Born that way

It's about time.

2003-11-08T09:12:00.000-08:00

Yahoo! News - GOP Plans 'Marathon' On Judges

They should have done this long before now. Pretty much as soon as the USS Lincoln left the gulf, I'd say. Now they look like opportunists, with the primary season coming up. (Despite all the claims from bloggers on the right that the Rockefeller memo is something new, I think that things have been this way for most of my lifetime. Gasp, the shock, a political party placing their own advantage over the country's best interests?) The good news is, at least they're doing it.

That being said, I do think that W is pushing the envelope a little bit with some of these judges, but it'd be nice to see more of them get a vote in the full Senate.

(Oh, and anyone who thinks this judge smearing and filibustering stuff started with Robert Bork and it's therefore all the Democrats fault needs to look up Abe Fortas. That was before I was even born.)

This will be interesting

2003-11-08T09:02:00.000-08:00

Yahoo! News - Howard Dean to Skip Public Financing

I think this is the right decision for Dean, provided he can make it through the primary wars that are upcoming. He'll be at a bit of a disadvantage for a while when the other Democrats are picking up their campaign welfare checks. It has a big upside for him if he can still get the nomination, though.

I'm starting to think it'll take a non-political scandal to get him out of the frontrunner's seat, like Gary Hart in the 80's. All the Democrats except for Lieberman (well, and Kucinich, but I don't think it's a good thing in his case, because he's insane) have been waffling back and forth on various issues, so the fact that Dean is doing it too doesn't really hurt him. I was hoping that Joe Lieberman would make it through to the nomination, because he's probably as close to the Scoop Jackson mold as any of them, and he has argued against an instant repeal of the W tax cuts, but I don't think he's going to make it.

I wish Governor Dean luck with his decision, because I think it has a lot of potential to improve the political landscape. As it was, whoever won the nomination on the left was going to have to run a cash-poor campaign against W for several months from after he sewed up the nomination until the convention, and that would probably have been a fatal weakness. I'm a big fan of the President being in opposition to Congress, because it helps keep the country closer to the center, so I wouldn't mind seeing a decent Democrat win. I'm not sure if Dean is it, but he's certainly not the worst of the lot.

Men and women

2003-11-04T23:02:00.000-08:00

Kim du Toit went on a bit of a rant (link currently busted) about how we're turning into a bunch of wusses, and how we're effeminizing men. I think he's on to something, although he's probably exaggerating.

It also brought to mind something Steven den Beste wrote some time ago about wanting to be treated like a man, by women who like being women.

I have some thoughts about this...

Just for the sake of clarifying my viewpoint on this, a bit about how I got where I am now. I was raised a moderate Democrat in Seattle. I had a fairly sheltered upbringing, and the first time I was offered drugs was when I was 19 years old and already in college. I went to a Jesuit high school, and attended (but did not graduate from) the University of Washington before I enlisted in the Navy in the nuclear power program.

I am just about as big a geek as den Beste is. Not necessarily about all the same things, but I can talk semi-intelligently or better about just about anything you want me to. I'm pretty sure I have an edge on him in sports, but he certainly has an edge on me in military technology based on a few email conversations we've had, which is pretty funny since I'm the one who was in the service. It's probably a forest/trees thing.

Anyway, since I'm such a geek, I grew up getting teased. That probably doesn't surprise you, but I should clarify. I went to a private grade school for gifted kids. The dumb kids were smart. Still, I was just about the biggest geek in the school, except that I could always play sports.

Obviously, after that, I was doomed at high school, socially. It didn't help that I had no interest in partying on weekends anyway, so I had essentially no common ground with the average kids at the school. As a result, I arrived at college with basically no social baggage.

Going from 600 people in your 4 year high school to 30,000 or so at your university is a big change. Not only wasn't I the biggest geek (by a mile,) there were actually people like me. With a very few exceptions, all my best friends are people I met while I was in college. Not all of them were people I was going to school with, but it was during that time period, for all but about 5 people.

Probably the most popular hobby among my friends is the Society for Creative Anachronism, or SCA. It is an attempt to recreate the middle ages as we wish they were.

The funny thing is, in the SCA, chivalry is damn serious business. You treat women with respect, but as women. (And the way some of them dress encourages you to remember that they are female...hmmm hmm hmm) Either because this has become instilled in us, or because we were all drawn to this, nobody among my friends has ever made the serious suggestion that there was something inherently wrong about being a man, or inherently superior about being female.

My politics have become more conservative as I get older. Most of my friends are now, just by standing still, far more liberal than I am. My wife went to Evergreen State College (home of Rachel Corrie), as did another of my best friends. Another works in the Washington State DSHS. A couple are or want to be veterinarians (and are correspondingly big on animal rights). So clearly, they are evil liberal fringe leftists who want to castrate me and take my guns and all that stuff, right?

