Quote of the Day

I heard this in a radio advertisement on my way to work today. The ad was placed by the California Teacher's Association (CTA), and included this statement:

This law forces us to teach to the test.

As if that were a bad thing! The premise of the ad is that the tests required by the No Child Left Behind Act – the ones that actually measure the scholastic achievement of our school kids – force the teachers to spend time teaching that stuff instead of whatever it is that they would do otherwise (say, inculcation in Muslim culture or leftist ideology).

I kid you not – that's exactly what the ad says.

Talk about missing the point!

I believe our public schools have reached the point where the rot is unrecoverable. The only hope for reform is to close them, and let the private sector take over; let parents choose where to spend their education dollars.

Not that that's likely to happen. But I can dream, can't I?

High-Tech Warehouse...

Here's a fascinating story (if you're a geeky type) about a radical new design for warehouses, enabled by very smart robotics. The story likens the design to random access memory (the RAM of your computer), but I think a closer analogy would be a disk cache.

The graphic (above right) is a schematic of shelving units, color-coded for how frequently the items on them sell (red most frequently, violet least frequently). The entire system self-adapts to the changing sales rates of the goods on each shelf. This is exactly the behavior of a LRU (least recently used) disk cache.

This is a great example of modern technology penetrating the most mundane of industries. Right now (as usual) it's only cost-effective at very large scales; in a few years the costs will come down and you'll see this technology in even small warehouses...

Another Skeptic...

Another professional meterologist who is skeptical of global warming: John Coleman, founder of The Weather Channel:

It is the greatest scam in history. I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming; It is a SCAM.

Some dastardly scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long term scientific data back in the late 1990's to create an allusion of rapid global warming. Other scientists of the same environmental wacko type jumped into the circle to support and broaden the "research" to further enhance the totally slanted, bogus global warming claims. Their friends in government steered huge research grants their way to keep the movement going. Soon they claimed to be a consensus.

Environmental extremist, notable politicians among them then teamed up with movie, media and other liberal, environmentalist journalists to create this wild "scientific" scenario of the civilization threatening environmental consequences from Global Warming unless we adhere to their radical agenda.

Now their ridicules manipulated science has been accepted as fact and become a cornerstone issue for CNN, CBS, NBC, the Democratic Political Party, the Governor of California, school teachers and, in many cases, well informed but very gullible environmental conscientious citizens. Only one reporter at ABC has been allowed to counter the Global Warming frenzy with one 15 minutes documentary segment.

You can read John's entire paper here, and his blog here.

Day-By-Day and Yon...

Check out today's Day-by-Day cartoon: John Muir (the cartoonist) comments on the moving photograph by Michael Yon, showing Iraqis of several faiths working together to put a cross on top of a rebuilt Christian church.

If you're reading this on some day other than November 8, 2007, then click on the link above to see what I'm talking about.

x86 Math Bug...

The implementation of sin() and cos() on the Intel x86 platform has an interesting bug:

For many years, the JDK on x86 platforms has used the hardware fsin/fcos x87 instructions in the range [-pi/4, pi/4], a range which encompasses about half of all representable floating-point values. Therefore, in that range the performance of the JDK's transcendental functions should be nearly the same as the performance of the transcendental functions in C, C++, etc. that are using those same fsin/fcos instructions. Benchmarks which focus on testing the trig performance of large values, such as almabench, present a skewed portrait of Java's trigonometric performance. The next question is why don't we just use fsin/fcos over the entire floating-point range? The simple answer is that fsin/fcos can deliver answers that are arbitrarily wrong for the most straightforward way of measuring error in the result.

I'd never heard about this until I read this post on James Gosling's blog. On the native, uncorrected platform, the error can amount to 5 or 6 significant digits – most likely even producing results with the wrong sign!

Java programmers need not fear – the JVM fixes the problem (read the post to see how), but the fix is computationally intensive and reduces performance for angles outside the range of -pi/4 to pi/4 (in radians). Slow, but accurate (and predictable), as opposed to fast, but randomly inaccurate...

Jamulian

From the Union-Tribune:

SAN DIEGO – Authorities released the name Wednesday of an 18-year-old college student killed when the car he was driving crashed off an East County freeway at high speed, possibly as the youth was racing another motorist.

