Morning Funnies...

Via my mom:

Links of the Day...

There and back again... Nick Berry has another nice brain-teaser, with a little easy algebra in the proof.  His additional examples neglect the non-linearity of speed vs. drag, but no matter – the results are the same anyway...

The more I hear about Snowden's NSA leaks, the more I think the man is a hero – and the more worried I am about what the hell is happening to my country...

Awesomely detailed drawings of animals, like the example at right...

Peggy Noonan has a good piece in today's WSJ on the Syrian issue, but the best part is the addendum at the end:

A point on how quickly public opinion has jelled. There is something going on here, a new distance between Washington and America that the Syria debate has forced into focus. The Syria debate isn't, really, a struggle between libertarians and neoconservatives, or left and right, or Democrats and Republicans. That's not its shape. It looks more like a fight between the country and Washington, between the broad American public and Washington's central governing assumptions.

I've been thinking of the "wise men," the foreign policy mandarins of the 1950s and '60s, who so often and frustratingly counseled moderation, while a more passionate public, on right and left, was looking for action. "Ban the Bomb!" "Get Castro Out of Cuba."

In the Syria argument, the moderating influence is the public, which doesn't seem to have even basic confidence in Washington's higher wisdom.
That would be a comment on more than Iraq. That would be a comment on the past five years, too. 

 On Yahoo's new logo...  General reaction from the serious business community is about like this, which could be summarized as “WTF, Marissa?”  But Megan McArdle wins the pithy comment contest (and her piece reflects my own reaction):

“Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic” has some new competition for phrase meaning pointless business activity at failing firm: “rearranging the fonts in your logo.”

Political commentary in the days of yore: Napoleon Bonaparte in a chamber pot (at right).  Awesome.  Let's bring it back!

Through reader, friend, and former colleague Aleck L.., I've discovered that one of my favorite books (Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary) is out of copyright and available on a web site and in free eBook form.  Hooray!

Another great, short TED talk, this time on the beauty (and primal sexuality) of prime numbers.  Mathophobes, do not fear – the talk is almost entirely free of weird symbols and head-exploders.  Via reader and friend Simon M.  I've lost track of how many times I've spent an entertaining and informative few minutes watching one of the TED talks – it's a great web resource. 

Links of the Day...

N.J. “Weedman” on his acquittal via jury nullification.  I haven't made up my mind on the use of jury nullification, but this is a great example of how it can be a positive force in America...

Thomas Sowell, on Obama's foriegn policy team: “They're all bozos on that bus!” Well, that's not exactly what he said, but that's what he meant...

Ace notes: an actual culprit in the Benghazi disaster is named – by Al Jazeera America.  The Obama-worshipping lamestream lapdog media continues to ignore the entire incident, as it most inconveniently shows The One and his minions to be bumbling fools...

Just what we need for Washington politicians: “Rats spent hours in a state of chilly suspended animation after researchers injected a compound into the animals in a cold room.  The animals’ heart rates slowed, brain activity became sluggish and body temperature plummeted.”

Mark Steyn, The Blasphemy Police: “It's creepy and unnerving how swiftly the West's chattering classes have accepted that the peculiar sensitivities of Islam require a deference extended to no other identity group.”  Indeed it is.  Equally unnerving to me: the manner in which the multi-culti crowd manages to cheerfully ignore all the manifest conflicts between the Islamic world and their cherished ideals of tolerance and moral equivalence...

Snapshots from space history, an online collection of space images.  At right is an image of the surface of Venus, returned by the Soviet's Venera 14 in 1982...

Yesterday I posted about my experience with Acxiom's About The Data site, showing the data collected about me on the web.  Looks like Megan McArdle (Big Brother Apparently Needs Glasses) and Ron Miller (Marketers may think they know all about me, but they don't) had basically the same experience...

The EPA raids a gold-mining town in Alaska, looking for dirty water – with a force of nearly a dozen heavily-armed, body-armored on an EPA SWAT team.  What the hell is happening to my country?

Math test: 3 times 4 equals what?  Anything you want it to, so long as you can explain how you got it.  After you get out of school, though, those completely unreasonable employers are going to insist that 3 times 4 equals 12...

Siskiyou County votes to secede from California.  My household did, too.  Unlike Siskiyou County, we can actually act on our vote – we're headed for much-less-wacky Utah one of these fine days...

Scientists surprised when a chemical reverses the effects of Down syndrome in mice.  They're surprised because the chemical normalized the growth of the cerebellum, and reversed the Down syndrome symptoms of learning and memory deficits – which nobody knew the cerebellum had anything to do with.  It's amazing to me how little we know, even today, about how the brain actually works...

James Taranto, in the excellent The Buck Stops Here:

Of course we could be wrong. Maybe Obama really didn't set a red line. It could have been a case of mistaken identity. Perhaps on Aug. 20, 2012, the world sneaked into the White House, donned an Obama mask, strode into the press room and took questions.

If so, the world did a bad thing and will need to be punished. But we hope that whoever has authority over such matters will have a little compassion for the world's predicament. It isn't easy carrying the weight of Barack Obama on your shoulders.

Stephen Hayes' lead in The Hawk's Case Against Obama on Syria: “Perhaps historians will provide a clear understanding of Barack Obama's head-snapping decision to pause his administration's urgent case for military strikes in Syria to seek the formal authorization he says he doesn't need from a Congress he disdains.”  Perhaps.  More likely, I think, is that history will settle on the story of Obama the Fool...

In the WSJ's editorial today, The Beltway Choom Gang: “Not since Nixon have we seen a Presidency so disdainful of the law, but at least Nixon had enough respect for legal appearances to break the law on the sly. This Administration simply declares it won't enforce the laws it doesn't like and calls it virtue. The media then give this a pass because Mr. Obama's decisions mesh with their own policy preferences. ”  Just another manifestation of The One's assumption of royalty...

Heathkit: the news of my death has been greatly exaggerated.  Really?  I'd love to see “real” Heathkits come back.  I'd buy at least one just for the nostalgic rush it would provide...

A crack in the wall of NSA's secrecy.  Good...

School is a prison, and damaging our kids.  I have a lot of sympathy for this position.  My memories of school are dominated by boredom and bullying.  I learned almost nothing useful in the classroom – I attended school, but mainly taught myself – and dreamed of being elsewhere.  My professional career (hardware and software engineering) was entirely based on self-taught math, science, and technology – and my school experiences were more of an impediment than an enabler...

The weird, wacky world of x86 processors...

Far Worse than Carbon Dioxide...

