Resources for Rebuilding...

I heard about this event (San Diego Rebuilds) on the radio, and it sounds very useful -- especially the expertise and advice that will be available. It's a one-day affair in Escondido, but I suspect that if you're rebuilding, it would be well worth your time to attend:

Here is why this event is so important

Lessons learned during the Cedar Fire

Many fire victims were unfamiliar and unprepared to deal with the rebuilding process. Many became easy prey for unscrupulous, sleazy contractors. It was well documented that several were “revictimized” at the hands of these crooks; making absurdly low estimates, taking large deposits and then disappearing, poor workmanship, delays, etc. Others were stalled in the bureaucracy of the city’s building departments costing them precious time and money from their insurance settlements. Much of this aggravation could have been prevented with some help.

It is our intent to get all the players in one room— A one-stop shop if you will, where the 2007 victims can come and get honest assistance and opportunities to meet local building officials, licensing board, attorneys, tax and lending professionals, verified (licensed, insurance, comp, bonded) contractors, architects, estimators and other suppliers.

The organizer of this event was being interviewed by Roger Hedgecock (who is himself involved in the event to some extent). It sounds like this is completely a volunteer effort -- there is no cost to this event (either for fire victims or for the contractors and architects, etc.), so this is not an attempt to make some money from our neighbor's pain. From the interview, I gathered that the main goal of this event was to make it easy for people rebuilding to get all of the information they need, and (perhaps especially) to check out the vendors present so you know they are not going to rip you off.

Cross-posted from Jamul Fire Help.

Cow Rescue...

A cow in a culvert, somewhere near Jamul (along 94). Rescued by the San Diego Human Society…

JAMUL, Calif. -- Thanks to a specialty rescue crew and some beefy equipment, Violet the cow is no longer stuck livestock.

The brown-and-white bovine, who had wandered away from her owners' Jamul home overnight, got spooked, bolted and slipped into a concrete culvert when a highway patrol officer approached her alongside state Route 94 about 9:30 a.m. Monday, according to the San Diego Humane Society.

It took a volunteer crisis team that works with the animal-welfare agency about two hours to hook the roughly 1,700-pound cow to a harness rig and haul her out of the ditch with a crane, said Candice Ely of the SDHS.


A veterinarian then looked her over and determined that she was unscathed by her misadventure, Eley said.

Violet normally is pastured in Campo, but her owners had brought her to their rural home so they could care for an eye infection she had developed, Eley added.

Clean Cell Phone...

I just remembered a funny little story from our evacuation two weeks ago, during the fires. We drove from our home in Jamul to a friend's house in Chula Vista, Debbie in my pickup and me in our RV. We talked to each other during the drive via our cell phones – so I knew I had remembered to bring mine. But...shortly after we arrived at our friend's home, my cell phone disappeared. I wrote it off in my mind as a trivial cost considering what we were doing, and didn't worry about it.

But a couple of days later, Debbie came in from our friend's garage, laughing, and holding my cell phone. It was dripping wet and covered with soapy spots – she had just fished it out of the washing machine. Apparently I left the thing in my pocket, and into the laundry it went.

It looked completely hopeless, but just for form's sake I took it apart, rinsed it out, and set it in a sunny window to warm up and dry out. The next day I plugged it in, and to my surprise the “charging” indicator showed up on the screen – a substantial amount of the phone has to be functional for that to happen. After it charged for a while, I turned it on – and it worked! Better than ever, actually – the keyboard used to have some sticky keys, but now they all worked perfectly.

My phone is a cheap, bottom-of-the-line Nokia that I paid $29 for at Wal-Mart. Something tells me that if we had laundered my wife's feature-laden, $299 cell phone, the results would not have been as happy…

The Singing Revolution...

