Wednesday, May 6, 2015
Do you feel the ground shaking?
Jøtul F 100 wood stove...
Jøtul F 100 wood stove... The photos below show my new wood stove, which I mentioned yesterday. In the first photo you can see just how tiny it is – those windows are on the small side, and the stove is much smaller than them! The second photo shows a close-in view The circular thing on the left side of the top is a wood stove thermometer...
Even more progress in Paradise...
A fine lunch...
A fine lunch... On this rainy, overcast day we decided to take ourselves out for a nice late lunch. We set out to go for sushi (in Ogden), but as we drove up through the rain in Sardine Canyon, somehow we got onto the subject of burgers. That, in turn, got us onto the thought of Maddox Ranch House restaurant, in Brigham City. We went there for the first time about a month ago, and had a superb beef supper. So we went there for lunch today for a burger.
Everything about the meal was superior. Fresh dinner rolls with strawberry butter or plain butter. Delicious burgers on a homemade bun, nicely grilled on the inside. Crisp green lettuce. Ripe, flavorful tomato. Perfect dill pickle spears. Iced tea, perfectly done. We both had soup for our appetizer: a creamy potato soup with plenty of vegetables and bacon. I had just enough room to consider a dessert: strawberry pie. It was basically a pile of strawberries with a dollop of stiff whip cream, sweetened and vanilla flavored, on top. There was very little pastry. The strawberries were perfectly ripe: sweet and bursting with flavor, but yet still with a slight crunch. I have no idea how they could make that any better.
Now we're in a burger/strawberry pie coma. I expect no progress the rest of the day :)
Everything about the meal was superior. Fresh dinner rolls with strawberry butter or plain butter. Delicious burgers on a homemade bun, nicely grilled on the inside. Crisp green lettuce. Ripe, flavorful tomato. Perfect dill pickle spears. Iced tea, perfectly done. We both had soup for our appetizer: a creamy potato soup with plenty of vegetables and bacon. I had just enough room to consider a dessert: strawberry pie. It was basically a pile of strawberries with a dollop of stiff whip cream, sweetened and vanilla flavored, on top. There was very little pastry. The strawberries were perfectly ripe: sweet and bursting with flavor, but yet still with a slight crunch. I have no idea how they could make that any better.
Now we're in a burger/strawberry pie coma. I expect no progress the rest of the day :)
Are we older folks really the ones with dementia?
Are we older folks really the ones with dementia? These six tales, allegedly all true – the Intertubes said it, so it must be so! Via my brother Scott, who is ever-so-slightly less ancient than I:
Recently, I went to McDonald's and I saw on the menu that you could have an order of 6, 9 or 12 Chicken McNuggets.
I asked for a half dozen nuggets.
'We don't have half dozen nuggets,' said the teenager at the counter.
'You don't?' I replied.
'We only have six, nine, or twelve,' was the reply.
'So I can't order a half dozen nuggets, but I can order six?'
'That's right.'
So I shook my head and ordered six McNuggets
Unbelievable but sadly true. Must have been the same one I asked for sweetener and she said they didn't have any, only Splenda and sugar. And they think they are worth $15.00 per hour!
I was checking out at the local Wal-Mart with just a few items and the lady behind me put her things on the belt close to mine. I picked up one of those dividers that they keep by the cash register and placed it between our things so they wouldn't get mixed.
After the girl had scanned all of my items, she picked up the divider, looking it all over for the bar code so she could scan it. Not finding the bar code, she said to me, 'Do you know how much this is?'
I said to her 'I've changed my mind; I don't think I'll buy that today.'
She said 'OK,' and I paid her for the things and left.
She had no clue to what had just happened.
But the lady behind me had a big smirk on her face as I left.
A woman at work was seen putting a credit card into her DVD drive and pulling it out very quickly. When I inquired as to what she was doing, she said she was shopping on the Internet and they kept asking for a credit card number, so she was using the ATM thingy.
I recently saw a distraught young lady weeping beside her car.
