The Female Perspective on Shopping...

Via Jim M.:

A woman was in town on a shopping trip. She began her day finding the most perfect shoes in the first shop and a beautiful dress on sale in the second. In the third, everything had been reduced by 50 percent.  Then her cellphone rang.

It was a female doctor notifying her that her husband had just been in a terrible car accident and was in critical condition and in the ICU. The  woman told the doctor to inform her husband where she was and that she'd be there as soon as possible.  As she hung up she realized she was leaving what was shaping up to be her best day ever in the boutiques.

She decided to get in a couple of more shops before heading to the hospital. She ended up shopping the rest of the morning, finishing her trip with a cup of coffee and a beautiful chocolate cake slice, compliments of the last shop. She was jubilant. Then she remembered her husband. Feeling guilty, she dashed to the hospital.

When she arrived at the hospital, she saw the doctor in the corridor and asked about her husband's condition. The lady doctor just glared at her and shouted, "You went ahead and finished your shopping trip didn't you! I hope you're proud of yourself!"

She ranted on: "While you were out for the past four hours enjoying yourself in town, your husband has been languishing in the Intensive Care Unit! It's just as well you went ahead and finished, because it will more than likely be the last shopping trip you ever take! For the rest of his life he will require round-the-clock care. And he will now be your career!"

Feeling guilty, the women broke down and sobbed.

The lady doctor then chuckled and said, "I'm just pulling your leg. He's dead. Show me what you bought."

Ouch.  But (if you're of the male persuasion)...doesn't it sound, well, plausible?

BPotD, Again...

An American native in Pakistan (via Botany Photo of the Day).

Gorgeous!

More photos at the link...

Taxing Medical Technology...

The Obamacare bills currently wending their way through Congress all have provisions in them that would tax the medical technology that has done so much to extend our lives and reduce our suffering.  Just on the very face of it, this sounds incredibly stupid to me.  Taxes always discourage innovation and development, because they reduce the financial rewards to entrepreneurs.  Our overlords may not like it, but those evil financial rewards really are the engine that drives the amazing economic machine that is America.  The medical technology industry is but one example.

Amazing for now, at least.  The bills, if enacted, will do their bit to make America's economic machine less amazing.  Smart entrepreneurs will gravitate to other industries where they can make more money.  If our policies are bad enough, they may even migrate to other countries with less stupid policies.

2012 can't come soon enough.  Let's hope the mid-term elections next year send such a clear signal to the liberals that our drift towards socialism is turned around...

Good discussion at TigerHawk...

At a Tea Party in Quincy, Illinois...

Courtesy of Instapundit, who attended:

Two Trillion Tons...

Atlas Is Still Going Strong...

When I was a little boy in the late '50s, the Atlas rocket was under development as both an ICBM and as a means to put satellites and men in orbit around the Earth.  The news stories about it had the same aura of wonder that today might be seen when talking about a manned mission to Jupiter.  There was much uncertainty about whether it would work – and when it did work, much joy and pride.  John Glenn rode an Atlas into space, and for those of us who grew up in that time and were fascinated by early space exploration, that event sealed the Atlas' claim to fame.

The initial Atlas of the '50s evolved into an entire family of rockets.  Together, the Atlas family is by far the most successful set of launchers any nation has ever developed, with hundreds of successful launches and very few failures.  The photo here is of the most recent family member, the Atlas V, which just this week launched a satellite into orbit from Cape Canaveral.   As with any technology that has evolved over many years, the current Atlas doesn't very closely resemble the original.  But if you follow the history of the beast, you'll see that from the first one to the current one, the Atlas models are a series of incremental developments and changes.

A 60 year old rocket.  Who'd a thunk it?

Remembering 9/11...

Eight years ago, it was.  I still think about it every day – usually, for some reason, on the way home from work.  I still remember my shock, and over the next few days, my dawning realization that the radical Muslims were actually serious about killing us all.

These days I feel like a bit of a minority...

In reading many other rembrances this morning, Peggy Noonan's piece resonated most strongly.  A taste:

They've been marked by 9/11 more than they know. It was their first moment of historical consciousness. Before that day, they didn't know what history was; after that day, they knew they were in it.

It was a life-splitting event. Before it they were carefree, after they were careful. A 20-year-old junior told me that after 9/11, "a backpack on a subway was no longer a backpack," and a crowded theater was "a source for concern." Every one of them used the word "bubble": the protected bubble of their childhood "popped." And all of them said they spent 9/11 and the days after glued to the television, watching over and over again the footage—the north tower being hit by the plane, the fireball. The video of 9/11 has firmly and ineradicably entered their brains. Which is to say their first visual memory of America, or their first media memory, was of its towers falling down.

I'd never fully realized this: 9/11 was for America's kids exactly what Nov. 22, 1963, was for their parents and uncles and aunts. They were at school. Suddenly there were rumors in the hall and teachers speaking in hushed tones. You passed an open classroom and saw a teacher sobbing. Then the principal came on the public-address system and said something very bad had happened. Shocked parents began to pick kids up. Everyone went home and watched TV all day, and the next.

And her conclusion:

He remembered after 9/11 those who rose up to fight terrorism. Even as a child he was moved by them. There are always in history so many such people, he said. It is always the great reason for hope.

The whole thing is here.

30...

Yesterday was my 30th (that is, 30₁₉) birthday, and we celebrated Jamul-style.  Our friends and neighbors Jim and Michelle took Debbie and I out for a sushi feast and great company.  Then we went home and enjoyed a quiet, relaxed evening whose main events were feeding the hummingbirds and the dogs, having a nice glass of wine, reading (I'm re-reading Lord of the Rings), and sharing some time together.


My kind of birthday party!

How To Drive In New Jersey...

Via my mom, who has spent most of her life in New Jersey but has recently escaped to Virginia:

Seriously, there are only two things needed to drive effectively in NJ: A horn and a middle finger. Everything else is superfluous, including knowing where you are going.

