Morning Walk...

Something was in our yard last night.  I don't know what it was, but the dogs do.  All four of them.  This morning I had all four on leash, and as we walked out of our front door, they nearly pulled me over.  For once they were all pulling – very strongly! – in the same direction.  The usual morning drill is to meander outside in a snarl of leashes, each dog searching for the perfect place to pee.  Not this morning, oh no...

This morning, all four dogs headed straight for the first spot of intense smell, about 40 feet (12 meters) outside our front door.  At that special spot (where I could see or smell absolutely nothing), all four dogly noses tried to get to the same tiny little patch of ground.  They were arranged in a perfect cross, 90° apart, jostling for the best access to that spot.  They seemed neither particularly excited or afraid, just interested.  Only after they'd had their fill of inhaling whatever molecules they could, vacuuming up everything useful – only then did they decide to pee.  Right there, on that spot, one after the other.  There's a message there, but I'm not sure what it is.

The rest of our morning walk was a series of high-speed dashes between other spots that were just as intensely interesting as that first spot.  A trail of them led down our driveway toward our gate.  As we got near the gate, it dawned on me that the dogs were going to straight out the gate and into the hills unless I did something about it, so I started yanking them back.  This was not as successful as it normally is.  Finally I tried a slightly subtler tactic: I pulled them sideways, off our driveway and into our yard.  This worked.  Once I got them going sideways, I yanked them sideways again, and got them headed back toward the house.  Two 90° turns was feasible; a single 180° turn was not. 

The march back to the house was another series of dashes between delicious spots that needed vacuuming.  One other spot became a “pee target”.  I've no idea what made those two particular spots targets, while the others weren't.  I also have no idea what it was that came into our yard, and to within 40 feet or so of our house!

News Overload...

There's so much happening in the world right now...I'm overwhelmed.  I have the sense that we're all witnessing something that potentially is of the same historical import as the fall of the Soviet Union.  It seems like the world's attention isn't particularly focused on the events in the Middle East.  They're in the news, but for a lot of it I have to dig a bit on the inter-tubes.  But the news is there, though it's very hard to be sure what to place credence in.

Libya, Yemen, Iran, Bahrain all appear to have active revolts taking place (though with greatly differing prospects of success).  Gadaffi is slaughtering hundreds of his subjects.  The governments of Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, and UAE are all taking various actions designed to tamp down any revolutionary efforts – though for most of these it's not clear how much those actions were actually needed to maintain the current regimes' power.  Our president says nothing at all about the situation; offers no support, exhibits no leadership either domestically or internationally.  This shames me, as this is exactly the sort of situation in which the world looks to the U.S. for leadership.  Where will the leadership come from?  China?  Russia?  France?

One thing that keeps running through my mind are the predictions of the “domino effect” in the Middle East by a host of neocons in the early 2000s, and by Natan Sharansky.  The scenarios they outlined as likelihoods bear a striking resemblance to what's actually happening...

This morning I read of the earthquake in New Zealand; as I read the death toll stood at 65, with hundreds still unaccounted for.  I visited the city of Christchurch back in the '70s, while I was in the U.S. Navy; somehow my having been there makes the devastation seem a little more real than the typical news report.  There's little any of us can do to help; all we can do is hope for the best...

A New Kind of Internal Combustion Engine...

Reader Dr. Simi L. passes along this video of an OPOC (Opposed Piston, Opposed Cylinder) internal combustion engine.  The video makes clear the advantages of such a design, and they are indeed interesting.  I'd love to see one of these in action!  A word of caution to the viewer: the person narrating the video is the entrepreneur behind its development – so you can fully expect the benefits to be exaggerated and the challenges understated...

Voting With Their Feet...

Americans who are desperate for jobs will move from one state to another to get a job.  Studying the relative movements of Americans between the states is a wonderful summary of the relative economic health of the various states.  Certain businesses are marvelously sensitive to these relative people flows.  One such business is one-way rentals of U-Haul trailers – if more people are traveling from state A to state B than vice versa, U-Haul will charge more for the former in order to cover their cost of returning the trailer.

Reader Doug W. passes along an article that looks at exactly this statistic.  A teaser for fellow Californians:

Good indicators of the outward migration are the prices of U-Haul vehicles. To rent a 26-foot truck one-way from San Francisco to Austin costs $3236, and yet the one-way charge for that same truck from Austin to San Francisco is just $399. Even so, U-Haul has to pay its employees to drive the empty trucks back from Texas.

“Ouch!” says Doug. Ouch, indeed...

Here's another article that looks at the same metric more broadly.  And you can't help but notice that in general, the states that are attracting workers (because they're economically healthy) are the least liberal/progressive...

The Secret Life of the Pilcrow...

Do you know what a pilcrow is?

Wisconsin Kerfuffle...

I've received several emails over the past few days from people wondering why I'm not commenting on the confrontation between Governor Scott Walker and the public employee unions in Wisconsin.  The reason is very simple: I have little to add to the discussion.  But I'm watching with great interest, because I think the outcome of this confrontation is going to be a foreshadowing of the politics of the next year or two.

This sort of confrontation was, I think, inevitable after the 2010 elections.  I certainly didn't expect the public employee unions to simply roll over – they're going to fight back with every tool at their disposal, as we're seeing in Madison.  They have every right to do so.  The interesting element here isn't so much what the unions are doing – rather it's how Scott Walker and the (Republican majority) Wisconsin legislature react.  If they stick to their principles and pass Governor Walker's reform bill, then the conservatives and the Tea Party will have won an important battle in their war on government spending, and their fellows across the country will take great heart.  On the other hand, if they cave in to the public employee unions, the unions across the country will take great heart.  I don't believe the overall war on government spending hinges on the results in Wisconsin, but I do believe that a convincing victory by either side will greatly aid that side.  So I'm watching with great interest, and cheering for Governor Walker... 

Epic Fails: Technology Forecasts...

An amusing collection of forecasts by the experts and pundits of the past – every one of them an epic fail.  These make very clear something that most people figure out if they live long enough: the experts of today have no particular skill at divining the future.

Just as a sample, here's one from one of my personal heroes: Lee de Forest, one of the pioneers of electronics (he invented the first practical vacuum amplifiers, the triode):

While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially I consider it an impossibility, a development of which we need waste little time dreaming.

Heh, as the Instapundit would say...

And Even More Rain!!!

As I write this on Sunday morning, the storm total is just over 4.5 inches (12 cm).  It's quite thoroughly wet outside!

The dogs and I were a little late this morning for our walk; we didn't get outside until about 5 am.  The sky was filled with dark clouds, but there were plenty of places where the starry sky peeked through – including one big hole with a bright moon.  The moonlight lit up all the clouds most beautifully.  Our walk was uneventful; just happy dogs in a freshly washed environment.  Just a few moments after we came back inside, the heavens erupted once more with another brief downpour.  Judging from the radar, we're in for a few hours of that sort of thing...

