JamulBlog

Sunday, January 8, 2012

A Talent I'd Love to Have...

...but which I most certainly don't have. Just watch:

Miki, Taking Second in Standard...

This is from last weekend, where Miki qualified on 5 out of 6 runs, and took one second place (shown below) and one third place. Debbie was handling, of course. Woo hoo!

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

But not a particularly happy one. Doug S. points out this post showing that just before the end of the year, the U.S. debt “officially” exceeded our GDP in 2011.

We all knew this was coming, given the velocity of our debt increases. There's nothing particularly significant about this milestone; it's akin to your car's odometer rolling over 10,000. But it's a measure of our debt load that's well into danger territory – expressed as a percentage of our GDP (which is as close as I know how to get to expressing our debt in meaningful terms), our debt is now higher than it's been at anytime since the height of WWII. Unlike that war, this time our debt load is almost entirely (and voluntarily!) self-inflicted – the costs of both our lengthy wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is only a small piece of this debt load...

Autonomous Helicopters Build a Building...

Well, sort of. Warren Y. sends along this demonstration of autonomous (i.e., no human controlling them) helicopters (really, quadracopters – much easier to control) building (well, assembling) a building (ok, an attractively designed pile of styrofoam blocks).

Snarking aside, it's really quite an achievement for these roboticists – and it probably is a glimpse of what the future will bring us. It's perfectly conceivable that within a reasonable amount of time (say, a decade or two) we'll see robots that can actually perform many of the tasks that construction workers do today. For example, I have no problem imagining a robot that could do a great job at block masonry.

Sunday, January 1, 2012

The Cats Know...

Somehow our cats seem to know today is “special”. Our youngest (the Savannah cat Jahar) is playing, hard, with one of our oldest cats (Tippy). The pair of them are chasing each other all over the house, having a grand old time. A middle-aged, portly cat (Halala Pala) tries gamely to follow them, but he can only manage about a third their speed. Two older cats (Pana and Boots) are sitting on the sidelines, their heads swiveling as they closely follow the action. And little Maka Lea (our physiologically challenged fellow) is also trying to join the action, but Jahar and Tippy can make it around the house about four times while Maka Lea runs three feet and flops over 'cause he tripped over himself.

I can't recall another time when the entire feline crew participated in this sort of thing all at the same time.

And it sure is nice to see Tippy looking so spry. And proud of himself!

Mankind Will Benefit from My Vital Discovery...

I own one of the tea strainers shown at right. It's the best one I've ever owned. I love the silly thing.

But until this morning, I've had one complaint about it, something I thought was an unavoidable consequence of its construction.

Until this morning, when I made my morning tea, I'd load up my tea strainer, drop it in my cup, and pour boiling water all over it. The strainer would immediately bob to the surface, and what follows was a 60 second or so battle to get the thing to sink (so my tea could steep!).

This morning, I accidentally forgot to put the strainer in my cup before pouring the hot water in. So I plunked it in after pouring the water – and it immediately sank to the bottom of the cup. Of course, I then had to follow up with a series of tests. Every time, pour first, it sinks; pour after, it floats. WTF?

I finally figured it out. When I pour after, water immediate coats the entire metal surface, and the pores of the tea strainer are blocked by stable water films powered by surface tension. When I pour first and drop the strainer in, the upper pores remain unwetted until after the strainer sinks. Simple.

There now, doesn't that revelation change your life in a positive way?

Trends...

Over at Scribd they've got a terrific collection of totally depressing charts – 11 trends over the last 11 years.

The one that surprised me the most is at right (click to enlarge). I hadn't realized that the Federal government owned so much consumer debt. After a little research, I discovered this is primarily due Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae (both government-sponsored and government-backed institutions) capturing the dominant share of home mortgates – and home mortgages dominate consumer credit, of course.

In the last three years, federally-owned consumer credit has increased almost five times. What does this mean? It means that those (increasingly few) American citizens who, like me, actually pay taxes – it means we're on the hook to back almost five times more government-guaranteed debt. Lovely. What could possibly go wrong?

Saturday, December 31, 2011

Public Service Announcement...

Aunt Chippy Wraps a Present...

Via my mom. Put down your morning beverage first:

Top 12 Reasons to Vote Democratic...

Via reader Jim M., this handy list you can use when talking politics with your lefty friends:

Top 12 Reasons To Vote Democratic

I'm voting Democratic because...

1. I believe oil companies' profits of 4% on a gallon of gas are obscene, but the government taxing the same gallon of gas at 15% isn't.

2. I believe the government will do a better job of spending the money I earn than I would.

3. Freedom of Speech is fine as long as nobody is offended by it.

4. I'm way too irresponsible to own a gun, and I know my local police are all I need to protect me from murderers and thieves.

5. I believe people who can't tell us if it will rain on Friday can tell us the polar ice caps will melt away in ten years if I don't start driving a Prius.

6. I'm not concerned about millions of babies being aborted so long as we keep all death row inmates alive.

7. I think illegal aliens have a right to free health care, education, and Social Security benefits.

8. I believe business should not be allowed to make profits for themselves. They need to break even and give the rest away to the government for redistribution as the Democrats see fit.

9. I believe liberal judges need to rewrite the Constitution every few days to suit some fringe kooks who would never get their agendas past the voters.

10. I think it's better to pay billions to people who hate us for their oil, but not drill our own because it might upset some endangered beetle or Gopher.

11. While we live in the greatest, most wonderful country in the world, I was promised "HOPE AND CHANGE".

12. My head is so firmly planted up my ass, it's unlikely I'll ever have another point of view.

Our Perception...

From the Abstruse Goose, this interesting infographic showing just how little we actually can perceive of the total electromagnetic spectrum (what we perceive with our vision) and the acoustic spectrum (what we perceive with our hearing):

Friday, December 30, 2011

Corporate Cronyism...

Note the little Ds (for Democrats) and Rs (for Republicans). See a trend? As always, click to enlarge...

Thursday, December 29, 2011

A Hack from 1903!

Read about the exploits of Nevil Maskelyne – it sounds much like something that might happen today on the Intertubes...

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

iPad Cool...

This is just plain cool – a NASA visualization application for the iPad, with content updated several times a month...

A New Low...

A French fellow has set a new record low in the never-ending geek quest for elaborate, weird, and useless technology. His accomplishment? The successful transmission of TCP/IP over a Lego model railroad...

Color eInk...

Showing up commercially for the first time. I saw a demonstration of this technology a couple of years ago, before it was ready for production. The unit I saw had quite low contrast and took almost 30 seconds to refresh the image. I've been waiting for this – I can't wait to see the production units for myself!