Artist Jon McNaughton has been in the news a several times over the past few years for his controversial political paintings. The one at right, showing President Obama holding a burning U.S. Constitution, is his latest. On his web site, the following text appears below the painting:
One Nation Under Socialism
“I pledge allegiance to the United States of America, And not to an ideology, which can never stand, One nation under socialism, divisive, With no liberty or justice for anyone.”
This November, you will make a choice. Will you choose One Nation Under Socialism?
McNaughton’s Answers to Questions Regarding This Painting:
Why the title “One Nation Under Socialism?” Our federal government has been moving in the direction of socialism for over one hundred years. Many presidents and politicians have compromised the Constitution as we have given away our freedoms under the guise of entitlements and government intervention. When the people are willing to sacrifice the next generation for their current lifestyles and allow the federal government to have all the power for an illusory mess of pottage—you have chosen One Nation Under Socialism.
What do you mean by an ideology, which can never stand? I will not support an ideology, which will lead to the destruction of America. In the history of the world, never has there been a recorded example where Socialism has led to the betterment of the human condition or improved the liberty of the people. I know there are varying degrees and definitions of “socialism.” Even the European model of Democratic Socialism has proven to be a dismal failure. Do you want to see our country become like Greece, Italy, Portugal, or even Great Britain?
What do you mean by “divisive, with no liberty or justice for anyone?” Socialism uses the illusion of offering fairness and justice for everyone by redistributing the wealth of the nation; picking and choosing winners and losers. This administration has taken over our health care system, given bailouts to the automotive industry, banking industry and energy industry. They support the “Occupy Wall Street” movement of increased taxing of the rich to pay for the welfare of the “less rich.” The Constitution never guaranteed equal things—only equal rights and justice. In America we should be FREE TO SUCCEED and FREE TO FAIL!
At this very moment our Constitution is literally going up in flames. What will you do to preserve the Constitution and save America?
Interesting character. I don't know anything else about him, so I don't know whether he's expressing his genuine beliefs or just exploiting a market opportunity. After reading his web site, though, I'm inclined to the former...
A lot of folks can't understand how we came to have an oil shortage here in our country. Well, there's a very simple answer. Nobody bothered to check the oil. We just didn't know we were getting low. The reason for that is purely geographical. Our oil is located in Alaska, California, Coastal Florida, Coastal Louisiana, Coastal Alabama, Coastal Mississippi, Coastal Texas, North Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Texas. Our dipsticks are located in DC.
In the hard disk business, the way to get more data capacity is to increase the number of bits you can store on a given piece of disk surface. This is called “areal density”, and it's usually measured in bits per square inch. Areal densities have been improving at a fairly steady rate ever since the '70s, and the density march continues. Seagate has just demonstrated 1,000,000,000,000 bits per square inch (a terabit/sq. in.), and promises 60 TB (terabyte) disk drives as a result. Wow!
Excerpted from an article in today's WSJ by Michio Kaku:
But the floodgates finally burst open last week when a second group of physicists announced that they redid the entire experiment and found that Einstein was correct all along: Their neutrinos traveled at precisely the speed of light, not faster or slower.
What makes this second announcement so convincing is that they used much of the same apparatus as the previous group. They used the same particle accelerator at CERN, fired a beam of neutrinos over the same path, and used the same destination, a laboratory in Gran Sasso near Rome. The crucial difference between these two groups was the equipment used to measure the speed of the neutrinos. This gives enormous weight to the idea that the first group did not properly calibrate their instruments.
Last week the director for research at CERN, Sergio Bertolucci, issued a diplomatically worded statement that read, "The evidence is beginning to point towards the [earlier] result being an artifact of the measurement." Nobel Laureate Carlo Rubbia, a spokesman for the second group, was more blunt when he said, "We cannot be both right. One of us is wrong. I know who is right. We are right."
Since there is so much at stake, in the coming months more experiments will be done to verify this new result. But in the minds of most physicists the issue is now settled—Einstein's theory remains undefeated.
Do read the whole piece, as Dr. Kaku places this in context rather nicely...
WIN! Simon M. passed this little gem along. I am in awe of this little enhanced-reality app. All this awesomeness is free, too.
I downloaded the app in a few seconds (from the iTunes store), and fired it up. There was no configuration required. When it started up, I aimed my iPhone at the local horizon and got an image (through the iPhone's camera) much like the one at right (click to enlarge).
What you're seeing there is a realtime video display of whatever your smartphone is looking at, but the mountain peaks are overlaid with a little symbol and an annotation giving you the peak's name and altitude.
I live in a fairly obscure valley (Lawson Valley) in the foothills of the coastal range in San Diego County. The “peaks” immediately around me are really just the tops of slightly larger-than-average hills; all of them are less than 3,000' high. Peak.AR knew the names and altitudes of every one of them – even several local peaks whose names I've never been able to find, not even on Geodetic Survey maps. Peak.AR must have access to an amazingly large database of peaks!
Here's a fascinating chart of historical Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the nine “Great Powers”, back to the year 1 AD, and projected forward to 2050 (using a projection from Price Waterhouse Coopers). Note that the timescale is non-linear, so be careful interpreting the trends. The biggest surprise for me was India, pre-1800 – I don't know much about India's history, I guess. As usual, click to enlarge...
Via Simon M., this musical tribute to Rick Santorum. So far as I've been able to discover, this video was not sponsored or paid for by the Santorum campaign; it appears to be a genuinely spontaneous expression of support for him.
I haven't commented on the Republican horse-race much, as I'm not finding it very interesting, and certainly not inspiring. It looks like it's coming down to one of three possibilities:
Romney (not exciting, not scary)
Santorum (slightly more exciting, much scarier)
Random candidate from a brokered convention (who knows what to think about that?)
