Broken tooth ponders

A couple weeks ago, while driving to work and chewing on a breakfast burrito, I felt something hard and odd-shaped moving around in my mouth. Strange feeling; I thought it was a piece of bone (which definitely didn't belong in my breakfast burrito!). So I spit it out, and by gosh it was about half of the top part of a molar. And sure enough, there was a vacant spot in my mouth, lower left hand side. Somehow, on something as soft as a breakfast burrito, I'd managed to break a tooth apart!

Fortunately for me, this was a pain-free broken tooth. Not like the fall-on-the-floor-writhing-and-screaming kind of broken tooth that I'd witnessed in others. So when I got to work, I called and made an appointment with my dentist, Dr. Tom Brassington ("Dr. B") of La Mesa, California.

This past Thursday, I went in to see him. He went to work on my mouth, full of good cheer and friendly conversation as always. I've known Dr. B for close to 30 years. We met in (I think) 1979, when I owned a business manufacturing business computers, Z-80 CP/M based machines with minimal software, but a nice oak or walnut cabinet (which we also made). Dr. B was one of the first customers we had, buying a computer for his business. I'm not entirely sure he knew what he was getting into, but he was positive he wanted one!

An hour or so later, I was on my way with a very numb face and tongue, and a brand-spanking-new temporary crown. I'll get the real thing in a few weeks, some kind of fancy porcelain-on-gold high-tech thingy.

But I couldn't help thinking about Dr. B some more. His work contrasts in many ways with mine. The most immediate difference, to me, is the simple fact that he's been doing basically the same work ever since I first knew him. I don't know how long he'd been a practicing dentist when I first met him, but I think it's safe to say he's been in practice at least 30 years. Compare that with my "career" — I haven't done the same thing for more than a few years at a stretch, ever. Then another difference: every single day, the work that Dr. B does helps people in a very direct and tangible way. My work (in software engineering, at the moment) can be positioned as helping people, in some kind of general, vague, and abstract fashion — but that help has nothing like the direct, personal nature of Dr. B's help. Then I had the chance on this visit to watch Dr. B handle a situation gone awry (of course this would happen to me!). Apparently my gum was bleeding and would not stop. In very rapid sequence, Dr. B did several things to attempt to staunch the flow. I'm not at all sure I can remember all of them, but there was an injection of some vasoconstricter (I know only because I asked him), some kind of electrical device (that was painful, even through the numbing), and some kind of ferrous chemical (that tasted extremely bad). Eventually the bleeding was stopped. What struck me, however, was the calm, competent, and practiced manner that Dr. B had throughout the whole affair. He was moving quickly, was obviously concerned, but knew exactly where everything was (and it was right at hand), knew what sequence to try them in, and just generally seemed to be in control. Some of this, I suspect, is because Dr. B really is a wonderful general practitioner dentist — and some, I suspect, is because he's been doing this for 30 years. I'm sure I'm not the first "bleeder" he's had to deal with. Contrast that with my work, where it's very common for me to run into something for the first time ever, and to bumble about trying to find the answer. Now it happens that I enjoy the troubleshooting and debugging; it's like solving a puzzle. And I do believe I have an above-average skill level in this area — but rarely do I ever have the opportunity to show the kind of all-encompassing competence that Dr. B does day in and day out.

I hope Dr. B finds his career as rewarding for him as it is for his patients...

Ali's back!

Ali at Free Iraqi hasn't posted for serveral weeks. I've been browsing to his blog every day in the hopes that he would return, but I was nearly ready to give up; truthfully, I was afraid something had happened to him. This morning, a fresh post appeared — whew! In it, Ali gives his thoughts on Operation Lightning. He begins:

Operation lightning seems to be going better than what I expected in terms of reducing violence in Baghdad. I think everyone who's following the news must've seen that the attacks in Baghdad these days are getting less than before, and here on the ground we can see the same thing. Not just terrorist attacks that has been reduced but even regular crimes, as it seems that part of the operation is focusing on capturing regular criminals who are in addition to their usual criminal activities do form, in my mind, the right hand for the Ba'athists.

It sounds like things are going reasonably well, from Ali's perspective, and I'm very glad to hear that. He goes on to tell the story of an Iraqi police raid right near his home (it went well), then concludes:

One of my greatest worries about operation lightning just as the whole war on terror is that it would give those in charge a more than needed and accepted power. In a place like Iraq where all our miseries came from unlimited power, that is certainly a huge concern. Still I know and feel that most Iraqis won't accept something like this to happen. It's not easy at all to explain where this feeling come from but it's there and I have full faith that most Iraqis will clench their teeth on every bit of freedom they gained through America's help and that we will and are ready to sacrifice to gain more; the type of freedom that even America cannot grant us.

Welcome back, Ali. I'm very glad you're safe. And it sounds like good news on Operation Lightning.

Read Ali's whole post, or I'll conjure up a plague of desert fleas to pester your dog and your sister.

APOD

APOD brings us...

No sudden, sharp boundary marks the passage of day into night in this gorgeous view of ocean and clouds over our fair planet Earth. Instead, the shadow line or terminator is diffuse and shows the gradual transition to darkness we experience as twilight. With the Sun illuminating the scene from the right, the cloud tops reflect gently reddened sunlight filtered through the dusty troposphere, the lowest layer of the planet's nurturing atmosphere. A clear high altitude layer, visible along the dayside's upper edge, scatters blue sunlight and fades into the blackness of space. This picture actually is a single digital photograph taken in June of 2001 from the International Space Station orbiting at an altitude of 211 nautical miles.

Click on the picture for a larger view. The expanded picture is gigantic (1499 x 1025), suitable for screen backgrounds or printing.

Koran reality

You'll recall the recent controversy over how our troops in Gitmo handle the Koran, with Newsweek fanning the flames and the MSM in general throwing fuel on the fire. I haven't posted on this previously because I really couldn't think of any way to respond with descending into anger and foul language directed at the media. Roger Kimball at the New Criterion took care of this for me; in a new column he nails it:

Should we laugh or cry at this exhibition of politically correct hyper-sensitivity? By all means, let us treat prisoners with the dignity and respect they lack in their own lives. Let us not besmirch or ridicule the Koran. But let us also preserve some rudimentary contact with reality. These people are terrorists and suspected terrorists. Many--probably most--of them have dedicated their lives to slaughtering innocent Westerners, inspired, note well, by the very document our soldiers are enjoined to handle as a “fragile piece of delicate art” (as distinct, one supposes from a “sturdy piece of delicate art”). Operating in the realm of fiction, Evelyn Waugh might have made an amusing episode out of this absurdity (talk about “Black Mischief”!) Perambulating in the precincts of real life, however, we should have the fortitude to acknowledge that the comedy has gone rancid. Those sections of the army’s “Detention Operations Group Standard Operating Procedures” that bear on the Koran should be respectfully excised, using only the right hand. They should then be carefully conveyed in a “clean, dry detainee towel” to the nearest outhouse and . . . flushed down the toilet.

That's his conclusion, but you won't want to miss the whole thing.

Quote for the day

A revolution is not a bed of roses ... a revolution is a struggle to the death between the future and the past.

   Fidel Castro

Why our soldiers fight

Believe it or not, this quote comes from Scott Ott at Scrappleface! I'm not going to spoil the punch line; you'll just have to read the whole thing.

"Men volunteer to fight, bleed and die for the United States of America because she is the last, best hope for peace and freedom on earth," he said. "They consider the evidence that America has pushed back the veil of tyranny and saved countless millions of men, women and children from imprisonment, torture, starvation, humiliation and brutal death. And they act on that evidence, knowing that the blood of free men is always the price of freedom.

Amen, Scott.

Falsified signed documents

If you're a technical person interested in digital security, here's a scary one: a team has produced two different documents, each with meaningful contents, but with identical MD5 hashes (signatures).

Tip of the hat to Bruce Schneier. The team's article is here.

This isn't quite the end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it, but...it shows that there might be a path there, which I for one was not expecting to be the case unless quantum computing is ever made practical.

Socialized medicine

Canada has long had socialized medicine, and its citizens have suffered greatly because of it (I can hear the liberals chanting already!). At "Enjoy Every Sandwich," the irreverent, occasionally obscene, and always funny Canadian blogger has some very interesting commentary about a recent Canadian Supreme Court ruling on the subject. An excerpt:

As is the case with mail delivery or killing unarmed Somali teenagers, the Canadian government isn't particularly efficient at it. In Ontario, where I live, health care eats up a full 40% of the provincial budget. If my math is correct, that's almost half! Half of every dollar in government spending goes toward health care. Even with 40 cents of every dollar going to health care, it hasn't stopped things like hospital closings or long lines for care.