At a news conference in Washington today, President Obama announced that he is directing the Environmental Protection Agency to act immediately to enforce a new set of regulations to limit emissions of dihydrogen oxide gas, or water vapor, one of the primary causes of catastrophic anthropogenic climate change.

“The world faces a crisis,” the president intoned, “and America must lead. We have taken the first step by limiting carbon emissions, but that cannot be effective unless we deal with the larger menace posed by dihydrogen oxide pollution as well. Since Congress has failed in its duty to pass the required laws, I, as president, am directing the EPA to move unilaterally to issue and enforce appropriate regulations.”

The importance of dealing quickly with the dihydrogen oxide crisis was dramatically made clear by EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, who showed charts comparing current atmospheric CO2 levels, at 400 parts per million, with those of water vapor, which are now greater than 10,000 parts per million. “And not only do dihydrogen oxide levels exceed CO2 more than twenty times over,” Ms. McCarthy said, “but each molecule of DHO has greater greenhousing effect. So we need to get control of this without delay.”

That dihydrogen oxide is nasty stuff!

Read the whole thing...

A Novel Concept...

Acxiom is one of the largest companies that specialize in collecting data about Internet users.  Their main customers are marketeers looking for new prospective buyers of their products.  The data they have comes from many sources, including cookies, web site tracking technologies, and partnerships with web stores that share purchase and browsing information.

None of that is new.  What is new, though, is that Acxiom is making your data available to you.  Once they confirm your identity, you can view what they know about you – and if you find errors, you can even correct it.  You can also opt out, meaning that Acxiom will stop selling your data to marketeers.  That is a novel concept: openness.

You can do this yourself by visiting About The Data.  Scroll to the bottom and click the orange button to start the process.  It took me about five minutes (and three tries!) to successfully identify myself – but once I did that, the rest was easy.

They've broken down the information they hold on you into several categories.  It was fascinating to look at.  In my case, at least, I was surprised by how much they didn't know, or had wrong.  They have my name, address, and email all perfectly.  They didn't have any of my phone numbers, their income and economic data was wildly off, and the shopping information they have is heavily skewed to Debbie's purchases.  Since she does much more shopping off Amazon than I do, I suspect this means Amazon doesn't report our purchases – thank you, Amazon.  After absorbing my profile there, I realized that I kind of like what they're presenting to marketeers – it's so far off that it will keep the predators at bay :)

Sixty Eight Years Ago...

The surrender of Japan to the Allied Forces in World War II, ending the war that killed many millions of soldiers and citizens.  U.S. Admiral Nimitz is shown signing the surrender document, on September 2, 1945.  Folks in my parents' generation all know exactly what they were doing when they first heard the news of Japan's surrender.

I've read hundreds of books about World War II and its participants, from both an Allied perspective and an Axis perspective, giving me a context that most people don't have.  Despite that, I still am amazed that such a thing could happen just a few years before I was born.

And I fear it could happen again...

That's One Way to Do It!

Your tractor-trailer truck is involved in a traffic accident and catches fire.  How do you put it out?  You get some help:

Links of the Day...

New password cracking software can test 8 million passwords per second...

Here's a service whose inflation-adjusted price appears to be constant over millennia...

New interferometric radio telescope delivers high resolution (< 0.1 arcsecond) images...

A very strange insect cocoon (at right):

The NSA prefers hacking network routers and switches.  Me, too...

The West's Libyan intervention was a disaster.  Foreshadowing for Obama's Syrian intervention?

DNC Chairman claims there are “dozens” of allies that will join our intervention in Syria – but then says she can't name them.  The Obama gang sure look lame when you compare this with Bush's stunning success corralling a coalition to invade Iraq...

Wacko Birds vs. Angry Birds: Matt Welch weighs in on the Syria intervention.  I sure wish Matt would run for national office...

Are you pregnant?  Here's an easy way to earn some pocket change.  One hardly knows what to say...

An English professor – progressive, of course – denies that Stalin ever killed any Soviet citizens.  I used to think this sort of thing was really dangerous, but then I discovered that many college-educated young people have no idea who Stalin was, when he lived, or what he did.  That's an even bigger problem!

An oasis in a volcano, in the middle of a desert, in the middle of nowhere (at right).  Known locally as the “Oasis of Mosquitoes”!

I knew they were skimping on the fuel!  Things airline pilots don't want you to know...

Don't mess with Mother Nature!  She's got a bite to match her bark...

Celebrities patent the darnest things...

My Statement...

This is all I'm going to say about Miley Cyrus:

The One Pisses Me Off, Part 827,395...

A few days ago, President Obama made some remarks on Syria that included these:

Now, I have not made a final decision about various actions that might be taken to help enforce that norm. But as I've already said, I have had my military and our team look at a wide range of options. We have consulted with allies. We've consulted with Congress. We've been in conversations with all the interested parties, and in no event are we considering any kind of military action that would involve boots on the ground, that would involve a long-term campaign. But we are looking at the possibility of a limited, narrow act that would help make sure that not only Syria, but others around the world, understand that the international community cares about maintaining this chemical weapons ban and norm.

There's one part of the remarks above that really pisses me off.  It's this part:

...my military...

Last time I checked, that military belonged to the United States of America, not this president (or any other president).

I think that choice of words reveals an essential truth about Obama: his presumption of the status of a monarch.  This is no surprise, certainly – his behavior fairly screams that presumption.  But to have him actually say it in a public context is somehow especially infuriating.  He's openly flaunting his belief that he possesses the unlimited powers of a monarch.

And at the same time, he (lamely) punts the Syrian intervention decision to Congress.

William F. Buckley, Jr. famously said “I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.”  I'll paraphrase that slightly and say I'd rather have a President randomly chosen from the Boston phone book than have Obama.

Hell, I'd rather have Biden than Obama...

Prince Rupert's Drop...

I have read about Prince Rupert's Drops, but I had never before seen one demonstrated – especially not at 130,000 frames per second!  If you're interested in science, you'll enjoy this 7 minute mini-documentary...

Life in Space...

We're Doing It Wrong...

Via reader Jim M., who thinks there might be a bit or two of wisdom in here:

I am over 60 and the Armed Forces thinks I'm too old to track down terrorists. You can't be older than 42 to join the military. They've got the whole thing ass-backwards.

Instead of sending 18-year olds off to fight, they ought to take us old guys. You shouldn't be able to join a military unit until you're at least 35.

For starters, researchers say 18-year-olds think about sex every 10 seconds. Old guys only think about sex a couple of times a month, leaving us more than 280,000 additional seconds per day to concentrate on the enemy.

