Saturday, May 31, 2014

Smells good here right now!

Smells good here right now!  Scott Norman is mowing the alfalfa on our field south of the house.  This is the first of (hopefully) three cuttings in this growing season.  This one didn't need any irrigation; we had plenty of rain to let it grow.

Scott is one of the extensive Norman clan in the Paradise area.  We lease 13.5 acres to him for to run alfalfa on.  His uncle, Mike, built our house here 22 years ago.  He and a number of his relatives live within a half-mile radius of us.  We're surrounded!  :)

Splat!

Splat!  A fascinating theory that explains many of the oddities about the Earth's moon – by positing that the Earth used to have two moons, and they collided in slow motion...

The United States project...

The United States project...  The name drew me in, but it wasn't what I expected at all.  This is a geek project, a set of tools that can be used to explore freely available data about the U.S. government.  It's interesting stuff, and if it gathers some momentum I can imagine this being very useful indeed...

I have to admit...

I have to admit ... that I did not expect this.  It appears that Putin has either blinked, or has become more enamored of a new adventure.  Either way, I am greatly relieved!

...these things called Beauty Contests...

...these things called Beauty Contests...  James Delingpole at his sarcastic best.  The intro:
I'm very grateful to the mainstream media for drawing my attention to the fact that this is a newsworthy story. Otherwise, I'm ashamed to say, I might have overlooked it completely. It's because, unfortunately, I happen to be a throwback to the terrible era when young men would frequently assess women on the basis of their pulchritudinousness and when, amazingly, this was considered quite normal, healthy behaviour. Indeed, we even used to have these things called Beauty Contests in which - I kid you not - young women willingly participated in competitions where they were judged according to their looks, mostly by middle aged males, and didn't die of sexism or misogyny poisoning afterwards.
You'll want to read the rest...

More crazy people...

More crazy people...  Haven't these guys ever heard of remotely-detonated explosives?

The wildfires are worse than ever! We're all gonna die!

The wildfires are worse than ever!  We're all gonna die!  Uh, no:


Obama's “recovery”...

Obama's “recovery”...  The graph at right (click to embiggen) provides a detailed view of what Obama has declared to be a robust recovery.  I would call it hard evidence of a non-recovery, with a foreshadowing of more trouble to come.

The graph shows how the labor force participation rates for various age groups have changed since the onset of the recession in 2007.

The first thing I noticed is that one age group is actually has a higher labor force participation rate.  What group is this?  The oldest workers, those aged 55 and over.  All other age groups have lower labor force participation rates – even after 2 years of “recovery” – than they did at the onset of the recession.

The second thing that struck me is that two of these age groups stand out for the largest drop – the two youngest groups, covering workers from 18 to 24 years old.  Younger people are having far more trouble finding work than older, more experienced workers.  That does not bode well for the future, for until these younger workers can find work and gain experience, they will remain disadvantaged in the work place.

This recession has now broken all records for longevity of an economic depression or recession.  It's hard to avoid concluding that our economic policies – especially the huge bailouts and “stimulus” programs – have utterly failed (though the progressives are proclaiming them to be stellar successes, on the hypothesis – considered as fact by them – that those programs prevented an outright depression).  Worse, there's no end in sight.  It reminds me of the Carter era, in the late '70s, when the economic malaise looked like it was just going to go on forever...

Imagine what Obama's West Point speech should have been...

Imagine what Obama's West Point speech should have been...  Richard Fernandez did, in Brother Rat.  An excerpt:
I said I was going to speak at West Point. That way it will look like I’m doing something. Because for me, to speak is to act. Let me say there’s a chance for the Ukrainian people to choose their future — without us firing a shot – because it is the Russians who will do all the shooting. The Iranian nuclear program steadily advanced for years. Never so fast as under me. We have a very big chance of achieving a breakthrough agreement with Tehran, “a fat chance” in fact. This is American leadership. This is American strength.

NATO was the strongest alliance the world, made up mostly of us. Now that I’ve taken out the “us” we have more room for diplomacy. You see, we have to talk. We can’t fight any more. That’s why you owe me one. I’ve saved your life. Never again will you have to take to the battlefield. There’s no point. With any luck you’ll just have work as props from now on. To sit in front of me when I talk, to stand behind me when I talk. American influence is always stronger when we lead by example. Let’s show everyone that there’s no enemy, no danger, no peril we can’t run away from or try to buy off.
Brilliant!  Go read the whole thing...

Friday, May 30, 2014

Israel no longer has a water shortage...

Israel no longer has a water shortage...  You'd think their Arab neighbors would wake up some day, and realize that if the Israelis can do it, so could they – if they would just stop with the jihad crapola...

The War on Drugs just claimed another victim...

The War on Drugs just claimed another victim...  This time, a 19 month old baby.

Depending on who's doing the counting, the war on drugs kills or injures between 1,000 and 5,000 Americans every year.  More than half of our incarcerated citizens were convicted only of drug-related infractions.  More than half of all robberies are motivated by drugs.  What have we accomplished for all this?  There is no evidence that the “War on Drugs” has decreased drug use at all.  Instead, drug use appears to shift up and down with cultural trends that are wholly unrelated to the War on Drugs – and also unrelated to the legality of the drugs.

Isn't it way past time to shift from this costly (in both blood and treasure) failed “war” to something more akin to how we deal with alcohol and tobacco?

I certainly think so.  If that burned baby survives, I'll bet he'll feel the same way...

Quote of the day...

Quote of the day...  From Joe the Plumber:
Guns are mostly for hunting down politicians who would actively seek to take your freedoms and liberty away from you.
Varmint hunting...

Where on earth...

Where on earth ... is the government smart enough to upload a copy of its data to the cloud, in case the country gets overrun by the big, bad Putin?  In Estonia, that's where!

The determined fellow at right will hold off the Russians long enough for the backup to be completed...

Where on earth...

Where on earth ... do more than 200 volunteers annually help almost 16,000 frogs cross the road in springtime?  In Estonia, that's where!

