“Chronically incapable.”

“Chronically incapable.”  That's Sir Hew Strachan, one of the U.K.'s most respected military advisers, on That One.  More:

Strachan is currently a member of the United Kingdom's Chief of Defence Staff's Strategic Advisory Panel and claims that the 'crazy' mismanagement of the Syrian crisis at the end of the summer was the worst example of the military planning in evidence since 9/11 and that at least President George W. Bush had a plan and stuck to it.

Stern views: Professor Sir Hew Strachan of Oxford University has been sharply critical of the United States, President Obama and Britain's strategic planning since 9/11 in his new book The Direction of War.

'If anything it’s gone backwards instead of forwards, Obama seems to be almost chronically incapable of doing this,' said Strachan.

'Bush may have had totally fanciful political objectives in terms of trying to fight a global War on Terror, which was inherently astrategic, but at least he had a clear sense of what he wanted to do in the world.

'Obama has no sense of what he wants to do in the world,' he said according to the Daily Beast.

Even worse still, Strachan believes that Western indecision over whether or not to launch limited action against President Bashar al-Assad strengthened the Syrian leader and undermined the United States' power and reputation.

'What he’s done in talking about Red Lines in relation to Syria has actually devalued the deterrent effect of American military capability and it seems to me that creates an unstable situation, because if he were act it would surprise everybody,' he said.

He's got just one word for you...

He's got just one word for you ... as you try to get him to go into his kennel...

The immorality of minimum wages...

The immorality of minimum wages...  Doug Bandow with an interesting piece at Cato...

The standoff...

The standoff...  Twisted Sifter...

Earthquake!

Earthquake!  Well, a little teensy one – just magnitude 2.2, yesterday at 8:24 am local time.  We didn't feel a thing here, and probably wouldn't have even if we were at the epicenter.  The seismograph of it at right (click to embiggen) was captured by the USGS seismometer bolted to our home's slab, about 4 feet behind me as I write this.  The epicenter was about 42 km (25 miles) from our house.  The earthquake occurred at 16:23:57 UTC, and the onset of the primary wave here was 16:24:05 UTC, just 8 seconds later.  That works out to a primary wave speed of 5.25 km/second (or 11,340 MPH), which is about the right speed for primary wave propagation through a very hard material like granite (which our local mountains are made of)...

Obamacare debacle update...

Obamacare debacle update...  Because your morning needs a little schadenfreude...

7 takeaways from the new Obamacare sign-up data...  Peter Suderman, writing at Reason, does the dissection for us...

Obamacare kills...  Don't think so?  Read this, then this ... and then think hard about this.  Were the first two stories the consequence of glitches and mistakes – or were they deliberate strategies suggested by the progressive attitudes in the third story?  I don't have any way to know, but I'm certainly not going to dismiss the possibility of the latter...

Does Massachusetts hold hope for ObamaCare?  We've seen several stories in the past few days that claim ObamaCare will all work out in the end, just like RomneyCare did in Massachusetts.  Megan McArdle looks at that notion...

ObamaCare's sex problem...  James Taranto is on it...  At the end of the linked edition of “Best of the Web Today” (under “Chicken Hawks?”), Taranto gave me my laugh for the day:

Among other reasons, Seahawks management apparently is scared of 49ers fans, who "made their presence known in several opposing stadiums."

One reader who sent us this tip mocked the Hawks, writing: "How big of a bunch of [cowards] are you if you're afraid of people from San Francisco?" We chuckled, but we realized he was wrong when we thought of Nancy Pelosi.

Yup, that certainly is a scary person from San Francisco!

Exciting event!

Exciting event!  Via reader and friend Simon M.:

I have two extra tickets for an exciting event in Tennessee next weekend.  Robbie Knievel (son of Evel) is going to attempt a death defying jump over 1000 Obama supporters and 30 IRS agents with a Caterpillar D9 bulldozer. It should be an exciting event to watch.

Oh, man, I can hardly wait!

Geek: the ampere, redefined...

Geek: the ampere, redefined...  Most of the fundamental units involved in electronics have long since been defined in terms of an observable physical phenomenon that's readily repeatable.  This is actually quite a crucial need for metrology – the science of measurement that is a crucial underpinning for the entire electronics industry, mainly through applied metrology in the form of the calibration of electronic instruments.

But one of the most fundamental of electrical units – the ampere (the unit of electrical current) – has always been defined in much more ambiguous terms.  It looks like that may be about to change, though.

My last assignment in the US Navy was to our shipboard metrology lab, where I first ran into the whole idea of calibration – far more interesting than I had imagined.  We had a few requirements on the ship for very high precision measurements, mainly related to the nuclear reactors and some of the weapons systems on board.  The two most challenging things for us to calibrate were precision ammeters (current-measuring devices) and precision calorimeters (you could think of them as fancy, very precise thermometers).  In both cases we needed references whose calibration was traceable to NIST by no more than two steps.  I don't know how hard that is today, but back then (mid-'70s) getting those references generally involved a shipment from NIST labs in Maryland or Colorado, and the references had to be used within a few days – otherwise their values might drift.  The reason we had to go to those extremes was the lack of a definition in terms of observable physical phenomena – that forced the entire calibration chain to be dependent on standards held at the NIST labs...

This is quite an interesting team!

This is quite an interesting team!  The new Blackphone is put together by a team with several members that I'm familiar with: Phil Zimmerman, Jon Callas, Mike Janke, and Mike Kershaw.  There are some strong personalities in that group, and a lot of technical expertise. 

I don't know a thing about the product itself (a mobile phone oriented toward privacy and security).  I like the idea in a very general sense, but I wonder how many people and companies have to be trusted to keep it secure – and, post-Snowden, I have to wonder how long it will take the NSA to weasel their way in.  Or do they have a collaborator on the team? 

Here's some paranoid thinking for you: if you were the NSA, and you were getting annoyed by the security features on commercial cellphones, wouldn't starting a company to make supposedly secure cellphones that you've built a backdoor into be the perfect ploy?  Mind you, I'm not suggesting that the NSA has done this with the Blackphone.  I'm just pointing out the kind of scenarios that you must consider when you know what the NSA has already done.

Another example: I read a completely unsubstantiated rumor in the comments of a post on a security-related blog, to the effect that John Chambers (long time CEO of Cisco) was an ex-NSA employee who had built Cisco as, effectively, a captive subsidiary of the NSA.  And I didn't completely dismiss it immediately.  Paranoia is becoming a frame of mind whenever I think of computer security...

Net neutrality is dead...

Net neutrality is dead...  Well, not quite.  But all the progressives and rent-seekers are squealing nicely, so I'm happy about it.  This is one of those complicated issues that can be analyzed quite simply by just listening to see who's not happy...

Coincidence? You decide...

Coincidence?  You decide...  A Facebook post by Chuck Heath, who happens to be Sarah Palin's brother:

Coincidence? You decide.

