Service-now in the News Again...

This time it's a nice little piece about one of our customers: Orrick, an international law firm. Orrick's IT operations are located in Wheeling, West Virginia; I visited them a couple months ago to help them get our Discovery product (a piece of our overall product that I've been focused on) up and running. Here's the lead from the article:

Changing your Service Desk solution can be a large project with many challenges. The ideal is to improve customer service, while reducing costs and making the transition as painless as possible. Many companies also want to adopt ITIL processes into their Service Desk. For Orrick, the SaaS solution Service-Now.com was the choice.

The Discovery product gets a nice little mention, and there's a video showing the Orrick facilities and several of the people that I worked with there. Orrick's service team is a finalist for a prestigous industry award, and they give our product credit as one of the things (certainly not the only thing!) that got them there...

Obama and Education...

The Obamas' little girls go to a pricey private school – $20,000+ per year each just for tuition. I applaud them for being willing to sink that kind of serious money into providing a solid education for their kids. I don't know anything at all about the school they're sending their kids to, but I have to assume that they've got their little girls' best interests in mind, and that they're doing the best they know how to give their kids the opportunity to excel. That's terrific, and I mean that most sincerely – this is one of the few actions of the Obamas that I find admirable.

But it also serves to point out, in a very clarifying way, Obama's staggering hypocrisy on the subject of education. He and his wife make good use of their wealth to get their kids out of our miserable public schools – but Obama adamantly opposes any such opportunity for ordinary parents. You know, those parents his party claims to represent.

The issue of education, perhaps more than any other, highlights the intrinsic conflict of interest between ordinary people and the Democratic Party. Ordinary parents (the kind who can't afford to spend $20K/year on their kids) desperately want to be able to control where their kids go to school. The Democratic Party (most definitely including Obama) opposes any and every kind of school choice.

The National Education Assocation (NEA) rates Obama's voting record on education as “perfect”. Their definition of perfect is very much self-interested, no matter how much they cloak it in “for the children” rhetoric.

The NEA and Obama are for more education funding, and against any financial reform. The implicit assumption in this is that public schools currently use their funding in a manner which could not be improved, and of course this is absurd. There are numerous examples of non-public school systems that spend less, have smaller bureaucracies, and that graduate kids with demonstrably superior knowledge and skills. The parochial school system is but one such example, but it's a good one.

The NEA and Obama are against any form of school choice, including (most famously) vouchers. While they don't like to say this directly, one cannot escape the conclusion that their objective is to force every parent to send their children to the school chosen for them by the education bureaucracy. No school choice for ordinary parents, only for the wealthy.

The NEA and Obama are against merit pay, are against firing substandard (but certified) teachers, and are against every other program that would rid our public schools of bad teachers and attract good teachers to them. They have many arguments for these positions, but they all boil down to this: they are putting the interests of the rank-and-file (mediocre by definition) union members ahead of the interests of the children. Oh, they won't say that, of course – but that is in fact what they are doing.

Obama's and the Democratic Party's position on education is inexplicable until you factor in this: the single biggest supporter of the Democratic Party is the NEA. Not just in cash, but also in contributions of grass-roots labor. For example, over half of all the delegates to the Democratic Party's convention are NEA members (and more than half the remaining delegates are members of other public-sector unions). The Democratic Party (and Obama) must support the NEA's positions, or they lose money and help they can't afford to lose.

In a very real way, the Democratic Party is an extension of public-sector unions, most especially the NEA. The interests of those unions (and by extension, of the Democratic Party) are clearly in conflict with those “ordinary Joe” voters the Democrats claim to support.

Obama: hypocrite on education. Here's a case where his actions speak far louder than his words. He and his wife have made a choice to take their kids out of public school. We all know why they're doing so – and I, for one, completely agree with him on that score. But Obama doesn't want you and I to have that same choice...

Full Moon...

Just got back in from taking the dogs for a walk, at 4 am. There's a full moon high in our clear southwestern sky, and it is very bright. I could easily see colors – not only bright colors in close objects (like the dog's leashes), but also on the hills several miles away. The bright moonlight lit up Cajon Mountain, some 15 miles away; its light-colored granite faces were clearly visible. The skies were relatively haze-free – I could still make out major constellations, the Pleiades, etc.

The dogs seemed to enjoy the moonlight, too – they were straining at their leashes for our entire morning walk...

Democrats Hit Bottom, Keep Digging (Chapter 16,543)...

Reader Gary P. sent me to this post over at the Daily Kos, recommending the analysis by Paul Hackett (a well-known liberal commentator who posts over there). The analysis is interesting, but what really caught my eye was Hackett's advice to Democratic operatives in Ohio, saying that the message they should send to the media is this:

"Sarah Palin? Can't keep her solemn oath of devotion to her husband and had sex with his employee. Sarah Palin? Accidentally got pregnant at age 43 and the tax payers of Alaska have to pay for the care of her disabled child. Sarah Palin? Unable to teach her 16 year old daughter right from wrong and now another teenager is pregnant. Sarah Palin? Can you trust Sarah Palin and her values with America's future? John McCain? Divorced from his first wife one month and marries a billionaire influence peddler and convicted felon. John McCain, a record of rash and impulsive decisions. That’s not change that’s more of the same.”

Seriously, this is what he's recommending. It's not a parody or a joke; he means it. It's as if the backfire on the Democrats from all the lies and dirt they've already spread about Palin was invisible. The Democrats are in worse shape than I thought, if this is the level they've descended to...

Farewell from the Commander...

General David Petraeus has turned over his command in Iraq to move up the chain to CENTCOM. We Americans owe this exceptional leader our gratitude. Here's his farewell letter to the troops that were under his command:

Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, Coast Guardsmen, and Civilians of Multi-National Force-Iraq:

It has been the greatest of privileges to have been your commander for the past 19 months. During that time,we and our civilian and Iraqi partners have been engaged in an exceedingly complex, difficult, and important task. And in the face of numerous challenges, we and our partners have helped bring new hope to a country that was besieged by extremists and engulfed in sectarian violence.

