The Next Bubble?

Quite a few smart people are predicting that student loans will be the next big asset bubble to pop and splatter us all with the detritus.  Some are saying it has already started...

Narratives...

Peggy Noonan on the political narratives of the 2012 Presidential hopefuls:

Here's the problem: There is no story. At the end of the day, there is only reality. Things work or they don't. When they work, people notice, and say it. 

Would the next president like a story? Here's one. America was anxious, and feared it was losing the air of opportunity that had allowed it to be what it was—expansive, generous, future-trusting. It was losing faith in its establishments and institutions. And someone came out of that need who led—who was wise and courageous and began to turn the ship around. And we saved our country, and that way saved the world. 

There's a narrative for you, the only one that matters. Go be a hero of that story. It will get around. It will bubble up.

Read the whole thing.  Sure is nice to have the old Peggy back...

Another One Bites the Dust...

Anwar al-Awlaki is dead, the means unspecified (not that it really matters)...

Coffee! Now!

Via colleague Aleck L., a poster that instantly made me think of Debbie.  For some reason.

Phone Outage...

Way out here in the nether regions of Lawson Valley, we had a telephone outage yesterday.  We didn't find out what the cause was until Debbie stopped and talked with the repair crew.  It seems that some thieves, night before last, climbed ladders up the utility poles, cut through the phone cable between several poles, and made off with the wire to sell as scrap copper.  The chart at right shows the motivation: the price of copper is roughly four times what it was in 2000, though in the past few days copper prices (like those of nearly all commodities) has been plunging.

Gophers aren't bad enough?  We have to have copper thieves, too??

Did You Know?

This was just too good to not share.  I have no idea (and neither does Snopes) whether this story, allegedly written by a rancher, is true – but it is plausible.  And damned funny.  By email from a friend in Estonia who prefers to remain anonymous:

I had this idea that I was going to rope a deer, put it in a stall, feed it up on corn for a couple of weeks, then kill it and eat it. The first step in this adventure was getting a deer. I figured that since they congregated at my cattle feeder and do not seem to have much fear of me when we are there (a bold one will sometimes come right up and sniff at the bags of feed while I am in the back of the truck not 4 feet away) that it should not be difficult to rope one, get up to it and toss a bag over its head (to calm it down) then hog tie it and transport it home.

I filled the cattle feeder then hid down at the end with my rope. The cattle, who had seen the roping thing before, stayed well back. They were not having any of it. After about 20 minutes my deer showed up…3 of them. I picked out a likely looking one, stepped out from the end of the feeder, and threw my rope. The deer just stood there and stared at me. I wrapped the rope around my waist and twisted the end so I would have a good hold. The deer still just stood and stared at me, but you could tell it was mildly concerned about the whole rope situation. I took a step towards it. It took a step away. I put a little tension on the rope and received an education.

The first thing that I learned is that while a deer may just stand there looking at you funny while you rope it, they are spurred to action when you start pulling on that rope. That deer EXPLODED.

The second thing I learned is that pound for pound, a deer is a LOT stronger than a cow or a colt. A cow or a colt in that weight range I could fight down with a rope with some dignity. A deer, no chance. That thing ran and bucked and twisted and pulled. There was no controlling it and certainly no getting close to it. As it jerked me off my feet and started dragging me across the ground, it occurred to me that having a deer on a rope was not nearly as good an idea as I originally imagined. The only up side is that they do not have as much stamina as many animals. A brief 10 minutes later, it was tired and not nearly as quick to jerk me off my feet and drag me when I managed to get up. It took me a few minutes to realize this, since I was mostly blinded by the blood flowing out of the big gash in my head.

At that point I had lost my taste for corn fed venison. I just wanted to get that devil creature off the end of that rope. I figured if I just let it go with the rope hanging around its neck, it would likely die slow and painfully somewhere. At the time, there was no love at all between me and that deer. At that moment, I hated the thing and I would venture a guess that the feeling was mutual. Despite the gash in my head and the several large knots where I had cleverly arrested the deer's momentum by bracing my head against various large rocks as it dragged me across the ground, I could still think clearly enough to recognize that there was a small chance that I shared some tiny amount of responsibility for the situation we were in, so I didn't want the deer to have to suffer a slow death. I managed to get it lined up to back in between my truck and the feeder…a little trap I had set beforehand. Kind of like a squeeze chute. I got it to back in there and started
moving up so I could get my rope back.

Did you know that deer bite? They do! I never in a million years would have thought that a deer would bite somebody so I was very surprised when I reached up there to grab that rope and the deer grabbed hold of my wrist. Now, when a deer bites you, it is not like being bit by a horse where they just bite you and then let go. A deer bites you and shakes its head…almost like a pit bull. They bite HARD and it hurts. The proper thing to do when a deer bites you is probably to freeze and draw back slowly. I tried screaming and shaking instead. My method was ineffective. It seems like the deer was biting and shaking for several minutes, but it was likely only several seconds. I, being smarter than a deer (though you may be questioning that claim by now) tricked it. While I kept it busy tearing the bejesus out of my right arm, I reached up with my left hand and pulled that rope loose.

