Another wingsuit flyer...

Another wingsuit flyer...  But this one took some beautiful video.  This is the first time I've watched one of these and not assumed the flyer was criminally insane...

Sunrise in Cache Valley...

Sunrise in Cache Valley...  Looking from our yard to the northwest...

Quote of the day...

Quote of the day...  This is from the middle of an excellent post by the always-wonderful Megan McArdle on the justification of Obamacare by economic externalities.  She demolishes that argument most convincingly, and in the process says this:

The answer is that we don't simply say "OMG, negative externality! Quick, government, kill it with fire!"

I sure hope Megan never stops being Megan...

Religions in general have some friction with science...

Religions in general have some friction with science...  That is, most religions have some beliefs that conflict with science, or at the very least are challenging to reconcile.  Evolution and cosmology are perhaps the most familiar such sources of friction.  However, most religions accept unhesitatingly an ancient scientific discovery that has been rather convincingly proven: that the Earth rotates around the sun, and revolves on its axis.  Most religions, I said – but not all of them.

Oh, my...

Unless you've been sleeping in a cave somewhere...

Unless you've been sleeping in a cave somewhere ... you know about the progressive press and punditry whipping up a storm of outrage over the candidacy of Scott Walker.  One of the outrage-whippers is the screamer Howard Dean.  The source of the outrage is Walker's lack of a college education.  Someone asked Mike Rowe what he thought about that, and his response is a must-read.  Here's one part that jumped out at me:

I don’t agree with Howard Dean - not at all.

Here’s what I didn’t understand 25 years ago. QVC had a serious recruiting problem. Qualified candidates were applying in droves, but failing miserably on the air. Polished salespeople with proven track records were awkward on TV. Professional actors with extensive credits couldn’t be themselves on camera. And seasoned hosts who understood live television had no experience hawking products. So eventually, QVC hit the reset button. They stopped looking for “qualified” people, and started looking for anyone who could talk about a pencil for eight minutes.

QVC had confused qualifications with competency.

Perhaps America has done something similar? 

Go read the whole thing...

Assessing scientific knowledge in the American public...

Assessing scientific knowledge in the American public...  That's the objective of this survey, which I just took.  Mid-way through the 13-question survey I started wondering where the tough questions were.  There weren't any – these were all trivially easy questions that I'd expect any adult American to know.  At the end of the survey, there's a graph showing the distribution of the number of correct answers (below) in the original survey.  There's also a chart showing cross-tabulations by question against age, education, and gender. 

I find these sorts of data to be very disheartening...

What's the strongest known biological material?

What's the strongest known biological material?  Limpet teeth (at right).

Who knew that limpets even had teeth?  I'd never thought about it before, though I've seen limpets at work on shoreline rocks many times.  I always assumed that they used digestive acids to perform their rock-cleaning magic – I had no idea they did it mechanically, with teeth and muscles.

I have a new-found respect for limpets :)

Just when you think ISIS can go no lower...

Just when you think ISIS can go no lower...  Beheadings, immolations, massacres – ISIS has been at the pinnacle of mass depravity for a while now.  But if this is true, they've raised it to another level: massacre for profit...

I wonder...

I wonder ... how the Obama administration will spin this?  An angry Muslim man walks up to two strangers, determines (by asking them) that they are not Muslim, and ... attacks them with a knife.  This doesn't fit the Obama administration's narrative, and it's right here in America (well, that's assuming you consider Detroit to be part of America).  What say ye, Obamanoids?  Is it time to acknowledge the obvious yet?

The greatest sushi in Utah?

The greatest sushi in Utah?  It just might be!  Debbie and I drove down to Ogden today to try a meal at Tona Sushi.  It's a 52 minute drive for us, about the same as the drive from our old home in Jamul to our favorite sushi there (Hana Sushi in El Cajon).  How was it?  Awesome!

