Another resource that I use for free images is The Commons on Flickr.

The key goal of The Commons is to share hidden treasures from the world’s public photography archives.

The following images are a few of the many results on a search on “color” in The Commons. (Click on any image to go to the corresponding image page on Flickr)

Color guard of Negro engineers, Ft. Belvoir, VA circa 1939, image from Library of Congress

Image taken from page 207 of ‘The Great Battles of the British Army. … With coloured illustrations. (New edition.), The British Library

Image taken from page 71 of ‘Love-Knots and Bridal-Bands: poems and rhymes of wooing and wedding, and valentine verses. The British Library

A dragon  – The Illuminated Books of the middle ages; an account of the development and progress of the art of illumination … from the IVth to the XVIIth centuries … Illustrated by a series of examples … executed on stone and printed in colours by Owen Jones. The British Library

Image from page 17 of “On colour, and on the necessity for a general diffusion of taste among all classes : with remarks on laying out dressed geometrical gardens, examples of good and bad taste, illustrated by woodcuts and coloured plates in contrast”, Internet Archive Book

I like to incorporate images in blog posts, no matter what the post is about.

Sometimes, the blog post is the image or images and little or nothing else.  Other times, the image(s) is an illustration for the post.

As much as possible, the images that I use will be (1) my own, (2) public domain, or (3) licensed for the use.

Public domain images are images that have no copyright restrictions on them.  This may be because the copyright has lapsed or they have been placed into the public domain by their “author.”  By law, most photos made by the US government are public domain as “works” by our government cannot be copyrighted.

Most of the licensed images that I use are licensed free to the public under Creative Commons copyright licenses.  Under Creative Commons licenses, creators waive some of their rights under copyright and retain other rights.  There are several standard Creative Commons copyright-licenses.  (See https://creativecommons.org/)

A site that I’ve been using quite a bit recently is Pixabay, which has over 300,000 free photo, art, and vector illustrations.  All Pixabay images are available for use without cost or attribution, even for commercial applications.

The image at the top is from Pixabay.

Wolverine near Grinnell Glacier, September 9, 2012, Glacier National Park, Montana – National Park Service photo by Erik Peterson (Some rights reserved)

I had no idea that there were wolverines in the lower 48 states of the US.  That would have been interesting to see – from a safe distance – when we were in Glacier last summer.

The wolverine is the largest land-dwelling species of the family Mustelidae (weasels). It is a stocky and muscular carnivore, more closely resembling a small bear than other mustelids. The wolverine, a solitary animal, has a reputation for ferocity and strength out of proportion to its size, with the documented ability to kill prey many times larger than itself. (Wikipedia)

In a press release on Friday, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) claimed its analysis of world temperatures showed ‘2014 was the warmest year on record’.  The analysis is based on readings from more than 3,000 measuring stations worldwide.

Apparently, it beat out the 2010 record by 0.02°C.

Really.

Really?  0.02°C? (That’s 0.036°F).

The margin of error acknowledged by GSS researchers is five times that value (0.1°C, 0.18°F).

Gavin Schmidt, Director of GISS, released the graphic below on Twitter.

According to NASA, then, there is only a 38% probability that 2014 was the warmest.  Yet, in the media, it’s presented as proven fact.

Given that NASA says there is a 38% probability it was the warmest, there is a 62% probability that it wasn’t.

I didn’t see that on the evening news or in any of the headlines that proclaimed 2014 the warmest ever.

Global temperatures for all of the years in the table fall within the 0.1°C margin of error.

In other words, the variation has been insignificant.

Today, we drove over to Petit Jean State Park and hiked the Seven Hollows Trail.  It’s a 4.5 mile hike that is quite strenuous in places.  The trail-head sign said to allow 4 hours to hike it.  We finished in about 2 hours and 45 minutes.  The parking lot was full when we got there so we parked in the parking lot of a different trail a short ways down the road.  That added a bit to our hike so we may have been closer to 5 miles.

My fitness level is not yet where I would like.  I was struggling on the steepest areas of the last half of the trail.  The last mile or so was a steady upward slope.

We were close enough to home that we actually ran into someone we knew, a young man who works at the gym we go to.

One of the features along the trail referred to as a natural bridge, but it is actually a natural arch.  To get this picture – which is better than the view from the trail – I climbed up through the arch.

