The Gate Rule...

Peggy Noonan's lead this week:

There's something Haley Barbour reminded me of called the Gate Rule. The former Mississippi governor said it's the first thing you should think of when you think about immigration. People are either lined up at the gate trying to get out of a country, or lined up trying to get in.

It says something about the health of a nation when they're lined up to get in, as they are, still, with America. It says, of course, that compared with a lot of the rest of the world, America's economy isn't in such bad shape. But it says more than that. People don't want to come to a place when they know they'll be treated badly. They don't want to call your home their home unless they know you'll make room for them in more than economic ways.

It's a rather upbeat and hopeful piece – read the whole thing...

Big Bay Boom...

The “Big Bay Boom”...

By now you've likely heard about the “Big Bay Boom” – the big malfunction at the July 4th fireworks display in San Diego.  I didn't personally witness this, though I sure wish I had – I think I would have greatly enjoyed it!  The gist of it is this: a malfunction of some kind (whether human or equipment is not yet certain) caused all the fireworks that were to be used in a 20 minute long show to be fired off all at the same time, roughly five minutes before the fireworks were scheduled to begin.  The entire show was over in something like 15 seconds.  The image at right is destined for glory, I think – one of the most awesome fireworks photos ever.

The backstory to this has a slight personal connection.  It turns out that the firm responsible for both the equipment and the operation of the fireworks show was Garden State Fireworks, of Millington, New Jersey.  I hail from the state of New Jersey, growing up on what was once a farm east of Trenton, but which now is the parking lot for a Walmart store.  I left (or fled) New Jersey in 1971, and after discovering that nearly everywhere in the world outside New Jersey was a better place to live, I never returned.  My wife and I settled in the mountains of San Diego County, California, where we've lived for almost 15 years.  Poking fun at my “homeland” of New Jersey has been a sort of hobby of mine for a long, long time.  This incident makes it almost too easy: the New Jersey firm wins the contract for the San Diego fireworks display, then screws it up in a spectacular and very public way – and because they won all the key aspects of the contract, there is utterly nobody else to blame.  Ah, yes...New Jersey has covered itself in glory this time  :-)

Iconic Trees...

The “baobab” tree of Africa...

This Smithsonian article describes seven iconic trees of the world, like the one at right:

Its bark is fire resistant. Its fruit is edible. It scoffs at the driest droughts. It shrugs, and another decade has passed. It is the baobab, one of the longest-living, strangest looking trees in the world. Several species exist in the genus Adansonia, mostly in the semi-deserts of Africa and southern Asia. They can grow to be nearly 100 feet tall—but it’s the baobab’s bulk and stature that is so astonishing; many have trunks 30 feet in diameter. The Sunland Baobab of South Africa is far bigger still and is reportedly more than 6,000 years old. Its trunk, like those of many old baobabs, is hollow and—as a tourist attraction—even features a small bar inside. Baobab trees are leafless for much of the year and look rather like an oak that has been uprooted and replanted upside down. Numerous legends attempt to explain the bizarre and awesome appearance of the baobab, but if you visit the great Sunland Baobab, just let your jaw drop—and go inside for a drink.

I was disappointed to see that the author left out the koa tree of Hawai'i, one of my personal favorites. The koas at altitudes of roughly 8,000 feet and up on Mauna Kea (the middle volcano on the Big Island) are amongst the most beautiful trees I have ever seen. But despite this omission, it's an interesting collection...the tallest, strongest, and most iconic trees in the world.

Seen Around...

Via my lovely bride.  I don't know if they're real or they're photoshopped, but I like the sentiment:

Seen on the back of a U.S. Marine's Jeep...

At the intersection of Highway 59 and Highway 43 in Hutchinson, Kansas...

Along Highway 61, also in Hutchinson, Kansas...

Race in Action...

A photographer captured this beautiful shot of Race (our border collie who competes in agility) cresting an A-frame obstacle.  Most dogs (in fact, every other dog I've seen) clambers over the A-frame, some more quickly than others.  Race, on the other hand, simply leaps over the top!

Race, leaping over the apex of the A-frame...

Five Stars...

Via my lovely bride:

The kids filed into class Monday morning. They were all very excited. Their weekend assignment was to sell something, then give a talk on salesmanship.

Little Sally led off. "I sold Girl Scout cookies and I made $30" she said proudly, "My sales approach was to appeal to the customer's civil spirit and I credit that approach for my obvious success."

"Very good", said the teacher.

Little Debbie was next. "I sold magazines" she said, "I made $45 and I explained to everyone that magazines would keep them up on current events."

"Very good, Debbie", said the teacher.

Eventually, it was Little Johnny's turn. The teacher held her breath. Little Johnny walked to the front of the classroom and dumped a box full of cash on the teacher's desk. "$2,467", he said.

"$2,467!" cried the teacher, "What in the world were you selling?"

Toothbrushes", said Little Johnny. "Toothbrushes", echoed the teacher, "How could you possibly sell enough tooth brushes to make that much money?"

"I found the busiest corner in town", said Little Johnny, "I set up a Dip &Chip stand and I gave everybody who walked by a free sample." They all said the same thing, "Hey, this tastes like dog poop!" Then I would say, "It is dog poop. Wanna buy a toothbrush?" I used the President Obama method of giving you some crap, dressing it up so it looks good, telling you it's free and then making you pay to get the bad taste out of your mouth."

Little Johnny got five stars for his assignment.

Preconditions for the American Revolution...

Dave Carter over at Ricochet looks at current conditions to see how they map onto the Declaration of Independence.  He concludes with this:

The hour is late, and the moment urgent. Moderates didn't risk their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor by signing the Declaration of Independence. The men who signed that document went, as they say, "all in." The weak of heart didn't storm the beaches at Normandy. There was no compromise at Iwa Jima. Liberty isn't cheap, and can be lost much more easily than earned. Do we have the heart to reclaim liberty in America? The answer lies in the heart of the free man, if there are enough of us left. Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness, …these are the gifts of "Nature's God," and nature has unyielding determination.

Read the whole thing...

Obama's Autobiography...

What does it tell us when we discovery that our President simply made up large and important parts of his autobiography?

Mostly it makes me distrustful of him, and that in turn makes me very uncomfortable.  I'm now even more skeptical of anything he says or any position he takes, than I was before.  In other words, I now assume he's a dishonest man.

Yet another way in which Obama reminds me of Tricky Dick...

Another Posner Apple Patent Spanking...

Groklaw has it...

A Hopeful Sign for America...

In general, businesses and individuals make decisions more rationally than governments do.  An example from current events gives me some hope about U.S. politics, for reasons that will take a bit of explaining.

Airbus (the European aircraft manufacturer and only major competitor to Boeing) recently decided to locate a new plant in the U.S. to help it win future contracts with the U.S. government.  But where would they locate that plant? 

