Valles Marineris on Mars...

Via APOD, of course.  This is a marvel a little older than you might think – this image was constructed from a mosaic of Viking orbiter images taken in the '70s:

Noonan on Libya...

An interesting morning read...

On Approach to Tokoyo Airport During the Earthquake...

Via reader Dr. Simi L., this message from a pilot who was in the air, piloting a passenger jet, on final approach to Tokoyo airport when the earthquake hit a couple weeks ago:

I'm currently still in one piece, writing from my room in the Narita crew hotel.

It's 8am. This is my inaugural trans-pacific trip as a brand new, recently checked out, international 767 Captain and it has been interesting, to say the least, so far. I've crossed the Atlantic three times so far so the ocean crossing procedures were familiar.

By the way, stunning scenery flying over the Aleutian Islands. Everything was going fine until 100 miles out from Tokyo and in the descent for arrival. The first indication of any trouble was that Japan air traffic control started putting everyone into holding patterns. At first we thought it was usual congestion on arrival. Then we got a company data link message advising about the earthquake, followed by another stating Narita airport was temporarily closed for inspection and expected to open shortly (the company is always so positive).

From our perspective things were obviously looking a little different. The Japanese controller's anxiety level seemed quite high and he said expect "indefinite" holding time. No one would commit to a time frame on that so I got my copilot and relief pilot busy looking at divert stations and our fuel situation, which, after an ocean crossing is typically low.

It wasn't long, maybe ten minutes, before the first pilots started requesting diversions to other airports. Air Canada, American, United, etc. all reporting minimal fuel situations. I still had enough fuel for 1.5 to 2.0 hours of holding. Needless to say, the diverts started complicating the situation. Japan air traffic control then announced Narita was closed indefinitely due to damage. Planes immediately started requesting arrivals into Haneada, near Tokyo, a half dozen JAL and western planes got clearance in that direction but then ATC announced Haenada had just closed. Uh oh! Now instead of just holding, we all had to start looking at more distant alternatives like Osaka, or Nagoya.

One bad thing about a large airliner is that you can't just be-pop into any little airport. We generally need lots of runway. With more planes piling in from both east and west, all needing a place to land and several now fuel critical ATC was getting over-whelmed. In the scramble, and without waiting for my fuel to get critical, I got my flight a clearance to head for Nagoya, fuel situation still okay. So far so good. A few minutes into heading that way, I was "ordered" by ATC to reverse course. Nagoya was saturated with traffic and unable to handle more planes (read- airport full). Ditto for Osaka.

With that statement, my situation went instantly from fuel okay, to fuel minimal considering we might have to divert a much farther distance. Multiply my situation by a dozen other aircraft all in the same boat, all making demands requests and threats to ATC for clearances somewhere. Air Canada and then someone else went to "emergency" fuel situation. Planes started to heading for air force bases. The nearest to Tokyo was Yokoda AFB. I threw my hat in the ring for that initially. The answer - Yokoda closed! no more space.

By now it was a three ring circus in the cockpit, my copilot on the radios, me flying and making decisions and the relief copilot buried in the air charts trying to figure out where to go that was within range while data link messages were flying back and forth between us and company dispatch in Atlanta. I picked Misawa AFB at the north end of Honshu island. We could get there with minimal fuel remaining. ATC was happy to get rid of us so we cleared out of the maelstrom of the Tokyo region. We heard ATC try to send planes toward Sendai, a small regional airport on the coast which was later the one I think that got flooded by a tsunami.

Atlanta dispatch then sent us a message asking if we could continue to Chitose airport on the Island of Hokkaido, north of Honshu. Other Delta planes were heading that way. More scrambling in the cockpit - check weather, check charts, check fuel, okay. We could still make it and not be going into a fuel critical situation ... if we had no other fuel delays. As we approached Misawa we got clearance to continue to Chitose. Critical decision thought process. Let's see - trying to help company - plane overflies perfectly good divert airport for one farther away...wonder how that will look in the safety report, if anything goes wrong.

