Map of the Universe...

Extra gigantic sized!

I Need One of These!

Very clever – and beautiful – demonstration of the relationship between a pendulum's length and it's oscillation period...

Quote of the Day...

By Bert Prelutsky in the Los Angeles Times:

Frankly, I don't know what it is about California, but we seem to have a strange urge to elect really obnoxious women to high office. I'm not bragging, you understand, but no other state, including Maine, even comes close. When it comes to sending left-wing dingbats to Washington, we're number one. There's no getting around the fact that the last time anyone saw the likes of Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, Maxine Waters, and Nancy Pelosi, they were stirring a cauldron when the curtain went up on 'Macbeth'. The four of them are like jackasses who happen to possess the gift of blab. You don't know if you should condemn them for their stupidity or simply marvel at their ability to form words.

Wish I'd written that!

Audio Illusion...

Known as the “McGurk Effect”, this is simply awesome.  I must have watched this 10 times and I can still hardly believe it.  Via reader Simon M.:

Replace the Monkeys...

Political advice worth considering, via my mom:

If you start with a cage containing five monkeys and inside the cage, hang a banana on a string from the top and then you place a set of stairs under the banana, before long a monkey will go to the stairs and climb toward the banana.

As soon as he touches the stairs, you spray all the other monkeys with cold water. After a while another monkey makes an attempt with same result ... all the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Pretty soon when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.

Now, put the cold water away.

Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and attempts to climb the stairs. To his shock, all of the other monkeys beat the crap out of him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs he will be assaulted.

Next, remove another of the original five monkeys, replacing it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment... with enthusiasm.

Then, replace a third original monkey with a new one, followed by a fourth, then the fifth. Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs he is attacked. Most of the monkeys that are beating him up have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs. Neither do they know why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.

Finally, having replaced all of the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys will have ever been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless, none of the monkeys will try to climb the stairway for the banana.

Why, you ask? Because in their minds... that is the way it has always been!

This, my friends, is how Congress operates... and is why, from time to time, all of the monkeys need to be REPLACED AT THE SAME TIME IN 2012.

Shadow Government Statistics...

Here's a fascinating site whose objective is to undo all the obfuscation the U.S. government has applied to its financial statistics.  Key indicators (such as the unemployment rate), when they move in a politically unsavory direction, tend to be “reformulated” to paint a rosier picture.  One side effect of this is that it's almost impossible for us to compare statistics today to past statistics.  This site computes today's statistics the same way they used to be computed, to give us a consistent picture.  For example, if the unemployment rate were computed today the same way it was in 1990, it would be about 16%, not the 9% being reported today...

Another Climate Scientist Turns Skeptic...

An excerpt from an article by David Evans:

Weather balloons had been measuring the atmosphere since the 1960s, many thousands of them every year. The climate models all predict that as the planet warms, a hot spot of moist air will develop over the tropics about 10 kilometres up, as the layer of moist air expands upwards into the cool dry air above. During the warming of the late 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, the weather balloons found no hot spot. None at all. Not even a small one. This evidence proves that the climate models are fundamentally flawed, that they greatly overestimate the temperature increases due to carbon dioxide.

This evidence first became clear around the mid-1990s.

At this point, official “climate science” stopped being a science. In science, empirical evidence always trumps theory, no matter how much you are in love with the theory. If theory and evidence disagree, real scientists scrap the theory. But official climate science ignored the crucial weather balloon evidence, and other subsequent evidence that backs it up, and instead clung to their carbon dioxide theory — that just happens to keep them in well-paying jobs with lavish research grants, and gives great political power to their government masters.

Now go read the whole thing!

Tenerife...

Beautiful.  Just beautiful.  Via APOD...

Optical Illusion of the Year...

The colors on the dots below are changing the entire time the video is playing, but when the wheel starts jogging, they appear to stop.  Awesome!

The Correct Way to Arrest a Terrorist...

I want those cops on my side!

Won't Be Long Now...

The Decorah eagles are close to fledging.  All three of the chicks made it this far...

Newspaper Front Pages...

If you've ever been curious what newspapers in some faraway place look like, this site is for you.  They have hundreds of newspaper front pages, daily.  There's a world map, and you just drag it around until you see the place you want, click, and voila: today's front page shows up.  Cool!

360° Helicopter Cockpit...

Fascinating.  Via reader Dr. Simi L...

Sombrero Galaxy...

AKA M104, and home of a large black hole.  When I was a kid, the best photos of M104 came from places like the Palomar telescope, and they were fuzzy, grainy, black-and-white images with a tiny fraction of the detail of this one.  I remember poring over those early images, fascinated, and wishing I could see something like that from a backyard telescope.  Now look what we can see, from our comfortable chairs!  From APOD, of course...

Human Regeneration?

As Glenn Reynolds would say, faster please...

Kissinger, Now and Then...

I just finished reading this adaptation from Henry Kissinger's upcoming book, On China.  I have several independent reactions to it, but to understand them, you'll need a bit of context. 

Kissinger has had a huge and quite direct impact on my life.  I was in the U.S. Navy from '71 through '77, which includes the tail end of the Vietnam War, Nixon's famous visit to China, and Nixon's ignomious resignation.  The photo at right is from '76, and that visage is how I remember him.  Kissinger played an important role in all three of these events, but to me personally the most important role of his was in the “peace negotiations” with the North Vietnamese.

Probably more than any other event in my youth, this awakened my interest in politics and history.  Contemporaneously, very little was publicized about the inner workings of those negotiations; it took decades for it all to leak out.  My image of Kissinger is of an extremely bright, motivated, and sincere man – but capable of arrogance and ruthlessness even on large issues that affect millions of people.  His advocacy of Realpolitik I found profoundly un-American.  He frightened me when he was in power.

