Wolf Totem

I just finished a most excellent book: Wolf Totem, by Jiang Rong, translated by Howard Goldblatt. This is (amazingly) a first novel by a Chinese writer; the writer's own experiences were the “research”. Most of the novel takes place in China of the 1960s, in the crazy days of Mao Tse Tung. The main character is a student who was forced out of the city and school to go work in the countryside. He volunteers to go to the most primitive place in all of China, to live with the nomadic Mongolian tribes who herd horses, sheep, and yaks.

As a reader, you walk away from this novel with a very detailed picture of the hard, surprisingly complex life of the Mongolian tribes. Their lives were immutably interlinked with the health of the vast Mongolian grasslands and the major creature populations it supported: humans, mice, marmots, sheep, horses, yaks, and...the awesomely fierce Mongolian wolves. Humans and wolves shared the top of the food chain, and had to stay in balance to keep the grasslands healthy. Human culture grew up around that need, with lore and custom finely honed to keep everything working.

Later in the novel, modern technology and an alien culture (the Han Chinese) moved into the grasslands, with technology and an utter disregard for maintaining the grassland habitat. The results are entirely predictable, and very sad. The novel can be read as a withering critique of the central Chinese “management” of Mongolia – which makes it all the more surprising that this book is a runaway bestseller in China, and has not been restricted by the government. In fact, this book has outsold any book ever published in China, save one: Mao's Little Red Book.

Don't miss it – it's simply wonderful.

Wedding Day...

Today my best friend is getting married, and I'm the best man. Jim and Michelle are getting married at a B&B just outside of the town of Julian, up in the mountains. It's a beautiful summer day – blue skies (a little hazy from the fires to the north of us) and not too hot. The ceremony is at 5:30, and we'll probably be there for several hours afterwards.

Blogging will be light, but tomorrow I'll post some photos and my toast to the newlyweds...

Telegram for Mr. Billary...

Your evening smile:


Thanks, SimonM!

A New Scam...

This morning I stopped to fill up my truck at the Jamul 7/11, on the corner of Steele Canyon Road and Campo Road. I started the pump, then got the squeegee and paper towels to clean my windshield and mirrors. Shortly after I started this chore, two young women approached me. I could tell from their demeanor that they were going to try to sell me something; the only question was what.

With big smiles and an earnest tone, they told me that they had the answer to the high price of oil – they could sell me the way to get 150 miles per gallon of gasoline! That's about 9 times better than my truck gets now – with gas at $4.58 a gallon, you have to admit that's an attractive pitch...

They had small plastic bottles – about the size of the liquor bottles the airlines sell you – filled with a dark green liquid. One bottle would treat one tank full of gas (they told me it didn't matter how big my gas tank was), and any vehicle that was so treated would get 150 miles per gallon for that entire tankful. All they wanted was $4.

I sent them on their way, and not in a particularly polite manner. Parasites like this really piss me off. Later, as I was completing my transaction, I watched them sell two bottles of their snake oil to other customers.

There's one born every minute. At least one.

The Rest of the Story...

Well, yesterday Debbie got her LandCruiser back from the independent repair shop. The final bill was $900, just over half the $1,700 estimate from the dealer. From everything I can tell, the workmanship was excellent – as was the communication and straight dealing.

On top of all that, the independent repair shop has a cat. That sealed the deal for Debbie !

So it's time to name names:

The dealer who gave us the outrageous quote for a simple brake job and a minor air conditioning repair (a hose): Toyota of El Cajon. We have been patronizing them for ten years, and just last year I purchased a new truck from them. I think it's fair to say that we were good customers. Were.

The independent repair shop is Rancho Jamul Auto Care, at 13975 Campo Road (State 94). Their phone number is 619/669-2848. They're between the Jamul Post Office and the feed shop, on the same side of the road. I've been driving past them for years and never even knew they were there!

My Guns Are Safe...