Rain!!!

Last night it poured – the proverbial cats and dogs.  We got almost 3 inches (7 cm) of rain just last night.  For these parts, that's the stuff of legends. As I write, we're still getting intermittent showers, but nothing like the sustained intensity of last night.  The pounding on our new (and watertight!) metal roof woke me up a few times, and I was glad it did – I flipped on one of our outdoor floodlights and just stared out at the wondrous downpour.

The dogs and I took our morning walk while the downpour was in full swing.  I was all decked out with my waterproof jacket and rain hat; the dogs could hardly have cared less.  The three field spaniels, as usual, had noses to the ground – the wet was all good so far as they were concerned.  And the border collie just went for the pine cones, also entirely as usual.  Outside the door, on the way back in, all three showed their usual incomprehension of why I might want to rub them with a towel.  You could almost hear them saying “Aw, come on!  Just let me in already!  I just know something exciting is happening in there!”

And for three of them, something exciting was happening – but not in the house.  Racer, Miki, and Mo'i are all headed to Ramona today (with Debbie, of course) to compete in an agility trial.  Mo'i hasn't been to a competition in a long, long time – Debbie's taking him only because she knows he'll enjoy it...

NGC 2841...

Via APOD, of course...

Wet Doggy Morning...

I've been a little discombobulated the past few days – my company has moved to a new building, and my first week in the new building is on an unusual schedule for me.  I'm helping one of my team teach a class on our Runbook Automation product, and the hours aren't what I'm used to.  Nobody else seems to think that 5 am is a good time to start, so we're not starting until 8:30 am.  I still wake up at around my normal time (it's habitual; can't help it), so these shifted hours feel hard.  Oh, well.  It's all done on Friday!

We got a half inch of rain yesterday, most of it late in the day and early evening.  This morning it had stopped raining, but the ground was sopping and the sky completely overcast.  The sounds of the morning were completely dominated by our ecstatic frog community.  All four dogs were a little subdued, and very actively sniffing – probably something intimidating visited our yard last night.  I couldn't see or smell any sign of it, but the dogs were all over it.

Bringing the dogs back in after a wet morning walk is always a challenge.  Imagine having four very vigorous dogs on short leashes – bad enough already.  Then when you approach the house's front door, of course they all want to go in – so they're madly jockeying for position as I try to unhook them from the leashes.  After that madness is completed, I've got a writhing ball of dogs at the door, but every few seconds one of them gets distracted and darts away – so I've got to call it back, which isn't always easy (depends on the attractiveness, in dogly terms, of the distraction).  On a wet morning like this morning, I've an additional step: I have to dry off the worst of the water with an old towel we keep by the door.  The dogs, naturally, have zero interest in being dried off; in fact, they have no idea what I'm doing, and find the whole process puzzling and distasteful.  So they wriggle all the more!  Eventually I get them somewhat drier and all positioned by the door – and when I slide it open, the four-dog herd goes thundering into the house.

That home entry always follows the same pattern.  Miki, our youngest field spaniel, always is in the lead.  He's driving as hard and fast as he can, heading straight for the bedroom where Debbie is still in the process of waking up.  Miki's arrival on the bed will speed that process up, and make the final result more certain (you cannot remain asleep with Miki bouncing on you).  After Miki, Racer (the border collie) follows slightly behind.  I think it's mostly reflex with him; he sees Miki running, has no idea why, but can't stand to be left behind.  After Racer, it's Mo'i, our oldest male field spaniel, lumbers along.  He's not running, and he's not headed for the bedroom – he heads for the food bowls in the kitchen (just in case they magically filled up with food while he was outside), and then, always disappointed, heads to the water bowl for a prolonged drink.  That could take five minutes.  Finally, at the back of the herd, is Lea – our oldest dog, a female field spaniel.  I think she's actually running flat out, but she's old and creaky, so that isn't very fast.  She usually gets tuckered out before crossing the living room, so she changes course for one of the doggie beds that our house is littered with, and curls up for a nice nap before doing anything more energetic.  It's the same pattern every morning...

Guard Dog...

The other night, as I was getting ready to go to bed, I noticed Miki (our youngest field spaniel) standing just inside our bedroom door, between our bed and a bookcase.  He had a funny look on his face; to me it looked like he was afraid of something and hiding.  I petted him a bit, trying to comfort him, but he wouldn't budge.

A few minutes later, Debbie came into the bedroom and immediately recognized his behavior as “guarding behavior” – he was guarding something from our other dogs.  But what?  We couldn't see anything there that would interest a dog.

After a few mintues of trying various things, we figured out what he was interested in – something behind the books on the lowest shelf of the bookcase (which is right on the floor).  Our first thought was that some little critter had zoomed across the floor and hidden itself behind the books.  We have any number of little critters out here that could do that, ranging from cute little desert mice that occasionally make their way into the house somehow, to less benign things like scorpions and baby rattlesnakes.

Naturally, it was my job to figure out what was behind the books.  Miki watched the proceedings with great interest, clearly eager to get at whatever we'd reveal.  So, very carefully, I started pulling books off the bottom shelf so I could see behind them.  On about the third book, the culprit revealed itself: a wild dog biscuit fragment.  How that little piece of dog biscuit got behind our books, we have no idea.  Nor do we know when that happened – those books haven't been touched for months, so it could have been quite some time.  But Miki's little cold, wet nose obviously led him to the shelf on that day, and he sure as hell wasn't going to let some other dog capture that biscuit!

Of course we let Miki eat his prize, which he did with evident satisfaction...

Camellia...

Via BPotD...

Stardust-NeXT Visits Comet Tempel 1...

After its initial mission was successfully completed, the Stardust robotic explorer had some extra fuel.  After holding a contest for ideas on what to do with this, NASA picked a proposal to revisit the comet Tempel 1, which was first visited by the Deep Impact mission back in 2005.  NASA named this new “bonus” mission Stardust-NeXT. 

After a lot of work and some very tricky orbital mechanics (to keep the fuel use low), on Valentine's Day (Monday) Stardust-NeXT made a successful near pass to comet Tempel 1, collecting all sorts of science data including a spectacular series of images like the one at right (via APOD, of course).

Total cost of this scientifically fruitful mission: less than the cost of shipping Tang to the International Space Station.

Dang!

Niall Ferguson on TV...

Niall Ferguson is one of my favorite authors, with a series of non-fiction books covering a variety of topics in history and economics (often blending the two).  They're uniformly excellent, very readable, and I recommend them often to my friends.

I had no idea that Mr. Ferguson appeared as a pundit on TV (since I rarely watch TV!), but yesterday I happened across this clip yesterday.  In it, Mr. Ferguson (apparently an invited guest on MSNBC) eviscerates the rather obvious pro-Obama position of the talking heads.  He brooks no nonsense, avoids anything resembling platitudes, and absolutely nails them with those pesky things called facts.  Highly entertaining!  I'd really like to see more like this, but I suspect that Mr. Ferguson's career on MSNBC has come to a screeching halt, for he ran completely off the approved narrative rails...

