A collection of beautiful photos...

A collection of beautiful photos...  These are all finalists in this year's Smithsonian photography contest.  There are some spectacular photos amongst them...

Time-lapse movie of a morning glory...

Time-lapse movie of a morning glory ... solves the mystery of how vines “know” where to grow.  Much organized flailing is involved, and very little in the way of intelligence...

Today would have been...

Today would have been ... my dad's 90th birthday.  He's been gone now for nearly six months.  There's some sadness in Paradise today...

Search old newspapers...

Search old newspapers...  Tens of thousands of pages of old newspapers have been digitized on this site, and are searchable.  There is no charge. 

Just to try it out, I ran a search for my father's name, and found the listing at right in a 1937 edition of a Long Island, NY paper.  In 1937 my father would have been 13 years old – and apparently at that age he collected cigar bands.  There can be no doubt that's my father, as he is the only Dilatush to have had that exact name, and he lived near Robbinsville.  It's very hard for me to imagine my father collecting cigar bands, though :)

Then I found this May 8, 1938 reference in the same paper.  Apparently my dad also collected stamps.  I've heard him poke a great deal of fun at collectors, in particular of stamps – so this greatly surprises me!

In a January 1949 edition of the Pittsburgh Courier, there's an article about the conviction and sentencing to death of 6 black men.  It contains the reference at right.  I know my grandfather grew potatoes at one time (on the farm I grew up on), but I think it was considerably earlier than 1949. 

I also found references to my grandmother, grandfather, my two uncles on my father's side, my sister, and my brother.

I foresee myself spending some hours on this site :)

The warmists down under are misbehaving...

The warmists down under are misbehaving ... and Steve McIntyre takes them to the woodshed.  It feels like an unraveling of the warmist front is underway.  About time!

Ukrainian Easter eggs...

Ukrainian Easter eggs...  When I was a kid, we had an elderly Hungarian lady (Mrs. Mate) living on our farm with her husband.  She painted elaborate Easter eggs, too – but certainly not the equal of these...

Tug of war...

Tug of war ... between an 850 HP modern John Deere tractor and an 18 HP 1904 steam tractor – and the steam tractor wins.  The John Deere's power can't be applied here, because its traction isn't even close to the steam tractor's.  The steam tractor weighs around 12 tons; the John Deere around 3.  Note how the steam tractor isn't shoveling dirt at all, while the John Deere is digging trenches with its spinning tires...

I wonder how he explained this to his boss?

I wonder how he explained this to his boss?

Awesome photo...

Awesome photo...

Healthcare services are scarce goods...

Healthcare services are scarce goods...  To an economist, the term “scarce goods” means something very specific: that there is greater demand for something than can possibly be supplied.  Healthcare is such a thing: it isn't possible for everyone to get the most exotic cancer treatments, nor can everyone be treated at the best hospitals, or by the very best doctors.  So healthcare is a scarce good.

With any scarce good, some means must be found to decide who gets the care, and who doesn't.  For healthcare in the U.S., that used to be decided by who could (and was willing to) pay.  That system is called capitalism, and it's the most efficient means of allocating scarce goods that anyone has ever come up with.  But for healthcare in particular, allocation on the basis of ability to pay seems unfair to the majority of our citizens.  So we've come up with alternatives.

Fast forward to now, and the advent of ObamaCare.  Healthcare is still a scarce good, and ObamaCare – having replaced anything remotely resembling capitalistic allocation – still has to allocate that scarce good.  No matter how much we might wish it were so, there's not enough healthcare to cover everybody for everything.  ObamaCare takes two approaches. 

First, there are the committees of bureaucrats that Sarah Palin so memorably called “death panels”.  These committees are deciding what procedures will be covered by ObamaCare policies, and which will not.  That's a form of allocation: if a procedure you need is covered, your ObamaCare policy will cover it.  If it doesn't cover the procedure, you'll have to pay for it yourself – if you can.  Otherwise, you die or suffer.  Thanks to the ObamaCare health insurance “mandates”, you cannot purchase an old-fashioned major medical policy that will cover such risks.

Secondly, there's a new aspect of the ObamaCare healthcare policies called “reference pricing.”  This article treats reference pricing as though it were just invented, but actually it's been a part of ObamaCare all along (and many opponents of ObamaCare wrote about it during the legislative process).  Fundamentally it is a way to discourage people from choosing the most expensive (i.e., the best) doctors and hospitals.  It accomplishes this by imposing some fairly draconian financial burdens on anyone who chooses to do so – and by making it impossible to insure for such expenses.

There's a third step I expect to hear about very soon: the expansion of ObamaCare allocation steps to MediCare.  It seems almost inevitable...

The end result of this situation is very predictable, thanks to prior experience by two nations we know very well: the United Kingdom and Canada.  In both of those countries the overall quality of healthcare lags that of the U.S. substantially – and only relatively wealthy people can escape the consequences (generally by paying for more advanced treatment in the U.S., India, or China). 

It seems to me that for all their trying, the ObamaCare supporters didn't really accomplish very much in the way of better allocating healthcare.  Now, as then, only the people who can afford to pay can get top notch healthcare.  In one significant way, ObamaCare has made it worse: it used to be true that anyone who desired it could buy simple major medical coverage.  The price might be high (especially if you had pre-existing conditions of some sort), but you could buy it.  Now those policies are illegal.  You cannot have them at any price.  That means if you want top notch healthcare, you have to be wealthy enough to pay for the care directly – not just wealthy enough to pay for the insurance.

I sure hope we can get ObamaCare repealed...

Laundry...

Laundry...  Our new home in Paradise, Utah didn't come with a washer and dryer, so we had to buy new ones.  After a bunch of research, we selected General Electric models, with the washer and dryer designed to go with each other.

In our past purchases of washers and dryers, “go with each other” meant their appearance was compatible.  That's still true today, but there's more: the washer and dryer are connected by an Ethernet cable, and the washer tells the dryer what's coming next – including how much water is in the clothing.  How does the washer know that?  It weighs the clothing before washing and after, and the difference is the water content.  It also tells the dryer what the dry weight of the clothes were, and the dryer watches that to know when its close to being finished.  It also senses the exhaust humidity (which is the only thing older dryers did) to know exactly when all the water is gone.

