The standoff...

The standoff...  Twisted Sifter...

Earthquake!

Earthquake!  Well, a little teensy one – just magnitude 2.2, yesterday at 8:24 am local time.  We didn't feel a thing here, and probably wouldn't have even if we were at the epicenter.  The seismograph of it at right (click to embiggen) was captured by the USGS seismometer bolted to our home's slab, about 4 feet behind me as I write this.  The epicenter was about 42 km (25 miles) from our house.  The earthquake occurred at 16:23:57 UTC, and the onset of the primary wave here was 16:24:05 UTC, just 8 seconds later.  That works out to a primary wave speed of 5.25 km/second (or 11,340 MPH), which is about the right speed for primary wave propagation through a very hard material like granite (which our local mountains are made of)...

Obamacare debacle update...

Obamacare debacle update...  Because your morning needs a little schadenfreude...

7 takeaways from the new Obamacare sign-up data...  Peter Suderman, writing at Reason, does the dissection for us...

Obamacare kills...  Don't think so?  Read this, then this ... and then think hard about this.  Were the first two stories the consequence of glitches and mistakes – or were they deliberate strategies suggested by the progressive attitudes in the third story?  I don't have any way to know, but I'm certainly not going to dismiss the possibility of the latter...

Does Massachusetts hold hope for ObamaCare?  We've seen several stories in the past few days that claim ObamaCare will all work out in the end, just like RomneyCare did in Massachusetts.  Megan McArdle looks at that notion...

ObamaCare's sex problem...  James Taranto is on it...  At the end of the linked edition of “Best of the Web Today” (under “Chicken Hawks?”), Taranto gave me my laugh for the day:

Among other reasons, Seahawks management apparently is scared of 49ers fans, who "made their presence known in several opposing stadiums."

One reader who sent us this tip mocked the Hawks, writing: "How big of a bunch of [cowards] are you if you're afraid of people from San Francisco?" We chuckled, but we realized he was wrong when we thought of Nancy Pelosi.

Yup, that certainly is a scary person from San Francisco!

Exciting event!

Exciting event!  Via reader and friend Simon M.:

I have two extra tickets for an exciting event in Tennessee next weekend.  Robbie Knievel (son of Evel) is going to attempt a death defying jump over 1000 Obama supporters and 30 IRS agents with a Caterpillar D9 bulldozer. It should be an exciting event to watch.

Oh, man, I can hardly wait!

Geek: the ampere, redefined...

Geek: the ampere, redefined...  Most of the fundamental units involved in electronics have long since been defined in terms of an observable physical phenomenon that's readily repeatable.  This is actually quite a crucial need for metrology – the science of measurement that is a crucial underpinning for the entire electronics industry, mainly through applied metrology in the form of the calibration of electronic instruments.

But one of the most fundamental of electrical units – the ampere (the unit of electrical current) – has always been defined in much more ambiguous terms.  It looks like that may be about to change, though.

My last assignment in the US Navy was to our shipboard metrology lab, where I first ran into the whole idea of calibration – far more interesting than I had imagined.  We had a few requirements on the ship for very high precision measurements, mainly related to the nuclear reactors and some of the weapons systems on board.  The two most challenging things for us to calibrate were precision ammeters (current-measuring devices) and precision calorimeters (you could think of them as fancy, very precise thermometers).  In both cases we needed references whose calibration was traceable to NIST by no more than two steps.  I don't know how hard that is today, but back then (mid-'70s) getting those references generally involved a shipment from NIST labs in Maryland or Colorado, and the references had to be used within a few days – otherwise their values might drift.  The reason we had to go to those extremes was the lack of a definition in terms of observable physical phenomena – that forced the entire calibration chain to be dependent on standards held at the NIST labs...

This is quite an interesting team!

This is quite an interesting team!  The new Blackphone is put together by a team with several members that I'm familiar with: Phil Zimmerman, Jon Callas, Mike Janke, and Mike Kershaw.  There are some strong personalities in that group, and a lot of technical expertise. 

