American Spirit...

Updated (again):

One of my commenters makes it clear I miscommunicated. When I talk below about the Iowa flooding being worse than the Katrina flooding, I don't mean the human toll (which was much worse in Katrina). I am instead talking about the actual amount of water – the flood itself.

Updated:

Some excellent live flood-blogging (with video) here.

Original Post:

Unless you've been hiding under a rock somewhere, you know that Iowa is experiencing a massive flood. In fact, it's a “500 year flood” – of a size we'd expect to see only once every 500 years or so. Hundreds of square miles of land are flooded, and the flood waters are just starting to recede. Lots more photos here. The Cedar River was the worst; it crested at 32 feet over flood level. Thousands of homes were flooded, thousands of people evacuated, tens of thousands of acres of farmland were flooded and their crops ruined. By any reasonable measure, this flood was worse by far than the infamous flooding that Hurricane Katrina provoked in New Orleans, less than 1,000 miles to the south.

As if that wasn't enough, Iowa also suffered through a series of awful tornadoes in and near the flooded areas. The people of Iowa have been put through the wringer this week, that much is for certain.

Note the complete absence of whining, or reports of looting, or of screams for help from FEMA, or of complaints about inadequate federal assistance. The airwaves are not filled with pleas for donations. Not one squawk about how this is all Bush's fault. Instead (though there's little reporting of it in the mainstream lamestream media), there's a series of inspiring stories about people infused with what I'll call the “American Spirit” – the “can-do”, self-reliant attitude that launched these United States. There are many stories of people simply helping their neighbors in need, any way they can. I haven't heard a peep about Iowans believing they're victims – no crying out for help from these folks. They're just pitching in, administering first aid when needed, making sure that order prevails, and (already!) beginning the clean up and repairs. Farmers are already talking about replanting crops.

TigerHawk makes similar observations:

The thing is, though, the people of eastern Iowa seem to be stepping up in the Iowa stubborn way. I have seen any number of man-on-the-street interviews, and nobody is complaining. They all seem to be working to solve their problem, which is not surprising because Iowans do not complain about tragedy. They complain about hot weather and dry weather, but not tragedy. And I have looked for reports of looting and come up empty so far.

Katrina has become a metaphor for many things beyond natural disaster, including governmental and individual incompetence (depending on your point of view). In Iowa there is a 500 year flood, but the people are not paralyzed, whining, or looting. There will be no massive relief effort from around the world, and nobody will step up to help Iowans except for other Iowans. Yet years from now, there will be no Iowans still in FEMA camps.

The difference is not in the severity of the flood, but in the people who confront the flood.

Then over at Ace of Spades, Russ (from Winterset, Iowa – about a hundred miles from the flooding) writes this:

You may have heard that Iowa is experiencing catastrophic flooding this week. In addition to the flooding, we had a tornado on May 25 that wiped out more than half the town of Parkersburg and another tornado this last Wednesday that hit a Boy Scout campground along the Missouri River in Western Iowa, killing four scouts. The total body count of the tornados and flooding around the state has risen to 15, and we've got hundreds of millions of dollars in damage lying underneath the brown floodwaters. That's not even considering that we may lose 20% or more of the corn crop from delayed planting and some of the seeds that did manage to get planted drowning in the saturated soil. We'll soon be to the point where corn can't be replanted (it can only go so far into the fall before the frost kills it, and usually if you haven't gotten your corn in by now, you're gonna switch the ground to beans instead), and that'll throw a mother of a wrench into the corn price works.

The one thing I'm proud of right now is the absence of voices coming from my state cursing FEMA and President Bush for not "preventing" this tragedy. Compared to the opera we saw in Nawlins' in the aftermath of Katrina, it's nice to see people suck it up and get to work rebuilding their homes & businesses when Mother Nature takes a giant dump on them.

...

The one thing I'd like to address quickly is the NCAA track athletes who helped fill sandbags and try to save neighborhoods in Des Moines this week. Drake University in Des Moines is hosting the NCAA track & field championships this weekend, and there are literally hundreds of athletes who finished their events and immediately went down to the river to help anyway they could. We've got Northerners, Southerners, Easterners & Westerners (and Conservatives, Liberals & Libertarians, I'm sure) all pitching in to help Iowans save their homes and businesses. Next time you see some college athlete in a "revenue sport" acting like a horse's ass, remember these kids and know that not all athletes are self-centered and spoiled. I know that for every memory of a house or business befouled with floodwaters, there will be another warm memory of a stranger who showed up out of nowhere and asked "What can I do to help?" God bless 'em.

American Spirit in action. Finally, here's Kathy from the Cake Eaters Chronicles, writing about the Boy Scouts who immediately swung into action after their camp was devastated by a tornado:

While the whole thing is just horrible, I have to think that if it was a pottery camp organized by Kumbaya-singing hippies, things might have been much, much worse. They probably would have had the kids out on the front porch, to witness the awesomeness of Mother Nature, and there probably would have been more casualties and more deaths. If you go up to either of those news links, you will view interviews with many scouts who were there, and the common thread was yes, we found shelter, we prayed to God to spare us, then when the storm passed, we were on our feet with our First Aid kits at the ready and started applying pressure to bleeding wounds, and started digging out people who were crushed by walls, ceilings and debris. A few kids even broke into a shed where there was an ATV and chainsaws and went out to the main road and started clearing up the fallen trees so that the emergency vehicles could get in to help the wounded. How amazing is that? The majority of these kids are under the age of fifteen and they had the presence of mind to deliver first aid and to make sure that ambulances could get in? That's freakin' phenomenal. When most kids their age would be running around like headless chickens, crying and screaming for the benefit of the cameras, these young men were doing what needed to be done, and I have no doubt there would have been more fatalities if not for their swift action.

Her post is much longer and covers several related topics; read the whole thing here.

Unlike Michelle Obama, I've been proud of America for a long time. Unlike the aftermath of the Katrina disaster, the stories coming out of the American heartland's awful floods are a good example of the source of my pride.

I made a donation to the Boy Scouts of Cedar Rapids this morning. They are already at work, helping their neighbors. Though they haven't asked for any additional help, I'm certain they'll put it to good use. There won't be any stories of wanton waste and massively stupid relief efforts from that quarter...

A Day at the Flag Shop...

Never let it be said that the Germans can't poke a little fun at themselves – and the Palestinians at the same time...

Enjoy...

Beauty Before Common Sense...

Here's an example of the weighty matters our U.S. Congressman choose to spend their time on:

Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner, a 43-year-old bachelor, has proposed legislation giving international beauties their own U.S. visa category, rather than have them compete with computer analysts and scientists for the non-immigrant H-1B visa for skilled professionals.

Congressman Anthony Weiner (D), at your service.

Rope.
Tree.
Congressman.
Some assembly required.

Boumediene, Part II...

