Jamul/Lawson Valley Weather

I've had an automated weather station running in my back yard for the past couple of years, but I just now got it “hooked up” to provide nearly live weather information on the web. If you look just below the Day-By-Day cartoon on the sidebar, you'll see the Lawson Valley Weather link, along with a strip chart of temperature and humidity information for the past week. Clicking on either the link or the chart will take you to a page with 16 meters and strip charts with all sorts of information about the current Lawson Valley weather situation. Right now the weather page is functional and ugly; I'll pretty it up over the next few weeks. The information is automatically updated every 10 minutes.

Wildfire Information...

It's that time of year again for Jamulians – with the low relative humidity and high temperature, our risk of wildfire is greatly increased. Add some Santa Ana winds to the mix, along with illegal aliens making campfires anywhere and anytime, and we've got a very volatile situation.

When a wildfire is actually underway, everybody in the area hungers for information – good, solid, reliable, up-to-date information. Unfortunately, this information can be amazingly difficult to come by. The usual sources that you might expect to deliver such information are actually rather bad at it. During the Viejas, Pines, Cedar, and Horse fires, we discovered firsthand (by our own on-the-spot surveys and investigations) that much of the information being put out by the media – newspapers, radio, and television – was either flat-out wrong or very badly out-of-date. Wildfires driven by Santa Ana winds evolve very quickly, and the media news cycles just can't seem to keep up.

So where do you go for information? Here is a list of the best resources that I've accumulated over the years, both from my own research and from local residents where were kind enough to share. If you know of other resources, please leave them in the comments. I'll round 'em all up and revise the post. I've made a permanent link at right to point to this list…

619/590-3160 and 619/590-5100: These fire information hotlines are manned by volunteers during an incident. We've had mostly good information from these folks, though the quality has not be consistent. One thing we particularly appreciate is that you can ask specific questions about the risks to your area, and you will usually get an informed answer. We were particularly impressed with this service during the Horse Fire (which burned quite close to our home).

Lyons Peak Cameras (North, East, South, and West): These cameras are a fantastic resource for Jamulians – a 360° view from Lyons Peak, updated every two minutes. I snagged the photo at right from the north camera (which looks toward our home) this morning – no smoke! A local fellow told me about these cameras around the time of the Horse Fire, and I used them to keep track of the fire's progress in nearly real time. The smoke plumes, smoke direction, and weather were all clearly visible on the screen – we knew when the wind shifted to a direction dangerous to us, and when things looked relatively safe. These cameras are part of the High Performance Wireless Research and Education Network (HPWREN), and the same group maintains several other such cameras.

Fire Planning and Mapping Tools: When I first stumbled across this web site a few years ago, I could scarcely believe what I had found – it is so chock-full of good information that it just didn't seem likely. It takes a bit of work to learn how to use this site, but that is time well invested. The image at right is one that I captured this morning. It shows our area; Jamul is roughly in the center of the screen. The shaded red areas show the boundaries of fires that occurred between 2000 and 2007 – you can see pieces of the Cedar, Viejas, Horse, and Otay fires. With this tool you can easily zoom into any part of California and Nevada, and you can turn “layers” on and off (the red-shaded fire boundaries are one example of such a layer). The real power of this tool lies in the rich set of layers that are available: current fuel loads, current incident boundaries, historical fire boundaries, fuel treatment history, risk assessments, and even satellite data from thermal imaging satellites.

In my own experience, the historical information on this site is far more useful than the information on current incidents. You might think the satellite information, in particular, would be highly useful – but it's got several problems that I've observed. First, it's not all that timely – there may be only two or three satellite passes per day; this is useless and even misleading on a fast-moving wildfire. Second, the resolution is low (about 1 kilometer), so it is not possible to accurately pinpoint the active front. Third, the data can be quite misleading – sometimes active fire fronts don't show up at all, and sometimes inactive places (for example, with lots of embers) do show up. On the Horse Fire we were able to directly compare personal observations, Lyons Peak camera observations, and the satellite data – and the satellite data was always wrong.

