Dione

Another amazing Cassini photo...

Saturn's moon Dione is placed in a setting here that's straight out of one of those awful pulp science-fiction paperbacks -- the bright grey moon set against the majesty of the giant planet Saturn. From the Cassini web site:

Speeding toward pale, icy Dione, Cassini's view is enriched by the tranquil gold and blue hues of Saturn in the distance. The horizontal stripes near the bottom of the image are Saturn's rings. The spacecraft was nearly in the plane of the rings when the images were taken, thinning them by perspective and masking their awesome scale. The thin, curving shadows of the C ring and part of the B ring adorn the northern latitudes visible here, a reminder of the rings' grandeur.

It is notable that Dione, like most of the other icy Saturnian satellites, looks no different in natural color than in monochrome images.

Images taken on Oct. 11, 2005, with blue, green and infrared (centered at 752 nanometers) spectral filters were used to create this color view, which approximates the scene as it would appear to the human eye. The images were obtained with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera at a distance of approximately 39,000 kilometers (24,200 miles) from Dione and at a Sun-Dione-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 22 degrees. The image scale is about 2 kilometers (1 mile) per pixel.

When I first saw this image, I thought that the edge-on rings were some kind of camera artifact, and I thought that the ring's shadows were the result of either a time exposure or some artist "cleaning up" the photo. The fact that those are real elements in the photo -- we'd see them if we were there -- makes this somehow even more astonishing to me.

Oh, what I would give to be able to take a seat in Cassini, and see with my own eyes what our precocious robot is seeing...

As usual, click on the photo for a larger view...

APOD

AE Aurigae: The Flaming Star

APOD brings us...

Is star AE Aurigae on fire? No. Even though AE Aurigae is named the flaming star, the surrounding nebula IC 405 is named the Flaming Star Nebula, and the region appears to harbor red smoke, there is no fire. Fire, typically defined as the rapid molecular acquisition of oxygen, happens only when sufficient oxygen is present and is not important in such high-energy, low-oxygen environments such as stars. The material that appears as smoke is mostly interstellar hydrogen, but does contain smoke-like dark filaments of carbon-rich dust grains. The bright star AE Aurigae, visible just below the image center, is so hot it is blue, emitting light so energetic it knocks electrons away from surrounding gas. When a proton recaptures an electron, red light is frequently emitted, as seen in the surrounding emission nebula. Pictured above, the Flaming Star nebula lies about 1,500 light years distant, spans about 5 light years, and is visible with a small telescope toward the constellation of the Charioteer (Auriga).

Click on the picture for a larger view.

Clancy

In memoriam...

Randy Cassingham is, amongst other things, the author of the weekly email publication This is True (more on that below). Randy's cat Clancy (pictured at right in a favorite pose) was his longtime friend and companion. Yesterday Clancy died, and Randy (of course!) put up a web page that is a tribute to Clancy. On it, he says:

Clancy was a sweet boy who liked sleeping right next to me -- or, more often in the winter, on me. When I rolled over, he'd "surf the wave" and stay right with me, and when I settled down he would too. But in recent months it was getting clear he was in distress. He has always loved to jump up into my arms (I'm tall, and the floor is a long way away, so I taught him to jump up to me rather than rely on me to bend down to pick him up). But over time, his jumps were less and less powerful -- he wasn't making it all the way to my arms. And in recent weeks, he wouldn't even make the attempt; he was simply tired and, perhaps, hurting.

Any of you who are (like us) kept by your animals will recognize and identify with the sentiment that Randy expresses. Read the whole thing!

On This is True: I first ran into this email publication over seven years ago. I subscribed for years to the free edition, but about three years ago upgraded to his "premium" edition. For that entire period I've looked forward to receiving the latest edition each week. It's very hard for this writer to imagine how Randy manages to keep up the consistent quality of this wonderful little publication, issue after issue after issue, but somehow he does it. He never fails to put a smile on my face and to make me laugh out loud (sometimes in inappropriate work situations <smile>!), and usually has some interesting points to ponder. If you're not already a subscriber to This is True, you really should at least go sign up for the free edition. Try it for a while, and I'll bet you'll want to upgrade to the premium edition!

