Governor's Run/Walk

I took part today in the Governor's Run/Walk event in Dover. This is part of the push to get state employees to live healthier lifestyles. It makes sense from a budgetary standpoint; healthier employees cost less in the long run in health insurance payments.

The event featured health-related displays, a station for getting your blood-pressure checked, and things like that. after very brief remarks from the Governor, there was a 5K run, a 5-K walk and a 1-mile fun-walk.

We started at a point on Kings Highway. Our route wound down several back streets and an alley and through Silver Lake Park. It was twice around a course to make the 5 kilometers.

I was among the walkers. At a point on our first circuit, the lead runner came through us, preceded by a motorcycle policeman.

I was not sure I would do the whole walk today. I spent the long week-end and Tuesday with a virus and a moderately high temperature. It seemed wise to start from the back and go easy. In the end, I did finish, and I enjoyed the walk.

My time (55:56, unofficially) was not great, but I was happy to have been able to take the walk.

At the end, there were oranges and bananas. We heard the winners honored. Then headed back to the office for one of the sweatier afternoons in recent state government history.

A Restaurant Recommendation Chain-Post

I'm home sitting out a virus today, so it seems a good time to respond to NPR Junky's having tagged me for a "Best Places to Eat" meme. There are three steps.

1. Add a direct link to your post below the name of the person who tagged you. Include the city/state and country you’re in.

nicole (sydney, australia)
velverse (kuala lumpur, malaysia)
lb (san giovanni in marignano, italy)
selba (jakarta, indonesia)
olivia (london, england)
ml (utah, usa)
lotus (toronto, canada)
tanabata (saitama, japan)
andi (dallas [ish], texas, united states)
todd (louisville, kentucky, united states)
miss kendra (los angeles, california, u.s.a)
jiggs casey (berkeley, ca, usa! usa! usa!)
tits mcgee (new england, usa)
joe (ne tennessee, usa)
10k monkeys (chattanooga, tennessee, usa)
big stupid tommy (athens, tennessee, usa)
newscoma (weakley county, tennessee, usa)
russ mcbee (knoxville, tennessee, usa)
atomictumor mrs eaves (oak ridge, tennessee, usa)
oh really? lissakay (oak ridge, tn, usa)
mark steel blogitude.com (knoxville, tn, usa)
swanky the swank pad (knoxville, tn, usa)
johnny dollar’s vault (baltimore, maryland, us of a)
NPR Junky (Wilmington, Delaware, USA)
Mike's Musings (Lewes, Delaware, USA)

2. List out your top 5 favorite places to eat at your location.

Big Fish Grill is just outside of Rehoboth Beach. It is a simple place; bustling, friendly, comfortable with large portions of simple, well-prepared and fresh seafood and other dishes. They don't take reservations and by 5:30 on a typical Saturday afternoon, there are dozens of folks waiting outside. It is well worth the wait.

Striper Bites is in downtown Lewes. It is a small place, part bar and part restaurant with a short menu of great dishes. It is in an old and well-refurbished building that feels just right for a beach town.

The La Tolteca on Route 1 between Lewes and Rehoboth is a favorite place for comfort food. We know we can always get good Mexican food, inexpensively, from a friendly staff. Every time we eat there, we see people we know.

Tokyo Steakhouse is on Route 1 just south of Five Points. It is a traditional Hibachi-style restaurant but done to perfection. The building itself is so perfectly crafted that it stands out and stands for the craft of the chefs within. And it is great fun.

Nicola Pizza in downtown Rehoboth Beach is a part of that resort town's history at this point. Grotto Pizza may get more press coverage, but that's at least in part because it is a corporate entity. Nicola Pizza is still a family-run small-town pizzeria. And it has better pizza. And the Nicaboli.

3. Tag 5 others. This is the part I'm always a little bit uncomfortable about, but what the hey....

Chaplain Sam, a minister in Smyrna who also works in Elkton, MD. His should be a different perspective from mine.

Howard, of Delmar Dustpan, should be able to shed some light on a part of Sussex County I've not dined-out in.

Elbert (That’s Elbert With An “E”) is another western Sussex Countian who may also have some good western Sussex restaurant ideas.

Now, let us head out of state.

Tara Lynn Johnson is a writer in Pennsylvania, a place I may need to find a restaurant someday.

And Jon Mahaffie is a young man way out in Washington State who may or may not be a very distant cousin. In any case, he's the most distant blogger I could think of for this meme-tagging thing.