CDF Current Incidents Page: The California Department of Forestry (CDF) is the lead firefighting organization in our area. This page (and the links on it) have some information about all the incidents they are currently working. Our own experience with this site is mixed, mainly because of one weakness (from our selfish perspective): the information on it always seems to be at least 24 hours old, and sometimes more. This delay was very evident to us during the Horse Fire, when our our own observations were clearly a day or so ahead of this web site. On the plus side: they publish information that is hard to obtain elsewhere, especially incident maps and photos. The image at right demonstrates both the good and the bad: it's the most current incident map of the still-burning Zaca Fire (in Santa Barbara County) – over two weeks old!

Fire Imagery – Remote Sensing Center: This is a national web site, with many organizations participating. It has many different kinds of information available, and it's well worth exploring. The most useful looking to me are the thermally-enhanced satellite imagery (example of today in southern California at right), and a map of the whole country similar to the California and Nevada Fire Mapping and Planning Tools discussed above, but with fewer layers. The thermally-enhanced satellite imagery shows both the active fire fronts and the smoke plumes – wonderful information to have during an incident.

National Interagency Fire Center: This site has a lot of useful safety and planning information, and links to lots of other information (including on current incidents, such as the sites above). The image at right shows a simple overall wildfire risk assessment for this year; there's a lot of information like this that you can snag on this site.

Wildland Fire Assessment: This site is run by the National Forest Service (NFS), and has several areas with good information on a national scale. For example, they publish a daily map of 10, 100, and 1000-hour fuel moisture like the one at right. These maps are useful guides to the overall risk in your area. The same site has many other “products” that you can view or download as well, from weather forecasts to direct sensor observations to the output of forecasting models especially created to help predict wildfire behavior. The NFS uses this information to help them decide where to deploy and pre-position their fire-fighting assets.

Another example is shown at right – a map of “observed fire potential”. This product is still experimental, which means (I believe) that the NFS is not yet ready to rely on its results. Our area looks surprisingly low risk until you look very closely and discover that Jamul is in a relatively small area of high risk completely surrounded by lower risk areas.

Those are the resources that I rely on the most (along with my own eyeballs, of course. Do you know of others? If so, please leave comments to share them with your fellow Jamulians!

Fuel Moisture

One of the key factors determining how fast a wildfire moves and spreads in the chaparral is fuel moisture – the amount of water that has been absorbed by the fuel. Here we're talking about “dead moisture” – the moisture that is in dead wood, brush, and grass. “Live moisture” is the moisture present in living plants, and this is largely independent of atmospheric conditions. The notion that high fuel moisture retards fire makes instant sense to everybody – if the fuel is wet or damp, it isn't going to catch fire as quickly as perfectly dry fuel, nor will it burn as intensely. But dig down into the notion of fuel moisture a little more, and there are some complexities that are well worth knowing…

Fuel moisture is determined in the end by atmospheric humidity and precipitation. However, there is a lag time between a change in atmospheric conditions and a change in the moisture of any particular fuel. Light, small fuels (such as dead grass) will very quickly respond to changes in the atmospheric conditions; heavy fuel (such as large downed logs) will change very slowly. This lag time is critical for firefighters, as it is a major determinant of whether fire will spread quickly or slowly through a particular area at a particular time. Here's how they classify fuel moisture lag time:

Fuels are classified into four categories by which they respond to changes in moisture. This response time is referred to as time lag. The four categories are:

• 1-hour fuels: up to 1/4 inch in diameter.
• 10-hour fuels: 1/4 inch to 1 inch in diameter.
• 100-hour fuels: 1 inch to 3 inches in diameter.
• 1000-hour fuels: 3 inches to 8 inches in diameter.

Examples of one-hour fuels are grass, leaves, mulch and litter. Fuel moisture in these fuels can change within one hour according to factors such as temperature, rain, humidity and shade. Conversely, larger diameter fuels such as deadfalls, brush piles, etc., take up to 1,000 hours to respond to changes in environmental factors.

Fuel moisture can be determined by clipping and immediately weighing the sample before oven drying it to a constant weight. Then the following formula can be used to determine percent fuel moisture: [(Wet Weight – Dry Weight)/Dry Weight] x 100.

When I first saw fuels classified as “1 hour” or “10 hour” fuels, I thought that meant how long the fuel would burn. But that's not it at all – the time is instead a reference to the lag time between a change in relative humidity and the consequent change in fuel moisture.

