This is being reported...

This is being reported ... as the sinking of a battleship, to make an artificial reef.

Uh, no.

That's not a battleship, not even in the Mexican Navy.  It's just barely a ship, for crying out loud.

But the video is cool!

We're so glad we left California...

We're so glad we left California...  After reading this, I wonder if Victor Davis Hanson might be following us someday soon.  Depressing, that piece is, if you ever loved California...

You don't often hear something like this...

You don't often hear something like this ... from a dedicated progressive.  Just listen!

I want you to know...

I want you to know ... that Mia Love is a Utahan, and a Republican representative to Congress.  Look what she's proposing.  Ain't it wonderful?  I estimate its chance of passage at about 0.0000048%, give or take a few millionths.  But we can dream, can't we?

Wait a minute...

Wait a minute...  In last night's Iowa caucuses, on the Democratic side there were six precincts where the ballots were tied – evenly split between The Hillary and The Bern.  So what did they do?  They tossed a coin to decide it.  That's fair enough; in a tie they break it by randomly choosing a winner.

But...

In all six of these tied precincts, The Hillary's people won the toss.  What's the chances of that?  For a geek like me, that's a trivial question.  Assuming the coin tosses really are random, there's exactly one chance in sixty-four that Hillary (or Bernie) would win all six of them.  If it had gone the other way (that is, Bernie winning all six), would that have changed the election results?  I'm not sure, as the Democrats have a less-than-transparent mechanism, population-based, for deciding how much weight to place on each precinct's votes.  If the precincts decided by a coin toss are small (in population), as is most likely, then their cumulative effect might not be enough to change the outcome.  But we don't know that – at least not now – and given the shenanigans the Clinton dynasty is justly famous for, I find that ... at least unsettling, and possibly suspicious.

I'd sure like to know whether if Bernie had won tosses, he'd be the winner...

Meanwhile, Scott Adams is broadly hinting that it's possible the Republican caucuses were rigged.  The most persuasive piece of “evidence” he offered (assuming it's accurate) is that Microsoft supplied the software that totaled the Republican results, Rubio's biggest donor was Microsoft, and Rubio is a big-but-plausible winner.  Hmmm...

Comet 67P...

Comet 67P...  Every time I look at one of these images, I marvel that I live in an age where I can sit in my living room and look at photos taken just hours ago by a camera located very nearby a comet! 

When I was a boy on our farm in New Jersey, comets were largely mysterious objects about which there was far more speculation than actual knowledge.  Not so many years later, we have sent robotic explorers to two comets, we have several more such explorers that will be visiting, and we've gained an enormous amount of concrete knowledge about comets – including magnificent photos like these, streaming back from the Rosetta spacecraft.  While there are still many mysteries about comets (especially about their origins), there's a solid base of knowledge and understanding now – there's more knowledge than speculation...

So the Iowa caucuses are over...

So the Iowa caucuses are over...  What did we learn?

Not much, I think.  The big loser would appear to be The Hillary – a tie with an octogenarian socialist is pretty far removed from the expected coronation.  It's only one tiny step from losing to the octogenarian socialist.

On the Republican side, there were three viable candidates going into the caucuses (Cruz, Trump, Rubio) ... and there are three viable candidates coming out.  The three of them finished less than 5 points away from each other, which I'll call a tie for statistical purposes.  So ... a great, big nothing-burger.

Another loser (but this is almost an evergreen assertion these days): the polls.  Not a single one of them correctly predicted this outcome.  Everybody was surprised by (a) Trump's loss, slight as it was, and (b) Rubio's near-tie.  My takeaway from this is the same as my takeaway from the pollsters in the 2012 election: political pollsters and weather forecasters are the only two occupations I know of where getting the wrong answer most of the time isn't career-threatening (I'm looking at you, weather forecasters of northern Utah last week!).  We shouldn't give either group any credibility in our thinking.

I'm feeling ... very reinforced in my lack of excitement and engagement with this year's Presidential contest.  We still have five viable candidates (Clinton, Cruz, Trump, Sanders, Rubio), not one of which I'd look forward to having as my President.

My favorite observation about the evening, made by several people in several forms: the alleged party of old white men (the Republicans) gave over 60% of their votes to (relatively) young minorities, while the allegedly minority-friendly party of the people (the Democrats) gave 99.4% of their vote to old white folks...

An amazing visualization tool...

An amazing visualization tool...  Free, on the web, and it works in your favorite web browser.  It's called “earth”, and it lets you look at winds, temperature, humidity, pollutants, ocean waves, and more – and you can see them anywhere in the world.  It's all driven by satellite data, and much of the data is updated in near realtime (within a few hours).  The least fresh data I could find was at most five days old.  You can even look at the data with a variety of map projections.  Amazing to have this at your fingertips!

