Backcountry Plan: No Decisions...

This article has the details, but the bottom line is that (as expected) the County Supervisors are not voting on the General Plan Update until sometime after the election on November 2.  There will be more hearings and more public input.  However, as the article points out, the public input so far has been overwhelmingly negative.  The plan update has something for everybody to hate, as probably any proposed changes would.

How do I feel about it?  Unsure, as I haven't read the proposed changes.  However, if the news stories are accurate (never a sure thing, that), there is one element which I definitely would oppose: a “taking” in the legal sense.  This element would increase the minimum size of lots that homes could be built on – directly reducing the value of larger tracts that individuals or developers own, without compensating them in any way.  That is a taking, and I'd oppose it...

Optical Illusions...

Here's a great collection of spectacular optical illusions.  In the one at right, the “yellow” tile is actually exactly the same color as the “brown” tile on top.  Don't believe it?  Make a mask from a piece of cardboard with two holes in it, and hold it over the image – you can see for yourself that they are the same color.

Perception is a very tricky thing, and the brain is far more involved that most people realize...

Viva Chile!

When Peggy Noonan's writing started wandering down a strange path (this started when Obama was campaigning in 2008), it was a big disappointment for me.  I used to eagerly await her new column each week, and only rarely did she fail to deliver an interesting insight.  For a couple of years, one got the sense that somehow she'd been partly hijacked by the progressives.  I stopped reading her column altogether, and only when some other bloggers started mentioning her writing again a few months ago did I pay attention myself.

Now I'm back reading her column each week, for she seems to have shrugged off whatever “infection” she had.  Her column from last week is a great example of the kind of writing I cherished before.  Here she's commenting about Chilean President Piñera's reaction to learning about the mine collapse and missing miners:

What do you do? You throw yourself at the problem. You direct your government: This is the thing we do now. You say, "We will get the men." You put your entire persona behind it, you put it all on the line, you gamble that your nation can do it. You trust your nation to do it. You do whatever possible to see your nation does it. And the day the rescues are to begin, you don't show up and wring your hands so people can say "Ah, he knew it might not work, he was not unrealistic, he was telling us not to get our hopes up." No, you stand there smiling with joy because you know it will work, you know your people will come through, you have utmost confidence. And so you go and radiate your joy from the first moment the rescue began and the first man came out straight through to the last man coming out. You stand. You stay.

It was the opposite of the governor of Louisiana during Katrina, projecting helplessness and loserdom, or the president flying over the storm, or the mayor holing up in a motel deciding this might be a good time for a breakdown. This was someone taking responsibility. 

This is the same comparison I made in an earlier post, though presented more eloquently than I ever could.  She's captured (in her entire post) exactly the set of reactions I had to Chile's oh-so-competent handling of the mine collapse, and our governments “loserdom”.

Nice to have your old self back, Peggy...

Rain! And So Much Less...

As of this past Monday morning, we'd had a total of a quarter inch of rain in October.  As of this morning, the guage stood at 3.15 inches – so we've had almost three inches of rain in three days.  The bulk of our rain came on Tuesday night, as you can see on the graph at right.

Folks who have lived out here for over thirty years tell us that they don't remember another October that was so cool and wet, and all the research I've done into historical weather records backs up their memory.  Two years ago the anthropomorphic global warming folks were telling us to “stand by” for endless hot, dry summers and more wildfires like the Cedar fire.  For some reason I don't hear them saying much about this year, which has set all sorts of records in the exact opposite direction...

What did we have less of?  Power.  At around 9:30 pm on Tuesday night, Debbie and I were snoring away – but were (very) rudely awakened by the God-awful squalling of some infernal electronic device.  This turned out to be our carbon monoxide detector, which was offended because we had lost power.  I turned it off and went back to bed; such power outages are quite common out here after a storm.

But when we woke up at 2:30 am on Wednesday morning, we still had no power.  This was more unusual; the power company crews normally do an amazing job of fixing outages quickly.  For something to be out for five hours indicated a more serious problem than we usually experience.