The washer (a top-loading model) has us ready to believe in magic.  The first thing we noticed is that there is no agitator in the middle, as every other washer we've ever owned has had.  That agitator seems key to getting the clothes clean, but somehow (here's the magic!) this washer gets the clothes nice and clean without one.  That's not the best part, though.  With this washer, we can throw the clothes into the tub without taking any care to balance them.  The washer somehow compensates for this, so that when it starts spinning, the tub remains balanced.  Magic!  This morning I deliberately loaded the tub all on one side, and even with that the tub spun smoothly, without the washer trying to walk across the floor.  There must be a counterweight that moves to offset the load's imbalance, though if there is it is completely hidden.  We can watch the tub turn slowly after we load it, and we can see the imbalance in the beginning of its cycle – but within a few seconds, it's “zeroed out” and spinning as if completely in balance.

Both machines are being run by an embedded computer, of course.  With a few sensors and actuators, these computers are solving problems that have plagued washers and dryers forever.  Even though I have a pretty good idea how these things are working, it still feels like magic to use it...

It's still pitch-black this morning...

It's still pitch-black this morning ... but I'm being serenaded by beautiful birdsong.  I don't recognize the species.  I need a Google search for audio, like their image search :)

Pruning...

Pruning...  That's what I've spent most of the last three days doing.  Our new home is surrounded by a fair number of trees – including over a dozen 30 to 35 foot tall pines of a species I have yet to identify.  Those pines have been neglected for their entire life, which I'm estimating at 25 to 30 years (the house was built 22 years ago, and almost certainly they were planted then).  They appeared to be healthy, but were full of dead wood (normal as lower branches get shaded out) and broken branches (most likely from snow weight).  They also had limbs low enough that their ends touched the ground, and it was difficult to walk under them.

So ... I pruned.  Lots :)  Armed with a 15" pruning saw, a pair of loppers, a pair of hand shears, and an 8' stepladder, I took off all the low-hanging branches and cleaned out all the dead wood I could reach.  Most of the trees had branches that afforded me good (safe) footing, so I climbed to get deadwood up to about 20' up.  The transformation is very satisfying – those pines are now shade trees, covering a nice green lawn and making a park-like atmosphere in the yard immediately surrounding the house.  You can see one bit of it in the photo at right; the field in the background is planted in alfalfa.  In another 5 years or so, they'll need some additional work.  Hopefully I'll still be up to it!

Meanwhile, there are still another 50 or so pines further from the house.  The bulk of those are Ponderosa pines, one of my favorite pine species, planted in a tight grove that desperately needs thinning.  Those pines are 20' to 25' high now, and the ones on the outside of the planting are noticeably more vigorous than the (mostly shaded) ones on the inside.  This fall or next spring, that's going to turn into a big project...

Programming pain...

Programming pain...  An article on a topic I've often pondered myself: why is programming so damned hard for most people?  Some of it is the tools, which is what this article focuses on.  I used to fantasize about a graphical programming environment, in which a user could “draw” their program, much as an electrical engineer used to draw a schematic.  I say “used to”, because much of hardware design (anything but the simplest devices) is designed these days using text-based hardware design languages – even hardware has given up on graphical design.  Why?  In a nut shell, complexity.

The complexity of computer systems (by which I mean both the underlying hardware and the software) have grown many-fold just over the course of my own career.  The Univac mainframe computers I first worked with, back in the '70s, were not the biggest or most complex computers of the day – but they were pretty high on the computing complexity scale.  The ship I was on had 12 interconnected (we didn't use the word “network” back then :) mainframe computers, organized into functional units (radar, tracking, missile control, etc.), each of which had its own program.  Those programs ran directly on the hardware – there was no operating system as we know the notion today.  The sum of all that hardware and its specialized software – which seemed so big and complicated at the time – is downright trivial by comparison with a single cheap smartphone running Android.

I think that complexity is the main reason underlying the difficulty of programming.  While I believe there are many things that could be done to make that programming a bit easier, none of the things I can think of would make a significant dent in the overall complexity of the problem.  Short of actual machine intelligence (something I am highly skeptical of), I don't see any answers other than relying on those weird geeks that know how to program...

Booting up a PDP-11/34...

Booting up a PDP-11/34...  Well, here's a blast from the past!  When I was just getting started programming computers, in the mid-'70s, these DEC machines were what I lusted after.  I got to play with them a few times on consulting jobs, but their price tag put them way out of my reach.  I had to settle for owning microcomputers (and even they were a big strain on my tiny purchasing power).  At the time, that felt like settling for fourth or fifth-best.  The notion that microcomputers would come to dominate computing never occurred to me at the time – I thought of them then as simple, small, and unpowerful cousins of the real computers...

Animal photos, captioned...

Whoo-o loves ya, Baby?

Animal photos, captioned...  A nice collection via my card-carrying, pissed-off, ancient-American mom...

Anemone blanda...

Anemone blanda...  Via BPOD, of course...

Rodney Dangerfield lines...

Rodney Dangerfield lines...  Via reader Simi L.:

My wife only has sex with me for a purpose. Last night she used me to time an egg.

It's tough to stay married. My wife kisses the dog on the lips, yet she won't drink from my glass!

Last night my wife met me at the front door. She was wearing a sexy negligee. The only trouble was, she was coming home.

A girl phoned me and said, 'Come on over. There's nobody home.' I went over. Nobody was home!

A hooker once told me she had a headache.

I went to a massage parlor; it was self-service…

If it weren't for pickpockets, I'd have no sex life at all.

I was making love to this girl and she started crying I said, 'Are you going to hate yourself in the morning?' She said, 'No, I hate myself now.'

I knew a girl so ugly that she was known as a two-bagger. That's when you put a bag over your head in case the bag over her head comes off.

I knew a girl so ugly... they use her in prisons to cure sex offenders.

My wife is such a bad cook, if we leave dental floss in the kitchen the roaches hang themselves.

I don’t want to say I am ugly I stuck my head out the window and got arrested for mooning.

The other day I came home and a guy was jogging, naked. I asked him, 'Why?' He said, 'Because you came home early.'

My wife's such a bad cook, the dog begs for Alka-Seltzer.

I know I'm not sexy. When I put my underwear on I can hear the Fruit-of-the-Loom guys giggling.

My wife is such a bad cook, in my house we pray after the meal.

My wife likes to talk to me during sex; last night she called me from a hotel.

My family was so poor that if I hadn't been born a boy, I wouldn't have had anything to play with.

