No giggling allowed

Mark Steyn is a wonderful columnist, writing for the London Telegraph and other outlets. His columns often make me laugh right out loud, and always make me think. Today he's posted a column about Bush's upcoming European trip, and why it really doesn't mean anything. As always, it's funny as hell. And the European perspective is interesting to read about. A longish passage from the column:

And now the President himself is on his way, staying up all night on Air Force One trying to master the official State Department briefing paper on the European Rapid Reaction Force, the European Constitution, the European negotiations with Iran, etc. ("When these subjects come up, US policy is to nod politely and try not to giggle. If you feel a massive hoot of derision coming on, duck out to the men's room, but without blaming it on the escargots.") The French Foreign Minister took to calling the US Secretary of State "chère Condi" every 30 seconds. It's doubtful if the French President will go that far, but, if he does, the White House line is that Mr Bush is happy to play Renee Zellweger to Chirac's Tom Cruise ("You had me at bonjour").

What does all this mean? Nothing. In victory, magnanimity – and right now Bush can afford to be magnanimous, even if Europe isn't yet ready to acknowledge his victory. On Thursday, in a discussion of "the greater Middle East", the President remarked that Syria was "out of step". And, amazingly, he's right. Not so long ago, Syria was perfectly in step with the Middle East – it was the archetypal squalid stable Arab dictatorship. Two years on, Syria hasn't changed, but Iraq has, and, to varying degrees, the momentum in Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian Authority and Lebanon (where the Syrians have overplayed their hand) is also in the Bush direction. Boy Assad finds himself in the position of the unfortunate soldier in Irving Berlin's First World War marching song, "They Were All Out Of Step But Jim".

The EU isn't the Arab League, though for much of the past three years it's been hard to tell the difference. But it, too, is out of step. The question is whether the Europeans are smart enough, like the savvier Sunnis in Iraq, to realise it. The Washington Post's Fred Hiatt compared the President's inaugural speech with Gerhard Schröder's keynote address to the Munich Conference on Security Policy last week and observed that, while both men talked about the Middle East, terrorism and 21st-century security threats, Mr Bush used the word "freedom" 27 times while Herr Schröder uttered it not once; he preferred to emphasise, as if it were still March 2003 and he were Arab League Secretary-General, "stability" – the old realpolitik fetish the Administration has explicitly disavowed. It's not just that the two sides aren't speaking the same language, but that the key phrases of Mr Bush's vocabulary don't seem to exist in Chirac's or Schröder's.

The differences between America and Europe in the 21st century are nothing to do with insensitive swaggering Texas cowboys. Indeed, they're nothing to do with Iraq, Iran, Kyoto, the International Criminal Court, or any other particular issue. They're not tactical differences, they're conceptual.

That last bit is an insight worth pondering.

Cheney to plow a road for Condi?

Captain Ed (of the excellent Captain's Quarters blog) pointed me to this intriguing article at WorldNetDaily's site. In it, Dr. Jack Wheeler reports on a rumor flying around Washington that Dick Cheney will step aside, perhaps citing health concerns. His stepping down would let President Bush (using procedures outlined in the 25th amendment) appoint a new VP to replace him. The rumor is that Bush would appoint Condi Rice, specifically to get her the experience and exposure she'd need to make a credible candidate in 2008.

Just a few hours ago, I posted an opposing take -- one that essentially said there was no way for Condit to gain that needed experience in time for 2008. Is the approach suggested in this rumor plausible? I'd say it might well be, especially if Condi turned in a stellar performance. Though I have to wonder how much of a canvas she'd have to paint on in the VP role, as opposed to the very expansive canvas afforded to her as SecState (but stretching my metaphor a bit, perhaps the canvas at State is not quite the right texture). In any event, it's an interesting speculation. An excerpt below:

Vice President Dick Cheney likely will step down next year due to health reasons and be replaced by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, according to a report by geopolitical expert Jack Wheeler.

On his website, To the Point, Wheeler reports there's a "red-breasted rumor bird" flying around Capitol Hill that has whispered the same thing to most congressional committee chairmen.

