Peter Tosh – Mystic Man—-a song that held up over time…J.R.
I’m a Mystic Man
I’m just a Mystic Man
I man don’t
I don’t drink no champagne
No I don’t
And I man don’t
I don’t sniff them cocaine
Choke brain
I man don’t
No I don’t
Don’t take a morphine
Dangerous
I man don’t
I don’t take no heroin
No no no
(CHORUS)
‘Cause I’m a man of the past
And I’m livin’ in the present
And I’m walking in the future
Stepping in the future
Man of the past
And I’m livin’ the present
And I’m walking in the future
I’m just a mystic man
Got to be a mystic man
I man don’t
Eat up your fried chicken
Not lickin’
I man don’t
Eat up them frankfurters
Garbage
I man don’t
Eat down the hamburger
can’t do that
I man don’t
Drink pink, blue, yellow, green soda
(CHORUS)
Just a mystic man
Got to be a mystic man
I man don’t
No I don’t
Play fools’ games on Saturday
And I man don’t
No I don’t
Congregate on a Sunday
Such a mystic man
Just a mystic man
(CHORUS)
Just a mystic man
Got to be a mystic man
New Study: Climate Scientists Overwhelmingly Agree Global Warming Is Real and Our Fault By Phil Plait | Posted Friday, May 17, 2013, at 8:00 AM
A new study has just come out that looked at nearly 12,000 professional scientific journal papers about global warming, and found that—of the papers expressing a stance on global warming—97 percent endorse both the reality of global warming and the fact that humans are causing it.
Ninety-seven percent. That’s what we call a “consensus”, folks.
The study was clever. They found the papers by searching on the terms “global warming” and “global climate change”. Once they compiled the list of papers, they looked at the abstracts (a short summary of the results scientists put at the top of their papers) to see if the paper itself talked about the causes of global warming. About 4000 of the papers did so. That may seem like a smallish fraction, but most papers analyze measurements and climate effects, not thecause of global warming (like most astronomical papers on, say, galaxies don’t discuss how galaxies form, but focus on their structure, content, and so on—also, because there is such a strong consensus on warming, scientists don’t generally feel the need to state the obvious in their abstracts).
Examining those 4000 papers, the study authors determined that 97.1 percent of them endorsed the consensus that humans are causing global warming. And here’s where they did the clever bit: They contacted 8500 authors of the papers in question and asked them to self-rate those papers. They got responses from 1200 authors (a nice fraction), and, using the same criteria as the study, it turns out 97.2 percent of the authors endorse the consensus.
That’s a remarkable agreement! And it’s no surprise. There have been several studies showing almost exactly the same thing. This new one is interesting due to the methodology, and the fact that it’s so robust.
So, the bottom line: The vast majority of scientists who conduct climatological research and publish their results in professional journals say humans are the cause of global warming. There is essentially no controversy among actual climate scientists about this.
Of course, if you read the Wall Street Journal or the contrarian blogs, you might think the controversy among scientists is bigger. But you’ll find that the vast majority of people writing those articles, or who are quoted in them, are not climatologists. You’ll also find many, including politicians so vocally denying global warming, are heavily funded by fossil fuel interests, or lead institutes funded that way.
Because deniers tend to go to the OpEd pages and TV, rather than science journals, the public perception is skewed in their favor; people think this is a bigger controversy than it is. The only controversy here is a manufactured one; made up by people who are basing it on ideology, not facts, evidence, and science. That’s not just my opinion; that statement itself is backed up byfacts, evidence, and science.
Global warming is real. Climate change is happening. Carbon dioxide in the air is increasing, andis at a higher level than it has been for the past three million years. That carbon dioxide is increasingly heating us up: we are warming at a rate faster than in the past 11,000 years, and most likely far longer than that.
And it’s our fault. It’s well past time we do something about it, and we need to get past this false controversy. For more information, go to The Consensus Project, and see what we can do about it.
Are Buddhist Monks Involved In Myanmar’s Violence?
In the Western stereotype, Buddhists are meditating pacifists who strive to keep their distance from worldly passions. But last month, more than 40 people were killed in fighting between Buddhists and Muslims in the central Burmese town of Meiktila. Witnesses say some Buddhist monks joined in the violence, while others tried to stop it.
One prominent monk in particular has been blamed for being behind it.