My long-time readers know that I have a special interest in the tiny country of Estonia. Because two companies I worked for had software development teams there (in the main city, Tallinn), I visited there many times from 1994 to 2005. I've traveled extensively throughout the country and made many friends there. There are many things I cherish about Estonia, but high on the list is its recent history, beginning with the bloodless revolution that won the country's freedom from the Soviet Union in 1991. This revolution is called "The Singing Revolution", because of the important role that music – and specifically singing – played in it. I've read several books about it, and watched two documentary films. I've also learned a lot about it from several people I know who actually participated in it.

Now there's a movie about it. I only learned of this movie this morning, from this column by Brent Bozell on Yahoo News. A teaser:

How many of us know that Estonia, one of the smallest countries on the face of this earth, is responsible for one of the most extraordinary, and certainly the most unique, revolutions in modern history? How many of us know that this tiny Baltic nation defeated the Soviet Union — with a song? This is not meant as hyperbole. It is literal truth.

One of the most fascinating documentaries you will ever watch is about to make its debut around the country. Make a note of it: "The Singing Revolution." Go to the Website singingrevolution.com to learn when and where in your city it will air. Should you miss that opportunity, make it a point to rent the DVD the moment it hits the stores.

Some documentaries entertain. Some educate. "The Singing Revolution" will bring you to your feet, cheering. It is the quintessential celebration of the human spirit.

The film's web site is here. I know nothing more than what is in the column and web site linked above – but if this film comes to San Diego, I will go see it. I haven't been to a theater for something like 10 years, and thought I was never going to go again – but I'd make an exception for this movie…

Naturally, there's a clip on YouTube:

Peaceful Sunset...

This was the view looking west from Lyons Peak just a few minutes ago. Serene, beautiful, peaceful...

And not necessarily expected. Up until a few hours ago, the national weather service was forecasting a mild Santa Ana for today and early tomorrow – enough to cause the Governator to order a full alert for all the fire-fighting services, and to pre-position equipment in San Diego County (and in other Southern California areas).

But in the end, we got no winds today. It was dry, warm, and calm – a very pleasant day, actually.

This is one time when I'm quite happy that the weatherman got it wrong!

Cross-Posting???

I seem to have confused some of my readers with the little note I put at the bottom of one of my posts this morning, saying Cross-Posted from Jamul Fire Help – several of you wrote to ask me what the heck that meant. So let me explain in a little more detail…

The folks who run the Jamul Fire Help website were kind enough to ask me to post on their blog occasionally. They're trying to raise money (and otherwise help) for the Jamul victims of the recent fires. They asked if I'd help out a little by posting on their blog, and of course I agreed. When the topic makes sense for both my blog and theirs, I'll publish the same post in both places – that's what “cross-posting”…

Tomato Soup...

Just before the fires last week, my parents shipped two large boxes of New Jersey tomatoes to me – the last of the season. When the fires closed the Post Office (and we were evacuated), the delivery that should have been made last Tuesday or Wednesday was delayed until this Tuesday – an entire week late.

My mother was sure that the content of the boxes would have putrified by then, but when Debbie picked up the boxes, she discovered that most of the tomatoes were fine. In fact, most of them weren't even completely ripe yet. So I set them aside for a few days to let them fully ripen. The few that ripened earliest disappeared into a few evening snacks of tomato salads and tomato sandwiches. Lovely things, they were.

But they don't hold a candle to what I did with the remaining 16 dead-ripe New Jersey tomatoes today: I made a large batch of Boston-style cream of tomato soup. Debbie, our best friend Jim, and I gorged ourselves with two gigantic bowls of this delectable concoction; it was our dinner tonight. The recipe was simple enough – I'd never made this particular style before, but there wasn't much that could go wrong. The base of the soup is a puree of the tomatoes (with some carrots and onions) and a little whipping cream for texture and body. The tomato flavor is enhanced with a strong component of fresh thyme, plus parsely and fresh-ground pepper. The result was right up there with the very best tomato soups I've ever had.

I made about six quarts of soup; there is only about a pint left. All three of us are sloshing as we walk. But we have smiles on our faces…that soup was good enough to make us wonder if it might not be a controlled substance!

Preparing for the Next One...

