One Breath

In as little as a single inhalation, humans can become addicted:

A new study published in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine shows that 10 percent of youth who become hooked on cigarettes are addicted within two days of first inhaling from a cigarette, and 25 percent are addicted within a month.

To tobacco.

This jibes with the results of several studies over the years. The plain fact is that nicotine is one of the most addictive substances known to man – more addictive than heroin or crack cocaine.

It seems to me that the entirely arbitrary way that our society has legalized (and failed to stigmatize the use of) alcohol and tobacco, as opposed to the way it treats drugs like marijuana, cocaine, and heroin, is entirely indefensible on any logical basis. We've simply declared, as a society, that alcohol and tobacco are ok, and marijuana (for example) is not – with no rational basis at all. There are two scenarios that one could lay a rational foundation for: make all such addictive and psychoactive drugs illegal, or make none of them illegal.

The former approach suffers badly from a slippery-slope problem – surely caffeine (which is both addictive and psychoactive) wouldn't be far behind, then chocolate, and eventually ... basic foods like sugar. If you think I"M being ridiculous, consider the recent nanny-state actions in New York (trans-fats, paté, etc.).

The latter approach (legalize all such substances) has my vote, consistent with my libertarian leanings. So long as one doesn't harm anyone else, I think people should be free to ingest whatever they want – whether it harms them or not. If their choice sends them to their reward sooner, I'll call that evolution at work...

Oh, My...

We have a house guest with us at the moment, and she (who shall remain unnamed) has a favorite television show: Fox's Are You Smarter Than A 5th-Grader? Our guest asked me to watch this show with her, and because I love her dearly, I agreed to subject myself to 60 minutes of commercial television – something I haven't done for about 10 or 12 years.

The premise of this show is that an adult contestant is asked a series of up to 11 questions that are at (or below!) a fifth grade educational level. Each time they answer a question correctly, they win the next level of prize – up to one million dollars if they get all the questions right. There are some additional rules, all of which serve to help the contestant – basically, all ways to cheat with the help of a fifth grade “helper” kid. In addition, the contestant can bail out at any time and keep whatever prize they've won so far. In other words, the whole thing is rigged in favor of the contestant.

In the show that I watched, there were two contestants. Both of them bailed out at some point – the money that they'd won apparently wasn't worth risking on these terribly difficult questions:

How many months have 31 days in them?

If y=3x and 3x=12, then what is y equal to?

What U.S. President's face appears on the nickel?

What was President Taylor's first name?

If the diameter of a circle is 4 inches, what is its radius?

True or false: the U.S. is in the Eastern Hemisphere?

What continent is the only one that is also a country?

The above are just a representative sample of the questions asked on the show; I didn't try to transcribe them all. The contestants appeared to find these questions challenging, and on several occasions they relied on the rules to allow their helper kid to answer for them (correctly , in each case). The last question above caused one contestant to bail out – after she correctly enumerated all the continents out loud, but then said that each one of them was a country!

Oh, my.

Part of me is unsurprised by this. Over the years I have seen many examples of profound ignorance of nearly everything, mainly in co-workers at places I worked. Let me hasten to add that certainly not everybody I worked with fell into that category – just that there were more than a few of them.

But part of me is surprised – I have trouble believing that apparently functioning adults can't answer certain questions easily (like that simple algebra question), and I'm especially surprised that people who find such questions challenging themselves (like my house guest) are entertained by watching other challenged people. I'd be slinking around in shame, and doing some immediate remedial studying...

And then the ponder: I wonder what would happen if the adult contestants for this show were taken from other countries – China, India, England, or even Estonia? The pattern of results would be most interesting. Based on my personal knowledge of their educational systems, my guess would be that the countries of the former Soviet Union and most of Asia (including India) would produce contestants that would make the U.S. contestants look like chumps...

Headline of the Day

About a million other bloggers have picked this up as well, but it's just too good to not be on my blog:

I KICKED BURNING TERRORIST SO HARD IN BALLS THAT I TORE A TENDON

As the Instapundit said, this may be the headline of the year, or maybe even of the decade!

Dirty Bombs?

So far we have been fortunate that no act of terrorism has included any nuclear material. We know from successful interdictions that al Qaida and other terrorist organizations have been trying for years to get their hands on nuclear materials – but so far they have either failed, or have not figured out to use it. It seems very encouraging that our counter-terrorism efforts have been so successful in this regard.

But this report from Canada is alarming – 76 devices containing nuclear materials (all of which are usable in a terrorist device) have gone missing, and 35 of those were stolen:

Radioactive devices -- some of which have the potential to be used in terrorist attacks -- have gone missing in alarming numbers in Canada over the past five years.

A new database compiled by The Canadian Press shows that the devices, which are used in everything from medical research to measuring oil wells, are becoming a favoured target of thieves.

At least 76 have gone missing in Canada over the past five years -- disappearing from construction sites, specialized tool boxes, and generally growing legs and walking away.

Some of the devices could be used in a "dirty bomb," where conventional explosives are used to detonate nuclear material, spreading the contamination over a wide area, said Alan Bell, a security and international terrorism expert from Globe Risk Security Holdings.

As I understand it, the major risk we face from terrorists is not a nuclear weapon, but rather a “dirty bomb” – conventional explosives used to scatter some radioactive material (like that found in the missing Canadian devices) around a large area. This radioactive material would find its way into people exposed to the dust and smoke from the explosion, causing many kinds of illnesses and injuries, some of which would kill. The area covered by the radioactivity could be quite large, and the area where the explosion occurs could be very dense with people – and therefore the number of people injured, sickened, or killed by such a weapon could be very large. Most of the symptoms would manifest over extended periods of time, and you can be sure there would be massive media coverage of the agonies of the afflicted.

In other words, a dirty bomb is a terrorist's dream weapon.

After reading this report, I'm feeling much less confident that the world will remain free of such a horror...

Shame

While reading about the Glasgow bombing attack, I came across this Associated Press article. Here's the lead:

They had diverse backgrounds, coming from countries around the globe, but all shared youth and worked in medicine. They also had a common goal, authorities suspect: to bring havoc and death to the heart of Britain.

The eight people held Tuesday in the failed car bombing plot include one doctor from Iraq and two from India. There is a physician from Lebanon and a Jordanian doctor and his medical assistant wife. Another doctor and a medical student are thought to be from the Middle East.

All employees of the United Kingdom's National Health Service, some worked together as colleagues at hospitals in England and Scotland, and experts and officials say the evidence points to the plot being hatched after they met in Britain, rather than overseas.

"To think that these guys were a sleeper cell and somehow were able to plan this operation from the different places they were, and then orchestrate being hired by the NHS so they could get to the UK, then get jobs in the same area — I think that's a planning impossibility," said Bob Ayres, a former U.S. intelligence officer now at London's Chatham House think tank.