For those of you who live in Jersey or have lived there, these things may come as no surprise. For those who haven't travelled there before, BEWARE!!! Be Prepared!!!

How to Drive in Jersey

1. You must first learn to pronounce the city name; it is Nork - rhymes with Fork, not New-ark. Also, Trenton is not pronounced Tren-ton, it is Trent-in.

2. The morning rush hour is from 5 AM to NOON. The evening rush hour is from NOON to 7 PM. Friday's rush hour starts on Thursday morning.

3. The minimum acceptable speed on the turnpike is 85 mph. On the parkway it's 105 or 110. Anything less is considered "Sissy." (Just ask the Governor of NJ)

4. Forget the traffic rules you learned elsewhere. Jersey has its own version of traffic rules. For example, cars/trucks with the loudest muffler go first at a four-way stop; the trucks with the biggest tires go second;

5. If you actually stop at a yellow light, you will be rear ended, cussed out, and possibly shot.

6. Never honk at anyone. EVER! Seriously! It's another offense that can get you shot.

7. Road construction is permanent and continuous in all of Jersey. Detour barrels are moved around for your entertainment pleasure during the middle of the night to make the next day's driving a bit more exciting.

8. Watch carefully for road hazards such as drunks, illegals, drunk illegals, skunks, dogs, cats, barrels, cones, celebs, rubber-neckers, shredded tires, cell-phoners, deer and other road kill, and the Homeless feeding on any of these items.

9. MapQuest does NOT work here -- none of the roads are where they say they are or go where they say they do and all the Turnpike EZ Pass lanes are moved each night once again to make your ride more exciting.

10. If someone actually has their Turn Signal ON, wave them to the shoulder immediately to let them know it has been "accidentally activated."

11. If you are in the left lane and only driving 70 in a 55-65mph zone, you are considered a road hazard and will be "flipped off" accordingly. If you return the flip, you'll be shot.

12. Do not try to estimate travel time -- just leave Monday afternoon for Tuesday appointments, by noon Thursday for Friday appointments, and right after church on Sunday for anything on Monday morning.

Product Recommendation...

If you have dogs or cats (we have four and seven), you may already have an automatic waterer of some kind.  Recirculating water encourages animals to drink, and in our dry climate it's important for them to get enough water.  

For several years we've had a Drinkwell “Big Dog” fountain.  All of our indoor animals took to it immediately, and we've generally been very happy with it.  However, it had one downside that caused me to go looking for something better: it needed regular and onerous cleaning.  The entire unit had to be disassembled, cleaned in steamy hot water, and reassembled – usually a couple times a week.  Less often (perhaps once a month), some mechanical abrasion was needed to scrape off the accumulated scale left by water evaporating from all the exposed surfaces where it had splashed.

In Our Yard...

Well, not really. But the message is accurate.

Come to think of it, the message on this sign is kind of implicit in the area where I live. Nearly everyone who lives near us (including us) owns firearms and knows how to use them.

I think the burglars understand this. There's very little crime where we live...

A Word of Advice About H1N1 (the Swine Flu)...

If you wake up looking like this...
Don't go to work!

If Architects Had To Work Like Software Developers...

That's the title of an excellent post by Neil Middleton. He's poking fun at a phenomenon that many software developers have run into, nearly any time someone who doesn't understand software development has software developers working for them (either as employees or as contractors).

The issue arises, I think, from a simple fact: many people have utterly no understanding of how a computer works. To them, a computer is essentially magic – and the software developers are akin to wizards with limited social skills. Most other engineering professions don't have this attribute, or at least not with the purity that software development has. For instance, when a civil engineer designs a bridge, anybody can understand the process, even if they don't understand the math. They know roughly what a civil engineer does. For software engineering, however, most people haven't a clue what happens between the idea and the finished product – not even in their imagination.

This is the disconnect that Neil writes about. Imagine that an architect had to work with the same level of disconnect with his customers. Here's part of what they might hear:

Please don’t bother me with small details right now. Your job is to develop the overall plans for the house: get the big picture. At this time, for example, it is not appropriate to be choosing the color of the carpet.

However, keep in mind that my wife likes blue.

Also, do not worry at this time about acquiring the resources to build the house itself. Your first priority is to develop detailed plans and specifications. Once I approve these plans, however, I would expect the house to be under roof within 48 hours.

While you are designing this house specifically for me, keep in mind that sooner or later I will have to sell it to someone else. It

therefore should have appeal to a wide variety of potential buyers. Please make sure before you finalize the plans that there is a consensus of the population in my area that they like the features this house has. I advise you to run up and look at my neighbor’s house he constructed last year. We like it a great deal. It has many features that we would also like in our new home, particularly the 75-foot swimming pool. With careful engineering, I believe that you can design this into our new house without impacting the final cost.

The “I believe...” clause in the last sentence above particularly resonated with me. Two jobs ago, when I worked for a CEO who was a stock trading expert but knew utterly nothing about software, I used to hear variants on this several times a day...

Read the whole thing!

Funny Tweets...

I've tried twitter, and my main reaction was to wonder why anyone cares about it. The one useful thing I've done with it so far was to follow the post-election turmoil in Iran.

But now I've discovered the real purpose of Twitter: to deliver one-liners! And at twaxed.com they collect the best of them. Some that made me laugh out loud:

programming is a lot like sex. One mistake and you could have to support it the rest of your life.

Hi. I'm in a staff meeting. There are 83 ceiling tiles in our meeting room. And 8 light fixtures, with 24 fluorescent bulbs. That is all.

I am not a sex addict. I have restless groin syndrome.

My personality test results came back. They're negative.

Just looked up "assiduity" on dictionary.com; definition: "obsequious solicitude." Next up: finding a synonym for "Fuck you, dictionary.com"

When peeing on someone, the element of surprise is everything.

There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who have regular sex.

If men had their periods, they would brag about the size of their tampons.

Talking of crap tv, I would rather watch cat vomit slide down the screen than watch the stuff on TV now!

