Risk Quotient

A Persian proverb declares there are four kinds of people:

He who knows not and knows not that he knows not is a fool – shun him.
He who knows not and knows that he knows not is a child – teach him.
He who knows and knows not that he knows is asleep – wake him.
He who knows and knows that he knows is wise – follow him.

Somebody actually created a test to measure where you are on this proverbial scale. In other words, the test doesn’t measure what you know; it measures the validity of your certainty about what you think you know. I took the free test and scored 73, which puts me at line 3: asleep. That sounds about right, too: asleep at the switch. That’s me. Excuse me while I move to the sofa.

You can find the test at http://projectionpoint.com/.

Hugo

I saw the movie Hugo. It’s a nice family movie, set in 1930s Paris, and beautifully directed by Martin Scorsese. It's been called a children's movie, but most adults will love this movie, too. It’s about an orphan boy named Hugo (Asa Butterfield) who lives in the walls of a train station, a young girl named Isabelle (Chloë Grace Moretz) who befriends him, and a mysterious key that connects their lives. Ben Kingsley acts the part of the girl’s godfather, Georges Méliès.

The film is historical fiction; it mixes fiction with actual people and events. Georges Méliès was a real person and a pioneer in silent movies, and events that happened to him in the film really happened to him. Portions of his films are shown in Hugo. Clearly, Scorsese wants to reacquaint audiences with this early filmmaker and his work.

Asa Butterfield is a talented young actor. He should have a bright future in films. And with roles as diverse as Mindy Macready (Hit Girl) in Kick-Ass and Abby in Let Me In, the versatile Chloë Moretz is the Natalie Portman of her generation.

Here's the NY Times review. No guns, no shootouts, no car chases. Just a gentle, lovingly made film. There’s one scene that will look familiar if you saw my blog post from last December. I saw Hugo in 2D. I haven’t seen any recent 3D movies in 3D. It just seems gimmicky.

Random Photos

Not much writing tonight … just some photos from my computer. Most were taken in, around, or near my home. All photos were taken with a $99 point-and-shoot camera. No special lenses were used. In fact, the factory lens is not removable.

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Many years ago, I bought this plate in the San Francisco airport and gave it to my parents. They hung it on a living room wall. After they had both passed on, I found myself owning it again. It’s tourist kitsch but I like it. (Click image for a larger view.)

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You’re supposed to have fruit every day. Brandy is made from wine, which is made from grapes, which are a fruit. So there.

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Angles.

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Salmon fillet and veggies.

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Halloween in the park across the street. After sundown it got crazy. The giraffes were out of control.

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Thanksgiving. Homemade cranberry pie.

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Remember when kerosene was so cheap people burned it to stay warm?

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The biggest moon. Ever. Remember, cheap point-and-shoot camera.

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Pansies. Not to be confused with posies. Which is a band. Which are a band?

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This is a purple, uh, a lavender … a lavender … dang it, I used to know this.

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I know what some of you are thinking: a strawberry is neither straw nor berry. Keep up that kind of thinking and soon you’ll be telling me a peanut is neither pea nor nut. It’s a slippery slope. Where does the insanity end?

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Afternoon sunshine on oak floor.

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The 3 objects above are about the same size.

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My kitchen window.

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“Can With Leaky Valve.” It just looked cool in the morning sunlight.

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Maple leaf on oak floor.

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Three geese go into a bar. The first goose says to the bartender …

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Another Earth

I recently watched a movie called “Another Earth”. The interesting thing about it, to me, was how it came to be made.

Brit Marling, who played the movie’s starring role, graduated from Georgetown University with a degree in economics. She was offered a job with Goldman Sachs but decided, instead, to move to Los Angeles and pursue a job in the film industry. After a couple of years, during which she was offered roles such as “the cute blonde in horror movies”, she decided the best way to get a decent role in a movie was to write the movie herself. So she learned how to write movie scripts. Then she wrote two movie scripts simultaneously, one in the mornings and one in the afternoons. And that is how Another Earth and Sound of My Voice came to be written and ultimately made. (Brit co-wrote each film with the film’s director.) Both movies premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2011. Both movies were generally liked by the critics.

Here’s how Brit puts it: “How terrifying to surrender your life to being chosen all the time. Having to be chosen and re-chosen. Writing so that I can act became a way of having not more control over my future but not having to wait for permission. You can choose yourself. Hmm, who should play this part? I nominate me!”

There’s something to admire in being able to “find a way” to get it done.

Dinner

For you readers who, like me, cook your own meals (see previous post: “Lunch”), here’s an easy dish you can try. Not as easy as opening a jar of peanut butter, but fairly easy. You’ll need a wok to cook this dish, although a large frying pan might work if you modify the recipe to make the volume of food smaller.

I was strolling the grocery aisle at Walmart a few days ago and saw a package of “Johnsonville Chicken Sausage with Monterey Jack Cheese and chipotle peppers”. That’s a mouthful to say, but they sure looked good. The package looks like this:

They’re fully cooked and their taste reminded me of Hillshire Farm Turkey Kielbasa, only (in my opinion) better. Although, I think I’d prefer the kielbasa if I planned to eat it with mustard and sauerkraut.

Tonight I got out my wok and I stir-fried yellow squash, red Bell pepper, and white onion. I toasted garlic and ginger in peanut oil before adding the veggies to the wok. I also added red pepper flakes, a little soy sauce, salt, and fresh ground pepper. After the veggies were almost done, I added the four (cooked) sausages which I had already cut into slices.

I’m not a cook and I just winged the recipe (no pun intended). It turned out very tasty. The Johnsonville website has more recipes, including this kabob:

Lunch

Sometimes it comes in a jar.

Lynn & Riley

Today is the last of the 70 degree days, at least for a while, so I took a stroll around the ‘hood just to be outside in the nice air. I had just gotten back from my walk when I encountered two new neighbors, Lynn and her Labradoodle named Riley.

Riley is from Australia. He has a number tattooed inside his ear, which is an Australian thing. Lynn said that in Australia, dogs are tattooed inside the ear and are given a microchip (in case they lose the ear, I suppose) before they leave the country.

Labradoodles are a hybrid, not a breed. Therefore their characteristics can vary from dog to dog. They are often used as guide dogs or service dogs. Riley is a therapy dog. Lynn and Riley visit an elderly home twice a month and the old people really enjoy seeing him and petting him. It’s probably a mutual thing.

I petted Riley but he seemed completely unaware I was there. I suppose being around people so much in his therapy dog career has made it impossible for him to get too excited about meeting one more person. But, welcome to the neighborhood, Lynn and Riley.

 

(After looking at these photos, I think it’s possible that the reason Riley is oblivious to me is because he can’t see me.)

Thanksgiving

This is the week when turkeys all over America must be asking themselves, “Why me? Why wasn’t I born an armadillo? Millions of armadillos are not eaten every November.”

It’s Thanksgiving Day. Again. I awaken in utter darkness and lie still for a long while until I’m sure I won’t be getting back to sleep. Then I look at the digital clock beside my bed and see it’s 4 AM. I went to bed late, so waking at 4 AM is not good. The hours pass until at last darkness gives way to a predawn glow. I get out of bed and move to the living room sofa to lie down. I’m thinking maybe I can fall asleep for an hour or two, but there is no more sleep for me. This is so typical.