"A much more likely scenario is they were here together, they discovered that they shared some common ideology, and then they decided to act on this while here in the UK," he said.

No one has been charged in the plot in which two car bombs failed to explode in central London early Friday and two men rammed a Jeep Cherokee loaded with gas cylinders into the entrance of Glasgow International Airport and set it on fire the following day.

Do you notice anything missing? How about any reference to the fact that the suspects being held are radical Muslims believed to be linked to Al Qaeda in Iraq? The press and government spokesmen (especially in the U.K.) are falling all over themselves to avoid ... what, exactly? Careful parsing of the information that has been released by the government shows that (a) the suspects were all radical Muslims, and (b) the U.K. government is confident that the suspects were members of a group linked to (and most likely directed by) Al Qaida in Iraq. So why aren't they just saying it directly?

Because the liberal, multi-culti mindset is very uncomfortable – nay, offended – at the idea that we might associate Muslims with terrorism. That would be so arrogant and biased of us! Never mind that virtually all terrorist attacks on Western targets in the last 20 years have been perpetrated by radical Muslims. Never mind that they tell us, over and over again, loudly and often (though our lamestream media reports it only infrequently) that we are infidels and it is their duty to kill us. Never mind that the alleged "moderate" Muslim community, every time it is polled, overwhelmingly supports jihad and the imposition of sharia law. Those things, in the multi-culti world, are just not to be spoken of.

The multi-cultis are the spittin' image of that dumb ostrich with his head in the sand.

Can't you just imagine the discussions that occur amongst the Al Qaida members about this phenomenon? Right after they shoot some women, blow up a few schoolchildren, and hack of the heads of some more (as occurred outside Baquba just a few days ago), they flip on CNN and see something like the story above – how encouraged they must be! Their enemies are so stupid, they don't even know they're being attacked, or who is doing it! Then a little later, when they see a of clip of Murtha, Reid, or Pelosi babbling about how the war is lost (by the Americans), can't you just hear the jihadis cheering? Their enemy is giving up!

A thought experiment: if the jihadis could vote in the 2008 Presidential election, who do you suppose they would vote for? I don't think it's Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Duncan Hunter, or John McCain. It disgusts me to have to acknowledge there are viable candidates for that office whom the jihadis would be delighted to vote for – such as Barack Obama, Ron Paul, John Edwards, Al Gore, and Hillary Clinton. The willingness (nearly eagerness) of those candidates to trade American security and our soldier's lives for their own political gain is way beyond the pale.

I'm ashamed of them...

Rescued!

This sounds like a corny Hollywood stunt, but it really happened -- yesterday, in Iraq. Chief Warrant Officers Mark Burrows and Steven Cianfrini were flying their OH-58 Kiowa reconnaissance helicopter in Iraq when they came under heavy ground fire. Their helicopter was shot down, but they survived with only minor injuries. They were attacked on the ground as well, so they crawled out of the helicopter and into a nearby canal full of reeds, and immediately got stuck in the mud on the bottom of the canal. They thought they were done for -- and then:

After five to 10 minutes, the machine gun fire slowly started to dissipate. An unmanned U.S. drone aircraft circled above them. Help was not far behind.

A pair of Apache helicopters from the 1st Calvary Division pushed back the insurgents. Burrows was able to climb out of the mud and up an embankment, signaling the Apache for help. Using his M4 rifle, he pulled Cianfrini out of the mud.

Because the Apache has just two seats, one of the Apache pilots and Burrows had to strap themselves to the outside of the aircraft, braving 120 mph winds on the ride back to base. Cianfrini rode inside in the Apache.

Burrows, who without a helmet gripped the outside of the Apache, called the 10-minute flight back to the base in Baghdad “a pretty wild ride.” “I could endure anything at that point after what we had just gone through,” Burrows said in the department of Defense interview.

That's two very happy guys and their families on this Independence Day! Read all about it here and here.

Independence Day

Two hundred thirty one years ago, on July 4, 1776, fifty-six men representing the English colonies in America signed the Declaration of Independence. I've reproduced it in its entirety below in celebration of this day:

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

-- He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

-- He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

-- He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

-- He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

-- He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

-- He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

-- He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

-- He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

-- He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

-- He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

-- He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

-- He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

-- He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

-- For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

-- For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

-- For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

-- For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

-- For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

-- For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

-- For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

-- For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

-- For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

-- He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

-- He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

-- He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

-- He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

-- He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Every time I read this document (as I try to do every July 4th), the ponder sets in: if the signers of this document could see how America has evolved, what would they think?

This time another ponder set in: with just a little editing, this document could be updated to serve as a Declaration of Independence from the current political parties. The list of grievances the original document contains is startlingly apropos of today's political environment...

But that's a thought I'll pursue another day. Today I reserve for celebration of the amazing courage and fortitude of this countries forefathers...

Yon the Humiliator!

A few days ago I posted about the recent Al Qaeda atrocities near Baquba so eloquently reported by Michael Yon. In that same post, I lamented the lamestream media's determined avoidance of reporting the ugly truths about our enemy. Many other bloggers had similar thoughts, including Glenn Reynolds (the InstaPundit). His post caused someone in the media to respond to Glenn with the following email:

Yon's story doesn't get attention because it is humiliating.

It is humiliating because it is obvious that we media – and our allies in the state department, the legal trade, the NGOs, the Democratic Party, the UN, etc., - can’t do squat about such determined use of force.

Our words, images, arguments and skills can’t stop the killing. Only the rough soldiers and their guns can solve the problem, and we won’t admit that fact because the admission would weaken our influence and our claim to social status.

So we pretend Yon’s massacre – and the North Korean killing fields, the Arab treatment of women, the Arab hatred of Israel, etc. - doesn’t exist, and instead focus our emotions and attention on the somewhat-bad domestic things that we can ‘fix’ with our DC-based allies. Things such as Abu Ghraib, wiretapping, etc. When we ‘fix’ them, then we get status, applause, power, new jobs, ego, etc.

Please don’t be surprised. We media are an interest group not much different from the automakers, the unions, and the farmers.

Glenn says that the journalist's name is one we'd recognize. Presumably this journalist requested anonymity – and given his (or her) heretical observations, one can understand why.

Remember this the next time you hear some beguiling journalist make claims about their profession's objectivity and lack of agenda...

A Complex War

The war in Iraq is a complex affair, far more so than the majority of American observers understand. Most Americans seem to want a "sound bite" war, totally comprehensible within the space of a 60 second news segment. This is probably no different than any past war, except in one important respect: today anyone who wants to be informed about the complex details, can be -- thanks to the Internet. There are many sources available, with different perspectives and access to different information -- and all of it is in nearly real time.

