Fishing With Hand Grenades...

Now here are a couple of candidates for a Darwin award!  Via reader Simi L.:

A Distribution...

Nick Berry, writing at DataGenetics, has another in his fine series of data analyses “just for fun”.  This time he looked at the number of images with names like IMG_0001, IMG_0002, etc.  This particular series of file names is commonly created by digital cameras and smart phones.

What he found is in the graph at right: a classic logarithmically decaying curve, with a few glitches on it.  With some thought, you might be unsurprised by the log decay.  Most people wouldn't worry about the glitches – who knows what would cause them?  Not Nick Berry – with some help from a reader, he figured them all out...

Mo'i Update...

We called Animal ER this morning to check on how Mo'i was doing, and we got some good news: Mo'i was ready to come home!  I jumped in our trusty old LandCruiser and zoomed up there right away.

Shortly after arriving, the vet tech brought Mo'i out to see me.  Oh, man, he looked good!  Alert, happy to see me, tail wagging, giving me his customary “hug”.  If I didn't know better, I wouldn't have known he'd just had a fairly major surgical procedure.  The photo at upper right is Mo'i after returning home (in his “Elizabethan collar” so he doesn't chew his staples out)...

The post-operative care is simple in his case: no strenuous activity for a week or so, bland diet (boiled chicken and rice) and small frequent meals for a few days, and a couple of drugs.  Nothing hard at all.  In ten days or so, we'll get his staples out. 

The folks at the Animal ER said that Mo'i was a great patient.  We hear this about him almost everywhere we've ever taken him .– he's friendly, extroverted, and almost impossible to provoke into an angry response.  He takes needle pokes with equinamity, and gobbles nasty-tasting pills like they were doggie treats.  Vets and vet techs all love him.

We drove home via the grocery store, to get Mo'i a nice pile of chicken thighs to boil up and mix with rice.  Once home, he took a little walk, had a small meal, and drank (oddly, he didn't want water, so I mixed a little chicken-flavored “Gatorade for dogs” for him, and he loved that).  Then we took a look at his wound (above left), which looks fine.

The fine folks at Animal ER were happy to make a CD with Mo'i's X-rays for me to take home.  Below are the two X-rays showing his gastric volvutus so clearly that even I can tell that something is wrong.  Note how the bloated stomach pushed other organs around – that must have been epically painful for the poor guy...

A Most British Observation...

I think I've posted this before, but I couldn't find it so...here it goes again (maybe).  Via my cousin Mike D.:

The train was quite crowded, so a U. S. Marine walked the entire length looking for a seat, but the only seat left was taken by a well dressed, middle-aged, French woman's poodle.

The war-weary Marine asked, 'Ma'am, may I have that seat?'

The French woman just sniffed and said to no one in particular 'Americans are so rude. My little Fifi is using that seat.'

The Marine walked the entire train again, but the only seat left was under that dog. 'Please, ma'am. May I sit down? I'm very tired.'

She snorted, 'Not only are you Americans rude, you are also arrogant!'

This time the Marine didn't say a word; he just picked up the little dog, threw it out of the train window, and sat down.

The woman shrieked, 'Someone must defend my honour! This American should be put in his place!'

An English gentleman sitting nearby spoke up, 'Sir, you Americans often seem to have a penchant for doing the wrong thing. You hold the fork in the wrong hand. You drive your cars on the wrong side of the road. And now, sir, you seem to have thrown the wrong bitch out of the window.'

Makers vs. Takers, 1 of 5,292,003...

Via my mom:

A union boss walks into a bar next door to the factory and is about to order a drink to celebrate Obama’s victory when he sees a guy close by wearing a Romney for President button with two beers in front of him. He doesn't have to be an Einstein to know that this guy is a Republican. So, he shouts over to the bartender so loudly that everyone can hear, "Drinks for everyone in here, bartender, but not for the Republican."

Soon after the drinks have been handed out, the Republican gives him a big smile, waves at him, then says, "Thank you!" in an equally loud voice. This infuriates the union boss.

So the union boss once again loudly orders drinks for everyone except the Republican. As before, this does not seem to bother the Republican. He continues to smile, and again yells, "Thank you!"

So just to make his point one more time, the union boss once again loudly orders drinks for everyone except the Republican. But, as before, this does not seem to bother the Republican. He continues to smile, and again yells, "Thank you!"

