Color Perception

The way we perceive color is very different from what you might think (if you've ever thought about this at all!). When someone with normal color vision looks around them, they see a world full of colors – an infinite variety of hues and brightnesses. This perception is created by a relatively simple set of color sensors (in the retina at the back of your eyeball) and a lot of fancy interpretation by your brain.

Consider this simple-sounding color perception example – the color of a tiny patch of clear blue sky. You perceive that as a specific color: a bright, light blue. In actual fact, the “color” of the sky is much more complex than that. It is not a high intensity of a single wavelength of visible light (as a laser is); instead, it is a mix of a broad range of wavelengths from very short ultraviolet light to very long infrared light. The blue end of these wavelengths are slightly higher intensity than the red end, and we perceive the mix as the bright, light blue of the sky.

The physical mechanism by which our eyes sense the various wavelengths of light is well understood. Our retinas have “sensors” (the so-called “cones”) that respond to three different sections of the visible light spectrum. The graph at right shows their response in a typical person – as you can see, it is quite arbitrary. In the case of our hypothetical blue sky, all three sensors would respond: the S cones (blue) most intensely, the M cones (green) slightly less intensely, and the L cones (red) even slightly less. Our brain takes that combination and interprets it as the bright, light blue of the sky.

A digital camera has sensors that mimic those of our eyes; the better cameras do so quite closely. A camera taking a photo of our example's patch of sky would record the color as intensities of red, green, and blue: something like 100% blue, 99.6% green, and 99.4% red. If you were to view that photo on your computer monitor, three different tiny dots – one red, one green, one blue (look at your screen with a magnifying glass and you can see them!) – each lit up brightly, with the blue one slightly brighter. Our eyes see that mix of three wavelengths as being nearly identical to the broad range of wavelengths in the real blue sky, and we're successfully tricked into seeing the same color.

A different kind of camera sensor is under development today – one that can record the actual spectrum at every tiny piece (“pixel”) of a photo. For scientific purposes, this is incredibly valuable information. Often it is possible to identify a particular substance (such as a particular metal, mineral, etc.) from the reflected spectrum of light. Such a camera mounted on a robot space explorer could identify all the minerals it could see on the surface of a planet; on a military vehicle, it could see the difference between natural objects and camouflaged objects. One could imagine all kinds of interesting things to do with images that have so much information in them. For example, software might analyze such images to locate wildlife – so someone might build a pair of binoculars that automatically pointed out the wildlife to you!

Currently there is no system that I'm aware of that can reproduce such an image with a full spectrum of wavelengths – but if we were to imagine such a system, then the spectrum imaging camera's photos could be seen in exactly the same way as they originally appeared. Such an image would be indistinguishable from the real thing, even by sensitive scientific instruments.

The next few years of imaging technology promise to be very interesting indeed. Many companies and scientists are working on this technology, some aimed at consumer cameras and others aimed at more exotic objectives – but anything useful is almost certain to end up in readily purchasable cameras, as this area is intensely competitive…

I want those binoculars!

Before and After

This evening I sat down to start restoring a fine old Dring & Fage slide rule, and I finally remembered to do something I've been meaning to do for a long time: show a “before” and “after” photo.

This particular slide rule dates back to the mid-1800s. It's an unusual style, with two slides on each side of the body. The condition of this example is superb, with almost no damage or even signs of wear. The only notable problems are (1) it is filthy, as you might expect from something 150 years old, and (2) the parts fit too tightly to move smoothly.

In the photo above, the top piece is a segment of an uncleaned slide and the bottom piece is a segment of a cleaned slide. This rule has four slides plus a rather large body – it took me 45 minutes to clean the first slide, so the whole rule will probably take about 5 hours to clean.

The cleaning process is simple, but tedious: I soak an old washrag, fold it into quarters on my worktable, sprinkle some Bon Ami onto a corner of the washrag, and then carefully scrub one little piece of my work at a time. The trick is to scrub hard enough to get off all the soiling, but not hard enough to do any damage to the finish – the only way I know how to do this is trial-and-error, starting with very little pressure and working my way up.

