Jamul Casino

Well, it looks like the Jamul Indian Tribe has secured financing to build their casino:

Lakes Entertainment, Inc. Announces Signing Development Financing and Services Agreement with Jamul Indian Village

MINNEAPOLIS — (BUSINESS WIRE) — March 31, 2006 — Lakes Entertainment, Inc. (Nasdaq:LACO) today announced that it has signed a development financing and services agreement with the Jamul Indian Village, a federally recognized tribe located near San Diego, California. This agreement will help assist the Jamul Tribe in developing a first class casino with related amenities/services on its existing six acre reservation which the Jamul Tribe will manage ("Casino Project").

Under the terms of the agreement, in addition to providing development design and construction oversight, Lakes will also advance to the Jamul Tribe sufficient sums to finance the design and construction of the Casino Project. Lakes will receive a flat fee of $15,000,000 for its development design services, and a flat fee of $15,000,000 for its construction oversight services. Each of these fees will be payable to Lakes evenly over the first five years after the opening date of the Casino Project. In connection with Lakes financing of the Casino Project, the Jamul Tribe will pay interest over a ten year period on sums advanced by Lakes equal to the rate charged to Lakes for obtaining the funds necessary plus 5%. Sums previously advanced by Lakes to the Jamul Tribe in connection with the Tribe’s proposed casino resort on land adjacent to the reservation are to be included in the financing for the Casino Project. Tim Cope, President and Chief Financial Officer of the Company stated, “We are extremely excited for the Jamul Indian Village as they take another step forward to achieving economic self-sufficiency. Designing, building and financing a large first class casino on their existing Indian land presents a tremendous opportunity for the Jamul Indian Village and our Company. We look forward to immediately starting the architectural plans and anticipate beginning construction within the next twelve months."

I’m not an expert on corporate finance, and especially not in the gambling industry — but I do know something about it (I was once the CEO of a public company, and I’m generally an entrepreneurial sort). This is a strange sort of deal. The two $15M flat fees seem outrageously exhorbitant, and they’re covering activities that would normally be billed hourly. The big, round numbers and huge amounts add up, basically, to a way to spin a large fee — I’d guess the PR folks think that’s more palatable to someone (I’m not sure who they care about pleasing). The rest of it (the construction cost) is structured as a straight loan, at cost plus 5% — which today would mean a 9% or 10% rate. Again, that’s outrageously high, and suggests one of several things: a large risk being covered by the large rate of return, an awesomely naive customer, or a downright desperate customer who can’t get financed anywhere else.

If you’re a regular reader, you know my stance on the casino: I hate the very idea of the thing, and I hope like hell that it won’t be built. But after reading this press release I can’t help but feel sorry for the Jamul Indian Tribe — because this deal stinks to high heaven. It looks to me like they’re being taken to the cleaners on this one…

Which is just one more reason to hope that the Jamul Casino is stopped…

Breaking the Law

Certainly I won’t argue that crossing the U.S. border without permission isn’t illegal. An interesting fraction — the more rabid — of the anti-immigration crowd stops thinking right there: it’s illegal!, they holler. Punish them! Don’t reward them with the right to stay here! End of story.

Personally, I don’t think the story ends there, and I don’t think it’s quite so simple. For starters, our immigration laws are a complete mess — a ludicrous mish-mash of stupidity, racism, failed initiatives with good intentions, failed initiatives with bad intentions, and a general lack of anything constructive, useful, or even moral. I have next to zero respect for our immigration laws, and even less for our lame “enforcement” of them.

Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal touched on something close to this in a column today:

From Bastiat Knows What Frist Doesn’t About Immigration by Daniel Henninger:

Another 19th-century Frenchman close to the hearts of American conservatives is Frederic Bastiat, who had a further thought: “The surest way to have the laws respected is to make them respectable.” Is our immigration law “respectable"? Need you ask?

America is a nation of laws by now so numerous that it provides jobs for more lawyers per capita than any nation on earth. They serve as legal lifeguards, saving mostly honest citizens from the legal system’s capricious undertow. Medical malpractice and asbestos are two areas of law for which “respect” is about zero. A law’s existence requires compliance, but not respect.

Some of the anti-Mexican sentiment likely reflects an embarrassed awareness of our degraded laws, and so it has chosen to draw a line in the legal sand over immigration. That won’t change the fact that U.S. immigration law is a disrespectable morass.

Swaths of American business openly ridicule the immigration law regulating so-called H-1B temporary visas for highly skilled non-citizen engineers and computer scientists. This controversial boom-and-bust employment morass exists because there is no rational system to give permanent, green-card status to these non-citizen workers and their families. Insisting on “respect” for a law that is doing damage to the nation’s economy is cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face. That is a bad habit.

The immigration law asking for respect is simply a system of legislated quotas, not much more than a numbers game. The people who play this game — anyone seeking entry to the U.S. for a spouse, sibling, child or worker — make monthly visits to the State Department’s Web-based Visa Bulletin. Have a look; it actually resembles a bingo card.

What he said.

Those of you who live far from a border may not realize just how dumb our “border control” is. I’ve lived within a few miles of the Mexican border for over 30 years, so I’ll claim some personal knowledge of how we deal with our border enforcement. Over that period we’ve changed our laws and our policies considerably — and nearly always in a way that makes them less sensible and less…respectable.

Just to pick on one example: several cities in San Diego County have enacted so-called “sanctuary laws", basically forbidding the police (or any emergency workers) from even asking about a person’s immigration status — much less actually enforcing U.S. law. And the U.S. Border Patrol is forbidden (by policy) from enforcing immigration laws outside the immediate border area. The illegal immigrants know exactly what cities have sanctuary laws, and of course they know that in those cities they are completely safe. Would you — do you — respect such a law and enforcement policy? I don’t.

It reminds me a bit of our laws and enforcement policies on speeding. It’s very clear to any motorist that enforcement of speeding laws is haphazard, and equally clear that in certain circumstances they are completely ignored. Just to pick on one local example: the traffic in the I-5 corridor through Camp Pendleton (which I used to commute on weekly) routinely runs at 80 to 85 MPH, in a 65 MPH zone. I’m not talking about the occasional speeder — I’m talking about virtually every vehicle, traveling 15 to 20 MPH over the speed limit. And yet enforcement is virtually zero; it has been years since I’ve seen someone being ticketed there, despite the CHP cars and motorcycles traveling along with the traffic frequently. That law is not respected, and clearly none of the motorists have any respect for the law. Should we levy heavy fines on those motorists? Imprison the repeat offenders? I don’t see a lot of support for that, for the reasons just given.

Is the immigration situation different in any significant way?

When it is true — and known to be true — that an illegal immigrant can live safely and openly in Chula Vista (a San Diego County city just 5 miles from the border), with the city openly declaring sanctuary and welcome for illegal immigrants, with economic opportunity beckoning (relative to Mexico), can we really say that breaking the immigration laws is entirely the illegal immigrant’s fault?

Myself, I think not. I think we American citizens are also culpable. We need, as Daniel Henninger put it, “respectable laws” — I’ll add sensible and moral laws — and we need to enforce them. Then, and I believe only then, can we hold the illegal immigrants fully responsible for their infractions.

Note that this is not an argument for any particular kind of immigration law — that’s a whole 'nother topic, for a whole 'nother day. All I’m arguing for here is laws that make sense — that are internally consistent, that are possible to enforce, that don’t violate any of the principles that we Americans hold (or should hold) dear. Respectable laws.

Politicians, want my vote? Are you listening?

Faster, please.

Border Control and Security

I have mostly stayed out of this debate, mainly because I can’t think of much to contribute beyond some more whining. There’s one piece I will touch on, though, because I think it’s leading to some low quality thinking…

Recently the folks who are agitating for better border control have frequently — in fact, nearly universally — tied in the notion of border security against terrorism as more justification for drastically increased control at the border.

But this notion doesn’t withstand scrutiny. As others have observed, the vast majority of the folks agitating for increased border control are only asking for increased control at the Mexican border. If security against terrorism were really the issue that was motivating them, they would be agitating for across-the-board border control: the Canadian border, airlines, ships, and any other way people can enter this country. That’s not happening; the focus is entirely on the Mexican border. Therefore there must something else motivating those folks who are blathering on about border security, and that something is easy to identify: the economic impacts of illegal immigration. Not security.

