The healthcare mash...

The healthcare mash...  Remy, from Reason.  Even if I didn't have libertarian leanings, I'd go read their blog to make sure I didn't miss their excellent (and occasionally quite entertaining) reporting.

Mac OSX “Mavericks”...

Mac OSX “Mavericks”...  I installed this a few days ago, and so far I am well pleased.  My installation was completely painless, though I've read that's not true for everyone.  Three features in particular I'm finding very nice:

Memory management.  This one I did not expect, but the improvements in OSX memory management have completely eliminated the problems I used to have with Firefox eating all my RAM.  I used to be in the habit of restarting Firefox several times a day, especially after having lots of tabs open, just to get rid of memory it was hanging onto.  If I didn't do this, my whole machine would grind ever slower.  Now I can use Firefox all day long without any issue at all.  Marvelous!

Menu and dock on every screen.  Hallelujah!  Happy days are here again!  Handsprings and fireworks and joy!  Finally!  My normal working setup has two 27" Retina screens, and now they are equal in all respects.  It works flawlessly.

Battery lifetime.  Better CPU management in Mavericks means my laptop battery lasts much longer.  The battery life was already great on my Macbook Pro, but now it lasts two to three hours longer – it really is close to an “all day” battery now.

Nice job, Apple.  Free was a nice touch...

That pretty well sums it up!

That pretty well sums it up!  Reader Jim M. sent me this:

Remember when Nancy Pelosi said: “We have to pass it, to find out what’s in it?”

A physician called into a radio show and said: "That's the definition of a stool sample."

Pretty much.

I give up!

I give up!  Trying to keep up with the ObamaCare news, that is.  I can't figure out whether it's going to collapse under the weight of poor design, poor implementation, and poor optics – or make us all yearn for the healthcare system of Bangladesh...

My personal, immediate issue is this: after I retired this past January, we continued my former employer's healthcare through the COBRA program. We can do this for up to 18 months, but ... the annual enrollment period is underway, and finishes on November 15.  So sometime in the next two weeks, I have to figure out whether it makes more sense for us to buy private insurance directly, use the ObamaCare exchange, or to extend our COBRA insurance.  I have no freaking idea which makes more sense.  Any advice from my readers?

Finally – the one-handed zipper!

Finally – the one-handed zipper!

The Mpemba effect...

The Mpemba effect ... solved.

Stalin's rope roads...

Stalin's rope roads...  All in the pursuit of manganese.

Estonian mushrooms...

Estonian mushrooms...  Ah, this article brought back some very nice memories for me!  First, watching the Estonian faces in the video took me right back to the happy times I had driving around the nether regions of the country.  Then the story about the mushrooms raised memories of my many hikes through the taiga and swamp forests of Estonia – where many of the people I met were searching for berries, mushrooms, or meteor craters.  It's been quite a few years now – more than ten – since my last visit to Estonia.  I'd like to go back again, with Debbie...

The F-35's capabilities are simply amazing...

The F-35's capabilities are simply amazing – but the idea of a manned fighter aircraft seems pretty much obsolete, given the capabilities (present and future) of drones...

The Benghazi story is finally starting to come out...

The Benghazi story is finally starting to come out, and it isn't pretty.  It seems likely to me that a toxic combination of incompetence and political meddling led to the deaths of Americans (including our Libyan ambassador).  I used to expect better from my country, but those days are long gone...

Seeing in the dark?

Seeing in the dark?  You might be able to do it already.  Well, not really – but your brain may be synthesizing an image of your body parts from other information it has available, even in total darkness.  Scientists have now confirmed that these are genuinely perceived images, and closely related to the experiences of synesthesia, a condition that has long fascinated me... 

A banana flower...

A banana flower...  No, seriously – just not the way you expected to see it.  This is a cross-section of a banana flower as it develops, imaged in an MRI...

Where oh where is the dark matter?

Where oh where is the dark matter?  Cosmologists have a problem.  They've posited the existence of so-called “dark matter” as the explanation for why the observable mass (mainly in stars and nebulae) is less than could possibly account for the gravitational effects observed in the motions of stars and galaxies.  There were originally quite a few candidates (mainly different kinds of sub-atomic particles) proposed as the culprit, but one by one these have been getting knocked out.

Now a bunch of them have bitten the dust, ruled out by the LUX detector (more on Science News ($)).  These results need to be duplicated, so they can't be called definitive yet – but it's not looking good for the particle candidates.  And if not them, then what?

War of the worlds...

War of the worlds...  The Orson Welles radio play, I mean.  You can download the whole thing from this page.  Awesome!

Also available (my mom will like this): The Shadow.

There's a lot more at the Internet Archive.  I could spend several happy days pawing through this collection...

Flying pig moment!

Flying pig moment!  It's been obvious since the dawn of portable electronics that operating them on a passenger flight posed no danger to the aircraft.  The FAA took roughly 25 years to figure this out, but they have (at last!) decided to allow passengers to use smartphones (though not to make calls), tablets, laptops, etc. at all times during a flight.

I suspect the lag time for healthcare technology decisions will be roughly the same...

The battle for power on the Internet...

The battle for power on the Internet...  Bruce Schneier has a powerful essay posted, a must-read for anyone who uses the Internet (that would be just about everybody except those cannibals 2,000 miles upstream on the Amazon – and I'm not too sure about them).  The introduction:

We're in the middle of an epic battle for power in cyberspace. On one side are the traditional, organized, institutional powers such as governments and large multinational corporations. On the other are the distributed and nimble: grassroots movements, dissident groups, hackers, and criminals. Initially, the Internet empowered the second side. It gave them a place to coordinate and communicate efficiently, and made them seem unbeatable. But now, the more traditional institutional powers are winning, and winning big. How these two side fare in the long term, and the fate of the rest of us who don't fall into either group, is an open question -- and one vitally important to the future of the Internet.

In the Internet's early days, there was a lot of talk about its "natural laws" -- how it would upend traditional power blocks, empower the masses, and spread freedom throughout the world. The international nature of the Internet circumvented national laws. Anonymity was easy. Censorship was impossible. Police were clueless about cybercrime. And bigger changes seemed inevitable. Digital cash would undermine national sovereignty. Citizen journalism would topple traditional media, corporate PR, and political parties. Easy digital copying would destroy the traditional movie and music industries. Web marketing would allow even the smallest companies to compete against corporate giants. It really would be a new world order.