One reaction I had to reading the adaptation is that it reads a bit like an insider's historical account, and even if only for that reason I will read the book.  I don't know enough about modern China to assess his thoughts about it. 

Another reaction I had is a superficial one: to his contemporaneous photograph.  I haven't seen a photo of him for quite some time, so I was surprised and shocked by how much he has aged.  In the '70s, he was often seen with a beautiful woman on his arm, generally much younger than he.  His most famous quote (“Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac”) seemed quite consistent with his public persona.  He's now nearly 90 years old, so I really shouldn't have been surprised by the photo.  But I was.

The last reaction I had was to be a bit surprised at myself, mainly for not having thought about Dr. Henry Kissinger for quite a long time.  In the '70s and '80s, he and Zbigniew Brzezinski were frequent targets of my reading and thinking.  Other than as historical figures (!), neither has been top-of-mind for many years. 

Power and influence are fleeting things, usually...

A Recipe for Happiness...

Start with a stale crust of Dudley's Rosemary & Olive Oil bread.  Rip it into small pieces.  Warm a few tablespoons of milk in the microwave and soak the bread chunks in it.  Sprinkle a little shredded Parmesan cheese on it.  Stir in a tablespoon of melted butter.  Finely dice a slice of ham and mix it in.


Then put the bowl down on the floor for your old girl dog friend (in my case, Lea, our 15 year old field spaniel).  I guarantee you'll be a happier person after you watch your dog's delight and grunts of sheer doggie ecstasy.


It's so easy to make a dog happy...

Router Blues...

Recently the router (a 10 year old Cisco 806) that connected us to the Intertubes started having intermittent problems.  The symptoms were really quite annoying: it would work just fine for some period between 30 seconds and a week, then suddenly conk out completely.  To “fix” it, we had to power it down, wait a minute or so, then power it back up.

That annoyance has been removed.  I've replaced the venerable Cisco 806 with a Buffalo Technology model WZR-HP-G300NH (at right, click to enlarge), flashed with DD-WRT (open source router software).  This single $80 router replaces not only my malfunctioning Cisco 806, but also a separate Cisco wireless router.

So what was it like to replace that Cisco 806? 

Installing the Cisco in the first place is something I remember well.  I was already reasonably familiar with the arcane Cisco IOS configuration files before I started that job.  Even so, to set up the 806 I had to learn a few new things.  It ended up consuming an entire weekend, and involved many failed attempts before I finally got us up and running on the Intertubes.  For months afterwards, I tweaked one thing and another until I finally got it all working.

Now contrast the more recent experience of bringing up the Buffalo Technology router.  There were just two steps.  First, I downloaded the latest DD-WRT version and flashed the router with it.  Elapsed time: about 10 minutes.  Then I used the built-in web pages to explore and configure the router.  Elapsed time: about 10 minutes.  Then I plugged it into power and the network, and … it all worked on the first try.  I've not had to do any tweaking at all.

Awesome job, DD-WRT folks.  Just awesome.  And much appreciated...

Jamul Casino Update...

Lakes Entertainment is out with their latest financial report, and it's more of the same.  The Jamul Casino Project is showing no signs of progress (hooray!).  The company's stock price seems to be stuck in the doldrums, and their business overall looks much less than exciting.  As a Jamul Casino Project opponent, I can say that it looks quite hopeful that both the project and its sponsor are grinding their way, slowly, into oblivion.

Let's hope there's no rescue in the works...

Coolness...

The weather for the past week, and the forecast for the coming week, are both much cooler than the norms for this time of year.  Out here in Lawson Valley, we've been (and are forecast to be) seeing highs in the 60s and 70s (°F, of course).  The strange weather of our winter seems to be continuing.

The coolness sure is a nice change from the usual summer blast-furnace.  Debbie and I are hoping that this continues through the entire summer, though that seems a bit much to ask for...

Back On the Air!

Google's Blogger blogging platform (which this blog runs on) had some kind of disaster a couple days ago.  Some of my favorite blogs have been down (such as Althouse, whose blog is back up, but is missing 20,000+ posts!), and I've been unable to post from Thursday morning until this morning.  But we're back now!

It's Time...

Reader Dave H. passes this along, and says: “When this happens, it's time to retire while you still have your dignity...”

Dave, I think if things reach this point, it may well be too late to hope for any dignity!

Elephants and the Marula Tree...

Via my mom...

Ceding Existential Decisions...

This is the sort of thing that makes me so uncomfortable about the notion of doctors or courts deciding when someone who is sick or injured should die...

Man, This Looks Like FUN!

I wanna go!

A Lovely Story About My Mother...

My mom passed this along to me, and I can only assume she wanted me to share it with y'all...

One day long, long ago, there lived a beautiful woman who did not whine, nag, bitch or drink (that would be me).

But that was a long time ago and it was just that one day.

THE END.

Of All the People Who Have Ever Lived...

...how many are alive today?

Answer: about 1 in 8.

Meaninful Adjacencies...

The New Yorker has an interesting short article on how the names of the dead will be arranged at the 9/11 memorial (due to open on 9/11/11).  It's a solution to a problem that I'd not thought of: when you have several places to display names, which names go in which place, and what order do they go in?  I'd most likely have opted for a simple alphabetical order, but as the article points out, this is actually less than ideal.

The solution turns out to be mathematically challenging, and computers were used to figure out the final ordering.  The guiding principle used is “meaningful adjacencies”, meaning that names found next to one another are connected in some way (organizational affiliation, relationships, families, etc.).  Fascinating stuff.

Ideas in the Shower...