Nope. Not a one of them. They're not all big on guns, but in Seattle that's no surprise. I doubt that if I was a social worker I'd be a big fan of guns, considering the demographics of most of her caseload match up with the gun violence demographic just about perfectly. But they've never behaved as though I was bad because I was male. I read about people who are like that, and it's like someone's writing science fiction at me.

I mean, I'm living in (well, just outside, technically) Seattle, for crying out loud. Surely there's no more "L"iberal city on the left coast except San Francisco? The only tax we vote against is the Starbucks tax! Those people *have* to be here if they're anywhere! But I've never met one. Where do you find these folks? I'm at a loss.

Oh, maybe they're in the media? That must be it. Let me tell you something. The people that make this country work do not take their cues from what the media says, no matter how much AP, AFP, Reuters, and the rest wish they did. For that matter, the people that make the whole damn world work don't, either. Not here, not in Europe, not in China, not in the Middle East. The people that are building buildings, keeping the lights on, raising their children to be functional adults, etc., are just going right on along doing it while the other folks puddle in self pity and collective guilt. Just ignore them, folks. There's nothing to see there, and what are you going to do by shining a light on it? All that can happen is they get more piteous, and try to spread the guilt around more. Toss them a rope and move on. They can either pull themselves out, or hang themselves. Either way, it's a victory for the rest of us.

Now, in the SCA, just because there's chivalry doesn't mean that a woman, if she wants to, can't strap on armor and try to bash your brains in with a stick. We don't make allowances for the lower average strength of women, or their smaller stature or shorter limbs, but they're welcome to play, just the same. And it's perfectly ok to smack them one back, on those terms. Which brings me to my next point...

What Kim said about Annika Sorenstam is crap. Pure, utter crap. The sponsor's exemption is there for the sponsor's benefit, not the players. Vijay Singh was talking straight out his ass when he whined about the poor pro who wasn't getting a chance to play. He wouldn't have whined if it was Jack Nicklaus who got the exemption, even though Nicklaus would have probably scored just about exactly what Sorenstam did, and brought less extra fannies to fill seats. It would still have taken away one pro who had a realistic shot of winning. The exemption is there so the sponsor can do whatever the hell they want with it. And Sorenstam brought the crowds. So the sponsor got a win, the PGA tour got a win, and she went back to the womens' tour and shot the lights out, so she got a win. Who loses? People like Kim lose. People who think that letting someone, anyone, try to be as good as they possibly can makes anyone else less. Life is not a fucking individual competition, it's a team competition, and it is not some 3rd grade boys against girls red rover crap. Grow the hell up.

So she didn't win. Big deal. So she didn't make the cut. Big deal. She beat David Duval, who isn't that far removed from his British Open victory. (Admittedly, he was playing some of the worst golf of his life, but nevertheless, his worst golf is still quite a bit better than most men's best.) Bringing golf into this make Kim disturbingly close to the male equivalent of Martha Burk. (Perhaps I exaggerate slightly...)

Whew. I got off on a bit of a rant there, but hopefully you can see my point.

What I'm trying to say is, I'm sure there must be these anti-male people out there somewhere, but I don't see what is being gained by paying attention to them. In theory, if they're anti-male enough, all we have to do is ignore them, and they'll be bred out of the gene pool. This is turning into the Last Temptation of Christ all over again (crappy movie, good gate because of free publicity from the church screaming bloody murder.) Human cloning isn't working yet, after all. Aside from bringing in Annika Sorenstam, though, I do think that Kim is almost entirely hitting the nail on the head here. Repeatedly. Very very hard.

And I think Steven den Beste should go to an SCA event or five. He might find a few real women there. (And a rather remarkable percentage of SCA folks work in the computer world in real life, so he has automatic common ground.)

The Boondocks and Condi Rice

2003-11-03T14:32:00.000-08:00

I've read a few people complaining about The Boondocks, and the storyline where Huey decides that what Condoleezza Rice needs is a good man to straighten her out. The people I've seen complaining are on the right, and think this is somehow an insult to her.

Assholes, it's a cartoon! He's making a complicated joke. The one who looks like an ass is Huey, not Condi Rice. And if you have no sense of humor, you should go be a Democrat these days. Sheesh.

The Senate sneaks to a win-win situation...

2003-11-03T14:22:00.000-08:00

Yahoo! News - Congress Sends Bush $87.5 Billion for Iraq
Now they can claim that they were trying to be fiscally responsible when they wanted to make $10B of this into loans, yet not be obstructionist because in the end they did the right thing and didn't burden a recovering country with loans.

Hopefully this will help lever France and Russia into writing off the Hussein-era debt that Iraq owed them, but I'm not holding my breath.

I'm just not finding anything new and clever to write about these days.