Young guys haven't lived long enough to be cranky, and a cranky soldier is a dangerous soldier. 'My back hurts! I can't sleep, I'm tired and hungry.' We are bad-tempered and impatient, and maybe letting us kill some asshole that desperately deserves it will make us feel better and shut us up for a while..

An 18-year-old doesn't even like to get up before 10am. Old guys always get up early to pee, so what the hell. Besides, like I said, I'm tired and can't sleep and since I'm already up, I may as well be up killing some fanatical son-of-a-bitch.

If captured we couldn't spill the beans because we'd forget where we put them. In fact, name, rank, and serial number would be a real brainteaser.

Boot camp would be easier for old guys.. We're used to getting screamed and yelled at and we're used to soft food. We've also developed an appreciation for guns. We've been using them for years as an excuse to get out of the house, away from the screaming and yelling.

They could lighten up on the obstacle course however... I've been in combat and never saw a single 20-foot wall with rope hanging over the side, nor did I ever do any pushups after completing basic training.

Actually, the running part is kind of a waste of energy, too... I've never seen anyone outrun a bullet.

An 18-year-old has the whole world ahead of him. He's still learning to shave, to start a conversation with a pretty girl. He still hasn't figured out that a baseball cap has a brim to shade his eyes, not the back of his head.

These are all great reasons to keep our kids at home to learn a little more about life before sending them off into harm's way.

Let us old guys track down those terrorists. The last thing an enemy would want to see is a couple million pissed off old farts with bad attitudes and automatic weapons, who know that their best years are already behind them.

HEY!! How about recruiting Women over 50...in menopause!!! You think MEN have attitudes?? Ohhhhhhhhhhhh my God!!! If nothing else, put them on border patrol. They'll have it secured the first night!

Tweet of the Day...

Put down your morning drink, then read:

Today, the French renamed American Cheese to "Freedom Cheese"

Awesome.

For those of you who don't understand this: Americans renamed “French fries” to “freedom fries” in response to France's refusal to join with us in our invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Please Remember...

Via Instapundit:

I Spit on Labor Day...

It's yet another way the once-mighty unions have distorted American values.

Besides, I'm retired :)

Respect the Colorectal Surgeon...

Quote of the Day...

In England, a six year old wants to know why he only gets one pound (about $1.60) per week in pocket money.  The BBC business editor, writing in The Guardian, gives him a worthy answer:

You are given £1 a week because the people who look after you think that's fair. And even if you think it is not fair, they have all the power and all the money, so there is little you can do about it.

You could scream and scream till they give in and give you more pocket money, but that is not a nice way to behave (although some so-called grown-ups, such as movie stars and bankers, have been known to do that). So you will have to acquire some power, and there are two ways to do that. There is capitalist individualism, which is for you to become brilliant at doing something people need, so that people pay you lots of money to do it. Or there is the syndicalist way, where all the six-year-olds gang up together and ask the grown-ups nicely to share their money with you (democratic socialism) or where you threaten to break the grown-ups' things unless they share their money with you (revolutionary socialism).

On Syria...

Reader, friend, former colleague, and Idaho real estate mogul Doug S. sends along this tongue-in-cheek summary of all the reasons why we shouldn't intervene in Syria.  The Wall Street Journal today summarizes the reasons why we should.  Foreign Policy tells us what the big consequences of a Syria attack will be.  Michael Yon publishes the pithiest Obama criticism, a comment by Adam Holloway (member of the U.K. Parliament): “Outrage is not a strategy.  I thought military action always had to have a purpose behind it – so what is the endstate here?  Hit, and then hope?”

Me?  I'm with Sarah Palin: let's let Allah sort it out...

Whoa!

Watch this first (there's a big surprise in it), then read below:


Two things to note:

1. Just before the boulder plops down on the road, approximately where the car would have been, the preceding landslide pushes the car out of the way.  That's what I call lucky!
2. A few seconds into this video (around 0:03), you can see this boulder begin its fall.  It starts out on the skyline, up high near the center of the video.

Quote of the Day...

Mark Steyn, writing at NRO about Obama's planned intervention in Syria.  The lead:

I see the Obama “reset” is going so swimmingly that the president is now threatening to go to war against a dictator who gassed his own people. Don’t worry, this isn’t anything like the dictator who gassed his own people that the discredited warmonger Bush spent 2002 and early 2003 staggering ever more punchily around the country inveighing against. The 2003 dictator who gassed his own people was the leader of the Baath Party of Iraq. The 2013 dictator who gassed his own people is the leader of the Baath Party of Syria. Whole other ball of wax. The administration’s ingenious plan is to lose this war in far less time than we usually take. In the unimprovable formulation of an unnamed official speaking to the Los Angeles Times, the White House is carefully calibrating a military action “just muscular enough not to get mocked.”

Go read the whole thing.

My father had a semi-serious solution for all these problems in the Middle East: use our nuclear arsenal to turn the entire Middle East into glass.  Then start over.  There are days when I think my father may have been wiser – and perhaps more serious – than I thought at the time...

What the Hell is Happening to My Country, Part 49,931...

Here are two examples of jack-booted bureaucrats trampling the faces of U.S. citizens:

• The ball-busters in the Consumer Products Safety Commission.  When I first heard about this, I bought some BuckyBalls for myself...
• Don't destroy that non-existant wetlands by building a pond (see video below)!

And then there's this: a liberal writer (and former lawyer) penning an article in which she asserts that sex between a teacher and a student shouldn't be a crime at all.  Jazz Shaw (writing at Hot Air) has an excellent retort.

An Annular Eclipse of the Sun...

Down on the surface of Mars, the Curiosity rover looked up to see a beautiful annular eclipse of the sun by the Martian moon Phobos. You can easily see that Phobos is not spherical – it's shaped more like a potato than a ball...

Oh, If Only...

Via my mom:

Imagine...

Imagine a thick steel sphere whose interior is just 6 feet (2 meters) in diameter.  Imagine shoehorning yourself, a companion, and a whole bunch of equipment into this tiny space.  Then imagine that steel sphere is attached to a submarine.  You're floating just a few feet under the surface when something goes horribly wrong, and your now-broken submarine breaks free of the cable holding it near the surface and it plunges toward the bottom, about 1/3 of a mile (1,580 feet, or 480 meters) below.  As your steel sphere – the only thing keeping you alive – rushes down at speeds reaching 40 mph (60 k/h).  You have almost a minute to prepare yourself before it his the bottom, but when it does hit all hell breaks loose.  Your submarine embeds itself in a shallow gully on the bottom.  Equipment and supplies are all over the place, but you and your companion survive.  You have oxygen sufficient for just 72 hours of life, but basically everything else about your submarine is broken.  There's no way you can do anything at all that could get you back to the ocean surface.  What do you do now?

