Bumper Snickers...

Via my lovely bride:

Steve McIntyre's Hero...

If you've been following the climate change debate at all, then you know who Steve McIntyre is – he's the unassuming, patient, and skeptical amateur who has published more competent takedowns of warmist nonsense than anyone else.  For someone like me, he's a pure delight – a ruthless seeker of scientific truth who mines the facts and slices up bogus statistical analysis like I wish I could.  He's a hero to the entire AGW skeptic community.

Steve McIntyre has a hero himself: his mom.  Here he points out an article about her conquering her fear of heights – at 89 years old!

How Liberals Look to Conservatives or Libertarians...

The liberals could, of course, come up with own version of these.  The cartoons nicely illustrate the yawning gulf between liberal positions (and, presumably, the thinking behind them) and those of conservatives or libertarians – to whom these liberal/progressive positions simply make no sense at all...

Via my mom:

Freedom in the 50 States...

Here's a fascinating interactive infographic exploring different aspects of freedom in all 50 states, from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University:


Utah sure looks good compared with California...

You Decide...

I stumbled across this list of “body hacks”.  Are they for real, or BS?  You decide...

Cure a Tickling Throat
When you were 9, playing your armpit was a cool trick. Now, as an adult, you can still appreciate a good body-based feat, especially if it serves as a health remedy. Take that tickle in your throat: It's not worth gagging over. Here's a better way to scratch your itch: Scratch your ear. "When the nerves in the ear are stimulated, it creates a reflex in the throat that can cause a muscle spasm," says Scott Schaffer, M.D., president of an ear, nose, and throat specialty center in Gibbsboro, New Jersey. "This spasm relieves the tickle."

Experience Supersonic Hearing
If you're stuck chatting up a mumbler at a cocktail party, lean in with your right ear. It's better than your left at following the rapid rhythms of speech, according to researchers at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. If, on the other hand, you're trying to identify that song playing softly in the elevator, turn your left ear toward the sound. The left ear is better at picking up music tones.

Overcome Your Most Primal Urge
Need to pee? No bathroom nearby? Fantasize about Jessica Simpson. Thinking about sex preoccupies your brain, so you won't feel as much discomfort, says Larry Lipshultz, M.D., chief of male reproductive medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine. For best results, try Simpson's "These Boots Are Made for Walking" video.

Feel No Pain
German researchers have discovered that coughing during an injection can lessen the pain of the needle stick. According to Taras Usichenko, author of a study on the phenomenon, the trick causes a sudden, temporary rise in pressure in the chest and spinal canal, inhibiting the pain-conducting structures of the spinal cord.

Clear Your Stuffed Nose
Forget Sudafed. Here's an easier, quicker, and cheaper remedy to relieve sinus pressure: Alternate thrusting your tongue against the roof of your mouth, then pressing between your eyebrows with one finger. This causes the vomer bone, which runs through the nasal passages to the mouth, to rock back and forth, says Lisa DeStefano, D.O., an assistant professor at the Michigan State University college of osteopathic medicine. The motion loosens congestion; after 20 seconds, you'll feel your sinuses start to drain.

Fight Fire Without Water
Worried those wings will repeat on you tonight? Try this preventive remedy: "Sleep on your left side," says Anthony A. Starpoli, M.D., a New York City gastroenterologist and assistant professor of medicine at New York Medical College. Studies have shown that patients who sleep on their left sides are less likely to suffer from acid reflux. The esophagus and stomach connect at an angle. When you sleep on your right, the stomach is higher than the esophagus, allowing food and stomach acid to slide up your throat. When you're on your left, the stomach is lower than the esophagus, so gravity's in your favor.

Cure Your Toothache
Just rub ice on the back of your hand, on the V-shaped webbed area between your thumb and index finger. A Canadian study found that this technique reduces toothache pain by as much as 50 percent compared with using no ice. The nerve pathways at the base of that V stimulate an area of the brain that blocks pain signals from the face and hands.

Make Burns Disappear
When you accidentally singe your finger on the stove, clean the skin and apply light pressure with the finger pads of your unmarred hand. Ice will relieve your pain more quickly, Dr. DeStefano says, but since the natual method brings the burned skin back to a normal temperature, the skin is less likely to blister.

