Saturday, February 13, 2016
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says...
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says ... that Obamacare costs will rise by 60% over the next decade. In other words, the Obamacare skeptics were right all along when they predicted that Obamacare would increase the cost of healthcare, not decrease it as Obama and his mincing minions promised. No surprise to anyone who's been paying even the least bit of attention to the debate – and especially not a surprise to anyone paying their own insurance costs!
Friday, February 12, 2016
Do you like persimmons?
Do you like persimmons? If you do, try Trader Joe's unsweetened, unsulfured dried California persimmons. They are hands-down the best I've ever had. They actually taste like persimmons!
Music video in weightlessness...
Why do people go to emergency rooms?
Why do people go to emergency rooms? Man, there were a lot of surprises in here for me, starting with #1...
Sawed off in Paradise...
Sawed off in Paradise... For about three hours this morning, we were cut off from the Internet (“sawed off” in IT lingo). Quite a bit of my morning routine revolves around the Internet (mainly email, Twitter, and news), so this was quite ... unsettling ... for me :)
The views outside our windows were quite beautiful this morning. At right is the view to the north, toward our friend and neighbor Tim D. I particularly liked the way the mountains looked, filtered through the haze. Not ten minutes after I took this photo, that fog bank you can see in the background came down and engulfed us. Now we're living in a sea of gray, with visibility down to under 100'.
Now I'm going to go catch up on things, as we have the Internet back. Yay!
Now I'm going to go catch up on things, as we have the Internet back. Yay!
Thursday, February 11, 2016
A rimey morning in Paradise...
A rimey morning in Paradise... It's cold this morning, but it's also foggy. That combination means that rime is forming on any surface that's below freezing. Since it was well below freezing (air temperature) last night, that means just about everything is covered with rime, some so thickly that it looks almost like it snowed. Some photos from around our yard:
Like all the photos I've taken in the past few months, these were taken with an unmodified iPhone 6s Plus using the built-in camera app. As usual, the only processing I've done is color-correction (for white balance) – for some reason, my iPhone wants to make outdoor shots have a bluish cast...
Like all the photos I've taken in the past few months, these were taken with an unmodified iPhone 6s Plus using the built-in camera app. As usual, the only processing I've done is color-correction (for white balance) – for some reason, my iPhone wants to make outdoor shots have a bluish cast...
Paradise Porcupine ponders...
Paradise Porcupine ponders... That's Porcupine Reservoir, which we took a short drive up to last night. We'd heard from a fellow wildlife gawker that the road up to the reservoir had been plowed, and that there were elk to be seen up there. Well, we got to the reservoir, but no further than the north edge of the dam – and that road had not been plowed. Furthermore, we saw just one cow elk on the entire trip.
On the other hand, we saw quite a few deer, and a bald eagle soaring overhead. And lots of beautiful winter scenery:
On the other hand, we saw quite a few deer, and a bald eagle soaring overhead. And lots of beautiful winter scenery:
They're counting on you being stupid...
They're counting on you being stupid... The American political parties, I mean. There's a form of corruption that is, so far as I'm aware, uniquely American. The two major organized political parties in the U.S. (the Democrats and the Republicans, if you've just emerged from under a rock) both have a vested interest in not letting you (the American voter) select the candidates that you want in the Presidential primaries. They have two main methods of taking this power away from you:
The “Party Purse” is easy enough to understand. The two parties collect a lot of money through campaign contributions. This money gets spent in various ways. Some of it promotes the party in a way that is not specific to any candidate. Most of it is eventually spent in support of a single candidate, though the means may be slightly subtle. For instance, if the Republican party were to spend money on ads promoting one particular point of view on, say, immigration – that will be seen as supporting some candidates and not others.
The superdelegate system, on the other hand, is something the parties (especially the Democratic Party) would rather you didn't know about. Certainly they don't go around bragging about it, and the media says remarkably little about it. However, consider this: in the primary election just held in New Hampshire, Sanders took 60% of the vote, and Hillary less than 40%. So Sanders should have 50% more delegates than Hillary, right? Wrong. Hillary has the same number as Sanders, because of superdelegates – party insiders – choosing her, despite the votes of New Hampshire party members. The theory is, you see, that the superdelegates know better than the voters. That's American democracy in action, folks.