This really happened forty years ago, in August 1973.  I remember it well, especially the timing (just a couple of weeks after the last U.S. combat activity in the Vietnam War).  The plight of the two men trapped deep underwater made news headlines all around the world.  After an international effort got the right equipment and men to the scene, the helpless submariners were rescued.  When they were finally back on the surface and cracked their hatch, they had just 12 minutes of oxygen left.  It was that close.  I know that Hollywood would have made it 12 seconds, but in real life...that is really, really close to the edge.  The photo at right was taken just after a raft picked them up from their sphere...

Under the Ice...

Bigger than the Grand Canyon, this one was just discovered under Greenland's icecap:

We're a long way from knowing even our own planet very well.  Other planets (and even more so other stars) we've just barely scratched the surface.  Literally...

SlightlyLoony's Links...

This is the inaugaral post of a new series: SilghtlyLoony's Links.  They can be on any topic, are not necessarily safe for work, and might induce uncontrollable laughter or chuckling.  Or they might piss you off.

Today's:

For Parkinson's sufferers: a stabilized spoon.  Seriously.

Turns out you can infer the value Obamacare places on your life.

Maybe that's how we are now (Peggy Noonan).

Version control for writers or groups of writers.

Mars may have enabled the creation of life on Earth.

Back Home...

I returned home last night from my trip to Virgina to visit my folks.  It's always good to get back home after a trip, and the more trips I make, the more true that is...

Debbie had a difficult day yesterday: our oldest cat (Pana, at right) had reached the point where it was time to say good bye, and Debbie had to both make the decision and act on it in my absence.  Tough for her, but she did it.  We've waited too long for some of other other animals, and have regretted it for years afterward; she was determined not to let that happen again.  And she didn't.  Little Pana was between 22 and 24 years old, a small all-black cat that was likely part Turkish (because he liked to play in water) that we rescued when he was quite young.  He had a long, happy, and safe life in our home...

This morning I did all my usual chores, then fired up our Kubota diesel tractor for another one: digging a grave for little Pana.  I was surprised when the tractor fired right up, as I hadn't started it for over a year.  But start it did, on the first turn of the starter.  Then I lifted the front bucket and the rear backhoe bucket and started moving toward the grave site.  Moments later I was swarmed with yellow-jackets, especially on my right hand.

They were in full “defend the nest” mode, stinging away as fast as they could.  I got stung quite a few times on my right hand and arm, twice above my right eye, and several times on my back and rear end.  Ouch!  I jumped off the tractor, leaving it running, and ran far enough away to escape the horde of angry yellow-jackets, then killed all the ones still stinging me.

The last time I had something like that happen to me was when I was a child – as an adult, I've only had one or two stings at a time.  I was worried what sort of reaction I might have to so many stings, but now (two hours later) all I have is some localized swelling.  My hand is by far the worst, but I expect it to go down within a few hours.  I've taken Benadryl and iced the hand; all the advice I can find on the web says those are really all I need to do.  Then wait :)

I found the reason why those yellow-jackets were so mad at me: they had constructed a nest under the left rear tractor tire.  When I moved the tractor, I ripped the roof right off their nest.  If some monster came along and ripped the roof off my house, I'd be pissed off, too.  I'd probably let him have it with my “stinger” (in my case, a semi-automatic 12 gauge shotgun).  Tonight, assuming it gets cool enough to slow the yellow-jackets down, I will destroy their nest.

I don't think I'll leave my tractor parked quite such a long time again :)

Ah, Those Irishmen – Such Romantics!

Via my mom:

At the Irish wedding reception the disc jockey yelled:

"All married men please stand next to the one person who has made your life worth living!"

The bartender was almost crushed to death.

Flying Pig Moment...

Is the New York Times finally getting it?

Good Times...

You're a cow.  You've been in the barn all winter, but now it's spring and the pastures are full of tasty green grass.  The farmer comes to let you out to pasture for the first time:



From the Mt. Vernon, Texas News...

Forwarded by reader Simi L. I don't know if this is for real, but...I really don't care. By the way, put down your drink and swallow before reading this...

WHOREHOUSE SUES LOCAL CHURCH OVER LIGHTNING STRIKE!

Diamond D's brothel began construction on an expansion of their building to increase their ever-growing business. In response, the local Baptist Church started a campaign to block the business from expanding – with morning, afternoon, and evening prayer sessions at their church.

Work on Diamond D's progressed right up until the week before the grand reopening when lightning struck the whorehouse and burned it to the ground!

After the cat-house was burned to the ground by the lightning strike, the church folks were rather smug in their outlook, bragging about "the power of prayer."

But late last week 'Big Jugs' Jill Diamond, the owner/madam, sued the church, the preacher and the entire congregation on the grounds that the church ... "was ultimately responsible for the demise of her building and her business -- either through direct or indirect divine actions or means."

In its reply to the court, the church vehemently and voraciously denied any and all responsibility or any connection to the building's demise.

The crusty old judge read through the plaintiff's complaint and the defendant's reply, and at the opening hearing he commented, "I don't know how the hell I'm going to decide this case, but it appears from the paperwork, that we now have a whorehouse owner who staunchly believes in the power of prayer, and an entire church congregation that thinks it's all bullshit."

Quote of the Day...

By Oren Hazi:

This is how we lose our rights. Not overnight in one fell swoop, but gradually, after getting worn down again and again, and after hundreds of mini-panic-attacks, and with ever-ratcheting procedural changes that effectively invalidate the assurances and safeguards that we're given. I give up. The terrorists have won.

Palate Cleanser of the Day...

Just watch:

Sometimes...

...one simply doesn't know what to say!

How To Demolish a Hotel, Las Vegas Style...

This happened 6 years ago, but I just saw it:

I'm So Depressed...

The Filthy Filner saga is over.  No more reliable morning entertainment for me!

Light Blogging Alert...

I'm getting on a plane this morning, bound for Richmond, Virginia to visit my folks.  I'll be back in about a week.  Meantime, blogging will be intermittent at best...

They're All Bozos...

...in the White House...

A Nation of Sullen Paranoids...

That's the title of an excellent piece by Peggy Noonan, and a quote from an unnamed Senator...

Tweet of the Day...

