Jim and Michelle are married! The ceremony (at Pine Hills Lodge, just outside of Julian) was beautiful, and the festivities carried on until way past our bedtime – we left at 9:30 PM, and many people were still there, dancing and having a good time.
There were dozens of people taking bazillions of photos at the wedding. I'm sure we'll be getting lots more photos from other people, and I'll put some of them up here. Our friends Vera and Konstantin were there (with huge happy smiles the entire time), and Konstantin took lots of photos; he's already promised to send me his...
Michelle's brother-in-law (Rodrigo) was the man in charge of the male half of the wedding preparations. He rounded up Jim and I, and took us off to a cabin where we made our preparations. Jim changed from his shorts and Hawaiian shirt into his suit, and Rodrigo (who is an expert on men's clothing) made sure our ties were tied correctly, that our suits were correctly assembled, and that our corsages were pinned where they were supposed to be.I first met Jim over thirty years ago, as we served together in the U.S. Navy – and we both still had all our hair. Through all the years since then, he's been my best and closest friend. We've shared many things – work and play, lots of laughter, a few tears...and now we're next-door neighbors out in Lawson Valley, near Jamul.
I've had the privilege of watching Jim grow from a shy, naive kid from Minnesota into an altogether admirable (if somewhat hair-challenged) man from California. I can tell you first-hand that he's had a good life, in many ways an enviable life. But until that wonderful day when Jim first met Michelle, one very important thing was always missing from my friend's life: someone to share it with.
Now, Jim knows me very well. Right about now, he's probably expecting me to say something deeply embarrassing. And you know I could! But...relax, Jim. Instead, I'm going to be serious – at least for a moment – and quote one of my heroes.
Ronald Reagan once said:
“There is no greater happiness for a man
than approaching a door at the end of a day,
knowing that someone on the other side of that door is waiting for the sound of his footsteps.”
Michelle has brought great happiness to my friend Jim, and vice versa.
So today I toast them, and offer this wish: may it always be so.
Karen spoke after me, telling all of us the story of how Jim and Michelle first met. She had us all both laughing and crying. I'll never be able to remember all she said, or do it justice – I'm hoping that someone took a video that we can post. Rodrigo took the microphone after Karen, and before he could speak, someone in the audience begged him not to make us cry any moreIn other news, 5-4 was bit too close for comfort in my opinion. I was figuring on 6-3 or 7-2, honestly. Sure, this quiz was pass/fail but we were only one heart attack away, my friends. I hate to say it but that one reason is why I’ll hold my nose, get good and hammered, and pull the lever for John McCain. And I’d have to shower after that too.What he said. It might actually be true that the single most last consequence of any Presidential election is the selection of Supreme Court justices...
The scientists first created a rough chronology of events depicted in the "Odyssey." First, 29 days before the supposed eclipse and the massacre of the suitors, three constellations are mentioned as Odysseus sets out from the island of Ogygia, where he has spent seven years as a captive of the beautiful nymph Calypso. Odysseus is told to watch the Pleiades and late-setting Boötes and keep the Great Bear to his left. Next, five days before the supposed eclipse, Odysseus arrives in Ithaca as the Star of Dawn — that is, Venus — rises ahead of the sun.Finally, the night before the eclipse, there is a new moon.
Also, the messenger of the gods, Hermes, is sent west to Ogygia by the king of the gods Zeus to release Odysseus and then immediately returns back east roughly 34 days before the eclipse. The researchers conjecture this trip refers to an apparent turning point of the motion of the planet Mercury. (Mercury was the Roman name for Hermes.)
Mercury completes its orbit around the sun in just roughly 88 days, compared with the year it takes Earth to do so. This means that Mercury and Earth are somewhat like two cars moving along separate lanes of a racetrack at different speeds. The effect of these motions is that Mercury occasionally appears to go backward or retrograde in the sky from our point of view, Magnasco explained. This happens for roughly three weeks at a time, about three times a year.
The scientists then searched for potential dates that satisfied all these astronomical references close to the fall of Troy, which has over the centuries been estimated to have occurred between roughly 1250 to 1115 B.C. From these 135 years, they found just one date satisfied all the references — April 16, 1178 B.C., the same date as the proposed eclipse.
