Carnival of the Vanities, number 51?
is hosted by Admiral Quixote at Solport. Y'all go visit.
20030910
20030908
Awesome coverage
e-Claire posts some nice coverage of the California gubernatorial recall slash campaign. The first debate and a radio interview of Peter Ueberroth.
e-Claire posts some nice coverage of the California gubernatorial recall slash campaign. The first debate and a radio interview of Peter Ueberroth.
20030905
Something I don't see every day
I'm becoming somewhat attached to a German restaurant here at Undisclosed Remote Location. This is the first time I've seen it busy. A wedding rehearsal party took half the dining room. But at a table next to mine I saw something truly beautiful: four generations dining together. A girl, maybe five years old, then the mother, a blonde six-footer, her mother, also tall, and the great grandmother, stooped with age but alert and proud.
I wanted to say something to them, about how remarkable it was to see them together in one place, but how to say it, without being taken for a lunatic who can't mind his own business?
As they left, I overheard that Great-Grandma was visiting from Germany.
Sadly, my in-laws will never see such a day. Barbaloot and I married later in life, and are raising children later too. My parents are already gone, hers are in their seventies. There's little hope our kids will have kids before the ir grandparents, my in-laws, pass away. Maybe that's why I had this urge to say something to them---to try to share their moment because I will probably not be participating in such a moment of my own.
I'm becoming somewhat attached to a German restaurant here at Undisclosed Remote Location. This is the first time I've seen it busy. A wedding rehearsal party took half the dining room. But at a table next to mine I saw something truly beautiful: four generations dining together. A girl, maybe five years old, then the mother, a blonde six-footer, her mother, also tall, and the great grandmother, stooped with age but alert and proud.
I wanted to say something to them, about how remarkable it was to see them together in one place, but how to say it, without being taken for a lunatic who can't mind his own business?
As they left, I overheard that Great-Grandma was visiting from Germany.
Sadly, my in-laws will never see such a day. Barbaloot and I married later in life, and are raising children later too. My parents are already gone, hers are in their seventies. There's little hope our kids will have kids before the ir grandparents, my in-laws, pass away. Maybe that's why I had this urge to say something to them---to try to share their moment because I will probably not be participating in such a moment of my own.
Lizard cavalry
(This post has been brewing longer than this blog is old. Thanks to Alphecca, who pointed me to Bill Dennis's HeinleinBlog, where was posted a quote by James Pinkerton, who noted that Starship Troopers foresaw the cybernetic future of infantry. Thanks also to James Rummel, who reminded me of the older material in an offhand mention of powered armor. Sometimes I feel like James Burke.--Ed.)
This article in Wired discusses the development of robots for military roles. The difficulty remains in integrating sensor inputs and connecting them to motor outputs, i.e. all of those tasks that human brains seem to do easily and quickly. The developers estimate that it still takes 4 people to manage 1 robot, and DoD's goal is 1 soldier to manage 4 robots. We humbly submit that they're solving the wrong problem, and ignoring the damned good soon for the uncertain future best.
What might shorten their development time, and result in some useful weapons platforms in the meantime, is to develop larger robots that carry soldiers inside them. Miniaturizing the motors, computing, sensors, and so forth is already done, so use it and perfect it while the numbercrunching improves. Work on just the locomotion, for example, and focus on numbercrunching locomotive control systems that have already been debugged by evolution. When the computing power matures to the point that machine "awareness" and vision are feasible, put it into the robot and take the soldier out. Menawhile, serious computing power will still be needed to make the robot respond smoothly to the soldier's commands, and that in itself will advance immensely the technology needed to field the objective unmanned versions. Heinlein's protagonist in Starship troopers described "feedback loops" to guide the powered armor. Feedback loops aren't fast enough.
Meanwhile, other DoD projects seek to armor a soldier to create some kind of Frankenstein---not genetically modified, just a stronger and harder human-shaped platform, like Ripley in the Caterpillar loader in Aliens. The problem there is that the human shape is not optimized for strength or speed, but for use of the forelimbs for grasping instead of locomotion, and gaining height for distance vision. We're on our hind legs instead of all-fours not because it's inherently stronger or faster. If you want stronger/faster/carry-more-weight, you'll have to give back some of the bipedal compromise.