Once I've thoroughly scrubbed the entire workpiece, I inspect it carefully for any firmly adhered stuff. These chunks I carefully work off with dental picks. This particular piece had a few specks of something that looked like wax, plus a few paint droplets. Most of the pieces this old that I restore have far more adhered junk.

The last cleaning step is to rinse the workpiece, which is more of a challenge than it sounds. Slide rules like this have very finely engraved lines on them, and if they're made from certain woods (such as mahogany) open pores. These engravings and pores accumulate soap, feldspar powder from the Bon Ami, and fine particles of whatever the slide rule was exposed to in its life. All of this stuff must be rinsed out, and usually the force of the tap water is not enough – I also have to scrub out all the pores with a very fine, stiff-bristled brush. That last bit can be quite tedious!

Once I've cleaned the entire slide rule, and all the parts are thoroughly dried, I'll apply several coats of Johnson's Paste Wax. That will protect any bare wood that's been exposed, and it will fill in small pores and scratches. I let the wax dry for a few hours and then polish it up with a shoe-polishing rag. In the photo above, the bottom slide has been cleaned but not waxed; it will be a little darker and much shinier once it's been waxed.

One interesting thing I've learned about these old wooden slide rules is that they are impervious to water. When I first started restoring these instruments, I was afraid to get them even slightly wet – I figured that would raise the grain and ruin the finish. After a few accidental soakings caused no harm, I started getting bolder about the use of water – and now I don't hesitate to put a 200 year old instrument directly in the tap water. The only slide rule I've ever damaged with water was an unfinished wooden rule made by Lawrence (an American manufacturer of crude, low-end slide rules), and even that one was easily fixed with a little fine sandpaper. The combination of water and Bon Ami cleans the old wooden instruments better than anything else I've ever found…

Fowler's Universal Calculator

This is a fine example of a watch-style circular slide rule, albeit a very large one – it is 87mm (about 3½ inches) in diameter. Click on the photo at right for a large version, or visit my slide rule collection for all the details.

Using one of these slide rules is a bit more work than an ordinary linear slide rule (turning the knobs is slightly tedious), but they pack a lot of accuracy into a very small package. With its three-segment D scale, this one can multiply and divide with the same accuracy as a linear slide rule that is 49 cm (over 19 inches) long – not back for something that fits conveniently into your pocket!

The Fowler watch-style slide rules (they made many models) seem somehow quintessentially English to me: heavy, sturdy, practical, and yet quite sophisticated. I know of no American-made slide rule even remotely like this one, though several American manufacturers made circular slide rules. There were several English manufacturers of fine watch-style circular slide rules, at least one French manufacturer, and even the Soviets made a cheap imitation. But the English models have a unique style that, for whatever reason, was never duplicated outside of England…

Hit And Run Wreck

Via NBC San Diego, this news (more photos here) of a hit-and-run wreck that seriously injured a mother of four, but spared her kids:

Police said that the driver of a pickup truck took off running after he hit a truck with a mother and her four children inside.

The wreck took place on Monday afternoon on Melody Road in Jamul.

According to investigators, the truck with the family inside was following behind the suspect's pickup, which had pulled over to the shoulder. When the family drove by the truck, its driver pulled out to make a U-turn and slammed into her truck. Authorities said the driver fled the scene. A passenger riding inside the vehicle stayed with the pickup, investigators said. The children were apparently unharmed in the wreck, but their mother was seriously injured.

The driver fled the scene on foot. Given that the police have his truck and his passenger, one would think the police would be able to identify, locate and apprehend him quickly. I sure hope so...

I don't know anything further about this incident. If any of my readers know more, please leave comments with the additional information.

Would You Be Useful?

Imagine you could travel back in time … say, a couple thousand years. Would you be able to teach people about technologies that are now common, but were unknown then? That's the question The Universe As asks:

If you were to travel 2000 years into the past, how useful would you be in jumpstarting technological advancements? This 10 question quiz will help you figure out your technological usefulness. If you do poorly on the quiz, as most people likely will, then just let that inspire you to study up more on how things work and where raw materials come from.

