Building a Radio, from Scratch...

Ran across this fascinating story from World War II, about British prisoners in a Japanese POW camp who built a working radio receiver from scratch. A taste:

I should come back to the capacitors on that, because we had to insulate the layers of those which we did by putting a layer of newspaper (a few people had newspaper and various things, for other reasons than newspaper of course, but then we had no other toilet requisites in the party) and by soaking this in some coconut oil we could insulate each layer after we wound it, and with a piece of this bee wire - we had something like fifty feet of it - wound round this part of the fish plate, we made a fairly good choke coil. And then a bigger capacitor, which was no trouble, having had success with the small one, to just wrap as much tin foil as we could round another sheet of newspaper which finished up about 18 inches long by about three quarters of an inch in diameter. We didn't even try to measure the capacitance of it, because we couldn't do anything about it anyway, except put more wire on. And that in effect was a fairly good rectifier, a very dangerous one because we had the 110 all right but we had a bit over that by the time we had rectified it, and we don't know because we had no means of measuring it.

Finally, the valve; we joined the valve by winding the clean little bee wire around it and then plugging it with any insulating material we could get to make it stick, - no valve holder, of course. So eventually we produced a receiver of sorts, except it wouldn't oscillate. We tried building more, another choke coil, and this went on for ages; there was no possibility we could get this valve to oscillate. I think it's recommended according to a friend of mine who had an amateur license, he thought that about 120 volts was the best we could get and there was no way we could get that by trying to smooth this any more. So the only avenue open was to bribe one Chinese working at the power station who was very much our way, and of course in those days was a nationalist Chinese.

For my readers unfamiliar with antique British English, a “valve” is what Americans would have called a “vacuum tube”, or just “tube”. For my younger readers, a vacuum tube is a device used for electronic amplification and rectification before the advent of semiconductor transistors and diodes.

Now I have built some electronic devices (including a radio receiver) from bits and pieces. My dad helped me build an old-fashioned crystal radio this way. But we had some purchased components (the headphone, the rectifying crystal, wire, etc.), easy access to things like waxed paper and aluminum foil, and some basic test equipment. These POWs not only had extremely limited materials at hand (though they were uninhibited about bribes, blackmail, and theft), they had no test equipment and no reference material. For instance, when they designed a capacitor, they had to either remember or re-invent the basic formulae describing capacitance!

One side-effect of our rapidly advancing technology base is that there are now relatively few people who understand the basics and fundamentals. In electrical engineering, for example, most time is necessarily spent on advanced integrated systems, and very little on the fundamentals of components. After all, in modern design work that newly minted engineers are likely to do, there's little use for the primitive components such as those the POWs made. On the other hand, back then electrical engineers generally were directly involved in the design of such components – so that knowledge would have been much more widespread in the engineering community...

Remember This Photo?

One of our warriors, caught by a firefight with the Taliban at an, err, inopportune moment. The photo made him famous. Now this:

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) - The soldier who was photographed fighting the Taliban in his boxer shorts says he's glad to be back home in Texas after his yearlong deployment to Afghanistan—especially on the Fourth of July.

Specialist Zachary Boyd says he initially thought he'd get in trouble after an Associated Press photo showed him with other soldiers behind sandbags—while wearing his pink boxers and flip-flops, plus his helmet and bulletproof vest.

The Fort Worth soldier said he had jumped up from a nap when his unit came under fire and didn't want to waste time putting on his uniform.

But Boyd has been praised for his courage.

And now that he's home in Fort Worth he says his boxers will be displayed in the 1st Infantry Division museum at Fort Riley, Kansas.

Gotta love 'em...

America...

Thanking the Troops...

Two hundred and thirty three years ago today, our ancestors declared this country's independence from Britain. Our soldiers fought the Revolutionary War to make that declaration reality, and in all the intervening years, through many skirmishes, battles, and wars, our armed forces have kept this country a free and independent nation.

If you happen to see one of our warriors today, take a moment to thank them, won't you? You'll be glad you did, too. A couple of weeks ago I bought a cup of coffee and doughnuts for a couple of Army soldiers as we all waited for our flights at the Houston Airport. I sat down with them for a short conversation. Turns out they were both headed to Afghanistan on their second tour, and they were looking forward to it – they feel like they're doing something that matters, that makes a difference. And their smiles and warm words told me how much it meant to them to be acknowledged and appreciated...

If you'd like to make a more tangible contribution, I can't think of a better way than donating items, money, or your time to Homefront San Diego. These fine folks – all volunteers – find ways to help out the families of our deployed warriors.

San Diego is an expensive area to live in, yet we have more military here than in any other County in the U.S. Many of our lower-ranking military really don't make enough money to make ends meet – and when they're deployed, things can get very difficult for the family they left behind. Simple things that most of us would consider just irritating can become almost insurmountable challenges for them. For instance, the wife of an E-4 Marine with a couple of kids may simply have no way to handle a transmission problem on her car – she can't afford to get it fixed, she can't fix it herself, and yet she absolutely has to have the car to get around. Homefront San Diego will step into such a situation and find a way to resolve it. They're very creative about the solutions – maybe they'll find a local shop to fix it for free (or for parts cost); maybe they'll find a replacement car; or maybe they'll simply pay for getting it fixed. But one way or the other, they'll get that family back in its car. One can easily imagine what a relief it would be to the deployed warrior to know that his or her family has a safety net like Homefront San Diego to fall back on...

California Budget Crisis...

The entire planet knows that the state of California is in the midst of an awful budget crisis. The legislature has been unable to agree on a budget, primarily because the politicians are unable to bring themselves to significantly reduce expenses, nor can they find any politically acceptable way to raise taxes to pay for what they want to spend. Meanwhile, the state is completely out of money and has taken to paying many with IOUs, and forcing state workers to take several days per month in unpaid furloughs.

So one could be forgiven for thinking that the state legislators would be busy in meetings focused on resolving the impasse. If that's you, then your innocence and naivete are showing. Our legislators are meeting, all right – but they're discussing just about anything other than the budget impasse. For example, here's some video of a committee debating the propriety of lopping cow tails (with Schwarzennegger's admonishments):


Rope.
Tree.
Some assembly required.

Hopeyness and Changitude of the Day...

The Obama administration's total commitment to respecting the science.

WTF of the Day...

No animal was hurt in making that meat at your grocery store.

Oh, my.

I really don't know what to say.

But consider this: the person who wrote this is (presumably) an adult – and an eligible voter. What does that tell you about the viability of a representative democracy? Hmm?

Preserving the Declaration...

How the original Declaration of Independence, handwritten in ink on parchment, is preserved.

John to Abigail...

