Speechless, I am...

Speechless, I am...  USB typewriters.  I had thought that the faddish attraction to vacuum tube amplifiers was the ultimate expression of this particular type of insanity – but I think a USB typewriter (at prices approaching $1,000!) eclipses even that...

Strange nonchaotic attractors in the heavens...

Strange nonchaotic attractors in the heavens...  Spotted in the strange pulsations of a distant variable star...

Quote of the day...

Quote of the day...  From Strategy Page:

The accountants always win in the end.

Read the details of how ISIS is disintegrating from within.  It's encouraging, and gives a good explanation of how air power actually does have a good chance of bringing ISIS down (and accountants figure in this).  At the very least it should dramatically weaken them; in the best case it will defeat them...

Powerful photos...

Powerful photos...  Thirty-one, including the one at right which had me in tears the first time I saw it years ago...

Photos from the window seat of an airplane...

Photos from the window seat of an airplane...  Twenty-seven beauties like the one at right!

What did I think of Hillary Clinton's email explanations?

What did I think of Hillary Clinton's email explanations?  Inquiring readers want to know.  Well, the Wall Street Journal editorial board had basically the same reaction I did, which I can sum up with one word: “preposterous!”  Their lead:

Hillary Clinton’s admirers say she’ll run for President in part by invoking the glory days of the 1990s. For a taste of that era, we recommend her brief press conference Tuesday explaining why she had used a private email account as Secretary of State. It had everything nostalgia buffs could want—deleted evidence, blustery evasions, and preposterous explanations that only James Carville could pretend to believe.

I'm not even sure about Carville :)

Do go read the whole piece – it hits all the notes I would...

There were a lot of guys from Samoa and Guam...

There were a lot of guys from Samoa and Guam ... who served with me in the U.S. Navy.  Their high participation continues.  Other American territories have similarly high participation rates.  The reasons for that are complicated, but they serve in high numbers nevertheless.  I learned from them that they're American citizens, but they can't vote; this has always seemed terribly unfair to me.  Samoa is a special case – things are even worse there.  In the video at right, John Oliver explains this nonsense, in his own special (and very funny) way.  I hope he succeeds in raising the profile of this issue...

Aurora over Icelandic glacier...

Aurora over Icelandic glacier...  Via APOD, of course...

Geek: “Dieharder” random number generator test suite...

Geek: “Dieharder” random number generator test suite...  I hadn't run into this before.  There have been several times when I wished I had access to such a test suite.  Digging into this will make a good weekend project for me sometime...

Geek: a searchable catalog of NASA open source software...

Geek: a searchable catalog of NASA open source software...  There's quite a bit of interesting stuff in here...

Dasatinib and quercetin...

Dasatinib and quercetin... You may be hearing a lot more about these.  Quercetin is available over the counter today (though I have no idea what the quality of it is, and the supplements industry is notoriously fraud-filled).

6.5 million Americans are over 112 years old...

6.5 million Americans are over 112 years old...  Not really, of course.  But that's what the Social Security Administration's records say.  You can probably guess what a wide door that opens for fraud – and, of course, that door is being used by tens of thousands of crooks.  At least tens of thousands, and quite possibly, many more.

Who's the idiot that thought it was a good idea for the federal government to manage healthcare?  Every time we turn over a bureaucratic rock, we find more festering incompetence, fraud, and waste.  I'd have thought the Post Office was all the example anyone needed.  The $900 toilet seats purchased by the Pentagon might have been another clue.  The “stay in line until you die” lists at the Veteran's Administration might have clued someone in, too.  Apparently all of this together is still insufficient to convince the progressives that it's a bad idea to have government managing anything...

Life in Paradise...

Life in Paradise...  For the past three days, every afternoon we've had people showing up at our door with complete evening meals – hot, tasty food ready to eat.  Two of these times the people were complete strangers to us.  Why is this happening?  That's a bit of a story...

It started in our driveway last Thursday afternoon, as Debbie and I walked out  to her truck to drive up to Angie's (in Logan) for dinner.  We hadn't been there for a couple weeks, and we both felt like some comfort food.  Our driveway still had patches of ice, but the afternoon was warm and it was melting.  Wet ice, as you may know, is very slippery.  Then add to that the fact that Debbie was wearing leather-soled cowboy boots.  They might as well have been Teflon-coated.  You can probably guess what happened next: her slippery feet slipped on the slimy ice, and down she went.