Stop the World from Spinning
One too many drinks left you dizzy? Ah, luckily there's a remedy. Put your hand on something stable. The part of your ear responsible for balance—the cupula—floats in a fluid of the same density as blood. "As alcohol dilutes blood in the cupula, the cupula becomes less dense and rises," says Dr. Schaffer. This confuses your brain. The tactile input from a stable object gives the brain a second opinion, and you feel more in balance. Because the nerves in the hand are so sensitive, this works better than the conventional foot-on-the-floor wisdom.

Unstitch Your Side
If you're like most people, when you run, you exhale as your right foot hits the ground. This puts downward pressure on your liver (which lives on your right side), which then tugs at the diaphragm and creates a side stitch, according to The Doctors Book of Home Remedies for Men. The fix: Exhale as your left foot strikes the ground.

Stanch Blood with One Finger
Pinching your nose and leaning back is a great way to stop a nosebleed—if you don't mind choking on your own O positive. A more civil approach: Put some cotton on your upper gums—just behind that small dent below your nose—and press against it, hard. "Most bleeds come from the front of the septum, the cartilage wall that divides the nose," says Peter Desmarais, M.D., an ear, nose, and throat specialist at Entabeni Hospital, in Durban, South Africa. "Pressing here helps stop them."

Make Your Heart Stand Still
Trying to quell first-date jitters? Blow on your thumb. The vagus nerve, which governs heart rate, can be controlled through breathing, says Ben Abo, an emergency medical-services specialist at the University of Pittsburgh. It'll get your heart rate back to normal.

Thaw Your Brain
Too much Chipwich too fast will freeze the brains of lesser men. As for you, press your tongue flat against the roof of your mouth, covering as much as you can. "Since the nerves in the roof of your mouth get extremely cold, your body thinks your brain is freezing, too," says Abo. "In compensating, it overheats, causing an ice-cream headache." The more pressure you apply to the roof of your mouth, the faster your headache will subside.

Prevent Near-Sightedness
Poor distance vision is rarely caused by genetics, says Anne Barber, O.D., an optometrist in Tacoma, Washington. "It's usually caused by near-point stress." In other words, staring at your computer screen for too long. So flex your way to 20/20 vision. Every few hours during the day, close your eyes, tense your body, take a deep breath, and, after a few seconds, release your breath and muscles at the same time. Tightening and releasing muscles such as the biceps and glutes can trick involuntary muscles—like the eyes—into relaxing as well.

Wake the Dead
If your hand falls asleep while you're driving or sitting in an odd position, rock your head from side to side. It'll painlessly banish your pins and needles in less than a minute, says Dr. DeStefano. A tingly hand or arm is often the result of compression in the bundle of nerves in your neck; loosening your neck muscles releases the pressure. Compressed nerves lower in the body govern the feet, so don't let your sleeping dogs lie. Stand up and walk around.

Impress Your Friends
Next time you're at a party, try this trick: Have a person hold one arm straight out to the side, palm down, and instruct him to maintain this position. Then place two fingers on his wrist and push down. He'll resist. Now have him put one foot on a surface that's a half inch higher (a few magazines) and repeat. This time his arm will cave like the French. By misaligning his hips, you've offset his spine, says Rachel Cosgrove, C.S.C.S., co-owner of Results Fitness, in Santa Clarita, California. Your brain senses that the spine is vulnerable, so it shuts down the body's ability to resist.

Breathe Underwater
If you're dying to retrieve that quarter from the bottom of the pool, take several short breaths first—essentially, hyperventilate. When you're underwater, it's not a lack of oxygen that makes you desperate for a breath; it's the buildup of carbon dioxide, which makes your blood acidic, which signals your brain that somethin' ain't right. "When you hyperventilate, the influx of oxygen lowers blood acidity," says Jonathan Armbruster, Ph.D., an associate professor of biology at Auburn University. "This tricks your brain into thinking it has more oxygen." It'll buy you up to 10 seconds.

Read Minds
Your own! "If you're giving a speech the next day, review it before falling asleep," says Candi Heimgartner, an instructor of biological sciences at the University of Idaho. Since most memory consolidation happens during sleep, anything you read right before bed is more likely to be encoded as long-term memory.

He Fooled Everyone...

Remember this winter when a photograph of a New York City cop who bought a $100 pair of boots for a homeless guy went viral?  The cop was (appropriately) lauded, and everybody felt great about it.  Barefoot in the winter, the homeless guy was now well-equipped.

