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1月31日 The Paranormal PuckThe Paranormal Puck
 The Paranormal Puck
This last week we got our 'paranormal puck' in the mail. We had ordered this in December with the hope of trying it out on our January trip to Deadwood. The thing is ordering the 'puck' is not like buying something off the shelf at Best Buy; I get the feeling that the assembly line for the 'puck' is one earnest geek sitting at a workbench in his basement. This is not to say it isn't a well built little wonder. Now we finally have it and I am busy integrating it into our laptops and home data storage server.
Now there has been a considerable amount of discussion about the 'puck' in the paranormal community. I am not going to try to repeat what has already been said. What I am going to do is link to some of the better items I've found online about it.
Florida Paranormal using the 'puck'.
The technical discussions of the capabilities and merits of the 'puck' are extensive. The fact of the matter is this sort of technology literally invites discussion and 'hacks' as people try to push and fine tune the performance of such a gadget.
One of the more definitive web posts about the 'puck'.
As we work with this gadget we will post more about it. Right now I am still busy installing it and configuring it for our systems. We should have it out on a trial run at a location we know within the next month.
1月25日 Ulysses S. Grant - Great Cigar Smoking American...President Ulysses S. Grant
Great Cigar Smoking
American
or
Failed President?
Ulysses S. Grant
Time to move forward on my tribute to cigar smoking historical figures. Today I pay tribute to President Ulysses S. Grant; eighteenth president of the United States. His cigar smoking has been well noted during the later period of his life. By one account he was smoking twenty of them a day! This might be a lesson in moderation for us all when you remember that he died from throat cancer at the age of 63.
Grant might be more famous for his role in the American Civil War as General-in-Chief of the Union Army. He can be seen as the mind behind the 'total war' strategy that would eventually crush the Confederacy. I sometimes wonder if his cigar smoking was just a way to cope with the stress of leadership during this? Literally the fate of the nation rested on the decisions he made as Union Army went through the meat-grinder battles approaching Richmond. It isn't hard for me to understand why he chain smoked cigars.
Grant as President of the United States was a bit less successful. His administration was rocked by repeated political scandals and eventually a financial crisis known as 'The Panic of 1873'. This national historical crisis is particularly of interest to me since it very directly influenced the eventual birth of Deadwood. In 1874 the War Department sent none other than George Armstrong Custer and the Seventh Cavalry into the Black Hills to, officially, look for a place to build a permanent army post. Some people have suggested that it was more likely that some leaders in Washington were curious about rumors of gold in the Black Hills. It would have been a way by which new money could have been fed into a failing economy. Now I have yet to see any historian establish that Grant might have ordered this but he was President at the time. In any case the Custer expedition did discover gold and soon Deadwood came to exist during the gold rush in 1876.
Now a lot of people look on Grant's administration as an example of a 'failed presidency'. I have a problem with how people define failure and success. Was Grant a failure because of the financial crisis that took place during his administration? I don't know that Grant had much power over the financial crisis they faced in 1873. Was his administration flawed by the political scandals that plagued it? He might have been guilty of simply putting too much trust in some of the people he appointed. In my opinion it is all up to the person viewing it to decide.
Now we hava a new administration in office. It hasn't even been in political power for a full week yet and people are comparing and contrasting it to the previous administration in terms of success and failure. I have a problem with this also. I see a lot of the policy decisions currently being made as taking the nation in the direction of socialism. Now if Barack Obama's goal is to make the United States a socialist state, and he achieves that bit of 'change', would that be a 'success'? It might certainly contain the financial crisis we allegedly face. It would introduce an uncomfortable level of government control of private financial and commercial interests. So could a 'successful' Obama administraction potentially mean a transition of the United States into socialism? 1月24日 Back to the American Civil War...Back to the
American Civil War...
There has been a lot of talk about American history in the last week. It seems that whenever something 'historic' happens you'll hear the media and politicians trying to compare it to the past. The problem I always have with this is our understanding of the past. I find some people have highly selective perceptions of history.
One of my first historical passions was the American Civil War. The 'War between the States' was, without a doubt, one of the most important and, sometimes, misunderstood conflicts in American history. I've heard it said that if the American Revolution decided if we would have a nation then the Civil War decided what sort of nation we would be. The Civil War was a 'revolutionary' war in many ways. This is a war that saw technology take a critical role in the conflict. It would also see our current political system effectively defined in the events and decisions of the war.
