Hot Winds

One of the rallying cries of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) crowd is “The Arctic Ice is melting!” The high priests of the AGW faith jumped quickly on this readily observable fact (the Arctic ice sheet has been melting) as evidence of AGW, and their lapdog media followers have repeated this claim endlessly. Something not usually linked with that claim, though, is a different puzzling fact: the Antarctic ice sheet has been growing, and quite dramatically. If AGW is the cause of the Arctic ice sheet shrinking, then why isn't the Antarctic ice sheet also shrinking? Somehow the AGW faithful managed to ignore this inconvenient little observation.

But now NASA has released a new study about the causes of the Arctic ice sheet melting. From the belly of the AGW beast (NASA is the home of the high priest of AGW, Jim Hansen) comes the news that the culprit appears to be a new pattern of winds:

The scientists observed less perennial ice cover in March 2007 than ever before, with the thick ice confined to the Arctic Ocean north of Canada. Consequently, the Arctic Ocean was dominated by thinner seasonal ice that melts faster. This ice is more easily compressed and responds more quickly to being pushed out of the Arctic by winds. Those thinner seasonal ice conditions facilitated the ice loss, leading to this year's record low amount of total Arctic sea ice.

Nghiem said the rapid decline in winter perennial ice the past two years was caused by unusual winds. "Unusual atmospheric conditions set up wind patterns that compressed the sea ice, loaded it into the Transpolar Drift Stream and then sped its flow out of the Arctic," he said. When that sea ice reached lower latitudes, it rapidly melted in the warmer waters.

"The winds causing this trend in ice reduction were set up by an unusual pattern of atmospheric pressure that began at the beginning of this century," Nghiem said.

The Arctic Ocean's shift from perennial to seasonal ice is preconditioning the sea ice cover there for more efficient melting and further ice reductions each summer. The shift to seasonal ice decreases the reflectivity of Earth's surface and allows more solar energy to be absorbed in the ice-ocean system.

The biggest surprise for me in this news is that the NASA press flacks allowed a press release about weather to go out without an obligatory mention of the linkage between this climatic phenomenon and AGW. Ordinarily I'd have expected some completely unsubstantiated mention of how AGW caused this change in wind pattern. The fact that such a statement is missing suggests (a) the scientists involved don't believe such a linkage exists, or (b) the PR flack involved was drunk, stoned, about to quit NASA, or possibly all three.

How To Call The Cops...

Passed along by Mike D.:

HOW TO CALL THE POLICE WHEN YOU'RE OLD AND DON'T MOVE FAST ANYMORE.

George Phillips of Meridian, Mississippi was going up to bed when his wife told him that he'd left the light on in the garden shed, which she could see from the bedroom window.

George opened the back door to go turn off the light but saw that there were people in the shed stealing things.

He phoned the police, who asked "Is someone in your house?" and he said "no". Then they said that all patrols were busy, and that he should simply lock his door and an officer would be along when available. George said, "Okay," hung up, counted to 30, and phoned the police again.

"Hello, I just called you a few seconds ago because there were people stealing things from my shed. Well, you don't have to worry about them now because I've just shot them." Then he hung up

Within five minutes three police cars, an Armed Response Unit, and an ambulance showed up at the Phillips' residence and caught the burglars red-handed.

One of the Policemen said to George: "I thought you said that you'd shot them!"

George said, "I thought you said there was nobody available!"

Don't mess with the ancient and venerable folks!

Snopes has this listed as "true", though some of the details are wrong...

Weekly Puzzler

Last week's puzzler got some interesting results: exactly half the people who answered got the right answer (picking a random number), and the other half all picked the same wrong answer (computing the angular distances between all the stars in the sky).

Despite experiences you may have had with a computer that seem like random events, computers are actually deterministic devices – for a given set of inputs, they always produce the same results. Computers have no capability that is the equivalent of rolling a pair of dice; they simply don't know how to. Some very clever programmers have developed some very clever approximations to random number generation, but even the cleverest of them is still repeatable: given the same set of starting conditions, they generate the same darned numbers, every time.