Would it be in Washington state, alongside Boeing, with tens of thousands of appropriately skilled workers nearby?  No. 

Would it be in California, with tens of thousands of high-tech workers readily available?  No.

Where, then?  Why, Alabama, of course.

What?!?  Alabama?  Why would any manufacturer in its right mind locate a plant in a state that epitomizes (to the legions of urban “progressives”, anyway) redneck hicks?

Perhaps for the same reasons that Mercedes and Toyota have already located plants there: business-friendly political environments, large and well-educated workforces eager for jobs, and low taxes.  Alabama is a right-to-work state (translation: unions are constrained), has a top income tax rate of 5%, a sales tax rate of 4%, and some of the lowest property tax rates in the country.

So why does this give me some hope about my country's future?

The fifty states that currently make up our union are in competition with each other, and a significant component of this competition relates to the political environment.  Good ideas in the political environment tend to win the competition.  This has been happening in Texas for the past decade – business-friendly politics has resulted in Texas having a booming economy and being relatively unscathed by the housing bubble.  It also has the largest rate of population growth of any U.S. state – our citizens are voting with their feet. 

My hope stems from this: in the long term, the political marketplace afforded by the fifty separate states will reward the winners.  And the winners are being chosen by people and businesses as they make decisions about where to live, or where to locate their business.  Alabama looks like one of the winners right now.  California lobbied Airbus hard to get that plant, and failed.  Politicians and citizens alike took note.  The more this happens, the less defensible the progressive economic death spiral becomes.  In the end, we all win.

So...I takes my hopes where I can get them.  And I'll take some here, with this news...

A Holiday Trip...

Debbie and I did a little local four-wheeling today, on a road that was new to us.  This doesn't happen all that often in San Diego County, as we know our local roads fairly well – so this trip was a bit of an adventure for us...

One turn off Pamo Valley Road

Our starting point was toward the north end of Pamo Valley, just north of Ramona.  This valley's floor is occupied by the aptly named Pamo Valley Ranch, an unexpectedly large cattle ranch located surprisingly close to urban areas.  Once you're in the valley, you could easily imagine that you're in some remote part of central California, as you're surrounded by hills, and the landscape is classic California riparian: oak and pasture.  There's not a bit of urburbia or suburbia in sight.  The last public turn off of Pamo Valley Road is on Forest Service road 11S01, otherwise known as the Lusardi Truck Trail.  This “road” is a bit rough, probably too much so for an ordinary car, but easily handled by our LandCruiser.  The photo at right shows 11S01 just after turning off Pamo Valley Road.

Gore-gated again!

We were able to drive about 5.8 miles up the road.  The two side roads that actually went anywhere were gated off, and just before we left the National Forest, we were stopped by a “Gore gate” (so called because rumor has it that Al Gore's cousin in Tennessee got a lucrative contract for these things nationwide) on our road (at left).  It's frustrating to be stopped on public lands by these damned gates that started popping up about 10 years ago – it happens more and more these days.  But the trip we could make was very enjoyable.

Under the oaks...

That stretch of road alternates between lush oak-filled creek valleys (some still running, even in July) and wide-open dry chapparal hillsides with nice views.  Some of the creek valleys were wet enough to support willows, cottonwoods, and what looked like asparagus at a distance (poison oak kept us from getting close to these).  We also saw two beautiful fern-filled glens, alongside a flowing creek and still under the oaks.  There was a lot of bird life, including some cries that we couldn't identify; something new to us.

At one point, not far from the Pamo Valley side of this trip, we ran across a deposit of quartz chips.  We first noticed a bunch of white chips in the road, but then saw an area roughly 6' in diameter that was composed of nothing but these chips...

Since we had to turn around and go back to Pamo Valley (thanks, Al – NOT!), we took another road we knew: Black Mountain Truck Trail.  This leads out of Pamo Valley to its east, and winds up at Lake Sutherland, just north of Ramona.  This approach has you winding around a hill until suddenly you're looking at the downstream side of the large dam that formed Lake Sutherland – quite impressive, and the biggest dam I know of in San Diego County.  Here's a map showing our two routes today.

And of course there were flowers:

Myths of the American Revolution...

One of the things that fascinates me about reading history is the way each historian casts his or her own filters on their telling of the tale.  It's a rare historian who doesn't edit (especially by omission) the story to better fit their own notions and preconceptions.  The omitted bits often relate more of the objective reality of any particular historical event than the celebrated and generally recorded bits.  So I especially cherish those historical accounts whose very purpose is to relate those often omitted bits.  This article is of that genre, though I know (from other reading) that some of the “realities” mentioned are not particularly well documented, and may not actually be true.  It's still interesting reading, and provokes one to reflect about how history gets made...

Independence Day...

July 4th, our Independence Day, is normally a day I would quietly celebrate.  I'm not feeling much like celebrating this year, for complicated reasons of which the recent ObamaCare decision is just part of.  If I was to try to summarize how I'm feeling, it might go like this: it feels like the Progressive movement is destroying the country whose independence I would celebrate.  My country.  It would be a bit like celebrating the birthday of a cherished dog – who was busy gnawing at my leg.  It's hard to celebrate under those circumstances...

But while I don't feel like celebrating, I haven't given up and I'm not feeling desperate.  I want my country back, and I know it's possible to do it.  This November is the big chance – not the last one, but the biggest evident opportunity.

I saw this video from Bill Whittle yesterday.  It's the closest thing I've seen or read to my own position.  I'm with Bill...

Senior Citizen Health Care Solution...

Via my mom, and attributed to the Maxine cartoon strip:

So you're a sick senior citizen and the government says there is no nursing home available for you, what do you do?

Our plan gives anyone 65 years or older a gun and 4 bullets. You are allowed to shoot four Senators or Representatives.

Of course, this means you will be sent to prison where you will get three meals a day, a roof over your head, central heating, air conditioning and all the health care you need! Need new teeth?
No problem. Need glasses? That’s great. Need a new hip, knees, kidney, lungs or heart? They’re all covered. And, as an added bonus, your kids can come and visit you as often as they do now.

And who will be paying for all of this? It’s the same government that just told you that you they cannot afford for you to go into a home.

Plus, because you are a prisoner, you don't have to pay any income taxes anymore.

Is this a great country or what?

It Really Works!

Try this little arithmetic puzzle – it will reveal your favorite movie of all time.  I tried it, and to my absolute amazement, it really works!  Via reader Simi L.:

MATH QUIZ : Reveals your favorite movie


DO NOT cheat and scroll down to the movies . Do YOUR math, THEN compare the results to the list of movies at the bottom.

