Parbuckling

The enormous project to right and remove the remains of the Costa Concordia is now well underway.

There's some nice reporting on the NPR site:

• Costa Concordia Salvage Operation To Begin Monday

  "The old nautical term for the operation is called parbuckling. Over a 10- to 12-hour period, the ship — now slumped on its side on a sloping reef — will be slowly rotated as dozens of pulleys will pull it upright.

  "The big unknown is the condition of the side of the ship lying on the jagged reef, which juts into the hull by some 30 feet. But the engineers in charge are confident that the operation will be successful — so confident that there's no Plan B.

• How To Watch As The Costa Concordia Is (Hopefully) Righted .

The main website for the project is just loaded with information, diagrams, and details:

The parbuckling will be performed using strand jacks which will be tightening several cables attached to the top of the caissons and to the platforms, which will be pulled seawards, while the cables attached to the starboard turrets will be used for balancing.

This is a very delicate phase, during which the forces involved have to be offset carefully to rotate the wreck without deforming the hull.

The Guardian has a great blog with lots of updates, and lots of pictures: Costa Concordia: cruise ship lifting will be completed on Tuesday – live updates.

The white and black arrows on the photographs below show how far the Costa Concordia has been lifted. The black arrow shows the position of an upper deck before the salvage operation began, the white as it is in progress. The brown residue on the side of the vessel shows where it was submerged.

The BBC also has lots of great information: LIVE: Attempt to pull the Costa Concordia upright

The Washington Post has a dramatic slideshow.

And the Titan Salvage website has lots of information, too.

Overall, it seems like the project is going well.

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A Wyoming reading list

We're contemplating a trip to Yellowstone, so, as is my way, I've been getting myself ready.

Thus, a brief Northwest Wyoming Reading List:

• Top Trails Yellowstone & Grand Tetons: Must-do Hikes for Everyone

  With trips from Mammoth Hot Springs to Old Faithful, from the Absarokas to the Gallatin Range, and from Jackson Hole to the Teton Crest Trail, Top Trails Yellowstone & Grand Teton National Parks has all visitors need to enjoy the ultimate in natural and geothermal wonders

  We're not really expecting to do any epic hikes during our trip, but we do want to get out of the car and into the woods. So this book, from Wilderness Press, is a nice compromise. We have to be careful picking the hikes, because in their desire to be encylopedic the authors include trails spanning the range from half-mile nature walks suitable for taking your 4-year-old to 30 mile 3-night backpacking adventures.

  So obviously they aren't actually "Must-do Hikes for Everyone" (darn cover editors).

  But the book is nicely organized and the trails are clearly described, and I'm sufficiently experienced with reading trail guides to believe I can select appropriately.

• A Field Guide to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks

  More than 1.200 color photographs with concise descriptions reveal the richness of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. This is the definitive field identification guide to the region's rocks, minerals, geysers, waterfalls, mushrooms, trees. wildflowers, insects, amphibians, reptiles, fish, birds, mammals, tracks and scat, and the night sky. Includes 75 natural features with locator maps and 650 species.

  This. Book. Is. Simply. Gorgeous.

  Since the top draw of a trip to Yellowstone is to experience the top ten of North American wildlife viewing (according to Bryan):

  1. Grizzly Bear
  2. Bison
  3. Gray Wolf
  4. Black Bear
  5. Bald Eagle, Golden Eagle, Osprey, Great Horned Owl
  6. Moose, Elk, Antelope
  7. Gray Fox, Red Fox, Coyote
  8. Big Horned Sheep
  9. Mountain Lion
  10. Badger, Wolverine
  , an accessible field guide is most desirable.

  I love the fact that this field guide includes sections on geysers, on mushrooms, on "trails and scat", and on constellations of the night sky.

• Yellowstone National Park, WY (Ti - National Parks).

  Grand Teton National Park - Trails Illustrated Map.