One thing we can be certain of, unfortunately, is that wildfires will attack our community again. Some areas (such as Lawson Valley, where I live) have 35 years or more of chaparral fuel build-up. While a fire can start almost anywhere, areas with large amounts of fuel upwind of them have the highest risks during a Santa Ana – any fire upwind of such areas will move quickly toward them.

The general direction of the Santa Ana winds is from the northeast (blowing toward the southwest). However, local geological features (hills, canyons, etc.) can modify this, so the direction could be different in your immediate neighborhood – and those same features can also affect the intensity of the winds. The Pine Valley canyon is a good example of a geological feature that intensifies the wind; the I-8 bridge there is notorious for its fierce crosswinds during a Santa Ana.

It can be very instructive to see how much fuel is left near your home, and especially to the northeast of your home. The map at right, above (click to expand it) shows the fire history in our area for the past 18 years, since 1990. The blue hatched areas are where the Harris Fire burned last week. The pink hatched areas are where fires burned since 2000. The green hatched areas show fires that occurred in the 1990s. The areas that have no hatching (plain gray) have had no fires since 1990.

You’ll note that some areas have burned multiple times – it only takes a few years after a fire for enough fuel to regrow to be able to sustain a fire. However, fires in those more recently-burned areas are much less intense, for the simple reason there is less fuel there. In general, the longer it has been since an area has burned, the more difficult it is to fight a fire there. From the perspective of future risk, it’s definitely better to have recently burned areas upwind of you.

If you examine the map carefully, you’ll note that there’s a large area unburned since 1990 stretching from roughly the Descanso area southwest to the town of Jamul. Those of us living in that area should recognize the risk we face from fires starting during a Santa Ana, especially severe Santa Anas such as the one we had last week. There is a mild Santa Ana forecast for tomorrow and Sunday; even this elevates our risk considerably. If you live in this area that hasn’t been burned for a long time, be especially watchful this weekend and during any other Santa Anas we have.

An excellent resource that allows anyone in our area to watch for fires are the cameras on Lyons Peak. These are operated by HPWREN, and they update every two minutes. You can get the raw feeds directly from this page, or get them processed (with location annotations and automatic updating) from this page. Either way, keeping an eye on these cameras will give you the earliest possible warning of any fires breaking out, and exactly where they are located.

Cross-posted from Jamul Fire Help…

Monster Caterpillar...

As I was watering our potted patio plants this morning, I noticed that our potato tree (Solanum paraguayensis) had lost quite a few leaves. I looked a little closer, and spotted this enormous green caterpillar on its sparse branches. It was still early, just after sunrise, and cold – so the caterpillar was motionless. All stretched out, it would be about 3 inches (8 cm) long; about the size of one of my fingers.

With a little research on the web, I'm pretty sure that this is the caterpillar of some Sphinx moth (there are many species). I grabbed this photos quickly, as I suspected that when it warmed up it would start moving about.

And that's exactly what it did – by the time I got these photos loaded into my computer, the temperature had risen substantially, and the caterpillar had turned into an amazing eating machine. I watched it methodically strip one small branch of my poor potato tree in about 60 seconds. I don't think anything would have been left of my potato tree after a few hours of work by this guy!

So I picked it up and moved it over to the 6' post that holds our bird feeders up, and hoped it would feed a family of birds for a few days. A couple hours later, it was still there, wandering about looking for something green to masticate. A couple of sparrows were perched nearby, checking it out – so I suspect it's life expectancy is quite low…

Military vs. The Fires...

I found these photos (at StrategyPage) of the U.S. military aircraft helping fight last week's fires.

The top photo shows an Air Force C-130 Hercules dumping 3,000 gallons of fire retardant on the Poomacha Fire. This is the view from the open bay of the plane, looking down at the two nozzles as they dump the fire retardant.

The Poomacha Fire is still burning, and is still not 100% contained. The last update I read said that air assets were still on the job, 10 days after the fire started. The main challenge is that the fire is burning in some quite remote and inaccessible areas, especially on the north and northeast flanks of Mt. Palomar.

