The zipper...

The zipper...  Via reader Simi L.:

In a crowded city at a busy bus stop, a woman who was waiting for a bus was wearing a tight leather skirt. As the bus stopped and it was her turn to get on, she became aware that her skirt was too tight to allow her leg to come up to the height of the first step of the bus.

Slightly embarrassed and with a quick smile to the bus driver, she reached behind her to unzip her skirt a little, thinking that this would give her enough slack to raise her leg.

Again, she tried to make the step only to discover she still couldn't. So, a little more embarrassed, she once again reached behind her to unzip her skirt a little more. For the second time, she attempted the step, and, once again, much to her chagrin, she could not raise her leg. With a little smile to the driver, she again reached behind to unzip a little more and again was unable to make the step.

About this time, a large Texan who was standing behind her picked her up easily by the waist and placed her gently on the step of the bus.

She went ballistic and turned to the would-be Samaritan and screeched, "How dare you touch my body! I don't even know who you are!'

The Texan smiled and drawled, "Well, ma'am, normally I would agree with you, but after you unzipped my fly three times, I kinda figured we was friends."

Evening in Paradise...

Evening in Paradise...  I took a ride on my ATV, to one of the higher hills in the valley.  It's only about two miles from home, over farm roads.  The photo right is looking to the south, across fields of barley that's nearly ready to harvest.

The dogs and I took a walk just before this.  The temperature was 89°, down from today's high of 93°.  The forecast for tomorrow is for a high of 88°, a tad cooler than today.  The dogs didn't seem to care about the heat, but ... when we walked under an irrigation sprinkler, they were practically dancing in the cool water, obviously reveling in it :)

Pater: a Father's Day memory...

Pater: a Father's Day memory...  Of course my thoughts today kept wandering to memories of my dad.  At one point I tried to remember any Father's Day with him, and I wasn't having much luck.  My dad wasn't the sort to celebrate a “holiday” like that, nor am I for that matter.  But one memory finally did pop up – something I hadn't recalled for many, many years now.

I can't place the year exactly, but it would have been when I was about 13 or 14 years old – so something like '65 or '66.  It was a weekday before Father's Day, I think a Friday (because Father's Day was imminent).  I was working with my dad at the home of a landscaping customer, somewhere in northern New Jersey.  The customer's name was Deer (or maybe Deere), a couple with at least one child, a young girl perhaps 17 or 18 years old.

My dad was working in the front of the house, and I was spreading mulch down in the back yard, near a pool house.  The girl (whose name I've long since forgotten) came down to go swimming.  Before she went in to change, she stopped to talk with me for a few minutes.  I remember that she asked me what we were going to do for Father's Day, and I said “Nothing special.  We’ll all be home on Sunday, as usual.”

“Does your father work on Sunday?”, she asked.

“Usually in his office, or maybe at the nursery.” I said.  “But we’ll probably play some croquet or something in the afternoon.”

We really did play croquet on occasion, and other sorts of games both indoors and outside.

“My father always works at his office in town every day.  We hardly ever see him.” she said.  “You’re really lucky to be with your father all the time!”

That last sentence was accompanied by an expression of the purest envy.

If I remember correctly, her dad was a lawyer.  It was evident from the quality of his home that he made a great deal more money than my dad did.  I'd imagined, in the naive way of a child, that having all that money would make for some very happy kids.  I certainly wouldn't have minded having my own swimming pool!

But there was his daughter, envying me because I had something she couldn't have: what we'd call today quality time with my dad.

I know now that she was right to be envious.  Between work and play, I was with my father for more time in a year than most kids have in their entire childhood.  My dad was extremely accessible to me, as his work was either on the farm I grew up on or at customers' sites, where I was quite likely dragooned to help.  I had many, many hours of time with him driving to and from customers' sites – time we filled with conversation about all sorts of things.  Whether we were on the road or at home on the farm, he'd frequently take a few minutes to show me something interesting, or to explain something I was curious about.  This was my “everyday dad”, and I only realized how unusual that was when I joined the U.S. Navy and met people with very different experiences of their father (or, all to often, no experience at all because they never knew him).

Yup, she was right to be envious.  I was a lucky kid indeed to have the father I did...

I've had the privilege of knowing quite a few children of immigrants...

I've had the privilege of knowing quite a few children of immigrants...  Any one of those people could have been in this video (though none were).  Many of the sentiments expressed by these people are ones I share about my own parents, but these children have an extra poignant element: their parents came to this country as strangers in a strange land, with next to nothing in the way of resources.  That makes everything more difficult – and their successes and sacrifices more admirable...

Must-read piece on the impact climate change is having on science...