"We all know that Dick Cheney has been the best vice president of modern times, perhaps in American history," one such chairman told Wheeler. "And we know that he absolutely will not run for president in 2008. Further, he has an unfortunate history of heart trouble. So let's just say none of us will be surprised if, sometime next year, he will step down from the vice presidency due to his health."

Continued the source: "Should this happen, President Bush would need to appoint his replacement, just as Richard Nixon chose Gerald Ford to replace Spiro Agnew. It is quite clear to us whom the president would choose should he need to: Condoleezza Rice."

I'll be watching this for further developments...

The coffee gets its Tiger

I've been programming with Java 5.0 for several weeks now, and I'm much more impressed with it than I thought I'd be. I expected to find some interesting stuff that wasn't worth the risks (real or perceived) in switching from more mature versions of Java. After just the short experience I've had, I'd recommend that any sizable Java development effort seriously consider switching to Java 5.0. In my opinion, the benefits are so great that they outweigh those risks.

So what's so great about Java 5.0? Well, my favorite new features are generics (very similar to templates in C++), autoboxing (which lets you use basic types even where objects are ordinarily required) and the new for construct that virtually eliminates the need to explicitly instantiate iterators (or the ubiquitous i iteration index). While there are many more things to love about Java 5.0, I'm going to pick on these three and talk briefly about each of them, with some short examples.

Generics. What can I say? They're great! Below is an example of generics used to make a list of strings:

    // here's what you used to do...    List<String> myList = new ArrayList();    myList.add( "test" );    myList.add( new Integer(0) );   // compiles and runs just fine!    String gotIt = (String) myList.get(0);    // and here's what you do with generics...    List<String> myList = new ArrayList();    myList.add( "test" );    myList.add( new Integer(0) );  // won't compile -- sweet!    String gotIt = myList.get(0);

This one feature has greatly reduced the tediousness of using collections, reduced the errors in my code, and increased the readability. And I haven't even started writing my own generified classes yet!

Autoboxing. Autoboxing is a lovely thing. Java 5.0 automatically converts basic types to their equivalent object type when needed, and vice versa. This saves no end of tedium while writing code, and results in much more readable code. For example, the following code would have not have compiled pre-Java 5.0, but now it works fine (and as expected!):

    // before you'd do this...    int x = 5;    Integer y = new Integer(5);    x = y.intValue();    // now you just do this...    int x = 5;    Integer y = x;  // autoboxing instantiates the Integer...    x = y;  // autoboxing does the Integer.toValue()... 

for. With Java 5.0, there's no need to instantiate trivial iterators or index integers. The compiler does all the work for you. An example:

    // before you'd do this...    Iterator it = myCollection.iterator();    while( it.hasNext() ) {        // do stuff...    }    // now you do this...    for( Object o : myCollection ) {        // do stuff...    }    // or before you'd do this...    for( int i = 0; i < myArray.length; i++ ) {        // do stuff...    }    // now you do this...    for( Object o : myArray ) {        // do stuff...    }

Of course you can combine the new for syntax with generics, and that leads to much simpler and more readable code, and less prone to stupid typo errors as well. How many times have you typed that for( int i = 0;... pattern? It feels like about a million times for me! I'm very glad to leave that particular construct behind...

Bloggers will rescue the right

The Guardian has an interesting article by Iain Duncan Smith. Tip of the hat to PowerLine for the link (and some good commentary of their own). I was struck by this passage:

All this should put the fear of God into the metropolitan elites. For years there have been widening gaps between the governing class and the governed and between the publicly funded broadcasters and the broadcasted to.

Until now voters, viewers and service users have not had easy mechanisms by which to expose officialdom's errors and inefficiencies. But, because of the internet, the masses beyond the metropolitan fringe will soon be on the move. They will expose the lazy journalists who reduce every important public policy issue to how it affects opinion-poll ratings.