For example, the allosaurus weighed about 3 tons, was about 5 meters from tooth to tail, and could move at a burst of about 30 kilometers per hour, regular stride at 15. It won't keep up with an M1A1, or even a HWMMV, but it's not supposed to. And it will prevail in terrain or among obstacles that get these other two platforms killed. So borrow the blueprints.
Merge these two initiatives, the battle robot and the powered-armored soldier, making sensible tradeoffs. Get the first iteration into the field and tweak it while the computing power catches up.
The operator sits like a cyclist in a close-fitting compartment centered inside the lizard's hips. His legs extend into the lizard's legs. The lizard's head puppets the operator's head and neck movements; its legs move as the operator's legs move. The tail is animated to keep the lizard balanced whether it's in a dead run, or turning, or jumping, and it's where fuel is kept and hydraulic fluid is cooled off. The first numbercrunching problem to solve is animating the tail to balance the rest of the lizard's body while it runs, turns, corners, jumps, ducks, and cranes.
We will have a platform that could go where only infantrymen could go today, but carrying weapons that infantrymen cannot use on the move. It could clear obstacles that are death traps for infantry today, specifically those found in MOUT.
{salespitch}
Colonel, got your fire team pinned down in a parking lot by snipers on the roof? Two lizards can run in to offer cover fire and escort them out.
Need to flush a squad out of a warehouse? Two teams of three lizards will fit through a loading dock door, split up and manuever inside. They might even be able to ride a freight elevator.
Want to interdict a supply route? A Chinook full of lizards can catch the column from behind, trash it, and run away to board the flight home.
The supply route is on canoes across a swamp? This lizard can move through water or mud a meter deep, and still shoot and salute. And it can hide with only its "eyes" above water, waiting for the boats to slip nearby.
Sarin on the battlefield? With the right climate-control package, the human inside works in shirtsleeves. Bio or chemical contamination will not affect the lizard's speed or manueverability. If the operator is unhorsed, he pulls his chem gear on before climbing out, and he's in no worse shape than an armor crewman on foot.
{/salespitch}
Sure a tank round or even an RPG will take it out. Train the riders like we train our Abrams tankers and they'll be fine. Fire on the move, and move constantly. And have the sense not to take on tanks if you're not a tank.
That's the first generation. When and if the sensor-integration problem is solved, remove the human, push the size to 3 meters nose-to-tail and 750 kilos weight, and kick the land speed up to 50 kph. Then you're delivering Jurassic Park IV to the DoD. Ride the freight elevator? Sheeeee-it. It could take the stairs.
Teach these lizards to hunt in packs, and always employ them in packs, because machine vision will benefit from having more eyes. They'll beam video to each other so all of them will "see" more than any one of them alone.
We offer this concept merely as a patriotic duty. We ask only that two be set aside for an occasional ride by Emergent Behavior and myself (ask 'Merge how much he likes motorcycles). We'll bring them back gassed up and washed off. Promise.
(This post has been brewing longer than this blog is old. Thanks to Alphecca, who pointed me to Bill Dennis's HeinleinBlog, where was posted a quote by James Pinkerton, who noted that Starship Troopers foresaw the cybernetic future of infantry. Thanks also to James Rummel, who reminded me of the older material in an offhand mention of powered armor. Sometimes I feel like James Burke.--Ed.)
This article in Wired discusses the development of robots for military roles. The difficulty remains in integrating sensor inputs and connecting them to motor outputs, i.e. all of those tasks that human brains seem to do easily and quickly. The developers estimate that it still takes 4 people to manage 1 robot, and DoD's goal is 1 soldier to manage 4 robots. We humbly submit that they're solving the wrong problem, and ignoring the damned good soon for the uncertain future best.
What might shorten their development time, and result in some useful weapons platforms in the meantime, is to develop larger robots that carry soldiers inside them. Miniaturizing the motors, computing, sensors, and so forth is already done, so use it and perfect it while the numbercrunching improves. Work on just the locomotion, for example, and focus on numbercrunching locomotive control systems that have already been debugged by evolution. When the computing power matures to the point that machine "awareness" and vision are feasible, put it into the robot and take the soldier out. Menawhile, serious computing power will still be needed to make the robot respond smoothly to the soldier's commands, and that in itself will advance immensely the technology needed to field the objective unmanned versions. Heinlein's protagonist in Starship troopers described "feedback loops" to guide the powered armor. Feedback loops aren't fast enough.