2003-10-15T11:57:00.000-07:00

There's *another* suicide bomber every couple days...
It's an off year election...
The University of Washington football team couldn't find their ass with both hands and a map...
The Cubs and BoSox may both blow it...
My TiVo didn't even record the AFL Grand Final on Fox Sports World because it assumed that Grand Final:Brisbane vs. Collingwood was the same as the Brisbane vs. Collingwood playoff game 3 weeks earlier...(it was a thrashing anyway, so I didn't miss anything interesting.)
I'd still like to strangle some of my union leadership...
The stock market is back on the same straight line rise (log scale) that it's been on since the great depression, if you draw a line undercutting the internet bubble...
The Seahawks barely beat a fairly pathetic SF 49ers team...
Apparently now brigade commanders are distributing form letters to our troops in Iraq because their own words aren't good enough to paint the rosy picture they want...
The press continues to ignore the genuine good things that are happening in Iraq...

And so it goes. Nothing there is that is new under the sun...

Yes, I'm still here, barely.

2003-10-06T23:37:00.000-07:00

Unlike the Seahawks and Huskies (the UW type who failed to show up on Saturday, not the NIU ones who have been really impressive) who skipped a weekend.

Glad to see that my hopes of a "Just shut up already" World Series survived a scare today. (If it's Boston and Chicago, one of them has to quit whining about their respective curses. Of course, the other will probably whine twice as bad because they couldn't break their curse even against another cursed team...oh well, you have to start somewhere.)

Should I be embarassed for myself or proud for him?

2003-09-29T21:48:00.000-07:00

My 2 year old is way sick with a bad head cold and fever. He's taking it awfully well.

Probably better than I will when he gives it to me...I can hardly wait.

When it rains, it pours.

2003-09-23T12:51:00.000-07:00

Well, at work they've hired 4 people from operations into management in the last month. The result of this is that I'm going to be making a lot of money (yay!) by working a lot of overtime (boo!)...Since, unlike some people, I'm doing this for fun and not catharsis, blogging will be infrequent and sporadic until they hire more bodies. Which will be months at least.

So, um, go Mariners (you choking bastidges, you), go Huskies, go Seahawks (how 'bout them Seahawks?), and keep your helmet on out there, it's a crazy world. See you in a while.

Gone until monday

2003-09-18T11:46:00.000-07:00

I will be engaging in one of my strange hobbies (the SCA) this weekend, and so there will be no blogging.

Bruce Arena demonstrates why he is a soccer coach and not a businessman

2003-09-16T08:33:00.000-07:00

Yahoo! News - WUSA's decision jolts players

This is a bit of a shame, I think, although I have yet to be convinced that there is a market for women's professional sports here. The part that got me though, was this near the end:

League officials said they made the announcement on the eve of the Women's World Cup because they couldn't afford to remain open another day. "We couldn't keep the doors open even another 24 hours without jeopardizing a decent and fair severance package for our employees," said John Hendricks, chairman of the WUSA board of governors.

Men's national team coach Bruce Arena watched the U.S. women scrimmage Virginia's men's team Monday and sharply criticized the timing. "I think the timing is inexcusable," he said. "The business decision is one thing. It's very disappointing five days before the World Cup begins. ... This is the worst time."

Said Heinrichs, "Bruce can say that because he doesn't live (with) the consequences of a statement like that, but it's tough. ...

This is Bruce Arena, from the way it sounds to me, really, honestly, believing that his sport is more important than the league's employees livelihood. Apparently he is cut from the same cloth as the people who argue that businesses aren't about making money. (Feel free to assume that standardized anti-union rant #27, Bargaining into Oblivion, would be here if I felt like writing it right now. I'll get to it soon, I think.)

Here's a hint, Bruce. Most of the league employees were just as passionate about sports as you. I don't think there was such a capital infusion into the WUSA that a lot of people showed up digging for gold. But they have to eat, and unlike you they can't trade on their sports celebrity status to keep them fed. So you can whine all you want, but this is actually an example of, for once, a corporation doing the responsible thing, and dissolving when it can afford to pay its employees, rather than cooking the books and going into debt while pretending nothing is wrong.

Alternately, he could be arguing that they should have thrown in the towel sooner, so as to avoid the unfortunate timing. If that had actually happened, he'd be screaming that they hadn't exhausted every option before they went under. Stick to coaching, Bruce.

This is laughable.

2003-09-15T16:11:00.000-07:00

Yahoo! News - Carter Prods Bush on Mideast Peace Plan

I suppose Carter wants us to pay every single country in the Middle East $2B a year? That's how he got Israel and Egypt to play nice, after all.

"You have to let the Palestinians know we are representing their key interests," and you have to let the Israelis know the same, Carter said.

Yes, but they still insist that the right of return is a key interest. That means removing Israel from the map. How do you reconcile this, Jimmy?

The 1978 Camp David agreement and the Oslo accords of 1993, in which Norway mediated a partial accord between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (news - web sites), showed that good-faith negotiations can be successful and permanent, the former president said.