On July 3, 1776, John Adams wrote this letter to Abigail Adams (his wife):

Had a Declaration of Independency been made seven Months ago, it would have been attended with many great and glorious Effects . . . . We might before this Hour, have formed Alliances with foreign States. -- We should have mastered Quebec and been in Possession of Canada .... You will perhaps wonder, how such a Declaration would have influenced our Affairs, in Canada, but if I could write with Freedom I could easily convince you, that it would, and explain to you the manner how. -- Many Gentlemen in high Stations and of great Influence have been duped, by the ministerial Bubble of Commissioners to treat .... And in real, sincere Expectation of this effort Event, which they so fondly wished, they have been slow and languid, in promoting Measures for the Reduction of that Province. Others there are in the Colonies who really wished that our Enterprise in Canada would be defeated, that the Colonies might be brought into Danger and Distress between two Fires, and be thus induced to submit. Others really wished to defeat the Expedition to Canada, lest the Conquest of it, should elevate the Minds of the People too much to hearken to those Terms of Reconciliation which they believed would be offered Us. These jarring Views, Wishes and Designs, occasioned an opposition to many salutary Measures, which were proposed for the Support of that Expedition, and caused Obstructions, Embarrassments and studied Delays, which have finally, lost Us the Province.

All these Causes however in Conjunction would not have disappointed Us, if it had not been for a Misfortune, which could not be foreseen, and perhaps could not have been prevented, I mean the Prevalence of the small Pox among our Troops .... This fatal Pestilence compleated our Destruction. -- It is a Frown of Providence upon Us, which We ought to lay to heart.

But on the other Hand, the Delay of this Declaration to this Time, has many great Advantages attending it. -- The Hopes of Reconciliation, which were fondly entertained by Multitudes of honest and well meaning tho weak and mistaken People, have been gradually and at last totally extinguished. -- Time has been given for the whole People, maturely to consider the great Question of Independence and to ripen their judgments, dissipate their Fears, and allure their Hopes, by discussing it in News Papers and Pamphletts, by debating it, in Assemblies, Conventions, Committees of Safety and Inspection, in Town and County Meetings, as well as in private Conversations, so that the whole People in every Colony of the 13, have now adopted it, as their own Act. -- This will cement the Union, and avoid those Heats and perhaps Convulsions which might have been occasioned, by such a Declaration Six Months ago.

But the Day is past. The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America.

I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.

You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. -- I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. -- Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not.

John got the date wrong – we celebrate July 4th, when the Declaration of Indepdence was issued – but everything else still fits.

If John could somehow be transported to see the current Union and its history, I wonder what he'd think of it? There's much I'm sure he'd be proud of. I'm equally sure he'd be appalled at the degree to which the modern U.S. intrudes upon its citizens. The rate of taxation would astonish him – it far exceeds the tax levels that formed part of the motivation behind the original revolution.

But it would be most interesting to hear his overall “take” on the situation...

On Astrology...

Astrology is a blatantly inexplicable waste of time. Its proponents fall into two categories: informed, soulless charlatans who profit from hoodwinking gullible people, and ignorant putzes who cannot fathom the single digit arithmetic necessary to understand why astrology could not possibly work. It’s a 1970s-era fantasy clung to by the simple-minded who cannot possibly admit that the complexity of their own, boring lives has now exceeded their ability to figure it out for themselves, and as a result they need to blame their self-inflicted misfortunes on imaginary mind powers radiated from space. Astrologers and the people who believe in it are caught up in a mindless fantasy world of spells and crystals. The only difference between astrologers and the dorks who dress up in Hobbit costumes whacking each other with foam swords is that the latter group is smart enough to know, at the end of the day, they really aren’t Middle Earth characters. Grow the foxtrot up, put a brain back in your head, and face up to the fact that you and only you alone are responsible for your life, already.

What he said.

The 2012 Pelosi GTxi SS/RT Sport Edition...

Iowahawk improves an already great parody:

Barone on the Dangers of Liberal Judges...

Well, that's not actually his theme, but it might as well be – at least in this passage:

This is the sort of thing Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg described in the text as just the workings of politics. Writing in Slate, Yale Law faculty member Emily Bazelon goes further. She laments that the promotion test rewarded memorization and that it favored "'fire buffs' -- guys who read fire suppression manuals on their down time."

She is outraged that a fire department might want to promote firefighters who know more about suppressing fires, rescuing victims and protecting their colleagues rather than simply promote a predetermined number of members of specific racial groups whose self-appointed political spokesmen back the politicians in office.

Poster of the Day...

More here.

The Mustache, on Iran...

John Bolton is one of the consistently sane and adult voices on Iran. From his piece in today's Washington Post:

Only those most theologically committed to negotiation still believe Iran will fully renounce its nuclear program. Unfortunately, the Obama administration has a "Plan B," which would allow Iran to have a "peaceful" civil nuclear power program while publicly "renouncing" the objective of nuclear weapons. Obama would define such an outcome as "success," even though in reality it would hardly be different from what Iran is doing and saying now. A "peaceful" uranium enrichment program, "peaceful" reactors such as Bushehr and "peaceful" heavy-water projects like that under construction at Arak leave Iran with an enormous breakout capability to produce nuclear weapons in very short order. And anyone who believes the Revolutionary Guard Corps will abandon its weaponization and ballistic missile programs probably believes that there was no fraud in Iran's June 12 election. See "huge credibility gap," supra.

In short, the stolen election and its tumultuous aftermath have dramatically highlighted the strategic and tactical flaws in Obama's game plan. With regime change off the table for the coming critical period in Iran's nuclear program, Israel's decision on using force is both easier and more urgent. Since there is no likelihood that diplomacy will start or finish in time, or even progress far enough to make any real difference, there is no point waiting for negotiations to play out. In fact, given the near certainty of Obama changing his definition of "success," negotiations represent an even more dangerous trap for Israel.

I just hope he's right about Israel's willingness. That boils down, I think, to whether or not Obama has any success muzzling Bibi (Netanyahu). History would suggest that Bibi is hard to muzzle, fortunately...

The Issue For American Healthcare...

A slight exaggeration, perhaps. But Warren Meyer of CoyoteBlog has been consistently making the point nicely illustrated on the graph at right: that as people have more personal responsibility for paying the costs of their medical care, the prices come down.

The blog post linked above makes the case in much more detail. The fundamental point, though, is very simple: when people have to pay for something themselves, they'll start making decisions based on the value to themselves.

Outside the healthcare arena, everybody seems to accept this notion without argument. For example, when you buy a car, you weigh the cost of a particular model against its value to you. This gives the manufacturers a huge incentive to deliver more value for the dollar – the direct result of which is we can buy the marvelous machines that are today's cars (or computers, or whatever) at historically astonishingly low prices.

But healthcare in America today doesn't work this way. Patients have zero incentive to shop for more healthcare value for the dollar. Why should they, when the insurance company is going to pay for nearly whatever they ask for? Ditto for doctors – they actually have disincentives for saving money. Their best interest (reduced litigation) is to over-order both diagnostics and theraputics.