Meanwhile, other DoD projects seek to armor a soldier to create some kind of Frankenstein---not genetically modified, just a stronger and harder human-shaped platform, like Ripley in the Caterpillar loader in Aliens. The problem there is that the human shape is not optimized for strength or speed, but for use of the forelimbs for grasping instead of locomotion, and gaining height for distance vision. We're on our hind legs instead of all-fours not because it's inherently stronger or faster. If you want stronger/faster/carry-more-weight, you'll have to give back some of the bipedal compromise.
For example, the allosaurus weighed about 3 tons, was about 5 meters from tooth to tail, and could move at a burst of about 30 kilometers per hour, regular stride at 15. It won't keep up with an M1A1, or even a HWMMV, but it's not supposed to. And it will prevail in terrain or among obstacles that get these other two platforms killed. So borrow the blueprints.
Merge these two initiatives, the battle robot and the powered-armored soldier, making sensible tradeoffs. Get the first iteration into the field and tweak it while the computing power catches up.
- Set aside about 200 kilos for a human operator and climate control for him, then budget:
- 350 kg for frame and joints 500 kg for scales: elastomer armor sheating with ceramic hard plates that overlap so the "skin" flexes as the lizard moves, and maybe a titanium tub for the human operator;
- 500 kg for multiple small powerplants to provide pneumatic and hydraulic force to operate "muscles";
- 300 kg for the muscles and lines to deliver force to them, and to radiate waste heat from the working fluids;
- 200 kg for fuel
- 100 kg for communications, vision, and sensors;
- remaining weight for payload and additional fuel.
The operator sits like a cyclist in a close-fitting compartment centered inside the lizard's hips. His legs extend into the lizard's legs. The lizard's head puppets the operator's head and neck movements; its legs move as the operator's legs move. The tail is animated to keep the lizard balanced whether it's in a dead run, or turning, or jumping, and it's where fuel is kept and hydraulic fluid is cooled off. The first numbercrunching problem to solve is animating the tail to balance the rest of the lizard's body while it runs, turns, corners, jumps, ducks, and cranes.
We will have a platform that could go where only infantrymen could go today, but carrying weapons that infantrymen cannot use on the move. It could clear obstacles that are death traps for infantry today, specifically those found in MOUT.
{salespitch}
Colonel, got your fire team pinned down in a parking lot by snipers on the roof? Two lizards can run in to offer cover fire and escort them out.
Need to flush a squad out of a warehouse? Two teams of three lizards will fit through a loading dock door, split up and manuever inside. They might even be able to ride a freight elevator.
Want to interdict a supply route? A Chinook full of lizards can catch the column from behind, trash it, and run away to board the flight home.
The supply route is on canoes across a swamp? This lizard can move through water or mud a meter deep, and still shoot and salute. And it can hide with only its "eyes" above water, waiting for the boats to slip nearby.
Sarin on the battlefield? With the right climate-control package, the human inside works in shirtsleeves. Bio or chemical contamination will not affect the lizard's speed or manueverability. If the operator is unhorsed, he pulls his chem gear on before climbing out, and he's in no worse shape than an armor crewman on foot.
{/salespitch}
Sure a tank round or even an RPG will take it out. Train the riders like we train our Abrams tankers and they'll be fine. Fire on the move, and move constantly. And have the sense not to take on tanks if you're not a tank.
That's the first generation. When and if the sensor-integration problem is solved, remove the human, push the size to 3 meters nose-to-tail and 750 kilos weight, and kick the land speed up to 50 kph. Then you're delivering Jurassic Park IV to the DoD. Ride the freight elevator? Sheeeee-it. It could take the stairs.
Teach these lizards to hunt in packs, and always employ them in packs, because machine vision will benefit from having more eyes. They'll beam video to each other so all of them will "see" more than any one of them alone.
We offer this concept merely as a patriotic duty. We ask only that two be set aside for an occasional ride by Emergent Behavior and myself (ask 'Merge how much he likes motorcycles). We'll bring them back gassed up and washed off. Promise.