What could I possibly add to this?

Sprites...

I first started reading about sprites (aka “red lightning”) just a few years ago.  Now I'm starting to see good photos of these spectacular natural phenomena, like the one below.  I'd love to see one of these myself!

What the Hell is Happening to My Country, Part 49,930...

Just when I thought we might be reaching the end of the scandalous disclosures about the NSA, I read about this new outrage.

Rope.
Tree.
Federal bureaucrats and elected officials.
Some assembly required.

Let's Hope...

...that this becomes reality.

Filner: Settlement?

The media is reporting that some kind of settlement – details to be private until sometime after Friday – has been agreed with Filthy Filner.  The media seem to be presuming that the settlement includes Filthy's resignation, but at the same time (so far as I can tell) the settlement includes just one of his victims (the one at the center of the suit against the city).  So I'm still holding out hope that resignation is not included, and that the Filthy entertainment will go on...

You Know the Teacher was a Guy!

Via my mom:

Students in an advanced Biology class were taking their mid-term exam. The last question was, 'Name seven advantages of Mother's Milk.' The question was worth 70 points or none at all.

One student, in particular, was hard put to think of seven advantages However, he wrote:

1) It is perfect formula for the child.
2) It provides immunity against several diseases.
3) It is always the right temperature.
4) It is inexpensive.
5) It bonds the child to mother, and vice versa.
6) It is always available as needed.

And then the student was stuck. Finally, in desperation, just before the bell rang indicating the end of the test, he wrote:

7) It comes in two attractive containers and it's high enough off the ground where the cat can't get it.

He got an A.

Kilroy Was Here...

Any American (and many others) who lived through World War II will instantly recognize the image at right.  Though the war was before I was born, I've become very familiar with this image through my reading of history – the “Kilroy was here” tag and cartoon crop up time and again.  I've read about it in the U.S., in the European theater, and in the Pacific theater.  It's in many novels and essays of the era.  It's a World War II meme, one that somehow propagated throughout the world, wherever Americans went, without the help of the Internet.  I've never seen a good explanation for where the phrase came from, though I've read several conflicting accounts.

Yesterday my cousin Mike D. forwarded a plausible sounding explanation for the origin of the “Kilroy was here” meme (I've pasted it below).  This prompted me to go look, for the first time in probably 20 years, to see what was known about it.

First, of course, I googled the phrase – and got almost 400,000 hits.  The place you'd expect to see this were all represented: Wikipedia, Snopes, and of course The Straight Dope.  There was also a link to a “Legends” page on a site named www.kilroywashere.org (with a terrifyingly bad home page!).

I can't say that it looks like consensus amongst these sources, though there certainly is a generally consistent mention of James J. Kilroy, as in the story my cousin forwarded.  There are many differences in the details, though.

I suspect we'll never know for sure how it got started.

Here's what my cousin Mike forwarded:

He is engraved in stone in the National War Memorial in Washington, DC- back in a small alcove where very few people have seen it. For the WWII generation, this will bring back memories. For you younger folks, it's a bit of trivia that is a part of our American history. Anyone born in 1913 to about 1950, is familiar with Kilroy. No one knew why he was so well known- but everybody seemed to get into it.

So who was Kilroy?

In 1946 the American Transit Association, through its radio program, "Speak to America ," sponsored a nationwide contest to find the real Kilroy, offering a prize of a real trolley car to the person who could prove himself to be the genuine article. Almost 40 men stepped forward to make that claim, but only James Kilroy from Halifax, Massachusetts, had evidence of his identity.

'Kilroy' was a 46-year old shipyard worker during the war who worked as a checker at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy. His job was to go around and check on the number of rivets completed. Riveters were on piecework and got paid by the rivet. He would count a block of rivets and put a check mark in semi-waxed lumber chalk, so the rivets wouldn't be counted twice. When Kilroy went off duty, the riveters would erase the mark.

Later on, an off-shift inspector would come through and count the rivets a second time, resulting in double pay for the riveters.

One day Kilroy's boss called him into his office. The foreman was upset about all the wages being paid to riveters, and asked him to investigate. It was then he realized what had been going on. The tight spaces he had to crawl in to check the rivets didn't lend themselves to lugging around a paint can and brush, so Kilroy decided to stick with the waxy chalk. He continued to put his check mark on each job he inspected, but added 'KILROY WAS HERE' in king-sized letters next to the check, and eventually added the sketch of the chap with the long nose peering over the fence and that became part of the Kilroy message.

Once he did that, the riveters stopped trying to wipe away his marks. Ordinarily the rivets and chalk marks would have been covered up with paint. With the war on, however, ships were leaving the Quincy Yard so fast that there wasn't time to paint them. As a result, Kilroy's inspection "trademark" was seen by thousands of servicemen who boarded the troopships the yard produced.

His message apparently rang a bell with the servicemen, because they picked it up and spread it all over Europe and the South Pacific.

Before war's end, "Kilroy" had been here, there, and everywhere on the long hauls to Berlin and Tokyo . To the troops outbound in those ships, however, he was a complete mystery; all they knew for sure was that someone named Kilroy had "been there first." As a joke, U.S. servicemen began placing the graffiti wherever they landed, claiming it was already there when they arrived.

Kilroy became the U.S. super-GI who had always "already been" wherever GIs went. It became a challenge to place the logo in the most unlikely places imaginable (it is said to be atop Mt. Everest , the Statue of Liberty , the underside of the Arc de Triomphe, and even scrawled in the dust on the moon.

As the war went on, the legend grew. Underwater demolition teams routinely sneaked ashore on Japanese-held islands in the Pacific to map the terrain for coming invasions by U.S. troops (and thus, presumably, were the first GI's there). On one occasion, however, they reported seeing enemy troops painting over the Kilroy logo!

In 1945, an outhouse was built for the exclusive use of Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill at the Potsdam conference. Its' first occupant was Stalin, who emerged and asked his aide (in Russian), "Who is Kilroy?"

To help prove his authenticity in 1946, James Kilroy brought along officials from the shipyard and some of the riveters. He won the trolley car, which he gave to his nine children as a Christmas gift and set it up as a playhouse in the Kilroy yard in Halifax, Massachusetts.

Balance and Concentration...

Watch this all the way to the end for a surprise.  Via my mom:

On 95% Certainty...

Reader, friend, and former colleague Doug W. pointed out the image below (from Watts Up With That?), saying: “The image is stunningly effective, in my opinion.”

I agree.