For years I've noted something that was to me quite mysterious: I would find solutions to difficult problems (either design or debugging) while taking a shower.  Having observed this, I have, on more than a few occasions, taken a shower for the specific purpose of coming up with an idea to solve a problem – and it has worked.  I've never had a satisfactory explanation of why this might be so, however.

This morning I read a blog post that purports to explain the phenomenon (which many others have also noted).  Some of the links from this post are also interesting.  Essentially the notion is that while you're taking a shower, you're not getting a lot of input from other sources, so your subconcious can surface things its thinking about.  I'm not sure about the science behind this, but it is the first plausible explanation I've heard yet.  The blog post is actually about a product that lets you take notes in the shower, so you won't forget your ideas.  That's never been an issue for me – when I come up with an idea in the shower, it's generally for something I've been working on for hours or even days.  There's zero chance that I'm going to forget a solution for a problem like that!

A Fine Day...

Debbie and I had a wonderful day yesterday.  First we worked ourselves into a stupor, cutting and burning brush in our front yard.  I estimate that we cut, carried, and burned between a ton and a ton-and-a-half of pine limbs.  The fire was awesomely hot, to the point where it was painful to get within 6 feet or so of it.  We started around 7 am, and by the time we wrapped it up at around 3 pm we had almost completely cleared the yard; just a few logs remain.  All this to trim up just the first third or so of our pine trees!

After we got done working, we showered and headed for Descanso Junction Restaurant.  There we met up with my cousin Mike D. and his significant other Diane.  They're from Colorado, and they're taking a grand driving tour of the west.  We caught them as they were headed to San Diego for a couple days of sight-seeing.  Though we've corresponded quite a bit in recent years, I haven't seen Mike since I was a kid, close to 50 years ago.  He's 11 years older than I am, so his memories of that event are better than mine.  We had a grand old time, swapping stories and feasting. 

Mike and I both chose the same dish: meatloaf and mashed potatoes with green beans, preceded by a seafood chowder.  Debbie got one of her all-time favorites, the fried chicken.  Diane, the light eater amongst us, got a club sandwich – the look of dismay on her face when she saw the (monster) size of it was priceless.  Mike, on the other hand, nearly jumped for joy when he saw the gigantic slab of meatloaf that didn't quite fit on his plate!  He finished his entire plate off, then eyeballed Diane's remaining half-sandwich.  I suspect that sandwich didn't make it to the refrigerator last night...

We took our separate paths upon leaving the restaurant, but not before we made plans for Mike and Diane to join us for a day of four-wheeling when we're out in Ouray next month.  We're going to take them to Yankee Boy Basin for some wildflowers...

Rain!

We had 0.16" (3mm) of rain last night.  That's not much in the grand scheme of things, but considering that it's mid-May in the high desert it's pretty remarkable.  This year's weather continues to be far off the norms of the past 8 or 9 years.  Let's hope the summer continues to be cool – and wet!

Stallman on SaaS...

Richard Stallman (EFF) is a great example of a very smart person who is blinded by their own prejudices.  Here he's slamming Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) for one issue, while completely ignoring (indeed, not even mentioning!) it's many benefits.

No solution to any problem is 100% perfect.  Every choice is an exercise in balancing out the pros and cons.  Every time I buy a new vehicle I'm reminded of this – there are a bewildering variety of choices available, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. Imagine how arbitrarily limited your choices would be if (for example) you refused to consider vehicles that came with floor mats as standard equipment.  That's roughly what Stallman is advocating here.

SaaS is just one way to buy software.  It's got a suite of advantages that I (and many others) think are compelling, and a few disadvantages, many of which can be mitigated or minimized.  Refusing to consider SaaS for the reasons suggested by Stallman is just silly...

Autocorrecting Phones...

Suddenly my simple ancient cell phone has much more appeal...

Chicken Pasta Soup...

It's a chilly morning out here in the sticks; mid-60s in the house and I'm sitting at the computer working.  Yesterday I stopped by the Bravo Cafe near Jamul and picked up a quart of Manolli's lemony chicken pasta soup.  Just now I reheated it and slurped it down.  It's a lovely soup, with a light, slightly creamy broth that's quite lemony.  Plenty of chicken and tiny rice-like pasta, and some vegetables.  Just one of the many reasons why we love the food at Bravo!

But aside from the great (and plentiful!) food, the people there are what really makes the place.  Yesterday Milton and Esmeralda (two of Manolli and Rosio's kids) made up my order of soup and iced mocha (for Debbie), while Manolli churned out sandwiches and other goodies.  This family is a fixture in the Jamul area – hard-working immigrant Americans full of good cheer and good will.  Jamul would be a different – and lesser – place without them.

It just occurred to me to look them up on Yelp, and I'm delighted to see that every review up there is a solid five stars!

Note From My Mom...

I received this note from my mom a few days ago.  Before you read it, you should know that I am her oldest child (of four).

If you are supposed to learn from your mistakes, why do some people have more than one child?

Now ... how exactly should I interpret that?

Food!

If you're a dog lover, you're going to laugh until your sides hurt.  If you're not a dog lover, why are you reading my blog?

Animations...

This page has a collection of the coolest animated GIFs I've ever seen...

No Adults in the Room...

As I was saying the other day, there don't appear to be any adults in the room, up in our California legislature.  Consider this, from SB 432:

6714. (a) The standards board shall, no later than September 1, 2012, adopt an occupational safety and health standard for lodging establishment housekeeping. The standard shall apply to all hotels, motels, and other lodging establishments in California. The standard shall require all of the following:
(1) The use of a fitted sheet, instead of a flat sheet, as the bottom sheet on all beds within the lodging establishment. For the purpose of this section, a "fitted sheet" means a bed sheet containing elastic or similar material sewn into each of the four corners that allows the sheet to stay in place over the mattress.