At least for the moment, the state or county government can't put an outright ban on guns in place, thanks to yesterday's Heller decision from the U.S. Supreme Court. So naturally my first reaction was “Hurrah!” After the warm glow of affirmed individual rights wore off, though, my next reaction was a bit different:

In other news, 5-4 was bit too close for comfort in my opinion. I was figuring on 6-3 or 7-2, honestly. Sure, this quiz was pass/fail but we were only one heart attack away, my friends. I hate to say it but that one reason is why I’ll hold my nose, get good and hammered, and pull the lever for John McCain. And I’d have to shower after that too.

What he said. It might actually be true that the single most last consequence of any Presidential election is the selection of Supreme Court justices...

April 16, 1178 B.C., Around Noon...

That's when Odysseus returned to Penelope:

The scientists first created a rough chronology of events depicted in the "Odyssey." First, 29 days before the supposed eclipse and the massacre of the suitors, three constellations are mentioned as Odysseus sets out from the island of Ogygia, where he has spent seven years as a captive of the beautiful nymph Calypso. Odysseus is told to watch the Pleiades and late-setting Boötes and keep the Great Bear to his left. Next, five days before the supposed eclipse, Odysseus arrives in Ithaca as the Star of Dawn — that is, Venus — rises ahead of the sun.

Finally, the night before the eclipse, there is a new moon.

Also, the messenger of the gods, Hermes, is sent west to Ogygia by the king of the gods Zeus to release Odysseus and then immediately returns back east roughly 34 days before the eclipse. The researchers conjecture this trip refers to an apparent turning point of the motion of the planet Mercury. (Mercury was the Roman name for Hermes.)

Mercury completes its orbit around the sun in just roughly 88 days, compared with the year it takes Earth to do so. This means that Mercury and Earth are somewhat like two cars moving along separate lanes of a racetrack at different speeds. The effect of these motions is that Mercury occasionally appears to go backward or retrograde in the sky from our point of view, Magnasco explained. This happens for roughly three weeks at a time, about three times a year.

The scientists then searched for potential dates that satisfied all these astronomical references close to the fall of Troy, which has over the centuries been estimated to have occurred between roughly 1250 to 1115 B.C. From these 135 years, they found just one date satisfied all the references — April 16, 1178 B.C., the same date as the proposed eclipse.

Very cool!

Car Repair Blues...

We own a 1995 Toyota LandCruiser with almost 250,000 miles on it – so naturally we have more repairs these days than we did a few years ago. But yesterday Debbie got a real shock at the dealer where we've been taking our vehicles for the past 10 years or so – a routine brake maintenance job was quoted at $1,700, far more than such jobs had cost us in the past.

Debbie was very unhappy with this, but left the truck for repairs anyway. A short while later, she was talking with a friend who confirmed for her how outrageous the quote was, and told her to “Make them stop working on your truck. Take it out of the dealer and take it Dave at Jamul Auto Care.” So Debbie did exactly that, and the initial estimate from them was “less than $500.”

Our LandCruiser is down there now for repair. I'll let you know how it goes...

Quote of the Day...

Via FoxNews:

“CEOs of fossil energy companies know what they are doing and are aware of the long-term consequences of continued business as usual. In my opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.”

Spoken yesterday by James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. He is the highest ranking climate scientist in our government. And he's seriously loony.

Your tax dollars at work.

Programming Languages...

Most programmers have worked with at least a few different programming languages. Those who are as ancient as I have likely worked with many. Some programmers have a nearly religious attachment to their One Right Language; others are less concerned about the language than they are about the algorithms and data structures. I'm definitely in the latter camp.

Recently I came across this web site, which attempts to rank programming languages by the number of programmers who use them – measured indirectly by the number of web searches involving them.

I was not surprised to see Java in the number one slot, nor was I surprised that C and C++ took the next two slots. This measure has those “big three” taking 50% of the total search hits. Everyday experience says this can't be far off the mark, as virtually everyone I know professionally works in one or more of these three languages.