Devan Caddell of Jamul lost control of the 2001 Acura Integra after cutting in front of a white Ford Mustang on State Route 94 in La Mesa shortly after noon Tuesday, according to the California Highway Patrol and county Medical Examiner's Office.

The westbound Acura, which was traveling at 100 mph or faster, skidded off the right-hand side of the roadway near 69th Street, then crashed through a chain-link fence and smashed into a large tree behind a home, CHP public affairs Officer Brian Pennings said.

The impact uprooted the tree, tore the sedan apart and sent Caddell, a student at Mesa College, tumbling into the residential yard. He came to rest near a children's swing set and died at the scene.

The driver of the Mustang – who, according to witnesses, appeared to have been racing Caddell just prior to the crash – did not stop and has not been identified, Pennings said.

I don't know anything else about this senseless death. If any of you know more, please leave comments to let the rest of us know...

Less Profit...

Lakes Entertainment, the investor behind the Jamul Indian Casino project, just issued their quarterly report. It contains these statements related to the casino:

Net unrealized gains and (losses) on notes receivable were ($0.6) million and $5.8 million for the third quarters of 2007 and 2006, respectively. The net unrealized losses in the third quarter of 2007 related to unrealized gains on Lakes’ notes receivable from the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians (Shingle Springs Tribe) in the amount of $1.2 million and unrealized losses of $1.8 million on the Lakes’ notes receivable from the Jamul Indian Village (Jamul Tribe). These notes receivable are adjusted to estimated fair value based upon the current status of the related tribal casino projects. The increase in fair value of the notes receivable from the Shingle Springs Tribe relates primarily to continued progress on the construction of this project, which is currently within budget and on schedule. The decrease in fair value of the notes receivable from the Jamul Tribe relates primarily to an increase in the discount rate which resulted from a decrease in current estimated win per unit for this project.

Net unrealized gains of $5.8 million during the third quarter of 2006 included $2.6 million related to the adjustment to fair value of notes receivable from the Shingle Springs Tribe due to favorable events occurring during the third quarter of 2006. The remainder of the net unrealized gains during the three months ended October 1, 2006, related primarily to increases in fair value of notes receivable from the Jamul Tribe and the Pokagon Band.

Summarized in English: the casino project isn't going to be as profitable as they originally thought. Here's hoping that trend continues, to the point where everybody just loses interest...

Magic Moments...

The photo at right is one of dozens from a collection of photos taken at exactly the right moment.

Imagine, if you can, being that fish… Is that an “Oh, s--t!” moment or what?

Now imagine being the bear. Self-serving sushi!

Resources for Rebuilding...

I heard about this event (San Diego Rebuilds) on the radio, and it sounds very useful -- especially the expertise and advice that will be available. It's a one-day affair in Escondido, but I suspect that if you're rebuilding, it would be well worth your time to attend:

Here is why this event is so important

Lessons learned during the Cedar Fire

Many fire victims were unfamiliar and unprepared to deal with the rebuilding process. Many became easy prey for unscrupulous, sleazy contractors. It was well documented that several were “revictimized” at the hands of these crooks; making absurdly low estimates, taking large deposits and then disappearing, poor workmanship, delays, etc. Others were stalled in the bureaucracy of the city’s building departments costing them precious time and money from their insurance settlements. Much of this aggravation could have been prevented with some help.

It is our intent to get all the players in one room— A one-stop shop if you will, where the 2007 victims can come and get honest assistance and opportunities to meet local building officials, licensing board, attorneys, tax and lending professionals, verified (licensed, insurance, comp, bonded) contractors, architects, estimators and other suppliers.

The organizer of this event was being interviewed by Roger Hedgecock (who is himself involved in the event to some extent). It sounds like this is completely a volunteer effort -- there is no cost to this event (either for fire victims or for the contractors and architects, etc.), so this is not an attempt to make some money from our neighbor's pain. From the interview, I gathered that the main goal of this event was to make it easy for people rebuilding to get all of the information they need, and (perhaps especially) to check out the vendors present so you know they are not going to rip you off.

Cross-posted from Jamul Fire Help.

Cow Rescue...

A cow in a culvert, somewhere near Jamul (along 94). Rescued by the San Diego Human Society…

JAMUL, Calif. -- Thanks to a specialty rescue crew and some beefy equipment, Violet the cow is no longer stuck livestock.