Yup, you read it right. Let's mandate fitted sheets in hotel rooms, instead of something important, like, say, getting spending under control.

    Rope.
    Tree.
    Legislators.
    Some assembly required.

Hummers...

Like you've never seen them:

Morning Walk...

It was a gorgeous high desert morning this morning: 55°F, a light breeze, very dry, and desert scents filling the air.  The dogs all did their usual thing.  I walked on this moonless night with no flashlight – the stars and a bright Milky Way made just enough light for me to avoid any obstacles.  I could just barely make out Race as he zoomed around, happy, with his pine cone.  The three field spaniels were moving inkspots; couldn't see any details, but I could tell where they were.

Overhead, the sky was just glorious.  No moon, no planets – just stars.  The Milky Way arced high overhead, from just east of north to the southeast.  It was clear and bright enough that even with just a few minutes of accommodation I could see structure in it.  Beautiful, just plain beautiful...

As I walked and soaked in the night, I was thinking about the potential indirect consequences of Osama bin Laden's killing.  It occurred to me that if bin Laden had been living in that compound for years, there were probably interesting records there, and possibly even computers.  After coming back in and reading the news, I see that the Seals indeed captured a large amount of potential intelligence sources, including computers.  The consequences for al Qaeda may extend far beyond the death of their leader.  Let's hope that's so!

 

Euler's Identity...

For the geeks, a decoded crop circle:

After transcribing the binary digits, I translated each byte (8 bits) into its corresponding ASCII character with this handy online converter, starting from the direction of the windmill, and working clockwise around the circle and out from the centre. (If you're having trouble following this, see the animation linked at the bottom of the article).

The result was this:

e^(hi)pi)1=0

It looked like some kind of equation, and when I looked it up, Google asked if I meant: e^(i)pi)1=0, for which the top result was Euler's identity: eiπ+1=0. This has been called "the most beautiful theorem in mathematics". No surprise that it should turn up in a crop circle then!

Jupiter's Great Red Spot...

As you've never seen it before, in this photomosaic made of images from Voyager I.  From APOD, of course.

Supernova Remnant...

Man alive – I sure wouldn't want to be in the neighborhood when that thing exploded!  From APOD, of course.

The Best Case...

...for the Obama Presidency is a Jimmy Carter rerun.  Glenn Reynolds (aka the Instapundit) makes a persuasive, if depressing, case for the way we'll view Obama's presidency after he's gone...

Children in Sacremento...

I'm speaking of our legislators, of course.  The Democrats, petulant that they can't get the Republicans to vote for increased taxes, threaten to cut expenses: in the Repulican's districts!

Are there any adults in the room up there?

Wartime Golf Rules...

For a golf course in Richmond, England.  This down is just east of London, and it happens to be where my company has its London offices.  These rules were instituted during World War II, while England was regularly being attacked by German planes and missiles...

It's very hard to imagine this happening today, isn't it?

Flight Data Recorder Found...

Air France Flight 447 went down off the coast of Brazil almost two years ago.  Yesterday robotic submersibles found and recovered the memory unit from its flight data recorder.  Investigators are very hopeful that with this data they will be able to reconstruct exactly what caused the accident.  To date there is one main suspect (iced over pitot tubes) and several other possibilities.  We wish them good fortune in their search...

They Got Him!

Osama bin Laden is dead.  Killed by U.S. Navy Seals at a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan (look for the “A” on the map) – which is over 100 km from the Afghanistan border, and even further from the mountainous border area where he was rumored to be staying.

I'm sure more details will emerge about the operation.  Several helicopters and a couple dozen U.S. personnel were involved.  No U.S. personnel were injured or killed.  Our forces “took custody” of bin Laden's body, then buried it at sea (apparently to stay within the Islamic custom of burying a body within 24 hours of death).

Here's the only thing that really matters: the mastermind of 9/11 is dead.  Woot!

Top 6 of Top 10 Lists (for Programmers)...

Nice.

Meyer's Good Advice...

Via Maggie's Farm:

A short time ago, Iran's Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei urged the Muslim World to boycott anything and everything that originates with the Jewish people.

In response, Meyer M. Treinkman, a pharmacist, out of the kindness of his heart, offered to assist them in their boycott as follows:

"Any Muslim who has Syphilis must not be cured by Salvarsan discovered by a Jew, Dr. Ehrlich. He should not even try to find out whether he has Syphilis, because the Wasserman Test is the discovery of a Jew.
If a Muslim suspects that he has Gonorrhea, he must not seek diagnosis, because he will be using the method of a Jew named Neissner.

"A Muslim who has heart disease must not use Digitalis, a discovery by a Jew, Ludwig Traube.

Should he suffer with a toothache, he must not use Novocaine, a discovery of the Jews, Widal and Weil.

If a Muslim has Diabetes, he must not use Insulin, the result of research by Minkowsky, a Jew. If one has a headache, he must shun Pyramidon and Antypyrin, due to the Jews, Spiro and Ellege.

Muslims with convulsions must put up with them because it was a Jew, Oscar Leibreich, who proposed the use of Chloral Hydrate.

Arabs must do likewise with their psychic ailments because Freud, father of psychoanalysis, was a Jew.

Should a Muslim child get Diphtheria, he must refrain from the "Schick" reaction which was invented by the Jew, Bella Schick.

"Muslims should be ready to die in great numbers and must not permit treatment of ear and brain damage, work of Nobel Prize winner, Robert Baram.