Meyer's suggested fix is to reform healthcare to reintroduce market forces. I'm in 100% agreement with him on that general principal. There are a bazillion ways one could actually do this, and picking one would make an interesting public debate. But...I'm afraid that politically any such plan is dead on arrival. Americans have gotten used to their healthcare system, and they like the open-ended nature of it. Why wouldn't they? And, unfortunately, the vast majority of Americans do not understand that our current system is headed inexorably toward a very painful collision with the wall of economic reality...

Guess Who Gets the California IOUs?

Felix Salmon (Reuters) offers this handy chart (click to enlarge) of who California will “pay” with IOUs and who will get cash.

There seems to be a 100% correspondence between cash payments and politically connected groups, and no application whatsoever of common sense or morality. Our overlords have decided that instead of funding the genuinely needy with California's tight cash, we're going to fund government workers' pensions – that would be those same government workers that spent their way into this mess.

Where is the justice in this?

Here's my suggestion for justice:

Rope (lots of it).
Trees (Muir Woods would make a nice spot, wouldn't it?).
Politicians (all of 'em - let's start over!).
Some assembly required (easy stuff, folks – just a few basic knots).

Flying Pig Moment...

When Helen Thomas bludgeons Obama's press representative over the White House's tightly controlled “town hall” meeting, you know that somewhere pigs are flying...


What this all means, I don't know. All I know is that I certainly never expected, a mere six months into the Obama administration, to see the press doing anything other than kiss Obama's butt – especially Helen Thomas...

Frankensenator...

Al Franken has won the election, says the Minnesota Supreme Court. The blow-by-blow battle for this election is too complicated and convoluted for a mere blog post – I'd need 100 pages or so to do it justice. But my take on it is real simple: Franken and his lawyers were very clever, very ambitious, and completely uninhibited by concerns of propriety or legality – and they stole that election, plain and simple. This has consequences:

• Minnesota now has a certifiable lunatic as a senator. That sounds awful, but Franken is not the first such Senator, even in the current Congress. I suspect there are at least 10 others that fit that category (and no, they're not all Democrats).
  
  
• The Democrats will now have 60 votes in the Senate, enough to quash any Republican attempt at a filibuster (and the filibuster is the only way Republicans can currently stop a bill if the vote is purely partisan). Some commentators are making this sound like the end of the world. I don't think it's quite that bad, and it's not like this is the first time that's ever happened. In practice, politics is far from a precise science – and it's actually quite difficult to find an issue on which all 60 Democrats will vote their party's way. What traditionally happens in these scenarios is that the minority party identifies a few vulnerable votes in the majority party, and then puts enormous pressure (mainly through publicity) on those Senators to vote against their party – and this technique, more often than not, works just fine.
  

To me, the biggest impact of Al Franken's win is his rather open and blatant theft of the election. I've read extensively about the Minnesota contest, and it's clear to me that Franken won basically through simple and effective manipulation of the electoral process and the subsequent court battle – not by the now somewhat quaint and old-fashioned way of having the most votes. I'm not saying that this is the first time an election in the U.S. has been stolen, for clearly others have been. What's different here is that there was (so far as I know) no rigging or vote-buying done here – this election was stolen by litigation. And that's a scary precedent. Clearly we will see more of this, and I can't see any way that's good for the country...

On Honduras...

Joel M. writes to ask me what I think of the shenanigans in Honduras. This editorial at Investor's Business Daily sums up my take on the overall situation very well. But this excellent Ramirez cartoon perfectly summarizes my take on the politics...

The Spirit Still Moves...

Spirit – NASA's Martian explorer, that is – is still alive and kicking on the surface of Mars, over five years into it's 90 day planned mission. Two big events recently: an unexpected windstorm cleaned the dust off its solar panels, giving it a big energy boost, and it got stuck in the sand. The crew at JPL is carefully maneuvering, trying to get unstuck. The fact that one of the six wheels is stuck (and has been, for a long time now) isn't helping.

But during all the messing about trying to get unstuck, Spirit is still doing science. At the moment, it's taking advantage of the fact that its wheels are digging through the loose, sandy soil to study what's been exposed. And it's interesting stuff!

The Quite Possibly Never-Ending War On Ants...

Almost a year ago, in my ant-conquering arrogance, I made a crazy statement about almost being ready to declare victory. I hereby officially retract that grotesquely optimistic statement.

However...that is not to say that the RTV strategy is without value. Quite the contrary. Before about a year ago, our routine reaction to discovering ants was to break out the weapons of mass ant destruction (chemical weapons, that is) and madly spray them over anything that crawled within a 150 foot (or so) radius of our home. Most commonly this approach would immediately reduce the ant numbers, but not drive them completely away.

The new strategy, now being employed for about a year, is much different. No weapons of mass ant destruction are involved – just some ordinary RTV (self-curing silicone rubber, commonly sold in caulking tubes). I simply follow the ants (generally in the kitchen) back to whatever hole they're entering from, and caulk it. After that, for somewhere between 10 minutes and 2 weeks, we are ant-free – completely, totally, and utterly ant-free. And this despite the lack of chemical warfare on the ant nests outside.

This morning was quite typical. We noticed a few ants running around on our kitchen island – these were “explorers”, looking for some tasty treat. I gave them one – a dish of sugar water. Three hours later, there was a well-defined ant trail between the dish of sugar water and their entry point, which was a crack between the baseboard and the wall. I caulked the crack and cleaned up all the ants I could see with a paper towel. I knew from experience what would happen next – you can see it in the photo above.

First, the RTV caulking acts like some kind of repulsion shield to the ants – they won't touch it. That's the blue-circled area in the photo. Second, they'd start congregating in total confusion nearby the old entry point. I think what's going on there is that more and more ants show up, each laying down a pheremone trail, and that just attracts other ants all the more. About an hour after I caulked the crack, I took the photo above. In another couple hours, there will be another congregation – the more far-ranging explorers trying to get back to the nest.

So now we're ant-free once more. But I have no idea how long it will be until they pop up somewhere else...

Jamulian Morning...

Yesterday morning I went “down the hill” a bit later than usual, as I was called into work unexpectedly. As I crested the hill on Skyline Truck Trail, just before coming down into Jamul, this scene greeted me. It's typical for this time of year – clear and sunny east of Jamul town, but foggy as you get closer to the town.

These two photos aren't the best – I took them with my cell phone. But you'll get the idea...

The photo at left is looking to the south from my vantage point. The mountain in the distance on the left is Otay Mountain; to the right is San Miguel. The small peak just below Otay is Jamul Butte.

The photo above right is toward the west. San Miguel is in the center, with a couple of smaller, much closer hilltops jutting out of the mist like little islands...

Ulysses, RIP...