1. Pick a number from 1-9.

2. Multiply that number by 3.

3. Add 3.

4. Multiply by 3 again.

5. Your total will be a two digit number. Add the first and second digits together to find your favorite movie ( of all time ) in the list of 17 movies below:


Movie List:

1. Gone With the Wind
2. E.T.
3. Blazing Saddles
4. Star Wars
5. Forrest Gump
6. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
7. Jaws
8. Grease
9. The Obama Farewell Speech of 2012
10. Casablanca
11. Jurassic Park
12. Shrek
13. Pirates of the Caribbean
14. Titanic
15. Raiders of the Lost Ark
16. Home Alone
17. Mrs. Doubtfire

Seen in Walmart...

Via my lovely bride:

Garfield Assassination...

A great short article on this bizarre chapter of American History...

Saturn, Titan, and the Rings...

APOD presents this beautiful photo taken by the Cassini probe, still orbiting Saturn and studying the Saturnian system. 

Dinosaur Feathers...

Over the past year or so, more and more scientists are speculating that all dinosaurs had feathers, not just the few that evolved into today's birds.  I'm old enough to have grown up with the “scientific consensus” that the cold-blooded dinosaurs had all gone extinct, with only fossils remaining.  Then came the revelations of the last ten years or so that (a) dinosaurs were actually warm-blooded, and (b) that some dinosaurs had evolved into today's birds.  That was shocking enough!  Now the new “scientific consensus” is edging toward the notion that all dinosaurs had features – a kind of fuzzy thermal coat, much like mammalian fur.  If this is correct, then really the reign of the dinosaurs isn't much different (in evolutionary historical terms) then the much later reign of large mammals (saber-tooth tigers, mammoths, giant beavers, etc.) – the ones we know as fossils were the branches of the family that didn't survive, and the ones we know as birds were the branches that did...

FLIP Ship Turns 50...

Way back in 1962, the FLIP ship first set sail.  I first learned about it from a science newsletter in my school's library in that same year, then later read about it in National Geographic magazine.  I've followed news about it with interest ever since.  This year marks its 50th year of operation.

In the early '70s, when I was in the U.S. Navy and stationed in Long Beach, California, I found out that the FLIP ship was based out of Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Diego – just a short drive down the coast.  I called and discovered that it was in port, and I was able to arrange a visit through a friendly research assistant (the fellow my call was routed to).  I spent an interesting afternoon going through the ship.  After being used to the USS Long Beach (the nuclear powered cruiser that I was stationed on), the FLIP ship looked positively tiny to my eyes!

These days, the FLIP ship has its own home page on the web.  I also found this short news story on it, with a video of the flipping action.

Guess Who Was President of the Slide Rule Club?

My junior high school (in central New Jersey) had a slide rule club, and I was a member.  As I recall, the other members tolerated me mainly because I knew how to use the log-log scales, which mystified just about everyone else.  I certainly wasn't elected to any exalted position in the club!  But this fellow was: Michael Bloomberg.  Yes, that Michael Bloomberg...

How Unoriginal Mediocrity Is Done...

Rachel Lucas, at your service...

Modern Manufacturing: Yachts...

The short documentary-style ad below gives a fascinating look into a modern manufacturing facility that makes extensive use of industrial robots.  The mix of human and robotic workers is typical, though the robots keep advancing into more and more “skilled” areas.  The benefits of this kind of manufacturing are compelling, and well presented here.  They include: precision, low waste, high speed, the synchronization that enables just-in-time manufacturing inventories, (much) lower labor costs, (much) higher “up-time”, and more.  Watch:

Well, That Didn't Take Long...

The GOP is already planning to make some hay from the Supreme Court ruling on ObamaCare last Thursday.  Specifically, they plan to use the reconciliation process to fast-track a repeal of ObamaCare – because in the reconciliation process no filibustering is allowed, so they only need a simple majority (51 votes) to kill it.  This is possible because the Supreme Court redefined the mandate as a tax, and the reconcilation process is open to any bill including taxes...

History of Rock 'n Roll...

...in 100 riffs.  I recognized most of them until he got into the 60s or so.  In the last 30, I only recognized one of them!

Learn About Fracking...

A nicely done, fact-based documentary, just a half hour long:

Volcanic Temperatures in Charlottesville, Virginia...

According to this weatherman on a Richmond, Virginia weather station, literally volcanic temperatures:



But I checked my mom's computer (located in her home near Charlottesville), and it's still up.  So this must not be for real :-)

Victoria Arlen...

Frankie T. is one of my colleagues at work.  Victoria Arlen (swimming at right) is a friend of her family, and Frankie introduced me to Victoria's remarkable story.

Just three years ago, Victoria's legs were paralyzed and she was in a vegetative state.  But in 2009, she began an amazing recovery – and now, just three years later, legs still completely paralyzed, she is a member of the U.S. Paralympics swim team headed for competition in London.  Victoria's story is an uplifting tale of determination and grit, well worth a few minutes of your time to get acquainted with.  There's a two part (non-embeddable, dang it!) video story (part 1 and part 2), and more information here, here, here, and here...

Quote of the Day...

From Scott Adams, on today's Dilbert strip:

I am Mordac, the preventer of information services!

In one mordant sentence, a perfect summation of how corporate employees typically view IS (or IT) guys.  Fortunately for our collective sanity, there are exceptions to this (especially for enterprises using this), though even just a few years ago the exceptions were far fewer.  Every IS or IT guy I've ever met is painfully familiar with this stereotypical way of how their fellow employees view them – and how that view has more than a little truth to it.  The best work their butts off to avoid being viewed this way...

Twenty Groaners...

...via reader Simi L.  Some of these I've heard before, but many are new to me:

1. Two antennas met on a roof, fell in love and got married. The ceremony wasn't much, but the reception was excellent.

2. A jumper cable walks into a bar. The bartender says, "I'll serve you, but don't start anything."

3. Two peanuts walk into a bar, and one was a salted.

4. A dyslexic man walked into a bra.

5. A man walks into a bar with a slab of asphalt under his arm, and says: "A beer please, and one for the road."

6. Two cannibals are eating a clown. One says to the other: "Does this taste funny to you?"

7. "Doc, I can't stop singing The Green, Green Grass of Home."
"That sounds like Tom Jones Syndrome."
"Is it common?"
"Well, It's Not Unusual."

8. Two cows are standing next to each other in a field. Daisy says to Dolly, "I was artificially inseminated this morning."
"I don't believe you," says Dolly.
"It's true; no bull!" exclaims Daisy.

9. An invisible man marries an invisible woman. The kids were nothing to look at either.

10. DejaMoo: The feeling that you've heard this bull before.

11. I went to buy some camouflage trousers the other day, but I couldn't find any.

12. I went to a seafood disco last week...And pulled a mussel.

13. What do you call a fish with no eyes? A fsh.

14. Two fish swim into a concrete wall. The one turns to the other and says, "Dam!"

15. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft. Not surprisingly it sank, proving once again that you can't have your kayak and heat it too.