I am absolutely going to dropkick my work computer out a freaking window today. It is not cooperating AT ALL.

Here's To The Heroes...

Happy Labor Day!

The Bridge to Somewhere...

A couple of miles down the road from my home, on Lawson Valley Road, there's a little two-lane bridge over the Lawson Valley Creek. It's been inspected, and it's falling apart. So San Diego County is going to replace it.

Sounds perfectly ok, right? It's such an ordinary sort of thing for a Department of Public Works to do. You'd think they'd have pre-packaged plans for such a thing on the shelf, and all that would be required would be a little adjustment for the local circumstances. Get funding, take the tweaked plans, assign the right people and equipment, and then go build the bridge. Simple.

Ah, but you forget. There's a government involved. Simple, it seems, is just unacceptable.

On the San Diego County web site, there's a page for this project. There's nothing on it except for six links to PDF documents, which you can download (and if you live in Lawson Valley, I encourage you to do so). The documents include:

• Notice of Intent (NOI)
• CEQA Initial Study (IS)
• Mitigated Negative Declaration (MND)
• Natural Environmental Study (NES)
• Visual Impact Assessment (VIA)
• Water Quality Report (WQR)

Some of this government-speak must be translated for us normal humans. The CEQA is the California Environmental Quality Act. A Mitigated Negative Declaration is a document saying that a project has potential environmental impact, but they're going to be addressed by actions (the “mitigations”) that are part of the plan – so in the end there will be no environmental impact.

A question that immediately occurs to Lawson Valley inhabitants who live east of the bridge (that includes me!) is this: how the heck are we going to get in and out of the valley while this new bridge is being built? And how long will that take?

Well, the plan says that building the new bridge will take 18 months (really?), and that one lane will remain open while they build it.

The image at right is from the 36 page Visual Impact Assessment. It's the same as the photo above, but the new bridge is shown. I'm not sure how they made this – it could be an artist, or it could be some kind of computer-generated thing. In any case, someone went to a great deal of trouble to produce it. Then they never showed it to any of the people to whom it might actually matter, like the inhabitants of Lawson Valley. I only found this by accident, and the review period was up weeks ago. You'd think if they were going to go to all this trouble, they might have done something obvious like mail it to us denizens. Sheesh!

In any case, you can see that they're going to straighten the road just a bit. There are more modern-looking rails and the crash-absorbing “bumpers”. It's just a silly little bridge.

I'm still having trouble absorbing the notion that we taxpayers had to pay for a Visual Impact Assessment. This one was made by Vicki Estrada, of Estrada Land Planning. I'm afraid to ask what it cost – and even more afraid of what this cost is multiplied by the hundreds of projects across the county...

But the Visual Impact Assessment is dwarfed by the 154 page Natural Environmental Study. The diagram at right is one of many in the study. I learned a lot just by glancing through this study. For instance, I learned that in 2002 the county paid Nelson Olivas to visit the bridge site and determine that there was no nearby breeding habitat for the Arroyo Toad. Then in 2003, the county paid Nelson Olivas to visit the bridge site and determine that there was no breeding habitat for the Southwestern Willow Flycatcher. I read the 17 page “Wetland Determination Data Form” included in an appendix (fascinating stuff). Then there's the two page plant species list, listing about 60 species observed near the bridge – I'm sure we paid someone to take that inventory. Oh, and let's not forget the six page restoration planting plan.

By comparison to the preceding, the 17 page Water Quality Report is a model of brevity and conciseness. Even so, its actual content could easily be distilled to just a few sentences. Basically, it says that the new bridge will not have any significant impact.

Doesn't this seem like an awful lot of time and trouble (and money!) considering that we're talking about a teeny little country two lane bridge? In the end, all these studies and reports accomplished nothing whatsoever that I can see – the county is going to build a new bridge just as it would have done without the studies. A few “best practices” guidelines – like businesses use every day – would have covered things like erosion mitigation and recovery planting. This just seems horribly excessive, and a case of bureaucracy trumping common sense. These sorts of studies are the kind of thing I'd expect if you were going to build another Coronado Bay Bridge – and then I'd be lauding them for taking proper precautions. But for a little country bridge? Come on, folks...

Lockerbie, Again...

This story just keeps getting worse and worse. Two new factoids today.

First, it appears that the medical opinions asserting that Al Megrahi would likely die within 3 months were bought and paid for by Libya. On Al Megrahi's initial examination, doctors gave him 10 months or more to live. That just wouldn't do, you see, because Scottish law allows release on compassionate grounds only when the prisoner has 3 months or less to live. This was not an obstacle to the Libyans, who simply found more, er, understanding doctors. For a fee, of course. Read all the disgusting details here.

Second, we discover today that the U.K. government has been keeping Obama informed about Al Megrahi's release every step of the way. There were no surprises for Obama. And there were no vehement protests or objections beforehand – those came only when the Obama administration was surprised by the American reaction to Al Megrahi's release. Read all the despicable details here.

Sidenote: all the investigative reporting seems to be coming out of England. Note to U.S. newspapers: have you noticed that the U.K. newspapers are actually making money, while (as we, at least, have noticed) you're going broke? Do ya think that maybe, just maybe, the fact that the U.K. papers actually do some real reporting might have something to do with it? Just sayin'...

I have a little vignette that keeps running through my mind, wherein someone in the White House receives a call from 10 Downing. The caller (presumably a Prime Minister's functionary) says “Good morning, chaps! Just wanted to let you know that we're about to release the Lockerbie bomber, that Al Megrahi fellow. Heads up, as you say.” And the response is something like “Top of the day to you, George. Thanks for letting us know. We have no problem with that.”

It's that last bit that is really gnawing at me. What sort of American would think that releasing Al Megrahi to the Libyans was ok?

Houston, we have a problem...

Obama and the Left...

Jane Hamsher isn't the sort of blogger you'll find me quoting (or linking to!) very often. She's a prominent leftie blogger, a confirmed and vocal “progressive” whose politics are somewhere to the left of Lenin's.