'Do you need some help?' I asked.
She replied, 'I knew I should have replaced the battery to this remote door un-locker. Now I can't get into my car. Do you think they (pointing to a distant convenience store) would have a battery to fit this?'
'Hmm, I don't know. Do you have an alarm, too?' I asked.
'No, just this remote thingy,' she answered, handing it and the car keys to me. As I took the key and manually unlocked the door, I replied, 'Why don't you drive over there and check about the batteries. It's a long walk....'
Several years ago, we had an intern who was none too swift. One day she was typing and turned to a secretary and said, 'I'm almost out of typing paper.
What do I do?'
'Just use paper from the photocopier', the secretary told her.
With that, the intern took her last remaining blank piece of paper, put it on the photocopier and proceeded to make five blank copies.
Brunette, by the way!!
A mother calls 911 very worried asking the dispatcher if she needs to take her kid to the emergency room, as the kid had just eaten some ants. The dispatcher tells her to give the kid some Benadryl and he should be fine. Then the mother said:I'm feeling a bit less demented now :)
'I just gave him some ant killer......'
Dispatcher: 'Rush him in to emergency right now!'
Summer triangle...
Geo-location to centimeter scale...
Geo-location to centimeter scale... This is a really big deal, assuming they can actually productize it at scale. For my American readers, “centimeter scale” means accuracies on the order of a half inch.
If you're ancient enough, you'll remember the bad old days when the only way you could figure out where you were is to use maps, compasses, landmarks, sextants, and so on to get your position on the surface of the earth. If you were skilled and had the right tools, you could locate yourself within about a mile, or within a few tens of feet if you had landmarks and a good map. My dad taught me how to use USGS topo maps and a compass to figure out where we were when hiking, which I still know how to do. But only if I'm lucky with visible, identifiable landmarks can I get my position within 50' or so.
GPS changed all that, and remarkably quickly. A quick count tells me that Debbie and I own 8 devices that have GPS capability. One or more of them is virtually always at hand. That means that we can find out where we are on the Earth's surface to within about 20' anytime we want to. It's effortless. Most of these devices not only know where they are, but can also display a map to let us know very conveniently. The map might be a road map, a topo map, or even satellite imagery of our surroundings. It can be annotated with the names of stores, offices, etc. It's hard to overstate what a revolutionary thing this is. We all just take it for granted now that we can know where we are. It wasn't so very long ago that was a very challenging thing indeed.
This new technology promises yet another such revolution, with a 100x increase in accuracy. A mobile phone equipped with it wouldn't just know which house it was in – it would know where it was within a particular room, how high it was off the floor, and what direction it was pointing. This accuracy will be an incredible enabler for autonomous devices. To pick a trivial example: a robot mower, once “taught” about how your yard is laid out, will be able to mow your lawn without human guidance and (especially) without the large, expensive, and compute-intensive artificial vision systems and the like. If they can get this technology down to GPS-like prices, it's going to pervade all sorts of gizmos – and change our lives even more than GPS has...
If you're ancient enough, you'll remember the bad old days when the only way you could figure out where you were is to use maps, compasses, landmarks, sextants, and so on to get your position on the surface of the earth. If you were skilled and had the right tools, you could locate yourself within about a mile, or within a few tens of feet if you had landmarks and a good map. My dad taught me how to use USGS topo maps and a compass to figure out where we were when hiking, which I still know how to do. But only if I'm lucky with visible, identifiable landmarks can I get my position within 50' or so.
GPS changed all that, and remarkably quickly. A quick count tells me that Debbie and I own 8 devices that have GPS capability. One or more of them is virtually always at hand. That means that we can find out where we are on the Earth's surface to within about 20' anytime we want to. It's effortless. Most of these devices not only know where they are, but can also display a map to let us know very conveniently. The map might be a road map, a topo map, or even satellite imagery of our surroundings. It can be annotated with the names of stores, offices, etc. It's hard to overstate what a revolutionary thing this is. We all just take it for granted now that we can know where we are. It wasn't so very long ago that was a very challenging thing indeed.
