Morning Walk...

It's so nice to be back home after a business trip...

This morning the four dogs and I went for our morning walk at 3 am.  The perfect full moon was high in the cloudless southwestern sky.  The moonlight was more than bright enough for us to walk by; I could see color around our yard and a bit across the valley as well.  Race was, for the umpteenth time, utterly beside himself with joy – he found a tasty pine cone to play with.  The three field spaniels were nose-down as usual, checking on who's been in the yard since their last walk. 

A gentle breeze wafted the scent of hundreds of paper-whites, narcissus, and daffodils toward us.  Our yard is bursting at the seams with these blooms; more by far than we've ever seen before. We have bouquets all around our house, and the smell is just wonderful.

Finally it was time to go back inside.  None of us really wanted to go in.  I'd have been content to walk around for another hour or so.  But duty calls...

Silk Worms Spinning Spider's Webs...

Well, not quite.  But genetically engineered silk worms are now producing silk with the (vastly superior) strength of spider's silk.  This is the combination the researchers were looking for: a way to produce spider's silk as easily as we can produce silkworm silk...

Google's Unemployment Index...

...just took a big spike up.  As always, I'm not sure what that really means (other than that Google is seeing more searches related to unemployment)...

On the First Day...

My mom sent this to me, saying that I'd laugh at it.  I did!

On the first day, God created the dog and said, "Sit all day by the door of your house and bark at anyone who comes in or walks past. For this, I will give you a life span of twenty years."

The dog said, "That's a long time to be barking. How about only ten years and I'll give you back the other ten?"

And God saw it was good.

On the second day, God created the monkey and said, "Entertain people, do tricks, and make them laugh. For this, I'll give you a twenty-year life span."

The monkey said, "Monkey tricks for twenty years? That's a pretty long time to perform. How about I give you back ten like the dog did?"

And God, again saw it was good.

On the third day, God created the cow and said, "You must go into the field with the farmer all day long and suffer under the sun, have calves and give milk to support the farmer's family. For this, I will give you a life span of sixty years."

The cow said, "That's kind of a tough life you want me to live for sixty years. How about twenty and I'll give back the other forty?"

And God agreed it was good.

On the fourth day, God created humans and said, "Eat, sleep, play, marry and enjoy your life. For this, I'll give you twenty years."

But the human said, "Only twenty years? Could you possibly give me my twenty, the forty the cow gave back, the ten the monkey gave back, and the ten the dog gave back; that makes eighty, okay?"

"Okay," said God, "You asked for it."

So that is why for our first twenty years, we eat, sleep, play and enjoy ourselves. For the next forty years, we slave in the sun to support our family. For the next ten years, we do monkey tricks to entertain the grandchildren. And for the last ten years, we sit on the front porch and bark at everyone.

Life has now been explained to you.

There is no need to thank me for this valuable information. I'm doing it as a public service. If you are looking for me I will be on the front porch.

She's Never Seen a Republican Before...

I sure miss this guy...  Passed along by Dave H.:

Kopimism...

A new religious movement has been formally recognized by the government of Sweden.  It's just a bit different than most religions you've run into.  For example, one of their central tenets is that all information sharing is “holy”.  Their sacred symbols include things like ^C (the keyboard shortcut for copying to the clipboard).

On one level, this is just an amusing story.  On another level, though, it's a great example of something that free societies embracing religious freedom find quite challenging: exactly what constitutes a “religion” (thereby becoming worthy of protection by the state)?  That turns out to be an astonishingly difficult – perhaps even impossible – question to answer objectively.

Thanks to Simon M. for passing this along...

A Talent I'd Love to Have...

...but which I most certainly don't have.  Just watch:

Miki, Taking Second in Standard...

This is from last weekend, where Miki qualified on 5 out of 6 runs, and took one second place (shown below) and one third place.  Debbie was handling, of course.  Woo hoo!

A Milestone...

But not a particularly happy one.  Doug S. points out this post showing that just before the end of the year, the U.S. debt “officially” exceeded our GDP in 2011. 

We all knew this was coming, given the velocity of our debt increases.  There's nothing particularly significant about this milestone; it's akin to your car's odometer rolling over 10,000.  But it's a measure of our debt load that's well into danger territory – expressed as a percentage of our GDP (which is as close as I know how to get to expressing our debt in meaningful terms), our debt is now higher than it's been at anytime since the height of WWII.  Unlike that war, this time our debt load is almost entirely (and voluntarily!) self-inflicted – the costs of both our lengthy wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is only a small piece of this debt load...

Autonomous Helicopters Build a Building...

Well, sort of. Warren Y. sends along this demonstration of autonomous (i.e., no human controlling them) helicopters (really, quadracopters – much easier to control) building (well, assembling) a building (ok, an attractively designed pile of styrofoam blocks).

