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I've gone camping or hiking at a number of these national parks and the reality is -- they're not always that free of trash and kept well maintained, even when they have a full government staff.

I'm not saying it's a great situation having trash cans that aren't getting emptied for visitors right now ... But volunteers have already taken it upon themselves to do some of that in a few parks. It's not like you need special training that comes with the job of "park ranger" to be able to do it!

I live right by part of the C&O Canal:

https://www.nps.gov/choh/index...

This thing is over 180 miles long, and most people I know who ride horses or bicycle through it will tell you they've almost never seen a government employee doing any cleanup or maintenance work on it. People in my town are regularly organizing small groups on weekends to walk along a section of it and pick up any cans, bottles or other trash they find -- because we really don't EXPECT to wait for some Federal employee to keep it nice for us. It's a net benefit to our community to have it nearby, so we can attract business from people traveling along it who stop for a meal or even to stay overnight.

The mass media is trying to sound the alarm of how horrible a couple weeks of government shutdown has been to our parks, but I'm going to call B.S. on this one. It's all part of a concerted effort to apply as much pressure as possible to re-open government, mainly so people working for them can get paid again. I get it... Nobody likes to lose their regular paycheck. But it rings a bit hollow as being the "whole truth".

It defies what I know about most dams and ecological controls, and its is hard to imagine letting the upper section of the river go dry on a regular basis.

Agreed.

This is interesting;

"Water is released from Lake Mead only to meet downstream municipal and agricultural demands. Consequently, power demands in California, Arizona and Nevada do not impact its elevation."
https://www.nps.gov/lake/learn...

That seems to imply that average release amounts are determined more by downstream need that power demand. Not entirely what I would have expected.

Interesting indeed, and I don't recall them talking about that during the tour, which seemed to focus more on the power generating aspects. Or maybe that's just what caught my interest. Anyway, thanks for the link.

Again, the chart is a daily average, with no indication of whether or not it was shut off during the day.

I would be somewhat surprised if they actually did cut the flow, but I've found no hard evidence either way.

[BTW, I've taken the inside tour of the dam, and would heartily recommend it to one and all.]

I agree, but its the only thing I can find. I find no where any reference to cutting flow entirely under normal operation. That's not something that would go unnoticed. Can't prove a negative with no explicit statement though. It defies what I know about most dams and ecological controls, and its is hard to imagine letting the upper section of the river go dry on a regular basis. This is interesting;

"Water is released from Lake Mead only to meet downstream municipal and agricultural demands. Consequently, power demands in California, Arizona and Nevada do not impact its elevation."
https://www.nps.gov/lake/learn...

That seems to imply that average release amounts are determined more by downstream need that power demand. Not entirely what I would have expected.

Chaco canyon is a dark sky park. Or is a "preserve" something different? I was at Chaco last month, the ranger told me they even have a say in what new lighting is put up in the nearest towns.

making it the worst at-sea disaster [emphasis mine]

The Arizona was docked at the time. The water was so shallow her superstructure was above water after she sunk.

The USS Arizona was not "docked" at the time - "docked" means "drydock". That thing sticking out into the water? IT'S A FUCKING PIER, NOT A DAMN "DOCK".

And you "tie up" to a pier. You don't fucking dock your ship at a pier. That's like parking your fucking car in your window.

The USS Arizona was moored.

And yes, REAL nautical terminology is that precise. Don't you fucking dare quote Wiki-useless-fucking-pedia to try to claim piers are "docks".

Buy an axe, a 22 rifle, a shovel, a backpack and a pot. Find a large national park: https://www.nps.gov/index.htm and see if you can survive for a few years on your own.

Paw Paw Tunnel was built in 19th century. It has got a very good design, as there is alo a pedestrian (nowadays also cycling) trail near the boat channel in the tunnel:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://www.nps.gov/experience...

While you are at it, fix the brush fires from lightning in Africa, which account for about 26.3% of annual CO2 being dumped into the atmosphere.

Even if that were true, where do you think the brush came from? Digging carbon out of the ground and burning it is going to have a different net effect than extracting carbon from the atmosphere into a plant and releasing it back into the atmosphere.

