Tamm

"Tamm" is the Estonian word for an oak tree. It's pronounced almost like my name (Tom), but with an "ah" sound. There is a tradition in Estonia of preserving and naming the biggest trees of each major species, and also for large groves or unusual trees. My map of Estonia contains perhaps two hundred such marked trees, and all the ones I've visited so far (something like 30 or 40 of them) have signs or other markings, and usually some parking and a path to the tree or trees. I have no idea of the origins of this custom, and I have not yet ever found anyone else visiting the trees to ask. But I like it, and I've very much enjoyed finding and visiting various trees.

The tree at right above is called the Mäe-Lehtsoo Tamm, and it's located near the small lake (Punde) pictured at right, near the town of Urväste in south-central Estonia. If I understood the sign correctly, it is the second-largest oak in all of Estonia. The area around the tree had recently been cleared of brush, along with the hillside above it, giving a clear view of the entire tree. This was a nice presentation, but the tree itself looks like it's not in such good shape. There are many large broken branches, and much of the tree looks quite sickly.

This oak tree is the largest one in Estonia — a very famous oak called the Tamme-Lauri Oak. If you enlarge the picture of the sign at right, you can read all about it. A drawing of this particular oak adorns the Estonian ten-kroon note (Estonian currency is denominated in kroons until they adopt the Euro, scheduled in early 2006).

Click on any photo for a larger view.

Where in the world?

I'm leaving tomorrow morning (Thursday, 8/11) for an extended mostly-business trip, to Tallinn, Estonia and St. Petersburg, Russia. Blogging will be intermittent, and probably mainly on the weekends.

Those of you who know me also know that these are places that I have been visiting often (usually at least two or three times a year, sometimes more) since 1994 — Tallinn more often than St. Petersburg. I'll be spending a working week in each city, in my employer's software development facilities.

This coming weekend I'm going to spend a couple of days alone, sightseeing in southeastern Estonia near the towns of Võru and Rouge. With luck, the weather will be good and I'll even have a few photos to post.

The following weekend I'll be traveling by car from Tallinn to St. Petersburg, with two or three of my fellow workers. We'll be taking the long way, down through the same southeastern part of Estonia and then back up through a part of Russia that will be new to all of us.

Then after that second working week (in St. Petersburg), I'll be traveling back to the good old US of A — but not quite back to California. I'll be stopping in to see my folks for a few days, at their home in south-central New Jersey (yes, I'm related to someone who lives in New Jersey — get over it!). This will be both a for-fun visit and an "IT upgrade" visit — my mom's computer is badly in need of an upgrade, and I'm going to be hooking them up to a broadband Internet connection (via Comcast cable).

And then at at long last I'll be heading home. I'll be "boots on" to Jamul late on 8/31...

Mustard

Let me make one thing perfectly clear: I hate mustard. It's the worst weed in my home's environment, by far. There are two common species in my yard, so far as I can tell: black mustard (brassica nigra) and shortpod/mediterranean/hoary mustard (hirschfeldia incana). See this very useful mustard page, from which I shamelessly stole this photo. The photo at right shows both species growing side-by-side, with the h. incana in the foreground.

My mustard hatred is particularly keen at the moment, as I've just come back inside after battling the umpteen million plants in my yard. My current method is very hard work, but quite satisfying, as the mustard plants are mechanically chopped from the ground, pieces flying in all directions. I'm using the top-end Husqvarna weed-whacker, fitted with a three-toothed steel blade (that wimpy plastic cord doesn't work on mustard!). It's quite powerful, with (I believe) a 2.5 horsepower gasoline engine. What makes it hard work is that (a) you have to dig the rotating blade into the ground to get all the leaves chopped off (particularly for the h. incana plants), and (b) it's 90 degrees plus outside. Over the last two mornings, before it got too darned hot, I cleared about an acre and a half of these disgusting, hideous, obnoxious things.

That's the good news. The bad news is that past experience suggests to me that they'll be back, as strong as ever, within a week or two. The mechanical removal method — while satisfying — isn't really very practical, it seems. So this morning I set out to investigate herbicides.

And I discovered almost nothing in the way of advice on what kind of herbicide to use on mustard. I did find a few articles about "broad spectrum" versus "broadleaf" weed killers, but it's not 100% clear to me whether mustard is or is not considered a broadleaf. There was a lot of discussion about h. incana (in particular) and genetic modification; apparently it easily hybridizes with some crops (especialy rapeseed), creating the danger of spreading herbicide-resistance genes to the same species we're trying to control.

So...I'm off to Home Depot to see if they carry any herbicide that specifically targets mustards. I'm not particularly optimistic about this, as I'm beginning to believe that mustard is the one plant that's likely to survive anything up to and including a nuclear holocaust...