It's been a rough day. I got up this morning ... put a shirt on and a button fell off. I picked up my briefcase, and the handle came off. I'm afraid to go to the bathroom.

I was such an ugly kid! ...When I played in the sandbox, the cat kept covering me up.

I could tell my parents hated me. My bath toys were a toaster and radio.

I was such an ugly baby that my mother never breast fed me. She told me that she only liked me as a friend.

I'm so ugly my father carried around a picture of the kid who came with his wallet.

When I was born, the doctor came into the waiting room and said to my father, "I'm sorry. We did everything we could, but he pulled through anyway."

I'm so ugly my mother had morning sickness...AFTER I was born.

I remember the time that I was kidnapped and they sent a piece of my finger to my father. He said he wanted more proof.

Once when I was lost, I saw a policeman, and asked him to help me find my parents. I said to him, "Do you think we'll ever find them?" He said, "I don't know kid. There's so many places they can hide."

My wife made me join a bridge club. I jump offnext Tuesday.

I'm so ugly, I once worked in a pet shop, and people kept asking how big I'd get.

I went to see my doctor. "Doctor, every morning when I get up and I look in the mirror I feel like throwing up. What's wrong with me?" He said..."Nothing, your eyesight is perfect."

I went to the doctor because I'd swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills. My doctor told me to have a few drinks and get some rest.

With my old man I got no respect. I asked him, "How can I get my kite in the air?" He told me to run off a cliff.

Some dog I got. We call him Egypt because in every room he leaves a pyramid. His favorite bone is in my arm. Last night he went on the paper four times - three of those times I was reading it.

One year they wanted to make me a poster boy - for birth control.

My uncle's dying wish was to have me sitting in his lap; he was in the electric chair.

I'm so old, I could go tomorrow. As a matter of fact, I hope I do go tomorrow... I didn't go today.

What do animals see in the mirror?

What do animals see in the mirror?  A short article on the mirror self-awareness test.  This is a famous test I'd read about several times before, but this article raised several facets that were new to me...

An optimal drinking glass...

An optimal drinking glass...  How can one compute the shape of the optimal drinking glass?  Isn't that purely aesthetic? 

Well, no.  Not if you want to optimize the thermal characteristics.  In that case, you can compute the shape – and that's it, at right.

Programming language popularity...

Programming language popularity...  A fascinating log-log scatter chart (well, fascinating to a programming geek, anyway :) that has GitHub lines of code changed on one axis and StackOverflow mentions on the other.  These are both plausible measures of the popularity of any given programming language, and for the most part they yield fairly consistent results.  Some of the anomalous looking results are explained in the comments; I suspect we'll see an updated chart with those explainable anomalies cured.  Some languages are missing (for example, I went looking for Julia and found it wasn't there).

All the usual suspects are at the upper right – but there were some big surprises for me elsewhere on the chart.  I, for one, would never have expected Forth to be where it is – I thought I was one of the last living Forth programmers.  Apparently not!  And what the heck is Prolog doing in the middle?  And Delphi? Isn't it dead yet?  Scala, basically still in experimental state, ranks just below the top tier – that seems quite remarkable to me, but probably indicates just how desperate the Java world is for some aspects of functional programming and message-based concurrency.

The lower left part of the chart had me amused for a couple hours, as I looked up these languages I'd never heard of before...

Hard Work U...

Hard Work U...  This sounds like such a great idea!  Why hasn't it been copied all over? 

Discrete logarithms weaker than supposed?

Discrete logarithms weaker than supposed?  I can't access the original paper (and I'm not sure I could understand it even if I did!), but if this news report is to be believed, researchers have cast some doubt on the strength of cryptography based on certain variants of the discrete logarithm problem.  Assuming that they are correct, further assuming that this theoretical result could be reduced to practice, and even further assuming that the variant in question is used in common cryptographic building blocks – then this could be a big problem.  If so, I'd expect to hear much noise from the crypto community, pretty quickly...

This is so sad...

This is so sad...  Sudan will soon execute a woman for the unpardonable sin of being Christian.  Before they execute her, she will receive 100 lashes – generally considered a sentence of death by itself, as few can survive that kind of beating.

I don't know of any easy answers for the troubles in that part of the world.  But I can't help but note the inconsistency in our own government's stance on such events.  The kidnapped girls of Nigeria are getting a lot of attention right now (how effective that attention is remains to be seen).  The Sudanese ... not so much.  The Yemenis ... not so much.  The Libyans ... not so much.  I could go on, but I think you see the point.

It surely would be useful, both inside and outside the U.S., for our government to have a consistent strong voice – and policy – for the tragedies of the Middle East...

I think this may be the beginning...

I think this may be the beginning ... of the unraveling of the warmist community's united front.  Some real climatologists are revolting against the likes of Mann and Hansen.

It occurs to me that some enterprising journalist has a real opportunity here to break a big, big story...

Time-lapse movie of the Cocos fire...

Time-lapse movie of the Cocos fire ... as seen from the Stone Brewing Company's roof.

And here's what it looked like to two guys who drove right through it...

Speechless, I am...

Speechless, I am...  The warmist community has been getting a lot of flack because their computer models (which they derive all their dire predictions from) aren't matching the observed reality.  For example, about 10 years ago the IPCC published the results of dozens of computer models.  Those models predicted varying degrees of global warming 10 years (and more) into the then-future, which is right now.  That predicted global warming hasn't occurred.  This is very embarrassing for those computer models, and for most people (including most scientists) it is strong evidence that those models are seriously flawed – that is, they are pretty much useless for predicting global warming.  It also is pretty strong evidence that the dire predictions of the warmists are based on ... not much of anything.

But now one publisher of environmental research papers (including many climatology papers) takes a position that eliminates the issue: they say that to expect the models to be consistent with observed reality is an error.  That's a bit like saying that it is an error to expect the actual weather to match the weather forecast.  If we accepted that notion, then no matter what result the models predicted, and no matter how much they deviated from reality, we should accept them as “truth” on some level.

Orwell has entered the science building. 

I really don't know what to say about this, other than my jaw is sore from where it dropped and hit the table.  Steve McIntyre has a bit more...

“I’ve got a Masters in raising hell.”

“I’ve got a Masters in raising hell.”  That's but one of many endearing lines from a recent debate amongst candidates for Idaho's next governor.  Some commentary and links here.  The video at right is a highlight reel – put down your hot morning beverage before watching!