Take the quiz, and leave your score in the comments. I scored 8 out of 10.

Keuffel & Esser 1744

This slide rule (click to enlarge the photo at right) was made around 1897 and sold by Keuffel & Esser. It may have been actually manufactured by Dennert & Pape (in Germany); they made the earlier versions of this model and I'm not sure when Keuffel & Esser actually took over the manufacturing themselves. I've posted this up on my collection web site, including high resolution scans and lots of details.

This one posed an interesting restoration challenge that I had not run into previously – sometime in its history, someone spilled a liquid onto one side of it, and then let the liquid evaporate without cleaning it up. This left a layer of gunk on the slide rule that looked a lot like rust, and was quite difficult to remove – no solvent I have would dent it; I had to soak and abrade it (using Bon Ami). Some staining still remains; I could see under a microscope that the colorant has migrated into the plastic.

In addition, this slide rule had 110 years worth of the grey “gunk” that seems to accumulate on anything that humans touch. I probably really don't want to know what's in it! Usually this gunk cleans off easily with soap or alcohol, but on this slide rule some of the gunk had hardened into something resembling granite. To clean the slide's tongues and grooves I had to resort to carefully picking off the rocky gunk with a dental pick – hard work for these old eyes...

Photo of the Day

I thought you loved me!

Evaporative Cooling

Each summer we depend on our air conditioner to keep our home's temperature at a livable level – otherwise it would be 100°+ in the house, and darned uncomfortable. We have a completely conventional air conditioner (for the U.S.): a standard electric unit that depends on the evaporation and condensation of a synthetic refrigerant. It works great, and keeps our house at a very comfortable temperature – but it costs a small fortune to run. Surely there must be a better way!

And there is.

In any dry part of the country (and we certainly qualify for that!), evaporative cooling is a technology that costs much less for any given cooling capacity. This technology (which comes in several forms) leverages a simple fact about water: it absorbs a lot of heat (2272 Joules) for each gram of water evaporated. Our air conditioner is a “five ton” unit (60,000 BTU/hour). To provide an equivalent amount of cooling, we'd need to evaporate water at the rate of about 7.4 gallons per hour.

Two forms of evaporative cooling are common in homes in certain areas of the U.S.: misting systems and “swamp coolers”. Misting systems force water at high pressure through tiny holes, creating extremely fine droplets that evaporate almost immediately, cooling down the air around them. Many people in Arizona, New Mexico, and other places use misting systems to cool their patios. There are a few of these in the San Diego area, but they are not common. Swamp coolers work by blowing air through a porous pad that is kept wet, usually by rolling the pad continuously through a tub of water. The air is then routed into the home, directly cooling the house. These systems are common in some areas (again, in Arizona and New Mexico), but they have one big drawback: they raise the humidity in the house to undesirably high levels.

The third form of evaporative cooling technology isn't found (to my knowledge) in homes at all, though it is quite common in industrial buildings. This is the “forced-draft cooling tower”, which works by forcing air over droplets of water to cool the water. A conventional heat exchanger then runs a separate loop (of refrigerant or chilled water) to heat exchangers in the building being cooled. These cooling tower system are slightly less efficient than swamp coolers (as there are some thermal losses in the heat exchanger loop), but they have the great advantage of not humidifying the air in the building being cooled. The only reason I can think of that these are not used for homes is that they are relatively complex pieces of machinery. A small capacity cooling tower is just as complex as a large one, and would probably be much more expensive to build than a small capacity refrigerant-based air conditioner. But much cheaper to run!

To cool our home on a typical summer day, I estimate that we'd have to evaporate about 40 gallons of water. I'm exploring the notion of building my own cooling tower to replace our conventional system. The basic engineering challenge is to create enough droplets, with air blowing over them, to evaporate water at the required rate of 7.4 gallons/hour; I've not yet found any reference that would help me design this. The rest of it is very straightforward, basically just plumbing.

Any “evaporation engineers” out there?