This was a utopian vision, but some of it did come to pass. Internet marketing has transformed commerce. The entertainment industries have been transformed by things like MySpace and YouTube, and are now more open to outsiders. Mass media has changed dramatically, and some of the most influential people in the media have come from the blogging world. There are new ways to organize politically and run elections. Crowdfunding has made tens of thousands of projects possible to finance, and crowdsourcing made more types of projects possible. Facebook and Twitter really did help topple governments.

But that is just one side of the Internet's disruptive character. The Internet has emboldened traditional power as well.

Single points of failure and security layers...

Single points of failure and security layers...  Megan McArdle has a good introduction to the ideas, in a non-technical post.  Nicely done!

Some people know how to correct their mistakes...

Some people know how to correct their mistakes.  Chris Muir, of Day by Day, is most definitely one of them:

Sometimes I despair for my species...

Sometimes I despair for my species.  And then, usually, I stumble on something like this...

Balloons over New Mexico...

Balloons over New Mexico...  You'll definitely want to watch this one full screen...

Employment in America: WTF is going on?

Employment in America: WTF is going on?  Interesting rant from a headhunter, with some elements strongly resonating with my dimly-remembered corporate days (where I often recruited people)...

Well, duh!

Well, duh!  Doctors prescribe more of the most profitable therapies.  Does this really surprise anyone?  Incentives work!  The tricky part is to get the incentives lined up with the desired outcomes – which ObamaCare does even more poorly than what preceded it.  Real health care reform would take care of that by putting consumers in charge of their choices...

A nice “Halloween nebula”...

A nice “Halloween nebula”...  From APOD, of course!  Full resolution pic here.

The incredible shrinking workforce...

The incredible shrinking workforce...  William Galston, writing at The Wall Street Journal on the shrinking labor force participation rate, especially for men.  This is a very worrisome trend, especially when the U.S. looks so much worse than other countries...

21 of the best insults by classical composers...

21 of the best insults by classical composers...  Some of these are hysterical!

Geek! /dev/null as a service...

Geek!  /dev/null as a service...  Heh!

How the left distorts gun injury figure...

How the left distorts gun injury figure...  An excellent take-down. 

It should be noted, though, that political activists on all sides of any given question are prone to doing the same.  One of the biggest challenges for anyone seeking objective truth on one of these questions is sorting through the various statistics.  Megan McArdle is my favorite go-to person on such matters; she has the skills and the intellectual honesty required...

ObamaCare roundup...

ObamaCare roundup...  The blogosphere – and even some mainstream media – is in full rant over the ObamaCare roll-out debacle.  Here are some I found most interesting, or entertaining (and often both!):

A lie is just a truth that wasn't precise enough (NeoNeocon)
ObamaCare girl has disappeared (NeoNeocon)
Obama's big lie (NeoNeocon)
Obama lied for you, not to you (NeoNeocon)
I was very wrong to defend ObamaCare these past four years (Ace)
NBC throws its reporter under the bus (Ace)
Games incompetent people play (Ace)
How the Obama administration made sure people couldn't keep their plans (National Review)
Another story the media is missing (Ace)
Why won't the GOP let us have a normal debate? (Jonah Goldberg) [a fine rant!]
Why Obama's lie is so infuriating (Patterico)
Can we call Democrats the “Stupid Party” now? (Ricochet)
Democrats: the Gullible Party?  (Ricochet)
The ObamaCare Awakening (Wall Street Journal)
Questions for Secretary Sebelius (Peggy Noonan)

Rush Limbaugh's new book is #1 on Amazon...

Rush Limbaugh's new book is #1 on Amazon...  The book (Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims) is aimed at older children, the kind of book you wouldn't expect to hit #1 overall unless it was of Harry Potter caliber.  I haven't read the book, so I don't know if that's the case.  My first thought on seeing that rating was that it was a hopeful sign – maybe parents, believing that some of Limbaugh's conservative views would find their way into the book, would buy it for their kids in the hopes of educating them a bit.  Then I went and read the reviews, which are largely either 5 stars or 1 star.  The 5 star reviews mainly say the book's content isn't political, but is entertaining and historically accurate.  The 1 star reviews are overtly the same kind of mouth-breathing ad hominem attacks you expect from lefty trolls.

So I'm not at all sure what it means to see this book at #1 ... but somehow it still feels hopeful :-)

The Horsehead and Orion nebulae...

The Horsehead and Orion nebulae...  Via APOD, of course!  Glorious full-resolution pic here...

Collection of autumn photos...

Collection of autumn photos...   A couple of my favorites here, but many more at the link...

Sea lion: 1, fisherman: 0...

Sea lion: 1, fisherman: 0...

Codebase size, visualized...

Codebase size, visualized...  Non-geeks, don't tune out – this is for you!

A “codebase” is the entire collection of program text (aka “source code”) that is used to create some particular piece of software.  The size of that codebase is usually measured in “lines of code”, much as you might measure the size of a book by counting the lines of text in it.  The size of the codebase is reasonably well correlated with the effort that went into it, much like one book that's twice as long as another probably took roughly twice as much work to write.

This visualization shows the relative sizes of a number of different pieces of software, measured by lines of code.  Note that the horizontal scale is different for the top group than for all the others.  For non-programmers, I suspect there are quite a few big surprises here – things that perhaps looked easy to you turn out to be large codebases, or vice versa.  For me, the big surprise was car software – I had no idea so much effort has been put into this.

But for everybody, the real kicker is at the bottom.  Just look at how big the healthcare.gov web site (ObamaCare) software is!  My very first thought upon seeing that: I'm not sure commercial efforts that large would ever produce something that worked – and there's no way in hell a government effort would!

Blow it up and start over, and make the first priority be this: how can we make this thing simpler?  It's just too big to succeed...

Geek! Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR)...

Geek!  Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR)...  I'm a little surprised that the IT world hasn't already converged on a single binary object representation, as they have for so many other things (e.g., TCP/IP and Unicode).  It's an obvious interoperability problem, and one that I've spent a ludicrous amount of my own engineering time on, converting back and forth between two different representations of exactly the same object.  CBOR is on an IETF “Standards Track” (RFC 7049), which doesn't guarantee acceptance, but certainly doesn't discourage it.