This new technology promises yet another such revolution, with a 100x increase in accuracy. A mobile phone equipped with it wouldn't just know which house it was in – it would know where it was within a particular room, how high it was off the floor, and what direction it was pointing. This accuracy will be an incredible enabler for autonomous devices. To pick a trivial example: a robot mower, once “taught” about how your yard is laid out, will be able to mow your lawn without human guidance and (especially) without the large, expensive, and compute-intensive artificial vision systems and the like. If they can get this technology down to GPS-like prices, it's going to pervade all sorts of gizmos – and change our lives even more than GPS has...
Progress in Paradise...
Progress in Paradise... It was a day of little things.
I finished designing the flatbed, stake-sided wagon I'm going to build, and ventured up to the Logan Home Depot to pick up the lumber, paint, and hardware for it. The carriage bolts I need turned out to be problematic – every source in town added together didn't have enough of them! So I ordered them on Amazon instead; they'll be trickling in over the next week. That project is delayed.
On the way up to Home Depot, I stopped at King Hair in Logan and got my hair cut. Walking into that place feels like you're walking into someone's house – someone whose mom just happens to have a well-equipped barber and beauty shop. Each time I've gone, a different barber has taken care of me. They always strike up the kind of conversation you might have with a new neighbor – friendly, curious, and comfortable. My whole life haircuts have been something I avoided, as I always have something else I'd rather be doing, I don't really care much about how I look, and the experience generally involves lots of waiting (which I hate!). I've never waited more than 60 seconds here, literally. Only twice have I ever even sat down on one of their chairs for people waiting. The people there are so nice that I actually look forward to seeing them. They're starting to change my mind about haircuts. Maybe I'll start getting them more than 3 times a year...
On the way home I stopped in at the Artistic Metal Works shop in Millville. They're making a fireplace door for us, and they had some questions about what we wanted. The beginnings of the door were laying out on a work table. They're making the front of it out of a single piece of 1/4" thick steel – that piece along weighs about 75 pounds. The door frames are made from welded steel bars, about 1/4" x 2" in cross-section. We didn't specify this sort of King Kong resistant construction; it's what they proposed. We're going to need a crane to bring it into the house :)
The painters arrived while I was gone, and did some more work on the house before the rains set in (we got about 1/4" yesterday afternoon). As I pulled into our driveway, a stranger waited for me. Turns out he was the installer for Chim Chiminey, a local fireplace dealer. I'd ordered a small wood stove for my new office in the barn, and he had just finished installing it. The stove I picked was made by Jøtul, a Norwegian company. I chose the tiny little F 100, designed for heating small areas.
While I was at Home Depot, I also picked up a couple small black walnut boards (Home Depot has some hardwoods; not much to choose from, but of decent quality and at good prices). Debbie needs a little bowl holder for the cats, and her attempt to purchase one didn't work out so well. I did the first sawing and gluing step on it yesterday afternoon. I'll post a photo when it's finished.
My neighbor Tim D. came over to work on a better way to connect his irrigation pipes to our east-most riser. He's long had some trouble getting his hand line close enough to the eastern edge of his field, and when we had some fence removed last week, we opened up a new opportunity for him. He had a short section of 3" aluminum pipe that he will use as a “stretcher” to allow him to get about 15' closer to the eastern edge. That will be especially useful on days when the irrigation pressure is low (because so many people are irrigating). To do this, he needed to remove the sprinkler from this pipe section, and then clean up the end with the hook. I spotted him out there trying to do this by himself, and having some challenges. He's got arthritis in his hands, and his grip isn't all that strong. Further, some of what he was trying to do needed about six hands. So I went out to help, and between the two of us we managed to get it all done. Removing that old sprinkler took every bit of strength the two of us had together. We had an unreasonable sense of accomplishment when we finally got the sprinkler riser to unscrew!