For example, the web site Strategy Page has a number of contributors with various kinds of expertise and contacts -- conventional military, special operations, political, and more. A recent article of theirs discusses some of the effects of the "surge", and it includes this discussion of the reality of the insurgents existence:

What is news is the declining terrorist activity. But that won't be big news until there are no more bombs going off. The terrorists realize this, and are scrambling to keep the car bombs coming. This is increasingly difficult as troops and police move through the Baghdad suburbs, finding and destroying the bomb workshops. Not only that, several recent raids have also captured large amounts of cash. The terrorism in Iraq is sustained by cash, because most attacks are paid for. The Sunni Arab population suffered an economic catastrophe once Saddam and his Baath Party were out of power. For decades before 2003, the Sunni Arabs, 20 percent of the population, got most of the oil money, and any other economic action. Suddenly, they were getting less than even their fair share of 20 percent.

Not once have I seen the lamestream media convey this reality: that most of the enemy operations in Iraq are essentially mercenary. And they certainly haven't conveyed the damage that the "surge" is doing to the finances that sustain these mercenaries. Many interesting and important questions flow from the mercenary nature of our enemy in Iraq. Where is the money coming from? Where are the supplies coming from? How are the logistics being handled?

The answers to these questions are known to our forces, if not to most Americans. But anyone in the world could know, if only they would take the trouble to inform themselves...

Croc Eats Dog -- NOT!

What would you think if you saw this coming down the street toward you?

Don't worry, it's just a dog suit!

This dog suit was dreamed up by some marketeers trying to improve attendance at a zoo. This worked -- attendance was up by 15% the month after this promotion.

It certainly would get my attention!

Home at Last

Debbie and her mom (Kate) arrived last night after a completely trouble-free flight. The airport was a complete zoo -- the worst traffic snarl I've ever seen there. Police and security people were everywhere; I can only assume after the incidents in Glasgow and Blackpool they raised security.

The dogs have been without their "mother" now for three weeks. When Debbie walked in the dogs completely lost their marbles -- it was complete mayhem, with non-stop happy-barking, Miki practically doing cartwheels, and all the dogs running around madly in sheer joy. Then when Kate (whom they haven't seen for a year) walked in, it all started over again. The dogs were very happy last night; their world is back to normal again...

Poo Pumper

This photo pretty much says it all:

What Is Wrong With You?

Scott Adams asks a question that I've long wondered about -- why do so many people like horror movies?

By process of elimination, I assume fans of horror flicks are imagining themselves as the killer, thinking how cool it would be to disembowel attractive teenagers. Jeezus-frickin-christ! There are millions of these psychopath movie-goers. And they look just like normal people.

I wonder how many times in my life I’m at a store, for example, swiping my debit card, and the cashier is looking at me and thinking “It sure would be fun to drive a spike through his forehead and make a vest from his skin.” It probably happens more often than I’d like.

Do you enjoy horror movies? If so, what the f*ck is wrong with you?

I don't watch horror movies at all -- the idea of spending my money or my time to get frightened just has no appeal at all. If I want to be frightened, Alphonse can do the job! But I never thought of the possibilities that Scott Adams did. Go read the whole thing!

Quote of the Day

From Amy Alkon, writing at the Advice Goddess:

What should I call them, terror-bunnies?

Don't miss the rest of it!

Fire Danger...

About a year ago, the Horse Fire burned to within about three miles east of our home (the photos in this post are from that fire). That's the last major fire that burned close to us. In October 2003 we had the enormous Cedar Fire (and two smaller simultaneous fires) that burned all around us, but no closer than about six miles. In July 2002, the Pines Fire looked like it might be a serious threat, but in the end came no closer than about 15 miles. In January 2001, the Viejas Fire burned to within a mile to the north of our home. I was in Estonia at the time, and had the special experience of seeing "Lawson Valley in flames" across a CNN video (Lawson Valley is where we live). By the time I found out about the fire, Debbie had evacuated herself and our animals, and had quite an adventure while doing so.

So we have some history of nearby wildfires in the past six years. Our rainy season this year wasn't very rainy at all -- it's the lowest amount of rainfall in 130 years of record keeping (whereas last year was the second-highest!). This is mixed news. The lack of rain means that all the dead brush (the primary fuel in the chaparral) is as dry as the proverbial bone, and that of course increase the risk. However, the lack of rain also means that the new brush growth this year will be much lower than normal, which means less new fuel is being added.

Now we're entering our long, dry summer season (temperature highs are forecast at well over 100°F all week). The usual cycle here is that the chaparral will dry out all summer, and then by around September our fire danger will be very high until the first rains, which usually come between late December and early February. This year, the onset of the risky period is pulled forward to right now because of the lack of rainfall and the already-dry chaparral.

But that doesn't actually mean our risk of wildfire is unusually high this year. There actually are some factors working in our favor -- most especially the fact that in nearly every direction around us the fuel load has been burned off within the past six years. Our biggest risk isn't that someone starts a fire right in our valley -- no, the big risk is that a fire starts outside our valley, possibly many miles away, and then is blowin into our valley by the Santa Ana winds that come from the northeast and east each summer and fall. Best of all, in the most risky directions -- the direction the evil Santa Ana winds come from -- all the fuel was burned off by last year's Horse Fire.

There are still some fuel-laden paths that a wildfire could take into Lawson Valley, but they're not the most likely ones. The path that looks most risky to me starts just south of Descanso and follows the Japatul Valley just south of west from there to a point just east of Loveland Reservoir, then turns south into Lawson Valley. That path has not burned in many years, and there are (to my knowledge) no firebreaks constructed anywhere on it. There is a good defensive point along the crest of Gaskill Peak and the nearby hills, and the generally narrow path that constrains the blaze is easier to battle. Nonetheless, this path could be taken by a Santa Ana driven wildfire, so we'll be carefully watching any fires that start to the north-northeast of us. The other available paths are all much less worrisome. A wildfire could move north from Deerhorn Valley, but winds from that direction are rare. There's also plenty of fuel between us and the towns of Jamul and Rancho San Diego, but a wildfire would require strong winds from the west to drive that to us, and such winds are both rare and usually moisture-laden (unlike the bone-dry Santa Ana winds).

So we enter our fire season this year with an unusual combination of risks, some higher than usual and some lower. It's difficult to peg the overall risk, but my unscientific, intuitive take is that our overall risk is no worse than it has been in the past few years...

Chatter

ABC News is reporting that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has an intelligence document warning of an Al Qaeda "summer spectacular" -- and that the situation is reminiscent of the "chatter" we have all heard about in the summer of 2001, just before 9/11. The report also contained specific warnings about Al Qaeda plans to attack Glasgow and Prague airports and airport infrastructure, and this report was passed along to UK and Czech officials two weeks ago. U.S. officials are not denying the report, though Secretary Chertoff has said that the DHS has no specific information about attacks aimed at the United States.

