Category Archives: blogs

James Kim search continues. Tuesday 11:00 pm update

Posted on by
33

Family and Friends Website

Cnet update

latest updates from this blog 

11pm local news reports James is still missing with search scaled down for the night though I understand thermal equipped helicopter is flying the area.

I think the 5 mile search area assumes James got stuck following the Big Windy Creek drainage down to the river. I don’t know why they assume he did not make it to the River and out from there but I’m unfamiliar with that specific area’s terrain which may be so steep he could not have made it out and up or downriver from Big Windy.
—-
Darkness has fallen here in Southern Oregon and James Kim is still missing in the Rogue River Wilderness west of Merlin and Galice, Oregon. Approximately 100 searchers combed the drainage of Big Windy Creek Area today. A pair of pants was found near the creek. Reports say he had taken an extra pair of pants and may have left these as a sign. Another object was sited but police won’t identify it until they have it in hand.

Police indicated they did not know why he walked into the drainage and seemed confused about this but I’d suggest clearly he was looking for Rogue River which would for James be the only key navigation feature in the area. I certainly hope they search the Rogue River banks carefully, especially downriver at least to Half Moon Bar Lodge (closed but caretakers there and he would not have likely passed this point).

Map of the Wild Section of the Rogue River

Google Map of the Rogue River Area where James Kim is expected to be.

Flash Alerts from Oregon State Police – note photo links at bottom of post

This helicopter report from KGW news:

05:50 PM PST on Tuesday, December 5, 2006

By FRANK MUNGEAM, kgw.com Staff A helicopter with the Oregon Army National Guard was scheduled to continue searching Tuesday night for James Kim, missing since Thanksgiving weekend in Southern Oregon.

An OH-58 Kiowa helicopter equipped with the Forward Looking Infrared System planned to scour the mountainous area overnight.

A second aircraft, a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter, was en route to its standby location at the Medford Airport, according to ONG spokesperson Kay Fristad. The Blackhawk is a medevac helicopter used for rescue operations and is equipped with a crew that includes flight medics, crew chief and two pilots. According to Fristad, the team is highly skilled in hoist operations, patient stabilization, and transport.

Crews are camped out waiting for daybreak.

My current thinking is that it’s very important to search the south bank of the river all the way down to Half Moon Bar Lodge. It seems logical to me that he would have followed the river downriver, knowing it would eventually lead to safety. In fact the original Gold Beach destination of the Kims was TuTuTun Lodge which is right on the Rogue river (though many days from Windy Creek, but James would not have known how far upriver he was).

I called the Half Moon Bar Lodge folks a few hours ago and learned that they are closed but there are caretakers there, so if James made it that far we’d have heard. Paradise lodge is on the other side of the river. A bad scenario is that he saw that lodge and tried to cross over the river which would be very dangerous. This is a wilderness area and there are no residences or even shelters that I know of between Black Bar Lodge (near Windy Creek but which presumably he missed) and Half Moon Bar, a distance of about 20 miles by river.

5pm Update – Kati and kids in hospital in “good” condition. James still missing. 24 hour search for James continues.

Posted on by
5

[Update Dec 6.   James Kim was found dead in the Windy Creek Drainage of the Rogue River Wilderness.   Updates here]

Kim Family Site

Merlin, Oregon 5:15pm Monday December 4:

News conference notes:

Kati and kids in hospital in “good condition” (he also said they are in “great condition” James is still missing.

Carson Helicopter found them. Edge Wireless guy’s computer model helped concentrate the search in the correct area.

Units now tracking Mr. Kim’s footprints into the Windy Creek Drainage area.

2 USFS officers will track footprints throughout the night.
“They’ll be out there all night and will work 24/7 until we bring him home”.

Windy Creek Drainage area is James’ probable location. National Guard Helicopter on the way. More searchers headed to area. Dog teams will arrive in the morning as will river searchers.

James is wearing jeans, tennis shoes, sweater and jacket and may have a couple of lighters and possibly a camera strobe.

Family found today in “very good shape”. They had minor provisions, ran car at night to stay warm. Started to burn tires to stay warm. Don’t know if they ran off road. Were not on main road. James left 7:45 Saturday Morning, up the road they came down. At some point he went over into Big Windy Creek Drainage where they hope to find him soon.

Kati and kids may have to spend the night as a precaution, but according to the officer speaking now they are in “great shape”. Cell phone info was critical to the find. “Searchers did a fantastic job”.