One of our most productive robotic explorers is nearly at the end of its road. Ulysses was launched (via space shuttle) in 1990, and reached it's orbit around the sun in 1992. Ever since then – nearly 18 years – it's been doing great science. Its measurements of the sun, and most especially the sun's magnetic field, have contributed enormously to humanity's knowledge about the solar system.

Ulysses is yet another JPL/ESA project that far exceeded its original expectations, sending home years more science data than was originally planned. Last year the Ulysses team was almost ready to end the mission due to some failures – but some very clever engineering eked out yet another year of successful operation.

But now a combination of circumstances has brought a decision to shut down Ulysses. The biggest factor appears to be this: it's low-powered radio transmitter and great distance means that Ulysses can only be heard on JPL's 70 meter antenna network. This network has great demands upon it, so its time is valuable. Ulysses has been getting by with “spare time” use of the antenna network, meaning that it took whatever dregs other missions made available through last-minute scheduling changes, etc. Ulysses is getting further and further from earth, so its signal is weaker and weaker – which means a lower and lower bitrate on the data even when it can get antenna time. Simultaneously the demands on the 70 meter antenna network are getting even more intense. So the mission controllers decided that Ulysses had finally reached the point where the science value of its data was no longer worth the cost, both in terms of antenna time and in terms of maintaining the mission team.

So on June 30 (this coming Tuesday), the mission controllers will send a signal to Ulysses to tell it to turn itself off. It will remain permanently in orbit around the sun, a monument to mankind's achievments that will remain no matter what we manage to do to ourselves...

More information here, here, and here.

Anthropomorphic Global Warming Skepticism...

Image via Wikipedia

As I've noted in previous posts, skepticism about anthropomorphic (human-caused) global warming is on the rise. Here's yet another piece of evidence for that: a nice piece in the WSJ by Kimberly Strassel, a well-known political columnist. She writes:

The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. -- 13 times the number who authored the U.N.'s 2007 climate summary for policymakers. Joanne Simpson, the world's first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak "frankly" of her nonbelief. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming "the worst scientific scandal in history." Norway's Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the "new religion." A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton's Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled. (Both Nature and Science magazines have refused to run the physicists' open letter.)

The collapse of the "consensus" has been driven by reality. The inconvenient truth is that the earth's temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02. Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans. A global financial crisis has politicians taking a harder look at the science that would require them to hamstring their economies to rein in carbon.

Some of this skepticism, I'm sure, is the natural result of the political machinery absorbing the enormous cost of global warming “mitigation”, and wondering whether this cost made sense politically. A few politicians may even be wondering if the cost makes sense in ordinary terms (e.g., the benefit is greater than the cost). But mostly, I suspect, the new skepticism is derived from the politician's hyper-sensitivity to issues that might stand between them and re-election – and they're hearing from the electorate that global warming mitigation is most definitely one of those issues. I know my congress-critters have heard from me on that point, loud and clear – and two of them have responded by indicating that they're hearing such resistance a lot.

Your Lyin' Eyes...

The picture at right (click to enlarge) appears to show a pair of blue spirals and a pair of green spirals on a red/purple background. That's what your eyes are plainly telling you.

Your eyes are lying.

Both of those spirals are exactly the same color.

I didn't believe it either, so I enlarged the picture in GIMP and examined it under extreme magnification. Those colors really are the same!

All is explained here and here.

His First Time...

His first time meeting a politician, that is. John C. Write describes the encounter like this (my quote of the day):

The speech was an eye-opener. He referred to no principles, offered no promises, spoke of no future. All he did was say he planned to loot the taxpayers and give the swag to St. Mary's County if elected.

It was like listening to a psychopath. With such innocent charm and cold realism he talked about robbing others and splitting the take with us in the room. There was no sugar coating or double-talk: he nakedly said he meant to take and take and take, and if we voted for him, we would get a cut. He didn't even try to hide his meaning.

Read the whole post.

Five Dozen Taliban Reach Room Temperature...

Via the indispensable Bill Roggio reporting at The Long War Journal:

The US carried out its second Predator airstrike inside South Waziristan today. Unmanned Predator aircraft killed more than 65 Taliban fighters in a follow-on attack near the headquarters for Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud.

The Predator strike aircraft fired three Hellfire missiles as Taliban fighters gathered for a funeral of Khog Wali, a leader in Baitullah's army in South Waziristan who was among six Taliban fighters killed in the first US airstrike earlier today.

Commander Sangeen, a Taliban commander from Afghanistan, was reported to be among those killed in the strike at the funeral. Predators are said to have fired on Taliban vehicles as they attempted to leave the scene of the attack, Dawn reported.

Outstanding!

Employee of the Month...

From Jim M.:

A young guy from Wisconsin moves to Florida ang goes to a big everything-under-one-roof department store looking for a job.

The Manager says, "Do you have any sales experience?"

The kid says "Yeah. I was a salesman back in Wisconsin."

Well, the boss liked the kid and gave him the job. "You Start tomorrow. I'll come down after we close and see how you did."

His first day on the job was rough, but he got through it..

After the store was locked up , the boss came down. "How many customers bought something from you today?"

The kid says, "One."

The boss says, "Just one? Our sales people average 20 to 30 customers a day. How much was the sale for?"

The kid says, "$101,237.65."

The boss says, "$101,237.65? What the heck did you sale?"

The kid says, First, I sold him a small fishhook. Then I sold him a medium fishhook. Then I sold him a larger fishhook. Then I sold him a fishing rod. Then I asked him where he was going fishing, and he said down the coast, so I told him he was going to need a boat, so we went down to the boat department, so I sold him a twin engine Chris Craft. Then he said he didn't think his Honda Civic would pull it, so I took him down to the automotive department and sold him that 4+4 Expedition."

The boss said "A guy came here to buy a fish hook and you sold him a BOAT and a TRUCK?"

The kid said "No, the guy came here to by Tampons for his wife, and I said, Dude, your weekend's shot, you should go fishing."

Bob and the Blonde...

From my mom...

Bob, a handsome dude, walked into a sports bar around 9:58 PM. He sat down next to a blonde at the bar and stared up at the TV.

The 10 PM news was coming on. The news crew was covering the story of a man on the ledge of a large building preparing to jump.

The blonde looked at Bob and said, "Do you think he'll jump?"

Bob said, "You know, I bet he'll jump."

The blonde replied, "Well, I bet he won't."

Bob placed a $20 bill on the bar and said, "You're on!"

Just as the blonde placed her money on the bar, the guy on the ledge did a swan dive off the building, falling to his death.

The blonde was very upset, but willingly handed her $20 to Bob, saying, "Fair's fair. Here's your money."

Bob replied, "I can't take your money. I saw this earlier on the 5 PM news, and so I knew he would jump."

The blonde replied, "I did too, but didn't think he'd do it again."

Bob took the money...

Amazing a capella...

Much more here. Thanks, Dick C...

Obama and Ice Cream with his Kids...