Orbital Mechanics

Maneuvering a spacecraft in orbit requires some tactics that most of us would find counter-intuitive. This morning I got to pondering exactly how a simple maneuver would be accomplished. I set my self a simple problem: suppose I was in a perfectly circular orbit, 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) further from Earth than the space station I wanted to dock with, which was orbiting in a perfectly circular orbit at 500 kilometers (311 miles) above the Earth's surface. What maneuvers would I need to make?

Orbital mechanics doesn't get much simpler than this.

First thing you'd notice is that the space station is moving ahead of you in its orbit. That's because at its slightly lower altitude, it needs to move about a half millimeter per second (1.2 miles per hour) faster than you in order to stay in orbit. That's a leisurely walking pace, so you'd see the space station moving slowly past you – and you'd be forgiven for thinking that you had to speed up to “catch up” to it. But in fact, you need to do exactly the opposite! You need to slow down very slightly so that you will fall down to its altitude. So you aim your maneuvering rocket to slow yourself down, and light it off for a short blast, just enough to put you into an elliptical orbit whose perigee (low point) is 500 kilometers.

Now you're moving more slowly, and falling behind the space station more quickly – but as you fall, you gain a little more speed (just as you would if you jumped off a stool). Not enough to catch up, though, and when you've fallen to 500 kilometers, you're still a little bit behind the space station. But no matter – because you're in an elliptical orbit, you're actually traveling ever-so-slightly faster than the space station, so you slowly approach it. At that point, you need to slow down some more, to match the space station's speed and orbit.

You started out above the space station, moving more slowly than it was. You made two maneuvers to dock with it: both of them slowing you down! It seems weird, and somehow wrong, but that's really how it works. All of the strangeness derives from a simple fact: satellites in higher orbits have more energy than those in lower orbits. We had to slow down (twice!) to dock with the space station because we were in a higher orbit, and had more energy (for our mass) than the space station did – so we had to get rid of some...

The above analysis is based on a simple formula for the velocity of a satellite in a perfectly circular orbit around the Earth. The formula, along with other information, can be found here, here, and here.

Reaper

Today's news includes a new weapons deployment: the MQ-9 “Reaper” (aka “Predator B”) is being deployed to Afghanistan and (a little later) Iraq. This weapon system is one of the best examples of the U.S. employing its technology capabilities in modern warfare. I was expecting this system to be developed and deployed much more quickly than has proved the case, but nonetheless it is now on the way to the battlefield.

From the Air Force web site:

SYSTEM COMPONENTS

A typical Predator system configuration would include four aircraft, one ground control system and one Trojan Spirit II data distribution terminal. The Predator air vehicle is 27ft in length and has a 49ft wingspan. The system operates at an altitude of 25,000ft and at a range of 400nm.

The endurance of the air vehicle is more than 40 hours and the cruise speed is over 70kt. The air vehicle is equipped with UHF and VHF radio relay links, a C-band line-of-sight data link which has a range of 150nm and UHF and Ku-band satellite data links.

PAYLOAD

The surveillance and reconnaissance payload capacity is 450lb and the vehicle carries electro-optical and infrared cameras and a synthetic aperture radar. The two-colour DLTV television is equipped with a variable zoom and 955mm Spotter. The high resolution FLIR has six fields of view, 19mm to 560mm.

The Raytheon Multi-spectral Targeting System (MTS-A) is fitted on the MQ-1/9 Predator. The MTS-A provides real-time imagery selectable between infrared and day TV as well as a laser designation capability. MQ-1 can employ two laser-guided Hellfire anti-armour missiles with the MTS.

The Northrop Grumman TESAR synthetic aperture radar, which provides all-weather surveillance capability, has a resolution of 1ft. Other payload options, which can be selected to meet mission requirements, include a laser designator and rangefinder, electronic support and countermeasures and a Moving Target Indicator (MTI).

This is not your mama's UAV. The multiple imaging systems on board, operating across a broad spectrum from radio frequencies to visible light, give the Reaper an ability to see and designate targets that is almost magical. The long loiter time, high ceiling, and relatively high top speed combine to provide a weapons platform with nearly instantaneous availability over a battlefield. And its ability to carry several different weapons systems on standard pylons means that it is as lethal and flexible as our top-end manned aircraft.