The bottom photo shows a Navy MH-60S Seahawk about to fill its bucket. I believe the photo is showing it over Sweetwater Reservoir, with Dictionary Hill and Spring Valley in the background. If I'm correct, then it would have been fighting the Harris Fire, near our home.

More photos and a bit of the story can be found here.

Paul Tibbets, RIP...

Another well-known member of the Greatest Generation has died, at 92. Brigadier General Paul W. Tibbets was the pilot of the B-29 Enola Gay when it dropped the first atomic bomb used in anger on Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945.

I had the great honor to meet General Tibbets in the mid-1990s. He was a featured guest at an airshow I attended, and at one point he was at a B-29 exhibit. I spoke with him there very briefly; I had the chance to tell him that I had greatly enjoyed his book (The Flight of the Enola Gay), and that I was very glad that he had been there to fly the Enola Gay for that mission. I don't remember what he said in response, but I do remember the appreciative smile, and a firm handshake.

Rest in peace, General. Your country remains proud of its soldiers, anti-military wackos and the lamestream media notwithstanding.

There's a locked-down Wikipedia article on General Tibbets (locked down because anti-military kooks persistently edited the article to add defamatory and inflammatory remarks).

Obituaries from major newspapers here, here, here, and here.

Oops...

The List Universe has a great list of the Top 30 Failed Technology Predictions. Here are the first 5, just to give you a taste.

1. “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” — Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC), maker of big business mainframe computers, arguing against the PC in 1977.

2. “We will never make a 32 bit operating system.” — Bill Gates

3. “Lee DeForest has said in many newspapers and over his signature that it would be possible to transmit the human voice across the Atlantic before many years. Based on these absurd and deliberately misleading statements, the misguided public … has been persuaded to purchase stock in his company …” — a U.S. District Attorney, prosecuting American inventor Lee DeForest for selling stock fraudulently through the mail for his Radio Telephone Company in 1913.

4. “There is practically no chance communications space satellites will be used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television, or radio service inside the United States.” — T. Craven, FCC Commissioner, in 1961 (the first commercial communications satellite went into service in 1965).

5. “To place a man in a multi-stage rocket and project him into the controlling gravitational field of the moon where the passengers can make scientific observations, perhaps land alive, and then return to earth - all that constitutes a wild dream worthy of Jules Verne. I am bold enough to say that such a man-made voyage will never occur regardless of all future advances.” — Lee DeForest, American radio pioneer and inventor of the vacuum tube, in 1926

Go read the rest!

Grim Polka...

Peggy Noonan on Hillary Clinton's performance in Tuesday night's Democratic 2008 presidential candidate debate:

The story is not that Mrs. Clinton signaled, in attitude and demeanor, who she believes is her most dangerous foe, the great impediment between her and an easy glide to the nomination. Yes, that would be Tim Russert.

The story is that she talked about policy. Not talking points, but policy. In talking about it she seemed, for the first time, to be revealing what's inside.

It was startling. It's 1993 in there. The year before her fall, and rise.

I spent a day going over the transcripts so I could quote at length, but her exchanges are all over, it's a real Google-fest. Here, boiled down, is what she said.

Giving illegal immigrants drivers licenses makes sense because it makes sense, but she may not be for it, but undocumented workers should come out of the shadows, and it makes sense. Maybe she will increase the payroll tax on Social Security beyond its current $97,500 limit, to $200,000. Maybe not. Everybody knows what the possibilities are. She may or may not back a 4% federal surcharge on singles making $150,000 a year and couples making $200,000. She suggested she backed it, said she didn't back it, she then called it a good start, or rather "I support and admire" the person proposing such a tax for his "willingness to take this on."

She has been accused of doubletalk and she has denied it. And she is right. It was triple talk, quadruple talk, Olympic level nonresponsiveness. And it was, even for her, rather heavy and smug. Her husband would have had the sense to look embarrassed as he bobbed and weaved. It was part of his charm. But he was light on his feet. She turns every dance into the polka. And it is that amazing thing, a grim polka.