In Czechoslovakia, the UK, and Germany, the terror alert level is now at its highest level. The failed Glasgow bombing appears to have been timed for a moment when the airport was full of women and children. Two of the perpetrators (including the leader) were doctors, and UK residents.

The usual multi-cultural/politically correct/liberal line is that the West brings terrorism on itself by fostering despotic regimes with citizenry mired in hopeless poverty. Oops -- that line doesn't seem to fit the facts here. Let's see if we can figure it out -- what is there about these UK doctors that might have provoked their terrorist activity? Hmmm, let me think now -- could it have been the fact that they were radical Islamic fundamentalists who believe that all infidels must die?

There have been many reports from independent credible sources that the damage we have done to Al Qaeda is extensive -- many of its senior leadership has been killed or captured, and the rest are in hiding or on the run. The war in Iraq has been a huge drain on Al Qaeda, both in blood and treasure. Nevertheless, they are an enemy who will fight to the death, and these things that we would see as defeats and setbacks are seen much differently by them. They believe that each jihadi we've killed has gone to his glorious reward for his service to Allah -- and it drives them on all the more. So the recent "chatter" isn't inconsistent with a damaged Al Qaeda at all -- it's exactly what we should expect from a culture that emphasizes glorious death in jihad, and believes in both divine intervention and magic. A "summer spectacular" is just the sort of thing you'd expect them to cook up -- and they really don't need all that much of an organization left to pull it off. Remember, 9/11 was perpetrated by 19 men armed with box-cutters and some minimal flight training -- and a set of religious beliefs that encourage them to kill themselves in the course of killing "infidels".

"Infidels" would be you and me, of course.

Alphonse

Alphonse is a gopher snake, similar to the one in the photo at right. He (or she, for all I know) lives somewhere near our house. Gopher snakes are not venomous, despite their rather close resemblance to the rattlesnakes that are common here. Gopher snakes (which are also very common here) hunt small rodents, such as the gophers, ground squirrels, and various kinds of desert rats that live here -- and even rattlesnakes -- so we like gopher snakes!

But I've had just about enough scares from Alphonse, and I wish he'd be a little more ... polite. I'd appreciate some sort of warning before he shows up again...

The first scare he gave me was a couple weeks ago. I was washing my truck's windshield, and I was standing on a small stepladder so I could reach the center. As I finished and started to climb down my ladder, I looked down -- and saw what looked like a rattlesnake coiled right at the foot of my ladder, and starting to twine about the ladder's steps, as if to climb up. Yikes! Their resemblance to rattlesnakes is deliberate, to scare off potential predators -- and it sure scared this predator! It took me a few seconds to get my heartbeat under control and engage my brain to carefully look at the head (it's not as triangular as a rattlesnake's) and the tail (gopher snakes have no rattles). Ok, it wasn't a rattler...

Then, just a few days ago, I drove into our driveway, parked, and climbed out of my truck. I felt something on my leg, looked down -- and saw a snake climbing my leg! I froze, not wanting to threaten the rattlesnake -- and then, when my brain was working again, I checked it out carefully. Yup, it was Alphonse again. Sheesh! Once I was positive it wasn't a rattler, I just grabbed him behind the head (gopher snakes aren't real quick movers) and unwound him from my leg, and set him near a gopher hole -- which he immediately slithered down. Good -- I hope there were several unsuspecting gophers down there!

Hummers in the Morning Light

I never tire of watching the hummingbirds here; of all the abundant wildlife we have here, none delight me as these flying jewels do...

This morning the sun rose far in the north (as it's only been a week since the summer solstice) and brightly lit our hummingbird feeders, which are located on the north side of our house. I took advantage of this to take some photos. You can see the nine that came out well by clicking the photo at the very bottom; this will take you to an album.

The male hummingbird at right is a Costa's hummingbird (Calypte costae). While these are very common in San Diego County, until this year they haven't been particularly abundant at our feeders. This year we have at least a dozen males every day (based on how many we see at the same time). This morning while I was taking my photos, one of the Costa's males swooped in from behind my head and went into a hover about six inches from my eyeballs -- and stayed there for a good 15 seconds, just checking me out. What a view I had of him! A little while later, a different male Costa's landed on my camera, just an inch or so from my forehead (I had my eye to the viewfinder). I felt the air from his wings and the sound, so I knew he was there. I backed away from my camera ever-so-slowly, and he stayed right here, not looking concerned at all. After resting for 30 seconds or so, he flew over to swill some hummer juice...

Photographing a hummingbird perched is a challenge; getting one in flight approaches impossibility! This morning I managed to get three decent photos of flying hummers, the best I've ever done in one photo shoot. The bright morning light helped, as it allows the camera to focus more quickly. The photo at right was taken at 1/250th of a second, from a distance of about 18 inches, just as the hummer was about to land on a feeder. I managed to get the camera on her at about six feet away, and just held the shutter release down and tracked her on the way in. This one nicely shows how their entire body is involved in the complex aerodynamic and mechanical dance that is their landing -- and which they make look so easy...

Hummers 1

Good News, Horrible News

Michael Yon has filed a new dispatch from Iraq on Operation Arrowhead Ripper, and it has both good news and horrifying news.

The good news is of the continued progress of the operation, and in particular of the outstanding fighting ability of one Iraqi unit (the commander of which is in Yon's photo at right). The details in that portion clearly articulate the qualitative difference between this Iraqi unit and the Iraqi army in general a year or more ago. Much progress has been made, contrary to the blatherings and posturings of Reid, Pelosi, Murtha, and the like. This is very encouraging, as the ability of the Iraqi Army to fight is critical to stability in Iraq as the American forces withdraw.

The horrible news is graphic evidence of yet another of Al Qaeda's atrocities. Of all the failings of our lamestream media in Iraq, none offends me quite so much as their refusal to report Al Qaeda's bloodthirsty and cowardly style of fighting, their endless outrages to innocents. Here Yon meticulously documents another of these. In this case, a small village on the outskirts of Baquba had the misfortune to be close to a point on the road that Al Qaeda thought was a desirable place to plant IEDs. So the Al Qaeda forces took over the village -- and killed every man, woman, and child in it. They beheaded the children -- and Michael, like any sane human, can't help but wonder if the children were killed in front of the parents, or vice versa. In either case, a routine horror perpetrated by Al Qaeda that makes the worst incidents by rogue American forces seem tame by comparison.

Not that you'd ever see that in our press...

Quote of the Day

From former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, speaking about Britain's struggles with its Muslim minorities:

The reason we are finding it hard to win this battle is that we're not actually fighting it properly. We're not actually standing up to these people and saying, "It's not just your methods that are wrong, your ideas are absurd. Nobody is oppressing you. Your sense of grievance isn't justified."

"Your ideas are absurd."

Sometimes I think he's the last sane man in Europe. Though there's much about his political views that I disagree with, on this one existential issue -- the only one in today's political atmosphere that gets me really riled up -- he's been an absolute rock. It will be fascinating to see what (if anything) this man can do in his new post to promote peace in the Middle East...