U Wirathu, 45, is head of the Masoeyein monastery in Myanmar’s second-largest city, Mandalay, just up the highway from Meiktila. Wirathu is considered a talented scholar of Buddhist scriptures in the ancient Pali language, which gives him authority among Buddhists.
On a recent day, he sat in the middle of a large hall, full of Buddhist imagery and pictures of other monks. Wirathu is a slight figure, clad in saffron-colored robes. He says he was in Meiktila during the violence, and was trying to stop it.
“We spoke to the crowds to try to control the situation,” he says in a steady voice. “We assured them of their safety. We told them we intended to protect their lives and homes and asked them to join us.”
Wirathu acknowledges he’s a Buddhist nationalist. But he says he’s just defending his nation and his religion against attacks by outsiders.
“The Burmese race has been insulted,” he argues. “The Buddhist religion has been attacked, and our country has been trespassed. These are the origins of our nationalism.”
Heroic Theatergoer Smashes Cell Phone, Gets Thrown Out—–YEA!!!!!! J.R.
We can’t count the number of times we’ve wanted to enact vengeance on some inconsiderate audience member whose cell phone goes off during a performance. But, like most people, we just bottle that fury up deep down inside and take it out on the break room vending machine later. Not Kevin Williamson. Last nightthe National Review writer was in attendance at the marvelous new musical Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 when one theatergoer’s incessant cell phone use finally drove him over the edge… into vigilantism.
Although each table is explicitly told that photography and cell phone use is strictly prohibited during the performance, the people seated around Williamson were, he says, unbearable. “They were carrying on a steady conversation throughout entire show,” Williamson, who also writes a theater column for New Criterion, tells us. “They had been quite loud and obnoxious the entire time. There were two groups, one to the left and one to the right who were being loud and disruptive.”
During intermission, Williamson’s date complained to the theater’s management, but he says he didn’t personally witness the theater managers admonish the disruptive audience members. And once the performance resumed, the woman sitting to Williamson’s right on his bench would not, he says, stop using her cell phone. “It looked like she was Googling or something,” Williamson tells us. “So I leaned over and told her it was distracting and told her to put it away. She responded, ‘So don’t look.’ “
Blood boiling, Williamson says he then asked her, sarcastically, “whether there had been a special exemption for her about not using her phone during the play. She told me to mind my own business, and so I took the phone out of her hands. I meant to throw it out the side door, but it hit some curtains instead. I guess my aim’s not as good as it should be.” Asked if the phone was damaged, Williamson says, “It had to be; I threw it a pretty good distance.”
According to Williamson, the woman then slapped him in the face and, after failing to find her phone, stormed out. Soon the show’s security director asked to “have a word” with Williamson, and they stepped out into the lobby. “I told him I would be happy to leave,” Williamson recalls. “They tried to keep me there. He said the lady was talking about filing charges. So I waited around for a bit, but it seemed to be taking a while. He did try to physically keep me in, and was standing in the door blocking me, telling me I couldn’t leave. I inquired as to whether he was a police officer and I was under arrest, and since I wasn’t, I left.”
A publicist for the production did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But if the cell phone user decides to press charges, Williamson says he’s willing to face her in court. “I doubt that will happen, but if it does, that’ll be fun. If I have to spend a night in jail, I’ll spend a night in jail. I don’t want to suggest I’m Henry David Thoreau protesting the Mexican-American War, but I’ll do a day in jail if I have to.”
Why Basketball Won’t Leave Phil Jackson Alone
Phil Jackson, the former coach and player who won 13 N.B.A. championships.
Everyone wants to know what Phil Jackson is doing.
In the absence of data, they are happy to speculate. The first time I met Jackson, at the end of April, rumor had it that he might become the coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers. (Cleveland hired Mike Brown instead.) When we met again, a week later, the rumor was that he was maybe going to be an executive for the Toronto Raptors. While that rumor was still circulating, a new rumor popped up that he had taken a job with the Detroit Pistons. (Later it emerged that he agreed only to help the team, whose owner is a friend, choose its next head coach.) Then a rumor broke that the Brooklyn Nets were after him as a possible coach and/or president and/or part-owner.