In the spring of 1994, I happened to be driving from Tallinn to the ferry for Hiiumaa, taking a route across the northern coast.  I saw hundreds of these frogs crossing the road – and dozens of them squashed on the roadway.  In other years, I saw hundreds of storks stalking these same frogs in the (abundant) swamps of Estonia.  Nothing makes a stork happier than catching one of these for lunch!

Inferring age from first names...

Inferring age from first names...  This is a fascinating exercise in statistical analysis of abnormally distributed data.  The bottom line seems nonsensical at first: for people with certain first names (examples: Gertrude, Thomas, Mary), one can infer their age with a reasonable degree of certainty.  Really!

Yikes!

Yikes!  POV of an urban downhill mountain bike racer's run...

The clock-maker...

The clock-maker...  I've read brief mentions of this failed attempt on Hitler's life, but nothing like the detail assembled here...

Might this be even a teensy little bit relevant?

Might this be even a teensy little bit relevant?  Most likely you've seen the news reports talking about the “collapse” of the Antarctic ice sheets.  There are several aspects of this, however, that are not so widely reported.  Why?  Well, one suspects its because they don't actually support the global warmist narrative:
  • Only a relatively small part of the Antarctic ice sheet is “collapsing”  – in the western Antarctic, where about 15% of all the ice in Antarctica is.  The rest of Antarctica's ice sheets are growing at the highest rate ever recorded.
  • The word choice (“collapse”) implies something happening swiftly.  In fact, the ice sheet's reduction will occur over a 200 to 1,000 year period – if it continues at all.
  • The area where the “collapse” is occurring just happens to be an area full of active volcanoes – some of which are known to be erupting (see map at upper right).  The known effect of such an under-ice eruption is to melt the water underneath the glacier, leading to lower friction, higher glacial movement rates, and (wait for it!) – glacial collapse.
Jo Nova is all over the last bullet, which I haven't been able to find in any recent report about the collapsing glaciers – not even in the science rags I read.  However, it was present in several science articles over the past couple of years (Jo links to several such references)

Thursday, May 29, 2014

Spring babies...

Spring babies...  More here...

On Snowden...

On Snowden...  An excellent article in The Guardian (the U.S. edition of a U.K. paper).  An excerpt:
Snowden has provided the most valuable thing that democratic self-governing people can have, namely information about what is going on. If we are to exercise our rights as self-governing people, using the information he has given us, we should have clear in our minds the political ideas upon which we act. They are not parochial, or national, or found in the records of supreme court decisions alone.

A nation conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, enslaved millions of people. It washed away that sin in a terrible war. Americans should learn from that, and are called upon now to do so.
Do read the whole thing...

Giant dragon topiary...

Giant dragon topiary...  This looks like something my brother Scott might have made, but this one was made by a retired geezer in England...

Another crazy person video...

Another crazy person video...

Perfectly timed photo ...

Perfectly timed photo ... of a geyser about to erupt.  Incredible!  Click to embiggen...

On Obama's West Point speech...

On Obama's West Point speech...  What he (Ace) said...

Non-conforming dress...

Non-conforming dress ... may be an indicator of higher status?  I've always said it's better to be weird :)

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

The fantastical is becoming practical...

The fantastical is becoming practical...  A little game I often play with myself when looking at a new technology is this: when I was a teenager, would I have thought this might happen in my lifetime?  This is one where I'm certain my answer would have been “Not a prayer!”

One of these fine days, when I'm even more ancient and venerable than I am now, it will likely no longer be safe for me to drive.  The thought that these self-driving cars will probably be available is very comforting...

Mr. G. and Jellybean...

Mr. G. and Jellybean...  I know, I know, I'm a sucker for these stories...

D-Wave skepticism...

D-Wave skepticism...  Several of my friends with more knowledge of quantum computing than I have (and that's a very low bar!) have all been skeptical of it from the first announcements.  They're not alone...

Tornado!

Tornado!  I have several reactions after watching this video.  One is that it's fascinating to see a tornado this close up.  Another is that the guys in the video are not representative of our youth.  Then I wonder what I would do if placed in their circumstances.  Finally, the video ends ambiguously ... did they make it?  The comments on the YouTube page would indicate that they did...

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Save the antelope!

Save the antelope!  Via reader Simi L...

Painters have arrived...

Painters have arrived ... and they went right to work.  I'm still surprised every time a workman shows up on the day and time they say they will. They're working to some songs I haven't heard for many years: Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Kitty Wells, etc. My mom would feel right at home...


“Cosmic copyright law”...

“Cosmic copyright law” ... underlies a new “theory of everything”...

When I read the headline, my first thought was: “Oh, no!  The lawyers are extending IP to the entire cosmos?!?!?!” 

Odd rock on Mars...

Odd rock on Mars ... and Curiosity is checking it out!

Aleck, this is a teletype...

Aleck, this is a teletype...  My young friend and former colleague Aleck L. once found it hard to believe something I told him: that in the early days of microcomputing, we used mechanical teletypes to interact with the computer – and even to load software.  Well, here's a video of exactly such a setup, in action!

The teletype that I owned (affectionately nicknamed “Ralph”) was a different model than this one: it was a Model 28 Baudot code (five bit code) machine, and not the eight bit Model 33 shown here.  Consequently it couldn't read the 8 bit tapes that Microsoft sold their Basic on – so I built a 8 bit tape reader based on photo diodes (instead of the mechanical pins used to sense the tape holes on the teletypes).  When I received my paper tape of Microsoft Basic, my first attempt to read it was a complete failure – the tape was semi-transparent, and my tape reader couldn't distinguish between the holes and not-holes!