But that is not to say this chart had no surprises for me! I was stunned to see that JavaScript ranked so low. It's almost impossible to write web applications without using JavaScript, web applications surely dominate all application development today, and yet...under 3% of the search hits involved JavaScript. I don't understand how this could be so low.

But even more stunning to me is that Delphi (which evolved from Pascal) and Pascal itself are having a bit of a resurgence in popularity. I did a lot of development in Pascal back in the '70s and '80s; it was the first high level language that I really enjoyed using (I was a real assembly language cowboy back then!). It was also my introduction to object-oriented programming (via Borland's Object Pascal). I'd never have expected them to be on the rise...

One last personal reaction: the chart makes me feel a little old, as most of the languages I've worked in aren't on the chart at all. Assembly language is gone. Remember dBase, anyone? PL/1? Pogo? B? CMSII? And yet...I've worked in 12 of the 20 languages on the chart (counting even casual encounters). Yikes!

Change You Can Be Sure Of...

Oh, Yes...

Here's some political commentary from Hollywood's past:


Hard to imagine seeing something this tasty today!

Hat tip to SimonM for reminding me of this classic – and to YouTube for making video clips so easy to find...

Origin of Corn Flakes...

Now here's something completely unexpected (to me, at least!): several now-common foods were invented for the purpose of suppressing our animal passions. One specific example: the Kellogg brothers invented corn flakes as part of a dietary program, one objective for which was to reduce masturbation and other dangerous sexual behaviors.

No, I'm not kidding. Read more here, here, and here.

I'll never be able to look at corn flakes or graham crackers the same way again!

Murtha and Haditha...

The despicable John Murtha (D) is ... categorized ... by Modern Conservative. Money quote:

Your lies greatly harmed these men, but it has not stopped the cause for which they fought, and for which their comrades fight and die.

Rope.
Tree.
Murtha.
Some assembly required.

Full Moon Blogging...

I woke up a little early this morning, about 2:30 AM, and wandered out to our livingroom to check my email. My eyes were still adapted to the darkness, but I was startled by the view out our front windows: the yard was lit up quite brightly, enough to see colors clearly (especially green, for some reason). An acacia that is about 75 feet from the house is in bloom, and the pink flowers against the dark green leaves could be seen easily.

This lighting is the combination of a beautiful full moon and a crystal-clear desert night. We've seen it many times before, but it still surprises and delights...

Now, just an hour and a half later, the moon is skimming the southern horizon. It's not really low in the sky, it's just that our southern horizon is formed by some hills, and so is quite high in the sky. Trees and shrubs are now shading almost the entire yard from the moonlight, but there's still one puddle of light on my livingroom floor, entering through a “chink” in the wall of leaves. One of our cats (Maka Lea) is playing with the spot of light, as it's moving a bit with the motion of the leaves. Cats have excellent night vision, so that spot probably looks even brighter to him than it does to me.

Another half hour and the moon will disappear from my view. But I'll be driving to work before sunrise, and I suspect I'll get a nice view of the moon setting over the Pacific. Something to look forward to on my early commute!

Fire Suppression Assessment...

All of us who live or work in the San Diego Rural Fire Protection District (East Otay, Jamul, Descanso, etc.) should have received a mailer from the District by now. The flyer that comes in the mailer is titled “Fire Suppression Assessment”, and there's a mail-back ballot and envelope in there as well.

Basically this mailer is trying to sell us all on the idea of a new tax, proposed at a rate of $120 per year, per residential parcel (or a little more or less, depending on the type of parcel you have). If 50% or more of the property owners (weighted by the amount they'd pay) approve, we've got a new tax. The pamphlet uses a good portion of its ink emphasizing the limitations on how this money could be spent, and the fact that it's only authorized for 30 years.

The last few years have brought a series of wildfires to our parched area, and every property owner in the area is righteously concerned about the ability of our fire departments to suppress fires around our property. So I'm sure that everyone receiving one of these mailers is doing the same thing I've done – carefully considering whether the new tax makes sense from your personal point of view.