They should continue to die or remain crippled by Infantile Paralysis because the discoverer of the anti-polio vaccine is a Jew, Jonas Salk.

"Muslims must refuse to use Streptomycin and continue to die of Tuberculosis because a Jew, Zalman Waxman, invented the wonder drug against this killing disease.

Muslim doctors must discard all discoveries and improvements by dermatologist Judas Sehn Benedict, or the lung specialist, Frawnkel, and of many other world renowned Jewish scientists and medical experts.

"In short, good and loyal Muslims properly and fittingly should remain afflicted with Syphilis, Gonorrhea, Heart Disease, Headaches, Typhus, Diabetes, Mental Disorders, Polio, Convulsions and Tuberculosis and be proud to obey the Islamic boycott."

Bullet Trains...

Warren Meyer (of CoyoteBlog) has an excellent piece in Forbes on the stupidity of high speed rail...

Uncle Jack...

Just watch it.  Via reader Dr. Simi L.:

The Wish...

Your morning political humor, via my mom:

I met a fairy today that said she would grant me one wish. "I want to live forever," I said.

"Sorry," said the fairy, "I'm not allowed to grant wishes like that!"

"Fine," I said, "then I want to die after Congress gets their heads out of their asses!"

"You crafty bastard," said the fairy.

Quote of the Day...

Unknown source, via my mom:

If you voted for Obama in 2008 to prove you weren't a racist, you'll have to vote for someone else in 2012 to prove you're not an idiot.

A Day in the Country...

This morning I'm stiff and sore all over, because yesterday Debbie and I worked in the yard for the first time this season.  We got a lot more done than we thought we would – with burn permit in hand, we burned six brush piles that had accumulated around the yard.  The tractor started right up after being idle for the winter.  Once I filled it's gas tank, the chain saw started on the first pull, and I used it to cut up and burn one pile of branches.  Then finding ourselves with time and some leftover energy, we even sawed a few low, drooping branches from our pines.  We cut those up and burned them as well.  Then we were completely out of anything resembling energy!

Just moments after I doused the fire's embers and put away our tools, Frankie T. and Miss Daisy (her beautiful old dog) showed up for a visit.  We all had a very pleasant visit – Debbie had never met Miss Daisy before, and Miss Daisy had never met our dogs before.  Soon Miss Daisy was stretched out on our carpet, looking very content and happy, the center of the room's attention.  Mo'i watched over her.  Bootie and Maka Lea came over to check out the new dog.  Race ignored her and wanted us to throw his toy.  Debbie handed out treats to Miss Daisy that she eagerly accepted.  Miki was all over Frankie, wiggling with field spaniel joy.  Lea stayed away from Miss Daisy at first, but eventually (and very cautiously) came over to say hello.  The action never stopped, especially while Frankie was trying to drink a cup of coffee and eat (without help!) a piece of chocolate cake.  We were all sad to see Frankie and Miss Daisy head home, but we're hoping they'll wander out this way again some day soon... 

Happy Easter!

My mom sends these Easter greetings:

NGC 6543: the Cat's Eye Nebula...

From APOD, of course:

Don Knuth: All Questions Answered...

If you're a geek, Knuth needs no introduction. If you're not a geek, this will not be of interest.

Friends...

How the World Sees Us...

Musings from Peggy Noonan...

California Dreamin'...

John Fund has an excellent piece up at the WSJ.  Sample:

Hours after the legislators met with Mr. Perry, another business, Fujitsu Frontech, announced that it is abandoning California. "It's the 70th business to leave this year," says California business relocation expert Joe Vranich. "That's an average of 4.7 per week, up from 3.9 a week last year." The Lone Star State was the top destination, with 14 of the 70 moving there.

I don't want to move to Texas.  I don't even want to leave California.  But if the current trend continues, finding employment may be yet another reason (along with high taxes and batshit-crazy politicians) to vote with our feet...

What to Invest In?

Via reader Dr. Simi L.:

I called my stockbroker and asked him what I should be buying.

He said, "If the current administration is in office much longer, canned goods and ammunition is your best bet."

Energy Flows...

Reader Doug S. passes along this very cool chart of energy flows in the U.S. for a recent year (2009), from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories.  He points out that the chart makes it clear how difficult it would be to use wind or solar power to replace our other energy sources.  There are lots of other insights like that to be had by studying this for a bit...

Ceramic Lasers to Replace Spark Plugs?

Solid state lasers have come a long way, baby...

Original Sin...

What could I possibly add to this?  Via my mom:

Beautiful!

Time lapse photography from El Teide (tallest mountain in Spain).  The scenes with clouds below the level of the camera are very reminiscent of things we see in our mountain valleys quite frequently.  Via Frankie T:

On the Air Again...

Thanks to Eric at SDWISP, we're back on the air again.  We're not actually sure exactly what was wrong, but somehow between the work the Eric did on our radio link and associated wiring, and that I did on our network's router, our Internet connection is back.  Woo hoo!

Thanks for the great service, Eric.  While we've come to expect it (because you're so consistent!), it is still greatly appreciated...

Internet-Free Morning, and Quote of the Day...

Our Internet service at home died yesterday morning – I suspect rodents gnawed something important.  Eric from SDWISP returned my trouble call very quickly (on a Sunday – love that service!).  He'll be at our house this afternoon to put things right.

Meanwhile, I drove to work early this morning so I could actually get something done.  I got into the office at 2:25 am – a personal record.  Yes, mom, I know I'm crazy.

Around 2 am I passed the Rancho San Diego shopping center (where Target is), and spotted an older woman sitting by the side of the road.  I thought she might be sick or hurt, so I stopped to see if she was ok.  It was an interesting experience.