Frustrated, the union boss asks the bartender, "What the heck is the matter with that Republican? I've ordered three rounds of drinks for everyone in the bar but him, and all the silly joker does is smile and thank me. Is he nuts?"

"Nope," replies the bartender. "He owns the place."

War on Business...

This is just disgusting, and un-American.  The nanny state is alive and well...

More on the Intrade Crackdown...

The Wall Street Journal agrees with me: the crackdown on Intrade is gross regulatory overreach.

Scary Story...But With a Happy Ending...

Mo'i is our second-oldest dog – a male field spaniel who has been part of our lives for fourteen years.  He's a quiet, affectionate, and unflappable fellow.  The one thing that gets him excited is food – anything he can force into his mouth and swallow makes him happy.  We're not even sure what his favorite food is.  He likes dog food, but he also likes tomatoes, onions, bananas, banana peels, and even...gravel.  Yes, really – gravel.  A couple times a year, while we're walking him, he'll go over to our little gravel pile and grab a mouthful of pea gravel and swallow it.

Mo'i has had more than his share of health issues.  A few years ago, he had a splinter of bone fragment pressing against his spinal cord; that required some fancy surgery to fix.  Unusually for a dog, he has high blood pressure (hypertension).  More recently he's been struggling with skin problems (bacterial and fungal infections) that make him itch all over and smell funky.  The last few weeks he's had a couple of “hot spots” where he's licked and bitten the hair off a patch of skin, so we've had him wearing the “cone of shame” to keep him from further injuring himself.

But through all these travails, there's been one constant: put food down, and Mo'i is all over it.  When he figures out that we're about to feed them, Mo'i starts whimpering and even trembling in anticipation.  At moments like that, all thought of his pain or discomfort go flying out the window, and Mo'i is all about one thing: food, food, food, FOOD!

So yesterday afternoon (at 3 pm) when I fed the dogs and Mo'i was completely disinterested, I knew something was badly wrong.  That had, quite literally, never happened before – not in his entire life.  There were a couple of other less alarming symptoms as well: he was listless, held his back slightly arched, and had is little stub of a tail held level and trembling – all odd for him.  Debbie called our local vet; she was not in the office but another vet was covering for her, so Mo'i and I jumped in my car and away we went.

Before 4 pm the vet was examining Mo'i.  The only thing clearly wrong that he saw were his bright red gums – something possibly associated with Mo'i's hypertension.  With nothing else to go on, the vet thought that Mo'i's symptoms were most likely caused by something related to his hypertension, and quite likely not something acute.  Our local vet doesn't have the specialized sphygmomanometer needed for dogs, so he thought it might be a good idea to take Mo'i to the Animal ER in Kearny Mesa (40 miles or so away) where they did have a sphygmomanometer to get that blood pressure checked.  He didn't think it was urgently necessary to take Mo'i up, and waiting until Monday would probably be ok as well.

Ordinarily this is the sort of thing that Debbie and I would decide together, as she'd be right there with me.  But with Debbie laid up with her busted-up knee, I was down at the vet's on my own.  It's the kind of tradeoff decision that pet owners agonize over – do we put our pet through the low-grade trauma of further tests and travel, spend the money and time?  Is it actually necessary?  Vets (like doctors) generally don't give clear-cut advice in such matters, but the vibes I was getting from this vet were “this isn't all that urgent”.  On the other hand, the fact that Mo'i wouldn't eat was really sticking in my head – knowing Mo'i, that felt like a loud scream for help.

So I decided to take him to Animal ER.  Mo'i and I loaded ourselves back into our ancient LandCruiser, I gassed up, and away we went.  Animal ER didn't even open until 6 pm, so I thought I had plenty of time to get there – but it was raining, and the San Diego freeways were slick, and the traffic was horrible.  I didn't make it up there until just before 6 pm.

In very short order, Mo'i was being examined by Dr. Keith Ray at the Animal ER.  He recommended X-rays, and ten minutes later he was going over the electronic results with me.  There was a very clear diagnosis, and it had nothing whatsoever to do with his blood pressure: Mo'i was suffering from gastric volvulus, causing his stomach to blow up like a balloon.  The X-ray at right isn't of Mo'i, but it is very similar to his.  There are lots more details at the link, but basically his stomach had spun on its lengthwise axis about 2/3 of a turn.  This caused both ends of his stomach to be sealed shut, and it immediately started inflating from digestive gases.  If untreated, it's fatal – and quickly.  The mortality rate for diagnosed dogs is around 50%.  The sufferer is in agony.