When I took command of Multi-National Force-Iraq in February 2007, I noted that the situation in Iraq was hard but not hopeless. You have proven that assessment to be correct. Indeed, your great work, sacrifice, courage, and skill have helped to reverse a downward spiral toward civil war and to wrest the initiative from the enemies of the new Iraq.

Together, Iraqi and Coalition Forces have faced determined, adaptable, and barbaric enemies. You and our Iraqi partners have taken the fight to them, and you have taken away their sanctuaries and safe havens. You have helped secure the Iraqi people and have enabled, and capitalized on, their rejection of extremism. You have also supported the Iraqi Security Forces as they have grown in number and capability and as they have increasingly shouldered more of the responsibility for security in their country.

You have not just secured the Iraqi people, you have served them, as well. By helping establish local governance, supporting reconstruction efforts, assisting with revitalization of local businesses, fostering local reconciliation, and conducting a host of othernon-kinetic activities, you have contributed significantly to the communities in which you have operated. Indeed, you have been builders and diplomats as well as guardians and warriors.

The progress achieved has been hard-earned. There have been many tough days along the way, and we have suffered tragic losses. Indeed, nothing in Iraq has been anything but hard. But you have been more than equal to every task.

Your accomplishments have, in fact, been the stuff of history. Each of you should be proud of what has been achieved and of the contributions you continue to make. Although our tasks in Iraq are far from complete and hard work and tough fights lie ahead, you have helped bring about remarkable improvements.

Your new commander is precisely the right man for the job. General Ray Odierno played a central role in the progress achieved during the surge. He brings tremendous skill, experience, and understanding as he returns to Iraq for a third tour and takes the helm of MNF-I just seven months after relinquishing command of MultiNational Corps-Iraq. I have total confidence in him, and I will do all that I can as the commander of Central Command to help him, MNF-I, and our Iraqi partners to achieve the important goals that we all share for the new Iraq.

Thank you for your magnificent work here in the "Land of the Two Rivers." And thank you for your sacrifices-and for those of your families--during this crucial phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom. I am honored to have soldiered with you in this critical endeavor.

With great respect and all best wishes


David H. Petraeus
General, United States Army
Commanding

In my own experience in the military, commanders like these were rare indeed. I hope that's no longer true – I hope we now have a passel of them tucked away to help us in the tough years ahead. But meanwhile, I'm very glad we've had General Petraeus...

Speechless...

Me, that is – not this guy:


This is James David Manning, Ph. D., of the ATLAH World Missionary Church, in New York. I know nothing about him or his church. After watching this video (sent to me by my brother), my head is still spinning and I'm suffering from some combination of shocked sensibilities, stomach pains from laughing so hard, and hoarseness from cheering. I don't know whether to give this guy a little more exposure, or to soak my computer in some antibiotic solution.

So I put it up here for you to view. I look forward to your reactions...

Obama Takedown...

This is one of the best I've read, and amazingly it's by a British writer – Gerard Baker, writing in the London Times. The piece is brilliant, and I hope you'll read the whole thing. Here's his conclusion:

The essential problem coming to light is a profound disconnect between the Barack Obama of the candidate's speeches, and the Barack Obama who has actually been in politics for the past decade or so.

Speechmaker Obama has built his campaign on the promise of reform, the need to change the culture of American political life, to take on the special interests that undermine government's effectiveness and erode trust in the system itself,

Politician Obama rose through a Chicago machine that is notoriously the most corrupt in the country. As David Freddoso writes in a brilliantly cogent and measured book, The Case Against Barack Obama, the angel of deliverance from the old politics functioned like an old-time Democratic pol in Illinois. He refused repeatedly to side with those lonely voices that sought to challenge the old corrupt ways of the ruling party.

Speechmaker Obama talks about an era of bipartisanship, He speaks powerfully about the destructive politics of red and blue states.

Politician Obama has toed his party's line more reliably than almost any other Democrat in US politics. He has a near-perfect record of voting with his side. He has the most solidly left-wing voting history in the Senate. His one act of bipartisanship, a transparency bill co-sponsored with a Republican senator, was backed by everybody on both sides of the aisle. He has never challenged his party's line on any issue of substance.

Speechmaker Obama talks a lot about finding ways to move beyond the bloody battlegrounds of the “culture wars” in America; the urgent need to establish consensus on the emotive issue of abortion.

Politician Obama's support for abortion rights is the most extreme of any Democratic senator. In the Illinois legislature he refused to join Democrats and Republicans in supporting a Bill that would require doctors to provide medical care for babies who survived abortions. No one in the Senate - not the arch feminist Hillary Clinton nor the superliberal Edward Kennedy - opposed this same humane measure.

Here's the real problem with Mr Obama: the jarring gap between his promises of change and his status quo performance. There are just too many contradictions between the eloquent poetry of the man's stirring rhetoric and the dull, familiar prose of his political record.

It's been remarked that the biggest difference between Americans and Europeans is religion: ignorant Americans cling to faith; enlightened Europeans long ago embraced the liberating power of reason. Yet here's an odd thing about this election. Europeans are asking Americans to take a leap of faith, to break the chains of empiricism and embrace the possibility of the imagination.

The fact is that a vote for Mr Obama demands uncritical subservience to the irrational, anti-empirical proposition that the past holds no clues about the future, that promise is wholly detached from experience. The second-greatest story ever told, perhaps.

Nicely said, Mr. Baker!

Loose With the Facts, Again...

The liberals, that is.

A commenter to an earlier post made a standard liberal talking point. If I remove all the boilerplate Team Obama rhetoric, the rants, the bile, the insults, etc., essentially the commenter said this: of course the Republicans donated more to charity – they (the Republicans) are the rich ones, while the Democrats are all poor.

