Sunday, March 20, 2005

With my friends Sabine and Stefan from San Francisco, I went back to Tioga Pass Resort March 6-9, during Penn's spring break. The highlight of the trip was a ski ascent and descent of Mount Dana (13,057 ft), which sits on the border between the Ansel Adams Wilderness and Yosemite National Park on the Eastern Sierra, Southwest of Mono Lake. The day was warm, sunny, calm. We started the ascent at the gaging station just North of Tioga Lake by Tioga Pass Road close to the Eastern entrance of the park. We skinned South through conifer forest (thanks for the shade) to a series of steep climbs along the Northwest ridge of Dana. The snow on the ridge was wind scoured, icy in many places and deeply rutted in others. Ski crampons came in very handy. It got rather hot on the last 1,000 ft of climbing. After a lunch and photo break at the summit, we skied down the mostly well-covered Eastern face of the summit to Dana Couloir (diagonal snow strip at the lower left in the picture), which was filled with variable but very skiable wind-packed powder with a strip of soft avalanche debris from a skier-triggered slide (fortunately without victims) three weeks before. From the bottom of the 40 degree couloir, we followed Glacier Canyon back to our start point and finally to the lodge in good time for a much-needed, delicious dinner. More photos here. 6:37:29 PM

Chirac plans French anti-US "counter-offensive" on Internet culture (AFP): AFP - French President Jacques Chirac has vowed to launch a new 'counter-offensive' against American cultural domination, enlisting the support of the British, German and Spanish governments in a multi-million euro bid to put the whole of European literature on-line. (Via Yahoo! News - Technology.) Using information technology to improve global access to knowledge should be seen as a good in itself for developed countries, not just something you do in reaction to perceived outside 'domination'. The European Union has failed to lead the way in improved information access, even though the Web started at an European institution (CERN). Projects get tied up in bureaucratic, proprietary, and protectionist tangles. The European information industry has tended to resist open access for short-term business considerations. As far as I've been able to see, they have played little role in public efforts to improve information access for all. It is unlikely that top-down EU funds and direction can do as much alone as they would in collaboration with a healthy industry committed open access as a means of growing information exchange for everyone's benefit. 5:14:47 PM