It is possible to build special-purpose computer hardware to generate truly random numbers. Such hardware usually depends on some natural phenomenon (such as radioactive decay) that is, so far as anyone knows, truly random. Some innovative folks in recent years have developed other, less expensive techniques. For example, one such technique involves a lava lamp and a digital camera watching it; the image is then compressed to generate random numbers. To my knowledge, nobody has yet proved whether these systems are truly random…

This weeks puzzler is another history factoid...

Beautiful Photos...

I found these on a German website, and I have no idea what the context is. But … I do know that if you go here and just keep scrolling, you're in for a real visual treat!

Bearly Hanging In There...

From the photo, things don't look too good – but this story has a happy ending. Here's the beginning:

According to the Truckee BEAR League’s Dave Baker, a medium-sized bear jumped the railing of Rainbow Bridge, a 100-foot concrete arch near Donner Summit, on Saturday afternoon.

“The bear was crossing the bridge as cars were coming from the east and west,” said Baker. “[The cars] pinched the bear up and over the guard rail.”

The bear apparently jumped to avoid the cars, then found itself trapped in the concrete girders beneath the highest point of the bridge from 3 p.m. Saturday until its eventual rescue at noon Sunday.

“I’ve been on a lot of bear rescues, and this is the most intense bear call that I’ve been on,” Baker said.

One of the first on the scene, Baker said he saw claw marks etched into the concrete railing where the bear leaped and then scrambled for a secure hold to prevent falling about 80 feet.

You can read the whole story (and see more photos) here and here. This all took place on 9/15/2007.

America's Greatest Generation

Stephen Ambrose (historian and very popular history writer), I believe, is the man who first called the Americans who were of adults during World War II the “Greatest Generation”. Like many others, he was moved and impressed by their incredible courage, unstoppable optimism, and frank patriotism. I share those feelings, and my parents are members of that Greatest Generation.

Someone who was 25 in 1945 would be 87 years old today, if they are still alive. In not so many more years, America's Greatest Generation won't be here to share their experiences.

Simi L., one of my faithful (and patient!) readers, sent me a link to a tribute to the veterans of World War II, created by a doctor in San Antonio, Texas. He was motivated by observing that his elderly patients often had experiences in their lives that were surprising; he has come to cherish meeting them, however briefly, in his emergency room duties. One example:

There was a frail, elderly woman who reassured my young enlisted medic, trying to start an IV line in her arm. She remained calm and poised, despite her illness and the multiple needle-sticks into her fragile veins. She was what we call a "hard stick." As the medic made another attempt, I noticed a number tattooed across her forearm. I touched it with one finger and looked into her eyes. She simply said, "Auschwitz." Many of later generations would have loudly and openly berated the young medic in his many attempts. How different was the response from this person who'd seen unspeakable suffering.

Do go read (and see) the whole thing…

Lost Cat!

A beautiful and much-loved cat has gone missing:

My daughter's adored cat disappeared 7/14/07. He is friendly, curious, and doesn't know how to get back home. He is a marbled bengal, brown/gray with black swirls, short coat. She is heartbroken. She will pay a reward. We would be eternally grateful for his return. Please call 669-0314, home and message machine, or leave comments on the blog. Thanks, Ellen and Marley.

Do you know anything about this cat? Please let Ellen or Marley know if you do…

An Important Ruling

Earlier this week, I read about an appeals court ruling that I thought was a very important one. I'd planned to post about it, but the Wall Street Journal beat me to it, with an editorial that captures my reaction better than I could have done myself:

You probably haven't seen it reported, but the Guantanamo trial system for enemy combatants won a big victory earlier this week. A military appeals court overturned a much-ballyhooed decision in June that had dismissed all charges against Omar Ahmed Khadr, an al Qaeda operative captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan in 2002 after killing an American serviceman with a grenade.

The June decision was widely portrayed as a repudiation of the Bush Administration's antiterror legal policy, so perhaps this should be described as vindication. Under the 2006 Military Commissions Act, a panel called the Combat Status Review Tribunal makes a threshold determination of whether or not terror detainees are enemy combatants, before they are moved into military tribunals. Judge Peter Brownback ruled in June that the Review Tribunal had only screened for "enemy combatants," not "unlawful enemy combatants," thus giving his court no jurisdiction.