Rain!

And the fire danger drops to near zero...

When I toddled off to bed last night, we'd had a total of about a third of an inch of rain over the past couple of days, and the radar didn't show any more coming. So it was a very pleasant surprise to wake up this morning and discover that overnight we'd had quite a bit more rain -- almost another half inch -- for a total of 0.75 inches (19 mm) in the past two days. And it is raining nicely as I write this.

Now to you folks who don't live in the desert, that may not seem like a lot of rain. For the high-desert chaparral, though, to have this much rain right as our traditional fire season starts means a significant dimunition in the fire danger, for a least a week or two. All the abundant fuel in the chaparral (the dead twigs, leaf litter, etc.) has now been thoroughly wetted, and will not easily catch fire via wind-blown embers. This is the primary mechanism by which chaparral fires spread, so wet fuel is a big deal. And to dry the fuel out after this much rain will take a prolonged period of dry weather -- hence the several weeks of safety purchased by this rain.

Yahoo for the rain!

Estonia Power

Some nice exposure for Estonia...

For reasons that aren't entirely clear to me, Estonia has recently been getting quite a bit of good press in the U.S., both in the mainstream media and in the blogosphere. For example, Publius Pundit has a nice piece today, that starts like this:

In less time than it takes for a new baby to reach U.S. voting age, the nation of Estonia has transformed itself from a cold, gray, stagnant outpost of the Soviet Empire to one of the world’s most impressive dynamic democracies. Its banks are pristine, its one of the most wired countries in the world, it is famous for its absence of corruption, as well as its flat tax, its sound stable money, its property rights, its free trade (unilaterally done with no miserable CAFTA battle, as Alvaro Vargas Llosa noted.) The only shortage out there for Estonia is enough praise for this marvelous nation that is lighting a flame for the rest of the world.

In the rest of that article, he points to this comment on another blog, from someone whose sentiments (and sighs) I certainly share:

[Sigh] "Filing an annual tax return online, as 80% of Estonians do, takes a few minutes."

Processing these tax returns takes an average five days.

Estonia has a flat tax of 24% on personal and corporate income.

"Estonia's economy showed 9.9% year-on-year growth in the latest quarter -- Europe's fastest rate."

[Figures & quotes from The Economist 10/15/05.]

[Another sigh]

Maybe the Estonian government hired a new public relations firm?

Morning Walk

In the chaparral after a rain...

One of the nice things about being unemployed and living in the chaparral country of San Diego County is that I'm now completely free to take walks in the morning. With Debi and our two dogs (Mo'i and Lea), I've been walking every morning in the hills that surround our home.

This morning was even grander than usual. We had some rain last night -- not a whole lot, but enough to wash all the dust from the leaves of the chaparral, and to accent all the lovely high desert morning smells. The freshly cleaned leaves gave a new, dark green appearance to our hillsides. The smells of high desert chaparral are hard to put into words. The dominant small is from sage; the same sage that's commonly used as a spice. It's always the strongest at night and in the early morning; after a rainfall it is at the absolute peak -- strong and sharp in your nostrils. Along with the sage, there are dozens of odiferous nuances as you walk along; some from the leaves (like sage), others from flowers or stems that you crush as you walk. It's a veritable symphony of smell in the early morning after a rain, and that symphony is playing very loudly. The intensity of this desert perfume has to be experienced to be believed...

Something interesting about these smells -- nearly all of them serve a distinct purpose for the plant, usually either an insect repellant or an outright insecticide. The sharp odor of sage, for instance, is from a chemical that is quite an effective insect repellent -- even appearing in commercial products for use by people, and commonly planted in gardens to ward off bugs. Strange, somehow, to think that these things that we find so attractive are either obnoxious or fatal to insects!

Rhma

She's doing great!

