Office hours...

Office hours...  Saw an article on this study, which looks at when people actually go to work (graph at right).  This immediately brought two thoughts to mind:

First, in my last job I kept very strange hours, which will surprise exactly nobody who knows me :)  I generally arrived at work between 5:00 am and 5:30 am (after a one hour drive), and left around 2:00 pm.  I was in almost perfect sync with people who worked on the East Coast, in a time zone +3 hours from mine.

Then I recalled one quite interesting problem I worked on at that same job.  Our product was a SaaS product (otherwise known as a web application), and generally people logged into it when then came into work, and remained logged into it all day long.  Each of our customers had a separate instance of our product.  One of our large customers – out of hundreds of customers – was having a problem we were having trouble tracking down.  Every morning their system would start thrashing like mad: CPU utilization spiked, disk I/O spiked, and response times were in minutes instead of seconds.  After a half hour or so, every single morning, their system would settle down and start behaving normally.  Diagnostics showed nothing.  We swapped out hardware; no change.  People were pulling their hair out trying to figure it out, while the customer was issuing escalating threats on a daily basis.  I was one of the team troubleshooting the problem.  I was chasing down a strange symptom we observed, and happened to look at the table that contained login information – and noticed that almost 1,000 (of 1,200 total) users were logging in within a 3 minute period.  This seemed almost impossibly synchronized – how could 1,000 users all log in with such a synchronized schedule?  That question prompted a phone call to the customer, who verified that in fact all their employees did report to work in exactly this synchronized fashion.  About 90% of the employees were union members, and they clocked in precisely at 9:00 am, and out at 5:00 pm.  In fact, our contact at the company was surprised there was as much as a 3 minute spread in the logins, until he realized that many workers probably grabbed a cup of coffee on the way in.  Anyway, the high number of concurrent logins was the root of our issue.  We had the company solve it temporarily by telling their folks to log in on a staggered schedule (based on the last two digits of their SSN); then we fixed the concurrency issue with a simple queue mechanism.  No other customer had ever reported this issue, in years of experience with hundreds of thousands of users.  It's all the union's fault :)

Mystery of Death Valley's “traveling rocks” solved...

Mystery of Death Valley's “traveling rocks” solved...  It's ice!

Multiculti gone horribly wrong...

Multiculti gone horribly wrong ... in a new and awful way.  Press reports are saying this happened (and is continuing to happen!) in multiple U.K. cities.  This immediately makes me wonder if the same thing is happening in other European countries, most especially in southern France and Scandinavia...

Did Michael Mann help write the EPA documents...

Did Michael Mann help write the EPA documents ... the same ones that he claims validate his research?

This somehow seems of a piece for the guy who falsely claimed he was a Nobel Prize winner...

Brainwashing our young...

Brainwashing our young...  Progressive view of U.S. history mandated...

Take no prisoners...

Take no prisoners...  Afghanistan has ordered its soldiers and police not to take Taliban prisoners – but to kill them outright instead.  Why?  Because captured Taliban are finding it relatively easy to bribe their way out of prison.  That means the only way to stop a Taliban operative is to kill him.

Most Americans have no experience with the kind of pervasive corruption one finds in many other societies, and are constantly surprised (and appalled) at the effects of it.  Afghanistan is one of those countries, and reportedly one of the worst – but it is certainly not the only one.  I was once responsible for business subsidiaries in Russia, where we routinely paid bribes (for things as mundane as getting an Internet connection) and protection money (it would be a shame if something happened to your nice, modern office).

Locals quickly figured out that American money was being poured into our office in St. Petersburg, and it was obvious that people were angling for every possible means to take a chunk of that for themselves.  Not by the means Americans would generally expect, either.  One example will give you a flavor for it.  Our staff there asked us if we would spring for a bottled water delivery service, so our engineering staff could stop drinking the municipal water – which smelled like gasoline and tasted worse.  We said “Of course!”, since we didn't really want to lose staff members to poisoning.  The first day's delivery consisted of 20 liter (~5 gallon) bottles filled with distinctly cloudy water.  When our staff complained to the water delivery guy, he said: “Oh, you want the clean water!  That will be 30 rubles (about $1) extra per bottle, cash only.”  This enterprising fellow had found a way to bribe us for our water!  Complaining to his boss didn't help, because of course his boss got a cut of it.

Take that story and repeat 100 times, and you'll see why we estimated that about 1/3 of our St. Petersburg operating budget went to bribes and protection money...

Worried about Curiosity's wheel wear issues?

Worried about Curiosity's wheel wear issues?  Here's a very detailed article about it...

What the engineer should know about programming...