Kim Family still missing in Southern Oregon

Posted on by
11

Little new to report this Sunday morning on the seach for the Kim Family here in Southern Oregon. They were last seen in Roseburg, which should indicate they took either highway 42 over to Coos Bay on the coast or the Merlin to Galice “Bear Camp” route.

Based on the sketchy reports it appears to me that the most likely area they were lost in is on logging roads in the mountainous areas west of HERE , where you turn off to go to Agness and Gold Beach. I understand Josephine and Douglas county searchers are supposed to be focusing on this area after Curry county called off their search yesterday further to the west but I read that highway 42 appears to be the top area now. I simply don’t understand why the Kim’s would have passed up 38 to take 42, but it makes sense that they would have passed up both to take this Merlin route because it looks so short and easy on the map.

I’m following up today with calls to see if this area between Agness and Merlin has been searched exhaustively. I’m about 90 minutes away from there but don’t have a good vehicle for snowy areas so I think it’s best to leave the search to the professionals.

Update: it looks like some family and friends have come up from SF and are based in Grants Pass and coordinating a search effort. I’m trying to contact them to see about helping.

Wow, the internet could be put to much better use in this case, and that frustrates me. I called the Josephine Sheriff’s office who referred me to the message machine for search and rescue. I left a message saying I could volunteer to search starting tomorrow, but I’m now thinking I should follow my own best hunches about the location rather than waiting for the bureacratic coordination efforts.

I also emailed the site that says it’s for the family. They really should have some sort of forum. O’Reilly talks about harnessing the collective intelligence of the web, and it would seem you could do this with search and rescue. For example Kim Family search data should be flowing to centralized online places so dead ends are not followed twice and local energies are put to better use than “wondering” what’s going on. I’ve been worried about interfering with suggestions, but even in light of the new Roseburg citing I’m not clear the search is exhausting the obvious first choice area which are the mountain logging roads up from Merlin. I’m heading that way tomorrow on my own or as part of the organized search if they contact me.

Are bureaucratic channels inhibiting the best approach here? IMHO this would clearly be to have a master website that tracks all search activity using text entries over online mapping and encourages locals to search roads not yet followed.

I think the possibility of foul play in these cases may limit the way the police give out information. But in a case like this, where no foul play is likely and “lost in mountains” is very likely it would seem you want info about roads searched to flow much more freely than it has been.

Update: It appears the efforts are indeed focusing on 42 rather than Merlin/Agness area. I think this is not a logical route to follow for reasons I’ve detailed in earlier posts. [but perhaps I’m wrong – mapquest shows Roseburg to Powers to Agness to Gold Beach as shortest mileage I can find to TuTuTun Lodge from Roseburg] Bear Camp is not passable over to Gold beach but I’m going to try to reach the Agness cutoff road tomorrow and walk some of the logging spurs up there if the weather holds up.

Update II:  I talked to a friend of Kim family searcher today and it appears they’ve coverd much of the Agness high country, but not clear if they’ve covered the lower areas around Galice.   I may be discounting the Powers route as possible since I’m unfamiliar with it though my gut continues to say north and west of Galice, where they could have easily lost the road and headed up into logging roads.

Little companies get the big talent? Auren says yes, but he’s wrong.

Posted on by
1

Auren Hoffman of Rapleaf has a provocative post about how startups are sucking up the smartest people, leaving the Yahoos and Googles to fend for the second class talent. Based on my internet aquaintances and conference experiences I’d have to say he’s wrong about this. Google and Yahoo and other big company folks are among the brightest I meet anywhere. Many seem too young to have developed the wisdom that helps see big pictures, but that applies to the startup people I meet as well.

Google is especially agressive about plucking people from PhD programs before they even have a chance to think about alternative work and it looks to me that events like Yahoo’s Hack Day and liberal “start your own company” policies help keep the talent flowing in the direction of the big companies.

I should add that I think a lot of brilliant folks are doing startups, and this is a great thing.  My point is that company choice is based more on individual preferences (entrepreneurial mind vs stable mind … and yes I mean that literally).

I wrote over at Auren’s:

I’ll be more convinced of this when I go to internet conferences and the startup people are more impressive than the big company folks. I’m still *very* impressed with the depth of talent at Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc, especially in the cutting edge areas. Also, many big companies have liberal rules about starting your own project under the company umbrella, which minimizes personal risk but preserves the chance at home run profits (I think you could build an interesting big company around this single notion).