The brown-and-white bovine, who had wandered away from her owners' Jamul home overnight, got spooked, bolted and slipped into a concrete culvert when a highway patrol officer approached her alongside state Route 94 about 9:30 a.m. Monday, according to the San Diego Humane Society.

It took a volunteer crisis team that works with the animal-welfare agency about two hours to hook the roughly 1,700-pound cow to a harness rig and haul her out of the ditch with a crane, said Candice Ely of the SDHS.


A veterinarian then looked her over and determined that she was unscathed by her misadventure, Eley said.

Violet normally is pastured in Campo, but her owners had brought her to their rural home so they could care for an eye infection she had developed, Eley added.

Clean Cell Phone...

I just remembered a funny little story from our evacuation two weeks ago, during the fires. We drove from our home in Jamul to a friend's house in Chula Vista, Debbie in my pickup and me in our RV. We talked to each other during the drive via our cell phones – so I knew I had remembered to bring mine. But...shortly after we arrived at our friend's home, my cell phone disappeared. I wrote it off in my mind as a trivial cost considering what we were doing, and didn't worry about it.

But a couple of days later, Debbie came in from our friend's garage, laughing, and holding my cell phone. It was dripping wet and covered with soapy spots – she had just fished it out of the washing machine. Apparently I left the thing in my pocket, and into the laundry it went.

It looked completely hopeless, but just for form's sake I took it apart, rinsed it out, and set it in a sunny window to warm up and dry out. The next day I plugged it in, and to my surprise the “charging” indicator showed up on the screen – a substantial amount of the phone has to be functional for that to happen. After it charged for a while, I turned it on – and it worked! Better than ever, actually – the keyboard used to have some sticky keys, but now they all worked perfectly.

My phone is a cheap, bottom-of-the-line Nokia that I paid $29 for at Wal-Mart. Something tells me that if we had laundered my wife's feature-laden, $299 cell phone, the results would not have been as happy…

The Singing Revolution...

My long-time readers know that I have a special interest in the tiny country of Estonia. Because two companies I worked for had software development teams there (in the main city, Tallinn), I visited there many times from 1994 to 2005. I've traveled extensively throughout the country and made many friends there. There are many things I cherish about Estonia, but high on the list is its recent history, beginning with the bloodless revolution that won the country's freedom from the Soviet Union in 1991. This revolution is called "The Singing Revolution", because of the important role that music – and specifically singing – played in it. I've read several books about it, and watched two documentary films. I've also learned a lot about it from several people I know who actually participated in it.

Now there's a movie about it. I only learned of this movie this morning, from this column by Brent Bozell on Yahoo News. A teaser:

How many of us know that Estonia, one of the smallest countries on the face of this earth, is responsible for one of the most extraordinary, and certainly the most unique, revolutions in modern history? How many of us know that this tiny Baltic nation defeated the Soviet Union — with a song? This is not meant as hyperbole. It is literal truth.

One of the most fascinating documentaries you will ever watch is about to make its debut around the country. Make a note of it: "The Singing Revolution." Go to the Website singingrevolution.com to learn when and where in your city it will air. Should you miss that opportunity, make it a point to rent the DVD the moment it hits the stores.

Some documentaries entertain. Some educate. "The Singing Revolution" will bring you to your feet, cheering. It is the quintessential celebration of the human spirit.

The film's web site is here. I know nothing more than what is in the column and web site linked above – but if this film comes to San Diego, I will go see it. I haven't been to a theater for something like 10 years, and thought I was never going to go again – but I'd make an exception for this movie…

Naturally, there's a clip on YouTube:

Peaceful Sunset...

This was the view looking west from Lyons Peak just a few minutes ago. Serene, beautiful, peaceful...

And not necessarily expected. Up until a few hours ago, the national weather service was forecasting a mild Santa Ana for today and early tomorrow – enough to cause the Governator to order a full alert for all the fire-fighting services, and to pre-position equipment in San Diego County (and in other Southern California areas).

But in the end, we got no winds today. It was dry, warm, and calm – a very pleasant day, actually.

This is one time when I'm quite happy that the weatherman got it wrong!

Cross-Posting???