A big thank you for my morning smiles to friend, former colleague, Idaho mogul-of-everything, and voter-with-a-tough-choice Doug S...

OSX (Mac) keyboard shortcuts...

OSX (Mac) keyboard shortcuts...  A great summary...

A computerized spoon?

A computerized spoon?  If you have Parkinson's, this is a modern miracle.  I watched an older woman use one of these at a local restaurant, and talked with her briefly about it.  Her reaction was identical to those on the manufacturer's web site ... it's changed her life...

Some beautiful photos...

Some beautiful photos ... like the one at right...

His dog doesn't care if he's poor or homeless...

His dog doesn't care if he's poor or homeless... 

I miss my dogs...

San Diego fires update...

San Diego fires update...  The map at right (click to embiggen) comes from the GeoMAC viewer, a great resource for anyone concerned with wildfires.  The map can be interactively configured to show MODIS satellite data (the one-kilometer circles you see on this map) or HMS satellite infrared data (the smaller yellow dots).  Both of these are updated in real time as the satellites make passes overhead (their schedule is slightly complicated, but you can find them online).  Unlike the news media, which tends to spout reports long after they are obsolete, this is hard observational data.  In our own (far too intimate) experience with the 2007 San Diego fires, only this satellite data and the images from the HPWREN camera network proved to be reliable sources of near-realtime information.  The CalFire incident site has reliable information, but isn't updated regularly – those folks have other things to do.  Everything we heard on radio or TV was, to be blunt, sensationalized bullshit.  Sometimes it was even dangerously misleading.

The picture painted by this morning's satellite data is considerably better than even just last night.  The fire near the center of Camp Pendleton continues to look bad, but on the other hand that's mostly undeveloped chaparral, so relatively little damage will be done to structures there.  On Escondido's western border there is still an active fire – but between Carlsbad and San Marcos, the satellites haven't seen any active fire for 24 hours now (this is good news for several of our friends who live near there, including Doug W. who lost his home to a similar fire in 1996 and rebuilt there).

One thing we're hearing from all over: there is a remarkable difference in the effectiveness of the firefighting response this year, as compared to 2007 and earlier fires.  We've seen some of this on smaller fires over the past few years, but now we're seeing it on a much larger scale.  It isn't that new technology is helping, either – it seems to be a combination of (vastly) better leadership, a focus on solving the actual problems, and more equipment (in particular, air assets).  Debbie and I are about to leave this problem behind us, as we move our household to Utah ... but still, it's very nice to see this more competent response...

Orange jellyfish and a girl...

Orange jellyfish and a girl...  This reminds me of the jellyfish tank at the Monterey Aquarium, though I don't remember any orange ones there...

Pure joy...

Pure joy...  A kid on a swing...

“My climbing partner eats chicken liver...”

“My climbing partner eats chicken liver...”  Great story for cat lovers...

Quick-thinking truck driver ...

Quick-thinking truck driver ... makes the save...

Hedgehogs...

Hedgehogs ... even their snores are cute!

This isn't what it looks like...

This isn't what it looks like...  It's actually very sad...

Curiosity is drilling holes on Mars...

Curiosity is drilling holes on Mars ... and checking out the results.  This merge-focus image (click to embiggen) has artificially high depth of field – but it sure makes this hole and debris pile “pop”!  Geologists working on the Curiosity project must be jumping up and down for joy at the amazing capabilities of the tools on Curiosity...

Like Pantone, but from 1692!

Like Pantone, but from 1692!  View the entire book here.  I'm not sure what seems more remarkable to me: that the knowledge about colors existed back then, or that the author would have the patience to hand paint hundreds and hundreds of color “chips” – almost exactly in the same way that Pantone does today...

Eight OSX terminal utilities...

Eight OSX terminal utilities...  Several of these were new to me, and they look pretty handy...

JavaScript: is there anything it can't do?

JavaScript: is there anything it can't do?  In-browser RAW image processing.  I'm expecting a full-featured in-browser JavaScript IDE any day now :)

Cat saves kid from dog...

Cat saves kid from dog...  Via friend and former colleague Aleck L.  We've seen very aggressive cats a few times.  We used to own one (named Haku), years ago, who looked fierce, but really wasn't so much...

Quote of the day...

Quote of the day...  From Dan Henninger, for the conclusion of his op-ed piece in today's Wall Street Journal: Bonfire of the Humanities.

The loonies are becoming the public face of some once-revered repositories of the humanities. Sic transit whatever.

A guide to life...

A guide to life...  By the late George Carlin.  A couple examples:

Once you leave out all the bullshit they teach you in school, life gets really simple.

I don’t believe there’s any problem in this country, no matter how tough it is, that Americans, when they roll up their sleeves, can’t completely ignore.

Carlin was a raving liberal, and he held many positions that I strongly oppose.  Despite that, he had a peerless ability to cut through euphemisms, bullshit, and pretension that often had me rolling on the floor with laughter.  I still watch clips of him on YouTube every time I see one come along...

Lennart Bengtsson gives up...

Lennart Bengtsson gives up...  Dr. Bengtsson is a well-known climate scientist (and professor) who has long been part of the warmist scientific support.  A few weeks ago, though, Dr. Bengtsson very publicly joined a skeptic's group (the GWPF) – loudly proclaiming his doubts and his disgust at the unscientific approach of the IPCC.  Yesterday he resigned from the GWPF, citing enormous pressure from his scientific colleagues.  Steve McIntyre and James Delingpole have entirely characteristic responses.

I'd call it a sad day for science, except that I think in large part the “science” part of climatology has long since departed, replaced by a conformity and fanaticism that resembles that of certain religions more than it does science.  So I'll phrase it differently: it's a sad day for those few genuine scientists who remain part of the climatology community – scientists like Judith Curry or Lennart Bengtsson, who are willing to listen to things like evidence, alternative theories, etc.  Unfortunately they are greatly outnumbered by the likes of James Hansen, Michael Mann, et al.

Mark Steyn's lawsuit with Michael Mann, while primarily a free speech issue, does offer the hope of making a dent in the warmists' position.  That hope stems from the “discovery” part of the legal proceedings, wherein the private emails between Mann and the other contributors to the IPCC report will become public.  These emails almost certainly will contain hard evidence of the unscientific manner in which the support for the warmists position was constructed (I speak here not just of the infamous “hockey stick”, but of all the evidence in the IPCC reports).  It will be most interesting for the skeptical community to pore over these emails...

