Jesus is Watching You...

Via reader Simi L., who says this is one of his favorites:

A burglar broke into a house one night. He shined his flashlight around, looking for valuables when a voice in the dark said "Jesus knows you're here."

He nearly jumped out of his skin, clicked his flashlight off, and froze. When he heard nothing more, after a bit, he shook his head and continued. Just as he pulled the stereo out so he could disconnect the wires, clear as a bell he heard "Jesus is watching you"'

Freaked out, he shined his light around frantically, looking for the source of the voice. Finally, in the corner of the room, his flashlight beam came to rest on a parrot.

"Did you say that?" he hissed at the parrot.

"Yep", the parrot confessed, then squawked, "I'm just trying to warn you that he is watching you."

The burglar relaxed. "Warn me, huh? Who in the world are you?"

"Moses," replied the bird.

"Moses?" the burglar laughed. "What kind of people would name a bird Moses?"

"The kind of people that would name a Rottweiler Jesus."

Parrot 1.
Burglar 0.

This is So True!

Via Amy L.:

Evolution at Work...

Debbie came up with the tagline:

A Musical Surprise...

I'd sure like to have witnessed this:

Another Lovely Day...

It's cold here today; the kind of day we used to call “raw”.  The temperature has been around 43°F (5°C) all day, the humidity has been high most of the day, and the wind is howling.  We got almost a quarter inch of rain last night (but no more expected for at least a week, dang it).

So it was the perfect day for soup.  Debbie and I made tlapeno, a clear-broth Mexican chicken soup with garbanzo beans, carrots, potatoes, and rice.  The broth is flavored with smoked chipotle peppers, and we serve it with a topping of cubed avocado, chopped fresh cilantro, and thinly sliced green onions.  For ours, we substituted turkey meat and homemade turkey stock.  Wonderful stuff!

We had fun making it, too – not least because of the assistance of our four-strong canine cleanup crew.  For example, as I was preparing the carrots, the dogs ate the carrot ends I cut off before they could hit the floor.  They didn't like the potato peels very well, but just about everything else was a hit – even the cilantro!

Yesterday the day was so lovely that we changed our plans and headed up for one of our favorite drives: forest road 14S05 from Pine Valley to Laguna Mountain.  This one-lane paved road starts off in some of the prettiest sagebrush country around, and wends up over a few miles through various chaparral and riparian scenes, including a square mile or so of ground-cover manzanita that are only a couple of feet tall.  Eventually it ends up in the pine forests of Laguna's heights.

Before we turned onto 14S05, though, we checked to see if Frosty Burger in Pine Valley was open.  And it was!  That meant we could enjoy a treat: the best fish sandwiches we've ever found in San Diego, along with the best french fries.  Frosty Burger is a little mom-and-pop shop that makes great old-fashioned fast food: burgers, shakes (including malts), french fries – and an unreasonably good fish sandwich made with cod.  Yum!

By the time we got home, we weren't hungry enough to make a meal.  But we had previously purchased a pint of beautiful blackberries.  So I whipped up a zabaglione sauce (about 5 minutes work if you've never done it, and a first-class dessert) and we had zabaglione sauce over those luscious blackberries.  Good enough to make your brains fall out!

The zabaglione recipe calls for four egg yolks, which meant we had four leftover egg whites.  What to do with them?  Why, whip them together with a little heavy cream and some nutmeg, and you've got the best dog treat ever invented!  I did that, poured it into the dog dishes, and stood back to watch four dogs try to inhale their treat.  Happy dogs!

What Your Computer Does When You Leave It Alone...

Via my mom: go here and click on play.

Our Thanksgiving Day...

Usually we spend Thanksgiving Day with friends and family, at home (whether ours or someone else's).  This year we did something completely different.

For starters, we got up before dawn and headed for our local mountains to see if we could spot some wildlife.  We didn't do so well on the wildlife front, but we did see some unexpected beauty caused by the combination of rain and sub-freezing weather.  Our drive took us up the short road to Stonewall Mine (in Cuyamaca State Park), through large meadows where we often spot deer and bobcats.  Yesterday we saw the wintry scene at right: thick frost on all the plants in the meadow.  It was melting before our eyes from the sun that had popped over the horizon just a few minutes before we got there.

Further along that same road, we came to a low split-rail fence that was particularly pretty (at left).  Below you'll find a few close-ups that are interesting for the ice crystals that appear on the grain of the wood (some of which you can see at left).  The temperature outside was about 30°F (about -1°C) – very cold for us Southern Californians!

Later we drove up to Laguna Mountain.  There we saw something quite unexpected, and very difficult to capture in a photograph – the trees and bushes were covered in a thin layer (about 1/8", or 3mm) of ice that was as transparent as lead crystal glass.  What really made this stand out is that the northern flanks of Laguna Mountain all burned three years ago, and there are vast stands of the trunks and branches of burnt, dead trees and shrubs.  These were all coated with ice – and they were backlit by the early morning sun as we drove south on the Sunrise Highway.  The result was large shiny patches and stripes all over the mountains and hills.