  The National Geographic Trails Illustrated maps are simply the best maps you can get. They are accurate, they are gorgeous, they are sturdily-built, and they are designed from the viewpoint of the nature enthusiast. You'll think it's nuts to spend $10 on a map, but you won't regret it.

• Ring of Fire: Writers of the Yellowstone Region

  A unique anthology of prose and poetry from the volcanic and otherworldly splendor of the Yellowstone region. Powerful, engrossing, and controversial works by prominent authors and fresh talents. Moved by the natural wonders unique to their part of the world, these writers from Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming come together in a "Ring of Fire" around the world's first national park.

  As with any anthology, you will find yourself picking and choosing as you read this book, but overall I've really enjoyed it. The stories and essays are over the place, but among the ones that stuck out as I read:

  • Return to Wyoming, by Geoffrey O'Gara. Driving mostly at night to try to spare his failing car, O'Gara is struck by how, each time his car chooses to overheat, it turns out to be at a location that he remembers from his childhood.
  • The Firebabe, by Susan Sweetnam. Moving to a new small town, Sweetnam finds herself joining the volunteer fire department. Initially intimidated by the skill of the veterans, Sweetnam experiences the thrill of learning how to be a firefighter herself.
  • On Spread Creek, by C.L. Rawlins. Working as a guide at a dude ranch, Rawlins experiences simultaneously the joy of exposing city folk to the mountains as well as the sadness of realizing that what the guests think to be a series of mountain meadows is actually the result of years of clear cutting and strip mining by the lumber and mining industries.
  • Coming Off Lee Creek, by Louise Wagenknecht. Wagenknecht, a Forest Service ranger, describes her transfer from Northern California to Wyoming with a great story about the interactions between government officials and ranchers, highlighting the struggles she went through as a woman to be accepted as one of the guys in the rugged Wyoming mountains.

  There's much more, but overall I was really pleasantly surprised by Ring of Fire, which much exceeded my expectations.

• Mountain Time: A Yellowstone Memoir

  Schullery's book is now 30 years old, and the Yellowstone he writes about it still older, for he wrote the majority of the book while working as a park ranger, park historian, and environmental specialist in Yellowstone from 1972-1977.

  Still, this is a marvelous book. Schullery is a gifted writer, and he obviously loves the Yellowstone area. The book is structured as a series of independent essays, but they are sequenced and arranged nicely and each one is a joy to read.

  A little taste of Schullery's light and charming style can be seen in the chapter about elk, "Elk Watch":

  Antlers are occasionally a hazard in the realm of human/elk cohabitation. The residents of Mammoth, like those of any other community, like to decorate their houses at Christmas; many string lights on their walls and shrubbery. One of the local bull elk got himself tangled in a string of lights, probably while feeding on the shrubbery, and for several days afterward paraded around with his antlers festooned with lights as if he was looking for an electrical outlet.

  It's all great: sometimes heart-breaking, sometimes hilarious, Schullery's book sweeps you along, and you'll barely notice the pages fly by.

• Lost in My Own Backyard: A Walk in Yellowstone National Park (Crown Journeys)

  This is the lightest of the books I chose to read, both in heft and in style. Cahill, a well-known journalist and author of several entertaining travel books, presents just what he claims to present: the book is a series of descriptions of various hikes that Cahill took in Yellowstone.

  Whether you love this book or hate it will depend primarily on how you feel about Cahill's light-hearted, almost tongue-in-cheek style. It works very well for me, but I can see that others might find it infuriating or condescending.

  Here's a bit of a sample, to help you understand what I mean:

  The map suggested that a great many of the falls on and around the Bechler region faced generally south, which meant the sun would shine directly on them at least part of the day. And that meant that every day in which there was sun, there'd be a rainbow or two or three as well. You could count on them: I thought of the Bechler as the River of Reliable Rainbows.

