There are useful idiots, and there are useless idiots.  The latter are in the majority.  Students create a memorial to the people killed on 9/11 by planting 2,977 flags in the ground.  Five protestors then come along and remove the flags, falsely claiming desecration of Native American burial sites.

Well, progressives would call this progress.  In public policy, the scientifically verifiable facts don't matter any more...

I thought they meant The One and his Obsequioids!  White House full of vermin.

Soyuz landing on September 10.  This is the same landing pictured above, but this time in video.  There was a glitch, but the crew wasn't endangered.  Chuck Yeager would hate the Soyuz – monkeys in a can, he'd say...  

Clinging to the teats.  David Thompson on Australian scientists reacting to the news that the newly elected (relatively) conservative government is going to cut off their grant money...

Well of course not!  It's for the little people...  Federal workers don't want Obamacare.  For thee, but not for me (if I'm a Federal employee)...

Well, if I were a Jew in Syria, I'd have left long ago!  Almost all the Syrian Jews are gone...

Sad sushi scoop.  The best sushi near Jamul is at Yuki Sushi, in the Rancho San Diego Target shopping center.  Jenny (the owner) tells us that she's losing her lease there (for reasons she's not sure about), as of September 30th.  We're going to go back there as often as we can before then; I hope you will too.   Jenny's not sure what she's going to do after that.  She looked so sad as she relayed this news to us. BTW, for those of you who remember Tatsu's, where Ranch Feed is now – Mr. Tatsu, the former owner, now works for Jenny a couple of days a week. We've seen him there the past couple of Fridays; very nice to see our old friend...

Baby sea lion makes itself at home.  Cute.  Via my lovely bride!

Bravo Cafe is the best!  Just sayin'...  Manoli, Rosio, and their kids are a joy to meet and talk with – a true family business, even in this day and age.  And of course the food – simple, good, honest fare ... in stunningly huge portions.  I took a quick look around, and I'm glad to see that others share our opinion: here, here, and here.  Go grab a (giant) bite to eat there, and tell 'em we said hi!  Debbie just had a Caesar chicken salad, and I had a beef brisket sandwich.  I don't think I'll be hungry until around Thursday...

Tiny little gyroscopes.  They're at the heart of inertial guidance systems in modern rockets, satellites, weapons, and many other places.  They're also in your iPhone and other smart phones.  They're made of silicon, using processes much like integrated circuits – so they can be manufactured cheaply in high volumes.  They're also quite beautiful under a microscope...

Sharp shadows...  I was looking at some of the recent photos from the Curiosity rover on Mars, and noticed the shadow of the rock looked extraordinarily sharp.  The apparent diameter of the sun causes a fuzzy edge to shadows (the “penumbra”), and there wasn't much of one there at all.  But the apparent size of the sun on Mars is substantially smaller than it is on Earth.  So I did the math: from Earth, the sun's apparent diameter is about 32 arc-minutes, while from Mars it's about 21 arc-minutes.  That's enough to make shadows visibly sharper on Mars than they would be on Earth.  It's also enough to make the sun look considerably smaller...

You just gotta love our soldiers.  The finest in the world, bar none.  But sometimes I wonder what they think of the citizens they're defending!  Via friend and reader Simon M...

Don't park in the driveway!  Not if you live in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, anyway.  It's an old law they've decided to start enforcing again.  They'll say it's “for the children,” but of course it's really for the money.  It's always for the money...

World parrot rescue headquarters.  In Jamul, thanks to Jamulian Brooke Durham.

Tequila – is there anything it can't do?

See where the rich people live.  It's no surprise that many of them are in the Washington D.C. area, living off the federal teats (there are lots of them!).  Move the income slider bar at the bottom of the map...

The wrong Texan.  These thugs got more than they bargained for...

A surprising thing about Japan.  It's a tech-crazy culture, and the people are well-educated and wealthy.  What the hell is up with these ads?  They seem completely out of character to me, which I suspect means there's something about Japanese culture that I am profoundly ignorant of.  I used to think they were a spoof until I saw them myself on a Japanese cable channel...

