Tuesday, August 25, 2009
I've been reporting little tidbits here and there about the surprising lack of sunspots at the beginning of the current solar cycle. The low numbers of sunspots continues to the present time.
A paper just published (PDF) adds another dimension: not only are there fewer sunspots, but the ones that we have are weaker. Both factors contribute to lower solar irradiance – which means the sun is delivering less heat to the Earth.
I like this passage, from a web site that has a history of being completely credulous of anthropogenic global warming:
All of these numbers indicate that a return to Maunder-Minimum-like conditions could take us back to the conditions of the first half of last century, which would be a significant change in the climate. That would certainly take a bit of the time pressure off our attempts to limit our use of fossil fuels. But the impact would be less than we'd expect from a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide, meaning it would only delay some of the more significant climate changes.
It's very nice to see some actual climate science being widely published (instead of climate modeling)...
A collection of classic Rodney Dangerfield one-liners:
I tell ya I get no respect from anyone. I bought a cemetery plot. The guy said, 'There goes the neighborhood!'
When I was born, I was so ugly that the doctor slapped my mother.
When I started in show business, I played one club that was so far out, my act was reviewed in Field and Stream.
Every time I get in an elevator, the operator says the same thing to me: `Basement?'
When my parents got divorced, there was a custody fight over me. ... and no one showed up.
I never got girls when I was a kid. One girl told me, `Come on over, there's nobody home.' I went over. There was nobody home.
When I was 3 years old, my parents got a dog. I was jealous of the dog, so they got rid of me.
When we got married, the first thing my wife did was put everything under both names — hers and her mother's.
With my wife, I don't get no respect. The other night there was a knock on the front door. My wife told me to hide in the closet.
With my wife, I get no respect. I fell asleep with a cigarette in my hand. She lit it.
Made out of living roots! These bridges are grown in northeastern India...
Monday, August 24, 2009
Via my mom:
A teacher is explaining biology to her 4th grade students. "Human Beings are
the only animals that stutter," she said.
A little girl raises her hand. "I had a kitty-cat who stuttered."
The teacher, knowing how precious some of these stories could become, asked
the girl to describe the incident.
"Well," she began, "I was in the backyard with my kitty and the Rottweiler
that lives next door got a running start and before we knew it, he jumped over
the fence into our yard!"
"That must've been scary," said the teacher.
"It sure was," said the little girl. "My kitty raised his back, went Sssss,
Sssss, Sssss" and before he could say "Shit," the Rottweiler ate him!
The teacher wet her pants laughing.
Jumpin' Jehosephat on a deep-fried carrot! Is this wrong or what?
The average salary of a civilian employed by the Federal government is more than double that of a worker in private industry.
That's just wrong, dag nab it!
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things.
One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor.
Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
If man evolved from monkeys and apes, why do we still have monkeys and apes?
The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live.
I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, "Where's the self-help section?" She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.
What if there were no hypothetical questions?
If a deaf person swears, does his mother wash his hands with soap?
If someone with multiple personalities threatens to kill himself, is it considered a hostage situation?
Is there another word for synonym?
Where do forest rangers go to "get away from it all?"
What do you do when you see an endangered animal eating an endangered plant?
If a parsley farmer is sued, can they garnish his wages?
Would a fly without wings be called a walk?
Why do they lock gas station bathrooms? Are they afraid someone will clean them?
If a turtle doesn't have a shell, is he homeless or naked?
Can vegetarians eat animal crackers?
If the police arrest a mime, do they tell him he has the right to remain silent?
Why do they put Braille on the drive-through bank machines?
What was the best thing before sliced bread?
One nice thing about egotists: they don't talk about other people.
Does the Little Mermaid wear an algebra?
Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery?
How is it possible to have a civil war?
If one synchronized swimmer drowns, do the rest drown, too?
If you ate both pasta and antipasto, would you still be hungry?
If you try to fail, and succeed, which have you done?
Whose cruel idea was it for the word "lisp" to have an "s" in it?