In sheer frustrated desperation, I unrolled that entire paper tape into a large bucket, and dyed it with black fabric dye.  The next day I pulled out the tape (now nicely blackened) and let it dry for a couple of days.  The next attempt to read it worked flawlessly :)

There was another, more technical issue as well: the checksum loader (referred to on the video) was designed to work with hardware I didn't have: an Altair or an IMSAI computer.  My computer was a home-built Z80 based computer with completely different serial IO.  So I had to reverse-engineer the checksum loader, and write the equivalent to work on my own computer.  The first step to reverse-engineer it was to read it (by Mark IV eyeball) from the paper tape, generating a hex machine code listing.  Then I manually reverse-assembled it, then actually figured out how it worked.  Ah, those were the days!  The equivalent would be a lot more difficult today...

Monday, May 26, 2014

Patriotic bouquet for Memorial Day...

Patriotic bouquet for Memorial Day...  My mom sent this photo of her red, white and blue bouquet (creeping zinnia, baby's breath, and sage)...

Dave Carter ...

Dave Carter... driving the Ride of Pride with the Rolling Thunder, and writing about it.  His conclusion:
There were those along the route who waved and shouted, and we waved back and obliged them with the airhorn. But there were those, like Sgt. Chambers and his comrade who understand what Rolling Thunder is about. With their discipline and endurance, their dedication and love for their brothers and sisters in arms, these men give the rest of us hope. Their solemn and silent vigil speaks more eloquently of sacrifice and devotion than all the combined windy speeches of all the silver-tongued jackasses seated at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Let me hear no more about the virtues of “public service” from people who enter office as meager citizens only to emerge years later rich as potentates. One doesn’t serve by enriching oneself while confiscating the citizen’s earnings and suffocating commerce in a regulatory chokehold. Those who didn’t come home and were abandoned by their nation, those who came home in flag-draped coffins, the hundreds of thousands who, each year “ride for those who can no longer speak for themselves,” they know more about real service than the pampered class of condescending elites will ever understand. As long as we have these vets, and like-minded men and women, we still have a fighting chance.
Amen, Dave.  Amen...

If this surprises you...

If this surprises you ... then you haven't been paying attention for, oh, the last 50 years or so.  We can cut Zuck a little slack, as he's just over half that age – and probably didn't get much history in school.

The union/Democratic coalition is one of the most dangerous things that's happened to America since its founding.  It replaces the Founder's idea of a citizen's government with a thugocratic segment of the economy whose power is very hard to check...

As fine a Memorial Day poem as I've ever seen...

As fine a Memorial Day poem as I've ever seen...  It was written a couple of years ago by Mark Steyn's daughter, then in fifth grade.  It's very short, so I'll take the liberty of reproducing it in full:
The stars and stripes, red, white, and blue
Wave above our heroes true
It makes us cry, it makes us weep
But in our hearts we will keep
The sacrifice our soldiers gave, they shall not die in vain
For they have given us the freedom they have fought to gain
Daughter Steyn, I suspect you've made your papa very proud...

You don't like it after all...

You don't like it after all...  My mom, teary-eyed this Memorial Day morning, passed along this piece.  She assumed I'd seen it before, but I haven't.  As best I've been able to tell, this started as a letter to the editor of a paper, or was intended to look that way.  It ends on a hopeful note, and an assertion of geezer power:
The typical U.S. household headed by a person age 65 or older has a net worth 47 times greater than a household headed by someone under 35, according to an analysis of census data released Monday. If all of us "old farts" have all of the money, then let us try to elect someone who might be near honest and not be after feathering their own nests. 

They like to refer to us as senior citizens, old fogies, geezers, and in some cases dinosaurs. Some of us are "Baby Boomers" getting ready to retire. Others have been retired for some time. We walk a little slower these days, and our eyes and hearing are not what they once were. We have worked hard, raised our children, worshipped our God and grown old together. Yes, we are the ones some refer to as being over the hill, and that is probably true. But before writing us off completely, there are a few things that need to be taken into consideration. 

In school we studied English, history, math, and science, which enabled us to lead America into the technological age. 

Most of us remember what outhouses were, many of us with firsthand experience. 

We remember the days of telephone party-lines, 25-cent gasoline, and milk and ice being delivered to our homes. For those of you who don't know what an icebox is, today they are electric and referred to as refrigerators. 

A few even remember when cars were started with a crank. Yes, we lived those days. 

We are probably considered old-fashioned and outdated by many. But there are a few things you need to remember before completely writing us off. We won World War II, fought in Korea and Vietnam. We can quote The Pledge of Allegiance, and know where to place our hand while doing so. We wore the uniform of our country with pride and lost many friends on the battlefield. We didn't fight for the Socialist States of America; we fought for the "Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave." We wore different uniforms but carried the same flag. We know the words to the Star Spangled Banner, America, and America the Beautiful by heart, and you may even see some tears running down our cheeks as we sing. We have lived what many of you have only read in history books and we feel no obligation to apologize to anyone for America.
Yes, we are old and slow these days but rest assured, we have at least one good fight left in us. We have loved this country, fought for it, and died for it, and now we are going to save it. It is our country, and nobody is going to take it away from us. We took oaths to defend America against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and that is an oath we plan to keep. There are those who want to destroy this land we love, but, like our founders, there is no way we are going to remain silent. 

It was mostly the young people of this nation who elected Obama and the Democratic Congress. You fell for the "Hope and Change," which in reality was nothing but "Hype and Lies." 

You have tasted socialism and seen evil face to face and have found you don't like it after all. You make a lot of noise, but most are all too interested in their careers or "Climbing the Social Ladder" to be involved in such mundane things as patriotism and voting. Many of those who fell for the "Great Lie" in 2008 are now having buyer's remorse. With all the education we gave you, you didn't have sense enough to see through the lies and instead drank the "Kool-Aid." Now you're paying the price and complaining about it. No jobs, lost mortgages, higher taxes and less freedom. 

This is what you voted for and this is what you got. We entrusted you with the Torch of Liberty, and you traded it for a paycheck and a fancy house.
Well, don't worry youngsters, the Gray-Haired Brigade is here, and in 2014 we are going to take back our nation. We may drive a little slower than you would like, but we get where we're going, and in 2014 we're going to the polls by the millions. 