20030902
Packing on private property
One of the thorny issues we struggle with in our examination of lawfully-regulated concealed carry of a weapon is what happens when the person carrying crosses some boundary between public property and private.
As a libertarian, I would agree as a matter of course that the owner of the private property has a right to decide whether to allow other persons to carry concealed on his property. That boundary blurs, though, when the private property happens to be a business open to the public, such as a video rental, grocer, department store, and so forth.
There's no expectation that the property owner will know each person, even a significant fraction of the people entering the property. And the owner per se is very likely a body of shareholders spread across the United States. I can't call it private property for the purpose of delineating who's allowed on the property, and whose presence armed or unarmed constitutes trespass.
Many state with licensed shall-issue concealed carry address this problem by requiring those places that want to exclude CCW to post a notice at each entrance. At least one state, hoping to reduce the number of businesses who would post such notices, specified the signage so it is big enough, and obnoxious enough, that few businesses would go to the trouble.
The gun-nut's wet dream is a civil suit against a business who posts, making the business jointly responsible for any injury or death suffered by a person who would have carried but didn't because the business told him or her not to. This approach leaves me cold, of course, because somebody is going to have to suffer an attack for the suit to go forward.
I propose instead the Courthouse approach. Courthouses and other government buildings are required in many States to provide secure storage for weapons.
Your video rental outlet doesn't want CCW on premises? OK fine, where's the locker? State law says you need one locker, 8 by 8 by 14 inches, for each 200 square feet of store space, and it has to be accessible to both the entrance and exit doors. You may charge a deposit for the locker key of no more than ten cents. A Target could handle it, piece of cake, because of how their doors are arranged.
One of the thorny issues we struggle with in our examination of lawfully-regulated concealed carry of a weapon is what happens when the person carrying crosses some boundary between public property and private.
As a libertarian, I would agree as a matter of course that the owner of the private property has a right to decide whether to allow other persons to carry concealed on his property. That boundary blurs, though, when the private property happens to be a business open to the public, such as a video rental, grocer, department store, and so forth.
There's no expectation that the property owner will know each person, even a significant fraction of the people entering the property. And the owner per se is very likely a body of shareholders spread across the United States. I can't call it private property for the purpose of delineating who's allowed on the property, and whose presence armed or unarmed constitutes trespass.
Many state with licensed shall-issue concealed carry address this problem by requiring those places that want to exclude CCW to post a notice at each entrance. At least one state, hoping to reduce the number of businesses who would post such notices, specified the signage so it is big enough, and obnoxious enough, that few businesses would go to the trouble.
The gun-nut's wet dream is a civil suit against a business who posts, making the business jointly responsible for any injury or death suffered by a person who would have carried but didn't because the business told him or her not to. This approach leaves me cold, of course, because somebody is going to have to suffer an attack for the suit to go forward.
I propose instead the Courthouse approach. Courthouses and other government buildings are required in many States to provide secure storage for weapons.
Your video rental outlet doesn't want CCW on premises? OK fine, where's the locker? State law says you need one locker, 8 by 8 by 14 inches, for each 200 square feet of store space, and it has to be accessible to both the entrance and exit doors. You may charge a deposit for the locker key of no more than ten cents. A Target could handle it, piece of cake, because of how their doors are arranged.
20030831
Another try at the Pinnacle
Firstborn took another climb at the REI pinnacle this weekend, getting a good two meters off the floor before chickening out and being lowered by the belayer. Middlechild gave it a shot too, sorry no pictures.
20030830
An idea of mine stolen yet again
Date Patrol is coming to TLC. I wouldn't have noticed it except that Barbaloot enjoys watching Trading Spaces, hosted by Paige Davis, and, well, she's hot. So I was half-watching Paige---er, Trading Spaces with her, and what did they announce but the continuing theft of another of my ideas.
Anyway, if dating is an acquired skill set clearly some will acquire it better than others, and some will never get it without some formal coaching. TLC Network agrees with me, at least enough to give it a try as oxymoronic "reality television." It will not carry the baggage of a school operated by a distillery or a university.
