While hiking in the White Top Mountain area in Death Valley National Park a couple weeks ago I noticed a small but interesting plant called Cushion Buckwheat (Eriogonum ovalifolium). The flowers caught my attention and upon close inspection I decided that they looked like candy. I'm not sure if I'd say that they looked more like little peppermint candies or red and white taffy, but I was almost tempted to pluck a flower cluster and try one out. It looked that good! I encountered these plants at 7700 feet near what is left of the Silver Crown Claims at the end of the road above the Huntley Mine Camp. Click here for pictures from the White Top area trip!

There are times when combining tools makes a lot of sense. This is particularly true in the case of electronic devices. A single device that combines the utility of a camera, telephone, GPS device, and personal organizer, as well as providing entertainment and access to media presentations, is quite a useful convenience. A recent news article about a flying car developed at MIT also illustrates this concept. The spork is yet another example of innovation in the form of combining the usefulness of multiple tools into a single tool. Sometimes this goes too far. For instance, combining a knife and a fork wouldn't be all that useful since quite often people use the fork to hold their food still while they cut it with the knife! At any rate, my newest video is about the spork. Click here for more information on the song and the video!

Part of the long pre-writing process that leads up to the development of a novel is what I call the research phase of a writing project. During this time I read, scour the web, and contemplate various ideas. Foremost on my mind recently is a dichotomy that I've labeled the Hippie Utopia vision of society versus the Police State vision of society. I see them as two ends of a continuum with our current society leaning heavily towards the Police State mentality. Breifly, according to the Police State vision, the role of government is to maintain order and to facilitate this it prescribes a narrow orthodoxy to which all people must conform. Conversely, according to the Hippie Utopia vision, the role of government is to protect individual freedom and to maintain a range of acceptable behaviors that is as wide as possible. There is a lot more to this dichotomy and I will most likely discuss it further in a future blog.