This land does not belong to the man in the White House nor to the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. It belongs to "We the People," and "We the People" plan to reclaim our land and our freedom. We hope this time you will do a better job of preserving it and passing it along to our grandchildren. So the next time you have the chance to say the Pledge of Allegiance, stand up, put your hand over your heart, honor our country, and thank God for the old geezers of the "Gray-Haired Brigade."
It's a fact that geezers are more likely to vote than any other age group, and it's also a fact that they are the most conservative age group.  Let's hope the sentiment in this letter turns out to be for real!

Australia going down the U.S. path?

Australia going down the U.S. path?  Reader and friend Simon M. (himself a transplanted Aussie) sends along a link to this article, and some color of his own:
First thing I noticed is that it's well written which makes a nice change. Second thing I noticed is that this is just the kind of thinking that, in part, caused me to move to the U.S.
"Hockey and Abbott have made their choice. They want us to follow further down the US path. They believe that if you want something, you should pay for it yourself. If you can’t afford it then you don’t deserve to have it because you haven’t worked hard enough or tried hard enough."
I don't give any points for trying hard but other than that I'm with Hockey and Abbott.
The article is a classic progressive vs. conservative (in U.S. terms) world-view, told from a progressive perspective.  In this case, the progressive is complaining about the new (relatively) conservative tilt to the Australian government after the recent elections – though by American standards, it's got a long way to go before they could call it either conservative or small government.  But it's a move in the right direction.  :)

Everything is broken...

Everything is broken...  This post on the Internet security problem has been getting a lot of attention.  I think it overstates the case just a bit – but only just a bit.  The situation really is pretty bad.

On the other hand, one could write similar essays about the disaster that is our highway system (with over 40,000 people killed every year in the U.S. alone), or the union/criminal symbiosis in our big cities, or ... any number of other things.  We live our lives surrounded by incipient disasters, and somehow we muddle through.  The pattern that repeats across all these things is a simple one: things get worse and worse until it compels action, and then we take action to reduce the problem to a livable level.  I'm confident the same thing will happen with Internet security one of these days.  The precipitating events may be quite painful, though.

Bruce Schneier articulates the most plausible course to a solution that I've heard: to make the companies that keep our data financially liable for the consequences of the theft or misuse of that data.  This is the same general system that makes products relatively safe: if you buy some shoes that cause your feet to turn permanently purple, the manufacturer (and likely the reseller) are liable for damages – you can sue them, and if your cause is just (and your feet a sufficiently bright purple), you'll likely win monetary compensation.  That's not true today for security breaches – but if it were true, as Schneier eloquently argues, then we'd start seeing a lot better security being implemented...

The debt ceiling...

The debt ceiling...  Via my card-carrying, pissed-off, ancient-American (and crafty) mom...
THE DEBT CEILING

Democrats don't understand THE DEBT CEILING.

Republicans don't understand THE DEBT CEILING.

Liberals don't understand THE DEBT CEILING.

NO ONE understands THE DEBT CEILING.

SO - Allow me to explain...

Let's say you come home from work and find there has been a sewer backup in your neighborhood. Your home has sewage all the way up to your ceilings.  What do you think you should do? Raise the ceilings, or pump out the shit?

Your choice is coming in November.  Don't miss the opportunity!
That last line is one that I use often with my apolitical friends.  On this issue, as with so many others, the challenge for voters is that there is no realistic choice for a candidate who actually is committed to solving the problem.  On this particular issue, the only real solution is to reduce government spending, as only when deficit spending is stopped can we hope to reduce the total debt.  The Democrats and Republicans are both totally committed to bigger and bigger government – they know that government largesse is where the votes to elect (and re-elect) them actually come from.  So real change is almost impossible to achieve. 

The Tea Party candidates gave me some hope in that regard, but they don't seem to be making much progress.  Certainly they have nothing even remotely resembling a majority.

This week's UKIP victory in the U.K. gives me some hope – hope that something similar might happen here if the existing situation gets any worse.

ObamaCare gives me some hope – it just might be the rallying cry that gets voters thinking a little more rationally.

But I'm probably just dreaming...

Clever, sometimes disturbing images...

Clever, sometimes disturbing images...  A collection.  Some of them are just plain funny, like the example at right.  Via friend and former colleague Aleck L...

Sunset, just north of Paradise...

Sunset, just north of Paradise...  Paradise, Utah, that is.  My neighbor Alan L. captured these photos over the past few nights from his yard and gave me permission to share them.  I was asleep by the time these glorious sunsets appeared – I'm sorry I missed them!  Alan's an avid photographer, and it shows.  As always, click to embiggen...


Inside a TL431...

Inside a TL431...  Ken Shirriff rips apart this common programmable precision voltage reference.  I've used this part a few times myself, without ever even wondering what was inside it :)

If you're wondering what the “programmable” means, it doesn't mean that you can write code for it.  You “program” this part for a particular voltage via external resistors...

Remember...

Remember...  Tim McGraw's song If You're Reading This has been stuck in my brain for several years now as “the Memorial Day song”...

Some other Memorial Day thoughts:
The patriot’s blood is the seed of Freedom’s tree.   — Thomas Campbell

The dead soldier’s silence sings our national anthem.   — Aaron Kilbourn

We come, not to mourn our dead soldiers, but to praise them.   — Francis A. Walker

It doesn’t take a hero to order men into battle. It takes a hero to be one of those men who goes into battle.   — Norman Schwarzkopf

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.   — John F. Kennedy

The greatest glory of a free-born people is to transmit that freedom to their children.   — William Havard

Patriotism is supporting your country all the time – and your government when it deserves it.   — Mark Twain

Sunday, May 25, 2014

Doom...

Doom...  I feel the doom approaching...


This isn't as pretty as my mom's...

This isn't as pretty as my mom's ... but I suspect it tastes a whole lot better :)

Just in time for Memorial Day...

