On Harry Reid exercising the “nuclear option”...

On Harry Reid exercising the “nuclear option”...  I have a hard time getting excited about this one.  It's just a rules change, and it applies equally no matter which party happens to be in the majority.  In the short term, while Democrats hold the majority, I expect things will happen that I don't like.  In the longer term, there will be another day when Republicans are in the majority – and I expect things will happen that I don't like.  So I don't see it making much difference either way.

But the folks at The Wall Street Journal, and at Ace of Spaces HQ seem to view this event more positively...

Let the neutrino astronomy begin!

Let the neutrino astronomy begin!  The image at right is of “Bert” – the second-highest energy neutrino ever observed.  It was made from data collected at the IceCube neutrino observatory at the South Pole.

When I first read about neutrinos, not all that many years ago, it seemed like we'd never be able to even detect one.  Now we have neutrino telescopes.  Awesome!

A beautiful photo?

A beautiful photo?  Nope, it's a painting – a photorealist painting.  Lots more at the link...

But it's all Bush's fault!

But it's all Bush's fault!  Reader and friend Simon M. passes along an old urban legend that's been reworked a bit:

Linda Burnett, 23, a resident of San Diego, was visiting her in-laws and while there went to a nearby supermarket to pick up some groceries. Later, her husband noticed her sitting in her car in the driveway with the windows rolled up and with her eyes closed, with both hands behind the back of her head. He became concerned and walked over to the car. He noticed that Linda's eyes were now open and she looked very strange. He asked her if she was okay, and Linda replied that she had been shot in the back of the head and had been holding her brains in for over an hour.

The husband called the paramedics, who broke into the car because the doors were locked and Linda refused to remove her hands from her head. When they finally got in, they found that Linda had a wad of bread dough on the back of her head.

A Pillsbury biscuit canister had exploded from the heat, making a loud noise that sounded like a gunshot, and the wad of dough hit her in the back of her head. When she reached back to find out what it was, she felt the dough and thought it was her brains. She initially passed out, but quickly recovered.

Linda is a blonde, a Democrat, and an Obama supporter, but that could all be a coincidence.

The defective biscuit canister was analyzed and the expiration date was from 2008, so it was determined to be Bush's fault.

I like this version better than the others I've seen over the years :)

ObamaCare debacle update...

ObamaCare debacle update...  Because there's no such thing as too much schadenfreude!

It's really not done yet!  From an article in The Wall Street Journal:

One particular challenge that remains is building a payment system to transfer those subsidies to insurance companies. Mr. Chao said those "financial management" parts of the system aren't needed right away, but officials acknowledged that they must be running by January, when insurers will be expecting the subsidies to start flowing in.

That's a rather fundamental piece he's describing, and it will clearly be a very complex piece of technology – in particular, chock full of security concerns because of the vast amount of money that will be flowing through it.  We're just over a month from when it absolutely has to be working – and they haven't even finished building it yet, much less testing and debugging it.  As an ancient and venerable software guy, I can tell you that's clearly bad, very bad – and Mr. Chao knows it, unless he's a complete idiot.  That means they're spinning and lying to us.  No real surprise there, but you can consider this confirmation...

A yeoman's job, Mr. Taranto is doing.  Writing at The Wall Street Journal, he's clearly been feeling the schadenfreude as he skewers That One's ObamaCare rollout every day.  I loved this line:

"At this point, Lieberman seems primarily motivated by torturing liberals," Klein wrote (as if that were not an intrinsically worthy goal!).

Ha!

They're going to take our money!  Funny how little support socialism gets when people have to actually, like, pay for it.  The tricky part turns out to be making people notice that they're paying for it...

How the GOP should fix ObamaCare. Most of this piece is singing my song...

Too much schadenfreude?  There may come a day when we're enjoying the schadenfreude too much – but today is not that day!

Why youth is revolting against Obama.  ObamaCare is only part of it...

Obama's slow learning curve.  We're paying the price for That One's profound disconnection with the American reality...

Hacker bait.  IT security pros point out an abundance of gaping security holes in healthcare.gov's implementation and design.  The potentially huge financial rewards is already attracting the cockroaches hacker crooks from every dark corner of the globe...

When you've lost Time...   Just look at the current cover!  Oh, my, how far That One has fallen from his lamestream media pedestal...

Poll: 84% of Democrats want ObamaCare changed or repealed.  That's the kind of thing that strikes terror into the hearts of incumbent Democrats up for re-election in 2014.  Is that the sound of rats scurrying I hear?  Why yes, yes it is...

50 to 100 million more cancellations to come.  Just in time for the 2014 elections.  The movement to repeal or significantly change ObamaCare is starting to get the kind of political muscle behind it that it nees.  This will help, immensely...

ObamaCare promotion organizations are also politically involved.  You're not really surprised by this, are you?  Project Veritas is shining sunlight on a shady and bad-smelling place...

Will we ever get our $2B back?  Looks like the answer is probably “no”.  Taxpayers have lent ObamaCare promotional groups nearly two billion dollars.  There's no evidence to date that these organizations have been effective, or that they will be – and even less evidence that taxpayers will be paid back.  Now Sebelius and the HHS are stonewalling investigating Congressmen.  Sound familiar? 

When even California won't go along with your socialist program...   There's a message here for That One's administration, though I doubt anyone there is paying attention...

The Bush Team fights back.  John Yoo was a member of G.W. Bush's Justice Department.  His piece on Fox News today is a scathing indictment of That One's responses to the ObamaCare rollout debacle, and specifically directs scorn at the comparisons some on the left are making with Katrina.  An excerpt:

Bush’s second term ran aground because he failed to use the president’s powers effectively in the very setting for which they were created.  He eventually recovered with the surge in Iraq, a brave decision that showed the presidency at its best.

Obama is hitting the shoals for the exact opposite reason. ObamaCare’s collapse does not result from an act of nature or the attacks of a foreign enemy.  Instead, it is a perversely self-inflicted, man-made disaster that replaced the efficiency of the private markets with the tangle, confusion, and ideological bias of government bureaucracy.

By suspending the insurance mandate for a year, Mr. Obama does not use the powers of the presidency to protect the nation from unforeseen events.  He instead uses the executive to protect the American people from himself and his signature policy.

