texascavers Digest 6 Aug 2011 16:25:42 -0000 Issue 1362
Topics (messages 18297 through 18303):
Re: where a man can breathe free, and relevance to caves
18297 by: Geary Schindel
book review: Lew Bicking
18298 by: Mixon Bill
18303 by: Carl Kunath
book review: Cave of the Winds
18299 by: Mixon Bill
Re: book reviews: Lew Bicking, Cave of the Winds
18300 by: Logan McNatt
The few remaining humans will worship Oztotl
18301 by: BMorgan994.aol.com
Cuban caving publication
18302 by: Mixon Bill
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Rod,
Thanks for the wonderful analysis on population growth, you are right on the
money. For folks that are interested in this area, I would refer you to a
video lecture by Dr. Albert Bartlett, retired professor from the University of
Colorado in Boulder titled Arithmetic, Population, and Energy. You can
purchase it for about $20 from the Univ of Col. Bookstore or can down load it
in segments from YouTube. Scary stuff, we showed it as a Bexar Grotto program
one night. I have a copy if anyone wants to borrow it. Garrett Hardin also
has some very well written papers on this subject. You can view them all on
line at the Garrett Hardin Society.
Couple of interesting facts from the video. Bartlett talks about the rule of
70 for doubling of exponential growth (any growth over zero). That is, take
the yearly growth rate of a city, say San Antonio at approximately 2.8 percent
and divide that in to 70 and you get the doubling rate. That is, in 25 years,
the San Antonio area will double its population to around 4 million people.
That means we’ll need twice the roads, schools, water supply, land area, food,
police force, court, jails, parking spaces, energy, etc. This is not
sustainable. The U.S. doubling rate is approximately 60 years if I remember
correctly, which means we’ll have 600 million people by 2070.
China is the only major country that has addressed its population problem by
limiting growth to a one child policy (they are thinking about dropping this
policy – big mistake). Currently, immigration is the major driving force in
population growth in the U.S. as I believe we are the only first world country
with an increasing population. Births for native born citizens is at zero
population growth. Maybe the U.S. should start to limit Its population
growth through economic means. If you believe that some people on welfare have
more kids for an increased welfare check, it is reasonable to believe that the
middle class has more kids for an increased tax break. If we remove the tax
breaks for kids, and actually have a tax increase for having kids with a
graduated rate for having more than 2, it will help to decrease the population
growth. The tax rate should also be an exponential number, have more than 3
and you probably can’t afford it.
So, we should also limit immigration if we want to limit population growth.
There are consequences to limiting immigration such as it limits the best and
brightest that want to come to this country, and also removes a cheaper labor
source, but it also decreases all of the problems associated with growth as
noted above. This year, the world will pass the 7 billion mark after passing
the 6 billion mark in 1999.
Scary stuff, I’ve been concerned about population growth for more than 20 years
and it is why I’m a Neo Social Darwinist – I believe that we have way too many
people on the planet and anything we can do to eliminate some of the dummies,
I’m all for. That is why I’m opposed to mandatory seat belt laws, child car
seats, texting bans, and helmet laws. If you aren’t smart enough to do these
things out of common sense, you probably shouldn’t be reproducing.
Population and population growth has a major negative impact on our quality of
life and natural resources, including cave and karst regions.
G
From: Rod Goke [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Saturday, August 06, 2011 5:51 AM
To: [email protected]; [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Texascavers] where a man can breathe free, and relevance to caves
Regarding Gainesville Florida, Sleaze wrote,
"We don't want no stinking roads either."
Austin tried that for about 2 or 3 decades, during which the attitude of local
"environmentalists" towards roadway construction/expansion was:
Don't build it, and hope they won't come.
They opposed road building on the theory that more roads would encourage more
people to move here. The problem was that people came here anyway, resulting in
severe traffic congestion problems, as bad or worst than those often found in
much larger cities.