Never mind that "enemy combatant" is defined in a way that is inherently "unlawful" -- i.e., someone who is part of an international terrorist organization and engages in hostilities against the U.S. in violation of the laws of war. The legal hitch was not using the magic word "unlawful."

The appeals panel agreed that the Review Tribunal had not specifically determined that Khadr was an unlawful enemy combatant, but it also ruled that it wasn't obliged to. Rather, it said Judge Brownback ought to have considered the unlawfulness of Khadr's conduct under common courts-martial procedures, as defined by the Military Commissions Act. To do otherwise, let alone dismiss the charges, was "contradictory to the statute's clear structure, wording, and overall intent."

There's little doubt how the coming trial will turn out. There is a video, for instance, of Khadr preparing explosives to be used against American forces. But in the media's current terror narrative, it's only worth celebrating when the Bush Administration's judicial rules are overturned. When they're upheld, almost nobody notices -- so we thought you'd like to know.

How so many Americans believe we should coddle our enemies, and grant them the same rights as American citizens, is beyond my ken. Even more astonishing to me is how so many Americans don't even seem to realized that we're engaged in an existential war with radical Islamic fundamentalists. The American media, reflecting and amplifying this left-leaning bias, was very quick to report (and laud) the lower court ruling that limited our country's ability to prosecute its enemies. That ruling generated giant, joyful headlines across the country.

Reading the last couple of sentences back, I'm filled (again) with wonder at the self-destructive – suicidal, really – beliefs of my fellow countrymen.

The appeals court ruling, by contrast, is virtually uncovered in the lamestream media. I found one brief mention on Fox News, and a few mentions in the foreign press (mostly as a disaster report there). I found out about the ruling not through the lamestream media, but rather through one of the law blogs I read daily. This is so sad – an important ruling that helps this country defend itself, and the media just doesn't seem to care. Of course, the real problem is that the appeals court ruling doesn't fit their narrative at all, because that ruling vindicates the Bush administration's original position vis a vis the Guantanamo detainees' legal status.

Sigh…

Dog Found!

Dr. Christine Wilson and the folks at Steele Canyon Veterinary tell me that they have a dog that's in desperate need of finding its owner. From their email to me:

We have a dog that was found on 09/20/07 by a man who lives in Jamul off Lyons Valley Rd. The dog is an Akita Shep X, Spayed Female and brindle in color. The dog was found with tags and turns out that this dog was a patient of ours belonging to a different owner. When contacted about the dog they explained that they had adpoted the dog to someone in jamul....names and residence are unknown. The dog is very friendly and on the chance that there is a family in Jamul missing her we would like to get her back home.

If this sounds like it might be your missing dog, or if you know of anyone whose dog is missing, please give the Steele Canyon Veterinary Clinic a call, at 619/669-7274.

Photo of the Day

From the Botany Photo of the Day mailing list (which you can join by going here – just put your email address in the box at the upper right, and click the button!).

Who Said This?

Jim M., almost certainly my only reader from the mountains of northern New Mexico, sent me this little message:

Who said this?

1. "We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."
   
   
2. "It's time for a new beginning, for an end to government of the few, by the few, and for the few, and to replace it with shared responsibility for shared prosperity."
   
   
3. "(We) can't just let business as usual go on, and that means something has to be taken away from some people."
   
   
4. "We have to build a political consensus, and that requires people to give up a little bit of their own turf in order to create this common ground."
   
   
5. "I certainly think the free-market has failed."
   
   
6. "I think it's time to send a clear message to what has become the most profitable sector in (the) entire economy - that they are being watched."

Now you might think these were the famous words of the Father of Communism, Karl Marx. And you would be on the right track in thinking so. But you would be wrong. These pearls of socialist/Marxist wisdom are from none other than our very own, home-grown Marxist…

Hillary Rodham Clinton

Comments made on: (1) 6/29/04 , (2) 5/29/07, (3) 6/4/07, (4) 6/4/07, (5) 6/4/07 , and (6) 9/2/05 .

Be afraid, be very afraid!

These actually seem sort of tame to me, compared to her rantings about socialized health care.

