I am astounded that such a story made it onto the BBC's site. I suspect someone will be losing their job over this...During the latter half of the 17th Century, the Sun went through an extremely quiet phase - a period called the Maunder Minimum.Historical records reveal that sunspots virtually disappeared during this time.
Dr Green says: "There is a very strong hint that the Sun is acting in the same way now as it did in the run-up to the Maunder Minimum."
Mike Lockwood, professor of space environment physics, from the University of Reading, thinks there is a significant chance that the Sun could become increasingly quiet.
An analysis of ice-cores, which hold a long-term record of solar activity, suggests the decline in activity is the fastest that has been seen in 10,000 years.
"It's an unusually rapid decline," explains Prof Lockwood.
Londoners enjoyed frost fairs on the Thames in the 17th Century"We estimate that within about 40 years or so there is a 10% to 20% - nearer 20% - probability that we'll be back in Maunder Minimum conditions."
The era of solar inactivity in the 17th Century coincided with a period of bitterly cold winters in Europe.
Londoners enjoyed frost fairs on the Thames after it froze over, snow cover across the continent increased, the Baltic Sea iced over - the conditions were so harsh, some describe it as a mini-Ice Age.
Sunday, January 19, 2014
Flying pig moment, warmist edition...
Flying pig moment, warmist edition... The BBC has been a reliable promoter of AGW (anthropogenic global warming) for years now. Any skeptical views have simply not appeared there. So I was absolutely gobsmacked this morning when I read this article, which, amongst other things, says:
Wake up, Rosetta!
Molon labe!
If you're not familiar with the phrase “molon labe”, click the link for the complete story. It's a famous Greek phrase, now often used by 2nd amendment supporters. It's a retort to those who would take our weapons, meaning, basically, “Come and take it!”
ATF, of course, is the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.
In another photo (at the first link above), a chagrined ATF booth-boy is trying to remove the sticker...
North Korea propaganda film...
Saturday, January 18, 2014
Idea of the day...
Idea of the day... I came across this in a post at Althouse:
Well, I'm a member of a rich civilization. What animals do I routinely eat? The list isn't very long: cows, pigs, chickens, and a variety of seafood (some of it quite small, like mussels). While I wish it were true that the bulk of my food animal consumption was scallops, crab, and lobster, in reality its bigger animals. I probably eat more chicken (by weight) than any other food animal. If I was richer, would I eat more beef? No, I'd eat more seafood. But what do Americans on average consume? Answer: chicken, beef, pork, and turkey, in that order. American seafood consumption is tiny by comparison with any of those. Doesn't pass the sniff test.
What about a poor civilization? I don't know much about the diet of poor civilizations, but stories of eating grubs and locusts come immediately to mind in the context of this idea. A brief investigation on the web led me to several articles like this one, where it's clear that the bulk of the animals hunted are relatively small, with successful hunts of the largest animals being quite rare. On the other hand, total contribution of insects to the meat diet is tiny. Doesn't pass the sniff test.
I call bullshit on this idea...
The smaller the animals people eat, the poorer the civilization.What a weird idea! Is it true? The idea of correlating food animal size and the wealth of a civilization is a new one to me. Does it pass the sniff test? Are there poor civilizations that routinely eat large animals? Are their rich civilizations that routinely eat small animals?
Well, I'm a member of a rich civilization. What animals do I routinely eat? The list isn't very long: cows, pigs, chickens, and a variety of seafood (some of it quite small, like mussels). While I wish it were true that the bulk of my food animal consumption was scallops, crab, and lobster, in reality its bigger animals. I probably eat more chicken (by weight) than any other food animal. If I was richer, would I eat more beef? No, I'd eat more seafood. But what do Americans on average consume? Answer: chicken, beef, pork, and turkey, in that order. American seafood consumption is tiny by comparison with any of those. Doesn't pass the sniff test.
What about a poor civilization? I don't know much about the diet of poor civilizations, but stories of eating grubs and locusts come immediately to mind in the context of this idea. A brief investigation on the web led me to several articles like this one, where it's clear that the bulk of the animals hunted are relatively small, with successful hunts of the largest animals being quite rare. On the other hand, total contribution of insects to the meat diet is tiny. Doesn't pass the sniff test.
I call bullshit on this idea...