I've been an avid blog reader since they first started appearing a couple of years ago; certainly all that reading has had a big influence on me. But only after reading the passage above did I stop to think about how much I depend on blogs for timely political commentary. I've just about given up on magazines and newspapers, Wall Street Journal excepted. I read a lot of books, but they're necessarily not quite so immediate. So Mr. Smith's contention rings completely true with me. It's very interesting for this technologist to ponder what the Internet has wrought in this (seemingly) unlikely sphere...

Chirac: Hezbollah's best friend

President Jacques Chirac of France has a remarkable talent for raising my temperature, mostly when he demonstrates his world-class talent for hypocrisy. This week, he did it again.

The issue this week is an old one: France's ongoing refusal to declare Hezbollah a terrorist organization. That Hezbollah is a terrorist organization seems very hard to refute -- the evidence is overwhelming. They are supported by Iran and Syria. They occupy Lebanon in contravention of international agreements (but with the active cooperation of Syria). Hezbollah is widely suspected of having carried out this week's assasination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Hariri.

All right, all right, you say. So Hezbollah really is a terrorist organization. Why do we care whether Chirac will mouth the words? Because...until he does, Hezbollah can legally continue to seek and collect funds in Europe, which they are doing with great success. Of course the other European countries need to make the same declaration, but at the moment they're saying "Why bother?" because France will nix any such decree.

Why is Chirac (in the name of France) taking this position that seems contrary to all common sense? The only rational answer I can see is that France (and/or Chirac personally) has an economic interest in Syria, and Syria has a vital interest in Hezbollah. One hand washes the other, etc.

The Jerusalem Post has an article (free signup required) on the most recent brouhaha, excerpted below:

French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier was noncommittal when pressed to help change his nation's opposition to branding Hizbullah as terrorists during a visit to Jerusalem last week. President Jacques Chirac was more direct in his meeting with Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom on Monday. He said no.

France's argument for its position, that Hizbullah is a political faction in Lebanon, is ludicrous to the point of insult. This "political faction" has thousands of missiles pointed at Israel, is committed to Israel's destruction and is actively supporting Palestinian terrorism and undermining the PA.

Does this mean that if al-Qaida started a political party somewhere that it would no longer be a terrorist organization, no matter how deeply it is engaged in terrorism? How can France ban Hizbullah's television arm, Al-Manar, presumably for fomenting radicalism in France, and turn a blind eye to its doing much more than inciting terrorism against Israel?

The AP and New York Times had this to say:

Meanwhile, the Bush administration is arguing with European governments over whether they should designate the Lebanonbased Shiite group Hezbollah a terrorist organization, American and European officials say.

The disagreement over Hezbollah presents another challenge for President Bush, who will travel to Europe on Sunday on a mission to mend ruptures with Europe over the Iraq war.

In the past two weeks, the officials said, France has rebuffed appeals by both Rice and the Israeli foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, to list Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, which would prevent it from raising funds in Europe through charity groups.

The Europeans are not solidly opposed to listing Hezbollah as a terrorist group, the officials said. The Netherlands, Italy and Poland support the Bush administration’s view, several said, while Germany and Britain believe the issue is moot unless the French change their minds. One European diplomat said other countries were "hiding behind" France on the issue.

It doesn't look to me as if Chirac is actually fooling anybody. When even the rabidly liberal press (NYT) is pointing out your liberal hypocrisy, you know you've raised it to high levels. Meanwhile, the mere sight of Chirac's image raises my blood pressure. I swear Photoshop uttered some gagging noises as I processed the picture above...

Ethics Test Question

This test only has one question, but it's a very important one. By giving an honest answer, you will discover where you stand morally. The test features an unlikely, completely fictional situation in which you will have to make a decision based on your personal ethics.

Remember that your answer needs to be honest, yet spontaneous. Please scroll down slowly and give due consideration to each line.

You are in Florida, Miami to be specific. There is chaos all around you caused by a hurricane with severe flooding. This is a flood of biblical proportions. You are photojournalist working for a major newspaper, and you're caught in the middle of this epic disaster.

The situation is nearly hopeless. You're trying to shoot career-making photos. There are houses and people swirling around you, some disappearing under the water. Nature is unleashing all of its destructive fury.