Must-read piece on the impact climate change is having on science...  By Matt Ridley, writing at The Quadrant.  A sample from the beginning of the article:

Sure, we occasionally take a swipe at pseudoscience—homeopathy, astrology, claims that genetically modified food causes cancer, and so on. But the great thing about science is that it’s self-correcting. The good drives out the bad, because experiments get replicated and hypotheses put to the test. So a really bad idea cannot survive long in science.

Or so I used to think. Now, thanks largely to climate science, I have changed my mind. It turns out bad ideas can persist in science for decades, and surrounded by myrmidons of furious defenders they can turn into intolerant dogmas.

Someday I won't cry on Father's day...

Someday I won't cry on Father's day...  But today is not that day.  We miss you, dad...

This is what happens when a tech company has $200B in cash...

This is what happens when a tech company has $200B in cash...  They start doing really weird stuff that you'd never expect from a hardware company!

I, for one, welcome our new news overlords.  They couldn't possibly be any worse than the current batch!

Mama, don't let your kids grow up to be...

Mama, don't let your kids grow up to be ... weed-pullers, lest they turn out like the character at right.  That's my neighbor Tim D., recovering in the shade next to my shed after we got done pulling weeds yesterday morning.  All of us looked about like this :)

Took the dogs for a dawn walk...

Took the dogs for a dawn walk ... and that's what it looked like to our east.  We had just enough light to walk up the hill; by the time we walked back we had plenty of light and the sun was just touching the tops of the mountains to our west.  As I write this, the valley (where our home is) is still dark, but sunrise will probably happen in a half hour or so...

The seasons of Saturn...

The seasons of Saturn...  As imaged by the Cassini probe.  Via APOD, of course.  Full resolution version here.

Not long ago, I was talking with one of our local kids about the robotic probes that captured the wonderful images like these.  She had never known a time when high quality imagery of objects in space was unavailable.  Somewhere during the conversation, it dawned on her that the robotic probes were a relatively recent invention, and she asked me how we got images “before”.  When I told her that we simply didn't have them – that, for example, we knew Saturn as a fuzzy blob with fuzzy rings and very little detail – she thought I was pulling her leg.  Yet I can easily remember the wonder of those first probes – Ranger, Mariner, Venera – returning grainy images that were miraculously better than what could be obtained from earth.  I can also remember the amazing advances in adaptive optics making leaps and bounds in improving earth-bound astrophotography.  It wasn't so very long ago, really, that images like the one above could be found only in science fiction illustrations made by painters with vivid imaginations.  Now they're routine, and rather taken for granted...

Morning in Paradise...

Morning in Paradise...  I woke up at 3:30 this morning, and I could tell that I wasn't going to be able to go back to sleep.  So I got up, took a shower, and then walked outside with Mo'i.  The sky was moonless and slightly overcast, so it was dark but I couldn't really see the stars very well.  The night was

quiet except for a few birds peeping occasionally, and the sounds of hundreds upon hundreds of sprinkler heads irrigating the fields all around us.  These sprinkler heads come in all manner of shapes and sizes, from the bog-standard Rainbird impact sprinkler at right to the monster “guns” like the one at left, with nozzles as large as 1" in diameter.  Not only does each model of sprinkler have its own unique sound, but various accessories also do.  For instance, many sprinklers alongside a road have “shields” that stop the sprinkler from spraying the road; these have a very noticeable sibilant sound.  Then there are many sprinklers that have the ability to reverse direction, so they sweep back-and-forth over an area; these make different sounds depending on which direction they're rotating.

The most complex sounds of all come from some of the big guns that have computers controlling the water pattern so that it makes even coverage over a rectangular field.  The computer moves several controls on the gun to make the water shoot exactly the right distance to hit the corners of a field without over-spraying the sides.  They even compensate for wind drift!  A few weeks ago, I stopped to talk with a farmer setting one of these up.  He looked like an IT guy, with a laptop plugged into his “gun”, a wind direction and speed sensor, and a GPS surveying system to plot out the fields geometry.  He told me that his “gun” cost a little over $3,000, but would pay for itself in the first year by evenly sprinkling his whole field without over-spraying.  He figures he'll save around $1,000 in fuel alone (the sprinkler is powered by a diesel pump). 

I could hear all these sprinklers as we walked.  Some of the sprinklers I heard were likely over a mile away.  It's quiet at 4 am in Paradise :)

Today is mowing day.  I haven't mowed for over a week, and I irrigated this week.  The fertilizer I put down a few weeks ago has kicked in, and the warm sunny days have done their thing.  My lawn will have to be reclassified as a forest if I don't mow it down soon.  I'm going to generate enough clippings that you'd think I could bale it and sell it as hay :)

Usually when I finish mowing, our driveway is covered with lots and lots of grass clippings.  Today I'm going to blow them all off with the wheeled blower I got last week.  Should look very nice when I get done!