Oslo wasn't permanent, and Camp David was U.S. bribery.

On the other hand, Carter did admit that if he were president right now, he wouldn't be able to go in the isolation booth at Camp David for 2 weeks to get this done in the current world mess. So he wasn't being a complete moonbat.

Frankly, I think that if the press weren't so inclined to fawn at Jimmy's feet, he might not come off as such a lefty loon. It's the same way that sports figures end up shooting their mouth off because reporters print anything that comes out of their mouth.

Insidious plot to get me to pay for blogspot

2003-09-15T16:00:00.000-07:00

I brought up my blog and the ads were for Hillary's book. Eyugh.

Bastards.

The US blows a big chance

2003-09-14T23:33:00.000-07:00

World Trade Talks Collapse in Rich-Poor Rift

Well, I guess Europe dropped it too, really. Either side could have really made the other look bad by working with the third world on the farm subsidies issue. Here it comes down to the fact that politicians do what is best for their party, not for their country. I don't suppose it's that much different in Europe, although I'm not as familiar as I'd like to be with the coalition democracy model. (All I know about it I learned from watching "Yes, Minister" on PBS.)

The fact remains that, as I've said repeatedly, our long term fiscal health depends on a healthy third world. In the long run, we benefit much more from getting those countries out of the dessicating poverty they are in than we do from propping up economically unsound enterprise in our own country.

And if we could spend money in those countries, then we wouldn't have to talk about whitewashing bad loans to them all the time. (Hey, guess who pays for that? The same people who pay for the farm subsidies. Us.)

Congratulations to my viking cousins in Sweden

2003-09-14T17:41:00.000-07:00

Swedish crown, bonds seen softer after euro "No"

I'd say that cooler heads have prevailed, but I'm not that naive. It's hotheaded nationalism. Either way, though, I don't understand what good joining the euro is supposed to do, when France and Germany routinely fail to abide by the economic rules of the euro zone. (Nor should they. However, they did agree to do so, whether it was stupid or not. They should at least officially abrogate their status rather than just ignoring it.)

Joining the euro is a horrible thing to do, especially now that there's several countries in it. It pegs your exchange rate relative to the rest of europe for all time at whatever rate you agree to when you join. This results in one of two things:

Too low: your indigenous currency is not worth much in euros. Your citizenry takes a purchasing power hit, but your exports jump.

Too high: your indigenous currency is worth a relatively large amount in euros. Your citizenry enjoys good purchasing power, but you take a hit at the borders, since other countries' products are more cheaply made than yours.

Also, there are local conditions that don't affect the whole of Europe that can drive areas into recession or stagnation. If the local currency can't float to deal with this, the effects can linger and spread.

Note that this is happening in the U.S.A. right now--the west coast, being the epicenter of the tech bubble, has been hit much harder by its collapse. The difference here is, we think of ourselves as Americans first, and as Washingtonians (or Oregonians, or Californians) second. There isn't a big push to drive the local currency down to improve the export balance to, say, Kansas. As long as Spaniards want to be Spaniards, and the British want to be British, though, they're just setting up massive economic and political tension down the line by combining their economies in this way.

Big cars, little cars

2003-09-14T12:49:00.000-07:00

When I was in the Navy, one of my friends who had a big truck was complaining about insurance. His argument was that since he is safer in a big truck, it should be other people's insurance that goes up. I pointed out to him that his liability is much greater in a massive truck. He hadn't thought of it that way, of course.

Then again, it seems to me that most people aren't very good at arguing rigorously--they don't consider the obvious objections to their own arguments.

I have a Hyundai Accent. Not because I'm some sort of eco-freak (although I kind of am) or because I believe the CAFE standards are a good idea, but because I commute 65 miles each way to work. We got rid of my wife's old beater and we're paying 200 bucks a month for the Hyundai. I was getting 28 mpg in our Saturn station wagon, that went up to 40. Right there I save almost 100 bucks a month in gas, and her car was costing us over 1000 bucks a year in maintenance. So the new car is pretty much paying for itself. Plus, my wife isn't driving a deathtrap of a car anymore.

I'm really happy with my Hyundai, actually. It pretty much just does what it's supposed to do, and as light as it is, it really jumps off the line well for a itty bitty 90 HP 4 cylinder. At least, with a stick it does. It would probably be awful with an automatic. Plus it wouldn't get 40 mpg (EPA for the stick is only 36 on the highway, but it's not that hard to do better with a stick. OTOH, I've never done better than the EPA estimate in a car with an automatic tranny.) but probably more like 33.

I'm tired of mowing the lawn.

2003-09-14T12:39:00.000-07:00

I want a house with no grass.

I want a yard, mind you, I just don't want grass. Trees would be nice.

But then, I like living in town where the grocery store and the Home Depot and Circuit City are all within 5 miles. I guess I can't have everything.