Jamul Casino Update

The effort by the Jamul Indian tribe to build a casino on State 94 has hit another roadblock: CalTrans has told the tribe that they need to supply more information before CalTrans can decide on their application for a permit to install a signal light and turn lanes on State 94, in front of the proposed casino's driveway. From the San Diego Union article:

Jacob said last week that the tribe should be treated the same as any other developer. She wants Caltrans to keep the tribe from using its historic driveway for a casino, even if it adds a stoplight there.

“If the tribe thinks that would create a safe situation on Highway 94 to use that driveway, they are dead wrong,” she said. “That would create a huge traffic-safety problem.”

Jacob noted that a developer building houses across the road from the tribe had to move access up to Melody Road and close its original driveway.

County Public Works Director John Snyder, who deals with roads and negotiates with Indian tribes over gambling projects, said it's a stretch to say the county wouldn't approve a casino driveway off Melody Road.

Previous applications by the tribe haven't had enough information for a proper environmental review, Snyder said.

“I haven't made up my mind,” he said.

Caltrans isn't taking a position on the suitability of the casino, agency spokesman Edward Cartagena said.

“We're sort of in the middle,” he said.

The agency's focus, he said, is to ensure the highway is safe. That includes taking into account whether the road can handle the number of cars the casino would likely add.

Like most residents of Jamul, I am very much opposed to this casino. I'm hoping that recent events incline the financial backers to give up on the project. This particular event looks to me like one more of the proverbial “death by 1000 cuts”. I hope so…

Orbital Turkey

My 3.5 long-term readers have heard me rail about the waste and uselessness of the U.S. manned space program, and my rants about the funding it steals from the far more productive robotic space programs. Well, I'm not the only one who feels that way – Steven Weinberg, Nobel Laureate and renowned particle physicist, had this to say (this past Tuesday):

“The International Space Station is an orbital turkey. No important science has come out of it. I could almost say no science has come out of it. And I would go beyond that and say that the whole manned spaceflight program, which is so enormously expensive, has produced nothing of scientific value."

Orbital Turkey. That's a much better moniker for the ISS!

Dr. Weinberg went on to say this about the manned space program:

"No important science has come out of it. I could almost say no science has come out of it. And I would go beyond that and say that the whole manned spaceflight program, which is so enormously expensive, has produced nothing of scientific value. Human beings don't serve any useful function in space. They radiate heat, they're very expensive to keep alive and unlike robotic missions, they have a natural desire to come back, so that anything involving human beings is enormously expensive.

I think the public imagination gets very rapidly bored with the sight of humans in space knocking golf balls around. On the other hand, [the public] was fascinated by the kinds of things done by rovers on Mars. I think our political leaders underestimate the intelligence of the public in thinking they won't be fascinated by real scientific discoveries. I think enormous sums are wasted on manned spaceflight that continually crowd out science missions."

Aside from those scientists whose funding depends on NASA's manned space program, most scientists seem to hold similar views as Dr. Weinberg – though most are also far less eloquent and forthright about it. NASA is, after all, a major source of science funding. The views of such independent scientists – especially their assertions that little worthwhile science is getting done by the manned space program – puts the lie to the usual political justifications. The truth is that the manned space program is yet another political boondoggle, motivated by some combination of pork treats (e.g., major contracts issued to favored constituents), geopolitical posturing (my space program can piss further than your space program!), and fuzzy-brained romanticism (mankind can't be locked into just one planet!).

Personally, I'm so frustrated by the huge waste of my tax dollars by NASA that my preferred solution is to just kill it – shut down the whole damned thing. I'm convinced that once a bureaucracy achieves the scale and political power that NASA has, reform from within is nearly impossible. The country would be better served by a hiatus in the space program, followed by a new, trimmer, smarter program that addresses high-value science and research on fundamentals (such as alternatives to chemical rockets)…

News stories on Dr. Weinberg's remarks can be found here, here, and here. I'll leave you with a quote from The Register (a UK paper):

Here at the Reg, we don't quite know what to think. The idea of manned spaceflight is frankly more appealing than just sitting here on Earth looking at the rest of the universe until the end of the world, maybe sending out robots now and again. On the other hand we're not terribly impressed with the idea of chemical rockets as the only propulsion technology for the foreseeable future, which is mainly what NASA plans on.