Now those of you who check out my blog for my writing on the paranormal will not be disappointed. The Civil War had more than its share of mysteries and ghosts. If you are a modern day treasure hunter you won't be disappointed either. The collapse of the Confederacy saw the beginning of one of the great lost treasure hunts of history. If you are a wargamer you won't be disappointed either, provided you are a naval wargamer. I don't have as much time to 'push lead' as I did when I was younger but still indulge it when the opportunity shows up.
Right now I am going to turn to a topic that has popped in the news recently; the comparison of Barack Obama to Abraham Lincoln. I am reserving my personal judgement of Barack Obama. The man hasn't been in office a full week! I'll admit I don't like some of the ideas he built his platform on. I also know that the ultimate success or failure of a president doesn't rest in what they say but what they actually do.
One set of views about the Obama - Lincoln comparison.
Could this be a more realistic approach?
1月18日 The Year ahead...The Year Ahead...
It is almost three weeks now into 2009 and Laurie and I are starting to get an idea what the year might hold for us. Our vacation schedule at work is tighter than we have seen before. I have a feeling this has a lot to do with the company trying to do more with less - a lot less. It is probably just another sign of the generally weak economy. We won't make it out to Deadwood again until May. There is a very real chance we won't make it out there after that until October. Neither of us like this but, then again, we at least still have our jobs.
In less than 48 hours we will see our new president sworn in. I didn't vote for him. I wasn't all that happy with John McCain either. Both candidates state that they believe in 'global warming'. I don't believe in 'global warming'. I personally think the whole climate change thing is a scam. Obama is already making promises to counter our current economic problems with a wave of new 'green' jobs. It sounds to me like we will spend further billions of taxpayer dollars to deal with a problem that simply does not exist.
Still I respect of office of the President of the United States. I want President Obama to be successful. If he isn't successful we will be the people to suffer. I just wish I could have as much confidence in him as the people who did vote for him.
This weekend I have been cleaning out part of the second floor library in our house. I'm trying to make more room for our materials and so that we can organize them better. We might be stuck at home more this year but it doesn't mean I can't get some research done. I don't intend on letting the slow down in the economy to slow me down. 1月12日 A Very Grim ReminderA Very Grim Reminder
Poland: Workers find WWII mass grave of Germans
I've been a student of this grim chapter of history for quite some time now. The conquest of Germany by the Red Army at the end of World War II is relatively unknown in the west. There are some historians that think this might have been one of the bloodiest episodes in human history. The Russians came to the Third Reich with the intent of revenge. The Germans had committed more than their share of atrocities against the Russians. I still find it hard to condone the actions of the Red Army as they invaded Germany. It has helped me understand some of the actions taken by the Germans in the face of this onslaught. There was more than one case of Wehrmacht units fighting their way through Russian forces so that they might surrender to the British or American forces! The terror of the Red Army also brought on one of the largest dislocations of a civilian population in history as German's fled in front of the Soviet tanks. In the midst of this chaos a lot of mysteries came to be; Nazi leaders that vanished, secrets that still remain. It is morbidly fascinating to study but sometimes discoveries are a grim reminder of what happened. 1月11日 Home again...Home again...
Laurie and I made it home about a half hour ago. It didn't take long to unload the Vue. We did come back with a lot of information from this trip but most of it is on our laptops. The odd fact is we only bought five books on this outing! It was still a very good venture.
I'll be writing more soon. I really didn't have the time to do a proper blog update in the last couple days. I will say this right now; I came back with some kick-ass cigars... Departing DeadwoodDeparting Deadwood
Laurie and I are getting ready to leave Deadwood within the hour. It always makes me a little sad to leave. We did get most of what we wanted to do on this trip accomplished. Still it always bothers us to leave; someday we want to make this area our home. At the present it looks like we will be back in April - just have to check our vacation schedule at work. We definitely have time booked in October but that is a long way off. We always leave with the thought that we will be back. 1月8日 Sunny Deadwood and Dead ConfederatesSunny Deadwood
and
Dead Confederates
Today the weather in Deadwood is quite a bit different than yesterday. The sun is out and the temperature is rising! The streets are a bit messy with the melting of yesterday's snow but the sunshine is welcome! Laurie is out visiting some of the local gift shops and I am sitting comfortably at 'The Big Dipper' again enjoying a mocha and their flawless Wi-Fi. Life is good indeed!
 The Fairmont Hotel is always a welcome sight to me!