In fact, doctors are essentially government employees in Ontario and have been since 1987. Not formally, or anything, but it stands to reason if someone dictates what you may or may not do and how much money you can make, they are your boss. As a general rule, people to not become doctor's just because they get to reach inside of you and play with your innards. While that's a bonus, doctor's go through the trouble and expense of medical school so that they may become mind-blowingly rich. As a consequence, Canadian doctors and nurses have been on a decades long exodus to the United States where they can make fuckloads of money and pay less tax on it.

Warning: if foul language and a little nudity offends you, don't click on the link above...

Blurry vision

NASA's Deep Impact mission to the comet Tempel I will culminate on July 4 with the craft splitting into two pieces: the "impactor", an 850 pound chunk of copper that will strike the icy comet's core, and an instrument platform that will observe the comet and the impact. The science objective is to learn much more about the makeup of a comet.

Shortly after the mission was launched in January, scientists discovered that the high resolution imaging system — a key piece of instrumentation — would not focus correctly. Oops.

Now mission scientists have announced that they can "fix" the problem, with well-known deconvolution software that will "enhance" the blurry image by reversing, mathematically, the errors caused by the improperly focusing image. To do this, they had to first reconstruct the exact cause of the problem, and therein lies the achievement.

Space.com has the story. An excerpt:

However in March it was discovered that the Flyby spacecraft's High Resolution Instrument (HRI) was not focusing properly. The team will use a process, called deconvolution, to remedy the situation. Deconvolution is widely used in image processing and involves the reversal of the distortion created by the faulty lens of a camera or other optical devices, like a telescope or microscope.

"The process is a purely mathematical manipulation that works extremely well,” said Don Yoemans, a co-investigator for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). JPL is managing the mission for NASA.

“Even if you have a perfect telescope, which is limited by diffraction, you can use deconvolution to improve the resolution,” Yoeman said. “The process is sometimes time consuming, so the biggest effect on the science is a delay while you do all the processing to get the quality that you expected."

I'll bet there are some folks at NASA breathing much easier now! The whole mission story is quite interesting, and you can read about it on NASA's mission pages.

12,000 heroes

A short piece of commentary from the Wall Street Journal. It's so short that I've taken the liberty of reproducing it in its entirety:

Ever since the beginning of major combat operations in Iraq in March 2003, the media have kept a precise count of U.S. casualty figures, which now stand at nearly 1,700 killed and more than 6,400 wounded. There's also been plenty of tendentious speculation about the number of Iraqis killed by coalition action, the purpose of which is to cast Iraq's liberation as an unmitigated horror for Iraqis.

What has not been so carefully tracked, however, is the number of Iraqis killed by insurgent violence: the worshippers murdered as they pray in their mosques, the ranks of unemployed mowed down as they stand in line at government recruitment offices, and so on. We read about such incidents nearly every day but never see the cumulative death toll, perhaps because the cause of ordinary Iraqis finds few champions among trendy Western human-rights organizations.

Now the government of Iraq has gone and done that favor for itself. Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr released statistics last week showing that some 12,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed by insurgents in the last 18 months. Of these victims, the overwhelming majority have been Iraqi Shiites, indicating that what al Jazeera and friends call the "resistance against U.S. occupation" is in fact a jihadist and Baathist attack against the country's democratic government. "I have not seen any 'resistance,'" Mr. Jabr told the Washington Post. "There is terror, and all sides have agreed that anyone raising guns and killing Iraqis is a terrorist."

Too bad some of our own politicians can't show as much moral clarity. Too bad, too, that every time we magnify every U.S. misdeed in Iraq, real or fabricated, we turn our gaze from the real source of the country's misery.

Too bad, indeed.

Quote for the day

Most people give up just when they're about to achieve success. They quit on the one yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game one foot from a winning touch.

   H. Ross Perot

El computador!

A Spanish teacher was explaining to her class that in Spanish, unlike English, nouns are designated as either masculine or feminine. "House" for instance, is feminine: "la casa." "Pencil," however, is masculine: "el lápiz."

A student asked, "What gender is 'computer'?" Instead of giving the answer, the teacher split he class into two groups, male and female, and asked them to decide for themselves whether "computer" should be a masculine or a feminine noun. Each group was asked to give four reasons for its recommendation.

The men's group decided that "computer" should definitely be of the feminine gender ("la computadora"), because:

1. No one but their creator understands their internal logic;

2. The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else;

3. Even the smallest mistakes are stored in long term memory for possible later retrieval; and

4. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.

The women's group, however, concluded that computers should be masculine ("el computador"), because:

1. In order to do anything with them, you have to turn them on;

2. They have a lot of data but still can't think for themselves;

3. They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they are the problem; and

4. As soon as you commit to one, you realize that if you had waited a little longer, you could have gotten a better model.

The women won.

Dangerous snakes

Never bring plants into the house!!!

Garden Grass Snakes (also known as Garter Snakes) can be dangerous... Yes, grass snakes, not rattlesnakes. Here's why...

A couple in Sweetwater, Texas, had a lot of potted plants. During a recent cold spell, the wife was bringing a lot of them indoors to protect them from a possible freeze. It turned out that a little green garden grass snake was hidden in one of the plants and when it had warmed up, it slithered out and the wife saw it go under the sofa. She let out a very loud scream. The husband (who was taking a shower) ran out into the living room naked to see what the problem was.

She told him there was a snake under the sofa. He got down on the floor on his hands and knees to look for it. About that time the family dog came and cold-nosed him on the behind. He thought the snake had bitten him, so hescreamed and fell over on the floor.

His wife thought he had a heart attack, so she covered him up, told him to lie still and called an ambulance. The attendants rushed in, wouldn't listen to his protests and loaded him on the stretcher and started carrying him out.

About that time the snake came out from under the sofa and the Emergency Medical Technician saw it and dropped his end of the stretcher. That's when the man broke his leg and why he is still in the hospital.

The wife still had the problem of the snake in the house, so she called on a neighbor man. He volunteered to capture the snake. He armed himself with arolled-up newspaper and began poking under the couch. Soon he decided it was gone and told the woman, who sat down on the sofa in relief. But while relaxing, her hand dangled in between the cushions, where she felt the snake wriggling around. She screamed and fainted, the snake rushed back under the sofa.

The neighbor man, seeing her lying there passed out, tried to use CPR to revive her. The neighbor's wife, who had just returned from shopping at the grocery store, saw her husband's mouth on the woman's mouth and slammed her husband in the back of the head with a bag of canned goods, knocking him out and cutting his scalp to a point where it needed stitches.

The noise woke the woman from her dead faint and she saw her neighbor lying on the floor with his wife bending over him, so she assumed he had been bitten by the snake. She went to the kitchen and got a small bottle of whiskey, and began pouring it down the man's throat.

By now the police had arrived. They saw the unconscious man, smelled the whiskey, and assumed that a drunken fight had occurred. They were about to arrest them all, when the women tried to explain how it all happened over a little green snake. The police called an ambulance, which took away the neighbor and his sobbing wife.

The little snake again crawled out from under the sofa. One of the policemen drew his gun and fired at it. He missed the snake and hit the leg of the end table. The table fell over and the lamp on it shattered and as the bulb brokeit started a fire in the drapes.

The other policeman tried to beat out the flames, and fell through the window into the yard on top of the family dog who, startled, jumped out and raced into the street, where an oncoming car swerved to avoid it and smashed into theparked police car.

Meanwhile, the burning drapes, were seen by the neighbors who called the fire department. The firemen had started raising the firetruck ladder when they were halfway down the street. The rising ladder tore out the overhead wires and put out the electricity and disconnected the telephones in a ten-square city block area (but they did get the house fire out). Time passed. Both men were discharged from the hospital, the house was repaired, the dog came home, the police acquired a new car, and all was right with their world.

A while later they were watching TV and the weatherman announced a cold snap for that night. The husband asked his wife if she thought they should bring in their plants for the night.

That's when she shot him.

Peggy's thought experiment

Peggy Noonan has a great column wherein she asks the reader to participate in a thought experiment. What would happen if a leading Republican talked about Democrats using the same words that leading Democrats have been using to talk about Republicans? An excerpt:

President Bush is introduced at a great gathering in Topeka, Kan. It is the evening of June 9, 2005. Ruffles and flourishes, "Hail to the Chief," hearty applause from a packed ballroom. Mr. Bush walks to the podium and delivers the following address:

"Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. I want to speak this evening about how I see the political landscape. Let me jump right in. The struggle between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party is a struggle between good and evil — and we're the good. I hate Democrats. Let's face it, they have never made an honest living in their lives. Who are they, really, but people who are intent on abusing power, destroying the United States Senate and undermining our Constitution? They have no shame.

