Product review of the year...

Product review of the year...  Whatever you do, do not click on the link that follows while you are standing up, drinking or eating something.  Fair warning: if the kiddies read this, you may have some explaining to do.  Here's the product review on Amazon's UK site.  Other reviews of the same product.

Photos from the Shackleton 1914-1917 expedition found...

Photos from the Shackleton 1914-1917 expedition found...  Conservators found these 22 negatives frozen together in a block of ice, in a box found in a hut on Cape Evans in Antarctica.  The negatives were separated, cleaned up, and printed; one example is at right.  If you're not familiar with the Shackleton expeditions, it's one of the great stories of human exploration – well worth reading about.  There are several excellent books about Shackleton's expeditions, and lots of material on the web as well...

California leads the way!

California leads the way!  In losing the competition for drone testing areas.  We lost out to Texas, Nevada, Alaska, New York, North Dakota, and Virginia.  I'm sure that Governor Rick Perry is doing the happy dance, and Governor Moonbeam is confused again (for the 4,506,772nd time this week)...

Megan on ObamaCare...

Megan on ObamaCare...  Signs that ObamaCare is not dead yet, and change is ObamaCare's only certainty...

The big, giant health care reform roundup...

The big, giant health care reform roundup...  Pejman Yousefzdeh at Ricochet, chock full of linky goodness...

Moral for engineers: always look for the simple answer...

Moral for engineers: always look for the simple answer...  Via reader Sean H.  For some reason I haven't been able to pin down, software engineers seem to be particularly susceptible to the siren's call of overly complex solutions for problems that actually have a simple solution.  Here's a parable that nicely illustrates this engineering challenge, and it's in a form that anyone can understand:

A toothpaste factory had a problem: Due to the way the production line was set up, sometimes empty boxes were shipped without the tube inside. People with experience in designing production lines will tell you how difficult it is to have everything happen with timings so precise that every single unit coming off of it is perfect 100% of the time. Small variations in the environment (which can't be controlled in a cost-effective fashion) mean quality assurance checks must be smartly distributed across the production line so that customers all the way down to the supermarket won’t get frustrated and purchase another product instead.

Understanding how important that was to his bottom line, the CEO of the toothpaste factory gathered the top people in the company together. Since their own engineering department was already stretched too thin, they decided to hire an external engineering company to solve their empty boxes problem.

The project followed the usual process: budget and project sponsor allocated, requests for proposal sent out, third-parties were selected, and six months (and $8 million) later a fantastic solution was delivered — on time, on budget, high quality and everyone in the project had a great time. The problem was solved by using high-tech precision scales that would sound a bell and flash lights whenever a toothpaste box came off the production line weighing less than it should have. The line would stop, and someone had to walk over and yank the defective box off the line, then press another button to re-start the line.

A short time later, the CEO decided to have a look at the ROI (return on investment) of the project: amazing results! No empty boxes ever shipped out of the factory after the scales were put in place. There were very few customer complaints, and they were gaining market share. “That was some money well spent!” he said, before looking closely at the other statistics in the report.

The number of defects picked up by the scales was zero after three weeks of production use. How could that be? It should have been picking up at least a dozen a day, so maybe there was something wrong with the report. He sent an email asking why, and after some investigation, the engineers indicated the statistics were indeed correct. The scales were NOT picking up any defects, because all boxes that got to that point in the conveyor belt were good.

Perplexed, the CEO went down to the factory and walked up to the part of the line where the precision scales were installed. A few feet before the scale, a $20 desk fan was blowing any empty boxes off the belt and into a bin. Puzzled, the CEO turned to one of the workers who said, “Oh, that … one of the guys put it there because he was tired of walking over every time the bell rang!”

The moral is obvious: simple, obvious solutions are not always possible – but when they are, they are better.

A personal aside: I've seen the fan-blowing-empty-boxes-off-the-line solution in actual use, on a production line for paper clips.  There was a machine that took small boxes of paper clips and stuffed a dozen of them into a larger box.  That machine sometimes spit out an empty box (if it couldn't get 12 little boxes in time), and a nozzle squirting compressed air would blow those empties off the conveyor carrying the “full” boxes out of the machine.  It worked great!