Snarking aside, it's really quite an achievement for these roboticists – and it probably is a glimpse of what the future will bring us.  It's perfectly conceivable that within a reasonable amount of time (say, a decade or two) we'll see robots that can actually perform many of the tasks that construction workers do today.  For example, I have no problem imagining a robot that could do a great job at block masonry.

The Cats Know...

Somehow our cats seem to know today is “special”.  Our youngest (the Savannah cat Jahar) is playing, hard, with one of our oldest cats (Tippy).  The pair of them are chasing each other all over the house, having a grand old time.  A middle-aged, portly cat (Halala Pala) tries gamely to follow them, but he can only manage about a third their speed.  Two older cats (Pana and Boots) are sitting on the sidelines, their heads swiveling as they closely follow the action.  And little Maka Lea (our physiologically challenged fellow) is also trying to join the action, but Jahar and Tippy can make it around the house about four times while Maka Lea runs three feet and flops over 'cause he tripped over himself. 

I can't recall another time when the entire feline crew participated in this sort of thing all at the same time.

And it sure is nice to see Tippy looking so spry.  And proud of himself!

Mankind Will Benefit from My Vital Discovery...

I own one of the tea strainers shown at right.  It's the best one I've ever owned.  I love the silly thing.

But until this morning, I've had one complaint about it, something I thought was an unavoidable consequence of its construction.

Until this morning, when I made my morning tea, I'd load up my tea strainer, drop it in my cup, and pour boiling water all over it.  The strainer would immediately bob to the surface, and what follows was a 60 second or so battle to get the thing to sink (so my tea could steep!).

This morning, I accidentally forgot to put the strainer in my cup before pouring the hot water in.  So I plunked it in after pouring the water – and it immediately sank to the bottom of the cup.  Of course, I then had to follow up with a series of tests.  Every time, pour first, it sinks; pour after, it floats.  WTF?

I finally figured it out.  When I pour after, water immediate coats the entire metal surface, and the pores of the tea strainer are blocked by stable water films powered by surface tension.  When I pour first and drop the strainer in, the upper pores remain unwetted until after the strainer sinks.  Simple.

There now, doesn't that revelation change your life in a positive way?

Trends...

Over at Scribd they've got a terrific collection of totally depressing charts – 11 trends over the last 11 years.

The one that surprised me the most is at right (click to enlarge).  I hadn't realized that the Federal government owned so much consumer debt.  After a little research, I discovered this is primarily due Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae (both government-sponsored and government-backed institutions) capturing the dominant share of home mortgates – and home mortgages dominate consumer credit, of course.

In the last three years, federally-owned consumer credit has increased almost five times.  What does this mean?  It means that those (increasingly few) American citizens who, like me, actually pay taxes – it means we're on the hook to back almost five times more government-guaranteed debt.  Lovely.  What could possibly go wrong?

Public Service Announcement...

Aunt Chippy Wraps a Present...

Via my mom.  Put down your morning beverage first:

Top 12 Reasons to Vote Democratic...

Via reader Jim M., this handy list you can use when talking politics with your lefty friends:

Top 12 Reasons To Vote Democratic

I'm voting Democratic because...

1. I believe oil companies' profits of 4% on a gallon of gas are obscene, but the government taxing the same gallon of gas at 15% isn't.

2. I believe the government will do a better job of spending the money I earn than I would.

3. Freedom of Speech is fine as long as nobody is offended by it.

4. I'm way too irresponsible to own a gun, and I know my local police are all I need to protect me from murderers and thieves.

5. I believe people who can't tell us if it will rain on Friday can tell us the polar ice caps will melt away in ten years if I don't start driving a Prius.

6. I'm not concerned about millions of babies being aborted so long as we keep all death row inmates alive.

7. I think illegal aliens have a right to free health care, education, and Social Security benefits.

8. I believe business should not be allowed to make profits for themselves. They need to break even and give the rest away to the government for redistribution as the Democrats see fit.

9. I believe liberal judges need to rewrite the Constitution every few days to suit some fringe kooks who would never get their agendas past the voters.

10. I think it's better to pay billions to people who hate us for their oil, but not drill our own because it might upset some endangered beetle or Gopher.

11. While we live in the greatest, most wonderful country in the world, I was promised "HOPE AND CHANGE".

12. My head is so firmly planted up my ass, it's unlikely I'll ever have another point of view.

Our Perception...

From the Abstruse Goose, this interesting infographic showing just how little we actually can perceive of the total electromagnetic spectrum (what we perceive with our vision) and the acoustic spectrum (what we perceive with our hearing):

Corporate Cronyism...

Note the little Ds (for Democrats) and Rs (for Republicans).  See a trend?  As always, click to enlarge...

A Hack from 1903!

Read about the exploits of Nevil Maskelyne – it sounds much like something that might happen today on the Intertubes...

iPad Cool...

This is just plain cool – a NASA visualization application for the iPad, with content updated several times a month...