I get up from the sofa and sit down at the computer. I see a friend is online and we chat for a while. Then I fix breakfast. After breakfast, I sit at the computer again and tinker with my website design. Not this website … my personal website. Around 10 AM my neighbor Sally knocks on my door. She wants her ice cream, which for mysterious reasons is in my freezer. Then she leaves to go to her mother’s house.

At 11 AM I drive to Walmart. I thought most people would be traveling or preparing to eat at this time of day. But Walmart is surprisingly busy, considering the day. (But not as busy as it will be tomorrow.) I pick up some food items, including a frozen pizza. Pizza will be my lunch. No turkeys will die to feed me. A pepperoni had to die, but it was a tiny one, and probably deformed anyway.

Back home I nuke the pizza in the microwave oven and enhance it with a sprinkle of red pepper flakes. It tastes hot, salty, and greasy, my three favorite flavors. But according to a recent decision by Congress, I’ve just eaten two servings of veggies. I decide members of Congress must know what they’re talking about; after all, they’re in Congress and I’m not. So I pat myself on the back for choosing to eat a healthy meal. For a moment, I wonder how many members of Congress will follow their own Congressional thinking and have pizza with their turkey.

Around half past noon, my neighbor Kim phones me. She’s on a rant involving her mother and corn pudding. Talking is not required on my part. After the corn pudding rant, she switches topics and tells me her ex is trying to gaslight her, and a new rant begins. I listen to her for a long while, throwing in the occasional, socially mandated, “uh-huh”, “uh-oh”, and “huh!” to demonstrate that I’m still awake. After an hour, I remember that I’m neither married to her nor dating her, and I interrupt her monologue with, “We’ve been on the phone an hour, and I have things to do.” It’s the conversational equivalent of going from sixty miles an hour to a full stop in half a second, and it gets the job done. I’m off the phone.

I would describe the rest of my Thanksgiving day, but I can see all of you out there, eyelids getting heavy, heads nodding, a little drool trickling down chins. And I’ve heard you muttering the occasional “uh-huh”, “uh-oh”, and “huh!” Well, okay then, I’m outta here. I have things to do.

Adiemus

Adiemus, the opening track on the album Songs of Sanctuary by Welsh composer Karl Jenkins, is performed here by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, with lead vocalist South Africa-born British singer Miriam Stockley.

The Sun

If our eyes could see extreme ultraviolet light, the sun might look like this to us. This is the last 48 hours of the sun's activity, recorded by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. The movie is updated every 30 minutes. Solar activity is recorded at a wavelength that allows us to see magnetic field lines (made visible by particles spiraling along them) created by disturbances on the sun's surface. Also available are movies of the sun recorded at various other wavelengths of light.


For more data go to http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/

Courtesy of NASA/SDO and the AIA, EVE, and HMI science teams.

The Juicer Lives

Sometime during the 1990s I made a short-lived attempt to eat healthy. I bought a cheap juice extractor, used it for a while, and put it away. I don’t remember why I quit using it. Probably, it was more time and trouble than I thought it was worth. But then, back in those days I probably wasn’t suffering from metabolic syndrome: spare tire, overweight, A1C bumping against the upper limit, high triglycerides and low HDL, and prehypertension. Gosh, it sounds bad when I say them all at once like that.

Recently I watched a movie titled “Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead” about an Aussie businessman who was, well, “fat, sick, and nearly dead”, and who decided to come to America and drive from coast to coast while consuming only vegetable and fruit juice for 60 days. The film was inspiring and I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to lose weight and/or get more healthy. Not that I wanted or needed to go on a juice fast for 60 days, or 30 days, or even 10 days. I just wanted to get better nourishment into my diet.

So …

Banjo Player

I was watching a PBS program on the history of the banjo when this image of an old advertisement from an 1843 newspaper flickered across my TV screen.



Hahahaha ... The much-admired banjo-player and whaaa... ?!
I think the “melodist” was Joel Sweeney, an early blackface minstrel performer. Oh, how times have changed.

Autumn

It’s here. Fall. Autumn. The autumnal equinox has arrived. The sun’s journey across the sky sinks slowly toward the south now, little by little each day. Daylight is short and getting shorter. Dawn arrives later; dusk arrives sooner. The autumn sun is still hot but losing its intensity. Brown and yellow leaves litter yards and fill gutters. The day can be warm – even hot – but the nights are chilly – or downright cold – and sometimes there’s frost in the morning.

Today is a chilly, gloomy day, a dreary day. The sky is overcast. Rain fell last night and this morning.

As I was driving home from a doctor appointment, a traffic light stopped me in front of McDonald’s. I looked through my window and saw a hawk soaring above the restaurant, no doubt lifted upward on currents of warm air from the fryalator. That fryalator stays busy. Maybe it was a French fries-lovin’ hawk basking in the rising grease fumes. It’s all part of autumn.

I haven’t turned on the heat yet. Well, that’s not quite true. I turned on the boiler for two nights when the temperature was forecast to hit freezing. I wasn’t cold; that’s not why I turned on the heat. I was a little paranoid about frozen pipes. I turned on the boiler so that the radiator pipes would warm the crawlspace. It was an abundance of caution type of thing. It’s still too early in the season to seriously worry about frozen pipes.

The overnight temperature is supposed to hit 37° F tonight; the high tomorrow is supposed to reach 55°. But in 3 or 4 days the high will be back to 70° and the low will be 50°. Autumn can’t decide whether it wants to be the end of summer or the beginning of winter.

Autumn is nature tapping you on the shoulder and whispering in your ear: “Get ready, cold whether is around the corner.” Autumn is your reminder to finish your outside jobs. Paint that board on your house; wash your car; put up weather-stripping; seal the air leaks around that window air conditioner.

Autumn is the season for outdoor parties, for sitting with friends on hay bales around a bonfire, browning hot dogs and marshmallows, talking and laughing until someone leans back too far and does a slow motion roll right off their perch, and just generally having more fun than is natural.

Autumn is the remembrance of long ago high school football games, and trees with fiery colors, and outdoor walks wearing long johns under your jeans and a hoody zipped up over your shirt. Autumn is hot chili and pumpkin pie, and switching from iced tea to hot cocoa, and herbal tea at bedtime.

Autumn is Nature pretending to die so that, come Springtime, it can be reborn, revived, resurrected. In this way, Nature speaks to us. If we listen, if we hear, we may understand something very important about our own reality.

Or perhaps it’s not important at all.

Taxi Driver Followup

This is a followup to the previous post titled “Taxi Driver”. Therefore, if you haven’t read it yet, now would be a good time. It’s short. Read it then come back here.

In the news tonight, the police have arrested a dumbass mofo for shooting that cab driver to death. Oh, did I say, “dumbass mofo”? Excuse me. I meant to say, “alleged dumbass mofo.”

The police and U.S. marshals from the Fugitive Task Force burst through his front door, and the alleged Mr. Dumbass jumped out a back window into the arms of waiting police. He’s been charged with homicide, robbery, and two counts of using a firearm in the commission of a felony.

One final note: the cab driver and his wife had adopted a baby girl just one week before the cab driver was murdered.