16. A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel, and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories.
After about an hour, the manager came out of the office, and asked them to disperse.
"But why," they asked, as they moved off.
"Because," he said. "I can't stand chess-nuts boasting in an open foyer."

17. A woman has twins, and gives them up for adoption. One of them goes to a family in Egypt , and is named 'Ahmal.' The other goes to a family in Spain ; they name him 'Juan.' Years later, Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother. Upon receiving the picture, she tells her husband that she wishes she also had a picture of Ahmal. Her husband responds, "They're twins! If you've seen Juan, you've seen Ahmal."

18. MahatmaGandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him . . . A super-calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

19. A dwarf, who was a mystic, escaped from jail. The call went out that there was a small medium at large.

20. And finally, there was the person who sent twenty different puns to his friends, with the hope that at least ten of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did?

That's quite enough for now, don't you think?

Is Universal Suffrage a Good Thing?

First a clarification: “suffrage” means the right to vote; “universal suffrage” means the right for all adult citizens to vote.

I've wondered for a long time about the wisdom of universal suffrage, and finally I read about someone else thinking the same thing.  The linked post doesn't talk about any proposed alternatives, but does leave you expecting that any proposal would be to somehow limit suffrage to those who understood how democracy actually works. 

I don't much like that idea (though I wonder if it might not be better than universal suffrage), but for years I've been thinking about a different approach: making some people's votes count more than others.  I didn't have a name for it, but I coined one just now: “asymmetric suffrage”.  There are many ways one could construct such a system, but here's an example (not a serious proposal, mind you, but just an example to give you the gist of what I'm talking about).

Every adult starts with 1 vote, but various kinds of life experience and accomplishments could be used to modify that.  For example:

Multiplier   When
----------------------
1.5            when you have owned a home for 10 years
2.0            if you honorably complete at least 4 years of military service
1.5            you obtain a college degree in engineering, medicine, science, or math
2.0            if you have been the owner of a business with 10 employees for 5 years
1.5            you reach the age of 40
2.0            you reach the age of 60
0.5            you are a public employee
0.5            you are on welfare
0.0            you are convicted of a felony (removed if pardoned or overturned)

For example, if you're a 45 year old engineer who has owned a business employing 50 people for 10 years, owned a home for 20 years, and served four years in the Army, your multiples would be:

1.0   that everyone starts with
2.0   for service in the Army
1.5   for your engineering degree
2.0   because of your business ownership
1.5   because you're over 40
-------
9.0   the multiple of all the above; your vote would count as 9

Whereas, if you're 25 years old, have a degree in French literature, are on welfare (because you can't find a job), then your multiples would be:

1.0   that everyone starts with
0.5   because you're on welfare
-------
0.5   the multiple of all the above; your vote would count as half a vote

Naturally there would be a huge debate about what the multiples should be.  Surely there must be some that we could all agree on, though, no matter what our political, religious, and intellectual leanings might be.  A multiple based on knowledge of how our democracy works (or doesn't!) might be an interesting addition.

Completely aside from the problem of getting anyone to agree with me that this is a good idea, there's another problem, a political one: this scheme couldn't possibly work without some reliable form of voter identification.

Thoughts, anyone?

How I'd Like to See Our Healthcare System Work...

I read a piece by Holman Jenkins this morning in the Wall Street Journal.  It introduces a new term I hadn't heard before that gave me a chuckle: “lip-commitment” – referring to politicians who have verbally committed to something, but haven't actually done it yet.  He also proposes a solution to this country's healthcare problems, via a relatively small tweak to ObamaCare:

Now just modify the Affordable Care Act so buying any health policy authorized by the new charter, no matter how minimalist, satisfies the employer and individual mandate.

What would follow is a boom in low-cost, high-deductible plans that leave individuals in charge of managing most of their ordinary health-care costs out of pocket. Because it would be cheap, millions who would opt not to buy coverage will buy coverage. Because it will be cheap, companies will direct their low-wage and entry-level employees to this coverage.

I don't believe the solution is anything like that simple, but this is definitely a component of the reform I would like to see: a return to real insurance, instead of the all-you-can-eat prepaid healthcare pseudo-insurance we have today.

In response to a reader's question, here are the pieces of a reformed healthcare system that I'd like to see here in the U.S.  A lot of these pieces interact with others, so they really need to be considered together.  And before people start yelling at me, I know that the chances of these elements being enacted together at that national level are vanishingly close to zero.  So shut up, already – it's my dream!  The elements:

1. Either eliminate healthcare costs as deductible by employers, or make them deductible by individuals (or both).  This would eliminate the tax bias toward employer-provided healthcare (this never was a good idea, and only came into being as an accidental side-effect of WWI-era wage controls).  Employers could still provide healthcare, but it would cost them more.  Most employers would drop healthcare benefits like a hot potato, and then most Americans would be shopping for insurance.  Why do I think this is good?  Because it would empower individuals to shop for healthcare and health insurance, choosing the right combination of benefits and cost for them.
   
2. Eliminate all mandated features of health insurance products, both at the federal and state levels.  In other words, allow health insurance providers the same freedom as car manufacturers – let them make high-end and low-end products, some full of glitzy features and others stripped down to the bare metal.  Insurance providers will immediately start promoting high-deductible major medical policies – because they are dirt cheap compared with the feature-laden policies most states mandate today.  Why do I think this is a good idea?  Because then the insurance companies will fall all over themselves trying to find products that the marketplace finds compelling – just like car makers do today.  This will include low-end products (like high-deductible major medical policies) and high-end products (like today's healthcare insurance, if enough people are willing to pay for them).  The most important piece of this is that consumers then get to choose – and the marketplace does the rest.
   
3. Eliminate all state regulations that have the effect of creating a separate market for healthcare insurance within a state.  I can buy a Toyota in any state of this country.  I should be able to buy a Brand XYZ insurance policy the same way.  Why do I think this is a good idea?  That's easy: increased competition always means lower prices and better products.  No government ever produced a product like the iPhone, good service like Zappos, or low prices like Walmart – these all happened through the magic of competition in the marketplace – and the bigger that marketplace is, the better.
   
4. Forbid denial (of high-deductible, major medical policies only) on the basis of pre-existing conditions – but allow insurance companies to recover as much of their costs related to the pre-existing condition as possible.  The idea here is to allow anyone to obtain coverage, no matter what their medical situation – but when an insurance company is forced to accept someone with a pre-existing condition, they can come after all that person's assets to recover their costs, much the way student loans are treated today.  I'm glossing over lots of troublesome details here, like determining what's actually related to pre-existing conditions, dealing with pre-existing conditions that predate adulthood, people uninsured for a short time (like between jobs), etc.  All that would most definitely have to be worked out, and I suspect it wouldn't be pretty.  But...what I like about this approach is that we'd end up in a situation in which two things are true: (1) anybody, with any pre-existing condition can get insurance, and (2) people who choose not to buy insurance until they needed it would be penalized, potentially severely.
   