After an uncomfortable night, we went to see a doctor on Friday morning.  The verdict: a “strained” back and knee.  A “strain” is less severe than a “sprain”, but more than just “pulled”.  I'm not sure how they come up with this terminology, but the doctor made it clear this was nothing to worry about, that she'd recover completely and quickly, and she just needed some rest, to wear a knee brace for a while, and a little pharmacological assistance (muscle relaxant and analgesic).  Home we went.

Fast forward to Saturday morning, when our friend and neighbor Tim D. came over to visit.  I was out in the barn working on the wiring, and he went in to chat with Debbie.  When she came hobbling slowly to the door, wearing the brace, he knew something was up.  He got all the details when talking with her.

I've learned enough about living in an LDS (Mormon) community by now that I should have known what was going to happen next, but it got me by surprise anyway.  Tim is a former bishop, a devout Mormon, and upon learning about Debbie's injury (however minor!) he sprang into action as though she was now a quadriplegic.  A few hours after he left, Alan and Nikki L. (another set of friends and neighbors) showed up to visit with Debbie.  They were there both to comfort her and to interrogate her about our dining preferences.  Later that afternoon, they showed up with a ready-to-eat meal, which of course we disposed of very quickly.  This is despite our protestations that all this was entirely unnecessary, as (a) I can cook, and (b) Debbie wasn't bedridden, just slowed down.  They insisted anyway, Alan telling me, basically, to “shut up and embrace it”, because it was going to happen no matter what we said.

Sunday and Monday afternoon, women who were part of the local LDS ward's Relief Society showed up with another installment.  Sunday's meal was particularly good: roast beef with potatoes, carrots, a salad, and dessert, all ready to eat.

Yesterday morning, Michelle H. (the wonderful woman who does the heavy cleaning in our house every couple of weeks) came over as planned – but she was all prepared to do a lot more (I think Debbie's condition has been wildly exaggerated in the rumor mill) to help out.  She was ready to do the cooking (note the assumption that the male animal of the household can't prepare food!), take care of the animals, etc.  We didn't actually need any of that help, but it was comforting to know that if we did need it, it would be readily available.

The local Mormons are enjoying our discomfiture with all this, I think :)  But I have to say that we're enjoying the food and the opportunity to meet some members of our community who are new to us.

Monday morning I ran down to the Post Office to pick up our mail.  When I walked in the door, the postmaster asked me how Debbie was doing.  His assistant wanted to know if we were happy with the meals.  They both knew all the details of Debbie's fall, which is typical of any small community, I suspect – but after spending so much time in California, it's sure not something I'm used to.  Everyone is connected here, somehow (including, of course, through the LDS church that the majority of our community are members of).  Brent, our postmaster, is the brother of the woman who runs the local Relief Society.  Linda, his assistant, is actually a neighbor of ours (and a water rights expert currently working on getting our well permit).  Both are LDS.

Out in the Post Office lobby, where the P.O. boxes are, another woman greeted me with good wishes for Debbie.  I had no idea who this woman was, and it must have showed in my face, so she explained that her husband pointed me out as they drove into the Post Office (the lobby has big windows).  He knows me because we'd previously chatted in the Post Office lobby, and he remembered where I lived – and had heard in church that Debbie (whom he'd never met) had fallen.  So when his wife ran in to pick up their mail, she was full of concern and good wishes – even though she'd never met (or heard of) either of us before!

We love living here.  After forty-plus years in California, land of adjacent strangers, to live in a community that actually is a community is jarring in some ways, but comforting in so many more...

Taking notes...

Taking notes...  I noticed many years ago that if I took notes, pen on paper style, at a lecture or meeting, I'd remember the important things much better.  This was true even if I threw the notes away and never looked at them again.  In my corporate life I then developed a habit of taking extensive notes at meetings and often even during one-on-one conversations.  When I was managing teams of engineers, this was extremely useful, as it allowed me to remember many different things in a complex and ever-shifting environment. 

Now there's research that backs up my observation about the value of taking notes...

Replace alcohol?

Replace alcohol?  Ryan Cooper wants the government to fund research for a replacement for alcohol – because it's such a terrible recreational drug (highly addictive and physiologically damaging with heaving long-term use).  He makes the point that alcohol is worse in many ways than the currently illegal recreational drugs, including even heroin.