My plan was to write a portrait of Phil Jackson after basketball: to capture the full mundanity of his post-N.B.A. existence. It became clear very quickly, however, that such a thing was impossible. There is no Phil Jackson after basketball. Our first meeting was at his favorite diner, an unpretentious, inexpensive place decorated with framed jigsaw puzzles of Norman Rockwell paintings. We chatted for a while about upstate New York, where Jackson used to live, and the rumors about his current job prospects, but before long he was giving me detailed scouting reports of current N.B.A. players, then borrowing my pen so he could diagram a play on his place mat. At our second meal, at the little cafe attached to the upscale grocery store, I asked Jackson — innocently enough, I thought — how the N.B.A. has evolved since he first joined it as a player 46 years ago. He started unfolding his napkin to draw another diagram — whereupon I stopped him, went out to my car and brought back a stack of fresh paper. I expected him to sketch maybe three or four representative schemes: the motion offense of his 1970s Knicks, the running game of the 1980s Showtime Lakers, his 1990s Bulls’ signature triangle offense, the screen-roll plays popular today. Instead, Jackson spent more than an hour and a half drawing, in great and sometimes bewildering detail, what turned out to be more than 20 sketches — a mess of circles and arrows and hash marks that represented, no doubt, an infinitesimal fraction of his total basketball knowledge. He worked, the whole time, with the joyful absorption of someone solving a particularly excellent crossword puzzle. The drawings included the offensive sets of some of his biggest rivals — Jerry Sloan’s Jazz, Rick Adelman’s Kings, Mike D’Antoni’s Suns — as well as such novelties as the Horst Pinholster Pinwheel Offense, an elegant but obscure remnant of the 1950s in which everyone without the ball is sucked into a continuous vortex of motion. Jackson taught me how to get Shaquille O’Neal open in the post when the defense wants to double-team him. He drew Michael Jordan’s final two plays against the Jazz in 1998, including the iconic jump shot that won the Bulls their sixth trophy. In response to a sloppy playoff game he saw on TV the night before, Jackson showed me how to eliminate the possibility of a turnover on an inbounds pass.
.
Uranium Drive-In: A Documentary
Water Trapped For 1.5 Billion Years Could Hold Ancient Life
This map, from the United States Geological Survey, shows the age of bedrock in different regions of North America. Scientists found ancient water in bedrock north of Lake Superior. This region, colored red, was formed more than 2.5 billion years ago.
Scientists have discovered water that has been trapped in rock for more than a billion years. The water might contain microbes that evolved independently from the surface world, and it’s a finding that gives new hope to the search for life on other planets.
The water samples came from holes drilled by gold miners near the small town of Timmins, Ontario, about 350 miles north of Toronto. Deep in the Canadian bedrock, miners drill holes and collect samples. Sometimes they hit pay dirt; sometimes they hit water, which seeps out from tiny crevices in the rock.
Recently, a team of scientists (who had been investigating water samples from other mines) approached the miners and asked them for fluid from newly drilled boreholes.
.
Time-Lapse Video: The Rising Slow-Motion Dance of the Eclipsed Sun and Moon in Australia
The rising eclipse; part of an astonishing time-lapse video.
This eclipse was from last week, May 10, when the Moon passed directly in front of the Sun. The Moon’s orbit is elliptical, and it happened to be at a point where it is farther away than average when the eclipse occurred. Usually, the Moon and Sun are about the same size in the sky, but in this case the Moon’s added distance made it a bit smaller, and it couldn’t completely cover the Sun’s face. It left a ring, or annulus, of Sun circling the Moon’s silhouetted disk.
There were three major effects playing together to make this cosmic ballet so amazing. One is simply the daily turning of the Earth, so that we see the Moon and Sun rising. The second is atmospheric effects distorting the shape of the two as they rose. Near the horizon, this effect is very pronounced; it acts to flatten objects, so as they rise they look like they stretch out into their normal shape.
The third is the slowest, but most amazing of all. The Moon is orbiting the Earth, and that motion, as seen in this video, is in almost the opposite direction of the Sun and Moon rising. So it looks like the Sun is rising a hair faster than the Moon, changing the phase and shape of the eclipse. The eclipse goes from a full ring to a crescent, the horns pointing downward, shrinking as the two rise at different paces.
The combination—sunrise, vertical expansion, and changing phase—becomes a gorgeous and smoothly surreal view of two of our nearest celestial neighbors. We see them almost every day, and even those of us who observe and appreciate them all the time will stand and gawk in awe when they work together in this way.