Pater: memories...

Pater: memories...  Yesterday afternoon I bought a ladder and started pruning the 35' tall pines in our front yard.  There are eight of them, and as far as I can tell nobody has ever tried to prune them beyond removing limbs damaged by snow fall.  If you know pines at all, then you can easily imagine what I faced: long, gangly lower limbs with a few needles at the end (largely shaded out by the canopy above), and the bottom half of the trees filled with gray, dead wood.  This is all perfectly normal for a pine; the interior needles and branches die out as the tree grows, unable to get any light as new needles and branches hide the sun from the old ones.

I haven't identified the species of these pines yet, but whatever they are, they have a very attractive bark: the old parts are shades of browns and reds, and sort of papery and flaky.  The total effect is of a mottled blend of colors with a distinct 3D texture.  But most of this was being hidden by all the dead wood.

Armed with a ladder, a pruning saw, loppers, and a hand pruner, I went to work.  In just over 3 hours, I cleared all the dead wood up to about 18' high from three of these pines.  I also took off the lower branches to make enough room to walk underneath them.  I'm very pleased with the result – the pruned trees are much more attractive than they were before I started, and I really like being able to walk under them.  The cleared space also opens up a nice view to the south of our home, showing off farmed fields in the foreground and a 180° vista of snow-capped mountains in the background.

So where do memories come into this?

Many things about the afternoon's work reminded me of my dad.  Pruning out the grey, dead wood – that's something he taught me about.  How to cut off a branch without causing a damaging split back to the trunk – another little skill he passed along.  Knowing to let the rosin seep out freely, spreading it to cover the saw wounds – another piece of pater lore.  Even the tools I used (Swiss-made Felco) were a choice he made.  I can still remember him showing me the features of the swivel-handled Felco 10 hand pruning shears that he favored.  That was roughly 45 years ago; Felco still makes the same shears, and I used a pair of them yesterday.

Lots of memories; some brought with them a tinge of sorrow and grief, others smiles.  I would dearly love to have been able to show my dad around our new home in Paradise.  He'd have greatly enjoyed the name of the town, while poking fun at the Mormons all round me and teasing me about my imminent conversion (probably forcible).  I know he would have loved the climate and soil here, because it would mean we could easily grow the conifers and many other plants that he loved so much...

Fires in San Diego...

Fires in San Diego...  Several people wrote to ask if we were ok, after they heard the news reports about wildfires in San Diego County.  Debbie (who is currently at our home in Jamul) got phone calls from concerned relatives and friends.

Short answer: we're fine.  As best I can tell, there have been no major fires anywhere near Jamul, despite news reports to the contrary.  There were several minor fires, including one quite close to our home (that one was started, we're told, by a power line downed by the high winds on Wednesday morning).  These minor fires were all controlled, contained, and put out in short order by very fast and well-coordinated response from fire agencies – in marked contrast to the situation during the 2007 fires.

There are three major fires still uncontrolled in the northern part of the County, near the cities of Rancho Bernardo, San Marcos, and Carlsbad.  All of these have the potential to cause enormous damage.  As I write, just over 30 homes have been burned already.

The high winds (the “Santa Anas”) that are the primary driver for these fires have died down, and no more are in the forecast.  If past experience is a guide, that means that firefighters will now be able to control and contain these fires within a few days, and their structure protection efforts will be largely successful.  Fires roaring up canyons will be the biggest challenge for them.  That's not the voice of an expert you hear; it's the voice of experience.  We're very familiar with this pattern.

Our fire season appears to have arrived five months early – the weather that is at the root of these fires is what we would normally experience in October.  I have no idea what the next five months will bring, but I sure hope it's not one giant fire season!

Good news!

Good news!  Looks like I'm going to live to a ripe old age, as I have a sense of purpose.  Now if only I could remember what it was...

I love bananas...

I love bananas ... but it looks like one of my favorite foods is threatened – mainly because of a worldwide monoculture (single variety) in commercial banana production.  A fungus that attacks the variety grown looks unstoppable at the moment...

Non-celiac gluten sensitivity?

Non-celiac gluten sensitivity?  Looks like it doesn't actually exist, says the scientist who started the whole thing in the first place.  Lest you be critical of the scientist, let me point out that this is exactly how science is supposed to work – unlike, say, the “science is settled” anthropogenic global warming pseudoscience...

Oh, so this is what Apple products are for!

Oh, so this is what Apple products are for!  That's a comment from this video of a perfectly good Apple iMac being utterly destroyed by a WWII-era Finnish 20mm anti-tank gun.  Why, you ask?  If you have to ask that question, you are clearly not in this video's target demographic :)

Historical infographics...

Historical infographics...  A nice collection from the Smithsonian.  The example at right shows the barometric pressure and weather reports for Tottenham, England, in 1815...

Best used car ad evah!

Best used car ad evah!

I bawled like a baby...

I bawled like a baby...  Beagle Freedom Project.  There's a happy ending, but if you're a dog lover, you'll be crying too.

I've been up here for six weeks now, sans dogs, and I miss them badly...

I want to go there!

I want to go there!  But I don't know where “there” is.  It looks like somewhere in Asia, but that's about all I can tell.  What a gorgeously composed photo!  Click to embiggen, as usual...

If this doesn't raise your fear of flying...

If this doesn't raise your fear of flying ... then I'm not sure what could!  I cringed my way through the entire thing...

Russia fights back against sanctions...

Russia fights back against sanctions...  And our short-sighted, politically-motivated space policy comes back to bite us in the butt.  Hard.

Wow. Just wow...

Wow.  Just wow...  The Obama administration has decided to reverse course on home mortgage policy – to make easier credit available to consumers through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The stated reason?  They're afraid that tight mortgage policies (i.e., those that require mortgagees to be creditworthy) are going to stifle the nascent housing recovery.  Translation: unless we let people buy homes that they can't actually afford, there won't be as many homes purchased.

The real reason?  Buying votes, of course.  With taxpayer dollars, of course.

Somehow the geniuses that run the country have managed to forget the housing crisis that came to a head just 8 years ago, provoking the financial crisis that we're still trying to recover from.

I'm giving them too much credit, though.  It's really much simpler than that.  If you're a national level politician in the U.S., you're just trying to figure out how to get people to vote for you.  Making it easy for them to “buy” houses they can't afford, backed by taxpayer dollars from the “rich” minority is a great way to do that...