The Reaper is arguably the first generation of real robotic weapons platforms. It is most definitely not a toy or an experiment; it is a real, live weapons platform that made it all the way through a sometimes reluctant procurement process (the Air Force, in particular, has not always been eager to displace pilots). I believe it is a foretaste of the way future wars will be fought, and most especially of the way America can leverage its technological prowess to reduce the blood cost of war. Weapons systems in the air were almost inevitably the first to be robotized – but I don't think the ground-based systems will be far behind…

The Confession

Jim M. sends this along:

It started out innocently enough. I began to think at parties now and then – just to loosen up. Inevitably, though, one thought led to another, and soon I was more than just a social thinker.

I began to think alone -- "to relax," I told myself -- but I knew it wasn't true. Thinking became more and more important to me, and finally I was
thinking all the time.

That was when things began to sour at home. One evening I turned off the TV and asked my wife about the meaning of life. She spent that night at her mother's.

I began to think on the job. I knew that thinking and employment don't mix, but I couldn't help myself.

I began to avoid friends at lunchtime so I could read Thoreau, Muir, Confucius and Kafka. I would return to the office dazed and confused,
asking, "What is it exactly we are doing here?"

One day the boss called me in. He said, "Listen, I like you, and it hurts me to say this, but your thinking has become a real problem. If you don't stop thinking on the job, you'll have to find another job."

This gave me a lot to think about. I came home early after my conversation with the boss. "Honey," I confessed, "I've been thinking..."

"I know you've been thinking," she said, "and I want a divorce!"

"But honey, surely it's not that serious." It is serious," she said, lower lip aquiver. "You think as much as college professors and college professors don't make any money, so if you keep on thinking, we won't have any money!"

"That's a faulty syllogism," I said impatiently.

She exploded in tears of rage and frustration, but I was in no mood to deal with the emotional drama.

"I'm going to the library," I snarled as I stomped out the door. I headed for the library, in the mood for some Nietzsche. I roared into the parking lot with NPR on the radio and ran up to the big glass doors. They didn't open. The library was closed.

To this day, I believe that a Higher Power was looking out for me that night. Leaning on the unfeeling glass, whimpering for Zarathustra , a poster caught my eye, "Friend, is heavy thinking ruining your life?" it asked.

You probably recognize that line. It comes from the standard Thinkers Anonymous poster.

This is why I am what I am today: a recovering thinker. I never miss a TA meeting. At each meeting we watch a non-educational video; last week it was "Porky's." Then we share experiences about how we avoided thinking since the last meeting.

I still have my job, and things are a lot better at home. Life just seemed...easier, somehow, as soon as I stopped thinking.

I think the road to recovery is nearly complete for me.

Today I took the final step... I joined the Democratic Party.

That's a joke. I think.

Quote of the Day

Skippy (of Enjoy Every Sandwich) clearly understands New Jersey very well (and that's an escaped New Jerseyite's assessment):

New Jersey is the kind of place where the average obituary ends with the sentence "Authorities do not expect to find the deceased's remains." It is one of the very few places on Earth where the centers of power controlled by the Mafia are more honest and dependable than those that are not. And that, my friends, is pretty much all that makes New Jersey even remotely interesting.

If you're unoffended by outrageously crude, rude, and sexually explicit commentary, then go read the rest of it.

Barking Mad Englishwomen...

Rod Liddle's latest piece (in the London Times) is a great example of British humor at its finest. He skewers the BBC over recent events, and tackles a few other subjects as well – such as the new Mrs. bin Laden:

Another important blow struck in the war against terror. A rather dippy English lady called Jane Felix-Browne has married Osama Bin Laden’s son Omar and intends to live with him in Saudi Arabia. Felix-Browne, 51, who also uses the name Zaina Mohamad al-Sabah and is plainly as mad as a snake, says Omar, 26, loves his dad very much and misses him dreadfully but they “disagree about tactics”.

According to Felix-Browne, Omar hasn’t spoken to Osama since - er, when was it? - 2001. Well, we’ve all had a bit of a problem getting hold of him since then, haven’t we. Maybe he didn’t pay his phone bill in Tora Bora, who knows.