My father, who worked multiple jobs and faithfully and honestly paid his taxes for fifty years, had never heard a word from the IRS. In 2008, his daughter was tapped to run for vice president of the United States. Since that time, he has been, in his words "horribly harassed" six times by the agency. They've tried to dig up something on him but he's always operated above board.

Government and politics are ugly. Kudos to the few that are trying to clean it up.

I don't understand why so few people seem to be upset by the politicization of the IRS.

Paul Caron, writing at the TaxProf Blog, has been posting about this scandal every day since it first broke, 251 days ago today.  If you want to know what the status of the scandal is (and especially what facts have been discovered), his place is the place to go...

Oops...

Oops...  The Israelis let slip what they really think of Kerry's efforts to broker a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.  Though I have to wonder whether that slip was really accidental or not...

Incandescent bulbs are back!

Incandescent bulbs are back!  This caught me completely by surprise, as I thought the issue was politically kaput.  The budget deal just agreed by the bipartisan negotiations (and which That One has already said he'd sign) includes some side-agreements (that's business as usual for our crazy legislature).  One of those side-agreements defunds all enforcement of the Bush-era energy standards that effectively banned incandescent bulbs.  It's not complete victory, as the standards are still on the books – but at least they won't be enforced.

The lamestream media is covering this story, but in a low-key manner – and is mindlessly mouthing the support of the environmentalist wackos and bemoaning the loss of the rules.  Not a single story mentioned the fact that the major support for this bill comes from the rent-seeking lobbying of Philips and General Electric, who were after a government mandate to replace every light bulb with newer, less reliable, higher margin replacements.  And of course there wasn't a single story about the fact that the quality of the light from incandescent bulbs is different (and, for most people, markedly better) than the alternative technologies available today.  Nope, they just want to tell me what to do, because they know how to spend my money much better than I do!

Delivering 5mb of storage, circa 1956...

Delivering 5mb of storage, circa 1956...  IBM, of course.  Click to embiggen.  Spotted this in a nice collection of vintage photos...

The caption on that photo says it's “memory”, but I recognize the internals that are exposed in the photo through the open side panel – they are very much like the IBM disk drives that I worked on when I was in the US Navy, in the early '70s.  Those hoses you see toward the left really are hoses – for the high-pressure hydraulic system that positioned the read/write heads on that beast.  A couple of times I worked on disks that had developed a hydraulic system leak.  What a mess!  Large quantities of sticky, purplish fluid were all over everything – and in one case, when a pinhole leak had developed in a hose, the skinny stream of fluid had cut right through wires and printed circuit boards!  The failure modes for electronic systems were a little different back then :)

Judith Curry, meet Friedrich von Hayek...

Judith Curry, meet Friedrich von Hayek...  What happens when an honest and open-minded climatologist discovers the economist who faced down the uncertainties and complexities of modern economies?  I can't summarize it in any useful way, but it's darned interesting!

If That One had any honor at all, he'd resign...

If That One had any honor at all, he'd resign...  I'm not holding my breath for that event, though.  What's provoked me this morning is the news that in Obama's very first briefing on the Benghazi attack of 9/11/2012, he was told that it was an attack, not some overblown reaction to a video.  What that means, of course, is that Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Susan Rice all lied to the American public, repeatedly, and long after they knew the truth about who killed our ambassador and his bodyguards, and what provoked it.

They lied for political purpose, plain and simple, and apparently without any shame at all.  The narrative is more important to them than the truth.  They are without honor, and unworthy of our respect...

Le Chambon-sur-Lignon...

Le Chambon-sur-Lignon...  Yesterday, I happened across the story of the French village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon during WWII; despite all my reading about WWII, I had never heard the story before, and it's an inspiring one.  The people of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon saved about 5,000 Jews from the Nazis, at great personal cost and at considerable risk to themselves.  There are many stories like this from WWII, but this particular one was new to me, and notable for the number of people they saved.

But what really caught my eye was the mention that the residents of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon were mainly Huguenot – a French Protestant sect that had itself been much persecuted (by the French government).  Their memory of that persecution was part of their motivation to save the Jews.

My ancestors, on my father's side, were Huguenot refugees from the town of La Touche, not very far from Le Chambon-sur-Lignon.  They fled for their lives (quite literally), first to the Netherlands, then to England, and finally to America...

Pater: primogeniture...

Pater: primogeniture...  At right is Mo'i, chugging his way through a field of wildflowers in Corkscrew Gulch of Colorado's San Juan Mountains.  Mo'i was my dad's favorite dog amongst ours – a male field spaniel who shared my dad's love of food and naps...

Primogeniture...

I am the oldest child of my parents, who were farmers – and farmers, by long informal custom, tend to practice primogeniture (inheritance by the oldest son).  To the best of my knowledge, in the U.S. this has always been a matter of tradition and custom, not law.  It's also something that is honored as much in the breach as in the observance.

My dad (my entire family, actually) is notable for not following all that many traditions and customs.  We're weird, and we're proud of it!  While I certainly knew that I was the oldest son, and knew in a general way that the oldest sons of farmers frequently “took over the farm”, I don't recall ever thinking that such a custom might apply to me.  I had absolutely no interest in any kind of agricultural career – between my (life long :) aversion to hard physical labor and my keen interest in science and technology, spending my life on the farm was not an attractive proposition.  I spent no time at all considering it.

One evening after I graduated from high school and was still living at home, my dad awkwardly asked if I would talk with him a bit.  We were in his “office”, then down in the basement of our home.  We sat down to talk, but he was having a terrible time working up the courage to have his say.  He talked all around the subject of my future on the farm, mostly by asking me questions.  For instance, he asked me if I enjoyed watching the seedlings grow into nursery stock, and if I thought that working outdoors was a good thing.

He went on in that vein for 10 or 15 minutes, getting slightly more comfortable with the conversation himself, but leaving me increasingly puzzled.  His discomfiture was entirely at odds with the innocence of our actual conversation.  But at some point, it suddenly clicked for me, and I realized he was trying to ask me if I was interested in taking over the farm.  In my selfish youth, it never once occurred to me that he might have an interest in that.

From my vantage point now, over forty years later, it's easy for me to imagine why my dad would want to have that conversation.  I certainly would not have looked to him like a particularly hopeful candidate for inheriting the farm, but I must have at least looked like a possibility.  I don't know what he imagined my interest would be –  he knew of my interests in science and technology, and he most definitely knew how much I detested hard physical work.  But he also knew how much I loved nature, and that I shared much of his appreciation for the beauty of plants.  I can imagine that he was hopeful I'd have some interest.

Back then, though, my response was entirely self-centered and ungentle: I said “No way!”, or words to that effect, and forcefully, too.  That was the end of our conversation.

The subject rose just twice more between us.