Suddenly you see a woman in the water. She is fighting for her life, trying not to be taken down with the debris. You move closer. . Somehow the woman looks familiar. You suddenly realize who it is. It's Hillary Clinton!

At the same time you notice that the raging waters are about to take her under...forever. You have two options -- you can save the life of Hillary Clinton, or you can shoot a dramatic Pulitzer Prize winning photo, documenting the death of one of the world's most powerful women.

So here's the question, and please give an honest answer...

.

.

.

.

Would you select high contrast color film, or would you go with the classic simplicity of black and white?

Hillary and the ghosts

Hillary Clinton gets elected President and is spending her first night in the White House.
She has waited so long.....

The ghost of George Washington appears...
Hillary says, "How can I best serve my country?"
Washington says, "Never tell a lie."
"Ouch!" Says Hillary, "I don't know about that."

The next night, the ghost of Thomas Jefferson appears...
Hillary says, "How can I best serve my country?"
Jefferson says, "Listen to the people."
"Ohhh! I really don't want to do that."

On the third night, the ghost of Abe Lincoln appears...
Hillary says, "How can I best serve my country?"
Lincoln says, "Go to the theater!"

Jamulian Weather Radar

A few weeks ago I discovered that the National Weather Service (which has radars all over the U.S.) puts all of its radar data up on the Internet. The data is at most a few minutes old. There happens to be a NWS radar in Poway, which is less than 20 miles from where I live. So...if I could figure out how to read the radar data, I could have my very own radar -- with the convenience of someone else paying for its purchase and upkeep. What a deal!

So I spent a few weekends writing software to grab the data continuously, decode it, and then turn it into something pleasing to view. A reduced snapshot of the result is at right, but you can see the real deal by going to Tom's Weather Radar.

Note: you must have Java installed on your system (you can get it free at the Java site, and my web site is slow so it will take a minute or two for all the frames of the "weather movie" to download. But be patient -- it's worth it!

If you're interested in doing the same thing yourself, you can find out how to do it at the NWS Radar Product Central Collection Dissemination site.

Understated revenge

Mildred, the church gossip, and self-appointed monitor of the church's morals, kept sticking her nose into other people's business. Several members did not approve of her extracurricular activities, but feared her enough to maintain their silence.

She made a mistake, however, when she accused George, a new member, of being an alcoholic after she saw his old pickup parked in front of the town's only bar one afternoon. She emphatically told George and several others that everyone seeing it there would know what he was doing. George, a man of few words, stared at her for a moment and just turned and walked away. He didn't explain, defend, or deny. He said nothing.

Later that evening, George quietly parked his pickup in front of Mildred's house...and left it there all night

Iwo Jima: 60 years ago today

The assault on Iwo Jima must be almost unimaginable to most younger Americans -- the stuff of Hollywood, on an epic scale and full of larger-than-life heroes. Even the famous photo reproduced at right has this unreal quality. And by today's standards the statistics are also hard to accept: almost 7,000 Americans died in this single stupendous battle, and almost 20,000 more were injured. These figures dwarf the casualty figures for the entire war with Iraq...and yet they were but a single battle (albeit one of the most intense) of the much larger war.

Many of the young Americans I work with are sadly ignorant of history. I know several people who had never heard of Stalin until I raised the topic, and others who knew Iwo Jima only through the famous photograph. They had no idea of the sacrifice their parents' or grandparents' generation made in the Great War. Worse, they had no deeply felt belief in what Ronald Reagan unashamedly labeled the evil in the world. This scares me profoundly, as I believe folks this ignorant of historical evil are much more likely to take the road of appeasement...

Hat tip to PowerLine for two links to good articles on Iwo Jima here and here.

Contemporaries of my father (who was in the European theatre) fought in this horrific battle. My uncle was on Saipan during this period, and through his writings (which I am now the custodian of) I have gotten a good picture of what the great Pacific battles were like for the support troops, which is what my uncle mainly was. But most of what I've learned about Iwo Jima comes from reading several books about it, most recently Flags of our Fathers: Heroes of Iwo Jima, by James Bradley and Ron Powers. This is an excellent book; I learned a lot from it, and I was greatly moved by some of the stories it contains.