I’m not going to engage the topic of illegal immigration here, just border security.

Suppose you really did want to secure America from any terrorist trying to enter. What do you suppose it would take to have a reasonable chance of success? It seems to me that a great many people simply don’t comprehend the magnitude of this problem. We’re talking about over 5,000 miles of land borders, even more ocean borders, hundreds of airports, and dozens of ships ports. We’re also talking about a large number of methods that a terrorist (or a group of them) could use to enter the U.S.

Without even trying hard, I can think of several different scenarios, each of which I believe is completely impracticable to defend against.

Example 1: Prevent any single human from walking across the Canadian border. That border is roughly 5,500 miles long. Technology can help (infrared scopes, UAVs, etc.), but in the end the only reliable “human detector” we know if is a pair of Mark I eyeballs. Let’s get really, really optimistic and suppose that one pair of eyeballs for every half-mile was adequate (and I think the real answer is probably more like half that, or even less) To man the Canadian border with a full time guard for every half mile would require 11,000 guards per shift. To handle three shifts a day, weekends, and vacation, you’d need about 50,000 guards! If you figure that with salary, benefits, expenses, equipment, and management overhead each guard cost $120,000 a year (that’s a very conservative number), then you’re talking about $6 billion per year. And that’s just for the Canadian border!

Example 2: Prevent any single human from sneaking into the US on a small boat (e.g., motorboat or sailboat) launched from a “mother ship” outside US territorial waters. The only way I can imagine how to do this (no matter what technology I invoke) is to surveil every single ship within a few hundred miles of the US, 24 hours a day (at night with infrared equipment). And even this wouldn’t work with bad weather — how could you possibly detect a sailboat departing under cover of fog or rainsqualls? I don’t think you need to be a very smart terrorist to see the attractions of this method (and it’s not the only “attractive” one I can think of). For starters, nobody even pretends to control small boats — many thousands of them depart and arrive our ports and beaches every day.

I think that effective border control, to the point of excluding terrorists from US territory, is simply infeasible. From a security perspective, clamping down on the Mexican border is useless (all but the absolutely most stupid terrorist would simply switch to Canada, or some other method of entry), and needlessly diverts resources from more promising approaches. Note that I’m speaking strictly from a security perspective, and I’m not making any arguments about illegal immigration (I’ll tackle that another day). If we’re trying to make the US safer from terrorists, I’d like to see the resources spent in a more useful way…

Iran vs. the UN

Unless you’ve been in a coma for the past year, you know that Iran has been aggressively pursuing nuclear weapons, all the while noisily denying that they are doing so. Instead, they claim they’re developing peaceful nuclear power — a claim that seems absurd given the enormous oil and gas reserves Iran has.

Likely you also know about the UN’s “action” this week: a resolution with no teeth, which Iran promptly announced they would ignore. The resolution carried no teeth because the five permanent Security Council members (the U.S., France, Russia, China, and the U.K.) could not agree on anything that even hinted at possible repercussions.

This is a ridiculous situation, ripe for satire — and Scott Ott at ScrappleFace leapt into the breech with “Iranians Terrified by UN Resolution”. On the toothless resolution:

The measure, which carries no consequences for non-compliance, nevertheless contains active verbs, challenging vocabulary and deliberate punctuation that pose a “clear and present danger” to the people of Iran, according to an unnamed spokesman for the Islamic Republic.

Active verbs, indeed. Heh. And on the ludicrous Iranian claim that they seek only peaceful nuclear power:

Holding one-tenth of the world’s known oil reserves and the second largest natural gas reserves, Iran desperately needs enriched uranium only to generate electricity, and not to make nuclear weapons to wipe Israel from the map.

Especially galling is the way part of the Iranian government claims the nuclear development is for peaceful purposes, while their President (and some of the mad mullahs) run around bragging about how they will wipe Israel from the map. How do they keep a straight face?!

Good thing we have Scott Ott to poke fun at them…

But how sad that the Iranian loonies are running circles around the civilized world (if you believe that the UN represents said civilized world).

Sounds like a job for cowboy W. to me…

Server Cost

The other day I ran across an interesting statement in a technical article — the author asserted that recent power cost hikes had made the cost of power (over a server’s lifetime) greater than the cost of the server itself. The author didn’t back that up with any analysis, but if he’s correct, that really flips the cost picture on its head from just a few years ago. Intuitively it seemed likely to me, as the cost of servers keeps going down and the price of power keeps staggering up.

So I decided to do a little analysis to see if this assertion passes the laugh test. Long story short: it does. The chart at right (click for a larger view) tells the story. It shows the net present value (NPV) of the lifetime power cost for a server, for any combination of server power consumption and average power cost per kilowatt hour. For this analysis, I assumed a four year server lifetime and an 8% discount rate. Reading off the chart, if you have a 400 watt server and you’re paying 20 cents a kilowatt hour, that lifetime power cost is about $4,300 — and chances are you paid substantially less than that for your server. As I write this, we’re paying 32 cents per kilowatt hour at my home, and the last server I personally purchased cost about $2,400. There’s another factor that makes it even worse: almost all IT datacenters (or server closets!) use air conditioning to remove the heat generated by the servers — you can add another 20% to 30% to the power consumption for that.

Sounds to me like the next frontier in lowering IT hardware costs lies with “green” servers — boxes optimized for lower power consumption per delivered MIPS…

Puppy Journal

I came home Monday to a house full of puppies. :-) Debbie is on spring break this week and drove over to return the puppies and Picabo. They came home with twice as many toys as they left with.

They are doing well! Debbie provided them with wonderful experiences. I’m trying to keep them busy too.

It seems my whole house is now nothing but a series of x-pens. I took the crates out of the dog room, layed down a 6' X 9' vinyl floor remnant, and set up my big plastic x-pen. That is where they stay during the day and while we sleep. For the first time ever, I took down my dining room table and set up my compost bin/x-pen there. That allows them to see all the action going on in the house in the evening. I’m trying to cook more for my dinners. John is convinced that Crockett’s fear of the stove comes from a lack of exposure to one at a young age. Ha ha. Outside my patio door, just off the deck and under the tree, I have two metal x-pens clipped together. This is a great place to put awakening puppies to pee and poop. Then there is the 12' X 12' dog run that has been converted into the puppy run. The weather still isn’t great but it is good enough for 6 1/2 week old puppies to be out in for a little while each day. All these x-pens give me places to put the puppies while I clean all the other places they’ve been! LOL

I take puppy socialization very seriously. Three things have influenced the way I socialize young puppies:

1. I have owned unsocialized dogs. There is a difference between loving a dog and being happy with a dog. It is hard to be happy with an unsocialized dog.

2. The “Rule of Sevens” socialization guide that I first heard about years ago at a Pat Hastings seminar. In a nutshell, puppies should be exposed to seven different things in seven different categories by the time they are seven-weeks old. For instance, under the category “surfaces", my puppies have experience with and are confident on: carpet, linoleum, newspaper, wood decking, gravel, concrete, and grass. As a bonus, they will also walk across a fallen baby gate. The gate fell on Yellow Boy this morning, he crawled out from under it and proceeded to make several trips over it as he and his littermates traveled in and out of the dog room. Didn’t phase him a bit.

3. A National Geographic video about gorillas. One of the segments in this program shows a study done on captive gorillas to help them with their boredom. Every day they went into their exercise room, there was something new and exciting. Like yards and yards of butcher paper draped on everything. The gorillas loved it. They were excited to go into the room every day and played with the new stuff until they were exhausted. I try to do that with the puppies. Little things intrigue them. A big fluffy blanket with lots of folds to explore, a toddler’s tunnel, or a big pile of shredded paper. They have the traditional toys but every day I try to give them an untraditional toy. An empty water bottle, a cereal box, and scrub brush top their list of cool toys.

They are also at the age where they need physical challenges. They can go out the patio door and down the deck stairs. They can come up the deck stairs and Pink, Yellow, and Purple can come in through the patio door. Going out the back door and down those steps will be a different challenge.