The second time was on our trip together through Colorado in 1975.  I had been in the US Navy for several years at that point, and was looking forward to getting out in just a couple years.  His business was then in transition, and it was clear by then that none of my siblings were interested in taking over the business from him.  So, this time much more directly, my dad raised the subject with me again.  The moment he chose was when we were both sitting on a boulder high up on a mountain valley side, overlooking a waterfall surrounded by wildflowers (this might well have been in Yankee Boy Basin in the San Juan Mountains), with a gorgeous blue sky overhead.  A light breeze carried the scents of the wildflowers to us, along with the roar of the waterfall.  Butterflies flitted all around us.  There wasn't a soul in sight; we had this idyllic scene to ourselves, while we talked about his future.

I learned several things in that conversation.  One was that my dad had accepted my choice to not be a farmer, nurseryman, or horticulturist.  I also learned that he faulted himself for this, to some extent – I tried very hard to dissuade him of this.  He had the notion that he had somehow failed to nurture a sense of the worth of farming in me.  That certainly wasn't true – there were plenty of careers I thought were eminently worthy, but that I had no interest in.  Farming was just one on a long list of such careers.  Then my dad started rambling a bit about what the future of his nursery business held, and I realized that he was fearful that it would fail entirely – the business was changing, and despite the large population increases around him, the market for the kinds of services and plants he could offer appeared to be shrinking.  He was, I realized, genuinely fearful about what the future held for him.  He talked about how he had never managed to save anything, and he worried about what might happen to my mom.

This was all quite shocking to me.  At that time I knew next to nothing about business (some would argue I'm still in that boat :).  It had never occurred to me before that my father's business could fail.  Obviously, though, it had occurred to him.

After that introduction, my dad asked me if I still felt the same way about being involved with the nursery business.  He said that he recognized that it was a big risk, but he also thought that with my help, we might be able to change it in some way that would make it more successful.

This time, my response was a bit more thoughtful than the one I'd had 6 or 7 years earlier.  If anything, I was even more interested in science and technology than before – and I certainly hadn't lost my aversion to hard physical work.  This time, though, I took the time to talk about all that with my dad.  It turned out to be a easy conversation, and I think it was a big relief for him to be able to talk it out with me.  We ended up talking for a couple of hours, up there on that rock.  When we were all done, my dad thanked me for helping him understand what my plans were.  He was disappointed that I wasn't interested in taking over the farm, but not critical about it at all.

That is, in fact, the one thing that jumps out at me now about my dad's reaction to my disinterest in taking over his business: he was never critical, never bitter.  Not once did he ever try to change my mind.  I never heard him even wish that things were otherwise.  He simply accepted it, smiled, and moved on.

We had one last conversation about this subject, years later, and that conversation had a very different nature.  We were again on one of our trips together (I can't recall which one, but I think it was in the late '90s).  I remember being in a cabin alone with him, fireplace roaring, and my dad said that he was now very glad that I had made the choice, all those years ago, to pursue my own career.  He rambled on for quite a long time about all the things that had happened to his own business, the inevitability of it all, the changes in what people wanted in landscaping, and how the farm was likely going to be sold (whether or not I'd been involved).  Then he said some very nice things about what I'd accomplished, and made it plain that he thought my career choices had been good ones.  My dad said he was glad that things had turned out the way they had, both for him and for me.

I sure miss that man...

ObamaCare debacle update...

ObamaCare debacle update...  Even the ObamaCare supporters are starting to notice there's something wrong – and some are abandoning ship...

The ObamaCare legal “poison pill” – an exploration of the seeds That One has unintentionally sown that could lead to the dismantlement of ObamaCare...

James Taranto with an update on ObamaCare's rollout.  Mostly it's a list of the predicted failure modes panning out ... as failures.

An ObamaCare supporter rejoices when she and her husband sign up for ObamaCare policies – but just a few days later they abandon them as complete failures, and buy private policies instead.  A very sobering tale, especially when you know it's being told by an ObamaCare supporter.  Here's her conclusion:

Some may boil our misadventures down to its core, a bratty dirge by privileged whiners who don’t even need Obamacare and are sore they couldn’t get their medication covered. But that’s just it — we, too, need and want more affordable health care. We are precisely the kind of folks they need to make these exchanges work. If it’s all poor, very sick people, Obama can kiss his legacy goodbye.

What’s more, we have the time and initiative to dig for answers. As journalists, we could tap on the shoulders of people who ought to know, but that failed, too. Even with the looming prospect of being subject to this sort of publicity, nobody could give us complete, prompt or useful information. How are people who don’t badger public figures for a living, people who have no other option than to contend with Phone People, supposed to work it out?

But this isn’t merely a failure of government — though it is that. It’s also a failure of the private sector in the form of the insurance industry. They’ve received an unbelievable gift, a government-backed money-minting machine on an epic scale. Nobody really likes them, either. This is their chance, too. And their Phone People are no better despite being significantly more experienced. Their media spokespeople were even less responsive than the government’s, and that’s a pretty low bar.

Come November, we’ll check back and see what Obamacare plans are available for 2015. We want the ACA to work; the previous status quo certainly did not.

Right now, though, it’s time to move on. It’s easy to shrug that these are the expected growing pains of a massive new system. That’s probably true. But in real time, it is destructive to our finances and potentially bad for our health.

The president promised a system that would make obtaining insurance as easy as buying a book on Amazon.com. Instead, he gave us – so far, anyhow – one that’s about as easy as getting the NSA to stop listening to our phone calls.

History of the world, in 2 minutes...

History of the world, in 2 minutes...  Via my mom, who said “Don’t blink!” 

As I was watching this, I was pondering the way that any presentation of history contains the biases of its author.  Then at the 1:19 mark the image at right showed up – and I went from disinterested observer to battling with YouTube to freeze that shot :) 

That scene could have been taken on the fantail of the ship I was stationed on in April, 1975 (the USS Long Beach CGN-9).  I could be in that photo, as I was in a working party just like that one, pushing helicopters off the fantail and into the South China Sea.  I found the photo online, though – it was actually taken on the USS Blue Ridge, a communications ship that was in the same task force my ship was in.  We worked just as fast as we could, so that the next helicopter circling overhead, full of refugees fleeing for their very lives, could land and find safety.

Here's the video that the image at right came from:

Hah!

Hah!  Via my lovely bride...

On that Iranian deal...

On that Iranian deal...  There are so many facets of this that bother and discomfit me.  First, there's my generalized distrust of the U.S. State Department, for whom process and posturing seem to be their primary objective.  Then there's my specific distrust of Kerry, seared into my memory.  Add to that the public, gloating twitterings of the Iranian chief negotiator Hassan Rouhani.  An example from yesterday:

Our relationship w/ the world is based on Iranian nation's interests. In #Geneva agreement world powers surrendered to Iranian nation's will
— Hassan Rouhani (@HassanRouhani) January 14, 2014

Now this morning I read rumors about a secret side deal with Iran – and in this case, I'm confident that if it's secret, it's because it's contrary to the interests of the non-Iranian powers (including the U.S.).

We badly need some adult supervision in Washington, but I don't see any showing up anytime soon.  I just hope That One and his bevy of bozos can avoid blowing up the world before 2016...