The brush came from the ground. The brush fires came from lightning. The uncontrolled, large area brush fires came from misguided environmental policies, which prevent the clearing of "natural brush" and the creation of fire breaks. The resulting fires are called "fire use" or "let burn" fires. It came out of some misguided philosophies from the 1960's and 1970's. It was first instituted by the U.S. National Park Service (NPS) in 1968.

Here's a history, if you care to read it; sadly other countries have adopted the U.S. policy as well:

http://www.nps.gov/fire/wildla...

Perhaps not: "In 1942, the United States government ordered more than 110,000 men, women, and children to leave their homes and detained them in remote, military-style camps. Manzanar War Relocation Center was one of ten camps where Japanese American citizens and resident Japanese aliens were interned during World War II."

Read more at: http://www.nps.gov/manz/index....

A super volcano could be extinction event if it is big enough.

Not unless it is a lot bigger. The one that occurred around the time of the extinction of the Dinosaurs gave rise to the Deccan Traps.

To put the scale of this extinction-level eruption in context the article mentions that the new, larger chamber under Yellowstone contains enough magma to fill the Grand Canyon which according to here is 4,170 cubic kilometres. The Deccan trap eruptions produced 512,000 cubic kilometres over 30k years. A Yellowstone eruption would certainly cause a lot of devastation over a large area of North America but its peanuts compared to an extinction level event.

"Almost 12 million immigrants were processed through the immigration station on Ellis Island between 1892 and 1954 when the station closed. By 1924, however, the number of immigrants being processed at Ellis Island had been significantly reduced by anti-immigration legislation designed to establish quotas by nationality. This legislation dramatically reduced the number of immigrants allowed to enter the United States.

The Emergency Quota Act, passed in 1921, ended U.S's open door immigration policy. The law significantly reduced the number of admissions by setting quotas according to nationality. The number of each nationality that could be admitted to the United States was limited to 3% of that nationality's representation in the U.S. census of 1910. The law created havoc for those on Ellis Island and thousands of immigrants were stranded on the island awaiting deportation. The island sometimes became so overcrowded that officials had to admit excess-quota immigrants."

-- Immigration - Ellis Island ...

In other words, fuck you. And I'm sure I'll be rated -1 again for this post as well. Honestly, if we didn't have such an anti-immigrant quota system, it'd be reasonable to take issue with illegal immigrants who bypassed the exams, quarantines, and possible deportation. But when there's such a disparity between the number of people who wish to enter the US and the number LEGALLY allowed in, it's little wonder that a black market exists and the Back Door overrides the Golden Door.

Next up, you'll try to justify the US's ass backwards policy on drugs and free speech zones. Because, you know, it couldn't possibly be that in some ways there's been more of a regression in certain areas.

PS - Even back in the day, Ellis Island included some nasty stuff like Henry Goddard and his testing of the "feeble-minded". So, it wasn't all peaches and cream back then. But then we can learn from the mistakes and do better, not double down on the willful ignorance or the intentionally self-interested prejudice.

The speculation that it was an atomic explosion is a paranoid fantasy. Given the technology of the time, a ground level explosion would have produced so much radioactive fallout that it would still be detectable today.

Then there is the issue of the situation at the loading docks. This was the era of the racially segregated US military, and the majority of the sailors at the installation were African American sailors, with white officers. Most of the people killed were the black sailors. Afterwards, some of the men refused to resume work under such dangerous conditions, and were courts-martial for mutiny and jailed.

Given the reality of a segregated Navy, it is inconceivable that something as important as an atomic weapon would be assigned to the Port Chicago facility. In the real world, the nuclear components of the bombs dropped on Japan were accompanied by scientists and technicians from Los Alamos for assembly on Tinian before the flight missions.