The treatment is surgical, and Dr. Ray is experienced in this particular surgery.  He told me very frankly about the risks, which are significant.  The two biggest risks: necrosis (dead tissue) of the stomach (caused by blood vessels being twisted shut) and loss of the spleen (again, from loss of blood supply).  The first problem could cause anything from complications to death; the second could cause complications and increased risk of post-operative infections.  He recommended immediate surgery (the only real alternative was to euthanise him), and by 7:30 pm Mo'i was being prepped for surgery.  I had a chance to spend a bit of quality time with him as the tranquilizer was taking hold, but then it was off to the operating room for the Mo'i.

I drove back home to explain all this to Debbie, and to wait with her for the surgeon's call.  There was nothing either of us could do at the Animal ER; we couldn't even be with Mo'i.  So, feeling very helpless and very worried, we waited.  Finally, a bit before midnight, we got the call from Dr. Ray: the surgery had gone very well.  There was no stomach necrosis at all, and the spleen was fine.  Dr. Ray suspects that Mo'i's hypertension actually helped in this situation, by forcing blood through the constrained blood vessels.  Mo'i was fine, and his stomach was back in the right place, tacked down to a rib so it doesn't happen again, and the trapped gases were all released.  We've heard this morning that Mo'i is recovering just fine; he's been up for a little walk and he's behaving like the dog he is.  Hopefully we'll be able to bring him home tomorrow, where he'll be getting a bit of extra attention.  And maybe a banana, if the vet permits...

A Musical Experience...

I normally listen to music when I'm programming.  The type of music varies with my mood and the difficulty of the work I'm doing; anything from piano jazz (e.g., George Winston) to some old-fashioned “heavy” rock (e.g., Black Sabbath).  At home I usually play the music over a decent (but tiny) set of speakers with a separate sub-woofer.  The sound quality is good, but certainly not noteworthy.  Some time ago, I bought a pair of headphones so I could listen to music at work (which is an open environment where I really couldn't use speakers).  I ended up rarely using them, as it was a hassle to take them on and off every few minutes when a colleague needed to talk with me.

I recently brought those headphones home, and today I'm using them – Debbie is enthroned near me, and she of course doesn't want my music playing while she's on the phone or watching a video.  In some cases (like Melanie Safka), she detests my music and wouldn't want it playing under any circumstances where she could hear it :-)

So I'm using the headphones extensively, really for the first time – and I'm finding the experience to be extraordinary.  I'm hearing things in music I'm very familiar with that I don't believe I've ever heard before.  As I'm writing this, I'm listening to Peter, Paul, and Mary – and I can distinctly hear details like people walking on the set, and even the (very low level) hiss of the master tape.  Even more striking is the sudden sense of location I have for the instruments and singers.

The headphones I have are made by Sennheiser, their model HD 555, which I bought on the recommendation of a reviewer when they went sale on Amazon.  These are not the top-of-the-line model, but I'm very pleased with them...

Lupine...

Not my photo, and not a local species: this is from Columbia, Lupinus bogotensis, photo courtesy of Botany Photo of the Day...

When a Geek Tries to be Cute...

...this is what you get. 

Hint: when the guy stops running, wave your cursor around over his head.

Via my mom...

Here We Go...

I've no doubt that this is just an early salvo in the Obama administration's re-energized wealth redistribution campaign:

H.R. 4170 would forgive student loan debt for those who have paid 10 percent of their discretionary income toward their loans for 10 years and would cap interest on federal student loans at the current rate of 3.4 percent. Individuals who go into teaching, public service or practice medicine in underserved areas would have their debt forgiven after only five years.

Because over 90% of student loans are made directly by the Federal government, to “forgive” them simply means that future taxpayers will pay them – the debt doesn't simply disappear; instead it's due date is moved to the future and interest accumulates.

This is one example of precisely what Greece et al are fighting the consequences of right now.  Not that we'd learn any lessons from that – it will be different for us, bleat the Progressive politicians.

I have no idea what the chances are for passage of this bill.  It doesn't really matter, though.  Things have progressed too far when a Congressman can even introduce such a bill without the rest of the House shouting him down.  All I hear is...crickets...