Disaster deadline looming...
Disaster deadline looming... The Hill is reporting that a document published on a government procurement site gives some of the reasons why the Healthcare.gov contract was switched from CGI to Accenture last week. One part of the document says that if the back-end build-out isn't finished by mid-March, then ObamaCare could be jeopardized, insurers could be bankrupted, and the entire healthcare system threatened.
Holy crap! Somebody is worried, if language like that worms its way into a procurement document...
The Hill includes this quote from the document:
“There is limited time to build this functionality and failure to deliver…by mid-March 2014 will result in financial harm to the government,” the document says.
Holy crap! Somebody is worried, if language like that worms its way into a procurement document...
The Hill includes this quote from the document:
“There is limited time to build this functionality and failure to deliver…by mid-March 2014 will result in financial harm to the government,” the document says.
If this functionality is not complete by mid-March 2014, the government could make erroneous payments to providers and insurers. Additionally, without a Financial Management platform that accounts for enrollments and associated program costs that integrates with the existing CMS Accounting platform, the entire healthcare reform program is jeopardized.This sounds even worse than what I had imagined...
Gloves for sushi chefs...
Debbie and I had sushi a few days ago, and we noted that the sushi chef was ignoring the new law...
Lunchly bliss in Jamul...
Lunchly bliss in Jamul... Just made this, and ate it. You should be envious:
- Roast (or grill) some chicken thighs; let them cool overnight in the fridge.
- Skin them and peel away any fat pockets; feed the skin and fat to your dogs.
- Pull all the meat from the bone; put the bones somewhere the cats can't find them.
- Dice the meat into pea-sized chunks.
- Add about 2 teaspoons of mayonnaise (and not that abomination called “Miracle Whip
”) to the chicken meat.
- Crush about a teaspoon of quality dried tarragon
leaf in a fine-meshed sieve, and sift it onto the meat and mayonnaise. Discard the remaining stems.
- Mix the meat, mayonnaise, and tarragon thoroughly.
- Very lightly toast two slices of frozen Dudley's Irish Potato bread. There should be just a touch of very light brown on the surface of the toast.
- Spread the meat mixture on the bread to make a sandwich.
This is very cute...
Geek: interesting and useful data structures...
Geek: interesting and useful data structures ... that aren't so well known. This was fascinating for me to go through, for two reasons. First, most of these weren't known to me at all, or were things I'd run into only in passing before (example: Cuckoo hash tables). Others, though, were very well known to me – but really, only because I happen to have worked in areas that used them (examples: Huffman trees and Bloom filters). I imagine that almost anyone who's worked in software for a number of years would have the same results. One might actually be able to use this as a crude metric of overall software development experience (or age :). In any case, it was an odd feeling to see a bunch of things I was familiar with called “lesser known”!
The ethics of incarceration...
The ethics of incarceration... Sometimes these things can get quite difficult. This is a real story. A criminal is convicted of armed robbery and sentenced to 14 years in a state penitentiary. He develops heart disease that can only be treated with a heart transplant. The heart transplant costs about a million dollars. Should the taxpayers pay for his heart transplant? And, even more difficult: should a criminal get a scarce transplantable organ when that bumps a non-criminal to a later slot (and puts them at risk of death)?
In the real world (well, if you consider California to be part of the real world), this actually happened – and the state's Department of Corrections decided to go ahead with the transplant. There were non-criminals on the transplant list who were good matches for the donor heart.
If you think you've worked out the ethics of those considerations, try this variant: suppose the medical treatment in question were for a non-fatal condition. Say, for instance, surgery to correct a limp. If you came to a different conclusion on that, precisely how would you draw the distinctions between the two?
I'm going to add this to my (long) list of reasons to be suspect about the entire idea of punitive incarceration. It strikes me as being one of those human inventions (like socialism, including its “progressive” variants) that demonstrably doesn't work and needs to be eliminated. It's the sort of thing that makes me look fondly at societal banishment, such as the old English system of “transportation”. At least we got America and Australia out of that!
In the real world (well, if you consider California to be part of the real world), this actually happened – and the state's Department of Corrections decided to go ahead with the transplant. There were non-criminals on the transplant list who were good matches for the donor heart.