The image is showing two carefully selected sections of the global average temperature record most frequently cited by the IPCC (Hadley CRUT3).  Each section is for 50 years.  One of them shows the period of time where the IPCC claims “with 95% certainly” to see the effects of anthropogenic (caused by mankind) global warming.  The other shows undisturbed nature.

Which one is which?  Can you confidently point to one and say “That's it!  That shows mankind's influence on global temperatures for sure!”

You really can't see much of a difference at all, much less one that would give you a high degree of confidence in your answer!

FYI: The one on the left is 1957 - 2008; the one one the right is 1895 - 1946.

A Surface Nuisance...

George Carlin with a great monologue on a topic frequently seen here...

So Sad...

The Filthy Filner saga is winding down.  Sniff, sniff...

How Government Thinks...

In California, anyway.  Five years ago, the state government passed legislation offering tax credits for investors in certain kinds of small businesses.  Recently, the California Supreme Court ruled those tax credits unconstitutional.  Now the state's Franchise Tax Board (the tax collectors) are assessing back taxes retroactively for all five years, to those claiming the tax credits.  And not just back taxes – interest and penalties, too.

No individual or business could ever get away with an obviously unfair practice like that.  Only the government...

The asylum really is being run by the lunatics...

Oh, Goody...

With the current trajectory of the NSA snooping news stories, one could be excused for being credulous about some of the tin foil hat crowd's conspiracy theories...

Sometimes Science Gets It Wrong the First Time...

But often it gets it right.  It can be interesting and fun to watch the process of science changing its mind, and more so the earlier you can catch the process.  I first ran into this with the great plate tectonics debate in geology; that had begun shortly before I was born, and really wasn't over for another 30 years or so, when plate tectonics became nearly universally accepted as the process that shapes the earth's surface.

I just read a piece of science news that strikes me as possibly, just possibly, the beginnings of another such change.  Most likely it will turn out to be nothing - but there's a chance that it's the beginning of a big change in cosmology (and physics).  I'm fascinated that the mathematics of the current theory of the universe's expansion is basically the same as the mathematics of the alternative explanation being put forth.  There have been quite a few discoveries in science that started with just such an observation...

Sempra Buys a Bazillion Solar Panels...

Reader and friend Simon M. passes along this news about Sempra (our local electric utility) buying 1.1 million solar panels; there's more detail here.  Simon suspects lower prices and subsidies are at work.

Well, solar cell prices certainly have come down, rather dramatically.  And there are subsidies involved.  But incentives aren't what's driving this purchase: it's mandates.  Specifically, the California Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) – which, amongst other things, mandates that 33% of all energy supplied by power utilities come from renewable sources by the year 2020.  This is what's known to the bureaucracy as an “unconditional mandate”, which means exactly what it sounds like.  The utilities must provide that percentage of power via renewable sources regardless of the cost, regardless of the reliability, regardless of the impact on utility rates, regardless of any reason to use conventional power.  Sempra is reacting to that mandate.

A third of all power coming from renewable sources is an incredibly high fraction to achieve in such a short term, especially given that it takes up to 20 years to build new power plants in California (note that the Copper Mountain project is in Nevada!).  Some large organizations (can you say Google?) have given up on building solar power plants in California because of the lengthy and risky approval process.  As Sempra and other utilities noted at the time, this could only be achieved by spending huge amounts of money in capital investment – and that investment money is going to come from the rate-payers (that is, the folks like you and I who buy power from Sempra).  This need to finance capital is why the power from Sempra's all-PV Copper Mountain facility will cost significantly more than power from conventional plants.  Oh, and the rate-payers also get to pay for the costs of Sempra disentangling themselves from contractual commitments already made for future conventional plants, too.

This is one of the issues that's driving us out of California – in this case, a piece of regulatory madness that's guaranteed to drive up electricity costs, but not guaranteed to deliver any tangible benefit (all that political rhetoric notwithstanding)...

Sounds Perfectly Logical to Me...

But then, I'm a male.

Reader and friend Simon M. sent along this little story, which he says is perfectly logical to all males:

A wife asks her husband, "Could you please go shopping for me and buy one carton of milk, and if they have avocados, get 6."

A short time later the husband comes back with 6 cartons of milk.

The wife asks him, "Why did you buy 6 cartons of milk?"

He replied, "They had avocados."

Well, with a sample space of one (me), the assertion proved true.  The implication is that the story wouldn't seem logical to a female.  Debbie and I were at dinner when I received this email, so I read the story to her.  She said that it made no sense at all – she'd ask the same question as the wife in the story.


Fascinating...


If you try this yourself, please report the results in the comments!

Filthy Filner: It Looks Like the End Is Near. Dang It!

The one-man entertainment bonanza known as Filthy Filner looks like he's winding down.  There are numerous reports that he is negotiating for a “graceful exit” from his job as Mayor of San Diego.  Thought in the context of Filthy, I'm not entirely sure what a graceful exit would look like...

If Filthy won't go on his own, the City Council and City Attorney are cooking up other ways to get rid of him, and (as I noted on Sunday) the recall effort is finally underway.  One way or t'other, it looks like my most reliable source of morning entertainment is coming to an end.  Dang.

I did spot one thing in the Filthy news that shocked me more than any other Filthy revelation to date: there was a demonstration yesterday by Filthy supporters.  Over at Hot Air, the blogger AllahPundit pretty much sums up my own reaction:

Still, I feel the only solution now is nuking the city from orbit. Just to be sure.

Yup.  Just get the power setting right, will you?  I live well outside the area enclosing any Filthy supporters...

What the Hell is Happening to My Country, Part 49,929...

In Arlington, Texas, a small farmer was suspected of some “crimes”:

…authorities had cited the Garden of Eden in recent weeks for code violations, including “grass that was too tall, bushes growing too close to the street, a couch and piano in the yard, chopped wood that was not properly stacked, a piece of siding that was missing from the side of the house, and generally unclean premises”...

Sounds like a very annoying neighbor, doesn't it?

Now what do you suppose the authorities decided to do about it?  Send a code inspection guy to knock on their door and discuss the issue?

Nope.

The authorities started “a massive police action last week that included aerial surveillance, a SWAT raid and a 10-hour search.”

This is the kind of story I expect to come out of some place like Mynamar or North Korea.  But Texas?  Last time I checked, Texas was still a member of the United States.  You know, that place sometimes called “Land of the Free”?

What the hell is happening to my country?

Quote of the Day...

As seen on the “Book of Face”, via The Smallest Minority:

Obama wants Catholic institutions to provide birth control and abortions.  Does this mean he will force Muslims to serve alcohol and bacon?