My biggest challenge is to provide them with a lot of opportunities to relieve themselves in appropriate places. Yes, they are peeing and pooping all over my house but they are also peeing and pooping outside or on papers. The more time I put into this now, the easier it will be to housetrain them later. That means hauling them out in yesterday’s rain and this morning’s snow. Thanks to yesterday’s rain, I will probably have to mow my lawn this weekend. :-( BUT the sound of the lawn mower (or me cursing it for not starting) will be another good experience for the puppies.

Next week is their temperament test and the following weekend is their structural evaluation. Everything is happening so fast…

Sheila Miller

Wolftree Acres

Nevada, USA

sdmiller@the-onramp.net

http://www.wolftreeacres.homestead.com

Bird Blogging

One of the delights of living in the chaparral is the abundant bird life — dozens of species, ten or so of which are very common here. For instance, we have around a hundred hummingbirds visiting our feeders regularly, and about the same number of California quail.

I took these two pictures this afternoon, with two of our most common visitors. At far right is a female hummingbird on one of our feeders. I believe it’s an Anna’s Hummingbird, though it’s missing the red throat patch they usually have — perhaps it’s a juvenile. In any case, it sat unusually still for a moment, and I was able to get this quite clear photo. We have dozens and dozens of Anna’s here; they are the most common hummingbird around in the area.

The other bird is a male Lesser Goldfinch, one of a hundred or more that regularly visit our large thistle seed feeders. These little fellows aren’t much bigger than the hummingbirds, and are almost as brave (the hummers will feed happily while you’re a foot from the feeder, and with care you can get them to land on you). I can go outside while the goldfinches are feeding, and generally they’ll continue feeding if I don’t get closer than about 6 or 7 feet. This seems a little surprising in light of how hard it was to get these birds to the feeders at all — we had feeders out, full of thistle seeds, for two or three years before a single goldfinch showed up. After that, it was just days before huge numbers were crowding our feeders. We’ve had as many as 16 goldfinches on a single feeder at the same time, and it’s common for us to have all four feeders chock full of them, with many others awaiting their turn in the nearby pampas, fig tree, or liquid amber tree. One theory we have is that the goldfinches weren’t reticent to use the feeders — they simply didn’t know how they worked. And that could be, I suppose — but they certainly know now!

As usual, click on the small photos for a larger view…

The Last Helicopter

This morning’s Wall Street Journal (and its free Opinion Journal site) carries a column by Amir Taheri. Mr. Taheri describes in vivid prose the man driving foriegn policy of Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The piece describes my fears about Islamic extremism, more beautifully and more precisely than I could ever do myself. It’s well worth your time to read the whole thing.

But here I want to discuss just one thing that passed through my little grey cells as I read this piece: this is what keeps me a supporter of President George W. Bush, despite all his other failings in my eyes:

From the Opinion Journal:

To hear Mr. Abbasi tell it the entire recent history of the U.S. could be narrated with the help of the image of “the last helicopter.” It was that image in Saigon that concluded the Vietnam War under Gerald Ford. Jimmy Carter had five helicopters fleeing from the Iranian desert, leaving behind the charred corpses of eight American soldiers. Under Ronald Reagan the helicopters carried the bodies of 241 Marines murdered in their sleep in a Hezbollah suicide attack. Under the first President Bush, the helicopter flew from Safwan, in southern Iraq, with Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf aboard, leaving behind Saddam Hussein’s generals, who could not believe why they had been allowed live to fight their domestic foes, and America, another day. Bill Clinton’s helicopter was a Black Hawk, downed in Mogadishu and delivering 16 American soldiers into the hands of a murderous crowd.

According to this theory, President George W. Bush is an “aberration,” a leader out of sync with his nation’s character and no more than a brief nightmare for those who oppose the creation of an “American Middle East.” Messrs. Abbasi and Ahmadinejad have concluded that there will be no helicopter as long as George W. Bush is in the White House. But they believe that whoever succeeds him, Democrat or Republican, will revive the helicopter image to extricate the U.S. from a complex situation that few Americans appear to understand.

Mr. Ahmadinejad’s defiant rhetoric is based on a strategy known in Middle Eastern capitals as “waiting Bush out.” “We are sure the U.S. will return to saner policies,” says Manuchehr Motakki, Iran’s new Foreign Minister.

President George W. Bush is not an aberration out of sync with this man’s character — nor that of most other Americans I know, on this specific issue. There will be no last helicopter on W’s watch — I do believe that, because I believe that W is truly acting on principle (a notion that most politicians wouldn’t even recognize) when it comes to the global war on terror.

Here’s the really frightening part for me: there are no other players on the national stage known to be interested in a 2008 run for president for whom I hold the same belief. Sexy Hillary? Puh-lease! She’d fly that last helicopter herself if she thought that would buy her a few votes. John (me-me-me!) McCain? Surely you jest! Bill Frist? I think not, and the same for the rest of the bunch… In fact, the only person I’ve heard even mentioned who gives me a W-like confidence that there would be no last helicopter is Condileeza Rice — and she swears she’s not running.

This is problematic for me, because at the moment the global war on terror is for me the overriding issue, swamping all other issues, foreign or domestic. Yes, I care about immigration, taxes, health care, and all the rest — but I’d gladly put them all off for a decade if I could be assured that doing so would help win the global war on terror. That sense of priorities is what will drive my vote in 2008, barring some miraculous victory between now and then.

And I don’t see anyone running whom I’d want to vote for…

Decline of the Rabbit

If you’re one of the (very few) people who read my blog regularly, you may recall my previous bemused ramblings about the strange things that bring visitors to my blog. The rabbit at right is the hands-down winner over the past year, bringing a very reliable stream of visitors to my blog every single day, via Google image searches or (to a much lesser extent) Yahoo image searches. It’s a nice picture, but it’s not that nice, and I continue to be very amused by this phenomenon. That photo shows up on the second page of hits for “rabbit” on Google Images — which means that every day there are at least a hundred people somewhere in the world who search Google Images for rabbits, got to the second page of hits, then find and click on my silly little image. Every day! Why on earth do so many people care so much about a photo of a rabbit?

Recently, though, a contender for the “leading referrer” has been creeping up the charts. You can see the page that’s the source of these referrals for yourself here. It’s an automatically translated version of the page where I posted the Danish cartoons that caused such a flap back in February (and the reverberations continue). It looks like Chinese to my eye, but I wouldn’t know Chinese from any other language written with similar characters. I’ve been unable to figure out (from my web server’s logs) where these requests are coming from. If any of my dear readers can read (or even identify) any Asian written languages, I’d really appreciate you taking a gander at that translated page, with two objectives: what language is it, and why would they be translating my cartoon posting? And of course if any other interesting information jumps off the page at you, I’d like to know about that as well!

Meanwhile the rabbit is getting a serious run for his money — the mysterious automatically translated page is running today at about half the hits of the rabbit, which makes it the runaway number two on the hits parade…

Alika

Alika (Hawai’ian for Alex), at about 16 lbs, is our biggest cat by a pretty good margin. Friends of friends trapped him when he was an itty-bitty little feral kitten. He was cute as a button as a kitten, but (as is normal with a feral cat) extremely shy. The photo at right caught him in a favorite perch, on our rocking couch. In the intervening year or so since we got Alika, he has gotten so big that I’m beginning to wonder if he might be some sort of hybrid between a housecat and (say) a Siberian tiger. With Debbie he’s a little shy and stand-offish, but she can approach him, scratch him, and handle him (her “cat magnet” demonstrated again). With me he’s still nearly as shy as when we first got him — if he’s really, really relaxed I can sort of sidle up to him and scratch him a bit. But as soon as he figures out it’s me (and not Debbie), he gets stiff as a board and skedaddles at the first opportunity. The only reliable way I can get close to him is through play — if I whisk a toy about enticingly, he’ll let his instinct to hunt and play overtake his fear, and he’ll come right up to me to get a piece of the toy action.