In a post yesterday, she aired her frustration over Obama's tight control of the rhetoric and actions of leftie organizations. She says those organizations are in the “veal pen” – being fed (funded) by the Obama administration while being tightly penned in by the Obama administration's threats to withhold funding if they don't behave well. She concludes with this:

If these groups, if these liberal leaders, let Jones just hang there while Glenn Beck pounds his chest and celebrates the scalp, we have no liberal institutions. What we have are a bunch of neoliberal enablers who have found a nice comfortable place in the DC establishment that they don't want to jeopardize, a place on the new K-Street gravy train that they don't want to lose. Dropping Van Jones from their rolodex is a small price to pay.

If there is going to be a serious progressive movement in this country capable of standing up for health care against an industry that spends $1.4 million a day on lobbying, we can't just look to the members of the Progressive Caucus and say "hey, you, get something done." They need cover. They need to know that they will be supported. And people like Van Jones who have given their lives to causes we say we value like prison reform and environmental advocacy need to know that they will be defended, and not handed over to Glenn Beck as an acceptable casualty in the battle for K-Street dollars.

So to all you liberal organizations in the "veal pen" -- this is your moment of truth. I get all your emails. And the next Common Purpose meeting is probably on Tuesday. If you can't get it together to at least put out a statement of support for Van Jones and condemn the White House for using him as a sacrificial lamb to right wing extremists that will devour us all if left unchecked, it's time to add "proudly liberal only when it doesn't matter" to your logo and be done with it.

Looks like the Obama rose doesn't look quite so good to the lefties any more...

Reflections on Labor Day...

From the wit of Mark Steyn:

But to this future of vast, unstoppable, ever-expanding wealth, the champions of the oppressed have come up with an ingenious solution: global poverty! We need a massive Poverty Expansion Program if we're to save the planet. "I don't think a lot of electricity is a good thing," says Gar Smith of San Francisco's Earth Island Institute. "I have seen villages in Africa that had vibrant culture and great communities that were disrupted and destroyed by the introduction of electricity," he continues, globally warming to his theme and regretting that African peasants "who used to spend their days and evenings in the streets playing music on their own instruments and sewing clothing for their neighbours on foot-pedal powered sewing machines" are now slumped in front of "Dynasty" reruns all day long.

George Monbiot, celebrated doom-monger of Britain's Guardian, agrees: "It is impossible not to notice that, in some of the poorest parts of the world, most people, most of the time, appear to be happier than we are. In southern Ethiopia, for example, the poorest half of the poorest nation on Earth, the streets and fields crackle with laughter. In homes constructed from packing cases and palm leaves, people engage more freely, smile more often, express more affection than we do behind our double glazing, surrounded by remote controls."

In Ethiopia, male life expectancy is 42.88 years. George was born in 1963. That may be why the cheery peasants in the fields are cracking up with laughter. They know that even if he moves in tomorrow, they'll only have to endure his column in The Gamo Gofa Times-Herald for another year or two. No wonder they're doubled up and clutching their sides. It's not just the dysentery from the communal latrine.

Read the whole thing...

Dude!

This needs no commentary:

Following the Money...

My own thinking about abortion has been focused on the moral issues. Here's a film that (from the trailer) appears to be mainly focused on something else: the money that Planned Parenthood is making from performing abortions, and how that allegedly distorts their behavior.

I have no idea about the truth of these particular claims; it's not something I've ever tried to dig up some facts on. I did a little digging this morning, and found several sources saying that Planned Parenthood performs approximately 300,000 abortions per year (in the U.S.) and receives about $700 million dollars per year for those services. That makes them quite a large business, and there's certainly enough money to affect people's behavior.

Food for thought, on an aspect of abortion that has relatively little to do with its morality...

O-M-G!!!

Updated:

I just discovered that the trees have responded to the EarthFirsters:



Original post:


Somebody please tell me that this is some kind of a put-on. 'Cause, you know, I'd sleep a lot better if I knew for sure that people like these didn't walk the earth with me...

The Cats In Our Lives...

Anyone who has spent much time with a cat will enjoy these videos. I've spent almost 30 years with an average of about 8 cats, so you can imagine how entertaining I found them! Via Super Tremendous:

Van Jones “Resigns”...

I used the scare quotes in the title because only the most naive amongst us would believe that Van Jones voluntarily quit his job. There's no doubt in my mind that he was asked to – very forcefully, with no real alternative.

The lamestream media has, once again, been carrying water for The One. Aside from the renegade outlets like the Wall Street Journal and Fox News, there hasn't been a peep from them on the subject of Van Jones. The White House did their best to help them out by announcing the Van Jones resignation at midnight on Saturday on a long holiday weekend.

I don't even know how to be snarky about these things any more – it's not like they're sneaking around doing this behind our backs. They're doing it right in front of our faces! This behavior is leading to the strengthening of a dichotomy that's existed for a long time: the politically informed vs. the politically ignorant. This used to be almost the same thing as saying those who listened to the news vs. those who didn't. What's different now is that even if you do listen to the news, you won't be very well informed – because the “news” from the lamestream media more closely resembles a stream of propoganda than it does actual information. These days, if you want to be politically informed, you really need to read the Wall Street Journal and a selection of political blogs (leftie, rightie, and libertarian). People who did that are completely unsurprised by the Van Jones resignation.

The best commentary on this affair I've read so far comes from blogger Jim Treacher:

If the mainstream media didn't prove its own irrelevance during the Rielle Hunter scandal, this clinches it. An advisor to the President of the United States, a man in charge of tens of billions in taxpayer funds, is resigning because of a scandal that has not been covered by most news outlets. Now they have to do the same dance they did when John Edwards confessed to his affair: "Looks like we have no choice but to talk about this now. Let's cover the story as if we've been covering it all along, while explaining it for the people who don't know about it because we're their only source of news."

So long to the lying, racebaiting, communist Truther in the White House. Correction: So long to a lying, racebaiting, communist Truther in the White House.