Her name is Alicia, and she appears to be about 70 years old.  She's filthy, and her clothes are falling apart.  As best I could tell, she doesn't have a drink or drug problem – she just has no money, and the shelter she was staying in (in La Mesa) had closed.  She told me she was staying near the iron bridge just down the road, but she'd been rousted by the Border Patrol, and was now looking for another place to stay.  She was just resting when I stopped to check on her.

Alicia told me she'd really like to get to Clairemont Mesa, as she'd heard there was another shelter there, still open.  I was headed that way (I work in Del Mar), so I offered her a lift.  For the half hour ride, I asked Alicia a string of questions and she cheerfully answered.

She has two children that she hasn't heard from in ten years or more.  Five years ago her husband died.  She had no income other than Social Security, and that's not even close to enough to live on in San Diego.  She's been in San Diego for 50 years, after moving out here with her Navy dad.  She lost her house, foreclosed for taxes and mortgage payment; she got almost nothing from the sale.  She's been living on the streets in the three years since then.

And yet ... Alicia seems happy.  It's amazing how resilient some people are.  When I mentioned how surprising I found her cheerfulness, she said:

“I'm alive, aren't I?  I still enjoy sunsets and the birds, and I have enough to eat.  That's a lot more than some people have!”

Alicia gets my quote of the day.  I don't think anyone's going to top it.

I let her off at the 24 hour McDonald's off Mira Mesa Blvd, and bought her some breakfast.  I got a hug before she trudged off toward where she believed the shelter was, happily slurping her coffee and munching on her breakfast burrito.

Happy trails, Alicia.  I'll think of you at sunset today...

Historical U.S. Top Marginal Tax Rates...

Over the years I've been surprised many times by the general ignorance U.S. citizens have of how their top marginal tax rates have changed over the years.  In particular, few people seem to know how much higher these rates were between the FDR and Reagan administrations.  The chart below shows this very nicely (as usual, click to enlarge).

There are many interesting observations one can make from this chart.

One that progressives like to make is that we have a lot of experience in economic boom times (say, the late '50s) with very high top marginal rates – therefore such rates are not the destroyer of jobs claimed by the conservatives.  However, it is simultaneously true that the very wealthy back then had relatively easy access to tax shelters, and in fact very little income was actually taxed at that rate.  The real world is messy and complicated.

An observation that conservatives like to make is the strong correllation between the dropping of tax rates and the subsequent ramping up of the economy (this happened both in the late '20s and early '90s).  But progressives can point to other factors that influenced those economic upturns, including other roughly simultaneous changes in the regulatory environment.  The real world is messy and complicated.

So be careful reading too much into the squiggles on this chart.  Nonetheless it's a useful piece of any U.S. citizen's political education – no matter what one's political beliefs, this chart encapsulates the past century's history of one of the most significant consequences of elections: the setting of our tax rates...

IC 410...

From APOD, of course:

Ersatz Budget Politics...

Mark Steyn, as only he can:

The other day the post office apologized for its new stamp honoring Lady Liberty. Due to an unfortunate error, the stamp shows not the 19th-century Statue of Liberty that stands in New York Harbor but the 1990s replica that stands at the New York–New York Casino in Las Vegas.

An ersatz statue of pseudo-liberty standing guard over the world’s biggest gambling operation: What better way to round out a week in which the Republicans pretended to pass the most historically historic budget cut in history while the president pretended to come up with a plan to address the debt? All while pretending to wage a war in Libya whose most likely outcome seems to be that the only Arab dictator to sleep soundly in his bed at night during these turbulent times will be doing so under cover of a NATO no-fly zone for the rest of his 75-year term of office. In such a world, the USPS, bless ’em, has come up with a far more plausible emblem of societal devastation than Hollywood’s space monsters and climate-change fairies.

Ah, Mr. Steyn. How could I despair without you?

The Lady is on Fire...

Complete with the screechy voice.  It's impossible for anyone to reconcile the left's portrayal of her intellectual capacity with the content of that speech.  It's also impossible to miss the fact that she's the only national politician who effectively leveraged the recent events in Wisconsin – which she, alone, recognized as watershed events as they occurred.  Sarah Palin taken as a complete political package is one very impressive politician, whatever one may think of her views.

The 2012 election cycle promises to be even more interesting – and consequential – than the 2010 cycle.

Send In a Marine!

Via reader Simi L., this story of a Marine's solution to a discipline challenge:

A former Sergeant in the Marine Corps took a new job as a high chool teacher. Just before the school year started he injured his back. He was required to wear a plaster cast around the upper part of his body. Fortunately, the cast fit under his shirt and wasn't noticeable. On the first day of class, he found himself assigned to the toughest students in the school.

The smart aleck punks, having already heard the new teacher was a former Marine, were leery of him and he knew they would be testing his discipline in the classroom.

Walking confidently into the rowdy classroom, the new teacher opened the window wide and sat down at his desk. When a strong breeze made his tie flap, he picked up a stapler and stapled the tie to his chest.

Dead silence. He had no trouble with discipline the rest of the year.

Hoo ah!

Aurora Borealis...

Via reader (and colleague) Frankie T., this time-lapse movie that captures the aurora borealis on a flight from San Francisco to Paris...

Obama Likely to Lose in 2012...

So says Peggy Noonan.  Assuming, that is, the Republicans field a serious candidate, and not someone like The Donald...

Wax Bang at Hash Buck Grapes Circumflex and Splat Wane...

Explained...

Timing...

If you catch yourself doing this:

Then it's time to retire with your dignity intact.