In a desert climate such as ours, there is a daily cycle of relative humidity: we are typically very dry during daylight hours, and very variable during nighttime (but averaging about 80% RH). That means that fuels with lag times below about 15 hours will dry out every day, and at some point during the day they will become “flashy”, meaning prone to quick ignition, quick fire growth, and will burn intensely. Since we rarely have more than a week of very dry nights, fuels with lag times of more than about a week (roughly 200 hours) will never completely dry out, and those fuels are much less flashy (and therefore much less dangerous).

Firefighters constantly use fuel moisture information when assessing the risks of any particular area during an incident. For example, the morning after a humid night, a field full of tall, dead grass (about 1 hour fuel) may be perfectly safe – but a couple of hours after sunrise, when the air has been dry for an hour, that same place may be very dangerous.

Homeowners can use fuel moisture information as well, when deciding what has to be cleared from near their homes (or other structures). Plants with plenty of live moisture are best of all; plants (or plant materials, such as leaves, needles, and wood chips) with short lag times are the worst.

Flying Pigs Alert

For a little while this morning, I thought some hacker had hijacked the English-language Der Spiegel site. I have this on my reading list mainly because it has consistently (and stridently) presented the leftist European view of American foreign policy – most especially in Iraq and Afghanistan. In other words, you can normally rely on Der Spiegel to echo the prevailing European “let's bash America” views, with a special emphasis on Bush, Rove, and cowboy diplomacy – and sneering ridicule of American intellect and ideology.

So imagine my surprise when I read this (in the current edition of Der Spiegel):

Ramadi is an irritating contradiction of almost everything the world thinks it knows about Iraq -- it is proof that the US military is more successful than the world wants to believe. Ramadi demonstrates that large parts of Iraq -- not just Anbar Province, but also many other rural areas along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers -- are essentially pacified today. This is news the world doesn't hear: Ramadi, long a hotbed of unrest, a city that once formed the southwestern tip of the notorious "Sunni Triangle," is now telling a different story, a story of Americans who came here as liberators, became hated occupiers and are now the protectors of Iraqi reconstruction.

There's more – much more. For example:

Dinner arrives and it's a true feast, with a spread of kebabs and large pieces of roast chicken, salad and rice with coriander leaves. Chudeir serves sumptuous meals whenever the Americans come to visit, not only because he is a good host, but also because he is grateful to his American friends. Thanks to the American engineers, he says, the city has up to 10 hours of electricity a day now. "We have never had this in all of Ramadi's history. In the end, we will live like civilized people."

I have the same sense of wonder about this that I might if Teddy Kennedy stood up one day and announced that he was resigning the Democratic Party in disgust and had applied for membership in the Republicans. What on earth was in the editor's coffee yesterday morning? Could it be that they simply woke up one morning and realized that they were wrong?

I'm expecting a retraction to be announced at any moment, and probably some kind of excuse, such as a CIA mole planted within the web team…

Morning in the Chaparral...

Debbie and I took our usual morning walk with our dogs (Lea, Miki, and Mo'i from left to right in the left-most photo below), but just a little bit later than usual. The sun was just barely peeking over the mountains to the northeast of us, and gave us a very pleasant morning light to walk in.
The first photo I took on the way up our local hill; it's looking south and uphill. The second I took on the way down; it's looking northwest and downhill. Behind Debbie you can see Cajon Mountain, a prominent local landmark about 12 miles northwest of us. The colors in the chaparral are the “summer colors” – lots of browns, washed-out greens, and grays, along with a few greens as well. When I first moved out here, it looked to my eye (used to the lush greens of the east coast) like everything was dead or dying here. Now it looks normal, and even attractive – our sense of taste and beauty adapts quite easily.