What the engineer should know about programming...  A magazine article from 1957.  Things have changed just a tad since then :)

Who needs that damned Constitution, anyway?

Who needs that damned Constitution, anyway?  Certainly not King President Obama!

Related thought: do you suppose any foreign politician looks to the U.S. as a political model any more?  I read an article the other day talking about a debate amongst German talking heads, wherein the conclusion was that Putin's Russia was a far more viable model for Germany than Obama's America...

Barn: pier footing forms...

Barn: pier footing forms...  Our builder finished these yesterday afternoon, but the field was too wet and mucky for a concrete truck to get in.  We're hoping they can pour today.

The first photo just shows a rough form, sitting in its hole in the backfill.  The second shows the two rows of four piers.  The last shows the forms finished and ready to pour.  These are held up by stakes and are only roughly in the design position.  The top of them is several inches below the needed top of the pier foundation.  Once the footings have cured a day or two, a round form will be placed on top, and the top of this will be carefully positioned and set to the right height.  These will be poured next, after which the pier/footing “assemblies” will be backfilled around and compacted.  At that point (hopefully still this week), it will be time to put a layer of fine gravel over all the backfill, and carefully level it...

The EPA deals in political propaganda, not science...

The EPA deals in political propaganda, not science...  Warren Meyer of CoyoteBlog seems to be surprised by this.

I am not.  I would expect the EPA to pay attention to the science only when it serves their political interests to do so.  That's not very often, actually.

Lois Lerner had a Blackberry...

Lois Lerner had a Blackberry...  That's significant because some of her emails would have been stored on that device.  But the IRS destroyed it, too!

They're just laughing in our faces, now.  They don't even care if we know they're corrupt, lying sons of bitches.  They don't think there's anything that we the people can do about it.

Are they right?

Airstrikes in Libya...

Airstrikes in Libya ... were conducted by Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, acting on their own.  They didn't coordinate the strikes with the U.S., or get prior clearance for them.

The U.S. is receding from the forefront of world affairs.  There is no effective leadership.  Tin pot dictators like Russia's Putin, and posturing closet Islamists like Turkey's Erogodan are competing for the role.  I just hope things don't go to hell too fast, so that our next president has a fighting chance to reassert this country's leadership...

The best of Harry Reid...

The best of Harry Reid...  Now there's a sentence I didn't expect I'd ever write!

Ok, he wins...

Ok, he wins ... best ice bucket challenge evah!

Farmers rule!

Think about it...

Think about it...

Barn: initial backfill is complete!

Barn: initial backfill is complete! All the pit run needed is in. Despite our recent rains (over 2" in just the past few days) making a muddy mess of the field, the gravel truck managed to get all the required loads fairly close to the barn's foundation, and the builder shuttled it into the foundation with his loader/backhoe.  In the photo at far right, the builder's son is compacting the backfill down, in preparation for covering it with a layer of fine gravel.  In the other photo, a sprinkler is wetting down the backfill in preparation for that compaction.

The next step is to pour footings for the steel piers that will hold up the center of the roof, along with the second story storage area.  There are two rows of these piers, with three or four (I've forgotten which) piers in each row.  The rows of piers will be topped by a large gluelam beam that in turn will support the interior sections of all the trusses.  This combination of steel and engineered wood is very common these days, thanks to technological innovations in the building industry.  A few decades ago, the choices would have been far more limited – along with far more expensive, and not as strong...

Philae candidate landing sites!

Philae candidate landing sites!  The ESA has released the list of eight candidate landing sites for the Philae lander.  Later this fall, Rosetta will launch Philae for the short trip down to the surface of comet 67P.  As is usual in landing site selection, there's tension between choosing a scientifically interesting site, and a (relatively) safe site.  I don't envy those who must choose...

I recommend RealClearScience...

I recommend RealClearScience...  And this manifesto they've just published nicely sums up why.  The list at the end is in line with my own thinking on a bunch of “controversial” (or at least, unsettled :) science...

Why do I study physics?

Why do I study physics?  Very nicely done!

Triton flyby...

Triton flyby...  The just-released movie at right shows a robotic space explorer's flyby of Triton, Neptune's moon.  If you follow these things, as I do, you might be startled to hear that, as there are currently no explorers anywhere near Neptune!  The movie was made from a collection of still photos taken by Voyager 2, in 1989, as it zoomed past Neptune on its way to interstellar space.  Via APOD, of course...

California leads the way...

California leads the way ... in drunk state Senator driving.  Hueso is from San Diego, not all that far from Jamul...

Once speculation, now admitted...

Once speculation, now admitted...  The U.S. government is now admitting that they do, in fact, have all of Lois Lerner's emails on backup tapes.  They just don't want to take the trouble to retrieve them. 