I’m guessing if you did a study you’d find that the company choice for top candidates is more a function of individual preference than company size (e.g. the entrepreneurial-risk-taker vs the stable-income-and-fat-pension person.

TechMeme, paid blogging, and Zunes

Posted on by
2

Lots of interesting tech news today from TechMeme which is starting to distinguish itself as “the place” for tech insiders as Digg and Technorati increasingly seek to cater to a huge audience and Slashdot remains problematic because it’s not as robust with community input.

The New York Times reports that Huffington is adding “original” reporting to her extremely popular political blog. I wonder if this is as much for advertising credibility than quality, which clear thinking people know is not a function of whether you get paid to blog or not. Hey, wait a minute. A lot of bloggers (including me) are skeptical that paying people for blog posts, reviews and other online content serves the best interests of the blog community.

Yet nobody seems to frown on a journalist when they get paid to blog. Or, for that matter, run copious amounts of expensive advertising beside quality content as Mike does over at TechCrunch. For the time being I’m refiling my pay per post concerns under the folder “maybe right, but maybe just hypocritical pseudo-elitist nonsense”.

Also at NYT is this piece on the Third World Laptop project bringing cheap computing to the poor all over the world. It’s a very exciting concept that will certainly bring about big changes and also many unintended, unpredictable consequences. I remain confused as to why Bill Gates has opposed the laptop project because even though clean water and health and food are more immediate needs, the Laptops will connect the first and third worlds in ways that will *demand* more proactive participation in third world development by us rich folks. Also this project brings some of the best thinkers – people who often dwell in abstract and expensive first world problem solving realms – into the of “global poverty and development” department of innovation. Gates’ outstanding contributions in this realm are of global and historical significance so I hope he will eventually see how the laptop project is part of this excellent trend that is connecting the rich and the poor.

Aleks Krotoski has a great piece about digital violence over at Second Life where that blossoming virtual community is now under attack by opportunistic and malicious … programs. It’s not only art that imitates life, it’s virtually impossible to escape our human inadequacies even when humans are not physically present in the environment.

And those nifty Zunes can’t seem to crack the IPOD dominance in digital MP3 players. I often wonder how much of the tech trends are habit and how much innovation. Zunes seemed to offer better features yet they appear to be losing the battle. Ironically the neat song sharing feature using DRM restrictions seems to be backfiring on the Zune.

Yahoo beats Google at something other than … sports.

Posted on by
Reply

Google is closing down it’s answers feature which has been very inferior in performance compared to Yahoo’s and was missing the point in Web 2-point-0.

Hey, I pointed this difference out about one year ago.   This is actually a very interesting example of how Yahoo is more 2.0 friendly and better at bringing people into the computer equation, and helps disprove Matt Cutts’ recent, mildly back-handed compliment suggesting that Yahoo is only better in sports.

More important is that it’s a small indicator of how the battle lines are getting drawn in what may be the most significant, fun, and interesting corporate battle in the history of commerce.   Who you gonna call . com?    Yahoo as community builder, Google as search behemoth, Microsoft as “where o where did our monopoly go?!”   Who will rule the net?    There’s room for many players so it could even be a combination or companies yet to be invented.

So, how about a price spike in Yahoo stock, which seems to happen with GOOG every time that Google farts.

Hey Wall Street!  Yahoo!!!  Look!  Hey!

Disclaimer:   I own some Yahoo Stock and have some old Google puts that will expire soon, worthless.
Serves me right for betting against brilliance, though I still think Google is priced using an irrational exhuberance stock picking algorithm and Yahoo is … undervalued.

Blogs – why listen to the man when you can listen to the guy sticking it to the man?

Posted on by
3

Jeremy, over at one of the very best non-official blogs, is noting the challenges of corporate blogging which has been exploding thanks in no small part to the blog evangelizing efforts of another great non-official blogger Robert Scoble.

This reminded me of a nice talk I had with Google’s Adam at Pubcon where I was telling him that I’d rather read his own personal blog where he often has very thoughtful posts, or read Matt Cutts, than read the Google company line at the corporate blog.

Ideally I’d like to see Adam talk about Google stuff from his own perspective, as Jeremy has done so effectively over the years at Yahoo and Matt sometimes does at his blog. Corporate suits should take note of the amazing reservoir of credibility Jeremy, and a handful of other unofficial folks, have created with their frank, honest and introspective styles.

I’m still pretty much a corporate blog bigot, feeling that a large company blogs generally suffer from the items Jeremy notes PLUS the fact that usually it is very low level folks in charge of the blog and they simply can’t afford to rock the boat.