Just in time for Memorial Day ... my crafty mom has finished a project she's been wanting to do for a long time: making a U.S. flag from some very old fence pickets.  You can see it at right, hung over the front of her home near Charlottesville, VA.  Gorgeous, isn't it?

For my history-challenged readers, that flag design is a Betsy Ross flag – the original design of the U.S. revolutionary flag.  There are 13 stars arranged in a circle; each star represents one of the original 13 U.S. colonies.

Geek: Mathematical Cryptology...

Geek: Mathematical Cryptology...  A textbook, free online.  I don't know anything about its completeness or quality...

Geek: Edsger Dijkstra papers online...

Geek: Edsger Dijkstra papers online...  Dijkstra was a Dutch computer scientist whose work had a large influence on me as I started seriously programming in the late '70s.  Today his work has had many layers built upon it, to the point where its entirely possible for a practicing software engineer to be completely unfamiliar with his name.  Back in the '70s, his work was the foundation for the bleeding edge of two areas of programming: writing correct (e.g., bug-free) programs, and synchronizing the operation of multiple processes or threads within programs.

The general notion of “structured programming” derived from a key insight of Dijkstra's: that the use of GOTO statements was associated with hard-to-understand programs, and those were where most of the bugs were to be found.  This insight was published in the famous 1968 letter to the editor of CACM (Nikolas Wirth!) as “Go To Statement Considered Harmful”.  I remember reading this letter in about 1975 (no Internet back then; it took a while for ideas like this to make it to the field :), and being shocked by the simple and powerful ideas in it.  I then bought and read the book Structured Programming that he co-authored, and used the techniques in the first program I was ever paid to write: Tarbell Basic, in 1976.  Dijkstra detested BASIC, and I suspect it wouldn't have made him feel any better to know that his techniques were used to write a BASIC interpreter :)

In the late '70s I started writing programs for microcomputers that involved multiple processes that needed to synchronize their operations.  Back then, long before microcomputer operating systems and programming languages included support for such synchronization, it all had to be done from scratch for every program.  The need for synchronization cropped up most frequently between foreground processes and interrupt processing routines.  Here Dijkstra's ground-breaking work on semaphores (with his famous P-operations and V-operations) provided the key insights that allowed thousands of programmers like me to write reliable programs with multiple processes.

So why am I relating all this?  Because Dijkstra's papers – the famously hand-written “EWDs” – are being published online, and made freely available.  They are a walk down memory lane for me; I can still remember the first time I read some of these and felt the ideas just pouring through me.  They were the first serious contact I had with academic computer science, and along with Knuth's work they remain some of the most useful and fundamental sources of my understanding of programming.  A younger programmer, versed in much more modern ideas, might find them quaint and old-fashioned – but Dijkstra's ideas and insights are the foundation of vast swathes of today's computer science...

Saturday, May 24, 2014

Gjetost...

Gjetost...  Have you ever run into this stuff?  It's a Norwegian cheese, made partly or entirely of goat's milk.  The brand pictured (Ski Queen) is the one I've been familiar with since childhood.  My dad loved to try cheeses, and when we traveled with him on his landscaping or botanical trips, there was a good chance we'd be picking up some “stinky foot” cheese – something like a Roquefort, or Liederkranz, or something along those lines.  But every once in a while, he'd pick up some Ski Queen gjetost.  We kids really loved that stuff – it was slightly sweet, had an interesting texture (sort of like peanut butter), and was really different.  We liked it much better than Roquefort :)

One day when I was about ten years old, we had some gjetost for lunch – and shortly after that I was violently sick to my stomach.  Our bodies have evolved a very refined defense against foods that make us sick – once the association is made, the smell – or even the thought – of such a food may make us nauseous.  That's exactly what happened to me.  For 50 years, if I saw that cheese in a grocery store, I'd steer my shopping cart in a wide arc around it.

Just a few weeks ago I worked up the courage to try gjetost again, 50 years after getting sick upon eating it.  It was even better than I'd remembered – a delightful flavor and texture.  I've had it twice since, and there's a chunk of it in my refrigerator as I write.  Today I learned from a neighbor that the Ski Queen brand is a sort of “poor man’s version” of gjetost – it has a little goat's milk, but it's mostly cow's milk.  He told me about ekte geitost – the real deal, gjetost made from 100% goat's milk.  I just ordered some, and I can hardly wait to try it!

It's been a long, long time ...

It's been a long, long time ... since I last hauled aluminum irrigation pipe around, fixed up sprinklers, and generally got an irrigation system going again.  Click to embiggen the photo at right, and you'll see a 12 sprinkler line set up on part of our lawn.  The last time I did this was probably in 1965 or 1966, most of 50 years ago.  But today I was doing it again.

It sure brought back memories – of deep, gloppy mud; of being soaked to the bone by a 6 gpm sprinkler you're trying to unclog; of the inertia of 30' long pipe sections that just don't want to go where you're trying to put them.  The one thing that was more pleasant than my memory was carrying the pipe sections around.  The irrigation pipes here are 30' (or shorter) long, and 3" in diameter.  The ones I was hauling around as a kid were 40' long and 4" in diameter – which means they were roughly two and a half times heavier (if you're checking my math, you should know the wall thickness of 4" pipe is about 50% greater than 3" pipe).  I'm probably a bit stronger these days than I was as 12 or 13 year old kid, too.  So hauling the pipe was easy.  The rest of it was still a miserable, wet, muddy job, though :)

For the most part, size aside, the irrigation system here is identical to the one on the farm I grew up on.  The simple, reliable hook-and-latch pipe connections are exactly the same.  The sprinklers here are not quite as nice as those we had when I was a kid; I think the former homeowner was trying to save some money (the good sprinklers are just over $50 each, and I need about 20 of them).  One thing is very different, though, and that's the source of the water.