My, that's very convenient for the (most transparent evah) administration, no?

The Neo-Neocons...

The Neo-Neocons...  This editorial by Bret Stephens, in today's Wall Street Journal, caught my eye both because of the author and the title.  “Neo-Neocon” is one of my favorite blogs; its author is a woman who's gone through a political transformation in part because of the same issues Bret raises in this piece. 

Stephens' piece is focused mainly on a parallel topic: the way that some (many, actually) progressive political figures have changed their attitude toward military intervention against violent fundamentalist Islamic movements.  The emergence of ISIS while Obama was president neatly and cleanly exemplifies this, as Stephens documents...

Why do Nigerian scammers say they're from Nigeria?

Why do Nigerian scammers say they're from Nigeria?  The Nigerian email scams are notorious – the butt of jokes, and everyone knows about them.  So you'd think it would behoove the scammers to stop telling people that they're from Nigeria, wouldn't you?  Au contraire, say researchers at Microsoft: the scammers carefully and intentionally tell you they're from Nigeria.  Why?  Because then they know that any responses they do get are from the tiny percentage of the population that doesn't know about the Nigerian scams...

Seen in the northern Pacific...

Seen in the northern Pacific...  An airline pilot saw these strange lights two days ago, under a thin cloud cover, while flying over the northern Pacific between Alaska and Japan.  He has no idea what they were...

A small step in the right direction...

A small step in the right direction...  The progressive/socialist bastion of Vermont has moved to start treating drug addiction as a health and social problem, instead of as a criminal problem.  It's not the more complete withdrawal from the war on drugs that I'd like to see ... but it's a move away from the war, at least...

Russia is still in denial...

Russia is still in denial...  Ukraine captured Russian soldiers inside Ukraine.  In the face of some rather convincing evidence (including videotaped interrogations of the captured soldiers), Russia has admitted that the soldiers were there – but denies that they're there intentionally.

This is so reminiscent of the verbal games and deceptions employed by Hitler just prior to his invasions of Poland and Czechoslovakia.  We've forgotten the lessons of history, I'm afraid.  Knuckleheads like Putin need to be stopped sooner, not later.  That's not happening, and I am concerned about that...

Really!

Really!  Today's Pepper and Salt, in the Wall Street Journal:

23 years of Linux...

23 years of Linux...  On August 25, 1991, Linus Torvalds made the first announcement of the free, open source operating system Linux.  Torvalds is still the leader of the project, which has now captured a large and growing share of all non-desktop operating systems.  In my recent experience, Linux absolutely dominates the enterprise server market, something that I would never have predicted as recently as ten years ago.  Yesterday Torvalds made a sentimental minor release of Linux, on its 23rd birthday...

Weird flowers...

Weird flowers ... that look like other things, like the Flying Duck Orchid (Caleana major) at right.  Plus, a couple of bugs that look like flowers!  Via my CCPOAA mom...

Another loony in a wing suit...

Another loony in a wing suit...  It looks like he comes within a few inches of some of those trees...

A magnificent solar flare...

A magnificent solar flare...  An “M-flare”, just a medium-sized one.  But this one was captured in a movie by the SOHO satellite...

Galaxy Arp 188...

Galaxy Arp 188... Via APOD, of course.  As usual, click to embiggen...

Amazing story...

Amazing story...

Grout...

Grout...  The fellow who did the tile work in our remodeled master bathroom did a really nice job, but there was one imperfection that we didn't like: the grout, in certain places, hadn't been properly removed.  When grout is correctly used, all of it should be below the level of the surrounding tile or rock.  In the case of our bathroom, some of the right-angle joints (and especially the triple corners) had a “bead” of grout that was too high.  It's easy to see how this happened: when you apply grout, the last step is to clean off the excess with a sponge.  That works great on flat surfaces – but not so much on right angled joints.  You can see this on the photo above right (click to embiggen).

After a bit of research on the web, I headed down to my local Home Depot to get a grout brush.  I expected to be using this and my pocket knife to (laboriously) work that excess grout off.  However, when I arrived at Home Depot and started looking at the tile tools, a friendly fellow came over and asked me what I was trying to accomplish.  He told me about a special tool made for exactly my problem: a carbide-tipped scraper with a small triangular blade (see photos at right).  I headed home considerably better armed for the battle than I had expected.

With just a little practice I got the hang of that scraper.  It's important to wet down the grout and tile before you start – that keeps the dust from flying, and (more importantly) it helps prevent the scraper from “biting” into the rock, by lubricating it (same principle as shaving foam).  It's also important to be gentle and to use light pressure.  It's far better to make ten very light strokes than to try to remove it all with one muscular stroke, because that greatly reduces the chances of a catastrophic mistake (removing too much grout, or a chunk of rock).