Taxi Driver

When I’m driving around the city, I often see a certain taxi driver. I don’t know the man but I recognize his vehicle. He drives a white taxi cab, and his taxi has two short “flagpoles”, one on each side of the vehicle near the rear window, that display New York Giants flags. It’s a very distinctive vehicle with those flags flying. It always amused me slightly to see him driving down the road; I thought he must be a real die-hard Giants fan. I saw his taxi so many times around the mall, taking people to shop, taking people home.

Last night the local TV news announced that a taxi driver had been found shot dead in his taxi cab. When they showed a picture of the taxi, it was that distinctive white taxi with two Giants flags near the rear window. Seeing it made me a little sad. I had seen that taxi so often I felt almost as if I knew that driver. So far, no one has been arrested for his murder.

The same taxi cab company lost another driver five months ago. He, too, was found shot dead in his taxi. No arrest has been made for his murder either.

The owner of the taxi cab company said that “every job has its dangers.” Maybe so, but taxi driver and convenience store clerk are two jobs that seem to be in the news a lot, and not in a good way.

Adele

This young British singer (Adele Laurie Blue Adkins) has talent. Her first album, “19”, debuted at number one and has been certified 4x platinum in the U.K. The song Set Fire To The Rain is from her second album, “21”.



The song Someone Like You is also from her second album.

Speeding Poem

This short video always makes me smile.

The Bolshoi Simulation

Pleiades, the world’s seventh fastest supercomputer, spent 6 million CPU-hours creating this simulation, called the Bolshoi Cosmological Simulation. In it, you fly through an evolving universe of dark matter. There are other Bolshoi movies here.


Bolshoi Simulation from UC-HPACC on Vimeo.

Johnny Galecki Interviews Kaley Cuoco

An actor on actor interview from 2011.

Windows 8

Microsoft’s next operating system, Windows 8, will probably be released in the latter half of 2012. But as someone who occasionally creates programs to run on Windows systems, I’m curious about it. Will my programs that run so well on XP, Vista, and 7, run just as well on Windows 8? Will I have to change the way I code programs? How does the new Metro interface work?

Daughter

I first heard this song at the end of the movie Knocked Up as the credits rolled. Interestingly, Loudon Wainright appears in the movie as Dr. Howard. Lyrics can be found here.

Rainy Day, Rainy Night

Late night/early morning. Listening/watching Gnarls Barkley on Austin City Limits.

It rained Tuesday/Tuesday night. It rained Wednesday/Wednesday night. It rained Thursday. The rain hasn’t been continuous but it’s been often and at times heavy. The remnant of tropical storm Lee is heading north through Virginia on its way to flood Pennsylvania.

We’ve had severe electrical storms. Electricity, out for over a day after Irene, has flickered several times, setting the digital clocks in the house to blinking.

I once knew a bartender named Darlene. She told me one of her favorite things was rainy days. I can understand. When I have nowhere to go, sunny days make me feel guilty; I should be outside instead of being in the house. Rain gives me a reason to be indoors guilt-free.

At the time I knew Darlene, I wasn’t “into” rainy days. Thunderstorms were my thing. I had a reason. When I was a child, my mother – never close, emotionally or otherwise – was frightened of thunderstorms. When there was a thunderstorm, she would call my brother and I into her room and the three of us would get on her bed together for the duration. Thunderstorms brought us closer, and I loved that. As an adult, thunderstorms brought back those warm feelings.

I no longer enjoy thunderstorms so much. As some would put it, “The novelty has worn off.” Lightning hit power lines near my house and burned out my garage door opener. The system is old and repair parts are not available. Lightning flipped the circuit breaker to my electric stove. Lightning can do a world of damage or just mess with you, at its own choosing.

Like Darlene, I prefer rain now.

After Irene

Day One
This is Sunday, the day after Irene came though town. I am incommunicado, having neither electricity nor cell phone service. Many tree limbs are down, as are more than a few trees. A neighbor’s privacy fence lies on the ground. A two story house a few doors away has half its metal roof peeled back, and everything in the upper floor is wet, drenched by torrential rain. An electrical transformer on a utility pole a hundred feet from my house is damaged and its oil leaks out in a steady drizzle. Traffic lights are dark and police direct traffic at major intersections. Trucks carting tree limbs are a frequent sight, as are front-end loaders picking up loads of debris.

I have a tiny battery-powered FM radio. I plug computer speakers into its headphone jack and get a very decent sound out of it. I hunt for news about the hurricane but mostly I hear “All the hits all the time.” After 28 hours, electric power is restored. I’m standing in the street talking with three neighbors when word comes that we have electricity, and everyone heads home to verify the good news. Shortly after that I am able to use my cell phone in roaming mode.

Day Two
Boring. My TV and Internet, both of which arrive via Comcast cable, are still out. I can write, but I’ll have to wait before I can publish it to my blog.

Day Three
I had a weird dream early this morning, in which I was wandering about in a labyrinth of a building. I kept passing certain features over and over, though I had no idea where I was or where I was going. I think I was trying to find an exit. There were other people in the building which I encountered as I traveled the labyrinth. It was almost like being in a video game world, where you go through doors and find rooms or hallways or stairs to other floors – sometimes the stairs were inverted, upside down, and so could not be used. But the weird thing is I knew I was dreaming. I even commented to one of my dream companions, “I hate dreams like this.” I tried my best to make myself wake up, to no avail. I thought of real-world things like the moon; I clenched my fists and struggled to awaken. But I only dreamed on.

Three days after Irene, it seems not much has changed from immediately after. Many homes and businesses have no electricity and many traffic lights are dark. Grocery store freezers are empty, their refrigerated shelves gleaming bare.

The sun is close to setting, and I decide to walk through the ‘hood. First I encounter a little blond girl about 4 years old, dressed in pink and riding a battery-powered motorized tricycle. She is accompanied by a large black man who looks like a celebrity bodyguard. The little girl rides her tricycle into an empty church parking lot. She stops and looks back at the man. “Go on. Ride around,” he tells her as he motions her forward. She rides off across the parking lot. The man flashes me a smile and waves.

On another street I encounter a couple standing on the sidewalk, looking at a cherry tree growing between the sidewalk and the street. The woman tells me she planted it 4 years earlier. It is leaning toward the street, blown over by the winds of Irene. I talk with them for a while. They are trying to decide if the tree can be saved. Doubtful. Mosquitos are biting me so I wish them good luck and walk on.

The setting sun lights up the side of Violet Bank. The Cucumber tree still stands and I don’t see any damage. It has been through many hurricanes since it was planted in the eighteenth century. I had wondered if Irene caused it damage. I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had lost limbs or even toppled over. But there it was: a survivor of yet another hurricane.

Next to the Cucumber tree, I meet a woman and her pit bull mix named Vegas. She is from this area but lived in Las Vegas for a few years. Vegas is a rescue dog and very suspicious of me. Initially, he growls a lot, but I squat near him and hold out my fist so he can sniff me. (Never stick out your fingers to a dog – too easy to bite.) Vegas warms up and allows me to pet him, except for the top of his head. If I move my hand over his head, he dodges it.

As I return home, three girls run past my house. Teeny-boppers, tweeners, or whatever they’re called now, they look to be around 12 to 14 years old. One girl wears a neon-green shoe on her right foot and an orange shoe on her left foot. Another girl wears a blue shoe on her right foot and a bright pink shoe on her left foot. (Sometimes my over-fifty neighbor walks around with different color flip-flops. Though I suspect her reason for mixing colors is not fashion related.)