Awesome Anamorphic Illusions...

Anamorphic illusions are drawings or photographs that look very realistic when viewed from a particular vantage point.  You may be familiar with them from some famous chalk sidewalk art.  Here are a few of a completely different nature:


The author has made the source images available (here, here, and here) if you'd like to print them and try them yourself!

Free DNS Management...

Here's a startup offering a free DNS hosting and management service (made by Geeks!).  Until they figure out how to make money at this, I'd be a little leery of having a dependency on them...

Birthday Distribution...

It's not a surprise that more babies are born on some particular dates (month and day) than on others.  The distribution of those more “popular” dates was a big surprise to me.  For instance, all ten of the ten most common dates for babies to be born are in September (where my birthday is).  Here's a heat map showing those dates (and you can find an interactive version here).

English is a Scandinavian Language?

Jan Faarlund, a professor of linguistics at the University of Oslo, Norway, makes a very interesting claim: that Old English didn't evolve into Modern English (as is the general consensus of linguists today).  Instead, he says, Old English simply died out after the Vikings invaded England, and Modern English evolved from the Vikings' language – much influenced by the Old English of the people they conquered.

The history of languages is an area that's long interested me, though I haven't had the opportunity to immerse myself in it very much.  One reason why it fascinates me is that it's one of those areas of science that is extremely volatile: linguists' understanding and current models change very rapidly.  Just within my adult lifetime there have been something like five or six “revolutions” in our understanding of the history of the world's languages.  If Faarlund's claim ends up being verifiable, it's yet another example of this volatility...

Politicians and Cargo Cults...

CoyoteBlog has another interesting observation on the motivations of politicians (and, by inference, one of the fundamental reasons why democracy is broken).

Every time I get started down this particular line of thinking, I end up concluding that only a revolution (whether at the ballot box or otherwise) is going to get us off the path of doom.  I was hoping for a ballot box revolution earlier this month, but obviously that didn't happen.  Will there be one in 2016?  Or is it too late already?  I see three very broad possibilities:

1.  Most likely: The Obama administration muddles through, kicks the fiscal can down the road yet again, and some sort of slow economic recovery occurs.  The Republicans keep their House majority.  The 2016 election will then be another close, toughly-fought battle between two parties with little daylight between their probable governing styles.

2.  Possible: The Obama administration screws things up in ways that are impossible for even the most blinkered partisans to see.  The Republicans lose their House majority.  There are many opportunities for this: fiscal management, Afghanistan, regulatory weight, etc.  The 2016 election will then be a referendum on how to recover from whatever the Obama-provoked disaster was.  The Republicans will have the natural advantage of not being in Obama's party, and there's always the interesting possibility that the Tea Party will emerge as the champions of the most popular fix.  If the disaster was particularly profound (less likely), then there's even the possibility for that ballot box revolution I hoped for this time.  Not a particularly savory option, but one of the few that looks like it has the chance of a good outcome that doesn't involve violence.

3.  Least likely: The Obama administration presides over a spectacular economic recovery.  Democrats take the House majority.  Businesses grow strongly, the stock market soars, the war in Afghanistan ends in some satisfying way, no new wars start, and even hyper-partisan commentators start saying positive things about Obama.  The 2016 election will then be the Democrats to lose; all they have to do is field a plausibly “Obama II” candidate.

I don't much like those options...

Best and Worst Run States...

An interesting analysis for anyone considering leaving the worst-run state: California.  The results are available in tabular form and in text form.

Debbie and I are experiencing a cyclical emotional reaction to the thought of leaving California.  The cycle starts with a gradually increasing sense of regret and unease at the thought of leaving our friends, places we've come to love, and so much that's familiar and comfortable.  Then we'll hear a piece of news (most recently, that the takers in Sacremento are seriously considering a radical rise in the commercial property tax rates)...and we'll snap back to “Oh, crap, we've got to get out of here!”

This analysis is clarifying for the simple reason that it sets down in tangible form the real (and quite striking) differences in the way various states are run...

Punched Cards...

Christian Hansen continues his excellent series on Babbage's Analytical Engine.

Organic Molecules Found on Mars?

An Italian newspaper is reporting this.  I don't know the paper and so I have no idea whether it's more like the National Enquirer or the Wall Street Journal...