Here's my perspective.

The short answer: I'm voting no.

The longer answer:

There are fundamental problems with our firefighting organizations that have nothing whatever to do with money. The most significant of these issues, to me, is the patchwork-quilt nature of the dozens of organizations involved – local, municipal, county, state, and federal, with overlapping or adjoining areas of responsibility and a mish-mash of chains of command and communications. Aside from the sheer organizational madness of this in the chaos of a major fire, there's another problem: capital expenditure control. Fire fighting teams need things that are very expensive – helicopters, planes, fire trucks, fire stations, etc. By having a patchwork-quilt of organizations, the ability to raise capital in the first place is wildly variable, and of course there's no coordinated control of it. Throwing more money at one group in this disjoint mess strikes me as missing the point altogether. In the current scheme, I have no confidence at all that the money will be spent wisely, or even in a way that would benefit me.

One little nit-picky observation that inclines me to distrust the District's fiscal judgment: the one-page pamphlet is printed in full color on the front, black-and-white on the reverse. It looks like it might even have been printed on a color laser printer. However they did it, they spent thousands of dollars making it color, for no good reason. That's thousands of dollars that could have been used for something that actually would make my home safer. That's not a good example of thriftiness with my tax dollars...

Then there's the standard bureaucratic deceptions that always seem to accompany such a proposal. For starters, there's the assertion that the money can only be spent on fire suppression. This is a piece of boilerplate in assessments like this, so laughably (and demonstrably) untrue as to make you think that the bureaucrats who wrote it must all be laughing in a smoke-filled room somewhere. Three things happen to such directed funds in the real world: (1) bureaucrats often simply ignore the rules, (2) bureaucrats pull a classic bait-and-switch by changing the rules after the voters approve the new tax, and (3) the bureaucrats obey the rules, but reduce the general fund budget allocated for the same purpose, thereby freeing up $1 of general fund for every $1 of directed fund received – which is, mathematically, the exact same thing as saying that the new tax goes straight into the general fund. There are no protections against any of the three classic bureaucratic fund dodges in this code.

Then there's the assertion that this tax will last “only” 30 years. When's the last time you saw any such tax actually disappear? I'd estimate the probability of this tax disappearing at approximately zero percent. I'd estimate the chances of it being both (a) increased, and (b) extended to infinity at approximately 100%. On those grounds alone, I'm strongly inclined to say “no”.

My ballot is in today's mail, with a big, fat, “no” on it...

MX!

Debbie ran Mo'i in an agility competition in Escondido this weekend. On Sunday they double-Qd, and the Q on the standard course was the last one that Mo'i needed to get his Masters (MX) title. He's the second field spaniel ever to get that title, and because he already had his Masters Jumpers (MXJ) title, he's the first to get both!

The photo at right is an old one of him leaving a tunnel at top speed. I wasn't there on Sunday, but Debbie tells me he was a very happy dog during the run. And even happier afterwards, when he was showered with treats...

Now Debbie and Mo'i are working on the top title that any agility dog can get: the Mach. To get a Mach, a dog must have 20 double-Qs and 720 points. Right now Mo'i has 6 double-Qs and over 100 points – they're on the way!

Happy Father's Day!

My father still walks this earth – a little more slowly than he used to, but still going. He's no stranger to challenges, having lived through the Great Depression, been a soldier in World War II, married for over 50 years, helped to raise a family of four children, and weathered some very tough times in his career. Through all of it that I can bear witness to, he's been steadfast, optimistic, and reliable – and full of imaginative stories, nearly always cheerful, blessed with a wonderful sense of humor, curious (and respectful of curiousity), and unreasonably encouraging to his kids.

I love him more than I can find the words to say...