Awesome.

NSA Spying Linkfest...

Zero Hedge has an enormous collection of links about the NSA spying “petty scandal”.  It's informative, but depressing...

Obama Cashes a Check...

Via my mom:

President Obama walks into a local bank in Chicago to cash a check. He is surrounded by Secret Service agents. As he approaches the cashier he says, "Good morning Ma'am, could you please cash this check for me?"

Cashier: "It would be my pleasure sir. Could you please show me your ID?"

Obama: "Truthfully, I did not bring my ID with me as I didn't think there was any need to. I am President Barack Obama, the President of the United States of AMERICA !!!!"

Cashier: "Yes sir, I know who you are, but with all the regulations and monitoring of the banks because of 9/11, impostors, forgers, money laundering, and bad mortgage underwriting not to mention requirements of the Dodd/Frank legislation, etc., I must insist on seeing ID."

Obama: “Just ask anyone here at the bank who I am and they will tell you. Everybody knows who I am."

Cashier: "I am sorry Mr. President but these are the bank rules and I must follow them."

Obama: "I am urging you, please, to cash this check. I need to buy a gift for Michelle for Valentine’s Day"

Cashier: "Look Mr. President, here is an example of what we can do. One day, Tiger Woods came into one of our bank branches without ID. To prove he was Tiger Woods he pulled out his putter and made a beautiful shot across the bank into a coffee cup. With that shot we knew him to be Tiger Woods and cashed his check.  Another time, Andre Agassi came into the same place without ID. He pulled out his tennis racquet and made a fabulous shot where as the tennis ball landed in a coffee cup. With that shot we cashed his check.  So, Mr. President, what can you do to prove that it is you, and only you, as the President of the United States?"

Obama: Obama stands there thinking, and thinking, and finally says, "Honestly, my mind is a total blank...there is nothing that comes to my mind. I can't think of a single thing. I have absolutely no idea what to do and I don’t have a clue.”

Cashier: "Will that be large or small bills, Mr. President?

U.S. Population Changes Over Time...

This is a fascinating animated graph by Bill McBride at Calculated Risk.  Amongst other things, it makes obvious the reasons for the current and future insolvency of the Social Security system.  Way back when, before FDR, there were vastly more people of working age than of retirement age.  Today, not so much.  In the future, even less.

Of course there are many other repercussions of the demographic changes as well.  For instance, think what it means for healthcare costs, or number of doctors needed per capita, or economic growth, or any of dozens of other topics.

Study this for a while and you'll understand a lot about the dynamics that are affecting this country.  It might also make you rethink opposition to immigration (the vast majority of immigrants are under 30 years old)...

Sex Offenders...

Instapundit notes that the slide show of child sex offenders on this page (at the end of the article's text) is dominated by women.  He's wondering why schools are sometimes reluctant to hire male teachers.

Me?  I'm wondering where these women were when I was in high school...

What the Hell is Happening to My Country, Part 49,928...

The federal government now seems to be channeling the Mafia...

We thought we needed to leave California to escape big (and incompetent) government.  Now I'm wondering if we were thinking broadly enough...

Quotes of the Day...

These quotes are all from a single article, and mostly what makes them notable is who said them.  Read the quotes first, then click on the link to see who said them – and read the whole piece:

If Americans are worried about money in politics, there is no larger concern than the Clintons, who are cosseted in a world where rich people endlessly scratch the backs of rich people.

I never thought I’d have to read the words Ira Magaziner again. But the man who helped Hillary torpedo her own health care plan is back.

You never hear about problems with Jimmy Carter’s foundation; he just quietly goes around the world eradicating Guinea worm disease. But Magaziner continues to be a Gyro Gearloose, the inept inventor of Donald Duck’s Duckburg.

Clintonworld is a galaxy where personal enrichment and political advancement blend seamlessly, and where a cast of jarringly familiar characters pad their pockets every which way to Sunday.

Until Harry Truman wrote his memoirs, the ex-president struggled on an Army pension of $112.56 a month. “I could never lend myself to any transaction, however respectable,” he said, “that would commercialize on the prestige and dignity of the office of the presidency.” So quaint, Packer wrote, observing, “The top of American life has become a very cozy and lucrative place, where the social capital of who you are and who you know brings unimaginable returns.” 

The Clintons want to do big worthy things, but they also want to squeeze money from rich people wherever they live on planet Earth, insatiably gobbling up cash for politics and charity and themselves from the same incestuous swirl. 

Ouch! Who dumped on the Clintons?  Hint: it's someone whom you'd expect would be leaping upon the Hillary bandwagon right about now, winding up for 2016...

Smoke in Lawson Valley...

Update at 3:20 pm: the smoke has mostly cleared now.  We believe the fire at I-8 and Los Coches was the source of the smoke.

Original post: Just went outside to fire up the grill, and immediately noticed the strong smell of smoke.  In a broad smear to the WNW of our home there is moderately thick smoke.

The CalFire twitter site notes a fire in La Cresta, near I-8 and Los Coches; that may be the source.  The Lyons Peak cameras on HPWREN aren't telling me anything.

Please leave a comment if you have more information...

Big Brother...

Mark Steyn: Idiot Big Brother...

What the Hell is Happening to My Country, Part 49,927...

From the Weekly Standard, Matt Labash writing about the “Brony” phenomenon:

But Bronies represent a novel variation on the theme: Like so many American men, they wish to be forever suspended in childhood. Except this time, they want to be 6-year-old girls. Bronies have, in fact, come to embody what pop sociologists call the New Sincerity Movement. The thinking goes that the smirky ironic detachment of recent decades—​pretending to embrace low-culture totems for laughs​—​has grown stale. Now that the Internet has fragmented the culture into a million pieces, helping every maladjusted shut-in to realize his natural level of eccentricity, the only way for a self-respecting hipster or a Zuckerbergian alpha-nerd (the tribe that now runs the world) to distinguish himself is to enthuse over his enthusiasms without detachment or apology. Even if that means grown men writing Twilight Sparkle fan fiction or cutting bad electronica songs with titles like, “I Might Be a Brony.” You might find it funny, but they’re not joking.

Read the whole thing, then weep for my country...

“You Ignorant Slut!”

Said the AGW skeptic to the credulous warmist:

Please...

Via my mom:

 

I've had days like that...

The Life of a Parcel...

In one short video, with the boring bits mercifully edited out:

Three-Shear Image Rotation...

Nick Berry has the best explication of three-shear image rotation I've ever seen – something any programmer could understand...