A good new blog

2003-09-12T21:27:00.000-07:00

Marginal Revolution

From Tyler Cowen (of The Volokh Conspiracy) and his fellow economist Alex Tabarrok, it's a blog about, well, economics. (In case you couldn't have guessed.)

I know, I've been slacking.

2003-09-12T13:07:00.000-07:00

I was going to post something about 9/11/2001, but it just didn't want to come together. Ah well.

Anyway, as far as that goes, I do think there's a certain amount of moving on that's appropriate. But we must never forget not just that they hate us, but that they hate us for the things we are most proud of--our freedoms.

The schism on the right

2003-09-08T18:23:00.000-07:00

So there seems to be a pretty serious discussion going on now about whether conservatives should vote for Bush or not. The major arguments are, predictably, "that jackass isn't a conservative" and "but anyone the Democrats run will be worse."

Well, if you're a real conservative, those are both probably true.

I, on the other hand, am a pragmatist.

I do have some principles, on the other hand. One of them is that I detest carpetbaggers.

Therefore, I submit the following scenario:

If Dean (or one of the other 8 dwarves) wins the presidential election, then in 2008, the Republicans get a fresh start, and there's no momentum for a Billary presidency. On the other hand, if Bush wins, by '08, considering how short memories are, Hillary's "would not vote for even if it meant an asteroid will wipe out all life on earth otherwise" numbers will have dropped. While I'd love to see a Condi/Hillary general election, just to piss off all the misogynist bastards that are out there, I'd rather not, to paraphrase W.C. Fields, give Hillary an even break.

Then again, we could get some Pat Robertson-style ratfink out of the Republicans. (From the left, we hear "how could you tell the difference?" Yes, yes, we know. Go take your antidepressants.)

The other side of the keep 'em poor crowd

2003-09-07T21:58:00.000-07:00

Yahoo! News - Economic Hopes at Stake in WTO Talks

We're subsidizing farmers, as is the EU. Why is it that we do this? If it's because farming is hard to make money at, then all we have to do is let food prices float and they'll come up to the point where farmers can survive, because otherwise they'll quit farming.

I'm inclined to think it's because we have this craptastic Rousseau image of the farmer as a sort of a "noble savage" placeholder, you know, living off the land and all that hoo-hah. So when the farmers go crying to Congress, they can really get those tear ducts working. Of course, whenever anyone talks about how important farm subsidies are, they always talk about family farmers, even though it's corporate farming that reaps the bulk of the benefits of subsidies.

Not only were we doing this during the Cold War, we would then take the surplus grain (now that the cost of the subsidy was already sunk) and sell it for well below market price to the USSR. Russia has some of the richest farmland in the whole world, but we were basically giving them grain, because that was more cost-effective than letting it rot in a silo somewhere. Of course, this might have been an insidious plot to encourage the Soviets to let their infrastructure languish.

I doubt it, though.

Farm subsidies are just one more way to keep the third world poor, maintaining our status as the kings of the trade deficit.

Furthermore, if we lowered our farm subsidies and tariffs, it might give us some leverage with the EU when they whine about GM crops--suddenly, we'd be a bigger target market for the developing nations, and they could tell the EU to pack sand if they won't take GM imports.

It's good to have dreams, isn't it?

My god, it's the end of the world

2003-09-07T09:57:00.000-07:00

Sharpton: Black Voters Tired of Being Democratic Party's 'mistress' - from Tampa Bay Online

I agree with Al Sharpton. Somebody shoot me.

Abbas gone

2003-09-06T19:03:00.000-07:00

Well, I had a big post all written about this, but blogger ate it.

Oh well. You can pretty much guess what it said. It was pretty much a thousand words of "so much for the (much trampled already) road map."

It won't be a shame when Arafat's gone, that's for sure.

What's with President Gephart?

2003-09-05T20:10:00.000-07:00

Not only has W proven to be a trade protectionist (and not even a very good one,) but now he's arguing that we need to protect all those "high paying domestic manufacturing jobs" that the unions are always ranting about. If you've read me for a while, you know that I am in fact a union member, though not by conscious choice, but I differ rather sharply with the union on this issue.

This is a fundamental issue of economic strength. If we insist that the domestic manufacturing industry be propped up, this can only drive up the cost of the goods being manufactured. This ensures, in turn, that we cannot export them, because we have the highest standard of living of any large country, and nobody else can afford the things we can. Further, by not moving our money to countries where manufacturing is cheaper, we guarantee that their economies will stay depressed relative to ours, as their goods are being deprived of the world's strongest consumer market.

If, on the other hand, the jobs do move overseas, the standard of living overseas will rise, and although in the short term it will appear that our trade deficit is possibly even worsening, in the long run, the capital will mean that people in other countries will be able to afford to buy things made here, which is the only way to end the trade deficit. We can probably hold it at current levels by maintaining our current duty structure, but we can't eliminate it unless people in other countries can afford the things we make.