Beldar is dead on target:

The Supreme Court ruled today that terrorists who are citizens of foreign countries, who have never set foot within the United States, and who have systematically forfeited all the protections of the organized laws of warfare that would entitle them to be treated as prisoners of war, are, when captured on foreign battlefields by the U.S. military, nevertheless entitled to access to the federal court system of the United States — in most essential respects, exactly as if they were lawful, taxpaying citizens born here, raised here, and arrested here by the domestic police for alleged crimes committed here.

If Osama bin Laden, wearing no uniform, surrounded by children as human shields, and in mid-stroke while he's sawing the head off a captured American nurse, is captured by American soldiers tomorrow in Pakistan or Afghanistan, then his rights to use the federal writ of habeas corpus to guarantee him the protections afforded by the United States Constitution will be, so far as I can determine, indistinguishable from my own if I were arrested at my home by the Houston Police Department on a warrant for overdue parking tickets.

The Supreme Court has so ordered notwithstanding the fact that the people's lawful representatives — through statutes passed by their Congress, and signed into law by their president — had otherwise decreed. Instead, five members of the Supreme Court have set themselves up above the rest of the people and government of the United States of America, and they have proclaimed that even acting together, the Congress and president lack the constitutional power to make other provisions for these foreign barbarians and monsters captured on foreign battlefields while trying to destroy America and everything related to it.

He concludes with this:

This decision is a disgrace and a travesty. It's awful law and even more disastrous policy. It's the single worst decision of the United States Supreme Court in my lifetime, and quite arguably its worst in American history. It can't be sugar-coated. It can't be minimized. In all probability, it can only be thoroughly undone by a constitutional amendment, or by a pronounced change in the membership of the Court that will deprive the liberal wing of a crucial fifth vote in such cases and open the possibility of this decision being overruled.

...

Our enemies will never defeat us. We have the power to defeat ourselves, however, and today's decision by the Supreme Court is a terrible, tragic step toward such a defeat. What will you do in November? Will you help accelerate these judicial power-grabs? Or will you help reverse them?

His point is exactly in line with my own feelings on the matter: Boumediene looks a lot like a European-style societal suicide. The decision is a horrifying example of one of the few real consequences of electing a liberal President: they get to appoint the Supreme Court justices.

Read the whole thing.

HMS Ontario ... Found!

The HMS Ontario was a British frigate operating on the Great Lakes in the Revolutionary War. It never saw action, but on October 17, 1780 it sank in a gale on Lake Ontario, and all on board were lost (a crew of 40 Canadians, about 60 Redcoats, and 30 or so American prisoners of war). A few pieces of wreckage were recovered, and a few bodies – but for more than 200 years there hasn't been any trace of it.

Archaeologists, scientists, and shipwreck enthusiasts have been searching for the HMS Ontario's grave ever since it sank. Until just a few days ago, none of them have had any success. Jim Kennard and Dan Scoville, two well-known shipwreck enthusiasts, have found the HMS Ontario – in remarkably good condition, fully intact and upright in about 500 feet of water.

Here's an article about their find, another here, and this site has some photos of the actual shipwreck. Hats off to these two intrepid amateurs – what a find!

The Amazing HiRISE...

I've written several times about the HiRISE camera system on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter robotic explorer that's orbiting Mars. The photo at right (click to enlarge) is one that it took recently. There are thousands of photos like this on the HiRISE web site, available for all to peruse. I have spent hours just staring at the amazingly detailed views of Mars – a destination that seemed so exotic and impossible when I was a kid, and now our robotic emissaries are exploring it almost routinely.

In this one photo you can see fantastical terracing (through wind erosion, I presume), sand dunes on the bottoms of the old craters, and a small, fresh crater (bluish gray in the lower left) with ejecta splashed on the surrounding terrain. Strange bumps and valleys dot the landscape. In a few places you can see tracks from falling boulders or perhaps landslides. The terrain on Mars is much more varied than I'd have guessed – if you look at a few dozen HiRISE photos, you'll see what I mean – there's little commonality from one area to another...

The photo at right is also by HiRISE, but of a very different kind than it usually takes. First, the “look angle” is very oblique – normally HiRISE looks almost straight down at the surface. The purpose for this oblique look is also unusual: the researchers were trying to capture the Phoenix Lander while it was still in the atmosphere, under its parachute, headed for its landing – and they succeeded! Click to enlarge the photo to see what I mean...

Sunrise Over Lawson Valley...

Summertime each year brings us a special treat – beautiful sunrises that fill our windows. This is what we saw just before 5 AM this morning...

The reason summertime is different is that our windows face north, and in the summer, the sun rises far more to the north than in the rest of the year, when it rises mostly in the east. We have no windows in our house facing east, and there are trees and mountains between us and the easter morning skies – so Mother Nature doesn't give us a morning show until the summer.

I was outside just before sunrise this morning, working away on whacking down the weeds. This time of year, it's mainly mustard (with a few filary left to irritate me). I expected to be limited in my “outside time” by the heat – the forecast calls for near 90° heat today. But while it was still cool outside, something else drove me indoors: deer flies. Big, biting flies that we only get sporadically on very quiet days. I finally gave up when I was getting bitten at the rate of about once per 30 seconds; I just couldn't stand it anymore!

The photo at right (click on either one to enlarge them) was taken perhaps five minutes after the photo above, zoomed in to show the detail within the cloud. The early morning's near-horizontal rays greatly accentuate the texture within the clouds...

An aside on the photography: since my main computer is now a Mac, I was faced with a dilemma – should I purchase a second copy of PhotoShop for the Mac (hundreds of dollars), or should I try to use one of the open source photo editors (free)? This is a question that's unfortunately much more difficult than just the price: I have spent over a decade using PhotoShop, and I've become reasonably compentent with it. Photo editors, perhaps especially PhotoShop, have a well-deserved reputation for being difficult and counter-intuitive to use. Spending a lot of time learning a new application was not an attractive thought, so this was not a decision I took lightly. In the end, I decided to try the most famous of the open source photo editors: The Gimp. Short result: I'm glad I did – it's a perfectly usable photo editor, and (for me, at least) remarkably easy to learn how to use. It's missing some features I used in PhotoShop, but this is more than compensated for by some features it has that PhotoShop doesn't, and the fact that it is free.

This marks a milestone for me: PhotoShop was the last significant piece of commercial software (other than the operating system itself) that was part of my normal working set of software. I now use free open source software for nearly everything I do. There's really only one piece of commercial software that I have yet to find a good substitute for: Visio. But my use of Visio doesn't justify buying it, so I make do with functionally inferior open source subtitutes (most recently Open Office's “Draw”).

As for the operating system... If my choices today were limited to Windows Vista and Linux, I'd pick Linux. However, happily for me there is another choice: the Mac's OS/X, and that's now my operating system of choice (for a workstation or laptop, that is)...

Free Speech Forecast...