While this training was taking place, the components of the first two atomic bombs were shipped to Tinian by various means. For the uranium bomb code-named "Little Boy", fissile components consisted of a cylindrical target and nine washer-like rings that made up the hollow cylinder projectile. When the bomb detonated, these would be brought together to create a cylindrical core. The uranium-235 projectile and bomb pre-assemblies (partly assembled bombs without the fissile components) left Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, California, on 16 July aboard the cruiser USS Indianapolis, arriving 26 July. The Little Boy pre-assemblies were designated L-1, L-2, L-3, L-4, L-5, L-6, L-7 and L-11. L-1, L-2, L-5 and L-6 were expended in test drops. L-6 was used in the Iwo Jima dress rehearsal on 29 July. This was repeated on 31 July, but this time L-6 was test dropped near Tinian by Enola Gay. L-11 was the assembly used for the Hiroshima bomb. On 26 July three C-54s of the 320th Troop Carrier Squadron left Kirtland Army Air Field, each with three of the uranium-235 target rings, and landed at North Field on 28 July.

The components for the bomb code-named the Fat Man arrived by air the same day. The bomb's plutonium core (encased in its insertion capsule) and the beryllium-polonium initiator were transported from Kirtland to Tinian by C-54 in the custody of Project Alberta couriers. Three Fat Man high explosive pre-assemblies designated F31, F32, and F33 were picked up at Kirtland on 28 July by three B-29s, two from the 509th and one from the 216th AAF Base Unit, and transported to North Field, arriving 2 August. The B-29s were Luke the Spook and Laggin' Dragon of the 509th, and 42-65386, a phase 3 Silverplate of the 216th AAF Base Unit. F33 was expended during the final rehearsal on 8 August, and F31 was the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. F32 presumably would have been used for a third attack or its rehearsal.

Assembled nuclear bombs were never shipped in a configuration where a nuclear explosion could occur. Claiming otherwise is ridiculous. It's the fantastic logic of a day dreaming 9 year old boy.

So I suggest that you perform an experiment. Get a radiation detector and go to the site. Spend a day looking around. If the weather is nice you will have a wonderful time. And you will find no trace of radiation, or any sign of an explosion at all. Then you can take the radiation detector home and look for the radioactive mind control scorpions that the CIA has planted in your basement.

Geysir was clogged in the 1950s before the jet age, so it probably wasn't too very many American tourists.

Iceland destroyed half their geysers all by themselves for geothermal power plants:
http://www.nps.gov/yell/planyo...

The US made a strong showing too, but both are far behind New Zealand.

Meanwhile this "heavy-handed authority" is soon going to allow copper mining in a forest sacred to the natives of the region.

Because raping mother Earth for profit really shows off their light touch?

Pre-Reagan America had a government that didn't charge for national parks, but James G. Watt changed that.

Government should provide for the General Welfare. It can and should create money to do so. The Fed has proven it can create money at will, and the stock market has reached record heights. Use that power of money creation to empower individuals instead of corporations, in the form of a Basic Income, say. Then people can work on open source, wikipedia, and challenges if they choose, instead of entering the morally hazardous world of the market with its perverse incentives.

The Elwha dam removal project may turn out to be a shot in the foot of all the fish people.

For years, we have all been taught, and regulations and law have been made based upon the 'science' that salmon are unique to individual tributaries. In fact, the claim is that each local population is a unique species (because language in Endangered Species Act is set up to protect unique species). But then the Elwha dams came down. And the newly wild stretches of river are being repopulated by salmon. Not the same runs that lived there before. Just some fish that happened to be passing by on their way elsewhere (someplace that the fish people claim they were driven to seek) and they said, "Hey. Lets check this place out!" And the stories we have been told are turning out to be pure b*llshit.

So, salmon are salmon. And habitat is habitat. And we should be able to trade the Elwha for the Snake river. Or some hatcheries.

The fish people go absolutely ape-shit over hatchery fish. Weaker* (they claim) than native runs. But stronger in that they can't be allowed to compete and must be hand sorted out of the returning runs whenever possible.

*There was some truth to this back when hatcheries were first started. People didn't understand genetics and diversity as well and would create an entire crop from one or two females and males. Now we know better and can easily mix and match genetic materials across multiple populations (Copper river salmon in Lake Washington anyone). And perhaps produce more robust runs than even nature could create.

It's managed by the NPS and the other organizations partner with them to help, including the USFS, but as far as policy and legal aspects go it's under NPS jurisdiction.

http://www.nps.gov/appa/parkmg...