With a little googling, I found implementations in Ruby, C#, and Python.  Nothing so far in Java; I might fool around a bit with that myself...

The unbearable lightness of Obama...

The unbearable lightness of Obama...  Bret Stephens, writing at The Wall Street Journal, with a collection of summarized stories that speak to Obama's leadership style.

The last week or two is so chock full of examples of Obama's failures to lead that I find myself just plain disgusted.  He's like the anti-Midas – everything he touches turns to crap... 

There's a fool at the helm of our ship of state, and there's naught I can do about it as an individual.  All I can do is wait for the crash (which might take any of several forms, including financial crash or armed conflict) or for his term to expire.  And to tell you the truth, I'm not sure which of those outcomes to hope for...

Geek! fish shell:

Geek! fish shell:  I rather like this shell, which just released a new version...

Mortality rates in the U.S....

Mortality rates in the U.S....  A fine visualization by Matthew Isabel of mortality rates broken down by cause (respiratory failure at right) and state.  There are some sharp differences, more, perhaps, than you might expect.  In the visualization at right, the red states are those that have particularly high rates of smoking (Wyoming is a bit of a surprise there!).

Phenakistoscopes, praxinoscopes, and zoetropes...

Phenakistoscopes, praxinoscopes, and zoetropes...  A nice piece on these early forms of animation...

Amish in Maine...

Amish in Maine...  I grew up in New Jersey, just an hour or so away from the extensive Amish and Mennonite communities in the Lancaster, Pennsylvania area.  A few years ago, after the 2007 Cedar fire ravaged San Diego's east county area, I ran into another group of Amish – volunteers rebuilding homes burned down in the fire.  I think of them as an admirable, if quirky, community.  I also remember fondly their traditional cheese, soup, and pies, which we always took advantage of when in their area :)

Now I read that some Amish are starting to settle in Maine.  When I was a kid (in the '50s), most Amish and Mennonites were in Pennsylvania, and there were less than 20,000 of them altogether.  Today they can be found all across the U.S. and Canada (though they are concentrated in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana), and their population has grown steadily to almost 300,000 souls.  Their population growth rate is far above the U.S. average, so I expect to see that sort of growth continuing.

To anyone who knows anything at all about farming, one thing stands out above all else about these folks: they are absolutely the best, highest productivity farmers there are.  No industrial farmer can match their extensive knowledge and lore of the land, nor their land-preserving farm practices.  I've never seen people who work harder than them.  What they achieve routinely would be considered remarkable, even astounding by any other farmer. 

I'm glad to see all that paying off for them...

How would you like this?

How would you like this?  The Canadian single-payer healthcare system is frequently held up by progressives as an example of what we (in the U.S.) should aspire to.

Take a careful look at the chart at right (click on it to embiggen).  Note that the time axis is in weeks, not hours.

It's from this report on wait times for healthcare in Canada.  I don't know about you, but I find that graph shocking and depressing...

Oh, goody, look what's coming...

Oh, goody, look what's coming...  When you want to know what the environmentalist wackos are going to do next over here, just look to Europe.  They banned high-wattage incandescent bulbs over there, then a few years later over here.  Now they've banned high-wattage appliances – I own at least 3 that would not make the grade.  You can bet our home-grown wackos will be demanding parity within a year or two.  Like your Shop-Vac?  Well, that's just too bad.  You can't keep it!

A vision...

A vision...  I watched the video at right, and as I did, an idea formed in my mind.  Imagine a few hundred men and women with this Rufus' skill.  Then imagine them deployed as the citizens' motivational army for bureaucrats.  They'd have the responsibility to make sure that bureaucrats kept the citizens best interests to heart, and not their own.

Wouldn't that be awesome?

The job is beneath him...

The job is beneath him...  Via my mom, Michael Goodwin, writing at the New York Post, on The One's behavior during the government shutdown (this is clipped from the middle of a longer piece at the link):

America has had some great presidents, many mediocre ones and a few bad ones. But we’ve never had one like Barack Obama. He’s the first who thinks the job is beneath him.

He’s the first who turns political give-and-take into a crisis by refusing to negotiate with Congress.

He’s the first who thinks the way to more power is to inflict pain on ordinary people.

The move to barricade the World War II memorial reveals the mentality of a tin-pot dictator. The limited government shutdown did not need to affect the memorial because it is open 24 hours, without gates and often without guards.

But to turn public opinion in his favor, Obama’s goons trucked in barricades to keep out World War II vets and other visitors. By one estimate, the barricades and workers cost $100,000.

The same punish-the-people attitude led to shutdowns of other parks and historic sites that get no federal funding.

“We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we can. It’s disgusting,” a Park Service ranger told The Washington Times.

The ranger cited the order to close the parking lot at George Washington’s home in Mount Vernon so visitors couldn’t use it. The cheap trick captured the contrast between a revered president and the current one.

I’ve been saying for a while that there is no bottom to Obama. He’s not just ruthless. He’s without scruples and honor.

However the shutdown ends, it will bring only a temporary respite from the crisis atmosphere in Washington. When it comes to his countrymen, Obama always chooses conflict over cooperation.

Meanwhile, Jimmy Carter can rest easy. We have a new worst president.

The new worst president.  I wonder if he'll still look that way 20 or 30 years from now?  With the likes of Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and Elizabeth Warren being the front runners for the Democrats, there's a reasonable chance the bar will be set even lower a few years from now – so The One may not hold this particular record for long...

Optical illusions in a car ad...

Optical illusions in a car ad...   Watch the ad at right first, then the making of the ad at the left.  These illusions are particularly well done...

How an Economy Grows and Why It Doesn't...

How an Economy Grows and Why It Doesn't...  This is a comic book, written by Irwin Schiff (the famous tax protester), with the art done by Vic Lockman.

Fellow Jamulian and reader Scott M. sent me a link to a PDF of the full comic, along with another one: The Kingdom of Moltz, about inflation and where it comes from.  Both are full of simply explained ideas, though the latter suffers a bit from the old trope that inflation is caused by getting off of “hard currency” (e.g., the gold standard).  Like all the purveyors of that theory, Schiff neglects the many historical occurrences of inflation in countries using hard currencies.  For instance, Europeans of the late 1500s could teach Schiff a thing or two about inflation under the gold standard :)

I don't generally read comic books (or “graphic novels”, as they're styled today). I enjoyed these, though – mainly because I could imagine some people I know reading them, and perhaps accidentally learning a thing or two.  Some of those people read this blog...