Maybe if the boffins got loads of cash for atom-smashers, deep space Einsteinian-physics-bender probes, etc, they might finally come up with hyperspace drives or antigravity or something. Then there could be a proper space exploration effort. It could be worth playing the long game.

Another Photo

Here's another photo from the series...

Photo of the Day

A friend sent a small collection of spectacular images to me by email. These have been circulating on various lists, none of which seem to provide attribution. That's a shame, because whoever this photographer is deserves some recognition…

I'll post the rest of the collection over the next week or so. Click on the small picture to see a full-sized version.

Free Lunch

My mother sent me this little parable:

Free Lunch

There was a Chemistry professor in a large college that had some exchange students in the class. One day while the class was in the lab the Prof noticed one young man (exchange student) who kept rubbing his back and stretching as if his back hurt. The professor asked the young man what was the matter. The student Told him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting communists in his native country, who were trying to overthrow his country's government and install a new communist government.

In the midst of his story he looked at the professor and asked a Strange question: "Do you know how to catch wild pigs?"

The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line.

The young man said this was no joke. "You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come everyday to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side. The pigs, who are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat, you slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd.

Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught. Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity.

The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening to America . The government keeps pushing us toward Communism/socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not to plant crops (CRP), welfare, medicine, drugs, etc. While we continually lose our freedoms - a little at a time.

One should always remember "There is no such thing as a free lunch!"
Also, "You can never hire someone to provide a service for you cheaper than you can do it yourself."

Also, if you see that all of this wonderful government "help" is a problem confronting the future of democracy in America , you might want to send this on to your friends. If you think the free ride is essential to your way of life, then you will probably delete this email, but God help you when the gate slams shut!

Most politically-aware people in America reading this would immediately associate the fence-building with the Democratic party, and not without reason. However, in point of fact the Republican party is also guilty of much fence-building, especially in the regulatory sphere. In more recent years, it's sometimes been hard to distinguish between the two parties on the basis of their fence-building (think Medicare drug supplements and tax policies).

The only serious political party that has consistently positioned themselves against this sort of fence-building is the Libertarian party – but unfortunately it seems to be infested with lunatics and fractured by multiple agendas so disjoint they make the Democrats look unified. The probability of the Libertarians winning any real political power is close to zero.

So the only real hope any of us who would like to see fewer fences have is to reform one of the two major parties, to get them on board with the fence-demolition project. If your only practical choice is between the Republicans and the Democrats, clearly it is much more likely that we could move Republicans in that direction.

But, sadly, I think the real problem is nearly intractable. It is this: each metaphorical fence that is built represents more power for the political class. Conversely, to pull down a section of the metaphorical fence requires some elements of the political class to relinquish power – something that most humans are not inclined to do. Here's a concrete example: one of the biggest metaphorical fences we have right now is the federal income tax. Its regulations, hulking size, and mind-boggling complexity warp our behavior and reduce our free choices in many ways. The “flat tax” is a credible alternative, with the attractive virtue of utter simplicity. If any business faced a similar opportunity to dump the current tax code and adopt the flat tax, it would be an absolute no-brainer: the flat tax would be implemented immediately.

But consider this: switching to the flat tax would mean that a veritable army of bureaucrats at the IRS would have no job, that one of Congress' cherished tools for controlling our behavior (tax exemptions and credits) would be removed, and another army of tax accountants (who are big contributors to political campaigns) would be out of a job. From a politician's jaded perspective, there's nothing good about switching to a flat tax. Aside from a very few elected officials with genuine beliefs of their own, just about the only politicians who support the flat tax are those who are struggling to win their first election, or those who are threatened in their incumbency and need some way to attract voters. All the other politicians see the flat tax as a threat (to themselves, of course) or a reduction in their power – and they will resist its implementation with all their might, no matter what their public posturing is (much like the recent move to expose earmarking to public scrutiny has been successfully resisted, despite public statements to the contrary).

