Estonia vs. America...

As long-time blog readers know, I have visited little Estonia many times.  When I first visited in 1992, it was an economic wreck – only in its first year as an ex-Soviet satellite nation, and struggling with basic concepts of capitalism.  Over the years that I visited there (last time in 2004), the country adopted an enlightened tax policy, established the firm rule of law, and enacted legislation that created a very business-friendly environment.  Somehow, miraculously, they've also had a series of leaders that were not only not disastrous, but in some cases were downright visionary.

So it's interesting to look at how they fared in the recession of 2008:

In the midst of a world embroiled in economic turmoil, a few nations have managed to do surprisingly well—among them, Estonia. After near economic collapse during the 2008–2009 financial crisis, the country has managed to successfully bounce back with substantial GDP growth, a vibrant trade environment, and a notable budget surplus.

I'm not surprised, actually.

Here's a bet for you: Estonia will be amongst the first to opt out of the European Union.  The looming disaster there is going to look very ominous to one of the few high-performance economies in the EU – and given their tiny size, it's easy to predict that they'll be asked to shoulder a completely disproportionate share of the EU's miseries...

Humming Hummers...

The little fellow at right is a male black-chinned hummingbird.  I managed to catch him at the right angle to see the bright purple iridescent band around his neck (at most angles, it looks black).  This is a very common hummingbird around here.  It's slightly smaller than the other three species we see, and vastly more aggressive.

Many of the individual male black-chinned hummers have another interesting habit: they eat from our feeders without ever landing on them.  You can see this behavior at left.  This is the same individual shown hovering above right – but note that from this slightly different angle you can not see the purple band.  Sometimes they'll hover in the same position as at left for 45 seconds, apparently guzzling the whole time.  It's avian mid-air refueling!  Only very rarely do we see any of the other species exhibiting this behavior...

An Accidental Sunflower...

Out near our bird feeders we have a small sunflower plant, currently sporting about a dozen blooms.  Almost certainly it sprouted from the “sterilized” sunflower seed we buy as bird food.  We haven't pulled it for two reasons: we enjoy the cheerful flowers, and the birds use it for both perching and food.  We've seen about eight species on it, but primarily hummingbirds and house finches...

Oh, Happy Dogs!

How do you get four bad dogs to sit still for a moment?  You train them.  In particular, you teach them that they have to sit still, until called, if they want to get their afternoon meal.  And trust me, they really want their afternoon meal!  Left-to-right (click to enlarge), meet Race, Mo'i, Miki, and Lea.  All sitting oh-so-nicely until Debbie puts their food down and calls them, one at a time.

What happens after that?  Well, if you look at this picture (at left) closely you can pick up some distinct differences in their behavior.  This photo was taken at 1/100th of a second.  Note that Race (upper right hand corner) is blurred – that's because he eats as though his life depends on getting his kibble into his stomach as quickly as possible.  He attacks his food like a rabid badger.  But Miki (lower left) actually eats even faster than Race – but he's much more methodical and efficient about it, like a furry vacuum cleaner, slurping up the food.  Then he takes his time licking his bowl until it gleams like a freshly-detailed car.  Mo'i (lower right) attacks his food with vigor, but with much thought.  Stuff goes everywhere while he's eating, so some bits of kibble pass through his mouth multiple times.  From his perspective, that's probably a good thing.  Finally there's Lea (upper left).  She eats her food at about 1/3 the speed of the others.  She pauses frequently to growl preemptively at her fellow munchers, and we think that's her main pleasure in eating.  Eventually, after everybody else wanders away, she'll finish her meal.  We have no doubt that she has regrets when the meal is finished – not because the food is gone, but because the opportunity to growl at the others has ended...

An Old Lady's Problem...

Via my mom:

When I went to lunch today, I noticed an old lady sitting on a park bench sobbing her eyes out. I stopped and asked her what was wrong. She said, 'I have a 22 year old husband at home. He makes love to me every morning and then gets up and makes me pancakes, sausage, fresh fruit and freshly ground coffee.' I said, 'Well, then why are you crying?'

She said, 'He makes me homemade soup for lunch and my favorite brownies and then makes love to me for half the afternoon. I said, 'Well, why are you crying?'

She said, 'For dinner he makes me a gourmet meal with wine and my favorite dessert and then makes love to me until 2:00 a.m.' I said,'Well, why in the world would you be crying?'

She said, 'I can't remember where I live!'

My mom says: “I want one of those!”

All at Once...

Attack all viri in one fell swoop?  If they can make this work, it will most definitely change the world...

The Great Orator?

Peggy Noonan does a takedown of Obama's oratorical self-image.  The conclusion:

The president has been obsessing on Ronald Reagan the past few months, referring to him in private and attempting to use him to buttress his position in public. They say Republicans can't get over Reagan, but really it's Democrats who aren't over him, and who draw the wrong lessons from his success. Reagan himself never bragged about his ability to convince the American people. He'd never point a finger and say: "I'll go to the people and grind you to dust." He thought speaking was a big part of leadership, but only part, and in his farewell address he went out of his way to say he never thought of himself as a great communicator. He thought he simply communicated great things—essentially, the vision of the founders as applied to current circumstances.

Democrats were sure Reagan was wrong, so they explained his success to themselves by believing that it all came down to some kind of magical formula involving his inexplicably powerful speeches. They misdefined his powers and saddled themselves with an unrealistic faith in the power of speaking.

But speeches aren't magic. A speech is only as good as the ideas it advances. Reagan had good ideas. Obama does not.