An ode to Claude Shannon, by Charlie Martin, who calls him “The greatest genius no one has heard of.”  He's fairly well known in my field, especially to anyone working with error-correcting codes or data compression.  My favorite Claude Shannon quote: “Information is the resolution of uncertainty.”

More NSA scandal fallout: a font designed to be hard to scan to text, yet still be readable by humans.  I don't think this accomplishes anything useful from a technical perspective, but it does raise some attention...

In debt.  Listen to why George Will says he owes his happiness to Barack Obama...

Successful launch.  Japan's newest rocket – the Epsilon – was successfully launched for the first time, putting a research telescope payload into orbit.  Of note: no complex, expensive “command center” was needed for the launch.  Instead, a couple of engineers with ordinary laptops did it.

Dialing back.  Matt Ridley got a preview of the upcoming IPCC report, and he says it dials the global warming alarm rhetoric way back.  Perhaps preparing for a walk-back down the line?

Lucky dog!  A stray for at least 10 years, Sonya has been rescued, and has a home where she's happy and cared for...

Boys would be boys, if only they could...  A good roundup of the painful – and dangerous – consequences of the feminization of American schools.  Progressives just love to deny actual gender differences, despite the clear evidence that it exists.  My own field is a great example: computer science is dominated by men, worldwide, despite widespread availability of computer science education for women...

A shattering experience.  What happens when you freeze flowers in liquid nitrogen, then shoot them with a bullet.  Martin Klimas wanted to know this.  What I want to know is this: what did someone do to Martin when he was a kid, that caused him to wonder things like this?

Incremental ensnarement.  Millions of drivers use E-ZPass when they travel on toll roads or bridges.  Electronic readers see that they pass by, and their credit cards are automatically charged.  Very convenient.  But ... now administrators are setting up E-ZPass readers in New York City (and maybe other places as well) to collect information for other purposes – we don't know exactly what.  But what is alarming to many is that one can easily see how this could turn into a network that knew where you were, all day long.  Anyone with access to that system could find you anytime they wanted to.  Much more like this is coming, as location technologies mature and are dispersed.  Mobile phones, nearly all of which have GPS, are a major security concern for some...

Touchdown!  The photo at right shows the recent landing of a Russian Soyuz spacecraft with three astronauts on board, on the plains of Kazakhstan.  To cushion the landing, small retro-rockets fire very briefly when the craft is one meter (3 feet) off the ground.  U.S. capsules always splashed down in the ocean, whose soft embrace eliminated the need for the retro-rockets.  When Soyuz was developed, the Soviets were afraid of landing anywhere other than their own territory – enough so that the cost and trouble of developing the retro-rocket system seemed worth it.  I wonder how the Russians would make that decision today?

Syria agreement: Russia and the U.S. agree on a plan to relieve Assad of his chemical weapons – but they explicitly leave out the possibility of backing up the demand with military force.  Obama reserves the right to intervene militarily, unilaterally – but not right now, sometime down the road.  If you were Assad, how would you be feeling all this?  I suspect he's spending more time laughing at the bozos in Washington and Geneva than anything else...

Dilbert is awesome!  And so is his mom...  Scott Adams makes me think, makes me laugh ... what more could an Internet citizen ask?

I'm experimenting with some layout changes.  If you see something you don't like, or that doesn't work, please let me know.  Of course, I'd always be happy to hear about it if I managed to accidentally get something right :)

Links of the Day...

Syria roundup: indecisive, holding fire, and the global joke (us).  Mark Steyn on Putin: “In reality, Putin finds his thrill by grabbing Obama’s blueberries and squeezing hard.”  Summary: bad, and trending worse.  Winners: Iran and Pooty-Poot.

Obama administration obeys the law – unexpectedly!  Robert Zimmerman has this exactly right: the big surprise here is that the Obama administration didn't simply ignore the Obamacare law to do what would make their supporters (the unions) happy.   The details are interesting.  But I'm not buying the notion that Obama did this simply because he thought it would be illegal not to.  That's never stopped him before...

Oh, I sure hope so!  Will McCain retire in 2016?