  Over the next several days we moved up the Bechler and courageously endured the sight of many waterfalls generating many rainbows. Colonnade Falls, for instance, just off the trail, is a two-step affair, with a 35-foot plunge above, a pool, and a 67-foot fall below. The lower fall was enfolded in curving basalt wall. The gray rock had formed itself into consecutive columns more in the Doric tradition than the Corinthian. It had a certain wild nobility, Yellowstone's own Parthenon, with falls and a fountain.

• Hawks Rest: A Season in the Remote Heart of Yellowstone

  I haven't read Hawks Rest yet, but I'm very much looking forward to it. Here's a bit from the publisher's blurb:

  Beginning with his hundred-mile hike to reach the Lower 48's most remote place, Ferguson gives us a fascinating, personal account of three months living alone in the wilderness - a summer spent monitoring grizzly bears and wolf packs in Hawks Rest, the heart of the greater Yellowstone ecosystem. Through his encounters with park rangers, wildlife biologists, outfitters, and intrepid visitors, Ferguson weaves a poignant story of a land under siege. Opinionated first-hand accounts illuminate the dream and the difficulty of preserving the Yellowstone wilderness - America's first national park and a touchstone of all things wild. Ferguson's previous writings on nature have been well received. Publishers Weekly wrote about The Sylvan Path: "In prose as inviting and uplifting as a walk in the woods, naturalist Ferguson shares his lifelong passion...with a sense of discovery, humor, and deep reverence for his subject, [he] reclaims the natural world for himself, and for the reader as well."

  So stay tuned; I'll let you know about this one.

• National Geographic Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks Road Guide: The Essential Guide for Motorists

  I don't remember why I thought this would be worth getting. It wasn't. I'll keep it, though; maybe it will seem better when I'm there.

And, to occupy the long hours of travel, something new to try: three audiobooks:

• Bring Up the Bodies: A Novel, by Hilary Mantel, read by Simon Vance.

  I just adored Wolf Hall, and this is Mantel's sequel. Says the author:

  The action of Bring Up The Bodies occupies only nine months, and within that nine months it concentrates on the three weeks in which Henry's second wife, Anne Boleyn, is arrested, tried and executed for treason. So it is a shorter, more concentrated read. There are no diversions once the plot against Anne begins to accelerate, and the tension builds as her death approaches.

  It's quite possible to read Bring Up The Bodies without reading Wolf Hall. It makes sense in its own terms. But I think a reader will get a deeper experience by starting with the first book and seeing the characters evolve.

  Well, I read Wolf Hall, but my wife didn't; we'll see how our reactions to Bring Up The Bodies differ.

• Explosive Eighteen: A Stephanie Plum Novel, by Janet Evanovich, read by Lorelei King.

  Before Stephanie can even step foot off Flight 127 Hawaii to Newark, she’s knee deep in trouble. Her dream vacation turned into a nightmare, and she’s flying back to New Jersey solo. Worse still, her seatmate never returned to the plane after the L.A. layover. Now he’s dead -- and a ragtag collection of thugs and psychos, not to mention the FBI, are all looking for a photograph he was supposed to be carrying.

• Flush, by Carl Hiaasen, read by Michael Welch.

  You know it's going to be a rough summer when you spend Father's Day visiting your dad in the local lockup.

  Noah's dad is sure that the owner of the Coral Queen casino boat is flushing raw sewage into the harbor -- which has made taking a dip at the local beach like swimming in a toilet. He can't prove it though, and so he decides that sinking the boat will make an effective statement. Right. The boat is pumped out and back in business within days and Noah's dad is stuck in the clink.

  Amazon didn't exactly make it clear when I ordered this that it was a Young Adult book ("#48 in Books : Mystery, Thriller & Suspense : Thrillers")

  But I just love Carl Hiaasen.

So there you go: a Northwest Wyoming reading list.

Did I miss any favorites of yours? Let me know!

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Rim fire winding down

I hadn't been over to Inciweb's Rim Fire status page in a while, so I dropped in to see how the progress goes.

This is the long, slow, quiet part of the firefighting work: the part they call "mopping up", though there isn't a mop to be found.