Unfortunately, this kind of failure to provide workable long range solutions
often results when people practice superficial environmentalism, addressing
only the local effects and symptoms of population growth while shying away from
any discussion of the underlying causes of these problems. It's not hard to see
why people find this approach tempting. It's relatively easy for activists
groups to drum up support and claim political victories by promoting petty
"feel good" measures with no powerful opposition and little, if any, beneficial
effect. It takes far more courage and perseverance to address the fundamental
underlying population issues, since almost any measure that would really help
to alleviate overpopulation is likely to encounter strong opposition from one
or more influential groups. Different interest groups tend to object to
different measures on various grounds, involving political, religious,
ideological, and/or business interests, but almost any suggested solution is
liable to get you attacked and demonized by someone. Consequently, most groups
with environmental interest prefer to focus on the symptoms and ignore the
cause, as if population growth were an inevitable force of nature, beyond the
control of human beings. Never mind the obvious fact that population growth is
entirely due to human action. How many times have we heard people quote
population growth projections as inevitable facts about our future and then
proceed to talk about how they think we should deal with the consequences of
that growth? Why does no one seriously discuss the possibility of limiting
population growth to prevent undesirable consequences?
If any of you are wondering what this has to do with caves or are tempted to
think of it as "off topic" then think again about the various cave related
environmental and access issues that clearly are "on topic" for Texascavers. A
large portion of these issues, probably most of them, are directly related to
human population. For example, do you care about the effects of development
near caves, including both environmental impacts and the effects of development
on cave access? What do you think drives the demand for that development? Do
you care about the effects on caves of quarrying, mining, or oil and gas
production? What do you think drives the demand for these resources? Do you
care about the quality and quantity of ground water, including that found in
caves? What do you think influences the amount of pollution entering the
aquifer and the amount of water that is pumped from it? Do you care about the
effects of human visitation on caves and about the access restrictions that
sometimes are imposed to limit those effects? What do you think affects the
number of people seeking access? All of these, and undoubtedly more, cave
related issues are directly affected by human population density. If these cave
related effects of population growth are considered "on topic", how can we
possibly dismiss the underlying cause as "off topic", unless, of course, it's
just a cowardly attempt to avoid controversy about a relevant, but potentially
contentious, issue?
Rod
P.S. By the way, Sleaze, I was one of those graduate students who moved from
Gainesville to Austin in 1973 for my first full time job in my profession. I
would not say that "Gainesville is the Austin of Florida", because, although
both are university towns, Austin is much more. Even at that time, Austin was
(and still is) the state capitol, a center for high tech industry, and a
regional music center, attracting musicians from many surrounding states in
addition to Texas. The population of Austin at that time was approximately a
quarter million (much smaller than it is now), but the University of Texas was
so large (about 50,000 students) that it still gave Austin a university town
atmosphere. At that time, I was impressed with the exceptional variety of
influences and activities available in Austin for a city that small. I moved
away from Austin in early '74 and returned in '84, finding that it had grown
surprisingly larger but still was not a bad place to live. Now Austin still has
advantages over many other cities its size, but in my opinion, it has grown far
beyond its optimal size, and quality of life in the entire central Texas region
continues to deteriorate from excessive population growth. I'm sure there are
business interests who, like the purveyors of pyramid schemes, equate
exponential growth with prosperity. For ordinary citizens, however, it means
worse congestion, greater pollution, higher taxes, less freedom, and greater
competition for limited natural resources.
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
Sent: Aug 5, 2011 3:49 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [Texascavers] where a man can breathe free
In a message dated 8/5/2011 4:12:19 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
writes:
If all the people fretting over the numerous environmental and social
problems resulting from overpopulation were to focus instead on the primary
underlying cause, we might reverse this trend and see real progress towards
long range solutions and improving quality of life for future generations
Amen! Here in Hogtown the living is still easy, the moss hangs from the
live oaks and all is well until the Students return. Gainesville is the Austin
of Florida, but the big difference is that there are damned near two
million Texacans in Austin but only about 250,000 gators in the Hogtown metro
area. The reason for that is that we don't want no stinking jobs or new
businesses unless they are directly related to University of Florida biotech
spinoffs. As soon as they become successful they move to Austin taking the
redundant grad students with them. We make it a point to screw every developer
who sticks his head out of a hole. We often lose, but we still cost the
developers millions every time they try. We don't want no stinking roads
either. The bad news is the dawning of the age of biomass. It seems we have way
too many trees, so the plan is to burn them in place of coal. After they
cut down all the trees maybe I'll move to Detroit. I hear there are wide
open spaces out there where a man can breathe free.
Sleaze
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--- Begin Message ---
"Lew Bicking: A Legendary American Cave Explorer." Edited by David W.