The last time the Republicans had a brokered convention, Reagan emerged the winner. That sounds great, except for one little niggling detail: there's no Reagan anywhere in sight...
Now mind you I'm not entirely sure that the grand bargain would have been better than the current mess. For instance, had we in fact reached a bargain, Obama's prospects for re-election would almost certainly have been better. Nevertheless, it is dismaying to see the incompetence by our chief executive on display...
That's not exactly new news, I know. Alan Blinder has a piece in today's WSJ that nicely outlines the “fiscal cliff” we face in 2013. That would be the cliff that our national politicians (a) created, and (b) are doing nothing whatsoever about. His lead:
At some point, the spectacle America is now calling a presidential campaign will turn away from comedy and start focusing on things that really matter—such as the "fiscal cliff" our federal government is rapidly approaching.
The what? A cliff is something from which you don't want to fall. But as I'll explain shortly, a number of decisions to kick the budgetary can down the road have conspired to place a remarkably large fiscal contraction on the calendar for January 2013—unless Congress takes action to avoid it.
Well, that gives Congress plenty of time, right? Yes. But if you're like me, the phrase "unless Congress takes action" sends a chill down your spine—especially since the cliff came about because of Congress's past inability to agree.
At higher elevations in our local mountains, it's still cold enough for snow – and with the current storm, we have plenty of it. Debbie and I took a drive up and around Cuyamaca Mountain yesterday afternoon. These photos will give you some idea what we ran into. We thought the snow-covered flowers (like the blue ceanothus below) were particularly beautiful. As usual, click to enlarge...
We're now at 2.7 inches (7 cm) of rain for the storm (click to enlarge the graph at right), and the NEXRAD radar shows more headed our way. The forecast calls for a 40% chance of rain today, then fair weather the rest of the week. Man, are we wet!
We're at 2 inches (5 cm) of rain for the storm. The image below shows the NEXRAD radar image at 6:31 am this morning. This time I've turned on storm tracks (that's the “Z1” with an arrow) and precipitation monitor. The blue areas show frozen stuff (snow, in other words) in the mountainous areas. When the weatherman says “scattered showers”, this is what it looks like on the radar...
The image below is from my rain gauge, showing all the rain in the past few days (the time is GMT). The most intense rain was near the end of the day on the 17th, which was in the early afternoon yesterday (PDT) – we got a half inch in a half hour, a veritable downpour in these parts...
NASA released this video pieced together from footage shot on two shuttle missions. The cameras are mounted at several points on the solid-fuel boosters, which broke away from the shuttle itself shortly into each flight, roughly 30 miles high. The footage shows not only the “boost phase” (where the solid-fuel boosters are actually firing), but also the boosters' re-entry through the atmosphere and splashdown in the ocean. There are two boosters on each launch, and often one can be seen in the other's camera as they tumble toward the earth together.
This particular video has been enhanced in two ways. First, flight data (such as altitude and speed) has been superimposed on the video. I found this data fascinating. For example, you can see that the boosters arc up after detachment (carried by their inertia), then arc down, gain speed, and finally are slowed down as they re-enter the atmosphere. Second, audio has been added in the studio. I don't know where they got the audio from, but I thought it added a lot to the experience of watching the video.
Raymond Hunter, Chairman of the Jamul Indian Village, says:
The Jamul Indian Village has been working for many years to develop a gaming facility on our federal tribal trust land. This effort has not been without controversy. We are now creating a new vision for our gaming project, taking into account the concerns of our neighbors and the County of San Diego. Our newly designed project will create jobs for our neighbors, allow the tribe to become self-sufficient, and enable us to share gaming revenue with local governments and charities. We believe this can be achieved while respecting the environment and our neighbors’ concerns.
Some of the most important changes in our project’s design speak to its most pointed criticism. The total size of our gaming project has been cut by more than half from our proposal in 2006 – and this includes eliminating a proposed hotel. Building height of the gaming facility will now be reduced to 45 feet above grade as seen from Highway 94. This allows us to strategically use the contours of our land to provide parking below street level and outside the line of sight. These critical changes reduce the overall footprint of our project and, as a result, the oak and willow-studded stream traversing our reservation will be maintained in its natural condition.
The visual impact of our facility will be largely mitigated by its careful design. The earth-tone colors and natural materials of the exterior reduce the project’s visual impact by matching it to the background of the surrounding area. We will adhere to the county’s dark sky and sign ordinances. We will use native plants and the natural terrain to further limit views from roadways. This will not be a glitzy Las Vegas-style gaming facility with lights and signs. The project will be subject to a vigorous environmental process meeting state and federal standards.
This project will enable our tribe to be a greater asset to our community by generating revenue-sharing dollars for public safety, education, traffic mitigation and critical government services. The Jamul tribe has lived here for a very long time and has been recognized by federal officials since the 19th century. We only occupy a fraction of our ancestral lands and we have a responsibility to our members to seek the most effective economic development of this land for our future financial viability and cultural legacy.
We examined other economic development opportunities in the past. However, Indian gaming has proved to be the most successful means for federally recognized tribes to achieve self-sufficiency. Although Jamul Indian Village is eligible to receive federal money, our gaming project has not been funded with federal funds.
For federally recognized tribes such as ours, the proven path to achieve economic self-sufficiency has been Indian gaming. The Jamul Indian Village has had a gaming compact with the state since 1999. Our compact allows gaming of limited size and scope and only with a comprehensive regulatory system requiring state, federal and tribal participation. Our compact has been formally approved by the U.S. Department of Interior. Now we are working to create a gaming facility that will adapt naturally into our environment and community.