It would be a good point if it were true. But for decades now, the majority of wealthy Americans have been liberals, and have overwhelmingly voted Democratic. Are you surprised? You shouldn't be – just think of the Kennedys, George Soros, Bill Gates, the Pelosis, Kerry/Heinz, nearly all of Hollywood, Oprah, and on and on.

The actual demographic data is actually quite interesting. There's a good article about it here. It's hard to characterize in a simple way, as there's a lot of variation from place to place within the U.S. But speaking very generally, it's safe to say that the majority of America's middle class is conservative or libertarian (leaning Republican), and the majority of both America's wealthy and America's poor are liberal (leaning Democrat). The two best correllates to self-identified liberals are (a) wealth, and (b) living in urban areas. The two best correllates to self-identified conservatives or libertarians are (a) living in suburban or rural areas, and (b) Christian faith.

So my commenter's assertion about why conservatives and libertarions give more to charity doesn't fit with the actual facts – like so many other liberal memes...

The New Sitemeter...

Sitemeter is a web site traffic tracking tool used by many bloggers (and other web sites, I'm sure). I've used it for years, and I liked it enough to keep paying for it. If I'd been asked to grade the old product, I'd have given it a B or B+.

Today Sitemeter, after much fanfare, switched over to a brand-new site. It appears to have been rebuilt from the ground up. My first impressions are all negative. It's slow (though maybe this is partly because they just started up). It's way too complicated. I haven't yet figured out how to get all the information I used to get with a single click. The information I have figured out how to get takes more effort to get it. The old site used to leave me logged in, the new site requires me to re-login after some period of time.

It's just plain awful. I'd give it a failing grade: E. I know they never asked me about the new design, but I'm wondering if they asked anybody at all – the new site looks to me like someone's “brilliant” idea that they never bothered to check out with their customers.

So now I'm looking for an alternative vendor. Does anybody have any recommendations?

Update: The Sitemeter site is now displaying a message saying that they're rolling back to the former system. It doesn't say why, or whether this is a permanent rollback – but just in case they're paying attention: PLEASE! PLEASE MAKE THE ROLLBACK PERMANENT!!!

Sarah and Hillary on SNL...

Reader Simon M., knowing that I don't watch television, passed this clip along:

Dust Devils on Mars...

The little Phoenix lander, far in the north on Mars, managed to image a dust devil dancing across the plains. The dust devils were expected; they're a well-known phenomenon on Mars at this point. Spirit and Opportunity (the two rovers that are still operating on Mars) have encountered and photographed them several times. But I don't think anyone was expecting the stationary Phoenix lander to be able to do so. This site has much more information, and an animation.

Gibson vs. Palin...

I have not watched Gibson's interview of Palin, and after reading about it, I don't think I will – it seems apparent the man had an agenda, and isn't particularly influenced by facts or truths. Not exactly what I look for in a reporter.

Nancy Kallitechnis is a liberal writer whom I had never heard of until this morning, when reader Bill G. passed along a link to one of her posts on HillaryClintonForum.net. With some Googling all I could really discover is that she's a prolific poster on many liberal-oriented sites. It's clear from her posts that she's a very enthusiastic Hillary supporter, and has no love at all for The One. She posted a comparison of Gibson's interviews with Palin and Obama, and despite her agenda for Hillary, she makes some good points. Here's her conclusion:

There’s no doubt the Charles Gibson interviews showed extreme prejudice against Palin and extreme favoritism towards Obama. His manner towards Palin was much more negative. He asked her much more difficult questions and the questions were more adversarial. He constantly questioned her ability to lead but never questioned Obama’s ability to lead, all the more amazing considering that Palin was the only one with executive experience and the presidency is the highest level executive job in politics. The camera angles always focused on Obama’s face when he was talking making him the center of attention yet during Palin’s interview the angle often focused on her back apparently for the purpose of lessening the impact of her presence.

The questions, camera angle, and manner of the interviewer were designed in a way that favored Obama. Because Palin is a historic woman candidate and has been attacked with sexism it is reasonable to believe that ABC News is trying to harm her candidacy due to sexism. Of particular note is that Gibson asked Obama four questions about breaking the AA political glass ceiling but asked Palin zero questions about her breaking the women’s political glass ceiling. ABC’s prejudice against Palin was wrong and is blocking women’s progress towards equality. Palin is brave and strong and she, along with her supporters, will battle sexism and other forms of harmful prejudice in order to improve our world. This is a wake up call for ABC and the sexist news media to help them achieve their potential to be fair to candidates because fairness in the media is essential to a democracy.

Interesting stuff, especially considering the political inclinations of the author. What's even more interesting are the comments following the post...

Charity...

Biden's tax returns were posted to Obama's web site today, and on them you can discover that he and his wife donated 0.3% of their income to charity last year. The Obamas, by comparison, donated 5.7% of their considerably higher income to charity last year.

Now I don't think either of those numbers is “bad” in any sense of that word. By comparison, Debbie and I (in percentage terms) were somewhere between the two of them. I believe that giving to charity (and which charity one chooses to give to) are entirely personal matters, and the quantity of a candidate's charitable gifts has no weight at all in my decision about supporting them.

But this reminds me of a book I read some time ago, called Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism. The “surprising truth” in the book is this: measured in dollars or percentage, charitable giving by liberals is dwarfed by charitable giving by conservatives (and libertarians). This is consistent with my own (far less rigorous) observations and experiences in charity work.

McCain contributed 26% of his income last year to charities. Palin's tax returns have not yet been made public, so we don't know what their contributions were.

When I read that book, I came away with the thought that this aggregate difference in charitable giving carries a profound message of some sort. The closest I ever came to being able to articulate it was the notion that liberals in general expect government to do things for them; conservatives and libertarians are much more interested in having the government get out of the way so they can do things themselves. There's yet a deeper message there, I think...