War in Israel

Through my slide rule collecting, I know several Israelis living in Israel. Through my reading, I've heard that ordinary Israeli citizens are resigned to the notion of an impending war, with your choice of enemies: Hamas, Syria, Palestine, Jordan, or any combination of the above. So I asked the folks I know whether they heard the war drums, and one of them sent this answer:

Do not be concern about a new War here Israel. We are in a War zone since 1948 and we are accustom to the War drums music....and thanks to our good friends in the USA, we are still here.

MEMRI

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) is an indispensable source of information for Americans about the Middle East. They do something our lamestream media rarely does: they take the news reported by Middle Eastern mainstream media, translate it (if required) into English, and then post it raw and unedited. I don't know any other source that routinely provides a peek into the way Middle Easterners get their news. Their main site updates the stories they've processed each day, and their video site has the original Middle Eastern videos, with English transcripts of them. They even have a blog!

What provoked me to post about MEMRI was a transcript I read this morning. It is from the Saudi Iqra TV (a Saudi Arabian media outlet), and shows a man-in-the-street interview with various answers to a single question:

Interviewer: Would you, as a human being, be willing to shake hands with a Jew?

Interviewee 1: Of course I wouldn't be willing to shake hands with a Jew, for religious reasons and because of what is happening now in Palestine, and for many reasons that don't allow me to shake a Jew's hand.

Interviewee 2: No. Because the Jews are eternal enemies. The murderous Jews violate all agreements. I can't shake hands with someone who I know is full of hatred towards me.

Interviewee 3: No, the Jew is an enemy. How can I shake my enemy's hand?

Interviewer: Would you refuse to shake hands with a Jew?

Interviewee 4: Of course, so I wouldn't have to consider amputating my hand afterwards.

Interviewer: If a child asks you who "who are the Jews," what would you answer?

Interviewee 5: The enemies of Allah and His Prophet.

Interviewee 6: The Jew is the occupier of our lands.

Interviewee 1: The murderers of prophets. Our eternal enemies, of course.

Interviewee 2: The murderers of prophets, that's it.

Interviewer: If a child asks you who "who are the Jews," what would you answer?

Interviewee 8: Allah's wrath is upon them, as the Koran says. Allah's wrath is upon them and they all stray from the path of righteousness. They are the filthiest people on the face of this earth because they care only about themselves: Not the Christians, not the Muslims, nor any other religion.

The solution is clear, not only to me but to everyone. If only [the Muslims] declared Jihad, we would see who stays home. We have a few countries… there is one country with a population of over 60-70 million people. If we let them only march, with no weapons even, they would completely trample the Jews, they would turn them into rotten carcasses under their feet. There is another country that donated money, saying, "I am behind you, I'll support you with weapons, just wage [Jihad]."

But the cowardice inside us, deep within our hearts was instilled by the Arab leaders, may Allah forgive them. They breast-fed us with it from the day we were born to this very day it has grown with us.

In Saudi Arabia, as in many other despotic Middle Eastern regimes, decades of non-stop propaganda has produced a populace that apparently really believes this sort of rubbish. The regimes support the propaganda because it provides a target for their population's discontent -- a target other than themselves, that is.

I can't imagine how this sort of thing can be reversed other than by stopping the propaganda, letting real information flow freely, and letting a few decades go by. But so long as those regimes remain in power, the first two prerequisites just ain't gonna happen.

This is one of the main reasons for my support of the war in Iraq -- a democracy in the Middle East was (and remains) the best hope I can think of for addressing what I can only call the brainwashing of the Arab "street".

Now I think I"ll go take a shower; I feel unclean after reading that transcript...

Accelerated History

One of the accidental consequences of our incredibly rapid advances in science and technology is that certain things that happened within my own lifetime seem like ancient history. The ad at right (via GeekPress) is a great example of this -- it seems quite funny today that $12,000 for a mere 80MB would seem like a low price to anybody!

But... I purchased my first disk drive in about 1977. It was a used Memorex 630, with 5 MB of nonremovable storage and 5 MB of removable storage. I paid $10,000 for it -- used! Then I spent months figuring out how to attach it to my Z-80 microcomputer -- and when I got done, I thought I had the absolute hottest personal computer in the universe (and maybe, for about three seconds, I did!). Just a few short years later, I was manufacturing personal computers with 80MB "Winchester" disk drives that cost about $2,000 brand new. Today, a disk drive with 10,000 times that much storage sells for around $200!

Another personal story... In the mid-'70s, microcomputer hobbyists (and I was one, even back then) had very few sources for parts -- and even fewer for complete systems. A good friend (Mike Blier) and I built several microcomputers from scratch, designing the circuits ourselves and wire-wrapping the actual circuitry. One of the basic subsystems was random access memory (RAM), and our earliest efforts had very small amounts of it -- just a few hundred bytes (compared with billions of bytes in even a cheap PC today). During this period, we were in the U.S. Navy, and our ship was being overhauled in Bremerton, Washington. From one of the hobbyist magazines (TCH) we learned that a retail computer store had opened in Seattle, just across the bay from where we were. Back then, this was an astonishing development -- until that point, our only sources were mail order houses (remember, there was no Internet!), and easily three quarters of those were complete flakes. So Mike and I took every bit of cash we had (not much, as enlisted guys), and rode the ferry over to Seattle. A couple of hours later, we were walking down the street, whooping and hollering over our amazing purchases. Mike bought a used 5.25 inch floppy disk drive with a whopping 60kb capacity for $250 -- and was so excited about that he could hardly stand it. My purchase was a RAM board with more capacity than I believed existed: 2 entire kilobytes! And it was static RAM (the only reliable kind back then, nearly totally obsolete today), to boot! And best of all (wait for it) ... it was only $2,000! Wow! Just one measly dollar for each byte! Today RAM prices are less than 0.00001 cents per byte...

And yes, I remember vinyl records. Actually, I remember the old 78 RPM records made from a brittle material based on shellac. I even owned a wind-up, all-mechanical Victrola at one point, purchased from a yard sale for next to nothing (and now it would be a valuable antique, had I kept it).

Duck Bay

Spirit and Opportunity (the two NASA rovers on Mars) are still operating, delivering more science products on a bad day than the space station delivers in a good month. They landed over three years ago, and were designed to last just 90 days -- but the plucky little guys are still going strong.

Opportunity is still in very good condition (Spirit has a lame wheel and some power challenges). For several months it has been exploring the rim of Victoria Crater (at right), about four miles from where it landed. This meteorite crater exposes layers of interesting rocks that the geologists are learning a great deal from. Now they've decided to "take the plunge" into the crater itself, because they believe there's even more interesting stuff to learn from within the crater.