England is a few years ahead of the U.S. in the multi-cultural movement. Here's a peek at what we're likely to be dealing with a few years from now:

In February this year, Christian evangelists Arthur Cunningham and Joseph Abraham were doing what Christian evangelists do: handing out Bible extracts. They were stopped by a representative of the law, threatened with arrest if they carried on preaching in “a Muslim area,” and warned that they might get beaten up if they came back.

Where did this incident take place? Saudi Arabia, Iran, or Pakistan, where Christian preaching is forbidden and apostates persecuted? No, this “Muslim area” was in Alum Rock, Birmingham, England. That’s right — England, cradle of free speech; England, a country with an established, if enfeebled, Church, and where seventy-five percent of citizens (at the 2001 census) describe themselves as Christian. The man who stopped the evangelists, calling their preaching a “hate crime,” was Naeem Naguthney, a police community support officer (PCSO), and a Muslim. Granted, a PCSO is not a full police officer, and has only limited powers of law enforcement. But which law was he enforcing? It looks suspiciously like Sharia.

I'm no fan of Christian evangelists – I run them off my property at every opportunity, as I would a Muslim or Jewish or Hindu proselytizer. But I am a big fan of free speech in public places, and that's what this is all about. We see it starting to happen here in the U.S. already, especially on college campuses, where a “right to not be offended” is being invented...

Boumediene...

The best short analysis of the U.S. Supreme Court's Boumediene decision I've seen is by Scott Johnson at Power Line. There's no reasonable way to excerpt it – you'll just have to go read the whole (short) thing...

Geekly Humor...

Here's a very entertaining (in a geeky sort of way) collection of 101 quotes related to computers and programming. A few samples:

I've noticed lately that the paranoid fear of computers becoming intelligent and taking over the world has almost entirely disappeared from the common culture. Near as I can tell, this coincides with the release of MS-DOS.
Larry DeLuca

Microsoft has a new version out, Windows XP, which according to everybody is the 'most reliable Windows ever.' To me, this is like saying that asparagus is 'the most articulate vegetable ever.'
Dave Barry

The most amazing achievement of the computer software industry is its continuing cancellation of the steady and staggering gains made by the computer hardware industry.
Henry Petroski

It has been said that the great scientific disciplines are examples of giants standing on the shoulders of other giants. It has also been said that the software industry is an example of midgets standing on the toes of other midgets.
Alan Cooper

There are only two industries that refer to their customers as 'users'.
Edward Tufte

Computer science education cannot make anybody an expert programmer any more than studying brushes and pigment can make somebody an expert painter.
Eric Raymond

First, solve the problem. Then, write the code.
John Johnson

PHP is a minor evil perpetrated and created by incompetent amateurs, whereas Perl is a great and insidious evil perpetrated by skilled but perverted professionals.
Jon Ribbens

If Java had true garbage collection, most programs would delete themselves upon execution.
Robert Sewell

If debugging is the process of removing bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in.
Edsger W. Dijkstra

Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live.
Martin Golding

A Simulating Q & A...

Here's some pointed commentary on Bush's lame “stimulus package”:

This year, taxpayers will receive an Economic Stimulus Payment. This is a very exciting new program that I will explain using the Q and A format:

Q. What is an Economic Stimulus Payment?
A. It is money that the federal government will send to taxpayers.

Q. Where will the government get this money?
A. From taxpayers.

Q. So the government is giving me back my own money?
A. Only a smidgen.

Q. What is the purpose of this payment?
A. The plan is that you will use the money to purchase a high-definition
TV set, thus stimulating the economy.

Q. But isn't that stimulating the economy of China and Japan?
A. Shut up.

Tip o' the hat to Simi L...

Phoenix Update...

Phoenix – the little lander that could – is working away on the surface of Mars. A few days ago it scooped up some Martian dirt and tried to deliver it to one of the instruments on board, but ran into an unexpected problem: the dirt was very “clumpy” and refused to enter the pencil-lead sized container for the instrument's sample. The soil just sat on top of a screen intended to keep large particles out of the instrument.

The photo at right (click to enlarge) shows the clumpy dirt in the scoop. It looks to me almost like damp soil, though in the thin and dry Martian atmosphere this can't be the real explanation. The project scientists are trying to figure out what the actual source of the clumpiness is. The photo shows a test of a different way of delivering the dirt to the instrument: they tried vibrating the scoop (using a motorized rasp that's attached to the back of it) to see if that would help the soil more gracefully exit the scoop. Looks like this worked.

Meanwhile, the initial sample of soil delivered a few days ago decided to drop through the screen and into the intrument, to the delight of the project science team. They're not sure exactly why this happened – it could be all the vibrating that they've been doing, or it could be simply that the soil's characteristics changed after a few days in the sun. Whatever the reason, the team now has a sample in the instrument, and they have begun analyzing it. This is one of the key experiments on the lander, so I'm sure there are big sighs of relief being heard right about now...

The photo at right shows the two trenches that Phoenix has dug so far: “Dodo” on the left, and “Baby Bear” on the right (click to enlarge). Both trenches show whitish areas that are likely either ice or salts of some kind – with any luck at all, the sample currently being analyzed will give us a clue which it is.

So far the Phoenix lander has had zero technology problems – a very impressive achievement for NASA. For about the same price as delivering a pizza to the International Space Station...

Drill! Drill! Drill!

That's the title of Daniel Henninger's latest column in the WSJ. Here's his lead:

Charles de Gaulle once wrote off the nation of Brazil in six words: "Brazil is not a serious country." How much time is left before someone says the same of the United States?

One thing Brazil and the U.S. have in common is the price of oil: It is priced in dollars, and everyone in the world now knows what the price is. Another commonality is that each country has vast oil reserves in waters off their coastlines.

Here we may draw a line in the waves between the serious and the unserious.

Brazil discovered only yesterday (November) that billions of barrels of oil sit in difficult water beneath a swath of the Santos Basin, 180 miles offshore from Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. The U.S. has known for decades that at least 8.5 billion proven barrels of oil sit off its Pacific, Atlantic and Gulf coasts, with the Interior Department estimating 86 billion barrels of undiscovered oil resources.

When Brazil made this find last November, did its legislature announce that, for fear of oil spills hitting Rio's beaches or altering the climate, it would forgo exploiting these fields?

Of course it didn't. Guilherme Estrella, director of exploration and production for the Brazilian oil company Petrobras, said, "It's an extraordinary position for Brazil to be in." Indeed it is.

At this point in time, is there another country on the face of the earth that would possess the oil and gas reserves held by the United States and refuse to exploit them? Only technical incompetence, as in Mexico, would hold anyone back.

But not us. We won't drill.

Read the whole thing.

Great Newspaper Headlines...

Take a look over here for a great collection of newspaper headlines, all with photos to prove their authenticity. Here are a few more samples:

Volunteers search for old Civil War planes
Meeting on open meetings is closed
Federal Agents Raid Gun Shop, Find Weapons

Drill Here, Drill Now...

Newt Gingrich is working hard to get oil drilling opened up in America's gigantic oil reserves, and sooner rather than later. His starting point is a petition campaign – please sign up.