I don't know a thing about the product itself (a mobile phone oriented toward privacy and security).  I like the idea in a very general sense, but I wonder how many people and companies have to be trusted to keep it secure – and, post-Snowden, I have to wonder how long it will take the NSA to weasel their way in.  Or do they have a collaborator on the team? 

Here's some paranoid thinking for you: if you were the NSA, and you were getting annoyed by the security features on commercial cellphones, wouldn't starting a company to make supposedly secure cellphones that you've built a backdoor into be the perfect ploy?  Mind you, I'm not suggesting that the NSA has done this with the Blackphone.  I'm just pointing out the kind of scenarios that you must consider when you know what the NSA has already done.

Another example: I read a completely unsubstantiated rumor in the comments of a post on a security-related blog, to the effect that John Chambers (long time CEO of Cisco) was an ex-NSA employee who had built Cisco as, effectively, a captive subsidiary of the NSA.  And I didn't completely dismiss it immediately.  Paranoia is becoming a frame of mind whenever I think of computer security...

Net neutrality is dead...

Net neutrality is dead...  Well, not quite.  But all the progressives and rent-seekers are squealing nicely, so I'm happy about it.  This is one of those complicated issues that can be analyzed quite simply by just listening to see who's not happy...

Coincidence? You decide...

Coincidence?  You decide...  A Facebook post by Chuck Heath, who happens to be Sarah Palin's brother:

Coincidence? You decide.

My father, who worked multiple jobs and faithfully and honestly paid his taxes for fifty years, had never heard a word from the IRS. In 2008, his daughter was tapped to run for vice president of the United States. Since that time, he has been, in his words "horribly harassed" six times by the agency. They've tried to dig up something on him but he's always operated above board.

Government and politics are ugly. Kudos to the few that are trying to clean it up.

I don't understand why so few people seem to be upset by the politicization of the IRS.

Paul Caron, writing at the TaxProf Blog, has been posting about this scandal every day since it first broke, 251 days ago today.  If you want to know what the status of the scandal is (and especially what facts have been discovered), his place is the place to go...

Oops...

Oops...  The Israelis let slip what they really think of Kerry's efforts to broker a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.  Though I have to wonder whether that slip was really accidental or not...

Incandescent bulbs are back!

Incandescent bulbs are back!  This caught me completely by surprise, as I thought the issue was politically kaput.  The budget deal just agreed by the bipartisan negotiations (and which That One has already said he'd sign) includes some side-agreements (that's business as usual for our crazy legislature).  One of those side-agreements defunds all enforcement of the Bush-era energy standards that effectively banned incandescent bulbs.  It's not complete victory, as the standards are still on the books – but at least they won't be enforced.

The lamestream media is covering this story, but in a low-key manner – and is mindlessly mouthing the support of the environmentalist wackos and bemoaning the loss of the rules.  Not a single story mentioned the fact that the major support for this bill comes from the rent-seeking lobbying of Philips and General Electric, who were after a government mandate to replace every light bulb with newer, less reliable, higher margin replacements.  And of course there wasn't a single story about the fact that the quality of the light from incandescent bulbs is different (and, for most people, markedly better) than the alternative technologies available today.  Nope, they just want to tell me what to do, because they know how to spend my money much better than I do!

Delivering 5mb of storage, circa 1956...

Delivering 5mb of storage, circa 1956...  IBM, of course.  Click to embiggen.  Spotted this in a nice collection of vintage photos...

The caption on that photo says it's “memory”, but I recognize the internals that are exposed in the photo through the open side panel – they are very much like the IBM disk drives that I worked on when I was in the US Navy, in the early '70s.  Those hoses you see toward the left really are hoses – for the high-pressure hydraulic system that positioned the read/write heads on that beast.  A couple of times I worked on disks that had developed a hydraulic system leak.  What a mess!  Large quantities of sticky, purplish fluid were all over everything – and in one case, when a pinhole leak had developed in a hose, the skinny stream of fluid had cut right through wires and printed circuit boards!  The failure modes for electronic systems were a little different back then :)

Judith Curry, meet Friedrich von Hayek...

Judith Curry, meet Friedrich von Hayek...  What happens when an honest and open-minded climatologist discovers the economist who faced down the uncertainties and complexities of modern economies?  I can't summarize it in any useful way, but it's darned interesting!