On the farm I grew up on, the pressurized water came from a PTO-driven centrifugal pump that pulled water from one of our irrigation ponds.  The irrigation pipe connected directly to that pump.  Here in Paradise, the irrigation water comes from a company owned by everyone who uses it; a collective of sorts.  The water comes from Porcupine Reservoir and is piped under pressure to all the landowners who belong to the company.  On each plot of land there are a series of risers that terminate in a big rubber washer held down tight by a screw clamp.  To use the water, you attach a gadget like the one pictured at right to the top of the riser.  This gadget covers that rubber washer, and provides a handle to unscrew the clamp.  When you unscrew it, pressurized water erupts – and that pressure forces gaskets around the pipes to keep them from leaking.  I took this photo while the sprinklers were running, and as you can see the unit isn't leaking at all.  At the left you can see the first piece of pipe in the string of 12 sprinklers in the top photo.  That little hook is all that holds the pipe in place.  A gasket inside the female part of the fitting is forced against the pipe by the pressure of the water, and that keeps it from leaking.  That's the simple hook-and-latch connection system I referred to earlier.  It's been a standard for hand-line (irrigation pipe positioned by hand) for over 50 years now...

The moon hoax ... NOT!


The moon hoax ... NOT!  A disturbingly large percentage of American adults (55%) currently believe that it's possible, likely, or certain that NASA faked the Apollo moon landings.  That percentage keeps going up (Gallup polls it annually).  Every time I see that it's ticked up another notch, I lose another increment of hope for the human race...

Here's an excellent video by a professional photographer with a different take on the possibility of the Apollo landings being a hoax.  Essentially he's asserting that NASA couldn't possibly have faked the videos of activity on the moon, for the simple reason that the requisite technology didn't exist.  All the prior attempts I'd seen to prove the reality of the Apollo landings centered around things like the effects of lunar gravity, the motion of dust in the video, etc.  The people who believed in the hoax always seemed to have clever ways these things could have been faked – or at least, clever enough to convince the addled and the Obama voters (but I repeat myself).

This fellow has a different sort of argument altogether, and he presents it in a clear and amusing way.  Toward the end, he connects current politics to credulousness, and suggests somewhat slyly that if you believe in something so obviously bogus as the moon hoax, why then you may be doing the government a favor by ignoring the real conspiracies happening today, such as the financial bail-out or the NSA listening in on everything.  At the very end, he presents a twist that had me laughing out loud – and I'm not going to spoil it for anyone who'd like to watch :)

Oh, and the comments on YouTube are a wonderful combination of humor, good sense, and (dominating) ignorance and negative intelligence that will make you want to exterminate all life on the planet Earth...

Atlantic Puffin...

Atlantic Puffin...  Caught here swooping into it's nest, with food for its chick...

Spam comments...

Spam comments...  One of the banes of the online world is spammers – and they're not just on email.  If you keep a blog, you probably already know what I'm talking about, but if not ... spammers have “bots” (automated programs) that run around all the blogs in the world, trying hard to post a comment that contains a link to their evil, spammy site.

Once spammers started targeting blogs (about 8 years ago), most bloggers have switched to “moderated” comments – meaning that the blog owner has to read and approve comments before they will actually be published.  So now the spammers have taken to writing their spam comment in such a way as to entice the blog owner into approving it.

Here's a spam comment posted to my blog today:
This design is incredible! You definitely know how to keep a reader entertained. Between your wit and your videos, I was almost moved to start my own blog (well, almost...HaHa!) Wonderful job. I really loved what you had to say, and more than that, how you presented it.  Too cool!

My site Online Pharmacy
In the original spam comment, that link would send you to a site selling “male enhancement” products of the mechanical kind.  I've changed it to point to my own blog, since I most certainly did not want to send my readers to that site!  And of course I did not approve that comment!

Usually these spam comments are very badly written, most likely by someone whose first, second, or third language is not English.  Sometimes they're funny, or over-the-top, like this one.  But on very rare occasions, they're good enough that if I wasn't paying close attention, I might have approved it...

Mystery shrub...

Mystery shrub...  I found this growing along a fence in the nether regions of our yard.  It's about 15' high, and 10' in diameter.  The flowers are beautiful (the color came out more accurately on the right-hand photo below), and there's a nice perfume as well (though it's not real strong).  Anybody know what it is?


Paradise update...

Paradise update...  It's an overcast morning in Paradise.  Here's a few photos of from around our yard:

View to the NE, with sheep
Our one and only lilac (there will be more!)
It's a decorative onion of some kind
From our front yard, looking NE

We had a lot of progress on our remodeling this week. Nearly all the old flooring has been removed – I'm now walking around the house on the chipboard sub-floors, watching carefully for sharp nails and staples.  So far, I haven't stepped on any :)

There are some old flooring removal challenges in the kitchen, mainly because the cabinetry was installed on top of the old flooring.  This means that virtually every appliance has to be removed in order to access that flooring, and there are a lot of appliances in this kitchen.  Our garage now looks like an appliance graveyard, and there are still more that need to be removed.  The remaining ones are the hard ones, too: the (very large) gas range and the (gigantic) refrigerator.  Once all the appliances are removed, the old flooring has to be carefully sawed out.  This is done with a very special saw, the likes of which I'd never seen before: a “toe-kick saw”.  Our flooring contractor burned up his saw while removing some of our flooring; now he's waiting the arrival of a new one.  Watching this saw in action is pretty amazing – it neatly cuts the old flooring perfectly flush to a cabinet, without dinging the cabinet at all.

I've mentioned before that we're gutting the master bathroom and completely rearranging the location of everything in it.  The main motivation was to get rid of the very large, jetted tub and to create a large shower with the freed-up space.  The photos below show the current state of affairs.  All the old bathroom fixtures have been completely removed.  Yesterday, the plumbing for the new bathroom fixtures was completed (a two day job).  Some photos:

New shower valves
New shower drain
New sewer lines
New sink roughed-in

Plumbing has changed a lot since I last tried my hand at it!  All the new pipe being installed in our house is PEX (the semi-transparent pipes visible in the photos of the shower valves and roughed-in sink).  This was a completely new material to me (see the link for more information).  Up here, at least, it's now the standard for both new construction and remodeling, and for replacing copper pipes.  It has several advantages over copper: it's bendable (though with fairly large radii), it's forgiving of freezes (there's some give to the plastic), and the fastening technology is very simple and practically foolproof: crimped clamps over molded connectors.  The productivity of the plumbers using PEX is really something to see – easily 3 or 4 times as much finished work per hour.