A Long Ride Toward a New China — “Not even a wise man can be wise all the time.”
Every summer, the 59-year-old Chinese blogger Zhang Shihe rides his bicycle thousands of miles to the plateaus, deserts and hinterlands of North Central China. In this Op-Doc video, we meet Mr. Zhang, known to his many followers online as “Tiger Temple,” as he goes to great lengths to document the stories of struggling rural villagers whose voices are seldom heard in China’s state-monitored media.
In a country with one of the most sophisticated media and Internet censorship systems, Mr. Zhang and other bloggers must exercise great caution when writing about politically sensitive content — often skirting the label “citizen reporter.” But as Mr. Zhang told me during filming: “If they want to get you, they can find a way. Not even a wise man can be wise all the time.”
In 2010, he was taken by the police and put under house arrest for 10 days, during the country’s annual parliamentary meetings. News spread quickly. That day he received more than 2,000 text messages — good wishes poured in from concerned friends and readers who supported his efforts to help flooded villagers, defrauded farmers and the Beijing homeless. On this day, he said, he “felt the true power of the Internet.”
In 2012, Mr. Zhang was forced by the police to pack up his Beijing apartment and leave the city indefinitely. He now lives and blogs in the city of Xi’an with his elderly mother. As the summer months near, he prepares to set off on his seventh year of grueling bicycle trips deep into the countryside to continue his reporting.
When I asked Mr. Zhang why he continued his work, despite the persistent risks and challenges, he replied: “My blog is about hope. Having hope one story at a time.”
<nyt_author_id>
Stephen Maing is a filmmaker based in New York City. This Op-Doc expands on themes explored in his recent feature-length documentary “High Tech, Low Life,” which made its debut at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival and will have its television premiere this summer on the PBS series “POV.”
Pine River Valley Bank is proud to show the work of Brenda Grajeda and her one woman show “72 degrees and Sunny”
“My desire is to express in the abstract the imagery I see in nature; patterns, surface elements, space and the seasonal shifts of vibrancy”
DURANGO, COLORADO
.
The Emerald Mile The Epic Story Of The Fastest Ride In History Though The Heart Of The Grand Canyon
The 1983 Colorado River flood threatened the region with a catastrophic dam failure and prompted oarsman Kenton Grua into a near-suicidal effort. He sought to navigate the turbulent waters of the Emerald Mile on a small wooden dory to achieve a world speed record.
Host Rachel Martin talks to writer Kevin Fedarko about his new book, The Emerald Mile, which tells the harrowing story of three men who ride the flooded Colorado River through the Grand Canyon.
Who Would Kill a Monk Seal?
The Hawaiian monk seal has wiry whiskers and the deep, round eyes of an apologetic child. The animals will eat a variety of fish and shellfish, or turn over rocks for eel and octopus, then haul out on the beach and lie there most of the day, digesting. On the south side of Kauai one afternoon, I saw one sneeze in its sleep: its convex body shuddered, then spilled again over the sand the way a raw, boneless chicken breast will settle on a cutting board. The seals can grow to seven feet long and weigh 450 pounds. They are adorable, but also a little gross: the Zach Galifianakises of marine mammals.
Monk seals are easy targets. After the Polynesians landed in Hawaii, about 1,500 years ago, the animals mostly vanished, slaughtered for meat or oil or scared off by the settlers’ dogs. But the species quietly survived in the Leeward Islands, northwest of the main Hawaiian chain — a remote archipelago, including Laysan Island, Midway and French Frigate Shoals, which, for the most part, only Victorian guano barons and the military have seen fit to settle. There are now about 900 monk seals in the Leewards, and the population has been shrinking for 25 years, making the seal among the world’s most imperiled marine mammals. The monk seal was designated an endangered species in 1976. Around that time, however, a few monk seals began trekking back into the main Hawaiian Islands — “the mains” — and started having pups. These pioneers came on their own, oblivious to the sprawling federal project just getting under way to help them. Even now, recovering the species is projected to cost $378 million and take 54 years.
As monk seals spread through the mains and flourished there, they became tourist attractions and entourage-encircled celebrities. Now when a seal appears on a busy beach, volunteers with the federal government’s “Monk Seal Response Network” hustle out with stakes and fluorescent tape to erect an exclusionary “S.P.Z.” around the snoozing animal — a “seal protection zone.” Then they stand watch in the heat for hours to keep it from being disrupted while beachgoers gush and point.