Tell it, brother!

Update:

Here's some more, with snark, from Scott Jacobs (blogging at Patterico):

The question remains, however: How the holy monkey-fuck did this guy pass the vetting process? Is the White House that stupid? Or could it be that they didn’t find anything wrong with his words because they agree with them – after all, would crazy talk sound crazy if you agree with it?

I mean, I’m sure to other truthers a phrase like “the first time fire ever melted steel” sounds perfectly rational, you know what I mean?

Edit – Looks like it hit the wires at about 12:10am Eastern. Yeah, there’s no way people at the White House were trying to bury this…

Update: The WaPo has a story now, with the following awesome quote from Van Jones:

“On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me. They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide,” he said (emphasis added)

Smears? Lies? Distortions? Asshole, there were video cameras. We can watch you say the stuff we are claiming came out of your noise hole.

As I’ve often said in the past: “it isn’t slander if it’s true”.

Heh!!

Tiffany...Has a Lot of Growing Up To Do?

Offered without comment:

Excellent Lecture...

Excellent Rhetoric and Dramatic Gesture...

Her blog is here.

Station Fire Update...

Mostly it's good news: the western side of the fire, and much of the southern side, are largely under control. The fire is now mostly burning in deep, remote forests (some unburned for over 100 years) on the eastern edge. Click to enlarge the MODIS thermal imagery at right. No structures are threatened. The Mount Wilson observatory and communications towers were saved by the firefighters.

But two firefighters have died, and (unfortunately, unsurprisingly) investigators have pegged the cause of the fire as arson. The Los Angeles Sheriff's department is pursuing the case as a homicide, and Governor Schwarzenegger has put up a $100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the culprit or culprits.

Good News for Tetris Addicts...

Good news for my mom (a self-confessed Tetris addict):

Sinking blocks and clearing lines in Tetris may pay off with more than just a high score. Playing the classic shape-fitting computer game, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, for just three months may boost the size and efficiency of parts of the brain, a study published September 1 in BMC Research Notes finds.

Just about the only thing anyone's discovered so far that help fend off Alzheimer's is brain exercise. Intellectually difficult games (chess, Scrabble, Boggle, etc.) work. Some kinds of games, generally involving spatial manipulation (e.g., Tetris) also work.

But best of all is learning new skills or new understanding (as opposed to memorization). A great many things fall into these categories, from algebra to zener diode theory. If you're in your 50s or later, you'll stand a significantly better chance of avoiding senility if you stop watching the boob tube and instead start putting your brain to work (and no, the Discovery channel doesn't work out your brain)...

Government Employment is Inconsequential...

By which I mean that if you're a government employee, you can screw up massively, demonstrate your incompetence with crystal clarity, and you will not suffer any consequences for it. In fact, you'll quite likely be promoted the next time you cross some “time-in-grade” threshold, exactly as you would have been if you didn't screw up.

It certainly doesn't work this way in the real world of business, where incompetence is generally rewarded with unemployment – sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, but pretty much inevitably.

If I was incompetent and knew it, or even suspected it, clearly the optimal career strategy would be to wangle a job with the government...

The latest demonstration of this phenomenon is at the SEC, who notoriously botched the investigation into Bernie Madoff's $55 billion Ponzi scheme. Not only did multiple SEC investigations turn up nothing (much to Madoff's surprise – he thought even the idiots at the SEC would figure it out), but multiple independent investigators repeatedly tried to tell the SEC that Madoff was up to no good. The best documented of these was Harry Markopolos, who repeatedly fed information to the SEC for 16 years – and the SEC managed to ignore all this through sheer bureaucratic ineptness. Ironically the current investigators are relying heavily on Markopolos' data, and he's testified to Congress.

So if you were amongst the many innocents who presumed that such manifest incompetence would have some consequence for both the SEC as a whole and for the individuals involved – why, then, you're in for a surprise. Because every single one of the SEC employees associated with the Madoff investigation is either still in the same position, or has been promoted. And utterly nothing has changed in the SEC's organization. If Bernie Madoff hadn't already been discovered, the SEC would still be missing the boat.

Which, of course, makes you wonder how many other undiscovered “Madoffs” yet remain...

The lack of consequence for incompetence in government is high on my list of reasons why we should never entrust our health care to them. And why we should stop entrusting them with other things important to us, such as retirement funding, education, letter delivery, etc. I fantasize sometimes about a new President and a new Congress somehow injecting some consequence into government employees, but those are just satisfying fantasies. In the real world, I suspect the only effective recourse will be to take away the toys we let these unpunished idiots play with.

Fascinating Economic Information...

I just discovered a source of some fascinating economic information, courtesy of Google. They've been tracking the frequency of certain search queries since 2004. The results are publicly available.

For example, the graph at right shows computer and electronic related queries. An industry rule-of-thumb for many years has been that consumer electronics make a quarter to a third of all their sales in the last six weeks of the year. On the graph you can clearly see that exact trend, including two big peaks at Thanksgiving and Christmas. You can also see the generally downward trend of the past few years.

On the other hand, look as the graph at left to see how the current recession affects queries about unemployment benefits. Obviously we're not out of the woods yet (on the current recession)!

Dig a little deeper into that unemployment graph and you'll see small peaks of activity every January (when extra holiday season retail workers are laid off), and dips every mid-November (when extra holiday season retail workers are hired). There's a small peak in the summertime, I'll speculate because of high-school and college kids trying to find jobs.

Fascinating stuff, updated every day. Unlike government-supplied data, this is raw data – not “adjusted” in various ways with often political motivations. It's also near-realtime, so you don't have to wait a month or more to see what's happening. Personally, I'd trust my own interpretation of Googles raw data on unemployment queries much more than I'd trust the government's opaque unemployment numbers. I'll be watching this site...

How Tequila Works...

Word of Advice...

Never piss off someone who owns a backhoe.

I own a backhoe.

Miyuki Channels Nancy...