PC in the Military...

Remember this guy?  He's Major Hasan, the Muslim extremist who happened to be an Army psychiatrist – who attacked his fellow soldiers in Ft. Hood just over a year ago, killing 12 of them.

Dorothy Rabinowitz has an excellent piece in today's WSJ discussing the results of the military reports on the incident.  An excerpt:

In this report, titled "A Ticking Time Bomb" and put out by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, there is a detail as dazzling in its bleak way as all the glowing misrepresentations of Dr. Hasan's skills and character, which his superiors poured into their evaluations of him. It concerns the Department of Defense's official report on the Foot Hood killings—a study whose recital of fact made no mention of Hasan's well-documented jihadist sympathies. Subsequent DoD memoranda portray the bloodbath—which began with Hasan shouting "Allahu Akbar!"—as a kind of undefined extremism, something on the order, perhaps, of work-place violence.

This avoidance of specifics was apparently contagious—or, more precisely, policy. In November 2010, each branch of the military issued a final report on the Fort Hood shooting. Not one mentioned the perpetrator's ties to radical Islam. Even today, "A Ticking Time Bomb," co-authored by Sen. Joe Lieberman (I., Conn.) and Susan Collins (R., Maine), reminds us that DoD still hasn't specifically named the threat represented by the Fort Hood attack—a signal to the entire Defense bureaucracy that the subject is taboo.

There is something seriously amiss when the military can't (or won't) see the obvious evidence of our main enemy's infiltration into its own ranks.  The political correctness/multicultural movement is bad enough in the civilian world.  In the military, it puts our warriors unnecessarily in harm's way...

WTF: Weapon of Mass Destruction Found in the U.S.?

I'm not entirely sure what to make of this story.  The Daily Mail isn't exactly at the top of the list of reputable new sources.  On the other hand, the Obama administration would probably behave in exactly the way this article implies they are (hiding evidence of terrorist success), and the lamestream media here definitely has a history of supporting the administration. 

So I'm left wondering...

More Governor Awesome!

I'm still struggling with the concept that this outstanding example of effective government is from freaking New Jersey!

It's hard to imagine a response from a politician I'd like better, to a challenge like this one:

Egypt...

I have so much hope for the people of the Middle East, and at the same time I'm very worried about the bazillion ways this could go horribly wrong...

Peggy Noonan, apparently fully recovered from her Obama spell, has some interesting thoughts.  One paragraph:

And youth trumps age. Egypt is a young nation, median age 24, with high youth unemployment. All revolutions, in the end, are about the young versus the old, because the young are driven by hope and the old by experience. The men who massed in Tahrir Square the first week looked to be aged roughly 16 to 35. A few days into the revolution, I received an email from a friend just back from Cairo. He told me, he'd seen a young man run out of his suburban Cairo house. He was off to the demonstrations, to take part in history. Running after him was his grandmother, who literally grabbed him by the ear and tried to drag him back inside.

Heh. I can easily visualize that grandmother!

The always-interesting Fouad Ajami has a great column, also at WSJ, which concludes:

Umm al-Dunya, the mother of the world, Egyptians and other Arabs call the fabled city of Cairo. It had been there, in that city founded a millennium ago, that Islam fashioned a civilization, made its peace with the world, outwitted and outwaited conquerors.

Egyptians know that this Arab revolution of 2011—and the upheaval has earned that name—had not begun in their metropolis, that it had travelled eastward from Tunisia. When that revolt arrived in Cairo, it found a stage worthy of its ambitions. For decades now, Egypt has been the lens through which Arabs see their history. This is the case today. A new Arab politics has spawned in Liberation Square, a movement of a piece with the modern ways of protest and reform.

It will be said that the great, enduring dilemmas of Egypt—a huge country that has lost out in the game of nations—will still be there. There will be accounts to settle, a struggle between those who were sullied by the dictatorship and those who weren't. The Egyptians will be tested again as to their fidelity to democratic ways. But if this standoff that ended in the demise of the dictator is any guide, the Egyptians may give us a consoling tale of an Islamic people who rose to proclaim their fidelity to liberty, and who provided us with a reminder that tyranny is not fated for the Arabs.

Our fingers are crossed and our thumbs are pressed (as my German friends would say), reflecting our fervent hope for a good outcome from all this turmoil.  We're also hoping that this revolutionary wind keeps right on traveling, across all the thugocracies in the region...

Code of the West...

Via my lovely wife.  There's an interesting backstory.  The code:

1. Live each day with courage

2. Take pride in your work

3. Always finish what you start

4. Do what has to be done

5. Be tough, but fair

6. When you make a promise, keep it

7. Ride for the brand

8. Talk less and say more

9. Remember that some things aren't for sale

10. Know where to draw the line

Lots to like about that...

Parable for Our Times...

Via reader Dr. Simi L.:

"Winston, come into the dining room, it's time to eat," Julia yelled to her husband. "In a minute, honey, it's a tie score," he answered. Actually Winston wasn't very interested in the traditional holiday football game between Detroit and Washington.

Ever since the government passed the Civility in Sports Statute of 2017, outlawing tackle football for its "unseemly violence" and the "bad example it sets for the rest of the world," Winston was far less of a football fan than he used to be. Two-hand touch wasn't nearly as exciting.

Yet it wasn't the game that Winston was uninterested in. It was more the thought of eating another TofuTurkey. Even though it was the best type of VeggieMeat available after the government revised the American Anti-Obesity Act of 2018, adding fowl to the list of federally-forbidden foods, (which already included potatoes, cranberry sauce and mince-meat pie), it wasn't anything like real turkey. And ever since the government officially changed the name of "Thanksgiving Day" to "A National Day of Atonement" in 2020 to officially acknowledge the Pilgrims' historically brutal treatment of Native Americans, the holiday had lost a lot of its luster.

Eating in the dining room was also a bit daunting. The unearthly gleam of government-mandated fluorescent light bulbs made the TofuTurkey look even weirder than it actually was, and the room was always cold. Ever since Congress passed the Power Conservation Act of 2016, mandating all thermostats-which were monitored and controlled by the electric company-be kept at 68 degrees, every room on the north side of the house was barely tolerable throughout the entire winter.

Still, it was good getting together with family. Or at least most of the family. Winston missed his mother, who passed on in October, when she had used up her legal allotment of live-saving medical treatment. He had had many heated conversations with the Regional Health Consortium, spawned when the private insurance market finally went bankrupt, and everyone was forced into the government health care program. And though he demanded she be kept on her treatment, it was a futile effort. "The RHC's resources are limited," explained the government bureaucrat Winston spoke with on the phone. "Your mother received all the benefits to which she was entitled. I'm sorry for your loss."