The largest renewable energy installation in my state was also the one most bitterly opposed by environmentalists. It was built before renewables became fashionable: http://www.nps.gov/glca/index....

http://www.nps.gov/yell/nature... THe Yellowstone hot spot does indeed move. Some info on the Hawaiian hotspot also, http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/dynam... You could go all pedantic on me and say that the spots don't move, the land over them does. But that would be nicking at pits.

I get Yosemite Sam and the National Park but please stop, Apple. Please. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/..., http://www.nps.gov/yose/index.... And for those who want to know, it's Yo-sem-it-eee, derived from the American Indian Miwok name the tribe called the place. They lived there.

(a) TRANSFER AUTHORIZED .—(1) Notwithstanding any other provision of law and subject to subsection (b), the Secretary of Defense may transfer to Federal and State agencies personal prop- erty of the Department of Defense, including small arms and ammunition, that the Secretary determines is

(emphasis mine)
If you're not a government agency... what are you doing with all that excess military equipment acquired via the 1033 program?

References: http://www.mass.gov/eopss/agen...
https://www.justnet.org/other/...
http://www.nps.gov/legal/laws/...

It's interesting to compare how people react to warnings from the National Weather Service. My dad was a forecaster and specialized in severe weather. When they announced flash flood warnings, people would generally evacuate slot canyons like the Narrows. Not always, but the warnings weren't systematically ignored.

I wonder if the difference is just time scale. NWS forecasts are done in 6-hour chunks; i.e. "20% chance of rain tomorrow" means that for either 6-hour chunk tomorrow (6-12, 12-6), there's a 20% chance of rain. Geology time scales are vastly longer, which maybe makes the danger seem less immediate.

I don't know why a warning like "this building is likely to sink if you build it that way" would be ignored, though.

Here are some statistics to show that, as pertains the Arctic, the Earth is measurably warming. I can tell you offhand that annual temperatures in Alaska have warmed by 3 degrees in the last century, and winter temperatures by 6 degrees. Southeastern Alaska is characterized by stable temperatures throughout the year, heavy precipitation, and a gradual transition from getting most of that as rain vs snow as one goes further north. Thus the warming is shall we say particularly noticeable to costal inhabitants. Another good measure of long-term climactic changes is the extent of permafrost.[pdf] Much of the ground in Alaska, and practically all the ground above the Arctic Circle is permanently frozen. Ice being less dense than water, if you happen to melt it, you create a subsidence and potentially a small lake. Either way, it's extremely disruptive to what little vegetation (or structures) there are that can survive on top of permafrost and hence easy to observe. Other good measures are the many glaciers, which I am told take thousands of years to form. 98% of all glaciers in Alaska are in retreat, and I mean visibly, over the last two decades. I lived in a fairly glacier-heavy area, and every successive spring brought more bare rock where once there was towering ice. The most dramatic of these was Columbia, of course, and I'm told that is not strongly linked to climate changes, but nine miles of ice melting in two decades is really an incredible pace.

I've recently been probing my ignorance of atmospheric science. I've found a couple fairly informative resources, including this more general introduction to the maths, and a more thorough examination of carbon dioxide's role as a greenhouse gas. It really doesn't take a great deal of learning to see that, aside from the observed warming trend, a higher partial pressure of carbon dioxide must result in increased heat transfer to the Earth's surface. There's really nowhere else for it to go. What happens from there is obviously a complex topic, but as you say, the glass jar experiments show pretty clearly that CO2 absorbs long-wave outgoing radiation. Where else do you imagine the heat goes?

Just sell, transfer or exchange the immediate plot of land that the ten commandments monument is on to a private non-profit with appropriate deeded restrictions and then don't allow religious monuments on the public land that remains.

This is essentially what was done to settle the White Cross Monument dispute at the Mojave National Preserve.

I agree that religious and other forms of speech should not be biased or endorsed by government on public land. Doesn't mean there can't be a tasteful compromise to still allow religious monuments that are visible from public land.

The US is big enough to do both. You'll have to work pretty hard to "char" the Americans in places like this before they do their duty. Then it will be your turn to play in the fire and see how you like it. I'm betting you won't like it at all, and if you're smart you won't even try.