Hughes. National Speleological Society; 2011. ISBN: 978-1-879961-40-1.
7 by 10 inches, 324 pages plus plates, hardbound. $36; discounts for
NSS members.
"Solo" Lew Bicking was an enthusiatic and hard-charging caver from his
novice days in 1961 until his early death in a motorcycle accident in
1966. He gave his name to the NSS's annual Lew Bicking Award for the
exploration and mapping of a cave or group of caves. (Originally,
documentation--publishing--was also a requirement, before the secrecy
types got to it.) Bicking was best known for exploration in the East,
especially the Friars Hole Cave System in West Virginia, but he went
west a few times, including for the 1964 NSS convention in Texas and
the 1966 convention in California, after both of which he did some
post-convention caving in Mexico.
David Hughes's recent book on Vertical Bill Cuddington (NSS, 2008) was
written to be read. This book is a compilation that can only be
browsed. It contains what appears to be everything ever written about
Bicking's caving, by Lew or anybody else, mainly trip reports from the
heyday of the Baltimore Grotto News. Included are a number of
obituaries and items concerning the collection of the Lew Bicking Fund
and the creation of the award. There is a section of twenty-nine black-
and-white photos on pages not assigned numbers (shame!). Many of the
articles are well written and interesting, but there are an awful lot
of them. Finding the ones most informative and entertaining to you
will be a matter of supernatural persistence, or luck. My favorite
summing up was written by Squire Lewis on encountering Bicking in
Mexico after the 1966 convention: "Lew's only traveling and survival
equipment consists of a small Kelty pack whose sole contents are the
largest Spanish dictionary every printed--about a 20-pounder--and a
box of Mexican crackers. . . . His only clothes are those he wears,
and he obviously has some warped goal of not taking them off--ever--
for washing or any other purpose. . . . He has gotten all the long way
from Baltimore to California to [Mexico City] with nothing but his
great dictionary and his crackers. We have never seen him spend any
money--not any--he may well not have any. Yet he calmly proceeds
intact through all the chaos of the byways and accomplishes his goals.
He is the true stuff from which cavers are made."--Bill Mixon
----------------------------------------
May the last lawyer be strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
----------------------------------------
You may "reply" to the address this message
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--- Begin Message ---
Readers are reminded that Squire Lewis authored (and Old Man Wisdom
illustrated) a wonderful book titled Chronicles of the Old Reading Grotto. The
passage Bill Mixon quotes about Lew Bicking appears on page 73-74 of that book.
This 1993 work is still in print and has occasionally been available at Texas
caver functions. It's a great read! I commented on the book and about
Squire's passing in a short article for the Texas Caver many years ago. Here
is the text of that article:
Squire
Squire Lewis passed on this last spring. I didn't know about it at
the time and got the news only after all the dust had settled. At the same time
I learned of a piece he had authored called CHRONICLES of the OLD READING
GROTTO which details an incredible odyssey in the summer of 1966. I just read
this work, cover-to-cover; non-stop. It's wonderful! This journey, made with
two companions, spanned almost 17,000 miles coast to coast and Pennsylvania to
Acapulco. It's not the trip that is important, it's the way they did it. It's
how they traveled, what they saw and did and the conclusions they formed
thereby. This is a tale of the shifting values which lead up to the era later
known as "hippie-time." But it's before hippies; before long hair and beads.
It's about a time when questions were being asked about the way in which we
lived, which things were really important, and how we as individuals fit into
the larger puzzle. It's about the realization that suits, ties, and the
"establishment" aren't always right, or at least that they represent only one
way of doing things.
Squire does a wonderful job of describing the era. If you were
there, you'll understand completely. If you weren't, or were a little young
(or old) at these times, you'll still come away with a good feeling as to what
it was all about. In a way, it's almost an anthropological source book. Its a
catalog of most of the things that regular folks never experience. My family
always did things the normal way. On trips, we traveled eight hours in a
normal day, took our meals where there were waiters or at least people in
uniforms, and slept in vermin free hotels. Had it not been for my association
with caves and cavers, I might have completed my life without sleeping the
night in the parking lot at Cueva de Cacahuamilpa or dining in a mosca infested
"restaurant" in San Luis del Cordero, or. . . .