I took the screenshot at right this morning, showing the winds over the U.S. At first I thought that winds were all it could show, but then I clicked on the “earth” menu at the lower left corner, and a whole 'nother world opened up.  Take a gander!

The math was settled...

The math was settled...  There is no such thing as an irrational number (that is, a number that cannot be exactly defined as the ratio of two numbers). No opposition was allowed; in fact, irrational number deniers are rumored to have been executed.

It's all very reminiscent of global warming and its skeptics...

I tried...

I tried ... to get interested in tonight's caucuses (caucusi? see note below.) in Iowa.  I tried to even care.  But I failed.  Tonight's events are doubly irrelevant for me.  First of all, there isn't a single candidate running that I'm sure I'd like to elect as President.  Worse, there's not even anyone who stands out as someone I don't want – so there's not even anyone in particular to vote against.  Hell, I'm not even very curious about who wins this thing, in either party – they're all schmucks!  Then secondly there's the very limited meaning and impact of the Iowa caucuses, and it seems to be getting even less relevant with each passing election.

So I'm paying no attention at all.

Note: on a much more important matter, I looked up “caucus” in the OED to see what the usual form of the plural is.  I assumed, from the form of the word, that it was derived from Latin.  I got a surprise:
caucus

[Arose in New England: origin obscure.
   Alleged to have been used in Boston U.S. before 1724; quotations go back to 1763. Already in 1774 Gordon (Hist. Amer. Rev.) could obtain no ‘satisfactory account of the origin of the name’. Mr. Pickering, in 1816, as a mere guess, thought it ‘not improbable that caucus might be a corruption of caulkers', the word “meetings” being understood’. For this, and the more detailed statement quoted in Webster, there is absolutely no evidence beyond the similarity of sound; and the word was actually in use before the date (1770) of the event mentioned in Webster. Dr. J. H. Trumbull (Proc. Amer. Philol. Assoc. 1872) has suggested possible derivation from an Algonkin word cau′-cau-as′u, which occurs in Capt. Smith's Virginia 23, as Caw-cawaassough ‘one who advises, urges, encourages’, from a vb. meaning primarily ‘to talk to’, hence ‘to give counsel, advise, encourage’, and ‘to urge, promote, incite to action’. For such a derivation there is claimed the general suitability of the form and sense, and it is stated that Indian names were commonly taken by clubs and secret associations in New England; but there appears to be no direct evidence.] 

Such outright uncertainty is fairly rare in the OED, but this sort of discussion is one of the big reasons why I love that tool.  Way more than I love the Iowa primary process, whatever one calls it...

Paradise ponders...

Paradise ponders...  Well, the snow finally stopped sometime last night.  This morning, after the sun came up and was shining nicely, I went out to plow the driveway again.  I quickly ran into a problem, though – in my hurry to get into the (nice, warm) house last night, I forgot to turn off the hazard lights on my tractor.  I don't normally use those lights, but last night when I drove down the highway I had them on.  They were still flashing this morning, but the bulbs just barely lit up.  The tractor engine wouldn't turn over.

So ... I had to go fish the jumper cables out of the garage, run Debbie's truck over to the barn (over the unplowed inch to two inches of fresh snow), and park it nose-to-nose with the tractor.  Then I had to figure out how to open the tractor's “hood” so I could get to the battery.  Luckily that turned out to be easy.  I hooked up the cables and started up the tractor, then put the truck back, the cables away, and finally I could go plow.

I got surprised right away by a layer of ice that developed somehow, right against the pavement.  In a couple of places it was almost an inch thick, but most places it was only about a quarter of that.  I plowed the entire driveway but still couldn't actually see the pavement!  Fortunately the sunshine took care of that problem in just a few hours.

Then I shoveled off the walkway again, and salted it to get rid of the ice (it was there, too; not just on the pavement).  I've got four foot high piles of snow now on both sides of that walkway...

Uh oh...

Uh oh...  Curiosity may have a problem...

I've never been able to fathom...

I've never been able to fathom ... why so many people are attracted to socialism.  The inevitable outcome isn't exactly attractive...

Collision imminent!

Collision imminent!  A giant cloud of gas (weighing more than a million suns) is headed for the Milky Way galaxy at 700,000 MPH.  It will hit a different arm of the galaxy than the Earth is in, about 30 million years from now.  That's imminent in the grand scheme of things, though it may not seem so to you :)

The Square Red Nebula...

The Square Red Nebula...  Via APOD, of course.  What a bizarre celestial object!  Click to embiggen...

Things I did not know, part 54,903,112...