After all these weeks, the fire remains only 80% contained, and there are still more than 2,000 firefighters working on it.

Conditions in the fire area remain complex:

Damage assessments of destroyed or damaged structures, infrastructure, and developments interior of the containment lines continues as interior fire activity subsides. The pockets of unburned fuel within the perimeter of the fire area continue to consume.

Small contingents of employees from Hetch Hetchy Power and Water have been allowed back into Mather.

Anyone traveling on roads within the fire area should use extreme caution. Fire personnel and equipment continue to work in the area. Hazards include smoke weakened trees (that may fall) and hot burning stump holes. If you must drive through the fire area please do not stop, leave the roadway, or enter the burned area on foot.

The dry language of the bureaucrat conceals an agony of effort.

The remaining direct fire-fighting activity is hard because it is in truly remote areas:

Continued fire spread to the northwest into the Yosemite Wilderness north of Hetch Hetchy is expected. Pockets of vegetation will continue to burn within the containment lines.

That terrain north of Hetch Hetchy is as rugged and remote as it gets in the lower 48 states; I suspect they'll have to just let that section of the fire burn itself out, possibly going until the first rains of the fall arrive in mid-October.

Meanwhile, before any of the damaged areas can be re-opened, including America's most beautiful mountain pass, Tioga Road, a lot of work must still be done:

Fire suppression repair has been completed on 30 miles of dozer lines, 2 miles of hand line, 36 miles of chipping (along roads), and 10 miles of roads.

It's a long, slow process, but the last 2 weeks have gone according to plan.

I doubt I will live to see the rebirth of this forest, but I have my memories of it, and I'll look forward to visiting it in the years to come, to see the healing start.

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Yo, bro

Once again the "brogrammer" issue comes to the fore: The Brogrammer Effect: Women Are a Small (And Shrinking) Share of Computer Workers.

According to a Census report out this week, women today still make up a frustratingly small 26 percent of workers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) jobs. But whereas their presence has at least grown or held steady in most of these fields, it's been on a 20-plus-year decline in computer workers, such as developers, programmers, and security analysts.

I've been in the computing industry for 30 years, so I guess I'm at least somewhat willing to comment.

It's not as though there are no women in the industry at all. When I first started out, one of the first programmers who I found truly inspirational and motivational was a woman. And at my first job after college, my boss, my boss's boss, and my boss's boss's boss were all female.

During the years, the pattern has continued. I've met some superb programmers, both male and female. And I've had some great bosses (and some awful ones), both male and female.

At my current day job, we have multiple female executives, as well as a number of female managers and engineers. We've also sponsored events, such as the Bay Area Girl Geek Dinners. My officemate is headed to Minneapolis next week for this year's Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.

But if I'm honest, my experiences over those 30 years pretty much mirror the statistics from the Census report.

Which is not a good thing.

I guess I'm not really sure if it's the "brogrammer" thing or not. The engineers I've had the pleasure of working with are a long ways from these stereotyped clods, though certainly from time to time I've seen the occasional clunker. Of course, I've never been close to an experience like this: To my daughter's high school programming teacher.

Sadly, you only get one chance to make a first impression, and you, sir, created a horrible one for girls in computer programming.

Did you not see her enthusiasm turn into a dark cloud during the semester? Did you not notice when she quit laughing with and helping her classmates, and instead quickly finished her assignments and buried her nose in a book? What exactly were you doing when you were supposed to be supervising the class and teaching our future programmers?

I worry about the lack of women in computing, but, then again, I worry about the lack of people in computing, in general.

And more than either of those issues, I worry about the problems of unemployment and underemployment of our youth.

• The Idled Young Americans

  Over the last 12 years, the United States has gone from having the highest share of employed 25- to 34-year-olds among large, wealthy economies to having among the lowest.

• Young Adults Make Up Nearly Half Of America’s Unemployed Workforce

  College graduates, as recent Labor Department data showed, are increasingly working in low-wage jobs, largely because they have made up a majority of jobs added since the recession ended. One of every four Americans is projected to be working in a low-wage job in a decade.