We will soon release our initial proposed plan. At that time we will also seek additional community feedback before finalizing these plans. We hope that our neighbors in the Jamul and Dulzura areas will recognize that we are genuine in our effort to accommodate our neighbors’ input. We have, in fact, made significant changes in our development plan in response to many of the objections that have been raised in the past. Our new vision for the Jamul gaming project embodies a smaller, high-quality facility that is respectful of our neighbors, our environment and the culture of the Jamul Indian Village. We are hopeful that our neighbors can come closer to supporting our new vision.
If you would like to comment or make recommendations to the Jamul tribe, you can contact us here.
As of this post, we've had exactly 1 inch of rain from this storm – and we've only just begun. Below is what the NOAA NEXRAD radar showed just before this post:
The highest what? The highest corporate income tax rate. In the world. Starting on April 1st. From an opinion piece in today's WSJ:
April 1 is a date that every politician and business executive in America should circle on the calendar. That's when Japan cuts its corporate tax rate to 36.8% from 39.5%. The United States will then hold the title of highest corporate tax rate, with average combined federal and state profit levies of 39.2%.
Yes, that's higher than Sweden. Higher than Russia. And China, Mexico, Denmark and even France. Doesn't it make you want to break out in a chant: U-S-A, U-S-A?
I can almost hear the progressives cheering. “Yes!”, they'll say. We're leading the world, as we should be.
Me? I just cry for my country's future.
And, as always, remain amazed at how little attention issues like this get from everyday people. As though they don't matter...
This is an impressive piece of design, and woodworking: a folding table made from a single sheet of wood. Lots of details, and photos of the actual table, at the designer's site...
There's no new news about a potential ServiceNow IPO in this story. But the venue is new: Fox News! I got to this page through a link on the Fox News home page.
The search term “servicenow ipo” is still the number one driver of traffic to my blog...
Last night on my drive home, I heard a radio announcer talking about the rain storm expected to hit us tonight as “rainageddon”. It earned this moniker because of the amount of rain expected: up to 2 inches (5 cm). Anyone from a place like, say, Hawai'i would be greatly amused by this. We consider 2" of rain to be “rainageddon”, but there that would barely qualify as a morning shower...
This morning the dogs and I took our morning walk through a thick cloud. Visibility was about 100 feet. When we walked down to the end of our driveway, our house was gone; just a vague fuzz of light in its direction.
As usual, Race was all about the pine cone. I kicked; he was happy. The three field spaniels, though, were in a frenzy of smelling, just as they always are in wet air. The three of them would run around, seemingly at random, until one of them found something enticing. Then upon some signal not apparent to me, all three would congregate at that spot – noses together, bodies angled precisely 120° apart, forming a perfect three-pointed star. After sufficient sniffing of the exquisite spot, in concert they'd break off and commence the random searching, separately, again. This pattern repeated ad nauseum for our entire walk. The usual peeing and pooping occurred, mind you; it was just incidental to the real mission of smelling...
The Jamul Indian tribe unveiled its new casino plans yesterday (drawing at right). The UT has an article that echoes the tribe's professed optimism about finding a new funding partner.
A drunk man who smelled like beer sat down on a subway next to a priest. The man's tie was stained, his face was plastered with red lipstick, and a half-empty bottle of gin was sticking out of his torn coat pocket. He opened his newspaper and began reading. After a few minutes the man turned to the priest and asked, 'Say Father, what causes arthritis?'
The priest replies, 'My Son, it's caused by loose living, being with cheap, wicked women, too much alcohol, contempt for your fellow man, sleeping around with prostitutes and lack of a bath.'
The drunk muttered in response, 'Well, I'll be damned,' Then returned to his paper.
The priest, thinking about what he had said, nudged the man and apologized. 'I'm very sorry. I didn't mean to come on so strong. How long have you had arthritis?'
The drunk answered, 'I don't have it, Father. I was just reading here that the Pope does.'
I haven't used an Encyclopedia Britannica for quite a few years now – at a guess, not since about 1990. And why would I? When I see reference material in print form, one of the first thoughts that comes to mind is “Oh oh – it's probably obsolete!”
What subject area has been static enough for paper references to be reliable? Certainly not the areas I most frequently research: computer science, science in general, history, and politics. Of those, history is probably the only candidate – but new discoveries pop up all the time, especially because of declassification and regime change. For example, our understanding of Eisenhower's presidency has changed quite radically in the past few years.
Most of the news reports are emphasizing the role that Wikipedia (and other community-based efforts) had in killing the Encyclopedia Britannica, and that's certainly an interesting topic to ponder. What's more likely to be reliable – a reference edited by a single team (with all their biases), or a crowd-sourced effort with many people contributing and cross-checking? Both of these models have their own sets of problems and their own mechanisms for errors or outright lies to creep in. If I'm researching something I care about, I'll always look at Wikipedia and multiple other sources, to make sure I'm not missing some controversy or alternative (but unexpressed on Wikipedia) perspective. I'll also look at the edit history to see if there's a “wiki war” going on. Such searches frequently do turn up more material that seen on Wikipedia. But by and large, I've found the Wikipedia entries to be (a) at least not outright lies, (b) always useful at least as background, and (c) most often essentially accurate and authoritative. After years of practice with such searches, it's hard to imagine ever relying on a single source – a la Encyclopedia Britannica – again...
Shortly after Lakes Entertainment announced they were withdrawing from their funding deal with the Jamul Indian Tribe, the tribe released this presser:
The Jamul Indian Village announces its intent to pursue revised plans for a new casino gaming development on its Federal Tribal Trust land located in San Diego County. Since 1999 the Jamul Indian Village has worked with Lakes Entertainment of Minnesota to develop a gaming facility. As of today, that agreement has been terminated and the tribe is moving forward with revised plans for its gaming facility. This revised direction will allow the Tribe to achieve an economic and cultural foundation for its membership, while also working with its neighbors and the County to address the development's physical scope and potential environmental impact.