Christopher Columbus was awful...

Christopher Columbus was awful...  The Oatmeal (aka Matthew Inman) is not happy that we're celebrating Columbus Day, and he makes some very good points. 

When I first started reading history (some 40 years ago), discovering that Columbus was downright evil was one of the things that started me doubting the propaganda I'd been fed in school under the guise of “history”.  It turns out that precious little of that pap contained anything remotely resembling objective truth – and the stories we were fed about Columbus are as fine an example as you ask for...

What the hell is happening to my country?

What the hell is happening to my country?  This is disgraceful.  And scary.  And tyrannical...

Former ObamaCare supporter has revelatory experience...

Former ObamaCare supporter has revelatory experience...  There are more and more stories like this popping up, even in the lamestream media.  I'm beginning to think there's hope that even The One's lapdogs in the media are going to be forced to acknowledge the suckiness of ObamaCare...

ObamaCare, taking insurance away...

ObamaCare, taking insurance away...  So far the cancellations due to ObamaCare in just 3 states exceed the enrollments in all 50 states.  We're building an “insurance deficit” that will have to be recovered before ObamaCare can claim to increase the number of insured folks.

Ringing the ObamaCare bell of doom...

Ringing the ObamaCare bell of doom...  Megan McArdle is doing it almost daily.  Here's her latest...

What the hell is happening to my country?

What the hell is happening to my country?  According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are now more people receiving welfare because of their low income than there are full time workers.

Contrary to the assertions of some of the more raving liberal loonies, this isn't happening because the U.S. has more and more poor people.  In fact, the average income of poor people in the U.S. has been steadily increasing, no matter how you measure it.  Only in the U.S. do you see “poor people” with fat bellies, 75 inch flat screen TVs, nice cars, designer clothes, and smartphones.  That's not to say the U.S. doesn't have any people who are actually poor – of course we do.  But their numbers are declining, not increasing.

So why are so many people getting welfare?  Because the “means testing” (the maximum income you can have and still get the welfare) has been rapidly climbing.  What we're seeing is income redistribution on a scale that is quickly approaching that of overtly socialist countries.  We're on a trajectory to equal the redistributive policies of Europe within a decade or two.

We need us a revolution, folks.  At the ballot box, preferably.  But if that doesn't work...

Oh, if only ObamaCare was as good as the DMV!

Oh, if only ObamaCare was as good as the DMV!  Mark Steyn's conclusion in his new piece, ObamaCare's Magical Thinkers:

Despite the best efforts of President Obama and doting tweeters in Jersey City, government isn’t groovy. The standard rap on Obamacare is that it’s turned America’s health system into the DMV. If only. I had cause to go to the DMV in Twin Mountain, N.H., the other day. In and out in ten minutes. Modest accommodations, a little down-at-heel, nothing cool about it at all. But it worked just fine. Friendly chap, no complaints. Government can do that at the town level, county level, even (more sparingly) at the state level.

But a national medical regime for 300 million people? Not in a First World country. And, when you’re mad enough to try it, the failure is not the insignificant enrollment numbers, but the vaporization of the existing health plans of 119,000 Pennsylvanians, 160,000 Californians, 300,000 Floridians, 800,000 in that tech tweeter’s New Jersey . . . That’s the magic that happens when you disdain the limits of prosaic, humdrum, just-about-functioning government. Perhaps things will get so bad the coolest president ever will no longer seem quite so hip. But, alas, you’ll have to wait three years for a hip replacement. That’s government health care for you.

Oh, boy. I can hardly wait!

The Middle East was enough of a muddle before The One started messing with things...

The Middle East was enough of a muddle before The One started messing with things...  Now it's falling apart before our eyes.  Michael J. Totten is the best source of solid, first-hand information and clear thinking on the Middle East that I know of.  He's got an article in World Affairs on the Saudi-American rupture.  A sample:

“I’ve worked in this field for a long time,” says Brooking Institution expert Mike Doran in London’s Telegraph, “and I’ve studied the history. I know of no analogous period. I’ve never seen so many disagreements on so many key fronts all at once. And I’ve never seen such a willingness on the part of the Saudis to publicly express their frustration. Iran is the number one issue — the only issue for Saudi policy makers. When you add up the whole Middle Eastern map — Syria, Iraq, Iran — it looks to the Saudis as if the US is throwing Sunni allies under the bus by trying to cut a deal with Iran and its allies.”

Foreign Policy 101 dictates that you reward your friends and punish your enemies. Attempts to get cute and reverse the traditional formula always lead to disaster. Yet Barack Obama thinks if he stiffs his friends, his enemies will become a little less hostile. That’s not how it works, but the Saudis have figured out what Obama is doing and are acting accordingly.

“They [the Americans] are going to be upset—and we can live with that,” said Mustafa Alani, a Saudi foreign policy analyst. "We are learning from our enemies now how to treat the United States.”

Go read the whole thing...

This is only slightly implausible...

This is only slightly implausible...

This is what tyranny looks like...

This is what tyranny looks like...  The feds (DHS) cobble up a “plausible” reason to raid the home of a reporter, then use that raid to steal confiscate her confidential files – which just happen to contain identifying information on DHS whistleblowers.

The reporter used to work for the Washington Times, and they're going to sue the government on her behalf.

The boot is in our face, folks...

“OK, Louie. Drop the mop.”

“OK, Louie.  Drop the mop.”  That's my quote of the day, written by Cecil Adams, the self-proclaimed (with tongue firmly planted in cheek) “world's most intelligent human.”  The occasion for this quote is an issue of The Straight Dope, wherein Cecil answers a reader's question:

Why does the label on a bottle of Pine-Sol say, "It is a violation of federal law to use this product in a manner inconsistent with its labeling"? Exactly what uses are unlawful? We'd hate to be sent up the river on a Pine-Sol rap.

You just gotta love Cecil...

Now, this smells like the beginning of an ObamaCare death spiral...