Google acquires Nest...

Google acquires Nest...  We have a Nest thermostat in our home, and we love the thing (even though the NSA has probably hacked into it and is using it to monitor our hummingbirds).  The company has recently come out with a new product (Protect, a smart smoke and CO monitor) as well.  The company has a clever premise: to reinvent “unloved” (their word) devices and make them into something lovable.

I would not have expected them to be a target for Google.  While they may have more money than the U.S. Treasury, $3.2 billion (in cash, no less).  I really don't think Google is looking at the screen on the Nest as a target for advertising :)  So they must have some other idea in mind.  If you look at the wide variety of acquisitions (especially those of device manufacturers) that Google has been making in the last year or so, the one common thread seems to be that these are connected devices – part of the anticipated and much ballyhooed Internet of things that John Chambers so loves to ramble on about.  Still, it's not at all clear to me why it's to Google's advantage to own big chunks of the Internet of things.

Maybe it's much simpler than I'm imagining.  Maybe Google's huge pile of cash is burning a hole in their corporate pocket, and they're just going to buy lots of things everything...

A countryman's lament...

A countryman's lament...  Victor Davis Hansen on the changes around his country abode...

2,300 year old computing machine...

2,300 year old computing machine...  Well, sort of – a multiplication table on bamboo strips, from ancient China...

Pater: demolition!

Pater: demolition!  At right are some lupines that my dad and I enjoyed, at Cement Creek in the San Juan Mountains, on July 17th, 2005.

Demolition!

In my dad's notes on our nursery's history, I found one terse entry for 1964:

1964 Tom & kids dismantled big house

That event looms rather larger in my memory than that brief entry would indicate :)

The “big house” he referred to was the first house I lived in, as an infant (I have just a couple of vague memories of it).  As a child, I knew it as “Uncle Donald’s house” – where my uncle Donald, my aunt Marion, and my cousin Jonathan lived.  It was an old home even then, built near the highway (US 130).  It had three stories (including the unfinished attic) and a full basement, and seemed enormous to me as a kid.  Even after my family moved out of the second story apartment and into our own house, I visited there frequently – most often to play with my cousin, who was one year older than I.

The house was full of beautiful woodwork, most especially the grand staircase.  There were several other features of that house that made a big impression on me.   It had a roof made of thick slates (not at all like the fragile, thin slates used today), with gutters and flashing made of tin-plated iron sheet.  The window screens were made of copper, with the horizontal “wires” being narrow flat pieces angled like a Venetian blind set to keep out the sun.  I can't even imagine what such a screen would cost today!  The interior walls were hand-plastered over lath.  Some of the electrical wiring was still old-fashioned cloth-covered wire on ceramic posts, soldered and rubber-taped at the joints.  In the basement, one light switch was still an exposed knife switch.  The nails used throughout the house were cut from flat metal, not round wire as modern nails are.  They were also made of iron, not steel.  My dad once told me that the house had been built by a team of Italian craftsmen that were brought over from Italy just for this job.

As you entered that house from the door we normally used, you passed through a small, narrow kitchen on your left, then past my uncle's office on your right, and into the dining room.  Further on was the living room, which opened onto the staircase to the second floor.  There was my cousin's bedroom and his parents' bedroom, and the small kitchen and bedroom that my parents lived in when they were first married, and when I was an infant.  My mom tells me that we moved into our new house on September 10, 1953, when I was just one year old.  The only rooms that were finished at the time were the kitchen, dining room, and tiny bathroom off the kitchen – everything else was just studs!

My mom told me something this morning that I'd not heard before: the landscaping for the big house was done by Frederick Olmsted, a famous landscape architect.  He chose all the big trees around the house: a ginkgo, a scarlet oak, a Norway spruce, and a Magnolia acuminata.  Most of these trees were uncommon in our area.

In 1962 and 1963, my uncle Donald built a new home for his family, far back from the highway noise.  It was a “kit” house, delivered by railway car.  In the summer 1963, when I was 10, I “helped” him with some of the carpentry work.  Uncle Donald was constantly in a sour mood, complaining about one thing or another, but most especially about how he just could not get his son (my cousin Jonathan) to take any interest in building the house.  He was grateful for my help, especially on the tedious sawing and nailing involved in the sub-floor installation.  As he finished framing each section of the wall, he and I would lift it from the horizontal to the vertical position, and I'd go up on a ladder to nail the sections together.  I didn't realize it at the time, but I think Uncle Donald was uncomfortable on the ladder.

In early 1964, Uncle Donald and his family moved into their new house, and their old house needed to come down (I believe it had actually been condemned for some reason).  So ... if you're a farmer, and you need to demolish a house, what do you do?  Why, you put the kids to work, of course!

In 1964, I was just 11 years old, so my memories of this are a bit fuzzy.  I remember my dad, myself, and my brother Scott working on the demolition.  I think my uncle helped some as well.  I don't remember my cousin being there, though it seems like he should have been.  Julius and Chalky both helped when needed, especially Chalky on some heavy work.  I think my sister may have helped some as well, though I don't have any specific memories of that.  My grandfather (my dad's father) was there almost every day, working out in the yard straightening nails on an anvil.  He was recovering from the effects of a traffic accident that had almost killed him, and straightening those nails was one of the few ways that he was able to participate.  He straightened several barrels full of nails from that house.

What did we kids do? Most of what we did was smash, pry, and throw.  We smashed through plaster walls, pulled all the plaster and lath off, then pulled out all the cotton batting and newspaper insulation we found.  Much more carefully, we worked up on the roof, prying off individual slates and carrying them down to pile up (they were worth saving).  We pried out windows, tore apart the window frames, and pulled out the cast iron counter-weights.  We hammered on pipes until they broke apart, and occasionally had to saw through one.  We threw all the debris we collected out the windows onto big piles on the ground.  We worked on the roof, on ladders, on precarious piles of junk – violating just about every safety principle known to mankind in the process.

My brother Scott remembers feeling powerful and useful as he wielded his sledgehammer.  I remember teasing him about being sort of a mad dog at this work – he was really getting into it.  I was fascinated by all the things we found as we ripped that house apart – there was so much of its construction that was very different than the construction I'd helped my uncle with the year prior.  I've already mentioned the flat nails.  Another big difference: virtually nothing in the construction of that old house was straight or square.  Nearly every joint had one or more wedge-shaped shims (made of oak) that were used to force the joint into square.  Also, many of the joints – even in mundane things like the studs – were made with hardwood pegs wedged into place with nails.  Wherever we saw a drilled hole, it was obvious that it had been made with a hand-turned twist drill – they were never straight, and the sides of the hole bore the scars left by the imperfect drill bits.