The results are better than I had hoped for, and with far less work.  To go over the entire shower took me about 4 hours of work.  With just my pocket knife, that would have been more like 4 days.  Furthermore, this was easy work, with relatively little skill required (a vital element, when it's me doing the work!).

Bottom line: if you have an excess grout situation, get this tool!

Buh-bye, hard disks!

Buh-bye, hard disks!  A terabyte on a postage stamp, faster and more durable than flash memory, coming soon.

The first non-volatile RAM I ever worked with (back in '72) was made with magnetic “cores” – tiny toroids with wire strung through them.  These had a density of about 78 bits per cubic inch.  The first versions of these new memories will have densities of roughly 2 x 10¹⁵ bits per cubic inch – a density increase of about 3 x 10¹³ in just 55 years.  It seems unlikely that non-volatile RAM advances will keep up at that rate!  On the other hand, as recently as 20 years ago I would never have guessed that I'd live to see the density of flash memory today...

Good doggy!

Good doggy!

Seen in Los Angeles...

Seen in Los Angeles...  No normal human could ever figure this out...

The complete Feynman lectures...

The complete Feynman lectures ... are now online...

Crassula ovata...

Crassula ovata...  Via BPOD, of course...

Pretty much...

Pretty much...  Via my CCPOAA mom...

We can fix anything...

We can fix anything...  My CCPOAA mom sends along this ad, with the comment: “What every married man and suspicious wife need to know!”

Break up the NSA...

Break up the NSA ... and save the Internet.  Bruce Schneier, in Wired...

Your life, in graphics...

Your life, in graphics...  Via reader Simi L.  Ha!

Dangerous U.K. law...

Dangerous U.K. law...  We need to do our best to make certain this doesn't happen here.  The law in question requires U.K. citizens to decrypt files upon demand from the police – or face 2 to 5 years in jail.  This article has a good discussion of the law's problems.

The first objection you might think of is this: what happens if you forget the key (or password)?  Answer: you go to jail.  Yikes!  That's pretty bad!

But it gets much, much worse, as the article explains.  The police just have to think you have an encrypted file.  If you're not familiar with encryption, you might not realize just how problematic that is.  You see, an encrypted file (which can have any name at all) just looks like random data.  There's no test you can apply to it that will unambiguously show that it's an encrypted file.  So any file containing random data could be an encrypted file – and in the U.K., the police can demand that you decrypt it.  If the file happens to be just random data, and not an encrypted file, of course there's no way that you could possibly decrypt it!  If you can't convince the police that it's innocent random data, you could find yourself sharing a cell with a murderer for several years...

Barn: the backfilling marches on...

Barn: the backfilling marches on...  Another 30 or 40 yards of pit run got dumped today.  The builder is hoping that all the needed pit run will be there by tomorrow.  Today they started leveling and compacting the pit run, 3 or 4 inches below the top of the foam board – the right height to provide a base for the next layer of pea gravel.

Rough leveling

Fine leveling, and compactor

In other news, the painters finished up with everything they could do at this point. They have a couple hours of work left after the flooring folks have finished with the stairways, but everything else is done.  I thought I'd memorialize the appearance of the garage, which will surely never look this good again.  Ever.

Worthless scanners – the TSA's security theater...

Worthless scanners – the TSA's security theater...  Marine, reader, former colleague, and friend Larry E. links to this article and comments:

In my recent travels I've gone through these things and been wanded or searched after. Once, I looked back and saw the image, a silhouette style with a yellow mark where it found something. This is what the TSA goon was looking at when he wanded me. The indicator was on my mid-thigh. i.e. no pockets or anything. So I asked him if the thing just randomly places the marks. I don't think he found me amusing.

I don't believe they are any more effective than the failed "puffer" machines.

Frankly I'm offended and dismayed that we are deliberately dehumanized and treated as cattle as we shuffle belt and shoe-less through security lines with self-important goons shouting orders about whether the laptop goes in a separate bin or not.

I've also notice a lot more "homeland security - police" vehicles and personnel around. Their blue stripped "police" cars going up the freeway. commando outfitted homeland security "police" wandering the street fair. Homeland security "police" with automatic weapons boarding trains to walk around before they leave the station.

Why don't I feel safer?

Indeed...

The strange & curious tale of the last true hermit...

The strange & curious tale of the last true hermit...  A great read about Christopher Knight, the man who lived for 27 years in the Maine woods without any human contact...

Mother Nature whacks the environmentalists upside the head again...