"Jamul Indian Village expresses its gratitude to Lakes Entertainment for its involvement in various aspects of development efforts since 1999," said Tribal Executive Chairman Raymond Hunter. "We look forward to proceeding with our efforts to strengthen the economic base of the Tribe and the region, consistent with the character of the Jamul area and respectful of the local processes inherent to this goal."
The Tribe will present its plans and environmental document beginning this week and will kick off a public review process and workshop to discuss its plans with local stakeholders. Through this process, the tribal leadership will invite community engagement and feedback before finalizing their plans. Pursuit of this new development direction emphasizes the Tribe's new vision for the Jamul gaming project -- one embodying a smaller, high quality facility that is respectful of its neighbors and its environment. Ultimately, the newly designed project will create jobs for its neighbors in the Jamul and Dulzura areas, allow the Tribe to become self-sufficient, and enable it to share gaming revenue with local governments and charities.
This sounds more like wishful thinking than substantive announcement. My first thought (and other observers have said similar things) is that with the huge debt they're saddled with, the tribe is going to have a great deal of trouble finding another funding source (although I will say that there is the possibility of some arrangement made with Lakes' agreement that allowed funding on the condition that Lakes was paid back out of the tribe's cut after the resulting project was up and running).
During the Lakes-funded Jamul Casino project's lifetime, the Jamul Indian Tribe has managed to build up a large reserve of bad feelings with respect to their non-tribal neighbors. I've lived out here for nearly 15 years now, and I've not seen any other issue that so aroused the ire of my neighbors. So the tribe's proclamation now that their new efforts will be “...respectful of its neighbors and its environment.” will be met with a great deal of skepticism and suspicion, I think. Certainly that's true for me...
Many thanks to reader Mike W. who passed this along. Here's the interesting part of the press release (full release is here):
Lakes Entertainment, Inc. ("Lakes") announced that it terminated the Pre-Development, Development and Financing Arrangement Agreement (the "Agreement") by and between Lakes Jamul Development, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lakes, and the Jamul Indian Village ("Tribe"). While this Agreement was executed on November 22, 2011, Lakes has been working with the Jamul Tribe under various other previous agreements since 1999 to assist with the development of a casino on the Tribe's reservation outside of San Diego, California.
Due to Lakes' corporate strategic objectives, Lakes determined that it would not continue to move forward with the project with the Tribe and terminated the Agreement, effective March 13, 2012. Lakes has a continuing obligation to fund Tribal support payments equal to approximately $0.6 million subsequent to the termination date and provide funding of certain professional fees for a period of thirty days from the termination date.
As of the date of termination, Lakes has advanced approximately $57.5 million including accrued interest to the Tribe related to casino development efforts. As a result of the termination of the Agreement, Lakes has determined the fair value of the notes receivable from the Tribe to be zero which were previously recorded at their fair value of $9.6 million as of October 2, 2011. Although the Agreement provides that the Tribe commence repayment of all outstanding amounts within 30 days of such termination, it is not contemplated that the Tribe will have sufficient funds to make such payments unless it opens a gaming facility on its reservation in the future. The Tribe remains obligated to repay the advances and accrued interest, and Lakes continues to have collateral in all revenues from any future casino owned by the Tribe, and the casino's furnishings and equipment.
Tim Cope, President and Chief Financial Officer of Lakes stated, "We believe that the Jamul Indian Village casino project continues to have great merit. However, this project does not fit with our current business plan for the future of Lakes. We wish the Jamul Tribe much success with its continued progress toward development of their casino project."
So the Jamul Indian tribe is now carrying, $57m in debt – and Lakes shareholders blew the same amount (it's written down to zero, so there's no real expectation by Lakes that they'll be repaid). The only physical impact of the casino project is some very preliminary construction on the site; nothing to get excited about. There's another impact, though: an adversarial relationship between the Jamul Indian tribe and most of the rest of the local community. Oh, and the gigantic debt the tribe is now carrying – makes my share of the federal debt look puny by comparison.
Now we only have to worry about the Jamul Indian tribe finding another sponsor. I have no idea how likely that is, but clearly the probability isn't zero...
Reader Jim M. swears that these are actual ads from a Florida newspaper named The Villages. I couldn't find that paper online, so I'm not so sure about that. But they're funny even if they aren't real:
FOXY LADY:
Sexy, fashion-conscious blue-haired beauty, 80's, slim, 5'4' (used to be 5'6'), searching for sharp-looking, sharp-dressing companion. Matching white shoes and belt a plus.
LONG-TERM COMMITMENT:
Recent widow who has just buried fourth husband, and am looking for someone to round out a six-unit plot. Dizziness, fainting, shortness of breath not a problem.
SERENITY NOW:
I am into solitude, long walks, sunrises, the ocean, yoga and meditation. If you are the silent type, let's get together, take our hearing aids out and enjoy quiet times.
WINNING SMILE:
Active grandmother with original teeth seeking a dedicated flossier to share rare steaks, corn on the cob and caramel candy.
BEATLES OR STONES?
I still like to rock, still like to cruise in my Camaro on Saturday nights and still like to play the guitar. If you were a groovy chick, or are now a groovy hen, let's get together and listen to my eight-track tapes.
MEMORIES:
I can usually remember Monday through Thursday. If you can remember Friday, Saturday and Sunday, let's put our two heads together.
MINT CONDITION:
Male, 1932 model , high mileage, good condition, some hair, many new parts including hip, knee, cornea, valves. Isn't in running condition, but walks well.
Ineptocracy (in-ep-toc'-ra-cy). A system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.