After those debates (which I watched online, growing more and more frightened as the candidates droned on endlessly with amazingly leftist positions), my impressions of Hillary were hard for me to articulate. The summary was clear, though: anybody but Hillary, please. Ms. Noonan has nailed it, though, with her characteristic ability to vividly describe people and impressions. Her whole piece is on OpinionJournal, free. I hope you'll read the whole thing…

Scientists Speak Up...

It appears that the IPCC doesn't have quite the consensus of climatologists that the anthropomorphic global warming faithful would have us believe. John R. Christy is director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and a participant in the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC was co-recipient of this year's Nobel Peace Prize, along with Al Gore (aka “The Goracle”). In a Wall Street Journal ($) editorial yesterday, Mr. Christy said:

I'm sure the majority (but not all) of my IPCC colleagues cringe when I say this, but I see neither the developing catastrophe nor the smoking gun proving that human activity is to blame for most of the warming we see. Rather, I see a reliance on climate models (useful but never "proof") and the coincidence that changes in carbon dioxide and global temperatures have loose similarity over time.

There are some of us who remain so humbled by the task of measuring and understanding the extraordinarily complex climate system that we are skeptical of our ability to know what it is doing and why. As we build climate data sets from scratch and look into the guts of the climate system, however, we don't find the alarmist theory matching observations. (The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite data we analyze at the University of Alabama in Huntsville does show modest warming -- around 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit per century, if current warming trends of 0.25 degrees per decade continue.)

It is my turn to cringe when I hear overstated-confidence from those who describe the projected evolution of global weather patterns over the next 100 years, especially when I consider how difficult it is to accurately predict that system's behavior over the next five days.

Mother Nature simply operates at a level of complexity that is, at this point, beyond the mastery of mere mortals (such as scientists) and the tools available to us. As my high-school physics teacher admonished us in those we-shall-conquer-the-world-with-a-slide-rule days, "Begin all of your scientific pronouncements with 'At our present level of ignorance, we think we know . . .'"

I haven't seen that type of climate humility lately. Rather I see jump-to-conclusions advocates and, unfortunately, some scientists who see in every weather anomaly the specter of a global-warming apocalypse. Explaining each successive phenomenon as a result of human action gives them comfort and an easy answer.

Others of us scratch our heads and try to understand the real causes behind what we see. We discount the possibility that everything is caused by human actions, because everything we've seen the climate do has happened before. Sea levels rise and fall continually. The Arctic ice cap has shrunk before. One millennium there are hippos swimming in the Thames, and a geological blink later there is an ice bridge linking Asia and North America.

Unlike Jim Hansen (the proselytizer-in-chief of the anthropomorphic global warming movement), John Christy actually sounds like a scientist – looking for actual evidence and understanding, as opposed to grant funding. The Wall Street Journal is not the preferred venue for scientists, but my guess would be that John Christy had difficulty finding any of the usual venues who would publish anything with his perspective, despite his impeccable credentials.

Mr. Christy starts his editorial by rejecting his “share” of the Nobel Peace Prize, and poking at Al Gore:

I've had a lot of fun recently with my tiny (and unofficial) slice of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). But, though I was one of thousands of IPCC participants, I don't think I will add "0.0001 Nobel Laureate" to my resume.

The other half of the prize was awarded to former Vice President Al Gore, whose carbon footprint would stomp my neighborhood flat. But that's another story.

It's well worth reading the whole thing, if you're a WSJ subscriber. If you're not a WSJ subscriber, it's also possible that the WSJ will release this editorial for free viewing at OpinionJournal.com (they usually do this within a week of the original editorial's publication), or you can hope that Rupert Murdoch will change the model of the WSJ site from subscription to free (something he's openly discussed as a possibility).

John Christy is not the first well-known climatologist to speak skeptically about the anthropomorphic global warming (AGW) movement, not by a long shot. But, to my knowledge, he is the first member of the IPCC to have done so, at least in a public venue. Given the political power of the AGW movement, one must admire the courage of Mr. Christy – his willingness to speak skeptically about AGW may well have consequences to his career…

The Hildabeast...