Suddenly ATC comes up and gives us a vector to a fix well short of Chitose and tells us to standby for holding instructions. Nightmare realized. Situation rapidly deteriorating. After initially holding near Tokyo, starting a divert to Nagoya, reversing course back to Tokyo then to re-diverting north toward Misawa, all that happy fuel reserve that I had was vaporizing fast. My subsequent conversation, paraphrased of course...., went something like this:

   "Sapparo Control - Delta XX requesting immediate clearance direct to Chitose, minimum fuel, unable hold."
   "Negative Ghost-Rider, the Pattern is full" <<< top gun quote <<<
   "Sapparo Control - make that - Delta XX declaring emergency, low fuel, proceeding direct Chitose"
   "Roger Delta XX, understood, you are cleared direct to Chitose, contact Chitose approach....etc...."

Enough was enough, I had decided to preempt actually running critically low on fuel while in another indefinite holding pattern, especially after bypassing Misawa, and played my last ace...declaring an emergency. The problem with that is now I have a bit of company paperwork to do but what the heck.

As it was - landed Chitose, safe, with at least 30 minutes of fuel remaining before reaching a "true" fuel emergency situation. That's always a good feeling, being safe. They taxied us off to some remote parking area where we shut down and watched a half dozen or more other airplanes come streaming in. In the end, Delta had two 747s, my 767 and another 767 and a 777 all on the ramp at Chitose. We saw two American airlines planes, a United and two Air Canada as well. Not to mention several extra Al Nippon and Japan Air Lines planes.

Post-script - 9 hours later, Japan air lines finally got around to getting a boarding ladder to the plane where we were able to get off and clear customs - that however, is another interesting story. By the way - while writing this - I have felt four additional tremors that shook the hotel slightly - all in 45 minutes.

Cheers, J.D.

Dogs and Winter...

Via my mom:

Morning Walk...

It was very wet outside this morning, as we got another half inch (1 cm) of rain last night.  It rained quite hard at times; the sound on our metal roof woke us up a couple times.  We had just over a half moon in the eastern sky, and it was clear overhead.  Down in the valley below us, a cloud moved slowly across, all lit up by the moon – quite beautiful. 

The dogs were all very quiet, noses down (even Race, the border collie – the smells were more interesting to him than pine cones this morning).  I couldn't smell a thing other than the usual chaparral scents of sage and similarly spicy plants.  The dogs all pulled in different directions, chasing down the latest interesting scent.  They managed to work about half of each leash into a gigantic knot, squeezing my fingers so tightly that I had trouble getting my hand free!

Debbie shocked me yesterday.  When I said goodbye to her in the morning, she was blond Debbie.  When she came home in the afternoon after seeing her hairdresser, she was dark brunette Debbie.  This is going to take some getting used to!  After 30 years of light-colored hair, all of a sudden my wife has dark hair.  It feels a bit like there's a stranger in the house who can mimic Debbie's voice and mannerisms perfectly.  It's a very odd and unexpectedly powerful feeling, from such a trivial change as hair color.

I suspect in 20 or 30 years it will feel normal to me.  Maybe...

Meghan Saves Bobby with a Pink Pistol...

Seriously.  You go, girl!

On Libya...

No time for a serious blog this morning, but here are a couple of interesting articles on Libya.  First, Niall Ferguson (one of my favorite writers on history and economics), and then TigerHawk with an article from StratFor and lots of linky goodness...

And Yet More Rain!

In the past 12 hours, we've had just over an inch (2.5 cm) of rain (click to enlarge the graph at right), and still more is in the forecast.  In fact, the forecast for the week ahead has the probability of rain at between 20% and 70% on each day.

We're having a beautiful beginning to our spring out here in the chaparral.  Everything is greener than we've seen in quite a few years, all thanks to the rains, of course.  Our yard, normally an arboretum of weeds, is now covered with a mixture of grass and other plants we haven't seen for years – and hardly any of the mustard and other noxious invaders of the dry years.

In the past few days, one of the signature plants of the San Diego chaparral – the blue ceanothus species – have erupted into flower at our altitude (around 2200', or 700 meters).  Our hillsides have been painted blue.  Last night on the way home from dinner, Debbie spotted a particularly gorgeous patch along Lyons Valley Road, just south of Barrett Lake.  For the next couple of weeks these will be in full display.