But the seals’ appearance has not been universally appreciated. The animals have been met by many islanders with a convoluted mix of resentment and spite. This fury has led to what the government is calling a string of “suspicious deaths.” But spend a little time in Hawaii, and you come to recognize these deaths for what they are — something loaded and forbidding. A word that came to my mind was “assassination.”
‘
An Old Sad Story About ‘Fat City” (Aspen) in the 70′s
Claudine Longet: Aspen’s Femme Fatale
By Robert Chalmers
Claudine Longet left France in pursuit of the American dream. She found it as a chanteuse, actress and socialite. Then, in 1976, she was accused of killing her lover, the skiing legend Spider Sabich. But it was the outcome of her trial in the high-living haunt of Hunter S Thompson that really shocked the nation.
“Claudine who?”
Just for a moment I assumed that the journalist sitting at his keyboard in the front office of the Aspen Times had to be joking. Exactly how many aspects of Claudine Longet’s extraordinary life could have passed him by? Her performance as the female lead, opposite Peter Sellers, in Blake Edwards’ 1968 film The Party? The mercilessly derisive song “Claudine”, written about her by the Rolling Stones? Her close friendship with Bobby Kennedy, whose company she was in at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on the night of his shooting, on 5 June 1968?
Ronald Reagan once called Williams’ voice a “national treasure”. (While I was in Aspen in August last year, Williams was in hospital, combating the terminal stages of cancer.) No such claims have ever been made for Longet, although there is a distinctive and oddly haunting quality to her breathy, girlish renditions of songs such as the Beatles’ Here, There And Everywhere and Good Day Sunshine.
Another thing you’d have assumed any Aspenite would be aware of was the moment, on 21 March 1976, when a .22 in Longet’s hand discharged a single bullet from close range, killing her partner, champion skier Spider Sabich, in the luxury chalet they shared on the edge of town.
It’s certainly acceptable – some might say desirable – for a female icon to radiate a sense of recklessness and danger. But in Longet’s case, the events of that Sunday afternoon shifted the emphasis so firmly from femme to fatale that, even now, many have not forgiven her.
“She is still widely detested in Aspen,” one source told me.
Vladimir “Spider” Sabich had won the slalom at the World Cup in 1968 and the US championships in 1971 and 1972, but his huge popularity transcended the world of professional skiing. When he was killed, aged 31, the handsome Sabich was one of America’s most widely venerated sporting heroes. He was the model for fellow Californian Robert Redford’s character in Michael Ritchie’s 1969 film Downhill Racer and endorsed a wide range of products, from cosmetics to coffee. His shooting remains the most incredible story that the Aspen Times has carried in the modern era, even if you include the 2005 suicide of the writer Hunter S Thompson in nearby Woody Creek: that last death, very sadly, was more predictable. Only a serious back injury sustained when he was approaching the peak of his career (fearlessness was perceived to be his greatest weakness) prevented Sabich from becoming one of the best-known American sporting legends of all time. Known for his charm, generosity and humour, the Californian effortlessly excelled in every area of life that most young American men openly aspired to, with the significant exception of monogamy.
But it wasn’t her role in Sabich’s violent death that secured Longet’s unique place in the history of American justice, so much as her trial and subsequent punishment. Despite admitting that she was holding the gun when it killed Sabich in his bathroom, Longet, who said the weapon went off by accident, was charged not with homicide but with reckless manslaughter. She would eventually be sentenced to 30 days in Aspen’s Pitkin County Jail, a term to commence on a date of her own choosing. Beforesentencing, her defence co-attorney Ronald Austin had reportedly said that he hoped Longet would escape with a fine.
One reliable Aspen source told me that, shortly after Sabich’s death, an acquaintance had been obliged to help dissuade a third party from taking out a contract on Longet.