What's the answer for the corruptions of the American two-party system? Every once in a great while, a new political party emerges – when the voters have had enough, and want better. That last happened with the emergence of the Republican party in the 1850s, and their first big success with the election of Abraham Lincoln. It's been too long now – 160 years! – and the corruptions of incumbent power have long been a problem. It's long past time for us to have another ballot box revolution, though I don't see one anywhere in the predictable future.
Maybe we need the equivalent of term limits for political parties :)
- The power of the “Party Purse”.
- Superdelegates.
The “Party Purse” is easy enough to understand. The two parties collect a lot of money through campaign contributions. This money gets spent in various ways. Some of it promotes the party in a way that is not specific to any candidate. Most of it is eventually spent in support of a single candidate, though the means may be slightly subtle. For instance, if the Republican party were to spend money on ads promoting one particular point of view on, say, immigration – that will be seen as supporting some candidates and not others.
The superdelegate system, on the other hand, is something the parties (especially the Democratic Party) would rather you didn't know about. Certainly they don't go around bragging about it, and the media says remarkably little about it. However, consider this: in the primary election just held in New Hampshire, Sanders took 60% of the vote, and Hillary less than 40%. So Sanders should have 50% more delegates than Hillary, right? Wrong. Hillary has the same number as Sanders, because of superdelegates – party insiders – choosing her, despite the votes of New Hampshire party members. The theory is, you see, that the superdelegates know better than the voters. That's American democracy in action, folks.
What's the answer for the corruptions of the American two-party system? Every once in a great while, a new political party emerges – when the voters have had enough, and want better. That last happened with the emergence of the Republican party in the 1850s, and their first big success with the election of Abraham Lincoln. It's been too long now – 160 years! – and the corruptions of incumbent power have long been a problem. It's long past time for us to have another ballot box revolution, though I don't see one anywhere in the predictable future.
Maybe we need the equivalent of term limits for political parties :)
Things we have never seen before...
For those of you who aren't followers of physics and cosmology discoveries :)... This is a big deal, confirmation of a theory that originated with Einstein that has stood unproven for decades, despite many, many previous attempts to do so. Physicists have spent their entire career trying – and failing – to actually observe gravitational waves...
Wednesday, February 10, 2016
First page!
I got hung up today on a silly, stupid problem that took me an inordinately long time to track down. It came on a piece of Java code like this:
Integer x = test() ? 0 : null;test() returned false, it generated a NullPointerException. Can you guess what the problem was? It turns out to be the zero! Apparently the type of the result of a conditional expression is determined by the first operand after the "?". In this case, that's an int – so when test() returned false the program ended up trying to assign null to an int, and of course that isn't going to work all that well. I'm a little surprised that the result was a NullPointerException instead of some more illuminating exception, but whatever. All I had to do to fix the problem was to change the zero to either new Integer(0) or (Integer) 0. After that change, all was well. I'm not the first to run into this problem, of course. I'm very glad to have that stupid little bug behind me!
Paradise ponders...
Paradise ponders... We had a lovely excursion up to Hardware Ranch late yesterday afternoon, after a great lunch at Jack's. We both had their Teres Major pizza, which is made from a beef cut (teres major) I'd never heard of before. Debbie had peppadew peppers with hers, and I had roasted red peppers. Yum!
Our excursion was a memorable outing for several reasons, but most especially because we had four moose sightings – by far the most moose we've ever seen on one day! One of them was an injured bull that we've spotted a couple times before, quite close to where we saw him yesterday. His left rear leg (or foot, we're not sure) has something wrong with it; you can see him avoiding putting any weight on it. Despite the crippling injury, he seems to be getting enough to eat, and otherwise he looks like he's in good shape. We were only 40' or so from him, so we had a great viewing. The other three moose were partway up the side of the mountain to the south of Blacksmith Fork River. I've never seen moose foraging so far from water before; a couple of them were at least a quarter mile up that mountain. All three of them were munching away on the already-struggling deciduous bushes that grow on those steep slopes, probably some sort of scrub oak.