Now I have been following a set of historical discussions on some Civil War related forums. Part of the chat had been spurred by speculation around the reputed events in the movie 'National Treasure II: Book of Secrets'. There was definitely a covert resistance movement established by the Confederacy during the Civil War. The fact and extent to which it survived the war is the subject of some scholarly debate.
One of the trailers for 'National Treasure II'.
The subject of secret groups such as the 'Knights of the Golden Circle', lost Confederate gold and other Civil War related mysteries lend themselves to some interesting ideas. One idea that I saw was that former Confederate agents might have headed to the Black Hills during the 1876 gold rush. The idea seems to be that they needed money - gold preferably - for their covert efforts. The relatively lawless environment of the early gold rush might have further encouraged them. What better way to hide from federal authorities than in the chaos of the area.
 Thomas Rosser
Now I do know of some former Confederate military officers that ended up near this area. Thomas Rosser, ex-Confederate Major General, worked with the Northern Pacific Railroad during their expansion through the Dakota Territory. I don't think he got anywhere near the Black Hills in this time. The odd historical fact is that this expansion of the Northern Pacifc Railroad was one of the events that further strained relations with the Lakota Nation. It was just one more incident on the historical path to the Centennial Campaign of 1876 that would result in the Battle of the Little Bighorn and the legitimate establishment of Deadwood and other gold mining communities. This was, in my opinion, not the part of any conspiracy but the complicated course of events.
Still, I have opened up a new file on my laptop just in case I run across any information on Confederates that might have ventured out here. The idea is interesting. I can easily imagine them coming into the Black Hills not so much to help start a new southern uprising but to simply find the opportunity for a new life. The 1876 gold rush attracted a varied group of entrepreneurial adventurers; I don't think it is a big stretch of the imagination to see ex-Confederate soldiers in the mix. 1月7日 Another snowy Deadwood day...Another snowy Deadwood day...
 View from the Bullock Hotel parking lot.
Laurie and I had unusually good weather for the trip in yesterday. Most of the way was bright sunshine, 30 degree temperatures and dry roads. The only unusual thing we noticed along the way was we saw a lot more South Dakota Highway Patrol cars than we usually see along I-90. This is the thing about winter trips; you are entirely at the mercy of the weather. It only takes one snow storm to ruin the whole thing.
 The front of a snowy Bullock Hotel.
Today the weather is quite different. We have snow and according to weather reports we are going to get a lot of it. Now if this had taken place 24 hours earlier it could have messed up the trip in considerably. The fact of the matter is Laurie and I are currently sitting quite comfortably in 'The Big Dipper'. This is the only real coffee shop I know of in Deadwood and it is right on Main Street across from Saloon No. 10. Give me a little caffeine and enough wireless bandwidth and I can accomplish miracles!
 The Big Dipper
The actual address for the coffee shop is 625 Main Street and the phone number is 605 717-3354 and their e-mail address is MainStreetEspresso@Rushmore.com. I am a sucker for hot espresso on a cold day. Laurie and I are really quite comfortable inspite of the weather. We have managed to visit the Adams Museum and meet up with some friends. Deadwood is like a lot of small towns in that it has its own local dramas and gossip. The big story we keep running into is an altercation involving some bikers over New Year's Eve. The town doesn't have any problem with bikers; the fact of the matter is they are generally pretty welcome here. This time things just got a little out of hand, fists flew, arrests were made.
 Looking south along Main Street.
Right now the weather reports say that a warm front is coming in overnight. We are supposed to have sunshine and enough heat to melt a lot of this off. On Sunday, the day we have to leave, the weather is looking good. I always hate to think about leaving but it pays to plan ahead. Until then Laurie and I are having a grand time.
1月6日 Deadwood again...Deadwood again...
 Laurie and I made it into Deadwood a little after noon today. The fine people at the Bullock Hotel had our room ready for us. Now we kick back for a little while... Another ritual of our tips...Another ritual of our trips...
Laurie and I made it into the I-29 'Flying J' outside Sioux Falls at about 5:00am today. This is sort of a ritual to us and marks the halfway point in our trip to Deadwood. The weather is again working out unusually well for January. Planning a roadtrip in the winter always seems a bit risky; it wouldn't take that much bad weather to make it all a bust. So far I-90 has been clear, not even a hint of snow and the skies have been clear.
We will fill the gas tank and roll out of here in about an hour. I would say that even with a couple stops along the way we will be in Deadwood by about 1:00pm. I doubt if our room at the Bullock will be ready yet so where will be my first stop? Probably Deadwood Tobacco Company. Yeah, I'm a creature of habit... 1月5日 Deadwood on my mind...Deadwood on my mind...