Click on the photo for a larger view…

Desert Wildflowers

Yesterday (Sunday) two friends and I trekked out to the local desert (the southern part of the Anza-Borrego) in search of wildflowers. My friends Rick Pugh and Ted Dunning (seen at right) had been out in the desert before, but they had missed last year’s super-spectacular wildflower show. We knew it wouldn’t be as good this year as last; but we were at least hoping for a decent showing. In that we were disappointed — the flowers were as scarce as I’d ever seen them. To some extent I suspect that’s because we were a bit early; perhaps a week or two. But it’s more than that, as there were darned few green plants propoking up in most of the areas we trekked.

We drove out I-8 and turned north on S2 at Ocotillo. The ocotillos were in bloom, but only in a desultory fashion; nothing like years past. It’s possible that we were either too early or too late for them; there was so much individual variation that I couldn’t really tell. Other than the ocotillo, the first really nice flowers we saw were the chuparosa (Beloperone californica, at right), reliable as always — but still not as nice as in most past years.

Desert lavendar (Hyptis emoryi) is another one we spotted early in the day, down south of the Carizzo Badlands overlook. We were clearly too late for this one; those few plants that were still blooming at all had only a few blossoms left, right on the ends of their flower clusters. The bees were very attracted to the desert lavendar; every plant had dozens of bees feeding on it. The bee photo at right was one of 12 that I took of the same bee, all within a few seconds of each other — and it was the only one with the bee reasonably in focus. Those little guys move fast, and on top of that there was a light breeze making the branches sway — a nice photo challenge…

If I’m reading my field guide correctly, the flowers at right are Bigelow’s Monkey Flowers (Mimulus bigelovii), a figwort. These are the flowers that Ted is taking a photo of above; you can just barely make them out in the large version of the picture, a foot or so to the left of his camera. They are tiny! I took the rightmost photo by putting my camera right on the ground and aiming the lens in the general direction of the flower; I tried this three times before I managed to get the bloom framed. If I wanted to use the viewfinder, I would have needed to dig a hole for my chin! You can see the desolate micro-environment this individual was in, and according to the field guide that’s exactly what it likes: full sun, dry soil, and no competition.

Here are a few I was unable to identify. If anyone knows what these are, I’d appreciate a comment with the ID. These were taken down on the Anza-Borrego desert floor, between Ocotillo and Smuggler’s Canyon (inclusive). I forgot to mention earlier that we had darned near perfect weather for this sort of an outing — very pleasant temperatures, relatively humid (compared to what the desert normally is!) thanks to the recent rains and the subsequent evaporation, and some diffuse lighting because of a variable, mostly light cloud cover. We seemed to have no trouble finding things to talk about, and laugh about, all day long; that always makes for a more enjoyable day.

These are some others that I couldn’t identify, taken at higher altitudes at points along the Oriflamme Canyon jeep road, from the desert up to the top of the canyon. Just before we turned up the Oriflamme, we took a half-mile or so walk up Smuggler’s Canyon. That area is, in most years, prime wildflower territory; this year there was very little to see — though we just might have hit it a week or two too early. We got a nice surprise, though — the birding was better than I’d expected, given the dearth of flora. We were treated to several extended views of Lesser Goldfinches (Carduelis psaltria), with a behavior I’d never seen before — they were happily munching on the center flower parts of the ocotillos. We also saw another bird that I’ve been unable to identify from memory with my Sibley’s guide; I’m hoping Ted can pull that one out.

The rock-daisy (Perityle emoryi, far right) is usually quite abundant; this year we only saw a few plants (all southwards, between Carrizo Badlands and Ocotillo). This same area is where, in most years, I can find at least one or two desert lilies, which I just love. Not one this year; not only no bloom, but no plants, either. Their long leaves make distinctive, easy-to-spot rings in the sandy soil as the wind blows them around. We did spot a couple of gourds in a wash, and walked “upstream” until we spotted the plant’s remains from last year — with a bit of new growth just starting to show for this year.

The two far-right photos are of the same Indian Paintbrush (Castilleja miniata); this was an individual with a particularly nice color, and handsomely set off against a rock, on the mesa between the top of Oriflamme Canyon and Banner. The Indian Paintbrushes vary considerably in color and form from individual-to-individual, and there are several varieties of them all living in the same area. I’ve never been able to tell the various red or reddish-orange ones apart. The group of cactus (I’m not sure which species this is) was a particularly good-looking bunch we stumbled across near the southwest end of Smuggler’s Canyon.

These last three photos are of a plant that Ted identified as a “bush poppy", and from what I’ve been able to find on the Internet, he’s correct: Dendromecon rigida, and to my surprise it really is a member of the poppy family (Papaveraceae) — and, happily, it’s a native. We’ve seen this plant in many places, but it is particularly abundant (and accessible, if you have a four-wheel drive vehicle) on the Banner half of the Oriflamme Canyon jeep road and the Rodriguez Canyon jeep road. When it’s set off against a shaded background, or against a dark rock, those yellow blossoms are spectacular — an almost unnaturally saturated and pure yellow. The little beetle seemed to enjoy the flowers as much as we did. The center photo shows a typical plant growing out on flat ground; in general I found the individuals on road cuts and steep grades to be more attractive, especially the foliage.

After we exited the jeep trail at Banner, we zoomed it up to Julian (saw a couple of ceanothus along the way), and south toward Cuyamaca. We stopped briefly at the vista point just south of Julian to eat a lunch that Ted had brought along (he sees such a meal as an aethetic requirement for an outing like this) — some nice gruyere cheese, salami, and a banana. We would have had chocolate to top it all off, but the mild heat down on the desert had completly liquified it. If that was my chocolate, I’d have found a way to pour it down my gullet — that liquification really just helps the mastication process with a little “pre-processing", as it were. But it was Ted’s chocolate, so I just watched — with some regret — as he put it away to take it home, and managed to control my sobbing over the loss…

As usual, click on any of the smaller pictures to see a larger version…

Gas Attack

The state of Oregon is experimenting with the idea of basing highway taxes on how many miles you drive, instead of how much gas you buy. To do this would require an elaborate system, including GPS trackers in every car. Why would they go to all this trouble?

From UPI:

Eighty percent of Oregon’s highway money comes from its 24-cents-per-gallon gas tax. If the state promotes reducing gasoline consumption and consumers tend to buy the fuel-efficient vehicles, including hybrids, highway revenues would take a hit, The New York Times reported.

Oregonians (especially from the western part of the state) tend to think of Californians as knuckle-dragging conservatives. So here’s this very, very liberal state with a gasoline tax that was specifically promoted as a way to get people into environmentally friendly cars. The bureaucracy there — operating as bureaucracies do everywhere — got very used to the huge revenue windfall that the new, larger tax raised. And now, when the tax is looking like it had its intended effect, are they happy about it? Mais non, of course! With typical bureaucratic malign myopia, they see the reduced gasoline usage as a threat, and on cue the roll out the standard bureaucratic response: scare tactics. Take away our money (you can be certain that’s how they think of it), and your roads will fall apart. You won’t hear a bit of discussion about how they used to get along just fine with much less money…

Lets look at this from a completely different perspective: good governance policy. Where should the funding for highways come from? Highways are used for so many different things — like any true utility service — that this one is hard to get a handle on. Certainly big chunks of users include commuters and shipping, but there are lots of other categories of users as well: emergency services, military, shopping, and on and on. And what are the costs of having a highway system? Certainly a big chunk of that is the original construction cost, but there is also a very high recurring cost — maintenance, related law enforcement and emergency services, and so on. And there are indirect beneficiaries — the businesses whose employees can now live further away, the cities who can now attract residents and businesses, increased visitors to a region, and so on.

My own inclination is that highways should be built and maintained out of state and federal governments general funds. Both gasoline taxes and mileage taxes are terribly anti-progressive — they hit the lower income folks far harder than they hit upper income folks. Here in San Diego County, where I live, there’s a great example of this: our county’s concentrations of businesses tend to be close to high-priced housing areas: downtown, Del Mar, Rancho Bernardo, etc. Many of the employees of these businesses have long commutes to “bedroom communities” with much lower cost housing. In fact, this accounts for much of San Diego’s notorious rush hour snarling. Those employees who drive long distances have (on average) substantially lower incomes than those employees who live close by. This was true for every company I’ve worked for in San Diego for the past 25 years. Consider how a mileage or gasoline tax works for those people — it’s upside-down, with lower income people paying more, both in absolute and in relative terms. For something that’s a pure utility, with such broad benefits, I think that’s wrong. Hence my belief that highways should be funded from general funds…and that gasoline and mileage taxes are morally wrong.