McCain's Email Challenges...

I've got plenty of beefs with McCain – I'm not thrilled by the man at all. His candidacy has turned me into a single-issue voter. So I don't have any kind of knee-jerk negative reaction to criticisms of McCain from the Obama camp, as I think there are plenty of things for them to criticize.

By now you've probably heard about (and maybe you've seen it) Obama's ad criticizing McCain for being old-fashioned and out-of-touch. The ad specifically mentions his inability to send an email, as part of its general characterization of him. And if you're paying attention at all, you've probably already heard that Team Obama is looking pretty darned stupid on that account, as they apparently missed the reason why McCain can't send an email: his North Vietnamese torturers made sure that he'd never be able to do anything requiring dexterity in his hands again. The best sober discussion of this incident that I've seen is here.

Team Obama seems to be remarkably prone to this sort of stupidity. They've made gaffe after gaffe, and despite the best efforts of the in-the-tank-for-Obama lamestream media to suppress them, the word is getting out. I'm beginning to get the impression of a rock-star celebrity-based campaign run by amateurs who were getting away with it only because of The One's image and celebrity. But those are looking a little tarnished these days, and the light seems brighter over in the McCain/Palin camp – and only because of Palin.

I'd pay good money to be a fly on the wall of a Democratic strategy session right about now...

I hope the Republicans don't get too cocksure during this period. Must be mighty heady for them...

Palin Cartoons...

Simon M. sent along a collection of cartoons about Sarah Palin. These were my favorites. As always, click to enlarge:

Service-now in the News Again...

This time an article in CIO Magazine. An excerpt, quoting our CEO (Fred Luddy):

Luddy used a combination of young and experienced staffers claiming that a young mindset is required. More experienced developers can tend to be set in their ways which may have been good ideas in the past, but are not good ideas today. For example, Luddy asks "why would anyone write APIs" anymore? APIs made sense back in the client server days but is not the most efficient approach in an SOA. Luddy challenged his more experienced developers to go with what is relevant to the problems you are trying to solve today and "shed your baggage at the door." Luddy's best advice is "choose the simplest, most flexible technologies." His team did just that and selected a variety of open source and web 2.0 technologies to make the user presentation layer as user friendly and customizable as possible.

It's exciting to see us getting more press attention, and interesting to see the things they pick to focus on. One thing I'm sure of: when the press talks with Fred, they aren't hearing the usual plate full of buzz words that high-tech CEOs seem to love so much, without really understanding them...

Watch Her Act...

Barbara Kay, writing in Canada's National Post:

The ultimate American individual, Palin wasn't ever committed to any collectivity but America itself. She was never "I am Woman, hear me roar." She was always, "I am Sarah, watch me act." Palin represents what would have happened to American women without a feminist revolution. For legal and social equity for women was bound to arise organically through political and cultural reform, as more and more women entered university and the work force, a process well underway before feminism became an organized movement.

Interesting thought, and it rings true with me. Palin, the organic feminist!

Rothschild Calls Obama "Elitist"...

Said today by Ms. Lynn Forester de Rothschild:

I'm a longtime Democrat. I worked for Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan and supported Sen. Hillary Clinton in her presidential campaign. But I must face the uncomfortable truth that liberal elitism has been a weakness of the Democratic Party for more than half a century. In 1952 and 1956, for example, Adlai Stevenson emerged as the presidential candidate of the party's "new politics" wing. But while Stevenson's stylish, articulate, high-brow manner thrilled the nation's intellectuals, he could never connect with large numbers of working-class Democrats who found him aloof and aristocratic.

The "new politics" Democrats have found their new, improved Stevenson in Mr. Obama. In spite of his lofty liberal rhetoric, Mr. Obama is not connecting to millions of middle- and working-class voters, as well as women voters of all classes. Not only is his legislative record scant on issues that make a difference in their lives, but his current campaign is based mainly on an assumption of his transcendence.

Despite Mr. Obama's assertions that his campaign is about "you," much of his campaign is, in fact, all about him. In the months since the primaries ended, his creation and display of a mock presidential seal with his name on it, his speech at a mass rally at the Prussian Victory Column in Berlin, and his insistence on delivering his acceptance speech in front of fabricated Greek columns in a stadium holding 80,000 chanting supporters have crossed the thin line that separates galvanizing voters and plain old demagoguery.

In this context, it should come as no surprise that Sarah Palin, mother of five, hockey mom turned governor and maverick reformer, would instantly zero in on the inherent weakness in Mr. Obama's candidacy, and contrast it with her own compelling life story.

Liberal Democrats – most especially female liberal Democrats – seem to be emerging from whatever crazy place they've been into the real world. And Palin is the common thread in all of these metamorphoses.

The Democratic strategists must be shrieking and wailing nonstop these days.

I love it!

Palin Visits the Troops...

Another photo from her tour of places Alaskan soldiers served, last year. The MilBlogs are, btw, chock-a-block full of stories from soldiers about meeting and talking with Palin. Usually the troops are quite reserved and respectful when talking about politicians. The posts about Palin stand out for the frank admiration expressed (and not just about her appearance!). In that way they are reminiscent of posts from the troops about President Bush...

Seven Years Ago...

Seven years ago today, Osama Bin Laden's evil followers attacked the U.S. They succeeded in destroying the twin towers of the World Trade Center and damaging the Pentagon. Thousands of Americans (and dozens of peope from other countries) died that day, including the passengers and crews of the four passenger jets that Al Qaeda hijacked and used as weapons. On one airliner (United 93), they failed – we believe because the passengers fought back, including Todd Beamer and his famous “Let's roll!”.