Very cool!
“CEOs of fossil energy companies know what they are doing and are aware of the long-term consequences of continued business as usual. In my opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.”Spoken yesterday by James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. He is the highest ranking climate scientist in our government. And he's seriously loony.
Most programmers have worked with at least a few different programming languages. Those who are as ancient as I have likely worked with many. Some programmers have a nearly religious attachment to their One Right Language; others are less concerned about the language than they are about the algorithms and data structures. I'm definitely in the latter camp.
The despicable John Murtha (D) is ... categorized ... by Modern Conservative. Money quote:Your lies greatly harmed these men, but it has not stopped the cause for which they fought, and for which their comrades fight and die.Rope.
Debbie ran Mo'i in an agility competition in Escondido this weekend. On Sunday they double-Qd, and the Q on the standard course was the last one that Mo'i needed to get his Masters (MX) title. He's the second field spaniel ever to get that title, and because he already had his Masters Jumpers (MXJ) title, he's the first to get both!Only A DadOne of the best of men, indeed. Happy Father's Day, dad!
Only a dad with a tired face,
Coming home from the daily race,
Bringing little of gold or fame
To show how well he has played the game;
But glad in his heart that his own rejoice
To see him come and to hear his voice.
Only a dad with a brood of four,
One of ten million men or more
Plodding along in the daily strife,
Bearing the whips and the scorns of life,
With never a whimper of pain or hate,
For the sake of those who at home await.
Only a dad, neither rich nor proud,
Merely one of the surging crowd,
Toiling, striving from day to day,
Facing whatever may come his way,
Silent whenever the harsh condemn,
And bearing it all for the love of them.
Only a dad but he gives his all,
To smooth the way for his children small,
Doing with courage stern and grim
The deeds that his father did for him.
This is the line that for him I pen:
Only a dad, but the best of men.
Edgar Guest, 1916
The thing is, though, the people of eastern Iowa seem to be stepping up in the Iowa stubborn way. I have seen any number of man-on-the-street interviews, and nobody is complaining. They all seem to be working to solve their problem, which is not surprising because Iowans do not complain about tragedy. They complain about hot weather and dry weather, but not tragedy. And I have looked for reports of looting and come up empty so far.Then over at Ace of Spades, Russ (from Winterset, Iowa – about a hundred miles from the flooding) writes this:
Katrina has become a metaphor for many things beyond natural disaster, including governmental and individual incompetence (depending on your point of view). In Iowa there is a 500 year flood, but the people are not paralyzed, whining, or looting. There will be no massive relief effort from around the world, and nobody will step up to help Iowans except for other Iowans. Yet years from now, there will be no Iowans still in FEMA camps.
The difference is not in the severity of the flood, but in the people who confront the flood.
American Spirit in action. Finally, here's Kathy from the Cake Eaters Chronicles, writing about the Boy Scouts who immediately swung into action after their camp was devastated by a tornado:You may have heard that Iowa is experiencing catastrophic flooding this week. In addition to the flooding, we had a tornado on May 25 that wiped out more than half the town of Parkersburg and another tornado this last Wednesday that hit a Boy Scout campground along the Missouri River in Western Iowa, killing four scouts. The total body count of the tornados and flooding around the state has risen to 15, and we've got hundreds of millions of dollars in damage lying underneath the brown floodwaters. That's not even considering that we may lose 20% or more of the corn crop from delayed planting and some of the seeds that did manage to get planted drowning in the saturated soil. We'll soon be to the point where corn can't be replanted (it can only go so far into the fall before the frost kills it, and usually if you haven't gotten your corn in by now, you're gonna switch the ground to beans instead), and that'll throw a mother of a wrench into the corn price works.
The one thing I'm proud of right now is the absence of voices coming from my state cursing FEMA and President Bush for not "preventing" this tragedy. Compared to the opera we saw in Nawlins' in the aftermath of Katrina, it's nice to see people suck it up and get to work rebuilding their homes & businesses when Mother Nature takes a giant dump on them.
...
