A beautiful morning in Paradise...

A beautiful morning in Paradise...  Paradise, Utah, that is.  The photos below (click to embiggen) are from around our yard, looking south, southwest, and west, respectively.  Yesterday and today we're having a bit of a cold snap.  We had rain from yesterday afternoon through this morning (about 3/4" all totaled), and then it abruptly cleared and the sun broke through.  Looking west we can see the Wellsville Mountains, which got a fresh coat of snow during the night.  By eyeball it looks like the snow line is down to about 6,000'.  The Wasatch Mountains to our east are also dusted with new snow, but they're in shadow this morning and I couldn't take a decent photo of them.

I've had our home's heater shut off for over a month now, as the weather has been pleasant to a little warm (though the house stayed nice and cool). This morning when I woke up, though, the house was 46 °F – brrrrr! So I lit off the heaters to get it up to 65 °F, where it is right now.  Running the heater in late June is rather a new experience for me :)

The flooring guys have been working in the house for a week now.  The basement rooms (other than the cattery) are now floored in a beautiful hickory; they're all done down there.  They've now started on the most challenging room on the second floor: the TV room.  It's challenging for several reasons, but there are two particularly odd things.  First, there's a “ramp” about 3 feet long that rises about 2 inches over that length.  This ramp connects the main part of the second floor to the large TV room, whose floor is 2 inches higher than the rest of the second floor.  Wood floor systems are designed to be laid on flat surfaces, so this requires some ingenuity and cleverness.  The top transition is done and looks great!  The second odd thing is that we have a steel brace (for the end of a stair railing) that is about 3/16 of an inch thick, and has four lag bolt heads protruding about the same amount further.  The wood is 3/4 of an inch thick, which means that a carefully routed out matching hole in the wood should leave plenty of wood above it (especially if we fill the cavity with glue).  But this calls for some tricky hand routing.  They should be attempting this today...

A broccoli stand in a candy shop...

A broccoli stand in a candy shop...  This conclusion seems obvious, given the pap published by the lamestream media.  What I'd really like to understand is why.  Why do the majority of Americans find it preferable to read about (say) the latest hair fashion in Hollywood than (say) the underlying causes of the Middle East conflict?  It seems pretty clear to me that the former will have exactly zero effect on my life, while the latter has quite a large one.  Is that not clear to most Americans?  Or do they just not care enough to study and think about the “hard” news?  This has puzzled me for a very long time and I've never come across an answer that I find satisfying; it remains a puzzle...

A Tale of Two Scandals...

A Tale of Two Scandals...  That's the title of Peggy Noonan's piece in the Wall Street Journal today, and it's a good read.  She's doing something many others have done: comparing the “lost” emails of the current IRS scandal to the 18 1/2 minute gaps in the Watergate tapes.  What really caught my attention, though, was her close:

She was one of those usually unknown people who populate government, who come from throughout the country drawn to Washington and wanting to help, wanting the sense of consequence and drama and meaning it can impart, who do their jobs well for many decades, who know what they know and then, eventually, go home. Those were good days, when everybody went home.

That's Rosemary Woods she's talking about, but the important point is that last sentence.  That's a good encapsulation of the Founders' notion of a citizen government – where ordinary citizens would temporarily interrupt their life for a few years of government service, and then they would return back to their previous ordinary citizen life.  Implicit in that vision is that notion that there would not be a “permanent government class” – a set of “elites” who ruled over the country as their career.  In the very beginning of the Constitutional U.S., that citizen government actually was what we had.  The erosion started almost immediately, though, and now we've evolved (or devolved, maybe) into almost the opposite – a government where every elected official tries to remain in office as long as possible, where it's possible to get rich in office, and where the actual objectives of those officials is self-enrichment or self-aggrandizement of some other kind.

If George Washington could see what's happening in his namesake city, he'd be very sad indeed.  Angry, too, I suspect.  He might even start thinking about leading another revolution...

Oh, taxes are for the little people!

Oh, taxes are for the little people!  And not for the Clintons, that's for sure...

The F-35 kluge...

The F-35 kluge...  It's a wonderful, frank, and straightforward description of how the government (in this case, the military) can totally screw up almost any procurement.

I was particularly interested in his explanation of why, as he puts it, “stealth is a scam”.  It boils down to this: all the stealth technology does is to “hide” high frequency radars, the kind that most Western countries have been building since WWII.  High frequency radars have many, many advantages – from higher resolution to smaller, lighter components (especially antennae).  The lower frequency radars are actually simpler technology, but they are bigger and have lower resolution.  Stealth technology, though, hardly affects their operation.  I first ran into this phenomenon when reading about the Bosnian war (where the rebels successfully shot down an F-117A, a stealth plane).  They detected the plane with a WWII-era Soviet radar, just as this fellow talks about.  Later I read about a hobbyist in Nevada operating a U.S.-made WWII radar, along with more modern radars – and reporting that the older radar was seeing planes that were invisible on the modern radars.  This video is now the third time I've heard references to that stealth vulnerability – which I find completely plausible, and utterly devastating to the whole idea of aircraft stealthiness...

V838 light echo...

V838 light echo...  You'll want to watch this full screen, and you might want to lower your volume before playing it.  Via APOD (where there are details), of course...

Flight from taxes...

Flight from taxes...  This morning's Wall Street Journal has a good piece on one of the presumably unintended consequences of American corporate tax policy: the rather large incentive it creates for successful (that is, profitable) American-based corporations to leave the U.S.  Here's a couple of key paragraphs:

But shareholders of all companies—including employees who care about where economic growth will occur in the future—should know that America's federal corporate tax rate is 35%, which when combined with state and local levies rises to an average of nearly 40%. Ireland, where politicians evidently care about economic growth and as far as we know don't seek to stifle free speech on the topic, has a corporate tax rate of 12.5%. 