But...

The “homeless guy” was a fake.  The cop didn't know it, but this guy was running a scam, pretending to be a homeless guy while raking in over $100k tax-free dollars a year from generous New Yorkers.  He also has dozens of pairs of shoes donated by Good Samaritans like the cop, all stored in his (rather nice) apartment.

Sigh...

FJ Mods: Wheels and Tires...

This was a simple modification, exchanging the factory alloy wheels (vulnerable to shattering if smacked hard on a rock) and street tires for steel wheels and offroad tires.  We got these wheels and these tires, and we're quite happy with both.  The puncture-resistant Kevlar sidewalls and tread design are a perfect combination for what we're going to be doing offroad, and the silica rubber is superior on wet surfaces. 

FJ Mods: Ravelco...

Yesterday I finished the most difficult modification I've done yet: installation of a Ravelco theft prevention device (photo at right).  If you've never heard of Ravelco, don't feel bad – I'd never heard of it either until very recently.

For years now, I've known that automobile burglar alarms were almost completely ineffective as a theft deterrent.  Insurance companies keep wonderful statistics on such things, and these statistics don't lie: cars equipped with burglar alarms are actually more likely to be stolen than those without.  The actuaries are certain that counter-intuitive result is a sampling bias problem – desirable cars are (of course!) more likely to have a burglar alarm installed.  But here's the statistic that tells you burglar alarms don't work: there is no statistically significant difference between the theft rates for any particular car model and year for those with or without burglar alarms.  None. Zip. Nada.

So how do you keep your car from being stolen?  LoJack will help you recover it once it has been stolen, but what if you'd like to avoid the theft in the first place?  Currently the best theft deterrents are “immobilizers” – devices that keep a thief from operating your car.  Immobilizers won't stop a really determined thief who loads your ride onto a tow truck and makes off with it, but they will stop the more typical thief who's going to hot-wire the ignition and drive away.

Immobilizers work by disabling some vital part of your car's electronics, most commonly some combination of starter motor, ignition, fuel pump, fuel injectors, or automatic transmission control.  Nearly all immobilizers are wired under the dashboard, which makes them vulnerable to a knowledgeable thief who wants to disable them.  YouTube and many web sites have videos that teach you how to hot-wire immobilizer-equipped cars, with examples from many makes and models (especially the factory-supplied immobilizers).  Clever people figure out the method, then people with questionable motivations publish the videos showing the techniques.  Yikes!

Enterprising and knowledgeable car owners often install “kill switches” in a hidden location.  These kill switches do the same thing a commercial immobilizer does (interrupting some vital electronics), but in a simpler and non-standard way.  The non-standard part makes it harder for the thief; the simpler part makes it easier: if a thief crawls under the dash and spots the kill switch or its wires, he knows exactly what to do to defeat the kill switch.

The Ravelco folks had a very simple idea about how to make a more effective “kill switch”.  Then they added some clever bits to make it harder to defeat.  The result is a ridiculously simple device, with nothing to go wrong, that's remarkably hard to defeat.  It's also hard to install :)

The simple idea is this: the Ravelco socket (at right, above) is installed somewhere inside your car.  In my case I installed it in a hidden location that's very easy to get to.  That socket has 16 pins, but only five of them are connected to the five wires that extend from the back of the socket: two pairs and a ground wire.  The Ravelco plug (at left, above) has a matching set of 16 pins, but only four pins are wired up (two pairs of pins are wired together).  Both the socket and the plug have their wiring embedded in the hard molded plastic; you can't look at it to see which wires are wired to which pins. 

Each of the pairs of wires is connected to some vital electronic system in such a way that when the plug is removed that electronic system is disabled.  In my case I wired them into the ignition power circuit and the fuel injector power circuit.  With the plug removed, you can crank the engine over but it won't start: there's no fuel and there's no spark.  With the plug installed, the fuel injectors and ignition gets power, and the car runs fine.