Or we could just debase the currency horribly and rapidly, so that the dollar declines big on the world currency market, thereby forcing us to buy domestically manufactured goods because we can't afford anything else, and use all the extra dollars to pay off the non-structural portions of the national debt. (By structural debt, I mean things like US savings bonds, which have a fixed term and can't just be paid off on the spot.) Of course, all that money you've saved would lose much of its value, but that's a small price to pay in the name of national economic stability, isn't it?

Oh, it is? Maybe we better let the money move around then, and stop overpaying for manufacturing. In the long term, that would improve our economic health more, by improving the third world's economic health, and eventually providing us with a market.

At least somebody's trying

2003-09-04T16:20:00.000-07:00

Yahoo! News - Abbas Tells Lawmakers to Back Him or Sack Him

I know Abu Mazen (aka Mahmoud Abbas) has a pretty ugly past, though certainly not worse than many other of the Palestinian militants, but he seems to me to have his head screwed on straighter than a lot of people over there right now. He certainly seems to have realized that if they don't do something quick to justify Israel and the U.S.'s gestures (remember about 3 weeks ago Sharon was actually talking about dismantling some settlements?) then there will be no road map, no homeland, and with the U.S. having 100,000 soldiers down the road in Iraq to keep the Arab nations from doing anything frisky this time, pretty soon just about no Palestinians.

As I've said before, I prefer pragmatists to ideologues, and Abbas, at least in his current guise, appears to be the lone pragmatist in a sea of lunatics. I wish him luck, and I salute that he had the guts to go as far out on a limb as he has. I certainly don't condone many of the things he has done in the past, but it does seem to me that the U.S. could have made far worse choices as far as a counter to Arafat. I hope it works.

I'm not holding my breath, though.

Last day in hell

2003-09-04T16:12:00.000-07:00

Finally. Tonight is the last night of "hell week", and I should have a bit more energy to find things to rant about again after that. Unfortunately, not only have I been at work a lot, but it's been pretty hectic at work, and I've pretty much been a basket case.

I challenge anyone to tell me this was "all part of the plan"

2003-09-03T14:09:00.000-07:00

Yahoo! News - U.S. Goes to UN for Iraq Help, but Insists on Control

Does anyone still believe that we planned this thing all the way through? Rumsfeld is discrediting himself almost daily at this point with his "we have enough troops there now" line. Not only doesn't the public believe him, apparently the administration doesn't, either. This is very frustrating to those of us who have been strongly in favor of the effort to change the Middle East so that it is no longer a haven and breeding ground for terrorism. Now that enough of the other candidates, even the strongly anti-war Dean, have stated that there is clearly a long-term commitment to Iraq that cannot be ignored, I see no reason why I should reward the administration's poor long-term planning with a second term.

It's almost as if they want to give away their credibility. Well, they've given away what they had with me.

Employment and jobs and things

2003-09-01T16:38:00.000-07:00

So I was at Home Depot today and I noticed they have self-checkout stands now, as does Fred Meyer. (For those of you who've never been out to this part of the country, Fred Meyer is like a Target/Wal-Mart/K-Mart except with a complete grocery store and less other stuff inside. They're part of the Kroger chain.) I was wondering why the food service unions don't scream and wail and gnash their teeth about these checkstands, because they have to be "destroying jobs". Maybe it's because checkers don't make a so-called "living wage".

In general, here's some advice for all members of the workforce:

If your job doesn't require human judgement, it's in jeopardy. (This is for the longshoremen's union, who went on strike to protest cost-cutting modernizations in the west-coast ports that reduced the number of overpaid broad-backed laborers used in unloading cargo ships.)

If your job relies on consuming a scarce resource, it's in jeopardy. (I'm kind of in this category, with coal, but there's still quite a bit of coal out there. For this one, I was really thinking back a few years ago out here, when old-growth timber logging was drastically cut back.)

You have no right to expect to make the same (real) wage, doing the same thing, for your entire adult life. This is one of the reasons employers don't want to pay you 20 bucks an hour for unskilled assembly or simple heavy lifting. If you aren't making enough to support your family, it's not because your employer is somehow evil, it's because you either don't have a skill that makes you valuable, or don't have the drive to work the hours necessary to do so. (Note that this is for able-bodied people. I'm not completely callous.) If you don't have either of those things, you ought to acquire one before you start a family, not complain after the fact. It's totally irresponsible to have children when you lack the means to support them.

The military is always hiring. All you need is a GED, and sometimes they'll even waive that. And they'll even provide you with housing, most of the time.

And now, a bit about rotating shiftwork...

2003-08-29T22:32:00.000-07:00

Or, blogging about why I'm not blogging. (How postmodern.)