We're expecting intermittent rain over the next few day, which the farmers here are very happy to see. There are several thousand acres of freshly planted hay within just a couple of miles of our house, including all the fields adjacent to us...
I finished designing the flatbed, stake-sided wagon I'm going to build, and ventured up to the Logan Home Depot to pick up the lumber, paint, and hardware for it. The carriage bolts I need turned out to be problematic – every source in town added together didn't have enough of them! So I ordered them on Amazon instead; they'll be trickling in over the next week. That project is delayed.
On the way up to Home Depot, I stopped at King Hair in Logan and got my hair cut. Walking into that place feels like you're walking into someone's house – someone whose mom just happens to have a well-equipped barber and beauty shop. Each time I've gone, a different barber has taken care of me. They always strike up the kind of conversation you might have with a new neighbor – friendly, curious, and comfortable. My whole life haircuts have been something I avoided, as I always have something else I'd rather be doing, I don't really care much about how I look, and the experience generally involves lots of waiting (which I hate!). I've never waited more than 60 seconds here, literally. Only twice have I ever even sat down on one of their chairs for people waiting. The people there are so nice that I actually look forward to seeing them. They're starting to change my mind about haircuts. Maybe I'll start getting them more than 3 times a year...
On the way home I stopped in at the Artistic Metal Works shop in Millville. They're making a fireplace door for us, and they had some questions about what we wanted. The beginnings of the door were laying out on a work table. They're making the front of it out of a single piece of 1/4" thick steel – that piece along weighs about 75 pounds. The door frames are made from welded steel bars, about 1/4" x 2" in cross-section. We didn't specify this sort of King Kong resistant construction; it's what they proposed. We're going to need a crane to bring it into the house :)
While I was at Home Depot, I also picked up a couple small black walnut boards (Home Depot has some hardwoods; not much to choose from, but of decent quality and at good prices). Debbie needs a little bowl holder for the cats, and her attempt to purchase one didn't work out so well. I did the first sawing and gluing step on it yesterday afternoon. I'll post a photo when it's finished.
My neighbor Tim D. came over to work on a better way to connect his irrigation pipes to our east-most riser. He's long had some trouble getting his hand line close enough to the eastern edge of his field, and when we had some fence removed last week, we opened up a new opportunity for him. He had a short section of 3" aluminum pipe that he will use as a “stretcher” to allow him to get about 15' closer to the eastern edge. That will be especially useful on days when the irrigation pressure is low (because so many people are irrigating). To do this, he needed to remove the sprinkler from this pipe section, and then clean up the end with the hook. I spotted him out there trying to do this by himself, and having some challenges. He's got arthritis in his hands, and his grip isn't all that strong. Further, some of what he was trying to do needed about six hands. So I went out to help, and between the two of us we managed to get it all done. Removing that old sprinkler took every bit of strength the two of us had together. We had an unreasonable sense of accomplishment when we finally got the sprinkler riser to unscrew!
We're expecting intermittent rain over the next few day, which the farmers here are very happy to see. There are several thousand acres of freshly planted hay within just a couple of miles of our house, including all the fields adjacent to us...
Tuesday, May 5, 2015
On Iran's seizure of a U.S.-flagged ship...
On Iran's seizure of a U.S.-flagged ship... Excellent piece at Ricochet...
Progress in Paradise...
Progress in Paradise... The painters were here yesterday to finish up the last bits on the barn and to fix some minor paint issues on the house. They didn't quite get done – the weather turned threatening (thunderstorms were all about) in the afternoon, so they packed up and went home. They'll be back on the first day that looks like it will be clear, which might not be until next week. The entire outside of the barn is now white, and most of the window and door trim is done. My upstairs office is caulked and painted; it looks very nice. All that's really left is a second coat of white on some of the repaired places on the house, and the trim on the upstairs barn windows. We're so, so close to being done on the barn!
I worked on indoors electrical stuff yesterday. We have guests arriving next Sunday (Jim and Michelle B.), and we want the spare bedroom to be ready for them. I didn't quite finish this work, but I think I've just got three or four hours left on it.