This photo shows our front yard. The “lawn”, as always for this time of year, is basically dirt and dead annuals – the only living thing is the damned mustard. In the foreground at left you can see our dark green acacia (not a native) that is thriving in our desert climate. Just behind to to the right of it, there's a rather nice manzanita (native), one of a group of five that is the showpiece of our front yard. Behind the manzanita and peeking up over its top is a fan palm (native); these normally need access to water, but this one is doing just fine with none at all. In front of and to the right of the manzanita is one of our native scrub oaks; I have trouble telling these apart. To the left of the manzanita is a liquid amber tree (not native, and so named because of its beautiful fall foliage); it's the only thing in our yard that resembles the deciduous greens that I grew up with…

This Week's Puzzler

Imagine that you are flying in a small airplane with a skydiver. The door has been removed (as is common) so that the skydiver can easily jump out. You are positioned with a perfect view out of the door, so you can watch the skydiver as he jumps.

The airplane climbs to 10,000 feet high, flying straight and level at 90 MPH. The skydiver picks his jump point and leaps out of the airplane as you watch. From your perspective (and assuming that the airplane doesn't change course or speed itself), how would you describe the motion of the skydiver? Assume you can still see him for the first 30 seconds or so of his fall…

Last Week's Puzzler...

…must have been boring – only three people answered it, and all three of them got it right!

Let's see if I can do better this week…

A Heretic Speaks Out...

Freeman Dyson – famous and accomplished scientist, and proud scientific heretic – has a new essay at Edge. I'm always eager to read something by Dyson, as it's always good brain exercise – fully of tasty ideas and fresh perspectives. This one did not disappoint. Here's a sample, on one of my favorite topics:

My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models. Of course, they say, I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak. But I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models.

There is no doubt that parts of the world are getting warmer, but the warming is not global. I am not saying that the warming does not cause problems. Obviously it does. Obviously we should be trying to understand it better. I am saying that the problems are grossly exaggerated. They take away money and attention from other problems that are more urgent and more important, such as poverty and infectious disease and public education and public health, and the preservation of living creatures on land and in the oceans, not to mention easy problems such as the timely construction of adequate dikes around the city of New Orleans.

Don't miss the whole thing!

New Moon Rising

Just a few minutes ago, I was outside with our dogs in the early morning twilight, and spotted this beautiful new moon. You may have to enlarge the photo to spot it!

We live in a location that's close to ideal for watching new moons, which are the thinnest when the moon is very close to the sun. Here we have clear skies nearly every morning, very little man-made “light pollution”, and a nice little mountain range to block the sun in the morning. My view this morning took perfect advantage of this setup – most of the glare (caused by Mies scattering) from the morning sun is being blocked by the mountains you see at the bottom of the photo, and the moon contrasts very nicely with the still-dark sky above.

Global Warming News

CoyoteBlog has a great post on some rather dramatic global warming news from yesterday: the historical temperatures in the primary database used by climatologists have been revised downward, by a significant amount. I call that very dramatic news indeed, though my guess is that you won't see this on the evening news – most especially not the implications…

It turns out that the recent accusations of climatologist “amateur” Steve McIntyre were dead on target – the professional scientists had committed a grade-school error (a year 2000 bug, no less!) in their math. The error was hard to find for a very unscientific reason: GISS (the creators of the database) never released their methodology for peer review. Steve McIntyre did some clever reverse-engineering to make a case for their bug, and yesterday GISS admitted that he was absolutely correct.

Oops!

The reason this is a big deal is that this database is used as an input to all of the climate models that have been “proving” anthropogenic global warming. The revised historical temperatures are so much lower that they destroy one of the central premises of anthropogenic global warming: that mankind has caused global temperatures to increase through the 1900s, with the hottest years of the century coming right at the end. The “fixed” (still highly suspect in my book) shows the hottest year on record was 1934 (not 1998, as previously claimed).

Oops!

Quote of the Day

By Skippy Stalin, at Enjoy Every Sandwich:

Simply put, symbolism is the result of the marriage between the stupidity of the public and the laziness of the political class. Once you understand that, politics becomes much more fun to watch.

He wrote this as part of a discussion about Darleen Mealy, a New York City councilwoman) introducing a bill to outlaw the word “bitch” – but don't go there if you're offended by coarse language or photos of beautiful, half-naked women (and links to more).

Not Tonight...

From an anonymous writer:

I never quite figured out why the sexual urge of men and women differ so much. And I never have figured out the whole Venus and Mars thing. I have never figured out why men think with their head and women with their heart.

