I've been to the Soudan mine and the underground lab. Heck, I helped get them wired up. The network at the site is all fibre-optic and, except for the VAXen they still had running a few of years back, it is (or was) all very state-of-the art. The uplink, however, is a different story.

Perhaps this new project, which they've actually been working on for years, will give them the boost they need to get a fiber run from Ely. Maybe they've gotten it already. When I was working with the project, we had to run fiber to a hut on a hill, run coax to the other company's hut, microwave the signal to Tower, MN, and then run it over 11 pair of copper to Soudan.

It worked.

If you like the outdoors and like to travel, it's beautiful country up there. If you don't mind the skeeters and the black flies. The Soudan Mine is actually a state park, and during the summer months you can visit. They run tours down the mine on a regular basis. You ride a car down an incline into the mine, about a half mile down and they walk you around and show you how the mining was done. Greenstone and iron... the iron so pure you can weld to it.

If you catch the 10 am tour (double check me on that before you go) you also get a tour of the Physics lab. It puts the BatCave to shame--and yes, there are plenty of bats down there. The lab is carved out of the rock and iron of the mine and it looks like a set from a War Games or Dr. Strangelove type movie. Huge (very) steel plates hang from railings overhead, with fine fiber optic cable running through them, trying to catch a glimpse of a neutrino or two as they fly through. The neutrinos, of course, are being fired at Soudan from Fermilab in Illinois.

Worth the trip, just to see the mine, but the Physics lab is icing on the underground cake.

http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/state_parks/soudan_underground_mine/index.html

I tend to keep things simple. I wrote Implementing CIFS in very plain HTML. Yes, by hand. No, I didn't flail myself with birch bows or kneel on jacks just to prove my inner strength. It was honestly the simplest, easiest way to format everything. Mind you, I had a very supportive publisher.

...and I used to write college papers in Runoff, so I'm used to that kind of markup.

...and I would probably want to learn Docbook if I were to do it all over again.

What they had was greywater—wastewater that is undrinkable but perfectly useful for simple jobs like filling the toilet tank for flushing. Re-use of greywater is a well-known practice among conservationists and environmentalists and anyone concerned about fresh water usage. I'm in Saint Paul, and I know folks hosting protesters. I'm not making this up.

Think for a second... How practical would it be—even for a so-called "anarchist"—to store and tote buckets of urine up the hill to the convention site and fling it at anyone? A five-gallon bucket of water would weigh over 40lbs. If someone were aiming at causing that kind of trouble there are better, easier ways I'm sure.

The reports I have read from local sources indicate that the raid in Saint Paul was lead by the county sheriff, not by St. Paul police (though St. Paul officers were present). The Saint Paul police have saved my tail more than once and have my respect. I hope they don't get mired in this mess.