The day is coming to a close. The outside air is cooling so I turn off the A/C and open windows. Through my windows, I hear the hum of distant home generators. I wonder if I’ll be able to publish this post tomorrow.

Day Four
5:28 PM: Comcast got my TV and Internet working. I’m online, therefore I exist.

Irene

9:50: AM: Irene made landfall two hours ago in eastern North Carolina. It’s been raining here in central Virginia all morning. Ten minutes ago the power flickered momentarily – not a good omen. I optimistically set the time back into the blinking digital clocks.

11:00 AM: CNN says more than 200,000 people are without electric power. It’s breezy now but not yet a strong breeze. My home has aluminum awnings which are composed of individual slats mounted to a frame. Every other slat is permanently mounted, while the in-between slats slide into place and are therefore removable. The last time a hurricane passed by, several removable slats were blown out of the awning and I had to go out into the yard, in hurricane-driven rain, and fetch them before they could blow away. Irene will be passing by tonight. I’ll cross my fingers that the awnings stay intact.

1:40 PM: The wind is gusting strong enough to litter my yard with leaf-bearing twigs from the pecan tree growing at the corner of my lot. I have the refrigerator at its coldest setting in case I lose electric power.

1:55 PM: The National Weather Service says the wind speed is 28 mph (45 kph) gusting to 43 mph (69 kph).

2:00 PM: The red ‘X’ marks my city. The center of Irene hasn’t entered Virginia yet, but my city is definitely inside the storm.

2:40 PM: My electricity just went off. It came back on after 20 seconds. When the TV came back on, MSNBC was reporting 400,000 without power in North Carolina and Virginia. Irene is still 5 or 6 hours from Virginia.

Veggie Burger

My curiosity got the best of me at the grocery store. I bought a package of veggie burgers. The burger looked so good in the picture on the box: the sesame seed bun, the veggie patty – with black grill marks – resting on a piece of lettuce and topped with tomato and onion. It looked like a restaurant burger. I had to know what it tasted like.

Back home in my kitchen, I heated a veggie burger and placed it on a hamburger bun. I added sliced onion and mustard. Then I bit into it.

Want to know what a veggie burger tastes like? It tastes like cardboard.

I’ve never tried to eat cardboard so I can’t claim to know exactly what it tastes like. But a veggie burger tastes just like what I imagine cardboard would taste like. In a word: nasty … like something that doesn’t belong in your mouth. It’s not meat-like in any way; neither in taste nor texture. It doesn’t taste like food at all. At least, not to me, and I’m not picky about food. I threw the thing into the kitchen garbage can.

Why would anyone eat one of these things? And why spend money to buy a facsimile burger when, for no cost at all, you could cut out a piece of cardboard and place it on a bun and have basically the same thing?

I bought ground beef patties today and cooked some burgers. I already had the buns.

Butternut

Here’s how things go at my house. I wanted to cook a butternut sqash I bought today. But the big Pyrex baking dish I wanted to use was sitting atop my microwave oven where it serves as incoming mail and important documents holder. I thought: what else can I use? Then I remembered the other baking dish that the squash would fit into – it was upstairs where it served as a drip-catcher when I had a leak in the roof. I didn’t need it there anymore, as I recently had a new roof installed. So I went upstairs and brought it down. It was really cruddy, so I had to take it outside and pre-clean it then bring it to the kitchen sink for a final cleaning. It’s good to go, now. But do I move my mail from the Pyrex dish to the new one and cook the squash in the Pyrex dish? Or leave the Pyrex as primary mail-catcher and cook the squash in the new dish?

It’s obvious: I don’t have enough baking dishes.

Earthquake

The house started rumbling, and I thought it was a heavy truck going down the street. The rumbling got stronger, and stronger, and stronger. What the hell? Is a huge helicopter hovering over my house? The rumbling continued to get stronger and the shaking became violent. Suddenly I knew what it was. Earthquake.

The news people say it was a magnitude 5.8 quake centered 3.7 miles below the town of Mineral, Virginia. That puts the quake’s epicenter about 50 miles from my house. The motion was up-and-down, not side-to-side. It was not a swaying motion; it was a shaking motion. It was strong enough that I was really afraid my house would suffer damage if not collapse. Then, just as it had slowly built in strength, it slowly faded away. I walked out of my house and saw my neighbors on either side walking out their front doors. I tried to call someone on my cell phone but couldn’t get through. I guess too many people are calling people.

This wasn’t the first earthquake I’ve been through but it definitely was the strongest. I hope my water and sewer pipes are ok. Time will tell. And this Saturday, Virginia is predicted to be hit by hurricane Irene. That means Virginians will have an earthquake and a hurricane in the same week. What are the odds? Really.

Vegetarian-like

I just found out that I’m a vegetarian. Or rather, a type of vegetarian. You see, I was always under the impression that vegetarians only ate plants: vegetables, fruit, grains, nuts, legumes. But apparently my impression was based on bad information.

I recently learned that a vegetarian can also eat dairy products. If you’re a vegetarian and you eat dairy, too, you’re a lacto-vegetarian. In addition to milk and cheese, you might want to add eggs to your diet. Then you’d be a lacto-ovo-vegetarian.

My friend Dave’s wife insists she is a vegetarian. In addition to dairy and eggs, she also eats poultry and fish. So that makes her a lacto-ovo-fish-fowl vegetarian. I’m like her, with the slight difference that I also eat pork and beef. I’m a type of vegetarian called lacto-ovo-fish-fowl-pork-beef vegetarian. And there happens to be a lot of us.

It’s comforting to know that when I sit down to a plate of baby-back ribs or sirloin steak, that I’m eating a healthy vegetarian meal. And what about those few people who actually eat only plants? They don’t even call themselves vegetarians any longer. Now they’re “vegans”. They did that to set themselves apart from the animal-eating vegetarians.

Who knew that steak wrapped in bacon was totally vegetarian? I love Newspeak.

What’s Up With All the Euphemisms?

I don’t drive a used car, I drive a pre-owned car. I’m not watching a TV rerun, I’m watching an encore presentation. I’m not feeling old, I’m feeling chronologically challenged. Politicians never retract a statement, they clarify their position. If your doctor advises you to have surgery, be sure to ask him or her about the odds you might experience a negative patient care outcome.

You might need out-placement if your company out-sources your job. I’m sure you’ve never been fired from a job, but perhaps you’ve been decruited or dehired because you were redundant after a skill-mix adjustment. Maybe you were given an early retirement opportunity during a personnel realignment. I was rightsized, unassigned, and selected out when my company was defunded and had to restructure, retrench, and streamline in order to rationalize the workforce and invoke a workforce imbalance correction.

Why in the world are all these euphemisms necessary? Can’t anyone just say what they mean? I would like to expound further on the subject but right now I have to talk to a man about a horse.

Clock Revisited

I went for a walk, leaving my house at 6:30 AM. The morning air was slightly cool. As I crossed an intersection, I felt and smelled a warm, moist, slightly perfumed current of air. Someone was running a clothes dryer and it wasn’t even 7 AM yet. Laundry is a chore that awaits me today. But right now, it’s too early to think about laundry.

I took my Clock program I wrote about previously and tinkered with it. Now it’s an alarm clock and it looks like this. (Well, by default it does.)