Petit Jean Natural Bridge is actually an abandoned natural arch eroded through Hartshorne sandstone. It is located in Petit Jean State Park in Conway County, Arkansas. Access is via the Seven Hollows Trail, a 4.5 mile loop. It has a span of 30 feet, a height of 22 feet, a width of 23 feet, and a thickness of 20 feet.  (The Natural Arch and Bridge Society)

This type of natural arch is invariably isolated and the lintel is arched. There are two roughly vertical abutments, each having a vertical rise greater than its horizontal extent. For many natural arches of this type, the lintel and abutments form a single strand of rock whose breadth varies little over most of its curved length. In other examples, one of the abutments is noticeably broader than the lintel and other abutment, but this broadening is roughly in the plane of the opening aperture. Natural arches of this type are considered old, i.e., at the end of their lifecycle. Although there is no conclusive evidence for a specific formation process, it is clear that the natural arch continues to survive due to compression strengthening. Compression strengthening made the remnant rock more resistant to erosion than the rock that once surrounded it, and hence, gave it its characteristic arched shape. This type of natural arch is rare. (The Natural Arch and Bridge Society)

One of the membership benefits at our gym is free Wi-Fi.  I’ve been using it for several months to watch old TV series from Netflix on my cell phone while exercising.  It certainly helps pass the time. I was watching one episode while exercising on one of the stationary bikes, stair-climbers, or elliptical machines. After that I would head out on a fast walk on the indoor track.

A couple of weeks ago, I started watching movies.  Since it’s a little hard to walk on the track and watch video on the cell phone, I’ve been watching about an hour on one type of fitness machine.  Then I finish the movie on a different type of machine, usually one of the bikes.

I’ve been going to the gym on a very regular basis for over a year now.  When using the machines, I have them set at a high level of difficulty.  When I was at my highest level of fitness over the years, my tee-shirt would be soaked by the end of the workout.  I’m not to that point, yet, this time, but I’m getting closer.

I’ve always had good intentions to continue working out after starting on a new contract job. I’ve not been successful.

This time, I’m going to do better.

I woke up this morning at 3:30 AM – and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I got up and read for a while in the hopes of getting more sleepy so I could go back to sleep for a while.

It didn’t work.

After a couple of hours, I brewed some coffee, had breakfast, and checked email, blogs and Facebook before heading to the office.

Before yesterday, I would have tried to get a nap, generally some time in the afternoon.  Since I’m back at work for a while, that’s no longer an option – unless I leave work and come back home, which I might have done if I was totally exhausted.

I’m working part-time to start, 20 hours a week, but will be working full-time later.  Today was a 7 hour day.

Though tired, I stopped at the gym and had a very good workout before coming home.

…..

I think I’m going to go to bed a bit early tonight.

I’ve been pretty fortunate over the years when it comes to commuting to work.

I learned to drive in the late 60s when I lived just outside of Houston, Texas.  Some of the driver education training included driving in traffic on one of the area freeways.  I was comfortable driving in urban traffic.

Very little of my commuting to work has been in that kind of traffic.  I’ve never really had to deal with heavy traffic or traffic jams regularly.

When I was in the Navy, moving off base meant riding a commuter train between Waukegan, Illinois and Great Lakes Naval Training Center to go to and from school.  For my nuclear operational training, there was a fleet of yellow buses that took students and others out to the Naval Reactors Facility over an hour away in the Idaho desert.

Most of my commuting time, though, has been by automobile, with the drive ranging from about 20 to 30 minutes.

Traffic congestion during my commutes has almost never been a problem.  The worst was during outages at the nuclear plant, when getting to and from work takes longer during the periods when the shifts are changing due the longer hours and increased staffing.

I normally go to the gym after most folks are already at work. Traffic is normally very light.  When I headed in today at about 7:30,  traffic was noticeably heavier.

After my first half-day of work, I left at about normal quitting time and ran into some congestion, with traffic backed up from where vehicles leaving the plant turn onto the main highway.  My commute home was lengthened by about 5 minutes from what I remember from the past.

Honestly, I really am thankful for the low stress commutes that I have had for most of my working life.

What has been your commuting experience been? (or your spouse’s if you worked in the home?)

Today, among other things, I filled out U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification.

The form verifies an employee’s identity and proves that they are eligible to work in the United States. The requirement to prove eligibility was established in 1986.  This is at least the sixth time I’ve completed Form I-9.

These forms, as I understand it, are not submitted to the government, but, rather, are retained by the employer for all current employees and for a defined period of time after the employment ends.

There are a lot of illegal immigrants in the United States and most wouldn’t be able to stay  without employment income.  None would have legitimate documents required to prove eligibility for employment.

Employers can be fined by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for the following immigration law violations: ¹

1. Employing workers who are not authorized to work in the USA.
2. Not having I-9 Employment Verification Forms done for each employee.
3. Having improperly filled out I-9 forms.
4. Not verifying employment authorization within the time limits of the law.
5. Ignoring Social Security Mismatch letters.
6. Discriminating against employment authorized foreigners.
7. Requiring specific documents for verification purposes.
8. Not accepting documents presented by employees listed on the I-9 form.
9. Hiring independent contractors to circumvent Immigration Law.
10. Not cooperating with US government officials during an audit and/or a raid.

¹ Top 10 Reasons Why Employers Are Fined For Immigration Law Violations