“Never forget!” is the rallying cry on this day. But I fear too many Americans already have forgotten, in the sense that they no longer see the existential threat that Al Qaeda (and radical Islamic fundamentalism, more generally) present to this country. We have had seven years without another successfull attack on our homeland, and many Americans see this as evidence of Al Qaeda's weakness (or even non-existence!), as opposed to American strength. We now have many adult Americans who really don't even remember 9/11, as they were too young when it happened.

For me, these are all pieces of the only issue I am really worried about in the upcoming election. It boils down to this: when the next Al Qaeda attack comes (as I think is likely), would I rather have Obama or McCain as President? Or, for that matter, Biden or Palin? As best I can tell, the Democrats would instinctively react by withdrawing and retreating, by preemptive surrender, and they'd wrap those actions in flowery words of moral equivalence, America's sins, and multinational agreement. I cannot even imagine them reacting as I would want to: with an aggressive offense, stomping the perpetrators out of existence and making an example that would give the next jihadis some doubts about the wisdom of their actions. I cannot be sure that McCain (or Palin) would react that way, but it seems likely.

So McCain and Palin will get my vote. I will vote on this one issue alone; the rest are irrelevant by comparsion (to me).

Not that it actually matters how I vote here in California. We're a “winner takes all” state, and the Democratic lead is insurmountable (or so conventional wisdom says)...

Palin Explosion...

Camille Paglia is a prominent feminist, Democrat, and liberal, most well-known, probably, for her slightly unorthodox views. Nothing that would make you call her a conservative, mind you – but not a cookie-cutter chardonnay liberal, either. I've always thought her to be one of the more interesting characters on the feminist left, and one with some of the most intriguing ideas. But I never imagined I'd here her say something like this:

I had heard vaguely about Palin but had never heard her speak. I nearly fell out of my chair. It was like watching a boxing match or a quarter of hard-hitting football -- or one of the great light-saber duels in "Star Wars." (Here are the two Jedi, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn, going at it with Darth Maul in "The Phantom Menace.") This woman turned out to be a tough, scrappy fighter with a mischievous sense of humor.

Conservative though she may be, I felt that Palin represented an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism. At her startling debut on that day, she was combining male and female qualities in ways that I have never seen before. And she was somehow able to seem simultaneously reassuringly traditional and gung-ho futurist. In terms of redefining the persona for female authority and leadership, Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment.

The whole article is over at Salon, and well worth a few minutes of your time.

Palin is shaking things up more than I'd ever have expected...

Real, Not Plastic...

Thanks to George P. for passing this along...

One of Rush Limbaugh's callers told a poignant story about McCain and Palin taking time out, privately, to say hello to the caller's family – which includes a chlid with Down's syndrome. In the caller's own words:

So we accompanied them up the hill, we went right to the bus, where it was, and Governor Palin, Senator McCain, Cindy, Todd Palin, they're all standing there. We're in this inner circle with just us and them, and the Secret Service agent, and they came right up to us and thanked us for coming out, said they loved our sign, and Governor Palin immediately said, "May I hold your daughter?" and our daughter Chloe, who's five, went right to her, and I have some pictures I'd love to send you maybe when I'm done here, but Governor Palin was hugging Chloe, and then her little daughter brought their baby Trig who has Down syndrome from the bus, he was napping, and Chloe went right over and kissed him on the cheek, and my son Nolan who's nine, he thanked her.

This sort of out-of-the-press, private, no-publicity-intended action speaks volumes about the true nature of an individual. It's like the old maxim that character is behaving well when nobody is watching. McCain and Palin didn't do this because it was advantageous to them – they wanted to do this. Though most people don't know it, George Bush does this same sort of thing all the time. For all three of them, knowing this has the same effect on me: it makes these politicians seem more real, more genuine, more human, more ordinary – and not at all like the disdainful elitist that Obama so typifies amongst the liberal's top tier.

More photos and dialog here.

Probably Not the Best Turn of Phrase...

Barack Obama, at a campaign event today:

"That's not change. You know, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig."

He may or may not have meant that as an allusion to Sarah Palin's now-famous comment in her acceptance speech (“What's the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick!”), but his admirer's certainly thought he did. And that's not likely to go over well with the wavering Obama supporters.

It's more pleasurable than I thought it would be to see the Democrats on defensive for once...

Sarah Palin Surge...

At right is a graph of this blog's traffic over the past couple of weeks. The entire “bump” is accounted for by Google image searches that include the words “Sarah Palin”.

Many included other words, as well – words that I'm not going to repeat. But I'll tell you this much: I spent six years in the Navy, before there were women on ships at sea, and (a) I'm embarrassed by some of these searches, and (b) some of them I had to look up the meaning of. There are some truly sick puppies out there...

Topsy Turvey, and Other Bedtime Stories...

McCain's choice of Sarah Palin, followed by the liberal sliming of her, has had some results I don't think either side anticipated. Who could have imagined this video just a month ago?


We live in interesting times, and old stereotypes are being turned on their heads...

Service-now in the News Again...

Network World has a little article about us. Here's the lead:

What does it take to rank among the top 50 companies on the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest growing private companies in America? Among other things, these days it takes great information technology. Brian Morgan, director of IT at Interbank FX (IBFX) in Salt Lake City concurs.

IBFX is a leading provider of online foreign exchange trading services, serving clients from more than 140 countries. The company handles about $4 billion in transactions a day for its customers. Inc. magazine recently named IBFX as the 46th fastest growing private company in America, and the 5th fastest growing financial services company. Utah Business magazine gives IBFX the title of number one growth company in the state of Utah.

To reach and sustain that level of growth, the IT systems need to be able to grow and adapt rapidly to the company’s needs. This is one of the reasons Morgan and his IT team selected a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering from Service-now.com as the company’s IT service management (ITSM) platform. “Service-now.com helps us provide better uptime for our systems than we could do if we hosted an application ourselves,” says Morgan.

Alaska!

A tip of the hat to my mom...

Message From A Vet...

You don't want to miss the end of it.