Every time he waives yet another ACA regulation, Mr. Obama blocks himself from acting and allows the return of the private market that existed before his election.

The Framers never vested the presidency with great powers for such purposes. To avoid responsibility for his policies, Mr. Obama must violate his constitutional duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”

According to long practice, a president may selectively choose the cases to prosecute because the federal government does not have the limitless resources needed to chase down every violation of the laws.

But the executive power over prosecution does not allow a president to refuse to simply enforce all cases under a law. That amounts to a suspension power that the Framers consciously rejected by including the Take Care Clause in Article II of the Constitution. 

Our QE addiction...

Our QE addiction...  Forbes: Bernanke Fed has no clue how to taper QE without tanking the markets.  Gulp...

Curiosity's “Seven minutes of terror”...

Curiosity's “Seven minutes of terror”: the backstory...

Tal Golesworthy is my kind of engineer!

Tal Golesworthy is my kind of engineer!  If you have a heart condition that requires terrifyingly risky surgery with questionable benefits to fix, what do you do?  If you're a real engineer, you'll design something better, of course!  And that's exactly what Tal Golesworthy did – plus he was the first to receive the new treatment.  That was five years ago, and he's still going strong.

All that, and an awesome name to boot!

The viola organista...

The viola organista...  This was completely new to me – an instrument designed (but apparently never built) by Leonardo da Vinci.  It's been built and has had its concert debut (video at left). 

The viola organista is a string instrument that sounds much like a cello, but it's played like a piano.  It's full of moving parts, and acoustically it's quite sophisticated.

Awesome!

The Gipper's rules for negotiation...

The Gipper's rules for negotiation...  As relayed by George Schulz, writing in today's Wall Street Journal:

1. Be realistic; no rose-colored glasses. Recognize opportunities when they are there, but stay close to reality.

2. Be strong and don't be afraid to up the ante.

3. Develop your agenda. Know what you want so you don't wind up negotiating from the other side's agenda.

4. On this basis, engage. And remember: The guy who is anxious for a deal will get his head handed to him.

I have zero confidence that That One's administration is following any of these rules...

The Middle East muddle...

The Middle East muddle...  There's a great (and short) summary of Middle Eastern tensions on Strategy Page...

Apollo data recovered from tape backup after more than 40 years...

Apollo data recovered from tape backup after more than 40 years...  If you're in IT, you know that's a small miracle right there :)  Scientists have now analyzed this old data to figure out the rate of dust deposition on the moon – and it's much faster than expected...

Geek: the sounds of sorting...

Geek: the sounds of sorting...  This little bit of geekly entertainment is the most fun with sort algorithms I've had in a long, long time.  It's not just entertainment, either – the visualizations are a great aid to understanding how the algorithms work.  Much more detail here and here.  Kudos to these folks for a great visualization (with audio, too)!

In my youth, while in the U.S. Navy, I spent a great deal of time implementing and tuning one particular sorting algorithm: merge sort.  We had log data captured during the Vietnam war, produced by the NTDS system I maintained, that was (of course!) in linear time order.  We needed that data to be ordered by various other things, such as by target.  The data was far too large to fit into the computer's very limited memory; it was stored on tape.  I had the job of figuring out how to sort that data, using the four tape drives attached to the computer.  The best answer was a merge sort.  I remember that my first implementation took over a day to run, which was dangerously close to the average up-time of the system (computers back in those days were not very reliable!).  After weeks of tuning, I managed to get that down to “just” a couple of hours.  Most of my performance gain came from figuring out how to use multiple computers to increase the amount of (relatively fast) computer memory I had available.  That turned out to be a career-changer, as I was sorting the data faster on a deployed ship than the big data center in the Philippines could do it.  I ended up being helicoptered from my ship to the USS Enterprise, and from their flown on a COD to Subic Bay, where I taught the data center folks how to do it.  They had lots more computers than my ship had, so their implementation ended up being much faster.  After that incident my job shifted from primarily being a hardware repair guy to being a programmer...

Ospreys delivering aid in the Philippines...

Ospreys delivering aid in the Philippines...  Not the osprey bird, the U.S. Marines' tilt-rotor V-22 Osprey transport plane.  This is a chance for the controversial aircraft and their crews to show their stuff.  Their U.S. Marines stuff.  Go, Marines!

Oopsie!

Oopsie!  A 747 belonging to Boeing lands at the wrong airport. 

Whenever I see a story like this (and they're not actually all that infrequent), I wonder: how does the pilot ever live this down?  And it's got to be worse for a Boeing pilot...

Welfare states...

Welfare states...  Many believe that the real agenda of the warmists is to use AGW as a pretext for a massive redistribution of wealth from richer nations to poorer nations.  Anyone holding that suspicion saw the demand for $100B in annual payments from rich nations to poor nations at the U.N. climate talks as validation, or even proof.  But now the poor nations have been rebuffed; their demand denied, and they've left the talks.

Personally, I think the notion that such transfers would actually mitigate the effects of AGW (even if there is AGW) is absurd.  One of the major reasons countries are poor is their political systems are blocking prosperity for all but the thugs at the top.  Like other cash foreign aid, the vast majority of it would be siphoned off to enrich those thugs.  Hell, even the food we send to North Korea is mostly being siphoned off!

My twin brother did it!

My twin brother did it!  That sounds like something out of a movie plot, but it's actually happening...

Governor Shingles...

Governor Shingles...  Reader and fellow Jamulian Celeste S. passed along this article by Jim Hughes at the Daily Caller – and how could I not like an article that starts out like this:

As a fourth generation Californian who lived through the first Jerry Brown administration — or as I like to call it, the tunnel-boat scene from Willy Wonka — back in the ‘70s, I always considered a Jerry Brown governorship to be like the chicken pox. It’s horrible, you have to suffer though it, it leaves scars, but the good news is that you can never get it again. Then a friend reminded me that chicken pox can lie dormant for years, coming back as its more virulent, painful, adult cousin: The shingles.

Well, Governor Shingles is at it again.