Now, dammit!

And then pass that link along to everyone you know – let's send an overwhelmingly obvious message to our elected morons Senators and Representatives. They tend not to understand anything that's even slightly subtle...

Pandering Ponders...

This morning's news brings two more stories about political pandering to the public's apparent belief that high oil prices are caused by the evil big oil companies: first there's Harry Reid (D) and Richard Durbin (D) wanting to tax alleged “windfall profits” at the oil companies, and then there's Maria Cantwell (D) and Chucky Schumer (D) who'd like to make U.S. commodity futures markets uncompetitive (compared with, for example, Dubai's markets).

I wonder first whether the American electorate is actually as stupid as these politicians would have us believe. For instance, do Americans really believe that a profit of between 6% and 8% is outrageously high? There are many examples of big companies that make far higher profits than that – Microsoft, for example. The oil companies are actually making very modest profits (by any rational perspective) on very large revenues, which means that the profit expressed in dollars is very large. And the attack on the commodities future markets (which are all about price discovery and speculation, which – contrary to some assertions – is most certainly not a dirty word!) is a classic case of shoot-the-messenger. The speculators are no more responsible for the high prices than I am responsible for Ted Kennedy's brain tumor.

The actual cause of our current high oil prices is obvious to anyone with even the most basic understanding of capitalism and free markets. Hopefully that includes most Americans over the age of 6 or 7. The cause is that demand exceeds supply. The answer is equally obvious (and it's the same answer for every such price rise, no matter what the product is): increase the supply. And the oil companies have been patiently explaining to Congress, for the past 40 years, precisely how the supply could be increased: remove the regulations that forbid the oil companies from exploring and drilling – regulations that Congress themselves imposed.

If a windfall tax is enacted, the results are very easy to predict. Investors in oil companies will move their money to other, more profitable ventures (like Microsoft). Oil companies will have to find more expensive sources of capital. This will make exploration and drilling less attractive, and the oil companies will do less of it. We will buy more foriegn oil. Supply will be reduced further, and prices will go up. Not down, you flippin' (mostly D) idiots in Congress – but up.

If the commodity markets here are over-regulated and thereby made more expensive, the commodity traders will instantly move to other markets. The exchanges in places like Dubai, Hong Kong, and Kuala Lumpur will be beside themselves with glee, laughing all the way to the bank. They'll be laughing because we handed them all the highly profitable trading business for no reason at all, a totally senseless and moronic self-inflicted wound that will kill a large American business (commodities exchanges) and do absolutely nothing to help oil prices.

The rest of the world no longer looks to America for economic leadership. They look to us for economic entertainment.

Rope.
Tree.
Stupid politician (but then I repeat myself).
Some assembly required...


Updated:

John Hinderaker (at Power Line) agrees with me – and has a brilliant idea.

We're Back!

It was a great business trip, and a very nice visit with my folks. Also a reminder (as if I needed any!) of one of the 10,458 reasons why I don't live in New Jersey anymore: temperatures in the high 90s, with 100% relative humidity. In other words, thick hot air and lots of sweat. Everywhere. The airport on Sunday was just awful – hordes of miserable, cranky people, and none of them looking their best...

Phoenix is Trenching...

The Phoenix lander on Mars has begun its primary science mission. One element of that mission includes digging a trench into the Martian soil, looking for water ice or other evidence of past water. Just an inch or so down, it has uncovered a bright white layer – most likely either water ice or salts deposited by evaporating water (clearly visible in the photo at right). Further investigations will determine which it is. In either case, it's what the scientists sent Phoenix to Mars to find, so they are elated with this early success.

You go, little lander!

Hubris and Humility...

Here are a couple of clips from Senator Obama's victory speech:

... I face this challenge with profound humility and knowledge of my own limitations...

Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that, generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless … this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal … this was the moment when we ended a war, and secured our nation, and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth.

If Americans can elect a President this full of himself and this empty of substance ... then we deserve every consequence.

Isn't the proclamation of your own “profound humility” profoundly unhumble (not to mention unbecoming)?

And surely his hubris in making such a forthright declaration that he will heal the planet and stop the oceans from rising reaches a new high-water mark for any politician's hubris ... an accomplishment of sorts that is really quite remarkable.

Our choice on the upcoming election is not what we'd hope for. It's not a difficult choice between the best of two candidates. It is instead a difficult choice of which one is worse (so you can vote for the other one).

Sigh...

Election Results...

After reading quickly through the California and San Diego election results, here's some quick reactions:

• Propositions 98 and 99: big disappointment, though I can't say it's a surprise. The developers and cities put on a big, slick, and persuasive advertising campaign that bet on the public not even bothering to read the analysis on the ballot pamphlet – and they won their bet handily.
• San Diego mayor: Sanders wins, no runoff. The best of an unimpressive field won.
• San Diego city attorney: Aguirre and Goldsmith are headed for a runoff, and Goldmith had a very strong showing. My bet would be that many of the challengers not making the runoff will throw their support to Goldsmith; the incumbent (Aguirre) has made a lot of enemies. Peters and Maienschein – two of the city council members closely associated with the city's pension fund disaster – both had very weak showings. This is a welcome gust of sanity from the voters.
• San Diego city council seats: these surprised me in a positive way. One reformer (Carl DeMaio) won outright, three other reformers are headed for runoffs with strong showings. We just might endup up throwing the bums off the council (meaning: the candidates supported by the city employees unions might lose, or at least enough of them so that the unions lose their strangehold on the council). Good.
• Duncan D. Hunter wins the Republican nomination to succeed his dad. Excellent.

Light Blogging Alert!

I'm on the road to visit a large customer, in a place that I didn't think I'd ever visit voluntarily: West Orange, New Jersey. On Thursday evening, I'm driving down to south Jersey to visit with my folks. Between now and then, expect light blogging, as I will be very busy...

Dog Found!

I got this email from Amber and Lyndsay at Steele Canyon Veternarian Clinic:

We found a dog over Memorial Day weekend on Hillside in Jamul. It is a female poodle mix. Please call Steele Canyon Vet Clinic at 619-669-7274.

If you know anyone who's missing a dog, please let them know about this post...

The Navy Invented Sex!

A Marine and a sailor were sitting in a bar one day arguing over which was the superior service.

After a swig of beer the Marine says, 'Well, we had Iwo Jima.'

Arching his eyebrows, the sailor replies, 'We had the Battle of Midway.

'Not entirely true', responded the Marine. 'Some of those pilots were Marines, in fact, Henderson Field on Guadalcanal was named after a Marine pilot killed at the Battle of Midway.'

The sailor responds, 'Point taken.'

The Marine then says, 'We Marines were born at Tunn Tavern!'

The sailor, nodding agreement, says, 'But we had John Paul Jones.'

The argument continued until the sailor comes up with what he thinks will end the discussion. With a flourish of finality he says...... 'The Navy invented sex!'

The Marine replies, 'That is true, but it was the Marines who introduced it to women.'