But why would they? They have never been acquainted with the truth. You ever been to a Democratic fundraiser? They all look the same. They all behave the same. They have a dictatorship, and suffer from zeal so extreme they think they have a direct line to heaven. But what would you expect when you have a far left extremist base? We cannot afford more of their leadership. I call on you to help me defeat them!"

Imagine Mr. Bush saying those things, and the crowd roaring with lusty delight. Imagine John McCain saying them for that matter, or any other likely Republican candidate for president, or Ken Mehlman, the head of the Republican National Committee.

Can you imagine them talking this way? Me neither. Because they wouldn't.

Messrs. Bush, McCain, et al., would find talk like that to be extreme, damaging, desperate. They would understand it would tend to add a new level of hysteria to political discourse, and that's not good for the country. I think they would know such talk is unworthy in a leader, or potential leader, of a great democracy. I think they would understand that talk like that is destructive to the ties that bind — and to the speaker's political prospects.

It's writing like this that gets me all gushy about Ms. Noonan. Read the whole thing, or your spouse and children may start dating camels.

Rods from God

Michael Goldfarb, in the Daily Standard, has a fascinating column about a potential kinetic energy weapon he calls "Rods from God":

The system would likely be comprised of tandem satellites, one serving as a communications platform, the other carrying an indeterminate number of tungsten rods, each up to 20 feet in length and 1 foot in diameter. These rods, which could be dropped on a target with as little as 15 minutes notice, would enter the Earth's atmosphere at a speed of 36,000 feet per second--about as fast as a meteor. Upon impact, the rod would be capable of producing all the effects of an earth-penetrating nuclear weapon, without any of the radioactive fallout. This type of weapon relies on kinetic energy, rather than high-explosives, to generate destructive force (as do smart spears, another weapon system which would rely on tungsten rods, though not space-based).

The column is well worth reading, both for the technical details and for the political implications.

As I think about the implications of such a weapon myself, my conclusion is that it would be an almost ideal way for a (the) superpower to project power. Near-instantaneous deployment, nuclear-level power but non-nuclear, very expensive and very high-tech (thus putting it out of reach of terrorists and all but a few countries), unmanned (so no soldiers need go in harm's way), and infinitely extendable. It seems to me that (as with many weapons systems) the bulk of the investment is in up-front research and development; scaling it up would be much less expensive than developing it. Also, unlike a nuclear weapon, this not something that could be sold or otherwise tranferred to a terrorist or a rogue state — the infrastructure required to support it is substantial.

The main question I have is this: when can we have one?

Progress in Iraq

The always-excellent StrategyPage has an interesting story today about recent progress in the Iraqi "wild west". It starts:

More towns in Iraqi's "wild west" are being pacified. The usual drill is not another Fallujah, but a government official meeting with local tribal and religious leaders, where an offer is made. Iraqi and American troops are coming. Neighborhoods that support the government will see little or no fighting as a search is made for weapons, bombs and the like. Neighborhoods that wish to resist will be hit hard. By now, everyone knows how smart bombs work. Increasingly, Sunni Arab leaders are being told, by their followers, that all this violence is not worth it. After Saddam fell, Sunni Arabs continued to believe in fantasies. For the last two years, the collective delusion was that the Americans had no stomach for guerilla war, and the Kurds and Shia Arabs could never get a government together. Today, Sunni Arabs who can get away on a little vacation, go north to the Kurdish north, or south to Shia Basra. In both places you can sit in an outdoor cafe without fear of a suicide bomb going off down the street. The Kurds and Shia have more jobs, more reconstruction and less crime. The Sunni Arabs don't want to live in their own mess any more. They don't want to live in a combat zone, especially while the Kurds and Shia are not.

Read the whole thing; it's well worth it.

I find this development quite encouraging, especially if it really is an accelerating trend, as the article appears to contend. A guerilla war doesn't really have a defined end (a surrender), as a more conventional war would. It seems to me that closest equivalent to a surrender in a guerilla war is when one side's civilian support disintegrates. And that's exactly what this Sunni behavior sounds like the beginning of...

Quote for the day

The three most dangerous things in the world are a programmer with a soldering iron, a hardware type with a program patch and a user with an idea.

   Anonymous

Wildfire!

Debi's a member of Emergency Animal Rescue, and this evening she got a call from the supervisor. It seems there was a fire, a big one, and not that far from our house (although the supervisor only knew generally where it was. We were asked to make a run out to the area and check it out.

So off we went, in a big hurry because the supervisor's information was quite alarming. After we drove out of our valley, we expected to be able to see the smoke plume (and if it was really a big fire, we would have). But there was no plume anywhere in sight. We drove to within about 2 miles of the fire before we saw any sign of it at all, and even then all we could see was a layer (trapped by a thermocline, most likely) of hazy brown smoke. It didn't look like an active or large fire.

In Deerhorn Valley there's a fire station, and we stopped there to get a little information from a volunteer. He told us exactly where the fire was, and told us that he believed it was under control. The location he gave us was only about three miles down the road, so we went off to see for ourselves.

Our route took us from Honey Springs Road to Deerhorn Valley Road, then three miles or so to Manzanitas Road. At that intersection we could actually see where the fire had burned, right next to a large electrical substation. There was a tanker plane circling overhead, a firefighting helicopter hovering over the burned area, at least 25 or 30 fire crew working on the ground, and several pieces of equipment (pumpers, dozers, etc.) parked around the area. Nobody had been evacuated, and the prevailing wind would have taken the fire over uninhabited areas toward Barrett Lake. From what we could see the fire was out and under control.

Whew!

After we got home, I got out my maps and did some measuring. That fire was only 6.5 miles from our home as the crow flies, though it was over 25 miles by the very indirect roads. That's close enough to be a major concern to us, had the conditions been hot, dry, and windy (in the wrong direction). As it was, we really weren't in any danger at all.

One thing that was very nice to see: firefighters were all over this fire, and apparently very quickly. By eyeball, I'd guess there was 10 to 15 acres burned; that goes very quickly in the chapparal. Those firefighters got very quickly to an area far more remote than our home. That's a nice feeling...

APOD

APOD brings us...

What has this supernova left behind? As little as 2,000 years ago, light from a massive stellar explosion in the Large Magellanic Clouds (LMC) first reached planet Earth. The LMC is a close galactic neighbor of our Milky Way Galaxy and the rampaging explosion front is now seen moving out - destroying or displacing ambient gas clouds while leaving behind relatively dense knots of gas and dust. What remains is one of the largest supernova remnants in the LMC: N63A. Many of the surviving dense knots have been themselves compressed and may further contract to form new stars. Some of the resulting stars may then explode in a supernova, continuing the cycle. Pictured above is a close-up of one of the largest remaining knots of dust and gas in N63A taken by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. N63A spans over 25 light years and lies about 150,000 light years away toward the southern constellation of Dorado.

Click on the picture for a larger view.

Rhea

Cassini brings us another spectacular image from the Saturn system:

Saturn's brightly sunlit moon Rhea commands the foreground in this image from Cassini. The planet's splendid rings are discernible in the background. Rhea is 1,528 kilometers (949 miles) across.

The spacecraft was just above the ringplane when it acquired this image, and thus captured the darkened appearance of the dense B ring when viewed with sunlight filtered through the rings. From this perspective, bright areas in the rings are regions of low density, containing very small particles that effectively scatter light toward Cassini.

North on Rhea is up and rotated about 25 degrees to the left. This view shows principally the anti-Saturn hemisphere on Rhea. The right side of Rhea is overexposed.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Feb. 18, 2005, at a distance of approximately 540,000 kilometers (340,000 miles) from Rhea and at a Sun-Rhea-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 110 degrees. The image scale is 3 kilometers (2 miles) per pixel.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage.

Click on the image for a larger view.

Quote for the day

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal.

   Hannah More

Yon reports

Michael Yon has filed another report from Northern Iraq. An excerpt:

Iraq's army accordioned in defeat, and the first Coalition folded most of their tents and sailed home, leaving the Kurds to fend for themselves. Saddam had revenge on his breath when he turned his attention north and unsheathed his fury against the Kurds. Initially a slaughter of wholesale proportions, somehow, still the Kurds kept fighting. They hung on until the US gave military support and maintained the no-fly zone overhead. In 1993, Mr. Qatou was able to return to the rubble that had once been Yezdinar.

An Iraqi. A Kurd. A Yezidi. A village Headman. Whatever the label, more than forty years after his birth, this man came home. Only now, after the latest war, does Mr. Qatou finally have confidence in the peace, after more than a half century of life lived under orders or under sentence.

This seemed like the moment to ask the question, "What do you think of the United States?"

"We cry when America loses one soldier. We pray for the soldiers every night."

Don't miss this latest in Michael's excellent series of postings...

APOD

APOD brings us...

