Ahlschwede Blog

Flight Patterns

If you have any fear of flying or just have an interest in the aircraft overhead you should check out the visualizations of one day's flights over the US at Flight Patterns. I first saw movies like this after September 11th, used to show how quickly aircraft in the US were grounded. These movies created by Scott Hessels and Gabriel Dunne are the most polished I've seen yet.  For the most uncluttered view of the data, watch the "Just the plots" movie., and take note of the timestamp in the lower right corner and the number of planes in the lower left.

Link: Flight Patterns

Washington Trip Photos

After being chided by friends that my Minneapolis photos were quite heavy on architecture and short on narrative, I've put up a few Washington & Oregon photos with some brief descriptions.

Back in Omaha, Missing the Calgary Wedding

Landed in Omaha around 10:00 last night. Ben Mattson and I had a great time visiting our friend Jereme Haack up in Washington. Sadly, and a trip to Calgary for Jereme and Shankari's wedding isn't feasible. It's either $1,200 for a plane ticket or 24 hours for a car trip - and the wedding is now less than 24 hours away.

The newspaper story I mentioned in my previous post made the front page of Jereme's local paper. There was also a story in the Calgary Herald, Border red tape strands bride, which also made the front page. Jereme wasn't quoted for that story because we were somewhere between Portland and Seattle when the reporter called his house.

The ironic bit in all of this is that the papers for Shankari to re-enter the United States were stuck in the very INS office in Lincoln, NE where a number of Jereme and my friends work. So, we know from first hand accounts that everyone there is working very hard, but that they are very much behind on getting forms processed because of bureaucratic considerations. (I don't want to get more specific out of deference to friends; sufficient to say some requests can take multiple years to make their way through the system.)

The whole thing really makes me think about Richard Posner's assertion that the law should be a resource for achieving social justice. (Richard Posner is a Circuit Judge for the US Court of Appeals.) The sad thing is that for this philosophy to be effective, it has to be shared by everyone. Every single piece of soft-data made it obvious that it would be a good decision to allow Shankari into the country for the ceremony, but because "the right forms weren't processed" she was denied. It goes to show that the law really is a much more squishy thing than one would imagine - the shape of life can be molded by the subjective judgments made at the lowest level of law enforcement.

Wedding, Interrupted

I'm up in West Richland, Washington this morning visiting my friend Jereme - it's a trip my friend Ben and I took as a prelude to attending Jereme's religous wedding in Omaha next Thursday. Sadly, the ceremony is not to be, as Jereme's wife, Shankari (who was married to Jereme in a civil ceremony on July 5th of this year), was not able to cross the Canadian border. (She's a Canadian citizen.) The whole fracas was laid out in a good article in this morning's Tri City Hearld, Religious ceremony snarled in red tape. The ceremony has been rescheduled for Calgary.

Things aren't all doom and gloom here - Jereme's been on and off the phone with relatives and officials since we got here, but we've still had time for a lot of fun - and this morning we're driving out to Portland, Oregon.

Minneapolis Photo Album

Well, I was bound and determed to make a post about the Minneapolis trip before my trip to Washington - as of right now it's 10:45 the night before my 7:15am flight to Washington from Omaha. So, I tossed up some pictures that I took on the trip, but haven't had time to add the comments. Right now, all you need to know is that they represent wacky Minnesota fun.

Greetings From Minneapolis

I'm visiting Minneapolis right now, taking a couple of classes from Scott McCloud about comic books. I want to write a good post about the classes and there are a lot of changes going on in my life that I want to write about. Right now, however, I'm pretty busy with homework and paying work (I wanted to call it "real work", but my stuff for class is actually more difficult), so I'll just leave you all with more promises that I'll post again soon, and this picture I that took in downtown Minneapolis last evening.

E3 Visual Summary

I think there's some sort of cosmic irony at work that the height of marketing involves scantly-clad SoCal women giving clothing made in Haiti to Americans on behalf of a wealthy Japanese company.

Greetings from Colorado

Due to a leaky hydralic system, I'm sitting in the Denver airport waiting for my plane home 1 day later than planned. It's a pretty swanky airport, but I'm ready to be back in Lincoln.

Greetings from California

Actually, I'm Just waiting in the airport to go back home right now- it's about 1/2 hour until my flight takes off. Just thought you'd like to see a picture of ultra-cool California-James and his natural environ.