To date, the missions have been very careful to avoid risky circumstances. This time, however, they are deliberately taking a calculated risk -- the rough terrain and sand dunes could entrap the rover, and there's a real chance that Opportunity might not be able to drive out of the crater once it's in. But the chance for some good science has convinced the folks at NASA that it's a chance worth taking...

After much careful study, they've selected "Duck Bay" as the most likely entry point into the crater. You can read about this new adventure here. Wikipedia has an entry on Victoria Crater here.

Good fortune and smooth sailing, Opportunity!

The Straight Dope

In a conversation with a friend yesterday, I discovered that he didn't even know about The Straight Dope, by Cecil Adams. I thought everybody knew about The Straight Dope! Just in case one of my readers (mom?) doesn't know about it, here's an introduction from today's edition of the emailed version (it's also a web site and a series of books)...

Did you ever wonder why the buttons on the drive-up ATM machines have Braille bumps on them? One of Cecil's readers did, and here's the beginning of The Straight Dope's answer:

Congratulations, Vox, you are the one millionth person to ask this question! Please send us your address so we can burn down your house.

Hey, just kidding! Although if you ask ever why we park on the driveway and drive on the parkway, you won't get lucky twice.

Anyway, you asked a question, and by God you are going to get an answer. Drive-up ATM buttons are marked with braille because federal regulations require it. To be specific, section 4.34.4 of the ADA Accessibility Guidelines for Buildings and Facilities (Appendix to Part 1191, 36 CFR Chapter XI, issued pursuant to the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990) says, "Instructions and all information for use [of an automated teller machine] shall be made accessible to and independently usable by persons with vision impairments." Drive-up ATMs, unlike the walk-up variety, don't need to be wheelchair accessible, but the rules make no exception regarding accessibility by the blind.

And he goes on from here (the full answer is not quite as ridiculous as it sounds at first blush).

The subtitle of The Straight Dope web site and books is "Fighting Ignorance Since 1973 (it's taking longer than we thought)". The answers are both informative and entertaining; I look forward to reading every email I get from them. You can subscribe (it's free!) at the home page.

American of the Day

Grab a box of kleenex and go watch this video. Then you'll understand this quote from the American artist Kaziah Hancock:

There's nothing I'll ever paint that will be more appreciated.

I'm certain she's right.

There's a gallery of her special work here, and her home page is here. A news story about one of her paintings is here.

Damn, ran out of kleenexes...

A Fine Essay

Yesterday the Supreme Court handed down a decision on free speech for students of public schools (Morse v. Frederick, aka the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" case). From my perspective, the decision itself was disappointingly narrow and limited, and it was yet another 5-4 split. But there's a surprising gem contained within the decision, which I read early this morning. Justice Clarence Thomas -- a first-rate thinker and communicator -- joins the opinion, and writes a separate opinion. That opinion could stand alone as a fine essay on the state of our public schools -- and he forthrightly says that he'd like to overturn the 1969 Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District case that in his view is the direct cause of much of our educational system's current dysfunction. His opinion starts on page 19 of the document linked here -- it's well worth taking the time to read. I'll excerpt here just the conclusion:

In place of that democratic regime, Tinker substituted judicial oversight of the day-to-day affairs of public schools. The Tinker Court made little attempt to groundits holding in the history of education or in the original understanding of the First Amendment.8 Instead, it imposed a new and malleable standard: Schools could not inhibit student speech unless it “substantially interfere[d] with the requirements of appropriate discipline in theoperation of the school.” Inherent in the application of that standard are judgment calls about what constitutes inter-ference and what constitutes appropriate discipline. Historically, courts reasoned that only local school districts were entitled to make those calls. The Tinker Court usurped that tradi-tional authority for the judiciary.

And because Tinker utterly ignored the history of public education, courts (including this one) routinely find it necessary to create ad hoc exceptions to its central premise. This doctrine of exceptions creates confusion without fixing the underlying problem by returning to first principles. Just as I cannot accept Tinker’s standard, I cannot subscribe to Kuhlmeier’s alternative. Local school boards, not the courts, should determine what pedagogical inter-ests are “legitimate” and what rules “reasonably relat[e]”to those interests.

Justice Black may not have been “a prophet or the son of a prophet,” but his dissent in Tinker has proved prophetic. In the name of the First Amendment, Tinker has undermined the traditional authority of teach-ers to maintain order in public schools. “Once a society that generally respected the authority of teachers, de-ferred to their judgment, and trusted them to act in thebest interest of school children, we now accept defiance,disrespect, and disorder as daily occurrences in many of our public schools.”

We need look no further than this case for an example: Frederick asserts a constitutional right to utter at a school event what is either “[g]ibberish,” ante, at 7, or an open call to use illegal drugs. To elevate such impertinence to the status of constitutional protection would be farcical and would indeed be to “surrender control of the American public school system to public school students.”

I join the Court’s opinion because it erodes Tinker’s hold in the realm of student speech, even though it does so by adding to the patchwork of exceptions to the Tinker standard. I think the better approach is to dispense with Tinker altogether, and given the opportunity, I would do so.

Someone please hand that man a case he can use to overturn Tinker!

Andreas Anselm, RIP

Updated and bumped:

For the past couple of days, over half the visitors to my blog have been searching the web for "Andreas Anselm", and found this post. These visitors have come from all around the world -- Australia, Europe, Canada, Asia, and the U.S. Friends and relatives have left some comments here as well. Andreas must have been a remarkable man to have had this worldwide network of people who cared about him...

Original post:

Yesterday Andreas Anselm was killed in an accident just a couple of miles from our home. The Union-Tribune had this brief article:

A 41-year-old man who was fatally injured in a crane accident east of Jamul on Sunday was identified by authorities yesterday as Andreas Anselm of Garden Grove.

Anselm became entwined on the crane's arm shortly after 6 p.m. on a ranch on Skyline Truck Trail near Hilary Drive. He suffered serious arm and chest injuries before firefighters freed him. He was pronounced dead at 2:35 a.m. yesterday at a San Diego hospital, said a spokesman for the county Medical Examiner's Office.

State safety officials from Occupational Safety and Health Administration were investigating the accident.

And that's all I know about the incident. I didn't know Andreas or his family, but my thoughts are with them all today. If you know anything more about this incident, Andreas, or the family, please comment and share it with all of us.

Good News from Iraq

Omar, at Iraq the Model, has posted some very positive and optimistic news about the results of the recent operations in Baquba, and the changes he's seeing in Iraqis. An excerpt:

The results so far have been astounding, and please allow me to say that I'm proud of the change in attitude many of my fellow Iraqis are showing. Even if numbers don't suggest so because the change is happening but it will take time-perhaps beyond September-before this change will show in numbers.
A nation is not a corporation and when we deal with a nation we are dealing with a society; a mass of people with ever changing hearts and minds and that's why numbers alone can't be enough to assess the situation—thoughtful insight and looking at the bigger image are also required.