Most bright stars in our Milky Way Galaxy reside in a disk. Since our Sun also resides in this disk, these stars appear to us as a diffuse band that circles the sky. The above panorama of a northern band of the Milky Way's disk covers 90 degrees and is a digitally created mosaic of several independent exposures. Scrolling right will display the rest of this spectacular picture. Visible are many bright stars, dark dust lanes, red emission nebulae, blue reflection nebulae, and clusters of stars. In addition to all this matter that we can see, astronomers suspect there exists even more dark matter that we cannot see.

This photo is even more beautiful than the usual fare from APOD — you don't want to miss it! Click on the picture for a larger view.

Kidney story

Today's San Diego Union-Tribune has a heart-warming story about a 74 year old mother receiving a kidney from her 44 year old son:

Three months later, his mother needed a kidney. While on a trip to Oshkosh, Wis., she noticed her ankles were swollen. Within a few months, her kidneys failed. She began going to dialysis treatments three times a week. The procedures exhausted her. Her health deteriorated quickly. She had a stroke and needed surgery to remove her diseased kidneys before a transplant could be considered.

The average wait for a kidney from the transplant donation list in San Diego County is two to five years, said Landes' transplant surgeon, Dr. Evan Vapnek.

Mary Lou Landes, 74, received her son's kidney May 19, 2004. The next day, he said, "she looked like she had 10 years ago. I hadn't realized how ashen she had become, and now her eye had a sparkle in it again.""Younger, healthier people can stand dialysis for many, many years, but older people don't do well," Vapnek said. "She would not have been able to wait long enough to get a kidney off the list."

A donation from a living family member wouldn't necessarily save her. She was older than the typical recipient and her health was poor. During a family dinner at an Italian restaurant in Fallbrook, Landes and his brother and sister all said they were willing to give their mother a kidney. They decided, though, that because of his job flexibility, Landes would be the best choice.

That's quite a gift mom got!

Azerbaijanis for freedom

Via Gateway Pundit, an article and photos about Azerbaijanis demonstrating for freedom:

Thousands of opposition protesters chanted "Freedom!" and carried pictures of President Bush as they marched across Azerbaijan's capital Saturday, urging the government of this U.S. ally to step down and allow free parliamentary elections this year.

The massive rally in Baku was the largest opposition demonstration in the former Soviet republic since October 2003, when one person died and nearly 200 were injured in clashes between police and demonstrators protesting vote-rigging in the presidential election.

Tensions have been building steadily in this oil-rich Caspian Sea nation in the run-up to parliamentary elections set for November, leading some observers to predict that Azerbaijan could see a massive uprising similar to those that toppled unpopular regimes in other ex-Soviet nations of Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan during the past 18 months.

The Anchoress and I have the same reaction: isn't it just interesting as all get out that the protesters are holding up pictures of George W. Bush on their posters?

Think about it: in the context of today, if you're living under the bootheel of a repressive government and you work up the courage to openly demonstrate, who's your message going to be aimed at? You only have one agenda — you want help in freeing the people of your country (along with yourself, of course). So you aim your message at the one person or country that you believe will be most effective in helping you. The people of Azerbaijan apparently understand that that means George W. Bush and the United States. Not Putin and Russia, but also not...Chirac and France, Schroeder and Germany, and so on. No, you don't look to their ilk for help in freeing yourself. You look to the United States and its leader.

These pictures are good evidence that the people who really matter have figured out how the world really works. Despite the best efforts of the MSM to "educate" them.

Quote for the day

The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful.

   Henri Poincaré

Discipline

Without discipline an Army would just be a bunch of guys wearing the same color clothing.

So begins a very interesting post by an unusually articulate soldier in Iraq. The post is about an Iraqi unit demonstrating discipline. Another excerpt:

I didn’t think back to that clipped broadcast until I returned to Iraq. Here in the throbbing heart of Baghdad, swimming in a sea of shimmering heat - that news segment seems almost disingenuous. I’m sure that yesterday, half a world away that same newscaster spent 10 or 15 seconds covering the latest insurgent ambush before moving onto the local weather forecast. And I’m equally certain that someone watched that broadcast and grew a little more despondent about the situation here in Iraq. But what was lost in that syrupy smooth slice of news was a story that shows just how much Iraq has changed, and about how disciplined some Iraqi Army units have become in a few short months.

I heard the story this morning from one of our NCOs who works hand in hand with the Iraqi Army unit that was ambushed. After conducting operations outside of our sector the IA unit was returning in the shadowy silence of early morning. The unit was moving in a snaking column, a long sinuous file that took them right into the waiting ambush. I can imagine the silence of that morning, the only sound echoing off the urban canyon the grumbling clamor of Bongo trucks and Iraqi vehicles making their way down the road. And then the silence was broken, and the sky was aflame with a storm of machine gun fire. The insurgents had set their ambush in the middle of a quiet residential area an arrangement that guaranteed that any returning fire would careen through a densely populated neighborhood and compound the tragedy by killing innocent civilians sleeping in their beds. The Iraqi unit took the worst the insurgents had to throw at them, making the wrenching decision to limit their return fire to protect the civilians the insurgents were using as unwitting shields.

Frank Burns is the soldier's name, writing in his blog "365 and a Wakeup". Don't miss the rest of this post, or his other writings. I've added him to my blogroll...

Quote for the day

Logic will get you from A to B, Imagination will take you everywhere.

   Albert Einstein

Nazi squirrel?

I never dreamed that slowly cruising on my motorcycle through a residential neighborhood could be so incredibly dangerous. Little did I suspect!

I was on Brice Street, a very nice neighborhood with perfect lawns and slow traffic. As I passed an oncoming car, a brown furry missile shot out from under it and tumbled to a stop immediately in front of me. It was a squirrel, and must have been trying to run across the road when it encountered the car. I really was not going very fast, but there was no time to brake or avoid it — it was that close. I hate to run over animals, and I really hate it on a motorcycle, but a squirrel should have posed no real danger to me. I barely had time to brace for the impact.

Animal lovers, never fear. Squirrels, I discovered, can take care of themselves! Inches before impact, the squirrel flipped to his feet. He was standing on his hind legs and facing my oncoming Harley with steadfast resolve in his beady little eyes. His mouth opened, and at the last possible second, he screamed and leapt!

I am pretty sure the scream was squirrel for, "Bonzai!" or maybe, "Die, you gravy-sucking, heathen scum!"

The leap was nothing short of spectacular... He shot straight up, flew over my windshield, and impacted me squarely in the chest. Then, instantly, he set upon me. If I had not known better, I would have sworn he brought 20 of his little buddies along for the attack. Snarling, hissing, and tearing at my clothes, he was a frenzy of activity. As I was dressed only in a light T-shirt, summer riding gloves, and jeans, this was a bit of a cause for concern. The furry little tornado was doing some damage!

Picture a large man on a huge black-and-chrome cruiser, dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and leather gloves, puttering at maybe 25 mph down a quiet residential street, in the fight of his life with a squirrel...and losing!

I grabbed for him with my left hand. After a few misses, I finally managed to snag his tail. With all my strength, I flung the evil rodent off to the left of the bike, almost running into the right curb as I recoiled from the throw. That should have done it. The matter should have ended right there... It really should have.

The squirrel could have sailed into one of the pristinely-kept yards and gone on about his business, and I could have headed on home. No one would have been the wiser — but this was no ordinary squirrel. This was not even an ordinary, angry squirrel. This was an EVIL MUTANT ATTACK SQUIRREL OF DEATH!

Somehow he caught my gloved finger with one of his little hands and, with the force of the throw, swung around and with a resounding thump and an amazing impact, landed squarely on my BACK, and resumed his rather antisocial and extremely distracting activities. He also managed to take my left glove with him! The situation was not improved...not improved at all.

His attacks were continuing, and now I could not reach him. I was startled, to say the least. The combination of the force of the throw, only having one hand (the throttle hand) on the handlebars, and my jerking ba! ck, unfortunately, put a healthy twist through my right hand and into the throttle.

A healthy twist on the throttle of a Harley can only have one result — torque. This is what the Harley is made for, and she is very, very good at it. The engine roared and the front wheel left the pavement. The squirrel screamed in anger. The Big Harley screamed in ecstasy. I screamed in...well...I just plain screamed.

Now picture a large man on a huge black-and-chrome cruiser, dressed in jeans, a slightly-squirrel-torn t-shirt, wearing only one leather glove, and roaring at maybe 50 mph and rapidly accelerating down a quiet residential street on one wheel, with a demonic squirrel of death on his back. The man and the squirrel are both screaming bloody murder.

With the sudden acceleration I was forced to put my other hand back on the handlebars and try to get control of the bike. This was leaving the mutant squirrel to his own devices, but I really did not want to crash into somebody's tree, house, or parked car. Also, I had not yet figured out how to release the throttle...my brain was simply overloaded.

