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Geohashing Meets an Angry Rancher With Firearms
katicli writes "Geohashing, an obscure xkcd pastime which involves going to random coordinates generated by md5 hashing, the date, and the opening status of the stock market, appears to have just gotten far more interesting. The official wiki reports a warning for other geohashers intending to go to the spot designated for June 14th in the San Francisco area, as several avid fans of xkcd were met by an angry rancher and firearms."
http://wiki.xkcd.com/geohashing/Known_Issues
"If someone says you are trespassing, it is probably best to heed them and turn back. Shotguns are a good indicator of trouble. See Template:Disclaimer."
Sounds like that other thing where you use GPS and leave a bowl with stuff in it.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Indeed. Guns are tools, and ranchers have ample use for them such as killing critters (feral dogs, etc) that threaten their livestock. Fuel and equipment thieves are another good reason for ranchers to be armed. Diesel theft from irrigation pumps can threaten their ability to make a living, and thieves may be armed. In isolated areas the police can't be there on the spot to help.
Remember kids:
If it isn't your land and you don't have permission to be there, stay the hell off. There is plenty of public land to play silly games on.
Country folk are often very good at looking out for their neighbors. If you don't belong there, expect to be checked out. I'd be delighted to have a neighbor who would observe and photograph any questionable visitors. Being visibly armed deters violence, and cameras preserve potential evidence.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
It took a few moments to sink in. "In the San Francisco area" ... with guns mounted on trucks? Why, unless people are using one of those really broad definitions of San Francisco, that could be nowhere else but ... yup. Upon checking the address on Google Maps, it turns out to be none other than San Ramon, California -- about 15 minutes from where I grew up.
I know what you guys are thinking. "A bunch of uptight yuppies from San Francisco got in their cars and drove out to the wild wilderness and got a taste of the real world..." Yeah, right -- if by that you mean "took a pleasant drive out among the trees along the curves of Crow Canyon Road," just off the 580 Freeway kinda wilderness. Maybe they took the long way back and stopped off at Stoneridge Mall on their way home.
News flash for ya, folks. The exact location where these folks went is out a long, undeveloped road, sure. But San Ramon is a suburb, people. Yeah, if you're out there you'll find that 80 percent of the people are white. But that's not "white trash missin teeth an' drinkin moonshine" white, that's "53 percent of the people in this town are college educated and 17 percent have graduate degrees" white. It's "48 percent of the families in this town have median incomes higher than $100,000" white. Look it up.
Clearly, these "geohashers" must be even bigger peckerwoods than the people I grew up with (in neighboring Castro Valley) if that environment makes them uncomfortable. If white guys with guns mounted to pickup trucks makes them uncomfortable, I hope they had a speedy return to wherever they came from, completely bypassing Oakland, California, whose demographics are markedly different. And whatever they do, they should not wait for the bus on the streetcorner out in front of my local bar. It's gotten pretty hairy over there a couple times over the last few years.
Breakfast served all day!
Hey, Randall here (hey, my account still exists!)
Sometimes the coordinates fall on military bases. Sometimes they're in the ocean. Sometimes they're in the middle of Bill Gates's house (when that one happens, maybe we can work something out). So even if it weren't for the legality issues, there's a big common sense element.
The idea is that you get as close as you can to the point without going onto private property without permission. Most of the time, this means meeting on a road or cul-de-sac or whatnot. The point is just to get people close enough that they can all exchange high fives and then go to a nearby park or bar together.
I've met unfriendly people while out hiking (both for geohashing and for fun). I've also met some astonishingly friendly people, more than you'd expect. People on the whole are decent. But if you're wandering around in strange places in the real world, there are risks inherent to that, and you do have to use your judgment. If you treat the coordinates like commands and try to get at them no matter what, you're doing it wrong.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
There are indeed reasons for that Rancher to be armed. First off, if you get into trouble, it can take 911 longer than the rest of your life to get there. Pretty much you're on your own. Secondly, I don't know if anybody's noticed or not, but it's spring and cows drop calves and sheep drop lambs this time of year, and Coyotes are everywhere. Worse still, coyotes have something in common with man-- they frequently kill for the hell of it. And the margins on running a ranch are close enough that you can't afford to lose livestock to random predation unless you want to go broke, so this time of year, if you see a coyote, out comes the SKS or whatever, (very popular as a ranch rifle) and the coyotes in question become fodder for vultures, magpies, ect. There are places where there is a tradition of free range. Most of Nevada outside of Clark or Washoe Counties for example, still let you roam around as long as you're not damaging anything. A lot of ranchers are looking at keep out signs though, because of idiots who do things like cut locks, cut fences and shoot at water troughs. (And in a desert, shooting a water trough is actually a crime that merits hanging, even though nobody does) and sometimes livestock. In order to prevent such things, if you're working a ranch, you pack a rifle. And it is considered good manners to ask, and if you're hunting and get lucky, a couple of cleaned birds on the way out is usually appreaciated. And I usually carry some stuff to take a few minutes to fix a downed section of fence if I find one. One makes friends that way. The bottom line is that those young idiots who seem to have gotten a case of the vapors over a rancher with a camera and guns that happen to be his working tools in the gun rack, were handled far more gently than they probably deserved and they should be thankful rather than complaining. And they do owe him an apology, so that little suggestion that was on their website is one that they should take to heart.
Wolves are also protected, and they only needed reintroduction because of asshats like you spreading lies about them. There have been issues with them killing livestock, but not major problems as you state. In addition, welfare ranchers are raising their cattle on PUBLIC LAND which everyone pays for, then they have the GALL to act like they should have exclusive rights to it, even over what used to be a natural predator that lived there.
There are a few things about the old west that I really hate... one of them is the disrespect for the land. And wolves and mountain lions are part of the land here, just like the pines and rattlers.
My family lives on a farm in rural Ohio and I was stuck waking up at the buttcrack of dawn for many years to feed the animals (gotta drive some cool equipment though along the way). Anyways, a farm to any farmer includes the raising of crops (soybeans, corn, wheat, alfalfa, etc). A ranch only has livestock. One that has both would be considered a farm, not a ranch. Texas has farms and it has ranches, since they do grow things such as wheat and cotton down there.
Some might go farther to say that there are also orchards and plantations (not to be confused with those of the Antebellum era in the United States). However, a "spade is a spade" and I tend go with farm=crops/crops+animals, ranch=only animals.