To the show's producers' credit, it appears they will be examining and finishing "her" skills as well. That will make the show more interesting to us guys. But a pitfall awaits: the date arranged between the two of them is far less likely to fail, and will offer much less educational value to its viewers, because the finishing teachers will be unconsciously guiding him and her together. That does not occur in the real world. Even arranged marriages are put together by people who couldn't give a rat's *ss whether he can strike up any chemistry with her.
A better test will come when the poor yub tries these newly-acquired skills on someone randomly chosen from the same pool that he would have chosen from if the TLC cameras had never shown up. But by then the cameras will be gone, and countless other poor yubs will not have the benefit of learning from his mistakes. And there will be mistakes.
Good luck. It's a jungle out there.
Date Patrol is coming to TLC. I wouldn't have noticed it except that Barbaloot enjoys watching Trading Spaces, hosted by Paige Davis, and, well,
Anyway, if dating is an acquired skill set clearly some will acquire it better than others, and some will never get it without some formal coaching. TLC Network agrees with me, at least enough to give it a try as oxymoronic "reality television." It will not carry the baggage of a school operated by a distillery or a university.
To the show's producers' credit, it appears they will be examining and finishing "her" skills as well. That will make the show more interesting to us guys. But a pitfall awaits: the date arranged between the two of them is far less likely to fail, and will offer much less educational value to its viewers, because the finishing teachers will be unconsciously guiding him and her together. That does not occur in the real world. Even arranged marriages are put together by people who couldn't give a rat's *ss whether he can strike up any chemistry with her.
A better test will come when the poor yub tries these newly-acquired skills on someone randomly chosen from the same pool that he would have chosen from if the TLC cameras had never shown up. But by then the cameras will be gone, and countless other poor yubs will not have the benefit of learning from his mistakes. And there will be mistakes.
Good luck. It's a jungle out there.
One in the oven
The sonogram below is of our next child, at 17 weeks gestation.
We've withheld announcement until now because we've lost fetuses in the first trimester, even later, several times before; the odds of full delivery on this tadpole are pretty good now. Even though Barbaloot is now 40 years old.
Names have been chosen, both pink and blue, and we prefer to find out which at birth. "Accident" was peremptorily rejected.
We've withheld announcement until now because we've lost fetuses in the first trimester, even later, several times before; the odds of full delivery on this tadpole are pretty good now. Even though Barbaloot is now 40 years old.
Names have been chosen, both pink and blue, and we prefer to find out which at birth. "Accident" was peremptorily rejected.
Upgrade season
We are dropping our AT&T mobiles, and switching to Verizons. Moving our long-distance calling to the mobiles and saving ten bucks a month in the bargain.
Update: mtpolitics is going farther down this route, contemplating the dropping of land-lines altogther.
We've noticed that the Verizon phone works very poorly on the first floor of our house, but OK upstairs, so going long-distance is still a player; it also works at the church, so Barbaloot will get calls from the sitter (or me) on Thursday night choir practice. I've noticed that mine pukes directly beneath the lone rural tower here in Undisclosed Remote Location. Cadre says, "they all suck here."
We are dropping our AT&T mobiles, and switching to Verizons. Moving our long-distance calling to the mobiles and saving ten bucks a month in the bargain.
Update: mtpolitics is going farther down this route, contemplating the dropping of land-lines altogther.
We've noticed that the Verizon phone works very poorly on the first floor of our house, but OK upstairs, so going long-distance is still a player; it also works at the church, so Barbaloot will get calls from the sitter (or me) on Thursday night choir practice. I've noticed that mine pukes directly beneath the lone rural tower here in Undisclosed Remote Location. Cadre says, "they all suck here."
20030824
We need you to do something
The organization that is coordinating pressure on the TSA to train pilots to be armed is staging simultaneous press conferences at several major airports. I need you to go to their site, and if you live near one of the airports, get your ass over there on the proper date and time. Bring some sammiches for the pilots.
Another blogger and I differ, respectfully, about the wisdom of armed pilots (versus armed passengers). I truly believe that if we can achieve a critical mass of armed pilots, we can turn a corner with public opinion about concealed carry by ordinary citizens, both on the ground and eventually in the air.
I doubt that armed passengers can be a reality before Earthbound citizens can go discreetly armed. And I believe that Earthbound permit-free, or "Vermont-style" concealed carry can spread to most of the US until we penetrate those few holdouts like New York state and California with "shall-issue."