Simi L. passed something much like this to me, along with a reference to Snopes as having authenticated it. When I looked carefully at the Snopes piece, it was slightly different. Barbara Mikkelson at Snopes did her usual magnificent research job on this, and the question of its authenticity is muddied a bit by the fact that some of the remarks are hard to authenticate (because they're the word of a single witness) or are taken out of context. Nevertheless, many of them are confirmed by multiple witnesses – and none seem implausible given the confirmed ones. The picture this paints of a private Hillary isn't a pretty one.

I've reproduced the Snopes version below – but to get the full effect, you need to go read the Snopes article as well:

WHAT A SWEET, WONDERFUL PERSON THE HILDABEAST IS.
Cheers to the Truth!

"Where is the G-damn f**king flag? I want the G-damn f**king flag up every f**king morning at f**king sunrise."
(From the book "Inside The White House" by Ronald Kessler, p. 244 - Hillary to the staff at the Arkansas Governor's mansion on Labor Day, 1991)

"You sold out, you mother f**ker! You sold out!"
(From the book "Inside" by Joseph Califano, p. 213 - Hillary yelling at Democrat lawyer.)

"It's been said, and I think it's accurate, that my husband was obsessed by terrorism in general and al-Qaida in particular."
(Hillary telling a post-9/11 world what a 'great' commander in chief her husband was; Dateline, NBC 4/16/2004.)

"I have to admit that a good deal of what my husband and I have learned [about Islam] has come from our daughter."
(TruthInMedia.org 8/8/1999 - Hillary at a White House function, proudly tells some Muslim groups she is gaining a greater appreciation of Islam because Chelsea was then taking a class on the "religion of peace")

"F**k off! It's enough that I have to see you shit-kickers every day, I'm not going to talk to you too!! Just do your G*damn job and keep your mouth shut."
(From the book "American Evita" by Christopher Anderson, p. 90 - Hillary to her State Trooper bodyguards after one of them greeted her with "Good morning.")

"You f**king idiot."
(From the book "Crossfire" p. 84 - Hillary to a State Trooper who was driving her to an event.)

"If you want to remain on this detail, get your f**king ass over here and grab those bags!"
(From the book "The First Partner" p. 259 - Hillary to a Secret Service Agent who was reluctant to carry her luggage because he wanted to keep his hands free in case of an incident.)

"Get f**ked! Get the f**k out of my way!!! Get out of my face!!!"
(From the book "Hillary's Scheme" p. 89 - Hillary's various comments to her Secret Service detail agents.)

"Stay the f**k back, stay the f**k away from me! Don't come within ten yards of me, or else! Just f**king do as I say, Okay!!!?"
(From the book "Unlimited Access", by Clinton FBI Agent in Charge, Gary Aldrige, p. 139 - Hillary screaming at her Secret Service detail.)

"Many of you are well enough off that [President Bush's] tax cuts may have helped you. We're saying that for America to get back on track, we're probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We're going to have to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."
(Hillary grandstanding at a fund raising speech in San Francisco; SFGate.com 6/28/2004.)

"Why do I have to keep proving to people that I am not a liar?!"
(From the book "The Survivor," by John Harris, p. 382 - Hillary in her 2000 Senate campaign)

"Where's the miserable c*ck sucker?"
(From the book "The Truth About Hillary" by Edward Klein, p. 5 - Hillary shouting at a Secret Service officer)

"No matter what you think about the Iraq war, there is one thing we can all agree on for the next days — we have to salute the courage and bravery of those who are risking their lives to vote and those brave Iraqi and American soldiers fighting to protect their right to vote."
(Was posted on Hillary Clinton's senate.gov web site on 1/28/05)

"Put this on the ground! I left my sunglasses in the limo. I need those sunglasses. We need to go back!"
(From the book "Dereliction of Duty" p. 71-72 - Hillary to Marine One helicopter pilot to turn back while en route to Air Force One.)