No, politicians and bureaucrats need to understand mathematics better so that they realize exactly how much heat you'd have to remove to start influencing geological events.

It may be less than you realize. According to the National Park Service: In Iceland and New Zealand, geothermal drill holes and wells 2.5 - 6.2 miles distant have reduced geyser activity and hot spring discharge.

There may be 4000km^3 of magma, but if the geysers and GT plants are both using the same topmost 0.001%, there can be an effect.

An open air memorial that is normally open 24/7 and actually took resources to close, while leaving it open would not have?

I even got you some numbers to satisfy my own curiosity:

According to the National Park Service's FY13 Greenbook, the National Mall and adjoining shrines and memorials (which include the National World War II Memorial) are treated as a single item and cost the National Park Service $32,282,000 to maintain in 2012, or over $88,200 each day.

These costs do not include Park Police, which are listed as a separate $79,763,000 expenditure in the DC area alone in '12.

No, I just noticed that on my own. Apparently just the sites I tried to get information off of were closed down. http://www.census.gov/ http://www.fs.fed.us/ http://www.nps.gov/ Those were the ones that I tried to use.

If the US has it as a national park, the others will likely be polite enough to avoid trashing it.

How naive... This is how America falls... via people so disconnected from reality..

Parent+1 : So true. Look at how wonderfully American interests are preserving land in the sq. mile around Niagara Falls National Park
http://www.nps.gov/nifa/index.htm.
The visuals of the local neighborhoods are stunning - especially just behind the treeline as you follow the river into America (not!)
(map) http://goo.gl/4B5Rc

Or, New Jersey's new " Great Falls National Park" - recently named ( even with sequestration, and no budget to fund any facility there).. it seems beautiful, just don't stray too far north along the river into the decaying structures.. or into the nearby neighborhoods.
(map) http://goo.gl/D5QlW

From USA Today :

It will take several years and millions of dollars before Great Falls looks like a national park; there won't even be ranger programs until next year. Since the designation, though, the site has received many more visitors. Robert Marshall, a retired public works director from a nearby suburb, had often driven past the falls, but until last month he'd never seen it up close. "I didn't know you could park and walk around here," he says, standing on the footbridge across from the falls. Then Marshall professed confusion over the national park designation: "The park service seems to be talking about laying people off, and they're adding a park here."

As if to illustrate the debate, along came Hamid Amer, his wife and three kids. All seemed mesmerized by the falls. None had ever set foot in a national park. Amer, a Palestinian barber who moved his family to the USA five years ago from the West Bank, voiced concern over the amount of trash on the ground and in the water and said he thought the Park Service could clean it up."

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/travel/destinations/2009-08-19-greatfalls_N.htm
http://www.nps.gov/pagr/planyourvisit/hours.htm

If anybody has any sense.. they won't let our elected leaders pollute and commodify one of the last places we haven't destroyed yet. Should visiting the moon become an attainable vacation destination - let's try and put some real environmental laws in place; with sufficient funding and real enforcement. ( I think that should sufficiently exclude the Koch bros. from even entering lunar orbit.)

If the US has it as a national park, the others will likely be polite enough to avoid trashing it.

How naive... This is how America falls... via people so disconnected from reality..

Parent+1 : So true. Look at how wonderfully American interests are preserving land in the sq. mile around Niagara Falls National Park
http://www.nps.gov/nifa/index.htm.
The visuals of the local neighborhoods are stunning - especially just behind the treeline as you follow the river into America (not!)
(map) http://goo.gl/4B5Rc

Or, New Jersey's new " Great Falls National Park" - recently named ( even with sequestration, and no budget to fund any facility there).. it seems beautiful, just don't stray too far north along the river into the decaying structures.. or into the nearby neighborhoods.
(map) http://goo.gl/D5QlW

From USA Today :

It will take several years and millions of dollars before Great Falls looks like a national park; there won't even be ranger programs until next year. Since the designation, though, the site has received many more visitors. Robert Marshall, a retired public works director from a nearby suburb, had often driven past the falls, but until last month he'd never seen it up close. "I didn't know you could park and walk around here," he says, standing on the footbridge across from the falls. Then Marshall professed confusion over the national park designation: "The park service seems to be talking about laying people off, and they're adding a park here."