The fish was by far the best we've had in Utah.  In fact, it was better than most of the fish we got at Hana Sushi, our previous “gold standard”.  Even better: the quality was consistent across every selection we made.  I ordered the sashimi combination, with six different fishes that the chef selected.  I also got two orders of nigiri sushi selected by the chef.  All eight kinds of fish were simply superb.  Debbie got two different kinds of rolls, and reports that both of them were top-notch.  We had “bacon bubblegum” as an appetizer: bacon-wrapped fried mochi.  Delicious, but a bit heavy for my tastes as an appetizer to a repast of raw fish.

Tona has a selection of delicious-sounding desserts (unusual for a sushi restaurant), so we decided to try them.  Debbie got the chocolate mousse, and I got the semifreddo: semi-frozen mascarpone, Oreo “soil”, Myer lemon citrus preserves, and berries.  Debbie made happy noises the entire time she was eating her mousse, and for most of the trip home.  My semifreddo?  Let me put it like this: I will never visit Tona without ordering it.  Never!  It's a dessert perfectly suited to my tastes: creamy, not overly sweet, with tart fruit and delicious dribbled sauces.

We didn't think to ask whether they had fresh wasabi until we were ready to leave.  The answer?  Certainly – just ask when ordering.  That makes Tona only the second sushi restaurant we've run into with fresh wasabi.

You can probably guess that we'll be coming back here whenever we need a sushi fix...

Wind-carved sandstone...

Wind-carved sandstone ... in Michigan (more photos here)...

Mukbang...

Mukbang...  This is really weird.  I know several Koreans; I need to ask them what on earth the appeal is here...

Thundersnow...

Thundersnow...  And this weatherman (Jim Cantore) is very excited about it :)

Acoustic jamming...

Acoustic jamming...  Scientists have shown that the long tails of some moth species confuse the echo-location senses of predating bats.  Basically, they're an acoustic jamming system.  The bats end up targeting the moths' tails instead of their bodies, thus saving the moth from becoming a meal for the bat.

I remember first reading about a completely separate defensive mechanism in some moths: they've evolved the ability to hear the bat's “sonar” squeaks, allowing them to take evasive action before the bat can eat them.  This new jamming mechanism with the long tails is a separately evolved defensive mechanism, in different species.  From what I've read, it appears that no single moth species has both defensive mechanisms...

Kings of the mountain...

Kings of the mountain...  Last fall, our friend and neighbor Tim D. piled all the soil excavated for our barn's foundation up on the west side of our garden area.  Another neighbor's boys (and their friends) are enjoying the small hills Tim created.  They use them for building forts, riding their bikes on, and just generally running around.  In bare feet.  In February.  It's a gorgeous day out, 48°F and wall-to-wall sunshine.

Before the boys started playing on our “mountains”, they knocked on our door to ask if it was ok for them to do so.  They did the same thing before playing in our pine “forest” (visible behind the mountains), and before riding their bikes on our pavement.  They're endearingly polite, these boys – something 30+ years of exposure to California boys had me thinking that good manners had gone the same way as floppy disks, typewriters, and vinyl records...

Flags on President's day...

Flags on President's day...  The local Boy Scout troop provides a service to local homeowners on patriotic holidays: they post flags along the road.  The photo at right shows our flag this morning, and if you embiggen it you'll see several of our neighbors' flags to the south.  The Boy Scouts do this for 7 or 8 holidays during the year, for a donation of $35.  I've noted that several families in town who likely can ill afford such an expense also have the flags up – either the Boy Scouts are helping out, or they're sacrificing something meaningful to pay for them.  Either way, another interesting statement about the local culture...

Paperless, updated...

Paperless, updated...  About six weeks ago, I posted about our adventure in switching to paperless records storage.  We've just gone over 100 documents filed this way, with about 250 pages total.  As I gain familiarity with the system, it just gets easier and easier to use.  I've started using folders in DevonThink to organize the information, but only in a very high-level way (for instance, all of our financial records are in a single folder).  I've started to routine scan manuals and instruction sheets (it's so easy!), not because they take up so much room, but because by being scanned they're so easy to search.  Very, very convenient.