Why are hemorrhoids called "hemorrhoids" instead of "assteroids"?
Why is it called tourist season if we can't shoot at them?
Why is there an expiration date on sour cream?
Can an atheist get insurance against acts of God?
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Earlier this year I switched from WildBlue (a satellite ISP) to SDWISP, a small terrestrial wireless network serving the valleys of Eastern San Diego County. This is a network based on point-to-point high-bandwidth radio links that connect a point-of-presence in each valley served with the wired Internet infrastructure. In our case, that means a point-to-point that connects a wired Internet connection in Alpine to a hill in Lawson Valley that's only a hundred yards or so from our home. Very nice!
But even better than the technology is the service we get from Eric Williams, the entrepreneur who founded and runs SDWISP. Unlike any other ISP I've ever dealt with (and that's a long list, both personally and professionally), Eric always responds positively and effectively. In the end, the problem always gets solved, and expeditiously, too. And there are always smiles and handshakes involved.
Today we had yet another example of his superb service. For several days we've been having intermittent trouble accessing the Internet. Today I spent some time troubleshooting it, and I discovered that problem was occuring somewhere outside my little network – either on SDWISP's network or on their Internet provider's network. I couldn't tell which. The symptom I got was a "destination unreachable" message from SDWISP's router, but that could mean lots of different things.
So I sent Eric an email describing the situation, and in a short while I got a call back from him. We talked about it briefly, and then he remembered a tweak he'd made just a week ago to the router that was sending me those messages. This tweak was an effort to tighten up security on his router (a good thing!), made at the recommendation of the router vendor. But when he and I realized what that setting was doing, we realized it might well be the source of my problem. Right then and there, Eric turned off that setting. I tested it, and sure enough, that was the source of the trouble. Problem solved!
With most ISPs I'd have spent weeks convincing them that there was an issue that they were causing, then I'd wait more weeks for them to figure out what they were going to do about it. If anything.
I just love having a little local ISP...
Via my mom:
A fleeing Taliban, desperate for water, was plodding through the Afghanistan desert when he saw something far off in the distance.
Hoping to find water, he hurried toward the object, only to find a little old Jewish man at a small stand selling ties.
The Taliban asked: 'Do you have water?'
The Jewish man replied: 'I have no water. Would you like to buy a tie? They are only US$5 ....'
The Taliban shouted: 'Idiot! I do not need an over-priced tie. I need water! I should kill you, but I must find water first!'
'OK,' said the old Jewish man, 'it does not matter that you do not want to buy a tie and that you hate me.
'I will show you that I am bigger than that. If you continue over that hill to the east for about two miles, you will find a lovely restaurant.
'It has all the ice cold water you need. Shalom.'
Muttering, the Taliban staggered away over the hill. Several hours later he staggered back, almost dead.
'Your damn brother won't let me in without a tie!'
Excellent!
Seven or eight years ago, we bought a large-screen HDTV. After doing quite a bit of research on the various technologies and models, we eventually settled on a rear-projection triple-CRT model: the Pioneer Elite Pro-620HD.
It's a monster of a TV. If the inside of the cabinet were hollow, you could use it as a residence for 3 or 4 families in some parts of the world.
We've really enjoyed this television. The picture is superb, and the user-tweakable digital color convergence has allowed us to keep it that way for all these years (I adjust it every 18 months or so).
But a couple of days ago it just quit working. The symptoms were not at all encouraging: when you tried to turn it on, the green power light would come on for a fraction of a second, you could hear some relays clicking, and then it just shut down again.
A few minutes on the web and I learned several depressing things: (1) Pioneer no longer supported this prehistoric model in any shape, way, or form (including at their authorized service centers); (2) nobody has any spare parts for it; and (3) there apparently is no longer any such thing as a television repair shop.
I was on my own.