Another memorable sighting was an American Dipper, like the one at right (not my photo), doing his little bobbing thing in the creek not 30' from our parked truck. He didn't seem to mind the fact that there was ice all along the edges of the creek, or that the water was 32.0001°F (at most!).
We also saw about 12 bazillion deer, littering the canyon's bottoms and sides. It was really kind of crazy how many deer there were. Then there were the elk – about 10 bazillion of them. Most of the elk were in the fenced enclosure up at Hardware Ranch, but we also saw some outside the enclosures, ranging the hills. Once again we saw the group of bull elk on the hills just outside of Hyrum, right at the mouth of Blacksmith Fork Canyon. Awesome!
Our excursion was a memorable outing for several reasons, but most especially because we had four moose sightings – by far the most moose we've ever seen on one day! One of them was an injured bull that we've spotted a couple times before, quite close to where we saw him yesterday. His left rear leg (or foot, we're not sure) has something wrong with it; you can see him avoiding putting any weight on it. Despite the crippling injury, he seems to be getting enough to eat, and otherwise he looks like he's in good shape. We were only 40' or so from him, so we had a great viewing. The other three moose were partway up the side of the mountain to the south of Blacksmith Fork River. I've never seen moose foraging so far from water before; a couple of them were at least a quarter mile up that mountain. All three of them were munching away on the already-struggling deciduous bushes that grow on those steep slopes, probably some sort of scrub oak.
We also saw about 12 bazillion deer, littering the canyon's bottoms and sides. It was really kind of crazy how many deer there were. Then there were the elk – about 10 bazillion of them. Most of the elk were in the fenced enclosure up at Hardware Ranch, but we also saw some outside the enclosures, ranging the hills. Once again we saw the group of bull elk on the hills just outside of Hyrum, right at the mouth of Blacksmith Fork Canyon. Awesome!
Why would you vote Democrat?
Why would you vote Democrat? An oldie-but-goodie, via my lovely bride. It's fake, of course, but still entertaining (if you're not a Democrat :):
Ten reasons to vote Democrat by Letterman
#10. I vote Democrat because I love the fact that I can now marry whatever I want. I've decided to marry my German Shepherd.
#9. I vote Democrat because I believe oil companies' profits of 4% on a gallon of gas are obscene, but the government taxing the same gallon at 15% isn't.
#8. I vote Democrat because I believe the government will do a better job of spending the money I earn than I would.
#7. I vote Democrat because Freedom of Speech is fine as long as nobody is offended by it.
#6. I vote Democrat because I'm way too irresponsible to own a gun, and I know that my local police are all I need to protect me from murderers and thieves. I am also thankful that we have a 911 service that gets police to your home in order to identify your body after a home invasion.
#5. I vote Democrat because I'm not concerned about millions of babies being aborted so long as we keep all death row inmates alive and comfy.
#4. I vote Democrat because I think illegal aliens have a right to free health care, education, and Social Security benefits, and we should take away Social Security from those who paid into it.
#3. I vote Democrat because I believe that businesses should not be allowed to make profits for themselves. They need to break even and give the rest away to the government for redistribution as the Democrat Party sees fit.
#2. I vote Democrat because I believe liberal judges need to rewrite the Constitution every few days to suit fringe kooks who would never get their agendas past the voters.
#1 reason I vote Democrat is because I think it's better to pay $billions$ for oil to people who hate us, but not drill our own because it might upset some endangered beetle, gopher, or fish here in America. We don't care about the beetles, gophers, or fish in those other countries.
Remember when Nancy Pelosi said, "We have to pass Obamacare, to find out what's in it." A physician called into a radio show and said: "That's the definition of a stool sample."
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits"… Albert Einstein
The perils of a connected world...
The perils of a connected world... This story is about a GPS glitch that caused some GPS satellite clocks to broadcast a time that was 13 microseconds (that's millionths of a second) off. That doesn't sound like much, but it's more than enough to cause major errors in GPS' major function (locating oneself on the planet). That 13 microsecond error translates into a (roughly) three mile location error, if the broken satellite was one of three you're using. The problem is less awful if your receiver is using more satellites, as is most often the case.