My father lives some 2,500 miles away from me, so I don't get to see him as often as I'd like to. For the past few years he's been coming out to California each summer, so that he and I can take a two or three week trip together. We've had some memorable hiking and four-wheeling trips in search of wildflowers, a passion that he and I share. Several of these trips I've blogged about (to the San Juan Mountains, Big Sur, and Mt. Lassen). We'd planned a trip this year, but some medical treatments he's taking forced us to postpone it. We're hoping that either this fall or next summer he'll be well enough to take another one...

Meanwhile, today is Father's Day – a day for all children to honor and cherish their dad. In my dad's honor this year, here's one of my favorite poems about fathers:

Only A Dad

Only a dad with a tired face,
Coming home from the daily race,
Bringing little of gold or fame
To show how well he has played the game;
But glad in his heart that his own rejoice
To see him come and to hear his voice.

Only a dad with a brood of four,
One of ten million men or more
Plodding along in the daily strife,
Bearing the whips and the scorns of life,
With never a whimper of pain or hate,
For the sake of those who at home await.

Only a dad, neither rich nor proud,
Merely one of the surging crowd,
Toiling, striving from day to day,
Facing whatever may come his way,
Silent whenever the harsh condemn,
And bearing it all for the love of them.

Only a dad but he gives his all,
To smooth the way for his children small,
Doing with courage stern and grim
The deeds that his father did for him.
This is the line that for him I pen:
Only a dad, but the best of men.

Edgar Guest, 1916

One of the best of men, indeed. Happy Father's Day, dad!

American Spirit...

Updated (again):

One of my commenters makes it clear I miscommunicated. When I talk below about the Iowa flooding being worse than the Katrina flooding, I don't mean the human toll (which was much worse in Katrina). I am instead talking about the actual amount of water – the flood itself.

Updated:

Some excellent live flood-blogging (with video) here.

Original Post:

Unless you've been hiding under a rock somewhere, you know that Iowa is experiencing a massive flood. In fact, it's a “500 year flood” – of a size we'd expect to see only once every 500 years or so. Hundreds of square miles of land are flooded, and the flood waters are just starting to recede. Lots more photos here. The Cedar River was the worst; it crested at 32 feet over flood level. Thousands of homes were flooded, thousands of people evacuated, tens of thousands of acres of farmland were flooded and their crops ruined. By any reasonable measure, this flood was worse by far than the infamous flooding that Hurricane Katrina provoked in New Orleans, less than 1,000 miles to the south.

As if that wasn't enough, Iowa also suffered through a series of awful tornadoes in and near the flooded areas. The people of Iowa have been put through the wringer this week, that much is for certain.

Note the complete absence of whining, or reports of looting, or of screams for help from FEMA, or of complaints about inadequate federal assistance. The airwaves are not filled with pleas for donations. Not one squawk about how this is all Bush's fault. Instead (though there's little reporting of it in the mainstream lamestream media), there's a series of inspiring stories about people infused with what I'll call the “American Spirit” – the “can-do”, self-reliant attitude that launched these United States. There are many stories of people simply helping their neighbors in need, any way they can. I haven't heard a peep about Iowans believing they're victims – no crying out for help from these folks. They're just pitching in, administering first aid when needed, making sure that order prevails, and (already!) beginning the clean up and repairs. Farmers are already talking about replanting crops.

TigerHawk makes similar observations:

The thing is, though, the people of eastern Iowa seem to be stepping up in the Iowa stubborn way. I have seen any number of man-on-the-street interviews, and nobody is complaining. They all seem to be working to solve their problem, which is not surprising because Iowans do not complain about tragedy. They complain about hot weather and dry weather, but not tragedy. And I have looked for reports of looting and come up empty so far.

Katrina has become a metaphor for many things beyond natural disaster, including governmental and individual incompetence (depending on your point of view). In Iowa there is a 500 year flood, but the people are not paralyzed, whining, or looting. There will be no massive relief effort from around the world, and nobody will step up to help Iowans except for other Iowans. Yet years from now, there will be no Iowans still in FEMA camps.