My dad seemed to be everywhere as we tore that house down.  He would have been 40 years old that year, and in peak physical condition.  So far as Scott and I could tell, he never got tired, and only rarely ran into something beyond his capacity.  If we got stuck, unable to pry something loose, or to lift something, generally he'd come over and do it easily.  There were just a few occasions when my dad needed to get help, usually just from us kids.  We took the big staircase out in one piece (to install as the stairs to our basement in our house), and for that I remember we had my dad, Chalky (who was even stronger than my dad!), Julius, Scott, and I – and we struggled to get it out without damaging it.

The house came down from the top down, of course.  We took off the roof tiles first, then the roof's framing.  In the process we dislodged a large number of bats, which all took off, annoyed, to our neighbor's farm (owned by a Mr. Sadley).  We also found a flying squirrel in the attic, which became a pet: Jingles.  My dad built a big cage for it, wood-framed with hardware cloth walls.  Scott had a big problem with an allergic reaction – to the plaster dust, bat and rat droppings, or maybe the cotton batting.  In any case, his nose was running badly the whole time we worked on that house.  I wasn't so badly affected.

Tearing that house down was sustained hard physical work, day after day for several weeks.  It's the first such burst of work I remember ever doing, and oddly enough I remember it as being satisfying and occasionally even fun.  There were definitely moments that weren't pleasant – a couple of times I managed to cut myself, and I recall one close call on the roof (when I lost my purchase on the roof and started sliding toward the edge).  But the memories that have stuck for nearly 50 years are of comradeship, of shared work, and of satisfying accomplishment (even if it was of the destructive kind :).  Mainly between the three of us (my dad, Scott, and I) we completely demolished a three story house – reducing it to a few piles of stuff worth saving, and a large pile of rubble...

History of U.S. Income Tax...

History of U.S. Income Tax...  Here's a nice piece by Daniel Greenfield, writing at Sultan Knish, highlighting a little-known fact about the origins of the U.S. Income Tax: that the political impetus for it came largely from progressive forces pressing for alcohol prohibition.  Why?  Because almost half of the federal government's tax receipts at the time came from liquor taxes – and prohibition would wipe that out.  The progressives' solution was to impose an income tax on the wealthiest Americans (oh, doesn't that sound familiar?!?!).  A century later very few Americans realize that prohibition led quite directly to the rapid growth of all government because of the newly tapped source of money.  And nothing delights a progressive quite like spending someone else's money...

Chang 3 and Yutu successfully awoken from hibernation...

Chang 3 and Yutu successfully awoken from hibernation...  Photo of Yutu at right.  They went into hibernation for the two week long lunar night.  Now that the sun has risen on their location, Chinese controllers have woken both of them.  They report that all systems are nominal (space-speak for everything is working normally)...

Prostitution is caused by...

Prostitution is caused by ... climate change.  So says Democratic Representative Barbara Lee (from California, of course) and a dozen other moonbats.

You just can't make this stuff up!

Soviet-style price controls for milk...

Soviet-style price controls for milk ... in America.  That's what the Democrats are looking for.  It continues to amaze me just how few Americans realize the extent to which their government is jacking up the grocery store prices on agricultural commodities like sugar, milk, and rice...

Your morning funnies...

Your morning funnies...  At The Smallest Minority, more like this one...

Caring for your introvert...

Caring for your introvert...  Jonathan Rauch with some good advice for introvert-keepers...

An Engineer's Guide to Cats 2.0...

An Engineer's Guide to Cats 2.0...  Awesome!  Via my lovely bride...

Blast from the past...

Blast from the past...  Reader and friend Simon M. passes along this video of a news report from 1981, talking about the wonders of online news reading.

I don't recall ever seeing this particular news report, but it could have been about me: I was reading the news online in 1981, for the first time.  At that time, I was a big user of CompuServe, the then-giant of the online world (this considerably predates the Internet).

Back then, we connected to CompuServe through a 300 baud modem, faster than the 110 baud acoustic coupled modems shown in this video.  We also connected to privately-run, free “bulletin board services” (BBS), and on those we could connect as fast as 700 baud using a proprietary modem from a now-defunct company with a memorable name: Potomac Micro Magic Inc., or PMMI for short (image at left).  Their modems were S-100 boards crammed with discrete components, marvels of electronics ingenuity for their time.  I was amazed to find that the manual for that ancient thing is available online, and reading through it brought that board right back to life for me, along with some of the norms for the day.  Back then, we had to use FCC-registered “couplers” to legally connect a modem to the phone line; that was a hangover from the fully regulated telephone lines of just a few years earlier, when it was illegal to connect anything to the phone lines unless you bought it from AT&T.  Then I had to laugh at the extensive programming examples in the manual – in several flavors of Basic, and in 8080 assembly language.  What a different world back then!

Geek: some ARM cleverness for immediate operands...

Geek: some ARM cleverness for immediate operands...  I'm currently reading a lot on computer instruction sets, as I have a goal of building a computer from component parts.  I've chosen a simple architecture for my machine, based on my reading over the past few months: a 32 bit RISC machine.  The ARM family is good example of a successful RISC design, so I've been looking at it.  I'd never written ARM assembly language before, so the entire thing is new to me.  Yesterday I ran across this discussion of ARM's 12 bit immediate operand encoding, an ingenious approach to maximally exploiting those 12 measly bits.

If you're familiar with immediate values from other machine's instruction sets, you know that generally speaking they are simply constant values with a bit length shorter than the computer's word length (if the processor has fixed word lengths, as ARM does) or equal to the computer's word length (if the processor has variable instruction length, as the x86 does).  There are quite a few machines with variable-length instruction sets that implement both variations of immediate values.

The ARM, though, does something that is unique, so far as I'm aware: rather than use simple constant values, its 12 bit immediate value is divided into two fields: a 4 bit rotation specifier and an 8 bit integer.  The rotation specifier is internally multiplied by two, then used as a rotate right operand, with the result being 32 bits long.  For example, the immediate value 0x345 becomes 0x45 rotate right 6 = 0x14000001.  This mechanism allows that 12 bit immediate to encode quite a few values within a 32 bit space, including every possible single bit value – a very useful capability indeed, and without the need for a special bit level instruction.

Very clever, ARM folks!

PS.  The site linked above has a very nice interactive demonstrator for the ARM immediate value encoding...

California leads the way...

California leads the way ... to the abolition of private property.  What am I babbling about?  SB1 has been approved by both the California assembly and senate – it needs only the Moonbeam's signature to become law.  A careful read of the bill's text reveals something quite disturbing: the creation of a mechanism by which any private property could be defined as blight, and therefore subject to government taking under the doctrine of eminent domain.

More detailed analysis here, here, and especially here.  It's scary stuff.  We are so glad that we've already decided to leave this loony bin!

Overheard...

Overheard...  Yesterday Debbie and I stopped for lunch at a local institution (who is blameless, and therefore shall not be dragged into this).  As we tucked into our sandwiches, a pair of girls came in and sat at a table adjacent to us.  They looked to me to be in their 20s, but from subsequent overheard conversation it was clear they were high school seniors (and, we hope, younger than 20).  Shortly thereafter, a pair of boys came in and sat at a table adjacent to both us and the two girls.  From overheard conversation, it became clear that the two boys were also seniors, in the same high school as the two girls – all parties knew each other well.