Debbie and I struggled for a while to explain why these shiny patches had suddenly appeared – but then we drove past a stand of ice-coated manzanita skeletons, and then we understood.  The photo at right shows the lighting effects of the ice, though not very well.  Try to imagine what this would look like if I had taken a good photograph...then multiply that by 100 billion or so, and you'll have an idea what we were looking at.

We finished our drive by about 10 am, and now we were hungry.  Debbie made some delicious buckwheat pancakes (from 100% buckwheat flour, easy to buy on the Internet these days).  We slopped some excellent maple syrup on them and had ourselves a grand breakfast.  Later in the day, when we once again got hungry, we made ourselves a real treat: pan-fried eastern scallops (just butter and garlic – yum!), a casserole-like accompaniment made with bell peppers, mushrooms, sharp cheddar cheese, breadcrumbs, and milk, and rice.

The rest of the day we just relaxed, had a little wine, and were generally lazy and useless.  A wonderful day!

A few more photos from our drive:

SSH Commando...

25 geekly SSH beauties...

Flaming Nebulae!

As always, click to enlarge. From APOD, of course.

TSA Meets Lady Liberty...

Yup, that pretty much says it...

Nissan Leaf's EPA Gas Mileage Rating...

The Obama administration recently gave the Nissan Leaf plug-in electric vehicle a mileage rating of 99 MPG.  That makes it look very good compared to almost any gasoline-powered vehicle.  But what does an MPG rating even mean on an electric vehicle?  And is it a fair comparison of the energy consumption of the Nissan Leaf to a gasoline-powered vehicle?

Many folks are skeptical of the benefits of all-electric vehicles.  In fact, there are very good reasons to wonder about the wisdom of producing them at all.  This debate is completely overshadowed, however, by the loud support that all-electric vehicles get from the usual suspects in the environmental wacko world, and from the Obama adminstration and their lapdog lamestream media. 

So what's the actual truth here?  Warren Meyer, of Coyoteblog fame, has an excellent analysis in the current issue of Forbes.  If you're curious (and you should be, as your tax dollars are subsidizing GM's Volt), read it and understand...

Public Sector Jobs Growing the Economy?

Why creating public sector jobs is useless for growing the economy:

The Fake Taliban Negotiator...

IowaHawk has the inside scoop.  Put down your morning beverage first, swallow your last gulp, then read...

If You're Traveling Over Thanksgiving...

Buck Howdy is thinking about you:




Meanwhile, we're thankful to be staying home all four days of this holiday (except for an excursion into our local mountains this morning)...

Blue vs. Red...

For the past 100 years or so, U.S. politics have been essentially a contest between two political parties: Republicans and Democrats.  While other parties and independent candidates have most certainly run, not one of them has ever achieved even political importance, much less dominance.

The “movie” below shows graphically which parts of the country voted for Republicans (red) and for Democrats (blue).  The saturation of the color represents the degree of dominance.  The movie starts around 1920 and ends in 2008.  It would be interesting indeed to see this movie extended to include the 2010 elections!

Settled Science...

The term “settled science” appears in the IPCC reports and has become a key catch-phrase in the AGW debates.  The basic notion put forth by AGW proponents is that the (alleged) consensus of “professional climatologists” must be true, as the magnitude of the consensus indicates that all scientific debate on the topic has been “settled”.  Ergo, to all skeptics, they say STFU.

Well, anyone even modestly acquainted with the history of science knows that there are many, many examples of “settled science” (using the notion described above to define the term) that turned out later to be bogus.  One of my favorite examples is from geology, where in my lifetime the theory of plate tectonics completely overturned the “settled science” of stationary continents. 

This morning I came across a delightful list of such examples.  Many of the entries were reminders for me, such as the relatively recent discovery that stomach ulcers are caused by bacteria (but the previous “settled science” attributed them to stress).  Many other entries were entirely new to me.  The simple existence of this (eminently verifiable) list is a wonderful refutation of the AGW proponents notion of “settled science” – and a reminder of the permanent importance of skepticism to science...

The More I See of this Guy...

...the more impressed I am.

Very Cool – But a Nightmare for Some Folks...

Flying snakes.

Oh, Boy...

Most of my readers know that I work in the software industry.  This industry has the rare good fortune to suffer only the occasional bout of government interference.  That may be about to change.  I'd say that the chances of the government doing a good job at this, without undue burden on software companies, is approximately the same chance as the Post Office offering friendly and effective customer service, or the TSA providing real security instead of security theatre.  If this bill passes, you can bet that software innovation will gradually migrate to a friendlier locale...

Rainy Morning...

Up at 3 am as usual, and out with the dogs for our morning walk at 3:20 am.  When I opened our front door, I was surprised to hear a light patter of raindrops on our roof.  The dogs, of course, couldn't possibly care less whether it was wet outside.  They bounded out, happily, to do their morning business – and came back in only reluctantly.

It is amazing just how wet a dog can get on a five minute walk!  You'd think our mutts had been swimming...