Because of people like Squire, I learned an alternate life style;
another way to view the planet. After 30-odd years, I have yet to meet
people other than cavers who embrace that style, although I suspect that some
of the climbers and rafters may come close, and I imagine that those outside
the U.S. must commonly fall in step. The difference is, in "second-world"
countries, they are born to it in most cases and we, in the U.S., must come to
it somehow. The thing is, if you must have a soft bed and a hot shower and a
"store-bought" meal on each occasion, you'll miss a lot and probably never know
you missed it.
So. . . you ought to buy, or at least read, this classic piece of
caver-oriented literature. It's 146 pages of great reading and wonderful
illustrations by Charlie Loving [who is able to do to society with a cartoon
what Squire did with text].
Squire and I were not friends. Nodding acquaintances is about as
close as we got. That not withstanding, I'll miss him considerably because of
what he represented. As they say in certain other circles upon the death of a
respected elder: "We are diminished."
===Carl Kunath
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----Original Message-----
From: Mixon Bill
Sent: Saturday, August 06, 2011 9:32 AM
To: Cavers Texas
Subject: [Texascavers] book review: Lew Bicking
"Lew Bicking: A Legendary American Cave Explorer." Edited by David W.
Hughes. National Speleological Society; 2011. ISBN: 978-1-879961-40-1.
7 by 10 inches, 324 pages plus plates, hardbound. $36; discounts for
NSS members.
"Solo" Lew Bicking was an enthusiatic and hard-charging caver from his
novice days in 1961 until his early death in a motorcycle accident in
1966. He gave his name to the NSS's annual Lew Bicking Award for the
exploration and mapping of a cave or group of caves. (Originally,
documentation--publishing--was also a requirement, before the secrecy
types got to it.) Bicking was best known for exploration in the East,
especially the Friars Hole Cave System in West Virginia, but he went
west a few times, including for the 1964 NSS convention in Texas and
the 1966 convention in California, after both of which he did some
post-convention caving in Mexico.
David Hughes's recent book on Vertical Bill Cuddington (NSS, 2008) was
written to be read. This book is a compilation that can only be
browsed. It contains what appears to be everything ever written about
Bicking's caving, by Lew or anybody else, mainly trip reports from the
heyday of the Baltimore Grotto News. Included are a number of
obituaries and items concerning the collection of the Lew Bicking Fund
and the creation of the award. There is a section of twenty-nine black-
and-white photos on pages not assigned numbers (shame!). Many of the
articles are well written and interesting, but there are an awful lot
of them. Finding the ones most informative and entertaining to you
will be a matter of supernatural persistence, or luck. My favorite
summing up was written by Squire Lewis on encountering Bicking in
Mexico after the 1966 convention: "Lew's only traveling and survival
equipment consists of a small Kelty pack whose sole contents are the
largest Spanish dictionary every printed--about a 20-pounder--and a
box of Mexican crackers. . . . His only clothes are those he wears,
and he obviously has some warped goal of not taking them off--ever--
for washing or any other purpose. . . . He has gotten all the long way
from Baltimore to California to [Mexico City] with nothing but his
great dictionary and his crackers. We have never seen him spend any
money--not any--he may well not have any. Yet he calmly proceeds
intact through all the chaos of the byways and accomplishes his goals.
He is the true stuff from which cavers are made."--Bill Mixon
----------------------------------------
May the last lawyer be strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
----------------------------------------
You may "reply" to the address this message
came from, but for long-term use, save:
Personal: [email protected]
AMCS: [email protected] or [email protected]
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--- Begin Message ---
"Cave of the Winds Then and Now." Photography by Norman Thompson, text
by Richard Rhinehart. Westcliffe Publishers, Boulder, Colorado; 2011.
ISBN 978-1-56579-650-8. 11 (wide) by 8.5 inches, 112 pages, softbound.
$17.95.
This is a very clever book. The Cave of the Winds in Williams Canyon
at Manitou Springs, Colorado, has a long history as a show cave,
starting in March 1881, and this book was published on the occasion of
its hundred-thirtieth anniversary. It contains about a hundred pairs
of photographs, one in each pair old, from roughly 1880 to 1930, and
one recently taken to match as closely as possible the old scene. The
old photograph are in black-and-white, except a few hand-colored
postcards. The modern photos are of course in color. In addition to
illustrating the development of the cave and its surface facilities,
many are views of the canyon and sights within it, such as the Narrows
and the Temple of Isis, a cave remnant penetrating a small ridge. I
was struck by how much more vegetated the vicinity of the cave looks
in the modern photographs. Evidently the canyon had only begun to
recover even fifty years after a fire tore through it in 1847. Many of
the photos, old and new, are stereographs, providing another possible
use for the stereo viewer that was distributed with the guidebook for
the 2011 NSS convention in Glenwood Springs.