One of the girls was trying very hard to keep a conversation going between the four of them.  She'd ask leading questions, obviously hoping to draw the boys into a conversation.  Considering her age, I thought she was actually quite skilled at this, and I was half-listening to the chatter mostly to admire both her skill and her persistence.  Then she asked the one question that sticks in my mind (well, actually, it's the answer that sticks).  She said, to one of the boys:

Hey, are you going to get a job after you graduate?

To which he replied:

No, I can get more money from unemployment.

Oh, my.  That's just wrong on multiple levels!

I have no idea what this boy's previous employment experience was, but if I'm reading the California eligibility requirements correctly, he'd have to have been employed within the past 12 months to be eligible for unemployment insurance (UI) at all.  However, I'm not at all confident that I'm reading them correctly (they are complex and poorly written), nor am I confident that our state government is smart enough to enforce such a requirement.

Then there's the question of the amount of money paid by UI.  Surely it's not equal even to minimum wage?  According to the previously linked document, the maximum UI rate is $450 per week (or $11.25 per hour for a 40 hour week).  Elsewhere I see that California's current minimum wage is $8/hour.  So yes, it is possible to make more money through UI than through full time employment at minimum wage.

So was this boy's assertion accurate?  I can't say for certain, but it does appear that it is possible that he was correct.  If so, that is just wrong – it makes no sense at all for any UI scheme to provide the perverse incentive of making UI more lucrative than a job.

Then there's the question of the boy's attitude, his moral stance: why does he think it's acceptable to make a choice like that?  Not only acceptable in a minimalist way, either – but acceptable enough that he was willing to proclaim it in a public setting, to a girl he obviously thought well of.  I find that quite shocking, a measure of just how far our society's fabric has torn in the period of my life.  My high school peers would have thought that choosing to go on UI instead of getting a job was shameful.  So shameful that they would have gone out of their way to keep that choice private and secret.  Making such a choice public would have had a severe stigma attached to it, a public shaming that nobody would have wanted to endure.  Contrast that with this boy's straightforward reckoning that choosing to go on the dole was more lucrative than a job, and therefore would be his choice.  From the chatter subsequent to his announcement of his choice, there didn't appear to be any shame attached to it by any of the four youths.  It was the logical, rational thing to do...

I sure hope that what I overheard yesterday was an aberration.  If it was not – if it's really an accurate reflection of our young people's attitudes – then I am much less hopeful about my country's future...

Anniversary today!

Anniversary today!  One year ago today, I retired.  Yay!

California leads the way...

California leads the way ... to new heights of nanny-statism.  Starting January 1, it is now illegal for sushi chefs in California to make sushi with their bare hands.  They are now required to wear gloves.  Seriously.

The bill instituting this requirement was AB 1252, approved on October 4, 2013 by Governor Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown.

Listen up, That One!

Listen up, That One!

The week in images...

The week in images...  Steven Hayward, writing at Powerline, has a wonderful collection of images from the week, like the one at right...

Senatorial pressure getting attention...

Senatorial pressure getting attention...  Senator Udall's attempt to quash the release of ObamaCare cancellation numbers is getting a lot more attention today...

Analog computers coming back into vogue?

Analog computers coming back into vogue?  Well, maybe.  New metamaterials are providing opportunities to build components that perform basic analog computation (amplify, invert, add, subtract, multiply, divide, differentiate, integrate, etc.) with light, rather than electricity.  These could be used either directly as an analog computer, or indirectly as components in a light-based digital computer (much as transistors, resistors, capacitors, and inductors are used to make electronic computers).

Back in the '70s, when I was in the U.S. Navy, our ship still had quite a few analog computational systems still on board and in use.  The biggest, baddest of them was the all-analog fire control computer that ran the Terrier anti-aircraft missile system that was my ship's primary defensive weapon.  These analog systems were electro-mechanical beasts, full of precision electronic components, synchro motors, gears (some of them very complex), and oddly shaped cams that implemented arbitrary math functions.  Maintaining those computers was a never-ending job, mainly involving cleaning (dust and dirt actually affected their accuracy!) and lubricating.  A few systems also had electronic calibration that needed regular tuning.  But...these systems were (at that time) smaller than digital systems with the same capability, and in certain cases were faster.  These days a digital computer would win the race hands down, but back then, when our mainframe had a blazing 100KHz clock, an analog computer doing a few multiplies, divides, and differentiations, would beat the digital computer handily...

Cosmic magnifying glass...

Cosmic magnifying glass...  An anomalously bright supernova was originally classified as a new type of super-bright supernova, because it was 30 times brighter than expected.  Now another astronomer proposes that it's actually a well-known Type Ia supernova, but is seen from earth as magnified by the gravitational lensing of an intervening galaxy (as seen from Earth).  The evidence for this new hypothesis is at the fringe of data the best current telescopes can provide – but newer, larger telescopes coming on line in the next few years should be able to settle the question...

Geek: fast arithmetic entropy encoding...

Geek: fast arithmetic entropy encoding...  This post, on finite state entropy encoding for lossless data compression, caught my eye for two reasons.  First, I have a general interest in data compression.  Secondly, the approach the author took has the same objectives as the decimal number formatting and parsing project I'm currently working on – accomplishing its job entirely with additions, shifts, and masks (no multiplies and especially no divides)...

Home schooled...

Home schooled...  Via reader Simi L.

1. My mother taught me TO APPRECIATE A JOB WELL DONE: "If you're going to kill each other, do it outside. I just finished cleaning."

2. My mother taught me RELIGION: "You better pray that will come out of the carpet."

3. My father taught me about TIME TRAVEL: "If you don't straighten up, I'm going to knock you into the middle of next week!"

4. My father taught me LOGIC: "Because I said so, that's why."

5. My mother taught me MORE LOGIC: "If you fall out of that swing and break your neck, you're not going to the store with me."

6. My mother taught me FORESIGHT: "Make sure you wear clean underwear, in case you're in an accident."

7. My father taught me IRONY: "Keep crying, and I'll give you something to cry about."

8. My mother taught me about the science of OSMOSIS: "Shut your mouth and eat your supper."

9. My mother taught me about CONTORTIONISM: "Will you look at that dirt on the back of your neck!"

10. My mother taught me about STAMINA: "You'll sit there until all that spinach is gone."

11. My mother taught me about WEATHER: "This room of yours looks as if a tornado went through it."

12. My mother taught me about HYPOCRISY: "If I told you once, I've told you a million times. Don't exaggerate!"

13. My father taught me the CIRCLE OF LIFE: "I brought you into this world, and I can take you out..."

14. My mother taught me about BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION: "Stop acting like your father!"

15. My mother taught me about ENVY: "There are millions of less fortunate children in this world who don't have wonderful parents like you do."