If you think you've worked out the ethics of those considerations, try this variant: suppose the medical treatment in question were for a non-fatal condition. Say, for instance, surgery to correct a limp. If you came to a different conclusion on that, precisely how would you draw the distinctions between the two?
I'm going to add this to my (long) list of reasons to be suspect about the entire idea of punitive incarceration. It strikes me as being one of those human inventions (like socialism, including its “progressive” variants) that demonstrably doesn't work and needs to be eliminated. It's the sort of thing that makes me look fondly at societal banishment, such as the old English system of “transportation”. At least we got America and Australia out of that!
Scott Walker...
Scott Walker... This post (at Ace's place), along with the links in it, is the most interesting stuff I've read yet about Scott Walker (governor of Wisconsin, and often-mentioned prospect for Republican presidential nominee in 2016). There's a lot to like there...
Ball lightning, captured at last!
Ball lightning, captured at last! People have reported seeing ball lightning many times, dating back for centuries – but until now, nobody had ever captured it on film. Now a group of Chinese researchers has captured ball lightning on video – and they had a spectrograph working at the same time! This fortunate accident has already led to some interesting insights about the origin of ball lightning (dirt is involved :). Unfortunately the video itself hasn't yet been released (or at least, it's hidden well enough that I couldn't find it)...
Geek: an open-source text on operating systems...
Geek: an open-source text on operating systems... I've only read a few pieces of this, but what I have read looks pretty good ... and free is hard to beat!
Geek: Internet of things is getting easier all the time...
We live in amazing times...
Martian mystery...
NASA will send Opportunity over to examine the rock. It's interesting no matter how it got there, because it's upside-down now, showing a fresh face that will allow some new science investigations. The leading candidate explanation is that the rock (which is about the size of your fist) was “tiddly-winked” to it's new location by Opportunity's movements. Another candidate explanation – more exciting, to be sure – is that a meteorite struck the surface of Mars and threw up some debris, one piece of which just happened to land smack in front of Opportunity.
I enlarged the object and it seems to be an odd shaped creature of some sort. In the enlargement you can also see that its sort of a square shape, but its center is pushed downward. It would be cool if this was some kind of crab-like creature.I don't know what sort of creatures Scott runs around with, but where I come from, crabs didn't look much like that at all :)
Friday, January 17, 2014
Miki...
He needed to be anesthetized for this procedure, so while he was under, we asked that they clean his teeth and cut his nails, too. Amber (our candidate for the world's greatest RVT) discovered during the teeth cleaning that he had five teeth that were so bad they were loose in their sockets. Yikes! So the poor little guy woke up missing three molars and two of his front bottom teeth. We felt bad for not having picked up on his dental problems, as he's probably been in some pain for a while – we never had a clue. Dogs are awesomely good at hiding their pain or lameness; when you do see it, that's an indication of just how bad it is...
Notes from a home with 4 dogs and 7 cats...
Notes on life with 4 dogs and 10 cats... Upon sighting a darker area on the floor when walking through the darkened house, do not step on the darker area. It may be squishy. It may be wet. It may be warm. It may be all three!
Oh, and smell bad, too...
Oh, and smell bad, too...
Six thought experiments...
Via reader and friend Simon M...
Say, that's a little harsh, isn't it?
Say, that's a little harsh, isn't it? Some physicists recently published a paper in a relatively new journal. The paper expressed some views that were skeptical of the IPCC report and warmists' views in general. So the publisher cancelled publication of the journal. It's history!
Take that, skeptical physicists! How are you going to publish those heretical views now?
Take that, skeptical physicists! How are you going to publish those heretical views now?
Fishermen are crazy...
Note for the squeamish: it all ends well.
Note for those who think these boats are repeatedly sinking and are somehow resurrected: you're being fooled by the perspective; they're actually (mainly) rising and falling with the waves, and sometimes there's a wave between the camera and the boat...
Demand curves...
Demand curves... I share Warren Meyer's perplexity over the progressive's support for minimum wages. I would think they'd be clamoring to abolish them!
Prepare to be angry...
Prepare to be angry ... at the Democrats' top priority in the recent budget negotiations. Kimberley Strassel as the scoop...
Public servant selfishness...
Public servant selfishness... Peggy Noonan makes some interesting points...
It's starting...