Puppy Journal

When last I checked in, Debbie was taking the puppies for a week during the critical socialization period. Monday was Debbie’s reality check as she realized that no matter how prepared you are for a litter of puppies, you aren’t. :-) By Monday night Debbie knew she wasn’t going to get anything done as she all wanted to do was sit with them.

So she got up at 3:30 on Tuesday just so she could have that sit with them time before school started. :-) Tuesday afternoon was the first day she brought them to her classroom (4th graders). That was a learning day for all. They quickly learned that 25 students don’t evenly divide by six puppies. They learned you don’t rush puppies and that colored rick rack collars are pretty cool.

Wednesday afternoon and back to the classroom. The kids were expert by now and what a difference 24 hours made for the puppies. Tuesday was all new stuff to them, Wednesday was old hat. Her class nearly panicked when they noticed that Pink Girl lost her collar. “How do we know who this puppy is"?!!! Debbie said, “Is it a boy or a girl? Is it black or brown? Whatever color is missing, this is the puppy.” One by one, the other grades came in to see them. When the kindergarten class came, their teacher asked, “How many puppies are there?” “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven…” OK, they need to work on that counting thing. :-) Then they named their colors (coat and collars).

Thursday was the best day yet. Her whole class has fallen in love with these puppies but especially one boy. On Thursday he came to school with six little wrapped packages. Each one with a different color bow: blue, white, pink, purple, green, and yellow. A present for each puppy. This is Nevada Reading Week and Debbie’s class divided up among the two first grades and kindergarten to read to those students and help them with their AR (accelerated reading). What about the puppies? One student said, “Six divided by three is two. Each group will take two puppies with them”. So they did and they brought the presents too so the little kids could be there for the opening. Each group sent a messenger back to Debbie, “The puppies like their presents"! Their presents were appropriately colored squeek or rope toys. This is so touching because I know the little town where Debbie lives and that young man in her class must have made his mother drive the 50 miles to Elko so he could get those presents.

Friday is going to be another good day. Debbie is very proud of how well her students handled the puppies and she is pretty darn proud of how the puppies have handled all of their new experiences. Each student in her class is going to have his/her picture taken with a puppy of their choice. I need to write a very special thank you to her class and send them updates and pictures of the puppies. I’m sure they will want to know where each of these puppies ends up living. Hey, that could be a geography lesson!

Sheila Miller

Wolftree Acres

Nevada, USA

Heads-Up, Kerry

The lead of an excellent article on the always-superb Brussels Journal blog:

Europe’s Ailing Social Model: Facts & Fairy-Tales:

Europe’s social disaster is unfolding while the rest of the world is booming at its fastest rate in three decades. 2004 and 2005 were record years for China and India, which have double-digit growth rates, and for the USA, which fully enjoys the benefits of globalization. The world’s economy is booming at an average rate of over 4%, but Europe’s pgrowth has stagnated at an inflated 1.5%.

Why is Europe performing so poorly? Europe’s deficient performance is incompatible with its huge potential as the world’s largest single consumer market. Its slow growth contradicts its unequalled industrial productivity and infrastructure, its outstanding education level and labour ethics, its favourable climate, “fair business” morality, and not in the least its tremendous potential provided by the opening of the iron curtain. Obviously Europe’s fairy-tale is not materializing. Nor are the inflated expectations prognosticated by Europe’s political elite at the launch of the Common Currency and the Lisbon Agenda.

This article contains a lot of interesting information about the current European economic situation, and how it got there. Basically the situation in Europe is bad and it’s deteriorating. The government bureaucracies are actively hiding the degree of trouble they’re in; no surprise there. What really got my attention, though, is the analysis of how Europe got into this sitaution — and the close parallels Europe’s recent past and the current U.S. situation. And of course, if the liberal Democrats have their way, we’ll be even more like the Europeans.

One example of what I mean: the article cites the almost unbelievably large size of Europe’s unfunded public debt and pension liabilities. For some countries, these unfunded liabilities are three or four times the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) — a staggering debt burden, and one that dwarves the U.S. debt and social security burden. How did this happen? Europe long ago adopted the pay-as-you-go pension model just like our social security, and now their aging population has increased to the point where the burden on the younger workers to pay for their retirees pensions (not to mention welfare) is stifling the countries' economies. They’re decades ahead of the U.S. on the aging phenomenon, but we’re headed that way — and for the same trouble, if we don’t do something about it. The article cites all the classic symptoms of a disintegrating economy, and finds them in today’s Europe. There are lessons for us (the U.S., I mean) in this European experience. If I were in the Democratic party, I’d be wondering about the wisdom of some of my party’s platform and rhetoric…

Another example: the changing prosperity rankings within Europe. On the chart at right you can see most of Europe slowly sinking, with the sole exception of Ireland, whose rankings have skyrocketed from 22nd to 4th in less than twenty years. If you know anything about what Ireland has been doing over the past 20 years, you already know why: they have the most pro-business environment in Europe, including low tax rates, incentives for businesses that locate in Ireland, and government initiatives (mainly pragmatic, focused eductation) to make their population better able to perform to today’s workplace. The result is very apparent from this chart — the Irish have gone from being emblematic of poverty to being the fourth most prosperous country in the world. More lessons there.

After reading this article yesterday, I sent an email to my state’s two Democratic Senators — both are notorious liberals — urging them to take a close look at this information, and to revise their positions on issues such as social security reform and education. I know there’s little chance of them modifying their positions (especially not Barbara Boxer, a card-carrying barking moonbat). One look at my blog and they’ll know that Karl Rove is controlling me through his mind-rays. But I can always hope…

Disaster!

Early this morning (Pacific Time), my blog server tried to reboot — but a disk drive failure prevented it. As a consequence, my blog and email server was down hard for several hours today.

I live way, way out in the boonies — and I’m a geek who irrationally insists on running all his own software. This means that it’s my server (I get to fix it), and it is located a long way away from my house (in a place where it’s possible to get a broadband connection). When it breaks I have to travel for the best part of an hour (each way) to go visit it. This time, I had to make that round trip twice — I had to bring it home, put it on the bench, and figure out what happened. And fix it.

This is the second time in two weeks that a disk drive died in the server, and the disks are a bit long in the tooth, so I just went ahead and replaced all four of them. Hopefully this won’t happen again anytime soon.

My apologies to my seven regular readers for disturbing their morning routine…

Of Mice and Men

Stephen Moore has an excellent piece in this morning’s Wall Street Journal:

Start of Of Mice and Men ($ WSJ):

DENVER — Here in Colorado, the hottest political issue of the day may not be the war in Iraq or the out-of-control federal budget, but rather the plight of a tiny mouse. Back in 1998, a frisky eight-inch rodent known as the Preble’s meadow jumping mouse gained protective status under the 1973 Endangered Species Act (ESA). What has Coloradans hot under the collar is that some 31,000 acres of local government and privately owned land in the state and stretching into Wyoming — an area larger than the District of Columbia — was essentially quarantined from all development so as not to disrupt the mouse’s natural habitat. Even the Fish and Wildlife Service concedes that the cost to these land owners could reach $183 million.

What we have here is arguably the most contentious dispute over the economic impact of the ESA since the famous early-'90s clash between the timber industry and the environmentalist lobby over the “endangered” listing of the spotted owl in the Northwest. That dispute eventually forced the closure of nearly 200 mills and the loss of thousands of jobs. Last week the war over the fate of the Preble’s mouse escalated when a coalition of enraged homeowners, developers and farmers petitioned the Department of the Interior to have the mouse immediately delisted as “endangered” because of reliance on faulty data.

The property-rights coalition would seem to have a fairly persuasive case based on the latest research on the mouse. It turns out that not only is the mouse not endangered, it isn’t even a unique species.