Things I did not know, part 54,903,112...  StrategyPage's article on suicide bombings includes this paragraph (emphasis mine):

In both Lebanon and to a lesser extent in Sri Lanka, the terrorist organizations took advantage of religious beliefs that honored extreme sacrifice. Added to this was exploitation of economic and political grievances, thus making the suicide attackers into heroic characters. In addition, families of the suicide volunteers received generous (by local standards) economic rewards. Until in 2003 families of Palestinian suicide bombers receive up to $33,000 (from various sources, mainly Iraq and Saudi Arabia). Financial incentives like this have become common and the Palestinian government now pays them out of foreign aid cash. 

Assuming that's true (and I've found StrategyPage to be a reliable source), this is simply appalling.  The vast majority of foreign aid that Palestine receives comes from the U.S., either directly or indirectly through the U.N. and other aid organizations.  So ... U.S. tax dollars are paying rewards to the families of suicide bombers.

You'd think I'd be cynical enough to be unsurprised by this, but I guess I need to work on my cynicism some more because this did surprise me.  As I sat here and festered, I started thinking about all the things our government does that anger me, and ... I understood a little better what a powerful current Trump is tying into.  I don't like the idea of Trump-as-President, but I absolutely love the idea of tipping over the apple-cart on the current people running the government...

I've neglected to mention...

I've neglected to mention ... a piece of clothing I recently bought, that's making me even more comfortable outside in cold weather: fleece-lined jeans from Carhartt.  They are the bomb!
 Despite having (a relatively mild case of) Raynaud's disease, with the right apparel I'm not having much trouble.  The one exception: my hands.  I still don't have a great solution for keeping my hands comfortable while still allowing me to work with some semblance of dexterity.  My best answers today are (a) a pair of electrically heated gloves (designed for motorcyclists), and (b) a pair of well-insulated mittens combined with chemical heaters.  My fingers still get painful in the gloves if it's cold enough, and of course in the mittens my dexterity is quite impaired.  Still searching for a good answer for that!

The insulated boots I got earlier this year have proven to be a great answer for my cold feet.   Yesterday afternoon I was outside for about four hours, including an hour in a near-blizzard condition, and my feet (and legs) were comfortable the whole time...

Dang it!

Dang it!  The storm stopped around 1:30 pm, and the forecast said little chance of more, and the weather radar showed nothing on the way – so I shoveled our porch and walkway (about 18" of snow), and plowed our driveway. 

Then I headed over (on the tractor) to our neighbor, Nick and Maria S.  They have a long driveway and told me they had nobody arranged to plow them out, so I volunteered.  On the drive over (about 2 miles on a 15 MPH tractor), it started to snow.  By the time I got to their house, it was a full-on blizzard, with visibility down to 100' or so.  I plowed them out as best I could see, and headed home. 

I was frozen and soaked by the time I got back in the house, so I jumped right into a nice, hot shower.  Fifteen minutes later, there was an inch of fresh snow on the ground – and it's still coming down hard. 

Dang it!

Plowing the driveway this time was a much different experience than usual.  Normally the only challenge is to scrape every square inch while marshaling all the snow off to the side.  It's sort of a management problem: not taking too big a bite, having the blade angled right, etc.  This time there was a completely different challenge: how to get the vast quantity of snow herded off to some place available to put it.  There was a lot of snow to put somewhere!  Next time we have a deep snowfall, I'm going to try starting out with the loader bucket, and use that to move the bulk of the snow off to some good place for a pile.  Then I'll use the blade to finish it off nicely...

Newton...

Newton ... or Haukea (white snow in Hawai'ian), or Haunani (beautiful snow) ... all these names are under consideration.  He's one cute little kitten.  So far as we can tell, he's in good health.  He's got a vet appointment on Wednesday to be sure.

Then there's our dogs, in the snow.  They'd really rather be inside :)

Snowy consequences...

Snowy consequences...  The temperature is hovering right around freezing, which means the (totally unpredicted) volumes of snow that we're getting are heavy, gloppy, and wet.  For some reason one particular basement casement window is having lots and lots of snow pile into it – to the point where I started to get worried about its physical integrity.  The weight of that snow looked like it just might break the window panes!

So I ran out to my shop, found a piece of scrap OSB (chip board), and sawed it up into two 5' x 20" pieces.  Then I shoveled all the snow out from around the casement (this is while the roof was dumping more on me!), shoveled out most of the snow inside the casement, and covered it with those two pieces of OSB.  It looks like it will hold, and it definitely removed the immediate threat.  We're keeping an eye on the other casements, too, but so far none of them are getting large amounts of snow in them.  I know not why.

Meanwhile, some photos from around the place to entertain you.  If I didn't keep thinking about the work it's going to take to dig us out, I'd be entranced by the beauty of it.  The first photo shows our sidewalk after I shoveled off the first 8" or so.  In the fifth photo you can see the juncos that just don't care that I'm standing right next to them – they want that food!  The last is the same balcony shot I took just a few hours ago – look at all this white stuff!