So just in case you were wondering whether we still thought going paperless (as Helen W. asked by email yesterday) was a win ... the answer is “Hell, yes!”

A switching mystery, resolved...

A switching mystery, resolved...  Yesterday I replaced a few more electrical switches.  I've been chipping away at this project, working my way through the house replacing all the switches and outlets, and cleaning up the (all too numerous) wiring problems I've found in the process.

One of the switches I replaced is located near our front door.  It controls four outdoor floodlights, which we use every evening and morning to light up the yard when we walk the dogs.  We only know of that one switch for controlling those lights, so I was surprised to discover – when I removed the existing switch – that it was wired as a “three-way” switch.  The fact that it was wired as a three-way switch implies (rather strongly) that there is another switch somewhere that also controls these same lights.  That was a big surprise to us – we have no idea where that switch might be, and we don't know of a logical place for it to be located.  In this house, though, it could be located in some completely nonsensical place.  We joked that maybe it was in the basement, where there are several switches whose purpose we haven't yet deciphered.

That's not the mystery that the title of this post refers to, though, as we haven't yet resolved it.  The resolved mystery was a different one: I replaced the switch and then tested it.  I test these rewiring jobs every time, even when (as in this case) the rewiring is trivial.  It's pretty difficult to miswire a three-way switch, and there is no way to dangerously miswire one.  I was confident this one was wired correctly, as the “hot” wire was easy to identify visually.

So I was very surprised when it didn't work.

I took the new switch out, and connected the wires directly.  I saw a spark, but no lights came on.  I checked the circuit breakers; no breakers were tripped.  WTF?  There's so little that can go wrong with a circuit like this!  With the power verified (the spark and no breakers tripped), what's left to go wrong?  All four bulbs coincidentally burn out?  Just in case that was somehow the problem, I replaced one.  No joy.  I went round-and-round on this for about an hour, and finally just gave up.  I decided to reinstall the switch, button things back up, and troubleshoot it later.  I had other things to do.

A couple hours later, while moving some boxes around, I was thinking about the switch problem.   It was bugging me, because it was such a simple electrical wiring problem and yet it had me buffaloed.  Then I remembered something I'd observed that surprised me: the spark made when I connected the wires manually was quite small – smaller than I'd expect for a circuit with 600 watts of lights being switched.  Why would that be?  Then a few seconds later, I had it – I knew why the lights weren't working.

Did you figure it out?

I hypothesized that somewhere in that circuit there must be a photoelectric control that turned those outdoor floodlights on at night, and off in the day.  That control would draw a small amount of current even in the day, when the lights would be off – hence the small spark, and no lights.  At night the photoelectric control would allow the lights to come on.

So at dusk I walked Mo'i, and turned on the light switch.  The lights all came on.  All that time I spent troubleshooting the switch earlier in the day was for naught – it was wired correctly in the first place, and was working all along.  The lights simply aren't allowed to come on during daylight hours!

I still have no idea where that photoelectric control is located.  Nor do I know where the other switch is.  Yesterday I also replaced another “mystery switch” located near our front door.  This one is a simple on/off switch (not a three-way), located in our entranceway.   The circuit is live, and it draws current when turned on (about an amp, so around 100 watts).  We haven't detected anything that it's turning on and off.  My working theory is that the former owner installed a light bulb inside a wall somewhere, and that's what's being controlled :)

The humor of Ronald Reagan...

The humor of Ronald Reagan...  Reader Simi L. sends along this delightful compilation.

Just seeing his face made me feel better about my country.  Odd, how effective that is.  I'm proud to call him an American, and proud to have him represent our country to the world.  It's been a while since I've felt that way, dammit...

Too cool for school?

Too cool for school?  That's what friend and former colleague Aleck L. says about this collection of math-explaining graphics, like the one at right...