If That One had any honor at all, he'd resign...

If That One had any honor at all, he'd resign...  I'm not holding my breath for that event, though.  What's provoked me this morning is the news that in Obama's very first briefing on the Benghazi attack of 9/11/2012, he was told that it was an attack, not some overblown reaction to a video.  What that means, of course, is that Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Susan Rice all lied to the American public, repeatedly, and long after they knew the truth about who killed our ambassador and his bodyguards, and what provoked it.

They lied for political purpose, plain and simple, and apparently without any shame at all.  The narrative is more important to them than the truth.  They are without honor, and unworthy of our respect...

Le Chambon-sur-Lignon...

Le Chambon-sur-Lignon...  Yesterday, I happened across the story of the French village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon during WWII; despite all my reading about WWII, I had never heard the story before, and it's an inspiring one.  The people of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon saved about 5,000 Jews from the Nazis, at great personal cost and at considerable risk to themselves.  There are many stories like this from WWII, but this particular one was new to me, and notable for the number of people they saved.

But what really caught my eye was the mention that the residents of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon were mainly Huguenot – a French Protestant sect that had itself been much persecuted (by the French government).  Their memory of that persecution was part of their motivation to save the Jews.

My ancestors, on my father's side, were Huguenot refugees from the town of La Touche, not very far from Le Chambon-sur-Lignon.  They fled for their lives (quite literally), first to the Netherlands, then to England, and finally to America...

Pater: primogeniture...

Pater: primogeniture...  At right is Mo'i, chugging his way through a field of wildflowers in Corkscrew Gulch of Colorado's San Juan Mountains.  Mo'i was my dad's favorite dog amongst ours – a male field spaniel who shared my dad's love of food and naps...

Primogeniture...

I am the oldest child of my parents, who were farmers – and farmers, by long informal custom, tend to practice primogeniture (inheritance by the oldest son).  To the best of my knowledge, in the U.S. this has always been a matter of tradition and custom, not law.  It's also something that is honored as much in the breach as in the observance.

My dad (my entire family, actually) is notable for not following all that many traditions and customs.  We're weird, and we're proud of it!  While I certainly knew that I was the oldest son, and knew in a general way that the oldest sons of farmers frequently “took over the farm”, I don't recall ever thinking that such a custom might apply to me.  I had absolutely no interest in any kind of agricultural career – between my (life long :) aversion to hard physical labor and my keen interest in science and technology, spending my life on the farm was not an attractive proposition.  I spent no time at all considering it.

One evening after I graduated from high school and was still living at home, my dad awkwardly asked if I would talk with him a bit.  We were in his “office”, then down in the basement of our home.  We sat down to talk, but he was having a terrible time working up the courage to have his say.  He talked all around the subject of my future on the farm, mostly by asking me questions.  For instance, he asked me if I enjoyed watching the seedlings grow into nursery stock, and if I thought that working outdoors was a good thing.

He went on in that vein for 10 or 15 minutes, getting slightly more comfortable with the conversation himself, but leaving me increasingly puzzled.  His discomfiture was entirely at odds with the innocence of our actual conversation.  But at some point, it suddenly clicked for me, and I realized he was trying to ask me if I was interested in taking over the farm.  In my selfish youth, it never once occurred to me that he might have an interest in that.

From my vantage point now, over forty years later, it's easy for me to imagine why my dad would want to have that conversation.  I certainly would not have looked to him like a particularly hopeful candidate for inheriting the farm, but I must have at least looked like a possibility.  I don't know what he imagined my interest would be –  he knew of my interests in science and technology, and he most definitely knew how much I detested hard physical work.  But he also knew how much I loved nature, and that I shared much of his appreciation for the beauty of plants.  I can imagine that he was hopeful I'd have some interest.

Back then, though, my response was entirely self-centered and ungentle: I said “No way!”, or words to that effect, and forcefully, too.  That was the end of our conversation.

The subject rose just twice more between us.