A few more minutes of searching for our TV's symptoms led me to several articles and forum posts. There I learned that this model had a history of exactly this failure – and that at least for one person, re-soldering some “cold” solder joints on the low-voltage power supply circuit board fixed the problem. I also knew from long past experience as an electronics tech that cleaning dirt (especially away from high-voltage components) and cleaning/reseating connectors could often cure a problem.
So I decided to take the back off the beast and see what I could do. The thing was quite expensive, and I didn't want to just throw it away without even trying.
First came the easy part: cleaning off the accumulated dust of years, and reseating the connections. As I was doing this, I could observe (for the first time, actually) all the electronics in this TV. A couple of impressions: it was very nicely made (trust me, not all electronic equipment is!), and there was an awful lot of electronics. I counted 9 circuit boards in the area I could see, and I don't doubt there were more tucked away in parts of the cabinet I couldn't see.
After the cleaning/reseating, we tested. No joy. The symptoms were identical. So I decided to go for the more difficult task of removing, cleaning, examining, resoldering, and replacing the power supply board.
There are actually two power supply boards in this TV: a low-voltage and a high-voltage board. The low-voltage board was the culprit in the article I'd read online, and fortunately it was the easier of the two to get out. The board is mounted vertically at the extreme right side of the cabinet, as you're looking in from the back. There were 17 screws and 11 connectors to remove, and then out it popped. Took only a few minutes to get it out.
Then I took it to our kitchen table, and carefully examined it in the bright sunlight. It was a largish (about 12 x 18 inches) single-sided circuit board with dozens of large, high-power components on it (all of this is typical for a power supply). Right away it was obvious that someone had worked on this board since it was manufactured. The giveaway was that 30 or so solder joints had brown rosin residue remaining – something you don't see on boards that were soldered by machine (the rosin all gets cleaned off with solvents). A little more examination and I saw a pattern: the resoldered joints were larger than the majority of the joints. That led to a theory on my part: that Pioneer had a manufacturing problem that caused cold solder joints on the larger joints on the board (and being a power supply board, it had quite a few of these). Larger solder joints do require more heat, and they are tricky to get right in an automated soldering machine, so this was at least plausible.
So I resoldered every one of the large solder joints on the board – something like 175 of them. The hardest part of this chore was spotting them – my eyes don't seem to work quite as well as they used to. I've done a lot of soldering in my day, and apparently I didn't forget how (it's like riding a bicycle, you know). In the course of carefully looking for each of those large joints, I spotted 3 that looked like they might be cold solder joints, and one definite bad joint, complete with cracks.
When I finished all the soldering, we put everything back together and tried it out. Much celebrating ensued – the danged thing worked, and it has kept on working. Debbie (the primary consumer of TV around here) was very happy to have her TV back, and we were both very happy that we didn't need to go out and buy another TV.
A small victory, to be sure...but it really does feel very good to have had it!
Friday, August 21, 2009
It's 2004; George Bush and John Kerry are locked in an incredibly close battle for the U.S. presidency. There's a very real possibility that John Kerry would win. If he did, he'd give up his Senate seat and the Governor of Massachusetts would appoint someone to finish out his term. The Democrats controlled the state legislature, but the Governor was Republican Mitt Romney.
The other Democratic Senator from Massachusetts was Ted Kennedy. He spearheaded a successful effort to have the legislature pass a modification of the law. With the change, a special election would have to be held to choose the replacement for John Kerry, and any future replacement Senators.
In other words, we don't like the law, so we'll just change it.
Bad. But now it gets worse.
Fast forward to 2009. Ted Kennedy is dying of a brain tumor. He's not likely to live long enough to serve out his term. A special election would then have to be held to replace him, thanks to the law he fought for just 5 years ago. Now Massachusetts has a Democratic governor. Now Ted Kennedy is worried about not having a replacement for himself rapidly, as the Democrats in the Senate have only the thinnest of a majority. So what does Ted Kennedy do? You guessed it: he's agitating for a quick return to the old method of letting the Governor appoint a Senatorial replacement.
Rope (great hanks of it).
Trees (lots of them).
Some assembly required.
My favorite:
Go see the rest.