The one thing I'd like to address quickly is the NCAA track athletes who helped fill sandbags and try to save neighborhoods in Des Moines this week. Drake University in Des Moines is hosting the NCAA track & field championships this weekend, and there are literally hundreds of athletes who finished their events and immediately went down to the river to help anyway they could. We've got Northerners, Southerners, Easterners & Westerners (and Conservatives, Liberals & Libertarians, I'm sure) all pitching in to help Iowans save their homes and businesses. Next time you see some college athlete in a "revenue sport" acting like a horse's ass, remember these kids and know that not all athletes are self-centered and spoiled. I know that for every memory of a house or business befouled with floodwaters, there will be another warm memory of a stranger who showed up out of nowhere and asked "What can I do to help?" God bless 'em.
While the whole thing is just horrible, I have to think that if it was a pottery camp organized by Kumbaya-singing hippies, things might have been much, much worse. They probably would have had the kids out on the front porch, to witness the awesomeness of Mother Nature, and there probably would have been more casualties and more deaths. If you go up to either of those news links, you will view interviews with many scouts who were there, and the common thread was yes, we found shelter, we prayed to God to spare us, then when the storm passed, we were on our feet with our First Aid kits at the ready and started applying pressure to bleeding wounds, and started digging out people who were crushed by walls, ceilings and debris. A few kids even broke into a shed where there was an ATV and chainsaws and went out to the main road and started clearing up the fallen trees so that the emergency vehicles could get in to help the wounded. How amazing is that? The majority of these kids are under the age of fifteen and they had the presence of mind to deliver first aid and to make sure that ambulances could get in? That's freakin' phenomenal. When most kids their age would be running around like headless chickens, crying and screaming for the benefit of the cameras, these young men were doing what needed to be done, and I have no doubt there would have been more fatalities if not for their swift action.Her post is much longer and covers several related topics; read the whole thing here.
Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner, a 43-year-old bachelor, has proposed legislation giving international beauties their own U.S. visa category, rather than have them compete with computer analysts and scientists for the non-immigrant H-1B visa for skilled professionals.Congressman Anthony Weiner (D), at your service.
He concludes with this:The Supreme Court ruled today that terrorists who are citizens of foreign countries, who have never set foot within the United States, and who have systematically forfeited all the protections of the organized laws of warfare that would entitle them to be treated as prisoners of war, are, when captured on foreign battlefields by the U.S. military, nevertheless entitled to access to the federal court system of the United States — in most essential respects, exactly as if they were lawful, taxpaying citizens born here, raised here, and arrested here by the domestic police for alleged crimes committed here.
If Osama bin Laden, wearing no uniform, surrounded by children as human shields, and in mid-stroke while he's sawing the head off a captured American nurse, is captured by American soldiers tomorrow in Pakistan or Afghanistan, then his rights to use the federal writ of habeas corpus to guarantee him the protections afforded by the United States Constitution will be, so far as I can determine, indistinguishable from my own if I were arrested at my home by the Houston Police Department on a warrant for overdue parking tickets.
The Supreme Court has so ordered notwithstanding the fact that the people's lawful representatives — through statutes passed by their Congress, and signed into law by their president — had otherwise decreed. Instead, five members of the Supreme Court have set themselves up above the rest of the people and government of the United States of America, and they have proclaimed that even acting together, the Congress and president lack the constitutional power to make other provisions for these foreign barbarians and monsters captured on foreign battlefields while trying to destroy America and everything related to it.
His point is exactly in line with my own feelings on the matter: Boumediene looks a lot like a European-style societal suicide. The decision is a horrifying example of one of the few real consequences of electing a liberal President: they get to appoint the Supreme Court justices.This decision is a disgrace and a travesty. It's awful law and even more disastrous policy. It's the single worst decision of the United States Supreme Court in my lifetime, and quite arguably its worst in American history. It can't be sugar-coated. It can't be minimized. In all probability, it can only be thoroughly undone by a constitutional amendment, or by a pronounced change in the membership of the Court that will deprive the liberal wing of a crucial fifth vote in such cases and open the possibility of this decision being overruled.
...Our enemies will never defeat us. We have the power to defeat ourselves, however, and today's decision by the Supreme Court is a terrible, tragic step toward such a defeat. What will you do in November? Will you help accelerate these judicial power-grabs? Or will you help reverse them?