The sewer plumbing turned out to be the big challenge for the remodel, specifically moving the toilet's 3-inch line about 5 feet diagonally across the room.  This took some creative routing and a little math on the part of the plumber.  The routing had to make allowance for two things: the 3 inch holes in the joists had to be more than 3 feet from any joist support, and the line had to be on a slope of at least 1/8" per foot.  To accomplish both, he ended up running the line in a "C" shaped route.

The roughed-in sinks had a number of features new to me.  The piece of galvanized steel with holes in it is purpose-built for rough-ins.  It has holes to accommodate hard plastic “grommets” to protect the softer PEX tubing from abrasion.  Over the sewer pipe in the photo, where it runs through a stud, you can see a metal plate.  This is to prevent the drywall installers from screwing through the pipe accidentally.  The plumber hammered on a couple dozen of these over every stud or joist penetration.

Next up: the electrician and the heating guy, to install outlets, switches, lights, fans, and heating ducts.  They should both be done by the middle of next week.  Then it's time for the tile folks to come in and start covering all this mess up!

UKIP in a big win...

UKIP in a big win...  If you follow European politics at all, you already know this story.  If not, here's the short version: UKIP is the party led by my favorite European politician, Nigel Farage (seen at right enjoying a victory pint).  They just made huge gains in an election in the U.K., to the point where they must now be considered a mainstream political party (and not just a fringe group of nutters).  It's impossible to capture their platform in a single sentence, but James Delingpole does a good job in the linked article, the thesis of which is that UKIP is a continuation of Margaret Thatcher's revolution.

To the extent that they succeed, this can only be good for the world.

Seeing this happen in the U.K. gives me hope for the future here, too...

Friday, May 23, 2014

Discrete logarithm problem...

Discrete logarithm problem ... not so solved after all :)  A few days ago, I blogged about a breakthrough in solving certain kinds of discrete logarithm problems.  I wasn't sure about how relevant this was to commonly used cryptographic building blocks.  Friend and former colleague Doug W., who has lots of experience with cryptographic implementations in hardware and software, wrote to say that we was skeptical about the applicability to those building blocks.  Now Bruce Schneier has weighed in: not very relevant.

A dog's perspective...

A dog's perspective...  Take one dog.  Add a GoPro.  Three and a half minutes later, you have a delightful view of a dog's world.  The tongue is definitely the main character of this short :)  In every scene – running through the grass, running through the woods, drinking from a stream, and fetching a stick – the tongue is playing its part...

Scars of WWI remain, 100 years later...

Scars of WWI remain, 100 years later...  The giant crater at right, almost 70 feet deep, is Lochnagar Crater in northern France, formed by a large mine in the Battle of the SommeMore photos here.

I've been surprised, in my travels around Europe, just how many remnants and ruins of both WWI and WWII remain.  Sometimes these are deliberately preserved as monuments and memorials, but most often they simply haven't been removed or repaired.  I've traveled much less extensively in Asia, but there also it was easy to find remnants of WWII...

Good news?

Good news?  As always, I'm not entirely sure how to interpret the Google unemployment index.  It's derived from counts of searches related to unemployment, so it's a very indirect measurement of something not easy to define in the first place (especially given the politically-motivated “adjustments” to published government data).  Whatever this index is (or isn't) measuring, it's dropped substantially in recent weeks, to levels not seen since mid-2008 (screen capture at right; click to embiggen).  Somehow that feels encouraging :)

Wrong again, Internet!

Wrong again, Internet!  Did you know that pissing on a wound (to clean it out!) is advice you can find on the Internet?  I didn't, but some quick googling provides proof.  I have heard people tell me that urine was sterile, but I knew that to be wrong from my own adventures with a microscope as a kid (it's easy to see the bacteria in urine).  I didn't know the rest of the story, though...

Geek: healthcare.gov source code...

Geek: healthcare.gov source code...  Weeks ago I started seeing news sites talking about healthcare.gov having 500 million lines of code.  That's a crazy number, way higher than any reasonable estimate, and I didn't bother to repeat it as I thought it was likely bogus.  Now we have a report from a programmer on the project, saying that there are 3.74 million lines of code underlying healthcare.gov, and offering a breakdown by code type (at right).  That's a far more believable number!

While one could debate whether CSS and XML are “programming languages”, it's certainly true that all the things listed are the typical work product of programmers on a project like healthcare.gov.  The ratios look about right, too, except that I'm a little surprised that the JavaScript component is so (relatively) small.  The dominance of Java on the server side is entirely typical of a large corporate project these days.  I'm somewhat relieved by the absence of Basic, .NET and C++.  I'm also a little surprised that a government contractor didn't manage to sneak in some proprietary language (like CMS) or some off-the-wall or obsolete language (like Forth or Prolog).

None of the above should be taken to imply that the healthcare.gov software was well-specified, well-designed, or well-implemented.  In fact, I think we can assume that none of those things are true, given how badly the system bombed on rollout, and how much of it remains to be implemented.  All this information does is to say that the implementation isn't completely, overtly, insanely crazy...

Planting the corn used to be so simple...

Planting the corn used to be so simple...  Now it involves $400,000 computer-driven tractors, advanced geolocation systems far more accurate than GPS, computer-controlled seed drills, iPads, and software and data in the cloud.

There's not much corn planted here in Paradise.  The large fields here tend to be planted in forage crops, especially alfalfa and oats.  Even with these crops we're starting to see some hi-tech innovations.  Yesterday, for example, I watch a ginormous tractor spraying an oat field.  The spray booms extended roughly 50' on each side of the tractor, and I saw individual nozzles being turned on and off (presumably by computer) to avoid double-spraying or missing any piece of the crop...