Ed couldn't make it either. He had forgotten to plug in his electric car last night, the only kind available after the Anti-Fossil Fuel Bill of 2021 outlawed the use of the combustion engines-for everyone but government officials. The fifty mile round trip was about ten miles too far, and Ed didn't want to spend a frosty night on the road somewhere between here and there.

Thankfully, Winston's brother, John, and his wife were flying in. Winston made sure that the dining room chairs had extra cushions for the occasion. No one complained more than John about the pain of sitting down so soon after the government-mandated cavity searches at airports, which severely aggravated his hemorrhoids. Ever since a terrorist successfully smuggled a cavity bomb onto a jetliner, the TSA told Americans the added "inconvenience" was an "absolute necessity" in order to stay "one step ahead of the terrorists." Winston's own body had grown accustomed to such probing ever since the government expanded their scope to just about anywhere a crowd gathered, via Anti-Profiling Act of 2022. That law made it a crime to single out any group or individual for "unequal scrutiny," even when probable cause was involved. Thus, cavity searches at malls, train stations, bus depots, etc., etc., had become almost routine. Almost.

The Supreme Court is reviewing the statute, but most Americans expect a Court composed of six progressives and three conservatives to leave the law intact. "A living Constitution is extremely flexible," said the Court's eldest member, Elena Kagan. " Europe has had laws like this one for years. We should learn from their example," she added.

Winston's thoughts turned to his own children. He got along fairly well with his 12-year-old daughter, Brittany, mostly because she ignored him. Winston had long ago surrendered to the idea that she could text anyone at any time, even during Atonement Dinner. Their only real confrontation had occurred when he limited her to 50,000 texts a month, explaining that was all he could afford. She whined for a week, but got over it.

His 16-year-old son, Jason, was another matter altogether. Perhaps it was the constant bombarding he got in public school that global warming, the bird flu, terrorism or any of a number of other calamities were "just around the corner," but Jason had developed a kind of nihilistic attitude that ranged between simmering surliness and outright hostility. It didn't help that Jason had reported his father to the police for smoking a cigarette in the house, an act made criminal by the Smoking Control Statute of 2018, which outlawed smoking anywhere within 500 feet of another human being. Winston paid the $5,000 fine, which might have been considered excessive before the American dollar became virtually worthless as a result of QE13. The latest round of quantitative easing the federal government initiated was, once again, to "spur economic growth." This time they promised to push unemployment below its years-long rate of 18%, but Winston was not particularly hopeful.

Yet the family had a lot for which to be thankful, Winston thought, before remembering it was a Day of Atonement. At least he had his memories. He felt a twinge of sadness when he realized his children would never know what life was like in the Good Old Days, long before Obama and government promises to make life "fair for everyone" realized their full potential. Winston, like so many of his fellow Americans, never realized how much things could change when they didn't happen all at once, but little by little, so people could get used to them.

He wondered what might have happened if the public had stood up while there was still time, maybe back around 2012, when all the real nonsense began. "Maybe we wouldn't be where we are today if we'd just said 'enough is enough' when we had the chance," he thought.

Maybe so, Winston. Maybe so.

Not All Entertainers Are Liberal Pantywaists...

A musical tribute to the troops in Iraq, by Gene Simmons (of KISS).  Via my cousin Mike D.:

It's Really Getting Cold Back East!

Via my mom:

I just got off the phone with a friend living in northern Maine near the Canadian border.

She said that since early this morning the snow has been nearly waist high and is still falling.

The temperature is dropping way below zero and the north wind is increasing to near gale force.

Her husband has done nothing but look through the kitchen window and just stare.

She says that if it gets much worse, she may have to let him in.

The Ultimate Cookbook...

It's 2,400 pages and 47 pounds, and costs $625.

I think I'll wait for the Kindle edition...

Mystery Solved!

How fleas jump...

Bye-Bye, Old Office...

One of my colleagues took the snap at right, showing the office where I've worked for the past couple of years.  That office was in the building we called the “wooden spaceship” because of its resemblance to the disc-shaped part of Star Trek's USS Enterprise.  We're all going to miss that old building: lots of character, and right on the beach.  Also termites, roaches, rats, and cranky heating and air conditioning, but that's all just part of the character...

Now we're in a sleek new building, albeit far more conventional.  We've leased the entire building, and the amount of space inside is breathtakingly huge compared to our old building.  It's located at 12225 El Camino Real, San Diego.  The photo below is a Google Maps view; my team's office is on the second floor where the orange arrow is pointing, facing south.  One side of our office is open (i.e., there are only three walls) and facing tall windows looking across Carmel Valley – a pleasant, sunny view with lots of greenery, but not quite like the ocean views of our old building.

I went in to the new building on Saturday to unpack and troubleshoot any problems – but also just to see what the new place was like once everything was installed.  Many of my colleagues were there as well.

There were lots of reactions to various things.  Probably the most interesting reactions were related to the kitchens – there's one on each floor, and they are stunningly well-equipped compared to our old place.  The second-floor kitchen (which my team will use) has two enormous industrial-strength refrigerators, three microwave ovens, enough storage for an army regiment, sinks, an ice machine, coffee machines, and a soda fountain.  It looks like a facility you'd find in a restaurant, except there's no range or oven. 

A Clarifying Thought...

I caught this simple assertion on a Ricochet podcast driving home from work yesterday afternoon:

Meritocracy is violative of liberal principles.

David Limbaugh was the man talking.  He's Rush Limbaugh's brother; like him, a conservative political observer and commentator.  David sounds more like an academic, and less like a talking head; the few times I've delved into his work, I've found it thought-provoking and rant-free.  He's occasionally quite funny, too.

But back to that six word assertion above.  First, I googled it and got zero hits.  It seems to be original with Mr. Limbaugh.  Second, it is highly compressed (a little inside joke there that a few of my readers will get) – I'd probably have to write several paragraphs to capture that same thought, and not so well.

That assertion (which I agree with) is a great summary of why I don't want liberals running my health care, the military, Congress, or the government in general.  Liberal governments attract mediocrity (or worse) like stink on you-know-what...

Mubarak Out, the SandMonkey Reacts...

From the Egyptian blogger “SandMonkey”:

Sweet!

My Favorite Animal...

Via my mom:

Our teacher asked us what our favorite animal was, and I said, "Fried chicken."  She said I wasn't funny, but she couldn't have been right, because everyone else in the class laughed.

My parents told me to always be truthful and honest, and I am. Fried chicken is my favorite animal. I told my dad what happened, and he said my teacher was probably a member of PETA.  He said they love animals very much.

I do, too. Especially chicken, pork and beef. Anyway, my teacher sent me to the principal's office. I told him what happened, and he laughed, too. Then he told me not to do it again.

The next day in class my teacher asked me what my favorite live animal was.  I told her it was chicken. She asked me why, just like she'd asked the other children.

So I told her it was because you could make them into fried chicken.

She sent me back to the principal's office again. He laughed, and told me not to do it again. I don't understand. My parents taught me to be honest, but my teacher doesn't like it when I am.