The HMS Ontario was a British frigate operating on the Great Lakes in the Revolutionary War. It never saw action, but on October 17, 1780 it sank in a gale on Lake Ontario, and all on board were lost (a crew of 40 Canadians, about 60 Redcoats, and 30 or so American prisoners of war). A few pieces of wreckage were recovered, and a few bodies – but for more than 200 years there hasn't been any trace of it. 
I've written several times about the HiRISE camera system on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter robotic explorer that's orbiting Mars. The photo at right (click to enlarge) is one that it took recently. There are thousands of photos like this on the HiRISE web site, available for all to peruse. I have spent hours just staring at the amazingly detailed views of Mars – a destination that seemed so exotic and impossible when I was a kid, and now our robotic emissaries are exploring it almost routinely.
The photo at right is also by HiRISE, but of a very different kind than it usually takes. First, the “look angle” is very oblique – normally HiRISE looks almost straight down at the surface. The purpose for this oblique look is also unusual: the researchers were trying to capture the Phoenix Lander while it was still in the atmosphere, under its parachute, headed for its landing – and they succeeded! Click to enlarge the photo to see what I mean...
Summertime each year brings us a special treat – beautiful sunrises that fill our windows. This is what we saw just before 5 AM this morning...
The photo at right (click on either one to enlarge them) was taken perhaps five minutes after the photo above, zoomed in to show the detail within the cloud. The early morning's near-horizontal rays greatly accentuate the texture within the clouds...I'm no fan of Christian evangelists – I run them off my property at every opportunity, as I would a Muslim or Jewish or Hindu proselytizer. But I am a big fan of free speech in public places, and that's what this is all about. We see it starting to happen here in the U.S. already, especially on college campuses, where a “right to not be offended” is being invented...In February this year, Christian evangelists Arthur Cunningham and Joseph Abraham were doing what Christian evangelists do: handing out Bible extracts. They were stopped by a representative of the law, threatened with arrest if they carried on preaching in “a Muslim area,” and warned that they might get beaten up if they came back.
Where did this incident take place? Saudi Arabia, Iran, or Pakistan, where Christian preaching is forbidden and apostates persecuted? No, this “Muslim area” was in Alum Rock, Birmingham, England. That’s right — England, cradle of free speech; England, a country with an established, if enfeebled, Church, and where seventy-five percent of citizens (at the 2001 census) describe themselves as Christian. The man who stopped the evangelists, calling their preaching a “hate crime,” was Naeem Naguthney, a police community support officer (PCSO), and a Muslim. Granted, a PCSO is not a full police officer, and has only limited powers of law enforcement. But which law was he enforcing? It looks suspiciously like Sharia.
I've noticed lately that the paranoid fear of computers becoming intelligent and taking over the world has almost entirely disappeared from the common culture. Near as I can tell, this coincides with the release of MS-DOS.
Larry DeLuca
Microsoft has a new version out, Windows XP, which according to everybody is the 'most reliable Windows ever.' To me, this is like saying that asparagus is 'the most articulate vegetable ever.'
Dave Barry
The most amazing achievement of the computer software industry is its continuing cancellation of the steady and staggering gains made by the computer hardware industry.
Henry Petroski
It has been said that the great scientific disciplines are examples of giants standing on the shoulders of other giants. It has also been said that the software industry is an example of midgets standing on the toes of other midgets.
Alan Cooper
There are only two industries that refer to their customers as 'users'.
Edward Tufte
Computer science education cannot make anybody an expert programmer any more than studying brushes and pigment can make somebody an expert painter.
Eric Raymond
First, solve the problem. Then, write the code.
John Johnson
PHP is a minor evil perpetrated and created by incompetent amateurs, whereas Perl is a great and insidious evil perpetrated by skilled but perverted professionals.
Jon Ribbens
If Java had true garbage collection, most programs would delete themselves upon execution.
Robert Sewell
If debugging is the process of removing bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in.
Edsger W. Dijkstra
Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live.
Martin Golding
This year, taxpayers will receive an Economic Stimulus Payment. This is a very exciting new program that I will explain using the Q and A format:Tip o' the hat to Simi L...