A lot of blogs (and even some news outlets) are giving Obama grief for going out to have ice cream with his two daughters while Iran is unraveling. My readers know well that I have little agreement with Obama in the political sphere, but attacking him because he went out to have ice cream with his kids? Come on, folks, the man has to have some kind of life, and he's got to be a dad to his kids at least once in a while. In this big old world there's never going to be a moment when the globe is totally at piece and there's nothing for the POTUS to pay attention to besides his kids.

So my reaction is a little out of step with the rap he's getting from most blogs. From my perspective, this is one of the most admirable things I've seen him do – taking a few minutes away from what must feel like an all-consuming responsibility to spend some quality time with his kids. Kudos, Mr. President.

Now...please get the rest of your act a little bit together. Someday, your little girls will be grown up – and they'll read the judgments of history about your actions as POTUS. Make your actions the right ones for our country, not just for your party...

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Back Home...

It's always so good to come home... I arrived early yesterday evening, and had a lazy, comfy few hours before going to sleep – and then we didn't get up until after dawn (very late for us), when our three field spaniels decided we'd been in bed entirely too long. They're very efficient at waking us up – they just walk all over us, jumping occasionally; that's all it takes...

Coming home last night, the best part (as always) was the greetings from my honey, my dogs, and Maka Lea (our little challenged kitty).

While I was away, poor Debbie was suffering through two challenges of her own. I really hated being away while this was going on...

The first one was her recovering broken arm. The cast came off two weeks ago, but she's been in awful pain ever since. This week she finally reached the point where she couldn't stand it any more and started making insistent calls both to the doctor caring for her arm and to our GP. In the end, they diagnosed her as having reflex sympathetic dystrophy (RDS) – basically some nerve damage, most likely caused either by the injury itself, the setting of the bones, or possibly by the initial cast being too tight. The good news is that both the pain and the underlying cause of the pain are eminently treatable. She's now taking neurontin (aka gabapentin), which I picked up on the way back from the airport last night. This drug, originally used as an anti-epileptic, has recently been found to be useful for people suffering from RDS. The prognosis is that in about three weeks she'll start seeing improvement (and the pain should disappear immediately). Fingers crossed on this one...

The second challenge involved Aka, our oldest cat. We've had Aka a long, long time – our best guess is that we adopted him in 1988, 21 years ago. He was a feral kitty in our (then) Chula Vista neighborhood, about six months old, when Debbie captured and tamed him. He's always been aggressive (typical of a feral cat), so he's always lived in our outdoor cattery. For the last years his companion has been Koa, our psychotic kitty. Somehow the two of them became best buddies, inseperable. Aka's been going downhill for months, losing weight and slowly but inexorably getting weaker and weaker. At this point in our lives we've lived through the loss of many of our furry companions, and we've become quite sensitized to the challenges of deciding exactly when the time has come to say goodbye to one of them. Our hearts always tell us to do more and more to try to restore them to health, but our heads tell us that sometimes that's for our benefit and not our friend's. On Wednesday this week, Debbie was very worried about Aka's condition, and took him down to Dr. Christine Wilson, our wonderful vet in Jamul. The folks there got some fluids into him, but couldn't get him to eat (this is quite typical for old or sick cats – they just stop eating). Blood tests brought bad news – Aka was suffering from massive systemic, most likely from a metastasizing cancer or some equally disastrous organ failure. He wasn't suffering, just fading away. Usually Debbie and I face these decisions together, but this time I wasn't home and Debbie made the call on her own (but it's certainly one I agreed with). One of our friends and neighbors (Paula C.) went down to Dr. Wilson's with her, and Debbie held Aka as slipped away...

On a completely different note, each of my three flights on this trip had an interesting component.

On my first flight (San Diego to Newark), I sat next to a fellow who's family (wife and four kids) was scattered around us, all in middle seats (they were on standby, and so got the worst seats). They were all from Tijuana, Mexico (a large city just across the border from San Diego), en route to Madrid, Spain where he had just gotten a new (and good) job. I had an interesting conversation with him during the trip, but the best part happened just before we landed in Newark. During our final approach, we had an excellent view of New York City and the Hudson Bay area. Two of his sons were in the rows immediately behind us, and we heard them shouting “estatua de la libertad!” – Statue of Liberty. In fact, we had a great view of Lady Liberty. Isn't it interesting that some young (around 8 or 9 years old) Mexican kids recognized it immediately, and were excited to see it? I can't help but wonder how many American kids of the same age would react like that...

My second flight (Newark to Houston) started off about as unexciting as it could – we just sat on the tarmac for almost two hours waiting to take off. Storms were causing traffic delays throughout the east coast, and planes were stacking up at all the major airports, Newark included. Finally we took off, and the pilots managed to make up all but 45 minutes of the delay. The flight to Houston was bumpy, but not exceptionally slow. The landing was something else altogether! We came in steep and fast, and slammed into the ground more forcefully than any other landing I can remember. From my seat I could see the wingtips, and it looked like they bent to within a foot or two of the ground as we hit, then oscillated five or six times before they started looking solid again. Nearly all of the overhead luggage bins sprang open, and quite a bit of luggage spilled out. The plane was a Boeing 767, and the arrangement of the luggage bins was such that most of the luggage spilled into the aisles. So far as I know, nobody was hurt by the hundreds of pieces of luggage that fell out. I ended up with a small suitcase in my lap – it sort of rolled onto me after falling down onto a big suitcase that had already fallen into the aisle. My laptop was in its case in the overhead, and it fell out but was caught by the shoulder strap tangling with the hinge – so no damage was done to my stuff. I'm pretty sure not everybody with a laptop was so lucky. There were some shouts and screams at the moment the luggage fell out, but no panic – and once we figured out that nobody had been hurt, there was much relieved laughter. Everybody helped scoop the luggage back up when the pilot paused on the taxiway and asked us to clear the aisles. By the time we got to the gate, the mood was downright jovial...

