Category: ethics

Bikepacking Patagonia – day 18

On By Rick McIn best bike rides, cycling, ethics, hiking, travel2 Comments

Jan 31, 2019 – Puyuhuapi to Queulat National Park (38km)

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Queulat is another of Chile’s newly announced Route of Parks (Ruta de los Parques) – a chain of 17 stretching 1500 miles.

Since I’d had a rest day in pretty Puyuhuapi town I felt I had to push on … despite the rain.

My bigger problem than H2O was my detached pannier rack. I’d fixed 🙄 it with a metal spacer, but didn’t have much confidence it would last the 218km to the next bike shop in Coyhaique.

Also, I had to attach my ugly load far to the left in order to keep it stable. Not good.

Though I got muddy, I actually like gravel road in the rain better than dry. The tires roll more smoothly. And there’s less dust.

Each year more of the Carretera Austral is getting paved.

I’d really been looking forward to getting to Quelat. And it is great. They are very used to rain here.

I stashed my bike in the forest. And hiked to Ventisquero Colgante: The Hanging Glacier of Queulat.

This is a land of great lakes. Pristine rivers. True wilderness.

I found the cutest little high, dry, flat nook in the bamboo to set up my tent.

About 5m from the river.

The weather cleared during the night. I had red wine and a starry, starry night.

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Bikepacking Patagonia – days 12-13

On By Rick McIn best bike rides, cycling, ethics, travelLeave a comment

Jan 25-26, 2019 – Caleta Gonzalo to Chaitén 70km

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It’s been a year since Pumalín became an official National Park. One of the world’s great conservation stories.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Pumalín gets around 6 meters of rain / year!

Though it had been lovely weather for me so far in January, here it started raining hard in the morning.

I had a C$22 breakfast at the only restaurant in the park, hiding from the downpour.

Happily it cleared up about Noon and I began my return to Chaitén, hiking en route.

First stop was the Laguna Tronador trail. Physically demanding. Gorgeous.

Next the very popular, short Alerce trail. This park protects the Alerce trees, the largest in South America. They grow to more than 70m with up to 5m trunk diameter. Charles Darwin reported finding a specimen 12.6 m in diameter.

They had been heavily logged before conservationists weighed in.

One is 3622 years old, the second oldest fully verified (by counting growth rings) age for any living tree species, after the bristlecone pine.

Weather was now excellent for riding. The only annoyance pesky horseflies.

My third hike of the day was Cascadas Escondidas trail. I’d actually planned to camp there as well, but it was too crowded.

Late in the day I pushed on to Lago Blanco campground.

I love sites which keep my tent under roof. If it does rain, no worries.

Fantastic as they are, these sites are not inexpensive. This one is C$32 / night. The Park guys didn’t collect this night, however. Perhaps I arrived later than they had made the rounds.

A beautiful, calm night. Superb morning.


Next morning I stopped at Volcano campground for the bathroom. Gorgeous. The best of about a dozen camps in this part of Pumalín, I’d say.

It’s alongside the Park airstrip.

I walked their excellent interpretive trail.

My only major hike of the day was Chaitén Volcano trail. Fantastic. And very popular.

I arrived back to the hostel in Chaitén about 3:30pm. Rene from Germany and Victoria from the States were just heading off to Amarillo Hotsprings about 30km away. I hopped aboard the shuttle van with them. A long soak is the best way to remove dust from nails and pores.

Another big meal at the hostel.

Another glass of wine at sunset.

This trip is going well. 😎

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important film – Minority Report 2002

On By Rick McIn ethics, government, internet, moviesLeave a comment

Minority Report is a 2002 American neo-noir science fiction film directed by Steven Spielberg and loosely based on the short story “The Minority Report” by Philip K. Dick. …

The film’s central theme is the question of free will versus determinism.  …

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Eye in the Sky with Helen Mirren

On By Rick McIn ethics, government, moviesLeave a comment

Though gripping and fantastic, very few people saw this movie.

It’s got 95% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Eye in the Sky is a 2015 British thriller film starring Helen Mirren, Aaron Paul, Alan Rickman …

… the film explores the ethical challenges of drone warfare. …

It is the last live action film to feature Alan Rickman, who died in January 2016.  …

Terrorists are targeted in Nairobi, Kenya .

 

Time’s Person of the Year 2018 – JOURNALISTS

On By Rick McIn ethics, good news, government, human rightsLeave a comment

Great decision in an era where dictators and toddler-dictator-wannabes call all criticism FAKE NEWS.

Time magazine’s 2018 Person of the Year title goes to the “guardians and the war on truth.”