FOR EXAMPLE: One evening last week, my girlfriend and I were getting into bed.

Well, the passion starts to heat up, and she eventually says "I don't feel like it, I just want you to hold me."

I said "WHAT??!! What was that?!"

So she says the words that every boyfriend on the planet dreads to hear... "You're just not in touch with my emotional needs as a woman enough for me to satisfy your physical needs as a man." She responded to my puzzled look by saying, "Can't you just love me for who I am and not what I do for you in the bedroom?"

Realizing that nothing was going to happen that night, I went to sleep.

The very next day I opted to take the day off of work to spend time with her. We went out to a nice lunch and then went shopping at a big, big unnamed department store. I walked around with her while she tried on several different very expensive outfits. She couldn't decide which one to take so I told her we'd just buy them all. She wanted new shoes to compliment her new clothes, so I said lets get a pair for each outfit. We went onto the jewelry department where she picked out a pair of diamond earrings. Let me tell you...she was so excited. She must have thought I was one wave short of a shipwreck. I started to think she was testing me because she asked for a tennis bracelet when she doesn't even know how to play tennis. I think I threw her for a loop when I said, "That's fine, honey." She was almost nearing sexual satisfaction from all of the excitement. Smiling with excited anticipation she finally said, "I think this is all dear, let's go to the cashier."

I could hardly contain myself when I blurted out, "No honey, I don't feel like it."

Her face just went completely blank as her jaw dropped with a baffled WHAT?"

I then said "honey! I just want you to HOLD this stuff for a while. You're just not in touch with my financial needs as a man enough for me to satisfy your shopping needs as a woman." And just when she had this look like she was going to kill me, I added, "Why can't you just love me for who I am and not for the things I buy you?"

Apparently I'm not having sex tonight either.

Fortress Update

Great progress again today, and a big milestone reached: the block walls are finished! Davy (the mason) and Alfredo started early this morning, just before 6:00 am – Davy wanted to take advantage of the cool morning air, and he certainly did that. But just a few hours later – by 11:00 am – I discovered that they had finished the wall and were cleaning up the work site.

Which leads to the not-so-good news: there was nothing more that Davy could do, because Ruben (my contractor) had not delivered the additional materials need (lumber for the forms and rebar for reinforcing the roof). I've been in contact with Ruben, and he swears he's trying to get it delivered today by borrowing a big truck (the lumber is 16' long and the rebar is 20' long – way too big for a pickup truck). If he fails, then it will be a couple of days or more for the supplier to get it out here, which means a delay. Damn! I'm not in a frame of mind to readily accept delays – the darned thing is finally underway, and I want it finished! No excuses!!!

Today was Alfredo's last day on the job, as tomorrow his school year begins. I'll miss his smiles, and his adult-level work ethic. Of the boys that I've met, he seems most like his father in his behavior (though certainly not in appearance)…

While talking with Davy today, I discovered that my estimates for the rebar were badly understated. I forgot to account for the ‘L’ shaped pieces needed to tie the vertical rebar pieces to the horizontal pieces on the roof, and there will be a lot of those – it adds up. Also, I forgot about overlaps (some of which are spec'd at 4 feet) and some other stuff. All in all, I underestimated by about 15%.

But that's better than Ruben did on the blocks. With the walls completely finished, we still have about 300 blocks left! I'm not quite sure how he managed to be off by that amount.

Oh, well. Blocks are a handy thing to have around the place. I'm sure there's something else we can use them for, one of these fine days…

Ahhhh...

This morning, as is our habit, we walked (with all three dogs!) a couple of miles up a small hill near our home. We haven't seen very much dense fog this year (mostly it has been below us), but this morning we were completely encased in thick, soupy fog.

I love walking in this weather – the sounds and smells of our chaparral environment are all amplified tremendously. We heard quail and rabbits (lots of rabbits!), and smelled the sages and other pungent desert plants. The dogs go a little bit crazy when the humidity is so high, as they can smell so much better. The fog was so dense today that large amounts were condensing on tree leaves and dripping down, leaving wet circles around every tree. At one point where a eucalyptus tree is overhanging a piece of pavement, there is a wet spot and a pleasant sound like a light rain. Just beautiful!