Via my mom, this wonderful example of “I scarcely know what to say...”. This video shows the ceremony each evening upon closing the border gates between India and Pakistan...
A priest dies and is waiting in line at the Pearly Gates. Ahead of him is a guy who's dressed in sunglasses, a loud shirt, leather jacket and jeans.
Saint Peter addresses this cool guy, "Who are you, so that I may know whether or not to admit you to the Kingdom of Heaven?"
The guy replies, "I'm Jack, retired airline pilot from Houston."
Saint Peter consults his list. He smiles and says to the pilot, "Take this silken robe and golden staff and enter the Kingdom." The pilot goes into Heaven with his robe and staff.
Next, it's the priest's turn. He stands erect and booms out, "I am Father Bob, pastor of Saint Mary's for the last 43 years."
Saint Peter consults his list. He says to the priest, "Take this cotton robe and wooden staff and enter the Kingdom."
"Just a minute," says the good father. "That man was a pilot and he gets a silken robe and golden staff and I get only cotton and wood. How can this be?"
"Up here - we go by results," says Saint Peter. "When you preached - people slept. When he flew, people prayed."
Most criminal cases in the U.S. never go to trial. Instead, the accused pleads guilty as part of a “plea bargain”. This saves an enormous amount of time and money, and reduces the number of judges, courtrooms, prosecutors, etc. needed in the justice system.
It also leads, in some cases, to miscarriages of justice – in both directions. That is, sometimes innocent people are pressured into pleading guilty to avoid the risk of long jail terms. Sometimes (more often, actually) guilty people are pleading to lesser charges than they're guilty of – putting us all at risk of their repeat offenses.
But, what if...every defendant decided to insist upon their right (granted by the Constitution) for a trial by a jury of their peers? Short answer: they'd crash the justice system, which doesn't have the resources to handle such a load...
Go here. You'll find the exact time, and it will tell you how far off your computer's clock is. I have a Mac, so it's using NTP out-of-the-box and the clock setting is darned near perfect (0.008 seconds off)...
The Soviet Union drained most of the Aral Sea, using the water for irrigation projects. When they did so, hundreds of ships that had sunk were revealed, like the one below. Now you can walk among them, and find ships and camels intermixed:
A great story, passed along by reader Simi L. The sender claims it's a true story, but I've been unable to verify it:
A woman was flying from Seattle to San Francisco. Unexpectedly the plane was diverted to Sacramento along the way. The flight attendant explained that there would be a delay, and if the passengers wanted to get off the aircraft the plane would re-board in 50 minutes. Everybody got off the plane except one lady who was blind.
A man had noticed her as he walked by and could tell the lady was blind because her guide dog lay quietly underneath the seats in front of her throughout the entire flight. He could also tell she had flown this very flight before because the pilot approached her, and calling her by name, said, "Kathy, we are in Sacramento for almost an hour. Would you like to get off and stretch your legs?"
The blind lady said, "No thanks, but maybe Buddy would like to stretch his legs." Picture this: all the people in the gate area came to a complete standstill when they looked up and saw the pilot walk off the plane with a guide dog for the blind! Even worse, the pilot was wearing sunglasses! People scattered. They not only tried to change planes, but they were trying to change airlines!
All my life, I've had difficulty recognizing faces. It isn't that I can't recognize faces – people I know well I can recognize with no difficulty. The challenge I have is with people I don't know well. So I'm pretty sure I don't have any flavor of prosopagnosia.
Recently at work there was a good example of my face-recognition challenges. There's another fellow there named Tom whom I mistakenly thought was Frank Slootman, our CEO. When someone corrected me (and only then!), I asked around to a few other people – and none of them thought Tom and Frank looked anything alike! Yet I still (even after carefully examining both of them) find it challenging to be sure which is which when I see them. This sort of thing has happened to me many times.
Another common pattern: I'll meet someone for the first time (say, on a visit to a customer), and for the term of the visit I'll be able to recognize them. Then perhaps 6 months or a year later, I'll visit again – and while the rest of the ServiceNow people attending will recognize the person without difficulty, I will not recognize him or her, and I may not even realize that I've met the person before.
I suspect this difficult is related to my inability to visualize “in my mind's eye”, something I've blogged about before. Most people tell me that they can easily “bring up” the face of someone they know; I simply cannot do this, not even for people I know very well. I've got no proof these things are related; it's just an intuition...
Debbie and I took an evening drive up to Cuyamaca Mountain yesterday, arriving at the Stonewall Mine just before sunset. The meadows in that area used to be full of deer, but after the fires of October/November 2007 we saw none until the last couple years, and even then just a very few.
But last night... Last night, the deer were back, in force. We saw about 10 groups of deer all together, with five or six of the groups number more then 20 individuals. The grass is plentiful this year, and the deer were chowing down with some enthusiasm.
The return of the deer means that the mountain lions will be back (if they're not already). We know the rodent population must be healthy because we see lots of hawks. Hopefully that also means the bobcats are back (we've seen a few, but nothing like the numbers we used to see up there). It's very nice to see the animal ecosystem returning to some semblance of normality...
A little boy goes to his dad and asks, 'What is Politics?'
Dad says, 'Well son, let me try to explain it this way: I am the head of the family, so call me The President. Your mother is the administrator of the money, so we call her the Government. We are here to take care of your needs, so we will call you the People. The nanny, we will consider her the Working Class. And your baby brother, we will call him the Future. Now think about that and see if it makes sense.'
So the little boy goes off to bed thinking about what Dad has said. Later that night, he hears his baby brother crying, so he gets up to check on him. He finds that the baby has severely soiled his nappy (that's a diaper, for us Americans). So the little boy goes to his parent's room and finds his mother asleep. Not wanting to wake her, he goes to the nanny's room. Finding the door locked, he peeks in the keyhole and sees his father in bed with the nanny.
