General – Page 2 – PureSynchronicity

Fall Creek Mountain Climb – August 2015

The annual “birthday climb” of Fall Creek Mountain, over by Feeley and Carr lakes, happened this year on 8/23. We had ten participants, and everyone made it to the top followed by a refreshing swim in Island Lake afterwards. Along with Kate and I, we had Stephen & Janelle, Mike & Vicky, Nan, Patrick, Alan and Kaye. My little P&S lumix camera died before the swim so no pics of that. It was a gorgeous day and possibly the best trip yet. I have been climbing Fall Creek Mtn since 1999 and its always a new adventure.

Fall Creek mtn — Fall Creek Mtn taken by Patrick from opposing mountain range.

Island Lake in the background, our swimming hole

Island Lake

My 69th Birthday

I had a great time with a few good friends to celebrate making it this far, age 69. BBQ baby backs turned out great, Kates version and mine were tied. Katie did an awesome job with all the cooking and planning. She always does. She’s my hero. Here are some pics.

Stephen & Janelle’s Wedding Photos

January 11, 2015 Stephen and Janelle’s wedding photos. Highlights from the 230+ photos I took.

Stephen & Janelle Wedding Shower (Dinner for 15)

Scott Oglesby

My good friend Scott Oglesby has been struggling with getting published for a long, long time. He has written some really humorous articles and short stories but getting published in the likes of Sun Magazine seems to be a huge challenge that so far has eluded him. He has however been published in a few places.

He wrote an article for the Villager, on the heroics of riding a bike in NYC.
He wrote a creative non-fiction treatise about him and his sister called “Divorcing Rhonda” which was published in Gravel.
He wrote a beautiful story about his late wife Helene, “The Best That Love Could” published in the Bellevue Literary Review.
He wrote a silly rant about old age and exercise in the Dec. 4th issue of the Villager called “My Last Pair of Hi-Tops”

Scott also wrote a novel about the pot delivery service in NYC. The book is called Riding High. Scott has written many other pieces however, apparently they will never get published if I put them up here, so I will wait until he gives me the go ahead.

Spirit Drum Circle

Back in December 2003 I was with Bob Scarlet’s Spirit Drum Circle. I had been playing congas in the group since 1997. We had this one gig in Sacramento along with several other drum groups performing. We were lucky enough to have it taped and I have uploaded to youtube and now have it here.

The King Fire

The King Fire that was near my last camp out at Loon Lake is now 43% contained and has covered over 95,000 acres. 8,000 firefighters were utilized, the largest number on a wildfire. Colfax and Auburn and Grass Valley was experiencing much smoke and ash in the air up until it rained on 9/25. Here is a map showing the status of the fire. Note Loon Lake off to the east of the fire near the top. Click the + button to blow up the map, then pan over to the left and you can see how close Colfax is. In fact if you click the [ ] box at the right corner of the map, it will blow up to full screen size.

And check out this a timelapse movie of the sunset on Wednesday nite with this huge pyrocumulus cloud formation.

King Fire Pyrocumulus Sunset Timelapse.mov from Brandon Manning on Vimeo.

Richard Downs Wired Art Interview in Oakland CA.

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NCAA Statistical Predictions

Nate Silver (the guy whose predictions for the last presidential election were right on) has a website called FiveThirtyEight.com. In his sports section he has a neat forecasting model for the NCAA tournament. He calculates the chance of each team reaching each round, taking into account a composite of power rankings, pre-season rankings, the team’s placement on the NCAA’s 68-team S-curve, player injuries and geography. After each round it is updated so the odds change based on outcomes. Click here for the page with the odds shown in bracket form or table form. I thought it would be interesting to see how the teams with the highest chance of winning it all turn out.

Right now the top teams and their chance % follows:

Louisville 15%
Florida 15%
Univ. of Arizona 13%
Kansas 7%
Virginia 6%
Michigan State 6%
Wichita State 5%

Lets see how it plays out.

Are we alone in the universe?

The universe is so incredibly large, beyond our imagination, that I have always thought it’s egotistical for anyone to think us humans are the highest and only forms of life in the entire universe. As Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson states there are more stars in the universe than all the grains of sand on earth. In this video he describes the logic behind the idea that there are other more intelligent forms of life out there. I find his argument incredibly compelling.