of forbidden topics like free love, homosexuality, evolution, birth control, and women’s rights. You can see that a cranky repressive guy like Hoover couldn’t allow such pollution of the American intellectual landscape.

Despite J. Edgar, 300 million Little Blue Books were published between 1919 and 1978, so I suppose those who blame our moral decline on things like Pokémon and gay marriage can just add Haldeman’s smart-alecky elitist smut to their list.

July 4 edition

Posted on Friday, July 4, 2008 by nosleepingdog

On July 4 in the US we celebrate the adoption of the Declaration of Independence by the Continental Congress in 1776; we should also celebrate December 15, 1791 when the Bill of Rights came into effect after being ratified by three-quarters of the states.

Two events reported this week got me thinking about civil liberties.

Court orders Google to release information to identify all YouTube viewers

Viacom has been suing Google, owner of Youtube, alleging that Youtube has acted “as a willing accomplice to Internet users who put clips of Viacom’s copyrighted television programs on the popular video-sharing website.” Google tried to resist Viacom’s “request for data on which YouTube users watch which videos on the website in order to support its case in a billion-dollar copyright lawsuit against Google.” Google maintained that “the data should not be disclosed because of the users’ privacy concerns,” citing the (Video Privacy Protection Act) VPPA, 18 U.S.C. § 2710 but US District Court Judge Louis Stanton, San Francisco, found in favor of Viacom and ordered Google to release to Viacom “all data from the Logging database concerning each time a YouTube video has been viewed on the YouTube website or through embedding on a third-party website.”

How many people does this affect? In January 2008, nearly 79 million users used YouTube, making over 3 billion video views. Over 80 million videos are hosted on YouTube, uploaded by users. Not bad for a business founded in 2005, which Google says makes a “negligible” profit. (from Wikipedia.)

Handing over the identifying information on 79 million distinct users is a huge breach of privacy, and unjustifiable given that a study of videos removed from YouTube at the request of copyright holders found that only 2% of them were from Viacom.

Google was apparently hoist by its own petard, having previously claimed in a blog post, titled “Are IP addresses personal?”, that “We . . . are strong supporters of the idea that data protection laws should apply to any data that could identify you. The reality is though that in most cases, an IP address without additional information cannot.” The judge evidently reasoned that this made release of the data acceptable despite restrictions of various federal legislation concerning electronic privacy. Many of the comments posted in response to this post disagree. It seems that people using home computers, as opposed to mobile laptops, are particularly likely to be identifiable.

Will this ruling begin another round of lawsuits against individuals, like those filed by the Recording Industry Association of America over music downloads? Seems very possible.

But of more concern is the breach of the principle of the Video Privacy Protection Act of 1988. The VPPA

was passed in reaction to the disclosure of Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork’s video rental records in a newspaper. The Act is not often invoked, but stands as one of the strongest protections of consumer privacy against a specific form of data collection. Generally, it prevents disclosure of personally identifiable rental records of “prerecorded video cassette tapes or similar audio visual material.” [see information at EPIC, the Electronic Privacy Information Center]

The Patriot Act, of course, trumps everything, from the Bill of Rights to the VPPA, but legally it can be considered (and I hope that day comes soon) as ad hoc legislation to meet a temporary need, or perceived need; as something to be retired after the need, or the panic, or the madness, has subsided. When privacy legislation––not passed in response to a specific political crisis––is bypassed or invalidated, that loss may be permanent.

But it’s worse in Britain

Britain may have pushed things along, in the civil liberties, field, with the Magna Carta in 1215, but they never got around to anything like a Bill of Rights. So citizens there have much less legal basis to protest violation of their rights by a government bent on reforming behavior and cracking down on terrorism.

Habeas corpus?

The British government recently extended the period for which it could hold terrorism suspects, without charges, to 42 days. In a recent public debate, the new law was criticized on pragmatic grounds: “The problem with 42 days is we keep innocent people for longer than we do guilty ones,” said House of Commons member David Davis, because those with clear evidence against them were charged first. That, he said, did nothing to encourage “moderate Muslims” to help counterterrorism operations. Davis is resigning his MP position in order to force an election for the seat; he will run (or “stand,” as they say there) and he promises to make threats to civil liberties a central issue of the election.