You tell 'em, Rush!  When you want to educate a receptive mind about American Exceptionalism, Rush is the big gun.  He's in fine form here...

Polarization...   This time, we're talking about rural vs. urban.  We see it out here in rural San Diego County.  Physically we're just 35 miles from the big city.  Politically and culturally, we're a million miles apart.  We often feel like we're traveling to a foreign, unfriendly country when we go “down the hill” into town...

Someone found a use for Jerry Brown's California: a place to dump people with mental health issues.  Dave Blount: “Not only will they feel perfectly at home in a state that would react to an economic crisis by putting Governor Moonbeam back in power, but it is suitable revenge for the previously sane parts of the country that have been infected with moonbattery by Californians escaping the mess their liberalism made of their own state.”

Cats and dogs...  Hackers and the FBI – it's getting more difficult to tell them apart.

The inverse-square law rules!  Two big radio-telescopes have imaged Voyager I, whose transmitter emits a mere 22 watts.  Despite being over 11 billion miles from Earth, Voyager's transmitter still looks very bright compared with anything nearby it in the sky.  That's the inverse-square law at work!

Klepto Kitty.  I hear it's applied for a job with the IRS...

More like minimum jobs, you idiots!  Reason's Scott Shackford takes note of California's new $10-an-hour minimum wage, and notes that it's likely to let out what little steam our “recovery” has...

Some speech would be more free than the rest...  A Senate panel yesterday approved a bill that would establish a special class of citizens: journalists.  Without knowing anything more, that's already terrifying!  The bill goes on to enshrine special protections for journalists, most especially protecting the identity of their sources.  That necessarily implies that all us non-journalists won't enjoy such protections.  But ... who, exactly, would be considered a “journalist”?  Well, that's not clear at all.  Some reaction: James Lileks, Matt Drudge, and James Taranto.  They're no happier about it than I am.

The climate models need decades of work, says the National Academy of Science.  But the science is settled?   Maybe they're just trying to figure out how to keep the taxpayer-funded grant money coming.  In which case we need to figure out how to make it stop!

Not good.  NIST is telling people not to use it's elliptic-curve based random number generator standard.  Random numbers matter.  Given the Snowden revelations about the NSA, my first thought is: “What else has been compromised?” 

I can't decide.  This is either the best campaign ad evah, or it's an unambiguous sign that the end times are nigh.  Jeff Wagner is running for mayor there, and he wants you to “Wake the fuck up!”

It's a map-a-palooza!...  Go here and click on“PROJECTS” to get started; lots of good things to waste some time with...

Mainstream media to Republicans: “You're obsessed with Obamacare!”  I've got news for you, lamers: it's not just Republicans – we libertarians and independents think it's a crock of bovine fecal material, too...

There, but for the NRA, go we...  Two burglars walk into a jewelry store in Nice, France and threaten the owner with a gun.  The owner pulls out his own gun, chases them off and shoots one in the process.  The burglar dies on the scene.  The jewelry store owner is arrested and charged with voluntary homicide. This is controversial even in France, but it's not at all clear how things will turn out...

They're a good thing – abusers, addiction, and social problems notwithstanding, the doc proclaims.  Our own family doc has much the same attitude, much to our relief.  Of course, Obamacare may change all this.  Just ask any Canadians how easy it is for them to get pain killers.  Unless they come to the U.S., of course...

Well, duh!  What did you think would happen when you hire a bunch of high achievers and put them to work teaching?

Progressive hypocrisy?  Color me totally unsurprised.  Progressive media queen Tina Brown's charity collects millions in donations, then makes a single grant of $10,000.  They're better than us, though.  Don't forget that.

“Get ready.”, said the judge, to release some NSA-related FISA court proceedings.  Basically, he's calling bullshit on government assertions about the need for secrecy in all these matters.  About time!

You feel lucky, punk?  Then go invest in the Twitter IPO, says Megan McArdle (the world's tallest female economics blogger)...

Oh, goody.  The Obamacare health insurance exchanges aren't even open for business yet, and already there's a security breach that exposed private information for 2,400 insurance agents.  But that's ok.  You ain't seen nuttin' yet, buddy...