The difference is not in the severity of the flood, but in the people who confront the flood.

Then over at Ace of Spades, Russ (from Winterset, Iowa – about a hundred miles from the flooding) writes this:

You may have heard that Iowa is experiencing catastrophic flooding this week. In addition to the flooding, we had a tornado on May 25 that wiped out more than half the town of Parkersburg and another tornado this last Wednesday that hit a Boy Scout campground along the Missouri River in Western Iowa, killing four scouts. The total body count of the tornados and flooding around the state has risen to 15, and we've got hundreds of millions of dollars in damage lying underneath the brown floodwaters. That's not even considering that we may lose 20% or more of the corn crop from delayed planting and some of the seeds that did manage to get planted drowning in the saturated soil. We'll soon be to the point where corn can't be replanted (it can only go so far into the fall before the frost kills it, and usually if you haven't gotten your corn in by now, you're gonna switch the ground to beans instead), and that'll throw a mother of a wrench into the corn price works.

The one thing I'm proud of right now is the absence of voices coming from my state cursing FEMA and President Bush for not "preventing" this tragedy. Compared to the opera we saw in Nawlins' in the aftermath of Katrina, it's nice to see people suck it up and get to work rebuilding their homes & businesses when Mother Nature takes a giant dump on them.

...

The one thing I'd like to address quickly is the NCAA track athletes who helped fill sandbags and try to save neighborhoods in Des Moines this week. Drake University in Des Moines is hosting the NCAA track & field championships this weekend, and there are literally hundreds of athletes who finished their events and immediately went down to the river to help anyway they could. We've got Northerners, Southerners, Easterners & Westerners (and Conservatives, Liberals & Libertarians, I'm sure) all pitching in to help Iowans save their homes and businesses. Next time you see some college athlete in a "revenue sport" acting like a horse's ass, remember these kids and know that not all athletes are self-centered and spoiled. I know that for every memory of a house or business befouled with floodwaters, there will be another warm memory of a stranger who showed up out of nowhere and asked "What can I do to help?" God bless 'em.

American Spirit in action. Finally, here's Kathy from the Cake Eaters Chronicles, writing about the Boy Scouts who immediately swung into action after their camp was devastated by a tornado:

While the whole thing is just horrible, I have to think that if it was a pottery camp organized by Kumbaya-singing hippies, things might have been much, much worse. They probably would have had the kids out on the front porch, to witness the awesomeness of Mother Nature, and there probably would have been more casualties and more deaths. If you go up to either of those news links, you will view interviews with many scouts who were there, and the common thread was yes, we found shelter, we prayed to God to spare us, then when the storm passed, we were on our feet with our First Aid kits at the ready and started applying pressure to bleeding wounds, and started digging out people who were crushed by walls, ceilings and debris. A few kids even broke into a shed where there was an ATV and chainsaws and went out to the main road and started clearing up the fallen trees so that the emergency vehicles could get in to help the wounded. How amazing is that? The majority of these kids are under the age of fifteen and they had the presence of mind to deliver first aid and to make sure that ambulances could get in? That's freakin' phenomenal. When most kids their age would be running around like headless chickens, crying and screaming for the benefit of the cameras, these young men were doing what needed to be done, and I have no doubt there would have been more fatalities if not for their swift action.

Her post is much longer and covers several related topics; read the whole thing here.

Unlike Michelle Obama, I've been proud of America for a long time. Unlike the aftermath of the Katrina disaster, the stories coming out of the American heartland's awful floods are a good example of the source of my pride.

I made a donation to the Boy Scouts of Cedar Rapids this morning. They are already at work, helping their neighbors. Though they haven't asked for any additional help, I'm certain they'll put it to good use. There won't be any stories of wanton waste and massively stupid relief efforts from that quarter...

A Day at the Flag Shop...

Never let it be said that the Germans can't poke a little fun at themselves – and the Palestinians at the same time...

Enjoy...