As if to illustrate the debate, along came Hamid Amer, his wife and three kids. All seemed mesmerized by the falls. None had ever set foot in a national park. Amer, a Palestinian barber who moved his family to the USA five years ago from the West Bank, voiced concern over the amount of trash on the ground and in the water and said he thought the Park Service could clean it up."

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/travel/destinations/2009-08-19-greatfalls_N.htm
http://www.nps.gov/pagr/planyourvisit/hours.htm

If anybody has any sense.. they won't let our elected leaders pollute and commodify one of the last places we haven't destroyed yet. Should visiting the moon become an attainable vacation destination - let's try and put some real environmental laws in place; with sufficient funding and real enforcement. ( I think that should sufficiently exclude the Koch bros. from even entering lunar orbit.)

That they come up with an original name...

Most people find this enlightening:

http://www.nps.gov/liho/historyculture/debate1.htm

I will say here, while upon this subject, that I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position. I have never said anything to the contrary, but I hold that, notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. [Loud cheers.] I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects-certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man. [Great applause.]

Lincoln was a lawyer, and a politician. People attribute something profound to him. I have doubts.

And DC would be a horrible place for a canal.

Yeah, except for the C&O Canal you mean? While it didn't work out well for shipping/transportation (due to the untimely invention of the railroad) it makes a great bike path and park.

Here is the listing of fees:
http://www.nps.gov/grca/parkmgmt/upload/GRCA-2007change-in-FilmingFees.pdf

Exactly! You should see the permit cost to broadcast from the Grand Canyon! .... oh, wait.....

The exact price isn't listed; but for $100, you can ask.

While Australia has 45C temperatures, you can survive that for a few days, if you're lucky. Here when it hits -30C you might have 5-6 hours if you're not dressed for it.

For what it's worth - if you ever find yourself in a 45C environment, keep in mind that death can easily happen in a 5-6 hours as well if you're not prepared for it. What helps is shade, plenty of drinking water, staying put, and alcohol or caffeine. I've gone hiking in Big Bend National Park where its rather common for a person or two to die of exposure each year. http://www.nps.gov/bibe/parknews/upload/SurviveTheSun_SB.pdf It's a beautiful area though, if you know how to experience it safely.

looking it up is also an option

You missed a big one, Chaco Canyon. A lot of it has not been excavated, you see thousand year old pottery shards lying on the ground. One of the Anasazi half-circle towns in Chaco, called Pueblo Bonito

That said, there are some pretty visually impressive natural rock formations all over the world. http://www.buzzfeed.com/scott/most-surprising-rock-formations-from-around-the-wo . It'd be a shame to not see the American SW in one's lifetime, but you could get quite a fill from the rest of the world.

The majority also supported the roundup of Japanese-americans during WW2, depriving them of their liberty, property, and right to a jury trial.

Jim Crow laws, too.

In recent history small scale hydro schemes have actually been seen to be more environmentally damaging than traditional large ones, largely because the can escape some of the environmental oversights in various jurestrictions. British Columbia is one of the worst offenders, where 49MW is a key project power output threshold below which it;s much easier to build a scheme. A very informative little film by my friend Bryan, now a Nat Geo camera man: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPtddgUqr4o

Here's another great link to an NPS site dedicated to the ground breaking remval of 2 obsolete dams on the Elwha River in WA.
http://www.nps.gov/olym/naturescience/elwha-ecosystem-restoration.htm

Hydro has it's place, but its not panacea.

In New Jersey there is a National Park dedicated to Thomas Edison the inventor. http://www.nps.gov/edis/index.htm It is highly recommended!

http://www.nps.gov/edis/index.htm

If you are already going to be in New Mexico to see the Very Large Array, try to swing by the Carlsbad Caverns: http://www.nps.gov/cave/index.htm

Sure, it's not tech-oriented, but I'm sure you can get your geology geeking on. It's not often one is in the area (BFE New Mexico), so take the opportunity. The caverns are not to be missed!