The text consists of a brief historical introduction and long captions
for the photographs. There is a good bit of redundancy, but this is
not bad in a book meant for browsing.--Bill Mixon
----------------------------------------
May the last lawyer be strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
----------------------------------------
You may "reply" to the address this message
came from, but for long-term use, save:
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--- Begin Message ---
Thanks for the book reviews, Bill. Very informative, e.g., I did not know the story about Lew Bicking. The description by Squire is
priceless.-- Logan
On 8/6/2011 9:32 AM, Mixon Bill wrote:
"Lew Bicking: A Legendary American Cave Explorer." Edited by David W. Hughes. National Speleological Society; 2011. ISBN: 978-1-879961-40-1. 7
by 10 inches, 324 pages plus plates, hardbound. $36; discounts for NSS members.
"Solo" Lew Bicking was an enthusiatic and hard-charging caver from his novice days in 1961 until his early death in a motorcycle accident in
1966. He gave his name to the NSS's annual Lew Bicking Award for the exploration and mapping of a cave or group of caves. (Originally,
documentation--publishing--was also a requirement, before the secrecy types got to it.) Bicking was best known for exploration in the East,
especially the Friars Hole Cave System in West Virginia, but he went west a few times, including for the 1964 NSS convention in Texas and the
1966 convention in California, after both of which he did some post-convention caving in Mexico.
David Hughes's recent book on Vertical Bill Cuddington (NSS, 2008) was written to be read. This book is a compilation that can only be
browsed. It contains what appears to be everything ever written about Bicking's caving, by Lew or anybody else, mainly trip reports from the
heyday of the Baltimore Grotto News. Included are a number of obituaries and items concerning the collection of the Lew Bicking Fund and the
creation of the award. There is a section of twenty-nine black-and-white photos on pages not assigned numbers (shame!). Many of the articles
are well written and interesting, but there are an awful lot of them. Finding the ones most informative and entertaining to you will be a
matter of supernatural persistence, or luck. My favorite summing up was written by Squire Lewis on encountering Bicking in Mexico after the
1966 convention: "Lew's only traveling and survival equipment consists of a small Kelty pack whose sole contents are the largest Spanish
dictionary every printed--about a 20-pounder--and a box of Mexican crackers. . . . His only clothes are those he wears, and he obviously has
some warped goal of not taking them off--ever--for washing or any other purpose. . . . He has gotten all the long way from Baltimore to
California to [Mexico City] with nothing but his great dictionary and his crackers. We have never seen him spend any money--not any--he may
well not have any. Yet he calmly proceeds intact through all the chaos of the byways and accomplishes his goals. He is the true stuff from
which cavers are made."--Bill Mixon
----------------------------------------
May the last lawyer be strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
----------------------------------------
You may "reply" to the address this message
came from, but for long-term use, save:
Personal: [email protected]
AMCS: [email protected] or [email protected]
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--- Begin Message ---
Rod of Austin writes:
“Regarding Gainesville Florida, Sleaze wrote,
"We don't want no stinking roads either."
Austin tried that for about 2 or 3 decades, during which the attitude of
local "environmentalists" towards roadway construction/expansion was:
Don't build it, and hope they won't come.
They opposed road building on the theory that more roads would encourage
more people to move here. The problem was that people came here anyway,
resulting in severe traffic congestion problems, as bad or worst than those
often found in much larger cities.
Unfortunately, this kind of failure to provide workable long range
solutions often results when people practice superficial environmentalism,
addressing only the local effects and symptoms of population growth while
shying
away from any discussion of the underlying causes of these problems. It's not
hard to see why people find this approach tempting. It's relatively easy
for activists groups to drum up support and claim political victories by
promoting petty "feel good" measures with no powerful opposition and little,
if any, beneficial effect. It takes far more courage and perseverance to
address the fundamental underlying population issues, since almost any measure
that would really help to alleviate overpopulation is likely to encounter
strong opposition from one or more influential groups. Different interest
groups tend to object to different measures on various grounds, involving
political, religious, ideological, and/or business interests, but almost any
suggested solution is liable to get you attacked and demonized by someone.
