INTERESTING TIMES

Kayaking on this class V section will be permitted, and the management team there sounds quite reasonable about letting management evolve along with use. The use of this river section can be revoked if there is any paddling on Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, where boating is banned.

The run will start at Pothole Dome below Tuolumne Meadows and end at Pate Valley. Exact details about put-in, take-out, portage trails and landing/no-landing zone locations will be determined in the near future in consultation with the boating community, tribal interests and National Park Service resource experts. Boaters making the run will be required to carry their boats 3 miles to the put-in, and carry them 8 miles from the take-out at Pate Valley to the White Wolf trailhead.

Carrying your kayak 11 miles is hard. The info does not indicate that this section of river is a series of long slides over domes of granite. I do not know if anyone has been running it lately, but I do remember that Lars Holbek carried his boat most of the way and didn't want to do it again. I have HIKED down the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne on a 3 day backpacking trip, and it was spectacular. A backpack trip might be a good way to scout the whitewater before committing in a boat. Though it is possible that those California boaters think nothing of this stuff. Looks hair to me.



SOURCE
http://www.americanwhitewater.org/content/Article/view/articleid/31898/

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief.
Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now.
You are not obligated to complete the work,
but neither are you free to abandon it.
-The Talmud

Last night while at a Sierra Club meeting involving the effort to hasten decommission of the Columbia Generating Station (nuke at Hanford), I started having all manner of thoughts about my book on homeopathy. I brainstormed my intro and some chapter ideas on the same page where I'd taken a few notes about newly understood seismic activity in the Tri-Cities area, the power needed to make fuel rods, the types of nuclear waste storage currently in use, and such. Part of what brought homeopathy to mind was the groupthink in evidence among the meeting attendees. The anti-nuke information being conveyed was at times not even faintly believable, but the group assumed that all present were on board with the effort to eliminate nuclear power from our bevy of power sources.

This morning in my inbox I find an interesting article by Art Markman on the question of what kind of creativity we display while our conscious minds are occupied with something else. It appears that for simple decisions, it's better to think about consciously it, however for complex issues it may be good to be distracted from the direct question. Dijksterhuis and Nordgren presented Unconscious Thought Theory (UTT) in this paper. Another paper by Haiyang Yang et al shows that the duration of unconscious thought has an inverted-U shaped relationship with creativity, suggesting that unconscious thought may outperform conscious for moderate-length deliberations.

So for quick decisions tis best to focus on the matter at hand. For very long and complex deliberations, there might be time for both conscious and unconscious contemplation. And to harness the power of unconscious synthesis thinking, one needs a moderate amount of time in which to do it.

I've heard of UTT before but not by name. I generally have my best ideas while walking, which suggests to me that cross-crawl integration of walking may bring the two brain halves to apply their knowledge to whatever problem is at hand. I've seen the process modeled extensively by television character Dr House. House plays ball, drives bumper cars, or does pranks on his coworkers to distract himself from the burning questions, and allow his unconscious mind to sort out the myriad details of a medical case and arrive at a diagnosis and treatment. People may think that he is goofing off, but in fact it is physical play that brings his most astounding ideas to the fore. He starts with the conscious brainstorming with the help of his team, then goes off to do whatever activity life presents, then returns to the conscious cogitation. The science is beginning to support the use of this technique for creative decisionmaking.

The moon is huge and bright. My calendar says full tomorrow but from the looks of it, that peak fullness may be in the wee hours tonight. I'm going out walking in it.

www.medscape.com
From Medscape Medical News article by Allison Gandey
November 24, 2009
( notes )

At long last we can turn the page on another year. Funny how we mark time, and make certain days into big turning points. Every day is a new beginning. Every moment is an opportunity to begin to do what you really love, to begin the work of being your truest you, to begin the process of peeling away the layers of conditioning and denial that separate us from who we really are. The new year starts today, and every day. But today is the day for resolutions, so I am going to check on my old ones, and write out some new ones. Most days I look only at what I need to do to get through the next day or maybe week. It is rare that I look years into the future and focus on longterm goals. I think this is the value of these marks in time; that they remind us of how much time is passing. Another year has gone by. I hope to have another year to follow, and another, and another. I hope you also have many years, and that they are all good. Thanks for sharing your voyage with me.
( new resolutions and old ones )

The elementary school a block from my house has awakened. This morning there are people everywhere, repair men and mothers and kids. Groups of adults standing behind the school and talking in the sun. There's not a free parking spot on the block.
( more )

I couldn't study anymore. I read the middle half of The Mastery of Love this evening while the sun was still shining into the Crow's Nest, then went for a walk just before it set. Ruiz's writings set my mind at ease. My fear abated, and my love was shining out. I followed the directions that felt right, running at first because the pace of the first song on my ipod was a slow lope. I actually ran for three minutes and felt pretty good, other than slight pain in my left hip. My gut is extra empty from the colonic yesterday, and I felt loose and light after a smoothie for dinner. I looped around and ended up crossing Powell to the north instead of returning home across the wooden bridge over the railroad tracks. On the north side of Powell my heart felt lighter, I don't know why. ( There was a whole new neighborhood to explore. )