I did manage to mash the back brake, but it had little effect against the massive power of the big cruiser. Also, about this time the squirrel decided that I was not paying sufficient attention to this very serious battle (maybe he was an evil mutant NAZI attack squirrel of death), and he came around my neck and got INSIDE my full-face helmet with me. As the faceplate closed part way, he began hissing in my face. I am quite sure my screaming changed intensity. It had little effect on the squirrel, however. The RPMs on the Dragon maxed out (since I was not bothering with shifting at the moment), so her front end started to drop.

Now picture a large man on a huge black-and-chrome cruiser, dressed in jeans, a very raggedly-torn and blood-stained T-shirt, wearing only one leather glove, roaring at probably 80 mph, still on one wheel, with a large puffy squirrel's tail sticking out of the mostly-closed full-face helmet. By now the screams are probably getting a little hoarse.

Finally I got the upper hand...I managed to grab his tail again, pulled him out of my helmet, and slung him to the left as hard as I could. This time it worked...sort-of. Spectacularly sort-of — so to speak.

Picture a new scene. You are a cop. You and your partner have pulled off on a quiet residential street and parked with your windows down to do some paperwork. Suddenly a large man on a huge black-and-chrome cruiser, dressed in jeans, a torn, blood-stained T-shirt flapping in the breeze, wearing only one leather glove, moving at probably 80 mph on one wheel, and screaming bloody murder roars by, and with all his strength throws a live-squirrel-grenade directly into your police car. I heard screams... They weren't mine.

I managed to get the big motorcycle under control and dropped the front wheel to the ground. I then used maximum braking and skidded to a stop in a cloud of tire smoke at the stop sign of a busy cross street. I would have returned to 'fess up (and to get my glove back)... I really would have. Really... Except for two things.

First, the cops did not seem interested or the slightest bit concerned about me at the moment. When I looked back, the doors on both sides of the patrol car were flung wide open. The cop from the passenger side was on his back, doing a crab walk into somebody's front yard, quickly moving away from the car. The cop who had been in the driver's seat was standing in the street, aiming a riot shotgun at his own police car. So, the cops were not interested in me. They often insist to "let the professionals handle it" anyway.

That was one thing. The other? Well, I could clearly see shredded and pieces of foam and upholstery flying from the back seat. I could also swear I saw that squirrel in the back window, shaking his little fist at me. That was one dangerous squirrel...and now he had a patrol car. Granted, it was a somewhat-shredded patrol car, but it was all his.

I took a deep breath, flipped on my turn-signal, made a gentle right turn off of Brice Street, and sedately left the neighborhood. I decided it was best to just buy myself a new pair of gloves...and a whole lot of Band-Aids!

APOD

APOD brings us...

Eta Carinae, one of the most massive and unstable stars in the Milky Way Galaxy, has a profound affect on its environment. Found in the the South Pillar region of the Carina Nebula, these fantastic pillars of glowing dust and gas with embedded newborn stars were sculpted by the intense wind and radiation from Eta Carinae and other massive stars. Glowing brightly in planet Earth's southern sky, the expansive Eta Carinae Nebula is a mere 10,000 light-years distant. Still, this remarkable cosmic vista is largely obscured by nebular dust and only revealed here in penetrating infrared light by the Spitzer Space Telescope. Eta Carinae itself is off the top left of the false-color image, with the bright-tipped dust pillars pointing suggestively toward the massive star's position. The Spitzer image spans almost 200 light-years at the distance of Eta Carinae.

Click on the picture for a larger view.

Boiling water

Did you ever wonder what would happen if you threw a pot of boiling water into the air in Antarctica while it was -50C?

Well, I never wondered that, either. But that's what the picture at right is all about — the folks at Halley station in Antarctica, with apparently way too much time on their hands, are having a little fun with the extremely cold temperatures.

Don't miss their video!

Dohuk

I'd never heard of Dohuk before, but I know it now through a wonderfully uplifting post by Michael Yon. It's a town in northern Iraq, in the Kurdish section — and it's thriving. The people are safe in their everyday lives, the markets are full of goods, and the economy is in good shape (at least, by the evidence of Yon's eyes). An excerpt:

The Army left me behind and I stayed alone. I walked for miles and miles.

Through the marketplace, up and down the streets.

There were shoeshine boys, flower shops and computer stores. The computer stores in little Dohuk are much better stocked than those Milano, Italy. This is fact.

I walked into a store called Zanest Computer & Electronics, at 14th Anthar Street, and there I sat with Mr. Abdul Shukry, and asked him about business. Mr. Shukry said business is good, and that the US Army had come a few days earlier and purchased sixty computers and sixty UPS's and gave them all to Dohuk University.

"That's great," I said, "But how are sales if you do not include the Army business?""Still is good," he said, "Since the war has ended, all is good.""Are the people happy?" I asked.Mr. Shukry paused for a moment, as if it were the simplest question he'd been asked in months, "Of course they are happy, " he said."Are you Muslim?" I asked."Yes," he said."Sunni, yes?""Yes, Sunni. Most Kurds are Sunni.""Many people think the Sunnis all make war.""Not us. We are Kurds."

We talked on, exchanging answers to questions like, "What do you think of the police?" "What do you think of the U.S.?" "What do you think of the U.K.?" "Of Germany, of France?" "What do you think of Yezidi people?" "What is on your mind?"

You don't want to miss this post; go read it before you forget to. And don't miss the link to Dohuk University in his post!

Egyptian protests

At Rantings of a Sandmonkey, there's an interesting post (with photos) about the recent "Black Wednesday" protest in Egypt. Hosni Mubarak has committed publicly to holding free elections. These elections, were they truly free, would likely throw Mubarak out of office. So what's really happening, according to nearly all information I've been reading on the subject, is that Mubarak is mouthing "free elections" but using every tool at his disposal to suppress anything even remotely resembling an opposition. And because Mubarak is actually a dictator, those tools are numerous and high-powered. An excerpt from Sandmonkey:

The great country can set the example, no problem. It's Mubarak that has to set it really by punishing the kind of behaviour that took place the day of the referendum, and maybe, just maybe, follow some standards for a far election.

Oh look, Bush has some for you in case you can't come up with some on your own:

"People ought to be allowed to vote without being intimidated, people ought to be allowed to be on TV, and if the government owns the TV, they need to allow the opposition on TV, people ought to be allowed to carry signs and express their pleasure or displeasure. People ought to have very vote count," he said.

See Hosny? It's not that hard is it? No? Ok, then why don't you stop being a douche bag and let us have our free fu**in elections? God knows you will probably win any way with the current state of the opposition, so why don't you just give the people a real right to chose for once? It may forgive some of the shit you've put us through those past 24 years.

Blogs are one of the few things that Mubarak and his ilk have very little means to control. I do not know how widely read the Egyptian blogs are, but I know they are quite numerous. Relatively few are in English, of course, and Sandmonkey is one of them — albeit an unusually pro-American, pro-Western example.

As readers of this blog know, I subscribe to the blogospheric theory that once the protest babes show up, the opposing side is in big trouble. So the best news of all (from Sandmonkey's post) is that the protest babes have showed up supporting the Egyptian opposition. Telegram to Mubarak: it's all over but the shouting. You might as well start planning your retirement...elsewhere.

Deep Throat

By now you've probably heard the "sensational" news about the Watergate source code-named "Deep Throat" finally being revealed, as the then number two man at the FBI, former Director W. Mark Felt. The MSM is all over this story, trying as hard as they can to create an instant hero in Mr. Felt, and in reliving what must be the most glorious days in living memory for the MSM.

As many have pointed out, there are good reasons to wonder about Felt's motives — and even better reasons to question his actions, whatever his motives were. Any law enforcement office with knowledge of a crime has an obligation to report that crime — not to a newspaper reporter as a secret source, but through ordinary law enforcement channels. Even if one were to buy the argument (that some have made) that Felt had good reason to be suspicious of his superiors, then there were still other legitimate channels he could have pursued. For instance, he could have spilled his guts to any ranking Democrat — the political process would have ensured that Watergate was fully exposed, just as it was after the press reported it. So why did Felt take this route? Almost certainly for the most pedestrian of reasons: it was the safest thing for him to do personally. Not hero stuff in my book.

From the always-informative Captain's Galley, here's another interesting and related tidbit. It seems that this story (about Felt being Deep Throat) has been being shopped for several years, by his family members who are interested in making some money from the story. And it's been turned down at least a couple of times by enterprising MSM journalists who did not believe it was ethical to pay for a story, or who couldn't get reliable enough information to pursue a book deal. My current sense of journalistic ethics in the MSM is such that I have to think that either this story is incredibly rotten, or that the journalists involved are unusually principled. An excerpt from the Captain's Galley story:

Even Felt himself claimed during several sections of the taped interviews that Woodward made up the source Deep Throat.