I work a 12 hour rotating shift work job. I live an hour and about 20 minutes away, so when I work, it's about a 15 hour day door to door. My schedule goes: Friday through Monday night on, off until Friday morning, Friday through Sunday day on, off until Tuesday night, Tuesday through Thursday night on, off until the following Monday morning, then on either Monday through Wednesday or Tuesday through Thursday day. Then off for a week, and it starts over. (I think you can find a calendar of that schedule on line by looking for firefighter shiftwork schedule or something like that.) Anyway, I'm in what we call "hell week" right now, which starts with Friday day, and ends the following Thursday night, in which I work 6 12 hour shifts. Unfortunately, the job I have this week doesn't lend itself to any quick blogging from work, so my rantage will be limited. Ah well.

I see the "road map" isn't exactly Rand McNally

2003-08-28T08:09:00.000-07:00

Hamas Rocket Hits Major Israeli City for First Time

Somebody explain to me why Israel should concede anything until all these groups a) lay down their weapons, and b) concede that Israel has a right to exist. As long as Palestinian schools teach a world map with no Israel on it, I don't think Israel should move one step. When the president of the Palestinian Authority (Arafat) has his own militant group (The Al-Aksa martyrs brigade), it's clear that he isn't really serious about stopping this, only about jumping back and forth to stay in power.

And remember, you have that war hero, T.E. Lawrence, to thank for all this. Historically, under the Ottoman sultans, the Jews were treated reasonably well, certainly better than they were treated in Christian countries at the same time. Although the Ottoman power structure was already quite weakened by WWI, it wasn't until the division of the Middle East by the European powers along imaginary lines that Arab nationalism really started to lead to poor treatment of the Jews.

Really, what's changed is that America has started treating Jews relatively well, and the Arabs have started treating them badly. Europe has never been kind to them, so expecting that to change is a little like asking a leopard to change its spots. Which doesn't excuse it one bit, but at the same time it probably isn't a good idea to wait up nights expecting it to get better.

Go Huskies

2003-08-27T22:37:00.000-07:00

Well, the Mariners have dropped out of first place into a tie with Boston for the wild card in the AL. Must be college football season!

Really, college football was my first spectator sport anyway. I can still name several members of the 1977-78 University of Washington football team, which isn't bad since I was born in 1971. (Warren Moon, Spider Gaines, Joe Steele, Nesby Glasgow, Michael Jackson. I might get one or two more if I really thought hard, but those are the ones that leap to mind.) I remember my parents went to the Rose Bowl that year, and I was teaching my 20 year old babysitter about football. When I was six.

Basically I picked a good time to grow up for Seattle sports. The Huskies went to the Rose Bowl six times between my 6th and 22nd birthday, the Mariners and Seahawks started play, and the Sonics went to the NBA finals two years in a row, losing to the Bullets in 7 games the first time, then beating them in 5 the next year.

Not to mention the North American Soccer League was still a going concern. The Seattle Sounders made it to the championship twice, losing to the New York Cosmos (also known as the over-the-hill world all-star team, with Pele, Franz Beckenbauer, and Giorgio Chinaglia) and were actually drawing pretty well, but since most of the teams were losing money like mad, the league folded.

But it's fall now, so I'll live if the Mariners tank, because college football is back. At least until Saturday, when UW plays Ohio State in Columbus. (sans Maurice Clarett, but it could be a mighty rough game nevertheless.)

I've been thinking about the gay marriage thing...

2003-08-26T16:17:00.000-07:00

and I'm still not sure how I feel about this.

On the one hand, I can see the point of people like Mrs. du Toit who argue that there are fundamental reasons why marriage is between a man and woman. It's clear to me that society incurs costs by sanctioning marriage, for example, the legal concept of spousal immunity. I would make the argument that society forgoes income (in the form of inheritance taxes, typically) in many cases by allowing spouses to jointly hold assets, but (see my post of a couple days ago) government income is not an end in itself in my world, so that doesn't count. On the other hand, there really is a right being granted to some people that is not (in spirit, don't give me the argument that they can enter heterosexual marriages just like everyone else.) granted to others because of their orientation.

The reward for society for sanctioning marriage is primarily in getting more well-raised new members. If you really don't think that children benefit from a stable, two-parent family, I think you're ignoring the evidence. There are other benefits, such as reduced promiscuity, but without new members society collapses, especially given our propensity to rob our children to pay for our own retirement.

The problem is, there are a host of attendant rights that come along with marriage that, I think, most people would not have a problem granting to gay couples. These are things like hospital visitation rights, community property rights, relative ease in establishing a power of attorney relationship, and things like that. There are ways to get all of these individually, but without some sort of civil sanction, it's de facto discrimination, because it becomes much more difficult, costly, and time-consuming for a gay couple to accomplish these things than a traditionally married couple.