The second time was on our trip together through Colorado in 1975.  I had been in the US Navy for several years at that point, and was looking forward to getting out in just a couple years.  His business was then in transition, and it was clear by then that none of my siblings were interested in taking over the business from him.  So, this time much more directly, my dad raised the subject with me again.  The moment he chose was when we were both sitting on a boulder high up on a mountain valley side, overlooking a waterfall surrounded by wildflowers (this might well have been in Yankee Boy Basin in the San Juan Mountains), with a gorgeous blue sky overhead.  A light breeze carried the scents of the wildflowers to us, along with the roar of the waterfall.  Butterflies flitted all around us.  There wasn't a soul in sight; we had this idyllic scene to ourselves, while we talked about his future.

I learned several things in that conversation.  One was that my dad had accepted my choice to not be a farmer, nurseryman, or horticulturist.  I also learned that he faulted himself for this, to some extent – I tried very hard to dissuade him of this.  He had the notion that he had somehow failed to nurture a sense of the worth of farming in me.  That certainly wasn't true – there were plenty of careers I thought were eminently worthy, but that I had no interest in.  Farming was just one on a long list of such careers.  Then my dad started rambling a bit about what the future of his nursery business held, and I realized that he was fearful that it would fail entirely – the business was changing, and despite the large population increases around him, the market for the kinds of services and plants he could offer appeared to be shrinking.  He was, I realized, genuinely fearful about what the future held for him.  He talked about how he had never managed to save anything, and he worried about what might happen to my mom.

This was all quite shocking to me.  At that time I knew next to nothing about business (some would argue I'm still in that boat :).  It had never occurred to me before that my father's business could fail.  Obviously, though, it had occurred to him.

After that introduction, my dad asked me if I still felt the same way about being involved with the nursery business.  He said that he recognized that it was a big risk, but he also thought that with my help, we might be able to change it in some way that would make it more successful.

This time, my response was a bit more thoughtful than the one I'd had 6 or 7 years earlier.  If anything, I was even more interested in science and technology than before – and I certainly hadn't lost my aversion to hard physical work.  This time, though, I took the time to talk about all that with my dad.  It turned out to be a easy conversation, and I think it was a big relief for him to be able to talk it out with me.  We ended up talking for a couple of hours, up there on that rock.  When we were all done, my dad thanked me for helping him understand what my plans were.  He was disappointed that I wasn't interested in taking over the farm, but not critical about it at all.

That is, in fact, the one thing that jumps out at me now about my dad's reaction to my disinterest in taking over his business: he was never critical, never bitter.  Not once did he ever try to change my mind.  I never heard him even wish that things were otherwise.  He simply accepted it, smiled, and moved on.

We had one last conversation about this subject, years later, and that conversation had a very different nature.  We were again on one of our trips together (I can't recall which one, but I think it was in the late '90s).  I remember being in a cabin alone with him, fireplace roaring, and my dad said that he was now very glad that I had made the choice, all those years ago, to pursue my own career.  He rambled on for quite a long time about all the things that had happened to his own business, the inevitability of it all, the changes in what people wanted in landscaping, and how the farm was likely going to be sold (whether or not I'd been involved).  Then he said some very nice things about what I'd accomplished, and made it plain that he thought my career choices had been good ones.  My dad said he was glad that things had turned out the way they had, both for him and for me.

I sure miss that man...

ObamaCare debacle update...

ObamaCare debacle update...  Even the ObamaCare supporters are starting to notice there's something wrong – and some are abandoning ship...

The ObamaCare legal “poison pill” – an exploration of the seeds That One has unintentionally sown that could lead to the dismantlement of ObamaCare...

James Taranto with an update on ObamaCare's rollout.  Mostly it's a list of the predicted failure modes panning out ... as failures.

An ObamaCare supporter rejoices when she and her husband sign up for ObamaCare policies – but just a few days later they abandon them as complete failures, and buy private policies instead.  A very sobering tale, especially when you know it's being told by an ObamaCare supporter.  Here's her conclusion:

Some may boil our misadventures down to its core, a bratty dirge by privileged whiners who don’t even need Obamacare and are sore they couldn’t get their medication covered. But that’s just it — we, too, need and want more affordable health care. We are precisely the kind of folks they need to make these exchanges work. If it’s all poor, very sick people, Obama can kiss his legacy goodbye.

