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Additionally, you can find pictures of the lava and a description of the hike to the spot that collapsed on the OutdoorDB wiki.

I don't understand how the biggest blockbusters are fantasy (LOTR) and nonhorror sci-fi (star wars, star trek), but studios refuse to invest in new ideas in these genres. How stupid is that?

-Sean (OutdoorDB.org - The Outdoor Wiki)

I am disappointed with the lack of support in MediaWiki for ontologies and controlled vocabularies. I have been playing around with wikis for annotating outdoor activities my site at outdoordb.org and I am finding that it would be great to have tighter integration of controlled vocabularies. For example, if a hike occurs in Mt. Rainier National Park, I have to make sure that it is always annotated as the same string, instead of annotating with a key that always refers to Mt. Rainier NP. Users who annotate using different strings (such as 'Mount Rainier NP') either need to be fixed or they remain semantically disjointed. The cool thing about wikis is that these ontologies could grow with the knowledgebase, and allow users to select existing terms as they are needed. They could even be extracted and used elsewhere. If the edit page had an 'insert term' button, it could take care of the backend on its own, maybe using categories as an ontology.

Uhh, on the bad urban planning award. Seattle has:

1. They already had light rail (Trolley system), and removed it. In fact, I bet at some point it is going to cost money to move the equipment that is under the street. See this image of the counter balance, for example.

2. Due to the fire and sewage problems, Seattle actually raised ground level of downtown up one story to bury their problems. For a period of time, store fronts were underground, and people used ladders to reach them!

3. Seattle actually spent money bulldozing a large hill (See this pic of the denny regrade)

4. Traffic continues to be a problem.

etc, etc.

-Sean (OutdoorDB - The Outdoor Wiki)

The monorail was a bad idea. I am vigorously supportive of rapid transit. But in this case there are problems. The elevation would block views, it wouldn't be that fast, it was very expensive, and would implicitly divert funds from light rail (a better idea). seattle has a long history of bad urban planning I'm glad that light rail is going forward and this isn't.

-Sean (OutdoorDB) - The Outdoor Wiki

The lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math.

Gambling is similar, particularly with all those bots running around.

-Sean (OutdoorDB - The Outdoor Wiki

As populations grow, they are going to move into more and more dangerous areas. Given the relative shortness of the human lifespan, any major environmental disaster that occurs with periodicity of more than 30-40 years is going to have humans living in its path. (because humans tend to forget things through generations) Unfortunately since these events are so rare, it is hard to prepare for them. That said, people seem to focus on these things right after a disaster. Remember the New Orleans disaster is one of the largest distructive forces to hit the continental US, regardless of population.

-Sean (OutdoorDB - the Outdoor Wiki)

Can be found here

-Sean (OutdoorDB - The Outdoor Wiki

I once did an NSF funded REU internship and it was one of the greater experiences of my life. I met people I'm still friends with, I became a researcher in the area and I still do some of the things I learned then. I highly recommend them, they also are great for the resume when finding a job, when I hire now, internships make a difference. Obviously at the undergraduate level is an excellent time to do this, although many CS/engineering grad students do this successfully. Bio grad students not so much.

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