Clear Skies in the High Desert...

I was up at 3:30 this morning, and by 4 I was out walking our dogs. There was just a hint of dawn in the northeastern sky, and there was a bright quarter-moon 20° or so up in the eastern sky. As my eyes accommodated to the darkness, the familiar constellations popped out. A little while later, the Milky Way emerged from the darkness, stretching from the northern horizon to straight over head and down to the southern horizon – truly a glorious sight to behold.

The fact that I can see such things, as insignificant as it might sound, is one of my favorite things about living where we do. We're on the western slope of the mountain range that traverses San Diego County from north to south. Our house is on a north-facing slope, at about 2300 feet in altitude. In drought years, as we've experienced now for about eight years, you could call us the high desert, or at least the “near-desert”. But even in normal rainfall years, we have many days each year of extraordinarily low relative humidity – below 10% commonly, and sometimes below 5%. These conditions lead to low amounts of both water droplets and particulates in the atmosphere in our area, and that leads to amazing visibility.

Like seeing a bright moon, a looming dawn, and the Milky Way all at the same time...

Global Warming?

Global warming (or the allegation of it, at least) has implications for the tourism business. One of those implications is that you can now book passage on a ship that will take you on a trip through the fabled Northwest Passage, north of Canada. The ship is no ordinary ship – it's one of the most powerful ice-breakers on the planet, built in Russia for their northern ports.

So you book your trip, and you're traveling through the Northwest Passage. The ice is gone, thanks to global warming, right? Well...

What irony. I am a passenger on one of the most powerful icebreakers in the world, travelling through the Northwest Passage - which is supposed to become almost ice-free in a time of global warming, the next shipping route across the top of the world - and here we are, stuck in the ice, engines shut down, bridge deserted. Only time and tide can free us.

Maybe not – in this case, one of the world's most powerful icebreaker was held captive for a week. They're lucky it wasn't all winter! In many places in the Arctic this year, the ice cover is more extensive than has ever been recorded. This isn't getting much play in the lamestream media, I suppose because it doesn't fit the global warming storyline very well (it's kinda hard to see how global warming could create more ice.

You can read the whole thing here, and a good blog post about it here...

Phoenix: The Science Starts...

The Phoenix lander has started doing what it was made to do: investigate the northern plains of Mars. The science team at Tuscon must be jumping for joy...

Yesterday one of the orbiters used its telescopic camera to image Phoenix's landing site. They hit paydirt: not only did they find Phoenix itself, but they imaged the parachute/backshell and the heat shield. To my surprise, the heat shield is a little closer to the lander than the parachute/backshell.

The photo at right shows all these details (click to expand).

Meanwhile, the stereo imager on the lander has begun the job of mapping the area around the lander. The imaging team is assembling a mosaic from hundreds of individual images, each of which captures a tiny piece of the total scene. As the days go by, more and more of this will be filled in, until eventually the entire surrounding scene will have been imaged in full color.

This mapping exercise has direct science benefits itself. It is also a necessary first step to the investigation of the soil and ice – the resulting map will guide the digging arm in its exploits.

Let the science begin!

Terrorists.com...

Some interesting observations about the web sites used by Al Qaeda and their supporters:

Al Qaeda web sites are making a lot of noise about "why we lost in Iraq." Western intelligence agencies are fascinated by the statistics being posted in several of these Arab language sites. Not the kind of stuff you read about in the Western media. According to al Qaeda, their collapse in Iraq was steep and catastrophic. According to their stats, in late 2006, al Qaeda was responsible for 60 percent of the terrorist attacks, and nearly all the ones that involved killing a lot of civilians. The rest of the violence was carried out by Iraqi Sunni Arab groups, who were trying in vain to scare the Americans out of the country.

Today, al Qaeda has been shattered, with most of its leadership and foot soldiers dead, captured or moved from Iraq. As a result, al Qaeda attacks have declined more than 90 percent. Worse, most of their Iraqi Sunni Arab allies have turned on them, or simply quit. This "betrayal" is handled carefully on the terrorist web sites, for it is seen as both shameful, and perhaps recoverable.

This is a good example of the (vastly) more complete information that is available on alternative news sites and blogs. You just don't see this sort of thing reported in the lamestream media. I guess it's just not “sensational” enough to make the cut – though certainly any indication that Al Qaeda is suffering sure sounds pretty sensational to me!

Sue, Sarah, Sue!

That's the title of a New York Post article that starts like this:

The polar bears are doing just fine, thank you very much.

So says Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who announced last week that her state would sue to block Washington from listing the animals as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act.

And it's a good thing, too - because the new bear-population protections mask what may be the most serious threat to American economic might in decades.

Yes, polar bears.

The polar bear, you see, marks the first species on the "threatened" list whose supposed predicament is linked directly to global warming.

The current Alaskan polar-bear population may be near an all-time high.

But Interior Department computer models - such as they are - project widespread melting of the polar ice the bears need to hunt.

And that's a big problem, given the near-limitless powers embedded in the Endangered Species Act.

Go read the whole thing to understand how your elected representatives are conspiring to (a) keep your gasoline prices high, and (b) waste more of your tax dollars than you thought possible.

Sarah: You go, girl!

Meanwhile, my thoughts are drifting in this direction (as they so often do):

Rope.
Tree.
Representative or Senator.
Some assembly required.

Phoenix Photos...

Here's a fine mosaic put together by the Phoenix team from many individual images. Eventually they'll have the entire site mapped with full-color, stereographic photos. The technology used for surface imagery keeps getting better and better – this mosaic is, for all practical purposes, competely free of seams and other artifacts that usually appear. They've got the techniques and technology pretty much nailed...

This photo shows the scene from one side of the lander all the way to the horizon. Notable things immediately visible include the hummock-and-trough terrain extending right up to the lander (this is good, because the scientists want to dig both in a hummock and in a trough), the low hills on the horizon (very useful for figuring out exactly where the lander is), the wide expanse of similar terrain (good because it tells us that the lander didn't happen to squat on an anomalous piece of Mars), and, just for fun, a white artifact in the upper left corner of the scene.

That artifact appears at right, blown up just as big as I can make it. It's very tempting to conclude that it's something man-made, as it doesn't look like anything else in the surrounds.

There are several candidates for such a man-made object: the “backshell”, the heat shield, and the parachute.

The backshell is the shroud that protected Phoenix as it cruised from Earth to Mars; it is most likely still attached to the parachute. As Phoenix descended through the Martian atmosphere, first it decelerated through atmospheric drag, protected by the heat shield. Once it had slowed down sufficiently, the parachute deployed to slow it still further. While under canopy, the heat shield was discarded. At about 1,000 meters of altitude, the lander separated from the backshell (which was still attached to the canopy), dropping away, then using rocket motors to descend slowly to the surface.

Given this sequence, the heat shield is most likely several kilometers (or more) away from the lander, but the backshell and parachute could be within a few hundred meters – just where this artifact appears to be.

