Creek Walk - Lost Creek Barton Creek Entrance

As it gets hotter, we will start earlier, I thought about starting this at 7 AM as it will be 89 degrees at 11 AM. Tell me when you would like to start earlier. This will be a creek walk, wear hiking water shoes and clothes prepared to hike in the water much of the hike and possibly higher than knee deep for short segments.

This is not an official entrance to Barton Creek - but it is a well used one - no legal issues. This is the farthest upstream entrance I know. Park below the bridge - should be lots of room at 7:30 AM, but if this small road is full park just past the golf course entrance on the other side and walk down.

From Mopac South entrance to 360 go past Scottish Woods and take a left onto Lost Creek, it is almost 3 miles through the neighborhood and there is a small creek level access road (technically Bend O' River Drive, but I've never seen a sign) on the right to go down to the right and below the bridge. If you pass the golf course entrance after the bridge and on the right - turn around and park on the right and walk down.

What might we talk about?

• Smartphone users are paying for their own surveillance. Edward Snowden, for example, noted that under mass surveillance we're essentially "tagged animals" who pay for our own tags. There's an argument to be made that the vast majority of network-connected gadgets enable monitoring far more than they protect individual liberty.

• Google wants to make it easier for users to find answers to their symptom-related questions. It's improving search responses to health symptoms that have been vetted by the Mayo Clinic and Harvard Medical School. The company also plans to use its Knowledge Graph feature to enhance the search results it provides.

• A new bill in the Russian Duma, proposes making cryptographic backdoors mandatory in all messaging apps so the Federal Security Service can obtain special access to all communications within the country.

• CRISPR won approval from the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee (RAC), a federal ethics panel set up at NIH to review experiments that change the human genome to be used to fight cancer in human trials. The procedure takes patient blood samples, alters their T-cells and returns them to more effectively target cancer.

• For industrial vehicles it can be a challenge to get very far on just electric power. Sweden is testing out an 'electric road' with an overhead system very similar to light rail, allowing e-vehicles can jump on, get juiced while they travel, and get back on the conventional road where they can operate as hybrid vehicles. They just opened a two kilometer test electric road. A step towards a fossil fuel-free Sweden.

• Do you want robots making your pizza? Zume has an army of robot sauce-spreaders, for now humans put on cheese and toppings. Conveyor belts to robots that pack pizza in trucks with 850-degree ovens. Pizzas are fully cooked when delivered to customers. Domino's with less labor and faster delivery.

• A company named Axiom Space wants to launch a new module for the International Space Station. Axiom would use it for commercial purposes, research to tourism. It would also be available for use by NASA, helping to transition research on the ISS to future private stations. Research hardware on the station could be moved to this module to allow its continued use after NASA privatizes ISS. Similarly, Nanoracks, is proposing a commercial airlock for the ISS. The development of commercial space stations, as well as commercial spacecraft such as the SpaceX Dragon and the Boeing Starliner, constitutes NASA's long-term strategy of handing off low-Earth orbit to the private sector while it concentrates on deep space exploration.

• In 2017, a version of Civilization V will be made for schools as an "educational tool providing students the opportunity to think critically and create historical events, geographical, economic and technological decisions - and to engage in systems thinking and experiment with the causal/correlative relationships between military, technology, political and socioeconomic development."

• A new study shows that most people prefer that self-driving cars be programmed to save the most people in the event of an accident, even if it kills the driver, .. they believe that, unless they are the driver.

We will be in or near the creek for the entire hike - possibly getting as far down stream as Twin Falls. Hike is estimated to be 3 to 3.5 hours unless we all agree we want to be shorter or longer.

Wear good shoes and bring water. As always, we will wait if you are late, on your way and call - otherwise we will leave on time. All Crack of Dawn hikes are dog friendly, Stokie wouldn't allow it any other way, but you are responsible for the behavior of your dog if you bring one.

Dave

(512) 507-2831