A slight misunderstanding

When Osama bin Laden died, he was met at the Pearly Gates by George Washington, who slapped him across the face and yelled, "How dare you try to destroy the nation I helped conceive!"

Patrick Henry approached, punched him in the nose and shouted, "You wanted to end our liberties but you failed."

James Madison followed, kicked him in the groin and said, "This is why I allowed our government to provide for the common defense!"

Thomas Jefferson was next, beat Osama with a long cane and snarled, "It was evil men like you who inspired me to write the Declaration of Independence."

The beatings and thrashings continued as George Mason, James Monroe and 66 other early Americans unleashed their anger on the terrorist leader.

As Osama lay bleeding and in pain, an Angel appeared. Bin Laden wept and said, "This is not what you promised me."

The Angel replied, "I told you there would be 72 Virginians waiting for you in Heaven. What did you think I said?"

The "young psyche"

An excerpt from an email sent to me by a young friend:

Also I did some research on the "young" psyche in general. Basically the "millennial" generation which is born from 80's to now vs.. the generation before that of course. They say "our" generation, meaning mine I guess, suffers from the "Self-Esteem" movement. Where we were taught to be strong and never let anything get you down blah blah blah. Well, it seems that this "philosophy" has developed an impervious shield in our brain in that "you're wrong" and I'm not. Always have a sense of "entitlement". Never really see "themselves" as imperfect or wrong. When I learned of this it hit right on the nose. I act in this manner sometimes. And I never looked at it within myself. I hate to mention this Tom, but I'm afraid for the "millennial" future. I've noticed a lot of college grads nowadays feel they're entitled to the highest position and most pay because they have years of schooling and high self-esteem, and leadership skills etc. I don't want to go too much into this but I hope you know what I mean.

I know exactly what he means. For me (probably because most of my friends are as gray as I am) the impact is mostly in the workplace. For example, I once had a very bright young woman working for me as a software engineer. She was a few years out of school, ambitious, and a very hard worker. But she had a habit of turning in work that was just plain unacceptable, for the old-fashioned and quaint reason that it didn't function correctly. This young engineer was completely unperturbed by the fact that her work product was useless -- and she really could not understand why I was critical of her because of that. After all (as she told me very directly), she had worked diligently on her project, pouring her best efforts into it. For that reason she believed she deserved a promotion and a raise, and she very forthrightly demanded that I provide those rewards. She equally forthrightly demanded that I stop my silly insistence on judging her value to the company by the quality of her work -- as clearly the quality was an irrelevant factor! This incident was the first time I ran into the "young psyche" in such an unambiguous way (though I've run into it many times since). I was quite taken aback, and engaged her in a long conversation about her mindset. In the end, we mutually concluded that her beliefs had been fostered by her schooling, all the way through her Masters degree (from UCSD, no less). If I am to believe her, she had never once in her schooling been truly held accountable for the quality of her work. Not once! Instead, she was judged by how hard she tried (my characterization, not hers -- though as best I could tell, that was the meaning she conveyed).

As someone famously said (George Carlin?), I don't want to ride in an airplane designed by someone like that...

Condi for President?

In the past couple of weeks there has been quite a bit of noise about Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice being a winning Republican candidate for President in 2008. Probably Dick Morris has been the most forceful proponent, claiming that Condi would be the perfect candidate to run against presumed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. Several of my correspondents also see this as a winning matchup, including a friend of mine who is a recovering liberal and happens to be young, black, and male -- and is not buying into the liberal rants about Condi. And I have to admit that the idea of someone so well-equipped intellectually is attractive to me as well.

But...

An article by Steven Warshawsky (Beware the Condi bandwagon) makes a good case for why Condi would not make a good candidate in 2008. It's an interesting read, and raises some important issues. Most importantly he raises good questions about Condi's demonstrable ability and lack of experience with executive leadership. Food for thought...

Hat tip to Michelle Malkin for the Warshawsky link...