The graph above shows you our temperature (red, left scale) and humidity (green, right scale) for the past week. You can see that we've been on a cooling trend for the past few days, and the classic desert humidity “rail-to-rail” swings are in evidence. Though this morning it is 52°F and 100% relative humidity, in just a couple of hours it is likely to be about 85°F and under 5% relative humidity, with perfectly clear, blue skies.

Davy and Alfredo came to work just as we left for our walk, at about 5:45 am – much earlier than usual. When we got back, I talked with him and discovered that he knew all about the cool, damp morning and rushed out here early to take advantage of it. That's exactly what I do when I work outside in the summer – start early in the morning. But me, I stop when it gets hot – usually 10 or 11 am. Davy and his son will keep working until at least 4 pm, right through the heat…

Not Much New Under the Sun...

A newlywed wife whose husband is serving in the war wrote about a dinner where many of the attendees were members of the liberal elite:

For dark, personal reasons, many people could not resist this chance at cruelty. There were the intellectuals who demanded aggressively if we believed in war and asked across our dinner tables did we relish the idea of being the widows of dead heroes? There were men of peace who fulminated against destruction and argued that no idea was worth fighting for that leveled Casino or Dresden….There were the newscasters who, after the fourth Martini, swore with something akin to professional pride that the war would last another eight years….

These “men of peace” aren't talking about the Iraq war – it's World War II they're fulminating about. The newlywed was choreographer Agnes De Mille, writing in her memoirs.

Neo-Neocon uses this story to illustrate that there's nothing new about the liberal elites' reflexive anti-war posture, or their declarations about the useless sacrifice in any war. To them, it's always “not worth it” – even in circumstances such as World War II, where to most people the lines between good and evil seemed so clearly drawn.

Agnes De Mille would instantly recognize the sneers and blatherings of today's liberals as they posture about the Iraq war.

I always wonder why those liberal elites can't seem to hear themselves in the echoes of history – and why the don't ever seem to pause to think hard about the folly of their position when we are in a battle to the death with an implacable enemy. I'm still waiting for an answer on that one…

Electoral Unfairness

I have long felt that my vote in Presidential elections was, for all practical purposes, completely useless – the Democrats inevitably win because they have a large majority in any statewide race, and California (like most states) has a winner-takes-all rule for its electoral votes. It's not that I'm a Republican, mind you – but it's hard to imagine any Democrat that I'd vote for winning the primary…

That winner-takes-all rule is the source of what is essentially the disenfranchisement (in California, for Presidential elections) of anyone who is not a Democrat. It seems quite unfair to me that the roughly 45% of the voters in California who normally vote for some candidate other than the Democrat have no influence on the election at all.

The winner-takes-all rule is not imposed by any Federal constraint – the individual states are completely free to allocate those electoral votes any way they see fit. Last month, a well-known attorney (GOP Thomas Hiltachk) filed the papers to begin the initiative process to change the winner-takes-all rule to one that instead allocates two electoral college votes to the winner in each congressional district, plus two more for the statewide winner. In the 2004 election, had that been in place, George Bush would have received 22 electoral votes from California, instead of zero. And my vote would have actually meant something, as I could have contributed to a win against John Kerry in my congressional district (which leans slightly Republican).

Hiltachk's proposal still isn't completely “fair” (where proportional votes would be completely fair) – but it's a huge step in that direction. It's also completely within the spirit and intent of the electoral college system, unlike some other proposals being bandied about. I like the idea, and I think it is a much fairer system than the winner-takes-all system we have in almost every state today. I'd support it, and I say this without even knowing if Democrats or Republicans have an advantage if this were implemented in other states. California's unique initiative system probably makes it easier to get the ball rolling here than in any other state, and here the Republicans would be the clear winner. In many other states, such a change would deliver an advantage to the Democrats, and I have no idea how it would balance out nationwide.

But who cares? I want my vote to matter!

I suspect there's going to be one hell of a fight over this California initiative, with money pouring in from all over the country, both for and against. Hiltachk has an impressive record with initiatives – he's the guy who started the recall effort that pitched Governor Gray Davis out of office four years ago. If this initiative were crafted and timed such that it would be effective for the 2008 election, then both Democrats and Republicans would see this as quite likely to tilt the playing field significantly in the Republican's direction – 22 electoral votes ain't chickenfeed; it could easily be enough to swing the election. So both sides will have a large incentive to influence the initiative vote – and there are no limits on spending for initiatives…

More information from the Sacremento Bee.