For those of you who don’t live in the Bronze State (we lost our gold AAA rating a long time ago), Governor Brown and the State Legislature’s Democrat super-majority have been passing an all-out orgy of Liberal spending bills ranging from the bizarre to the absurd. In July, they took time out from building their $98 Billion dollar bullet train to nowhere long enough to address perhaps the most pressing issue of our times: “Gender neutral bathrooms” for K-12 school children.

While I greatly enjoyed Mr. Hughes' style – reminds me a bit of Mark Steyn – the issue he's writing about remains unsettled in my mind.  I posted about this back in August, when Governor Moonbeam Shingles signed the bill into law.

There's a lot of angst about this bill, but it's not at all clear to me how well-founded it is.  I haven't been able to find out exactly how a child's “gender identity” would be established.  A lot of people are assuming (as Hughes is) that it would simply be on the child's say-so.  I don't think even our public school administrators would be that stupid, though I certainly don't rule out the possibility.  More likely, I think, is that some sort of protocol will be established to ascertain the genuineness of a claimed transgendered identity.  If there is such a protocol, and if it's well designed, then I'm actually not opposed to this law – based on my own experiences with transgendered people, detailed in that earlier post.

If, on the other hand, there is no reasonably accurate protocol, and children can simply claim a gender identity – well, then, California's parents have every right to be upset, and we all have every reason to heap scorn upon our bought-and-paid-for legislators and our addled Governor.  Of course, they deserve our scorn in any case :)

Good people...

Good people...  As my long time readers know, I had plenty of differences with George W. Bush's leadership and policies – and plenty that I heartily approved of.  But one thing I never doubted: the fundamental honesty and sincerity of the man.

As an ex-President, though, I don't find any fault at all.  If I were designing an ex-President, I'd come up with something that looked pretty much exactly like him.  And his wife (Laura) is just as faultless as an ex-First Lady.

The two of them appeared on Jay Leno's show sometime recently (which is what the clips at right are).  I started the first clip, figuring I'd get bored and move on in a minute or so.  Instead, I sat mesmerized – and smiling – through the entirety of all four clips.

Why?

I sat and thought about that a bit, as I surprised myself by watching these.  More than anything else, I think it was this: that watching this man and his wife made me feel proud to have had such quality folks at the White House.  It has naught to do with agreeing with his policies, and everything to do with them just plain being good people.  The kind of people I'd like to know, to call friends.  The kind of people I'd like to be.  People I respect and admire.

I most definitely don't have these same sorts of feelings about other ex-Presidents.  Reagan was right up there, in the few years before he disappeared from sight due to his Alzheimer's.  H. W. Bush I have positive feelings about, albeit much less strongly then with G.W.  Clinton?  Uh ... no.  Carter?  Hell, no.  Ford?  Neutral.  Nixon?  No.  Johnson?  No.  Kennedy - we'll never know.  Eisenhower?  I only have a few memories of him as an ex-President, and none of them stand out.  Truman?  Even fewer memories; he died when I was 20. 

Then my thoughts spooled forward in time, to that happy day when Obama is an ex-President.  What will my feelings be about him?  I know enough about his personality to know that it's inconceivable that he'd turn out like G.W.  I'm imagining him as a much more ambitious Carter.  I suspect he's not going to disappear from the world's political stage.  Unfortunately.  I'm guessing that he's got his sights already focused in on a UN Secretary-Generalship, or heading up the IMF or World Monetary Fund.  Something along those lines, where his narcissism and arrogance could continue to disgust us all.  What a thing to look forward to!

So, what's the problem?

So, what's the problem?  From a collection my mom sent me...

Lake Mattanawcook at sunset...

Lake Mattanawcook at sunset...  Taken by a family friend.  Map...

Flip the channels...

(Updated) Flip the channels...  So says Doug S., friend, reader, former colleague, and mogul-of-everything-Idaho.  I like Bob Dylan, but the people lip-syncing is something I don't get.  Maybe you will :)

Update: Ann Althouse has basically the same reaction I had:

My reaction to the video was: 1. Here's the Dylan song that's used to represent all Dylan songs when you want to reach the largest possible audience with the message that you are playing a Dylan song, 2. I'm hearing the Dylan recording but I'm seeing some TV person mouthing the words, a type of performance that is annoying even when your dearest loved one does it; it's not cute. 3. So there are a bunch of TV people who were willing to go on camera mouthing the words of the entire 6+ minute song. 4. Either show me Bob Dylan with the voice of Bob Dylan or cover the song with your own voice and do it well (not cutesy) or leave me alone.

But she has some theories about why some people like it.  What's most interesting to me about Ann's reaction is that she is far more into culture than I am; it's something she writes about often.  She's roughly my age, too, so it's not an age difference showing...

Realistically colorized historical photos...

Realistically colorized historical photos...  Via reader and friend Simon M.  Some of these, like the one at right, sent chills through me.  Many include a before-and-after version, which are quite interesting to compare.  In some cases, I think the monochrome version has more impact – but I have to say that most of the time its the full color version...

The power of words...

The power of words...   I posted this a few years ago, but it's well worth a re-post.  Via my lovely bride, who's in Indiana caring for her mom...

ObamaCare debacle update...

ObamaCare debacle update...  Because hump day!

Terrified Obama trapped in healthcare.gov web site!  The Onion has the story.  I'll bet it's not too far from the truth...

Obama's approval rate down to 37%.  That's solidly into Jimmy Carter territory, and about the same as Nixon just before he resigned.  Looks like The One is on his way to That One...

Obama hits new lows with Dems.  Well, yeah – the rats have to be thinking real hard about abandoning ship.  Especially those rats with an election coming up next year...

Oh, those wonderful new ObamaCare policies!  In D.C., some on offer cover abortion, but not hearing aids.  Just what your average 60 year old really needed!

Mr. President, tear down this web site!  So says Lamar Alexander, a Republican Representative from Texas, and not someone I normally think of for witty one-liners.  I wonder what Peter Robinson (the Reagan speechwriter who coined the “Mr. President, tear down this wall!” line, and now co-founder of Ricochet) thinks about this appropriation of his line?  Robinson is adamantly opposed to ObamaCare, so I suspect he might be enjoying this...