He gives up and goes back to bed.
The next morning, the little boy say's to his father, 'Dad, I think I understand the concept of politics now.' The father says, 'Good, son, tell me in your own words what you think politics is all about.' The little boy replies, 'The President is screwing the Working Class while the Government is sound asleep. The People are being ignored and the Future is in deep shit...
If you know me at all, you will be completely unsurprised when I tell you that I am related to the man who created the “snow-alien” at right (as always, click to enlarge – if you dare!). My brother Scott (who has a landscaping business in Virginia Beach, Virgina, called Artist in the Garden) is the perpetrator. The snow-alien was quite a hit with the neighbors, we understand. Proudly showing it off is my sister Holly (who has a web-based business called Learn English with a WorldWide Perspective), who lives near my parents in Charlottesville, Virginia. We were all there visiting my parents a few days ago when a snowstorm dumped a bunch of that wet white stuff we see so rarely out here in California...and Scott just couldn't resist the opportunity...
...learning to create software changes you and makes you different. Not better or worse, just different. You may find that people treat you harshly because you can create software, maybe using words like "nerd". Maybe you'll find that because you can dissect their logic that they hate arguing with you. You may even find that simply knowing how a computer works makes you annoying and weird to them.
To this I have just one piece of advice: they can go to hell. The world needs more weird people who know how things work and who love to figure it all out. When they treat you like this, just remember that this is your journey, not theirs. Being different is not a crime, and people who tell you it is are just jealous that you've picked up a skill they never in their wildest dreams could acquire.
You can code. They cannot. That is pretty damn cool.
Reader Jim M. passes along this great example of a politician at work:
In 1952, Armon M. Sweat, Jr., a member of the Texas House of Representatives, was asked about his position on whiskey. What follows is his exact answer (taken from the Political Archives of Texas):
"If you mean whiskey, the devil's brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea, literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children; if you mean that evil drink that topples Christian men and women from the pinnacles of righteous and gracious living into the bottomless pit of degradation, shame, despair, helplessness, and hopelessness, then, my friend, I am opposed to it with every fiber of my being.
However, if by whiskey you mean the lubricant of conversation, the philosophic juice, the elixir of life, the liquid that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in their hearts and the warm glow of contentment in their eyes; if you mean Christmas cheer, the stimulating sip that puts a little spring in the step of an elderly gentleman on a frosty morning; if you mean that drink that enables man to magnify his joy, and to forget life's great tragedies and heartbreaks and sorrow; if you mean that drink the sale of which pours into Texas treasuries untold millions of dollars each year, that provides tender care for our little crippled children, our blind, our deaf, our dumb, our pitifully aged and infirm, to build the finest highways, hospitals, universities, and community colleges in this nation, then my friend, I am absolutely, unequivocally in favor of it.
This is my position, and as always, I refuse to compromise on matters of principle."
Interesting piece in the London Telegraph. Most of the Brits I know (and most especially those who have travelled in the U.S.) think the NHS stinks. They do tend to like the idea of “free” healthcare, though – who wouldn't? If only it were really free...
Cecil answers the important questions in his inimitable fashion. The question, from Neil:
Is consuming expired prescription medicines really all that dangerous? Some friends of mine insist taking pills beyond the printed expiration date is flirting with death, while another claims expiration dates on labels are BS, there solely to prompt us to order refills and spend more money. I once treated a nasty headache with the only thing I had on hand, some Vicodin that was about a year out of date. My headache went away, and I was no worse for wear. As time passes, are the pills in their little plastic bottles chemically restructuring themselves into poisons, or is there nothing to fear?
But you don’t see anyone pushing for expiration date reform. Why not? No doubt because of the same combination of greed and excessive caution that drives up all healthcare costs: (1) The drug companies potentially could forego billions of dollars in lost sales; (2) the amount individual consumers could save is relatively trifling; and (3) there’s a remote but nonzero chance somebody relying on defunct drugs could die.
Carefully, though, don't hurt yourself! If you shake your head side-to-side while staring at the picture at right, it becomes more obvious what the picture is showing.
I've noticed a similar phenomenon when looking through window screens, or (better yet) picket fences. It's a terrific example of how your brain puts assembles information gathered over time...
This isn't really an illusion in the usual sense, but more a demonstration of the brain's contribution to perception...
While I was in Navy “C” school at Mare Island, California I had the chance to meet Grace Hopper. This would have been in 1972 or 1973. At the time, I had no idea of her career or accomplishments. I first met her when she lectured to a large group of people attending and teaching the various technical schools there (mainly Data Systems Technicians and various rates attending cryptographic schools). This must have been late in the week, because on the following weekend I met her again – this time much less formally, and one-on-one. That meeting was quite memorable.
The Data Systems Technician school that I was attending had a “lab” with a large collection of the kinds of equipment we were learning how to repair. This collection included a number of military Univac computers (models like the 1206a, 1206b, 1218, and 1230, for those of you who can remember such antiques). This was like a playground for me after school hours; I spent many evening and weekend hours just poking around in there, learning as much as I could. Most of the time, I had this extensive lab completely to myself.
On the weekend in question, I had rolled an oscilloscope (they were big back then!) over to a computer, and I was running a little test program and observing how the electronics responded – trying to figure out how the hardware integer square root instruction (on a 1206b) actually worked. While heads down, staring at a schematic, I heard someone come up behind me. I turned around, and there was Grace Hopper – with a friendly smile, and in civilian clothes. She was a high-ranking officer, normally quite a scary thing to a low-ranking enlisted guy like myself. But it was obvious right from the first that she was “just people”, and not the type to insist (as many officers did) on formalities.