Hukio Hatoyama has just been elected Prime Minister of Japan. His wife Miyuki is about to become Japan's new First Lady.

Remember Nancy Reagan's reliance on astrologers and soothsayers? Well, Miyuki apparently is made of similar stuff. She claims to have been abducted by aliens, flown to Venus on a triangular UFO, and impressed by the Venutian lushness and friendly natives.

Oh, my.

I hope her husband is at least a little better grounded...

Where Obamacare Would Take Us...

Britain's National Health Service (NHS) is often cited by proponents of Obamacare as a model that we should be moving toward here in the U.S. One consequence of centrally-planned health care is the subject of an interesting article in the London Telegraph. An excerpt:

Under NHS guidance introduced across England to help doctors and medical staff deal with dying patients, they can then have fluid and drugs withdrawn and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away.

But this approach can also mask the signs that their condition is improving, the experts warn.

As a result the scheme is causing a “national crisis” in patient care, the letter states. It has been signed palliative care experts including Professor Peter Millard, Emeritus Professor of Geriatrics, University of London, Dr Peter Hargreaves, a consultant in Palliative Medicine at St Luke’s cancer centre in Guildford, and four others.

So it's expensive to try to cure old people, and pointless when they are most likely dying anyway. The bureaucratic fix is obvious (to a bureaucrat, anyhow): identify these resource-wasters, withhold all medicine, sedate the crap out of them, and wait for them to die.

Sound like the kind of health care system you want?

The Things We Do to Our Dogs...

Well, some people do. Via the one and only Rachel Lucas.

Health Care Debate...

Of all the reading I've done on the topic (and that's a lot, including several books), there's one source that stands out: Megan McArdle's blog at The Atlantic. Here's a sample from a post she made yesterday:

I think probably most people would agree that if Rand is right, and price controls shave, say, almost a year off of average lifespans, this is not necessarily a good deal for even the squishiest bleeding heart liberal--for the same reasons that socialism turned out not to be a good idea. No, I'm not calling you a socialist. I'm saying that if nationalizing companies and 90% tax rates on the very wealthy had worked well anywhere, a lot more liberals would be in favor of those things, because if you take away the unintended consequences that they turned out to have, they seem to conform to a lot of progressive priorities about justice, distribution, and so forth. But they didn't, and so most progressives have (or so I devoutly hope) abandoned these sorts of ideas in favor of a less intrusive agenda.

So ultimately I'm saying, I think this is the way that our government works, and this is the way that markets work, and for all the screaming, these are not crazy positions. There's plenty of evidence for government crowding out. There's plenty of evidence for price controls. There's plenty of evidence for what happens to markets that are largely governed by price controls.

You may disagree. You think government works better than I do. You think we'll be able to draw a line in the sand and keep the government from crossing over it to take over more of the market. You think government spending can substitute for R&D, because you don't find the socialist calculation debate compelling. Or maybe you say, hey, yeah, well, 0.7 years off the average lifespan isn't a bad tradeoff for covering the uninsured.

If you want to educate yourself about the health care debate, I don't know any better starting point than Megan's blog over the past few months. Health care is but one of the many topics she covers; her beat is economics and all things related to it, and I've been reading her for quite a while now for the general content.

But her sober, level-headed coverage of (and participation in!) the health care debate really stands out...

Oh, the Government Can!

Excellent!

Great Optical Illusion...

The image at right won the “Best Visual Illusion of the Year” award.

Why?

Because the two halves are identical!

Read all about it here.

Blunt Cards...

This web site has an apparently endless supply of “blunt cards” (like the one at right) that you can just read, or that you can send to a friend (or whatever). Probably the site exists mainly to collect email addresses, but some of these blunt cards are quite funny just to read. Probably NSFW (just the words, not the imagery)...

Resurrecting Ancient Musical Intruments...

Now this is just plain cool – a project melding science and modern computer technology to digitally reconstruct the sound of ancient instruments known only from historical references. The result is a “concert” in which you can hear these instruments being “played” by a computer program.

Here's one sample of an instrument called an epigonion (and I have no idea how to pronounce that). But you really, really should go read about what these folks did. On their site you'll find many more samples.

Al Megrahi Release - More...

The Wall Street Journal is very suspicious about the motives for the recent release of Al Megrahi (the Lockerbie bomber):

But Mr. Straw's distinction is the real red-herring: Regardless of which legal fig-leaf Mr. MacAskill chose to employ in releasing Megrahi, the Brown government made clear to Edinburgh, repeatedly, that the issue of Megrahi was subordinate to the U.K.'s "overwhelming interests" in improving the relationship with the Gadhafis. We also know from Libyan officials that those "interests" included commercial oil contracts.

As Scottish Nationalists, Mr. MacAskill and Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond might seem unlikely to bow to the British government's wishes. But then we don't know what Scottish "interests," if any, Mr Brown may have put into play to persuade the Scots. Or perhaps Mr. Straw figured that if he muttered "who will rid me of this turbulent prisoner" enough times, the Scots would get the message. Mr. Brown's blanket denials of any involvement by his government in the affair have already proven to be false, and the public deserves to know whether there was, or was not, a quid pro quo.

This is starting to look like a major flapadoodle in UK politics...

Fires Near Los Angeles...

Looking at the fire maps (from two different tools below; click to enlarge) reminds us of the fires here in San Diego County in October 2007. Sends shivers down our spines.

Both of these maps are derived from satellite-based thermal imagery.

The good news is that so far the fires haven't massively invaded areas with homes, as they did here. And we are not having a Santa Ana wind storm, so there's some hope that the firefighters can get it under control.

We send our best wishes and hopes their way...

Oh, Jeez...

There's something particularly disgusting and disturbing about a government that trades its first responsibility – protecting its citizens – for money. It appears that this is exactly what the British government has done (via the London Times):

The British government decided it was “in the overwhelming interests of the United Kingdom” to make Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, eligible for return to Libya, leaked ministerial letters reveal.