Have you noticed that the administration stopped calling it “ObamaCare”?  Now it's the Affordable Care Act.  The distancing has begun...

Obama lied and people died.  Let the body count being, says Thomas Lifson.  Accountability is needed...

Can you miss what you never had?  Why, yes.  Yes you can...

When the facts suck ... the lamestream media pulls out its ultimate weapon: 100% fact-free reporting!  And Neo-Neocon heaps well-deserved scorn upon them...

They've known since March ... that healthcare.gov was going off the rails.  They hired a top-notch consulting firm (McKinsey) and then didn't listen to them.  Truth and transparency: they're for the little people...

Wishful thinking won't hold ObamaCare together.  Megan McArdle notes the emergence of something that she (and many others) didn't expect: sober people on both sides discussing the possibility of repealing ObamaCare.  Awesome!

Comically evasive mouthpiece.  That's Ace's formulation, and it's spot on.  I have some sympathy for Jay Carney – the poor schlub has one of the worst jobs in the world trying to make Obama look good.  On the other hand, he could always resign.  Where I in his shoes (and oh how glad I am that I'm not!), resigning would be far less humiliating than watching myself on a YouTube clip like this...

The end of ObamaCare as we never knew it.   All of the proposed fixes, including Obama's, significantly change ObamaCare.  They also create more, and larger problems down the road.  They are political fixes, designed to win elections in 2014 – without regard to the consequences past that magic date.  But if those consequences doom ObamaCare to the dust bin of history, you know what?  I'm ok with that...

Obama is violating a fundamental right.  So says Richard Epstein, scenting out the legal consequences of recent ObamaCare-related events.  Yet another unintended consequence that I like!  This is kind of creepy, the way I keep reading about things related to ObamaCare that make me happy...

30% to 40% of the Federal healthcare exchange system hasn't yet been built!?!  Being an ancient and venerable software engineer and (unfortunately) an experienced software engineering manager – I know that if the manager is saying that, the real situation is far more dire.  They are far, far up the creek and there are no paddles anywhere...

Security?  It's so bad that the experts think they should just shut the damned web site down.  Okay!

Yet another liberal slapped upside the head with ObamaCare.  But she still likes Obama!  I wonder what it would take to change her mind?

Obama breaks ObamaCare to save it.  Megan McArdle notes the triumph of politics over reason, common sense, practicality, and just about everything else...

Obama loses his cool.  As in, his cool factor.  I noted an instance of this a few days ago, while waiting at our veterinarian's office.  Two women also waiting were chatting, and one mentioned that she and her husband were very worried about their healthcare coverage – her husband's employer was dropping healthcare benefits because of increased costs associated with ObamaCare, and when they looked at the California exchange, the prices were shockingly high for policies that weren't nearly as good as the one they are about to lose.  The other woman said “You know, I really regret voting for him.  I thought he’d make things better, but everything is so much worse!”  I smiled for hours after that...

Gaming the system.  This is one of the “tells” of top-down, authoritarian systems: people find ways to get money (or power) by using the rules of the system against itself – a sort of bureaucratic ju-jitsu.  This one takes advantage of the fact that under ObamaCare, nobody can be denied insurance.  So hospitals are now examining the idea of buying policies (at the hospitals expense) to cover those indigent people they've been treating for free.  That way they'll get paid for care they used to absorb the cost of – but it would be a complete disaster for insurance companies (or the taxpayer, after the insurance companies bail out).  We'll see more and more of this if ObamaCare actually gets implemented.  It will be a war: gamers come up with new and creative exploits, the bureaucracy fights back with more onerous rules, layers of auditing, etc.  Any Russian old enough to have lived in the Soviet Union can tell you endless stories about this game.  Let's hope we don't have to go there...

Open-source mathematics...

Open-source mathematics...  Collaboration on the twin primes conjecture.  Reading the story, and how the collaboration actually worked, reminded me strongly of some of the open source projects I've contributed to.  Some of them are exciting, passionate communities, as the mathematicians working on the twin primes conjecture seem to be.  Others are more like personal projects with some interested parties as helpers, and some are almost indistinguishable from corporate projects – mainly because they're funded by corporations.  The Internet, web, and other modern communications technologies make these sorts of collaborations possible, and we all benefit.  Another that comes to mind are the extraordinary musical collaborations now taking place; I especially enjoy the a capella collaborations that are taking place by the hundreds.

Had I somehow known, 40 years ago, that the Internet and web would become what they have, I don't think it would ever have occurred to me that such collaborations would be one outcome...

Filner is the gift that keeps on giving...

Filner is the gift that keeps on giving...  The city of San Diego held an election yesterday to choose a mayor to replace the disgraced (but highly entertaining!) Mayor Bob Filner.  But ... no candidate got 50% of the vote, so now they'll have to have a runoff election...

Now Desert Springs...

Now Desert Springs...  Another California city looking at bankruptcy.  Oh, goody...

LRO images...

LRO images...  A nice, browsable collection of images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO).  It orbits the moon at just 31 miles (50 km) high, which lets it make oblique photos like the one at right.  They've just added a number of these oblique shots, which give you a much better feel for the surface texture than the standard high-altitude photography we usually see...

Murray Ridge...

Murray Ridge...  A perspective view of a section of the rim of Endeavour Crater on Mars, put together from data collected by Opportunity.  That little robotic rover is still hard at work, nearly 10 years after it landed on Mars.  It's original planned mission time was just three months.  What a bargain that mission has been, if you measure it by dollars/science return!

Beautiful photos...

Beautiful photos...   The U.S. Department of the Interior posts on Instagram.  Lots more gorgeous photos at that link.  Well, I'll be darned...

Best Halloween display evah!

Best Halloween display evah!  Oh, how I wish I'd thought of this!  Via reader Jim M...

ObamaCare debacle update...

ObamaCare debacle update...  Because there's so much debacle goodness, I just have to share!

Would Obama sign a death warrant on his signature legislation?  National Journal thinks maybe he would...

On metrics and the ObamaCare web site...

Obama's gift to the Republicans.  From the uber-lefty Huffington Post.  Pass the popcorn, please...

“Seething at a President I helped elect.”  Obama voter Bruce Barcott is not happy with his policy cancellation – or its replacement...