5. Remove all barriers to forming a robust healthcare reinsurance market.  This has the effect of enlarging the risk pool, an unambiguously good thing for competition.
   
6. Completely separate the welfare component and the insurance component of healthcare-related policy and regulation.  Government programs like Medicare and Medicaid are part insurance, part pre-paid all-you-can-eat healthcare services, and part welfare.  What I'm proposing is requiring that when the government provides (directly or indirectly) health insurance to a program beneficiary, they buy a private health insurance policy to do so.  This has the effect of greatly increasing the size of the risk pools for both the indigent and the elderly, while still keeping it a competitive marketplace.

See what I mean?  Chances of all that passing are zero!

A Lovely Summer Brunch...

I just made this and had it for my brunch...

1 ripe tomato
1 ripe (but not mushy) avocado
1 chicken thigh and leg, roasted
2 tsp mayonaise
1 tbsp dried tarragon OR
2 tbsp minced fresh tarragon

If you're using dried tarragon, be aware that brands vary tremendously in quality.  Around here, the best we've found is Archer Farms, which Albertson's carries occasionally (stock up!) and Target carries usually.  Crush the dried leaves between your thumb and forefinger until they're almost powdered.  Remove any obvious stem fragments.

Cut the tomato, avocado, and chicken into pieces, roughly a quarter inch in size.  Put the tomato pieces and their juices into a bowl and mix the tarragon into them.  If you're using dried tarragon, let stand for 10 minutes or so to rehydrate the tarragon.  Then mix in the other ingredients and eat!

It's Just the Law...

An interesting and very different piece on the ObamaCare ruling by Jazz Shaw...

ObamaCare is Bananas...

Just watch this – it's the best short explanation of the major problems with ObamaCare I've seen yet, in language that anyone can understand...

A Cause for Celebration...

My father is the patriarch of our extended family, and of course he's even more ancient than I am.  Friends and family alike fondly refer to his age as “older than dirt” to edge around any awkward need for a more specific reference.  For him, waking up in the morning is reason enough for celebration – but he's got another reason just now: he's come through a minor surgery (hernia repair) in fine shape.  Through long experience, our family has discovered there's only one way to reliably tell what condition my dad is in: whether he's eating.  And he's eating his favorite food – chocolate milkshakes :-)

So we're celebrating!

Mom's Flowers...

It's got something to do with the combination of weather, “Scott's super soil” (Scott is my brother), and good fortune – all working together to make my mom's yard (near Charlottesville, Virginia) full of beautiful blooms.  Holly (my sister) is keeping a photo journal.  And flowers make moms happy, as everyone knows...

And Then I Read Mark Steyn...

...and was depressed all over again about the ObamaCare ruling.

This is definitely one of those issues upon which one can find any opinion one wants...and which defies rational analysis because of its complexity.

As far as I can tell, ObamaCare's impact on me personally, short term, will be tax increases – more money stolen from my pocket by the government and given to others in its inimitably inefficient manner.  Longer term, I am very worried about the stifling effects of ObamaCare on medical research, innovation, and practitioner compensation.  We currently lead the world on all these fronts, to the point where we dominate.  What happens when we make it unprofitable (or much less profitable) for the businesses and individuals who currently turn the gears of this wonderful machine?  They'll go elsewhere: either to other countries smart enough to take advantage of the bonanza we've handed them, or to other industries.  Either way, innovation most likely gets reduced – or at least our access to it.

Sheesh.

We gotta repeal this pig!

The ObamaCare Ruling...

Watching SCOTUSblog yesterday as the ObamaCare decision was made public, I was as surprised as anyone.  Like many who aren't “progressive”, my first reactions were dismay and anger at the result (ObamaCare upheld!) and utter surprise at the deciding vote (Roberts).  My thoughts tended toward things like alcohol consumption and firearms acquisition.

After getting home from work last night, I set off on a reading junket to see what some smart people were saying – and I was more than a little surprised to see some positive and even optimistic interpretations of the decision from a libertarian or conservative perspective.  A few folks who were most definitely not of the “progressive” persuasion even went so far as to admire Justice Roberts' opinion – and a few “progressives” saw the same issues as dangers for their side.

At this point I can't tell whether these are after-the-fact rationalizations of a bitter decision (lipstick on a pig, so to speak), or if Roberts actually has done the non-progressive world a favor with this decision.  The ideas certainly are interesting, however.  At the end of this post is a collection of links to the original material I read through.  The main lines of hopeful thoughts I read about (in no particular order):

• The part of the decision that struck down the mandate but turned it into a tax is the first Supreme Court ruling that sets a precedent for limiting Congress' powers under the commerce clause.
• The mandate/tax has the effect of shifting a huge part of the cost of medical care to younger people, which you'd think would motivate younger folks to fight the law.
• The ruling materially raises the probability that Obama will be defeated in November, both by boosting Romney's appeal and by re-energizing the Tea Party and other limited-government folks.
• The ruling materially raises the probability that Republicans will have the Presidency, the House, and the Senate in January 2013 – and therefore materially raises the probability of an ObamaCare repeal.
• Tax bills (which ObamaCare now is) can't be filibustered.  This vastly decreases the political difficulting of repealing ObamaCare: the Senate now needs just 51 votes instead of 60.
• The transformation of the mandate into a tax means the ObamaCare bill is imposing a new tax.  The Constitution requires any such bill to originate in the House of Representatives; the ObamaCare bill originated in the Senate.  This presents the possibility of a Constitutional challenge on much firmer grounds than the challenge just ruled on.  Some are proposing that Roberts did this intentionally, so the law could be struck down in a bipartisan fashion.
• The part of the decision ruling that terminating Medicaid funding to states that didn't participate in the Medicaid expansion is actually a significant reining in of federal power over states – and could lead to challenges of other laws that diminish state's rights.

Even in aggregate, the above are not as immediately satisfying as having ObamaCare struck down in its entirety would have been.  They may, however, be better than what many considered the likliest ruling: striking down the mandate, but allowing the rest of ObamaCare to stand.  While I'm no Republican, the prospect of defeating Obama and repealing ObamaCare is very attractive (even more so that a Supreme Court takedown), so I can take some solace in that...

The pile o'links:

• Medicaid impact
• More Medicaid impact
• Commerce clause thoughts
• More commerce clause thoughts
• Taxes and generation cost shifting
• The activity/inactivity line of argument
• Young people screwed by ObamaCare
• Commerce clause precedent-setting
• Even more Medicaid impact
• An act of great cunning?
• Good news for Romney
• Yoo and Epstein podcast
• The gift and the repeal pledge
• Even more commerce clause thoughts, plus politics
• Political genius?
• Major limits on Congress' power
• Lost the battle, won the war
• Everybody wins
• A weird victory for Federalism
• Roberts' Gambit

Morning Walk, with Random Thoughts...