Sheesh...  If we as a people keep electing these idiots, we deserve to get it good and hard.  And we are...

Those cheap Apple knockoffs are just as good, right?

Those cheap Apple knockoffs are just as good, right?  Wrong!  Ken Shirriff does a stellar side-by-side comparison between two products: a genuine Apple iPad charger ($19), and a cheap knockoff ($3). 

I once bought one of the cheap ones myself, and did a much less rigorous test: I connected the output to a 2.5 ohm load (to get 2 amps/10 watts of output) and looked at the output with a 'scope. 

First problem: the output was just over 3 volts, not the desired 5 volts.  That's 40% under voltage; the USB spec says 5% at most.

Second problem: there was almost 1 volt of 25 KHz noise on the output.  Apparently the switcher operated at that frequency.  One would expect to find no more than 100 millivolts of noise, and ideally less than 10 millivolts.  This thing was producing 10 to 100 times that!

Third problem: after about 2 minutes of under-load testing, a wisp of smoke started curling up from the charger block.  A few seconds later there was a loud pop, the case cracked, and clouds of black smoke shot out.  Simultaneously the house's circuit breaker blew.  I opened the windows and let the stupid thing cool down, then threw it away.

I ran the same tests on the Apple charger, and it passed with flying colors.  The block got slightly warm, otherwise I couldn't see any change at all.  I've happily paid my “Apple tax” ever since.  I prefer my electronics to work, and without noxious smoke, please...

What kids really do in college...

What kids really do in college...  Parents, behold where your hard-earned tuition dollars are going!

Best kitty hug evah!

Best kitty hug evah!

Some day I will be proud of our elected leaders...

Some day I will be proud of our elected leaders ... but today is not that day.  Behold Joe Garcia, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.  Watch the video and you'll see him carefully examine something adhering to his finger – and then eating it.  That something on his finger?  That's something he just extracted from his ear.  With the cameras rolling, during a hearing.

Overall I think I prefer the fisticuffs that periodically break out in the South Korean and Taiwanese legislatures.

What party does Joe Garcia belong to?  The Democrats.  What state does he hail from?  Florida. 

Last night I received four emails from friends who live in other countries.  This little video clip just confirmed all their suspicions about the barbarian nature of Americans.  We're just not ready for membership in the civilized world, and we need adult supervision.  Badly.

Wreck of Columbus' ship Santa Maria may have been found...

Wreck of Columbus' ship Santa Maria may have been found...  Off the coast of what is today Haiti...

Curiosity is drilling holes on Mars again...

Curiosity is drilling holes on Mars again...  Click to embiggen (this is a focus merge photo, with artificially high depth-of-field)...

Low information citizens...

Low information citizens...  The Arab nations in general, and the Palestinians in particular, have spent a lot of money over the past few decades on public relations (PR) efforts.  These are primarily in Europe and the U.S.  The PR paints a far more moderate picture of their views and intentions than the reality on the ground in the Arab countries, and this is deliberate.  It's been well-known in Europe and America for over 30 years, and anyone there can find this out for themselves these days through numerous sources on the web (the lamestream media, with only a few exceptions (notably the Wall Street Journal), just republishes the PR, so they're just about useless for discovering the truth).

However, the vast majority of the population of both Europe and America are what I'm calling “low information citizens”.  These citizens know only what they hear from the Arab/Palestinian PR, as trumpeted by the lamestream media, and as a direct consequence public opinion has gradually shifted toward pro-Palestinian views and away from pro-Israeli views.  One consequence of this has boomeranged on the Palestinians (as noted by the linked article): more Jews are emigrating from Europe to Israel because of the increase in anti-Semitism there.

There's a larger issue, though, that makes me very sad: public policy in many countries, including the U.S., is drifting toward support for the Palestinians at the expense of the Israelis.  In different terms, policy is drifting toward support of the utterly corrupt, totally failed Arab societies and away from the sole example of a moral, free, and successful society in the Middle East.  That is what makes me sad, because this drift in policy will only promote the needless suffering and deaths of millions of people suffering under the Arab thugocracies.  At the heart of the problem is those low information citizens.  Were they informed and engaged, I have no doubt the drift would be entirely different...

Geek: Randall Munroe's TED talk...

Geek: Randall Munroe's TED talk...  Munroe is the creator of XKCD...

Climate change – is there anything it can't do?

Climate change – is there anything it can't do?  James Delingpole deservedly mocks the UK's Guardian newspaper for credulously reporting that climate change contributed to the Boko Haram kidnapping of hundreds of Nigerian girls.  Reading things like this make me think that Homo sapiens is quickly “evolving” into Homo stultus...

Delingpole also reports that the latest studies of those rapidly disappearing Himalayan glaciers had some unexpected results: the glaciers are not disappearing after all!  In fact, if measured by the aggregate ice accumulation in all Himalayan glaciers, they're increasing at a higher rate than the climate models can model.  Oops!


Then there's this bit on Watts Up With That?, wherein Nobel-prize winning chump Michael Mann is caught out with his “hide the decline” fakery in a particularly delicious fashion.  The graph above right is from that story.

A friend from Estonia wrote me the other day, asking how I would react if Mark Steyn were somehow to lose his lawsuit with Michael Mann.  My correspondent is a fervent anthropogenic global warming believer, so he fully expects this outcome.  Here's what my reaction would be: I would lose what little faith remains in me about our American system of justice.  That reaction has absolutely nothing to do with whether Steyn's position is just, and everything to do with free speech – because in the end, that's what this lawsuit is about: whether Mark Steyn (or anyone else) can stand up and speak his or her mind.  Forget the climatology-related merits of each side on this case; they are irrelevant.  What's really on trial is good old-fashioned American-style free speech...

She's a mom, too...

She's a mom, too...  Via my lovely bride, who is a “mom” to our four dogs, nine cats, and innumerable hummingbirds...

Geek: computers really suck at division...

Geek: computers really suck at division...  By that, I mean that division is slow compared with other arithmetic operations, and there are no simple ways to make it faster.  So programmers will sometimes go to extreme lengths to avoid it...

I've never done anything quite like what the article describes.  However, I have used many other “tricks”, including table look-ups, shift-and-add (for fixed integers), and approximations.  The programmers working on video games have been particularly inventive in this area, as their code often needs to do many millions of divisions in order to paint a scene...