Or it could be a Martian, playing a joke on us by rolling up a nice big snowball.

My bet is on the backshell/parachute...

Caught in the Act...

Of parachuting, that is. This is just amazing:

NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander can be seen parachuting down to Mars, in this image captured by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. This is the first time that a spacecraft has imaged the final descent of another spacecraft onto a planetary body.

From a distance of about 760 kilometers (472 miles) above the surface of the Red Planet, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter pointed its HiRISE obliquely toward Phoenix shortly after it opened its parachute while descending through the Martian atmosphere. The image reveals an apparent 10-meter-wide (30-foot-wide) parachute fully inflated. The bright pixels below the parachute show a dangling Phoenix. The image faintly detects the chords attaching the backshell and parachute. The surroundings look dark, but correspond to the fully illuminated Martian surface, which is much darker than the parachute and backshell.

Phoenix released its parachute at an altitude of about 12.6 kilometers (7.8 miles) and a velocity of 1.7 times the speed of sound.

The HiRISE acquired this image on May 25, 2008, at 4:36 p.m. Pacific Time (7:36 p.m. Eastern Time). It is a highly oblique view of the Martian surface, 26 degrees above the horizon, or 64 degrees from the normal straight-down imaging of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The image has a scale of 0.76 meters per pixel.

One satellite, whizzing by in it's orbit, takes a photo of the lander on its way down to the surface and itself moving very quickly. All done with the nearest human being several hundred million miles away. The capabilities of these robotic explorers staggers even a reasonably well-informed geek like me!

I never saw any announcement that they were attempting such a feat. That probably means it was a real longshot, and they didn't want to get expectations up...

Wow. Just wow!

Memorial Day Song...

Something to get you in the pondering frame of mind, on this Memorial Day:

The lyrics:

If you’re readin’ this
My momma’s sittin’ there
Looks like I only got a one way ticket over here.
I sure wish I could give you one more kiss
War was just a game we played when we were kids
Well I’m layin’ down my gun
I’m hanging up my boots
I’m up here with God and we’re both watchin’ over you

So lay me down
In that open field out on the edge of town
And know my soul
Is where my momma always prayed that it would go.
If you’re readin’ this I’m already home.

If you’re readin’ this
Half way around the world
I won’t be there to see the birth of our little girl
I hope she looks like you
I hope she fights like me
And stands up for the innocent and the weak
I’m layin’ down my gun,
I’m hanging up my boots
Tell dad I don’t regret that I followed in his shoes

So lay me down
In that open field out on the edge of town
And know my soul
is where my momma always prayed that it would go
If you’re readin’ this, I’m already hoooommmmmeeee

If you’re readin’ this,
There’s gonna come a day
You move on and find someone else and that’s okay
Just remember this
I’m in a better place
Soldiers live in peace and angels sing amazing grace

So lay me down
In that open field out on the edge of town
And know my soul is where my momma always prayed that it would go
If you’re readin’ this
If you’re readin’ this
I’m already home

Remember our fallen heroes – and their families – today...

Full Color, Full Resolution...

Here's the first of what will be many to follow – a spectacular mosaic of color images taken at various elevations along a single azimuth.

This particular image is monocular, taken from just one of the pair of cameras on the mast. Soon we'll see similar examples in pairs, one from each camera, giving us stereo views just like our own eyes give us. Then we'll see the same scene with the added dimension of depth.

Those polygonal hummocks really jump out at me. I've very similar terrain in parts of Alaska and northern Finland. While driving through Finland I stopped to get out and look at this odd landscape, for at the time I had no idea what caused it. Just scraping with my foot a couple of inches deep got me into soil mixed with small chunks of ice (this was in April, almost at the northern border of Finland). Another inch or two down, and I ran into solid ice with embedded soil particles. Seeing this terrain provoked me into reading up on it, and from that reading I discovered that these polygons are the natural result of millenia of freezing and thawing cycles. When the liquid water freezes, it expands and moves the soil particles about – and eventually, through a complicated but predictable process, these polygonal hummocks form. I think the chances of them finding water ice just under this soil are very good, just based on my own observations in Finland...

Remembering...

Today we celebrate Memorial Day, a day set aside to remember the soldiers, sailors, and others of the United States who gave their lives defending our freedom. Originally this holiday (established after the Civil War) was each May 30th, but some years ago Congress, in a fit of pandering to the electorate, moved Memorial Day and several other holidays to be “floating” holidays – moved to the nearest Friday or Monday so as to create a worker-pleasing three day weekend. In the process, of course, they further eroded the symbolism of the day and helped turn it into a generic extra day off from work.

Our flag is flying today, on this wet Memorial Day. My habit is to just sit for a while and reflect on the sacrifice so many have made. Today I got to thinking about the statistics of war casualties – the way that the raw numbers have changed so much, even within my own lifetime. For starters, consider the numbers of American war dead for each major conflict we've been in:

Since the Vietnam war, in ten conflicts, we have suffered less than 5,000 casualties – nearly all of which are in Iraq. In just the preceding portion of the 20th century, we suffered over 600,000 war casualties – 120 times as many. But actually the impact on those earlier generations was even greater, as the U.S. population grew from 76 million to 281 million in that same period. I just ran the numbers, and it works out to roughly 1 American in 150 died in war in the first half of the 20th century, whereas today it is roughly 1 in 56,000. The generations that included my parents and my grandparents suffered casualties in war at a rate that is roughly 400 times what we're suffering today.

You'd never, ever figure that out from the news...

The casualty rate from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars works out to about 1,000 per year over the course of the war (though the rates are much lower than that today). Just for comparison purposes, the U.S. has between 35,000 and 40,000 traffic fatalities each year. And here's a much more politically-incorrect comparison: each year, something like 1.5 million American women kill their babies (exercising their “choice”).

Pondering all that, I can't help but observe that the vast majority of the men and women I'm remembering today were born before I was. They fought in wars that were much riskier for Americans – wars fought with weapons that look primitive compared to what our soldiers today have, wars fought against enemies with comparable (or even superior) military capabilities, and often wars that were much more clearly existential in nature.

None of these facts detracts from the courage and sacrifice of today's soldiers – this American couldn't be prouder of the superb troops we're fielding today, along with their incredibly superior weapons systems and the world's best military leadership. But it is surely something to reflect upon, as we listen to those so inclined talking endlessly about the terrible price we're paying in Iraq. Earlier wars exacted a vastly heavier toll in American blood, something that seems to have been generally lost from the American consciousness.

Too many Americans have forgotten the enormous sacrifice of earlier generations; I have witnessed this myself in many conversations, mainly with younger Americans, who have badly distorted views of our past. For instance, I recall a conversation a couple of years ago with a co-worker, a man about 30 years old. He was very angry about the Iraq war, and made a comment in my hearing to the effect that Bush was killing more Americans than any President before him.