Fortress Update

Davy (the mason) and his son Alfredo arrived early this morning, and immediately plowed into the work of laying more block. It is a pleasure to watch this quiet, competent man work – there are no theatrics, no drama; just a wall that slowly and steadily appears. As the wall gets higher and higher, the amount of work to lay each block gets larger and larger. When I took the photo at right (early this morning), Davy's head is about 12 feet off the ground. Each block must be lifted up to him (that's what Alfredo does), and buckets full of mortar must be raised the same way. Also, Davy's motions are now constrained to the size of the scaffold – which is just a couple 2 x 12s supported on steel ends.

But other than taking more effort (per block), the work is the same as it has been the past few days. The only thing that I spotted that was different today is visible in the photo at right, where it appears that the distant wall has a block missing. That's where one of the building's two vents will be located; there will be another one directly opposite it. If you look carefully, you can see that Davy – a bit of a perfectionist – used two half-blocks in order to locate the vent in the exact center of the wall. I wouldn't have cared if he was five feet off in either direction!

By the time they'd finished for the day, as they did shortly after I took the photo above, one entire wall was at full 10' height, along with one other corner (the one that Davy is working on). Tomorrow, Davy believes, they will finish all the block work. After that, the form for the roof goes up – and after that, the two layers of rebar for the reinforced concrete roof.

The form should be interesting to watch; I've never seen anything even remotely like this constructed. As best I understand it, the form inside the building will consist of a large number of 4 x 4 posts, on approximately 18" centers, supporting sheets of 3/4" plywood that will comprise the form for the bottom of the interior. The roof will project 8" outside the walls, forming short eaves. The form will be made from 2 x 8s for the bottom and 2 x 12s for the sides, with this assembly held up by more 4 x 4 posts. I haven't yet deciphered how they're planning to keep the pressure of the concrete from forcing the form away from the walls.

The plans call for two layers of rebar inside the roof. Both layers are constructed from #5 (5/8" diameter) rebar – that's big, heavy, “industrial strength” rebar! The top layer will be made of rebar on 16" centers (forming 16" squares); the bottom layer on 8" centers. That's a lot of rebar – about 1,600 feet if I did the math right.

I did learn something new today, talking with Davy: once we pour the roof, the form must stay in place for 15 to 22 days. This is much longer than the three days we waited after pouring the slab before starting to lay the block. Apparently it is critical for the concrete in the roof to completely cure before it first takes the loads and stresses of holding up the roof by itself. I'm not too surprised at this: reinforced concrete weighs roughly 160 pounds per cubic feet, and this roof will be 290 cubic feet – that works out to just over 23 tons of concrete! I want that to be well-cured before we remove those forms – and I don't want to be underneath it when we do!

Starry Nights

Are you fascinated by images such as the one at right, showing NGC 1316 as captured by the Hubble Telescope? If so, don't miss this web site.

Attractors

Here's an interesting simulation of gravity in two dimensions (a much simpler problem than in three dimension). You can drag the black dots (which have “gravity” around as you like.

Lost and Found Pets

In the most recent edition of the Jamul Shopper, Sharon and Phil Freeman have a short article (on page 19) outlining the need for a web site for Jamulians to post notices about lost and found pets. They're absolutely right, as there is no better way to get the word out than the web. My local readers know that I already post such notices on request, or when I spot them – but what we really need is a place that everybody knows about.

I've written the Jamul Shopper, as the Freemans suggest in their article, to see if they would help publicize the “Lost And Found Pets in Jamul” section of my blog, which can be found by clicking here (and of course right now there's nothing in it but this post). Anyone in the Jamul area is welcome to post a notice of any lost or found pets. All you have to do is send me an email at slightlyloony@jamulblog.com. Describe the pet you've lost or found, provide contact information, and if possible, attach a photo or two. I'll post it as soon as I receive it.

And if the ad succeeds, please let me know – my readers will want to know if the pet was reunited with it's owners!