I first heard rumors about this a few days ago, but dismissed them...saying to myself “Nah – the Brits would never do that!”

Evidence suggests that I was wrong, dang it.

Californians...

My wife and I both grew up on a farm – she in Indiana, me in New Jersey. We've been entertained over the years by running into people – mainly younger people growing up in California cities – who amaze and amuse us by what they don't know.

Just to cite a few recent examples: someone who didn't know that peanuts grow underground, another who thought that cheese was manufactured from man-made materials, a girl who believed that onions grew on trees (like apples), a guy who simply had no idea where honey came from, and another girl who thought yoghurt was somehow directly emitted by goats.

Los Angeles is talking to these people:

Fire in Lawson Valley!

Update:

A neighbor with police connections got some more information about the perpetrator. The word is that the driver of the truck was a young, blond woman – very drunk. She was arrested at the scene and taken away in handcuffs.

Original Post:

But everything is fine – nobody was hurt by the fire, and no buildings were burned.

The sign at right went up as the firefighters were working, at a home just west of the fire (which was at the intersection of Lawson Valley Road and Sloane Canyon Road). This homeowner's feelings are shared by everyone in the area – because the firefighters were Johnny-on-the-spot, present very quickly, in force and with plenty of equipment.

This fire started about two miles from our home, right along the road we drive several times a day. The cause of the fire was downed high-voltage power wires, brought down by a vehicle striking a utility pole (the replacement pole is in a photo below). This occurred at around 2:30 pm yesterday afternoon.

I talked with two people who live in the area; they both said that the pole was struck by a drunk male driver in a large white Ford pickup. They had no idea whether the driver was injured, or who he was.

One result of the pole being struck was that a number of homes in the immediate area lost power right away. A short time later, a much larger number of people lost power – because SDG&E had to shut off the power to the area to allow the firefighters to spray water on the flames (this would be dangerous for the firefighters if the power were still on).

East County Magazine has a short report about the fire:

A brush fire in Jamul has caused a power outage in the vicinity. The fire, caused by a traffic accident, has been contained at ¾ an acre, CAL-FIRE spokesperson Roxanne Provaznik reports.

SDG&E is on the scene working to repair downed power lines and restore power to area residents. Nine engines, three fire crews, a bulldozer, two water tenders, two helicopters, and two air tankers battled the fire, with 75 firefighters dispatched. The fire burned along both sides of Lawson Valley Road and Sloane Canyon Road. Firefighters will remain on the scene for several hours due to heavy fuels along the creekbed location.

That's a substantial firefighting response for such a small blaze.

We were very lucky on two counts: first, that there was almost no wind yesterday (so the fire spread very slowly); second, that there were no other major fires yesterday (so almost unlimited firefighting resources were available).

Yesterday was very hot, as all my local readers will know. It was 106°F in Lawson Valley at the time we lost power. Those of us with no emergency generators were without either air conditioning or fans until 1:30 am this morning, when the SDG&E teams finished their repair work.

It was just plain miserable.

But it was just as wonderful when the power finally came back on, and our fans blew that lovely cool chaparral air over us – and we could take a shower!

I took the photos below at the scene this morning. Click to enlarge any of them. Two of them are marked up with red lines to show the rough area of the fire.

Liberal Reaction to Ted Kennedy's Death...

Sayeth the oracle sometimes called Mark Steyn:

You can't make an omelet without breaking chicks, right? I don't know how many lives the senator changed – he certainly changed Mary Jo's – but you're struck less by the precise arithmetic than by the basic equation: How many changed lives justify leaving a human being struggling for breath for up to five hours pressed up against the window in a small, shrinking air pocket in Teddy's Oldsmobile? If the senator had managed to change the lives of even more Americans, would it have been OK to leave a couple more broads down there? Hey, why not? At the Huffington Post, Melissa Lafsky mused on what Mary Jo "would have thought about arguably being a catalyst for the most successful Senate career in history … Who knows – maybe she'd feel it was worth it." What true-believing liberal lass wouldn't be honored to be dispatched by that death panel?

Honored? Ugh.

Botany Photo of the Day...

Every day, I get a link to a photo like this sent to me in an email. For free.

If you're interested in things botanical, or things beautiful, then signing up for this is a no-brainer. Do it here, do it now. Just put your email address in the upper-right corner.

What IS That Thing?

It's an image of a pentacene molecule.

More on Auschwitz...

More than 60 years after the fact, detailed plans for the Auschwitz concentration camp have been found. Story here.

Just Awful...

The story of Jaycee Lee Dugard is all over the news right now. She was kidnapped as a little girl (just 11 years old) and held captive for 18 years by the two mouth-breathers at right. The man is 58 year old Phillip Garrido, and he's a convicted rapist.

This is yet another example of our government failing to protect us from criminals – arguably the primary purpose of state and local governments in the first place. In this case, it's a known sexual predator released back into society with no practical constraints on his behavior. Examples like this, unfortunately, abound – and not just in California. This is a national problem.

It's hard for me to imagine anyone defending the current state of affairs with respect to how we deal with the Phillip Garridos of the world – but, in fact, there are many defenders of the status quo. Primarily these defenders can be found in two populations: politicians and academics, two groups notable for the isolation from the rest of us.

Personally I think that society's main tool for handling the Philip Garridos should be something like penal colonies, with hard work and short lifetimes the expected outcome. I'd love to see a never-ending stream of news stories emerging from such colonies about the horrors of incarceration therein – sounds like a great deterrent to me!

But I'd be accepting of nearly any change, as I can think of very few possibilities worse than what we do today (we could give them cash prizes, perhaps?)...

Excellent Rant on Customer Service...

Sent to me by Isaac P., and found so many places on the web that I'm unsure where to attribute it:

Dear Cretins;

I have been an NTL customer since 9th July 2001, when I signed up for your 3-in-one deal for cable TV, cable modem, and telephone.

During this three-month period I have encountered inadequacy of service which I had not previously considered possible, as well as ignorance and stupidity of monolithic proportions.