Today, my teacher asked us to tell her what famous person we admire most.

I told her, "Colonel Sanders."

Guess where I am now...

I like roasted chicken best, myself!

Paraprosdokian...

Via my lovely wife:

A paraprosdokian is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part. It is frequently used for humorous or dramatic effect, sometimes producing an anticlimax.

Some examples:

1. Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.

2. Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.

3. The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it's still on the list.

4. If I agreed with you we'd both be wrong.

5. We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public.

6. War does not determine who is right - only who is left.

7. Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

8. Evening news is where they begin with 'Good evening', and then proceed to tell you why it isn't.

9. A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station.

10. How is it one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?

11. Dolphins are so smart that within a few weeks of captivity, they can train people to stand on the very edge of the pool and throw them fish.

12. I thought I wanted a career, turns out I just wanted pay checks.

13. Whenever I fill out an application, in the part that says "In an emergency, notify:" I put "Doctor".

14. I didn't say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.

15. Behind every successful man is his woman. Behind the fall of a successful man is usually another woman.

16. You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice.

17. The voices in my head may not be real, but they have some good ideas!

18. Hospitality: Making your guests feel like they're at home, even if you wish they were.

19. I discovered I scream the same way whether I'm about to be devoured by a great white shark or if a piece of seaweed touches my foot.

20. There's a fine line between cuddling and holding someone down so they can't get away.

21. I always take life with a grain of salt, plus a slice of lemon, and a shot of tequila.

22. When tempted to fight fire with fire, remember that the Fire Department usually uses water.

23. You're never too old to learn something stupid.

24. To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target.

Americans are NOT Stupid!

I don't know why I keep watching these things. They make me want to simultaneously laugh, cry, and hit people. Mostly hit people...




And then after thinking about it for a while, I'm just frightened for the future of my country. With reason, I think...

Hmmm...

The More Workers a Company Has...

It's an old business maxim, oft-repeated in the engineering world: the bigger your team is, the less productive each individual worker is.  Everybody in the software business recognizes this as one of the fundamental challenges to scaling a software company.  The company I'm working for is facing this very challenge right now, as we are growing very rapidly (and today we're packing to move into our new, much bigger building).

But I've never seen anyone seriously attempt to quantify this effect, until I read this post.  Interesting stuff.  And a little scary...

Sparrow...

According to this review, Sparrow (a $10 app at the Mac store) is a very nice email client for GMail users on the Mac.  I'm pretty happy with the web interface myself, but I just might give this a whirl...

Toyota's Accelerator Malfunctions...

If you've been paying attention to this story, you already know the outcome: after months (and millions of dollars) spent investigating the media-hyped reports of electronics problems in Toyota's accelerators that allegedly led to hundreds of accidents and dozens of deaths, the official report says: there is no electronic problem.  The problem was drivers mistaking the accelerator pedal for the brake pedal:

A record $48.8 million in fines, nearly eight million vehicle recalls, hundreds of lawsuits and one humiliating set of Congressional grillings later, we finally learned Tuesday that Toyota cars can't magically accelerate on their own. So what happened? "Pedal misapplications."

Now there's a euphemism for the bureaucratic ages. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood couldn't bring himself to say "driver error" and he grew testy with a reporter who dared to put it so bluntly. But that's what the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration study, conducted over 10 months with the help of NASA engineers, concluded. Or to put it in plain English: Drivers, in moments of panic, sometimes mistake the accelerator for the brake.

There's something badly broken about a legal system that allows mistakes like this to occur over and over again.  Billions of dollars of shareholder value (that's mom and pop's pension, folks) were destroyed for no reason whatsoever.  I have no magic answers here; wish I did...

Methinks This Lad is in Big, Big Trouble...

...from at least two directions.  Via Jim M.:

What Can I Say?

One of my co-workers, displaying his particular skills.

My little team and a couple of the people we work most closely with (including this character, who writes our customer-facing technical documentation) all went out together for lunch yesterday.  Good company, good Thai food - enjoyable for all of us.

We also went and visited the vastness of the new building we're moving into this Friday.  It's gigantic compared with our current building!  But it's also unfinished.  A small army of workers is busy installing things, running wires, putting up lights, painting, etc.   Someone who's never managed such an affair (like me!) looks at this chaos and says “How on earth can they possibly be finished by Friday?”  But those in charge are confident they'll be ready...

Oysters...

I reproduce this missive from Larry E. in its entire glory:

I read this article saying that oysters are on the decline worldwide...

Oysters disappearing worldwide

...and I'm thinking to myself.... GOOD!! 

First off, oysters are disgusting, so good riddance. And second, if they do die off, something else will fill that ecological niche. With luck, maybe that something will be a bit more tasty! 

I haven't figured out why environmentalists have have somehow, selectively, decided that this is the "Best Time in History®". The Earth is constantly changing, species constantly come and go and this has been going on for billions of years. The Earth has been way hotter than it is now, way colder, had way more CO2 in the atmosphere, oceans have come and gone and through most of its history its managed to do so quite nicely without mankind. So why is it so many think this should be different now? 

If we go out of our way to preserve a species that cannot adapt, aren't we artificially weakening the ecology by preventing that nitch from being filled by something more hardy?

I made a similar argument to a priest I met once on a long trans-Atlantic flight. He was involved in the finances for his church, particularly for charitable work in poor countries. I suggested that by providing minimal food etc. into areas that cannot sustain their population, that he might be making things worse. That it encourages the population to remain, possibly even anchors them there, in a place that cannot sustain them. Where the agriculture or economy etc. just isn't adequate. So people being what people are, they remain, and they have more children and they remain in a dependent and impoverished state indefinitely. 

He took offense of course, and it made for a particularly long flight.... for him. But the fact remains that if you artificially support a population, whether people or oysters, that cannot sustain itself, you may be doing much worse for the ecology and the population than good.

Speed Enforcement...

Watch it 'till the end – you probably won't be expecting the ending.  Via Jim M.:

Daily Smile...

Via Dr. Simi L.:

Binary Math and Russian Peasants...

Russian peasants allegedly used binary math to multiply, and didn't even know they were doing so.  The explanation.  I have no idea if the backstory is true, but the paper algorithm is interesting nonetheless...

Elections Have Consequences...

...and this consequence I like.  Colonel West, elected to the House of Representatives from Florida this past November:



Oh, more like this, please!

Where are “UFOs” Spotted...

I'm not at all sure what this graphic is actually telling me, but somehow it's very amusing nonetheless.  The darker the color on the chart at right, the more UFO sightings per capita.  Looks like there's something in the water in the Rockies and on their western slopes, and that same mysterious additive is missing on the eastern slopes and Great Plains...

Old Photos, New Mosaic...

Astronaut Ed Mitchell took a series of photos out the window of the Antares landing module during Apollo 14.  Much more recently, using modern digital technologies, many of these photos have been stitched together to form the mosaic at right.  Click to enlarge, or see APOD for the image in all its glory...