The man who is almost singlehandedly responsible for exposing the truth about the Preble’s mouse is Rob Roy Ramey, a biologist and lifelong conservationist, who used to serve as a curator at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Mr. Ramey’s research — published last year in the peer-reviewed journal Animal Conservation — concluded that the Preble’s mouse “is not a valid subspecies based on physical features and genetics.” The scientist who conducted the original research classifying Preble’s as unique now agrees with Mr. Ramey’s assessment. Even scientists who defend extending the mouse’s “endangered” status admit that it is 99.5% genetically similar to other strains of mice.

Nor is the mouse on the road to extinction. “The more people look for these mice, the more they find. Every time scientists do a new count, we find more of the Preble’s mouse,” Mr. Ramey says. It’s now been found inhabiting twice as many distinct areas as once thought. These are mice, after all, and the one thing rodents are proficient at is breeding. The full species of the meadow jumping mouse, far from being rare, can be found over half the land area of North America.

While I’ve known about this issue for a long time, we got slapped in the face with it ourselves a few years ago. About ten years ago, we purchased some undeveloped land in northern Idaho — beautiful mountain forest and stream, at a price that seemed downright cheap to a Californian. A few years after we bought the land, we discovered that we had a risk that we did not anticipate: the very real possibility that we would be forbidden to build a house on our land. The U.S. government would be the one forbidding us. We would get no compensation for the reduced value of our land. There was simply a rule that said “If x happens, then you, dear landowner, are just screwed — and there’s nothing whatsoever that you can do about it."

What’s x, you ask? If a bald eagle should decide to nest on our property, that’s what.

What made this especially infuriating is that I knew enough about bald eagles to know that they were not (at that point in time) “endangered” in any sense that normal people (by which I mean non-environmentalist wackos) would recognize. The locals, as you might well imagine, were even more furious about this. After all, the land they owned wasn’t an investment or a vacation home — it was their home or their business. We stayed at one bed & breakfast that happened to be in prime eagle nesting territory, and had a long conversation with the owner about the risks this posed to his business. It was very simple, really: should an eagle decide to nest on his property, he’d be bankrupt. With no recourse. He could not have guests, he could not drive a car onto his property, he could not maintain his building, and so on and so forth. This would be disastrous for him and his family — and he had no intention of letting it happen. After a few glasses of wine, he told us about the informal network of cooperating property owners that had formed in the area. This network had one solitary objective: to make absolutely certain that no eagle ever decided to nest on any of their property. They would use any means necessary to accomplish this, starting with scaring the eagles away upon sight. But if they had to, they would kill the eagles and remove all traces of their nesting efforts.

In other words, the actual effect of the EPA in that area was to increase the risk to the unendangered eagles, and to turn the generally conservation-supportive population in the area into foaming-at-the-mouth eagle haters. Stephen Moore makes reference to this same phenomenon later in his piece. It seems like the natural reaction of any property owner to me; I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to find out that it’s a universal occurrence in EPA-plagued areas.

And as Stephen Moore also illustrates with the Preble’s meadow jumping mouse, all too often the EPA provisions are used by anti-development activists as leverage to stop development with a proxy animal that actually isn’t endangered at all. The EPA gave the environmentalists a tool to confiscate property without having to pay for it (if you stop me from developing my property and reduce its value to zero, you’re taking it away from me just as effectively as if I handed you the deed). The only requirement for them to be able to use this tool is that the area they wanted to “protect” had to be home to an endangered animal. So the new modus operandi in environmental wacko-land is this: as soon as you identify an area that you want to control ("protect"), find an endangered animal that lives there. And if such an animal cannot be conveniently located, well, then, just make one up! And it turns out that inventing an endangered species is easy: you just need to find some cooperative biologist to declare that the mice (or whatever) living in the area in question are a unique species, and then by definition they’re rare — after all, they only live in that one meadow over there! Poof! Magic! An endangered species conveniently appears, right where the wackos need it in order to steal ("protect") all the property they want. Environmentalist wackos are no more honest or moral than your average politico, so naturally this dodge has been frequently employed. There are several very well documented cases that even include recanting biologists, just as in the case of the Preble’s meadow jumping mouse. And many others — most famously the spotted owl disaster — have been shown conclusively to be based on fraudulent or (to be kind) incompetent science.

It’s time to fix this problem, and I don’t think it would be all that hard to fix, actually. One simple change to the EPA rules would introduce a huge dose of reality: require the U.S. government to compensate landowners — at market value — whose rights are confiscated. That cost would force the whole process to exercise judgment that is today sorely missing. If an animal really, truly does need protection, then we’ll find a way to do it, we’ll collectively bear the cost, and no individual landowners will be screwed. The basis for listing an endangered species will be much more carefully examined, as now such a listing would have potentially great (and negative) political consequences.

I’ve written my Senators and representative asking for such a change. Will you?

Post of the Day

The setup is this story about Hillary Clinton:

NEW YORK — Invoking Biblical themes, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton joined immigration advocates Wednesday to vow and block legislation seeking to criminalize undocumented immigrants.

And here’s the start of the post of the day:

From the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler:

Too much fun in that lede to snark at in one line. First, to the MSM in general: Cut it out with the “undocumented immigrants” Newspeak, because nobody is falling for it. At least not anybody who isn’t already a drooling liberal moonbat. You’re only making yourselves look silly. Well, sillier actually, hard though that may be to imagine. What’s next? Bankrobbers being charged with “undocumented withdrawals?”

Second: We can think of nothing more hilarious than the Whore of Babylon invoking Scripture. Hilarious as long as we don’t get to stand next to her when she does it, that is. You never know when lightning might strike unexpectedly, but we hope and pray that it’s sooner, rather than later.

Third: “Block legislation seeking to criminalize criminals?” That may just be the single most skull-slappingly stupid thing we’ve ever read, although we can certainly see why Ms. Whitewater et al might be averse to legislation of that sort. Too bad for the Hildebeest. Criminalizing criminals is sort of the whole point of legislation.

Undocumented withdrawals. Heh.

Criminalizing criminals is sort of the whole point… Heh, again.

Go read the whole thing!

Time

People who know me often wonder how I can possibly find the time to do all the things that I do. Usually they offer various theories having to do with some super-powers I must possess. These are all amusing, but the truth is much simpler:

I don’t watch television.

My television abstinence isn’t quite absolute — I’ll watch the occasional documentary, or news coverage, or even a movie. But I do not watch television day in and day out, as most people (worldwide, not just in the U.S.) do.

A quick google will get you various estimates of the time that the average American spends watching television, varying from 25 to 35 hours per week. Let’s call it 30 hours a week. That works out to about 1,500 hours a year. So in the 25 years that I have not been watching television, I’ve had about 38,000 hours of time to do other things. That’s the equivalent of 19 years of full-time work.

That’s my secret. It really is that simple. I’ve spent that time on wonderful vacations (including one-day local vacations), on my hobbies, on reading, and learning (which is really my meta-hobby). It’s true that I can read faster than most people, but that’s a small factor compared with not watching television — and I suspect that in no small part my reading skills are the result of having more practice.

Sorry folks, no super-powers here. And while my rather complete ignorance of the “television culture” has been the source of much amusement for others over the years, I don’t miss it myself at all. In fact, I think it leaves my brain just a little less cluttered, and more available for other things that seem somehow much more important and consequential to me. I may not know anything about The Simpsons (never having watched it), but I have read the Federalist Papers. I’ve completely missed the pleasures of American Idol, but I’ve hiked in the sub-alpine wildflowers of the San Juan Mountains. I don’t know What Not to Wear, but I do know how to program computers in a few dozen languages, how to design electronic hardware, and how to compute the proportions of aggregate, sand, and cement to make concrete.

These are trade-offs I’m quite happy with. And they are trade-offs that I think just about anyone could make, if it’s the right choice for them…

Bits and More Bits

I have spent a considerable part of my career working in the general area of digital storage, on software related to hard disks, digital tape systems, CD-ROMs, etc.. The computer industry calls this entire area of technology simply “storage", by which (generally) they mean non-volatile secondary storage. More informally, storage is all those places your computer more-or-less permanently saves its bits, whether or not the computer’s power is on.

