Turbulence

I snapped this during our vacation on Gotland this spring. Except for the crop and a little tweak of the colours I did no edits. Sometimes a little turbulence in the air is a good thing.

Significant figures

I have a problem with the tv show Biggest looser. They calculate the weight loss for the contestants as a percentage based on measurements in whole pounds. So a person that has gone from 310 to 305 pounds has lost 5 pounds => 5/310=1.61%. And then they use this number to eliminate people. It is just plain wrong to get a number with three significant figures from a division that contains a number with only one significant figure. The true answer to the above example should hence be 2%. They really ought to buy a more precise scale and learn some maths.

Change

I thought that a little change was due...

Shit

Another thing that happens in the woods bother me. It also involves stupid people like in my previous rant where someone destroyed my lens hood that I dropped, found and then left hanging on a tree in the same forest that inspired this little rant.
It is shit. Dog shit to be more precise. Having had dogs all the time growing up I am fairly familiar with the subject, but I find that I am a little bit undecided. I mean, if a dog shits on the streets you pick it up - no problem there. But if a dog shits on a path in the forest I do not really know. To just leave it for someone to step in is not acceptable. I think it is quite all-right to just push it out of the way with a stick so that no one would have to step in it, it will be gone pretty soon so no real harm is done. To pick it up with a plastic bag and throw it in the trash is also an option, but I must say that due to the extremely low density of dog poo trash cans out there in the woods I would be a bit hesitant to do that.
But there is a fourth option - to pick it up with a plastic bag and then throw the bag a few feet away from the path. It is just so fucking stupid. I mean I get annoyed of all littering, I have been so darn close to confront people that I see throw their crap on the streets like if it were their own personal trash can, my blood has boiled and I have wanted to just cut their fucking heads off with some choice words (I have only been held back by the fact that I live where I live and hence would most likely have been stabbed or the like by the perpetrator...), but to put something bio-degradable into a plastic bag and then throw it where everyone will see it for years to come is so darn stupid that I  [now I am so worked up that I am hyperventilating, maybe this sentence ought to end soon so that I wont pass out] that I can not even begin to describe it.

Sheos

Attended a training camp this weekend. It was great fun, hard work and a cheep way to up-grade my shoes. I was one of the last people leaving and I could not find my own shoes anywhere. Instead there was a pair very similar to mine: same brand, almost the same model, half a size larger, and a lot less worn. I could see no other option than to adopt them and treat them like if they were my own.

Being the fool

This Friday when I was picking the last of the mushrooms in the forest closest to me I found a lens hood. I was a bit amazed that it was very similar to one of mine. I thought it over and concluded that yes - it was similar, but it was definitely not mine. So I hung it on a tree next to the path close to where I found it and felt good about it, maybe the owner would find it and feel good about not having to spend a ridiculous amount of money for a little piece of plastic that is not a crucial part of the lens but still something that you want to have so that you can use it to its full extent.

I thought nothing of it during the weekend (during which I saw two elks) but come Monday my mind started to nag at me. I took a look around and of course I could not locate the lens hood that looked very much like the one I found in the woods. Fuck I thought, I am so stupid. Of course it was mine, the one I found. Of course, I mean, who else would walk around at that particular spot, with a lens similar to mine?

I quickly got mine and Tages stuff together and rushed out of the apartment. During the quick trot I calculated (maybe estimated would be a better word for what I did) the odds of what would happen next; At first I thought that there would be a 50% chance that it would be where I left it, a 20% chance that it would be on the ground close-by but still intact, a 10% chance that it would be close-by but broken, and the rest that it would be gone forever.

The closer I came the chances of me finding it intact grew smaller and smaller. When I saw the tree and that it was not there I was not very surprised. I later found it some fifty meters away in the mud, broken into four pieces. I am quite amazed of how the mind works for some people. Why would you, if you find a thing in the woods, a thing that someone clearly has found already and put up in a place where the original owner would be able to find it, a thing that is clearly not crap, pick that thing up and destroy it? What do you gain from that? On the other hand, I can not really say that my own brain worked particularly well during this episode either.