So after some caffeination, around 4 am, Debbie and I jumped in our truck and went on a quest to find the source of the outage, and to see if we could get some progress information from the crew.  We drove all the way out of Lawson Valley to Skyline Truck Trail in complete darkness – nary a light to be seen anywhere along the route.  That was actually a bit eerie.  We continued up over the little knob until we could see the town of Jamul, which was lit up as usual.  And we saw three SDG&E (the local power company) trucks parked down near the stop sign.

I stopped and talked with the three crews, who were taking a break after finishing repairs on an outage near the church in Jamul.  They were unaware of an outage in Lawson Valley, but looked it up on a laptop computer.  From this same computer they were able to see where the outage affecting us was, and they were able to get status: good progress was being made, and they estimated a couple more hours until power was restored.  Back home we went, but first we took a slight detour to see the actual outage.  This was near the intersection of Lawson Valley Road and Lyons Vally Road, just south of Skyline Truck Trail.  When we got there, we could see a crew at work, high on a hill just northwest of the intersection.  We'd learned that the outage was caused by lightning striking and breaking the wires, and that high location would be exactly where you'd expect such an outage.

Our power came back on around 6:30 am, close enough to their estimate, nine hours after we lost it...

Really Wet – Soggy – Morning...

We got almost a third of an inch of rain last night, and more is forecast for today and tomorrow.  This certainly is a very odd “fire season” – but we love it!

The dogs took no notice of all the wetness.  They simply don't care.  The three field spaniels found a spot along the driveway with an irresistable smell – I had a great deal of trouble dragging them away from it.  They'd have been smelling it for hours if I let them.  That was one of those moments when I really wish I could talk with them.  What on earth are you smelling there, guys?

The new roof performed flawlessly, so far as we can tell.  No leaks apparent in the house.  The rain made a gentle sound on the metal roof, but the water gurgling down the downspouts was quite loud (there's a downspout right outside our bedroom window, which was open).

Yay!

Wet Doggy Morning...

This morning I woke as usual at 3 am, and stumbled out with the dogs for their morning walk.  It was foggy outside, with very limited visibility.  Everything was soaking wet from a night of drizzle (and we recorded 0.17 inches of precipitation, so it must have been nearly continuous all night).

The three field spaniels were all about the smells, enhanced greatly by the wet ground and air.  For our entire morning walk, those three brown noses never got more than an inch from the ground. 

Race, our border collie, was another matter altogether.  He couldn't care less about the wet ground and air.  For him, it's all about the pine cone.  He rushed out (off leash) when I opened the door, and scampered under the pine trees until he found a nice, freshly-fallen cone.  At one point he reluctantly lifted a leg to pee – reluctantly because this broke his concentration on the most important thing: staring at the pine cone, waiting for me to kick it.  I kicked it, and he happily chased off after it, boring through the mist like a bullet.  Once he caught it, he ran around the yard for five minutes of sheer joy over his pine cone victory.  Then he dropped it on the driveway and stared intensely at it, waiting for me to kick it again.

When it was time to come in, Race continued the pine cone game until he realized that I was about to go inside.  Then you could almost see the gears turning in his little head: “Uh oh!  We're about to go in!  And I need to poo!  I better go do it right now!!!”  And off he goes, running at about 100 miles per hour up the hill to his favorite spot under some manzanitas, poos in record time (the field spaniels can take up to 3 or 4 minutes at this, but Race is done in 10 seconds, tops).  Then he zooms even faster down the hill and up to the door, waiting to be let in.

Mornings just wouldn't be the same without the dogs...

Wetness in the Mountains...

Yesterday Debbie and I were planning to do a little four-wheeling in the valley just south of Corte Madera.  But as we got ready to leave, we noted that it was drizzling out, and threatening even more rain.  Since parts of that route are steep and rocky, and potentially difficult when wet, we decided to change plans.  Instead, we drove up the tiny little road from between Guatay and Pine Valley up to Laguna, paralleling the Nobel Canyon trail.