"A right-wing network was after his presidency ... including perverting the Constitution."
(To Barbara Walters about the Republicans who impeached her husband; 20/20, ABC 6/8/2003.)

"Son of a bitch."
(From the book "American Evita" by Christopher Anderson, p. 259 - Hillary's opinion of President George W. Bush when she found out he secretly visited Iraq just days before her highly publicized trip to Iraq)

"What are you doing inviting these people into my home? These people are our enemies! They are trying to destroy us!"
(From the book "The Survivor" by John Harris, p. 99 - Hillary screaming to an aide, when she found out that some Republicans had been invited to the Clinton White House)

"I mean, you've got a conservative and right-wing press presence with really nothing on the other end of the political spectrum."
(C-Span, 1/19/1997 - Hillary complains about the mainstream media, which are all conservatives in her opinion)

"Come on Bill, put your dick up! You can't f**k her here!!"
(From the book "Inside The White House" by Ronald Kessler, p. 243 - Hillary to Gov. Clinton when she spots him talking with an attractive female at an Arkansas political rally)

"You know, I'm going to start thanking the woman who cleans the restroom in the building I work in. I'm going to start thinking of her as a human being" - Hillary Clinton
(From the book "The Case Against Hillary Clinton" by Peggy Noonan, p. 55)

"You show people what you're willing to fight for when you fight your friends."
(From the book "The Agenda" by Bob Woodward, ch. 14)

"We are at a stage in history in which remolding society is one of the great challenges facing all of us in the West."
(From the book "I've Always Been A Yankee Fan" by Thomas D. Kuiper, p. 119 - During her 1993 commencement address at the University of Texas)

"The only way to make a difference is to acquire power"
(From the book "I've Always Been A Yankee Fan" by Thomas D. Kuiper, p. 68 - Hillary to a friend before starting law school.)

"We just can't trust the American people to make those types of choices.... Government has to make those choices for people"
(From the book "I've Always Been A Yankee Fan" by Thomas D. Kuiper, p. 20 - Hillary to Rep. Dennis Hastert in 1993 discussing her expensive, disastrous taxpayer-funded health care plan)

"I am a fan of the social policies that you find in Europe"
(From the book "I've Always Been A Yankee Fan" by Thomas D. Kuiper, p. 76 - Hillary in 1996)

---

This ill-tempered, violent, foul mouthed, hateful and abusive woman wants to be your president and have total control as commander-in-chief of a military that her party so openly and proudly admit they detest. I can see someone like this gaining the respect of other nations, and especially from their leaders, who refuse to do as she tells them ... or else. No thanks, my country deserves a better leader, not a dominatrix!

The part that disturbs me the most about these comments (and similar comments by her husband, very much confirmed) is the utter disdain and contempt they demonstrate for ordinary Americans. It is disgusting and disturbing, a very un-American demonstration of elitism.

Also on display, vividly, is the pandering and hypocrisy that seems to be a standard part of politics these days. In this, Hillary (and her party) are far from being unique. Unfortunately, that seems to be a rather standard state of affairs. From this observer's point of view, it seems that it's a rare politician indeed who is motivated by belief and ideology. Instead (judging by their actions) they are motivated entirely by a desire to gain power. They'll say anything to get elected, and never you mind if it conflicts directly with something they said last week, or yesterday, or two minutes ago.

Hillary for President? I don't think so…

Jamul Fire Help

Update:

Several people, including Daniel Tyack, wrote to say that the Jamul Fire Help site can now take donations by PayPal. We just made a donation; it was easy and fast. If you're not familiar with PayPal, it's the largest electronic payment service in the world, owned by eBay – it is very safe and reliable. I have used it personally for thousands of transactions.

Original Post:

I just heard from Daniel Tyack that he's helping the Jamul Community Church put up a web site to act as a hub for the effort to help our community rebuild. A worthy effort to be sure. You can find their new web site at www.jamulfirehelp.org. If you need help, or if you can help those who need it, pay them a visit...please.