This is more optimistic than Omar has sounded in months, which I'll take as very good news indeed. The details in the rest of his post are fascinating -- don't miss it!

War

An interesting and sobering report from Michael Totten, in which this quote from a returning visitor (for five months) to Israel appears:

Everyone knows there is a war coming.

As Michael elaborates, "the street" in Israel sees five enemies, each of which seems likely to attack Israel sometime soon -- perhaps even next month.

Michael Totten is a consistently reliable voice from Lebanon, Iraq, and Israel; his site is worth visiting frequently for straight-up, level-headed reporting from the region. I'm assuming that's what you're interested in, of course.

Update:

Much more from Spook86 at In From The Cold, including more links and some quotes from John Bolton.

Quote of the Day

From Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom, as witty as always, commenting on Elizabeth Edwards' leveraging of the Ann Coulter kerfuffle to raise funds for her husband's (aka "SilkyBoy") campaign:

This country needs leadership. And nothing says leadership more than having your wife run interference for your campaign in order to butch it up a bit.

Thanks, Jeff, for my morning chuckle...

Botany Photo of the Day

I recently discovered the Botany Photo of the Day email list, a free service of the University of British Columbia's Botanical Gardens. It's a delightful and simple email list that sends a link to an interesting new botanical photo each day. I joined it to get the wildflower photos, but all of them have been interesting. Today's photo (at right) was of a slime mold from Kansas, Stemonitis.

The main web site is here; the subscription form is in the upper right hand corner.

Pandora's Box

Wouldn't you just love to have a radio station that played only the music you like? Even better -- how about 20, 50, 100, or 500 radio stations, one for each mood you're in or atmosphere you want?

I just discovered a web site that does a remarkably good job at doing exactly that: Pandora.

As I write this post, I'm listening to a piano piece by George Winston (a modern jazz pianist). A few hours ago, I created my own George Winston radio channel; it plays only songs that are similar to those that George Winston plays. Every song played is one that I enjoyed, and is pleasant for me to work while listening to. Something like half of the songs I heard were new to me, by artists I'd never heard of (but my radios station told me who they were!). I love this radio station!

What did I have to do to create it? Here's exactly what I did: I typed (get ready now, this is really complicated and challenging) "George Winston". Oh, and then I clicked on the button. That's it!

Did I mention that this web site is free? There is a subscription service, which looks very useful if you want to download music into your iPod, cell phone, or similar "on the go device" -- but the basic service, playing on your personal computer, is absolutely free.

Amazing!

Gaydar

The current issue of New York magazine has a fascinating article on the observed biological differences between gay men and straight men. A gay reporter (David France) researched and wrote the article after observing that most people -- gay or straight -- were able to effortlessly identify gay men, a skill popularly called "Gaydar" (a pun on "radar", if you don't get it).

This is not a subject I've ever read much about, so all but one of the biological differences caught me by surprise. For example:

As he recruited experiment subjects, Lippa scanned the passing scalps, some shaved clean, some piled in colorful tresses. “It’s like a kind of art. You look at the back of people’s heads, and it’s literally like a vector field,” he says. “We assume that whatever causes people to be right-handed or left-handed is also causing hair whorl. The theory we’re testing is that there’s a common gene responsible for both.” And that gene might be a marker for sexual orientation. So, as part of his study, he has swabbed the inside cheek of his subjects. It will be months before that DNA testing is complete.

I was surprised at how many people quickly agreed to lend five minutes of their pride celebration to science. “If I could tell my mother it’s a gene, she would be so happy,” said one, Scott Quesada, 42, who sat in a chair for Lippa’s inspection.

“Classic counterclockwise whorl,” the researcher pronounced, snapping a photo.

Quesada, who is right-handed and seemed to have a typically masculinized finger-length ratio, was impressed. “I didn’t know I had a whorl at all,” he said.

By the end of the two-day festival, Lippa had gathered survey data from more than 50 short-haired men and photographed their pates (women were excluded because their hairstyles, even at the pride festival, were too long for simple determination; crewcuts are the ideal Rorschach, he explains). About 23 percent had counterclockwise hair whorls. In the general population, that figure is 8 percent.

Gay men are three times more likely to have a counterclockwise hair whorl than straight men. There has long been a belief or suspicion amongst many straight people that gay men choose to be homosexual, rather than there being some biological cause for for their homosexuality. The hair whorl evidence (along with the other kinds of biological evidence covered in the article) is very difficult to square with the notion of homosexuality being a choice. It lends great credence to the (now) consensus of science: that homosexuality is derived from a biological predisposition. In other words, homosexuals are born as homosexuals; homosexuality is not acquired by choice or nurture.

The author weaves in many related topics, from the consequences of brutal suppression on Gaydar to the social implications of this research. It's a very interesting read -- so go read the whole thing!

Haku

Haku

Years ago we had a cat we named "Haku", which is Hawaiian for "master" – an entirely appropriate name for this fellow. He was one mean hombre of a cat!

He was a street stray that we took in (it's sort of a hobby of ours) and took care of. He lived in an outdoor cattery that we'd built to house the kitties we'd rescued that didn't have the right attitude to live indoors. Haku was very friendly with us, and got along with the other kitties just fine. He was enormous, but not at all fat; he was all muscle. Being white, his hair did little to protect him from the sun. Eventually all the exposure caused skin cancer in the tips of his ears, and at our vet's recommendation we had them amputated. This did nothing but enhance his already ferocious look!

Haku had one ability that always amazed us. On more than one occasion when we visited the kitties in the cattery we discovered a bunch of feathers all over the ground – and Haku looking very pleased with himself. It sure looked like he was catching pigeons and eating them – but how could he do this from within the cattery? Finally one day we watched it happen. Haku was curled up, apparently asleep, about eight feet from one wall of the cattery. A pigeon strutted stupidly around just outside that wall (sort of like a politician at work, don't you think?). Then when the pigeon was about 18 inches from the wall, Haku moved at relativistic speed across the cattery floor and extended one front paw an impossible distance through the wire fence that made up the wall. Claws were extended, of course – and they snagged the pigeon quite handily. A few minutes later, nothing but feathers – and that big, ugly grin on Haku's face!

Click on the small photo to get an album of Haku photos...

Estonia

I miss Estonia; it's been over two years since my last visit. Starting in 1993 and continuing through 2003, I made many business trips to this little country. Two different companies I worked for had software development teams there, and I met with them fairly frequently.

On most of those trips, I managed to get a weekend or two to go exploring on my own. My habit was to rent a car (in the early years, this was an adventure unto itself!), and take off on a solo expedition with only a map as my guide. On a few memorable occasions, friends from work traveled with me as guides.