The face of corruption in America...

The face of corruption in America...  Texas style...

Free speech is one of America's most precious ideas...

Free speech is one of America's most precious ideas...  Our universities are conspiring to kill it, just as it starts to flower in other countries.  This does not bode well for America.  I feel the doom approaching when I think about the implications.

I'll bet the multi-culti, non-offending metro-sexual types would have an entirely different attitude if they had any experience or knowledge of the the world outside their bubble, or of the past.  I suspect this is where historical cycles originate; the pattern is quite visible even in our own country's history.  The current madness will likely end when some existential threat appears – and for a little while at least, we'll get back to the core values that the country was founded upon.  Then they'll probably fade to blackness yet again...

A beautiful idea...

A beautiful idea...  It's also a wonderful example of the way the Internet enables things that were impossible without it...

Room-temperature superconductor breakthrough?

Room-temperature superconductor breakthrough?  Maybe.

It's very hard to overstate what an impact on our lives such a breakthrough would have...

Cognitive biases...

Cognitive biases...  This is a good collection of them, with easily understood descriptions. 

I've long noted that most people are completely unaware of these biases, though they'll readily recognize them when confronted with descriptions like those at the link above.

One thing that article doesn't mention is that people vary widely in their susceptibility to each of the biases.  For instance, in general introverts are much less susceptible to in-group bias.  I knew the late Dr. Alan Davidson, an industrial psychologist, quite well.  He and I had a fascinating conversation once about efforts to predict people's success by measuring their cognitive biases.  He believed that this effort, if made practical, was the only real contender to using IQ as a predictor of success.  At the time he and I had that conversation, about 15 years ago, the major finding so far was that successful people had much lower cognitive biases of certain types – and higher for other types.  For me, at least, that's a completely counter-intuitive result!

Recycling is bullshit!

Recycling is bullshit!  Except for aluminum cans, that is.  Note: if some angry, salty language offends you, this video is not for you.

Many moons ago, when we lived in Chula Vista, I made a discovery that outraged me – but I was very alone in that reaction.  My discovery?  The city's waste collection system required us to sort aluminum, plastic, and paper trash into a blue recycling bin.  We were charged extra for these bins.  The contents of those bins went to a facility where the aluminum cans were picked out and sold – for slightly less than it cost to run the facility.  The remaining plastic and paper trash was then trucked – at extra cost to the taxpayers – to a separate landfill in Mexico.  The rest of the trash went into a landfill in San Diego County.  The overall result was that taxpayers were subsidizing a completely ineffective recycling industry that ended up not only costing more, but using more energy and disposing of a large quantity of paper and plastic in an unregulated Mexican landfill. 

Before recycling was imposed legislatively, the vast majority of aluminum cans were recycled – by armies of people picking through the trash to make some money.  The proportion of aluminum cans that were recycled actually went down after recycling was imposed, simply because some people didn't recycle, but nobody picked through the trash any more.  The rest of the trash used to go all into a nice, safe San Diego County landfill, costing the taxpayers much less than trucking a bunch of it to Mexico.

When I shared my discovery with others, I was surprised that basically nobody shared my outrage.  It's a peculiar situation, where logic and common sense seem to be inoperative in the face of the “feel-good” aspects of recycling.  The entire multi-billion dollar industry seems to be one gigantic scam, a scheme to milk abundant tax dollars.  I'm sure you will not be a bit surprised to learn that the recycling companies are huge political campaign contributors...

California leads the way...

California leads the way ... in billion dollar oopsies.  And yet the voters keep on electing these knuckleheads.  You'd think they'd figure it out eventually, wouldn't you?

Wait.  What am I thinking?  I've met some of these voters – and I think I should feel lucky they didn't elect Justin Bieber...

Puppies always were cute...

Puppies always were cute...  Well, duh!  More here...

Product and company review: CAI Technologies water softener...

Product and company review: CAI Technologies water softener...  One of the things we needed to fix in our new home in Paradise, Utah was the water softener.  The old softener was leaking brine (ugh!) and also some of its resin beads were making it into the house water.  These beads clogged up basically every faucet and shower head in the house, greatly reducing the rate of water flow.  I had a plumber come out and inspect the old softener (a 24,000 grain single tank Aqua-Pure model), just in case it was something simple and inexpensive to fix.  It wasn't.

So ... it was time for me to start researching water softeners.  We have never owned a home that had one before, so I've never really had any idea how they worked.   The whole “add salt and your water gets better” part was a mystery to me.  Fortunately there are numerous excellent web sites that explain all this, and in a short while I actually understood how these things worked.  But I still didn't know which one I should get, and there are a bazillion choices.  My next tactic was to start reading water conditioning bulletin boards and blogs, and there are quite a few of them.  I quickly got to several concrete recommendations, based on the experience of quite a few installers.  The big ones:

• Fleck controller.  This is a brand of controller – the usage meter, electronics, and valves that control the operation of the water softener.  There are several manufacturers of these, but the Fleck products are the consensus “good stuff”.
• Twin tank.  This is a more expensive route to go, as there is an additional resin tank and double the resin beads.  However, there are multiple advantages to it.  First, your system has double the total capacity (that is, number of gallons of hard water that can be softened before a brine wash is needed).  Second, the regeneration job is done with soft water (coming from the tank that's not being regenerated) instead of hard water (which a single tank system must do).  This results in a better job of regeneration.  But third, and to me most important, is that the system is never off-line for the regeneration – one tank is regenerated while the other continues to supply softened water to the house.  This means that we can go to a purely metered system (a tank is only regenerated when it is actually needed, as opposed to being on a schedule).  The two hour regeneration process won't affect us at all.
• High capacity.  I discovered that “buying up” the total capacity is relatively inexpensive and results in much longer times between regenerations, and less wear-and-tear on the controller.  The capacity is measured in “grains” of calcium removed from the hard water.  Small units may be 16,000 or 24,000 grains capacity; large residential units are 64,000 grains.  With a twin tank system, that doubles – so a large residential unit would be 128,000 grains total capacity.

Then I needed to choose a supplier.  After a lot of research on the bulletin boards and blogs, and also with Amazon's product reviews, I settled on CAI Technologies.  They have a reputation for solid products and good service, and they had a unit that was exactly what I was looking for.  I ordered it directly from them.