That was when I got my final lesson in deer behavior for the day. Deer will strike at you with their front feet. They rear right up on their back feet and strike right about head and shoulder level, and their hooves are surprisingly sharp. I learned a long time ago that when an animal like a horse strikes at you with their hooves and you can't get away easily, the best thing to do is try to make a loud noise and make an aggressive move towards the animal. This will usually cause them to back down a bit so you can escape. This was not a horse. This was a deer, so obviously such trickery would not work. In the course of a millisecond I devised a different strategy. I screamed like woman and tried to turn and run. The reason I had always been told NOT to try to turn and run from a horse that paws at you is that the re is a good chance that it will hit you in the back of the head. Deer may not be so different from horses after all, besides being twice as strong
and three times as evil, because the second I turned to run, it hit me right in the back of the head and knocked me down.

Now when a deer paws at you and knocks you down it does not immediately leave. I suspect it does not recognize that the danger has passed. What they do instead is paw your back and jump up and down on you while you are laying there crying like a little girl and covering your head. I finally managed to crawl under the truck and the deer went away.

Now for the local legend. I was pretty beat up. My scalp was split open, I had several large goose eggs, my wrist was bleeding pretty good and felt broken (it turned out to be just badly bruised) and my back was bleeding in a few places, though my insulated canvas jacket had protected me from most of the worst of it. I drove to the nearest place, which was the co-op. I got out of the truck, covered in blood and dust and looking like hell. The guy who ran the place saw me through the window and came running out yelling "what happened"

I have never seen any law in the state of Kansas that would prohibit an individual from roping a deer. I suspect that this is an area that they have overlooked entirely. Knowing, as I do, the lengths to which law enforcement personnel will go to exercise their power, I was concerned that they may find a way to twist the existing laws to paint my actions as criminal. I swear….not wanting to admit that I had done something monumentally stupid played no part in my response. I told him "I was attacked by a deer.” I did not mention that at the time I had a rope on it. The evidence was all over my body. Deer prints on the back of my jacket where it had stomped all over me and a large deer print on my face where it had struck me there.

I asked him to call somebody to come get me…I didn't think I could make it home on my own. He did.

Later that afternoon, a game warden showed up at my house and wanted to know about the deer attack. Surprisingly, deer attacks are a rare thing and wildlife and parks was interested in the event. I tried to describe the attack as completely and accurately as I could…I was filling the grain hopper and this deer came out of nowhere and just started kicking the hell out of me and BIT me. It was obviously rabid or insane or something. EVERYBODY for miles around knows about the deer attack (the guy at the co-op has a big mouth). For several weeks people dragged their kids in the house when they saw deer around and the local ranchers carried rifles when they filled their feeders. I have told several people the story, but NEVER anybody around here. I have to see these people every day and as an outsider…a "city folk"…I have enough trouble fitting in without them snickering behind my back and whispering "there is the dumb-ass that tried to rope the deer.

Taking Cain Seriously...

Unlike Rick Perry, Herman Cain I know a bit about.  I've been reading about him ever since his (failed) run for the GOP Senate candidacy in 2004.  I had a personal interest in one of the other candidates (a Democrat with whom I'd had some truly awful business dealings), but Cain turned out to be the more interesting candidate in that race, his loss notwithstanding.

The main thing I see in Cain that I like is not directly political at all.  It's this: he appears to be a normal human being, self-made, and competent as hell.  There are darned few other players on the national political stage about whom I could comfortably make that statement.

But until this week, the punditosphere hasn't seemed to take Herman Cain seriously at all.  He was rather cavalierly dismissed as “unelectable” and third-tier.  With what I know today, given a choice between voting for Cain and voting for any conceivable Democratic opponent (i.e., Obama or Clinton), Cain gets my vote in a walk.  You might think that's not much of a statement, as you might think that any conceivable Republican candidate should win that contest.  However, for most of the matchups I can imagine (say, Obama v. Romney), my inclination is to decline to vote – as it's largely a waste of my time.  Cain would get my vote (again, with what I know right now)...

But the punditosphere may be recalibrating Mr. Cain...

Better Definition of an Ampere...

A breakthrough involving graphene may lead us (finally!) to a definition of the ampere directly derived from the electron charge...

Intimidated Republicans...

Via reader Simon M.:

Somewhere there's a newspaper headline editor who either (1) badly needs a refresh of his idiomatic English, or (2) has an excellent sense of humor!

A Fact of Life...

Via my colleague Aleck L.:

Giant Solar Flare...

NASA is tracking a large sunspot group, named Active Region 1302 (or AR1302).  One of its satellites captured this image of AR1302 emitting a gigantic flare.  The photo inset of the Earth is there to give you an idea just how big that flare is.  Via APOD, of course...