I'm not sure we need new research here.  Seems to me we just need to make the already existing, much safer drugs (like marijuana) legal.  Consumers can then freely choose to abstain, to use the safer drugs, or continue to use alcohol...

Follow the money...

Follow the money...  Oh, my:

"Follow the money." That apocryphal phrase, attributed to Watergate whistle-blower "Deep Throat," explains why the biggest threat to Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential dreams is not her emails. It's her family foundation. That's where the money is: corporate money, foreign money, gobs of money sloshing around a vanity charity that could be renamed "Clinton Conflicts of Interest Foundation."

If these allegations prove to have any truth to them at all, that really might doom Hillary's quest for the monarchy presidency...

Human-generated random data...

Human-generated random data...  This is, so far as I can tell, a completely useless (and almost certainly not random!) idea.  Also, it appears to be broken.  But their “About” page is one of the best I've seen in a long time :)

The Apple way...

The Apple way...  The Apple Watch had a challenge.  Unlike any of Apple's previous products, a watch is perceived by many to be a fashion accessory or even a piece of jewelry.  That means that some customers will want the rich look of gold – preferably, a nice 18K gold as is traditional for watchmakers going back hundreds of years.  Probably any other manufacturer would simply have said “OK, make a gold model.”  Apple noted, however, that traditional 18K gold has two problems.  First, it's expensive, especially when gold is going for $1,200+ an ounce.  Second, it's relatively soft – though 18K gold is much harder than 24K gold, it's still soft enough that it's easily scratched.

So Apple developed a new kind of 18K gold (see this explanation) that uses less gold and is more durable.  Very clever, that.  Also a great example of what can happen at the conjunction of visionary product development, scale, (almost) unlimited funding, and total vertical integration...

Quote of the day...

Quote of the day...  This one is from a New York Times article (I read them so that you don't have to :) about the things the must be done to make online education attractive as an alternative to traditional (and very expensive) universities.  The article focuses on credentialing, specifically on alternatives to the traditional college degree that's embodied in a diploma.  As my long-time readers (all four of you) will know, I'm not happy with the existing diploma system, as the possession of a diploma from an American university really tells you very little about what that person actually knows, or can do.  So this quote really caught my eye:

The standard diploma has roughly the same amount of information that prisoners of war are required to divulge under the Geneva Conventions. 

Ha!  Yes, that's absolutely true.  The fact that a candidate programmer has a degree from (say) Carnegie-Mellon University tells a prospective employer almost nothing at all about that candidate's suitability for the job.  Some of the alternative credentialing ideas mentioned in the article (Mozilla's Open Badges, in particular) are attempting to address that problem.  Traditional universities have a conflict with these alternative credentialing ideas, though – to the extent that they succeed, they will (a) provide less expensive alternatives to the university, and (b) expose the mediocrity of the education those expensive universities are delivering. 

Meanwhile, the best credentials I know of currently are open source project contributions...

European tree of the year...

European tree of the year...  This oak tree in Orissaare, Estonia, was just voted the 2015 “Tree of the Year” in a contest amongst 14 European countries.

I've traveled extensively in Estonia in the period from just after their independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 through 2004.  The map that guided my explorations had numerous interesting botanical specimens marked on it, and after seeing the beauty of a few of them I started making it a point to visit them.  This tree in Orissaare was one of those marked on that map, and I visited it twice – once in about 1995, then again in 2002, on one of my last visits to Estonia.

This particular tree is located on the eastern side of Saaremaa, the biggest Estonian island in the Baltic Sea, on the western border of the country.  If you view the map at left on Google Maps, you'll be able to see exactly where it's located by zooming out.

The first time I visited this tree was before the economic boom in Saaremaa, and the town's infrastructure was still in pretty bad shape.  I bought my lunch in a small grocery store, and sat beneath the tree to have myself a little picnic.  A couple of people walked by, but nobody stopped to talk.  The second time I visited, Orissaare (and the rest of the island) was far more prosperous, with lots of fresh paint, repaired structures, and even a bit of pavement here and there.  On that visit, I couldn't have my picnic under the tree, as there were all sorts of people playing several different games (though not football!) right around the tree.  I sat on the edge of the field to eat my picnic lunch, which that time came from a small, new restaurant serving allegedly local cuisine.  I'm not entirely sure what it was, but it had fish, potatoes, and a lot of dill in it – and was quite tasty!

It was fun to see a tree I know in the news :)