A few weeks ago I told you about a little Iraqi girl with a severe medical problem, and how some concerned Americans conspired to make sure she got the help she needed. Michael Yon now reports that Rhma has had the surgery she needed, and the results were terrific. He posted this email from one of her nurses:

Rhma did absolutely beautifully during surgery. Her oxygen saturation is now between 87 and 91 and she is pink! She looks like a different child. Her Mom just kept holding her hands, looking at her nail beds and smiling. She has been very stable and has not required any medications to keep her blood pressure up. She is still on the ventilator just to allow her to rest for the night but she'll be off it in the morning. I will keep you posted.

This is very sweet good news on top of the political good news of the Iraqi constitutional referendum...

A Storm!

Rain, lightning, and thunder...oh my!

The first picture at right is a snapshot of our local NEXRAD weather radar. The lower right circle is a close-up of the area around our home, and you can see that it's raining. As of this post, we've accumulated 4 mm--that may not sound like much, but it's a whole bunch of rain for mid-October, and very, very welcome as we enter the high-risk part of our fire season.

Recall that the Cedar Fire occured at the end of October in 2003, and you can see why we worry about such things...

The middle picture shows the barometric pressure here for the past week; it's notable mostly for the precipitous drop that's recorded for the past (about) 30 hours. This is the classic sign of an impending storm. The rightmost picture is temperature (red line) and humidity (green line) over the past week. You can see that the storm's onset included a dramatic drop in temperatures and an equally dramatic rise in relative humidity. In particular you can see the sharp rise to nearly 100% humidity at the onset of the rain just a couple of hours ago.

The NOAA forecast has good chances of rain from now through Tuesday evening, and we are making offerings to whatever rain gods we can identify, in the hopes of helping the weather forecasters improve their accuracy...

Bravo, Iraq!

From all that I've been able to read so far, it appears that (a) the turnout in the Iraqi election was very high, (b) the Constitutional referendum is going to pass--easily, and (c) the terrorist attacks were much less numerous, and much less effective, than threatened by the Al-Qaeda leadership.

Bravo, Iraq! May the "Spirit of the Purple Finger" live on eternally!

What good news for this Sunday...

Dem Minnesotans

Sure are a peculiar lot...

Two Minnesotans walk into a pet shop in Dingle. They head to the bird section and Sven says to Hans, "Dat's dem." The owner comes over and asks if he can help them. "Yeah, we'll take four of dem dere little budgies in dat cage up dere," says Sven. The owner puts the budgies in a paper bag. Hans and Sven pay for the birds, leave the shop and get into Sven's pickup and drive to the top of the Conor Pass. At the Conor Pass, Sven looks down at the 1000 ft. drop and says, "Dis looks like a grand place." He takes two birds out of the bag, puts them on his shoulders and jumps off the cliff. Hans watches as Sven falls all the way to the bottom. Looking down at the remains of his best pal, Hans shakes his head and says "Dis budgie jumping is too dangerous for me."

Moments later Ole arrives up at Conor Pass. He's been to the pet shop, too and walks up to the edge of the cliff carrying another paper bag in one hand and a shotgun in the other. "Hi, Hans. Watch dis," Ole says. He takes a parrot from the bag and throws himself over the edge of the cliff. Hans watches as, half way down, Ole takes the shotgun and shoots the parrot. Ole continues to plummet down and down until he hits the bottom and breaks every bone in his body. Hans shakes his head and says, "And I'm never trying dat parrotshooting either."

Hans is just getting over the shock of losing two friends when Lars appears. He's also been to the pet shop and is carrying a paper bag out of which he pulls a chicken. Lars then grasps the chicken by the legs holds it over his head and hurls himself off the cliff and disappears down and down until he hits a rock and breaks his spine. Once more Hans shakes his head. "First der was Sven with his budgie jumping, den Ole parrotshooting--and now Lars is hengliding..."

Estonian Political Hopeful

Would you believe I know this woman?

Updated (below).

And my wife isn't too happy about that...

Natalja Tereping (click on the photo for a larger view) was an employee in the Tallinn offices of a company I used to work for (Stac, which then became Previo). She was our bookkeeper and office assistant there for years. An Estonian friend of mine sent me this picture of Natalja this morning along with the interesting news that she is running for a seat on the Tallinn city council, representing the Mustamäe area (if I'm reading the Estonian language web sites correctly). She's a member of the center-right "Res Publica" party, one of the dominant political parties in Estonia.