"I just thought he was making it up," the then 90-year-old Felt told my partner. ...

The problem with Felt is that three summers before, he had suffered a stroke and briefly was sent to recuperate in a convalescent home. ... On Nov. 8, 2003, Felt told my writing partner when asked if he wanted to come forward: "You can tell them that I am Deep — that I was Deep Throat. The only thing is that Deep Throat is a little different than you probably have in mind. Deep Throat was not anybody real inside that was furnishing information. It was somebody confirming information."

Then Felt described his motive for coming clean then: "I guess I want some money for my family."

Earlier in that same interview, Felt said he didn't remember anything about Deep Throat, even saying at one point: "Well, I wasn't a Deep Throat."

Of Woodward, he said: "I don't think I ever provided information to him."

Later, Felt said: "I thought Deep Throat was another source entirely."

Don't miss the rest of the posting; it's fascinating stuff...

Quote for the day

The minute you read something you can't understand, you can almost be sure it was drawn up by a lawyer.

   William Penn Adair Rogers

APOD

APOD brings us...

Why caused this great white spot on the surface of Saturn's moon Rhea? The spot was first noticed last year by the robot Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn. Cassini's flyby of Rhea in April imaged in the spot in great detail. Astronomers hypothesize that the light-colored spot is the result of a relatively recent impact on the surface of the icy moon. The impact that likely created the crater also splashed light-colored material from the interior onto the darker surface. Rhea spans 1,500 kilometers across and is the second largest moon of Saturn after Titan. Rhea sports several other light colored surface features that are, as yet, not well understood.

Click on the picture for a larger view.

Quote for the day

Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality, the costs become prohibitive.

   William F. Buckley

Quote for the day

No person was ever honoured for what he received. Honour has been the reward for what he gave.

   Calvin Coolidge

Arlington Ladies

This is an organization I'd never heard of before, but after reading their story in the American Spectator, I am in awe of their volunteer service. This group makes certain that someone attends every funeral at Arlington, and they stand ready to help the families of the fallen in any way that they can. They seek no "pat on the back", as one of them put it. A tiny part of this article, quoting one of the Arlington Ladies:

"What we do is always important and meaningful, but when you are alone at a funeral there is an added relevance," Willey said. "You feel an even greater need to be there, like you're helping to close the circle. For those grieving far away, a personal letter letting them know that someone was there can help soothe their sorrow. It shows them that their loved one's service was not forgotten and also that their loss has not been ignored."

The connection between the bereaved and an Arlington Lady does not end when the funeral is over, either.

"One of the first things I tell all my families is, 'I am your Arlington lady, not just now but forever, and you can always contact me,'" said Paula McKinley, the chair of the Navy Arlington Ladies. "It's a bond that is built to last."

This may sound like hyperbole, but consider the following: McKinley has placed roses on a grave for years at the request of a Navy widow and last summer on what would have been the couple's 50th anniversary she sent along 50 roses because it's what she imagined the husband would have done.

Read the whole article. I recommend having a box of Kleenex at hand...

Remembering...

Photo courtesy of Yahoo. Click to enlarge the picture.

Eleven year old Thomas McGahan, a Boy Scout, and his Cub Scout brother Nicholas, of Northport, N.Y., place flags on graves at the Long Island National Cemetery.

I weep for the fallen and their families...

Sunrise in Iraq

From the Guard Experience.

Photo by SSG Russell Lee Klika
Courtesy of SSG Russell Lee Klika

4/5/05, IRAQ – SGT Chad Crisp, LTC Mark Hart, and SGT Robert Bonnett of 1st Squadron, 278th RCT clear a drainage ditch in the early morning hours of April 5,2005,that insurgents had used as a defensive position to stage an ambush the night before. LTC Hart is not wearing his blouse-top because he used it to help stop the bleeding of an insurgent so he could be evacuated for medical treatment and questioned.

Very nice photo.

APOD

APOD brings us...

This stunning aerial view shows the rugged snow covered peaks of a Himalayan mountain range in Nepal. The seventh-highest peak on the planet, Dhaulagiri, is the high point on the horizon at the left while in the foreground lies the southern Tibetan Plateau of China. But, contrary to appearances, this picture wasn't taken from an airliner cruising at 30,000 feet. Instead it was taken with a 35mm camera and telephoto lens by the Expedition 1 crew aboard the International Space Station -- orbiting 200 nautical miles above the Earth. The Himalayan mountains were created by crustal plate tectonics on planet Earth some 70 million years ago, as the Indian plate began a collision with the Eurasian plate. Himalayan uplift still continues today at a rate of a few millimeters per year.

Click on the picture for a larger view.

Quote for the day

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

   Edumnd Burke

APOD

APOD brings us...

Titan's odd spot could be a cloud, but if so, it's a persistent one. Peering into the thick, hazy atmosphere of Saturn's largest moon, cameras on board the Cassini spacecraft found a bright spot at the same location during Titan encounters in 2005 and 2004. Seen near Titan's upper edge in this false-color image from the VIMS instrument, the spot is almost 500 kilometers wide, and is brightest at infrared wavelengths. In addition to suggesting the uniquely colored spot is a persistent cloud possibly controlled by surface features, researchers also entertain the idea that the spot is caused by unusual surface material or extremely tall mountains. They also note the bright infrared spot could be hot. Further clues to the odd spot's nature will come during a planned encounter in July 2006 when Cassini's cameras will look at the spot during Titan's night. If it glows at night, it's hot.

Click on the picture for a larger view.

Best line of the day

Peggy Noonan has a new column on OpinionJournal, and it's a great one. The best line:

I don't know if politicians have ever been modest, but I know they have never seemed so boastful, so full of themselves, and so dizzy with self-love.

The lady has a talent with words. I savor her columns as I do few others, as much for the power and the beauty of her prose as for the insight offered up...

Quote for the day

I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.

   Rebecca West

Time

I work for a company in a regulated industry (securities trading). Some of the regulations require certain of the company's computers to keep verifiably accurate time, to within plus or minus three seconds of the official national time reference, kept at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Laboratories, in Boulder, Colorado. This is the F1 Cesium Fountain Atomic Clock, shown in the photo at right.

When I first ran into this requirement a few years ago, I thought this would be a simple matter of implementing the Network Time Protocol (NTP). This is a very well-known and widely deployed protocol for the specific purpose of allowing a computer's clock to be precisely synchronized to time standard on the Internet. These "Stratum 1" Internet time servers are themselves synchronized directly to the NIST time standard.

I ran into a showstopper hitch with this approach: the "verifiable" part of the regulatory requirement. The trouble is that NTP works by communicating with the time servers over the Internet, and the time it takes messages to travel back-and-forth over the Internet is far from certain. Here's a mind experiment that illustrates the problem:

Imagine that you want to set your kitchen clock accurately, but the only time reference available is your neighbor's clock, which you know is accurate. Then imagine that the only way you can communicate with your neighbor is by talking. So to set your clock, you organize 12 of your friends to form a line between your kitchen and your neighbor's house, where each person is within shouting distance of the person next to him in line. Now you're ready: your neighbor shouts to the first person in the line when it's exactly twelve noon, and that person relays it to the next one, and so on, until finally you hear the shout from the last of your twelve friends in line — and at exactly that moment you set your kitchen clock to twelve noon.

Now how accurate do you suppose your clock is? It's going to be off by whatever the delay was; perhaps 20 or 30 seconds in this case. But you have an idea: you'll practice this relaying ahead of time, and time the delay, so you know what offset to subtract to set your kitchen clock correctly! Well, that's basically what NTP does. But it doesn't always work correctly. For instance, suppose one of your friends sneezed exactly when the adjacent friend shouted, so that the shout had to be repeated? Oops — guess that one will take a little longer than usual! Also, how consistent do you suppose that shouting is? Not very — you'll find that the time varies considerably from attempt to attempt. No matter how you slice it, if you set your kitchen clock by the method just described, there's no way you can be positively, absolutely certain that your clock is correctly set. In other words, it's not verifiable.

It turns out there's a perfectly conventional way to solve this problem: you buy your own stratum 1 time server, and put it on your own network. This eliminates the uncertainties of the Internet, and leaves you vulnerable only to the vagaries of your own network. In most corporate IT environments (and even in many homes), these "local area" networks (LANs) are implemented in a way (called "fully switched") that essentially eliminates any uncertainties in the message delivery time. In this situation, the computers that need to have their clocks accurately set can synchronize to this local stratum 1 time server, and this will satisfy (easily) the regulatory requirements such as those my company faces.

One problem with this approach: it's very expensive. The cheapest stratum 1 time servers work by listening to cell phone signals (which are synchronized to NIST's national time reference) or by listening to GPS satellites (which have atomic clocks on board that are in turn synchronized to NIST's national time reference). These servers cost about $5,000 to $10,000 each — and a company like mine really needs to have two of them, just in case one happens to break.