This drive brought some most unexpected scenery.  The clouds were moving from the coast inland, but as we drove up to Laguna we were in front of them.  As we got to vantage points where we could see to the west, we could see the clouds pouring through all the low spots surrounding Cuyamaca's three peaks.  The views were particularly nice as we drive north on Sunrise Highway approaching Cuyamaca Lake – glorious vistas with dramatic, moving clouds and mountains.  People were stopped all over the place to take photos (and naturally, I didn't have my camera!).  Truly beautiful.

Then we drove past Cuyamaca Lake and up Engineer Road (between Middle Peak and North Peak).  We took this west across the gap, and down to the intersection with Boulder Creek Road.  As we traversed this gap, we entered the clouds, and the vistas changed completely.  Most of the time we could see a few hundred yards, but sometimes when the clouds were thick, our world shrank to 100 feet or so in radius.  There was drizzle the entire time, and everything outside was completely soaked.  The colors and textures of fall in the chaparral were all changed from the stark, sun-drenched dry hues we're used to; instead, everything was in soft light, as if seen through a romantic photo filter.  All colors were subdued, the saturation reduced by the mists.  Most colors were darkened by the dampness.   The brown buckwheats were deep reddish-brown; the gray tree trunks almost black.  The color that stood out the most was the green mosses, awakened by the moisture.  We greatly enjoyed the views as we drove south toward Descanso.

American Kestrel

The best part of all, though, was something neither of us had anticipated.  The raptors that are normally soaring through the skies about the chaparral were all grounded by the mist.  Well, “perched” would be more accurate.  Debbie was spotting them at what seemed like 10 foot intervals, sitting up on top of burned pine tree skeletons, looking made.  Around one turn we got a particularly pleasant surprise: a small falcon sitting about 20 feet high in a tree right next to the road!  I passed it before I could stop, so I backed up until I was right next to it – and for a minute or so, it sat there staring us down.  It was an American Kestrel (as in the photo, which is not mine). After that, it flew to a tree perhaps 50' away, and we were able to view it for a little longer through binoculars.  Finally it left in disgust.  What a beautiful bird!

At the end of our delightful little trip today was the Descanso Junction Restaurant.  As it was Sunday night, that meant the fried chicken special.  As always, it was great.  Afterward we turned homeward, very content with our afternoon...

Succinct Statement of Our Objective...

Via my mom:

Oh, yes, please!

A German's View...

Interesting piece passed along by reader Jim M.:

I used to know a man whose family were German aristocracy prior to World War Two. They owned a number of large industries and estates. I asked him how many German people were true Nazis, and the answer he gave has stuck with me and guided my attitude toward fanaticism ever since.

“Very few people were true Nazis” he said, “but, many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.”

We are told again and again by “experts” and “talking heads” that Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unquantified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the specter of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam. The fact is, that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars world wide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honor kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. The hard quantifiable fact is, that the “peaceful majority” is the “silent majority” and it is cowed and extraneous.

Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. China’s huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people. The Average Japanese individual prior to World War 2 was not a war mongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of Killing that included the systematic killing of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet. And, who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery. Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were “peace loving”.

History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points. Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by the fanatics. Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don’t speak up, because like my friend from Germany, they will awake one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun. Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Bosnians, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others, have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late. As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts; the fanatics who threaten our way of life.

I've often pondered humanity's poor track record of learning from past experience (i.e., history). Never got any good answers, though...

Climate Change Skeptics: A Good Introduction...

Warren Meyer (of CoyoteBlog) has a column in Forbes that provides an excellent introduction into the skeptics view of current climate science.  A sample:

Skeptics, however, point out that the computer models were built by scientists who have only a fragmented, immature understanding of complex climate systems. Moreover, these scientists approached the models with the pre-conceived notion that CO2 is the main driver of temperatures, and so it is unsurprising that their models would show CO2 as the dominant factor.