Reagan Quotes

Here's my strategy on the Cold War: "We win, they lose."

The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.

The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant: It's just that they know so much that isn't so.

Of the four wars in my lifetime none came about because the U.S. was too strong.

I have wondered at times about what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress.

The taxpayer: That's someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take the civil service examination.

Government is like a baby: An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.

If we ever forget that we're one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under.

The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program.

I've laid down the law, though, to everyone from now on about anything that happens: no matter what time it is, wake me, even if it's in the middle of a Cabinet meeting.

It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.

Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.

Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.

No arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women.

Cassini and Huygens

Over seven years ago (in October 1997) the Cassini/Huygens mission was launched. Cassini is the main satellite; Huygens hitched a ride on it. Between the launch and December 2004, the satellite used several planets as "slingshots" to boost its speed, until finally it arrived in the vicinity of its target: Saturn (and its largest moon, Titan). Just before Christmas, Cassini -- after seven years in the harsh conditions of interplanetary space -- fired its engines in a picture-perfect maneuver to put itself into orbit around the ringed planet.

Since its arrival in the Saturn "system", Cassini and Huygen have been making non-stop observations. They've generated huge quantities of data with far better sensitivity and resolution than anything ever collected before about Saturn. The photo at right is a great example: the moon Dione (which nobody had ever seen as more than a smudge before) with Saturn as a backdrop. BTW, you can click on the picture to see the Cassini/Huygen home page.

In January, Cassini flew near Titan and released Huygens on a trajectory that would end up with Huygens landing on the surface of that mooon. Huygen's journey was a scientific and technological marvel. It spent seven years turned off, as it depended on battery power and those batteries would only last a few hours. After it was released by Cassini, a simple timer inside Huygens told it when to switch on -- just a few moments before it plunged into Titan's thick methane-soup atmosphere. Then in a very precisely choreographed series of actions, Huygens used a heat shield, multiple parachutes, and in-air (so to speak) maneuvers until finally it was swinging below it's main parachute, slowly descending towards Titan's surface. And nobody knew what that surface would be composed of, so Huygens was prepared for anything from solid rock to liquid hydrocarbon. As it turned out, Huygens landed on something with the consistency of mud, and was able to take hundreds of photographs and instrument readings on the surrounding very interesting territory. Talk about Mr. Toad's wild ride!

There are dozens of triumphs already in the Cassini/Huygens mission, and many more to come. To date it has operated nearly flawlessly, and it is in perfect condition. I visit the mission web site almost every day to catch up on the latest amazing discoveries. Even though I'm used to the apparent general disinterest in science and technology (and I know I'm over-generalizing here), I've been very surprised how little interest most people seem to have with this mission. And I'm at a loss to explain why -- it seems to have all the elements of drama and action that would attract interest. What am I missing?

Animal cruelty in Jamul

For several months now, many folks who live in Lawson Valley (which is near the town of Jamul) have been driving by a small farm that was obviously mistreating its animals. The small fenced-in area was so small that every square inch of ground had been turned into mud by the hooves and defecation of the livestock (cows, horses, and mules) that were kept there. The number of animals was clearly far too high for the space they had, and the animals were suffering.

Well, yesterday fate caught up with the owners. Apparently they were away from home when the cows escaped. Someone called animal control, and that led to a visit by the police. The animal control officers and the police discovered starving dogs, the carcases of at least two cows, and much evidence of mistreatment and cruelty. We're informed that the owners have been given 72 hours to reduce the number of livestock and animals on the property to a reasonable quantity. In addition, they've been told to get veterinary care for those animals that need it. Local folks are rallying to find "foster homes" for the animals, and it looks like there are plenty of volunteers.

Sounds like a happy ending to a terrible story, right? Well, I'm not so sure we should be feeling good about this. We all (and I include myself as a guilty party) could have done something earlier -- and we probably should have, given the obviousness of the situation (if you've taken even one drive by that farm anytime in the preceding few months then you know exactly what I'm saying). Why didn't we do something months ago? I don't have a good answer for that one...