The two lovers met, incidentally, while Felix-Browne, a grandmother who has been married five times before, was having a look around the pyramids: it was love at first sight, for her. The name Bin Laden gave her no qualms at all, she said. Any more than if it had been Crippen or Gadaffi, I suppose.

This is the way forward, though. Never mind the cluster bombs and Challenger tanks, the way to defeat Al-Qaeda is to dispatch legions of barking mad Englishwomen to mate with them, thus seriously compromising the jihadist gene pool and perhaps destroying the terrorists’ resolve and even their will to live.

Ah, yes. Barking mad Englishwomen, that's the ticket. You're doomed, doomed I say, Islamofascists!

Fortress Update

Last October – nine months ago, I engaged a contractor to build a “safe house” on our property. This would be an all-concrete and completely fireproof building to protect us and our irreplaceable possessions in the event of a wildfire. I dubbed this building the “fortress”, and I posted about it and my difficulties with the contractor several times.

I've been soldiering on with this project the entire time, though I haven't posted much about it. But today we are celebrating a major milestone: we finally obtained a permit to build the fortress. It's all signed off, with dozens of approvals from so many bureaucrats with functions that you just wouldn't believe. It's the nanny state gone wild, with twisted, power-crazed bureaucrats running amok in every nook and cranny, torturing permit applicants until they scream satisfactorily. The final irony, of course, is that one must pay for the privilege of being tortured.

So now I have some paper that is plastered all over with stamps of approval. My wallet is several thousand dollars lighter than it was. And exactly what was the point of all this? They have given me permission to build the exact same 16’ x 16’ building that I planned to build in the first place. No changes were required at all. The process took eight months, untold hours of my time and my contractor's time, cost thousands of dollars, and added zero value.

And I'll bet you the planning department has no idea why I would be unhappy about this...

Brotherly News

My brother Scott was in the news today. He planted a “century plant” (agave americana) in Virginia Beach several years ago, and it has thrived there. So much so that this year it is blooming – which century plants do just once and then die.

These plants are native to our area (southern California), but certainly not to Virginia. Scott had to get creative to make the right sort of home for it there:

Not so for the Oceanfront agave. Landscaper Scott Dilatush planted the hearty specimen about seven years ago. He credits an anchoring of concrete and rocks and a special soil mix with "super-aged cow manure " for aiding the plant's growth.

"It's acting like it's in Florida instead of Virginia," he said.

There you have it. Ancient cow manure, that's the ticket!

The original article is here, and more information on agave americana can be found here and here.

Poll

Google just added a new feature to its blogs: polling. Just as an experiment, yesterday I put up a poll about a simple science question: why is our sky blue? I'll be putting up more polls, on whatever subject I feel like – please keep an eye out for them...

And vote!

Cognitive Bias

Cognitive bias is just a fancy term for a readily observable phenomenon: we humans aren't necessarily logical in our thinking. Often these cognitive biases can be traced back to some evolutionary advantage they conveyed (which may or may not still be an advantage in our modern world).

For example, we humans have a special horror for risks of death by unusual means. Around these parts, many people are quite frightened by our abundant rattlesnakes – and it is possible for a rattlesnake to kill you. Last year, in fact, seven people in the U.S did die from a rattlesnake bite (two of these were small children; four were adults who did not get treatment for various reasons, and one was an elderly man who apparently had a heart attack just before being bitten).

The same people who are frightened by rattlesnakes will climb into their car for a trip without the slightest care – despite knowing that over 100 people die every day in traffic “accidents” (39,189 in 2005, the most recent year for which data is available)! By any logical analysis, we should all be much more frightened by driving to the grocery store than we should be rattlesnakes...

A similar cognitive bias affects the lamestream media's reporting on the war on terror, and most people's perceptions of it. I've noted this in quite a few conversations – in general, people seem to very badly overestimate our war casualties. Of course this affects their perception of the war and how it's progressing; they see the war on terror as being unreasonably costly compared to it's benefits. The sad thing is that this perception doesn't stand up to any rational analysis, much like our fear of rattlesnakes versus our fear of driving.