Q. What is an Economic Stimulus Payment?
A. It is money that the federal government will send to taxpayers.
Q. Where will the government get this money?
A. From taxpayers.
Q. So the government is giving me back my own money?
A. Only a smidgen.
Q. What is the purpose of this payment?
A. The plan is that you will use the money to purchase a high-definition
TV set, thus stimulating the economy.
Q. But isn't that stimulating the economy of China and Japan?
A. Shut up.
Phoenix – the little lander that could – is working away on the surface of Mars. A few days ago it scooped up some Martian dirt and tried to deliver it to one of the instruments on board, but ran into an unexpected problem: the dirt was very “clumpy” and refused to enter the pencil-lead sized container for the instrument's sample. The soil just sat on top of a screen intended to keep large particles out of the instrument.
Meanwhile, the initial sample of soil delivered a few days ago decided to drop through the screen and into the intrument, to the delight of the project science team. They're not sure exactly why this happened – it could be all the vibrating that they've been doing, or it could be simply that the soil's characteristics changed after a few days in the sun. Whatever the reason, the team now has a sample in the instrument, and they have begun analyzing it. This is one of the key experiments on the lander, so I'm sure there are big sighs of relief being heard right about now...Read the whole thing.Charles de Gaulle once wrote off the nation of Brazil in six words: "Brazil is not a serious country." How much time is left before someone says the same of the United States?
One thing Brazil and the U.S. have in common is the price of oil: It is priced in dollars, and everyone in the world now knows what the price is. Another commonality is that each country has vast oil reserves in waters off their coastlines.
Here we may draw a line in the waves between the serious and the unserious.
Brazil discovered only yesterday (November) that billions of barrels of oil sit in difficult water beneath a swath of the Santos Basin, 180 miles offshore from Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. The U.S. has known for decades that at least 8.5 billion proven barrels of oil sit off its Pacific, Atlantic and Gulf coasts, with the Interior Department estimating 86 billion barrels of undiscovered oil resources.
When Brazil made this find last November, did its legislature announce that, for fear of oil spills hitting Rio's beaches or altering the climate, it would forgo exploiting these fields?
Of course it didn't. Guilherme Estrella, director of exploration and production for the Brazilian oil company Petrobras, said, "It's an extraordinary position for Brazil to be in." Indeed it is.
At this point in time, is there another country on the face of the earth that would possess the oil and gas reserves held by the United States and refuse to exploit them? Only technical incompetence, as in Mexico, would hold anyone back.
But not us. We won't drill.
Take a look over here for a great collection of newspaper headlines, all with photos to prove their authenticity. Here are a few more samples:Volunteers search for old Civil War planes
Meeting on open meetings is closed
Federal Agents Raid Gun Shop, Find Weapons
The Phoenix lander on Mars has begun its primary science mission. One element of that mission includes digging a trench into the Martian soil, looking for water ice or other evidence of past water. Just an inch or so down, it has uncovered a bright white layer – most likely either water ice or salts deposited by evaporating water (clearly visible in the photo at right). Further investigations will determine which it is. In either case, it's what the scientists sent Phoenix to Mars to find, so they are elated with this early success.If Americans can elect a President this full of himself and this empty of substance ... then we deserve every consequence.... I face this challenge with profound humility and knowledge of my own limitations...
Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that, generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless … this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal … this was the moment when we ended a war, and secured our nation, and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth.
We found a dog over Memorial Day weekend on Hillside in Jamul. It is a female poodle mix. Please call Steele Canyon Vet Clinic at 619-669-7274.If you know anyone who's missing a dog, please let them know about this post...
A Marine and a sailor were sitting in a bar one day arguing over which was the superior service.
After a swig of beer the Marine says, 'Well, we had Iwo Jima.'
Arching his eyebrows, the sailor replies, 'We had the Battle of Midway.
'Not entirely true', responded the Marine. 'Some of those pilots were Marines, in fact, Henderson Field on Guadalcanal was named after a Marine pilot killed at the Battle of Midway.'
The sailor responds, 'Point taken.'
The Marine then says, 'We Marines were born at Tunn Tavern!'
The sailor, nodding agreement, says, 'But we had John Paul Jones.'
The argument continued until the sailor comes up with what he thinks will end the discussion. With a flourish of finality he says...... 'The Navy invented sex!'
The Marine replies, 'That is true, but it was the Marines who introduced it to women.'