I can change how it looks. If I right-click the clock, a context menu appears which allows me to choose any color for the digits as well as a new skin. For example, blue digits and a chrome skin look like:

Clicking the “A” button brings up the alarm dialog that allows me to specify the time of day for the alarm, as well as daily, weekday, weekend, or one-time options. The alarm dialog also lets me choose a sound for the alarm. It was supposed to be a two day project but I spent three days on it. On day one, I wrote the code for the clock. A lot of that involved designing how the segments worked. On day two, I added the alarm functionality. On day three, I created a Help file and an About box, and I created the chrome skin and tweaked the graphics and debugged the code.

It was an enjoyable little project. I guess I’ll add it to my library of free software. But first I have to create a setup program that will check for and install the necessary runtime software for people who are still using Windows XP. Then I’ll upload it to my website for the world to enjoy. Or more likely, three or four people.

Late Night Meanderings

I popped an over-the-counter sleep aid pill at 8:30 PM, watched some tube while I waited for it to kick in, and went to bed around, oh, 10:30 PM. I read a Discover magazine for about 15 minutes then dropped the Discover to the floor beside the bed and turned off the light. (Strangely, my first impulse was to write “turned out” the light. Turned out. Where did that “out” come from? Perhaps it originated in an archaic phrase, “put out the lamp”, which referred to a kerosene lamp that had an actual flame that had to be extinguished – put out.)

My antihistamine-drugged brain fell asleep and I dreamed a long dream. (In my dream I was held prisoner by Homeland Security, who seemed intent on pissing me off every way they could, and which they did, and of which I made sure to let them know by pissing them off every way I could. But that’s another story.) Then I awakened in darkness. I lay in bed for a long time, a half hour or more, before I rolled over and looked at the clock. It’s glowing digits proclaimed 1:44 AM. I had slept for three hours, almost. Thank God for over-the-counter sleep aids. Where would I be without them? Probably right here, typing a blog post.

I ate way too much yesterday. I don’t know why. Wait, I remember why: I was hungry. But why was I so hungry? Don’t know. Yes, I do know. I ate a lot of carbs yesterday. Carbs always make me hungry. I ate a hamburger (hamburger bun carbs); I ate a “bacon & tomato on whole wheat” sandwich (bread carbs); I ate a couple of baked “chicken cutlets” (breading carbs) and three egg rolls (wrapper and cabbage carbs). I ate a bowl of “high fiber” cereal that was much sweeter than I would have preferred (all kinds of carbs, from the high-fructose corn syrup coating the carbohydrate flakes of cereal to the lactose in the milk). I wonder, if I ate some more carbs right now, would it help me to go to sleep?

In fact, I was reading a web page about how complex carbs eaten along with tryptophan-containing protein can calm the brain and let you sleep, and at the end of the article a reader had posted this comment:

I've been sticking to mostly vegetables lately to lose a couple pounds, but find that I don't sleep well. Last night I had a big ole honkin' bowl of spaghetti and a slice of garlic bread, and slept straight through the night. Do I have to choose between a good night's sleep and better fitting clothes? Anyone?

And another reader posted this most helpful comment in reply:

No, you don't. Sooner or later you're gonna die. Enjoy your food and drink now, 'cause you ain't eatin' or drinkin' when you're dead. "better fitting clothes"? Who gives a rat's a$$ about that? Who's lookin' at ya? Would you rather look good or feel good? I say, EAT! DRINK! BE MERRY!
P.S. That spaghetti and garlic bread sounds fantastic!

Mmmm. Spaghetti with garlic bread. Damn. Now I’m hungry again.

Binary Clock

For fun – yes, fun! – I coded a software clock that can display time in binary numbers. (My programs can get complex, so sometimes I write something simple just to unwind my brain – call it my way of doodling – and I know what you’re thinking: this guy needs to get a life. Well, to each his own.)

Below, the context menu (accessed by right-clicking the application window) shows the settings are 12 hour mode, decimal display, and display seconds.

 

Below, the clock is set to binary display with seconds off.

 

Background and text colors can be easily changed as seen below. Here, the display is set to 24 hour mode.

 

In the final picture, below, I kept 24 hour mode, changed to binary display, and turned seconds off. By chance, the time was 16:32 – both numbers being integer powers of ‘2’ and therefore represented by a ‘1’ followed by zeroes only.

Sometimes while writing a program I have to work out how to do something, and in this case I had to figure out how to convert an integer representing hours, minutes, or seconds into a textual representation of that integer expressed as a base 2 number. After some pondering, I came up with what I thought was a clever yet elegant algorithm to do that and wrapped it in a function. Here’s the result:

Private Function IntegerToBinaryString( _
                     ByVal n As Integer) As String
    'determine the largest power of 2 that is smaller
    'than the number "n"
    Dim txt As String = ""
    Dim d As Integer = n
    Dim exp As Integer = 0
    Do While d > 1
        d >>= 1
        exp += 1
    Loop
    'create a string that represents the number "n"
    'expressed as a base 2 number
    d = CInt(2 ^ exp)
    Do While d >= 1
        If n >= d Then
            txt &= "1"
            n -= d
        Else
            txt &= "0"
        End If
        d >>= 1
    Loop
    Return txt
End Function

It only converts positive integers, which is all I needed, but the conversion is fast. Give it the number 1 and it returns the text string “1”; give it the number 9 and it returns the text string “1001”; give it the number 59 and it returns the text string “111011”.

And as I patted myself on the back for creating such a cool little algorithm, I discovered that I needed only to have written this to accomplish the very same thing:

   Convert.ToString(n, 2)

A rookie mistake. A smart rookie, of course, but still, I should have known: before I try to figure out how to do something, I should first ask Google how to do it.

What’s Up With …

What’s up with food companies putting half-a-serving amounts on their products’ nutritional panels? Tuna fish cans, back in the day when they held 6 ounces, claimed to contain 2.5 servings. Does that mean I can make 2.5 servings of tuna fish salad? Does it mean I can make 2.5 tuna fish sandwiches? Who gets the half sandwich? Is the can designed to feed two adults and a small child?

My favorite buffalo chicken bites box claims to contain 3.5 servings per package. I consider it to have two servings max, one serving if you’re a teenager.

I bought a pre-made salad today that claims to contain 4.5 servings. It’s just pieces of lettuce with a sprinkle of cheese, bacon bits, and faux grilled chicken. I want to ask them, “Are you sure it’s four and a half servings? Are you sure it’s not two servings, or maybe even one serving?” How come putting lettuce in a small container makes a single 290 calorie serving, while putting the same lettuce in a larger container makes makes several 130 calorie servings? Are food companies playing games with us?

You bet they are.

Add Cart

Every two months I receive a utility bill from the City. It’s itemized: refuse, sewer, water, storm (storm water disposal), and something called “add cart”. I just look at the bill and pay it. I never knew what “add cart” meant, but it’s always $4.20. I figured it’s a fee that the City adds. Like my cell phone bill. I have a monthly charge, a tiered overage charge, a Federal Universal Service Assess Non-LD surcharge, a Virginia State Gross Receipts surcharge, a Virginia State Special Revenue surcharge, an Administrative charge, a Regulatory charge, a Virginia State 911 Tax, and a Virginia State Sales Tax. So when I see “Add Cart: $4.20”, I just pay it.