My younger readers may not know what the woman in the photo is doing.  She's applying an opaque white fluid (known as “white-out”) to her computer screen.  She's doing this because back in the old days, this is how she learned to correct errors when typing.  People used an antique device called a “typewriter” (a kind of combined printer and keyboard) to print neat text direct onto paper.  With a typewriter, the only way you could correct an error was to paint whiteout onto the mistake and then type over it.  There was no backspace key or erase key.  If you have trouble believing that humans actually used such primitive devices, or that such humans could possibly still be alive, please consult this article for more information on the subject...

Alpha Dog...

You know which dog is the alpha dog:

Eagle Camera, 24 x 7...

From Decorah, Iowa in their nest 80' in the air, the Raptor Research Project is streaming live video of eagles and their just-hatched chicks.  The snap at right I took just a few minutes ago.  It's black-and-white because at night the nest is illuminated with an infrared light (which the eagles can't see).  During the day, the feed is in full color.

Live eagle nest viewing, from the comfort of our homes.  What an amazing world we live in!

Windex vs. the Streaker...

Windex wins:

The Right Words...

Via reader “ole timer”:

Slide Rules...

Amazing!  I'm not the only one who thinks it would be a good idea for today's kids to learn about slide rules...

Mac OS/X Tips and Tricks...

An excellent collection.  I've been using a Mac for almost four years now, and most of these were new to me.  Better yet, a dozen or so are things I want to add to my back of tricks!

Hysterical...

This video is just over 10 minutes long, but trust me – you will not regret the time spent. Put down your morning drink, swallow, and watch. If you have young children, you might want them out of the room. If you work in a very conservative setting, this may not be safe to play there...

Thank You...

A farmer near Offutt Air Force Base (just outside of Omaha, Nebraska) has for several years used his tractor to make a giant signboard (at right, click to enlarge).  The pilots landing at Offutt see this on their final approach.  Via my mom, who's on a roll today!

Below is the same field, seen from a satellite.

Is the Honeymoon Finally Over?

Via my mom:

You know the honeymoon is over when the comedians start in on you...

The liberals are asking us to give Obama time. We agree...and think 25 to life would be appropriate.
-- Jay Leno

America needs Obamacare like Nancy Pelosi needs a Halloween mask.
-- Jay Leno

Have you heard about McDonald's' new Obama Value Meal? Order anything you like and the guy behind you has to pay for it.
-- Conan O'Brien

What does Barack Obama call lunch with a convicted felon? A fund raiser.
-- Jay Leno

What's the difference between Obama's cabinet and a penitentiary? One is filled with tax evaders, blackmailers, and threats to society. The other is for housing prisoners.
-- David Letterman

If Nancy Pelosi and Obama were on a boat in the middle of the ocean and it started to sink, who would be saved? America!
-- Jimmy Fallon

What's the difference between Obama and his dog, Bo? Bo has papers.
-- Jimmy Kimmel

What was the most positive result of the "Cash for Clunkers" program? It took 95% of the Obama bumper stickers off the road.
-- David Letterman

This Looks Like Fun!

Via my mom:

Modern Microprocessors...

An excellent and accessible quick course on modern microprocessor architecture...

ClimateGate: Some News...

Another in a long string of tour de force by Steve McIntyre.  If you weren't already disgusted with government-teat science, you will be by the time you finish.

And from the always-entertaining James Delingpole, news that he and his team have won an important legal victory against an attempt by the University of East Anglia (UEA) to quash his (to them) uncomfortable observations.  As he puts it: “They lost.  We won.”  His headline reveals his mindset: “UEA: the sweet smell of napalm in the morning.“

Morning Walk and Other Things...

We slept in a little bit this morning, until just before sunrise.  Mo'i, Lea and I went out for our usual walk into a beautiful, clear, cold morning.  We had frost on everything insulated from the ground, so the air temperature must have gotten to below freezing.  Not a cloud in the sky.  The birds were in great evidence, the birds of spring, singing their little hearts out as if celebrating the impending sunrise.  Tendrils of mist swirled around our little valley.  Just beautiful...

The dogs didn't notice, of course.  They were too busy checking out who visited our yard last night.  Judging from their activity, we had a lot of visitors.

Having just Mo'i and Lea makes for a downright sedate morning walk. Debbie's got Miki and Race at an agility competition in Arizona, and those two are the ones who make morning walks challenging – they're just so full of energy and curiousity.  Mo'i and Lea are much calmer.

It's a strange sort of morning for mid-April here.  Colder and wetter than we've seen for a while.  Last year on this same date, we had not had rain for 2 months, and the temperature was in the low 90s.  We had rain yesterday, and a frost last night; forecast for today is the high 60s.  Al Gore must be in town...

Debbie reports from the agility meet that things are going well for her and the dogs.  Race took a first place yesterday on a standard course, beating the course time by some absurd amount.  The little guy is basically a rocket ship on paws!  Miki ran yesterday in Excellent A category for the first time.  He had a fault on both runs, and in that category a single fault disqualifies you.  But Debbie was still very happy with the runs – he was focused and fast, and the mistakes were arguably hers rather than his.  You could hear her smile and excitement over the phone.

Last night my neighbor and friend Jim B. rang me up and offered to deliver some birthday party food for me.  I was invited to the party, but they know and forgive my introversion – I don't enjoy myself with large gatherings (they had over 20 people), especially when they are people I don't know well.  So Jim delivered a feast: a freshly grilled burger, some deviled eggs, a crab & macaroni salad, and a fruit salad.  Delicious, and it provided my breakfast this morning as well.

Now it's back to work for me!

The Ultimate Sandwich?