16. My mother taught me about ANTICIPATION: "Just wait until we get home."

17. My mother taught me about RECEIVING: "You are going to get it from your father when you get home!"

18. My mother taught me MEDICAL SCIENCE: "If you don't stop crossing your eyes, they are going to get stuck that way."

19. My mother taught me ESP: "Put your sweater on; don't you think I know when you are cold?"

20. My father taught me HUMOR: "When that lawn mower cuts off your toes, don't come running to me."

21. My mother taught me HOW TO BECOME AN ADULT: "If you don't eat your vegetables, you'll never grow up."

22. My mother taught me GENETICS: "You're just like your father."

23. My mother taught me about my ROOTS: "Shut that door behind you. Do you think you were born in a barn?"

24. My mother taught me WISDOM: "When you get to be my age, you'll understand."

25. My father taught me about JUSTICE: "One day you'll have kids, and I hope they turn out just like you!"

Lithops dorotheae...

Lithops dorotheae...  Also known as “living stones”.  Via BPOD...

ObamaCare debacle update...

ObamaCare debacle update...  One can never have too much schadenfreude!

Mix of ObamaCare enrollees worse than expected.  Of course it was.

No record of you.  That's what some ObamaCare policy holders are hearing as they try to use their shiny new ObamaCare policies: there's no record of their enrollment.  Well, what do you expect when government is involved?  Service and efficiency?  Surely you jest!

The numbers are so embarrassing ... that U.S. Senator (CO) Mark Udall tried to talk the Colorado Division of Insurance into not reporting them.

Most transparent administration evah says ... we like opaque better, now that we think about it...

Four months after the greatest web site implosion evah, That One's bevy of bozos decides to switch to another contractor: they're dumping CGI and switching to Accenture.  I'd never heard of CGI before, but Accenture is a big name with large enterprises...

Jamul Casino construction started...

Jamul Casino construction started...  At least, that's what's being published at a number of news sources (all of which seem to be written from the same press release).  The stories are all shy on details.  You can read them here, here, here, and here...

Still cooking the books, they are...

Still cooking the books, they are...  The unemployment numbers that came out this morning were, as usual, cooked.  The published “unemployment” number (6.7%) does not include the arbitrarily defined “discouraged workers”, and so therefore does not include all the people who are actually unemployed. The actual labor force participation rate (that is, the percentage of people of working age who are actually working) dropped (again), which would mean the unemployment rate, if measured accurately, would have increased.

Here's the participation rate, 1978 to today (Zero Hedge):

 

1978 – the Jimmy Carter “stagflation” era – is the last time the participation rate was this low.  If you corrected the published unemployment rate using the participation rate, here's what the real unemployment rate would look like (Federalist):

Quite a bit less progress, when viewed with the actual unemployment rate...

Strange coincidence noted...

Strange coincidence noted...  Reader Simi L. noted the strange coincidence of two famous historical sites being located very close to each other: the twin spiral tunnels built for the Canadian Pacific Railway in the Canadian Rockies, and the location of the Burgess Shale fossil field, where the Cambrian explosion of (bizarro-land!) species was discovered.  This map shows both of the spiral tunnels, plus the location of the most famous quarry in the Burgess Shale (the Walcott Quarry).  You may have to zoom out a little to see the three markers.  The two tunnels are about a mile apart; the quarry is about two miles from either tunnel.  Both are near the summit of Kicking Horse Pass, just a short drive northwest from Banff National Park. 

If the Cambrian explosion and the Burgess Shale are new topics for you, there's a book you should read: Wonderful Life, by Stephen Jay Gould.

How strange that these two places of historic interest (for completely unrelated reasons!) should be located so close together...

Google unemployment index...

Google unemployment index...  Once again, a result that I'm not quite sure how to interpret.  As you can see on the 5 year chart below, every November there's a dip in the index (presumably the hiring of holiday seasonal workers), and every January there's a sharp uptick (presumably the layoff of holiday seasonal workers).  But this year, the uptick is much higher than in previous years.  What does it mean?  I haven't a clue, but it's hard to see how it could be good news...

Marriage makes you stupid...

Marriage makes you stupid...  Megan McArdle with an interesting post about the effects of marriage, economic and otherwise...

How to tell if your dog is involved in a sex scandal...

How to tell if your dog is involved in a sex scandal...  A picture is worth a thousand words!  Via my mom, who is scandalous in her own special way :)

The millionaire's club...

The millionaire's club ... aka the U.S. Congress.  This year, for the first time ever, more than half of all U.S. congresscritters are millionaires.  That's interesting, and possibly concerning – but certainly not scandalous.  After all, being successful in business is one of the ways any individual might hold him or herself forth as being worthy of a position of political leadership.  I, for one, would feel much more confident of That One and his band of bozos if the leader and his band had some successful business experience.

So I've got no problem with the notion that we have lots of millionaires in Congress.  What I do have a problem with is those congresscritters whose net worths have soared while they are in Congress, with no other income.  Like, to name but just one example, the disgusting Harry Reid.  For that group (and there are members of it on both sides of the aisle), I have a standard prescription:

Rope.
Tree.
Corrupt congresscritter.
Some assembly required.

Ford knows where you drive...

Ford knows where you drive...  This story is all over the place today, usually accompanied by breathless commentary about the evils of corporate data gatherers.  I've got bad news for everybody: there's nothing either unique or surprising about Ford's gathering of GPS information.  This sort of data aggregation is a natural, even required side-effect of the other services companies like Ford are rolling out – usually to our delight, so much so that we're willing to pay big bucks to get them.

Take, for example, today's ubiquitous mobile phones.  They only work because the phone company knows exactly where you are.  Well, more precisely, they know exactly where your phone is.  Of course they keep records of where you've been – and those records allow services that we really, really want.  For example: the only reason that 911 works on your mobile phone is because that data exists.

I could go on in this vein for a long time, for there are many examples – including the services offered (and that people pay for) by Ford, GM, and other car companies that are enabled by the combination of mobile phone and GPS technologies – and the records of your car's location that result.

I don't mean to say that more privacy protections couldn't (or shouldn't) be put into place.  Personally, I favor transparency and liability as the best tools for a solution.  I think companies that use your location (or other private data) should be allowed to do so if they tell you they're doing it.  Then you can freely choose whether to use their service or not, based on your privacy concerns – and companies will find a motivation for increasing their privacy protections, based on consumer reaction.  On the liability side, I think companies should be liable for any breach of their privacy commitments, including consequential damages.  This is a big grey area right now, both in law and in precedent, and outcomes are (a) unpredictable, and (b) very expensive.  We won't see companies working hard to protect our privacy until it's in their financial interest to do so, and under today's liability regime, the incentives are mostly in the company's favor...

Tweet of the day...

Tweet of the day... Byron York, observing Christie's news conference yesterday:

MT @TPCarney: Christie's doing really well, not hedging or weaselling. Only 2 possibilities: he's innocent, or he's a Clinton-level liar.
— Byron York (@ByronYork) January 9, 2014

Yup, that pretty much sums it up!