Ms. Hopper wanted to know why I was there, and what I was up to. When I told her I was trying to figure out the damned square root instruction, she hauled me off to a blackboard (yes, with slate and chalk!), and launched into a great explanation. By the time we were done, I knew that thing inside and out.
Then she sat with me for another half hour or so, and just talked about working with computers. She was the first person I'd met who was actually passionate about working with computers – and she was also the first programmer I'd ever met. The people I was surrounded by were technicians; people who understood the hardware, how it worked, and how to troubleshoot it. Ms. Hopper understood the hardware, but what she really cared about was the software. On several occasions during that conversation, she encouraged me to get serious about learning how to program if I wanted to pursue a career in computers. When I asked her how one might go about doing that, she said “Just practice. Write programs, for anything. Do it over and over until you're happy with the result. You might consider going to college when you get out of the Navy, but what really matters is to practice.”
If I could choose one moment that started my career in programming, that would be it. I didn't immediately stop working on hardware, though – I continued to work extensively in hardware design for more than 10 years after that. But I did start seriously investigating programming immediately following that meeting with her. I've never stopped.
I never had the privilege of talking with Ms. Hopper again. About a week after I met her, someone at the school clued me in a bit on her career, and I read a book about her (in which I discovered how she started the use of the word "bug" to describe a software problem!). After the fact I was awed that she actually sat down and talked with me for an hour or so. I'm glad I didn't know about that when she walked up to me – I'd have been terrified! Most especially, though, I'd have enjoyed a followup conversation, and especially the opportunity to thank her for her good advice and inspiration to me.
So perhaps you'll understand now why I found this video of Grace Hopper to be quite a trip down memory lane...
A large collection of old maps is up online, and you can explore it for free. Within a few minutes I was able to find the map from 1888 at right (click to enlarge), which shows the area around where I grew up, just south of Robbinsville. Of course there isn't complete coverage of every area, but if you browse through their collection you'll find that a surprising part of the globe is covered.
Kudos to the folks at the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection for a beautiful example of applying modern technology to the challenge of making such a fine collection publicly accessible...
I think the solution is simple: disband it. The organization has spent billions of dollars with no discernable effect other than to piss off a whole bunch of citizens. It's long past time for it to go...
It sounds almost like a bad sci-fi novel: rats wipe out an interesting species on a large island, but years later scientists discover a tiny population surviving on a desert island. After two years of effort they get permission to take four individuals to attempt captive breeding. The first two individuals taken die shortly after leaving the island. The second two (dubbed “Adam” and “Eve”) nearly die, but a last-ditch, guessed-at food supplement revives them. Not long after: now we have thousands of descendants of Adam and Eve. And now they'd like to reintroduce them back to the island where the rats killed them all. Fascinating story! Here's video of one of the these animals hatching – it's a giant walking stick insect:
Super-chilled brine flowing into merely cold seawater forms ice in the lower-salinity water. This time-lapse film captures this, along with the slow-moving sea life that the ice overcomes. This little clip and the accompanying story are the first I've ever heard of this strange natural phenomenon...
These days, we take it pretty much for granted that photographs (and even videos) can be electronically transmitted around the world, nearly instantly. But not so long ago, this was a bleeding edge technology:
Manzanar was one of the notorious internment camps where over 100,000 Japanese-Americans were imprisoned in WWII. Ansel Adams was already a famous photographer at the time. I just ran across a fact previously unknown to me: that Adams was unhappy about the internment, and asked permission to photograph the Manzanar camp. You can see a collection of these photographs (one of which is at right) on this site.
Looking at these photos, I don't get the sense that Adams was appalled by what he found. In fact, I'd say the collection overall conveys quite a positive, hopeful sense of people making the best of a bad situation. I've not been able to find anything in writing from Adams, describing how he felt about what he observed at Manzanar. If you know of any such writing, please let me know...
This is fascinating stuff that I've been following for a few weeks now, as the news dribbles out. It's beginning to look like archaeologists have a solid case for Europeans having been the first to colonize North America:
New archaeological evidence suggests that America was first discovered by Stone Age people from Europe – 10,000 years before the Siberian-originating ancestors of the American Indians set foot in the New World.
A remarkable series of several dozen European-style stone tools, dating back between 19,000 and 26,000 years, have been discovered at six locations along the US east coast. Three of the sites are on the Delmarva Peninsular in Maryland, discovered by archaeologist Dr Darrin Lowery of the University of Delaware. One is in Pennsylvania and another in Virginia. A sixth was discovered by scallop-dredging fishermen on the seabed 60 miles from the Virginian coast on what, in prehistoric times, would have been dry land.
The new discoveries are among the most important archaeological breakthroughs for several decades - and are set to add substantially to our understanding of humanity's spread around the globe.
The general question of when did humans first make it to the Americas, and which humans were they, has had about 10 different “consensus” answers just in my lifetime. It's clearly far from a settled question even now. Various series theories put forth include several variations of migration across the Bering Straights, landings by Polynesian explorers, Egyptians, Africans, the Vikings, and (now) even earlier Europeans.
One of these fine days, I wouldn't be a bit surprised to read that humans originated in the Americas!
Climatology could learn a thing or two from archaeology about how science is actually supposed to work...
The food stamp program, part of the Department of Agriculture, has announced that is pleased to be distributing the greatest amount of food stamps ever.
Meanwhile, the National Park Service, also part of the Department of Agriculture, asks us to "Please Do Not Feed the Animals" because the animals may grow dependent and not learn to take care of themselves.
The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing – but the right hand has the right idea!
Scientists are working on “universal” flu vaccines. Unlike the current flu vaccines, these don't have to be custom-made for each variant of the flu. Some of them are in clinical trials.