A Light Footprint...

This post by John Hinderaker (at Powerline Blog) contains this bit that resonates strongly with me:

Krauthammer thinks that by selecting Palin, McCain threw away his best argument, the fact that his own qualifications are so obviously superior to Obama's. That was my concern, too, when I first learned of the Palin pick. But it fails to give enough emphasis to the basic fact that Obama is running for President, not Vice President. It also fails to acknowledge that Obama and Palin, being middle-aged, do have track records, and those records are very different. Obama has never been a reformer. He has always been a careerist. Wherever he has gone, he has left an extraordinarily light footprint. He has had little or no impact.

The opposite is true of Palin. She entered politics as an outsider--in Alaska!--and as a reformer. Wherever she has gone, she has made a difference. In political terms, her record usefully shows up the fact that Obama is a poseur.

That observation about Obama's few actual accomplishments versus Palin's many strikes to the heart of the matter.

And isn't it interesting that so many are comparing the Republican Vice Presidential pick to the Democratic Presidential pick?

Lipstick On A Pig...

Michael Mann is the creator of the infamous “hockey stick” temperature graph (at right) that in 2001 started the whole anthropomorphic (human-caused) global warming (AGW) madness. Though he is a scientist, Mann did something very unlike a scientist: he published his results, but not details of his data and methods that would allow independent scientists to replicate and verify his work. Replication and verification is a cornerstone of the scientific method, and it absolutely relies on full and open disclosure of everything underlying a result.

Mann was roundly criticized for this transgression, by both skeptics and advocates of AGW. So recently he published a reworked version of his original study, and this time he was more open about his data and methods. Warren Meyer, writing at Climate Skeptic, dubbed this new study “Lipstick on a Pig” – read his excellent article to see why. Meyer's post led me to Steve McIntyre's outstanding Climate Audit site and this article, where McIntyre did something very interesting that makes the root of his skepticism very accessible to people who don't know the math and are not climate experts. Spend a few minutes looking at the links below and you'll come away with a much better understanding of why I and many others are so skeptical of AGW.

First of all, here's the links (from Climate Audit): Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5. McIntyre broke this into five parts only because of limitations of the software he used to produce them.

The posts themselves delve into the technical reasons (though not too deeply) why so many scientists are concerned about Mann's study. But the graph animations linked above are simple enough for anyone to understand. McIntyre took all the temperature data that Mann started with, reformatted it so that he could display each source of data on an identical graph, and then flips through them one after the other. What anyone is immediately struck by is just how random the data is – there's no clear pattern in it at all. As a commenter observes, by cherry-picking and massaging this data, one could make a graph that has any shape you'd like it to have!

And cherry-picking and massaging is exactly what Mann has done with this data. What he most definitely did not do is simply average it all out – others have done this, however, and found no trend whatsoever. I'm not saying that a simple average is the right thing to do – but I am saying that if a simple average shows no trend at all, and Mann's manipulation shows the pronounced hockey stick, then we should be very skeptical indeed of Mann's results.

This kind of data manipulation hocus-pocus would be instantly condemned – and rejected – in just about every other field of science I'm familiar with. No reputable scientist would even consider relying on such a shaky foundation for public policy decisions that have trillions of dollars in economic impact.

Why are we allowing this to happen with AGW? Why do so many people listen to Al Gore rather than use their own common sense? I sure wish I knew the answer to that...

A Question for Obama...

Senator Obama, for the last week or so you've been repeatedly asserting that “we won't be bullied!” How, exactly, have you been bullied, or even threatened with bullying?

I see many who disagree with Obama, or who find him far more stylish than substantive...but bullied? Not unless that word has a far different meaning for Obama than it does for me. And I have to say that if Obama believes he's being bullied simply because there are some who disagree with him, or who don't find him admirable, then I find that alone a bit worrisome.

Seems a lot like whining. Like he needs his momma to come help him out with the meanies. Just sayin'...

Two Questions for the Media...

1. Why has every major news organization sent teams of reporters to Arizona (to hunt down and interview Cindy McCain's disinherited older half-siblings from her father's first marriage) and to Alaska (to hunt down and interview any disgruntled divorced in-laws or baby daddy's relatives) but not to Kenya (to interview the Muslim co-parents, half-siblings and co-siblings from Obama's father's numerous polygamist marriages) or to Indonesia (to interview the Muslim family of Obama's stepfather and any Indonesian half-siblings and classmates)?
   
   
2. Why is Obama's 18 year old birth mother (impregnated by an older African exchange student with several polygamist wives stashed away in Kenya) an example of all-American grit, courage and upward mobility, but Bristol Palin is a slut? (For bonus points - identify which one went on government assistance.)

(These are edited versions of questions originally asked by Concerned Democrats for McCain)...

Why The Left Mindlessly Attacks Palin...

Some excerpts from an insightful piece by Jeffrey Bell (titled Why They Hate Her, and subtitled Sarah Palin is a smart missile aimed at the heart of the left):

From the instant of Palin's designation on Friday, August 29, the American left went into a collective mass seizure from which it shows no sign of emerging. The left blogosphere and elite media have, for the moment, joined forces and become indistinguishable from each other, and from the supermarket tabloids, in their desire to find and use anything that will criminalize and/or humiliate Palin and her family. In sharp contrast to the yearlong restraint shown toward truthful reports about John Edwards's affair, bizarre rumors have been reported as news, and, according to McCain campaign directorSteve Schmidt, nationally known members of the elite media have besieged him with preposterous demands.

The most striking thing in purely political terms about this hurricane of elite rage is the built-in likelihood that it will backfire. It's not simply that it is highly capable of generating sympathy for Palin among puzzled undecided voters and of infuriating and motivating a previously placid GOP base, neither of which is in the interest of the Obama-Biden campaign. It also created an opening for Palin herself to look calm, composed, competent, and funny in response.

...