But ... that's only the beginning of the problem. GPS satellites contain an atomic clock that keeps time accurate to billionths of a second (actually much better than that in the current generation of satellites). Each satellite is broadcasting the time it has, continuously. The position of each satellite is known to a fantastic degree of precision. If you know the time that the satellite thinks it is (which it's broadcasting), and exactly where the satellite is (easy to get), then you can put a receiver anywhere on earth and use that to keep time that's almost as accurate as the clock on the satellite itself. That receiver and the necessary electronics and software are (currently, at least) far less expensive than having your own atomic clock. Because of that, systems on earth that require extremely precise timekeeping often rely on the GPS satellites as their time source.
I know of two such systems, but I'm sure there are more.
First there's the global network of cell phones. I won't go into the technical details here (that's a whole post on its own!), but here's a site that explains how cell phones work if you want to know. The main point I want to make here is that the cell phone systems are utterly dependent on incredibly accurate time keeping – and they depend on the GPS satellites for that time. That 13 microsecond error would translate directly into cell phones failing.
Then there's the global electronic trading systems, especially those for stocks, options, and currency exchange (probably others as well, but those are the ones I know well). The exchanges for these electronic trading depend on knowing the exact order that trades take place. That may seem like a trivial problem, but it's not – because (a) there are sometimes many thousands of trades occurring in a single second, and (b) the trades can originate anywhere in the world, (c) multiple exchanges that are simultaneously open must synchronize their trades perfectly. The system can recover if an error occurs (and they sometimes do), but the process of “unwinding” erroneous transactions is expensive and painful, so the exchanges go to great lengths to avoid such problems in the first place. Key to that is requiring a very high precision to the timekeeping used by all the components of that system. That required precision has increased over the years, and it's now at the point where only atomic clocks can provide it. Once again, that means a dependency on GPS clocks (except for a few big organizations that have sprung for their very own atomic clock).
So when the GPS clocks suffer from a problem like the one described in the article, the consequences can be far more serious than you might expect!
But ... that's only the beginning of the problem. GPS satellites contain an atomic clock that keeps time accurate to billionths of a second (actually much better than that in the current generation of satellites). Each satellite is broadcasting the time it has, continuously. The position of each satellite is known to a fantastic degree of precision. If you know the time that the satellite thinks it is (which it's broadcasting), and exactly where the satellite is (easy to get), then you can put a receiver anywhere on earth and use that to keep time that's almost as accurate as the clock on the satellite itself. That receiver and the necessary electronics and software are (currently, at least) far less expensive than having your own atomic clock. Because of that, systems on earth that require extremely precise timekeeping often rely on the GPS satellites as their time source.
I know of two such systems, but I'm sure there are more.
First there's the global network of cell phones. I won't go into the technical details here (that's a whole post on its own!), but here's a site that explains how cell phones work if you want to know. The main point I want to make here is that the cell phone systems are utterly dependent on incredibly accurate time keeping – and they depend on the GPS satellites for that time. That 13 microsecond error would translate directly into cell phones failing.
Then there's the global electronic trading systems, especially those for stocks, options, and currency exchange (probably others as well, but those are the ones I know well). The exchanges for these electronic trading depend on knowing the exact order that trades take place. That may seem like a trivial problem, but it's not – because (a) there are sometimes many thousands of trades occurring in a single second, and (b) the trades can originate anywhere in the world, (c) multiple exchanges that are simultaneously open must synchronize their trades perfectly. The system can recover if an error occurs (and they sometimes do), but the process of “unwinding” erroneous transactions is expensive and painful, so the exchanges go to great lengths to avoid such problems in the first place. Key to that is requiring a very high precision to the timekeeping used by all the components of that system. That required precision has increased over the years, and it's now at the point where only atomic clocks can provide it. Once again, that means a dependency on GPS clocks (except for a few big organizations that have sprung for their very own atomic clock).
So when the GPS clocks suffer from a problem like the one described in the article, the consequences can be far more serious than you might expect!
Maybe it's not such a bad thing...
Tuesday, February 9, 2016
Supernova 2015F...
It's hard to wrap one's brain around the scale of this thing, but ... I sure wouldn't want to be anywhere within a few light-years of that thing when it blew!
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