For starters, ponder this: in over four years of our war on terror, the total military casualties are about the same as the traffic fatalities from a single month. Even that is an overestimate, because it neglects something rather important: our military personnel are at risk even when they're not at war. From 1980 to 1999 (a relatively quiet period), our military suffered (on average) about 1,600 deaths per year from non-hostile causes. Adjusting for changes in the size of our military and for the fraction of our military directly engaged in the war on terror, a reasonable estimate is that those forces would have suffered about 2,400 deaths in the same four years, even if the war on terror had never occurred. So the incremental casualties directly caused by the war are more like 1,500 – about the same as the number of traffic fatalities in just 10 days.

Ponder that.

The men and women of our military engaged in the war on terror are heroes to me, and I mean that in the most literal sense. I think about them and admire them often; I read everything I can get my hands on about them. I mourn those who have been killed or injured. But I am also very conscious of something else: that our military's competence, combined with the amazing technology we possess, has lowered the human cost (to us) of warfare to levels far below many other risks that face us – and at the same time has increased the lethality to our enemies. By any rational measure, our military heroes are kicking al Qaeda's ass, hard; they are dying in large numbers. That's not a pretty fact, or a politically correct fact – but it is a fact. It's also the objective in a war, as General Patton famously said:

No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.

The only way that al Qaeda is going to win this war is if we give up. Their poor dumb bastards are dying in droves (especially in Iraq), while our astonishingly expert military is suffering very light war casualties. Partly because of this cognitive bias, a significant fraction of Americans (and virtually the entire Democratic party, except Joe Lieberman) are ready to give up, and hand al Qaeda a tremendous victory. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid make almost daily calls for withdrawal from Iraq – they want us to unilaterally surrender.

Such “leaders” shouldn't be allowed outside to play without adult supervision...

Fun Project

It's a rare and special treat when I can combine my hobby with my professional skills and experience. Over the past few weeks I've been spending some of my spare time doing exactly that – creating a web site to display slide rule information. The information is a compendium of all the models of slide rules ever made by Hemmi, who was the world's largest slide rule manufacturer. The data on this site was collected by Paul Ross, with help from several other slide rule collectors. It is now the “gold standard” reference for everything Hemmi.

The original web site was created (by Paul Ross) using Microsoft Excel. This was a tool familiar to Paul, and therefore very easy for him to use. But the resulting web site only works well with Internet Exploder (Microsoft pays little attention to compatibility), is very slow to download (because the HTML file is huge), and is a purely static page (you can't interact with the web page in any way). Paul is a slide rule god, not a geek. I'm a geek. I volunteered to help, and Paul eagerly accepted.

Last night I posted the first beta test version of the new site, and sent a message to slide rule collectors to have them start banging on it. I got my first bug report this morning, and I'm sure I'll get more. The new site “understands” the Hemmi slide rule data – you can do things like sort the slide rules in various ways, and limit the slide rules that you're looking at. From a technical perspective, one of the most challenging things was figuring out how to display the large amount of data in a way that was both compact and easy to read. This depends on the way the web browsers lay out tables, which is a very tricky thing. To help with this problem, I made many of the user interface details changeable on the fly – something not often seen on web sites.

Bottom line: it was lots of fun!

Thinking Blogger

Last year I had the privilege of working with Dale Roe on the 2,996 Project that honored the victims of 9/11. I wrote some software that helped manage the sign-up process for the several thousand bloggers who volunteered to make a post in tribute to one of the victims. We got to know each other a little bit from that work, but haven't had much contact since last September.

Out of the blue yesterday, Dale wrote me an email. It seems that he's chosen me (and two others) for a "Thinking Blogger" award. In the parlance of the blog memes, he “tagged” me. Other than accusing me of being a “staunch Republican”, he had only nice things to say. The gist of his comments is that while he often doesn't agree with my point of view, my posts challenge him, and make him think. What more could I ask?