If a thief is faced with the empty Ravelco socket and wants to make a brute force attack, here's what he's up against.  If you do the math, there are over a half million permutations of the wiring arrangement.  Every Ravelco is wired differently, so the thief, on average, would have to try a quarter million different jumper arrangements before he found the one that worked.  It's actually not quite that good, as the pin connected to ground can be found easily with an ohmmeter, but still the thief would need to try over 100,000 jumper arrangements.  Each jumper arrangement would take at least 5 seconds to insert and test - so we're talking about almost a week of 24-hour-a-day testing to find the answer.  Brute force isn't going to work :)

Here's where the extra clever bits on the Ravelco come into play.  First, the wires coming out the back of the plug are inside a flexible steel sheath, which extends all the way to the firewall (where the wires go through a hole into the engine compartment).  It would be very difficult indeed for a thief working inside your car to extract those wires and try shorting various wires together.  With just five wires, the number of combinations to test is considerable smaller: just ten.

So the thief would have to open your engine compartment, find the right wires (if you've ever looked inside a modern engine, you know that even that step is challenging – there are a lot of wires in there!), and then try shorting them together in various combinations.  However, there's a problem there: some combinations are likely to blow a fuse.  Once you blow the fuse, none of the combinations will work.  So to maximize his chances of success, the thief needs to follow those wires to their destination so he can figure out on the first try which wires need to be shorted together.

Ravelco goes to great lengths to tell you to hide those wires deep inside big cable harnesses.  That's what makes it difficult to install, but it also adds a tremendous degree of difficulty for the thief.  In my case the wires are buried inside three feet of cable harness, traversing four junctions in the process.  The thief would have no choice but to laboriously follow those wires to where they connect with factory wires, all without interrupting any other wires.  With all the right tools and perfect knowledge, I'd guess that would take about an hour.  What thief would work under the hood of your car for an hour?

Simple idea, clever implementation.  I recommend it.  Ravelco's business arrangements are clever, too.  Usually it costs $500 to $750 to get a Ravelco installed.  There are about $10 worth of parts in it, so that's a lot of profit margin!  The reason they can maintain this is that they won't sell you the parts directly – only dealers can buy the parts, and the dealers are contractually obligated to provide the Ravelco installed.  That installation is where they make their money.  I was lucky enough to find a brand-new Ravelco on eBay.  I bought it from some enterprising fellow who bought the assets of a failed Ravelco dealer, including his inventory of brand-new Ravelcos.  As I write this, there are still quite a few available.  I paid $50, and then was able to make an installation the way I wanted to, with the maximum amount of buried wires.  I've read stories of much poorer dealer installations; they, of course, are motivated to reduce the time they spend on the installation.

Forget Reservoirs and Power Grids...

After 9/11 there was a surplus of crazy talk about the vulnerability (and need to protect) public infrastructure like water reservoirs (easily poisoned, the thinking was) and electrical power grids (remote high-tension lines are vulnerable).  Fortunately the level of this crazy talk has dropped significantly upon the realization of two things: (1) protecting all this infrastructure was completely impossible (it's too darned big and distributed), and (2) it really isn't as vulnerable as it seems (there's lots of redundancy built in).

This news story about divers trying to sever an Internet cable feeding Egypt got me to thinking about the vulnerability of the Internet to terrorists.  Those Internet cables, which I've written about before, are vulnerable to attack and (if severed) could have large economic impacts.  Furthermore, the routers that terminate those cables are potentially vulnerable to attack over the Internet itself (hacking, in other words). 

In most of the developed world there is sufficient redundancy in these cables that it would be very difficult for an attacker to cause serious economic harm.  For instance, New York City has dozens of Internet “feeds” connecting it to the rest of the Internet.  Taking out all those feeds at once would be exceedingly difficult.

In some other parts of the world (like Egypt), this is not true – there may only be a few (sometimes even just one!) Internet feed connecting an entire region to the Internet.  If a terrorist organization were to take out those feeds, that region would likely suffer considerable damage.  Very little international business today is conducted without the use of the Internet.  Even simple things, such as buying bulk loads of spices from Madagascar, often rely on the Internet for the marketing, sales, negotiation, funds transfer, and coordination of the purchase.  In those places, I would think the Internet cable would be a prime target for the bad guys...

Red State Success...

Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore have a piece in today's Wall Street Journal ($) that delves into the quite evident differences in economic success between red (Republican) and blue (Democratic) states.  If you've been paying attention to this at all, there's not much news in here (though there are a few interesting observations I hadn't heard before).  If you haven't been paying attention to the differences between the various states, it's a great (and very short) primer on the topic.