Almost alone among civilized nations, Washington also demands to be paid on a company's world-wide earnings, rather than on money earned in the U.S. This tax is due whenever a company's overseas earnings are returned to America. Medtronic has about $14 billion overseas and rather than bringing it home and triggering the tax, the company will use the money to fund most of the cash portion of its $42.9 billion purchase. 

Will politicians pay attention?  Not very damned likely.

My mom would not like it...

My mom would not like it ... if I were to take up this sport!  Don't worry mom, I haven't purchased one of these bikes yet...

Duck River...

Duck River...  From the sound of the language and the fact that they're driving on the wrong side of the road, I'm guessing this is Thailand...

Finally! A bus ride that I would actually like to make!

Finally!  A bus ride that I would actually like to make!  I'd want a seat with a window that actually worked, though...

An aside on mass transit...  I've heard a great many people blathering on – sometimes eloquently, though usually not – about the wonders of mass transit (including buses).  Often these people have only a loose command of those pesky things called verifiable facts, but they certainly don't let that get in the way of their advocacy.  If you'd like an example of this phenomenon, I'll just refer you to the public records of speeches by the advocates of the current California “bullet train” proposal championed by the world's emptiest skull, aka California Governor “Moonbeam” Jerry Brown.

But there's another aspect of mass transit that I've never seen publicly discussed: the hell on earth that it is for anyone who is introverted (like me!).  Being shoved into a dirty, noisy, bumpy vehicle (train, bus, plane) with dozens or hundreds of poor examples of organisms allegedly of the same species as I – that is a well-designed instrument of torture for an introvert.  For buses and trains, you can add the additional horrors of government-run, union-manned “service”.  The bottom line: I'll do almost anything to avoid mass transit.  I fly only when I absolutely must.  I take a bus only to escape some life-threatening situation.  The rest of the time I drive or walk. Here in Utah, I just might get me a bicycle (the roads are virtually flat, and off the highway there are few cars).  The bus here (which is free) is likely better than others I've been on, but I'm not planning on trying it anytime soon...

I would like this house, please...

I would like this house, please...  Click to embiggen...

Man barks at dogs...

Man barks at dogs...  Dogs' reaction?  Varied :)

After listening to this guy barking, I'm convinced he's part canine...

“Ordinary fools are all right; you can talk to them...”

“Ordinary fools are all right; you can talk to them...”  This morning I stumbled across one of my favorite passages from one of my favorite Richard Feynman books (Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman!):

There were a lot of fools at that conference -- pompous fools -- and pompous fools drive me up the wall. Ordinary fools are all right; you can talk to them, and try to help them out. But pompous fools -- guys who are fools and are covering it all over and impressing people as to how wonderful they are with all this hocus pocus -- THAT, I CANNOT STAND! An ordinary fool isn't a faker; an honest fool is all right. But a dishonest fool is terrible! And that's what I got at the conference, a bunch of pompous fools, and I got very upset.

Organic food...

Organic food ... isn't all it's cracked up to be.  I think this has been obvious to every farmer (or anyone who knows anything about farming) since the beginning of the organic food craze.  As P. T. Barnum said: “There’s a mark born every minute!”

Tag and release program...

Tag and release program ... for studying American consumers.  Ha!

“I’m feeling lucky...”

“I’m feeling lucky...”  What if quality journalism isn't?  That's the title of an article by Thomas Baekdal, and it includes an interesting use of the phrase I used for this post.  If he just deleted the first two words from his article's title, he'd nail it :)

Coming soon to a Google map near you...

Coming soon to a Google map near you ... high resolution satellite imagery updated at least three times a day.  Today the frequency of Google Maps' imagery updates varies wildly, depending on where you're looking.  At our home in Jamul, it's only a couple times a decade.  Once the Skybox imagery is integrated with Google Maps, the updates will be roughly 1,500 times more often.  This is the sort of thing that you can handily predict will be continuously improved (by adding more satellites) as demand rises, and it seems inevitable that it will.  Google is likely to application developers to access this imagery (through APIs), which will drive demand rapidly – just as APIs for the existing maps and imagery drove demand for Google Maps. 

These are amazing times we live in...

Steve McIntyre brings nuclear weapons to a knife fight...

Steve McIntyre brings nuclear weapons to a knife fight...  Though in his case, the “nuclear weapons” are all in his little gray cells.  I almost feel sorry for his target.  Mostly, though, Steve's analyses increase my appreciation for the high value of skepticism – in science and in everyday life...

If Asians said the stuff white people say...

If Asians said the stuff white people say...  Friend and former colleague Aleck L. (who hails from Taiwan) sent me this hilarious spoof.  I suspect this is more universal between cultures and races than people on the receiving end assume.  After all, if you're Asian, then you're going to hear all the stereotypical Asian assumptions – and not the others.

I've been amused quite a few times by assumptions people from other cultures or races have made about me.  What leaps immediately to mind were my earliest experiences (in the early '90s) driving around Estonia.  I often met people who had never met an American before – and when they heard that I was from California, the almost inevitable follow-up was to ask me about various movies stars, with the assumption that I must know them personally :)  I also vividly remember a black guy from Chicago who was part of my mess decks crew when I was in the Navy.  He was continually astonished at the stuff we white people would eat – especially vegetables.  Much of the Navy diet was food he'd never tasted before, and which he associated with white people.  And then there was my Indian colleague who was continually amused by (from his perspective) the American/white beliefs about dating, sex, and marriage – he thought we were four or five centuries behind the Indians in those regards :)

Deer rescue by hovercraft...

Deer rescue by hovercraft...  Via my lovely bride...