In fact, the period 1978 to 1998 featured a number of other suspects that should have been considered as potentially contributing to warming. For example, the warm phase of several critical ocean cycles that have a big effect on surface temperatures, including the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, coincided with this period. Further, the second half of the 20th century saw far greater solar activity, as measured by sunspot numbers, than the first half of the century. Neither ocean cycles nor solar effects, nor a myriad of other factors we probably don’t even know enough to name, were built into the models. Even man’s changing land use has an effect on measured temperatures, as survey efforts have shown urban areas, which have higher temperatures than surrounding rural locations, expanding around our temperature measurement points and biasing measured temperatures upwards.

But go read the whole thing!

Such a Lovely Forecast...

Nothing but cool, humid, cloudy, rainy days in the forecast.  It's all foggy outside right now.  Fire seasons don't get any better than this!

What Has America Become?

Read this letter to the editor.  Via my brother Mark D.

Then re-read it just before you vote on November 2.

Billboard of the Day...

Via my brother Mark D.:

Oh, I don't know, Jimmy...it might be a tie!

Season's Greetings...

Via reader Jim M.:

T'was the night before elections
And all through the town
Tempers were flaring
Emotions all up and down

I, in my bathrobe
With a cat in my lap
had cut off the TV
tired of political clap-trap

When all of a sudden
There arose such a noise
I peered out my window
Saw Obama and his boys

They had come for my wallet
They wanted my pay
To give to the others
Who had not worked a day!

He snatched up my money
And quick as a wink
Jumped back on his bandwagon
As I gagged from the stink

He then rallied his henchmen
Who were pulling his cart
I could tell they were out
To tear my country apart!

On Fannie, on Freddie,
On Biden and Ayers!
On Acorn, On Pelosi
He screamed at the pairs!

They took off for his cause
And as they flew out of sight
I heard him laugh at the nation
Who wouldn't stand up and fight!

Please vote to throw the bums out on November 2.

Quote of the Day...

Thank God for Barack Obama!

From Gary Hubbell, writing at RightNetwork:

But Barack Obama has ripped the lid off a seething cauldron of dissatisfaction and unrest.

In his post he contends that Barack Obama is the best thing that's happened to America in a long time – a thought I've often had myself over the past few months.  Gary does a nice job articulating the reasoning...

Interplanetary Conclave of Light...

Unarian “polarities”

I have posted about the Unarians on several previous occasions.  By this time I've read quite a bit about them – a couple books, many web articles, etc.  I've visited their headquarters in El Cajon.  Learning more about them doesn't help me with my fundamental Unarian problem: I just cannot fathom how adult humans can actually believe this stuff.  In fact, the more I learn about them, the more they seem like a comedic parody – but they most decidedly are the real deal.  These people walk among us. 

Even more frighteningly, they can vote.

On October 9th and 10th (last weekend), they held their annual “Interplanetary Conclave of Light”.  This news article is clearly written by someone who has the same difficulty believing the Unarians as I do.  Here's one quote of particular interest to those who, like me, live in Lawson Valley:

...when the space brothers come, it will be in 33 different spaceships that will land one on top of the other on 60 acres of land near Jamul, Calif., a small town about 30 miles east of San Diego that is known for its rolling, rocky terrain.

You see, that 60 acres is just a mile or so from my home. We've visited it several times, looking for any signs of its specialness. I'm pretty sure that the only special thing about this particular plot of land is that at the time the Unarians bought it, it was very cheap.

But I can't get the Unarian's claim out of my brain – their claim that 33 spaceships are going to land here, one atop the other, to form a 33 spaceship tall tower over yonder. I can see where that tower would be through my living room window. This tower of light would dominate the view to the northwest of me.

I don't want a spaceship tower there, thank you very much. I like the glowing spaceship-free view I have right now.

Here's what that photo is about:

With that flourish, 33 Unarians came out from stage right and stage left. Each carried a banner with the name of a planet and its "polarity," the person who has been the main contact with the Unarians.