Every time I think about these obvious differences, I wonder the same thing to myself: how is it possible that voters keep voting for the politicians who have inflicted economic disaster upon them?  The best theory I know of to explain it is the “low information voter” theory – the idea that most voters really don't have any rational basis for their vote; they just vote for whomever “feels” better to them.

Then I just get sad...

The 12 Most Controversial Math Problems...

Upon seeing this headline, I clicked to see what I thought would be an article on problems that challenged mathematicians, but that's not at all what this article is about.  Instead, it's about math problems that challenge ordinary people's understanding – and it's quite well explained and illustrated.  About half of these problems are some I'd run across before as brain teasers; the other half were new to me.  All were interesting and illuminating.  Recommended reading!

Nuts to Them...

So says Mark Steyn, on the occasion of a particularly galling ruling by the Canadian Supreme Court.  Mr. Steyn has a short piece on the ruling, with this conclusion:

...In Canada, the law denies "the right to say his piece" to the likes of Bill Whatcott, a man who believes that homosexuals are sinners and in need of God's grace and forgiveness, but it has no objection to those who think homosexuals are evil and should be put to death. Mr. Philips need never fear the scrutiny of the "human rights" commission, or the cost of ten-year legal battles.

No homosexual needs the state's protection from Bill Whatcott. But all of us need protection from nitwit jurists blithely sacrificing core Western liberties to ideological compliance. It's not about Left vs. Right, gay vs. straight, religious vs. secular; it's about free vs. unfree. And on that most profound question, Canada's supreme court is on the wrong side. Nuts to them.

But do go read the whole thing...

Go 1.1...

A new release of Google's Go programming language...

Dragon Dreams...

It looks likely that giant aeroships will sail the skies again, in the not too distant future...

I'm Not Going to Africa...

...because they're suffering from a rash of genital theft:

Reports of genital theft have spread like an epidemic across West and Central Africa over the past two decades, in tandem with what appears to be a general resurgence of witchcraft on the continent. Anthropologists have explained this rise as a response to an increasingly mystifying and capricious global economy. Which is to say that when the workings of capital are as genuinely obscure as they are in today’s Africa, proceeding behind a veil of complexity and corruption, rumors of “occult economies”—often involving a trade in human organs—offer a less mystifying explanation for the radical disparities in wealth on display.

Biden Blooper...

I guess that headline is a bit redundant, eh?  A few days ago, Joe Biden amused many knowledgeable about guns – and infuriated many of the female members of that cohort.  Now there's a short video demonstrating where these reactions came from:


We have a semi-automatic 12 gauge shotgun with a seven shell magazine.  When loaded with magnum shells and shooting repeatedly, that thing will practically knock me down (and I'm not exactly a lightweight).  It leaves big bruises on my shoulder.  It would take an unusually strong woman to comfortably handle that weapon...

Race Needs This...

Race is our young border collie, who is obsessed with chasing anything roughly round that you might throw.  Pine cones, tennis balls, styrofoam packing material, it doesn't matter.  Our arms get tired of throwing long before he gets tired of retrieving.  This machine, scaled up for outdoor use and 200' throws, would be perfect for him:

Venn Diagram of Irrational Nonsense...

Awesome.

Let's Hear it for Weirdos!

I take some pride in being weird – a weirdo.  I've long proclaimed that being normal is boring.  This morning I read a great blog post by Michael Lazerow that ends with this:

Weirdos don’t see anything as impossible. Anything is possible. Just give us enough time.

Weirdos are contrarians. They think differently and act even more differently. Normals try to fit in. Weirdos stick out without really trying.

Weirdos aren’t driven by money. Money is a destination. Weirdos are all about the journey.

Weirdos don’t care what others think. They only care THAT they think and want to change HOW they think.

Weirdos come in all shapes and sizes, colors and countries. And they're not new to the tech industry, or industry in general.

Weirdos thought it made sense to get on the Mayflower from England to settle in a new land.

Weirdos thought we should get rid of slavery.

Weirdos insisted that women should also have a vote.

The world would suck if it weren’t for weirdos.

Instead of trying to get our kids to fit in, we should help them celebrate why they are different.

Let’s start to teach kids to embrace weird. Weird is good.

And let’s not stop until weird is normal.

A high-Q resonance here...

Strange Programming Language Features...

Fascinating thread on StackExchange, if you're of a geekly bent...