I asked him if he really meant what he was implying, that more soldiers were dying in Iraq than had died in any previous war. He replied, with some heat, that of course that's what he meant. Further conversation revealed that he really did believe that we suffered more casualties in Iraq than we did in Vietnam, or World War II, or even than the Civil War. Such profound ignorance of history does more than dishonor the soldiers of yesterday – it's dangerous, as these ignorant people (Obama appears to be an example of this) are going to be our political leadership soon.

Now there's a scary thought on this Memorial Day!

First Phoenix Images...

Feet on another world – the Phoenix lander's three padded feet are solidly in place on the hard ground the northern reaches of Mars. The image at right (which you can expand by clicking on it, as with all the images in this post) shows one of those pads, not noticably indented into the Martian surface. This is one of a series of images that the Phoenix lander took in the first hour after landing, while out of communication with the earth. It flawlessly executed its “surface initiation sequence” autonomously (by itself, without human control), deploying several systems and instruments. Then it stored the resulting information and images until the next satellite passed overhead and it could relay all these data to Earth. Phoenix can't communicate to Earth directly; instead, it depends on the services of two satellites already orbiting Mars (Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Observer) as relay agents.

One of the critical events that occurred in that initial hour was the unfurling of Phoenix's two solar cell arrays. Without the power supplied by these arrays, Phoenix would quickly drain its small batteries, and would die an ignomious death on the northern plains of Mars. Electronics on the lander detected that the batteries were charging, and a series of photos verified the good news: the arrays deployed without incident. This was the pattern for every element of the surface initiation sequence – everything operated perfectly.

On NASA TV, one could hear some of the project team members discussing the landing events. It was obvious that they were marveling at how smoothly everything had gone. Several of them commented that the actual landing was so much better than their endless simulated landings that it almost didn't seem real...

Here are the first quick photos (and mosaics) of the surrounding terrain. These initial photos are in black-and-white, but later photos will be taken through multiple color filters for many reasons, including to produce true-color photos.

Finally, here's the first stereoscopic pair from the mission. If your screen is wide enough, they will show up side by side. Then if you can cross your eyes to fuse the two images into one, you'll see a beautiul 3-D view of the Martian landscape. The pattern of gentle bumps, in polygon shape, is strongly reminiscent of certain arctic territories here on Earth. Here such shapes are caused by repeated thawing and freezing of wet soil – naturally it's very tempting to immediately conclude that's the situation on Mars. Certainly that's the suspicion, because that suspicion is why NASA chose this site for Phoenix.

Update 9:10PM:

The first post-landing news conference is underway. No surprises yet. It's fun to see this very happy team sharing their enthusiasm and joy...

Woo Hoo!

Phoenix has landed! The lander is safe, all systems are functioning nominally, and it is tilted only by about 0.25°. From indications so far, it could hardly have gone any better.

Next milestone: solar array deployment and first photos, at about 6:30PM Pacific.

Update, 7:15PM Pacific:

The critical post-landing and deployment downlink (through the Odessy satellite orbiting Mars) confirms deployment of all major systems, and returned a batch of photos showing patches of the surrounding terrain. This looks like a stunning success for NASA, JPL, Lockheed-Martin, and the University of Arizona – absolutely everything looks “nominal” (NASA-speak for “exactly as expected”). I watched the photos almost in real time on NASA TV; they haven't yet hit the image gallery on the Phoenix site.

Wow!

Phoenix Not on TV - But IS On the Web...

To my surprise, the NASA TV channel carried by DISH is apparently not going to cover the Phoenix landing. Strange. But, NASA TV on the web is going to cover it, and you can watch it here starting at 3PM Pacific (6PM Eastern).

According to the DISH guide, at the time Phoenix is landing, the NASA TV channel will be broadcasting an ISS update. Sigh...

Update at 3:30PM Pacific:

Looks like the DISH guide was wrong – I'm watching the Phoenix landing on NASA TV, where commentators are talking over the raw comm feed that's on the web. Both are potentially interesting, and it looks like both are going to show the first pictures coming back (with the TV being much higher quality).

Here's the opening of an open letter from two Iranian-Americans (mother and daughter) to Barack Obama:

May 24, 2008

Dear Senator Barack Obama:

After the recent days of highly charged commentary about “appeasement,” we thought that as Iranian-Americans, we would convey to you the feelings of most people in Iran and the Iranian diaspora at large. It is important that a decision to dialogue with the Islamic Republic of Iran not be made in haste, for the purpose of winning the election. Instead, you now have a unique opportunity to make good on your message of change.

On September 24, 2004, while a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate from Illinois, you suggested that “surgical missile strikes” on Iran may become necessary. “Launching some missile strikes into Iran is not the optimal position for us to be in” given the ongoing war in Iraq, you told the Chicago Tribune. You continued: “On the other hand, having a radical Muslim theocracy in possession of nuclear weapons is worse”.

Your change in approach is now stunning for many Iranians. It is not that we want our country to be bombed, but the point is, why did you so suddenly and without explanation go from that extreme to the extreme of “unconditional dialogue”?

Senator, since 1979 the Mullahs of Iran have killed upwards of one million Iranians, not to mention the nearly one million sacrificed to the 8-year-long Iran/Iraq war. And what the Iranian people have withstood in terms of outrageous human rights violations is shocking; public hangings, stoning, flogging, cutting off limbs, tongues and plucking out eyeballs are an everyday occurrence across Iran. All are meant to strike fear of the ruling Mullahs into people’s hearts.

Since you began talking about unconditionally dialoguing with the Islamic regime of Iran, you too have struck absolute fear in the hearts of the Iranian people, both inside and outside Iran. The few Iranian-Americans who support you are well-intentioned individuals who have been swept up in the excitement and fervor of your campaign. But we can wholeheartedly assure you that your comments have landslide opposition within the much greater Iranian heart both inside and outside Iran.

And here's the conclusion:

In closing, Senator, even if you manage to dialogue with the ruling clergy in Iran, they will never keep their word. They are masters of deception, manipulation, rhetoric and spin. They are incapable of even honoring their own signatures, and refuse to abide by the terms and conditions of treaties that they themselves have agreed upon time and time again, as we have witnessed in their reactions to U.N. resolutions.

We were born and raised in Iran, and we do know Iran’s Mullahs.

Respectfully,

Manda Zand-Ervin & Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi

Go read the whole thing. It's an interesting take on the notion “dialog without preconditions” propounded by Obama.

Me, everytime I read that phrase (“dialog without preconditions”) I'm strongly reminded of the rhetoric of Neville Chamberlain and his many supporters in the run-up to World War II. Their willingness to engage with Hitler did legitimize him, and was seen by him as weakness on the part of his enemies – weakness that begged to be exploited. In other words, it did exactly what these Iranian-Americans are saying similar rhetoric and and engagement would do for the mad mullahs of Iran...

Does Allah Have It In For Them?