The big excitement yesterday was the arrival of a whole bunch of new furniture. Much of this we'd ordered months ago, and it's been accumulating in a warehouse for shipment in one lot (much less expensive that way). The new arrivals: a coffee table and sofa table for the TV room, a pair of reclining overstuffed chairs for the dining room, and a matching set of end table, bookshelf/cabinet, and curio cabinet for the living room. All of these beautiful pieces of furniture, exceeding my expectations. It amazes me what one can buy over the Internet with excellent results! The quality, craftsmanship, and beauty of these pieces is really quite remarkable – and they're unusual pieces, of a style we really like, and that we would never be able to find in the local furniture stores. We're very pleased with our overall furniture purchases, and these latest ones were like icing on the cake. We're now nearly finished with the furniture for the house. We have a few smaller pieces left, but all the major pieces are done.
We did have one casualty in the shipment, though. The sofa table for the TV room suffered some damage in shipment. This was plainly the fault of the maker, who had done an atrocious job of packing it. Each end of the sofa table had a horizontal piece, about 24" long, that served as the legs for the table. One of these was ripped completely off and was missing – it was nowhere to be found in the truck. The other was partially ripped off, and had been quite severely damaged. On close inspection, the truck drivers and I arrived at a theory: we think the sofa table was packed such that its legs slipped down between the horizontal boards of the pallet, and were struck by the forklift as it moved the pallet about. That's the bad news. The good news? The shipper and the vendor both instantly supported us on the issue. We refused shipment on that one piece, and now it's headed back to its maker. It will either be repaired and sent back to us, or they'll make us a new one.
Online shopping has really changed our lives, and entirely for the better. In the course of the past year's work remodeling our new home and building the barn, we've purchased an amazing amount of goods entirely online. Not quite everything, mind you – but when I did the numbers I discovered that it was about 82% of our purchases by dollars. Partly that's because many of the big ticket items were purchased that way (all our appliances, all my woodworking equipment, etc.). The number of purchases was also quite high – so much so that I have a (free, city-supplied) dumpster dedicated to cardboard, and we're on a first-name basis with our UPS, FedEx, and USPS representatives :) Online shopping has some obvious advantages over brick-and-mortar shopping: price (especially when the sales tax is eliminated), convenience, and selection. There are a couple others, though, that I suspect many people wouldn't think of right away.
One is that there are many things that are unobtainable through local stores, or almost so. Our recently purchased furniture is a good example of this, but I've encountered many others. A small example: I've purchased a dozen or so quality hand tools that are made in Germany or Scandinavia – and that simply do not exist in any store in Utah.
Another advantage of online: returns have proven to be far less of a hassle than they would in a local store. I have a direct comparison here, on returns to Home Depot. While it goes out of its way to make those returns easy, taking something back to Home Depot still inevitably takes quite a bit of time – there's almost always a long, slow line at the service desk. Twice last year I simply skipped the return of small items, as it wasn't worth it to me to wait in that line. The online returns, by contrast, could scarcely be more convenient. Nearly always it involves a quick visit to Amazon's site, filling out a short, simple form – and the next day the UPS man shows up to pick it up. Only a couple of times did I need to use online chat or phone, and even those experiences were pleasant, short, and convenient. I'm at the point now where I try very hard to buy online if I can, and I go to the brick-and-mortar store only when buying online is impossible or impractical.
I fully expect to buy my next car online. Once Bezos has his fleet of drones ready to go, I expect to start buying my groceries online. I look forward to the day when the robot barber comes to my house to cut my hair :)
I worked on indoors electrical stuff yesterday. We have guests arriving next Sunday (Jim and Michelle B.), and we want the spare bedroom to be ready for them. I didn't quite finish this work, but I think I've just got three or four hours left on it.