For instance, Susa is the polarity for Endinite, a planet that, a while back, suffered a series of wars that caused the people to be born with two extra arms growing out of their stomachs. The arms were useless, but after Susa contacted Uriel, the spiritual name of Unarius co-founder Ruth Norman, he was able to "raise the frequency" of the planet and get the arms back to normal.
For 27 years, the members of the Unarius Academy of Science, a UFO group based near San Diego, hold the Interplanetary Conclave of LIght, a two-day event celebrating Earth's admission into a Confederation with 32 other planets.

After the conclave, the Unarians made every effort to keep the frequencies high throughout the whole weekend with an open house at their center in El Cajon, Calif., that featured what Kennedy described as "some futuristic objects on display"; a demonstration of technology discovered by 19th century scientist Nikola Tesla that can supposedly supply the world with free energy; a past life therapy meeting; and what may have been the highlight: a mental transmission from a representative from one of the planets in the confederation, sent through one of the Unarians.

The central mystery for me remains – how on earth does one talk oneself into believing such utter and obvious rubbish?

And if you do believe in such rubbish, who are you voting for on November 2, and why (though I tremble to ask that last bit)?

Roof Update: It's Done!

While I was away, our roof contractor came (as promised) to finish the job.  We are just tickled pink with the roof itself, the way that our contractor did the work, and the way our contractor worked with us.

Which means, dear local readers, that I can now recommend him without reservation.  Here's the contact info for our contractor:

Bolt Sheet Metal Works
9445 Doheny Rd
Santee, CA  92071
619/449-5991

The proprietor (and sheet metal master craftsman) is Chris Lavin, and he can also be reached by email (but usually only in the evenings, as he's usually off at work sites during the day.  Chris' sons also sometimes work in the business, along with other employees.

Chris and his guys did a simply outstanding job for us, from our first contact with him right up to the finish.  We couldn't be more pleased...

Back Home Again...

And it sure is nice to be here.  I picked up another danged virus of some kind on the way home, but this one is nowhere near as bad as the last one.  I just feel slightly peaked, with a touch of a stuffy nose.  Not so bad...

As I write this, the sky is completely overcast and everything is wet from drizzle, and the forecast is for rainy conditions and cool temperatures.  Two weeks from now is the third anniversary of the awful Cedar and Harris fires, and the environmental conditions could hardly be more different.  That year we were getting serial serious Santa Anas (not one this year so far!), the fuel load in the chaparral was dry as a bone, and we had high temperatures and low humidity.  Fire danger crackled in the air.  This year you'd have a hard time igniting the chaparral around our home (though we can't be complacent, as this could change in just a few days of the wrong kind of weather).  For now, though, we can relax and be cheerful about the next-to-nonexistent firestorm risk.  Whew!

Our beautiful red metal roof is now finished – more on that in the next post!

Now You Will Pay...

Excellent Republican ad, via my sister-in-law Gina:

ClimateGate: New Zealand Fraud...

New Zealand's National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) issued a report claiming that New Zealand has been warming at the rate of nearly 1° per century.  This result independently supports the IPCC report.

A group of New Zealanders wanted to understand this better, and they knew that all the data used by NIWA was publicly available.  So they requested the data and did their own analysis (well worth reading as yet another debunking of the massive fraud that Hal Lewis cites).  Oops.  No statistically significant warming was evident in the raw data.  So how did NIWA come to the conclusion they did?  Why, they “adjusted” the data, of course!  Quoting the report:

The shocking truth is that the oldest readings have been cranked way down and later readings artificially lifted to give a false impression of warming, as documented below. There is nothing in the station histories to warrant these adjustments and to date Dr Salinger and NIWA have not revealed why they did this.

I'm not shocked. We've seen too much of this from the IPCC folks.

Follow the money, folks.  Evidence of warming in New Zealand translated directly into increased research grants for NIWA.  Follow the money...