Remain calm, be kind, and carry on regardless!
You've reached the online journal of Richard Rathe — online since 2004! In this iteration I'm trying a few new ideas: minimal markup, working with mostly plain text, and moving beyond the timeline. I call it BLIS (BLog It Simple). Find me online…
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And this our life / Exempt from public haunt / Finds tongues in trees / Books in the running brooks / Sermons in stones / And good in everything. / I would not change it. (As You Like It)
Panorama, Panopainting, Driftwood, Florida
Jun 04, 2026
Bots just officially outnumbered humans on the internet for the first time ever. Cloudflare’s latest report shows AI and agentic traffic has grown so fast its now the majority of online traffic. We crossed a line and most people didn’t even notice 😳 https://radar.cloudflare.com/traffic#bot-vs-human Dead internet theory is now becoming a reality
Galleries Nature Photography Travel 2018
My brother-in-law Rick flew out from Colorado so we could go on a road trip together across South Dakota and beyond. We entered the Park via the Northeast Entrance (extreme right on map) and spent most of our day slowly moving west, stopping frequently—sometimes to take photos, sometimes due to bison migrating across the road. We ended up at the Sage Creek primitive camping area (upper left).
Bookhouse Books History Reviews
G. A. Henty (1886)
The original Luddites were millworkers who rebelled against factory automation back in the 1800s. They had a lot to lose. In the present time, to call someone a Luddite
or Neo-Luddite
is to write them off as a kind of techno-hermit, using a non-smartphone and writing in a paper notebook. This is a mischaracterization. The full text is available at Project Gutenberg.
Camping Hammocks Reviews 2026
I recently bought a Ridgerunner Hammock from Warbonnet Outdoors. These are my first impressions. I'd been aware of this type of hammock for a few years and I was curious about them. Online descriptions and 2D photos don't really help much. This design makes much more sense when you actually lay in one.
Books Commentary History Music 2026
![Preparing to Fly the Flag (July 4, 1976) [source: DC Public Library]](commentary/america_at_250/img/bicentennial-1976.jpg)
I put out my American Flag today. 🇺🇸 I've decided to only fly the flag on special days and this is one of them. Thinking about what makes this day special is what gives the act meaning. One cannot be patriotic every day, but that's not required. We need days like this to think hard about history (those actions and actors who mattered), the present (our current situation and how it differs from what it should be), and the future (the history we might make during the time remaining to us).
Birds Flowers Galleries History Road_Trip_2026 Travel 2026
My target for this segment was inspired by a used book I came across while working at my local Friends of the Library—Sinagua Sunwatchers
by Kenneth Zoll. At first I had a bit of trouble finding the site online because the name has been changed very recently to better reflect its Native American origins. [The old name V Bar V
referenceed the now defunct ranch on the property.]
Birds Nature 2026
Consider the Black-Bellied Whistling Duck! (One of the better bird names IMO.) Larger than average ducks, longer neck, pink bill & feet, used to be called tree ducks
. I see these very early in the morning and occasionally a pair on a nearby dock. Only learned recently that they are mostly active at night, which is why I wasn't aware they were around.
Birds California Galleries Travel 2025
This is my second trip to Mono Lake and the good news is it hasn't changed much. In fact, the water level has stabilized (it was drying up) after agressive water management action by California. A large amount of water had already been drained for watering lawns and golf courses in Los Angeles. We visited the Tufa State Reserve on a sunny afternoon and saw many cool plants and birds.
Critters Galleries Medicine Nature Science 2026
Horseshoe Crabs (Limulus polyphemus) evolved some 450 million years ago.[1] They have no close relatives in the world today. They are true living fossils and generally fascinating. First, they are not crabs—but remotely related to spiders. They have nine eyes, two underneath near the legs. They have twelve legs, including specializations for pushing, feeding, and mating (males). They breathe and excrete using book gills just behind their legs. And here's the best part—they chew with their knees!