The big excitement yesterday was the arrival of a whole bunch of new furniture. Much of this we'd ordered months ago, and it's been accumulating in a warehouse for shipment in one lot (much less expensive that way). The new arrivals: a coffee table and sofa table for the TV room, a pair of reclining overstuffed chairs for the dining room, and a matching set of end table, bookshelf/cabinet, and curio cabinet for the living room. All of these beautiful pieces of furniture, exceeding my expectations. It amazes me what one can buy over the Internet with excellent results! The quality, craftsmanship, and beauty of these pieces is really quite remarkable – and they're unusual pieces, of a style we really like, and that we would never be able to find in the local furniture stores. We're very pleased with our overall furniture purchases, and these latest ones were like icing on the cake. We're now nearly finished with the furniture for the house. We have a few smaller pieces left, but all the major pieces are done.
We did have one casualty in the shipment, though. The sofa table for the TV room suffered some damage in shipment. This was plainly the fault of the maker, who had done an atrocious job of packing it. Each end of the sofa table had a horizontal piece, about 24" long, that served as the legs for the table. One of these was ripped completely off and was missing – it was nowhere to be found in the truck. The other was partially ripped off, and had been quite severely damaged. On close inspection, the truck drivers and I arrived at a theory: we think the sofa table was packed such that its legs slipped down between the horizontal boards of the pallet, and were struck by the forklift as it moved the pallet about. That's the bad news. The good news? The shipper and the vendor both instantly supported us on the issue. We refused shipment on that one piece, and now it's headed back to its maker. It will either be repaired and sent back to us, or they'll make us a new one.
Online shopping has really changed our lives, and entirely for the better. In the course of the past year's work remodeling our new home and building the barn, we've purchased an amazing amount of goods entirely online. Not quite everything, mind you – but when I did the numbers I discovered that it was about 82% of our purchases by dollars. Partly that's because many of the big ticket items were purchased that way (all our appliances, all my woodworking equipment, etc.). The number of purchases was also quite high – so much so that I have a (free, city-supplied) dumpster dedicated to cardboard, and we're on a first-name basis with our UPS, FedEx, and USPS representatives :) Online shopping has some obvious advantages over brick-and-mortar shopping: price (especially when the sales tax is eliminated), convenience, and selection. There are a couple others, though, that I suspect many people wouldn't think of right away.
One is that there are many things that are unobtainable through local stores, or almost so. Our recently purchased furniture is a good example of this, but I've encountered many others. A small example: I've purchased a dozen or so quality hand tools that are made in Germany or Scandinavia – and that simply do not exist in any store in Utah.
Another advantage of online: returns have proven to be far less of a hassle than they would in a local store. I have a direct comparison here, on returns to Home Depot. While it goes out of its way to make those returns easy, taking something back to Home Depot still inevitably takes quite a bit of time – there's almost always a long, slow line at the service desk. Twice last year I simply skipped the return of small items, as it wasn't worth it to me to wait in that line. The online returns, by contrast, could scarcely be more convenient. Nearly always it involves a quick visit to Amazon's site, filling out a short, simple form – and the next day the UPS man shows up to pick it up. Only a couple of times did I need to use online chat or phone, and even those experiences were pleasant, short, and convenient. I'm at the point now where I try very hard to buy online if I can, and I go to the brick-and-mortar store only when buying online is impossible or impractical.
I fully expect to buy my next car online. Once Bezos has his fleet of drones ready to go, I expect to start buying my groceries online. I look forward to the day when the robot barber comes to my house to cut my hair :)
Monday, May 4, 2015
I didn't know where this was going...
Planning for the Mormon horde...
Planning for the Mormon horde... We were visited yesterday by three locals who wanted to do a little planning for May 16th, when our local LDS ward will hold a “service project” in our yard. There will be two groups: a group of young men (fence removal and general cleanup) and a group of adults (chainsawing and heavy brush removal); between 10 and 20 people all together. We'll be renting a large dump trailer that can haul off junk and brush to the dump. Debbie will be supplying large quantities of sandwiches, cookies, lemonade, and ice water. I'll be supplying gas and chain oil (for the chainsaws). They're going to start at 8 am, and work all day. The fellows who came over to help plan this thing seemed downright excited about it. They really do have a shortage of such projects to do, so to have one like this (with good things for both the young men and the adults to do) is something they're happy about. Plus I get the idea they just like an excuse to break out the chainsaws :)
I love this place!