Virtually all aspects of storage have changed dramatically in the 30 odd years of my career, but clearly the most significant changes have been in hard disks. In the late 1970s, I purchased the first hard disk I ever owned. It was a used Memorex 630, manufactured in the late 1960s; I paid $10,000 for it. This marvel was the size of a extra-large washing machine, and had just over 7MB of storage. That works out to 0.14 cents per bit — very cheap at the time. I spent hundreds of hours designing and building a controller to interface that disk to my Z80 CP/M system, for the sole purpose of speeding up my software development process. By today’s standards 7MB is laughably small, but in the late 1970s that system gave me (so far as I know) the biggest, baddest microcomputer-based development system in the world. At that time, “serious” software development for microcomputers was mainly being done on minicomputers, and part of the reason for that was the better storage found on the minis.

Just recently I had to run down to Fry’s Electronics to buy a hard disk as a repair part for one of my servers. The disk that broke down and needed replacement was 40GB — over 5,000 times the capacity of that old Memorex 630. And it wasn’t the size of a washing machine — it was more like the size of a paperback book. But Fry’s didn’t have any disk drives as small as 40GB! The smallest one I could buy was 120GB — but hey, it was only $89, so what the heck. The cost per bit on that disk drive was about 0.000000074 cents per bit — almost two million times cheaper than that used Memorex 630.

Hard disks keep getting cheaper and cheaper, especially in terms of price per bit of storage (because they keep getting bigger as well). Over the thirty years since I bought that Memorex 630, the price per bit for storage has dropped at a quite consistent rate, with storage each year costing about 60% of what it cost the year before. If you project forward ten more years, a 10TB (10,000GB) hard disk should cost about $42 — except you probably won’t be able to buy one that small!

But will hard disks still dominate in the future?

Hard disks currently have the advantage in price per bit, and they are reasonably fast. But the rate of advance in the speed of hard disks has not kept pace with the increase in speed for every other aspect of computer systems. The result of this divergence is that hard disks are today the major bottleneck in computer system performance. The fact that your PC takes a minute or so to boot is almost entirely due to the low speed (by comparison to the rest of your computer) of the hard disk. A modern computer can retrieve an arbitrary chunk of data (a word, it’s called) from its main memory (RAM) in about one billionth of a second — but to do the same thing from a hard disk takes several thousandths of a second, which sounds fast until you realize that’s millions of times longer than from main memory.

So hard disks are the bottleneck. What kind of storage is faster than a hard disk? Several, actually, but only one is currently a serious contender: FLASH memory (which comes in several technical variations). The price per bit today for FLASH memory is about 100 times higher than hard disks — but it is falling much faster. The price per bit may cross that of hard disks as early as five years from now, and almost certainly by ten years. And FLASH memory is superior in just about every performance category: it is much faster than hard disks, much smaller, uses less power, and has no moving parts. There’s one big difference with FLASH, though, that points to an area where hard disks may remain cheaper: the cost of making FLASH is essentially linearly related to its storage capacity. This is not true for hard disks — it costs very little more to add more bits to a hard disk, once you have paid for the basic mechanism.

Tom’s prediction (barring the introduction of some radical new technology): ten years from now, FLASH memory will dominate storage, with hard disks relegated to the particularly large, and probably tertiary, storage systems. Old-timer storage geeks like myself will recognize this as being parallel to the old paradigm of RAM-disk-tape, wherein RAM was used for primary storage, disk for secondary, and tape for tertiary. I think we’re going to see tape completely relegated to backup (actually that process is already well underway), with disk becoming the new tertiary media, and FLASH the new secondary. If I’m correct, that means production volumes of FLASH will go up (driving price per bit down even more). The opposite will be true with hard disks: volumes will go down, at least reducing the rate by which the price per bit drops.

Given the rate of innovation in the storage industry, it’s always possible that some new storage technology will pop up and displace both FLASH and disk. Possible, but not, I think, very likely. The history of storage has been mostly one of incremental advances, with fundamental new technologies coming along relatively rarely. In fact, nearly all the contenders for mass storage have actually been based on the same technology (magnetic storage): hard disks, tape, core memory, and even bubble memory, are all variants of magnetic storage technology. FLASH is the first semiconductor contender, with battery-backed DRAM another variant that might gain some traction. Those two fundamental technologies underlie every commercially significant storage technology for the last forty years. Of all the experimental technologies I’ve read about or heard of, the only one that seems particularly promising to me is three-dimensional optical storage (especially holographic, but also the non-holographic). The reason I find them promising is the extraordinary densities they could theoretically achieve. But these are very much laboratory curiousities at the moment, and I wouldn’t give them too much of a chance of emerging into high-volume production within ten years.

Bet on FLASH.

Lockbox

Not long ago I read an article that said the overwhelming majority (I believe it was 85%) of American voters did not know how their Social Security taxes were actually being used. Some, amazingly, still thought that the money when into some sort of investment account that the government managed. Others knew that there was no investment account, but didn’t know what actually did happen. This situation is so frustrating, as our elected representatives have been perpetrating a gigantic fraud on the citizens of this country — one that dwarves any crime ever prosecuted — and they’ve been doing it continuously for decades. Every single citizen is being cheated out of a huge amount of money, and yet very few people even complain about it, much less do the one thing that would change this behavior: throw the bums out of office.

From Bonnie and Clyde Budgeteers ($WSJ):

Remember when Al Gore pledged to create a “lockbox” to protect Social Security trust fund surpluses from the annual Congressional spending raid? Well last week, while voting to raise the federal-debt ceiling to $8.96 trillion, Senators had a chance to terminate this notorious money-laundering scheme.

And guess what? Every Democrat in the Senate joined with eight Republicans to kill an amendment by GOP Senators Jim DeMint and Mike Crapo that would have stopped the Bonnie and Clyde budgeting. The vote was 53-46, and on the list of those voting to continue the Social Security raid is every potential 2008 Democratic Presidential aspirant in the Senate, including Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Joe Biden. Worse, the list also includes Republicans Conrad Burns (Montana), Jim Talent (Missouri) and Gordon Smith (Oregon), who are running for re-election this year.

I hope my readers are better informed that the average American. But just in case this is news to you, let me describe how it works. Imagine that your 'Social Security' taxes (including the matching taxes that your employer pays) were being paid to a private investment firm instead of the U.S. Treasury. Every payday another dollop of your money goes into that account. Now what you’d expect from that private firm is that your money would be wisely invested, probably in a mix of investments that returned a modest but safe appreciation. But what if that firm didn’t bother investing at all? What if…they just took your money and did whatever they wanted to with it, leaving an IOU in your account? And then, whenever they feel like it, they pay the IOU with no interest or appreciation at all. Would you be content with this outcome?

I think not.

But that’s exactly what your elected representatives are doing to you, year in and year out.

Why are these criminals still in office? Forget the fact that (for the most part) their party affiliation is Democrat. I cannot understand how any voter would knowingly support someone who stole their retirement. There only two explanations I can conceive of: either American voters are incredibly stupid and gullible, or they don’t know. The latter explanation seems more plausible to me (though I could be wrong). Certainly it’s true that the lamestream media has not done a stellar job reporting this issue (and in fact, some editorials actually support the practice) — but they have reported it. So voters must be choosing not to become informed…

When I have a down day, facts like this can make me despair for the future of our democracy. If an electorate can’t be bothered to learn enough to keep themselves from being victimized by their elected representatives, is there hope for democracy succeeding? If most voters are willing to re-elect self-serving criminals, what kind of government can I look forward to?

Fortunately for my sanity, I have very few down days…

Puppy Journal

The puppies are five-weeks old today and weigh between 5 1/2 and 6 pounds each. In another week, their combined weight will outweigh Picabo. They are eating three meals a day and don’t need their food mashed up or goat’s milk added to it. They have graduated to yogurt. :-) It took Picabo a couple of days to get over her illness but she did and is back to 3+ double portion meals a day. She will still allow them to nurse but on her terms. She softly growls and gently snaps at any puppy sneaking in for a snack. I don’t blame her. Their teeth are sharp and they don’t have much bite inhibition at this age.