Today I got curious about it and called the Utility Department. They told me I was being billed for an additional trash can. I found out they’ve been billing me for two trash cans since 2008.

I’ve never had more than one trash can. The lady at the Utility Department told me that the number of trash cans at my house has been verified every six months. I told her that the person or persons who have been verifying two cans every six months for three years might not be doing their job. After a little wrangling, the lady said she would remove the $4.20 charge from this month’s bill and future bills.

“What about all the previous charges going back to 2008?” I asked her.

She said she couldn’t refund those charges because I had never complained about them. Seriously, that’s what she said.

I changed out of my shorts and t-shirt into more serious looking clothing, put on my Naval Special Warfare Command ball cap and drove to City Hall. I went to the Utility billing office so I could talk to the lady.

I was nice, of course. I asked her under what theory of law can the City make a mistake and overcharge someone and then get to keep the money because the person being overcharged doesn’t immediately spot the error. After all, if the bank makes a mistake and puts too much money into your account, you can’t keep the money. If the government accidentally makes your tax refund check too large, you can’t keep the money. How does the City make a mistake and call it my fault because I didn’t tell them about it?

I left City Hall with all the erroneous charges credited to my bill: one small victory for a taxpayer at City Hall.

Morning News

There was a major electrical storm here last night, so I unplugged my computer. This morning I reconnected the power and the pc acted dead ... it wouldn't boot up, the monitor stayed dark. I turned it off and on several times, unplugged it and plugged it back in, but it was no go. The internal fans ran but that was the only sign of life. Finally I turned it on its side and removed the side panel. I pondered what to do next (jiggle the cables? unplug and re-plug the connectors?) I pushed the power button one more time and this time the pc booted up normally. I think it will be ok as long as I never turn the power off again.

Being connected to the larger world once more, I began surfing the news stories. I read that a Tucson SWAT team stormed the home of an ex-Marine they suspected of being associated with smuggling drugs. They banged on the front door then broke through it. He was sitting inside holding an AR-15 (his wife and son were in the house), so the SWAT guys shot at him over 70 times, hitting him more than 20 times. They claimed he fired at them first, but an investigation determined his weapon was not fired and was never taken off the safety position. The officers found guns in his house but nothing illegal was found. An investigation concluded the actions of the SWAT team were in accordance with Arizona law and SWAT training. The officers involved in the raid were not charged with anything and all of them continue at their jobs.

But I say: if the law allows cops to break down your door, storm into your living room, and shoot you dead as you lawfully sit in your house minding your own business, then there is something seriously wrong with the law.

It’s Premium, Folks

I saw a TV ad for the Mickey D chicken club sandwich. The ad showed the crispy chicken version, although the product also comes in a grilled chicken version. It looked tasty, so when I drove past our local franchise around lunchtime, I had to duck in and buy one. Enough said. Check out the photos.

After the News

After watching the nightly news, I get the feeling that if this country were an airplane, the far left is the pilot who wants to pull the joystick back and climb steeper and steeper until the wings stall and the plane crashes, while the far right is the co-pilot who wants to push the joystick forward and dive the plane into the ground. Right now, they’re fighting over the joystick, with one pulling back on it and the other pushing forward on it. The passengers in the plane are worried. The passengers are telling the pilots to compromise and let the joystick have a middle setting. But the pilots are no-compromise guys. The pilot says the middle setting is no good because the plane won’t be climbing. The co-pilot says the middle setting is no good because the plane won’t be descending. Fortunately, the two pilots are equally strong and equally stubborn, so for the time being the airplane flies level. But, one cannot help feeling that something bad is imminent.

Money And Debt

Have you ever thought about how money gets created?

I suspect most people think the government creates money. It does not. Money is created by the Federal Reserve System, a cartel of privately-owned banks. Despite its name, it is no more a Federal agency than Federal Express.

When the Treasury Department needs money to pay the government’s bills, and if collected taxes aren’t enough, it borrows money from the Federal Reserve. In return, the Federal Reserve receives Treasury bonds of equal value. Treasury bonds are simply “IOUs”, a promise from the Treasury to repay the money to the Federal Reserve System – with interest. (All this happens with computer accounts, not pieces of paper.)

Where does the Federal Reserve System get the money to loan to the Treasury Department? It essentially writes a check on itself, creating money out of thin air. Every dollar in circulation was created as debt. If government and citizens repaid all public and private debt, there would be no money in circulation. If the federal government repaid all its debt, there would be quite a lot less money in circulation. A country’s monetary system doesn’t have to work this way, but that’s the system we have.

To avoid cycles of economic boom and bust, inflation and deflation, the Fed manages the amount of money in circulation. When the economy is growing too fast and inflation is creeping upward, the Fed shrinks the money supply (or slows its rate of growth). When the country is in a recession, the Fed boosts the money supply. Increasing the money supply helps the economy grow by reducing the cost of loans and making money easier to borrow. Boosting the money supply therefore promotes job growth. Shrinking the money supply makes loans more expensive and harder to obtain, thus causing the economy to grow more slowly (or shrink as businesses fail). Shrinking the money supply therefore promotes higher unemployment.

What happened in 2007 was a housing crash and then a banking crash. The image below shows the Fed’s R.100 chart from its 2nd quarter 2011 Flow of Funds (Z.1) report. Click the image for a larger picture. Line 1 shows the change in net worth of American families and nonprofits in billions of dollars. Prior to 2007, net worth had been growing at a rate of 5 or 6 trillion dollars per year. But in 2007, net worth grew a pitiful $22 billion. And in 2008, $12.8 trillion dollars of net worth suddenly vanished.

Remember, shrinking the money supply hurts the economy and promotes higher unemployment. That’s why the government rushed to pass a 2-year stimulus package. The idea was to get money back into the economy to replace some of the money that had vanished. (The stimulus bill was passed with no G.O.P. votes.) The problem was that the stimulus was so small relative to the amount of wealth that had disappeared that it was unlikely to help much. The stimulus did help, but it was no match for the amount of hurt that the housing/banking crash had inflicted.

Today, conservatives in Congress are trying hard to cut government spending. While this is good for the budget, it has a down side. A lot of paychecks in our economy are funded by government borrowing and spending. Cutting government spending will shrink the money supply which, in turn, will harm the still-struggling economy and curtail job growth. It all comes down to what you think is more important: the debt or jobs. Ironically, the spending cuts that hurt jobs are often made by cutting safety-net programs that were there to help people who are out of work and out of money.

Restaurant Tales

I have a lot of stories about restaurants, but my favorite stories didn’t happen to me. This first story happened to my brother Ken.

Ken goes into a KFC just before closing and orders a bucket of chicken. At the time this happened you could (and maybe still can) pay extra to get all white meat. So Ken asks for all white meat. The girl taking his order says “No, that would take all our white meat and if another customer comes in and wants white meat, we’ll have to drop another chicken [into the fryer], and we don’t want to do that so close to closing.”

Ken asks to speak to the manager. The manager comes over and, after being briefed on the situation, tells Ken the same thing. Ken can’t buy the white meat because another customer may come in and want it. So Ken leaves empty-handed and goes elsewhere for food.