At the time my company was facing this problem, we really didn't want to spend that kind of money on this problem. So we looked for alternative solutions, and found that it's possible to purchase "time receivers" that listen to the aforementioned cell phone signals, GPS satellites, or the WWVB radio station maintained by NIST for the specific purpose of transmitting time information. For a number of reasons, including price, we chose a WWVB receiver. We bought two of these, and connected them to two computers running the Linux operating system. Then we modified the source code for NTP (this is reasonably well documented, and it's open source) to match the WWVB receiver, and installed the modified and recompiled NTP. Voila! We had our own stratum one time servers, for a lot less money than the commercial equipment.

Now, being the geek that I am, I just had to have something even better (and cheaper!) at home. It took me a couple of years for technology to catch up with what I wanted, but it finally has. Garmin recently came out with a new device called the GPS 18 LVC. This little darlin' is about the size and shape of a couple of drink coasters piled on top of each other; a little disk with a wire attached to it. It's a complete GPS sensor, but the part I care about (for these purposes) is that it has (a) an NMEA-compatible interface, and (b) a pulse-per-second (PPS) output. "NMEA" is the National Marine Electronics Association, and those folks long ago created a standard protocol ("language") for GPS units. The standard NTP source code distribution contains an NMEA driver, so this compatibility makes it easy to interface the GPS 18 with NTP. The bottom line: the GPS 18 LVC has everything you need to create a spectacularly good stratum 1 NTP server. And it costs about $80!

So I bought a couple of these (to make a redundant time standard). I've designed some simple circuitry (RS-232 line drivers) to allow me to put the GPS receivers up on my roof, and yet still have a stable signal travel down 100 feet or so of wire. I will be implementing NTP with the standard NMEA driver (modified if needed for the GPS 18's needs), and I'll be using the PPS output to implement the PPS driver in NTP. In the end, I'll have a stratum 1 NTP server synchronized to one millisecond or better with the NIST national time reference. The total cost of this project, including the dual GPS 18 LVCs, is less than $250 (using existing Linux-based computers as the NTP servers).

If you're interested in the design, I'd be happy to send you a Visio of the schematic. Just drop me a line! And once I've built it and got it running with NTP, I'd also be happy to share the NTP driver sources and configurations...

Arabs for common sense

From Rantings of a Sandmonkey:

Look, we as arabs/muslims/whatever can't just play the victim, decry that we are opressed and persecuted, and yet be OK with venemous hate like this be spewed and spread throughout our society. We can't chant "Death to America" on one hand and wonder why they won't be more on our side. While the jews were holding out vigils, and stating that " we are all americans today", The Palestinians danced on the streets and handed out sweets and baklawas when 9/11 happend, and then they openly wonderd why the US was on the side of Israel. LOL. If you, dear reader, are one of those people, let me tell you the story of my friend Irina.

My friend Irina - russian jewish US immigrant and current US customs agent - was all about the peace process and giving the palestinians equal rights with the rest of her family when a suicide bomber blew himself up in 2002 and killed her cousin, who was a peace activist. Since that Day her and her whole Labour-voting family turned against the palestinian peace process and became overnight Likud supporters, because- as she told me- they realized that day "that the palestinians don't differentiate between pro- and anti-peace jews; they are all jews to them and therefore they should all die." She used to get really upset and cry whenever she would hear about palestinian houses getting demolished or palestinian bystanders dying or getting injured in crossfire, and now, when she hears about stuff like that, she says that the one thing that crosses her mind is "better them then one of my family".

Read the whole thing.

Good news from Iraq

Mr. Chrenkoff does it again, in part 28 of his excellent "Good News from Iraq series. A teaser:

American airmen are also currently training the reactivated Iraqi air force:

Pilots and enlisted Airmen from the 777th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron at Little Rock Air Force Base, Ark., are here working hand-in-hand with pilots and crewmembers who served in Saddam Hussein’s air force before Operation Iraqi Freedom.

By the time the program is over, which we estimate to be May 2006, they will be a fully functional squadron,” said Maj. Roger Redwood, operations flight commander for the 23rd Advisory Support Team that is part of the 777th EAS. They are training airmen at Iraq’s 23rd Squadron.

While many of the new recruits have ample flight experience, their exposure to English has been more limited, officials said.

Most of the officers can communicate pretty well, but they have a hard time understanding the radio calls from air traffic control,” Major Redwood said.

They know the airplanes. They know the systems. They can do it all in Arabic, but we require them to do it in English, because if they are going to fly worldwide, they will need to be able to do it in English,” Major Redwood said. The Iraqi airmen are certainly not lacking in determination and dedication, the major said.

“These guys are all true patriots. They want to help their country,” Major Redwood said. “All of them were higher ranking in the Saddam era, so they took a pay cut. A lot of these guys were colonels and now they are majors. The guys coming in now are all captains, and they used to be majors and lieutenant colonels.”

APOD

APOD brings us...

What causes small waves in Saturn's rings? Observations of rings bordering the Keeler gap in Saturn's rings showed unusual waves. Such waves were first noticed last July and are shown above in clear detail. The picture is a digitally foreshortened image mosaic taken earlier this month by the robot Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn. The rings, made of many small particles, were somehow not orbiting Saturn in their usual manner. Close inspection of the image shows the reason - a small moon is orbiting in the Keeler gap. The previously unknown moon is estimated to span about seven kilometers and appears to have the same brightness as nearby ring particles. The gravity of the small moon likely perturbs the orbits of ring particles that come near it, causing them to shimmer back and forth after the moon passes. Since inner particles orbit more quickly than outer particles, only the leading particles of the inner rings and the trailing particles of the outer rings show the wave effect.

Click on the picture for a larger view.

Quote for the day

This is the epitaph I want on my tomb: 'Here lies one of the most intelligent animals who ever appeared on the face of the earth.'

   Benito Mussolini

APOD

APOD brings us...

In 1997, Comet Hale-Bopp's intrinsic brightness exceeded any comet since 1811. Since it peaked on the other side of the Earth's orbit, however, the comet appeared only brighter than any comet in two decades. Visible above are the two tails shed by Comet Hale-Bopp. The blue ion tail is composed of ionized gas molecules, of which carbon monoxide particularly glows blue when reacquiring electrons. This tail is created by the particles from the fast solar wind interacting with gas from the comet's head. The blue ion tail points directly away from the Sun. The light colored dust tail is created by bits of grit that have come off the comet's nucleus and are being pushed away by the pressure of light from the Sun. This tail points nearly away from the Sun. The above photograph was taken in March 1997.

Click on the picture for a larger view.

Why watch birds?

From GrrlScientist at "Living the Scientific Life (or Scientist, Interrupted)", eight reasons why birdwatchers watch birds. Read the whole thing, but here's her final reason:

8. Finally, it can save your life. One day you will be walking home from work, depressed. Your kid has the flu; the car's clutch needs to be fixed; and you are thinking tomorrow is your birthday. Another year has passed, and once again you have not triumphed at anything, really. Then you glance at the sky in despair, and right there, right over your head, blessing that particular air space on your street forever, is the world's most beautiful bird! With pearly white head, black and white wings, long forked tail, it circles slowly, a hundred feet up, eating dragonflies, tearing off the wings and letting them flutter down -- while you toss your briefcase in a bush, grab the first person to come along, and shout, "A swallow-tailed kite! A swallow-tailed kite!" until he, too, looks up and blinks at the sight and knows suddenly that he must buy some binoculars and become a bird watcher himself.

Reason number five particularly resonated with me. Birds conjure up beauty and mystery and strangeness for me. They also are one of the most challenging photographic subjects, and that also appeals to me.

Another reason that birdwatching appeals to me is one that GrrlScientist doesn't mention: it's something that almost anybody can do from their home. We live in the foothills of the mountains just east of San Diego, California, and we have a little property out in the chapparal environment. With a few bird feeders and some reliable water, we get hundreds upon hundreds of bird visitors, prominently visible from every window in our home. The most common species are California quail, four different hummingbird species, California towhees, spotted towhees, California thrashers, house finches, lesser goldfinches, western bluebirds, and white-crowned sparrows. We have many other bird species as well: orioles, blackbirds, grosbeaks, sparrows, kingbirds, hawks, kites, osprey, tanagers, and many more. All observable, even if only on occasion, right from our home.

Iraqi art

From Lance in Iraq (more at this link):

NOTE: This one may need to be explained to liberals. In this picture, the US is being portrayed as a champion of human rights. That is the way we are seen by most Iraqis because they are perceptive.