Please allow me to provide specific details, so that you can either pursue your professional prerogative, and seek to rectify these difficulties – or more likely (I suspect) so that you can have some entertaining reading material as you while away the working day smoking B&H and drinking vendor-coffee on the bog in your office:

My initial installation was cancelled without warning or notice, resulting in my spending an entire Saturday sitting on my behind waiting for your technician to arrive.

When he did not arrive at all, I spent a further 57 minutes listening to your infuriating hold music, and the even more annoying Scottish robot woman telling me to look at your helpful website…. how?

I alleviated the boredom to some small degree by playing solitaire for a few minutes – an activity at which you are no-doubt both familiar and highly adept.

The rescheduled installation then took place some two weeks later, although the technician did forget to bring a number of vital tools – such as a drill-bit, and his cerebrum.

Two weeks later, my cable modem had still not arrived. After several further telephone calls (actually 15 telephone calls over 4 weeks) my modem arrived…

A total of six weeks after I had requested it, and begun to pay for it.

I estimate that the downtime of your internet servers is roughly 35%… these are usually the hours between about 6pm and midnight, Monday to Friday, and most of the useful periods over the weekend.

I am still waiting for my telephone connection. I have made 9 telephone calls on my mobile to your no-help line this week, and have been unhelpfully transferred to a variety of disinterested individuals, who are it seems also highly skilled malarky jugglers.

I have been informed that a telephone line is available (and someone will call me back); that no telephone line is available (and someone will call me back); that I will be transferred to someone who knows whether or not a telephone line is available (and then been cut off); that I will be transferred to someone who knows whether or not a telephone line is available (and then been redirected to an answer machine informing me that your office is closed); that I will be transferred to someone who knows whether or not a telephone line is available (and then been redirected to the irritating Scottish robot woman), and several other variations on this theme.

Doubtless you are no-longer reading this letter, as you have at least a thousand other dissatisfied customers to ignore, and also another one of those crucially important solitaire to attend to. Frankly I don’t care, it’s far more satisfying as a customer to voice my frustrations in print than to shout them at your unending hold music.

Forgive me, therefore, if I continue.

I thought BT were horrible, that they had attained the holy pot of god-awful customer relations, that no-one, anywhere, ever, could be more disinterested, less helpful or more obstructive to delivering service to their customers. That’s why I chose NTL, and because, well, there isn’t anyone else is there? How surprised I therefore was, when I discovered to my considerable dissatisfaction and disappointment what a useless shower of jerks you truly are. You are sputum-filled pieces of distended intestine – incompetents of the highest order. British Telecom – jerks though they are – shine like brilliant beacons of success, in the filthy puss-filled mire of your seemingly limitless inadequacy.

Suffice to say that I have now given up on my futile and foolhardy quest to receive any kind of service from you. I suggest that you do likewise, and cease any potential future attempts to extort payment from me for the services which you have so pointedly and catastrophically failed to deliver – any such activity will be greeted initially with hilarity and disbelief – although these feelings will quickly be replaced by derision, and even perhaps a small measure of bemused rage.

I enclose two small deposits, selected with great care from my cats litter tray, as an expression of my utter and complete contempt for both you and your pointless company. I sincerely hope that they have not become desiccated during transit – they were satisfyingly moist at the time of posting, and I would feel considerable disappointment if you did not experience both their rich aroma and delicate texture. Consider them the very embodiment of my feelings towards NTL, and it’s worthless employees.

Have a nice day – may it be the last in you miserable short life, you irritatingly incompetent and infuriatingly unhelpful bunch of jerks.

Excellent!

A Few of My Favorite Things...

Update:

My friend Doug W. found this on Snopes. It's provably fake, for the sad reason that Julie Andrews has been unable to sing since 1997. Oh, well, it's still funny as hell...

Original Post:

Via my cousin Mike D. I have no idea if this is true or not, but who cares?

40 Yrs Later: The 7 Children In 'The Sound of Music'

'The Sound of Music' won the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1965 and is one of the most popular musicals ever produced.

Remember the 7 children of the Trapp family? They were having a reunion after 40 years and all were looking healthy and amazingly well...

It wouldn't be funny if it weren't so true... Julie Andrews turned 69 and to commemorate her 69th birthday on October 1, actress/vocalist she made a special appearance at Manhattan's Radio City Music Hall for the benefit of the AARP. One of the musical numbers she performed was "My Favourite Things" from the legendary movie "The Sound Of Music."

Here are the actual lyrics she used:

Maalox and nose drops and needles for knitting,
Walkers and handrails and new dental fittings,
Bundles of magazines tied up in string,
These are a few of my favourite things.

Cadillac's and cataracts, and hearing aids and glasses,
Polident and Fixodent and false teeth in glasses,
Pacemakers, golf carts and porches with swings,
These are a few of my favourite things..

When the pipes leak, When the bones creak,
When the knees go bad,
I simply remember my favourite things,
And then I don't feel so bad.

Hot tea and crumpets and corn pads for bunions,
No spicy hot food or food cooked with onions,
Bathrobes and heating pads and hot meals they bring,
These are a few of my favourite things.

Back pains, confused brains, and no need for sinnin',
Thin bones and fractures and hair that is thinnin',

And we won't mention our short, shrunken frames,
When we remember our favourite things.

When the joints ache, When the hips break,
When the eyes grow dim,

Then I remember the great life I've had,
And then I don't feel so bad.

Ms. Andrews received a standing ovation from the crowd that lasted over four minutes and repeated encores.

Well, You Could See This Coming...

Obama's narcissism and arrogance make this an entirely predictable development. But the predictability doesn't make it any less horrifying.

The Obama administration has proposed using the National Endowment for the Arts (the NEA) to further their political goals.

No, I'm not joking.

Details here. Via Darleen Click at Protein Wisdom, who had the evocative picture at right (it's a lovely photoshop of the famous painting “Roses for Stalin”, by Boris Vladimirski).