As usual, click the photo for a larger view.

APOD

APOD brings us...

Will it be curtains for one of these auroras? A quick inspection indicates that it is curtains for both, as the designation "curtains" well categorizes the type of aurora pattern pictured. Another (informal) type is the corona. The above auroras resulted from outbursts of ionic particles from the Sun during the last week of 2001 September. A polarity change in the solar magnetic field at the Earth then triggered auroras over the next few days. The picture was taken on 2001 October 3 as fleeting space radiation pelted the Earth's atmosphere high above the Yukon in Canada.

Click on the picture for a larger view.

Rescued!

Said Yelena Milashevsky, wife of the trapped Russian mini-sub AS28, about learning that the crew had been rescued safely:

My feelings danced. I was happy. I cried.

What she said.

The news is reporting that the Russians have been very gracious about thanking the international efforts that helped free the mini-sub from its entanglements — most especially, of course, to the British, as their Scorpio remote-controlled submersible was first on the scene and actually cut the cables. Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, who went to Kamchatka to supervise the operation, praised the international efforts. "We have seen in deeds, not in words, what the brotherhood of the sea means."

An altogether joyous ending for something that could have ended in much differently...

Sub down

The story, as reported by The Age (Australia):

A Russian mini-submarine with seven sailors aboard was trapped on the sea floor off the Kamchatka Peninsula on Russia's Pacific Coast after becoming caught on an unidentified object, navy officials have said.

Navy authorities were trying to determine why the military vessel, called a bathyscaph or mini-submarine, was stuck some 190 metres below the surface before starting rescue efforts, Pacific Fleet spokesman Captain Alexander Kosolapov said in televised comments.

He said it might have been caught on a cable or a fishnet.

Kosolapov said there was contact with the sailors, who were not hurt and that authorities were preparing to send down a similar vessel to assess the situation.

Conflicting reports said there was enough oxygen in the vessel to last between one to five days.

Kosolapov said there was likely enough air to last four days, because such vessels typically have oxygen supplies for 120 hours and the accident occurred when it was launched from a rescue ship during a combat training exercise, the Interfax news agency reported.

AP reports have several facts different, in particular saying that there is just one day's oxygen on board. Let's hope the AP has got it wrong, because one day is not a lot of time to put a rescue effort together. I could find very little online about the Priz class of submarines. From Jane's, in a section on rescue submarines:

Little is known about Russia's systems, one submersible of the Bester and five of the Priz class, which were involved in the failed rescue attempt on the Kursk. The Priz is thought to be operable either manned or unmanned, but is restricted by a battery endurance of just three hours. An upgrade has been proposed that will allow the Russian systems to dock with damaged submarines and improve their navigation equipment.

I found several references to either one or two Priz-class submarines being used in the Kursk disaster, attempting to rescue the crew. From my own time in the Navy (now almost 30 years ago), I know that our rescue submarines depended on a specific hatch configuration to "dock" into; our submarine fleet was all equipped with these hatches. I don't know if the Russian rescue subs depend on such specific equipment (or indeed, if our own still do). I'm rambling a bit, but what I'm thinking is that a sub-to-sub transfer sort of rescue is a really tough challenge, and possibly dependent on equipment configurations that may or may not be present. I'm hoping that it's possible to untangle the propeller of the down sub, so that it can get to the surface on it's own — that seems like a much more likely scenario than a transfer.

Whatever the mode of rescue, our fervent hope is that the rescue is successful and the seven trapped sailors can breathe the fresh air on the surface once more...

Open source

A very interesting article from Paul Graham. An excerpt:

So these, I think, are the three big lessons open source and blogging have to teach business: (1) that people work harder on stuff they like, (2) that the standard office environment is very unproductive, and (3) that bottom-up often works better than top-down.

I can imagine managers at this point saying: what is this guy talking about? What good does it do me to know that my programmers would be more productive working at home on their own projects? I need their asses in here working on version 3.2 of our software, or we're never going to make the release date.

And it's true, the benefit that specific manager could derive from the forces I've described is near zero. When I say business can learn from open source, I don't mean any specific business can. I mean business can learn about new conditions the same way a gene pool does. I'm not claiming companies can get smarter, just that dumb ones will die.

Read the whole thing — it's fascinating.

A beautiful ad

Probably not the kind of comment you'd ever expect me to make! But take a look at this moving and effective ad for a Ford Mustang, and see if you don't agree with me.

Ford may have found a way to get me to look at their cars, which ordinarily I wouldn't even consider (we own a Toyota LandCruiser and a Toyota T-100, and love them both). Someone at that company has their act together. This ad is tasteful, very supportive of our troops, and yet still effective.

Hat tip to Gateway Pundit — and check out the moonbats in the comments while you're there for the view from the other side...the other side of the door to the lunatic asylum, that is.