I pointed this art out to a liberal friend, who immediately retorted that surely this was simply an enterprising Iraqi taking advantage of American military sentiments to make a few bucks. Could be, I suppose. But wouldn't the simpler and more likely explanation be that it is exactly what it appears to be? Especially coming from an artist, with, one suspects, sentiments of his own...

Click the photo for a larger view. Better yet, go to Lance's blog!

Quote for the day

One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike - and yet it is the most precious thing we have.

   Albert Einstein

Quote for the day

Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really seems to mean that half a loaf is better than a whole loaf.

   G. K. Chesterton

California dreamin'

You know you're from California if...

1. Your coworker has 8 body piercing's and none are visible.

2. You make over $300,000 and still can't afford a house.

3. You take a bus and are shocked at two people carrying on a conversation in English.

4. Your child's 3rd-grade teacher has purple hair, a nose ring, and is named Flower.

5. You can't remember . . . . is pot illegal?

6. You've been to a baby shower that has two mothers and a sperm donor.

7. You have a very strong opinion about where your coffee beans are grown, and you can taste the difference between Sumatran and Ethiopian.

8. You can't remember . . is pot illegal?

9. A really great parking space can totally move you to tears.

10. Gas costs $1.00 per gallon more than anywhere else in the U.S.

11. Unlike back home, the guy at 8:30 am at Starbucks wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses who looks like George Clooney really IS George Clooney.

12. Your car insurance costs as much as your house payment.

13. You can't remember . . .is pot illegal?

14. It's barely sprinkling rain and there's a report on every news station: "STORM WATCH."

15. You pass an elementary school playground and the children are all busy with their cells or pagers.

16. It's barely sprinkling rain outside, so you leave for work an hour early to avoid all the weather-related accidents.

17. HEY!!!! Is pot illegal????

18. Both you AND your dog have therapists.

19. The Terminator is your governor.

20. If you drive illegally, they take your driver's license. If you're here illegally, they want to give you one.

Dogs

The reason a dog has so many friends is that he wags his tail instead of his tongue.
— unknown

Don't accept your dog's admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful.
— Ann Landers

If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.
— Will Rogers

A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself.
— Josh Billings

A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down.
— Robert Benchley

We give dogs time we can spare, space we can spare, and love we can spare. And in return, dogs give us their all. It's the best deal man has ever made.
— M. Acklam

Dogs love their friends and bite their enemies, quite unlike people who are incapable of pure love and always have to mix love and hate.
— Sigmund Freud

Their is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face.
— Ben Williams

The average dog is a nicer person than the average person.
— Andy Rooney

I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult.
— Rita Rudner

Dogs need to sniff the ground; it's how they keep abreast of current events. The ground is a giant dog newspaper, containing all kinds of late-breaking dog news items, which, if they are especially urgent, are often continued in the next yard.
— Dave Barry

If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.
— James Thurber

Anybody who doesn't know what soap tastes like never washed a dog.
— Franklin P. Jones

If your dog is fat, you aren't getting enough exercise.
— unknown

My dog is worried about the economy because Alpo is up to $3 a can. That's almost $21 in dog money.
— Joe Weinstein

Ever consider what our dogs must think of us? I mean, here we come back from the grocery store with the most amazing haul - chicken, pork, half a cow. They must think we're the greatest hunters on earth!
— Anne Tyler

Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole.
— Roger Caras

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
— Mark Twain

If you think dogs can't count, try putting three dog biscuits in your pocket and then giving Fido only two of them.
— Phil Pastoret

You can say any foolish thing to a dog, and the dog will give you a look that says, 'Wow, you're right! I never would've thought of that!'
— Dave Barry

Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.
— Robert A. Heinlein

My goal in life is to be a person as good as my dog already thinks I am.
— unknown

Without comment

As it appears that none is needed!

Click on the picture for a larger, clearer view...

Mars Odyssey - photo!

Currently there are several active robotic satellites in orbit around Mars. One of these is the Mars Odyssey, another is Mars Orbiter Camera. Recently the Mars Orbiter Camera took photos of Mars Odyssey — an amazing technical achievement. In the words of Malin Space Science Systems:

The Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) images shown here are the first pictures of a spacecraft orbiting Mars taken by another spacecraft orbiting Mars. In April 2005, the MOC aboard Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) was used to take pictures of the other two spacecraft currently operating in orbit around Mars: NASA's Mars Odyssey and the European Space Agency's (ESA) Mars Express.

The MGS MOC is able to resolve features on the surface of Mars as small as a few meters across from its nominal 350 to 405 kilometers (217 to 252 miles) altitude. From a distance of 100 kilometers (62 miles), MOC would be able to resolve features substantially smaller than 1 meter across. Engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL; Pasadena, California), Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company (LMSSC, Denver, Colorado), and Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS; San Diego, California) worked very closely together to acquire images of Mars Express and Mars Odyssey.


Mars Odyssey

Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey are both in nearly circular, near-polar orbits. Odyssey is in an orbit slightly higher than that of MGS, in order to preclude the possibility that the two orbiters would collide. However, the two spacecraft occasionally come as close to one another as 15 kilometers (9 miles).

The figure at right shows an extreme enlargement of the best MOC view of Odyssey; the fourth figure is a computer-generated drawing scaled to the same size. The MOC image clearly shows the Gamma Ray Spectrometer (GRS) and its 6 meters-long boom, the high gain antenna used to transmit not only the science data from Odyssey's own instruments, but also to relay data from the two Mars Exploration Rovers (Spirit and Opportunity), and its solar array panel.

Mars Odyssey was launched on 7 April 2001, and reached Mars on 24 October 2001. Mars Global Surveyor left Earth on 7 November 1996, and arrived in Mars orbit on 12 September 1997. Both spacecraft are in an extended mission phase, both have relayed data from the Mars Exploration Rovers, and both are continuing to return exciting new results from Mars.

You can read more about this photo, and see more photos, at the Malin site. Click on the photo at right for a larger view.

Aurora Borealis

From Antartica, via "75 Degrees South". There's a nice collection of aurora borealis photos posted there...

Click for a larger view.

Ann nails Newsweek

Ann Coulter has a new column ("Newsweek dissembled, Muslims dismembered") that brilliantly exploses Newsweek's hypocrisy on the "flushed Qu'ran" story. Read the whole thing (linked above). Here's her conclusion:

No matter how I look at it, I can't grasp the editorial judgment that kills Isikoff's stories about a sitting president molesting the help and obstructing justice, while running Isikoff's not particularly newsworthy (or well-sourced) story about Americans desecrating a Quran at Guantanamo.

Even if it were true, why not sit on it? There are a lot of reasons the media withhold even true facts from readers. These include:

# A drama queen nitwit exclaimed she'd kill herself. (Evan Thomas' reason for holding the Lewinsky story.)

# The need for "more independent reporting." (Newsweek President Richard Smith explaining why Newsweek sat on the Lewinsky story even though the magazine had Lewinsky on tape describing the affair.)

# "We were in Havana." (ABC president David Westin explaining why "Nightline" held the Lewinsky story.)

# Unavailable for comment. (Michael Oreskes, New York Times Washington bureau chief, in response to why, the day The Washington Post ran the Lewinsky story, the Times ran a staged photo of Clinton meeting with the Israeli president on its front page.)

# Protecting the privacy of an alleged rape victim even when the accusation turns out to be false.

# Protecting an accused rapist even when the accusation turns out to be true if the perp is a Democratic president most journalists voted for.

# Protecting a reporter's source.

How about the media adding to the list of reasons not to run a news item: "Protecting the national interest"? If journalists don't like the ring of that, how about this one: "Protecting ourselves before the American people rise up and lynch us for our relentless anti-American stories."

It's classic Ann Coulter: witty, provocative, and dead on target.

Tech quote for the day

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build better and bigger idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.

   Rick Cook

Quote for the day

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.

   Abraham Lincoln

Developer humor

Top 12 things a Klingon programmer would say:

12. Specifications are for the weak and timid!

11. This machine is a piece of GAGH! I need dual processors if I am to do battle with this code!

10. You cannot really appreciate Dilbert unless you've read it in the original Klingon.

9. Indentation?! -- I will show you how to indent when I indent your skull!

8. What is this talk of 'release'? Klingons do not make software 'releases'. Our software 'escapes' leaving a bloody trail of designers and quality assurance people in its wake.

7. Klingon function calls do not have 'parameters' -- they have 'arguments' -- and they ALWAYS WIN THEM.

6. Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Our software does not coddle the weak.

5. I have challenged the entire quality assurance team to a Bat-Leth contest. They will not concern us again.

4. A TRUE Klingon Warrior does not comment his code!

3. By filing this SCR you have challenged the honor of my family. Prepare to die!

2. You question the worthiness of my code? I should kill you where you stand!

1. Our users will know fear and cower before our software. Ship it! Ship it, and let them flee like the dogs they are!