Again?

Some Italian scientists are claiming that they have a working cold fusion reactor that is nearly ready for production.  I'm skeptical.  But jeez, wouldn't it be just wonderful if this time it were for real?

Zeta Oph...

From APOD, of course.

Reagan's 100th...

Today is the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's birth.

Oh, how I long for him today...

Peggy Noonan (who worked for Reagan) has a beautiful piece in the WSJ today.  A teaser paragraph:

His most underestimated political achievement? In the spring of 1981 the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization called an illegal strike. It was early in Reagan's presidency. He'd been a union president. He didn't want to come across as an antiunion Republican. And Patco had been one of the few unions to support him in 1980. But the strike was illegal. He would not accept it. He gave them a grace period, two days, to come back. If they didn't, they'd be fired. They didn't believe him. Most didn't come back. So he fired them. It broke the union. Federal workers got the system back up. The Soviet Union, and others, were watching. They thought: This guy means business. It had deeply positive implications for U.S. foreign policy. But here's the thing: Reagan didn't know that would happen, didn't know the bounty he'd reap. He was just trying to do what was right.

He just wanted to do what was right.

I'll forgive a lot in a President, if I have that. Just that...

Now This Just Pisses Me Off!

The gist of the story:

• The local government, advised by engineers, does something that some local citizens don't like.
  


• The local citizens do their homework, put together a counter-argument, back it up with the same kind of work the city's engineers did, and submit it.
  


• An engineer working for the local government reads their submission and is surprised at the quality of it.  Then he notes that the work wasn't signed by a licensed engineer – so he files a complaint against the citizens for practicing engineering without a license (?!?!).

As one of my favorite bloggers used to say, before he was hounded off the Internet:

Rope.

Tree.

Bureaucrats and their minions.

Some assembly required.

NGC 3621...

As seen by the La Silla Observatory, in Chile.  Ole!

The Man Who Isn't There...

Via Frankie T.  I've seen some of these photos before, but never with any explanation.  The lead from the article accompanying the photos:

You might say that Liu Bolin likes to blend in.

But the Chinese artist does more than just wear camouflage pants and stand next to a bush. With the help of some assistants, Bolin paints himself, head to toe and unassumingly just stands there--in grocery stores, next to piles of coal, on staircases, you name it. And, unless you look really closely, you'll miss him entirely--which is pretty much the point.

My first thought on seeing these: it gives you a good idea what Harry Potter's cloak might do if such a thing could actually be made...

Flags of Every Country...

Brought to life in a beautiful roll-over map with pop-up images of the flags and information on their origin.  Somebody put a lot of work into this...

Bite Me...

The Daily Caller is running this image front and center, with no real explanation (either there or in the article it points to) of its origin.  I just thought it was an interesting graphic...

Technological Lock-In...

Neal Stephenson (yes, that Neal Stephenson) with an excellent piece on rockets as an example of technological lock-in.  It includes a fascinating analysis of how rockets came to be as they are, along with some informed speculation about why alternatives to rockets haven't been developed.

It's nice to see some new writing by Neal Stephenson; it's been a while since I've had that pleasure...

Resupply...

FOB Waza K'wah gets resupplied by the only means available: air drop.  This photo shows fuel being dropped.  Our guys are fighting out in one of the more nether regions of the world.  Click to enlarge.  More here...

Color Vision...

The most accessible explanation of human color vision and perception I've seen.  Even so, it doesn't shy from the mysteries that most texts avoid...

Code Cracking...

Where the code is on lottery tickets.  A Canadian statistician figured out how to pick winning tickets in a “scratcher” lottery – without scratching.  It's a fascinating read...

All the Volcano Webcams in the World!

On one page...

Gigapixel Art Reproductions...

Courtesy of Google and museums around the world...

Strange Morning Walk...

It's cold and windy – the winds are gusting up to about 25 MPH (40 kph) and the temperature is around 40°F (5°C).  The sky is crystal-clear and moonless; bright stars all around.  The Big Dipper (Ursa major) is nearly straight overhead, which always looks odd to me.

The three field spaniels were, as usual, noses-down, sniffing like mad.  They appeared to not even notice the howling wind.  Racer, the border collie, was very spooked by it all.  The noises all around us (gates crashing, branches swishing, brush rolling across the yard) all caught his attention and greatly distracted him from his pine cones.  He spent most of our walk with his hackles full up, growling, yipping, and generally acting aggressively toward all the noises.  If I was a noise, I'd have been intimidated.  The brown dogs...not so much.

Doing Their Bit...

...to help the folks in Egypt.  Good for Google!

Holy Byte Code!

Java hangs when running a simple program to convert a string to a double:

class runhang {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println("Test:");
        double d = Double.parseDouble("2.2250738585072012e-308");
        System.out.println("Value: " + d);
    }
}

It gets even worse: there's a similar compiler hang.

Just when you thought it was safe to assume the java.lang package was free of bugs...

ObamaCare Ruling...

My hero of the week: Judge Roger Vinson.  The WSJ has a good piece on his ruling this morning.  The lead:

'If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.'

Federal Judge Roger Vinson opens his decision declaring ObamaCare unconstitutional with that citation from Federalist No. 51, written by James Madison in 1788. His exhaustive and erudite opinion is an important moment for American liberty, and yesterday may well stand as the moment the political branches were obliged to return to the government of limited and enumerated powers that the framers envisioned.

As Judge Vinson took pains to emphasize, the case is not really about health care at all, or the wisdom—we would argue the destructiveness—of the newest entitlement. Rather, the Florida case goes to the core of the architecture of the American system, and whether there are any remaining limits on federal control. Judge Vinson's 78-page ruling in favor of 26 states and the National Federation of Independent Business, among others, is by far the best legal vindication to date of Constitutional principles that form the outer boundaries of federal power.

Go read the whole thing.

Wet Morning Walk...

We got a little rain yesterday afternoon and last night – enough to thoroughly wet down our valley, but not enough to produce any runoff.  My weather station is down at the moment, so I don't have a measurement.  My best guess is about a quarter inch.

The dogs always like these wet morning walks, as they can smell so much better under these conditions.  I suspect that every blade of grass and every grain of sand has an odiferous story to tell them.  The three field spaniels certainly acted that way – they wanted to spend an hour or so at each interesting repository of smells, which was about every half inch. 

Race, on the other hand, just wanted pine cones.  He appeared to take pleasure in the fact that they were cold and wet, crunching them with a bit more delight than usual (and that's saying something!).

No stars or moonlight this morning; it was completely overcast...

Seven Years of Opportunity...

APOD has a celebratory post up today – celebrating seven years on Mars by the amazing Opportunity explorer.  Designed for a mission of 90 days, it is still in nearly perfect condition seven years later.  It has now logged over 15 miles (27 km) of roving over the Martian surface, far more than its designers ever dreamed of.  It's also had its share of good luck: unexpectedly common dust devils have cleaned the accumulated dust off its solar panels on several occasions.  Without these lovely dust storms, Opportunity's solar panels would long ago have been blocked.