A notable exception is Bob Parsons over at Godaddy. I suppose his blog might be considered personal more than corporate, but this is my point. He’s wonderfully honest and insightful discussing Godaddy because nobody can kick his ass. He can write about the man without fear because he IS the man. His series about strategizing and running 2005 Superbowl TV ads was one of the most interesting things I’ve ever read about big ticket advertising.

So I’ll take Jeremy and Adam’s advice and check out the corporate blogs again, but I’m guessing I won’t be reading the man when I can read the guy who is at least willing to stick it to the man.

The causes of a problem cannot total more than 100%

Posted on by
2

There is a lot of blame going around the world these days.   I think it would be helpful if people blaming others for a problem would first define the problem and then assign blame to all the parties involved, with the total blame equalling 100%.     The conflicts in the Middle east come to mind as an area where this might be helpful.     If a car bomb planted by insurgents kills 100 people how do you rationally allocate the responsibility?    I see all the following parties as having at least a measure of responsibility:

The insurgent bombers themselves
The insurgency who helped the bombers
Iraqi govt security forces (for failing to protect)
USA Govt military (for helping to destabilize the region)
Foreign funders of insurgency
Iraq citizens who support insurgency
US Citizens (for funding the inital conflict)

A reasonable list goes on for some time, though I wonder if you could simplify things by grouping political allies and adversaries?    At first this excercise seems somewhat futile, but I think it forces people to address issues that are usually left off the table such as “how much responsibility does an individual have for their direct violent actions?”.       I’d suggest that however you allocate responsibility you cannot rationally say the total is greater than 100%.

My working assumption is that people generally fall into two camps on this – one that says individuals have a lot of control over themselves and therefore bear most of the responsibility for their actions.  The other group suggests people’s actions are best viewed as the product of complicated forces that are usually out of the individual’s control.   These folks look at individual behavior more forgivingly and see societies as responsible for problems far more than individuals.
In the USA, and even internationally I think, individual accountability people tend to be politically conservative while society accountability people tend to be liberal.

World Peace through Blog Evangelism

Posted on by
2

Hey Matt, I think I’m becoming a WordPress Blog Evangelist.   I’m telling everybody with anything to say to get a WP blog going ASAP.   Oddly (or not?) they all want their hand held while setting it up rather than just logging on and following the excellent directions and support here (there?) at WordPress.

The good news is that while blogging in many technology sectors  is going strong now, in travel (in fact in almost all of the non-tech sectors) I think blogging has not even reached that powerful upward inflection point.

Thus my dream of creating a huge, unstructured global travel blogging network is still attainable.    In fact wouldn’t it be neat if people started getting specific travel advice from local bloggers who they’d then take out to dinner to say “thanks!”.    Friendships would blossom, tourism would bring prosperity to every corner of the globe, and we’d have world peace through blogging.     (insert violin holiday music here)

Holiday discussion follow ups

Posted on by
Reply

One of my favorite things about the holidays is hearing from people about things they believe/don’t believe/feel strongly about/don’t care about, etc. It’s also fun to follow up online. I think many people who “live” online don’t realize how few people properly use the internet to find even basic information. This is changing, but slowly.

I’ve really been pleased with Wikipedia lately, which I often find to be more than enough information to satisfy my curiousity about even fairly complex topics. It came in very handy on all these topics discussed over the past few days in Minnesota as we geared up for the Turkey overdose:

Splenda is almost certainly very safe while Stevia, an alternative sweetener, is largely untested. So why do some people choose the unknown over the known, taking more risk but thinking they are taking less? They be silly sweeties.

Sunburn through glass is a surprisingly complex topic. In general it seems glass offers little UV-A protection (cancer and skin damage warning) but does protect against a lot of the UV-B which causes the burning. Moral: Avoid exposure with or without glass.

Israel and Palestine Frankly, the more I study this the more confusing it becomes. I was optimistic a few years ago as two-state plans started to blossom, but now think peace of the type we enjoy here in Uncle Sam’s Land may be unattainable. I see these key problem points for at least another generation: 1) Israel: right to exist 2) Palestinians: right to return 3) Borders for Palestine and Israel.

Richard Dawkins and Atheism His style and approach seems odd to me – more combative than strategic if Dawkins’ goal is to do more than *preach* to the atheists in the choir.
I just want to know if the conscious computers that come about around 2020 are going to believe in God or not. I’ll accept their conclusion.

…. later, circa 2020 …

42 ! ?