Now, this smells like the beginning of an ObamaCare death spiral...  Dave Carter, writing at Ricochet, leads off with:

"Let me be exactly clear," he said, at which point prudent Americans everywhere reached furtively for their wallets, because clarity to Barack Obama becomes a dismal and dangerous fog of dissimulation for everyone else. The prelude out of the way, the conductor continued:

First of all, if you've got health insurance, you like your doctors, you like your plan, you can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan. Nobody is talking about taking that away from you.

In a purely sophistical sense, that last sentence may be correct. They didn't talk about it. They just did it. But the rest of that statement is as blatant a lie as we've heard from any president since Bill Clinton denied using a subordinate as a humidor. And whereas Clinton was exposed, so to speak, as having dallied with one vulnerable young lady, we now face a situation in which the whole country is getting the shaft.

He points out several very public examples of ObamaCare delivering precisely the opposite of what was promised.  California leads the way in ObamaCare-related health insurance cancellations, and for some reason that doesn't surprise me in the slightest.

Do read the whole thing – like all of Dave Carter's posts, it's good reading and full of information...

First it was kids, now it's animals!

First it was kids, now it's animals!  Philosophers, that is.  Via my mom, who says she couldn't pick a favorite.  Click on any of them to embiggen them all...

Euonymus oxyphyllus...

Euonymus oxyphyllus, aka Korean spindle tree.  Your morning gorgeous, courtesy of BPOD.

This will definitely get your heart started!

This will definitely get your heart started!  The Boogie-Woogie Twins...

Stress reliever...

Stress reliever...  Via reader Jim M., who swears this works great:

In case you are having a rough day, here's a stress management technique recommended in all the latest psychological journals. The funny thing is that it really does work and will make you smile.

1. Picture yourself lying on your belly on a warm rock that hangs out over a crystal clear stream.

2. Picture yourself with both your hands dangling in the cool running water.

3. Birds are sweetly singing in the cool mountain air.

4. No one knows your secret place.

5. You are in total seclusion from that hectic place called the world.

6. The soothing sound of a gentle waterfall fills the air with a cascade of serenity.

7. The water is so clear that you can make out the face of the Congressman you are holding underwater.

See it worked. You're smiling. You feel better already.

Jim's right – this works wonderfully!

Something new in storage...

Something new in storage: Seagate's Kinetic Open Storage.

Key/value pairs on a disk whose interface is TCP/IP on Ethernet, with a supporting protocol.  Real “storage in a cloud”, not a disk array and file system wrapped with a cloud interface. 

This smells revolutionary to me.

Seagate appears to be making the entire stack open, in the hope of creating a ubiquitous standard, much like TCP/IP is today.  If they pull that off, this will be revolutionary.

I want to buy one.  Right now.  

Kids say the darndest things...

Kids say the darndest things...  This Reddit thread is full of interesting things that kids said.  Most of them also have lots of comments.  It all makes for fascinating reading.  Here's one thing, just to whet your appetite:

I was on a train with mum when I was maybe 4 or 5. I was facing the direction we were coming from and she was opposite me. Then I said 'It's like I'm looking into the past, and you're looking into the future."

Most transparent administration ever?

Most transparent administration ever?  What a crock!

These people have no shame at all.  None.

Sean Hannity is someone I frequently disagree with, but I think his response to the administration's action was admirable...

The kids finally noticed...

The kids finally noticed ... that the actions of The One's administration are going to royally screw them, and they're starting to fight back.

Good luck with that.  Seriously.

I've done a lot of debugging...

I've done a lot of debugging – but it never involved a device whose failure would create an explosion with a three mile radius of total destruction.  Yikes!

Your morning Beethoven...

Your morning Beethoven...

There are moments...

There are moments ... when I think the human race might be worth fighting to keep.

But they don't come often enough...

Over 8 months...

Over 8 months...  That's how long the average unemployed person has been out of work.  Previous post-1950 recessions were far less severe by this measure.

The longer someone has been out of work, the more severe the financial impact on them and their families.  Prior to my retirement, if I had ever been out of work for that long I'd have had to make some extremely difficult choices – such as whether to keep my house, or keep my retirement savings.  For the many two-income families these days, having one spouse unemployed for that long means a big reduction in income, but perhaps less than ruinous.  For single-income families (like ours), it would be worse...

Yup, that's about right...

Yup, that's about right.  Via my mom:

A Harley Biker is riding by the zoo in Washington, DC when he sees a little girl leaning into the lion's cage. Suddenly, the lion grabs her by the collar of her jacket and tries to pull her inside to slaughter her, under the eyes of her screaming parents.

The biker jumps off his Harley, runs to the cage and hits the lion square on the nose with a powerful punch.

Whimpering from the pain the lion jumps back letting go of the girl, and the biker brings her to her terrified parents, who thank him endlessly. A reporter has watched the whole event.

The reporter addressing the Harley rider says, 'Sir, this was the most gallant and brave thing I've seen a man do in my whole life.'

The Harley rider replies, 'Why, it was nothing, really, the lion was behind bars. I just saw this little kid in danger and acted as I felt right.'

The reporter says, 'Well, I'll make sure this won't go unnoticed. I'm a journalist, you know, and tomorrow's paper will have this story on the front page... So, what do you do for a living and what political affiliation do you have?'

The biker replies, 'I'm a U.S. Marine and a Republican.'

The journalist leaves.

The following morning the biker buys the paper to see if it indeed brings news of his actions, and reads, on the front page:

U.S. MARINE ASSAULTS AFRICAN IMMIGRANT AND STEALS HIS LUNCH

And THAT pretty much sums up the media's approach to the news these days, especially if you are a Conservative Republican.

This makes me want to cry...

This makes me want to cry...  You really need to watch the whole thing.  Then think about the state of education in this country...

A disaster on so many levels...

A disaster on so many levels...  James Taranto has renamed ObamaCare: it's now “Vaporcare”.  As Mr. Taranto puts it:

...ObamaCare isn't just a technical failure. And it isn't just an economically unsustainable scheme. Now it's a rhetorical disaster too. Even by the standards of Obama speeches it was terrible. It was so bad, it was the ObamaCare website of political oratory.

Read the whole thing...

Raise the minimum wage...