The organization that is coordinating pressure on the TSA to train pilots to be armed is staging simultaneous press conferences at several major airports. I need you to go to their site, and if you live near one of the airports, get your ass over there on the proper date and time. Bring some sammiches for the pilots.
Another blogger and I differ, respectfully, about the wisdom of armed pilots (versus armed passengers). I truly believe that if we can achieve a critical mass of armed pilots, we can turn a corner with public opinion about concealed carry by ordinary citizens, both on the ground and eventually in the air.
I doubt that armed passengers can be a reality before Earthbound citizens can go discreetly armed. And I believe that Earthbound permit-free, or "Vermont-style" concealed carry can spread to most of the US until we penetrate those few holdouts like New York state and California with "shall-issue."
20030823
Swen was talking about this one . . .
in a post here, describing it as the Colt IMP.
Bushmaster commercialized it briefly as the ARM Pistol. It is a bullpup design that rotates the whole weapon, minus the grip, about the barrel, so when fired right-handed it ejects to the right; fired left-handed, it ejects to the left, either way, it threw empties away from the shooter's body. It fired the full five-five-six from AR15 magazines. As the photo suggests, it borrowed many other parts as well from the AR15. Not so long ago, Bushmaster's catalog listed some few parts left for it, their website today does not.
When I was ready to get one in the pre-'94 AW Ban days, I had the three-hundred or so dollars that Shotgun News said the distributors wanted, and a dealer ready to order it for me with his nominal cut, but he could find none. I got a 9mm MAC-11 instead, and promptly regretted it.
Because the grip, with its trigger, moves with respect to the rest of the weapon and is also dislocated, so to speak, well forward of where it usually is put, it is difficult to make the trigger crisp. Maybe a solenoid affair can be made. Or hydraulics?
in a post here, describing it as the Colt IMP.
Bushmaster commercialized it briefly as the ARM Pistol. It is a bullpup design that rotates the whole weapon, minus the grip, about the barrel, so when fired right-handed it ejects to the right; fired left-handed, it ejects to the left, either way, it threw empties away from the shooter's body. It fired the full five-five-six from AR15 magazines. As the photo suggests, it borrowed many other parts as well from the AR15. Not so long ago, Bushmaster's catalog listed some few parts left for it, their website today does not.
When I was ready to get one in the pre-'94 AW Ban days, I had the three-hundred or so dollars that Shotgun News said the distributors wanted, and a dealer ready to order it for me with his nominal cut, but he could find none. I got a 9mm MAC-11 instead, and promptly regretted it.
Because the grip, with its trigger, moves with respect to the rest of the weapon and is also dislocated, so to speak, well forward of where it usually is put, it is difficult to make the trigger crisp. Maybe a solenoid affair can be made. Or hydraulics?
Verse of the day
Courtesy of The Military Series of the Declaration of Jihad.
The hearts of freemen are the tombs of secrets.
Courtesy of The Military Series of the Declaration of Jihad.
Land of a Thousand Pricks?
I drove my partner, Advon, to the MSP airport today. He goes home, I stay at Undisclosed Remote Location to roll up all of the workshop results and insert them into a new scenario for Cadre.
Took a delay en-route to the Mall of the Americas. While trying to merge with traffic to get into the West parking garage, two vehicles, not one but two, would not allow me to merge.
Side note on Mall of the Americas: it would be phenomenal if every store were something different. But there were at least three Victoria's Secret stores, for example, on separate levels. And nowhere for me to buy a bigger HD for the Clandestine Mobile Media Access Platform.
While leaving aforementioned huge repetitive Mall, another prick didn't realize that I was on the on-ramp, accelerating to highway speed, and that he should either accelerate so I could merge behind him, or decelerate so I could enter ahead of him, or change lanes so it would not matter.
I've driven this stretch of I-494 before; I used to report to headquarters of a beeg telecom company in Minnetonka. I just don't recall idiots on the road, though.
Please note, many of my best friends are from Minnesota. But a thousand pricks can go a long long way towards ruining it.
I drove my partner, Advon, to the MSP airport today. He goes home, I stay at Undisclosed Remote Location to roll up all of the workshop results and insert them into a new scenario for Cadre.