Mother Nature whacks the environmentalists upside the head again...  Several decades ago, scientists told the world that CFCs were causing the ozone layer to be depleted, resulting in a worldwide band and billions of dollars being spent to replace them with inferior products.  About ten years ago, scientists noted that – unexpectedly – the ozone hole was still being formed in some years, despite the elimination of CFCs.  Now scientists “belatedly” have discovered that there's apparently a natural source of CFCs, and they're unsure about whether the ban on man-made CFCs accomplished anything at all.

The earth is such a complex, inter-connected system that it's hard to weasel out any hard fact about it.  In this case the scientists a few decades back assumed that CFCs in the atmosphere were from man-made sources, because they didn't know any mechanism for such a molecule to be produced naturally.  Oops.  Bad assumption.  Only after billions of dollars were spent on what was essentially an enormous experiment did they learn the truth.  We're still spending lots of money on this experiment, as cooling systems across the globe are now running with fluids that are substantially less efficient than CFCs, costing the planet a lot of extra energy consumption.

Almost certainly the ban on CFCs will not be lifted, just as the ban on DDT has not been, despite the shaky science that prompted it.  In this case, I'm not at all certain the CFC ban should be lifted – more confirmation would be needed to make me comfortable about reversing it.  However, it seems clear that the ban shouldn't have been imposed without a more convincing scientific case having been made...

Inferiority induction, part 2...

Inferiority induction, part 2...

Wow!

Wow!  This makes me feel unworthy to even look at a woodworking tool...

Vintage medical devices...

Vintage medical devices...  Like the “Domestic Enema Machine” at right, from the 1830s.  More here...

Ha!

Ha!  SMBC...

“You want a Caliphate? Fine. Then we’ll attach a fuse to the end of it and set that bitch on fire.”

“You want a Caliphate?  Fine.  Then we’ll attach a fuse to the end of it and set that bitch on fire.”  Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom has had enough of progressive and libertarian posturing, and is up for some action against ISIS and the other fundamentalist Islamic terrorists.  His conclusion:

So.  To all the preening liberals who may choose to point to this as evidence of bloodthirsty xenophobia or a thrill for war, I offer a preemptive response:  fuck you and the sophistry you’ll use to condemn me.  I hate war as much as anyone.  I’m just not stupid enough to think we can simply wish it away — particularly against an enemy who takes such joy in showing their trophies, be they the heads of children on pikes or the digital video recording of executions.  I don’t care why they do what they do.  I care that they’re made to stop.  By whatever means necessary.

That’s the real moral stand to take, unpopular amongst the finger-wagging nuanced crowd.  And no, I don’t care about them, either.

But go read the whole thing...

Mimetes cucullatus...

Mimetes cucullatus...  Via BPOD, of course...

Ward summer party...

Ward summer party...  Our friends Bruce and June N. invited me to tag along with them to their ward's summer party.

For my non-Mormon readers, a “ward” is a geographically organized congregation.  All the Mormons who live within a designated area are part of a ward; they don't choose which church they go to (other than by choosing where they live).  Generally there will be several wards associated with a given church (meetinghouse) – they each have a given time slot in the meetinghouse on Sundays.

Bruce and June are part of ward 4 in Paradise, Utah, the town we live just north of.  The ward party was a gathering of the ward members (and at least one guest – me!) at Little Bear Bottoms in Wellsville, just a few miles down the road from us.  With Debbie still down in Jamul until our remodeling is complete, I don't have much of a social life :) – so the evening out was rather nice for me.  I met dozens of people, none of whose name I will remember.  There was a lot of interesting and entertaining conversation.  There was food, much of it quite good – and conspicuously evil.

The main entertainment was a homemade water slide (down a hillside) that worked very well.  The kids were the dominant sliders, right down to tiny little toddlers.  One pair of little girls – I'm going to guess 6 or 7 years old – spent nearly the entire evening dashing madly up to the top of the hill, then sliding down back-to-back with huge smiles, and jumping up to do it all over again.  A few adults also went down, including one of my friends (June N.).  In the video above right, she's the one in back, with her friend Donna in the front.

Shortly after June took this ride, the storm you can see in the video hit us with gusts of wind and a little rain.  We fled :)  Shortly after they dropped me off at home, the lightning and thunder started in earnest, and then the skies opened up and it poured.  I'm loving the dramatic weather up here ... very different than Jamul!

Nancy Pelosi takes the ALS ice bucket challenge!

Nancy Pelosi takes the ALS ice bucket challenge!  Via friend, reader, and former colleague Simon M...

The elks have it...

The elks have it...  Via my CCPOAA mom:

Two rednecks are sitting on the front porch.

One says, "Did you know that elks have sex 10 to 15 times a night?"

"AW MAN!", says his friend, "and I just joined the VFW!"

Ha!

Barn: Backfill time...