Half a Century Later...

The first digital image was created 50 years ago this spring at the National Bureau of Standards (now known as the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST). It was a very small scanned photo of researcher Russell Kirsch's 3-month-old son Walden.

That was the first step in a journey that has led to on-line photo-sharing sites like flickr and to high-resolution aerial photography and to citizen journalism and an on-line explosion in the arts.

Of course, it also led to pervasive digital pornography and photo-shopped political frame-jobs.

But you take the good with the bad.

Lewes' Silent Protests are Heard in the New York Times

Those of us who live in Lewes have gotten used to the weekly silent protests that take place each Sunday afternoon at the intersection of Kings Highway and Savannah Road. Today, there's a New York Times article about them: Silence Speaks Volumes at Intersection of Views on Iraq War. (Reg. Req.)

Anti-war protesters began gathering for a silent vigil each week back in 2004. Eventually pro-war demonstrators started to counter them and, for a time, things were fairly ugly.

After the peace vigil began in 2004, a group of counterprotesters began convening across the street. Some of the younger members of that group brought a radio and blared John Philip Sousa marching songs and patriotic music like “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Occasionally they yelled unkind things through a megaphone. At one point, fish guts and manure were strewn along the grass where the peace vigil meets.

Eventually, though, the pro-war side thinned out to one very faithful, but very polite gentleman. He is occasionally joined by others, but the ugliness is gone.

Tommywonk has picked up on one of the central points about this story; that it is possible to disagree civilly with each other about this war. I think that when you find someone on the other side of the question whose beliefs are deeply held, and honestly tested, you generally find the ability to disagree with grace.

I was struck by another aspect of the story. The Times noted that it is appropriate for this sort of protest to take place in a small town, since, it says, small towns have borne the brunt of war casualties.

About half of American military casualties in Iraq have come from towns with fewer than 25,000 residents. Among rural states, Delaware has the second-highest death rate, with 60 deaths per million military-age people, according to an analysis by William O’Hare of the Carsey Institute, a rural research center based at the University of New Hampshire, which has studied the demographics of soldiers fighting in the war.

Of course, we need to bear in mind that this is a rate of deaths, and not an actual number. Delaware's population is still less than million. Still, it is sobering and it led to me to a little searching to see how many Delawareans have lost their lives in this war. According to a casualty database from (I think) the AP and linked from the News Journal Site, 14 men and women who called Delaware home have died. I'm sure there are others whose home state was no loner Delaware, but who have family and friends here.

And this is a good say to point out that even though I oppose this foolish war, and think we were wrong to invade Iraq, I honor these men and women and all the men and women who serve our nation. That our President has made a terrible mistake is not their fault; in fact they suffer the consequences of that mistake and do their best every day to make it right.

Today, as every day, they will be in my thoughts.

Two Good Ideas in One in Wilmington

The City of Wilmington is starting a pilot program to reduce the number of cars in their "city car" inventory and to reduce the environmental impact of those cars that city employees do drive.

According to a story in the News Journal yesterday, the city will replace a number of the cars in its fleet with hybrid ride-share vehicles. They'll use cars from PhillyCarShare, one of a number of ride-sharing businesses that have popped up in cities in the last few years. My eye is always drawn to the ZipCar ads when I ride the Washington Metro.

It's not an approach to transportation that is likely to work where I live (small-town, long commute), but if I ever get myself settled in a city somewhere, I'll hope to take part in a ride-share program.

I think this makes great sense for government agencies in which staff don't have to have a car or truck available on-call at all times. Most of us government workers can plan any trips we must make far enough in advance that shared transportation works well.

The other part of this story, of course, touches close to home. For six years now I've been a proud Prius driver. And I take this opportunity to repeat that it is not to save money on gasoline that I drive a Prius; I want to reduce the emissions I cause. My Prius helps me do that.

Here's a Movie I'd Really Like to See

A new documentary about the life of Joe Strummer has opened over in England. I'm not sure if it is out yet here in the US. The film is called The Future is Unwritten, and it looks fascinating.

Joe Strummer was a guitarist and front man for one of my all-time favorite rock bands, the Clash, who helped me define my youth.

As I have written before, I remain a Strummer fan. He was at the heart of the great Punk Rock explosion of the 1970s, but he transcended that genre; he was a classic rock rebel and cultural revolutionary.

I think it is telling that one of his last recordings was a duet with Johnny Cash, singing Bob Marley's "Redemption Song."