As usual, this morning at around 3 am, the dogs and I gathered near the door for their morning walk.  The last few days, though, have been very confusing for the dogs.  You see, last weekend we replaced the patio door through which we begin our walk.  The old door was a sliding door, sliding from right-to-left, and we walked out the right-hand side of it.  Some of our dogs have been doing this every morning for over 12 years.

The new door, however, opens from the middle, left-to-right, and we walk out of it near the center.  This morning (like the previous few mornings), the dogs gathered near the right-hand side of the door, waiting impatiently for me to affix their leashes.  When I had them all hooked up, and opened the door – the confusion began.  You could almost hear them saying “WTF?”, complete with confused faces, as the door swung toward them.  “This never used to happen!”  Eventually we got it sorted out, and left on our walk...

Three things were much on my mind this morning...

The Supreme Court's decision on ObamaCare is the topper – those few men and women are about to decide something (well, let their decision be known) that has a huge impact on my country and on me personally.  A thought I read from Dave Carter expresses it just about perfectly:

“The very idea that we sit on the edge of our seats, eyes toward Washington DC, waiting on the deliberations and dispositions of nine mortals to tell us how much of our liberty we get to retain is preposterous.”

Yup, that's it, Dave.  And yet...here I am, on the edge of my seat.  And I have utterly no idea how they will rule.  Just a couple hours from the time I write these words, we'll all find out...

Jerry Brown just signed California's (yet again) insane budget, replete with all the usual gimmicks he forswore – and with a new one that tops all the previous gimmicks.  This budget assumes that the compliant sheeple of California will approve a massive tax hike in the November election.  Now the Democratic propaganda engine will swing into action, proclaiming to the sheeple that the sky will fall (and damn soon!) if we don't approve these taxes.  The dollars available to pay for this propaganda are awesome in their quantity, as every single organization that depends on public funding is, of course, wildly enthusiastic about these new taxes.  The teachers, public employees, police, fire, prison guards, and all the other vast army of state employees are represented by unions – and these unions have collected (not necessarily with the consent of their members!) vast hoards of cash to pay for this propaganda.  I am afraid the chances for passage of these tax hikes are reasonably good.  We may be headed down the same spiral that Greece is in the thrall of...

And then there's Fast and Furious, which infuriates me – both the program itself, and the subsequent cover-up of it.  Given the invocation of executive privilege, I'm finding it more and more plausible that not only did the knowledge of Fast and Furious extend to the White House (including Obama himself), but that it might have been ordered from there.  The partisan reaction to it no longer surprises me, but it certainly dismays me to see that because they are Democrats (or because they are black, or both) duly elected Representatives and Senators are refusing to hold Holder in contempt – when he so clearly is in contempt of Congress' request for information (which is itself equally clearly within their purview).  There are precious few Democrats who have committed to voting for the contempt motion later today.  For some reason this partisan reaction is even more depressing to me than the rest of the Fast and Furious mess...

But despite all these less-than-happy thoughts running around in my head, the walk was as beautiful as ever.  The Milky Way glowed overhead, and the dogs were, as always, full of delight and joy.  Cool breezes intermittently puffed down the hill above us, carrying with them the wonderful smells of the chaparral.  The morning was quiet and peaceful, and the dogs and I felt like we owned it completely...

Senior Moments...

This song is dedicated to my parents:

How Our Vision Really Works...

An excellent explication of the way our perception of color actually works, including both the physiology and our brain's influence.  The explanation is very accessible – you don't have to be a scientist to understand it.  What you were taught was almost certainly very different...

A Visual Git Reference...

If, like me, you're new to the world of git – you might find this visual reference quite useful...

Two Words...

James Taranto has two words for you.  Listen up!

This Means Something...

...though I'm not entirely sure exactly what.  Part of it, to be sure, is the ongoing triumph of style over substance.  But I think it goes deeper than that.

One thing I feel sure of: this is not a good omen for our species' future...

Greece Showed the Way...

...and California said “Yeah, that's what I want to do!”

When does the madness stop?  California seems hell-bent on destroying it's attractiveness on every front: as a place to live, a place to do business, and even as a place to visit.

It's close to being time to leave...as so many already have...

Both True and False...

If you're a programmer, you probably think of a boolean variable as having one of exactly two distinct states: “true” and “false”.  The value of that variable is either true or false.  It can't possibly be both.

Oh, yes it can!

Well, in “C”, at least, and probably in other languages that are relatively close to machine language.

Which got me to thinking...  The rise of languages like Java, JavaScript, and C# – all of which nearly completely abstract the underlying computing machinery away – is an enabler of the current programming world in which developers can be quite successful without ever understanding how computers actually work.  With languages like “C” (or assembly language), that just isn't so...

I'd Blow It All On You...

The Curiosity Challenge...

On August 5th of this year, at 10:31 PDT, the Curiosity Rover is scheduled to plop down onto the surface of Mars.  It is by far the most advanced probe anybody has ever attempted to land on any planet, and (assuming it lands successfully) we expect it to produce great science data at least through its primary mission.

Curiosity is also the biggest and heaviest probe anyone has ever attempted to land on Mars, and this meant some tough engineering problems to solve.  The engineering solution involves an advanced ablative heat shield, the largest supersonic parachute ever designed, a rocket-powered sky crane, high resolution descent radar, and a completely autonomous computer-controlled landing system.  Every bit of this has to work perfectly, or the Curiosity landing will fail (as so many previous Mars landings have failed).  For those of us who, like me, are more excited about robotic probes like Curiosity than we are of the manned space program, this landing is real edge-of-the-chair stuff.  It's also a spectacular feat of engineering in its own right, completely aside from the rover itself.

The video below is a sort of mini-documentary, very nicely done, about the technology developed to set Curiosity down on the surface of Mars...

Takedown!

Ann Althouse (one of my favorite bloggers) does a spectacular takedown of Jonathan Turley's proposal to pack the Supreme Court (a la FDR).  It's a thing of beauty, her takedown – one imagines Turley's ego lying shredded on the floor...

The Care and Feeding of Software Engineers...

Lots of truthiness in here...

Political Jokes...

Here's a big collection of contemporary political jokes, mostly about either Obama or Romney.  Some of these are as likely to make me cry as laugh.  The most interesting thing to me – Obama is getting the same treatment as Romney from the humorists.  No more “hands-off” attitude.  I guess there's just too much comedic gold for them there...

Sikorsky Prize Within Reach?

Watch the human powered helicopter below stay aloft for 50 seconds.  Awesome!  The Sikorsky Prize ($250,000) has remained unwon for 30 years.  One of the three requirements is staying aloft for 60 seconds or more.  They're getting very close on that front!  Another requirement is reaching 3 meters (almost 10 feet) high; they've got a ways to go on that...

