Desert Morning...

Yesterday morning was a desert morning to remember.  Despite being almost June, the temperature was 34°F when I went out for my 3:30 am walk with our dogs.  There was no moon in the sky, and when I first went outside I could see only the very brightest stars.  Within a few minutes, though, I could see many thousands of them – along with one of the brightest displays of the Milky Way I have ever seen.  I walked a little further than I usually do, down past our gate, just to get a clear view to the southeast, where the Milky Way descended into the horizon.  It was simply stunning – arcing from the southeast straight overhead into the north.  Details of shape and texture that I'd never seen before leapt out at me as my eyes continued accommodating to the darkness.  Beautiful!

The dogs, of course, couldn't possibly care less about the Milky Way.  As I stumbled along with my face toward the sky, they were noses-down, deciphering all the visitors to our yard last night.  All four were on leashes, and as they wandered about me, randomly, they tied their leashes into a very impressive knot.  At one point, a sound off to our right caught their attention, and all four simultaneously lunged off in that direction.  Four dogs pulling in the same direction is right at the limit in terms of my being able to stand upright.  They dragged me off our driveway about 20 feet into our yard, until their attentions were grabbed by something else.  When they're each doing their own thing, the vector sum of the forces they impose on my arm isn't very large (lots of cancelation!), so they're easy to control.  But when they all decide to go the same way, I'm in trouble...

I finally got them back to the driveway, and (carefully) resumed my skygazing.  It made me remember Jim Lovell in Apollo 8, describing how bright and beautiful the Milky Way was as they were halfway between the Earth and the moon.  I'd like to see that...

Sun Drives Climate?

For years now, skeptics of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) have been pointing out the abundant evidence for a linkage between solar output and Earth's climate.  For the most part these are observed correllations, not causual observations – but (as many skeptics have pointed out) even an observed correllation is far more interesting evidence than the output of a rather primitive computer model (what the AGW proponents rely on).

So it was with special interest that I read this newspaper article asserting that (a) solar scientists have been skeptical-but-silent about AGW from the beginning, and that (b) ClimateGate or something in the water seems to have released the solar scientists from their vow of silence, and they are increasingly assertive in their claims that solar cycles drive Earth's climate.  Yes, I know it's a Canadian newspaper.  Yes, I know that makes it suspect, on political and moral grounds.  But still...

Advanced Programming Languages...

Matt Might has a nice brief introduction to some of the more popular “advanced” programming languages.  Several of these look quite interesting to me (like Scala) – if I ever get a free week or two, I'd love to check some of them out...

Software Testing...

Interesting piece on the value (or not) of unit testing – from, of all places, MSDN.