Morose Obama asks his base for a psychological intervention.  You just can't make this stuff up ... and there isn't enough popcorn!

Rasmussen: 58% unfavorable to ObamaCare.  And 45% very unfavorably.  Is that a light I see, way back there at the end of the progressive tunnel?

Their credibility is shot.  Ya think?

Gallup: 56% now say access to healthcare is not the government's responsibility.  Yes, yes, that is a light I see!

New metrics clear as mud.  Megan McArdle isn't impressed with the newly announced metrics.  I'm not, either, but I worry that the majority of voters might be...

Administration already lowering expectations about the November 30 deadline.  Well, duh!

No bailouts for ObamaCare.  Marco Rubio in The Wall Street Journal.  A snippet:

Americans are sick and tired of Washington politicians picking winners and losers—and nowhere is this practice more grotesquely evident than taxpayer-funded bailouts, which assault the economic values of our free enterprise system in favor of those who are politically connected and whose lobbyists know the right people to call and levers to pull. ObamaCare is a living monument to this culture, and no one loses more than the average American.

 ObamaCare: So, what could go wrong next?  ObamaCare – the gift that keeps on giving!

Interview with Clarence Thomas...

Interview with Clarence Thomas...  This is a wonderfully done interview, with a great interviewer (Judge Sykes), and there's lots of Thomas' talking about his experiences.  It was unexpectedly (to me, anyway) entertaining – Thomas can be quite funny.  This is long (51 minutes), but highly recommended for anyone interested in American law, the Supreme Court, or American politics.  My favorite moment:

Judge Sykes: “Stare decisis doesn’t hold much force for you?”
Justice Thomas: “Sure it does.  But not enough to keep me from going to the Constitution!”

I hope Justice Thomas is with us, and on the Court, for a long, long time...

The next generation...

The next generation...  I watch things like this, and I swear I can hear the drums of doom approaching...

Hubble does M15...

Hubble does M15...  Via APOD, of course.  Full resolution image here...

Another piece of the puzzle...

Another piece of the puzzle...  We suspected that Lois Lerner was a political hack; now we know...

One quote that sums up the progressive mindset...

One quote that sums up the progressive mindset...  Walmart stores have some employees that they know are struggling financially.  It might be because a spouse lost a job, or had unexpected expenses; there are lots of reasons why an employee might be hurting.  To make the holidays a little brighter, Walmart has long supported a program of charitable giving by other employees, specifically to support their colleagues.  Over the years, some $80 million in cash and goods has been distributed under this program.

But some employees are offended by this.  Can you guess why?  Here's what one had to say:

"Why would a company do that?  The company needs to stand up and give them their 40 hours and a living wage, so they don't have to worry about whether they can afford Thanksgiving."

I suspect you could use a person's reaction to that quote as a litmus test for a progressive mindset.  The progressive will agree, and will share the speaker's anger at Walmart.

Me?  I'm wondering why they're not grateful to have the opportunity to make some money, and to be part of a supportive group of colleagues.  I wonder at the ignorance and naivete on display about how a business – any business – actually works.  I shudder at the naked display of the entitlement mentality, and the completely missing work ethic.  There's no notion that one's work ought to earn money for the company, and that you're paid because of that; that capitalist norm is upended completely, and replaced with something more like “I deserve high pay, because me”, or something equally incoherent.

A beautiful ad...

A beautiful ad...  From Google.  Have your tissues handy before you watch it.  You'll want it full screen...

Another classy communication...

Another classy communication...  From Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors.  The more I read from him and about him, the more impressed I am...

Comparisons...

Comparisons...  Bret Stephenson takes The One to task in The Wall Street Journal:

Seven score and 10 years ago, Abraham Lincoln delivered his sacred speech on the meaning of free government. Edward Everett, a former secretary of state and the principal speaker for the consecration of the Gettysburg cemetery, instantly recognized the power of the president's 272 words.

"I should be glad, if I could flatter myself," Everett wrote to Lincoln the next day, "that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes."

Barack Obama is not scheduled to be present at Gettysburg on Tuesday to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the address. Maybe he figured that the world would little note, nor long remember, what he said there. Maybe he thought the comparisons with the original were bound to be invidious, and rightly so.

If that's the case, it would be the beginning of wisdom for this presidency. Better late than never.

Ouch!  I hope Bret Stephenson never gets mad at me...

The Gettysburg Address...

The Gettysburg Address...  This most famous speech of Abraham Lincoln was made 150 years ago today, at the dedication of the cemetery for soldiers killed at the Battle of Gettysburg just a few months prior.  The speech was very short, just 275 words:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Though I've read it – sometimes out loud – dozens of times over the years, it still sends shivers up my spine when I read it again...

The web makes lots of things easier...

The web makes lots of things easier...  I bought a kilogram of Darjeeling first flush tea this morning – just a few clicks of my mouse, and the tea is on order and will be delivered on Thursday.  “Disintermediation” – a fancy term for getting rid of the middleman – has revolutionized a broad range of industries. 

Usually we think of these things as unalloyed “goods”, but there's a dark side as well.  Like virtually any other tool or technology mankind has ever created, the web can be used either for good or evil.  A new entry on the evil web front: a site dedicated to arranging crowd-funding of assassinations.

Robotic mule for Marines...

Robotic mule for Marines...  Popular Mechanics has a good story on it...

How a sewing machine works...

How a sewing machine works...  Nice GIF!

Fake data in pre-election unemployment numbers?

Fake data in pre-election unemployment numbers?  From the New York Post:

In the home stretch of the 2012 presidential campaign, from August to September, the unemployment rate fell sharply — raising eyebrows from Wall Street to Washington.

The decline — from 8.1 percent in August to 7.8 percent in September — might not have been all it seemed. The numbers, according to a reliable source, were manipulated.

And the Census Bureau, which does the unemployment survey, knew it.

At the time, the persistently high unemployment numbers were big political news – much was made of the need Obama had to show some progress toward a robust economic recovery.  The reported drop in unemployment rate gave a tangible boost to Team Obama in the polls.  They had motive, they had opportunity, and they have demonstrated corruptness.  All that makes this story all too believable...

Europe's growing anti-Semitism...