Well, the expected actually happened: the Scots, in a self-congratulatory fit of compassion, have released the Libyan terrorist. He flew home on Ghadaffi's private jet, and was given a hero's welcome when he got home.
Today's Wall Street Journal has an excellent editorial. It's conclusion:
More significantly, Megrahi's release is a reminder of what happens when terrorism is treated as a problem for the criminal justice system. Mr. MacAskill did not stint in congratulating Scotland (and himself) on the superior virtue his decision supposedly evinces. Terrorists will surely draw a different lesson about the will of the West to confront and punish them. And the compassion that is still owed those made bereft by the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 has now been tainted by a second Lockerbie outrage.
Exactly.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi (at right) is the Libyan terrorist bomber convicted of bringing down Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland on December 21, 1988. He's been serving a life sentence in a Scottish prison ever since his conviction in 2001. Recently he was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer, and under Scottish law this entitles him to compassionate early release. A decision about his release is expected today, and all signs are that it will be granted.
That's bad enough. The whole idea of compassionate anything for someone like him is disgusting.
But what's even worse is this: Mohammar Ghadafi, Libya's despotic leader, is sending his private $130m jet to pick up al-Megrahi and take him home to Libya.
Ugh.
The world really needs to be rid of some people, don't you think?
Seen near Durham, North Carolina...
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
There is now a steady stream of dyed-in-the-wool liberals who are opposing Obama's healthcare initiatives. Nat Hentoff is the latest, with a piece that starts out like this:
I was not intimidated during J. Edgar Hoover's FBI hunt for reporters like me who criticized him. I railed against the Bush-Cheney war on the Bill of Rights without blinking. But now I am finally scared of a White House administration. President Obama's desired health care reform intends that a federal board (similar to the British model) — as in the Center for Health Outcomes Research and Evaluation in a current Democratic bill — decides whether your quality of life, regardless of your political party, merits government-controlled funds to keep you alive.
It's tempting to think that the liberal juggernaut is coming apart at the seams. When even leading liberal lights, the in-the-tank-for-Obama press, and the few liberal talk shows still on the air all making news by their opposition to Obamacare, it looks like things are coming apart for the liberals.
But they're not. From everything I've been able to read on the subject, this is all single-issue opposition. There have not been massive numbers of people changing their world-views from liberal to libertarian or conservative. This is simply a single issue that's not resonating with liberal base.
I'm glad it's not resonating. But when this issue is behind us, I'm sure the next one will see the liberal juggernaut back in place, just as before...
Michael Yon (now in the thick of combat in Afghanistan) has a dispatch posted that's moving on several levels. Pay particular attention to the (completely normal) lengths that Americans went to save a wounded British soldier – and to the reason why the American's help was needed...
Yon's reporting is some of the very best you'll find from Afghanistan, just as he did from Iraq. Please consider supporting him – as an independent journalist our contributions are the only way he has to fund his very expensive trips...
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
The latest report for Lakes Entertainment shows their investment in the Jamul Casino project continuing to look bad, at least on paper. The money quote from the report:
The net unrealized gains for the six months ended June 28, 2009 consisted of $2.2 million related to the Jamul Casino project with the Jamul Tribe and $0.1 million related to the Iowa Tribe’s Ioway Casino project due primarily to improvement in the credit markets, which resulted in lower required rates of return.
Essentially this says that Lakes' accounts believe they'd have been better off (by $2.2 million!) putting the money in the bank than investing it in the Jamul Casino project.
Also in the news is the JAC (Jamulians Against the Casino) lawsuit aiming to overturn Caltran's recent settlement with the Jamul Indian Tribe on environmental grounds. I'm no lawyer, but this sounds like pretty shaky grounds to me...
In Jamul! According to the (very short) story, this happened at around 5 pm last night, near the intersection of 94 (Campo Road) and Steele Canyon Road (i.e., near Ranch Feed, the 7-11, and the Greek Sombrero).
I'd like to have seen that!
There's a short video at the link.