I have never had a discussion about politics with Natalja, so I don't know what has driven her to do this, or what positions she holds. The center-right platforms of her party are not too awfully far from my own more libertarian leanings, so most likely she and I could have a civil conversation on Tallinn's political situation, if I actually knew very much about it (I don't).

All that aside, can you think of a single female candidate for American political office (at any level) with the movie star/model attractiveness that Natalja has? Not one comes to my mind. It's hard to see how this could hurt Natalja's chances in the election, especially amongst the men...

Go, Natalja, go!

Update (10/17): My Estonian friend tells me that Natalja has received only seven votes (one of which was her own!), and has lost the election. How sad!

Seeds

Collected from our yard...

These seeds caught my eye as my wife and I took our morning walk with the dogs. I have no idea what the plant is.

The thing that caught my eye at first was the symmetry (more obvious on some of the seeds still on the plant) -- perfect four-pointed "stars" with "layers" of seeds. Upon closer examination I saw something more curious, though. Each seed has a tuft of fibers coming out of it, presumably to catch the breeze and disperse the seeds. The fibers for each seed are being pulled from two of the spoke structures -- this is what produces the symmetrical form that first caught my eye.

What an elaborate setup!

As usual, click on the picture for a larger view...

Terrorist Detection

A surefire method...

And a tip of the Jamulian hat to my mom for this contribution to excellence in homeland security...

U.N. Approval

An international symbol for marriage...

We're told that the United Nations has approved this new, official international symbol for marriage.

I don't think any married male will have any difficulty understanding this!

But will the married women understand?

I just asked my wife, and got a smack in the head as an answer. Oddly enough, I know how to interpret that: yes, she understood.

Barometric Oddities

Periodic atmospheric pressure variation...

At right you see a chart of the past week's barometric pressure at our home. There is a regular variation in the pressure that occurs twice a day (a diurnal cycle). The peak-to-peak variation is roughly 0.7 in/hg, or 2.2 millibars.

When I first saw this variation I thought it was some kind of heating effect on my instrument, or some other data artifact, and not a real pressure variation. However, the more I studied it, the stranger it looked. What, for instance, could account for the cycle being twice a day? So I did what I always do when faced with such a mystery: I googled.

It turns out that this diurnal pressure cycle is very well-known, and it's real. I've never seen it before because (a) the variation is quite small, and (b) until this past year I've never owned a sensitive enough recording barometer.

Although the diurnal cycle turns out to be very complex in nature, I can summarize what I discovered as follows:
--The large peaks (daily at around 10 AM PST) are mainly caused by solar heating of the atmosphere.
-- The lesser peak (daily at around 10 PM PST) are mainly caused by a solar tidal effect.
-- The solar tidal cycles (unexpectedly) dominate the lunar tidal cycles because of a resonance with a normal mode of atmospheric oscillation of approximately 12 hour period that closely matches the solar cycle, greatly amplifying it.

Because solar heating is the dominant underlying mechanism, there are some aspects of the atmospheric tides that are quite different than the oceanic tides:
-- The 10 AM peak is far larger at the equator than at higher latitudes.
-- Inland locations have greater 10 AM peaks than ocean locations (because there are greater heating effects on land masses).

There are also pressure variations with periods longer than a day. There is a pronounced annual cycle that relates to the seasonal change of temperature -- but its polarity varies by altitude. For locations below about 1300 feet in altitude have lower pressures in the summertime; locations above 1300 feet have higher pressures in the summertime (and, I suppose, right at 1300 feet there's no difference at all!). There are also several cycles --not well studied--that seem to be related to lunar cycles.

This turned out to be far more interesting, and complicated, than the instrumentation problem I suspected! You can read more about these phenomena here, here, here, and here.

Santa Anas Gone!

The chart at right shows the temperature (red line) and relative humidity (green line) at our home for the past week. You can see a three-day period with low relative humidity, starting just before midnight on the 4th and ending around 5 pm on the 7th. That's one signature of a Santa Ana condition; the other is the wind speed and direction. This time, for whatever reason, the winds never really picked up to high speeds, and only intermittently shifted direction.