Three days later, UPS dropped off 7 or 8 boxes containing the parts and pieces of our new water softener.  I arranged for a local plumber to come out and install it a week later, and then I unpacked and inspected all the parts.  It all looked great – the right stuff and all looked well made – except that they had shipped me the wrong controller.  Dang.

Well, anyone can make a mistake.  What really matters is how they handled it.  I called CAI, and within 30 seconds I was connected to an actual tech – someone intimately familiar with their products and how they're used.  He had me do a couple of checks to verify my belief that I had the wrong controller.  I did.  Then he said the magic words:

“Well, we’re going to fix this right now.  We’ll ship you the right one by overnight express today, and we’ll arrange for a pickup of the wrong one.  Our apologies for screwing this up.  Let us know if there’s anything else we need to do to make this right.”

I can't ask for anything better than that.  CAI did exactly as promised.  The next day I had the right controller in my hands, and the day after that UPS picked up the old (wrong) one to return to them.  By the time the plumber arrived, I had all the right stuff.  He installed it, we tested it, and all looked good.

That was a week ago.  I've now gone through two startup regeneration cycles (manually initiated) and one automatic regeneration cycle (because we used enough water to consume the capacity of one of the tanks).  It works flawlessly.  I've tested the water before and after softening: before it's 23 grains/gallon (fairly hard), after it's 0 grains/gallon (perfectly soft).  There are no brine leaks, and no resin beads are escaping into our water supply.

Good product, good company, great service.  Recommended!

Happy dogs (and cat)...

Happy dogs (and cat)...  It involves large quantities of mutts, ocean, showers, sticks, and swimming – all down under.  Via my lovely bride...

Tattoo files...

Tattoo files ... of Russian criminals.  Interesting stories behind each of the tattoos...

Valles Marineris (Mars)...

Valles Marineris (Mars)...  Via APOD, of course.  As always, click to embiggen...

Geek: large public datasets...

Geek: large public datasets...  The list is longer than I expected...

Quantum random numbers generated on a mobile phone...

Quantum random numbers generated on a mobile phone...  There's an app for that!

APIs can be copyrighted?

APIs can be copyrighted?  This strikes me as a strange court decision, one with lots of implications far beyond the software world.  Translated into the world of books, for example, this ruling would allow an author to copyright the characters and world characteristics in their novels – not just the novel itself.  For example, J.K. Rowling could copyright Harry Potter's world – and nobody else could write novels using them.  Last time I looked, there were several thousand novels and stories (most written by fans) using that world or derivatives of it.  If this ruling were applied to books, all of them would be copyright violators.

For the software world, this ruling, should it stand, will raise roadblocks for one of the fruitful paths for software innovation.  Like many other software engineers, I've personally reverse-engineered quite a few APIs so that I could write replacements that improved the original – making it more capable, faster, smaller, or sometimes just making it work correctly.  Had this ruling's logic been in place back then, I'd have been unable to do any of that.

I hope it's overturned.  More than that, though, I'd like to see our entire framework of intellectual property revisited, to take into account the realities of modern technology.  I'm not talking just about software here – music, visual art, and writing have all been impacted by modern technology.  Digital music and electronic book readers are familiar to us all, but even arts like painting and sculpture are seeing the impact of modern technology.  For example, one can now buy oil painting reproductions where even the brush strokes are robotically reproduced.  Even stone sculptures can now be precisely reproduced by large-scale 3D scanning and robotic sculptors.

The world, she's a-changing – and intellectual property law needs to change, too...

Three million for hot coffee...

Three million for hot coffee...  Remember that famous lawsuit, in which a woman won a $3 million judgment against McDonald's for their overly hot coffee?  Most likely, just about everything you thought you knew about that case was wrong.

That case happened back in the early '90s, in the days when we were all completely dependent on mainstream media for our news.  It's a great example of the distortions produced by their quest for a sensational story.  I remember reading about this case in the Wall Street Journal, and even there I don't recall seeing the details in the article above.  Doing a little searching on the web today, I found multiple sources for the same information in the article I linked, dating back to 2009 when HBO started making a movie about the case.

I like our new world much better – without the mainstream media deciding which news I'm going to hear...

California leads the way...

California leads the way ... in the flight to Mexico for medical care.  Why, you ask?  ObamaCare, of course...

Virtual President Bill Whittle on gun control...

Virtual President Bill Whittle on gun control...  Part of his excellent “Virtual Presidency” series.  Via friend, former colleague, and Idaho mogul-of-everything Doug S...

The wuss subroutine...

The wuss subroutine...  Scott Adams cracks me up :)

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day!  The science is settled...

Angry bird...

Angry bird...  A slightly early Mother's Day present for my card-carrying ancient-American mom (who loves owls).

Love you, mom.  I'll be there to collect a hug in 30 days!

Plectritis congesta...

Plectritis congesta...  Via BPOD, of course...

Mann misrepresents the EPA...

Mann misrepresents the EPA ... and Steve McIntyre takes him to the woodshed for it.

I love reading these public floggings by McIntyre – he's so level-headed and unemotional in his analyses, no matter what the provocation. He behaves like my ideal for a scientist – in marked contrast to a number of actual climate scientists, most especially including the disgusting self-promoter Michael Mann...

Green failures...

Green failures...  Graveyards of failed wind and solar power projects litter the land, especially in California.  England had its Victorian Follies; we have our Millennium Follies™

Ace didn't see it coming...

Ace didn't see it coming...  Neither did I.  The arrogance, hypocrisy, shamelessness, and boundless ambition of the Clinton family still boggles the minds of the rest of us...

Ancient Egyptian objects...

Ancient Egyptian objects...  Three-dimensional, fully interactive versions are being posted online, and access is free...

Saving Feynman's van...

Saving Feynman's van...  I would have loved happening across this in a campground...

Hadrian's Wall...

Hadrian's Wall ... in northern England.  As usual, click to embiggen.  If you're not familiar with Hadrian's Wall, it's a fortification built all the way across England (about 75 miles long) by the Romans during the reign Emperor Hadrian.  That's nearly 2,000 years ago – it was built between 122 and 127 A.D...

Debbie is back in Jamul...

Debbie is back in Jamul...  And I'm still “camping” in our new home in Utah.  It's lonely up here without Debbie and all our animals...

We had close to an inch of rain yesterday, along with a bit of hail the size of small marbles, and a bout of strong, gusty winds.  This morning it's still mostly cloudy and a bit cold (38°F).  The birds are all puffed up for warmth :)