Took a delay en-route to the Mall of the Americas. While trying to merge with traffic to get into the West parking garage, two vehicles, not one but two, would not allow me to merge.
Side note on Mall of the Americas: it would be phenomenal if every store were something different. But there were at least three Victoria's Secret stores, for example, on separate levels. And nowhere for me to buy a bigger HD for the Clandestine Mobile Media Access Platform.
While leaving aforementioned huge repetitive Mall, another prick didn't realize that I was on the on-ramp, accelerating to highway speed, and that he should either accelerate so I could merge behind him, or decelerate so I could enter ahead of him, or change lanes so it would not matter.
I've driven this stretch of I-494 before; I used to report to headquarters of a beeg telecom company in Minnetonka. I just don't recall idiots on the road, though.
Please note, many of my best friends are from Minnesota. But a thousand pricks can go a long long way towards ruining it.
20030819
Guardbumming update
Our present undisclosed remote location is 15TYU20136769; we're here working with Cadre, to debug new USAF doctrine on how to operate an airbase after it has been attacked. Interesting work, with some of the best people in the business.
Our present undisclosed remote location is 15TYU20136769; we're here working with Cadre, to debug new USAF doctrine on how to operate an airbase after it has been attacked. Interesting work, with some of the best people in the business.
20030815
Well, Mister President, it's the Bees and Spiders again! They stole my food stamps and sol'em to the Rats!
I'm surely not the first blogger to observe this, but: deregulation is being blamed for the capital-w-worst capital-b-blackout in US capital-h-history, or as Scott Chaffin directs, the Great Northeastern Blackout of Ought-Three. At least I'm the first to use a Firesign Theater line as the title for it. I hope it's apropos.
Bush-adorers: watch how he handles this one. Blue-ribbon committee? Thorough inquiry? Donk-apologists: watch how your party's leaders try an En-run around the facts. Is this a tar-brush to apply to the GOP?
FoxNews, to their credit, hosted a talking head from Cato today, explaining that if there's a problem with deregulation behind this blackout, it's one of not having enough deregulation. Without the freedom of prices to reconcile supply with demand, nobody has the incentive to build and maintain generation capacity within his own market, and relies more heavily on drawing power from neighbors (across regulatory boundaries) during peaks. There's too much source-sharing (transmission) among markets.
The technical cause of the blackout will be ascertained quickly, probably before this post is even timestamped. It may indeed be a relay the size of Glenn Reynolds's fist, or a serial cable the diameter of Mr. Untel's urethra. Whatever.
The solution, the measure or set of measures that keeps this from happening again, is not technical but economic and political. It will not be found by any of the parties holding the power necessary to put it in place, because solving it does not deliver benefits to those parties. "Paging, uh . . . the Usual Suspects. Usual Suspects, please meet your party at the Committee Hearing in 2123 Rayburn."
Our Macs and dual-boot Linux/Windows boxes are on UPSes, I have five gallons of bitters to rack, and we're celebrating my wife's 40th birthday tomorrow. Have a wonderful weekend, be back Monday from Undisclosed Remote Location. Relax and have a homebrew.
I'm surely not the first blogger to observe this, but: deregulation is being blamed for the capital-w-worst capital-b-blackout in US capital-h-history, or as Scott Chaffin directs, the Great Northeastern Blackout of Ought-Three. At least I'm the first to use a Firesign Theater line as the title for it. I hope it's apropos.
Bush-adorers: watch how he handles this one. Blue-ribbon committee? Thorough inquiry? Donk-apologists: watch how your party's leaders try an En-run around the facts. Is this a tar-brush to apply to the GOP?
FoxNews, to their credit, hosted a talking head from Cato today, explaining that if there's a problem with deregulation behind this blackout, it's one of not having enough deregulation. Without the freedom of prices to reconcile supply with demand, nobody has the incentive to build and maintain generation capacity within his own market, and relies more heavily on drawing power from neighbors (across regulatory boundaries) during peaks. There's too much source-sharing (transmission) among markets.
The technical cause of the blackout will be ascertained quickly, probably before this post is even timestamped. It may indeed be a relay the size of Glenn Reynolds's fist, or a serial cable the diameter of Mr. Untel's urethra. Whatever.