Today I am getting the things ready for our next trip to Deadwood. Departure time will probably be sometime in the wee hours of tomorrow morning. Arrival time in Deadwood should be in the early afternoon tomorrow. We don't have a lot of big plans for this trip. If circumstances work out we will make a stop on the way to shoot a few investigative photographs. Once we actually get settled in at the Bullock Hotel we don't have a lot of major plans.
I was going to entitle this blog entry something about 'fear and loathing over the 64-bit OS' but I gave up on that bit of angst. I finally picked up a new Toshiba laptop a couple months ago and it came loaded with a 64-bit Vista. Now this seemed sort of cool initially as the dual core processor seemed to just cook. Now the problem I am running into is all the applications I have that don't seem to be friendly with a 64-bit system. First was my Adobe Audition - something about the Vista security protocols doesn't allow the program to run. I sent off an E-mail to Adobe about this but haven't gotten any kind of constructive work around from them. I imagine that once enough users run into this same problem as they migrate their apps to other 64-bit platforms the people at Adobe and Microsoft will get their collective acts together.
Now I tried setting up my Mionet on this machine and the installer just spits this message back to me about not supporting 64-bit systems yet! So I will currently have to travel with both my new and old laptop. I have stripped the old laptop down and streamlined some of the security functions to speed it up. Just seems funny to me to have a computer dedicated to just two functions. Of course it does provide me with an additional 150 Gb of bulk storage while we travel. I can remember when this would have been quite a statement but now I can carry around 320 Gb of storage in my shirt pocket!
Just about everything is ready though! Deadwood is definitely on our minds... 1月4日 Cigars and HistoryCigars and History:
General Curtis LeMay
United States Air Force
 Curtis LeMay
Let me make a statement; I love cigars. I will go out of my way to have at least one good cigar every single day. I know it is a pleasure that some people can't understand. That is their problem. I consider myself a better man for the love of these cigars. Even my wife indulges my passion for fine cigars by picking me up a nice Camacho or CAO now and then.
Now everybody knows my interest in history. I probably read one historical book every two weeks. I also try to do as much of my own primary research as I can find time for. Even though the past is fixed and unchanging our perceptions of what happened are continually changing. I earnestly believe that how we move into the future is dictated by our understanding of the past.
There are a lot of different 'schools' of history. This is to say there are different ways scholars tend to view the past and interpret events. You have your economic historians that view every event as the result of financial trends and movements. Then you have some like your feminist or social historians that focus on a particular aspect of history. They tend to concentrate on specific events as they relate to their core interest. When I was a freshman at the University of Minnesota some thirty years ago I had the luck to meet Professor David Kieft with the Department of History. He was an advocate for what was known as the 'Great Man' school of history. Simply put he believed that what dictated the path of historical events was the leadership or intervention of individuals. This could be men or women, this could be military or political, just somebody who took a role to make a change. Now there are scholars who discredit this whole idea. They don't believe any single person could have the power to change some overwhelming events. Maybe it is some failed romantic notion on my part but I like to believe that leadership still matters and inspired leadership matters most.
Now I have noticed that some historical figures, some great historial leaders at that, happened to be cigar smokers. Now sometimes final judgement on the value of their leadership might be yet to be made. I earnestly believe the final assessment of any person's life generally won't come until after their generation has passed. Still I have found some fascinating individuals who just happened to be doing what they did with a stogie firmly in hand. I intend on making a few posts about some of these people when I can.
I want to start this with one of my personal heroes; General Curtis Emerson LeMay. He might be one of the most controversial officers to ever serve in the United States military. I am not going to try to recap his entire military career. General LeMay served in the military for over 37 years! He was one of the men instrumental in turning our air force from a prop-driven, open cockpit branch of the Army to what would be the incredible deterrent force of the Strategic Air Command. I really do believe that he was one of the elements that kept the Soviet Union in check. I think he terrified the Kremlin. LeMay was a man who was not only willing to fight a nuclear war but believed it could be won by the United States! I think that LeMay wanted the Russians to know that he didn't adhere to the idea of 'Mutual Assured Destruction'. When the United States and the USSR faced each other in the nuclear brinksmanship of the Cold War it was LeMay's Strategic Air Command that gave us one of the unquestionable cards that we could play.
LeMay's cigars were almost a personal trademark.