Opportunity's sibling rover Spirit is also still operational, but it has suffered more component failures (especially its wheels) and is now stuck in one place.  Nevertheless, it's still doing yeoman science work every day.

Click on the image below to see it greatly magnified, or see it on APOD...

An Unserious Speech...

Peggy Noonan on Obama's State of the Union Speech - her lead:

It is a strange and confounding thing about this White House that the moment you finally think they have their act together—the moment they get in the groove and start to demonstrate that they do have some understanding of our country—they take the very next opportunity to prove anew that they do not have their act together, and are not in the groove. It's almost magical.

The State of the Union speech was not centrist, as it should have been, but merely mushy, and barely relevant. It wasted a perfectly good analogy—America is in a Sputnik moment—by following it with narrow, redundant and essentially meaningless initiatives. Rhetorically the speech lay there like a lox, as if the document itself knew it was dishonest, felt embarrassed, and wanted to curl up quietly in a corner of the podium and hide. But the president insisted on reading it.

What she said.

Read the whole thing...

Mac Software Recommendations...

Quite a few things on this list that are new to me, and sound interesting...

Happy Music, Happy Feet...

Via my cousin Mike D.:



I was panting myself by the time they were finished...

She Lives Way Down the Street!

Very funny sermon, via my mom:

Shameless Plug...

For my company.  Our marketing folks just posted this little movie about our upcoming Winter 2011 release (coming in early February).  There are no technical details here; it's just setting the scene for them.

I love it that we do things like this movie!

Winning the Future...

As many others, including Sarah Palin, have observed: Obama's State of the Union theme “Winning the Future” is the wrong phrase to describe his leadership, but it's the right acronym.  The graphic is already viral...

Awesome.

She's Back!

Rachel Lucas is posting again, albeit only occasionally.  Here's one destined to be a classic: “Noodles that are Wrong”.

I go to work with a smile on my face on those days when Rachel has a new post...

M78 (in Orion)...

Jeez, it never looked like this in my telescope!  From APOD, of course...

Holey Moley!

It's like Christmas for geeks!

Sometimes, You're Just Amazed...

Just over a month ago, Frankie joined our little development team.  She keeps a blog that I think of as part of her recovery plan – recovery from a profoundly sad event in her life a couple of years ago (I'll let her tell that story through her blog).  The blog is called “Hope Rising”; a title that is hopeful in and of itself.

Well, this morning I visited her blog for the first time in a few days, and found this beautiful post.  The paragraph below was just one of several that I stopped and reread a few times:

My pursuit of hope introduced me to what I have come to call the space in between. The place in my life where what was is gone and what will be has yet to be revealed. It’s the place where the only road available is the one forged with decisions and consequences of my past and my only power is in choosing the demeanor with which I walk it. For me that road was letting go of Arielle and walking that road in pursuit of hope was my spoken choice.

Arielle is the subject of the sad event. The post this comes from is all about Frankie being ready to run in her first half-marathon – which she did on the next day.  That's her at right, crossing the finish line.

I'm proud to know you, Frankie.  And I'm looking forward to knowing you better...

Found Emu...

Seen on a piece of chipboard posted along side Lawson Valley Drive this morning on my way to work (at 4 am!):

Found Emu

Heh!

Update: added photos

Industry, Meet Statist...

TigerHawk explains, very clearly, how the Obama administration's failure to understand how capitalism works is wrecking our industrial jewel: the pharmaceuticals.  Read it and weep.  Then vote these assholes idiots out of office at every possible opportunity.

For the children.

And yourself...

Minimum Wage = Recovery Roadblock...

If it's not obvious to you why the minimum wage (at any level!) is a problem, then read Warren Meyer's excellent piece in Forbes.  Meyer, by the way, is the blogger at the always-interesting CoyoteBlog...

These Really Work!

Via my mom, who says she verified the following on Snopes:

Amazing Simple Home Remedies

1. Avoid cutting yourself when slicing vegetables by getting someone else to hold the knife while you chop.

2. Avoid arguments with females about lifting the toilet seat by using the sink instead.

3. High blood pressure sufferers – simply cut yourself and bleed for a few minutes, thus reducing the pressure on your veins. Remember to use a timer.

4. A mouse trap placed on top of your alarm clock will prevent you from rolling over and going back to sleep after you hit the snore button.

5. If you have a bad cough, take a large dose of laxatives. Then you'll be afraid to cough.

6. You only need two tools in life – WD-40 and duct tape. If it doesn't move and should, use the WD-40. If it shouldn't move and does, use the duct tape.

7. If you can't fix it with a hammer, you've got an electrical problem.

And the daily thought:

Some people are like slinkies – not really good for anything, but they bring a smile to your face when pushed down the stairs.

Yup, this is the kind of home I grew up in. Does that explain anything for you?

So You Think You're a JavaScript Whiz?

Try this mind-bender!  What does this JavaScript expression do, if executed in a browser?

($=[$=[]][(__=!$+$)[_=-~-~-~$]+({}+$)[_/_]+($$=($_=!''+$)[_/_]+$_[+$])])()[__[_/_]+__[_+~$]+$_[_]+$$](_/_)

The answer can be found here, once you give up trying to figure it out...

New Memory Technology...

This sounds very promising: a new semiconductor technology for non-volatile memory with the speed of volatile RAM.  Unlike some other, more exotic methods proposed over the years, this one doesn't require any advances in fabrication technology...

Alternative to OS/X Terminal...

In alpha right now.  It has some interesting features...

Public Key Cryptography Invented Earlier than We Thought?

Ask anyone interested in cryptography about public-key cryptography, and the names of Diffie, Hellman, Murkle, Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman will quickly arise.  They're the inventors of the concept of public-key cryptography as most of us know it.

Well, maybe not.  If this article is accurate, apparently the British government developed public-key cryptography independently and several years earlier than the six listed above.  The narrative sounds plausible to me, though of course I have no personal knowledge of any of it...

Wow!

Via APOD, this video of a spectacular meteor from 1992:

Morning Walk – Now with Coyotes!

Miki and Race are with Debbie in Arizona, getting ready to compete today.  So this morning I just had Mo'i and Lea to walk.  When I went into our living room to get ready to take them out, I noticed that our outside patio light, which has a motion sensor on it, was already turned on.  It takes a fairly large animal (dog sized) to make it turn on, so of course that got me to wondering what was out there.

Mo'i and Lea are our two oldest dogs, the least able to defend themselves.  So I walked out first by myself, with a flashlight, to see if anything was still hanging about the yard.  I shined the flashlight all around, and didn't see a thing.  Whatever it was that tripped the light seemed to have hightailed out of there.

So I went back inside, leashed Mo'i and Lea, and we went for our usual morning walk.  But when we got to the bottom of our driveway, I heard a couple of preliminary noises and then ... the unmistakable sound of a pack of coyotes howling.  And these were close!