My solo expeditions were always interesting and fun. Enough people spoke English so that I never had very much trouble getting answers to my (many) questions. On many occasions, a child acted as a translator for us -- they all get English in school, whereas many adults (especially outside of the three main cities) never did. Despite their reputation for reticence, the Estonians I met were never reluctant to help me. On a couple of occasions, I was invited into someone's home for a dinner and talk.

Those who know me won't be surprised that the main attractions for me were off the beaten track. I chased down famous trees, meteorite craters, the Takhuna moment to the children lost in the SS Estonia ferry sinking, remote islands, all the national parks, the "erratic boulders" of red granite from Finland dropped by the retreating glaciers on Estonia's limestone, ancient castles, wildflowers and birds. The photo above is of a tiny spit of land projecting a kilometer into the Baltic Sea from the island of Hiiumaa. Estonia has all these things in great abundance; for a traveler like me, it is a heavenly place.

In the most recent years I visited, I could see the beginning of the end of some of rural Estonia's charm. The coastal areas are being "invaded" by wealthy people (often foreigners, mostly Finns) who block off access to the coast and build a private home. Talking with some of the farmers on the northwest coast, I discovered that this was an windfall for them; some of Estonia's most impoverished people now have newfound wealth. This is easy to sympathize with, but still it is indisputable that something beautiful and peaceful is disappearing. I am glad I was able to see it before it disappeared.

On my visits after 1996, I carried a digital camera with me. I have taken thousands of photographs from all over Estonia. Many of them were previously published on a web site which I no longer have running. Some of them have been published by various government and tourist web sites in Estonia (usually, but not always, with my permission <smile>). In recent months, several people have written to ask that I publish those photos again -- so in this album I published a selection of them.

Enjoy!

USS Long Beach

I enlisted in the U.S. Navy in the early '70s, and served for six years. For approximately four of those years I was stationed on the USS Long Beach CGN-9, a nuclear-powered guided missile cruiser. This album has quite a few images of the ship, and the USS Long Beach Association web site has all sorts of information about the ship, its history, and its crew.

Good Kitty...

Via Cute Overload:

You Decide

Watch this video and then ponder: which Ted do you think more accurately reflects the views of the majority of Americans -- Kennedy or Nugent?


I know what I think...

They're Baaaack!

The old blog photos, that is. All 3,000 of them!

Well, almost all. There were few images that were incompatible with Blogger (mainly animated GIFs). But everything else is there!

Geek Alert! Do not continue reading if you are not a geek...

It has taken me exactly one month of spare-time programming and diddling and tweaking to get there, but I have finally succeeded in transforming my old blog (which ran on Pebble, on a Tomcat platform) to the Blogger platform. With minor exceptions, everything is back the way it was. Here's what it took:

1. I wrote a program that converted the Pebble posts (each in an XML file) to Blogger posts. I used JDOM to read the Pebble XML files, and the Blogger API to post them to my blog. The main challenge in this program was to convert the non-HTML markups in Pebble to HTML for consumption by Blogger. This involved porting a bunch of classes called "Decorators" in Pebble to my conversion program, and making a style sheet that rendered the posts properly in Blogger. The Blogger API is very easy to use; the only real problem I ran into there was that Google initially limited me to importing 50 posts per day. After I begged for a break, they raised the limit to 500. This code took me three days to write and debug, and then it took a week to get all the posts on Blogger.
   
   
2. Next I wrote a program that transferred all the images on the old blog to Picasa, using the Picasa API. This was necessary because the Blogger API doesn't provide any means of posting images. The main challenge for this step was the need to convert all image file types to JPG files; to do this I had to learn the ImageIO API in Java, including a series of quirks related to "transcoding" from one file type to another. Trust me, it was a pain in the neck! This program also built a database that kept track of the image URLs as they appeared in the old blog and the new Picasa URL. I ran this program over the past weekend; it took 11 hours over a high-bandwidth connection to transfer the 3,004 images from the old blog to Picasa.
   
   
3. Next I wrote a progam that munged all the old posts on Blogger, changing the href and src references to point to Picasa instead. I used the Blogger API again for this program. The main challenge in this program was identifying and correctly tranforming the many variations of IMG and A tags my blog had accumulated over the years.
   
   
4. Finally, I wrote a popup viewer (in JavaScript) to more elegantly handle the display of a large image when a thumbnail is clicked. Picasa serves up any image in up to 17 different sizes; my viewer attempts to pick the most appropriate size, taking into account screen resolution, window size, etc.

This is one project I'm very glad to have behind me!

Tower of Power

What on earth is this gobbledygook?

Free Energy for Spaceship Earth

Free Energy for Spaceship Earth will take you on an incredible journey, revealing the means to provide a nonpolluting, unlimited source of energy that will stem the tsunami tide of global warming and make free energy available to the entire planet. Over thirty years ago, this solution to the world energy crisis was presented as an advancement of Tesla technology. Discover how this new technology, based on the interdimensional science of energy, will enable scientists to develop Nikola Tesla's vision of a World Wide Energy System and Power Tower.

The new video program also includes Infinite Concept: Lesson #3 - Part 1. This enlightening lesson focuses on energy and mass, explaining how they are interchangeable and how energy functions by well-ordered principles in the interdimensional cosmos.

Ask the Unarians; they've got this interdimensional thing down pat...

Summer Nights...

This morning the dogs woke me a little earlier than usual, and I was up, showered, and ready to take them for a walk just before 4 AM. At this time of year, that's just before the first hints of dawn start showing in our northeastern sky -- so the sky was still pitch-black (the moon had set hours previously).

When my eyes adjusted to the darkness, the first thing I noticed was the Milky Way splayed out across the sky, passing right over my head. Beautiful! And as I stood their gawking at it (with an uncomprehending puppy bouncing around on the end of a leash), I saw a meteorite flash briefly in the northwestern sky. A few seconds later, another one flashed in the northern sky. Over the space of the next few minutes, I counted six meteorites in total; one of them a "long trail" meteorite with a visible flame trail -- and even a smoke trail lit by dimly by the pre-dawn sun at higher altitude.

Getting back in the house, I looked up the meteor showers predicted for June. The Boötids reach their maximum in just two days:

Prior to 1998, only two definite returns had been detected, in 1916 and 1927, and with no significant reports between 1928 —1997, it seemed probable these meteoroids no longer encountered Earth. The dynamics of the stream were poorly understood, although recent theoretical modelling has improved our comprehension. The shower's parent Comet 7P/Pons-Winnecke has an orbit that now lies around 0.24 astronomical units outside the Earth's at its closest approach. It was last at perihelion in 2002, and is next due in late 2008. Consequently, the 1998 and 2004 returns resulted from material shed by the comet in the past, and which now lies on slightly different orbits to the comet itself. Dust trails laid down at various perihelion returns during the 19th century seem to have been responsible for the last two main outbursts.

If you're an early riser, you might want to go outside and do a little observing the next couple of mornings!