On August 29, in the immediate aftermath of the announcement by the McCain campaign, all that was widely known of the governor of Alaska was that she was married with five children, the last one of whom had been carried to term with Down syndrome, and that she was pro-life. No one knew that her oldest daughter was pregnant. No one knew much about what she had done as governor or in her previous career. No one knew how she had been drawn into politics, or that her sister had had a reckless husband and a contentious divorce. Above all, with the possible exception of John McCain, no one knew that Sarah Palin was both a married mother of five and a brilliant political talent with a chance not just to change the dynamics of the 2008 election but to rise to the top level of American politics, whatever happens this year.

The simple fact of her being a pro-life married mother of five with a thriving political career was--before anything else about her was known--enough for the left and its outliers to target her for destruction. She could not be allowed to contradict symbolically one of the central narratives of the left. How galling it will be to Sarah Palin's many new enemies if she survives this assault and prevails. If she does, her success may be an important moment in the struggle to shape not just America's politics but its culture.

This is as good an explanation as I've seen anywhere for the left's continuing attacks on Palin – attacks that are already backfiring badly. The real losers of this, in the long run, may not be Obama and Biden – but the lamestream media and the kookier leftists. The media is full of stories about people being upset with – the media! The Daily Kos has pulled more stories about Palin in the past week, I think, than in their entire history – they've gone completely berserk, evenly openly promoting the wisdom and morality of blatantly lying to keep Palin from being elected.

I wish I liked popcorn...

Why Ayers Matters...

I was planning to post on this topic, but Neo-Neocon beat me to it. And of course, she did a much better job than I ever could. Her lead:

It is troubling that the MSM has abdicated its investigatory task by being surprisingly uninterested in shining light into some of the more suspicious regions of Barack Obama’s past. And of all those dark corners, the very darkest may be the Obama-Ayers connection.

Why does it matter? Isn’t this just a meaningless game of “gotcha” guilt by association, and a rather tenuous association at that? Can Obama really be blamed for the doings of everyone who’s ever crossed his path?

The official Obama campaign statement about Ayers and the candidate focuses on the charges about Ayers’ terrorist background, the Woods hole connection, and the fact that Ayers is considered a respected scholar on education. It is entirely mum—as Obama has mostly been so far—about their work together on the Annenberg Challenge.

If you care even a whit about this election, you really should go read her whole post – and find out why the Ayers connection matters...

Patio Plants...

Our patio has been a great source of pleasure for Debbie and I this year. We've got something like 40 or 50 plants on it, all potted. Many of them are perched on log segments, both purely for the visual effect and to keep the hungry rabbits from munching them (Debbie won't let me shoot the damned things!).

The photos below were all taken this morning in a binge shoot. It felt good to spend a little time with a hobby; I haven't taken many just-for-fun photos for a while, having been so immersed in my work. All of them are in natural light, with a 100mm macro lens and a polarizer.

There is only one native plant in the entire collection on our patio: a Western Redbud. The other plants you see below include honeysuckle, rosemary, thyme, lantana, guava, polygala, Texas sage, Cape honeysuckle, a bloomin' basil, phlox, garlic, and more...

Don't forget: you can click on any photo to get a larger version...

Enjoy!

12,000 Tossed-Away Flags...

After the Democratic convention in Denver, crews cleaned up the mess – including about 12,000 American flags of many different sizes. They threw them away.

No matter what you think about the American flag, you have to admit that it is a powerful symbol to many – and that for a campaign for President to throw 12,000 flags in the garbage is bound to be interpreted negatively by many people, including even some in the Democratic party. Not everybody sees the American flag as just another piece of cloth. It seems a remarkably stupid move, most charitably interpreted, perhaps, as a stunning tone-deafness to the sensitivities of many patriotic Americans.

Now the Republicans are going to make some hay out of the incident. It seems a worker at Invesco field rescued the flags, and some veterans are going to bring them on-stage at a Republican campaign event in Colorado. Somewhere, someone in the Obama campaign is kicking him or her self right now. Hard.

At the Denver Post, David Harsanyi reports the story, and then wonders what the Democrats were supposed to have done with them. You can almost hear the sneering “They're just some leftover cloth, folks!” Commenters are quick to answer for him – there are, after all, rather a lot of things one might do with some surplus flags. But apparently those things are hard to think of for people of a certain mindset...

Update: A commenter claims that the convention just left the flags at Invesco field, and a Republican-owned company, responsible for cleanup, threw them away. Firstly, even if that were true, the Democratic convention still made the choice to just leave them there, instead of doing something more likely to be interpreted positively. Second, if this claim were true, you'd think it would be in the (many) news stories reporting the incident, and would be the subject of a response from the Obama campaign. It is neither. So until someone can back up this allegation, I'm treating it as business-as-usual smears-and-lies from the fruitcakes and loons on the left. My commenter may well not be one of them, mind you – just a bit more credulous than I am...

Obama's Existential Crisis...

Patrick Poole, writing over at PJM, makes a case that the Obama campaign is facing an existential crisis. From the article:

In his selection of Gov. Palin, McCain has exposed what was perhaps Obama’s greatest weakness, namely how the Obama project has really been a last-ditch attempt by Democrats to extend the miserable life of the New Deal/Great Society Democratic Party — the very bloated big government model they have pushed with the past three candidates: Al Gore, John Kerry, and now Barack Obama. Can anyone really tell the difference between these political triplets?

Make no mistake; Democrats are frantic now that the man behind the curtain has been revealed. Despite their shameless attempt to mask their plans behind identity politics, the Obama campaign has always been about big government liberalism, labor union dinosaurs, and K Street fat-cat lobbyists — Washington politics as usual. America saw this with his vice-presidential pick, Joe Biden.

Read the whole thing over at PJM.

Oh, lordy, I hope he's right...

Some Beautiful Music...