Barn: Backfill time...  The concrete in the foundation is cured, so work has started again.  The next big step is backfilling soil that was dug out of the foundation trench, and adjusting the height of the soil on the interior (under the floor).  Both started today.  Before the interior is filled, the builder lined the outside with foam insulation, to keep heat (from the floor) from leaking through the foundation.  He also made a hole in the foundation to run the septic line through (there will be a toilet and sink in the barn).  The interior is being filled first with a layer of “pit run” – gravel the way it occurs naturally, with mixed sizes of rock in a matrix of soil.  This will be filled to 3" below the needed level, then the final 3" will be a layer of pea gravel.  Then comes a layer of foam insulation, topped by heating pipes, and finally the poured concrete floor.

Here are some photos from today's work:

Interior of foundation with blue foam insulation

Drilling a hole for the septic line

One load of "pit run" gravel

Rosetta is just 84 km (50 miles) from Comet 67P...

Rosetta is just 84 km (50 miles) from Comet 67P...  And getting closer every day!

Not following the narrative...

Not following the narrative...  Scientists link solar activity to climate change.  Wait, what?  Not man-made carbon dioxide?  Natural solar variability?  Oh, noz!  There goes the warmists main talking point!

“That’s what happens in totalitarian societies.”

“That’s what happens in totalitarian societies.”  That's a quote from Professor Alan Dershowitz – a notable progressive law professor – on the subject of Governor Rick Perry's indictment for abuse of power.  Dershowitz also compares the indictment to what happened in the old Soviet Union.

At this point there is a long list of progressives and Democrats who have condemned the indictment against Perry.  Even reliably progressive rags like the New York Times are, however mildly, critical of the indictment.  I'm beginning to think that the Texas Democrats (probably with DNC connivance) have inadvertently increased the (low) probability of Perry becoming the Republican presidential candidate in 2016, along with the (higher) probability of him becoming the vice presidential candidate...

“Because that's just the way it is in the Land of the Free.”

“Because that's just the way it is in the Land of the Free.”  Imagine that for some reason you owned a set of antique bagpipes that you played competitively.  These bagpipes, which you own legally, happen to have some components made of ivory.  What do you suppose you'd have to go through to take those bagpipes to (say) Canada and bring them back home?

Mark Steyn has the unbelievable details.  As I read his piece (and other articles I found on the incidents), I just wanted to crawl into a corner and cry – for the loss of the land of the free that America once was.  Now we're the land of the bureaucratic boot, smashing our faces into the dirt...

I'd bet on Amazon...

I'd bet on Amazon...  Hachette (an old-school publishing company) is in a pitched battle with Amazon for the hearts and minds of book authors.  Steve Cohen presents the case for authors to take Amazon's side in this fight, basically because book readership is in decline and Amazon is (much) more likely to foster the innovations needed to save the book concept.  I think he's gotten right to the heart of the matter.

Personally, I'm not sure that books (in the traditional sense of hundreds of pages of fixed text and images) have much chance of surviving the technological and cultural changes to the way we consume information (non-fiction) and entertainment (fiction).  I'm not even going to try to predict where things are going to go.  I can readily observe, though, how my own habits have changed.  I'm much less likely these days to buy a non-fiction book (though I still do buy quite a few) – there's so much fresh, high quality, curated information available on the web that many of my non-fiction needs and desires are satisfied with a few clicks, for free.  I haven't found any equivalent for book-length fiction, but ... there's so much other stuff that I read on the web that my daily reading time has been reduced.  I still buy a lot of fiction books, but probably less than half what I did just 10 years ago.  That doesn't mean I'm reading less, though – I think I'm actually reading more, in total.  It's just that a lot of it is on the web these days.

I'll also note that without any exceptions known to me, the people I know who are younger than about 40 years old read vastly fewer books than I do.

But if any organization had a chance to save the notion of books, it would be be Amazon – an organization with a proven record of innovation and disruption, and the biggest bookseller in the world.  Hachette is the equivalent of the buggy manufacturer's association back in the early 1900s...

A tale of two cities...

A tale of two cities...  Peking on the left, Los Angeles on the right.  Peking is more attractive in this video than I expected it to be.  Los Angeles is shown at night, from a distance – the only way that place would ever be attractive!

You'll want to watch these in full-screen mode...

California leads the way..

California leads the way ... to crazy jurisprudence.  The California Supreme Court has ruled that what you don't say is admissible as evidence unless a suspect explicitly invokes his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.

Speechless, I am.  And I hereby invoke my Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination for my speechlessness.

“Obama is signaling to absolute barbarians that they have relative free reign to overrun Iraq and the Kurds, slaughtering our one-time allies with impunity.”