I seem to have confused some of my readers with the little note I put at the bottom of one of my posts this morning, saying Cross-Posted from Jamul Fire Help – several of you wrote to ask me what the heck that meant. So let me explain in a little more detail…

The folks who run the Jamul Fire Help website were kind enough to ask me to post on their blog occasionally. They're trying to raise money (and otherwise help) for the Jamul victims of the recent fires. They asked if I'd help out a little by posting on their blog, and of course I agreed. When the topic makes sense for both my blog and theirs, I'll publish the same post in both places – that's what “cross-posting”…

Tomato Soup...

Just before the fires last week, my parents shipped two large boxes of New Jersey tomatoes to me – the last of the season. When the fires closed the Post Office (and we were evacuated), the delivery that should have been made last Tuesday or Wednesday was delayed until this Tuesday – an entire week late.

My mother was sure that the content of the boxes would have putrified by then, but when Debbie picked up the boxes, she discovered that most of the tomatoes were fine. In fact, most of them weren't even completely ripe yet. So I set them aside for a few days to let them fully ripen. The few that ripened earliest disappeared into a few evening snacks of tomato salads and tomato sandwiches. Lovely things, they were.

But they don't hold a candle to what I did with the remaining 16 dead-ripe New Jersey tomatoes today: I made a large batch of Boston-style cream of tomato soup. Debbie, our best friend Jim, and I gorged ourselves with two gigantic bowls of this delectable concoction; it was our dinner tonight. The recipe was simple enough – I'd never made this particular style before, but there wasn't much that could go wrong. The base of the soup is a puree of the tomatoes (with some carrots and onions) and a little whipping cream for texture and body. The tomato flavor is enhanced with a strong component of fresh thyme, plus parsely and fresh-ground pepper. The result was right up there with the very best tomato soups I've ever had.

I made about six quarts of soup; there is only about a pint left. All three of us are sloshing as we walk. But we have smiles on our faces…that soup was good enough to make us wonder if it might not be a controlled substance!

Preparing for the Next One...

One thing we can be certain of, unfortunately, is that wildfires will attack our community again. Some areas (such as Lawson Valley, where I live) have 35 years or more of chaparral fuel build-up. While a fire can start almost anywhere, areas with large amounts of fuel upwind of them have the highest risks during a Santa Ana – any fire upwind of such areas will move quickly toward them.

The general direction of the Santa Ana winds is from the northeast (blowing toward the southwest). However, local geological features (hills, canyons, etc.) can modify this, so the direction could be different in your immediate neighborhood – and those same features can also affect the intensity of the winds. The Pine Valley canyon is a good example of a geological feature that intensifies the wind; the I-8 bridge there is notorious for its fierce crosswinds during a Santa Ana.

It can be very instructive to see how much fuel is left near your home, and especially to the northeast of your home. The map at right, above (click to expand it) shows the fire history in our area for the past 18 years, since 1990. The blue hatched areas are where the Harris Fire burned last week. The pink hatched areas are where fires burned since 2000. The green hatched areas show fires that occurred in the 1990s. The areas that have no hatching (plain gray) have had no fires since 1990.

You’ll note that some areas have burned multiple times – it only takes a few years after a fire for enough fuel to regrow to be able to sustain a fire. However, fires in those more recently-burned areas are much less intense, for the simple reason there is less fuel there. In general, the longer it has been since an area has burned, the more difficult it is to fight a fire there. From the perspective of future risk, it’s definitely better to have recently burned areas upwind of you.

If you examine the map carefully, you’ll note that there’s a large area unburned since 1990 stretching from roughly the Descanso area southwest to the town of Jamul. Those of us living in that area should recognize the risk we face from fires starting during a Santa Ana, especially severe Santa Anas such as the one we had last week. There is a mild Santa Ana forecast for tomorrow and Sunday; even this elevates our risk considerably. If you live in this area that hasn’t been burned for a long time, be especially watchful this weekend and during any other Santa Anas we have.

An excellent resource that allows anyone in our area to watch for fires are the cameras on Lyons Peak. These are operated by HPWREN, and they update every two minutes. You can get the raw feeds directly from this page, or get them processed (with location annotations and automatic updating) from this page. Either way, keeping an eye on these cameras will give you the earliest possible warning of any fires breaking out, and exactly where they are located.