The little parable has an important message. I believe those fences are being built, and they threaten our freedoms far more than the Patriot Act or its ilk ever did. The only way I can think of (with any real chance of success) to demolish those fences is to reform the Republican party. I really hate to say this, but I'm not very optimistic about the chances of that reform – too many people in this country are attracted by that free corn, and are comfortable with it. And so far, their consistent history is to vote for the politicians who promise the most free corn…

Hell Is Over

Michael J. Totten – one of the extraordinary independent journalists in the Middle East – has filed a new report on his blog, full of excellent photos like the one at right, detailing his recent observations in Anbar province, Iraq. It is one of the most compelling pieces I have read about the current situation in Iraq – if you have any interest at all in events over there, you should read this post. Here's a tiny teaser for you:

I saw so many pictures of crazed Iraqis wearing ski masks and carrying rocket launchers and Kalashnikovs before I went to Baghdad and Ramadi that I slowly started to think, against my better judgment, that such people are typical. I never once saw anyone like that. They are around, obviously, but they are not in any way typical.

These are the typical faces I saw in Iraq.

They are the ones I now think of when trying to figure out what the United States should do in Iraq. They are the ones who will have to suffer the consequences the longest.

Don't miss reading the whole thing – and while you're there, please hit his tip jar; he depends on contributions to keep up his fine work…

Quote of the Day

By Karen Toggery:

“They say we're supposed to have fair and equal justice,” she said. “Where is it?”

Karen is one of the Jamul Indians evicted from her own reservation on March 10. Protesters at that incident were roughly treated, and had asked for criminal charges against the tribe and their security people. Yesterday District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis finally issued her decision about those charges: she declined to file any, saying that it was a civil matter, not a criminal matter. From the San Diego Union report:

“Tribal governments are recognized as sovereign nations,” she said. “Our office is authorized by Congress to prosecute state crimes committed on Indian reservations, but we have no jurisdiction over civil matters. An eviction process is a civil matter.

“Based upon this unique and unusual set of circumstances, our office has declined to file criminal charges against any of the persons involved in the events of March 10, 2007 on the Jamul Indian Reservation.”

Dumanis won't answer questions about her decision, spokesman Paul Levikow said.

I'm no lawyer, and I don't know what the “right” thing to do here is, from a legal perspective. Speaking as an American citizen, though, I can't see any way to claim justice has been served through this decision. Basically our District Attorney has just endorsed all manners of behavior in such “civil” matters. Now that the tribe has learned they can act with impunity, protesters on the reservation can expect to be treated violently. If the casino is ever actually built, protesters will be taking their lives in their hands to protest on the site…

Does that sound like America to you?

Route 94 Improvement Plans

In this morning's San Diego Union:

People concerned about the condition of state Route 94 will have a chance to tell Caltrans planners what they think of a plan for improvements on an 18-mile stretch from Jamul to Tecate.

Officials with the California Department of Transportation will be available to explain the proposal and take comments in a meeting scheduled from 4:30 to 8 p.m. today at Jamul Primary School, 14567 Lyons Valley Road in Jamul.

The proposed improvements include passing lanes, widening the road and realigning curves, said project manager Sam Amen, who estimated they would cost $90 million to $100 million to build.

There isn't enough money for the project in state and federal budgets right now, he said, but the planning is important for any eventual improvements. More information is available online at www.rural94.com.

I checked out the web site above; there's a bit of information, but nearly all of it is included on the map I've linked to above (click on it for a full-sized view). All of the improvements listed are for the section of 94 that lies between Jamul and Tecate, so for all of us who commute from Jamul toward San Diego, these have no benefit at all. It's another story altogether for those folks who travel between San Diego and Tecate, Campo, or points beyond – this stretch of 94 is (and has been for years) a notoriously dangerous route. Adding large numbers of trucks from Mexico isn't going to make it any safer, either…

Light Posting

You may have noticed that I haven't been posting much. My feeble excuse is that I've just started a new job, and I've been devoting much time to coming up to speed there. Losing some sleep, too, as the work is quite interesting…

My new title, at the moment, is my all-time favorite (which I'd love to keep forever!): “TBD”

That pretty much describes my entire career!