“Obama is signaling to absolute barbarians that they have relative free reign to overrun Iraq and the Kurds, slaughtering our one-time allies with impunity.”  Jeff Goldstein, at Protein Wisdom.

Yep.

San Diego leads the way...

San Diego leads the way ... toward a thugocracy.  Really.

Police forces across the country are fighting, tooth and nail, the idea that they could be monitored and held accountable for their actions.  Mind you, this isn't all police forces – some have embraced the transparency and accountability afforded by body cams and dash cams.  In part, that's to defend their officers against fraudulent accusations.  But the police forces that have entrenched abusive mindsets – mainly, but not entirely, in big cities – are seriously threatened by the disclosures by personal and automobile video, and they're not going to buckle without a fight...

“But this criminalization of politics is really wrong...”

“But this criminalization of politics is really wrong...”  I agree with Ann Althouse (and, by extension, Rush Limbaugh). 

I'll extend it just a tad: the problem isn't just the Democratic Party – it's what American politics has evolved into.  We no longer have a “citizen government” in any real sense.  Instead, we have a permanent political class, feeling as entitled as any elite class – and subject to all the corruptions and dirty tricks that any entitled class feels, er. entitled to.

I like to fantasize that we the people could fix all this mess by electing ordinary citizens instead of our political “elite.”  Then I remember who the voters are, and what their track record is.  And then I start thinking about wine, or the nearest concrete wall to bang my head against...

Going to the temple...

Going to the temple...  I'm visiting the Mormon temple in Ogden, Utah today.  No, I haven't undergone a religious conversion.  Friends here (Bruce and June N.) invited me to go see the temple during its open house following major renovations.  Temples are normally open only to baptized members of the LDS church who have a “temple recommend” attesting to the worthiness of the individual.  I would not qualify on either count :)

I'm looking forward to seeing what a Mormon temple looks like, and learning a bit more about the function.  What I know (perhaps) now comes mainly from books by Mormons who have left the church and now speak critically of it.  Devout Mormons with temple recommends do not discuss what happens inside the temple, in particular the temple ordinances; knowing this, I don't ask questions about it of my Mormon friends.  But I'm hoping a bit more will leak out on this visit.

Wine tasting BS...

Wine tasting BS...  You've most likely already heard about the wine tasting study, over 10 years ago, that completely smashed any notion that wine tasting was an objective “science”.  This shook the pretentious world of oenophiles to its very roots, and it still hasn't recovered.  This was very satisfying to me, as I do like my red wine – but I've long thought the “experts” were full of something (and it wasn't wine).

But the BS exposure masked another interesting discovery revealed in that study.  It turns out that the perceived color can completely override perceived taste and smell.  In other words, our brains are more willing to believe what our eyes see than what our nose smells.  Much more here...

Look at that white big house!

Look at that white big house!  That “sounds” wrong, doesn't it?  It should be “big white house”.  But why does the order of the adjectives (“white” and “big”) matter to us?  I don't remember ever being taught rules about adjective order in school – and yet, we all “know” them.  What's up with that?  Our brains work in strange ways – read about it (and try to ignore the fact that it's on Slate)...

Hah!

Hah!  A friend and former colleague (Bow R.) used to joke when someone yawned in a meeting: “Hey, now, no brain cooling here!”  Now I read that scientists think they've finally cracked the riddle of why we (and just about every vertebrate) yawn.  Yup, you guessed it: to cool our brains.

Bow, you missed your calling!

Why they hate Israel...

Why they hate Israel...  An excellent piece by Mort Zuckerman.

London cabbie vs. Arab Muslim...

London cabbie vs. Arab Muslim...  Via reader and friend Simon M.:

A devout Arab Muslim entered a black cab in London. He curtly asked the cabbie to turn off the radio because as decreed by his religious teaching, he must not listen to music because in the time of the prophet there was no music, especially Western music which is the music of the infidel.

The cab driver politely switched off the radio, stopped the cab and opened the door.

The Arab Muslim asked him, "What are you doing?"

The cabbie answered, "In the time of the prophet there were no taxis, so piss off and wait for a camel.."

Intolerance is a completely appropriate response to intolerance.


Having ridden in quite a few London black cabs, I can tell you that this response is completely plausible.  Those cabbies don't take any guff from anyone...

An alternative to conventional education...

An alternative to conventional education...  I'll bet these kids turn into very interesting adults...

Marmot vs. camera...

Marmot vs. camera...

BUFF...

BUFF...  The venerable B-52 Stratofortress first flew in 1952, just a few months before I was born.  It's still in service today, and is expected to remain in service until at least the 2040s.