Their fourth week was spent with me studying them and seeing what they were ready to do. For instance, up until now, the bedroom door has been open when they were out of the Dura-Whelp. While they were eager to explore the bedroom, crossing the threshold was a different matter. The hallway is dark with a vinyl floor whereas the bedroom is bright with carpet and newspapers. They would venture to the door but would not pass through it. That is, until Tuesday. Purple Girl just nonchalantly passed through the doorway and into the hall. When nothing happened to her, her littermates cautiously followed her. That was my cue to go to the end of the hall, get down on my knees, clap my hands, and call “puppy, puppy”. The hallway is only six feet long but that was a long six feet for them. We worked on walking down the hallway and into the living room (love that room) and into the kitchen (don’t like that room yet - too bright - too hard to walk on the floor). Now I have to have a baby gate up in their bedroom to keep them in!

With me gone all day and sleeping a few hours each night, I worry that they spend too much time in isolation. So this was the week I utilized the compost bin/x-pen in the living room. While the other dogs were crated for dinner, I would be in the living room with the puppies while they explored and used me as a jungle gym and living pin cushion. I would then put them in the x-pen with their toys and let the other dogs out. This is good for the puppies to be in the center of the house seeing dogs walk around, sniff them, hear them bark, etc. The puppies were put back in the Dura-Whelp for bed.

Week Five begins the socialization period. Deliberate socialization is necessary for the entire first year but weeks five through seven are critical in helping the puppy develop problem solving skills and a “shake it off” attitude as he faces the challenges and fear periods of puppyhood and adolescence. Sights, sounds, people, dogs, surfaces, toys, food, the list is endless. You don’t socialize a puppy by scaring it or forcing it to do things it isn’t ready for. You socialize the puppy by putting it in new and different situations (not scary) and letting the puppy get used to it. Besides exposing the puppies to things like vacuum cleaners, plastic bags, and TV sounds, I try to put the puppies in situations where they will go forward (toward) instead of backwards. I only get so close to the puppies and then encourage them to come to me. I also try to get out of the habit of carrying them. It takes us a lot longer to get to places in the house, but it is better for them mentally to make the journey themselves.

The puppies had a big journey today. My sister Debbie volunteered to take the litter for a week to give me a break and to give the puppies some great experiences. The journey to my van took about 20 minutes. With Picabo’s supervision, I carried two puppies at a time out the front door and since it was sunny (OK, it was only 32 degrees), I put them down on the lawn. The first pair out were Pink Girl and Green Boy. They were initially stunned but got to sniffing everything and slowly walking around. Green Boy stopped to pee and Pink Girl pooped. I scooped them up and put them in the warm van. Next pair was Yellow Boy and Purple Girl. Purple Girl sat at my feet and shivered. She didn’t like this. Yellow Boy on the hand, practically bounded off. He scampered through the grass, ran up to a tree and looked at it, then scampered over to the gravel. I had to chase him down before he noticed the deck. The cotton tails fit under there and so would he. They went into the van. The last pair out was Blue Boy and White Boy. Blue Boy was very funny because he kept pawing the air like he was afraid to take a step. The texture of the grass was giving him a sensory overload. White Boy sniffed around but stayed close to Blue Boy. I got down, clapped, and called them and White Boy bounded toward me. Blue Boy came too and once he took that first step on grass, he was OK with it. I wish it would warm up so they could have more outside adventures. It is a two-hour drive to my sister’s house. We met at the halfway town (Elko). They traveled well and didn’t hesitate to come out of the crate. We transferred them to Debbie’s van and she brought them home. She called to tell me that they needed zero time to adjust to their new digs. They like her kitchen and the stuff she put in it for them. They also like her and never shied from climbing all over her and biting her face. They do that pretty well. :-)

Monday will be “develop a daily routine” day for Debbie and her dogs. Beginning on Tuesday, she will be bringing the puppies to her fourth grade classroom in the afternoon. Her students are so excited! I am excited that both kids and puppies will be learning lots of stuff this week.

This week is going to feel like a vacation. I don’t have to get up at 4:15. I can sleep until 5:00! :-) I’ve already taken the Dura-Whelp down. This week I will clean the bedroom where the puppies have been and then redesign my dog room so the puppies can have a 4’X6' x-pen space when they come back next week. If I had a place to put my table, I would set up another x-pen in the kitchen.

One other thing happened this week. Green Boy had an “awakening”. He is now on the same clock as everyone else and is a different puppy. He thinks wide awake puppies are more fun than sleeping ones. :-)

Sheila Miller

Wolftree Acres

Nevada, USA

sdmiller@the-onramp.net

http://www.wolftreeacres.homestead.com

Screwed Up?

Almost three years ago, I read a column by Dinesh D’Souza that still often comes to mind. The column resonated so strongly with my own experiences traveling the world as a U.S. Navy sailor, and later as a businessman and vacationer. But most often I think of this column when I hear some American liberal blathering on about how screwed up America is, and how out of whack that is with the fact that most of the people on the planet would sacrifice a limb or two (or an inconvenient relative) for the privilege of living here. D’Souza had a wonderfully illustrative story on point:

From 10 things to celebrate Why I’m an anti-anti-American by Dinesh D’Souza:

Indeed, newcomers to the United States are struck by the amenities enjoyed by “poor” people. This fact was dramatized in the 1980s when CBS television broadcast a documentary, “People Like Us,” intended to show the miseries of the poor during an ongoing recession. The Soviet Union also broadcast the documentary, with a view to embarrassing the Reagan administration. But by the testimony of former Soviet leaders, it had the opposite effect. Ordinary people across the Soviet Union saw that the poorest Americans have TV sets, microwave ovens and cars. They arrived at the same perception that I witnessed in an acquaintance of mine from Bombay who has been unsuccessfully trying to move to the United States. I asked him, “Why are you so eager to come to America?” He replied, “I really want to live in a country where the poor people are fat."

Just once I would love for one of the blame-America-first crowd — right after they get done telling me how the evil corporations, run by nasty cigar-smoking capitalists are exploiting the rest of us, and how the moronic cowboy is killing zillions of innocents, and how we’re so stingy in our aid to the poor and hurting — to explain to me why America has an illegal immigration problem. I mean, we’re such a horrible people and all, why would anyone want to come here legally, much less illegally?

Yesterday I stopped in at Cafe Bravo to pick up a sandwich for my lunch. While I was waiting for my order, I struck up a conversation with a quiet young man, perhaps 30 years old, who was also waiting for his order. He spoke with a thick Arabic accent, and was obviously laboring with his English. With a little probing, I found out that he was born in Syria, joined their army, and got stationed in Lebanon. He’s Muslim, and in Lebanon met the Muslim girl of his dreams. They got married, and had two kids. All his life Ali and his wife had been indoctrinated by their governments and their imams about the evils of western civilization, and America in particular. At the same time, they watched American TV shows depicting ordinary people living in (to them) fantastic luxury, and they occasionally met ordinary Americans — soldiers and travelers — who seemed to them to be nice people. Their government and their imams said they were hearing lies about America, but Ali and his wife weren’t so sure that was true. And when they talked about and worried about their kids' futures, they became convinced that America was where they’d have the most opportunity.

America, land of opportunity. Where have I heard that before?

Ali and his wife somehow got out of Lebanon (he didn’t want to talk about that) and onto Cyprus. From there, they made their way to Italy and then applied for entry into the U.S. After a frustrating 18 months of paperwork and bureaucratic delays, Ali’s family finally was granted the right to come to America. A distant relative — an Iraqi, as it happens — lived near San Diego, and offered to help them get settled, so Ali and his family took a train out here.

That was almost three years ago. I asked Ali how things were going for him, and the most beautiful smile erupted on his face. “I am rich!", he said, and proceeded to tell me how he was able to quickly find work (Ali is a mason, specializing in decorative rock facades), paying him a salary that he still has trouble believing. He has joined a union; his family has medical insurance; his kids go to good schools where they have made many friends and speak English “just like the TV"; he sends money home to his wife’s mother. And best of all, Ali said, they had just purchased a little house of their own, on the outskirts of Santee — something that would never have happened had they stayed in Lebanon, as masons don’t make enough money.

"I am rich!", he said. On a mason’s wages.

Have you ever heard of such an evil, corrupt, horrible place to live?