Orbital Mechanics Primer...

Just in case you're planning to launch your own satellite...

Surprise!

My mom recently sent me the snapshot at right, with someone catching McDonald's in an apparent admission.  I'm sure most people who have eaten at McDonald's would smile and chuckle.

But it reminded me of a surprise Debbie and I got a few months ago.  I've forgotten the context, but somehow we were on the road, headed home late at night, and hungry.  We didn't want to take the time for a sit-down meal, and the only fast food places we knew were closed.  So we decided to grab a burger or something at McDonald's.

We hadn't looked at a McDonald's menu in years and years – and really didn't expect to do so ever again.  I saw couple of things on the menu that sounded appealing: a chicken-and-bacon wrap, and a mango-pineapple smoothie.  So I ordered them.

They were quite good.  Surprise!

I've had that same combination a couple of times since then, and I still have the same reaction: a convenient and inexpensive treat on the road.

Now, mind you, I don't think the wrap and smoothie are the best in the world.  I'd prefer more have more dark chicken meat, a bit more bacon, and the smoothie not quite so sweet.  But for the modest price and consistent quality, I'd say it was quite a bargain.

So to my own surprise, I'm now an occasional patron of McDonald's...

Elvis Has Left the Building...

So to speak...

Obamacare: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Jack-booted Obamacare thugs will be knocking down the doors of servicemen's homes, along with many others.

George Orwell: “Told ya!”

California: You Will Earn 3% on Your Retirement Savings...

If I were still employed by a small business in California, this would really piss me off – the nanny state telling me that it knows how to save for my retirement better than I do.  The proof is their guaranteed rate of return: a whopping 3%. 

Oh, vey.

We gotta get out of here...

California, a Hacker's Best Friend...

What could possibly go wrong?

Watts vs. Mann: My Money is on Watts...

Mr. Watts notes a recent paper that examines the dendochronology (tree ring interpretation) data that much of Mann's notorious “hockey stick” is based on.  A layman's summary: Mann's interpretation is faulty, and is faulty in a way that exaggerates (or possibly even creates) the hockey stick.

Oh, Mann!

I'm Indebted to Snowden...

Without his disclosures, I wouldn't have believed my government would do this...

U-2 and Area 51 Info Declassified...

This ought to keep the tin foil hat brigades up for a few nights...

Thirty Two Years Ago...

Debbie and I were married on this day in 1981 – 32 years ago.  Despite years of experience, she's still putting up with me :)

Today we celebrated in a very low-key way.  First we journeyed over our local back roads to Pine Valley, where we had a fish sandwich and fries at Frosty Burger (best fast food in the known universe).  The fries were absolutely perfect.  Then we drove up a Forest Service road that leads from just west of Pine Valley up to the Sunrise Highway north of Mt. Laguna.  The first part of this road is paved, but we turned off the pavement onto a 4WD road that stays downhill and west of the Mt. Laguna massif (which runs roughly north/south). 

There wasn't a lot of wildlife to see there today, though we did get a brief glimpse of a male Western tanager – just his back as he flew across the road below us.  We don't often come out this way in the summertime, as it's very hot and dry – and the wildflowers are long gone.  Except there was one wildflower there in abundance, a new one to me even after all these years (first photo below).  The mountain mahogany were prime, and very abundant.  And in one particular spot we ran across lots of a plant we don't know bearing red berries. 

Despite the lack of exciting scenery, it was still a very pleasant drive.  When we hit the Sunrise Highway, we looped back around to Cuyamaca Park and into the Stonewall Mine road, hoping for some deer – and we did see one.  Just one :)

Now we're back home, did the chores, and we're just chilling out for the rest of the day...

BTW, the photos below were all taken with a tiny little pocket camera: a Nikon CoolPix S4300.  I got this camera for my mom, and I'm learning how to use it – so that I can show her while I'm visiting next week.  It's been quite a few years since I've last used a pocket camera.  They've come a long, long way – both in capability and in ease of use.  Also, the automation is remarkably good.  I'm deliberately using only the full auto mode, as I'm pretty sure my mom will use only them.  I'm finding that the camera nearly always does exactly what I want it to do. 

The touch screen on the back allows a feature I've never used before, but have already fallen in love with: while you're viewing the scene you want to take a photo of, you can touch the part you want exposed correctly and focused on – and the camera just does it.  For example, you might compose a photo with someone's face in the lower left corner, and a distant scene in the rest of the frame.  By simply touching the person's face on the screen, you're telling the camera to focus there, adjust the exposure to suit the face's illumination, and take the photo.  One touch does all that.  Nice!

The mystery flower that we've never seen before because we don't venture onto Mt. Laguna in the summer.  The flowers are about dime-sized.

Mountain mahogany seeds.

Close up of the mountain mahogany seeds (zoomed to telephoto, shooting from about 3 feet away).

The obligatory FJ shot!

Mystery berries...

Curiosity: Occultation...

Curiosity recently took a sequence of images of the Martian moon Phobos occulting its sister moon Deimos.  Phobos is physically larger than Deimos, and is in a lower orbit, so its apparent size from the surface of Mars is much larger.  The good folks at JPL took this sequence of images and made a movie out of them:

Put Down Your Hot Morning Beverage...

...and go read these actual product reviews on Amazon.  There are some very funny and clever people out there.  Here's a sample:

Spambot of the Day...

Introducing a new feature on this blog: Spambot of the Day (see this Wikipedia article if you're new to the delights of spambots).  The particular flavor of spambot that typically plagues bloggers is the “comment spambot”.  These unethical marketing tools post fake comments on blogs, typically containing a link to a web site they're advertising, or a hacker's trap site trying to trick you in to downloading something you shouldn't.

Google's Blogger (the blogging platform this blog runs on) is pretty good at catching these spambot postings.  Most of them never become visible to me, which is much better than a few years ago – back then, on a typical day I might see 30 or 40 of them.  The main reason I have comment moderation turned on for my blog is to catch these things and delete them. 

Usually the text of the comment the spambot is posting has been either just gibberish, or some random text copied from a news story or some such thing.  Recently, however, the spambots are doing something clever: they know that comment moderation is catching them, so they try flattering the blogger – to trick the blogger into accepting a comment that's actually spam.  Some of these are quite funny, once you realize what they are.

Hence my new feature.  When I see a good one come by, I'll post it as Spambot of the Day.

Today's:

I like reading your current well written articles. I totally cherished each and every little bit of it. I have you bookmarked your website to be able to check out the new material in the future.

Nice try, spambot!