I don't know about the NH state parks, but the National Park Service spells out pretty clearly when permits are needed, under the general category "Commercial Filming and Still Photography Permits". Basically if it's a location not normally accessible to the public; you bring in models, sets or props; or the park service would need additional resources to monitor the activity. He's bringing in a costume, and he's doing it to advertise his other artwork, so it would probably require a permit in a national park. But small scale, there are no onerous fees: 1 - 2 people, camera & tripod only $0/day. The system is set up to keep advertisers and corporations from abusing the parks for their own uses. In the article, it sounds pretty similar for the NH state parks, except the fee is $100/day. As a photographer (who spends time in CA state parks and national parks), it doesn't sound to me like a question of free speech because they didn't deny him access, they just told him to follow the existing rules and get a necessary permit.

There are some real bizarre laws out there. For instance, United States companies are restricted in the resolution of satellite imagery of Israel.

This is truly bizarre, albeit true. With the passing of the National Defense Authorization Act in 1997, private companies in United States aren't allowed to provide high resolution satellite/aerial imagery of Israel. This restriction boggles my mind for a free country. Not that it matters much longer as other countries such as Turkey are going to provide high-resolution imagery of Israel in 2013.

It could be possible to construct a rudimentary "aerial" view by warping street view imagery (of course several areas and building roofs would not get into that picture) however. So yeah, there are some pretty weird restrictions out there.

The United States developed a... somewhat similar service during the cold war.

http://www.nps.gov/edis/photosmultimedia/talking-doll-record-hear-the-recording.htm

That's good, except that page contains a Flash-based mp3 player. If you really want to listen to the mp3, follow this link: http://www.nps.gov/media/ner/avElement/edis-tenhp_edison_c_E-821-8_edis-1279_20110523_minus-5-semitones-and-eqd.mp3

http://www.nps.gov/edis/photosmultimedia/talking-doll-record-hear-the-recording.htm

That's good, except that page contains a Flash-based mp3 player. If you really want to listen to the mp3, follow this link: http://www.nps.gov/media/ner/avElement/edis-tenhp_edison_c_E-821-8_edis-1279_20110523_minus-5-semitones-and-eqd.mp3

http://www.nps.gov/edis/photosmultimedia/talking-doll-record-hear-the-recording.htm

The Encyclopedia Britannica lists the area of the Sahara as 8.6 million km^2 (I choose that because Wikipedia's is far larger... 9.4 million km^2). Let's assume that half of the Sahara dessert is inhabitable (which I believe is a gross overestimation). Even then, 2% of the remaining area is still 86,000 km^2, or roughly the size of South Carolina, Austria, or New Zealand. Just because it's an extremely small proportion of the Earth's surface doesn't mean it's not still fantastically huge.

If we want to look in man-made terms, we can just look at the urbanized areas of the United States. 86,000 km^2 is equivalent to the areas of New York-Newark, NY-NJ-CT; Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA; Chicago, IL-IN; Philadelphia, PA-NJ-DE-MD; Miami, FL; Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX; Boston, MA-NH-RI; Washington, DC-VA-MD; Detroit, MI; Houston, TX; Atlanta, GA; San Francisco-Oakland, CA; Phoenix-Mesa, AZ; Seattle, WA; San Diego, CA; Minneapolis-Saint Paul, MN; Saint Louis, MO-IL; Baltimore, MD; Tampa-Saint Petersburg, FL; Denver-Aurora, CO; Cleveland, OH; Pittsburgh, PA; Portland, OR-WA; San Jose, CA; Riverside-San Bernardino, CA; Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN; Virginia Beach, VA; Sacramento, CA; Kansas City, MO-KS; San Antonio, TX; Las Vegas, NV; Milwaukee, WI; Indianapolis, IN; Providence, RI-MA; Orlando, FL; and Columbus, OH combined . This is the equivalent of constructing the entirety of the US Interstate Highway System out of PV cells, except building the road 1 km wide and 10,000 km longer.

Wait, this is SlashDot. 2% of the uninhabitable Sahara is equivalent to about 440,000 Libraries of Congress (using 2.1 million ft^2 for the area of the building).