The KFC had food to sell but refused to sell it because another (imaginary) customer might want it. They could have sold the chicken to Ken and told the next guy, “Sorry, we’re out.” But that would have made sense.

Another story came from my sister-in-law, Shirley. Traveling back from the beach, Shirley stops at a roadside diner. She orders dinner, which includes a choice of baked potato or potato salad. Shirley orders a baked potato. When her meal arrives, instead of the baked potato she ordered there is potato salad. The waitress explains that they are out of potatoes.

It so happens there is a pyramid of hot, foil-wrapped baked potatoes on the salad bar. Pointing to it, Shirley says, “There must be two hundred baked potatoes right there. Bring me one of those.”

And the waitress answers, “I can’t do that. Those potatoes belong to the salad bar.”

Once again, the restaurant has food the customer wants, the customer has money the restaurant wants, and you’d think there could be a simple swap that leaves everyone happy. But again, that would have made sense.

Why do I bring up these restaurant tales? Because I want to illustrate a certain kind of thinking. I call it the IBM binary mind. Yes or no. Black or white. Up or down. Good or evil. There are no shades of gray. It’s my way or the highway.

I don’t know where those restaurant workers are today, but their spirit lives on in Washington, D.C., where for many months, the name of the game has been “Let’s Not Make A Deal.” If we shoot ourselves in the foot, it will be our own damn fault. That’s what we get for voting nincompoops into office. Let’s not do that again.

The 27 Club

Amy Winehouse, singer and songwriter, is dead at age 27. Her name is the latest to be added to a list of musicians who died at age 27. So many, in fact, that it’s referred to as The 27 Club, or sometimes The Forever 27 Club, or Club 27. Amy is in good company. Brian Jones ... Jimi Hendrix ... Janis Joplin ... Jim Morrison ... Kurt Cobain ... are some of the better known members of the 27 Club. I wasn’t a fan of Amy Winehouse, but I could see she had talent. She sold millions of albums and left her mark on this world. Rest in peace, Amy.

Summer in Virginia

July and August in central Virginia bring blast-furnace days. When that blast-furnace covers other states it becomes newsworthy and people begin uttering phrases like “heat dome”. Heat dome? Is that Newspeak for heat wave? Whatever, it gets brutal. Oppressive. Dangerous. This is heat that kills people.

This morning’s heat index was at 119° F (48° C) by noon. The real air temperature reached 102° by 3 PM. That’s 102° in the shade. Add sweltering humidity so your perspiration doesn’t easily evaporate and you’ve got a recipe for heat stroke.

The temperature in my upstairs guest rooms reached 100° by afternoon. I keep the air conditioner off upstairs as there is no one living in that space. I’ll be honest; it felt much hotter than 100° up there.

Downstairs in the air conditioned living room the a/c unit struggled, running full time to hold the temperature at a balmy 80°.

The heat reminds me of a summer I spent in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. I was working my way through college and trying to save every dime, so I rented a room at an old boarding house. There was no air conditioning and my room was on the top floor under a metal roof and directly above the kitchen, which prepared dozens of meals for boarders and guests all day. “Hot” did not describe that room. It was a sauna. It was a lie-naked-on-the-bedsheets-and-sweat room. And because the house had only one bathroom for each floor, even a cool shower was often not an option. I’ll quit writing now, before people get the notion I’m complaining. Stay cool, peeps.

Heat Dome

The heat dome has arrived in central Virginia. I just checked the temperature and … oy! The heat index is 116° F at 1:55 PM – not even the hottest part of the day yet. And tomorrow is supposed to be hotter. Thank God for air conditioning. No, thank Willis Carrier for air conditioning. And thank God for Willis Carrier.

Selling Religion

I was reading an article on the World Wide Web when there came a gentle knock at my front door. I looked outside and saw two well-dressed young men at my door. I noticed they carried Bibles. Lovely. And, yawn. I haven’t talked to Bible-toters at my front door since, well, last week.

Car Inspection Day

I had my car inspected this morning. I also had them change the oil and filter. After it came back down on the lift to the garage floor, I asked the manager if the mechanic had lubed the chassis. He said "newer cars" don't have lube points. I told him my Jeep is a '95 and yes, it has lube points. So they put the Jeep back up in the air, and then they had trouble finding a grease gun that worked. Who knows if it really got lubed? I sure don’t.

The incident reminded me of the Magic Lube quick oil change shop in Roanoke where I used to take my Subaru. I took my Sube there for 10 years in a row. At every oil change they gave me a list of things they had checked ... transmission fluid level, check ... differential fluid level, check ... and so on. One day after I had put about a hundred thousand miles on the Sube, I watched the mechanic do the oil change. From the customer waiting area, I could look through a window into the garage bay. I knew they didn’t check the gearbox oil because you have to remove the spare tire (which was mounted above the engine) to get to the gearbox dipstick, and I saw that the mechanic didn’t touch the spare tire. So after the car was put back on the ground and brought around to the front of the building, I told the manager that they hadn’t checked the gearbox oil.

“Yes, we did,” was his reply.

“No, you didn’t. You have to remove the spare tire to get the dipstick out, and no one removed the spare tire.”

“You don’t have to remove the spare tire,” the manager replied. “You can get the dipstick out without doing that.”

“Show me!” I said to him.

So he raised the hood and grabbed the gearbox dipstick and tried to pull it out. He bent the dipstick this way and that way, trying to get it out from under the tire, but the dipstick would not budge. Finally he admitted defeat and told one of his minions to remove the spare tire. When he finally pulled the dipstick out of the gearbox, it was bone dry. There wasn’t a hint of oil on the dipstick. The gearbox oil didn’t go from OK to nothing in 3500 miles. Obviously, it hadn’t been checked in tens of thousands of miles. I had been paying these guys to check my engine, and each time I paid them they gave me a sheet of paper indicating that they had checked all these things. When I challenged them, they insisted that I was wrong and that they were checking my engine. And they were lying.

A final addendum to that story: after they added gearbox oil and I was on my way home, I drove the car about 100 feet before I realized something was wrong with the engine. It was running rough. I stopped and raised the hood, and I discovered that the mechanic had pulled off a vacuum hose and had not re-attached it. After I plugged the vacuum hose back onto the throttle body, the engine ran normally. But I shouldn’t have to fix my engine after I pay for an oil change.

I wish I could say that encountering a dishonest auto mechanic is rare, but my experience has shown me that encountering an honest auto mechanic is the rarity. Oh, I have stories I could tell you.

Marman Clamp

While I was cleaning the dryer vent, I had to disconnect a screw-type clamp connecting the flexible metal hose from the dryer to the round sheet-metal vent tube. It reminded me of a Marman clamp. Instantly I thought, “I should blog about the Marman clamp.”

Here’s what a Marman clamp looks like (right). It may look familiar. But here’s what you probably don’t know:

Do you remember Zeppo Marx? Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Gummo were comedians and Zeppo was the foil, the loser straight man. Zeppo (real name: Herbert) didn’t like acting and in 1933 he left the group to become a theatrical agent. Zeppo enjoyed tinkering with mechanical things and became an inventor. In 1941, Zeppo established the Marman Products Company. It made clamps and strapping devices and was involved in the war effort. It was the first company to produce the Marman clamp after its inventor showed Zeppo the device. Marman clamps have many uses; a common use is for quick disconnects for large fuel lines. They are used in spacecraft such as the Cassini orbiter now in orbit around Saturn. Marman clamps were used to hold the “Fat Man” atomic bomb inside the B-29 bomber Bockscar.