On my final flight (Houston to San Diego), the young lady sitting next to me was the most interesting element. She was about my height, extremely thin, with the kind of breathtakingly beautiful face that just stops you in your tracks. She was also one of the blackest people I have ever seen, ebony in the truest sense. The poor girl was terrified – after a while I was able to figure out that this was her first trip by air. She's from Ethiopia, and en route to San Diego to go to school at USD, where she had a full scholarship. She spoke only a kind of broken, pidgin English, but it was fascinating to hear her speak her native language (Amharic) on the cell phone; it sounded quite beautiful to my ears, melodic and lilting. We conversed (or tried to) for the entire trip – she was full of questions about San Diego and the environs, which I tried to answer as best I could. Some of her questions I had no clue about – such as whether there were any Ethiopian groceries or restaurants. Others I could help a bit more on, such as where were good communities to live, what kind of transportation was available, etc. She had absolutely no idea about any of these things, she was simply traveling into something completely unknown to her. If I understood her correctly, her scholarship was related somehow to a modeling contest, something she had won first in Ethiopia, then in Johannesburg, South Africa. The prize was a four year full scholarship (including living expenses) at her choice of four universities: USD, one in England, one in France, and one in South Africa. She said it has always been her dream to one day see America, so given this opportunity to actually live in America for four years, she snatched it instantly. She was the first person in her family (from some remote place in Ethiopia) to ever leave Ethiopia, when she traveled to Johannesburg. Her entire community is all excited about her opportunity in America, and her cell phone calls at every stop along the way were to various relatives and friends back home. She doesn't know anybody in San Diego, but did manage to find a church in San Diego that had some kind of a connection (I never did understand what she was telling me about that) to her church back home, so she's got some people to lean on for help. She's staying with a pastor and his wife for the first few weeks after she arrives, but she's got to find a place to live fairly quickly. Her reaction to all this seemed to be a mixture of excitement and terror, which is easy enough to understand. What a grand adventure, to be sure – but also what a wrenching and uncomfortable thing it must be to be torn from your community and sent halfway around the world to live with total strangers. I came away with a feeling that this very sensible young lady would do just fine. I also had the pleasure of hearing her say something very nice to hear: that she has been overwhelmed by how friendly and helpful the American strangers she's run into have been. She said that Ethiopians could learn a lot about human kindness from Americans...

A Million Frames per Second...

Suppose you've invented a video camera that can capture up to one million frames per second. How would you advertise this marvel of technology?

Why, you'd take cool movies of bullets striking targets, of course!

Where Does the Earth's Magnetic Field Come From?

For most of my adult life, the scientific consensus seemed to be that convection cells in the Earth's core, circulating molten metallic material, induced electric currents and created the earth's magnetic field. There has never been any proof for this consensus theory, however – nor has there been any good alternative theory.

But now a scientist has shown, through calculations, that variations in the observed magnetic field could, theortetically, be explained by electric currents flowing in our salt oceans (which are conductive). Fascinating stuff, and an interesting view of science being made...

Cassini Spots Ring Bumps...

Everything I've ever read about the rings of Saturn says that they are remarkably thin and sparse collections of dust and pebbles, swirling around Saturn in the same plane as the Saturn's satellites. Now I learn that there are mile-high “bumps” in the rings that were predicted by computer models of the rings, but never seen.

Until now, that is. Cassini took pictures!

Light Blogging Alert!

I'm away from home, on a business trip, and my attention will be largely on my work. Airlines willing, I'll be back home on Friday evening.

That is all.

Bumper Snicker...

“We're Not Happy!” - Iranians

The people of Iran (well, some of them, anyway) are not happy about the results of yesterday's elections. News reports are saying that many Iranians believe the election results were faked by the incumbent Ahmadinejad, and that the “reformist” candidate Mousavi actually won (and of course, Mousavi is claiming this). It would be nice to think that this presages some kind of internally-fomented revolution, but I think the mad mullahs are in firmer control than that.

Dang it.

Bumper Snicker...

The G8 Says “Undo It!”

The G8 finance ministers just finished their meeting in Lecce, Italy. As usual, they released a statement afterwards. Most unusually, the statement actually contained something very interesting and unexpected:

We discussed the need to prepare appropriate strategies for unwinding the extraordinary policy measures taken to respond to the crisis once the recovery is assured. These “exit strategies”, which may vary from country to country, are essential to promote a sustainable recovery over the long term. We asked the IMF to undertake the necessary analytical work to assist us with this process.

Whoa! The finance ministers want the G8 countries to unwind the remaining portions of the bailout programs once “recovery is assured” (a phrase that could be interpreted in all too many ways).

Unwinding is accounting-speak for "undo". In the U.S., the vast majority of the money from all the bailout programs has yet to be spent – and in some cases, it has yet to be borrowed. Unwinding these programs would mean repaying the borrowed money that has not yet been spent, and abandoning any future borrowing under these programs. In addition, unwinding would include converting any options, warrant, stock, etc. acquired by the government as part of the bailout (for example, the government's majority position in AIG) to cash, to repay the money borrowed to acquire them.

Dare we hope? Would the Obama administration have the good common sense to follow the G8's recommendations? Would they give back the money that they and the Bush administration stole from us?

My bet would be “No way, Jose!” But I would surely love to be wrong on this one...

Bumper Snicker...

Bolton on Israel and Iran...

Today's Wall Street Journal has a fascinating short analysis piece by John Bolton (aka “The Mustache”). His forthright manner and adult analysis stand in stark contrast to the gobbledegook we're treated to by the Obama administration on this topic. His conclusion:

This brief survey demonstrates why Israel's military option against Iran's nuclear program is so unattractive, but also why failing to act is even worse. All these scenarios become infinitely more dangerous once Iran has deliverable nuclear weapons. So does daily life in Israel, elsewhere in the region and globally.

Many argue that Israeli military action will cause Iranians to rally in support of the mullahs' regime and plunge the region into political chaos. To the contrary, a strike accompanied by effective public diplomacy could well turn Iran's diverse population against an oppressive regime. Most of the Arab world's leaders would welcome Israel solving the Iran nuclear problem, although they certainly won't say so publicly and will rhetorically embrace Iran if Israel strikes. But rhetoric from its Arab neighbors is the only quantum of solace Iran will get.

On the other hand, the Obama administration's increased pressure on Israel concerning the "two-state solution" and West Bank settlements demonstrates Israel's growing distance from Washington. Although there is no profit now in complaining that Israel should have struck during the Bush years, the missed opportunity is palpable. For the remainder of Mr. Obama's term, uncertainty about his administration's support for Israel will continue to dog Israeli governments and complicate their calculations. Iran will see that as well, and play it for all it's worth. This is yet another reason why Israel's risks and dilemmas, difficult as they are, only increase with time.

My read of his piece is that he fully expects Israel to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, and sooner rather than later. He sees the Obama administration's stance as accelerating this possibility, rather than delaying it (as Israel must be less certain of U.S. support now than at any time since at least the Carter era, and probably back to the time of Israel's founding). The longer Israel waits, the worse the tactical situation. Mr. Bolton also believes that the inevitable Iranian retaliation for such an Israeli attack will most likely take the form of “unleashing” Hezbollah and Hamas for terror attacks inside Israel.

I'd sure feel better about the Obama administration's foreign policy if we got this kind of analysis, supporting their positions, from someone on the team...

Poster Contest...

Over at Michelle Malkin's place. There's lots more like the one at right...

Bumper Snicker...

Anna's Pull Gs...

The male Anna's hummingbird (a species abundant around our home) turns out to be the record-setting vertebrate in terms of pulling Gs. This happens in the tight turns the males make while showing off to the females. Read all about it here (and watch some cool video)...

What a Great Idea!