Stellar speeders...

Stellar speeders...  Several recently-discovered stars in our Milky Way galaxy are traveling at speeds greater than the escape velocity for the galaxy.  They're headed for the great void outside our galaxy – and nobody knows why...

Eggplant-flavored toothpaste...

Eggplant-flavored toothpaste...  And that's just one of the, er, interesting flavors of toothpaste available to Japanese shoppers.  Apparently the toothpaste business over there is much more competitive than ours...

Too proud...

Too proud...  One of our cats is way too proud of his accomplishments this morning!  Those fragments used to be a single paper towel...

Polar bear vortex...

Polar bear vortex...  ScrappleFace:

“Within just a few years,” Holdren said, “you’ll be able to walk from Philadelphia to Dallas on the backs of polar bears…that is, if you haven’t already been slain by a ravening famished pack of them.”

Hah!

Just in case...

Just in case... one of my readers is amongst the 5 people on the planet who haven't already seen this Proctor & Gamble ad, here it is for you.  I recommend having some tissues at hand...

Walmart 1, ObamaCare 0...

Walmart 1, ObamaCare 0...  But the progressives aren't going to let anything like facts get in their way of destroying my country.  Nope, they wouldn't do that...

Speechless, I am...

Speechless, I am...  Debbie is stunned and incredulous.  Both of us are wondering what genes we're missing.  Just about every day, I learn that my ignorance of the human condition is even more profound than I had previously thought...

The good old days...

The good old days...  They weren't really so good.  I'm with Lenore Skenazy (WSJ$) on this (I remember well how boring the backs of those cereal boxes were!).  I'll take our online world over the alleged “good old days” of libraries and book stores.  In the pre-Internet era, I spent a lot of time in musty libraries and browsing in book stores.  While there are a few aspects I miss about them, the key word there is “few” – the advantages of instant information availability on today's web, and of electronic book readers (the iPad is my current preferred platform) completely overwhelms any nostalgia I feel for the old days.  To reinforce that, all I need do is remember how much I hated the always screwed-up, always out-of-date card indexes in technical libraries.  Nope, I don't want to go back there...

Duty...

Duty.  Robert Gates' memoir is all over the news now.  An English take is here, the Wall Street Journal's here.  A paragraph from the WSJ piece sums up my own feelings on it nicely:

The Gates book may be most troubling for what it says about the three long years left in Mr. Obama's second term—which also makes us wonder why he didn't go public sooner, at the time he left office. He describes a President who knows he must invoke the traditional rhetorical markers of U.S. foreign policy—a strong defense, credibility with allies, democracy and human rights—yet whose every impulse is to leave the world to its own devices. That's especially dangerous when the American public is in an inward-looking mood. The U.S. needs a President willing to make the case for continued American engagement and leadership.

November 2016 can't come fast enough...

Flow battery advance...

Flow battery advance...  This is the general sort of technology I think is most likely to solve the grid storage problem, at least in the near term.  Here's more on flow batteries, if they're new to you...

When it's really cold outside...

When it's really cold outside...  Now that we're planning on moving out of California, to somewhere much colder, we're paying a lot more attention to things like this.

We're going to be visiting northern Utah in a few weeks to get some first-hand experience with this...

I've been waiting for this...

I've been waiting for this...  The inimitable Mark Steyn on the global warming “scientists” stuck in the Antarctic ice over Christmas.  Here's a tiny sample from the beginning of his piece:

... you’d have to have a heart as cold and unmovable as Commonwealth Bay ice not to be howling with laughter at the exquisite symbolic perfection of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition ‘stuck in our own experiment’, as they put it.

Don't miss the rest of it!

About that “polar vortex”...

About that “polar vortex”...  The lamestream media, mindlessly repeating the talking points of the warmists, would have you believe that global warming caused the polar vortex that slammed most of the U.S. last week.  Other scientists, apparently not slurping from the warmist funding teats, say “Not so fast!” – as polar vortices have been around for quite a long time.  For instance, historians are pretty sure that the notoriously cold winter of 1777, in which George Washington and the Revolutionary Army huddled up in Valley Forge, was caused by a polar vortex quite similar to last week's.  Unless my memory is even worse than I thought, I'm pretty sure there were no gas hog SUVs, coal-fired electrical plants, or 747s in 1777.  As one of my favorite Englishmen (James Delingpole) puts it:

... without polar vortices, America might look a very different country today, possibly with many times more CCTV cameras, much poorer dental care, and with cricket as its national summer sport instead of baseball.

But the warmists place far more credence on their computer models than on those pesky facts...

Geek: Java oddity...

Geek: Java oddity...  I'm writing a replacement for Java's DecimalFormat class – faster, threadsafe, and slightly extended.  In the course of writing tests for my code, I discovered some unexpected behavior in DecimalFormat when formatting float values.  Here's some code that illustrates the behavior:

DecimalFormat df = new DecimalFormat( "#0" );
String fmt = df.format( 11111111E15f );

Run that code, and fmt will contain "11111110989762554000000" – way more significant digits than should be there.  WTF!?!

With a little bit of digging, I figured out what's going on.  The DecimalFormat class doesn't have a method with a format( float ) signature.  So what's happening is that my float parameter is being cast to a double, and the method with float( double ) signature is being called.  Inside that method, it assumes that there are 53 bits of significance in the mantissa, not the 24 actually present in the float – so it emits digits to cover all that.

I'm really surprised that was done in the first place, and even more surprised that the Java folks haven't fixed it.  That could lead to some mighty misleading results!

My class won't do that :)

WWII visualization...

WWII visualization...  This is the best one I've ever seen...

Nelson Mandela sculpture...

Nelson Mandela sculpture...  My mom sent me a photo of this sculpture, which I had never seen before.  It's located at the site where he was arrested in 1963, in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.  The artist is Marco Cianfanelli, a South African himself.  He's made a number of other interesting sculptures as well.

The Mandela sculpture is made from 50 steel rods, laser-cut so that the image of Mandela is visible only from one particular direction.  This site has some images that show more detail about how the sculpture was made...

Watch this...

Watch this ... and think about your relationship to your mobile phone...

The business climate in California is so bad that...

The business climate in California is so bad that ... New York looks attractive by comparison.  I tried to think of something witty to add to that, but I couldn't think of anything that topped the simple facts...

Don't underestimate the power of the Internet to make things weird...

Don't underestimate the power of the Internet to make things weird...  Seems like good advice...

Funny looking cat!

Funny looking cat!  A few months ago, I installed an oval fuzzy shelf on our north-facing living room window sill.  The intent was to provide a perch for the cats, who love to watch the hummingbirds buzzing around the feeders you can see in the background.  However, in short order Race, our border collie, decided that the shelf was perfect for him.  He couldn't care less about the hummingbirds, but he loves to perch in that window and watch for cars coming up our driveway...