I love this place!
Curiosity is staring hard...
Sunday, May 3, 2015
Treaties and thugocracies...
Treaties and thugocracies... There's an alarming pattern visible out there in the big, bad world right now. Several thugocracies (Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran) are taking actions that seem clearly designed to test the U.S. (and possibly EU and NATO as well) will to enforce treaties that obligate us to defend our allies. The Russians are getting more and more aggressive with their submarine and long-range bomber probes, and of course there's the whole Ukraine kerfuffle. Iran has seized a U.S.-flagged ship and its crew. China is building military bases on islands it doesn't own in the China Sea. North Korea is counterfeiting U.S. currency on an industrial scale, selling or enabling illegal drug sales to the U.S., and constantly making threatening gestures with their military. These things aren't happening by accident. They are the entirely rational actions of the powerful thugs at the helms of these countries, and they are testing the U.S. to see what they can get away with and still suffer no retaliation.
Under Obama, the answer is that they can get away with a lot. In fact, there is no limit in sight. The mad mullahs in Iran must be cackling with glee as they discover the lengths Obama is willing to go to in order to get a “nuclear deal” signed – and how skillfully he avoids the U.S. treaty obligations to defend Marshall Islands-flagged ships. Likewise Putin must believe at this point that he could do nearly anything he wants – he's already stolen half of Ukraine without major consequence. After seeing the Iran sanctions crumble, Putin surely doesn't believe the sanctions against Russia are durable. China is certainly carefully watching the U.S. non-response to its territorial ambitions. Vietnam, Japan, and Taiwan are vastly more effective adversaries at the moment, despite their lack of military might. They have the will to resist, which apparently the U.S. (under Obama) does not.
To any student of history, this pattern is very familiar. It happened in the early part of the 20th century, with the rise of Nazi Germany. The thug kept testing his adversaries, time and again, without suffering any consequences until he pushed one bit too much. Then we had a war that killed millions of people.
Will that pattern play out? That depends greatly, I think, on who the next President of the U.S. is. If it's someone with a robust sense of responsibility for treaty obligations and a grounded understanding of history, we still have time to stop these thugs before things get out of hand. If, on the other hand, it's another vacillating weasel, we got trouble. There are a lot of vacillating weasels running for President, dammit...
Under Obama, the answer is that they can get away with a lot. In fact, there is no limit in sight. The mad mullahs in Iran must be cackling with glee as they discover the lengths Obama is willing to go to in order to get a “nuclear deal” signed – and how skillfully he avoids the U.S. treaty obligations to defend Marshall Islands-flagged ships. Likewise Putin must believe at this point that he could do nearly anything he wants – he's already stolen half of Ukraine without major consequence. After seeing the Iran sanctions crumble, Putin surely doesn't believe the sanctions against Russia are durable. China is certainly carefully watching the U.S. non-response to its territorial ambitions. Vietnam, Japan, and Taiwan are vastly more effective adversaries at the moment, despite their lack of military might. They have the will to resist, which apparently the U.S. (under Obama) does not.
To any student of history, this pattern is very familiar. It happened in the early part of the 20th century, with the rise of Nazi Germany. The thug kept testing his adversaries, time and again, without suffering any consequences until he pushed one bit too much. Then we had a war that killed millions of people.
Will that pattern play out? That depends greatly, I think, on who the next President of the U.S. is. If it's someone with a robust sense of responsibility for treaty obligations and a grounded understanding of history, we still have time to stop these thugs before things get out of hand. If, on the other hand, it's another vacillating weasel, we got trouble. There are a lot of vacillating weasels running for President, dammit...
Moonrise in Mauna Kea's shadow...
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