General LeMay is not always remembered historically in the best of all lights. He is often shown as a war-mongering madman. I personally don't accept this view. LeMay understood warfare in a way that few of us can. He hated it. He also recognised that some threats can not simply be ignored or appeased. He also understood that no deterrent is effective unless everybody recognizes your complete willingness to use that force. I don't think the Russians every doubted General LeMay's willingness to nuke them.
 The stogie is evident again.
 General LeMay target shooting with a cigar firmly between his teeth.
You can find pictures throughout LeMay's life of him smoking cigars. I've found records of him smoking one while conducting briefings with the XXI Bomber Command during World War II. I have yet to find out what cigars he smoked? I have a feeling that under wartime conditions he might have been willing to accept what he could. I just find it ironic that later in his career he advocated American forces invading Cuba to remove Soviet missiles there. I always wonder if the real motive was to secure the tobacco supplies there for the West.
1月3日 Strange Days, Are these the 'End Times'?Strange Days
Are these the 'End Times'?
I was raised in an Evangelical Christian family. I hear a lot of people that consider Evangelical Christians like they are some sort of throwback to the Middle Ages. I personally do not accept this prejudice even though I am definitely not as devout as my parents would prefer. In the United States of America people still have a right to practice their religion as long as it doesn't infringe on the legislated freedoms of others. I actually have a lot of respect for most of the Evangelical Christians I personally know; as far as I can tell most do walk the walk as well as talk the talk. Most of the Christians I know are the sort of people that you would want as your neighbor. You might not party with them but you wouldn't have to worry about your property or safety with them.
Now I am hearing more and more of these people bring up the subject of the 'End Times'. I hear them talking about it when I chat with them, I see it on various web forums, I even hear it on talk radio sometimes. This is a big topic and not without controversy among Christians. When I was only 15 years old I attended weekly Bible study class that was built around understanding interpretations of Biblical prophecy. I was amazed then and am still amazed now, 35 years later, at the lengths to which some scholarly people go to interpreting ancient Biblical chapter and verse in relation to modern events. I also personally saw a couple of people who were, in my opinion, dangerously obsessed with the subject. Every faith has extremists and Evangelical Christianity is no exception to this. The whole subject of the 'End Times' seems to trigger this sort of response in some Christians.
Just one example...
Today there is a part of me that reads the newspaper and has to wonder. I just heard the news a little while ago that the Israeli Army had crossed into Gaza. Violence in the Middle East is nothing new. The modern state of Israel has been functionally embattled literally since the day it was born. Still the founding of the modern state of Israel is considered a benchmark moment to people into Biblical prophecy. To them this is just one step on the way to the Second Coming of Christ.
I heard a radio talkshow host recently comment on how the Russians were creating more diplomatic and military ties to Iran. The same host ended his commentary by saying, "Hey, all you Jesus people, think of Gog and Magog". For those of you not familiar with Biblical prophecy Gog and Magog was an alliance of kingdoms that would make war against Israel. This particular war would climax in the Battle of Armageddon.
So I watch the news with great interest. Part of this is cold practical interest; I have been watching the video of Israeli Merkava II's and Zeldas crossing the frontier into Gaza. I am wondering if the Israeli Army has found ways to compensate for the problems they experienced with the Russian supplied anti-tank missile systems Hezbollah used during the Second Lebanon War in 2006. You can bet that Hamas probably has the same weapons systems provided by the same Iranian suppliers. After all they seem to be getting Russian 'Grads' without any trouble. The 'Kornet' ATGM is considerably smaller than the bulky 'Grad'.
Interesting video about the Second Lebanon War.
Israel is not prone to sitting idle when a vulnerability is discovered in their vaunted military. They adapt quickly and, usually, decisively to changing circumstances. So I am watching the grim events unfolding in Gaza with some practical interest in the bloody testing of technology that might be taking place. Personally I put a lot of faith in a particular company called Rafael and our own General Dynamics.
Just remember that no weapon is really tested until it meets combat.
Then there is a part of me that can only watch all of this and wonder if this is these are signs of something even larger. I do know that quite a bit of the world seems to be hinged on events in the Middle East. As I watch all of this unfold I sometimes remember that in Winston Churchill's 'The World Crisis' he reported that when former German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck was asked what would start the next great war in Europe he state, "some damn fool thing in the Balkans". That 'damn fool' thing came in the form a Bosnian Serb college student by the name of Gavrilo Princip killing Archduke Franz Ferdinand. This single event would start the First World War, the death of almost ten million people and the collapse of empires.
Will the events unfolding throughout the Middle East be the 'damn fool' thing that ignites something greater in our age? |
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