I wish I'd thought of this! A school system in New York City is experimenting with the notion of “paying for grades” – offering cash rewards for students who get good grades. I know from my own experiences that kids in general have a lot of trouble connecting their education to their earning potential. This program removes that trouble very nicely: learn something, prove that you've done it (by scoring well on a test), and you get paid. In cold, hard, cash. Wonderful! The young lady at right certainly looks as though she's made the connection between educational attainment and earning potential...

Read more about the program here.

But I can't help thinking that … if they were going to complete the lesson, they'd flash the cash, then deduct the government's share and hand over the remainder. That lesson would do more for the education of these future voters than anything else I can think of...

Doing Business In California...

From serial entrepreneur Nolan Bushnell:

California's government is the problem. The state is business-hostile. It is merit-hostile. It has the highest tax rates and returns less in services to its average citizens. Massive pension abuses are not dealt with.

Worst of all, the state's crazy regulation structure creates uncertainty, cost, and risk in doing business here. The system is chilling to investment and innovation. This is true for businesses of all types, from technology companies to basic franchises.

Many businesses founded elsewhere now try to avoid for as long as possible doing business in California. Meanwhile, I have watched company after company leave the state. And, as you might imagine, it is much harder to get businesses back than to keep them from leaving.

This is so sad for those of us who love California...

I'm lucky enough to work for one of the very few entrepreneurial efforts that's doing so well it still works in California, despite the government's best efforts to prevent it. But there aren't many software startups like this one, and California is going to pay for this foray into brain-dead liberalism. It's not hard to see that the startups are going to go elsewhere – and with them will go the best engine for economic growth that the world has ever seen. A few years from now, the name “Silicon Valley” may refer instead to someplace in Montana, Nevada, or some other business-friendly state. Or worse, in some other country.

An Odd Experience...

I've posted several times before about the Descanso Junction Restaurant. It's one of our favorite places to eat, with terrific food at prices that make it an equally terrific value (kinda nice during this downturn). The decor, the people who work there, and everything else about it contributes to a homey, comfortable atmosphere.

Recently they completely redid their menu, with lots of new dishes we haven't had time to try yet. The first few things we've tried have been really good, and sometimes even surprising. For example, who would have expected top-notch crème brûlée way out in the sticks? Even better, they've been doing very well (despite the recession), and they've gone back to a 7-day-a-week schedule. Woo hoo!

Well, Friday night Debbie and I were up there for dinner. We sat at a booth, and the table (like all the others) was covered with a glass top that has lots of photos, clippings, cards, etc. underneath it. As is my habit, I started reading the pieces – some of them were new to me (the staff there changes them frequently). One review was upside-down from where I sat, so I struggled to read it, very slowly. The review seemed vaguely familiar – and that's when I noticed that it was from this very blog, almost three years ago. What a hoot! And what an odd feeling to see that clipping of my article there.

After thinking about it a bit, I decided not to let the crew know who I was. I really don't want any special treatment, so if I'm still unknown to them, I'd rather keep it that way...

More Dyson...

I just love the way Freeman Dyson thinks. And then when I reflect on his age (85), I'm always astonished. A sampler:

No doubt that warming is happening. I don’t think it is correct to say “global,” but certainly warming is happening. I have been to Greenland a year ago and saw it for myself. And that’s where the warming is most extreme. And it’s spectacular, no doubt about it. And glaciers are shrinking and so on.

But, there are all sorts of things that are not said, which decreases my feeling of alarm. First of all, the people in Greenland love it. They tell you it’s made their lives a lot easier. They hope it continues. I am not saying none of these consequences are happening. I am just questioning whether they are harmful.

There’s a lot made out of the people who died in heat waves. And there is no doubt that we have heat waves and people die. What they don’t say is actually five times as many people die of cold in winters as die of heat in summer. And it is also true that more of the warming happens in winter than in summer. So, if anything, it’s heavily favorable as far as that goes. It certainly saves more lives in winter than it costs in summer.

So that kind of argument is never made. And I see a systematic bias in the way things are reported. Anything that looks bad is reported, and anything that looks good is not reported.

A lot of these things are not anything to do with human activities. Take the shrinking of glaciers, which certainly has been going on for 300 years and has been well documented. So it certainly wasn’t due to human activities, most of the time. There’s been a very strong warming, in fact, ever since the Little Ice Age, which was most intense in the 17th century. That certainly was not due to human activity.

And the most serious of almost all the problems is the rising sea level. But there again, we have no evidence that this is due to climate change. A good deal of evidence says it’s not. I mean, we know that that’s been going on for 12,000 years, and there’s very doubtful arguments as to what’s been happening in the last 50 years and (whether) human activities have been important. It’s not clear whether it’s been accelerating or not. But certainly, most of it is not due to human activities. So it would be a shame if we’ve made huge efforts to stop global warming and the sea continued to rise. That would be a tragedy. Sea level is a real problem, but we should be attacking it directly and not attacking the wrong problem.

Read the whole thing.

My Kind of Brunch...

Debbie is “down the hill” in Bonita to watch her friends compete in a dog agility competition. Next week is her first competition since she broke her arm (it's out of the cast as of Friday, but she's still wearing a wrist brace). She took Race (our border collie) with her, so I'm home with the three field spaniels.

I got hungry around 10 am, so I went scrounging in the refrigerator to see what goodies we might have available. Found some leftover roast chicken: a leg and thigh. Skinned it, and fed the pieces of skin to three very appreciative dogs. De-boned it and diced the meat. Let the dogs clean my fingers and the chopping board (and yes, then I washed them!). In a bowl, combined the diced chicken, a half-cup or so of frozen corn kernels, a can of chick peas (garbanzo beans), a teaspoon or so of mayonnaise, about the same amount of “juice” from the beans, and a generous sprinkle of dried tarragon. Let the tarragon soak up the bean juice, then mixed up the bowls contents until everything was coated and the corn had thawed.

Then I ate it all, while the dogs watched forlornly. Yum.

I did let them clean the bowl and spoon, though, and I was quickly forgiven...

Congressional Motors...

IowaHawk strikes again. Tip of the hat to Doug S. for pointing this out...
Heh: “...even in the choppy waters of a Cape Cod inlet.$rdquo;

Septic Tank Shenanigans...

We just found out that existing law on the books in California mandates septic tank inspections (by state-approved inspectors) and upgrades to ambiguous standards when the inspection results aren't up to snuff. Worse, these inspections will be paid for by us; estimates run up to $650 not including the cost of opening, draining, and cleaning the septic tank. Required repairs and upgrades could run into the thousands of dollars. Note that this isn't a requirement to fix broken septic tanks – this is a requirement to periodically inspect each and every residential septic tank in the state.

Just what we need. More nanny statism, more expenses.