Raise the minimum wage, reduce the number of jobs.  CoyoteBlog has an easy-to-understand description of why this is so...

Just 35 diskettes!

Just 35 diskettes!  Though the box says 48 disks, so I'm not sure what's up with that.  But – a full 16 colors, too!  And it even works with your mouse!  It sounds like the installation is about as easy as it gets:

Just fire up MS-DOS, enter ‘A:\>dir *.exe’ into the command line, and then follow the instructions to install the Obamacare batch files—it should only take four or five hours at the most. You can press F1 for help if you run into any problems. And be sure your monitor’s screen resolution is at 320 x 200 or it might not display properly.

President Obama promises a 6 CD-ROM version by 2016, too.

With this kind of cutting-edge technology, how could an aging geek like me not love it?

Via friend and reader Simon M...

Pie Jesu...

Pie Jesu - Fauré's famous aria from the Requiem in D minor.  This is a beautiful performance of it, but what makes it especially notable is that the three guys singing the parts first met just a few days before this performance.  They got connected on the Internet, through one of the many web services springing up to connect musical performers around the world.

Via my lovely bride...

NGC 6357...

NGC 6357...  From APOD, of course.  Glorious full resolution photo here.

Hear, hear!

Hear, hear!  Brit Hume on what the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party is trying to accomplish.  Well said, and briefly too.

I'm skeptical that the Tea Party wing will ever be able to subsume the rest of the Republicans, though I'd certainly love to be proven wrong on that.  The last time an independent third party ever emerged was before the Civil War, over 150 years ago, when anti-slavery forced formed the Republican Party.  Those folks wouldn't recognize their creation today.  For a new third Tea Party to emerge, there would have to be similar passion and widespread support for the kind of liberty and small government the Tea Party stands for.  Could that passion be the equal of anti-slavery passion?  Certainly not today, and certainly not with the low information electorate we have...

From the Department of Doublespeak...

From the Department of Doublespeak...  Sylvia Burwell is the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and an Obama administration and White House insider.  Here's she's being interviewed (by Al Hunt, a liberal) and is asked what you would think would be an easy question, with a yes-or-no answer.  Hunt asks twice, but never actually gets an answer.

Burwell's response is exactly the kind of content-free political response that makes me distrust every one of these toadies.  Listen carefully to what she says (and doesn't say), then consider what that tells you about whether she's part of a government of, by, and for the people...

4.6033388489...

4.6033388489.  That's the answer to this puzzle, involving monsters, perfectly circular lakes, and rowboats.  Oh, and just a little calculus.  Nick Berry from Data Genetics does his usual nice job...

Scary story...

Scary story.  Identity thieves purchased consumer information from Experian.  Yikes!

Creative advertising...

Creative advertising.  Lots more on this web site.  Some of these are really, really clever...

This smacks of desperation...

This smacks of desperation...  Obama announces a “tech surge” to fix the broken ObamaCare web sites.  That's not what you do to fix a few little “glitches”.  That might be what you do if your technical team is telling you that the web site is badly broken and it's going to take months and months to fix it.  An ignorant and desperate manager, in that situation, might convince himself that the answer is to throw as many smart people as he can.

Large systems that were poorly designed generally cannot be fixed in a big hurry.  Patching symptoms, while a common response, isn't likely to actually fix the problems.  Careful study by experts who are thoroughly immersed in the details of the technology are what it's going to take – and that's not what a new team of “experts” will bring to the party.  At least not quickly, which is the stated goal...

I suspect it will be many months before those web sites are functioning well.  Maybe more – if they're as poorly designed as some suspect, the shortest path to a functioning system may well be to start over...

Fly over Mars...

Fly over Mars...  The short video at right was made from stereographs taken from Martian orbit.  Some snippets are in natural (or near-natural) color; others are in false colors highlighting mineral types, etc.  You'll definitely want to zoom this one to full screen.  Awesome!

Libtards, by Dixon Diaz...

Libtards, by Dixon Diaz.  I've just been introduced to this by my lovely bride.  Here's the motto, from his Facebook page:

We expose and mock the hypocrisy of the Left with op-ed pieces, cartoons and memes. 

What more could I possibly ask?  Here's a sample:

The American Medical Association (AMA) weighs in on ObamaCare...

The American Medical Association (AMA) weighs in on ObamaCare.  Via my mom:

The American Medical Association has weighed in on Obama's new health care package. The Allergists were in favor of scratching it, but the Dermatologists advised not to make any rash moves. The Gastroenterologists had sort of a gut feeling about it, but the Neurologists thought the Administration had a lot of nerve. Meanwhile, Obstetricians felt certain everyone was laboring under a misconception, while the Ophthalmologists considered the idea shortsighted.

Pathologists yelled, "Over my dead body!" while the Pediatricians said, "Oh, grow up!" The Psychiatrists thought the whole idea was madness, while the Radiologists could see right through it. Surgeons decided to wash their hands of the whole thing and the Internists claimed it would indeed be a bitter pill to swallow.

The Plastic Surgeons opined that this proposal would "put a whole new face on the matter". The Podiatrists thought it was a step forward, but the Urologists were pissed off at the whole idea. Anesthesiologists thought the whole idea was a gas, and those lofty Cardiologists didn't have the heart to say no.

In the end, the Proctologists won out, leaving the entire decision up to the assholes in Washington.

I don't know...it looks to me much more like the psychologists have it right...

Another way to pick our pockets.

Another way to pick our pockets.  This time, proposed by the IMF...

Jahar is doing fine.

Jahar is doing fine.  We had a bit of a scare yesterday afternoon, when he managed somehow to pull out 3 or 4 cm (an inch and a half or so) of his suture.  The incision looked fine, but all that suture hanging out didn't.  We ran him down to the animal ER in Kearney Mesa, where we discovered that he hadn't actually pulled any suture out – he had just managed to unravel the loose end.  The vet there tucked it all back in and we brought him back home.


He doesn't much like the “cone of shame” – none of the animals do when they have to wear it.  Without it, though, he'd be worrying away at the incision, and there's no way we could stop him.  He's managed to get it off twice, so we have to keep a close eye on him to make sure it's still on.  Last night Debbie slept down on the floor to keep an eye on him.  She dozed off for a few minutes, and when she woke the little so-and-so had pulled it off!