From Ron Liddle's latest column, a couple of selected passages:

You would think that by now Allah’s message might be getting through. Time after time Muslim fanatics attempt to wreak devastation in Britain – and succeed only in blowing themselves up, or setting themselves on fire, or their explosives refuse to do the decent thing and explode – while we infidel cockroaches look on in bemusement, quite unharmed.

If you were a devout believer, you might put two and two together and begin to suspect that Allah doesn’t entirely approve of blowing British people to bits. He would much rather his jihadis stayed at home and watched the Eurovision Song Contest, or did a spot of gardening, or took the dog for a walk.

...

I suppose that many years hence the terrible destruction of the twin towers will still be lodged in our minds, the image of the buildings crumpling, the video of Osama Bin Laden sniggering in his cave. But a similarly iconic image would be of the moron Richard Reid trying desperately to set his training shoe on fire on a plane, having forgotten to bring a lighter. They are either extraordinarily useless or Allah has got it in for them.

Go read the whole thing.

Phoenix Landing on Mars...

The Phoenix Mars Lander is on the final leg of its long journey to Mars, and if all goes well it will land this afternoon at just before 5 PM Pacific time. The mission's primary objectives are to understand the history of water at the landing site, and to investigate other indicators of the conditions required to support life. A major theme in these investigations is to unambiguously detect the water ice that scientists believe lies just below the surface soils.

The mission got the moniker “Phoenix” because it was hobbled together on a limited budget, largely using parts from two previous missions abandoned because of budget constraints (more on that later). Compared to the two Mars Rovers (Spirit and Opportunity) currently still operating on the red planet, Phoenix is very conventional: it will use an ablative heat shield for its initial braking as it enters the Martian atmosphere, then a parachute to slow it further until it gets near the surface, then rockets to place it (hopefully) gently on the ground. Then it will just sit tight for about an hour (to let the dust raised by the landing rockets settle), after which it will unfurl it's solar arrays and start deploying its instruments – including a stereo camera which will survey the landscape from atop a mast. The first photos should come back about an hour after the landing.

Once it is fully deployed and checked out (assuming, of course, that the landing goes well), then the impressive array of instruments on board will go right to work. Many of the instruments need soil samples to do their job; these will be obtained by the robotic arm and scoop visible in the painting at right.

Longtime readers know that I am a big supporter of these robotic missions, and an opponent of the current manned space missions. The Phoenix mission is a perfect illustration of why I hold these positions: this mission costs less than a single resupply flight to the International Space Station (and a miniscule fraction of the cost of the ISS itself), but it will deliver real science results that far exceed anything we've gotten (or will get) from the ISS. The science data we've obtained in just the past decade through robotic missions like Cassini-Huygens, the Mars Rovers, Messenger, Galileo, and so many more simply dwarfs the trickle of useful data and experience we've gotten through the ISS. And yet, the budget for ISS dwarfs that of the robotic space program, and worse, takes priority. The reason the two missions from which Phoenix got its components were abandoned is because the ISS took budget priority.

Just think what we could accomplish if we (a) completely cut out the manned space program, and (b) applied just half the savings to robotic missions. That would be roughly a 20x increase in funding for those missions!

A Package From Kazakhstan...

Yesterday I picked up a small package from an eBay seller located in Kazakhstan. I purchased an interesting Soviet-era slide rule from this seller, a modern (1978) model made in Kiev, Ukraine. But the package itself was actually more interesting than the slide rule!

The first thing I noted about the package was that it was made up in a way that seems quaint and old-fashioned to us: it was wrapped with heavy kraft paper, and very neatly tied with twine. Looking closely at the twine, I could see that it was quite primitive by modern standards – bits of seeds and unintended organic matter were embedded throughout it. Then when I turned the package over, I spotted something totally unexpected: sealing wax, complete with a stamp! I can't read the Cyrillic characters on the stamp, but it doesn't look like a personal stamp, but rather some sort of official stamp – customs, perhaps?

I disassembled the package carefully, as I was curious now about how the rest of it was constructed. The kraft paper was glued with the rubbery cement we used to call “mucilage”. Inside the kraft paper was a flat candy box, with a formed plastic holder for 20 pieces of (delicious looking!) chocolates. This piece of plastic made a very nice crush-resistant cushion for the slide rule itself, which was under it. A very thin plastic bag (of a type I've seen often used as a shopping bag in Eastern Europe) wrapped the slide rule.

My seller went to a lot of trouble to make this package, certainly more trouble than most Americans would. I can say this with some authority, as I buy slide rules from all over the world, and I can definitely see patterns in the packaging. Apparently packaging style is culturally determined!

Americans are by far the worst, on the whole. I have purchased expensive slide rules (say, $50 or $100) from American sellers who simply threw the slide rule in a much larger Priority Mail box and sent it. German sellers, on average, are not much better than the Americans. The British sellers, on the other hand, tend to be very conscientious packers – at least half the packages I receive from Great Britain would survive being run over on the freeway. But the best of all, so far, are the Israelis. There are three Israeli sellers whom I've purchased multiple slide rules from, and all three of them are exceptionally careful in their packing. One of them, a fellow named Yoram, sends me packages that are themselves marvels of mechanical engineering, with carefully carved and fitted pieces of foam to protect the slide rule I purchased from him.

Of course there are exceptions to the above observations. There are some American sellers who package things extremely carefully, and likewise some of the German sellers. One of these careful German sellers (Franz, who has become a good friend through our shared interests) sends me boxes of slide rules that are all individually wrapped in newspapers, a method that was common (and effective) when I was a kid growing up in New Jersey.

My package from Kazakhstan provoked some interest at our Jamul Post Office. As I walked out, someone who had overheard me exclaiming about the package wanted to see the package – and within a minute or two, we had a knot of people all looking at this quaint package that had traveled so far. Then, of course, I had to explain to several of the younger folks just what a slide rule was – as always, that led to some funny looks from people who were clearly wondering what sort of lunatic I was. Who would want to collect sticks that let you (sort of) multiply and divide ?

Lovely Weather...

Just two days ago the weather forecast called for “chance of patchy drizzle”, which generally means (for us) slightly denser than normal fog. We often get such weather this time of year; it's a welcome respite from the heat, but usually little precipitation accumulates. Yesterday afternoon I had to drive from Solana Beach to National City, and there was intermittent heavy rainfall along that entire path. As I drove home that evening, I was hopeful that we had gotten (or would get) some of that rain.

So I was delighted to see, as I drove down the length of Lawson Valley Road, that there was running water along the side of the road and everything looked thoroughly wet. When I drove alongside the creek, I could see water accumulating in it, so I knew we'd had some amount of rain. Finally, when I got home there was heavy drizzle (which turned into rain later), and my rain gauge showed 0.56 inches. This morning it's reading 0.64 inches, and there's more rain in the forecast for today and tomorrow...

Even more surprising is the temperature – right now it is just 41°F outside. With 100% relative humidity and light winds, it's actually uncomfortably cold – just a bit different than the 100°F, 7% relative humidity we had last weekend!

More of this, please...