Yes, I know it's religious music. That doesn't stop it from being beautiful!

I am in awe of the skill of these a capella singers, nuns from the St. Elizabeth Monastery in Belorussia...

Why, Oh Why?

Fergus Shanahan, a British journalist writing for The Sun in London, compares Sarah Palin to the current crop of British politicians:

Palin shows us how it's done
From FERGUS SHANAHAN

WHY, why, why can’t WE have a Sarah Palin?

That was the question churning in my mind as I witnessed this astonishing American presidential race.

A week ago few in Britain had heard of Palin.

Today, the moose-huntin’ mom is the most talked-about woman in the world.

And with good reason.

Her sensational performance at the Republican convention may turn out to be the moment the White House slipped from Barack Obama’s grasp.

She was an electrifying mix of passion, energy, optimism and plain speaking. The exact opposite of the slippery, two-faced, depressing bunch of third-raters who parade on our Westminster stage.

My first reaction to this was to wonder: Why, why, why, can't we have the likes of a Fergus Shanahan on the staff of (say) the New York Times? How refreshing that would be compared to the pap that rag feeds us today.

I rather like the rough-and-tumble, no-holds-barred, heavy-on-the-humor style of the British press. There's much to disagree with on the content, but the style I greatly appreciate – most especially the unabashed advocacy of positions, and the lack of pretense about “objectivity” so laughably claimed by our press here. Their newspapers are much more along the lines of our talk radio. Oh, and they make money, too – something you'd think our down-and-nearly-out newspapers would pay attention to...

Quote of the Day...

Ilan Samson, talking about why he's in San Diego:

We are here to stay, because this is the place where people do things. They're enthusiastic, as opposed to Europe where they cleverly talk about things.

Taken from this article in Voice of San Diego. Samson is an Israeli who has lived in Europe for years, and recently moved here to pursue the development of a new kind of calculator.

What initially piqued my interest in this interview was the calculator (called “Qama”). What makes it different than an ordinary calculator is that it won't provide the answer until you give it a reasonable estimate of what the answer should be. This is exactly the aspect of using a slide rule for calculating that pushed me into becoming proficient with arithmetic and algebra (especially), along with some other specific areas of mathematics. With a slide rule, you get the digits of the answer, but not the magnitude. For example, you might get the result ‘535’ – but you don't know whether that's 5.35, 53500, or 0.000535. To get the complete answer, you must estimate the correct answer (within an order of magnitude), and then use the slide rule to give you the digits. By using the magnitude from your estimate and the digits from the slide rule, you get the right answer – and only by doing that.

Which sounds exactly like what Qama is doing. I think Samson is onto something here...

Palin Rumors...

Charles Martin has a running list, updated as needed, of all the nasty-but-debunked rumors being spread about Sarah Palin since the day she was announced for the Republican VP slot. As I write this, he's listing 46 of them...

Huh?

At first this article caught my interest because the main subject was interesting: an archaeological find of humans in Switzerland some 5,000 years ago. But as I read the lead, I did a double-take:

Some 5,000 years ago, on a day with weather much like today's, a prehistoric person tread high up in what is now the Swiss Alps, wearing goat leather pants, leather shoes and armed with a bow and arrows.

The unremarkable journey through the Schnidejoch pass, a lofty trail 2,756 metres (9,000 feet) above sea level, has been a boon to scientists. But it would never have emerged if climate change were not melting the nearby glacier.

The emphasis above is mine. The rest of the article make clear the author's believe that the glaciers are melting today because of anthropomorphic (i.e., human-caused) global warming (AGW).

So...in the space of three sentences – the first three, no less – and with no apparent intended irony or sarcasm, this article (1) states plainly that 5,000 years ago the climate under today's glacier was warm, and (2) introduces the notion that anthropomorphic global warming is causing the glacier to melt, thus revealing our frozen Swiss hunter.

Presumably not even the most fanatic believer in AGW believes that the warm climate 5,000 years ago was caused by human activity. What amazes me is their assured acceptance of the notion that the many warm cycles our planet has experienced in the past are all different (and ok, somehow) than the current warming (assuming, even, that such warming is really occurring – something I am none too sure about). In other words, even though Earth has had hundreds of warm periods, dozens of them within the span of human history, AGW believers are certain that if another warming period occurs, it could only be because of (bad!) human activity.

And this set of assumptions is pervasive enough to make it into completely unrelated articles like this one.

I heard an interesting theory at work a few days ago. My coworker proposed this notion: that mankind has some sort of deep need to always be facing some upcoming disaster. Therefore if no real disaster is readily at hand, mankind will make one up through some sort of organic community process.

As I think back over my lifetime, it's not hard to plug in the looming disaster over each period of my life – the Soviets and their super-technology when I was a kid (think Sputnik), then the Communists and their quest for world domination. Oh, and let's not forget nuclear winter, over-population, the year 2000, and on and on. Yup, there always seems to have been one overriding looming disaster, except on a few occasions when we had two of them at once. Makes me wonder if my coworker might be right...

Your Morning Ponder...

Fascinating post over at Captain Capitalism, wherein the Captain makes a connection between lefties and terrorists. Here's a sample:

"Hey, Rahib. Do you want to go and get a degree in engineering, go to mosque, raise some kids and maybe some goats?

or...

"Go to the Western Infidel stronghold of London and against insurmountable odds wage an underground, underdog war in an epic and never-ending galactic fight against the evil, villainous forces of Capitalism, Christianity, America and Western Culture in a desperate attempt to convert the people of the world to Islam and destroy those that won't, while you guarantee yourself a position in heaven along with 72 brown-eyed virgins even though you have not the equipment to enjoy them!"

Again, what seems more heroic and romantic and would play to the psychoses of a brainwashed Islamic ego-manic?

Grab a cup of coffee and take 10 minutes or so to absorb the whole thing. There's lots of Saturday-morning brain-starterness in there...