The debt ceiling crisis revealed Mr. Obama's speeches as rhetorical kryptonite. It is the substance that repels the listener.

Zing!  That's gotta hurt...

A Moment With My Dog...

Yesterday I worked from home (something I do on most Wednesdays).  Early in the afternoon, I felt like a cup of tea.  I put the pot on to boil, and while I waited, I played with the dogs.  Race (our youngest, a border collie) was being unusually affectionate.  Normally he's a non-stop player – wants me to throw a toy, wrassle with him, or some other kind of active play.  But yesterday he acted more like one of our field spaniels, wanting some attention.

So I sat down on the floor and gave him a hug.  He gazed at me with adoring eyes, tongue dangling as usual, and leaning into me.  While I was enjoying this moment of communion with my dog, I noted a feeling of dampness on my leg, near my ankle.  Then I heard something like the distant tinkling of water being poured.  So I looked down at my leg, and...my dog was pissing on me.

Not just a drip or two, either.  Nope.  A full-on, let-it-all-out, completely engaged piss.  Directly onto my leg.  Still with the adoring look in his eyes as he gazed happily into my face.

WTF?

None of our dogs have ever done anything like this to me before.  Debbie's theory is that for whatever reason, he had to go really, really badly.  I'm not so sure myself...

A Google search on “my dog pissed on me” yielded over 15 million hits.  Clearly I'm not the first one this has happened to!

Ya Think?

A Gift for Your Liberal Friends...

You can buy them here.

Icons for Anything?

I tried searching for five things that I thought would be unlikely (like a tractor) – and in all five cases, there were multiple icons in the database.

These come from The Noun Project.  Here's their mission statement:

The Noun Project collects, organizes and adds to the highly recognizable symbols that form the world's visual language, so we may share them in a fun and meaningful way.

The contributors to this project sure put a lot of work into it!

All the icons are free, by the way.

My Work Here is Done...

Via my mom:

Ouch...

9,800 Feet Down...

Imagine being almost two miles under the Earth's surface.  A group of geologists recently visited the bottom of the world's deepest mine (copper/zinc), in Ontario, Canada.  They came back with photos and an interesting article...

Where's Your Budget, Mr. President?

Paul Ryan, in today's WSJ, asks the question.  A sample:

There is a better way—structural reforms that empower patients with greater choices and increase the role of competition in the health-care marketplace. The budget passed by the House of Representatives in April, "The Path to Prosperity," outlined the beginnings of such an approach by repealing the president's health-care law and proposing reforms that would make Medicare and Medicaid stronger and solvent for current and future generations.

In other words, we've put our cards on the table: According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), our plan puts the federal budget on the path to balance without resorting to job-destroying tax hikes. It will eliminate the shadow of debt that is discouraging job creation while advancing pro-growth tax reforms to get the economy moving again.

By contrast, the president and his party's leaders have refused to submit specific, credible budget plans that tackle health-care costs while restoring economic growth. Unwilling to reconsider their failed bureaucratic approaches to health and retirement security, the Democrats can only propose tax increases, and lots of them.

We need more Paul Ryans in Congress...

The Horrible Mess from the BP Oil Spill...

I'm sure you remember all the screaming and hollering from just about everybody, a year or so ago, when the BP oil well was spewing millions of gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico.  It seemed like the ultimate environmental disaster.  Numerous scientists were predicting things like 20 years of tainted, inedible fish and shellfish from the Gulf, or even the complete collapse of the Gulf's food chain and hundreds of years to recover.

But then a funny thing happened.  They lost the oil. That is, the scientists couldn't find the giant blob of oil that should have been left just a few weeks after the well was finally capped.  At first the assumption was that they really had simply lost it – couldn't find it with their instruments.  After all, the Gulf is a biggish place.  Then we heard that the oil must have fallen to the bottom and slithered to the lowest places in the Gulf, the hardest ones to explore.  But when they looked, it wasn't there.  In fact, wherever they looked, there was no oil.  The Gulf's recovery from the oil spill is already nearly complete, just one year later. 

What happened? 

I've been waiting for the first reports to come in from scientists who got past their embarrassment and actually figured it out.  Here's the first I've seen, and it says, basically, the microbes ate the oil.  Much, much faster than anyone predicted.

Mother Nature is an awesome lady...

The Debt-Ceiling Deal...

According to Bill McGurn (the lead):

When it comes to Murphy's Law—the idea that anything that can go wrong, will—we Irish have our corollary: Murphy was an optimist.

Even from this sunny perspective, it's hard to look at the debt-ceiling compromise and see it as anything but a conservative victory. It's not just that Speaker of the House John Boehner succeeded in imposing some conditions in exchange for an increase in the debt ceiling. It's that the deal has Democrats, including the president, essentially signing on to the Republican framework for defining the Beltway's budget problem: spending that is too high rather than taxes that are too low.

Dawn at Vesta...

The Dawn spacecraft has been inserted into orbit around the asteroid Vesta, and this is the first (of many!) science photos to be returned (as usual, click to enlarge).  Dawn is the first spacecraft to be completely reliant on a super-efficient ion propulsion system (instead of a chemical rocket) – not so long ago, these could only be found in science fiction.  You could fairly call this mission a proof of the system's viability...

National Creditworthiness...

Thomson-Reuters has an interesting (and, to me, surprising) infographic:

As usual, click to enlarge.  Lots of countries rated on here surprised me, in both directions. 

Standards...

Scott Adams nails it again – most hardware or software engineers will instantly recognize the uncomfortable truths he captures in three succinct frames:

 

Excellent, Mr. Adams...

I Don't Thought So!