Cedar Fire photo

The Cedar Fire of October/November 2003 was by far the closest call we've ever had to having our home and property burn. For those of you who aren't familiar with the chapparal ecological system we live in, I can say it like this: basically we live in an area where we are completely surrounded by large piles of very dry, highly inflammable fuel. Without human intervention, we're told that lightning-started fires would burn chapparal areas typically every 15 to 30 years. The area immediately surrounding our home hasn't burned for over 30 years, which means that we have a huge and extremely dangerous "fuel load" in our area. The vastness of the chapparal area means that cleaning it up and disposing of the fuel really isn't practical. Not to mention that you'd destroy all the native plants and animals in the process. So...we're left in this ever-more-precarious situation, exacerbated by the seven years of drought (but thankfully the drought is over due to the above-normal rain this year).

But we do it anyway, because we love the chapparal...

The blue dot on the map is the approximate location of our home; the green smudge is where the city of San Diego is located (about 25 miles from our house). The red rectangles are the locations of the burning areas at the moment this picture was taken (an infrared sensor on the satellite provided the data for this). You can see a burning area due south of our home; that's the Otay Fire. The large oblong group of red rectangles north of our home is the Cedar Fire, burning in all directions from its center. Further north is the Escondido Fire. We didn't have this information at the time of the fire, but we did know that our home was directly in between the Cedar Fire (burning south toward us) and the Otay fire (burning north toward us). It was not a pleasant situation. I wrote a contemporaneous account and photos on my personal web site. On that web site's home page you can find links followup accounts and photos as well.

Click on the photo for a bigger version.

Gravitational lensing

This astrophotograph captures a phenomenon that very graphically demonstrates Einstein's insight that gravity can bend the path of light. What looks like four stars (or galactic nuclei) in the picture are actually four separate virtual images of the same quasar, which is located far behind the galaxy whose faint image is all around the four quasar images. The intense gravity in the dense core of the galaxy acts like a gigantic lens that just happens to be directly between us and the distant quasar. Result: these four images of the quasar. You can read all about it here, with pointers to more information.

Desert wildflowers

Yesterday and Sunday two weeks ago we made a trip out to our local Anza-Borrego desert to see the wildflowers. They were by far the best we have ever seen — carpets of lupine, golden poppies, and dozens of other kinds of flowers. At a place called the Carrizo Badlands overlook, we stepped out of the car into the middle of hundreds of acres that were literally blanketed with wildflowers in their prime. The hillside in this picture is just a hundred yards or so from the roadside. The concentrated flowers also made for a concentrated wildflower perfume; a odiferous treat on top of the visual treat. Later in the day we hiked up Smuggler's Canyon, which was also in prime. We also four-wheeled up Oriflamme Canyon, where the different elevations and environments served up even more varieties of wildflowers. It was quite a day...

Click on the picture for a bigger version.

New Estonian government

A local analyzes the political situation (which is complicated!). From Baltic Blog.

No compelling reason

If you care at all about the Terri Schiavo sitution, Mr. Steyn's latest column is not to be missed. He starts like this:

A couple of decades back, north of the border, it was discovered that some overzealous types in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had been surreptitiously burning down the barns of Quebec separatists. The prime minister, Pierre Trudeau, shrugged off the controversy and blithely remarked that, if people were so upset by the Mounties illegally burning down barns, perhaps he'd make the burning of barns by Mounties legal. As the columnist George Jonas commented:

''It seemed not to occur to him that it isn't wrong to burn down barns because it's illegal, but it's illegal to burn down barns because it's wrong. Like other statist politicians, Mr. Trudeau . . . either didn't see, or resented, that right and wrong are only reflected by the laws, not determined by them.''

That's how I feel about the Terri Schiavo case. I'm neither a Floridian nor a lawyer, and, for all I know, it may be legal under Florida law for the state to order her to be starved to death. But it is still wrong.

This is not a criminal, not a murderer, not a person whose life should be in the gift of the state. So I find it repulsive, and indeed decadent, to have her continued existence framed in terms of ''plaintiffs'' and ''petitions'' and ''en banc review'' and ''de novo'' and all the other legalese. Mrs. Schiavo has been in her present condition for 15 years. Whoever she once was, this is who she is now -- and, after a decade and a half, there is no compelling reason to kill her. Any legal system with a decent respect for the status quo -- something too many American judges are increasingly disdainful of -- would recognize that her present life, in all its limitations, is now a well-established fact, and it is the most grotesque judicial overreaching for any court at this late stage to decide enough is enough. It would be one thing had a doctor decided to reach for the morphine and ''put her out of her misery'' after a week in her diminished state; after 15 years, for the courts to treat her like a Death Row killer who's exhausted her appeals is simply vile.

There seems to be a genuine dispute about her condition -- between those on her husband's side, who say she has ''no consciousness,'' and those on her parents' side, who say she is capable of basic, childlike reactions. If the latter are correct, ending her life is an act of murder. If the former are correct, what difference does it make? If she feels nothing -- if there's no there there -- she has no misery to be put out of. That being so, why not err in favor of the non-irreversible option?

Poor Kofi

A hat tip to Austin Bay Blog for the lead to the London Times article. And as usual, Michelle Malkin goes right to the point. From the story:

Depending on the findings of the report, by a team led by the former US Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, Annan may have to choose between the secretary-generalship and loyalty to his son.

American congressional critics of the UN are already pressing him to resign over the mismanagement of the oil for food programme, and even his supporters have been dismayed by the scandals on his watch, including the sexual abuse of children by UN peacekeepers in Congo.

One close observer at the UN said Annan’s moods were like a “sine curve” and that he appeared near the bottom of the trough.

I can't best Michelle Malkin's forthright plea: Kofi A. Annan, will you please go now?

Quote for the day

We're all in this alone.

   Lily Tomlin