Watching everyone

Britain has gone into video surveillance in a big way; the BBC presented the finding of a report, that in 2006 there were “are up to 4.2m CCTV cameras in Britain – about one for every 14 people.” The BBC cited another report issued about the same time, from the human rights group Privacy International, which found that “figures suggest Britain is the worst Western democracy at protecting individual privacy.” The two worst countries in the 36-nation survey are Malaysia and China, and Britain is down there with them in the bottom five because of “endemic surveillance”. Must be pretty safe there, you’d think. Wrong. Some liberals in the London city government used their Freedom of Information Act to get crime statistics: London has 10,000 closed-circuit TV cameras for crime fighting––costing 2 million pounds––but 80% of crime goes unsolved, and districts with more cameras don’t do better than those with fewer.

Recently their CCTV cameras became even more Robocop-like:

Britain is already one of the most watched nations on earth and now “talking” CCTV cameras are to be installed in 20 areas across the country. Britain is believed to have 20 per cent of the world’s CCTV cameras already. The loudspeakers will allow CCTV operators to bark orders at people committing anti-social behaviour.

Photo from Global Security Challenge. (I assume the painter is covering up this anti-social graffiti, or maybe he is the graffiti-ist himself, caught on camera.).

The neighbors are complaining about you…Off you go, then.

Since 1999 the British government has made use of Anti-social Behaviour Orders or ASBOs to control a wide range of behaviors

Anti-social behaviour has a wide legal definition – to paraphrase the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, it is behaviour which causes or is likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress to one or more people who are not in the same household as the perpetrator. Among the forms it can take are:

graffiti – which can on its own make even the tidiest urban spaces look squalid

abusive and intimidating language, too often directed at minorities

excessive noise, particularly late at night

fouling the street with litter

drunken behaviour in the streets, and the mess it creates

dealing drugs, with all the problems to which it gives rise. [from a Home Office page]

ASBOs are civil, not criminal actions against an individual and thus the individual doesn’t have the procedural safeguards––being charged, evidence being produced, and so on––that go along with criminal actions. What is the impact of an ASBO?

They stop people from doing stated things or going to stated places. They last for a minimum of two years, but can last longer. Those given ASBOs can be ‘named and shamed’ in local media, and sometimes are. Orders have been granted for abusive behaviour, vandalism, flyposting, and harassment as well as more the more celebrated exotic problems such as elderly people incessantly playing gramophones. Whilst ASBOs are civil orders, criminal penalties can result from breaching them.

Students can be barred from attending school, individuals can be banned from a certain area, or required to agree to a contract banning certain behaviors such as graffiti, rowdiness, drunkenness, or being too noisy. Violation of the contract can have criminal penalties, even though the justification for the ASBO itself was never tested or proved.

And how is this “Criminalisation of Nuisance,” as one author titled his book on ASBOs, working? Once again, not too well, it seems. “Hooliganism” is still common, and in 2006 a year-long study in England and Wales found that half the Asbos were broken, and “some teenagers saw them as glamorous….an Asbo was now viewed as a “diploma” that boosted a child’s street credibility. “Some of the friends are left out now because they are not on an Asbo,” said the mother of three young men who were all on Asbos.” Moreover, the report was published on the same day that “a separate study by the Institute for Public Policy Research suggest[ed] Britain’s youth are among the most badly behaved in Europe.”

So, if all this tough action by the British government is just as effective as requiring American travelers in airports to take off their shoes, and randomly surrender their laptops for two weeks…what purpose is being served? Ah, I wouldn’t care to say, could be hazardous to my liberty. Here’s to the Bill of Rights, and a citizenry wise and bold enough to defend it.

Photos from Breakthroughgen.org.

Cocoa mulch is toxic to dogs

Posted on Tuesday, July 1, 2008 by nosleepingdog

This one’s no urban myth: the cocoa hulls sold as mulch smell good to dogs (and some cats) and are toxic––even fatal––if ingested. These are the hulls of chocolate beans and contain the same ingredients that are poisonous to dogs in chocolate: theobromine and caffeine. The hulls smell like chocolate; apparently some dogs find this very appealing and snarf it up, while others don’t bother with it, but there’s no way to tell.