I just finished what may be the single best sandwich I've ever had in my life.  I haven't the faintest idea how I could improve upon it.  Here's how I made it:

• Bread:  Two slices of Dudley's rosemary-olive oil bread, toasted until it just began to brown.  If you're from the San Diego area and you don't know Dudley's bakery, then you're unnecessarily missing out on a simple pleasure.  If you do know about Dudley's, well, then, you know what I'm talking about!
• Mayonnaise: A freshly opened jar of real mayonnaise (not that “salad dressing” garbage) – not homemade, true, but still very good.
• Avocado: A Californa Haas avocado, perfectly ripe, blemish free, sliced.
• Tomato: An Imperial Valley tomato, ripened in our window until it smelled wonderful, sliced thickly.
• Lettuce: A few leaves of crisp, dark green iceberg lettuce – for the crunch and the burst of moisture as you chew.
• Salami: A half-dozen slices of top-notch genoa salami.  There's a huge variation in quality of Italian cold cuts at our local stores.  Albertson's carries several that are particularly good, and this was one of them.

I ate it with a tall glass of cold milk.  As we like to say: “It was so good that it made my brains fall out.”.

Never thought I'd say this, but I'm going back to work on the taxes with a smile upon my face.  Nothing to do with the taxes, of course...

One Happy Dog...

As I made my lunch a few minutes ago (more on that in the next post), the two dogs who are home with me (Mo'i and Lea) were watching my every move.  They acted as if they hadn't been fed in months, but since I had personally fed them just last night, I knew this wasn't true.  But Lea got to me anyway, because while she's still in great health, she's old enough now that her main joys in life are (a) sleeping, and (b) eating.

So she gets extra “treats” from me frequently.  I've tried to be creative in what I get her, to give her a little extra enjoyment.  I may have hit an all-time high today.  I took a couple of pieces of genoa salami (which she was acting very interested in) and blended them with a few ounces of milk (a well-known favorite).  Then I warmed that slightly in the microwave, and broke up a piece of potato bread crust into it.  I let the bread soak, then gave her the bowl.

When you know a dog as well as we know Lea, it's easy to tell when she's happy.  Lea was happy as she ate that bowl of doggie joy.  Her tail was wagging, and she came over to see me every few laps – just to say “thanks” so far as I could tell.  When she was all done, I was treated to five minutes or so of a very affectionate old dog acting like she was a puppy again.

Glorious.  And an absolutely wonderful antidote for the chore I'm working on today.

Thanks, old girl...

Satellite Temperature Data...

Here's something interesting: satellite temperature data, publicly available.  The graph below has ticks for each year.  The AGW folks sure are reading a lot into these data!  Of course, they're not using the satellite data – they're using surface measurements instead.  I will note that surface temperature data from hundreds of organizations and thousands of instruments is much easier to manipulate than the satellite data...

Good Career Advice...

Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert) isn't just a cartoonist, he's a first-class observer of modern humanity.  In this article at the Wall Street Journal, he's got some of the best advice I've ever seen for young people preparing for a career.  Much of his advice is applicable during a career as well, so there's something for everyone in the article.  Some elements of his advice one can see in my own career.  For example, I'd say that learning to write reasonably well, and learning how to be unafraid of public speaking, have both done more for my career than any particular piece of techncial learning.

But the strongest resonance for me was his advice that most people should emphasize acquiring multiple skills rather than trying to be world-class in any particular skill.  Oh, yes – for me this advice has the strong ring of truth.  Over the years, I've acquired a strange collection of knowledge and skills – designing concrete mixes, writing software, corporate accounting, back-end stock trading processing, designing electronic hardware, some civil engineering, slide rules, optics (especially as it applies to photography), cryptography, and a bunch more.  I'm no world-class expert in any of these areas, but the fact that I have a smattering of them all has been incredibly useful in my career.  It also has done something else that Scott doesn't mention: by practice and example, it gives me great confidence that I can learn how to do just about anything – and even that is very useful in a career.

So go read it, and pass it along to anyone you know who might be able to use some good career advice.

Quote of the Day...

And as a special added bonus, it's in a Kirk cartoon:

Discovering the government's been shut down is like finding out your Yugo has been stolen … you feel bad, but it's no big loss.

Exactly, Kirk.  Exactly!

It Could Have Been Worse...

This is why I can't get too excited by last night's budget deal.  It's crumbs, folks, and not very tasty crumbs at that.  I'm pleasantly surprised by Boehner's ability to negotiate, and completely unsurprised that the Democratic leadership couldn't get it's intellectually bankrupt people together.  All I'm saying, though, is that this could have been much worse.  That's not at all the same thing as saying it was good...

If You Hear Yelling and Cussing...

...from the general direction of Southern California today, that's probably me.  I'm doing my taxes today, toting up all the money that the federal government is going to steal from me.  As I watch the dollars add up, I'll be thinking about how the likes of Reid, Pelosi, Obama, Schumer, etc. will find wasteful ways to spend it.

If I have a good day, a liter or two of vodka should get my blood pressure under control this evening...

RIP, Kermit...

Geeks of a certain age will remember Kermit – a Columbia University project that became one of the first standard ways to communicate between computers.  Every bulletin board system in the '80s and early '90s supported Kermit.  If your modem software supported Kermit (as virtually all such software did), you'd be able to communicate (and transfer files) with any bulletin board.

Back in the pre-Internet days, I implemented Kermit several times – in Z80 assembly language, 8086 assembly language, and the last time in Turbo Pascal.  Just thinking about Kermit brings back all sorts of memories of the days when personal computers were just getting started.

Columbia University announced yesterday that the Kermit project is finally being terminated, after more than 30 years.  RIP, Kermit...

Taste and Smell: There's an App for That!

3D Lightshow...

Amazing stuff, via my mom: lightshow.