The Pilot and the Priest, at the Pearly Gates...

Via my mom:

A priest dies and is waiting in line at the Pearly Gates. Ahead of him is a guy who's dressed in sunglasses, a loud shirt, leather jacket and jeans.

Saint Peter addresses this cool guy, "Who are you, so that I may know whether or not to admit you to the Kingdom of Heaven?"

The guy replies, "I'm Jack, retired airline pilot from Houston."

Saint Peter consults his list. He smiles and says to the pilot, "Take this silken robe and golden staff and enter the Kingdom." The pilot goes into Heaven with his robe and staff.

Next, it's the priest's turn. He stands erect and booms out, "I am Father Bob, pastor of Saint Mary's for the last 43 years."

Saint Peter consults his list. He says to the priest, "Take this cotton robe and wooden staff and enter the Kingdom."

"Just a minute," says the good father. "That man was a pilot and he gets a silken robe and golden staff and I get only cotton and wood. How can this be?"

"Up here - we go by results," says Saint Peter. "When you preached - people slept. When he flew, people prayed."

Plea Bargains...

Most criminal cases in the U.S. never go to trial.  Instead, the accused pleads guilty as part of a “plea bargain”.  This saves an enormous amount of time and money, and reduces the number of judges, courtrooms, prosecutors, etc. needed in the justice system.

It also leads, in some cases, to miscarriages of justice – in both directions.  That is, sometimes innocent people are pressured into pleading guilty to avoid the risk of long jail terms.  Sometimes (more often, actually) guilty people are pleading to lesser charges than they're guilty of – putting us all at risk of their repeat offenses.

But, what if...every defendant decided to insist upon their right (granted by the Constitution) for a trial by a jury of their peers?  Short answer: they'd crash the justice system, which doesn't have the resources to handle such a load...

Another interesting and thought-provoking read...

Anybody Know What Time It Is?

Go here.  You'll find the exact time, and it will tell you how far off your computer's clock is.  I have a Mac, so it's using NTP out-of-the-box and the clock setting is darned near perfect (0.008 seconds off)...

Locked Up...

The New Yorker has an interesting article on why America imprisons so many more people than any other country.  I have many disagreements with some opinions expressed, but I completely agree that our incarceration rate is symptomatic of some profound problem in our society.  It's a thought-provoking read...

Ships at the Bottom of the (Former) Aral Sea...

The Soviet Union drained most of the Aral Sea, using the water for irrigation projects.  When they did so, hundreds of ships that had sunk were revealed, like the one below.  Now you can walk among them, and find ships and camels intermixed:

WWII Kodachrome Photos...

A small collection of stunning photographs from WWII, on 4" x 5" Kodachrome transparencies.  One example below, but go see the rest of them!

The Pilot and the Dog...

A great story, passed along by reader Simi L.  The sender claims it's a true story, but I've been unable to verify it:

A woman was flying from Seattle to San Francisco. Unexpectedly the plane was diverted to Sacramento along the way. The flight attendant explained that there would be a delay, and if the passengers wanted to get off the aircraft the plane would re-board in 50 minutes. Everybody got off the plane except one lady who was blind.

A man had noticed her as he walked by and could tell the lady was blind because her guide dog lay quietly underneath the seats in front of her throughout the entire flight. He could also tell she had flown this very flight before because the pilot approached her, and calling her by name, said, "Kathy, we are in Sacramento for almost an hour. Would you like to get off and stretch your legs?"

The blind lady said, "No thanks, but maybe Buddy would like to stretch his legs." Picture this: all the people in the gate area came to a complete standstill when they looked up and saw the pilot walk off the plane with a guide dog for the blind! Even worse, the pilot was wearing sunglasses! People scattered. They not only tried to change planes, but they were trying to change airlines!

Faces...

All my life, I've had difficulty recognizing faces.  It isn't that I can't recognize faces – people I know well I can recognize with no difficulty.  The challenge I have is with people I don't know well.  So I'm pretty sure I don't have any flavor of prosopagnosia.

Recently at work there was a good example of my face-recognition challenges.  There's another fellow there named Tom whom I mistakenly thought was Frank Slootman, our CEO.  When someone corrected me (and only then!), I asked around to a few other people – and none of them thought Tom and Frank looked anything alike!  Yet I still (even after carefully examining both of them) find it challenging to be sure which is which when I see them.  This sort of thing has happened to me many times.

Another common pattern: I'll meet someone for the first time (say, on a visit to a customer), and for the term of the visit I'll be able to recognize them.  Then perhaps 6 months or a year later, I'll visit again – and while the rest of the ServiceNow people attending will recognize the person without difficulty, I will not recognize him or her, and I may not even realize that I've met the person before.

I suspect this difficult is related to my inability to visualize “in my mind's eye”, something I've blogged about before.  Most people tell me that they can easily “bring up” the face of someone they know; I simply cannot do this, not even for people I know very well.  I've got no proof these things are related; it's just an intuition...

The Deer Are Back!

Debbie and I took an evening drive up to Cuyamaca Mountain yesterday, arriving at the Stonewall Mine just before sunset.  The meadows in that area used to be full of deer, but after the fires of October/November 2007 we saw none until the last couple years, and even then just a very few.