They Ate What?

Via reader Doug S., these stories of things that pets ate.  The grand prize winner's photo is at right: a dog taken to the vet for lameness in a hind leg, but X-rays showed nine handballs where they shouldn't oughtta be...

Inbred Cat...

A visual pun, via my lovely wife:

The Blues in Jamul...

Kate, my nonagenarian mother-in-law, has been visiting with us for the last three weeks.  Yesterday we put her on the plane for her trip home.  Despite being very frail and unable to walk more than a hundred feet or so in a push, and living in fear of just about everything (as a butterfly landing on her would probably cause a bruise), she was willing to leave the safety and familiarity of her home in Indiana to come spend some time with us (and our four dogs and eight cats). 

The dogs were good; they didn't jump on her and knock her down.  Even the cats seemed very careful around her.  And she had a good time with us, especially some shared sight-seeing drives and meals out (something she doesn't get to do much of back home). 

As Debbie says, it's a mixture of both sadness and relief to see her go.  Sadness, because we know we won't see her again soon (and at her age, we have to wonder if ever), and because we enjoyed her company.  Relief, because it is inevitably a lot of work to weave care and attention to her into our lives, and her stay disrupts the usual peace and calmness in our country home.  So yesterday after we put her on the plane Debbie and I had a bit o' the blues...

I'm feeling better this morning, though!

Cats and Dogs...

Via my mom:

Excerpt from a dog's diary...

8:00 am - Dog food! My favourite thing! 9:30 am - A car ride! My favourite thing! 9:40 am - A walk in the park! My favourite thing! 10:30 am - Got rubbed and petted! My favourite thing! 12:00 pm - Lunch! My favourite thing! 1:00 pm - Played in the yard! My favourite thing!  3:00 pm - Wagged my tail! My favourite thing!  5:00 pm - Milk Bones! My favourite thing!  7:00 pm - Got to play ball! My favourite thing!   8:00 pm - Wow! Watched TV with the people! My favourite thing!  11:00 pm - Sleeping on the bed! My favourite thing!

Excerpt from a cat's diary...

Day 983 of my captivity... My captors continue to taunt me with bizarre little dangling objects. They dine lavishly on fresh meat, while the other inmates and I are fed hash or some sort of dry nuggets.  Although I make my contempt for the rations perfectly clear, I nevertheless must eat something in order to keep up my strength. The only thing that keeps me going is my dream of escape. In an attempt to disgust them, I once again vomit on the carpet. Today I decapitated a mouse and dropped its headless body at their feet. I had hoped this would strike fear into their hearts, since it clearly demonstrates what I am capable of. However, they merely made condescending comments about what a 'good little hunter' I am. Bastards. There was some sort of assembly of their accomplices tonight. I was placed in solitary confinement for the duration of the event. However, I could hear the noises and smell the food. I overheard that my confinement was due to the power of 'allergies.' I must learn what this means and how to use it to my advantage. Today I was almost successful in an attempt to assassinate one of my tormentors by weaving around his feet as he was walking. I must try this again tomorrow – but at the top of the stairs. I am convinced that the other prisoners here are flunkies and snitches. The dog receives special privileges. He is regularly released - and seems to be more than willing to return. He is obviously retarded. The bird has got to be an informant. I observe him communicating with the guards regularly. I am certain that he reports my every move. My captors have arranged protective custody for him in an elevated cell, so he is safe. For now.

My Weird Family, Continued...

My sister finds more weird and awesome mushrooms in her yard...

Three Logicians Walk Into a Bar...

 

Excellent!

What Is This?

Dry ice on Mars, in the process of sublimating.  From APOD, of course.

Writing Unmaintainable Code...

A treatise on how to write programs that are very difficult to maintain.  As any experienced programmer will recognize, the techniques are commonly found in code that wasn't (presumably) intentionally written to be unmaintainable.  Even though it might as well have been.  An example:

Creative Miss-spelling
If you must use descriptive variable and function names, misspell them. By misspelling in some function and variable names, and spelling it correctly in others (such as SetPintleOpening SetPintalClosing) we effectively negate the use of grep or IDE search techniques. It works amazingly well. Add an international flavor by spelling tory or tori in different theatres/theaters.

But do go read the whole thing...

A USB Typewriter?

This may be an elaborate hoax, but it sure looks real.  The tagline looks like a joke, though:

The USBTypewriter™ is a new and groundbreaking innovation in the field of obsolescence.

The claim is that this fellow has developed a circuit board that can be attached to any old-fashioned mechanical typewriter, converting it to a USB keyboard input device.  From a technical perspective, this is completely plausible.  From just about any other perspective, it's some degree of crazy (and leaning toward very crazy).  Here's the company page, the Etsy storefront, and below is their marketing video.




I'm pretty much speechless...