Citizenship...

Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) has some thoughts on how one becomes a citizen of any particular country.  He doesn't really propose any solutions, but makes some unusual observations and a few predictions.  I found myself agreeing with many of his observations, in particular the arbitrary and capricious nature of “place of birth” as the determinant...

Optical Illusions...

It's a great one below, and there's another where that one came from.  I love illusions like this one that demonstrate so clearly the major role our brains have in visual perception...

MRI of a Human Birth...

This is the first ever MRI “movie” of a human birth.  It's just 25 seconds long, and is comprised (really) of a series of still images from the MRI, all strung together to make a movie.  There's much more about this here.

A Murmuration...

The Loneliest Little Shop in the World...

The Mulka Store in Australia...

Statoliths: How Plants Tell Up from Down...

Interesting article from NPR (though they've spelled “statolith” incorrectly on their drawing!) and a more detailed explanation...

The War on Drugs: an Alternative View...

This website is full of information and commentary about the futility and waste of the global war on drugs...

Housing Policy and the Great Recession...

An excellent interview of Peter Wallison by Anthony Randazzo of the Reason Foundation.  Content like this is the main reason why Reason magazine is one of only two dead tree publications that I still subscribe to...

Do Not Disturb...

Moscow Flash Mob...

Via my lovely bride:

A Satisfying Weekend...

Our living room opens onto our patio through a sliding glass door, or at least it used to.  Our old door was an old-fashioned glass door made of many individual panes of glass all held together by a wooden frame.  Our dogs, through years of scratching at the door, had worn through one of the wooden frame pieces, and burst one pane of glass right out of the door.  I made some emergency repairs with epoxy on the day it happened – and then we bought a replacement door.  This time it's a conventional hinged door (not sliding), and with a steel frame.  The dogs will not hurt this one!

I guessed that replacing the door would take a couple of days for Debbie and I, and that we might need some help (the new door was heavy!).  So we lined up Jimmy B. (our friend and neighbor) for some help, and this weekend was scheduled.

Saturday we “demoed” (demolished) the old door first.  This ended up taking most of the day, and involved one major frustration.  Once we got the old door physically out of the wall, we did a trial fit of the new door.  It's outside trim was larger than the hole left by the old door – we needed to cut between a half inch and an inch of stucco all the way around the door.  That's about 22 feet of stucco to cut.  Some of you may not be familiar with stucco – it's basically a half to three-quarters of an inch of concrete slapped onto a wire mesh made of high tensile strength steel wire. 

I'd never cut stucco before, so I did some Googling and found lots of advice.  All of it recommended using a diamond saw blade on a 7" angle grinder.  Naturally, this is a tool I didn't own (doesn't it always work that way?).  So down to Lowe's I went (an hour's round trip) to buy an angle grinder and a 7" serrated diamond blade.  I got back home, unpacked the new tool – and promptly discovered that there was no way the blade would fit on the angle grinder.  Argh!  Back down to Lowe's I went, whereupon I met up with a very helpful tools guy.  It seems that California passed a law that went into effect on January 1 of this year, outlawing angle grinders that would accept a saw blade.  Anywhere else in the U.S. I could still buy one, but not here.  Double argh!  Damn the nanny state!  However, the tool guy did make one very helpful suggestion: the diamond blade would do the same job on a worm-drive circular saw – and that's a tool I happened to own.  So back home I went, and drug out the huge, heavy, worm-drive circular saw.  I fitted the diamond blade and went to work cutting stucco.  This worked extremely well, but generated huge quantities of fine white dust.  We had to seal up the house with plastic to keep the dust out, and even so some leaked in.

Once we got the hole cut, the more satisfying work began.  On Saturday evening we got the door in place, tacked it in (just enough to keep it from falling out).  On Sunday, we adjusted it for level and squareness, screwed it into the frame very securely, then filled the voids all around with construction foam (wonderful stuff!).  Then came the really fun part, the part that involved some craftsmanship: we formed a concrete support for the sill, patched the stucco all around the outside of the frame, and then re-grouted the gap between the inside sill and the entranceway tile.  That took all day, but when we were done it actually looked like a real door.  Now the only thing we have left to do is to trim off the construction foam that expanded outside the frame, and then mount some trim boards around the inside of the frame.  Easy stuff! 

The work we did on Sunday was strangely satisfying to me, in the same way that writing some challenging software is satisfying.  It's something about the need to engage my brain, the pure craftsmanship involved in building something, and obtaining pleasing results.  All of that put together is a reliable way for me to have a good day.

Plus we have a new door!

Charlottesville, Virginia: Epicenter of Greekness...

The University of Virginia is currently dealing with it's own version of the economic crisis facing Greece.  On the one side, fiscal sanity and a modicum of rationality – and unattractive squareness.  On the other side, a belief in magic, a second helping of irrationality – and media-friendly progressivism.  Who will win?  The Wall Street Journal describes the mess...

Dance of the Robots...

These are industrial robots – by far the most common kind of robot, though many people have never seen one before.  They come in many varieties; this one is a general-purpose type that can be fitted with many different tools at the working end.  Someone with far too much time on their hands put this together.  I don't care much for the music, but I find the idea of choreographed robots fascinating...and strangely attractive:

Quote of the Day...

Via my mom, a tweet from David Burge (aka Iowahawk):

Apparently, I'm supposed to be angrier about what Mitt Romney does with his money than what Barack Obama does with mine.

ObamaCare...

Today is probably the big day: the day that the Supreme Court announces their ruling on the challenge to ObamaCare's constitutionality.  Though they still have the option to delay their ruling even longer, if they follow their traditional schedule of ruling announcements, today would be the day.

Some folks (like myself) have trouble understanding how ObamaCare supporters could be supporters – the flaws of the bill are numerous and pretty obvious.  Here's an interesting post on a very liberal web site that lists the 10 things we're going to miss if ObamaCare is struck down.

To me, this list is a wonderful capsule view of the progressive mentality.  Basically it's a list of benefits without any tinge of the consequent costs.  It's tantamount to saying “Wouldn't you like to have a bag of gold delivered into your hands every morning?” – without ever stopping to think how you're going to pay for it.  Don't worry about it!  The government will provide.  Why, yes, of course I'd like my daily bag of gold!

Idiots.  Shallow, self-centered, feel-good, irrational, “gimme-gimme” obliviots.  The trouble is, there are so damned many of them that they've managed to elect a government.  They deserve the government they elect.  Trouble is, they drag me (and my wallet!) along with them, kicking and screaming.

November 2012.  It may be this country's last real hope, else we go the way of Greece...

LOST: Law of the Sea Treaty...