Thursday, May 22, 2014

Ten minutes after they arrived...

Ten minutes after they arrived ... our old master bathroom is half-destroyed...

Lane and Josiah take out the old granite counter top
Pasquale takes a break from his favorite activity: destroying tile
Lane contemplates a challenge: capping the sink feeds
Pasquale swings the sledge, with a grin on his face

Geek: tcpdump and BPF...

Geek: tcpdump and BPF...  Your morning geek fix.  Learning how to analyze network traffic was one of the best investments of my geek time I ever made...

The bureaucrat on your doctor's shoulder...

The bureaucrat on your doctor's shoulder...  It's funny when Scott Adams mocks bureaucratic managers in DilbertIt's not funny when bureaucrats affect your medical care.  One story from the linked piece:
I recently operated on a child with strabismus (crossed eyes). This child was covered by Medicaid. I was required to obtain surgical pre-authorization using a Current Procedural Terminology, or CPT, code for medical identification and billing purposes. The CPT code identified the particular procedure to be performed. Medicaid approved my surgical plan, and the surgery was scheduled.

During the surgery, I discovered the need to change my plan to accommodate findings resulting from a previous surgery by another physician. Armed with new information, I chose to operate on different muscles from the ones noted on the pre-approved plan. The revised surgery was successful, and the patient obtained straight eyes.

However, because I filed for payment using the different CPT code for the surgery I actually performed, Medicaid was not willing to adjust its protocol. The government denied all payment. Ironically, the code-listed payment for the procedure I ultimately performed was an amount 40% less than the amount approved for the initially authorized surgery. For over a year, I challenged Medicaid about its decision to deny payment. I wrote numerous letters and spoke to many Medicaid employees explaining the predicament. Eventually I gave up fighting what had obviously become a losing battle.
This is what happens when government runs your healthcare.  The recent Veteran's Administration scandal is another example.

Let's repeal ObamaCare, fast!

Metropolitan Museum of Art...

Metropolitan Museum of Art ... posts 400,000 art works online, many in high-resolution scans.  More are coming, too.  Washington Crossing the Delaware (Emmanuel Leutze) at right is just one of them...

John Kerry deserves a magnum cum laude degree...

John Kerry deserves a magnum cum laude degree...  In climate pseudo-science.  James Delingpole tears apart Kerry's recent graduation speech...

Driving through a wildfire...

Driving through a wildfire...  In Russia.  This is surprising behavior even there, where an interesting fraction of the population is either drunk or insane (or both)...

Lion, tiger, and bear, oh my!

Lion, tiger, and bear, oh my!

Busy day in Paradise today...

Busy day in Paradise today...  The flooring crew will be here to finish removing the old flooring – 32 cubic yards of debris and counting.  Wallboard artistes will be here to complete the job of repairing the wallboard damaged when we removed (horrible) old MDF cabinets.  A demolition crew will be here to crush, kill, and destroy our existing master bathroom, in preparation for completely rebuilding it – we're basically exchanging a large tub (which we never use) for a giant shower (yay!).  A “pre-construction” surveyor from the local gas company will be here to figure out how to run a gas line to the barn we're going to build – and the electric company will have a surveyor here for the same purpose.  As if all that wasn't exciting enough, our new lawnmower gets delivered today.

I'm going to be tired tonight, I think :)

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

We create WOW!

We create WOW!  My brother Scott is an artist, gardener, and landscaper in Virginia Beach, Virginia.  He's recently updated his web site with lots of photos of his work, like the landscape at right.  Lots more photos here.  Like his work?  Give him a holler!

The progressive mind at work...

The progressive mind at work...  In this case, the mind of Elizabeth Warren.  Here's a sample of her thinking, exposed in an interview with Pro Publica:
Q: What is Congress doing to help?

A: This is the part that makes me grind my teeth. Right now, the United States government is making huge profits off the backs of our students. Our young people not only have to pay back the cost of the loans, they have to pay billions more in interest to the government — like an extra tax for trying to get an education. That's just wrong. We ought to be investing in young people who are trying to get an education — not making it harder for them.

Q: Student loans are treated differently than many other kinds of debt under bankruptcy law, so it's much harder for struggling borrowers to discharge their student loans. Do you think this should be changed?

A: Yes. I have co-sponsored a bill with Sen. Durbin, D-Ill., that called for making student loans dischargeable in bankruptcy. Keep in mind: Young people who have student loan debt — they didn't go to the mall and charge up a bunch of things they couldn't afford — but if they had gone to the mall, they could discharge those debts in bankruptcy. It's only the student loan debt they can't discharge.

Q: So whatshould the government be doing?

A: For both private loans and federal loans, the fixes are pretty similar. We need to restore bankruptcy protections, provide better oversight of the government contractors that work with borrowers and process loan payments, and ensure that struggling borrowers can get help to modify their loans.
“Making a huge profit” is her loaded language for the reality: the federal government charges interest at a rate substantially lower than the private lenders could ever do.  How do we know this?  Because every student has the choice of borrowing from private lenders, and almost all of them don't – because the interest rate is much higher!

Warren's solutions are classic socialism: stop charging any interest at all on the student loans, make it easy and automatic for student borrowers to restructure their loans (skipping or stretching out payments), and allow student borrowers to eliminate their debt if they go through bankruptcy.  Elsewhere she proposes that student loans be automatically granted, without any of those pesky preconditions such as decent grades, the ability to learn, or even the financial need.  All of these measures would cost an enormous amount of money, and of course Warren wants taxpayers to foot the bill.

Reading things like this make me feel like I inhabit some sort of bizzaro world where “up” means “down”, ordinary logic doesn't apply, and incentives work backwards.  I find it difficult to believe that any adult actually believes this bullshit.

But they do.  And the voters seem to love them.

Oh, I feel the doom coming on...