Yesterday (the 8th) afternoon the humidity increased dramatically while the temperature decreased, and this morning it felt downright chilly this morning (to the heat-acclimated amongst us; you residents of northern climates can stop laughing now). A welcome break, indeed.

Unfortunately our one-week forecast says it will be hot again by the end of the coming week, well into the 90s...

Java Performance

IBM on the "Java urban legend" of poor performance:

Pop quiz: Which language boasts faster raw allocation performance, the Java language, or C/C++? The answer may surprise you — allocation in modern JVMs is far faster than the best performing malloc implementations. The common code path for new Object() in HotSpot 1.4.2 and later is approximately 10 machine instructions (data provided by Sun; see Resources), whereas the best performing malloc implementations in C require on average between 60 and 100 instructions per call. And allocation performance is not a trivial component of overall performance — benchmarks show that many real-world C and C++ programs, such as Perl and Ghostscript, spend 20 to 30 percent of their total execution time in malloc and free — far more than the allocation and garbage collection overhead of a healthy Java application.

The article also has a bunch of interesting links...

Killer Daddy

"What on earth is this?" was my first reaction to seeing this comic. It's horrible looking, and when you read the text, you discover it's propaganda of the crudest sort — like some of the awful anti-Semitic stuff that came out of Hitler's regime.

But this ... this comic is aimed at kids! And it's brought to you by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). It's all the evils of fishing, and it is attempting to recruit children to defy their parents.

Just. Like. Hitler. And. Stalin.

A sample of the lovely rhetoric:

Until your daddy learns that it’s not “fun” to kill,keep your doggies and kitties away from him.He’s so hooked on killing defenseless animalsthat they could be next!

And this:

Imagine that a man dangles a piece of candy in front of you. You love candy so you reach for it. But, as you grab thecandy, a huge metal hook stabs through your hand and you’re ripped off the ground. You fight to get away, but it doesn’t do any good. You are caught, and there is nothing that you can do about it. You’d feel really scared, wouldn’t you?That would be an awful trick to play on someone, wouldn’t it? But guess what? Your daddy plays that same wicked trick on fish and fish get scared too!

Every time I read anything at all about this organization — including their own mailers that they send me — I come away with the impression of madness and diabolical evil. After reading this one, I want to take a shower. Can't you just see some PETA pervert cackling to himself (or herself — can't show a gender bias here!) as they pen the propaganda and paint the lurid comic? Can you imagine a ... normal ... person doing this?

As usual, click on the photo for a larger view...
A tip of the hat to Junkyard Blog.

Fire No Threat

The two fires that burned near us for the past few days are nearly out. As best we can tell, the danger is over.

Whew!

The Best

Last night, President Bush gave a speech at the National Endowment for Democracy. The entire conservative blogosphere seems to be abuzz about it. Mostly they are lavishly praising it; a few say "gee, that's nice — but why didn't we hear this years ago?"

I was glued to my screen as I watched the video playback (both the transcript and the video are available at the White House web site). It was a riveting speech; well-written, well-delivered, and with a much-needed message about why we're fighting the war on terror (including in Iraq), and why we're winning it. I can't add much to what the rest of the blogosphere has already said. I will say this, though (agreeing with some other observers): it's the best speech I've ever seen President Bush make. Period. An example of the rhetoric:

Over the years these extremists have used a litany of excuses for violence — the Israeli presence on the West Bank, or the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia, or the defeat of the Taliban, or the Crusades of a thousand years ago. In fact, we're not facing a set of grievances that can be soothed and addressed. We're facing a radical ideology with inalterable objectives: to enslave whole nations and intimidate the world. No act of ours invited the rage of the killers — and no concession, bribe, or act of appeasement would change or limit their plans for murder.

On the contrary: They target nations whose behavior they believe they can change through violence. Against such an enemy, there is only one effective response: We will never back down, never give in, and never accept anything less than complete victory.

Do read and view the whole thing.