Of course dog and cat owners should avoid using this mulch, indoors or out. Those who care about animals, even if they don’t have any, should do the same. But more than that, we must keep an eye on what our pets eat when we take them other places. Animals may not show any symptoms until as late as the next day and then begin with convulsions. By then treatment is too late.

Cocoa hull mulch with a quarter for size comparison. Color fades with age.
Photo: ASPCA’s very informative page on the toxicity of this material.

According to the urban-myth busters at snopes.com, who verify the internet warnings on this topic, some producers of cocoa hull mulch say that they have put the material through a process which extracts all theobromine and caffeine, but why take a chance at your own house? and as to what someone else has used, there’s no telling. I checked the webpage of one major producer, National Cocoa Shell, and there was no mention whatsoever of toxicity or extra processing to avoid toxicity.

If your pet eats even a small amount of chocolate-scented mulch it would be safer to take him or her to the vet. The ASPCA is quoted, in the snopes article, as to the toxicity of small amounts:

Cocoa beans contain the stimulants caffeine and theobromine. Dogs are highly sensitive to these chemicals, called methylxanthines. In dogs, low doses of methylxanthine can cause mild gastrointestinal upset (vomiting, diarrhea, and/or abdominal pain); higher doses can cause rapid heart rate, muscle tremors, seizures, and death.

Eaten by a 50-pound dog, about 2 ounces of cocoa bean mulch may cause gastrointestinal upset; about 4.5 ounces, increased heart rate; about 5.3 ounces, seizures; and over 9 ounces, death. (In contrast, a 50-pound dog can eat up to about 7.5 ounces of milk chocolate without gastrointestinal upset and up to about a pound of milk chocolate without increased heart rate.)

Note that milk chocolate is less toxic to dogs than dark chocolate, the kind we have all been encouraged to eat in moderation for our own health.

The toxicity of chocolate and cocoa hulls to pets underlines the point that what is healthful for humans may be fatal for our pets.

Another example: NSAIDs (Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory) pain medications such as aspirin; Tylenol (active ingredient acetaminophen, called “paracetamol” outside of North America); Advil, Motrin, etc. (ibuprofen); Aleve, Anaprox, Miranax, Naprogesic, Naprosyncan, etc. (naproxen) can be deadly to cats and harmful to dogs. They can cause intestinal perforation, internal bleeding, and other life-threatening conditions. They’re not that great for people, either, in long-term use, but we have more resistance than dogs, cats, rabbits, and ferrets.

Photo from drugfreesport.com.

To take aspirin as an example: Children’s aspirin contains 81 mg of salicylate, regular aspirin 325 mg, Pepto-Bismol 300 mg per tablet and 262 mg per 15 ml (1 tbsp.) of liquid. Numerous other products contain aspirin. The toxic doses of salicylate for dogs and cats are very low:

Dogs: 22 mg per pound per day. (A children’s aspirin could be toxic to a tiny dog, or a puppy whose immature digestive system is even more vulnerable)

Cats: 11 mg per pound per day, may see symptoms after one dose.

Don’t take these numbers as permission to calculate safe doses for your pets, if only because other factors affect toxicity, such as age and health of the individual animal. Call your vet and ask. If your vet or vet tech seems vague or not concerned, err on the side of caution for the time being and get a better opinion.

The Drs. Foster and Smith site gives more details on aspirin toxicity:

Signs (in dogs and cats) usually develop within 4-6 hours with an acute overdose. They include depression, lack of appetite, vomiting which may contain blood, abdominal pain, increased respiratory rate, acute kidney failure, weakness, coma, and death.

Chronic lower doses in dogs may lead to stomach ulcers and perforation, toxic liver inflammation, and bone marrow suppression resulting in anemia.

Immediate Action
Induce vomiting and seek veterinary attention.

Prognosis
Favorable, if treatment is started early. Poor, if symptoms are present when treatment begins.

Invest in that ounce of prevention and keep your pets safe.