• Better jobs reports don't help this lost generation of unemployed young adults

  these young people who can't find jobs now are likely to be scarred by the experience for their entire careers. They will have lower wages for life, according to several economic studies. That will cause social problems in addition to economic ones as these young people delay "life steps" such as purchasing a house, or even retiring, since they have not been able to build up as much in savings.

So, yes, save us from the Brogrammers.

And yes, let's try to figure out ways to address the skewed gender makeup in the computing industry.

But most of all, let's figure out a way to get the next generation involved, so that our children, and our children's children, can enjoy the wonderful world we've lived in.

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Legends from flyover country

Yahoo: The terrifying Mexican football legend of Columbus, Ohio

While the USA players celebrated their own qualification with their most putrid of domestic beers, the Mexican players were left to ponder what they must do to end Columbus, Ohio's reign of terror. But it may not be satisfied until Mexico's national team is reduced to the lowest depths of non-existent irrelevance that the USA's team once occupied. A place where the only sound that can be heard is the faint whisper of "Columbus, Ohio..."

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Beethoven and Jonathan Biss

I'm really enjoying the latest Coursera class that I'm taking: Exploring Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas.

This course takes an inside-out look at the 32 piano sonatas from the point of view of a performer. Each lecture will focus on one sonata and an aspect of Beethoven’s music exemplified by it. (These might include: the relationship between Beethoven the pianist and Beethoven the composer; the critical role improvisation plays in his highly structured music; his mixing of extremely refined music with rougher elements; and the often surprising ways in which the events of his life influenced his compositional process and the character of the music he was writing.) The course will feature some analysis and historical background, but its perspective is that of a player, not a musicologist. Its main aim is to explore and demystify the work of the performer, even while embracing the eternal mystery of Beethoven’s music itself.

The course is led by Jonathan Biss, who teaches at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia (and who was born in Bloomington Indiana, which is where my parents lived when I was born).

So far, I've finished the first two weeks of lectures:

• In week 1, Biss provides a quick overview of 150 years of the development of music, from Bach to Mozart to Haydn to Beethoven, helping us understand Beethoven's place in music history and why that is relevant to both studying and listening to Beethoven's compositions. Biss also gives us just enough music theory so that we can comprehend what a sonata is, how it differs from other forms, and what that means for the music of a sonata.
• In week 2, Biss leads us deeply into Beethoven's Piano Sonata Number 4, Opus 7, the work that Biss chose to represent the early period of Beethoven's piano sonatas. Alternating between describing the work and playing selections from it, Biss deconstructs and analyzes the sonata in detail.

Biss is just a delightful speaker. He is engaging and clear, and best of all his tremendous love for and respect of the music shines through, and is just so infectious. When you listen to Biss describe how a piece of music affects him, and why it affects him, you instantly grasp what he's talking about.

The course materials on Coursera include a class wiki, with lots of background material and pointers to further resources for study.

I'm not a professional musician, and never really studied music except at the most elementary level, but I've always enjoyed music, and I know that studying music helps me to appreciate it as a listener.

So I'm really looking forward to more opportunities to learn from Jonathan Biss, and to a greater appreciation and enjoyment of music.

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Shelter

I meant to post this as part of my article on Watership Down, but then totally forgot: Shelter

In Shelter you experience the wild as a mother badger sheltering her cubs from harm. On their journey they get stalked by a bird of prey, encounter perils of the night, river rapids crossings, big forest fires and the looming threat of death by starvation.

Food is to be found, but is there enough for everyone? You will learn that the cubs need food not just to survive, but to enable them overcome the varying challenges they will face as they make their way through the world.

Are you ready for a truly different adventure, something that might evoke feelings you've never felt in a game before? In the wild, all living creatures are put to the test. The question in the end is who will survive to live another day?

Has anyone played it?

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