Cross-posted from Jamul Fire Help…

Monster Caterpillar...

As I was watering our potted patio plants this morning, I noticed that our potato tree (Solanum paraguayensis) had lost quite a few leaves. I looked a little closer, and spotted this enormous green caterpillar on its sparse branches. It was still early, just after sunrise, and cold – so the caterpillar was motionless. All stretched out, it would be about 3 inches (8 cm) long; about the size of one of my fingers.

With a little research on the web, I'm pretty sure that this is the caterpillar of some Sphinx moth (there are many species). I grabbed this photos quickly, as I suspected that when it warmed up it would start moving about.

And that's exactly what it did – by the time I got these photos loaded into my computer, the temperature had risen substantially, and the caterpillar had turned into an amazing eating machine. I watched it methodically strip one small branch of my poor potato tree in about 60 seconds. I don't think anything would have been left of my potato tree after a few hours of work by this guy!

So I picked it up and moved it over to the 6' post that holds our bird feeders up, and hoped it would feed a family of birds for a few days. A couple hours later, it was still there, wandering about looking for something green to masticate. A couple of sparrows were perched nearby, checking it out – so I suspect it's life expectancy is quite low…

Military vs. The Fires...

I found these photos (at StrategyPage) of the U.S. military aircraft helping fight last week's fires.

The top photo shows an Air Force C-130 Hercules dumping 3,000 gallons of fire retardant on the Poomacha Fire. This is the view from the open bay of the plane, looking down at the two nozzles as they dump the fire retardant.

The Poomacha Fire is still burning, and is still not 100% contained. The last update I read said that air assets were still on the job, 10 days after the fire started. The main challenge is that the fire is burning in some quite remote and inaccessible areas, especially on the north and northeast flanks of Mt. Palomar.

The bottom photo shows a Navy MH-60S Seahawk about to fill its bucket. I believe the photo is showing it over Sweetwater Reservoir, with Dictionary Hill and Spring Valley in the background. If I'm correct, then it would have been fighting the Harris Fire, near our home.

More photos and a bit of the story can be found here.

Paul Tibbets, RIP...

Another well-known member of the Greatest Generation has died, at 92. Brigadier General Paul W. Tibbets was the pilot of the B-29 Enola Gay when it dropped the first atomic bomb used in anger on Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945.

I had the great honor to meet General Tibbets in the mid-1990s. He was a featured guest at an airshow I attended, and at one point he was at a B-29 exhibit. I spoke with him there very briefly; I had the chance to tell him that I had greatly enjoyed his book (The Flight of the Enola Gay), and that I was very glad that he had been there to fly the Enola Gay for that mission. I don't remember what he said in response, but I do remember the appreciative smile, and a firm handshake.

Rest in peace, General. Your country remains proud of its soldiers, anti-military wackos and the lamestream media notwithstanding.

There's a locked-down Wikipedia article on General Tibbets (locked down because anti-military kooks persistently edited the article to add defamatory and inflammatory remarks).

Obituaries from major newspapers here, here, here, and here.

Oops...

The List Universe has a great list of the Top 30 Failed Technology Predictions. Here are the first 5, just to give you a taste.

1. “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” — Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC), maker of big business mainframe computers, arguing against the PC in 1977.

2. “We will never make a 32 bit operating system.” — Bill Gates

3. “Lee DeForest has said in many newspapers and over his signature that it would be possible to transmit the human voice across the Atlantic before many years. Based on these absurd and deliberately misleading statements, the misguided public … has been persuaded to purchase stock in his company …” — a U.S. District Attorney, prosecuting American inventor Lee DeForest for selling stock fraudulently through the mail for his Radio Telephone Company in 1913.

4. “There is practically no chance communications space satellites will be used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television, or radio service inside the United States.” — T. Craven, FCC Commissioner, in 1961 (the first commercial communications satellite went into service in 1965).

5. “To place a man in a multi-stage rocket and project him into the controlling gravitational field of the moon where the passengers can make scientific observations, perhaps land alive, and then return to earth - all that constitutes a wild dream worthy of Jules Verne. I am bold enough to say that such a man-made voyage will never occur regardless of all future advances.” — Lee DeForest, American radio pioneer and inventor of the vacuum tube, in 1926

Go read the rest!