What's the BUFF?  I first heard the B-52 referred to as a BUFF while I was in the Navy, in the '70s.  At the time, the ship I was on (the USS Long Beach CGN-9) was on PIRAZ duty off the coast of Vietnam.  We were tracking numerous B-52s flying bombing missions over North Vietnam.  The radar trackers kept calling them BUFFs, which I didn't understand.  They told me: it was an acronym for Big Ugly Fat Fucker.  They should have gotten “noisy” in there somewhere, too – the engines on the B-52s were loud!

Washing machine unravelings...

Washing machine unravelings...  Our new washer is unlike any washing machine I've ever owned before.  It's a top loader with a glass door on top, so you can actually watch it working (it even has a light!).  It's very easy to use, especially as it has a built-in tank to hold detergent.  Normally you just throw clothes in and press “Start”; it does the rest.

When you look inside, the first thing you'll notice is that there is no “agitator” (the finned tower in the center).  Every other washer I've ever used had an agitator.  When you watch it work, the next thing you'll notice is that it doesn't fill up the tank with enough water to cover the clothes.  No agitator and not much water.  How the heck does the thing get clothes clean?

I confess to having watched several complete cycles (generally about an hour long) through the glass top, just so I could figure this out.  It had me sore puzzled.

While it doesn't have a standard agitator, it does have a round plate on the bottom of the tank that it can wiggle back and forth (clockwise and counter-clockwise).  That plate has rounded, gentle ridges and bumps on it.  And the tank itself can be wiggled back and forth in the same manner, independently of the agitator plate (my name for it).  Furthermore, the entire tank is relatively free to bobble in any direction.

When you start a load up, the washer appears to sense the weight of the clothing.  Then it uses that weight to judge how much water to use.  Once the wash cycle starts, some complicated motions begin – the agitator plate wiggles, with variable speeds and amounts of rotation.  The tank wiggles, also with variable speeds and amounts of rotation.  The result: no matter how you piled in the clothes, they all end up separated and rolled up into little balls at the bottom of the tank.  I have no idea how they came up with this, but it's actually kind of amazing to watch.  I've even deliberately interleaved the legs of pants, run a pant leg through a sleeve, etc.  It doesn't matter.  Each piece of clothing ends up as a separate ball of cloth on the bottom.

Once the load has been reduced to wet balls of cloth, the action starts to make more sense.  The motion of the agitator plate and the tank churn the clothes through the water on the bottom quite effectively.  All the while, water is being recirculated by a pump and poured over top of the clothes being washed.

The rinse works basically the same way, but with clean water, of course.  When the spinning starts, the self-balancing tank feature kicks in.

Awesome, this modern technology...

Seen in the wild...

Seen in the wild...  In the Logan, Utah Home Depot parking lot...

Business names that are a play on words seem to be a bit of a thing here.  It's a rare day when I don't see at least one of these.

For my readers who aren't all that familiar with the Mormon church: it's common to address Mormon men using “Brother” as an honorific, together with their last name.  So, for example, Joe Nelson might be addressed as “Brother Nelson”.

So I'd be willing to bet you that this lawn service was staffed by a group of Mormon men :)

From junk, beauty...

From junk, beauty...  By sculptor John Lopez, of South Dakota.  More photos of his sculpture here...

This is the kind of problem that creates oppressive regulatory regimes...

This is the kind of problem that creates oppressive regulatory regimes...  Whenever someone's freely made choice offends someone else's sense of what's right (whether moral, religious, or cultural doesn't matter), you'll hear cries for government regulation – which is really just a euphemism for controlling behavior by force.  That's where our laws on drugs, prostitution, and much more come from.

Libertarians generally claim to support the notion of everyone having the freedom to make whatever choices in life that they want to, so long as they don't harm anyone else in the process.  While I have significant disagreements with the Libertarian Party (especially in the realm of foreign policy), on this notion I am largely in agreement with them. 

In an article in The Week, Damon Linker (a self-identified libertarian) constructs a scenario that he admits tests the limits of his political philosophy.  Read it.  Then think about whether the libertarian ideal of free choice really works for you.

I don't have any children, but nonetheless I can easily empathize with the problem posed by Linker's scenario.  I can't be certain of this, but I think that if I did have a daughter, I'd still support her having the freedom to make such a choice.

The problem, of course, with government regulation of such matters is two-fold: first, you don't know who (or with what rules) the regulations will be made and enforced – or how well they will comport with your own sense of what's right.  Second, once there is a rule, there will be more – without end, as we can observe right now in our grotesquely over-regulated society...

This makes me very sad...

This makes me very sad ... not least because I have no idea what can be done about it.  It also makes me think that one of the central lessons of WWII has already been forgotten, a mere 80 years later...