Galleries Photography Southwest_2024 Travel 2024
Fantastic Rock Formations in Utah
Commentary History Medicine
Lawrence P. Garrod (1944)
Consider the so-called War on Raw Milk
. I was amazed to discover in my Grandfather's scrapbook an article from 1944 debating the benefits of unpasteurised (raw) milk. These are echoed today by the public health nihilist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Camping Everglades Galleries Travel Video 2007
This is a quick-and-dirty gallery of my Everglades photographs. Only a placeholder for now while I work on converting my older sites. See my Everglades Wilderness Guide for more trips, maps, & photographs.
History Medicine Science
Willett & Stampfer (2003)
For more than ten years the U.S. Department of Agriculture has promoted its food pyramid as a guide to proper nutrition. The only problem is that it isn't very good advice! The authors of this January 2003 article in Scientific American provide much better guidance. But first a little history…
Galleries Hdr History Panoramas Travel Video 2023
After braving the nearly washed out road from the north I arrived around 9am. I had to walk
my Prius diagonally over piles of gravel and exposed rock faces. This was my third attempt over twenty years to visit this important site. (The first two failed because the roads were completely washed out!)
Birds Flowers Galleries Iowa Travel 2025
Pikes Peak is a state park in Clayton County, Iowa, United States, featuring a 500-foot (150 m) bluff overlooking the Upper Mississippi River opposite the confluence of the Wisconsin River… The Iowa incarnation of Pikes Peak, a particularly high point overlooking the gorge of the Upper Mississippi, and like Pikes Peak in Colorado, is named for Zebulon Pike. Pike visited the area in 1805 during his first expedition.
[wikipedia]
Birds Camping Everglades Galleries Hdr Travel 2011
This is a quick-and-dirty gallery of my Everglades photographs. Only a placeholder for now while I work on converting my older sites. See my Everglades Wilderness Guide for more trips, maps, & photographs.
Hdr Nature Photography Plants 2012
The Cellon Oak Park is located three miles south of La Crosse off highway 121 in rural Alachua County. For years I’ve driven the highways nearby and never knew this gem was there. The tree is magnificent in person. Well worth a trip!
Galleries History Panoramas Southwest_2024 Travel 2024
We made several day trips to Lee's Ferry Utah while waiting for our other adventures (Paria Canyon, Coyote Buttes & The Wave) to start.
Camping Everglades Galleries Travel 2008
This is a quick-and-dirty gallery of my Everglades photographs. Only a placeholder for now while I work on converting my older sites. See my Everglades Wilderness Guide for more trips, maps, & photographs.
Books History Reviews
Barbara Tuchman (1984)
With America “at war” [2006 & 2026] on several fronts, I was stimulated to recall this wonderful and important book by the eminent historian Barbara Tuchman. The first line says it all…
Camping Everglades Galleries Travel 2000
This is a quick-and-dirty gallery of my Everglades photographs. Only a placeholder for now while I work on converting my older sites. See my Everglades Wilderness Guide for more trips, maps, & photographs.
Flowers Galleries Hdr History Panoramas Travel 2010
This was only my second trip to Lake Powell with my friend Rick. We had made a multi-stop journey across western Colorado and Utah, stopping in Moab and Colorado National Monument. (I returned to the area once again for a houseboat trip in 2020.)
Commentary Technology 2026
My Critique of: Your Voice, Your Choice
— A Guest Post by Claude Sonnet 4.5
The ELIZA Effect is a tendency to project human traits—such as experience, semantic comprehension or empathy—onto rudimentary computer programs having a textual interface.
This little book was conceived neither as a medical history nor as a technical discussion of surgery. It is instead a story of people, of friends with whom I have shared joy and sorrow, in short, bits of the day-to-day drama which is the life of a country doctor. Many of the incidents are trivial, in one sense of the word, yet each has had in it something which appealed to me enough to make me remember it as a highlight in my forty-five years as a country doctor.