Assemblyman Joel Anderson (Republican from El Cajon) is coauthor of a bill that would repeal this absurd regulation. He needs our support. You can reach him in several ways:

email: anderson@assembly.ca.gov
phone: 916/319-2177
mail: State Capitol, Room 2130, Sacremento, CA 95184

Modern Communications...

Reader Larry E. writes:

I was sitting here thinking how communication has changed so much.

Right now I’m sitting in a room around a table with 10 people. Developers, tech writers, qa. There are at least 5-6 other team members working from their homes at the moment.

In the room there are two distinct conversations going on verbally and at the same time a lot more going on via IM and still others via email. I’m sitting right across from my QA lead and I IM him asking for the updated QA Plan. I tell him that Christophe in France has a patch for our import problem which I got from email and he says, Christophe told him (via IM) and that Christophe is looking the ETL run as well. With a team spread over 5 sites in 3 countries this instantaneous communication is so important.

The other day I realized that when I left home for the USMC, communication with my family and friends back home dropped off to a trickle. Occasional letters and phone calls. Now my son left home for the USMC and even though he is on the East Coast, I hear from him a great deal. He calls me on the cell, text messages and emails. I get emailed pictures occasionally or he just takes a picture on his phone and sends it to me in a message. My son keeps up with his friends still in California via text and sites like facebook.

While it may not be as personal as face-to-face communication, and it is certainly very different, it is communication that would not happen at all without this technology. It enables you to maintain relationships you would not otherwise be able to do so otherwise.

Fascinating. At least from the perspective of someone that didn’t grow up with it.

This is a topic I've often thought about. Usually what brings it to my mind is “talking” (usually by email) with one of our soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan. This always reminds me of my days in the U.S. Navy, and how sawed off from the world we were whenever we deployed to the Western Pacific or Indian Oceans. There were intervals of months when I had no communications of any kind (not even mail!) with friends or family. Often the only news we got was from highly-filtered one-page news summaries sent to the ship's radio room (weekly, if I remember right) and made available in the ship's library. Very urgent family news (births, deaths, etc.) was occasionally sent via U.S. Navy radio traffic; it was a big deal when one of these came in. I remember very clearly the profound sense of isolation while on one of these deployments.

Contrast that with today's military, as Larry points out. Soldiers literally on the front line of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are using cell phones, email, instant messaging, and blogs to communicate with friends, family, and the whole world. They take digital photos and video, and post them up on Flickr and YouTube. I've watched videos of countless battles and actions just hours after they occurred, thanks to these technologies. And certainly our troops aren't cut off from the world in any sense of the world.

Neither are the homeless:

Like most San Franciscans, Charles Pitts is wired. Mr. Pitts, who is 37 years old, has accounts on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. He runs an Internet forum on Yahoo, reads news online and keeps in touch with friends via email. The tough part is managing this digital lifestyle from his residence under a highway bridge.

"You don't need a TV. You don't need a radio. You don't even need a newspaper," says Mr. Pitts, an aspiring poet in a purple cap and yellow fleece jacket, who says he has been homeless for two years. "But you need the Internet."

Amazing!

In my profession (hardware and software engineering), another Internet-enabled phenomenon has been equally revolutionary: search engines and freely available technical information.

Years ago, if I wanted to design a piece of electronic hardware, the starting point was to talk with the hardware resellers and try to convince them that they should supply me with “data books”. These were thick catalogs of the parts from a particular manufacturer, and owning a library of these was an absolutely essential prerequisite for any hardware design work. Today those data books are completely unnecessary. You can look up the parts on any of hundreds of web sites (for hardware vendors), and just click to get a PDF of the data sheet for the exact part you're interested in. It's hard to overstate the extent and importance of that liberation from the data book tyranny – it means now that any individual (not just engineers working for big companies) has wide-open access to all electronic parts.

In software engineering, the Internet has been just as revolutionary. Years ago the only method available for advancing your knowledge of the field was to buy (and read, of course!) expensive texts. Often you also had to buy expensive software development tools as well. These days that model has completely blown up. There are tens of thousands of web sites chock full of interesting and relevant technical information on any conceivable (and sometimes inconceivable!) and arcane software engineering topic. I still buy some books, but it's more for the convenience of at-hand access to a familiar reference than it is for learning. Perhaps an even more profound impact has come from sharing knowledge with others, often through web forums. Now when I run into some kind of unfamiliar problem, or I have a how-do-I-do-this? question, the first thing I do is launch a Google query – and very often this will lead me directly to a solution in a few seconds. In the past, I might have beat my head against the wall for these problems, for hours or even days. Not any more.

This Internet thingie has had quite an impact!

Fire Lookout Tower...

This caught my eye in a U-T article:

The forest service also will have two lookout towers staffed around the clock this fire season, one near Jamul in the south central part of the county and the newly renovated High Point Lookout Tower on Palomar Mountain.

Naturally, being the U-T, there are no more details. I can only think of two lookout towers they might be talking about: Los Pinos and Lyon's Peak. Los Pinos is regularly manned (though not full time), and Lyon's Peak hasn't been used in a long time. Do you know for sure what the plans actually are?

Grab You by the Ankles...

Don't miss today's Day-by-Day cartoon. An excerpt:

Amusement ride operator: “So...can we take you all for a ride today?”
Customer: “What's the ‘Stimulus Surprise’?”
Amusement ride operator: “Hydraulic grippers grab you by the ankles, bend you over, and – let's just say the ride's over when we say it's over.”

Earliest Audio Recordings Ever Found...

These recordings were made 20 years before Thomas Alva Edison made his famous recordings. Unlike Edison's, these recordings were never intended to be played back – the original goal was simply to make a “picture” of sounds. They were made by a French inventor, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville. The picture at right shows the apparatus he used.

The actual recordings can be heard here.

Hope 'n Change?

Ted Rall is an editorial cartoonist, sometime columnist, and author of the raving liberal lunatic persuasion. He's not someone I'd normally find myself agreeing with. He is someone I'd expect to be a rabid Obama supporter.

So imagine my surprise when I read one of his columns this morning, to find that contained the following (but not out of context!) quotes:

We expected broken promises. But the gap between the soaring expectations that accompanied Barack Obama’s inauguration and his wretched performance is the broadest such chasm in recent historical memory. This guy makes Bill Clinton look like a paragon of integrity and follow-through...

...Obama is useless. Worse than that, he’s dangerous. Which is why, if he has any patriotism left after the thousands of meetings he has sat through with corporate contributors, blood-sucking lobbyists and corrupt politicians, he ought to step down now — before he drags us further into the abyss...

...Obama is cute. He is charming. But there is something rotten inside him...

Whoa, there, lefty. Steady on, there, Ted. And right on!

In my own defense, the reasons behind these quotes are most definitely not the reasons I might use in arriving at the same conclusions.

I guess this is some evidence that Obama is moving toward the “center” (whatever that actually is). Long reviled from the right, he's now starting to be reviled from the “respectable” left...