Europe's growing anti-Semitism...  A depressing reality, says Cathy Young, writing at Reason...

Stop motion tissues...

Stop motion tissues...  Speechless, I am...

Hah!

Hah!  Screenshot of an error page at youtube.com.  Awesome!  As always, click on the thumbnail to embiggen...

Cat gonna survive, too...

Cat gonna survive, too...

A permanent slump?

A permanent slump?  So speculates Paul Krugman, the barking mad Nobel Prize-winning former economist who now shills writes for the New York Times. But upon reading his piece, I'm struck by the fact that what he's actually doing is blaming the non-recovery on anything and everything except the obvious things to point at: socialism, over-taxation, over-regulation, and deficit spending.

Mr. Krugman would find it educational to pay a visit to North Dakota, where they seem to have successfully recovered.  He might want to think about why...

What political disaster looks like...

What political disaster looks like...  Even as a thumbnail, the graph at right tells a dramatic story.  The red line is Obama's disapproval rating, the black his approval.  This is the Real Clear Politics “meta-poll”, arrived at by averaging the results of several actual polls.  They do this specifically to avoid the pitfalls of cherry-picking one's data.  In effect, this is the consensus of all the major polls.

And it's devastating, from a political perspective.  Combine this with the ObamaCare polls I'll be writing about shortly, and the picture looks very grim if your last name is Obama, or if you have a “D” after your name...

Pope disses progressives...

Pope disses progressives...  Really!

Today's gonna be a good day...

Today's gonna be a good day...  Click the thumbnail at right to embiggen, but please put your drink down first...

“It’s always good to see you, Dad.”

“It’s always good to see you, Dad.”  This beautiful story had me in tears, partly because of its resonance with my last visit with my dad, just a couple months ago.  I do, however, want you all to know: I did not visit Taco Bell...

Jarrett leading secret negotiations with Iran?

Jarrett leading secret negotiations with Iran?  If this report is true, it is very disturbing – such a negotiation is far outside her brief, and we have zero reason to believe that she is in any way qualified to do this.  The administration very quickly issued a categorical denial.  If this were any other administration, I'd immediately dismiss this report on the basis of that denial.  But it is The One's administration, and their denial actually makes me even more suspicious...

Bitcoin mining, for fun and loss...

Bitcoin mining, for fun and loss...  Warren Meyer, writing at Forbes, on the dodgy economics of bitcoin mining.  One little tidbit of technical awesomeness (in an article that's not really about the technology): devices are just coming onto the market that can execute 3 trillion cryptographic hashes per second...

Israel and Saudi Arabia, new BFFs?

Israel and Saudi Arabia, new BFFs?  I never thought I'd see anything like this outside of The Onion:

Israel is working on coordinating plans for a possible military strike with Saudi Arabia, with Riyadh prepared to provide tactical support to Jerusalem, a British newspaper reported early Sunday.

The two countries have both united in worry that the West may come to terms with Iran, easing sanctions and allowing the Islamic Republic to continue its nuclear program.

According to the Sunday Times, Riyadh has agreed to let Israel use its airspace in a military strike on Iran and cooperate over the use of rescue helicopters, tanker planes and drones.

From a purely pragmatic military perspective, this makes perfectly good sense.  But from any other perspective, it looks absolutely impossible!

A damned fine question, Mr. Sullum!

A damned fine question, Mr. Sullum!  Jacob Sullum, writing at Reason, asks:

Was the Dog-Authorized Exploration of David Eckert's Guts Legal?
A bizarre search illustrates how the war on drugs has undermined our civil liberties.

How is it possible that a motorist pulled over for a rolling stop could end up being forcibly subjected to two X-rays, two digital probes of his anus, three enemas, and a colonoscopy, none of which discovered the slightest trace of the drugs that police claim to have thought he was hiding inside himself? That is the question raised by a federal lawsuit that recently received wide attention after it was highlighted by KOB, the NBC affiliate in Albuquerque.

The answer says a lot about the outrageous indignities we have come to tolerate in the name of the war on drugs, which has undermined our civil liberties to the point that what happened to David Eckert after he was stopped in Deming, New Mexico, seemed perfectly justified to the cops who detained him, the prosecutor who approved their application for a search warrant, the judge who granted it, and the doctors who helped execute it. Even in retrospect, Deming Police Chief Brandon Gigante insists that "we follow the law in every aspect." The really horrifying thing about Eckert's ordeal is that the courts might agree with Gigante.

It's a must-read, and yet another reason for us to put an end to the moronic “war on drugs”...

The eternal melody of π, base 12...

The eternal melody of π, base 12...  Who thinks of these things? 

Robot spider salsa!

Robot spider salsa!  That's it, the Internet is finished...

The mask slips for just a moment...

The mask slips for just a moment...  The video of a U.N. translator at right is absolutely epic (the key moment is at 1:58).  Commentary Magazine has it right: the correct translation is “The U.N. is a joke!”  A damned expensive joke, and dangerous for the diseased worldview it nurtures...

ObamaCare debacle update...

ObamaCare debacle update...  Because there's nothing like the smell of ObamaCare decomposing on a sunny Monday morning...

Legalize real health insurance.  Dr. Paul Hsieh, writing in Forbes, is singing my song...

ObamaCare's union favor.  Are you surprised by this?  I'm certainly not – with The One's administration, it's Chicago-style cronyism right down the line...

Insurance industry readied while Obama slept.  Well, of course the insurance company “readied” – they are businesses, and they had to follow the law.  Unlike, say, The One.  Here's the kicker, though: this is in USA Today, heretofore (so far as I know) an unapologetic ObamaCare booster.  Oops!

Heads are going to roll.  It's not good to screw up The One's “signature legislation”...

Handy list of more ObamaCare shoes left to drop.  A half-dozen more shoes, and they're all big, heavy shoes.  Staffers working on ObamaCare must be cowering in the basement, knowing (and they do know) what's coming shortly...

The most shocking ObamaCare revelation: The One's towering incompetence.  I'm going to have to differ with the author (Walter Russell Mead) on this one, as Obama's incompetence has been on display for five years now.  But welcome to reality, Walter...