There are certain traumas so intense that they can permeate the DNA of a place or an institution, altering and defining the way it is perceived for decades to come, and affecting future generations whose awareness of the event may be vague or nonexistent. It might sound curious to compare the Longet shooting to the Munich air crash, and yet, just as that latter tragedy helped galvanise the ambition, world following and European focus of Manchester United, so the legacy of the Longet affair had significant and enduring consequences for Aspen. The case was crucial to the development of the Colorado town’s now famous reputation as a place that polices itself – not by orthodox means, but through liberal, consensual tolerance, a policy mainly orchestrated by its world-famous, recently retired sheriff, Bob Braudis. As a young deputy back in 1977, Braudis had the job of taking Longet her breakfast in jail.
………..READ MORE ‘FAT CITY’………..
Heat-Trapping Gas Passes Milestone, Raising Fears
The average carbon dioxide reading surpassed 400 parts per million at the research facility atop the Mauna Loa volcano on the island of Hawaii for the 24 hours that ended at 8 p.m. on Thursday.
The level of the most important heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide, has passed a long-feared milestone, scientists reported Friday, reaching a concentration not seen on the earth for millions of years.
Scientific instruments showed that the gas had reached an average daily level above 400 parts per million — just an odometer moment in one sense, but also a sobering reminder that decades of efforts to bring human-produced emissions under control are faltering.
The best available evidence suggests the amount of the gas in the air has not been this high for at least three million years, before humans evolved, and scientists believe the rise portends large changes in the climate and the level of the sea.
“It symbolizes that so far we have failed miserably in tackling this problem,” said Pieter P. Tans, who runs the monitoring program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that reported the new reading.
Ralph Keeling, who runs another monitoring program at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, said a continuing rise could be catastrophic. “It means we are quickly losing the possibility of keeping the climate below what people thought were possibly tolerable thresholds,” he said.
Virtually every automobile ride, every plane trip and, in most places, every flip of a light switch adds carbon dioxide to the air, and relatively little money is being spent to find and deploy alternative technologies.
.
James Cotton: ‘The Voice Is Gone, But The Wind Is Still There’
James Cotton is now in his 69th year of performing. The latest album by the Mississippi-born, Chicago based bluesman is called Cotton Mouth Man.
Conjure up a list of all time great blues harmonica players, and high up on it, you’ll see the name James Cotton.
Cotton’s music begins at the source: He was born in Tunica, Mississippi and started playing harp at the age of 9, learning directly from Sonny Boy Williamson II. He eventually made his way to Chicago, where he played for a dozen years in Muddy Waters‘ band before he struck out on his own.
James Cotton is now in his 69th year of performing. Throat cancer has captured his singing voice, but his harmonica continues to wail. Or, as he tells it: “The voice is gone, but the wind’s still there.”
Cotton’s latest album on Alligator Records is called Cotton Mouth Man. It features guest appearances by — among others — Gregg Allman, Delbert McClinton and Keb’ Mo’. NPR’s Scott Simon spoke with James Cotton and Keb’ Mo’ about making the new album; click the audio link on this page to hear their conversation.
.
A Drone’s-Eye View of Nature
Studying Birds, With a Drone’s Help: Drone technology, developed for warfare, is now being used to study the natural world. In Colorado, sandhill cranes are counted with a small drone called the Raven.
Monte Vista National Wildlife Refuge, Colo. — An electric whir filled the air of this high desert valley as Jeff Sloan, a cartographer for the United States Geological Survey, hurled a small remote-controlled airplane into the sky. The plane, a four-and-a-half-pound AeroVironment Raven, dipped; then its plastic propeller whined and pulled it into the sky.
There, at an altitude of 400 feet, the Raven skimmed back and forth, taking thousands of high-resolution photographs over a wetland teeming with ducks, geese and sandhill cranes.
The Raven, with its 55-inch wingspan, looks like one of those radio-controlled planes beloved of hobbyists. But its sophisticated video uplink and computer controls give it away as a small unmanned aerial system, better known as a drone. Drone technology, which has become a staple of military operations, is now drawing scientists with its ability to provide increasingly cheaper, safer and more accurate and detailed assessments of the natural world.
“This is really cutting edge for us,” said Jim Dubovsky, a migratory-bird biologist with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, which is responsible for the health of more than a thousand bird species.
Designed to monitor enemy positions from afar, the early Ravens, from about 2005, which cost $250,000 per system, were slated for destruction when an Army colonel thought they might be better used for scientific research and were donated to the Geological Survey. They were retrofitted for civilian life with new cameras and other gauges. Their first noncombat mission was counting sandhill cranes.
.
Jerry Roberts