What’s more, we have the time and initiative to dig for answers. As journalists, we could tap on the shoulders of people who ought to know, but that failed, too. Even with the looming prospect of being subject to this sort of publicity, nobody could give us complete, prompt or useful information. How are people who don’t badger public figures for a living, people who have no other option than to contend with Phone People, supposed to work it out?

But this isn’t merely a failure of government — though it is that. It’s also a failure of the private sector in the form of the insurance industry. They’ve received an unbelievable gift, a government-backed money-minting machine on an epic scale. Nobody really likes them, either. This is their chance, too. And their Phone People are no better despite being significantly more experienced. Their media spokespeople were even less responsive than the government’s, and that’s a pretty low bar.

Come November, we’ll check back and see what Obamacare plans are available for 2015. We want the ACA to work; the previous status quo certainly did not.

Right now, though, it’s time to move on. It’s easy to shrug that these are the expected growing pains of a massive new system. That’s probably true. But in real time, it is destructive to our finances and potentially bad for our health.

The president promised a system that would make obtaining insurance as easy as buying a book on Amazon.com. Instead, he gave us – so far, anyhow – one that’s about as easy as getting the NSA to stop listening to our phone calls.

History of the world, in 2 minutes...

History of the world, in 2 minutes...  Via my mom, who said “Don’t blink!” 

As I was watching this, I was pondering the way that any presentation of history contains the biases of its author.  Then at the 1:19 mark the image at right showed up – and I went from disinterested observer to battling with YouTube to freeze that shot :) 

That scene could have been taken on the fantail of the ship I was stationed on in April, 1975 (the USS Long Beach CGN-9).  I could be in that photo, as I was in a working party just like that one, pushing helicopters off the fantail and into the South China Sea.  I found the photo online, though – it was actually taken on the USS Blue Ridge, a communications ship that was in the same task force my ship was in.  We worked just as fast as we could, so that the next helicopter circling overhead, full of refugees fleeing for their very lives, could land and find safety.

Here's the video that the image at right came from:

Hah!

Hah!  Via my lovely bride...

On that Iranian deal...

On that Iranian deal...  There are so many facets of this that bother and discomfit me.  First, there's my generalized distrust of the U.S. State Department, for whom process and posturing seem to be their primary objective.  Then there's my specific distrust of Kerry, seared into my memory.  Add to that the public, gloating twitterings of the Iranian chief negotiator Hassan Rouhani.  An example from yesterday:

Our relationship w/ the world is based on Iranian nation's interests. In #Geneva agreement world powers surrendered to Iranian nation's will
— Hassan Rouhani (@HassanRouhani) January 14, 2014

Now this morning I read rumors about a secret side deal with Iran – and in this case, I'm confident that if it's secret, it's because it's contrary to the interests of the non-Iranian powers (including the U.S.).

We badly need some adult supervision in Washington, but I don't see any showing up anytime soon.  I just hope That One and his bevy of bozos can avoid blowing up the world before 2016...

Google acquires Nest...

Google acquires Nest...  We have a Nest thermostat in our home, and we love the thing (even though the NSA has probably hacked into it and is using it to monitor our hummingbirds).  The company has recently come out with a new product (Protect, a smart smoke and CO monitor) as well.  The company has a clever premise: to reinvent “unloved” (their word) devices and make them into something lovable.

I would not have expected them to be a target for Google.  While they may have more money than the U.S. Treasury, $3.2 billion (in cash, no less).  I really don't think Google is looking at the screen on the Nest as a target for advertising :)  So they must have some other idea in mind.  If you look at the wide variety of acquisitions (especially those of device manufacturers) that Google has been making in the last year or so, the one common thread seems to be that these are connected devices – part of the anticipated and much ballyhooed Internet of things that John Chambers so loves to ramble on about.  Still, it's not at all clear to me why it's to Google's advantage to own big chunks of the Internet of things.

Maybe it's much simpler than I'm imagining.  Maybe Google's huge pile of cash is burning a hole in their corporate pocket, and they're just going to buy lots of things everything...