Puzzler...

Last week's puzzler:

It seems like forever since I posted the last puzzler, about a strange early form of main memory for digital computers.

The correct answer was “mercury”, which got 41% of the 98 votes on this puzzler. To the best of my knowledge, none of the other elements figured in any early computer memory system, though silicon of course is the main constituent of current memory systems.

As one commenter noted, mercury was used in an early memory system that was essentially an acoustic delay line. The system that I worked on used long glass tubes of mercury, bent into a spiral much like a fully compressed spring. Each tube was about three-quarters of an inch in diameter, bent into a spiral that was about six inches in diameter and about four feet long. That means that the tubes, if fully extended, would have been about 100 feet long. The glass was coated with a soft plastic coating that was intended, I think, to provide some high-frequency acoustic isolation. The system had something like 40 of these tubes, providing a 30 bit word with error correction (the extra 10 or so bits). I can't remember some of the interesting details, such as the acoustic frequency or the number of bits held in each delay line. I do remember the main maintenance issue: thermal control. The operation of the system depended on (for those days) very tightly controlled, steady and even, temperatures across the entire array of tubes – not an easy thing to do.

This week's puzzler:

For this week's puzzler, I'm going back to history – this time, a little piece of American history that I happened to witness while I was serving in the U.S. Navy. As always, no fair Googling until you answer!

A Beautiful Chaparral Morning...

This is the view just now from the west-looking camera on Lyons Peak. Aside from the char in the foreground, you'd never know San Diego County was on fire just a few days ago. The white layer you see in the distance is just fog; our normal “marine layer” that we see on many mornings. I love this sight, especially as I drive down the last stretch of Skyline Truck Trail into the town of Jamul – the mountain tops look like islands rising out of an ethereal sea…

I received several emails from worried readers this morning, wondering why I wasn't posting. I suspect these are all new readers (and very welcome!) who have the impression from last week that I normally post a couple hundred times a day. This, I'm afraid, is simply not true. I actually have a job, where for some reason they expect me to do things for them <smile>. Normally I write a couple of posts a day, on average; some days more, some days none at all. It doesn't mean I've disappeared!

In response to another reader email, here's an offer: if you'd like your fire story to be up on the web (with photos, if you'd like), I'd be more than happy to let you do so on my blog. Just send me an email with what you want to say, and any photos you want to put up, and I'll take care of getting it up there. Make sure you let me know what personal details you do and don't want published (your real name, your address, etc.).

And one more excellent idea a reader had: if you have a story related to the firefighters and the wonderful job they did protecting our properties, or if you just want to say THANK YOU, I'd be happy to publish that as well. Again, just write up what you'd like to say in an email, and send it to me.

My email address is slightlyloony-at-jamulblog.com (replace the -at- with @). I have to write it in this odd way to keep the spambots from finding it an inundating me with disgusting email advertisements…

Reverse 911

Many of us who live in the remoter regions of San Diego County spend quite a bit of time many miles from home, at work, shopping, having fun, or whatever. A reverse 911 call to our homes when we're away is of little use.

I heard on the radio this morning that San Diego County very recently installed a second-generation reverse 911 system that is much more capable than the old one. It can make hundreds of thousands of calls per hour (a huge improvement), and it can handle cell phones and email addresses. But – a big but – it can only do this if you tell it what numbers or email addresses to call when your address is threatened.

Fortunately they've made it very easy. I just did it for our home, and it took less than a minute to register my cell phone, my wife's cell phone, and both our email addresses. All you need to do is to go to the County's sign-up web site, and fill in one simple form.

Take a few moments and do it now, while you're thinking of it…

Harris Fire Movies...

Hans-Werner Braun is one of the folks who run the HPWREN cameras on Lyons Peaks. These are the cameras that provide the images I use on my camera web site.

This morning, Hans-Werner sent me a link for some movies he has made from the images captured from all four cameras on Lyons Peak. They make for very interesting – and sobering – viewing…