In most years, by late March we have seen the end of our seasonal rains.  This year's rains are continuing right into April, it seems.  Woo hoo!

Unemployment Index...

It's been a while since I've posted this.  Obviously, it has changed very much for the better (click to enlarge).  As always, I don't really know what the search index is telling me, but nonetheless I find it quite interesting...

Amazing What You Can Do...

...in a modern web browser.  A JavaScript stats package, including graphing...

Tyranny of the Extroverts...

Lots of this resonates with me.  Follow the links, too...

Libya...

For a civilian observer, the fog of war is firmly in place.  I don't really have much of an idea what's actually going on over there.  Some number of U.S. Navy ships are involved, and at least on British submarine.  Similarly, there are French, British, and U.S. aircraft involved, and possibly some from other nations as well.  The official press releases are mainly going out of their way to stress the multinational nature of this attack, but one credible report has the operation as being comprised nearly entirely of U.S. forces, and U.S. led.  I'm pretty sure we launched a whole bunch of cruise missiles (100 to 114, depending on the report) and apparently (two reports) we have stealth bombers over Tripoli.  The French aircraft are visible and active over Benghazi.  That's about all the actual news content I've seen.

Ghadaffi is, of course, ranting like the madman he is.  He claims to have armed men, women, and children with heavy automatic weapons, grenades, mortars, rockets, etc.  He says that he will push the invaders (who are either after his oil or exterminating Islam, he says) off the earth.  Good luck with that, pal.

Now that we're engaged in Libya, I wonder mainly what our criteria for success are.  Are we going to limit our involvement to the literal wording of U.N. Resolution 1973 – to protect Libyan civilians?  Or are we committed to “regime change”?  And who are these rebels, anyway?  It's hard to conceive of a replacement for Ghadaffi that would actually be worse than him, I admit – but what does come after?  I have no idea.  In Tunisia and Egypt, the rebels were clearly asking for democracy.  In Libya, I simply don't know what they were asking for.

Another big question mark for me: our intervention in Libya represents an enormous shift in Middle Eastern strategy.  We have not intervened in a Middle Eastern country's internal affairs for a long time.  Are we now saying to the Middle Eastern thugocracies “Look at Libya!  Ghadaffi crossed a line that we will not let you cross.  Pay attention, or you could be next!”  And if we're not saying that, then what's so special about Libya that caused us to decide to intervene?

What I'm really afraid of – the subtext of the preceding paragraph – is that the Obama administration has no overarching strategy for Middle Eastern policy at all.  Instead, I fear, they're simply being reactive – and mainly to polling data.  I fear that the Obama acolytes saw this as an opportunity for Obama to become a “war president” in his own right (instead of a reluctant caretaker to inherited wars), and to earn support for the 2012 elections that way.  That's not a Middle Eastern strategy, and down that road leads disaster.  That's my fear.  I hope I'm wrong.

There is one thing we can know for sure, even without news reports:

Brave soldiers in all three parties to the conflict are in harm's way.  Most of these soldiers are apolitical, and are just doing their duty as they see it.  Some of them will be injured and killed in the next few days.  On all sides, families will be grieving.  All because of one nutcase thug.  It isn't fair, it isn't just ... but it's the way this crazy world works.  Despite the best intentions of the progressives, who think diplomacy and negotiation can settle any conflict – sometimes that just isn't so.  Sometimes it comes down to brutally applied force of arms...

Now We're Talking!

Flight and hotel reservation systems have always been frustratingly complicated.  It actually helps a lot to be a software engineer when you're trying to navigate the mainstream reservations web sites.  It always seems way to hard to find what you're actually looking for.

If you share my impressions of those web sites, I recommend checking out Hipmunk.  It's the first such web site I've ever used where my reaction was a smile of appreciation, instead of feeling an incipient headache coming on.  So far, at least, they only have flight and hotel reservation – but those two things are done beautifully.  There are lots of features about those sites that I like, but I'm going to call out two in particular that really, really resonated:

First, by default (you can change this) flights are presented to you sorted by “agony”, with the least agonizing flights on top.  What do they mean by agony?  It's a combination of price, layover time, and number of connections.  I'd say that's a pretty accurate reflection of my agony index!  In every trial search I made, the flights I'd pick were right at the top of the list.  Perfect.

