When you want to see the stars, find someplace dark
Comments on reality
Found among the recent legislation proposed for the 2018 session is HB1767 Related to Motor Vehicles. The bill caught my attention when searching for proposed legislation affecting Mauna Kea. As the issues that swirl about our mauna are high profile there is no surprise that there are multiple bills that turned up in my search.
It is this second provision that really caught my attention. This is something to look twice at and wonder what the effects of this particular legislation might be.
There are quite a few different bills proposed for this session of the Hawaii legislature that address astronomy and Mauna Kea. Of the more interesting there are proposals for an independant manangement body for the mauna, 4WD drive access to Mauna Kea and Waipio valley, addressing light pollution, and an audit of OMKM.
Just added! (12Feb2018)
As usual for the Hawaii legislature there is occasionally both a house and senate version some of the bills. These must be reconciled in the end as they wend through the rather interesting process our state lege uses. Several of these have passed first reading, the first weeding out of bills in the process for this session.
So… The Office of Hawaiian Affairs filed a lawsuit against the University of Hawaii challenging the lease for the summit of Mauna Kea. This is news across the state, press conferences were held, a big media deal.
You can see the images here. There are two shots, one of a wrecked Toyota from earlier this year, one of an ancient Hawaiian ahu or shrine high on the mauna.
As one Facebook friend already noted “At least they credited you!” That does not make the infringement go away, it is still infringement. They even left my watermarks and copyright symbol on the image, there is simply no excuse.
Interestingly it appears that OHA, a state agency, does not host their website on a state server. Rather they use Google Cloud Services to host the website. Thus it makes filing a DMCA take-down notice much easier.
I have done just that.
This is not my first DMCA takedown action, or even my third, done this a few times, it works fairly well. The notice goes to the hosting service, if they do not take action, they become legally liable. As a result service providers take DMCA notices fairly seriously.
A legal notice has been served and should be addressed in the next few days. We shall see what the OHA webmasters do with that. Either they remove the material, or the entire website goes poof.
This island is a small community, anything that happens is likely to involve someone you know, or a friend of theirs. There are often only a one to three degrees of separation between you and nearly every event that makes the local news.
It is amazing how fast information moves from mauka to makai, the grapevine is very well connected on this island. This connectedness is accelerated by social media. Where once you would have to wait hours or days for official confirmation, or a newspaper report, we now know immediately.
There are specific places everyone goes for this type of informations. Two notable Facebook groups cover island happenings, Big Island Thieves and Big Island Popo Alert.
Having recently viewed a total solar eclipse I have been thinking about the experience. What it was like to observe first hand a truly incredible spectacle of nature? A total solar eclipse is about as dramatic an event our world can produce.
The experience was astonishing. For the first thirty seconds or so I simply sat in amazement, observing the eclipse and the world around me. Despite old memories and numerous photos I was still amazed by the sight. I knew what was coming, but I was to some extent unprepared for the sight before me. Eventually I gathered my thoughts and took some photos before the fleeting moments of totality expired.
In these modern times we rarely encounter a natural phenomena we are completely unprepared for. Prior to the event we have seen photographs or video, read descriptions from others. We generally know what we are about to encounter beforehand, or at least have a name and a cause we can understand when caught by surprise.
Imagine if that was not the case, consider seeing a total solar eclipse when you have never seen one, never even heard of such a thing, and do not know something is about to happen.
In this ever complex world in which we live the rules are always changing, and usually getting more complex. A modern, information society has many rules that govern who owns what. Copy a photograph from the web and you are probably breaking the laws concerning copyrights. There is a complex and sometimes contradictory set of laws that governs all manner of ownership in this technological age.
Buy a CD with your favorite tunes… Can you copy the tracks onto your phone? Can you create a video with the music and post it to YouTube? What about that expensive photo software package? Can you put it on your laptop and desktop? The rules are often complex, and often the answer is not clear cut.
Increasingly we do not actually own what we buy. At least that is what many corporations will tell us.
You would think that the answer is easier if the thing we are talking about is a physical object. If you buy a car, can you re-paint it, install a new stereo, or ignition system. Of course you can do that. Can you? Sometimes the answer is no.
Increasingly corporations attempt to maintain control of a product after the sale. They use many tools to do this. One is intellectual property, copyrights and copy protection on the software that is now embedded into many of the things we buy.
I have to admit I was worried that the decision could go against the TMT project.
It did not.
The decision is nearly three hundred pages long, none of us has had a chance to do more than skim some of the more interesting sections. Indeed most of us opened the document and skipped straight to page 260 to read the Recommended Decision and Order first.
We have yet to see the outrage from TMT project opponents. I expect it will be shortly forthcoming and quite vehement.
Where do we go from here? As I understand it the next step is for the DLNR board to vote on the acceptance of the hearing officer’s recommendation and reissue the permit. Of course the next thing to happen after that is the inevitable court challenge. This will go straight to the state supreme court as recent legislation set that as the path for land use cases, skipping the lower courts.
Among the tribes of the coastal northwest there is a ceremony that surrounds the first fish of the season. These ceremonies might vary from tribe to tribe, from family to family, but every tribe had such a ceremony.
Life once depended on the yearly return of salmon to the rivers and streams each summer. For bears, eagles, and humans the annual bounty of salmon provided the nourishment that would see them through the long winter. The forest itself benefits from the nutrients carried from distant seas into the trees where the salmon would spawn and die.
Upon catching the first salmon of the season the tribe will stop and celebrate. They celebrate the life of the fish, they celebrate the cycles of the natural world, they celebrate their connection with nature. Some protocols insist that the first fish be released, to continue upriver to spawn, to ensure the salmon continue to return each summer.
That one idea is the critical bit, our connection with nature. Any fisherman understands that he takes from the natural world. A good fisherman stops and considers what he takes. He takes only what he needs to feed his family. This is the entire point of the first fish ceremony, it serves to educate the community in the act of taking, to limit what you take to what the environment can provide.
I grew up in a hunting and fishing family, where a considerable portion of our food came from what my father caught or shot. Be it elk, deer, ducks, razor clams, or smelt, so many of my childhood memories center around the capture, preparation and storage of food… Chopping, packaging and freezing an elk was a serious amount of labor for the entire family.
Continue reading “First Fish”Our local Waimea RadioShack shop is closing.
I have commented on my view on RadioShack before. As an electronic hobbyist I have mixed feelings about RadioShack. In my younger years it was a decent place to buy electronic components. Some of the early computers I learned on were RadioShack products like the TRS-80 and Tandy 1000. I even worked as a RadioShack sales clerk one summer during high school.
Several hours without transportation. My vehicle is in the transmission shop for a checkout, have been having some rough shifts. Stranded for the morning without wheels in the old industrial area I had no intention of sitting in the shop’s waiting area for a few hours.