Shelf cloud...

Shelf cloud...  Twisted Sifter...

Glitter nail polish – new security tool...

Glitter nail polish – new security tool...  This is wickedly clever – a cheap, easy, and effective way to tell if something has been tampered with.  For example, suppose you're traveling to China, Iran, or some other destination where you're afraid someone might open up your laptop and install a keylogger or similar device that will compromise the security of your laptop.  Actually preventing that may be impossible – but at least if you knew that your laptop had been opened, you'd know it wasn't safe to use it any more.

Enter the glitter nail polish.  Put a dot of nail polish over all the screws in your laptop's case.  Then (key part!) take a photo of those dots with your cell phone, and keep the cell phone with you at all times.  Now if you have to leave your laptop unguarded, you can do a “blink test” to compare the photos of the nail polish blobs with what you see now.  The glitter in the nail polish forms an effectively random pattern that would be practically impossible to copy precisely – and you've recorded it on your cell phone.  Even if the intruder managed to find the same nail polish you used, the pattern of the glitter would be different – and your brain's excellent pattern matching software would instantly detect the difference in the blink test.

Awesome, via Wired...

Oh, the irony!

Oh, the irony!  A small ship packed full of warmist climate scientists, credulous greens, and eco-tourists heads for Antarctica to “study” the impacts of global warming.  They get stuck in the expanding ice area (ice coverage is unusually high this year, and approaching all-time records).  Oops!

But it gets better.  An ice breaker goes to rescue them, but can't get through – and gives up.  A second ice breaker tries to rescue them, and it also can't get through, and gives up.  A third ice breaker does the same thing.  Now a (very expensive) helicopter rescue is being planned, and the fate of the ship is uncertain.

The lamestream media is mostly ignoring this story.  It just doesn't fit the narrative...

Full details at Jo Nova's place.  Rob Long is quite amused at Ricochet...

A Left-Wing America Stands Alone...

A Left-Wing America Stands Alone...  Daniel Greenfield, writing at Sultan Knish, with another ponder-worthy essay.  Key point:

The rule of the radical left in the United States is very much an outlier in the rest of the First World where conservative and center-right parties predominate. The conventional First World response to the economic crisis has been to cut spending and reform welfare, while in the United States has spent more money than ever before and expanded welfare.

Much of Europe now favors less federalism and less immigration. The United States has expanded its federal government dramatically and both Democratic and Republican leaders support amnesty for illegal aliens at a time when immigration is politically toxic everywhere else.

The only major European countries with a sizable population and serious economic problems ruled by the left are France and Italy and both are approaching economic collapse. France’s ruling left has become wildly unpopular and Italy is still imploding in slow motion. While the American left insists that historical inevitability is on its side, it has lost nearly everywhere else. America stands alone under the rule of the left, in uncontrolled spending, uncontrolled immigration and the iron hand of the welfare state.

Read the whole thing...

World's largest reflection pool...

World's largest reflection pool...  Twisted Sifter...

Let this one sink in for a moment...

Let this one sink in for a moment...  A commenter responding to this question:

What can gun owners learn from non-gun owners?

One of the answers:

I was never against having guns for shooting ranges, I am against them as means of self-defense (or freedom).

Sort of takes your breath away, doesn't it?

Tip of the hat to Kevin Baker at The Smallest Minority, who used the second quote as his Quote of the Day...

ObamaCare: at least 3 million fewer people are covered...

ObamaCare: at least 3 million fewer people are covered...  That, of course, is because more people had their healthcare policies canceled because of ObamaCare than signed up for new policies under ObamaCare.

Way to go, bozos...

Dave Barry's year in review is out...

Dave Barry's year in review is out...  As usual, you don't want to miss it.  San Diego made it this year:

In politics, San Diego Mayor Bob “Bob” Filner resigns as a result of allegations that he is a compulsive serial horn dog who groped pretty much the entire female population of Southern California. He immediately becomes a leading contender in the New York City mayoral race.

I do miss Filthy Filner...