The solution, the measure or set of measures that keeps this from happening again, is not technical but economic and political. It will not be found by any of the parties holding the power necessary to put it in place, because solving it does not deliver benefits to those parties. "Paging, uh . . . the Usual Suspects. Usual Suspects, please meet your party at the Committee Hearing in 2123 Rayburn."
Our Macs and dual-boot Linux/Windows boxes are on UPSes, I have five gallons of bitters to rack, and we're celebrating my wife's 40th birthday tomorrow. Have a wonderful weekend, be back Monday from Undisclosed Remote Location. Relax and have a homebrew.
Quote of the day
From e-Claire.
There are 135 candidates for Gov[ernor of California]. I'm not sure I want to be governed that badly.
20030814
I guess they don't like it
The new USAF tiger-stripe utility uniform is thoroughly dissed at Sgt Stryker, and mildly ridiculed there as well.
I admit, changing to new AF-unique camouflage uniforms is sending good money after bad---I need replacements for the Scope Shield radio and PSN-11, for example. If the AF wants a distinctive look in a uniform, go back to khakis, and save the BDUs and DCUs for bases and climates where they make sense. But as other commenters at Stryker have noted, USAF seems to have already decided on a new uniform, and seeks user comments just to cement the decision. So we might as wellcomplain abouttry to add some functionality to the uniform they've already committed themselves to.
Pity if I'm just hip-shooting. I already wear BDUs, and I don't need to wear the tiger-stripes or work next to someone who does, to guess at how they will or won't work, and what should be improved about them. But then I'm a proponent of bringing back warrant officers, having worked for a few of them. So you can take my suggestions with more than the usual dose of salt:
Pin-on rank insignia, in a pattern distinguishable at very short distances from that of officers.
Cargo pockets that will hold an LMR comfortably.
Buttons arranged not to snag on camouflage netting.
A pattern other than Solar-Absorption-Maximized Black (that goes for the T-shirts too).
The new USAF tiger-stripe utility uniform is thoroughly dissed at Sgt Stryker, and mildly ridiculed there as well.
I admit, changing to new AF-unique camouflage uniforms is sending good money after bad---I need replacements for the Scope Shield radio and PSN-11, for example. If the AF wants a distinctive look in a uniform, go back to khakis, and save the BDUs and DCUs for bases and climates where they make sense. But as other commenters at Stryker have noted, USAF seems to have already decided on a new uniform, and seeks user comments just to cement the decision. So we might as well
Pity if I'm just hip-shooting. I already wear BDUs, and I don't need to wear the tiger-stripes or work next to someone who does, to guess at how they will or won't work, and what should be improved about them. But then I'm a proponent of bringing back warrant officers, having worked for a few of them. So you can take my suggestions with more than the usual dose of salt:
Pin-on rank insignia, in a pattern distinguishable at very short distances from that of officers.
Cargo pockets that will hold an LMR comfortably.
Buttons arranged not to snag on camouflage netting.
A pattern other than Solar-Absorption-Maximized Black (that goes for the T-shirts too).
The TIC awareness of premature death by congestive heart failure . . .
encourages me to run. A good 28 to 32 minutes, four times a week, over a course that gradually expands through my neighborhood.
This course takes me past a backyard fence on which grows a vine with deep green leaves, and large, soft-green conical flowers. Could it be?
Yes. Hop flowers. Charlie Papazian describes them in the Complete Joy of Homebrewing as developing tiny yellow capsules of lupulin at the base of each petal as the flowers ripen, from mid-August into September. Boy and I walked there today and popped a flower off the vine, and found the lupulin. I rubbed the flower between my palms and smelled it. It's the real stuff.
Homebrew: just what I need to reduce my triglycerides.
This course takes me past a backyard fence on which grows a vine with deep green leaves, and large, soft-green conical flowers. Could it be?
Yes. Hop flowers. Charlie Papazian describes them in the Complete Joy of Homebrewing as developing tiny yellow capsules of lupulin at the base of each petal as the flowers ripen, from mid-August into September. Boy and I walked there today and popped a flower off the vine, and found the lupulin. I rubbed the flower between my palms and smelled it. It's the real stuff.
Homebrew: just what I need to reduce my triglycerides.
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