George Will on why we should not ratify the U.N.'s Law of the Sea treaty.

What he said.

Balancing the Budget – in 10 Minutes...

When you need a budget done quickly and effectively, just go to your nearest talk show host for assistance:

PBO, It's Time to Go...

Via my lovely bride:

If You've Lost Jon Stewart...

...then you've lost the whole thing on Fast and Furious...

Holder, If You Won't Explain...

...then other people are going to start speculating on what you're hiding.  Here's one smart guy came up with, quite plausible (if horrifying):

Read-Only Memory...

This post at NYC Resistor, about EPROMs, set me off on a little trip down memory lane this morning...

“EPROM” stands for Eraseable, Programmable Read-Only Memory.  The “ROM” part just means some memory (a place to store information) that can be read, but not written (modified, erased, etc.).  However, they can be programmed one time.  You could think of them as being analagous to a printed book – you can read the information in the book, but you can't actually change what's been printed on the page, once it's been printed.

This sort of memory is essential in virtually every electronics design that includes a computer, and in many other areas as well.  I designed a lot of electronic gadgets that included a finite state machine, and these often included a ROM as well.  EPROMs, like the 1702A (at right) and it's many descendants, were an enormous improvement over the previous forms of ROMs – you could erase and reprogram them (like being able to magically erase a printed book and replace the text with text of your choice).  If you're an engineer developing a design of some sort, you might go through many cycles of design/build/test during the course of finishing a product, and the EPROM made it easy to do that.

The 1702A EPROM was the first of these I'd ever run into.  I first started using it in the mid-'70s, and it was a huge improvement over previous ROM technology.  The way you erased one of these EPROMs is to shine a very bright, short-wave ultraviolet light through the clear window for an hour or so.  We bought specially little light-tight boxes to do this in, as the short-wave ultraviolet light is dangerous for people.  When I first heard about these things, I thought the idea very odd – no other electronic device I'd ever heard of worked with UV light.  But the convenience was undeniable.

Today the idea of a UV-erasable EPROM seems quite quaint.  EEPROMs (Electrically-Eraseable Read-Only Memory) have completely taken over.  These ROMs require That's what's in your USB memory stick, or your Solid-State Disk.  The laptop I'm writing this on has a 512GB SSD – that's an EEPROM with 4,398,046,511,104 bits of information in it.  The 1702A held 2,048 bits, roughly 2 billionths as much information as my laptop's SSD.  But what came before EPROMs?

The first kind of ROM that I ever ran into personally was built from a matrix of capacitors made from a double-sided printed circuit board.  Once side of the board had a series of parallel lines etched in one direction, while the other side had orthoganal parallel lines (at 90° direction).  Each intersection of lines from the two sides represented one bit of information.  To make a “1”, there was a small, square pad of copper on both sides of that intersection.  These pads formed a tiny capacitor, and appropriate electronics could detect these.  That first ROM I saw had 16 lines on each side of the circuit board, making 256 intersections – so it was a 256 bit (or 32 byte) ROM.  It was most definitely not eraseable – nor was it programmable.  The only way you could change the value of this ROM was to manufacture a new one from scratch!  The electronics that “read” that ROM was roughly the size of a shoebox, and quite unreliable – I spent many hours “tuning” those darned things back in the early '70s, on U.S. Navy cryptographic equipment.

The next kind of ROM I saw was used as the “bootstrap” (a small, simple program that loaded a bigger, more complex program) for the 642-A and 642-B computers I worked on, again in the U.S. Navy in the early '70s.  This ROM was made with a “plug-board” – essentially a big connector with some of the pins wired together.  Each pair of pins wired together was a single “1” bit, and each pair of pins not wired together was a “0” bit.  This particular ROM had 32 words of information, with each word being 30 bits long – so 960 bits all together.  This was implemented with four connectors, each having 480 pins (that's a big connector!).  This ROM was programmable – with a really skinny pair of pliers and a magnifying glass, you could plug or unplug wires to change bits from “1” to “0” and vice versa.  Just once I had to do this, when a field modification came out.  I remember that it took me several days of quite painstaking work to change the bootstrap programs for all four of the affected computers on my ship.

When I first started doing digital design work in the mid '70s, there was a kind of PROM (programmable, but not eraseable) available at fairly low cost.  These were little integrated circuits (chips, or ICs) that you could program by blowing microscopic little fuses that were actually constructed of silicon on the chip.  One did this with a PROM “programmer” – a little electronic gadget that you “talked” to through a serial port.  These parts were readily available with up to a few thousand bits, and in the smaller sizes were fairly economical.  Still, in each design/build/test cycle you'd have to throw the old one away and “burn” a new one – a process that was not only potentially expensive, but was annoyingly slow.  The 1702A EPROM was an enormous improvement over that, and really quite revolutionized the way that I did my design work, as I no longer had to worry much about either the cost or the time of the ROM in a design/build/test cycle...

Obama at the Bat...

Oh, it's going to be an interesting election season!

Hotel Astoria...

...in St. Petersburg, Russia.  About 10 years ago, I stayed here on two separate business trips, visiting a software development subsidiary of the U.S. company that I worked for.

The hotel was gorgeous, and ridiculously luxurious (though this was very adequately reflected in the room rate).  I greatly enjoyed walking around the nearby parts of the city, especially the almost adjacent large park and the naval museum.  In the latter, within minutes of my arrival staff had identified me as American, had someone out to interview me, and (most surprising to me) after getting my name they quickly identified me as a former U.S. Navy member – right down to my “rate” (my job), rank, and major duty stations.

But the most vivid memory I have of these two trips where I stayed at the Astoria was is this: the disjoint between the luxury of my lodgings and the shabbiness of our subsidiary's offices.  This was only exacerbated by my discovery (through conversations with our employees there) that our workers thought of our office building as rather grand and even a bit ostentatious.  For the couple of weeks (between the two trips) that I stayed there, I found this daily context switch between the hotel and the office very strange indeed...

89 Cliches...

Anyone who has worked with executives of the MBA variety has almost certainly run into at least a few of the cliche-spouting ignoramus variety.  These folks have risen to positions of power, sometimes as the executive in charge of hundreds or even thousands of employees.  Working with one of these people, if you're not one of them, can be highly entertaining.  It can also be awesomely frustrating, as you try to get something done but find the path to achievement blocked by an immovable boulder of ignorance.

The “cliche-spouting” seems to be more than a pattern – it's a practically infallible “tell”, a signal that raises the hackles of anyone experienced in the ways of the pointy-haired boss.  If that describes you, then you'll find this article very funny.  At least at first.  After that, you may (like me) find yourself reminded of unhappy and frustrating past experience.  For me, painful memories of a past boss (a CEO) came right to mind, in which I re-experienced things I'd rather not have re-experienced.  You were warned :-)

Ctrl – Alt – Delete!