Herbert “Zeppo” Marx held three patents. Two patents name him as co-inventor of a cardiac pulse monitor. The monitor was worn like a wristwatch and would alarm if the wearer went into cardiac arrest. Truly, Zeppo was not the Zero he played in the movies.

Jetsam

In his seminal 1964 paper titled On the Einstein Podolsky Rosen Paradox, Irish physicist John Stewart Bell presented a theorem that has been called "the most profound in science". It has also been called “one of the most profound discoveries since relativity”. Certainly, it is one of the most important theorems in quantum mechanics. It is called Bell’s theorem (a.k.a. Bell’s inequality).

Let’s say you and I have a hat (upside down) on a table before us. The hat contains two marbles, a red one and a blue one. I reach into the hat and remove a marble, taking care to not look at it. You remove the other marble, also taking care to not look at it. If I have the red marble, you must have the blue marble. If I have the blue marble, you must have the red marble. This would seem to be common sense. Classical physics says that my marble is either red or blue, even though I haven’t looked at it yet to determine its color. In other words, classical physics says that reality is independent of observation. But quantum mechanics says that my marble is both red and blue until I look at it. Quantum mechanics says my marble (and yours, too) exists in a state of superposition in which it has a 50% probability of being red and a 50% probability of being blue. Observing the marble is an act of measurement. When a measurement (observation) is made of the marble, the probability for one color instantly goes to 100% while the probability for the other color goes to 0%. So I look at my marble and in that instant my red/blue marble becomes one color and in that same instant your marble becomes the other color, even if we are trillions of miles apart. Which begs the question: if your marble was, like mine, both red and blue until I looked at my marble, how did your marble know, instantly, what was happening to my marble? We don’t know how this happens but we have a name for it. It’s called quantum entanglement.

Being a reasonable and rational person you probably object to the notion that my marble (and yours) is really both red and blue until one of us looks at it. You are probably thinking it really does have one color or the other, but we don’t know which color it has until we look.

For actual marbles, you may be right. But for atomic-scale things like protons, electrons, photons, and such, it’s not so clear whether their properties exist before we measure them or if they are created by the act of measurement. John Bell’s brilliance was that he devised a way for us to experimentally determine whether reality is observer-independent on an atomic scale. His theorem makes two assumptions about our world. It assumes that reality exists independently of an observer, and it assumes that no signal can travel faster than the speed of light. Numerous experiments have tested Bell’s theorem and they all confirm this simple truth: at the atomic scale, either reality does not exist independently from an observer, or faster than light communication is possible (or both). There are good reasons why faster than light communication is impossible, so we’re left pondering this thought: at the level of atoms, particles don’t have properties until someone or something measures those properties. But that begs the question: exactly what is a measurement.

Let’s go back to the marble experiment. Suppose I close my eyes and open my hand with the marble in it and take a photo of the marble. Later I look at the photo and see the marble is blue. Does the marble become blue when I look at the photo, or did it become blue when I took the photo? Quantum mechanics doesn’t tell us.

And there’s another obvious question: how big does a particle have to be before this red/blue superposition quits happening? Quantum mechanics doesn’t tell us that, either.

So just to be clear, quantum mechanics, a body of scientific principles discovered and added to since the early twentieth century, and which has been tested and experimentally verified again and again and again, and which has become the underlying mathematical framework of many fields of physics and chemistry, including condensed matter physics, solid-state physics, atomic physics, molecular physics, computational physics, computational chemistry, quantum chemistry, particle physics, nuclear chemistry, and nuclear physics – quantum mechanics tells us the moon doesn’t exist when no one is looking at it.

If you want to jettison that thought from your brain, then go ahead and lighten the load.

Flotsam

According to an article in the Seattle Times,

“Millions of tons of debris that washed into the ocean during Japan's catastrophic earthquake and tsunami in March — everything from furniture to roofs to pieces of cars — are moving steadily toward the West Coast and raising concerns about a potential environmental headache.”

That sentence brings to my mind the memory of an incredible sight I once saw many years ago. I was driving south on I-5 through Oregon, and at Grants Pass I exited I-5 and took US-199, the Redwood Highway, west toward the coast. Highway 199 crosses part of southwestern Oregon, enters California (and Klamath National Forest) and ends at the West Coast community of Crescent City, California. Once there I got on highway 101, the Pacific Coast Highway, to continue my journey south.

The Pacific Ocean and northern California beaches were to my right. It was night but a full moon made the beaches easy to see. I drove past mile after mile of beaches that were covered with all sorts of wood debris: lumber, pilings, portions of piers, etc. The beaches were piled high and it just went on and on like that, mile after mile, for well over a hundred miles. The sheer volume of debris was very impressive.

At one point I pulled my van off the road and went down to examine some of it. The debris had been in the water for a long time. It was very light; boards felt as light as if they were made of paper, rather than the other way around. There was no substance to the wood; you could ignite it with a match. I had several hitchhikers with me that I had picked up in Oregon, and we all marveled at it. I asked a local person I encountered on the beach about it, and he said it came from Russia. He said when they have exceptionally strong storms on the east coast of Russia, debris goes into the water there and currents bring it to the west coast of the US. I don’t think it happens very often. It might even be one of those so-called hundred-year events.

And now it looks like America’s west coast is about to get another pasting of flotsam, but this time it will be Japanese flotsam – who’s to say, perhaps even some parts of a Fukushima nuclear plant. So West Coasters, if you’re out walking on the beach and you come upon a huge pile of debris, and if you see this symbol on some of it …

Then don’t dawdle. Run away.

Monitor Revival

Two years ago, my 19 inch LG flat-screen computer monitor died. I immediately went to my local hhgregg store and upgraded to a 23 inch LED/LCD widescreen monitor. It was so much better I kind of wished the old monitor had died sooner. I stashed the defunct monitor in my junk room, thinking I would fix it one day. My recent success with repairing my TV (see HDTV Action) inspired me to get off the dime and have a go at repairing the monitor.

The problem is the monitor won’t turn on unless the temperature is above 85° F. Even the power-on LED stays dark. Above 85° it works fine. I reckoned the cause had to be in the power supply and was probably more bad electrolytic capacitors.

Only seven screws hold the unit together, but after removing them the front bezel remained firmly attached to the back of the unit. It turned out they were held together by little “snaps” molded into the bezel. Using a thin screwdriver blade and my fingers, I was able to pry apart the front and the back.

	The “guts” of the monitor are shown at left. The large metal panel holds the LCD display and the CCFL (cold cathode fluorescent lamps). The small box holds the power supply and controller electronics.
	After flipping the small box over and removing a plastic panel, the power supply board is visible on the right.
	The power supply contains a half dozen electrolytic capacitors. Two of them have swelled but have not vented electrolyte. The two bad capacitors are at the bottom right and center right of the photo. One is rated 1000µF/16VDC and the other is rated 680µF/25VDC.
	I drove to Radio Shack and bought two 1000µF/35VDC electrolytic capacitors. The photo at left shows them installed in place of the bad caps. The monitor now works normally. HDTV repaired: check. Computer monitor repaired: check. Stand aside, I’m on a roll!