Here's our souvenir from the surgery – about 20 cm of narrow ribbon.  We have lots of ribbon around the house, but it's all put away now.  We have no idea why on this day (as opposed to the past two and a half years) Jahar decided to eat this particular ribbon.  We've had cats in the house for over 30 years, and had never had anything like this happen before.  There may have been something about this particular ribbon (maybe an odor in the coloring?) that attracted him, or maybe it was just plain chance.  I don't think there's any way we're going to figure that out...

Update: there's something weird going on with the two photos on this post, and I haven't figured out what it is.  They both show up briefly when I reload the page (in any browser), but disappear a few seconds after the page is completely loaded...

Jahar is back home...

Jahar is back home.  He's got a huge incision in his tummy, about 6 or 7 inches long.  It's sprayed with metallic silver as an antibiotic, sort of matches his silver fur.  We have to keep him quiet for two weeks – no running, playing, or jumping allowed.  With just a couple hours experience, we can see this is going to be quite difficult – he wants out of the crate we have him in, in the worst way.

The surgeon bagged up the ribbon he removed, as a sort of souvenir for us.  That's one kind of souvenir I could do just fine without!

Teaching kids how to think.

Teaching kids how to think.  The Economist reviewed a new book: “The Smartest Kids in the World: and How They Got That Way”.  There's lots of interesting stuff in the review, and I've purchased the book.  The review discusses one part of the book, where three American students who are attending foreign schools react to what they find in those schools:

Their wide-eyed observations make for compelling reading. In each country, the Americans are startled by how hard their new peers work and how seriously they take their studies. Maths classes tend to be more sophisticated, with lessons that show the often fascinating ways that geometry, trigonometry and calculus work together in the real world. Students forego calculators, having learned how to manipulate numbers in their heads. Classrooms tend to be understated, free of the high-tech gadgetry of their schools back home. And teachers in every subject exhibit the authority of professionals held in high regard.

This jibes with my own observations of students in (especially) Estonia, but also other Eastern European countries.  They're far more serious about education than the U.S. is.

The author (Amanda Ripley) makes the case for the difference being that the foreign schools teach kids how to think critically, how to apply knowledge (see the video at the link).  I believe that's part of the reason for the success of these schools, but only part of it: those schools also do a much better job of equipping average students with the intellectual tools needed by engineers and scientists.  That is most especially true for mathematics...

The process of science isn't perfect.

The process of science isn't perfect.  To anyone not blinded by their faith in science, that's no surprise.  What might be a bit of a surprise, though, is that the “self-correcting” claims of science are likely a bit overblown.  “Trouble at the lab”, an article in The Economist, does a nice job of explaining the most common kinds of problems.  Some of the areas it explores are precisely those that concern me about the current state of climate science.  This quote jumped out at me:

There is no cost to getting things wrong.  The cost is not getting them published.

That's from psychologist Brian Nosek, who's worried about the number of errors in published psychological studies – but he could just as well be talking about climatology...

Jahar: repaired, out of surgery, and doing fine!

Jahar: repaired, out of surgery, and doing fine!  Dr. Jackson called us with the good news a couple hours ago.  He had to make just two half-inch incisions in the little guy's small intestines, and that was enough to get the ribbon out safely.  He's all closed back up and doing fine in recovery.  There's a good chance, Dr. Jackson tells us, that we'll be able to bring him home tomorrow morning.

Now if we could just figure out a way to keep him from eating anything else like that!

Younger folks might not remember this...

Younger folks might not remember this, but...you used to be able to drive right up to the rim of Grand Canyon in your own car.  Ah, those were the days...

Lamiaceae origanum 'Nymphenburg'...

Lamiaceae origanum 'Nymphenburg', a kind of oregano.  For the nature-challenged: that's the flower, not the butterfly.  Via Botany Photo of the Day...

Jahar: plicated small intestines...

Jahar: plicated small intestines, caused by ingesting a piece of ribbon.  That's not him at right, but rather a photo I found searching on the web.  “Plicated” is from the Latin “to fold”, which you can see is exactly what the small intestines do as they scrunch up around the foreign body.  In the veterinary world, they call this a “linear foreign body”, and it's a common problem with pets.  The veterinary surgeon explained to us that the plication is what happens when friction keeps the foreign body from moving through the bowels, but the intestines keep trying to move it.

Untreated, this is likely fatal – the intestines will eventually be cut through by the foreign body.  Fortunately the treatment is a fairly routine surgery, though it sounds complicated to me.  Basically the surgeon makes several small cuts through the wall of the small intestines, cuts the foreign body (a ribbon, in Jahar's case) into pieces, then extracts them through the same cuts.  Then cuts are sutured, the cat put back together (some combination of staples, sutures, and glue), and then a few days for recovery.  The biggest risk is for infection, caused by the bacteria in any liquid from the bowels that “leaks”, especially if a suture should fail.

Jahar's scheduled for surgery in a few hours, and by early this evening we should know how he did.  The surgeon is Dr. Jackson, at VCA in Kearney Mesa.  These are the same folks who so successfully treated Halala for cancer; we know them, like them, and trust them.  Jahar's in good hands.  Now we just wait...

Puppies!

Puppies!

It should have been called “BidenCare”!

It should have been called “BidenCare”!  The Powerline folks did it again.  Make sure you full-screen it so you can read the subtitles...

Ah, the English and the French...

Ah, the English and the French...  Via reader Simi L.:

True story reported by an English guy who was stopped and asked to give a breathalyzer test...

The English guy lives near Le Bugue in the Dordogne and at the time he was stopped he was as pissed as a fart (in American English, that means “drunk as hell”).

The gendarme signals to him to wind down the window then asks him if he has been drinking, and with slurring speech the English guy replies; “Yes, this morning I was at my (hic) daughter's wedding, and as I don't like church much I went to the cafe opposite and had several beers.  Then during the wedding banquet I seem to remember downing three great bottles of wine (hic) a corbieres, a Minervois and (hic) a Faugeres.  Then to finish off during the celebrations and (hic) during the evening, me and my mate downed two bottles of Johnny Walker's black label.”

Getting impatient the gendarme warns him: “Do you understand I'm a policeman and have stopped you for an alcohol test?”