HealthCare.gov gets a new spokesman.  Yeah, that ought to help!

Obama to rally supporters for ObamaCare.  Smells a little of desperation, doesn't it?

Pelosi vs. Gregory.  Incompetence and incoherence raised to new levels.  It continues to astonish me that (a) voters keep electing Pelosi, and (b) viewers keep watching intellectual zeroes like Gregory.  Ugh...

The One is nominating a new surgeon-general.  Is anyone surprised that he turns out to be a political hack, employed by a progressive hackery factory?

ObamaCare is derailing president's credibility.  Ya think?

American healthcare is all over but the screaming.  An industry insider's view of the impact of ObamaCare (and regulation in general) on hospitals.  Chilling stuff...

The backstory...

The backstory...  On that “Epic Split” ad.  I'm so glad I could amuse you all with my ignorance of the actor :)

Rates of technology adoption...

Rates of technology adoption...  Fascinating graph comparing the rates of penetration for various new technologies, going back to stoves in 1900.  The key point is that adoption rates are accelerating, as can easily be seen as those penetration curves get steeper and steeper.  One note: the vertical axis is perhaps not what you'd expect.  Rather than showing penetration percentage, it's a log scale of the ratio of penetrated to unpenetrated.  That's easy to convert to penetration percentage: 0.1 = 9%, 1.0 = 50%, 10.0 = 91%.

Aurora and clouds over Iceland...

Aurora and clouds over Iceland...  Via APOD, of course.

“Skilled dispatcher”...

“Skilled dispatcher”...  Page from the Visitor Reference Book, for visitors to the Swift & Co. slaughterhouse in Chicago, circa 1903.  It's clear that folks back then were just a tad less squeamish about the source of their meat than the average American is today.

Back in the '70s, when I was in the U.S. Navy, my ship (USS Long Beach CGN-9) visited Singapore.  Together with 20 or so other sailors, I visited a Chinese restaurant there.  One of the sailors ordered a roast chicken, and to his surprise – and discomfort – the waiter hauled him over to a pen to choose which chicken he wanted to eat.  Despite having suffered weeks of awful Navy-at-sea food, he didn't enjoy his meal at all.  The Chinese staff had seen this American reaction before, and they were quite amused.  As, I think, they should be – for what a silly pretension we Americans have, that our meat all comes from some factory, wrapped in plastic, and not directly from the flesh of some animal...

ObamaCare – a personal report...

ObamaCare – a personal report...  Well, I was finally able to make it all the way through the process on the Covered California site, right up to the point where I'd actually buy a policy (which I did not do).  Here's a summary of the results, in terms of costs, for a policy covering Debbie and I:

	Current policy	ObamaCare policy
Monthly premium:	$1,272	$2,012
Out-of-pocket cap:	$3,500	$7,800
Max annual cost:	$18,764	$31,944

The ObamaCare policy's out-of-pocket caps are quite complicated, as they vary for the type of care offered.  It wouldn't surprise me a bit to discover that they're actually higher than what I listed above.

In terms of coverage, the ObamaCare policy overlaps our current policy, but there are notable differences.  The biggest difference I see is that our current policy has much better coverage out-of-network, and gives us complete freedom to choose the specialists we want.  The ObamaCare policy is severely restricted in those terms.  On the other hand, the ObamaCare policy covers some things our current policy doesn't: birth control, maternity care, podiatrists, and much more mental health coverage.  We don't care about any of those things.

So, on balance: the ObamaCare policy is much more expensive (especially when you consider those out-of-pocket caps) and is lower quality (for the things that we care about) than our current policy.

Thanks a bunch, ObamaCare...

See SPOT fail. Fail, SPOT, fail...

See SPOT fail.  Fail, SPOT, fail...  Reason's J. D. Tuccille tears into it.  The bureaucracy is like a living being.  TSA is doing its best to keep this worthless program, despite the utter lack of evidence that it actually, like, accomplishes anything...

The GSA study referred to can be found here; it's an interesting read.  Here's it's conclusion (in its entirety):

TSA has taken several positive steps to validate the scientific basis and strengthen program management of BDA and the SPOT program, which has been in place for over 6 years at a total cost of approximately $900 million since 2007. Nevertheless, TSA has not demonstrated that BDOs can consistently interpret the SPOT behavioral indicators, a fact that may contribute to varying passenger referral rates for additional screening.  The subjectivity of the SPOT behavioral indicators and variation in BDO referral rates raise questions about the continued use of behavior indicators for detecting passengers who might pose a risk to aviation security. Furthermore, decades of peer-reviewed, published research on the complexities associated with detecting deception through human observation also draw into question the scientific underpinnings of TSA's behavior detection activities. While DHS commissioned a 2011 study to help demonstrate the validity of its approach, the study's findings cannot be used to demonstrate the effectiveness of SPOT because of methodological limitations in the study’s design and data collection.

While TSA has several efforts under way to assess the behavioral indicators and expand its collection of data to develop performance metrics for its behavioral detection activities, these efforts are not expected to be completed for several years, and TSA has indicated that additional resources are needed to complete them. Consequently, after 10 years of implementing and testing the SPOT program, TSA cannot demonstrate that the agency's behavior detection activities can reliably an d effectively identify high-risk passengers who may pose a threat to the U.S. aviation system.

Ouch...

Bullshit!

Bullshit!  Penn & Teller on the war on drugs...

ObamaCare debacle update...

ObamaCare debacle update...  Because just once a day isn't enough to keep up with the churning cascade of debacle debullition...

The three burials of ObamaCare.  Twice before we've tried to kill it.  This time, let's use a silver bullet!

ObamaCare costs more if you're married.  Oh, isn't this just lovely!  Now we've got the bureaucrats providing incentives for people to get divorced...

ObamaCare, deconstructed (video at right).  And a fine job they did, too!

Oops, there goes another ObamaCare promise...  Dave Carter at Ricochet speaks to the Obama voter.  His lede:

By chance, have you had enough yet?  Many of you have either lost your jobs or you've had your hours reduced.  Millions of you are seeing your insurance policies go up in a fireball before your very eyes, like a KISS concert only instead of singing, "I Stole Your Love," the front man now sings, "I Stole Your Heath Care."