It's starting... The number of electrical engineers in the U.S. declined last year, by 35,000 positions. The growth of software engineers in the U.S. is also declining, and may go negative next year or the year after.
The article I linked concludes that the people claiming we don't graduate enough STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) students are wrong, as witness the decline in positions and the growth overseas. I think they've picked the wrong problem – I think those jobs are going overseas because the education systems in so many places are producing better qualified graduates. Just to pick on one example, in which I have personal experience: a software company looking for talent isn't going to hire the first engineer they run into – and most of the time, they won't just hire the best engineer they find locally. They're going to look all over the world, and pick the best and brightest that they can attract from anywhere at all. It no longer matters what country a software engineer works in. The last company I worked for had software engineers who lived in five different countries – and they've expanded the part outside the U.S. since I left. The reason is not economics; in some cases, those foreign engineers cost more...
The article I linked concludes that the people claiming we don't graduate enough STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) students are wrong, as witness the decline in positions and the growth overseas. I think they've picked the wrong problem – I think those jobs are going overseas because the education systems in so many places are producing better qualified graduates. Just to pick on one example, in which I have personal experience: a software company looking for talent isn't going to hire the first engineer they run into – and most of the time, they won't just hire the best engineer they find locally. They're going to look all over the world, and pick the best and brightest that they can attract from anywhere at all. It no longer matters what country a software engineer works in. The last company I worked for had software engineers who lived in five different countries – and they've expanded the part outside the U.S. since I left. The reason is not economics; in some cases, those foreign engineers cost more...
Geek: a bit of wisdom from The Master (whoever that is)...
Geek: a bit of wisdom from The Master (whoever that is)...
The programmer and the stone statue.Excellent!
A programmer was troubled and sad, so he went to see his Master.
“Nobody recognizes my work” the programmer said with woeful voice.
The Master took him to a temple with a beautiful stone statue in the center and said “If you want your work to be recognized you must be like the person who made this statue”.
They kept walking for a couple of minutes util the programmer asked “Who made it?”
“I don’t know” replied the Master.
Suddenly, the programmer was enlightened.
My mom could use this...
Schneier briefs congresscritters...
Schneier briefs congresscritters... Six of them, all advocates of reining in the NSA (and the rest of our “intelligence” apparatus). I have competing reactions to this. Part of me wants to applaud Congress for bringing in a grounded security expert like Bruce Schneier. Part of me wants to cry over the reasons why they brought him in (read the piece to see what I mean).
Don't neglect the comments on this post; amongst the usual troll-crap there are some interesting ideas and points...
Don't neglect the comments on this post; amongst the usual troll-crap there are some interesting ideas and points...
Ship of fools...
Ship of fools... Steve McIntyre is back, not with a post about climatology per se, but rather on the adventure tourism ship that recently got itself stuck in the ice near Antarctica. Steve, in his classic thorough style and with his irrepressible wit, tears the leader of the expedition (Chris Turney) to shreds over his self-serving claims and evident idiocy. It is by far the best take-down of that fool that I've read – and Steve titled it, appropriately, Ship of Fools...
More toxic fallout from the war on drugs...
More toxic fallout from the war on drugs... This is one that not too many U.S. citizens are aware of: almost nobody charged with a crime gets a trial by jury today. Depending on whose numbers you want to believe, somewhere between 3% and 9% of criminal charges are resolved by a jury trial – the rest are all “plea bargains”. The plea bargain system has completely changed the face of American criminal prosecution within my lifetime. Up until the '70s, if you were charged with a crime and you didn't plead “guilty”, then a jury trial was a virtual certainty. Now it's nearly unheard of.
And the war on drugs did it.
Here's an excellent piece by Brad Schlesinger, writing at Outside the Beltway, that explains it all.
To me, this is just one more in a long, long list of reasons to legalize drugs and cut our losses in the disastrous war on drugs...
And the war on drugs did it.
Here's an excellent piece by Brad Schlesinger, writing at Outside the Beltway, that explains it all.
To me, this is just one more in a long, long list of reasons to legalize drugs and cut our losses in the disastrous war on drugs...
Thursday, January 16, 2014
Government logic...