The Englishman with a grin on his face replies:  “Do you understand that I'm English, like my car, and that my wife is sitting in the other seat, at the steering wheel?”

Saturn from above...

Saturn from above...  In this gorgeous composite of 12 smaller Cassini photos, by Gordan Ugurkovic.  You can download a 4000 x 3200 resolution version, and there are many more of his Cassini photos here...

Megan needs Prozac...

Megan McArdle needs Prozac.  Me, too, after reading her post.  We're out of tricks, out of money, out of time.

The drums of doom beat ever closer...

The ascent of Marxism...

The ascent of Marxism...  Sarah Hoyt in a fascinating post: The Fifty Shades of Marx.  Here's one example, about the concept of “value”.  Marx said that the value of any thing is determined by how much labor was put into it.  That's an idea most progressives would find true, or at least attractive.  The economists notion of value is much different: a thing is worth exactly what someone is willing to pay for it.  Someone who believes the former would govern or judge differently than someone who believes the latter.

Now multiply that by 50 or so “big” Marxist ideas, and you get (wait for it!) modern America.

Ugh.

Kludgeocracy?

Kludgeocracy?  Interesting quote by Steve Teles, in National Affairs.  Here he's writing about the tendency of our Congress to produce incredibly complex legislation:

Every veto point functions more like a toll booth, with the toll-taker able to extract a price in exchange for his willingness to allow legislation to keep moving.

This also jumped out at me:

The easiest way to satisfy both halves of the American political mind is to create programs that hide the hand of government, whether it is through tax preferences, regulation, or litigation, rather than operating through the more transparent means of direct taxing and spending.

The article is full of interesting observations and insights – go read the whole thing...

A week's groceries...

A week's groceries – what they look like in a bunch of different countries.  The Ecuadoran family at right is one example (they sure eat a lot of bananas!).  Some of those piles of groceries look much tastier than others, but they're all interesting. 

Via friend, former colleague, reader, and Idaho mogul-of-everything Doug S. – who we'll be getting together with in November, when work forces him to hold his nose and visit Southern California once again...

Cats and dogs...

Cats and dogs ... and dog beds.  Via my lovely bride...

That about sums it up...

That about sums it up...  Via Peter Robinson, writing on Ricochet, this passage from F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and the Damned:

He tried to imagine himself in Congress rooting around in the litter of that incredible pigsty with the narrow and porcine brows he saw pictured sometimes in the rotogravure sections of the Sunday newspapers, those glorified proletarians babbling blandly to the nation the ideas of high school seniors! Little men with copy-book ambitions who by mediocrity had thought to emerge from mediocrity into the lusterless and unromantic heaven of a government by the people -- and the best, the dozen shrewd men at the top, egotistic and cynical, were content to lead this choir of white ties and wire collar-buttons in a discordant and amazing hymn, compounded of a vague confusion between wealth as a reward of virtue and wealth as a proof of vice, and continued cheers for God, the Constitution, and the Rocky Mountains!

How are you feeling about Congress?  Did the shenanigans of the past couple of weeks make you glow with pride?

I thought not.

I didn't know “California” was a verb!

I didn't know “California” was a verb!  Though we did notice, years ago, that in Idaho folks would talk about the “Californication” of certain areas.  Anyway, it looks like the election for governor of Virginia is getting a little more interesting...

ObamaCare: an insult to glitches...

ObamaCare: an insult to glitches...  From this morning's Wall Street Journal, an article with this lede:

The White House set low expectations for the Affordable Care Act's October 1 debut, so anything remotely competent should have seemed like a success. But three weeks on, the catastrophe that is Healthcare.gov and the 36 insurance exchanges run by the federal government is an insult to the "glitches" President Obama said were inevitable.

I keep reading stories about the remarkably low enrollment rates on ObamaCare sites.   Delaware has just one person who made it through.  Several states have none at all.  The best results are just a few thousand people for an entire state.  These are utterly pathetic results for such a major effort, and far, far worse than many commercial insurance sites routinely achieve.

Maybe the damned thing will just implode on its own.  That seems more likely than the political process making a dent in it...

Puns in business names...

Puns in business names – with the photos to prove it.  Guaranteed groans...

Light blogging alert...

Light blogging alert...  I'm feeling a bit out of it this morning, after being up very late last night and getting just a few hours sleep.  What kept us up was a “cat emergency” – Jahar, our Savannah cat, ate a piece of ribbon.  We only know this because he vomited up a short piece of it.  We had no idea how much he had (or had not) eaten, and we knew that long, stringy things can be very dangerous when they get into the intestines, so...off we went, down to the emergency vet in La Mesa.

Bottom line: so far as we can tell, he's fine.  But the poor guy (who is terribly stressed by any kind of travel) went through hell last night, and we spent 5 hours waiting for the diagnostics and consultations to get done.  X-rays and an ultrasound exam found nothing to worry about – but then, it's just lucky when they do.  It's still entirely possible he has an undetected length of ribbon in him, so we have to watch closely for a few days to make sure his digestive tract is all working correctly.  Jahar is isolated in our bedroom so we track everything going in and coming out...

The perfect woman...

The perfect woman... Via reader Jim M., who swears this is a true story:

A man was dining alone in a fancy restaurant and there was a gorgeous redhead sitting at the next table. He had been checking her out since he sat down, but lacked the nerve to talk with her. Suddenly she sneezed, and her glass eye came flying out of its socket towards the man. He reflexively reached out, grabbed it out of the air, and handed it back.

'Oh my, I am so sorry,' the woman said, as she popped her eye back in place. 'Let me buy your dinner to make it up to you.'

They enjoyed a wonderful dinner together, and afterwards they went to the theater followed by drinks... They talked, they laughed, she shared her deepest dreams and he shared his. She listened to him with interest. After paying for everything, she asked him if he would like to come to her place for a nightcap and stay for breakfast. They had a wonderful, wonderful time..'

The next morning, she cooked a gourmet meal with all the trimmings. The guy was amazed. Everything had been so incredible! 'You know,' he said, 'you are the perfect woman. Are you this nice to every guy you meet?'

'No,' she replied, 'You just happened to catch my eye...'

Amazing ocean landscapes...

Amazing ocean landscapes...  The one at right is from Norway; many more on this site.  I'd love to visit Norway someday...