Colleen has a brand-new baby girl!

Sierra Lynn was born this past Saturday morning, and momma Colleen and baby went home on Monday. All is well, everybody is doing great. Colleen reports that Sierra is "an absolute joy, even if she does keep us awake at all hours." Somehow I'm not surprised that momma feels this way about her new baby!

For those of you who don't know Colleen, she and I have worked together now for quite a few years at two different companies. She is one of FutureTrade's product managers, with lots of very specialized knowledge and skills in some really arcane parts of the trading world — strange things that most people don't even know exists, such as FIX protocol, OATS reports, and the clearing process. She's also one of the FutureTrade folk scattered around the globe: she lives in Florida with her husband, who is a Navy pilot and was one of our brave warriors in Iraq.

All of us in her "FutureTrade family" are vicariously sharing in just the tiniest little bit of her joy and happiness...

Update: Animal cruelty in Lawson Valley

I got a report this evening from someone who drove by the overcrowded, mud-swamp hell farm on Lawson Valley Road. She reports that the sheriff and several animal control personnel and vehicles are on the scene, and the poor animals are being loaded into trucks to be taken away to somewhere safe.

Maybe this will be the good ending to the otherwise very sad story...

Fantastic images from Mars and Saturn

At right is a thumbnail of the most detailed image of Saturn ever taken. If you click on the image, you'll get the full-sized (gigantic!) photo with all the amazing detail intact. This image is what every amateur astronomer wishes he could see through the eyepiece of his earthbound telescope. The picture is actually a composite — a mosaic — of many smaller pictures, all stitched together. The pictures were all taken by the Cassini satellite that is currently exploring the Saturnian system. JPL has a nice write-up about the image here.

Every time I see stunning images like this, I am reminded once again of the high value of these robotic missions as compared to manned spaceflight. Somehow the visual image has far more impact, emotionally, than reading about the results of other instruments that are returning data perhaps even more important than the images. But those images...they are what really gets my imagination soaring. I can use the image as a tool to imagine actually being there, in orbit around Saturn, witnessing in person what this image is showing me. Somehow a graph of (say) ion energy over time doesn't have quite the same impact...

The bottom image at right is yet another fantastic panorama taken by a Mars rover. This time it's Spirit that took the pictures, pausing on its trudge up the Columbia hills toward Larry's Lookout. Once again, if you click on the thumbnail you'll get the original gigantic picture from NASA. The large image is rich in interesting detail of rock formations, boulders strewn about, and the hills through which Spirit is roving. There's plenty of detail to give you a real appreciation of just how far up in the hills Spirit is right now.

I'd give a lot for a (safe) chance to stand there alongside Spirit...

Strange weather continues

Now the storm cells are arriving from the northeast (the opposite of the storms of the last few days). This indicates that the center of the storm has passed us, and we're getting the dregs of the tail-end of it. The lightning terrifies one of our field spaniels (Lea); she runs to be with us, no matter what we're doing, and cowers nearby, trembling pitifully. Our other field spaniel (Mo'i) acts like he doesn't even notice the thunder...

The little bit of rain we've received this afternoon has pushed the gauge up to 12.99 inches for the year...

Mount St. Helens update

The USGS site is well worth exploring — lots of good information, and plenty of photos. I particularly enjoy the VolcanoCam.

The latest report includes this:

Small collapses of hot rock from the south end of the growing lava dome sent several ash clouds upward and over the crater rim during the past 24 hours. Shortly after 3 a.m. this morning a seismic signal from such an event was accompanied by a bright glow that persisted on the VolcanoCam for about 15 minutes. The glow results from the collapse exposing hot, incandescent rock deeper in the dome. Crews are in the field today taking photographs and, wind conditions permitting, dredging rock samples from the lava dome.

The presence of glowing rock got a lot of people's attention, as it indicates that molten lava is very close to surface, and could potentially erupt at any time. From all I've read, none of the geologists are really expecting an explosive eruption (though they're way too cautious to rule that out). What they're really expecting is a nice, quiet, "normal" eruption wherein some lava starts flowing. Of course nobody really has any idea how much or at what rate.

Zero tolerance run amuck

The full story sure sounds ridiculous. In particular:

Rojas said she was shocked to learn that her son was being punished for a Level 4 offense -- the highest Level at the school. Other violations that also receive level 4 punishment include arson, assault and battery, bomb threats and explosives, according to the Code of Student Conduct.

What are these school officials thinking?

A couple of the columnists that I read regularly (James Taranto and his excellent Best of the Web Today newsletter, and Randy Cassingham's hysterical newsletter This is True) frequently highlight these zero tolerance crazinesses. And there is a good web site devoted to exposing these incidents with the goal of changing the zero tolerance policies: ZeroIntelligence.net From their site:

Zero Intelligence is a play on "Zero Tolerance", the knee jerk reactionary policies that plague our school systems. The implementation of a zero tolerance policy is the equivalent of giving up on common sense, reasonability and intellect. All infractions are grouped into types with uniform punishments regardless of the individual facts of the incident. Possession of Advil is treated as if it were equivalent to pushing crack. An honor student with the wrong type of pencil sharpener is punished the same as a known delinquent with a switchblade would be. Improper use of an inhaler leads to arrest as assault with a weapon. It is easy to see why we call these "Zero Intelligence Policies".

The most frightening part of the above paragraph is that all of the examples cited are real. They are not hyperbole or fiction for effect. They all actually happened in various school systems in the United States. These and countless other incidents show just how badly zero tolerance policies fail our children.

Personally, I find these "zero tolerance" policies very disturbing. I can only hope that our young people are born with enough sense to realize that the real world they will face as adults doesn't work the way their schools do. I fear, however, that what is actually happening is akin to some of the other grand experiments we've made with our schoolchildren Ᾱ a disaster in the making that will result (again!) in lowering America's competitiveness with the rest of the world.

Moonlight in Lawson Valley

I got up at about 3:30 am, woken by bright light in my eyes. Looking outside, the light was bright enough for me to see some color in the back yard, from a big, beautiful full moon and skies clear from horizon-to-horizon. The uninhabited hill behind our house had a bright spot near its peak, almost as if someone was up there with a work light. Took me a minute (this was before coffee, mind you), but I figured it out: the exposed rocks are covered with a film of water, and the moonlight was reflecting from that. That film of water could only be coming from a spring, and there's not much of the hill that's higher than those rocks — an indication of just how much rain we've absorbed around here in the past few weeks.

And speaking of rain...the grand total for the year-to-date now stands at 12.95 inches. The National Weather Service is forecasting a "chance of rain" for Monday through Wednesday of next week, but the next few days look like we're going to have nice weather. It will be very nice to see the sun for a few days...