I still carry Joe Strummer's voice in my head. It seems comfortable there with Jerry's guitar sound.

Will we see this film down at Movies at Midway? Or will there remain three screens of Spiderman 3?

Birds In Dover

Walking in downtown Dover today, I came upon a tiny bird sitting quite still and all alone on the brick sidewalk of Loockerman Street -- at the quiet end, where there is less foot traffic.

It looked like this bird had just taken its first flutter out of the nest and failed to take flight. It seemed stunned.

In the tree above, an adult bird was squawking away on a lower branch. I assume that that was a parent, trying to distract me away from the young bird.

I thought it best to give them space, so I cannot report to you what the outcome was.

On a more positive note, I found a pair of ducks a few days ago taking full advantage of human activity.

This pair was hanging out beneath the drive-though window of a Dover Dunkin' Donuts.

This isn't where I would have expected a lot of crumbs to fall, but they must know what they are about; the young woman selling coffee and donuts told me that they are often around.

Stupid Thoughts That I Feel (for Some Reason) That I Have to Share #77

The word "visibility" has a lot of eyes in it.

Views From an Observation Tower

Created with Paul's flickrSLiDR.

Yesterday I climbed the Observation Tower at Fort Miles in Cape Henlopen State Park and took a 360-degree set of views from the top.

The tower is one of a network that stood sentry along Delaware's Atlantic coastline during World War II. They were used to watch for enemy warships and direct coastal defense battery fire should an enemy appear. The system was never called into action, though I believe at least one German U-Boat surrendered at Lewes at the end of the war.

This is the only tower that is still open to the public.

I started facing more or less west and took a photo through an opening in the chain-link fencing that keeps people from going over the edge of the tower. I took a wide side-step to my right and took another. Took another step and another picture. And so on, around the tower.

I Doubt This Will Surprise Those Who Know Me...

...But it appears that I am an "Information Technology Omnivore," according to an on-line tech-use survey from the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

The survey is part of a Pew study, A Typology of Information and Communication Technology Users, which attempts to describe the many different ways that we use our suite of information technology tools. According to the Pew study, "85% of American adults use the Internet or cell phones – and most use both." On the other hand, about half of Americans "have a more distant or non-existent relationship to modern information technology."

In other words, many have the tools and many use them, but only a small percentage are really comfortable in an on-line world.

It looks like I am one of this group, about 8% of the American public. The Omnivorous Tech Users are described as embracing the connectivity provided by technology to enhance their work lives and personal lives:

Members of this group use their extensive suite of technology tools to do an enormous range of things online, on the go, and with their cell phones. Omnivores are highly engaged with video online and digital content. Between blogging, maintaining their Web pages, remixing digital content, or posting their creations to their websites, they are creative participants in cyberspace.

I don't exhibit all of the characteristics of this group. I don't create video content very much and I don't IM or text message beyond what is required to keep tabs on a teen-age child. And I am well outside one of the key demographic characteristics: "The median age is 28; just more than half of them are under age 30."

I do feel old some days.

Ironically, two co-workers and I explored this same territory in a slightly different way yesterday. We had all heard keynote speaker Don Cooke talking about Second Life at the recent Delaware GIS Conference. That led to a discussion of on-line communities and some of the skills needed to maintain and grow them. I've been thinking about this a fair amount lately, in relation to my work with Delaware's GIS Community, and the National GIS Coordinators group (NSGIC) both of which are partly on-line.

Dave wondered aloud which world, the physical or the on-line, was, in fact, reality. We briefly considered the theory proposed in the film The Matrix (the first one), that what we perceive as reality is in fact a simulated, virtual reality dream world constructed and maintained to keep the entire human population in a state of subjugated sleep.

We skipped the obvious contemporary political implications of this thought and turned briefly to Plato's allegory of the cave in which what humans perceive as reality is in fact only the shadows of a puppet show cast on the wall of a cave in which they are prisoners (/oversimplification of complex philosophical thought).

At that point we realized that once you've pursued a thought back to Plato's cave, it's probably time to move on to something else.

As I write this blog entry, it occurs to me that one could rewrite Plato's allegory in modern terms with the Internet as the cave and blogs and web 2.0 things creating the shadows.

But there is a sunny Saturday morning outside and the grass needs to be cut. The library needs to be walked to. The state park is hosting a kayak expo.

I may be an Information Technology Omnivore, but I know when it is time to shut down the laptop and head outside.