But last night...  Last night, the deer were back, in force.  We saw about 10 groups of deer all together, with five or six of the groups number more then 20 individuals.  The grass is plentiful this year, and the deer were chowing down with some enthusiasm.

The return of the deer means that the mountain lions will be back (if they're not already).  We know the rodent population must be healthy because we see lots of hawks.  Hopefully that also means the bobcats are back (we've seen a few, but nothing like the numbers we used to see up there).  It's very nice to see the animal ecosystem returning to some semblance of normality...

Warning Labels on Alcohol Containers...

According to my mom, the following warning labels have been accepted by liquor manufacturers:

WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may leave you wondering what the hell happened to your bra and panties.

WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may make you think you are whispering when you are not.

WARNING: The consumption of alcohol is a major factor in dancing like a spineless goofball.

WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may cause you to tell your friends over and over again that you love them.

WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may cause you to think you can sing.

WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may lead you to believe that ex-lovers are really dying for you to telephone them at four in the morning.

WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may make you think you can logically converse with members of the opposite sex without spitting.

WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may create the illusion that you are tougher, smarter, faster and better looking than most people.

WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may lead you to think people are laughing WITH you.

WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may cause pregnancy.

WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may be a major factor in getting your ass kicked.

WARNING: the crumsumpten of alcohol may mack you tink you kan tpye reel gode.

Yes, That's About Right...

Via my mom:

A little boy goes to his dad and asks, 'What is Politics?'

Dad says, 'Well son, let me try to explain it this way: I am the head of the family, so call me The President. Your mother is the administrator of the money, so we call her the Government. We are here to take care of your needs, so we will call you the People. The nanny, we will consider her the Working Class. And your baby brother, we will call him the Future. Now think about that and see if it makes sense.'

So the little boy goes off to bed thinking about what Dad has said. Later that night, he hears his baby brother crying, so he gets up to check on him. He finds that the baby has severely soiled his nappy (that's a diaper, for us Americans). So the little boy goes to his parent's room and finds his mother asleep. Not wanting to wake her, he goes to the nanny's room. Finding the door locked, he peeks in the keyhole and sees his father in bed with the nanny.

He gives up and goes back to bed.

The next morning, the little boy say's to his father, 'Dad, I think I understand the concept of politics now.' The father says, 'Good, son, tell me in your own words what you think politics is all about.' The little boy replies, 'The President is screwing the Working Class while the Government is sound asleep. The People are being ignored and the Future is in deep shit...

He Did It to Himself...

Via Simon M., no further explication required:

Quote of the Day...

From the blogger known as TigerHawk:

Give Gloria what she's asking for. Please.

This time, you'll have to read the whole thing to understand it – please do!

Really, Apple?

A fine series of rants on the new iPad, with just the perfect touch of poking fun at the fanboys:

If You Know Me...

If you know me at all, you will be completely unsurprised when I tell you that I am related to the man who created the “snow-alien” at right (as always, click to enlarge – if you dare!).  My brother Scott (who has a landscaping business in Virginia Beach, Virgina, called Artist in the Garden) is the perpetrator.  The snow-alien was quite a hit with the neighbors, we understand.  Proudly showing it off is my sister Holly (who has a web-based business called Learn English with a WorldWide Perspective), who lives near my parents in Charlottesville, Virginia.  We were all there visiting my parents a few days ago when a snowstorm dumped a bunch of that wet white stuff we see so rarely out here in California...and Scott just couldn't resist the opportunity...

Sad, Sad Arthur...

Via my mom:

Arthur is 90 years old. He's played golf every day since his retirement 25 years ago.  One day he arrives home looking sad.

"That's it," he tells his wife. "I'm giving up golf. My eyesight has become so bad that once I hit the ball I couldn't see where it went."

His wife makes him a cup of tea, and says, "Why don't you take my brother with you and give it one more try."

"That's no good" sighs Arthur, "your brother's a hundred and three. He can't help."

"He may be a hundred and three", says the wife, "but his eyesight is perfect."

So the next day Arthur heads off to the golf course with his brother-in-law. He tees up, takes a mighty swing and squints down the fairway.

He turns to the brother-in-law and says, "Did you see the ball?"

"Of course I did!" replied the brother-in-law. "I have perfect eyesight".

"Where did it go?" says Arthur.

"I don't remember."

Rescue of Thirty Dolphins...

A very nice story from Brazil, via friend and colleague Frankie T.:

In the News...

Here's something I don't get to write very often: slide rules in the news!

I have several of the Gilson slide rules in my collection, including a couple in pristine condition...

What He Said...

From “Advice From An Old Programmer”:

...learning to create software changes you and makes you different. Not better or worse, just different. You may find that people treat you harshly because you can create software, maybe using words like "nerd". Maybe you'll find that because you can dissect their logic that they hate arguing with you. You may even find that simply knowing how a computer works makes you annoying and weird to them.

To this I have just one piece of advice: they can go to hell. The world needs more weird people who know how things work and who love to figure it all out. When they treat you like this, just remember that this is your journey, not theirs. Being different is not a crime, and people who tell you it is are just jealous that you've picked up a skill they never in their wildest dreams could acquire.

You can code. They cannot. That is pretty damn cool.

Yes.  What he said!

Clothing Tag Humor...

Nice collection of funny clothing tags.  My favorite is at right, but there are several more really good ones...