Most of the time, I don't long for the “good old days” at all – mainly because there's so much about the old days that really wasn't all that good. In my profession, the computers have gotten more powerful, cheaper, and smaller – and the tools we use today are fantastically powerful compared to the (by comparison) extremely primitive tools I first learned.
But there is one aspect of working with microcomputers that I miss. When I first got started (in the '70s), it was possible for a single individual to understand how an entire computer worked. I know this, because in the late '70s, some friends and I had a company making microcomputers. I designed (and we built) the entire thing: electronics (even the power supply!), operating system, and application software. We bought components and some subsystems (like floppy disk drives), but everything else we built. It wasn't even that hard. Computers were much simpler back then.
Today's computers are far too complex for one person to design and build the whole thing. Most people working with computers today know one area reasonably well, but the rest of the computer is a bit of a mystery to them. I'm not the only one to notice this.
That's the part I really do miss: knowing how the whole thing worked...
If you're a programmer, that statement will either (a) resonate strongly, or (b) infuriate you. I'm in the (a) group.
If you're not a geek, you may not know who Linus Torvalds is. He's one of the people who has revolutionized the world of software development, in his case twice: once for the development (and continued management of) the free open source operating system called “Linux”, the other for development of a revolutionary new source code management tool called “git”. He is a hero to many geeks. He's also a bit of a bad boy, and the rest of the context for that quote provides a fine example:
From: Linus Torvalds linux-foundation.org>
Subject: Re: [RFC] Convert builin-mailinfo.c to use The Better String Library.
Newsgroups: gmane.comp.version-control.git
Date: 2007-09-06 17:50:28 GMT (2 years, 14 weeks, 16 hours and 36 minutes ago)
On Wed, 5 Sep 2007, Dmitry Kakurin wrote:
>
> When I first looked at Git source code two things struck me as odd:
> 1. Pure C as opposed to C++. No idea why. Please don't talk about portability,
> it's BS.
*YOU* are full of bullshit.
C++ is a horrible language. It's made more horrible by the fact that a lot of substandard programmers use it, to the point where it's much much easier to generate total and utter crap with it. Quite frankly, even if the choice of C were to do *nothing* but keep the C++ programmers out, that in itself would be a huge reason to use C.
In other words: the choice of C is the only sane choice. I know Miles Bader jokingly said "to piss you off", but it's actually true. I've come to the conclusion that any programmer that would prefer the project to be in C++ over C is likely a programmer that I really *would* prefer to piss off, so that he doesn't come and screw up any project I'm involved with.
C++ leads to really really bad design choices. You invariably start using the "nice" library features of the language like STL and Boost and other total and utter crap, that may "help" you program, but causes:
- infinite amounts of pain when they don't work (and anybody who tells me that STL and especially Boost are stable and portable is just so full of BS that it's not even funny)
- inefficient abstracted programming models where two years down the road you notice that some abstraction wasn't very efficient, but now all your code depends on all the nice object models around it, and you cannot fix it without rewriting your app.
In other words, the only way to do good, efficient, and system-level and portable C++ ends up to limit yourself to all the things that are basically available in C. And limiting your project to C means that people don't screw that up, and also means that you get a lot of programmers that do actually understand low-level issues and don't screw things up with any idiotic "object model" crap.
So I'm sorry, but for something like git, where efficiency was a primary objective, the "advantages" of C++ is just a huge mistake. The fact that we also piss off people who cannot see that is just a big additional advantage.
If you want a VCS that is written in C++, go play with Monotone. Really. They use a "real database". They use "nice object-oriented libraries". They use "nice C++ abstractions". And quite frankly, as a result of all these design decisions that sound so appealing to some CS people, the end result is a horrible and unmaintainable mess.
One of the things about this little blog that I monitor is where my readers come from. Over the years, I've commented a few times about surprises in this. In general, this blog has two kinds of readers – a core of mainly friends and family who visit regularly, and then lots of readers who come in because some post of mine popped up in their Google search results (I get hits from other search engines, too, but Google totally dominates). That latter group is where the surprises generally come from: some search term that gets used frequently and points to my blog.
For example, one search term that regularly pops up is “kevlar shoelaces”. Enter that search term into Google, and (at this writing) my blog post shows up as the 11th hit. That generates a lot of visits to my blog.
Right now another search term is leading the pack: “servicenow ipo”. My blog post the other day is the third hit on the results of that search, and it's bringing an interesting group of readers to my blog. I can tell roughly where these readers are, by their IP addresses – the people searching for “servicenow ipo” are mostly in New York, London, San Jose, and Los Angeles. That sounds like financials, tech, and investors to me.
I don't really know what any of that means, but it sure is fun to watch and wonder!
In today's Wall Street Journal, this article by Frederick Kagan and Maseh Zarif. The lead:
Americans are being played for fools by Iran—and fooling themselves. There is no case to be made that Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapons capability. There is no evidence that Iran's decision-makers are willing to stop the nuclear program in exchange for lifting sanctions or anything else. The International Atomic Energy Agency reported on Friday that it has made no progress in its negotiations with Iran and that Iran continues to accelerate its enrichment operations, which are in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions and agreements with the IAEA.
Yet the policy discussion in the U.S. is confused. Former Ambassador Dennis Ross writes that the Iranians are ready for talks. Anonymous administration officials refer to one of the most dangerous Iranian nuclear installations, Fordow, outside the city of Qom, as "a Potemkin facility." The media are full of comparisons to Iraq in 2003, when suspicions that Iraq was pursuing a covert nuclear program led to war.
People are conflating intelligence assessment with policy recommendation. The prospect of war with Iran is so distasteful that people are desperate to persuade themselves that the problem is not serious.
I'm getting darned tired of having my government be played for a fool – though, given the individuals who comprise the current administration, that's probably inevitable...