Government logic... Megan McArdle notes some government information that is internally inconsistent. Some time ago, Washington D.C. implemented a tax on plastic bags to discourage their use. Recently they declared success, with plastic bag use down to less than half of its former levels. But, Megan notes, the tax revenue from the plastic bag tax is going up. How can that be? If the number of bags being used has been cut in half, shouldn't the tax receipts be half as well? Megan digs in...
Moving the goalposts...
Moving the goalposts... Peter Suderman, writing at Reason, on the administration's transparent attempts to declare success by repeatedly changing the objectives to something they apparently think might actually be achievable. Trouble is, even their modified objectives have yet to be met...
Old temperature data ignored...
Old temperature data ignored... The warmists have been diligent about hiding exactly what they've done to “adjust” the temperature data (direct or proxied) that they've used. Even Freedom of Information Act requests have so far failed to pry that information out of them. But...some of that old data is actually available – and for the most part it does not show the warming trend claimed by the warmists. Here's an outstanding example: meticulous temperature records, made in documented circumstances, from Adelaide, Australia:
There's almost 100 years of data there, and no hockey stick in sight. Jo Nova is all over this, and she has both more details and the backstory...
Flying pig moment, climatology edition...
Flying pig moment, climatology edition... A prominent warmist, writing at Nature, discovers ocean cycles and solar influence – the same two things the skeptic “deniers” have been asking about for years...
Tappi sushi...
Milton Friedman...
Hint for That One...
Quantum brains?
Quantum brains? Orchestrated objective reduction is a highly controversial theory that (amongst other things) posits quantum computation in the brain as a basis for human consciousness. The originators of the theory (Sir Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff) are now claiming that some recent discoveries provide evidentiary support for their theory.
I don't know enough about either their theories or the recent discoveries to make any judgment about the truth of the claims, or their strength. Until some widely accepted evidence appears, I will continue to look at this with skepticism.
There is one part of this theory that I find most satisfying: it's the only theory of consciousness that explains our brain's astounding feats of pattern recognition – feats that are unmatched by any supercomputer. We exercise these feats every day without thought, as they are effortless for us. Reading and comprehending a book is perhaps the canonical example – no computer has ever even come close to doing that, and the biggest reason is that computers are terrible at pattern recognition (but humans are great at it). Another example: human ability to comprehend speech in a room filled with people speaking. Another: human observational skills – we can easily pick the particular elements we're interested in out of our visual field – while we're moving, our eyes are moving, and our target is moving. Computers still can't even come close to that ability. True quantum computing occurring in our brains would provide a plausible mechanism for our pattern-matching abilities...
I don't know enough about either their theories or the recent discoveries to make any judgment about the truth of the claims, or their strength. Until some widely accepted evidence appears, I will continue to look at this with skepticism.
There is one part of this theory that I find most satisfying: it's the only theory of consciousness that explains our brain's astounding feats of pattern recognition – feats that are unmatched by any supercomputer. We exercise these feats every day without thought, as they are effortless for us. Reading and comprehending a book is perhaps the canonical example – no computer has ever even come close to doing that, and the biggest reason is that computers are terrible at pattern recognition (but humans are great at it). Another example: human ability to comprehend speech in a room filled with people speaking. Another: human observational skills – we can easily pick the particular elements we're interested in out of our visual field – while we're moving, our eyes are moving, and our target is moving. Computers still can't even come close to that ability. True quantum computing occurring in our brains would provide a plausible mechanism for our pattern-matching abilities...
Most-photographed places...
“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...
The immorality of minimum wages...
The immorality of minimum wages... Doug Bandow with an interesting piece at Cato...
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
Earthquake!
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:
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."Yup, that certainly is a scary person from San Francisco!
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.
Exciting event!
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...
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...
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:
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...
Coincidence? You decide.I don't understand why so few people seem to be upset by the politicization of the IRS.
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.
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!
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...
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...
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...
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...
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Pater: primogeniture...
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:
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...
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:
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:
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...
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...
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...
Monday, January 13, 2014
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!
Demolition!
In my dad's notes on our nursery's history, I found one terse entry for 1964:
1964 Tom & kids dismantled big houseThat 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...
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!
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...
Caring for your introvert...
Caring for your introvert... Jonathan Rauch with some good advice for introvert-keepers...
Sunday, January 12, 2014
An Engineer's Guide to Cats 2.0...
Blast from the past...
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).
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...
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!
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!
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