The honour has been given to four journalists and a newspaper that Time says “are representatives of a broader fight by countless others around the world. …

The “guardians” are:

  • Jamal Khashoggi, the prominent Saudi journalist who was killed in that country’s consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2.
  • The Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Md., where five people were shot and killed at the newspaper’s offices in June.
  • Maria Ressa, a detained Philippine journalist who is head of independent news website Rappler​.
  • Reuters journalists Wa Lone, 32, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 28, who have been jailed in Myanmar for nearly a year.​

CBC – Time names killed, jailed journalists as 2018 Person of the Year

Amal Hussain | dies of starvation age-7

On By Rick McIn ethics, government, human rights, photosLeave a comment

Most Canadians know very little about Yemen.

I’ve been there and left very discouraged. The Houthi rebels are terrible. The vastly stronger Saudi military brutal.

Little Amal Hussain was born into this disaster. She died a few days after this photo was taken.

She’s only one of about nearly two million children suffering from severe malnutrition in Yemen.

The only upside – U.N. sponsored peace talks.

Certainly Saudi Arabia and Yemen need to work this out. The USA should QUIT Saudi Arabia. All Americans are complicit in the role their government has in this war.

Listen to an interview with the photographer:

In the three years that Saudi Arabia, supported by the United States, has been at war with the Houthis in Yemen, very few journalists have been allowed into the country to document what’s happening there. The New York Times journalist Tyler Hicks is one. This is the story of how he came to take a photograph of Amal Hussain that drew international attention to the country’s plight.

The Daily podcast

mockumentary – I, Tonya

On By Rick McIn ethics, movies, sport - amateurLeave a comment

I finally saw the 2017 film I, Tonya.

… Watched it on my phone via the WestJet entertainment app. 

It follows the life of figure skater Tonya Harding and her connection to the 1994 attack on her rival Nancy Kerrigan.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

The film states that it is based on “contradictory” and “true” interviews with Tonya Harding and her ex-husband Jeff Gillooly, suggesting they are unreliable narrators. …

Allison Janney is fantastic as Harding’s foul mouthed, tough love mother LaVona Golden.  She won Best Supporting Actress at the Academy Awards.

Margot Robbie  is possibly even better as Tonya Harding. Though she trained to skate for 4 months, Heidi Munger and Anna Malkova served as skating doubles. 

The true story is so weird and unbelievable that it made a terrific film. A poor white trash girl rose to become the best skater in the world (at one point) in an elitist culture that hated everything about her aside from triple Axels.

Shawn Eckardt (who claims he’s Tonya’s “bodyguard”) was better than any fictional character.

The real life abusive husband Gillooly refused to take any money from the film’s producers … trying to take responsibility for the attack.

It sounds like Nancy Kerrigan has never watched the mockumentary.

 

 

the BUSINESS of American Politics

On By Rick McIn audiocasts, economics, ethics, governmentLeave a comment

I’ve followed politics in the USA since G.W. Bush was elected a second time in 2004. I had one question:

Why are so many Americans so stupid?

And why are Americans so close to a 50/50 split in so many elections.

Here’s one possible explanation. Many, MANY make a lot of money when American elections are close: lobbyists, consultants, media, broadcasters. They have incentive to try to keep it close.

In the most recent two-year election cycle, the political industry generated roughly $16 billion in revenue. Meanwhile, customer satisfaction — that is, from voters — is at a historic low. (Photo: Bill Pugliano/Getty)

Freakonomics audiocast:

Some say the Republicans and Democrats constitute a wildly successful industry that has colluded to kill off competition, stifle reform, and drive the country apart.

America’s Hidden Duopoly (Ep. 356)

Ben Franklin by Walter Isaacson

On By Rick McIn books, ethics, government, philosophyLeave a comment

Isaacson is a bit of a genius himself.

Recently he’s written biographies. I enjoyed his biography of Leonardo da Vinci (2017). And loved his biography of Steve Jobs (2011).

Benjamin Franklin: An American Life is good too. But not as good.

Ben’s life story was simply not as controversial as either Jobs or Leonardo da Vinci. As a result I found Isaacson repetitive regarding his few faults.

Ben Franklin regarded himself as a working class man. A printer. Yet became one of the most glamorous and famous people of his time. (1706-1790)

I admire him as an American polymath and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, freemason, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat. 

He founded many civic organizations, including the Library Company, Philadelphia‘s first fire department and the University of Pennsylvania.

Like Gandhi, his real goal was to make life better for as many as possible.

Franklin was foundational in defining the American ethos as a marriage of the practical values of thrift, hard work, education, community spirit, self-governing institutions, and opposition to authoritarianism  …

He’d be horrified by the GOP and their toddler President in 2018.