Second, when you're looking for hotels you're presented with a map of the general area, very much like a Google map view.  A selector allows you to overlay one of several “heat map&rdash;.  These show things like tourist attractions, shopping, nightlife, and ... “vice” (bars, casinos, and other adult entertainment).  The result is a beautiful and simple way to choose a hotel by its proximity to what you care about.  There are also very simple filters so you can see just the cheap hotels (or the expensive ones), just the ones with breakfast, etc.  But those heat maps are just perfect – simple, visual navigation of what you can choose from.

Bravo, Hipmunk!

Crying in Rage...

Sad story about the risks of manned space exploration amplified by the incompetence of Soviet socialism...

Yes, I realize it's on NPR's web site...

The UN Takes Action?!?

I confess myself totally amazed by this.  How is it possible that the UN could dawdle for nearly 20 years on the much more dangerous and cruel Saddam Hussein, and then act so quickly with respect to Ghaddafi?  There's something going on here that I just don't understand. 

The French leadership in the UN was notable, both for its difference from French anti-leadership with respect to Iraq, and for its clarity and principled basis compared to what the U.S. had on offer.  The French had huge financial entanglements with Saddam's Iraq, and that may explain much of the former.  The latter is simply shameful.

Now I wonder, like the rest of the world, what we are actually going to collectively do about Ghaddafi...

Earthquake Liquification Video...

One of the most under-appreciated effects of earthquakes is soil liquification.  In certain areas (including many in California), this phenomenon is actually the single largest risk factor to man-made structures.  This video shows one of the visible symptoms: surface water appearing out of nowhere.  What it doesn't show is damage-causing mode – the loss of stiffness in the soil, turning it essentially into a liquid, removing all support for structures built upon it.

The most interesting stuff starts about halfway through the video, so be patient:

RSA Hacked: Not Good...

But not catastrophic, either, if I choose to believe this message.  I'm looking for Bruce Schneier's take on this.  Meanwhile, here's the best analysis I've seen so far.

The RSA SecurID system is, I believe, the most widely deployed two-factor authentication system.  I've worked at several companies that use it (including my current company), and many of our customers use it as well.  Any practical compromise of this system would be quite a large security hole...

MESSENGER Is Looking Good!

I stayed up (late for me) last night, listening to the webcast of MESSENGER's orbital insertion burn.  When I heard the operations team cheering and applauding, I went to bed.  This morning I woke up and scanned the news – and it was all good.  Every report I read says that the orbital insertion burn was “nominal”, which is NASA-speak for “perfect”.  All systems appear to be operational, and MESSENGER is now going into it's week or so of preparation for science operations.

Woo hoo!  And congratulations, MESSENGER team.  This has to be a happy morning for all of you...

Rare Cat Not Quite So Rare as Thought...

The Andean cat's range is considerably larger than had previously been thought.  This is very good news for the highly endangered species...

MESSENGER's Big Day...

At 5:45 pm PST today, MESSENGER will start its 15 minute long orbital insertion burn.  With any luck at all, after over 6 years of incredibly complex travel, MESSENGER will be safely parked in a highly elliptical orbit around the planet Mercury – the first explorer from earth to have done so.  The last time any explorer visited Mercury was on March 16, 1975 – almost exactly 36 years ago – when Mariner 10 made its third and final high-speed fly-by.

I remember Mariner 10 quite well, as I thought its pioneering use of the “gravitational slingshot” technique was both clever and fascinating.  MESSENGER is itself a rather extreme example of that same technique in action; without it, MESSENGER's fuel budget would have been prohibitively large.

The scientists and engineers of the MESSENGER project must be very excited right about now.  They've been waiting for this moment since MESSENGER's launch on August 3, 2004, some six and a half years ago.

Fare thee well, MESSENGER!