Clear Lake Panorama

This is a stitched-together panorama, made of six individual shots. Each of the sub-pictures was made with identical exposure settings, handheld, in vertical orientation (e.g., the long axis of the picture is vertical).

I've made quite a few such composite pictures; with modern tools (I use PhotoStitch, from Canon) it is both quite easy and gives very nice results. This particular tool has two independent methods for orienting pictures: an automatic mode (what I used here) that somehow finds the pieces in adjacent pictures that are overlapping, and a manual mode that lets you precisely identify the overlaps. Usually I use the manual mode, as the results are generally better. This time, I could not spot any obvious flaws from the automatic mode, so I left it alone.

The place is Clear Lake, in the San Juan mountains of southwest Colorado (see my post here). As usual, click on the photo for a larger view.

'Intelligent Design'

The story:

President George W. Bush stirred the debate on the teaching of evolution in schools when he said this week that he supported the teaching of alternative viewpoints - such as the theory of Intelligent Design - to help students "understand what the debate is about".

"I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought," Mr Bush said in comments to five Texas newspapers on Monday. "You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes."

Although Mr Bush did not explicitly endorse the concept of Intelligent Design, which contends that certain features of biological systems are best explained by an "intelligent" cause rather than by natural selection, such influential groups as the National Academy of Sciences strongly oppose the teaching of ID in schools.

The story above (excerpted from the Financial Times), with minor variations, was reported all over the MSM yesterday. I first read it in a rather hysterical post on a liberal blog, where it was interpreted as Bush was about to force all schools to teach 'intelligent design' (which I put in scare quotes because I do not believe it is a legitimate scientific theory). On reading in more sober reports what Bush actually said, I am slightly comforted...but only slightly. Tigerhawk captures my personal response best in his excellent post titled "Sigh", here excerpted in its original entirety (it has since been updated):

Why, oh why, must our President, who is right about so many things, insist that idiocy is a form of intellect.

Thanks, Tigerhawk, for that succinct summary. And for the pointer to Charles Krauthammer's column in Time Magazine on the subject. Mr. Krauthammer doesn't mention Bush's remarks, but forcefully makes the argument that it's a bad mistake to teach something that is faith (meaning 'intelligent design' as if it were some form of science (such as evolutionary theory). And he gets it exactly right when he calls 'intelligent design' a "tarted-up version of creationism."

On the other hand, there are a few conservative voices supporting Bush's position. Right-Thinking Girl says:

Though I am positive that Bush's detractors will no doubt start crying "theocracy!" at the mere mention of Intelligent Design, I think this is a good idea. I am not interested in having Christianity taught in public schools, per se, but I believe that schools are places to challenge one's own body of knowledge. If evolution is perceived to be the "anti-religion", I think that there should be a counterweight to that. Though Intelligent Design is not Christian in nature, it does encourage the possibility of a Supreme Being. Good for Bush, speaking up on such a controversial subject.

Well, maybe. I'm not buying the "'intelligent design' isn't Christian" notion — so far as I can tell, it is entirely the construct of fundamentalist and radical Christians, exactly the tarted-up version of creationism that Mr. Krauthammer paints it as. Right-Thinking Girl's point about the need for a counterbalance might make sense in some kind of philosophy curriculum, but certainly not in a science classroom. Science is about truth, and truth is inherently "unbalanced" in the sense she means.

And then there's GrrlScientist's rant at "Living the Scientific Life":

Well, if we are going to be truly open-minded about this, bushco would propose equal time for ALL other creation myths floating around out there.

But the problem with this unexpected rush of open-mindedness is that bushco once again misunderstands science: science is not about presenting different creation mythologies as if they are Flavors of the Week at the local ice cream shop. In fact, there are thousands of peer-reviewed research articles that provide yet more evidence for the Theory of Evolution but there is absolutely no scientific credibility, and absolutely no data, that support ID/creationism. How long will it take before this simple fact finally sinks in? In view of this fact, forcing teachers to present ID in a science classroom is absolutely ludicris.

I regularly read GrrlScientist's blog because she shares an interest of mine (birds). I'm an amateur bird-watcher; she's a scientist, an ornitholigist if I'm not mistaken (and she's looking for a job, if any of you have one available). We do not share much common ground in politics, however. Every once in a while, she'll post a rant about Republicans in general, and Bush in particular, which mostly I've ignored except for their entertainment value, as they've been along familiar themes and lines of argument. This time, though, I do find some common ground with her rant. I admit to some discomfort at that realization <smile>.

My hope is that Bush will wake up to the bad politics his comments represent, and will make some clarifying remarks to defuse the negative reactions from (what I fervently hope is) the majority of his base. Including myself.