I had the flashlight with me, but wasn't using it.  I fumbled for a moment and turned it on, aiming it at where the sound appeared to be coming from.  Just to the left of the beam, three pairs of glowing eyes – a kind of greenish orange color, moving up-and-down as they howled.  The three were about 150 feet (50 meters) away, alongside and outside the fence around our yard.  They didn't act aggressively in any way – but neither were they shy. 

We turned back toward the house, and the coyotes stopped howling.  Mo'i and Lea seemed completely oblivious to all of this, acting just as they normally do, and paying no attention whatsoever to the racket the coyotes were making.  What does this mean?  I'm guessing it means that having coyotes about is no news to them, as they smell them all the time.  But that's just a guess.

I hustled them both back inside, as I didn't hear the coyotes any more, and the glowing eyes had disappeared.  Most likely they were headed away, but just to be on the safe side, I got the oblivious dogs back inside. 

We see coyotes around our neighborhood on nearly a daily basis, so it's not particularly surprising that we saw them this morning.  The bits that are unusual is to see them quite so close to our house, and to hear them howling from so close by – and most especially, to actually see them howling.  We have a self-filling waterer in our back yard, and we have all sorts of wildlife that comes to it for water (especially at night), so my guess is that we have guest coyotes in our yard quite frequently, though we don't see them...

Just Fiddle Around With It...

Through both work and play, I've dabbled in several kinds of engineering: software, electrical, mechanical, thermal, concrete, and audio.  Probably a few more I'm forgetting at the moment, too.  One thread (of many) that runs through all of them: one of the best (and most enjoyable) ways to learn about something is to play with it.  By which I mean: to experiment, and actually try different approaches.  In other words, to just fiddle around with it.

With software in particular, this is generally pretty easy to do.  One can simply write little scraps of test code, run them, and observe the results.  But certain kinds of software are more difficult, because they are parts of more complex systems.  JavaScript running in a web browser is a great example of this more difficult soft of fiddling.  jsFiddle is an interesting attempt to erase that difficulty...

Commentary on Palin...

Suddenly there seems to be a lot of commentary on Sarah Palin.  Specifically, why the left hates her with such a passion.  Here are three takes on that (one of these via my brother Mark D.): one, two, and three.

One thing that occurred to me as I read these: “Sarah Derangement Syndrome®” is a pretty darned good diagnostic for unthinking progressivism.  That is, if you're trying to gauge how well informed someone is (politically), and whether they think of themselves as progressive, the answer to a single question (“What do you think about Sarah Palin?”) is probably all you need...

Repeal of ObamaCare...

A nice piece in the WSJ this morning.  The lead:

Democrats are deriding last night's House vote to repeal ObamaCare as "symbolic," and it was, but that is not the same as meaningless. The stunning political reality is that a new entitlement that was supposed to be a landmark of liberal governance has been repudiated by a majority of one chamber of Congress only 10 months after it passed. This sort of thing never happens.

More House Members—245 in total—voted to rescind the new entitlement than the 219 Democrats who voted to create it last March. That partisan majority narrowly prevailed over all 178 Republicans and some 38 Democrats. The three Democrats who favored repeal yesterday confirmed the bipartisan opposition to the kind of vast new social program that historically has been built on a national bipartisan consensus.

Republicans across the country campaigned on repeal last year, and yesterday's vote showed refreshing respect for the often invoked, rarely consulted American people. Meanwhile, six additional states have asked to join the momentous constitutional challenge to ObamaCare in Florida, bringing the total to 26, plus Virginia's separate suit. A majority of states resisting this mandate is another "symbolic" threshold.

More like this, please, Republicans...

Walks...

Last night, around 7 pm, I took the four dogs out for their evening walk.  It was magical outside – we were completely enveloped in a thick, dense fog – the kind that fills the air with tiny droplets so small you can't see them, but if you wave your hand through the air it gets wet.  Visibility was down to just a hundred feet or so.  You can see this on the chart at right as a “pulse” of high humidity a few hours ago.

The three field spaniels went on an ecstatic tour de odeur, madly sniffing at anything and everything, drinking in the enhanced odors of the evening.  Race chased pine cones both real and imaginary; he didn't even notice the fog.  The dogs fur quickly was covered in tiny little droplets, giving them a diamond-encrusted appearance in the dim light from our front porch.  There was a full moon high overhead, but the fog so dimmed and diffused the light that I could scarcely tell it was there.

This morning was a completely different story.  We got up a bit early, around 2 am.  Everything was damp outside, but the sky was completely clear and it was much warmer than last night.  On the chart above, you can see that an hour or so before our morning walk, the humidity dropped precipitously (from near 100% to under 10%) in the span of a few minutes, and the temperature jumped 10°F at the same time.  A beautiful full moon was high in the sky, and it was very bright outside.  No flashlight needed this morning!  Off to the west I could see the top of fog in the lower reaches of Lawson Valley, bright white in the moonlight.  Colors were easily visible all around us, even in the distance.  The stars were largely washed out by the moon, but this was more than compensated by the beautiful views of the moonlit landscape.

The dogs were excited, too, but by something completely different and unknowable.  They spent our entire morning walk – all four of them – being very quiet, staying close to me, and sniffing at a dozen or so particularly interesting spots.  It was hard to get them off those spots.  A couple of times the four dogs made a perfect "plus" sign, with all four noses smelling the same square inch of ground, 90° apart.  I'd sure like to know what they were smelling!  It had to be something really, really interesting to get Race's mind off pine cones. 

I'm looking forward to seeing that fog in the moonlight as I drive into work this morning...

Interesting AGW Development...

Months ago, Virginia's Attorney General (Ken Cuccinelli, a Republican) initiated an investigation of fraud targeting Dr. Michael Mann (the infamous “hockey stick” graph creator).  Dr. Mann is a professor at the University of Virginia, and Cuccinelli is investigating the misuse of public funds.

I've not commented on this before, because I wasn't sure in my own mind whether the investigation was justifiable (not being party to whatever evidence Cuccinelli had) and was quite possibly more of a witch hunt (Cuccinelli is an outspoke AGW skeptic) than of substance.

But today comes news that makes me wonder.  It seems that two state Senators (Democrats, both) have proposed legislation that would prevent Cuccinelli from continuing his investigation, by retroactively removing his authorization.

That smells like shenanigans to me.

And now I'm more inclined to believe that Cuccinelli had something real to investigate.  Otherwise why would there be retroactive butt-covering going on?

Get 'em, Cuccinelli!  String 'em up!

Storm on Saturn...

Photo by the intrepid robotic explorer Cassini, which is still collecting science every day as it whips around in the Saturnian system.  APOD featured this photo today...

AGW, Explained...

Via reader Aaron B., this very nicely done takedown of the typical poorly-informed, poorly-reasoning member of the public who believes in the pending AGW doom: