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Up late and working on some other stuff

Happy New Years!

Want to wish everyone a happy new years and looking forward to a fantastic 2007.

Murphy paid us a final visit this morning when my 1 1/2 year old Brittany took himself for his usual morning constitutional in our woods and returned home with a thorn stuck into his eyeball.

A couple hours at the emergency vets and a couple hundred lighter in the wallet and he is home again with a roster of medications that will be fun over the next two days. Basically, he needs several permutations of eyedrops and antibiotics every two hours for the next 48 hours. Good thing we slept in this morning…

Start your (spam) engines

Comments and trackbacks have been turned on…

Quote of the day

A liberal is someone so broad-minded that he won't take his own side in a quarrel.
—-Robert Frost

Back home again

Flew into SeaTac airport from Fresno, got our car and drove up to Bellingham and to our house.

The trip was fun but it is soooo good to get back to our stuff, our house, to sleep in our own beds, to be surrounded by our critters.

You don't realize just how much farm life seeps into your being until you leave it even for just a few days…

Comments and Trackbacks will be turned back on again tomorrow.

Hope everybody had a wonderful Christmas and wishing everyone the best of New Years and Eid.

Search engines and weblogs

A lot of people visit here from searching for specific topics on a Search Engine such as Google or Yahoo.

SteveH at Hog on Ice is testing (trolling actually) a search phrase to see what it attracts — here it is, let us see what happens:

MOHAMMED ORALLY MOLESTED PIGS, AND HIS REAL FATHER WAS A RABBI.

You know, the false prophet has a lot more interesting history than that: pederast, murderer, lier, Satanist. I could go on but…

Neck meet Rope

Saddam is greeting the Ifrit in Jahannum now after a few minutes of hanging around a small room.

The next few weeks will require a lot of strength and patience but his death will prove to a lot of people that his reign of terror is over and that a new beginning is starting.

Next on the list is the little pig-boi Sadr.

note: funny how hell is called Gehenna in Hebrew and Jahannum in Persian but there is no similarity between the two cultures at all… Nothing to see here folks — keep moving.

tick   tock   tick   tock

Saddam's days are numbered. Hell (and this is where he will be going), his minutes are numbered…

From Charles at Little Green Footballs:

Saddam Counting the Minutes
He’s taking the fall this weekend.

Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, sentenced to death for his role in 148 killings in 1982, will have his sentence carried out by Sunday, NBC News reported Thursday. According to a U.S. military officer who spoke on condition of anonymity, Saddam will be hanged before the start of the Eid religious holiday, which begins this Sunday.

The hanging could take place as early as Friday, NBC’s Richard Engel reported.

The U.S. military received a formal request from the Iraqi government to transfer Saddam to Iraqi authorities, NBC reported on Thursday, which is one of the final steps required before his execution.

It would have been nice if he could have been tried for all of his deeds but this would have dragged on for years and years. Best to just get him off the earth now — he will not be missed. He kept his people in repression and poverty while he lived the life of luxury. Well, it is time to pay the butchers bill for that lifestyle.

Here is hoping they go after that fat-boi al-Sadr next. Got one of his top aides recently — need to cut this cancer off at the head though.

The times climate they are a' changing

Via Tim Blair comes this observation into the inner workings of the recent American Geophysical Union meeting.

From physical oceanographer Kevin Vranes's weblog:

So what happened at AGU last week?
With thirteen thousand people at a confab of geophysicists and geophysicists-in-training, a few thousand of whom work on something related to the climate system, you expect to hear about climate change. In perhaps a short decade, climate change has rapidly surpassed seismology as the primary membrane between the public and the geophysics research world. Climate is now what most makes the American Geophysical Union relevant to non-members; climate is now what essentially drives the meeting despite the presence of dozens of other specialties represented.

As a physical oceanographer (which by definition also means “climatologist”)- become-enviro policy guy, though, I wasn't so much interested in the details of climate science at this year's AGU. What I was (and am) interested in is seeing the conference as a whole. My interest in AGU has strayed from the hardrock science, moving into something more to do with feelings and hunches. That's right, feelings. Hunches. Intuition. The squishy, soft underbelly of the human mind; the part we want to ignore in pursuing geophysical data analysis. What I want to know is attitude. More than the state of the science, I now want to know about the state of the scientists.

Kevin sets the stage and then proceeds:

To sum the state of climsci world in one word, as I see it right now, it is this: tension.

What I am starting to hear is internal backlash. Sure, science is messy and always full of tension between holders of competing positions, opinions and analyses. That has always been the nature of science, and of course extends to climate science. Tensions come out at meetings, on listservs, on letters pages, and in the press. But these tensions normally surround a particular paper, or a particular question. While much more broadly-based tensions have existed for years on the state of understanding on global warming, they haven't really been tensions internal to the climsci community, but tensions between the climsci community and interested outsiders.

What I am sensing now is something much broader and more diffuse, something that has less to do with particular components of the science in the field and is much more about how the field is composing itself.

What I see is something that I am having a hard time labeling, but that I might call either a “hangover” or a “sophomore slump” or “buyers remorse.” None fit perfectly, but perhaps the combination does. I speak for (my interpretation) of the collective:

We tried for years - decades - to get them to listen to us about climate change. To do that we had to ramp up our rhetoric. We had to figure out ways to tone down our natural skepticism (we are scientists, after all) in order to put on a united face. We knew it would mean pushing the science harder than it should be. We knew it would mean allowing the boundary-pushers on the “it's happening” side free reign while stifling the boundary-pushers on the other side. But knowing the science, we knew the stakes to humanity were high and that the opposition to the truth would be fierce, so we knew we had to dig in. But now they are listening. Now they do believe us. Now they say they're ready to take action. And now we're wondering if we didn't create a monster. We're wondering if they realize how uncertain our projections of future climate are. We wonder if we've oversold the science. We're wondering what happened to our community, that individuals caveat even the most minor questionings of barely-proven climate change evidence, lest they be tagged as “skeptics.” We're wondering if we've let our alarm at the problem trickle to the public sphere, missing all the caveats in translation that we have internalized. And we're wondering if we've let some of our scientists take the science too far, promise too much knowledge, and promote more certainty in ourselves than is warranted.

The last emphasis is mine. True words — Climate Scientists have 'invested' so much effort and prestige to promote this natural warming cycle; theyhave staked their careers on their jumping on the bandwaggon and now, now that the unwashed masses are also jumping on the bandwaggon, they are afraid that their juggernaut cannot be redirected.

We have become a people sold on the idea that the current warming trend is the fault of capitalism and that we need to greatly step back our productivity if we are to survive.

To which I reply bullshit. We may have had an influence of a few percent but this is a trend that will happen and whatever we try to do to mitigate it will be 99.999% ineffective. Rather than cutting the output of the free world, how about spending one tenth of the money and provide clean water, sanitation and good cookstoves for everyone in the developing nations — now THAT would be making a change for the good!

A pinprick

Fantastic if it works out. From The Daily Mail:

The vaccine to cure every strain of flu
British scientists are on the verge of producing a revolutionary flu vaccine that works against all major types of the disease.

Described as the 'holy grail' of flu vaccines, it would protect against all strains of influenza A - the virus behind both bird flu and the nastiest outbreaks of winter flu.

Just a couple of injections could give long-lasting immunity - unlike the current vaccine which has to be given every year.

The brainchild of scientists at Cambridge biotech firm Acambis, working with Belgian researchers, the vaccine will be tested on humans for the first time in the next few months.

A similar universal flu vaccine, being developed by Swiss vaccine firm Cytos Biotechnology, could also be tested on people in 2007 - and the vaccines on the market in around five years.

Importantly, the vaccines would also be quicker and easier to make than the traditional jabs, meaning vast quantities could be stockpiled against a global outbreak of bird flu.

Martin Bachmann, of Cytos, said: “You could really stockpile it. In the case of a pandemic, that would be a huge advantage.

Still has to pass all sorts of tests for human use but…

Here are the websites for Acambis and Cytos mentioned in the article.

A traffic ticket

Youch! From Philadelphia's NBC10:

True Urban Legend: Trucker Gets $17,000 Ticket
Hefty Fee Levied Because Of Weight Of Vehicle

A truck driver gets lost in the Philadelphia suburbs and winds up with a $17,000 traffic ticket.

It's not an urban legend - it happened and the NBC 10 Investigators have the proof.

William Connell said he couldn't believe his eyes when he got a ticket for $17,751.50.

He said he thought he had been hit by a Mack truck.

“My face just dropped. I couldn't even believe it,” Carroll said. “I said, 'What is this, 1,700?' He said, 'No, 17,000.' I said, $17,000?”

Carroll is an independent trucker out of Philadelphia. Recently, he was taking a load to be dropped off in East Whiteland Township, an area he was unfamiliar with.

“One company that I'm leasing from, they were the ones that gave me the directions,” Carroll said.

The directions told him to get off at the Route 202 South Frazer exit. That dumped him onto Route 401.

Carroll said he missed a cockeyed sign at the corner of 401 and Bear Road where he had to make a right turn. The next thing he knew, he was in a residential neighborhood — Sydney Road to be exact — where the police gave him a ticket.

“But once you get in the there with a 53-footer, its impossible to get out,” Carroll said.

PennDOT spokesman Charlie Metzger said they, along with the East Whiteland Police Department were just enforcing a law that penalizes trucks that are too heavy for certain bridges and roadways, which might be damaged by overweight vehicles.

The NBC 10 Investigators' Vince DeMentri asked Metzger why the ticket was $17,000.

“It's $150 for the fine, and then it's $150 for every 500 pounds over the 3,000-pound weight limit,” Metzger said.

Metzger said there is a reason the fines are so stiff.

“The money can go right back into the repairs of the roadway or the bridge,” Metzger said.

Carroll said it is not fair because the sign warning of the fine was bent and somewhat obstructed.

The East Whiteland Police Department, which has its own motor carrier enforcement unit, isn't playing around. For them, this is a sign of the times that is not to be ignored.

Obviously this will be appealed and lawyers will get their little claws in but sheesh! This is almost as bad as the $217,000 fine that a Nokia Exec got for speeding in Finland.

Dinner for one...

John F. Kerry went for a fun little visit to Iraq to check up on what was happening there. This was just after he met with Syrian dictator Bashar Assad earlier this month.

Kerry sat down to eat and it seems that a lot of people wanted to talk with him.

From this post at Hottalk:

“This is a true story…..Check out this photo from our mess hall at the US Embassy yesterday morning. Sen. Kerry found himself all alone while he was over here. He cancelled his press conference because no one came, he worked out alone in the gym w/o any soldiers even going up to say hi or ask for an autograph (I was one of those who was in the gym at the same time), and he found himself eating breakfast with only a couple of folks who are obviously not troops.

What is amazing is Bill O'Reilly came to visit with us and the troops at the CSH the same day and the line for autographs extended through the palace and people waited for two hours to shake his hand. You decide who is more respected and loved by us servicemen and women!”

Again I say…”GOD BLESS OUR TROOPS!!”

Hat tip to Charles at LGF

Back at Jen's parent's farm again

Heading off to Yosemite tomorrow with my Dad (Jen is taking part in a girls-only party) and then, back to Bellingham for everyone.

Moss Bay was a lot of fun — It serves as home port to several oceanographic vessels, a large commercial fishing fleet as well as two research labs. Lots of antique and design shops too so some $$$ was spent.

Hotel Blogging

Last day on the Monterey Peninsula — high winds (can't seem to get away from this), gorgeous coastline and fun times. Went through the Aquarium yesterday and heading off to Moss Bay today.

Moss Bay is more like what Cannery Row used to be and a lot less touristy so this should be fun. Cannery Row has bit-by-bit become erroded so little of the original buildings and curio shops are left and it's now all franchise chains and chinese crap stamped “Monterey Bay”

Heading back to the Central Valley later today and heading back home on the 30th — it has been fun but it will be great to get back again…

RIP - James Brown

From the BBC:

Soul star James Brown dies at 73
He was admitted to hospital in Atlanta after being diagnosed with severe pneumonia but died at 0145 local time (0645 GMT), said Frank Copsidas.

The star was famous for hits including I Got You (I Feel Good), Papa's Got a Brand New Bag and Living in America.

“He is such an influence, I learned so much from him,” Mr Copsidas told the BBC World Service.

“On Friday he had his toy giveaway, which is his annual toy giveaway in Augusta, Georgia.

“On Saturday, he went to his dentist up in Atlanta, and his dentist told him something was wrong, and he sent him to a doctor immediately.”

Another star has gone out in the sky. He will be missed.

A new Vista

A very sobering text report on just how Big Media has wormed it's way into the new MSFT Operating system and how Digital Rights Management will result in a very unsatisfactory experiance for a lot of users.

From Peter Gutmann:

A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection
Executive Summary

Windows Vista includes an extensive reworking of core OS elements in order to provide content protection for so-called “premium content”, typically HD data from Blu-Ray and HD-DVD sources. Providing this protection incurs considerable costs in terms of system performance, system stability, technical support overhead, and hardware and software cost. These issues affect not only users of Vista but the entire PC industry, since the effects of the protection measures extend to cover all hardware and software that will ever come into contact with Vista, even if it's not used directly with Vista (for example hardware in a Macintosh computer or on a Linux server). This document analyses the cost involved in Vista's content protection, and the collateral damage that this incurs throughout the computer industry.

Executive Executive Summary
The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history.

Looks to be very well thought out and comes with a good list of references.

Here is another excerpt — this is the section dealing with the increased hardware costs that everyone will see — Windows XP and 2K, MAC and Linux users included:

Increased Hardware Costs
Vista includes various requirements for “robustness” in which the content industry, through “hardware robustness rules”, dictates design requirements to hardware manufacturers. For example, only certain layouts of a board are allowed in order to make it harder for outsiders to access parts of the board. Possibly for the first time ever, computer design is being dictated not by electronic design rules, physical layout requirements, and thermal issues, but by the wishes of the content industry. Apart from the massive headache that this poses to device manufacturers, it also imposes additional increased costs beyond the ones incurred simply by having to lay out board designs in a suboptimal manner. Video card manufacturers typically produce a one-size-fits-all design (often a minimally-altered copy of the chipset vendor's reference design), and then populate different classes and price levels of cards in different ways. For example a low-end card will have low-cost, minimal or absent TV-out encoders, DVI circuitry, RAMDACs, and various other add-ons used to differentiate budget from premium video cards. You can see this on the cheaper cards by observing the unpopulated bond pads on circuit boards, and gamers and the like will be familiar with cut-a-trace/resolder-a-resistor sidegrades of video cards. Vista's content-protection requirements eliminate this one-size-fits-all design, banning the use of separate TV-out encoders, DVI circuitry, RAMDACs, and other discretionary add-ons. Everything has to be custom-designed and laid out so that there are no unnecessary accessible signal links on the board. This means that a low-cost card isn't just a high-cost card with components omitted, and conversely a high-cost card isn't just a low-cost card with additional discretionary components added, each one has to be a completely custom design created to ensure that no signal on the board is accessible.

This extends beyond simple board design all the way down to chip design. Instead of adding an external DVI chip, it now has to be integrated into the graphics chip, along with any other functionality normally supplied by an external chip. So instead of varying video card cost based on optional components, the chipset vendor now has to integrate everything into a one-size-fits-all premium-featured graphics chip, even if all the user wants is a budget card for their kids' PC.

I used to work at MSFT and am an official MSFT Alumni. As such, I have the ability to buy $600/year of software from their company store at greatly reduced prices. When I heard about some of the junk that was going into Windows Vista, I promptly went out and bought a number of licenses for Windows XP Professional so I can use them on any future computers I build for my own use. Windows Vista will be an interesting thing to follow — I am thinking that it will push a number of people over to Linux since Linux desktops are getting better and better. Should be a fun trainwreck to follow anyway…

Stick a fork in him -- he is done...

King of Pop, Micheal Jackson is entertaining a comback in Las Vegas baby…

From the Las Vegas Review Journal:

Michael Jackson landing on Strip?
Ending 18 months of seclusion in Europe, reclusive superstar Michael Jackson was on a plane to the United States late Saturday bound for Las Vegas, where he plans a comeback.

Jackson and his three children, Prince Michael, Paris and Prince Michael II were due to arrive before midnight at a private executive terminal at McCarran International Airport, sources said.

We hear that Jackson's friend, Las Vegas dealmaker Jack Wishna, was instrumental in having the pop icon move back to the United States.

Reminiscent of Howard Hughes' secretive arrival in Las Vegas on Thanksgiving Day in 1966, Jackson's surprise move came after his father, Joe Jackson, vowed his son would not live in the United States again.

The 48-year-old deposed King of Pop has lived in Bahrain and a Celtic castle in Ireland since being acquitted in California of child molestation charges in June 2005.

Wishna, reached by telephone, wouldn't comment, other than to confirm Jackson was moving to Las Vegas and to say, “We are working on several projects.”

Unless he reverts back to his 'Thriller' style, I would not see this show if I was given a free ticket. Well maybe if it was to avoid a root-canal or something…

Christmas Eve

Slept in until 10:30, went and had breakfast and then saw Apocalypto.

Very good job on casting. It was performed entirely in Mayan with English subtitles but the acting was so good that you didn't really need to read the subtitles after a few minutes. The story was a simple one but powerful.

Minor astronomical glitch in that there was a total eclipse of the Sun during one of the scenes and the next evening showed a full moonrise. Total eclipses only happen when the moon is new, not full.

Haning out for a few hours at Jen's parents place and then heading over to her Grandparents for Christmas Eve dinner.

Wishing all of you a joyous Christmas.

Farm blogging

Arrived in central California today and am at Jen's parents house.

The immediate family is coming over in an hour for dinner (only about fifteen people) so I will not blog much tonight — planning an early night as we have both brrn running on a few hours sleep for the last couple nights.

More tomorrow…

Heh...

Swiped from Mostly Cajun:

Expertise
An efficiency expert concluded his lecture with a note of caution. “Do not try these techniques at home.”

“Why not?” asked someone in the audience.

“I watched my wife’s routine at breakfast for years,” the expert explained. “She made lots of trips to the refrigerator, stove and table, often carrying just a single item. So I suggested, ‘Honey, why don’t you try carrying several things at once?’”

Another person asked, “Did it save time?”

The expert replied, “Actually, it did. It used to take her twenty minutes to get breakfast ready…and now I do it in about ten.”

Pedal Power

Check out these photos of an asian man repairing a bicycle tire.
I don't have the ability to store and forward photos on the hotel computer so I can't offer a preview but it's pretty amazing.

Check it out: Silent Inspiration (Must See)

Time -IN- my hands

An interesting story about reviving a dying trade.
From Business Week:

Making Time with the Watchmakers
To combat a shortage of skilled horologists, Rolex is underwriting a free school in Pennsylvania to teach the craft to a new generation.

It's just six months until graduation, and in a bright, clinical classroom, 12 students in crisp white lab coats with round loupes attached to their foreheads and glasses pressed to their noses are sitting on low stools at their work benches. In front of them, under Plexiglas lids that look like miniature cake holders, are tiny disassembled parts, some the size of a grain of salt, others no wider than a human hair. Under the tutelage of a master horologist, the intensely focused individuals are being given a lecture on the Lemania caliber 1873 chronograph, a mechanical timepiece with a 30-minute counter and a small second-hand dial.

It's one of five types of chronographs that by graduation, each of the 12 pupils will be able to take apart, diagnose, handcraft a part for, and repair. The individuals, all second-year students at the Lititz Watch Technicum, are in the final phase of studying what until only recently was considered the dying art of watchmaking.

Launched in 2001 by Rolex USA, the U.S. arm of the venerable 101-year-old Geneva watchmaker, the Lititz Watch Technicum was started in an effort to shore up the shortage of skilled watchmakers in the U.S., which had for decades been on the wane due to the popularity of digital and electronic watches. However, a strong resurgence in mechanical watches in recent years, particularly luxury models, has catapulted demand for horologists, a profession that was not so long ago thought to be going the way of blacksmiths and corset makers.

And a bit of the backstory:

“We were facing a situation today where we needed to foster a new generation of watchmakers,” says Charles Berthiaume, the senior vice-president for technical operations at Rolex and the Technicum's president “Thirty to 40 years ago, there was a watchmaker at every jewelry store. That's not the case today,” he notes. Since opening, the school, which is partnered with the Watchmakers of Switzerland Training and Education Program, has graduated 40 students.

Very cool — I have been having a lot of fun learning blacksmithing and starting to be able to make what I am thinking about instead of turning out a piece of misshapen metal. I see the work of some of the practicioners of the craft and am amazed. Watchmaking must be very similar — doing a bit of what I do but on a much smaller scale.

A nice meditation on computing power

Don Lancaster doesn't support permalinks so you have to go here and scroll down to the entry for December 21, 2006 but it is entirely worth it:

Computing power has gotten FUNDAMENTALLY INSANE.
Just realized I was sitting here solving 14 linear equations in 14 unknowns to 64 bit precision. And worrying about how I was going to speed up the algorithm to get under 120 milliseconds. And being upset that 32-bit math, while useful, was not quite good enough to do the job at hand.

That, of course, is while limping along on an ancient ( almost two years old! ) 750 MHz machine. Compared to back in college where I would spend hours with a K&E log log duplex decitrig slide rule along with the Mathematical Tables from the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics to try and solve a simple transmission line problem. To three percent accuracy.

Just about anybody now has personal computing power that is unimaginably beyond the best available to only the biggest schools or corporations a very few years ago.

Which tells us that these days, if you have a problem, throw some math at it. Another ten million calculations is simply not that big a deal anymore. Brute force reigns supreme.

And no telling where it will lead.

And no telling where it will lead. — indeed…

These are fun times to be alive. I'm not much into computer gaming but I am into intense graphics (photoshop, etc…) and it was the business of gaming that drove the R&D into the high-end and relativly cheap video cards we have these days.

Like DUH???

An interesting observation on movie pricing and theater profits from Science Blog:

Variable pricing of movie tickets could up profits
New research explains how movie theaters may increase profits by moving away from uniform pricing to variable pricing.

The study is being published in an upcoming issue of the International Review of Law & Economics.

Currently, consumers pay the same price for blockbusters and for flops, for a movie on the Fourth of July and for a movie on a rainy day in January, for a movie on Friday night and for a movie on Monday evening.

“We don't pay the same price for apples and oranges or for a hotel room on weekdays and weekends. There is no solid economic justification to charge one price for all movies, seven days a week, throughout the year,” explains Barak Orbach, an associate professor at The University of Arizona's Rogers College of Law and one of the authors on the study. “Under the present pricing model of movie theaters, some money is left on the table.”

While the authors recognize obstacles to variable pricing based on individual movies, they argue that premiums for event movies, on weekends and holidays and during the summer do not raise similar obstacles.

“Movie exhibitors would increase their profits by engaging in variable pricing,” says Orbach. “The industry's argument that uniform pricing must be the best pricing model because it has always governed the industry is logically weak and factually wrong,” argues Orbach, who in another article shows that, until the 1970s, variable pricing governed the industry.

It seems that the fixed pricing scheme was promoted by distributors so they could measure ticket sales by gate reciepts…
The word you are searching for is 'dinosaur'

Hotel Blogging

It has been a long day. Got up early, finished building the Llama shelter for Marley and Pancho, picked up my Dad in Bellingham and then headed down to Seattle to meet with the reators to sign our side of the papers for the house sale and then on to a motel near the airport to catch an 8:00am flight to Fresno.

It's about 8:00pm and it feels like 11:00

Comments and trackbacks have been disabled until the 30th as some new techniques for spamming seem to be evolving and I will not always have internet access to monitor them.

Comments and Trackbacks suspended for a few days

Turning off the comment and the trackback features while we are on the road. I will be checking in from time to time but there are enough people trying new techniques and I don't have the time to analyze each and every one. The scripts I have are getting really good — several hundred attempts each day with only one or two successes if that — usually it is zero.

Two dictators

Interesting comparison of two South American Dictators that have been in the news recently.
From NewsMax:

Castro, Pinochet, and Human Rights
Two former Latin American heads of state have been much in the news lately.

One because he passed away; the other because his death seems imminent. The terms “human rights abuses,” along with “murders and tortures” appear consistently in the articles on one while being almost completely absent from the ones on the other, where the terms “gains in health-care and literacy” predominate.

One jailed more political prisoners as a percentage of population than Hitler and Stalin — and for three times as long. Modern history's longest-suffering political prisoners languished in the prisons and forced-labor camps established by his regime.

According to the Harvard-published “Black Book of Communism,” he executed 14,000 subjects by firing squad. These ranged in age from 16 to 68 and included several women, at least one of them pregnant.

According to the scholar/researchers at the Cuba Archive, his regime's total death toll from torture, prison beatings, machine gunning of escapees, drownings of same, etc. comes to 112,000 and counting.

According to Freedom House, half a million Cubans have suffered in his Gulag and torture chambers. Today — 47 years after the establishment of the totalitarian police state — political prisoners still languish in his regime's prisons for quoting Martin Luther King and Gandhi.

And the other one:

One led a coup to oust a Marxist regime that had been declared unconstitutional by his nation's legislature and Supreme Court. In the “dirty war” immediately following the coup, 3,000 people were killed and 30,000 arrested.

Within a few years all had been released or exiled.

He is the one reviled for “human rights abuses, killings, and tortures.”

The article talks a lot more about Castro and how “human rights” groups ignore the massacres and torture of the Castro regime.

What isn't mentioned that under Pinochet, Chile flourished economically and the previous government was trying to remake it into the same workers paradise that Castro was envisioning for his lucky people.

The Iraqi's really need someone like him now. Someone strong enough to command power and to get the stupid little theocrats to stop playing games and to simmer down while the nation gets rebuilt.

Llama blogging - part two

Jen was able to get a good shot of Marley inspecting his new shelter as it was being built.

These are such dear creatures — I love our Goats and Sheep but the Llamas are really sweet. It is funny that some people have behavioral problems with them; thinking that this is more an issue with the owner than the Llama.

Truth in advertising

I had to bring some furniture up from Seattle while closing out my Mom and Dad's house. Rented a U-Haul 14-foot box truck.

I then had to bring some lumber out to our farm to build the Llama shelter and ran into something interesting…

Here are four photos:

Here is one of the pieces of lumber in the truck.

Here is one of the pieces of lumber in the truck sticking out over the rear of the vehicle. Please note that this is a 12 feet long board and remember that this is a 14-foot truck.

Ahhh — the truck has a “Grannie's Attic — could they be measuring the cargo size from here?

Yep.

Not exactly a deception but still, if I was renting a truck to carry a specific piece of equipment or supplies and if I got there and found that I was unable to load, I would be very very pissed. I do not see on any of U-Haul's web pages (just checked) the statement that the length was measured at the longest part of the van or that the actual available floor length might be smaller.

A minor nit but one worth remembering if you have to rent a truck…

Curious...

From the Canadian Broadcasting Company:

Japanese man in virtual 'hibernation' survives 3 weeks without food or water
A man who went missing in western Japan survived in near-freezing weather without food and water for over three weeks by falling into a state similar to hibernation, doctors said.

Mitsutaka Uchikoshi had almost no pulse, his organs had all but shut down and his body temperature was 71 degrees Fahrenheit or about 21.6 Celsius when he was discovered on Rokko mountain in late October, said doctors who treated him at the nearby Kobe City General Hospital. He had been missing for 24 days.

“On the second day, the sun was out, I was in a field, and I felt very comfortable. That's my last memory,” Uchikoshi, 35, told reporters Tuesday before returning home from hospital. “I must have fallen asleep after that.”

Doctors believe Uchikoshi, a city official from neighbouring Nishinomiya who was visiting the mountain for a barbecue party, tripped and later lost consciousness in a remote mountainous area.

His body temperature soon plunged as he lay in 10-degree Celsius weather, greatly slowing down his metabolism.

“(Uchikoshi) fell into a state similar to hibernation and many of his organs slowed, but his brain was protected,” said Dr. Shinichi Sato, head of the hospital's emergency unit. “I believe his brain capacity has recovered 100 per cent. “

Uchikoshi was treated for severe hypothermia, multiple organ failure and blood loss from his fall, but was unlikely to experience any lasting ill effects, Sato said.

Doctors were still uncertain how exactly Uchikoshi survived for weeks with his metabolism almost at a standstill.

In animals like squirrels or bears, hibernation reduces the amount of oxygen that cells need to survive, protecting the brain and other organs from damage.

If they can figure out what happened and how to reproduce this, it would be an amazing addition to a backpacker's ten essentials.

The MAC doesn't have as many security issues as Windows

BZZZZTTTT!!!

From Infoworld:

Month of security bugs set to bite Apple
Two hackers plan to disclose bugs in the Mac OS X kernel, Safari, iTunes, iPhoto and QuickTime

Apple Computer will soon be a member of the “month of bugs” club.

On Jan. 1, two security researchers will begin publishing details of a flood of security vulnerabilities in Apple's products. Their plan is to disclose one bug per day for the entire month, they said Tuesday.

The project is being launched by an independent security researcher, Kevin Finisterre, and a hacker known as LMH, who declined to reveal his identity.

Some of the bugs “might represent a significant risk,” LMH said in an e-mail interview. “Others have a lower impact on security. We are trying to develop working exploits for every issue we find.”

The two hackers plan to disclose bugs in the Mac OS X kernel as well as in software such as Safari, iTunes, iPhoto and QuickTime, LMH said. Some of the bugs will also affect versions of Apple's software designed to run on Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system, he added.

Going to be an interesting few months for people. And Finisterre, and LMH are just going after the low hanging fruit. Any operating system of this level of complexity is going to have security issues. This was not a big deal ten years ago but now everyone is always-on and always-connected.

Meet Graham Owen

Graham ties flies used for fly fishing and he is very good at this.

So good that when he went to 'pose' one of his creations on a branch, a dragonfly decided that it looked really tasty and made off with it.

A wonderful series of photos here: Flies with an Attitude

I've often been asked “why do you enjoy tying realistic flies?”

Typically, I scratch my head, and say hmmm…Well, I enjoy the challenge, artistry, relaxation and therapeutic value, as well as the thrill of fooling large wary old fish that had previously seen it all. The sting of steel seems to provide these large wary fish with an abundance of attitude and likely an adrenaline rush as deep as mine.

That said, I never could have anticipated the reason why I tied the orange dragonfly pictured above, and don't recall ever being in such a rush to get busy at my tying desk. So, I'm going to share my story with you, presented more as a photo essay as opposed to lengthy text.

The story begins when I went to a local stream, with new digital camera in hand, eager to practice taking photos of a few of my realistic flies. The first thing I did was place a realistic fly on top of a dried twig sticking up out of the ground.

After taking one quick snapshot it appeared that noon was not the best time to take outdoor fly photos, the light was too bright, creating unwanted glare on the wings. I moved in a bit closer with the camera, and being unaccustomed to finding and focusing on small objects, I struggled to find the fly in the viewfinder. By the time focus was made, the fly was no longer on the twig. After searching for several minutes, crawling around on the ground, it finally occurred to me that something had taken the fly away.

After pulling another fly from my box, and deeply embedding the hook into the twig, I grabbed the camera, focused thought the viewfinder, and took a photo that stuck me as being rather unusual.



A bright orange dragonfly seemed rather determined to pull an easy meal from the twig.

One more:

These are just thumbnails — visit his site for the full story and lots of other fantastic photographs.

A high pucker factor

A story of a near fatal industrial accident.

From Neanderpundit:

near-fatal crapblogging
Today as I sat on the throne in the bathroom of the manufacturing facility where I’m working, i hear a fairly large crash, and a forklift tong enters the brick wall of the stall where I’m siting, thankfully several feet from me. I get to the paperwork fairly quickly, pull up the drawers and zip up, and step over the forklift to exit the stall.

Outside, a gapers block has begun to form, and eventually the forklift is extracted from the wall.

I can safely say, as a method of making you no longer interested in crapping, this is utterly effective. You couldn’t drive a sewing needle up my ass with a jackhammer. I’ll probably be shitting spaghetti for a month.

Sorry — I just had to share…

Home Schooling

Kim DuToit and his wife are home schooling their children.
Hi son will turn 18 in May and will be taking an exam. If he wins, he will get his high school diploma from Kim and Connie.

Here is the schedule for the exam:

The examinations will be fairly straightforward:

• Mathematics (6 hours, divided into three 2-hour periods): Algebra; Arithmetic; Geometry and Trigonometry.
• Practical Math (3 hours): Budgeting & Forecasting, Basic Statistics.
• History (6 hours, three 2-hour periods): U.S. History; Ancient History and Modern European History. All essay questions, of course.
• English Language and Literature (8 hours, four 2-hour periods): Book Reports, Essay Writing, Grammar.
• Physics (2 hours): Discussion of basic principles (Newton’s Laws, Ohm’s Laws, etc) and basic problem-solving—a combination of essays and problems.
• Civics (6 hours, two 3-hour periods): U.S. Government; Analysis of other political forms and systems.
• Philosophy (2 hours): classical theories (including Aristotle, Plato, Aurelius, and Aquinas)
• Geography (3 hours): Climatology, Oceanography, Cartography.

The exams may also be linked, to a greater or lesser degree. An English Lit. exam on Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar may also be tied to an Ancient History question on the emergence of the Roman Empire, a Civics question on dictatorships and democracy, and a Trigonometry question on dome measurements (from the Roman Pantheon), to give but a simple example.

Sounds like a nice several day journey through some fun information.

Ye Gods! If it doesn't kill the lad first…

Seriously, this is what examinations were like when I was going to school — not all at once, but the list of expected subjects to master describes a good basic education. Something that is sadly missing in 90% of today's students.

Kim's Son & Heir will go far…

Light posting next few days

Getting ready to fly down to California to visit with Jen's parents for the Christmas holiday.

I have internet access down there so blogging will continue, it is just that these next few days will be a bit thin on the ground. Lots of loose ends up here to take care of before we can travel.

An example of the Main Stream Media

Time Magazine in this case. They posted a photo of Ahmadinejad with a rather inflammatory caption. They edited the website a few hours later:

Champion of the dispossessed?¿?¿
global Everyman?¿?¿

I mean seriously — W.T.F. — this dude is nothing more than a terrorist in a nice suit and a mouthpiece for the theocrats running what used to be the center of a wonderful culture (Persia).

Consider the origin of the name Iran that I posted on December 14th:

So intense was the shah's identification with the Third Reich that in 1935 he renamed his ancient country “Iran,” which in Farsi means Aryan and refers to the Proto-Indo-European lineage that Nazi racial theorists and Persian ethnologists cherished.

Are you starting to get a hint of what we are up against?

Hat tip to Charles at LGF

Cash Crop

What crop accounts for the most money in the USA?

Hint: It ain't Petunias. From The LA Times:

Pot is called biggest cash crop
The $35-billion market value of U.S.-grown cannabis tops that of such heartland staples as corn and hay, a marijuana activist says.

For years, activists in the marijuana legalization movement have claimed that cannabis is America's biggest cash crop. Now they're citing government statistics to prove it.

A report released today by a marijuana public policy analyst contends that the market value of pot produced in the U.S. exceeds $35 billion — far more than the crop value of such heartland staples as corn, soybeans and hay, which are the top three legal cash crops.

California is responsible for more than a third of the cannabis harvest, with an estimated production of $13.8 billion that exceeds the value of the state's grapes, vegetables and hay combined — and marijuana is the top cash crop in a dozen states, the report states.

The report estimates that marijuana production has increased tenfold in the past quarter century despite an exhaustive anti-drug effort by law enforcement.

And some numbers:

California ranked as the report's top state for both outdoor and indoor marijuana production. The report estimates that the state had 4.2 million indoor plants valued at nearly $1.5 billion. The state of Washington was ranked next, with $438 million worth of indoor cannabis plants.

California also is among nine states that produce more cannabis than residents consumed, Gettman estimates. According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the state's 3.3 million cannabis users represent about 13% of the nation's pot smokers. But California produces more than 38% of the cannabis grown in the country, the study contends.

Nationwide, the estimated cannabis production of $35.8 billion exceeds corn ($23 billion), soybeans ($17.6 billion) and hay ($12.2 billion), according to Gettman's findings.

Got a case of the munchies just thinking about it…

How not to wire a computer

Comcast was installing this guys internet connection and the installer mis-connected a wire. From The Consumerist:

Powerbook Explodes After Comcast Plugs In Wrong Cable
“I ordered high speed broadband internet from the local cable company. On November 16, 2006 a technician arrived to install it.

He connected the coaxial cable that was coming into the wall from outside into a cable modem for Mac. He then connected an Ethernet cable out of the modem and into my fully loaded Apple 15” Powerbook.

After over an hour, and with the installation CD still spinning in the laptop, the technician said he still could not get the proper signal into the modem/computer. He said he was going to trace the coaxial cable from the wall up onto the roof and see if he could solve the problem.

About 10 minutes later I was standing on the back porch just outside the window of the computer work desk when I saw a bright flash of light accompanied by a very loud explosion at the work desk. It was as loud as an illegal M-80 on the Fourth of July. After being stunned and confused for several seconds, I ran inside my home into a thick cloud of grey smoke which smelled like gunpowder. Then I ran outside and yelled for the technician, thinking that perhaps he had been electrocuted.

Everything on the desk was blackened with soot and burned either partially or completely. Three external hard drives, a digital camera, videotapes, papers, CD's, etc. The floor, wall, and radiator cover were burned, along with the tabletop.

Every cable that was connected to the laptop, Ethernet, Firewire, Power, and USB, was forcibly shot out of each portal, and each portal covered with the black soot. Metal bits and electronic debris from the power cable hub and other cables was scattered around the room and some wires had split apart into copper shreds. Molten silver metal flecks are still lodged in the windowsill.

A supervisor arrived later that day and after surveying the scene and materials, conceded that their company had caused the accident. He noted, in particular, the internally fried coaxial cable.

Yikes!

RIP Joe Barbera

Joe Barbera passed away today. CNN has an obituary:

Yogi Bear's co-creator dies at 95
Joe Barbera, half of the Hanna-Barbera animation team that produced such beloved cartoon characters as Tom and Jerry, Yogi Bear and the Flintstones, died Monday, a Warner Bros. spokesman said. He was 95.

Barbera died of natural causes at his home with his wife, Sheila, at his side, Warner Bros. spokesman Gary Miereanu said.

With his longtime partner, Bill Hanna, Barbera first found success creating the highly successful Tom and Jerry cartoons.

The antics of the battling cat and mouse went on to win seven Academy Awards, more than any other series with the same characters.

The partners, who had first teamed up while working at MGM in the 1930s, then went on to a whole new realm of success in the 1950s and '60s with a witty series of animated TV comedies, including “The Flintstones,” “The Jetsons,” “Yogi Bear,” “Scooby-Doo” and “Huckleberry Hound and Friends.”

I grew up with these characters and Joe will be missed. Part of my life. Bill Hanna passed away a few years ago in 2001.

This sucks...

Remember the big 2004 tsunami at Aceh, Indonesia?

Did you give money (we did)?

Guess what the money is going for — from The Sunday Times Online:

Tsunami survivors given the lash
Disaster donations help Islamic vigilante force impose punishments on women

When people around the world sent millions of pounds to help the stricken Indonesian province of Aceh after the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004, few could have imagined that their money would end up subsidising the lashing of women in public.

But militant Islamists have since imposed sharia law in Aceh and have cornered Indonesian government funds to organise a moral vigilante force that harasses women and stages frequent displays of humiliation and state-sanctioned violence.

International aid workers and Indonesian women’s organisations are now expressing dismay that the flow of foreign cash for reconstruction has allowed the government to spend scarce money on a new bureaucracy and religious police to enforce puritan laws, such as the compulsory wearing of headscarves.

Some say there are more “sharia police” than regular police on the local government payroll and that many of them are aggressive young men.

“Who are these sharia police?” demanded Nurjannah Ismail, a lecturer at Aceh’s Ar-Raniri University. “They are men who, most of the time, are trying to send the message that their position is higher than women.”

In one town, Lhokseumawe, the authorities are even planning to impose a curfew on women — a move that social workers warn will force tsunami widows to quit night-time jobs as food sellers or waitresses and could drive them into prostitution.

So wrong on so many fucking levels and yet, the “international community” is just standing there, wringing their hands and going tsk, tsk, tsk and fervently wishing that all this nastiness would just go away. And yes, Bush is a moron.

I ask — what constitutes a “Call To Action” for these people?
It was 9/11 for me. What is it for them or are they so self absorbed and clueless that WW3 could start and finish while they were prattling on about the need for free-trade rutabagas from Somalia.

Joseph Stalin called them Useful Idiots while he was murdering several hundred million people. The term “Useful Idiots” does seem appropriate…

Toying with Genocide

Every so often, Gerard Van Der Leun hits one out of the ballpark.

This time, it went into orbit.

Go here and read this — it will take about ten minutes but it is well worth the time spent.

Not even going to try to excerpt it — this is good and spot on writing.

Sucks to be you -- Robert Mugabe

Schadenfreude on steroids — from The Independent:

Desperate Mugabe allows white farmers to come back
Economic collapse has forced Zimbabwe to reconsider its notorious land reform policy

President Robert Mugabe's regime in Zimbabwe, which has mounted a six-year campaign to seize white-owned farms, is beginning to allow some white farmers to return to their land as the country faces starvation and economic collapse.

Since November, 19 white farmers who lost ownership of their land have been granted 99-year government-backed leases on resettled farms. “We wanted to come back, because it's home,” one farmer told The Independent on Sunday on his 100-hectare farm outside the capital, Harare, where he is planning to grow maize and tobacco. “Farming has been in my family for generations. We're just happy to be back on the land.”

A bit more:

In July 2005 Mr Mugabe declared that his land reform policy would only be complete when there was “not a single white on the farms”. But a contracting economy, hyperinflation and severe food shortages have forced the authorities to allow some interested whites to return. The Land Minister, Flora Buka, said the government had received more than 200 applications so far from whites to take up farming again.

“It is a radical change of policy at this stage - but the future remains to be seen,” said Eric Bloch, a Bulawayo-based economic adviser. “Are there going to be 19 token whites, or will the government continue?”

Emphasis mine — or will the government just take the land back once it becomes profitable again. Just like the diamond mines they nationalized a few weeks ago.

One last bit:

“Farming is dead in the water,” said John Robertson, a political analyst. “The banks won't accept the farms as collateral, and farmers can be removed within 90 days if they fail to comply with government requirements.”

There is no sign that Mr Mugabe is preparing to ease his grip on power. Zanu-PF is about to postpone the 2008 presidential election until parliamentary elections in 2010, officially as a “cost-saving measure”. But a senior loyalist has suggested that he should be made president for life.

How can people like this live with themselves…

Light posting tonight

Working on some other stuff…

Well fine then...

What did we have last night?

Auroras, wonderful auroras.

We also had a lot of light pollution from a nearby city and dense, high cloud cover.

What do we have tonight?

Dead clear and cold sky. And no auroras.

Here are some photos of last nights display — looks like it was delightful!

Here is one of them:

sigh…

Interesting Diabetes breakthrough?

From the Canadian Broadcasting Company:

Canadian scientists reverse diabetes in mice
Researchers working on a “breakthrough” discovery that identifies the role of pain nerves in the cells that produce insulin have prevented and reverse