Consequently, most groups with environmental interest prefer to focus on
the symptoms and ignore the cause, as if population growth were an inevitable
force of nature, beyond the control of human beings. Never mind the
obvious fact that population growth is entirely due to human action. How many
times have we heard people quote population growth projections as inevitable
facts about our future and then proceed to talk about how they think we
should deal with the consequences of that growth? Why does no one seriously
discuss the possibility of limiting population growth to prevent undesirable
consequences?”
Rod:
Obviously the congestion in Austin isn't bad enough! Overpopulation may be
the root of all evil, but roads are the vascular system that enables the
evil to metastasize.
As for how to address the root cause, I've done my part and have no kids.
Very few of my friends have kids either. We are an evolutionary dead end.
Intelligence is an experiment that failed and that has long term evolutionary
consequences. The inheritors are those stupid enough or religious enough
(there I go being redundant again!) to simply act on their instincts without
considering the consequences. Yes, Walmart shoppers and their conspecifics
elsewhere are inherently inferior, brainless betas. They will inherit a
degraded world suitable only for themselves and their fellow cockroaches. All
the advances of the last several thousand years will be lost upon them.
Here in America we have already forgotten how to do or build anything. Our
degenerate descendants will be like the subhuman Tasmanians who lost even the
use of fire. Our collective amnesia will be unimportant because there will
be no resources, no power, no metal, no wood, no food, and no water.
Cannibalism was a prominent behavior of early humans and it will be again in
the
future. If you need an example look no further than the Congo where the
past and future have coalesced into the present, a place where savage bands
of Hutus consume pigmies as a readily available form of bush meat.
There is a solution but we won't pursue it because it isn't "fair", and
that is totalitarian State control over reproduction. Not like in China which
has a one child policy but is otherwise egalitarian. What is needed is a no
child policy for the betas, along with specific exceptions made for the
tiny percentage of alphas who qualify for the breeding program. That's right,
we need strict eugenics directed by the Overlords. For those of you who
have forgotten or spend too much time in church "natural selection" is the
principle mechanism behind the evolutionary process. The problem is that it
is random and directionless. When humans do the choosing it is called
domestication, and human directed evolution has worked quite well with the
exception of the Chihuahua. To make it work for humans will require that we
bury
Hitler's ghost and make our selection of breeders be based upon science
rather than racism, nationalism, or ideology. Obviously this will never happen
under a democratic regime. It will require the use of force, and the only
moral considerations should be those of means, not ends.
The good news is that evolution is an inexorable process. As we tinker with
our genome the good work of coevolution will continue apace. Roads won't
be a problem for the newly emerging species because there will be no cars on
them. The possums of tomorrow will have free sway to cross the way as
sediments slowly accumulate on the asphalt (chickens won't make the cut).
Cockroaches with their adaptability and superior intelligence will diversify
into new and unimaginable forms. Will our descendants think of them as
succulent "land lobsters" or as rivals? Even the coastline will recover as the
underwater rubble of coastal cities serves as the substrate for new reefs. The
rich warm seas will bloom with CO2 loving algae and the acidified waters
will erode the calcium from the rubble, thus setting the stage for the
sequestration of carbon in the limestone deposits of tomorrow. The few
remaining
humans will worship Oztotl by throwing all their defective offspring into
the well, then all will be well.
Sleaze
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
El Explorador, Periódico Digital Espeleológico, a monthly web magazine
from Cuba, can be found at http://www.geda.pinarte.cult.cu/html/explorador.htm
. Issues 1 through 71, for May 2004 through March 2010, are currently
on the site. Nicely done, all in HTML. The only problem is that each
issue is one very long page, impossible to print. Even if you want to
print just one article, you'll find illustrations broken over printed
page boundaries. The editor casts a wide net, and there is a lot of
material only vaguely related to caves, such as general archaeology or
geology.--Mixon
----------------------------------------
May the last lawyer be strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
----------------------------------------
You may "reply" to the address this message
came from, but for long-term use, save:
Personal: [email protected]
AMCS: [email protected] or [email protected]
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