But I don't want you to feel gullible.  I think, under the circumstances, something approaching totally bamboozled would be understandable, ... or snookered, or hoodwinked, or hornswoggled, swindled, fleeced, scammed, deluded, stung, bent, folded, spindled and mutilated perhaps, broken into tiny dehumanized pieces to be redesigned into an academic's experimental idea of a perfect society certainly, … but not gullible.

In what became the longest instance of political foreplay in contemporary American history, the President whispered utopian nothings in your ear, caressing your hopes while dreamily promising  that millions of people would get something for nothing and you wouldn't have to pay for it.  You could say he was being coy, but that would be on the order of saying that the Titanic took on just a little added moisture.

If you set the bar low enough ... even the government can make it over.   We find out now that the administration's goal for healthcare.gov is for 80% of people attempting to buy insurance to actually make it through.  Worse, we find out that this goal has just been set – before that, there were no goals.  As I read this piece, I was trying to imagine Jeff Bezos' reaction upon discovering that someone working at Amazon had set the bar that low...

ObamaCare may wreak havoc on liberal agenda: Shields and Brooks.  Oh, dang, I'm completely out of popcorn!

Toe the line, you shlubs!  The Washington, D.C. insurance commissioner questioned the viability of Obama's proposed “fix”.  One day later, he's out of a job.  Don't you dare question The One!

“We all knew.”  Those are the words of Senator Gillibrand, D NY (at right), upon being asked if she was misled by Obama's “If you likeyour plan...”  promise.  We all knew.

   Rope.
   Tree.
   Congresscritter.
   Some assembly required.

ObamaCare debacle update...

ObamaCare debacle update...  Because Sunday morning just wouldn't be the same without it...

“Modified rapture” is how Neo-Neocon describes her reaction to recent events in ObamaCare-land.  She makes some interesting, and sobering, points...

Will Liberalism implode?  I don't know, but the simple fact that someone is asking that question out loud puts a big grin on my face!

Game over?  So asks Dana Milbank, ordinarily a reliable lefty writer.  It's clear from the piece that he believes the answer is “yes, game over”.  If this is actually all a dream I'm having, then please let me sleep some more...

Stop digging.  Start over.  That's the headline on an unsigned editorial by The Chicago Tribune.  Yes, that newspaper – the Obama hometown that has previously worshiped every single move of The One, and defended him from all comers.  That newspaper.  Here's there conclusion:

But in this country we don't change bad laws by presidential fiat. We change them by having Congress rewrite them or by starting from scratch. Obama doesn't want to reopen this law for fear that Republicans and some Democrats will substantially rewrite it. But that's what has to happen.

We understand why the president and leaders of his party want to rescue whatever they can of Obamacare. On their watch, official Washington has blown the launch of a new entitlement program ... under the schedule they alone set in early 2010.

What we don't understand is their reluctance to give that failure more than lip service. Many of the Americans who heard their president say Thursday that "we fumbled the rollout of this health care law" would have been pleased to hear him add: So we're admitting it. This law is a bust. We're starting over.

Wow.  Just wow!

Hold them accountable.  That's the theme of yesterday's weekly Republican radio address (video at right).  Obviously the Republicans see political advantage for themselves in this mess, and of course they're going to exploit it.  My problem with the Republicans is that I've only heard a few of them propose healthcare reform that I could support, so I'm not sure that what they come up with would be substantially better than ObamaCare.  But if repealing ObamaCare is the first step, then I'm all for it!  The conclusion of their address:

Throughout the health care debate, Republicans have proposed dozens of solutions designed to help control costs and improve quality – without surrendering control of your personal health care decisions to nameless bureaucrats in Washington. Now is the time to enact those common sense ideas.

But none of this will occur unless the American people hold those who supported ObamaCare accountable – and do so with a very loud voice. Democrat Senators must help Republicans pass legislation to limit the damage of ObamaCare. If not, those who choose to ignore the plight of millions of Americans should be replaced next November by those who will act.

150 million year old seawater...

150 million year old seawater...  Now that's an ancient aquifer!

It's amazing what a little prosperity can do!

It's amazing what a little prosperity can do!  Somehow the progressives always miss this solution to the ills they purport to want to cure...

Pahoehoe...

Pahoehoe...  The Hawaiians call this slow, thick, viscous form of lava “pahoehoe”.  It leaves a characteristic pattern of “feet and toes” that are very easy to walk on – after the lava has cooled, of course!

You'll want to watch this one full screen... 

Big ball of mud...

Big ball of mud...  What's the most common, most successful software architecture in the world?  Why, it's the big ball of mud (also known by many other less polite names)!  Every experienced software engineer knows the truth of this.  It is the de facto standard of software architecture.  Every single commercially successful software product I've ever had the privilege to look closely at is, under the covers, one gigantic ball of mud.  It's as if you looked under a bridge and found that it was held up by enormous piles of twigs tied together with shoelaces, duct tape, and used chewing gum.  Every such software product has dark corners in its code where people fear to change anything, because nobody knows how it works.  Or areas where the complexity is so high that it would take days to acquire an understanding deep enough to successfully extend or repair it.  Every one contains layers and layers of software that works around problems in other layers, or covers up the problems of a lower layer while making new problems of its own. 

The one thing I have never seen is a commercially successful software product whose code is pristine and beautiful.

Why is this?  Why are all these software products such a disaster under the covers, in their code?  This fascinating and entertaining paper (at least, if you're a programmer) by Brian Foote and Joseph Yoder delves into exactly that question.  It jibes nicely with my own experiences, where the big ball of mud emerges from the tension between the business need to make the software do something useful as quickly as possible, and the engineering need to make something beautiful, fast, and reliable.  This tension leads to innumerable small decisions in favor of expediency and against the engineer's better judgment.

One of the reasons I'm enjoying the programming I'm doing now, in my retirement, is that this tension is completely removed.  I am free to make the best code I know how to make, no matter how long it takes me.  In my current project, for example, I've already spent a month on a problem that I don't imagine any company I've ever worked for would have allowed me more than a day or two – and I'm not nearly done!  But I'm also not making a big ball of mud.  I'm making something much more beautiful than that.  At least to me :)