The local Republicans (think Duncan Hunter) would probably have some sort of heart palpitations if I joined – there aren't very many Republicans in favor of open legal immigration, or decriminalizing drugs and prostitution. Some Republicans (e.g. Bush, McCain, Thompson) have a perspective on the war on terror that I largely share, and many share my fiscal conservatism. About the only political party I could imagine joining would be the “Tom Party”, which has just one member...

But I do appreciate the fact that Dale reads my blog, and even more that my posts challenge him to think about his positions (whatever they are!). And of course it's cool to get an award.

Under the rules of this award (see below), I now have to choose five other bloggers to get a “Thinking Blogger” award. Here are my choices:

1. Dilbert Blog: Scott Adams (the cartoonist behind Dilbert) has a way of looking at the world that is very different that most people. His observations and insights are often quite funny, but they are always thought-provoking and often challenge assumptions you normally think of as unassailable.
   
   
2. Schneier on Security: Bruce Schneier is one of the most sober and level-headed thinkers about security. He's an authority on cryptography algorithms and systems, but immersion in this led him to an even more interesting set of problems: security in the real world. While his focus is more-or-less on computer security, he also delves into other kinds of security (terrorism, burglary, etc.) – with his same trademark clear thinking and focus on the results rather than the process.
   
   
3. The Bleat: James Lileks weaves together a sort of diary of his life and pungent observations on the events of the day. He has a special talent for distilling the essence of a very complex issue or event into a one or two sentence comment that will cause you to rock back and say “whoa!” – and quite possibly laugh out loud at the same time.
   
   
4. CoyoteBlog: Warren Meyer is a libertarian business owner who is completely unintimidated by big, complex issues – and is particularly good at analysis and challenging assumptions. Most recently he's tackled the global warming hypothesis, writing (and posting) a small book.
   
   
5. Enjoy Every Sandwich: You can count on “Skippy” to make you think in different ways about familiar issues. You can also depend on him to be rude, offensive, and outrageous – if you're offended by completely uninhibited sexual imagery (and imagination!), don't read Skippy – but your prudery will keep you from an often interesting perspective.
   

Here are the rules for this award:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award' with a link to the post that you wrote .

The Bet

Scott Armstrong is a noted expert on long-range forecasting – he quite literally wrote the book on the subject. He's recently written a paper (available here, PDF) that examines the methods used by climate scientists to forecast global warming. I was struck by the way in which Armstrong attacks this from a method I wasn't familiar with: examining the forecasting methodology itself. Here is a snippet from the paper's conclusions:

Our paper is concerned with rational assessments of public policy, not with public opinions. People will continue to believe that serious manmade global warming exists as they will continue to believe other things that have no scientific support (e.g., the biblical creation story, astrology, minimum wages to help poor people, and so on), and public opinion can be intense on such issues. Public policy makers should, however, be concerned with how to move away from emotions and towards rational scientific analysis.

One might say that it is important to consider steps to prevent global warming, but we have the same level of confidence in saying that we should take steps to prevent global cooling. The more important question is “what is the best way to invest our resources for the benefit of mankind?” This would lead to such trade-offs as asking whether it is better to spend a dollar on reducing AIDS or air pollution or malaria or breast cancer, where we know what policies will work, or to spend it on controlling future climate, where uncertainty about the situation is high. Given the large uncertainties of climate change science, government polices on climate control are unwarranted and will reduce the well-being of the great majority of people who are not the beneficiaries of the wealth redistribution that will occur as a result of such policies. Advocates owe it to the people who would be affected by the policies they recommend to base their advocacy on scientific forecasts that address all four of the key areas that are necessary for a rational analysis of the problem. We hope that before committing resources, decision makers will insist on scientific forecasts rather than accept the opinions of some scientists.

In comments Armstrong has made to reporters, he makes an interesting point: that scientists aren't generally very good at making forecasts, even when they are experts in the science of the field. He makes the case – and he's eminently qualified to do so – that the data and skills needed for forecasting are completely different than those needed for the science. Fascinating stuff, and I recommend reading the entire paper (it's not very long).

To help publicize the paper, Armstrong has offered to bet Al Gore $10,000 that our climate will not change. More on the bet is available here and here. At this writing, the Goracle has not responded...