The real problem, from the standpoint of legal precedence, is what comes after government sanction of gay relationships. Clearly, they are not being sanctioned for their important role in raising the next generation. Therefore, we can no longer appeal to that argument once we make gay marriage, or civil unions, or whatever you want to call them official. So what about a marriage between one man and two women or one woman and two men?

Don't tell me I'm being silly and out on a limb, here. I know two groups of one woman and two men. In one case, the first couple was legally married, and held a religious wedding ceremony to join the other man to them. In the other, the second man is "living in sin" with the couple. Not one, but two. From what I've seen, they're both working pretty well.

But, you argue, there's no need to add state sanction to this relationship--there's already a perfectly good traditional marriage in there. (Mrs. du Toit and I discussed this a bit in e-mail.) Well, here's the problem. What if the two people who are married in the eyes of the state die or are horribly injured in a car wreck? The third party has no community property status, no hospital visitation rights, etc. If we intend to grant these rights to gay couples, (and I think we will,) then why on earth shouldn't we be granting them to other non-traditional marriages?

Now, if divorce had any social approbation left, I would argue that the government should sanction these sorts of relationships, too. I could make a pretty convincing argument that a child raised in such a 3-parent household might even have some big advantages over one raised in a traditional two-parent one. (Spare me the arguments about all the teasing the kid would go through, unless you're prepared to argue that adopted children should never be adopted by anyone not of their racial background so as to spare them the confusion and shame.) The trouble is, divorce has become a basic fact of modern life.

So, if you start sanctioning all relationships, and rewarding people for entering into all these different sorts of relationships, and divorce is nearly free, consider the risk/reward evaluation people might make. This does really happen, by the way. I knew several people in the Navy who were in marriages because it allowed them to receive housing benefits which they would not otherwise have gotten. It seems to me that what will happen is, believe it or not, the social pressures to make marriage work will be further eroded.

What? I hear you cry, you're making the fringe right-wing argument that this will destroy the sanctity of marriage?

Yes. Here's why. People who enter into non-traditional relationships are already less vulnerable to the pressures of society. (If they cared what society thought, they wouldn't get into those sorts of relationships.) Thus, the social pressure to try to make the marriage work will be less effective on them. But, they derive benefits, financial and otherwise, from getting state sanction for their relationship. So they have incentives to make their relationship official, but relatively few costs to dissolving it later. Then, as more couples dissolve for the reason that they were never really compatible in the first place, this will start to affect people's attitudes to marriage and divorce in general.

What we're doing is turning marriage into a business partnership. To be fair, this is not the fault of gays, or non-traditional marriage advocates. It's happening now, even with only traditional marriages recognized by the state. I do think, though, that expanding "marriage" to include other relationships will only hasten the process.

This is a toughy. My heart, and my ideals, say that it's an equality issue. But my pragmatic streak says that expanding the word "marriage" to cover such things is going to cause more problems than it solves. I think that establishing a "civil union" is a much better answer. And, being the radical freak that I am, I think my friends should be able to get "civil union" sanction for their 3-person relationships.

How to get your blog discovered

2003-08-26T15:31:00.000-07:00

Or, "OK, I got here from Parkway Rest Stop, but how did he find your blog?"

Here's the trick: Most bloggers seem to be very interested in knowing who's reading their site. So, they check their referrals pretty regularly. So what you do is take your list of blogs out of your bookmarks and put it on your own blog. Then, whenever you want to read one of those blogs, click through the link on your blog. Eventually, curiosity will get some of them to come read your blog.

Getting them to recommend it is up to you.

This is a much better solution than email linkwhoring, I think. It takes advantage of human nature (we are curious) rather than running counter to it (we don't like to be told what to do).

Oh, and if you want to know who's coming to your site, I use sitemeter. You have to run the javascript version to find out where people are coming from, but it seems to work just fine under blogger.

And another controversy to stick my nose in...

2003-08-25T14:17:00.000-07:00

For those of you living in caves, it seems that the Chief Justice of Alabama, Roy Moore, has caused a big flap by placing a Ten Commandments monument at the courthouse, then refusing to remove it. Here's my take on it.

This is establishment. If it isn't establishment, why do they have a problem with, say, putting a monument to another famous religious ethicist, like Buddha, in the same place? (Do a little research, and you find that Buddha is credited with saying many of the same things, or at least very similar things, to what are attributed to Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, only hundreds of years before Jesus is supposed to have been born.) This is a use of public money and public property to promote the teachings of one religion at the expense of others. He can take the monument and put it on his front lawn, if he wants, but he can't use the courthouse this way.

If it's supposed to be an ethical foundation, it shouldn't start with "I am the Lord your God, you shall have no other gods before me." That's straight proselytization, when presented to people who do not worship the God of the Bible. If he's trying to present it as the foundation of our laws, he should probably make a monument to the Talmud, instead. As it is, it's a naked, publicly funded religious statement, and that violates the first amendment.

Now to stir things up a bit...

2003-08-25T02:49:00.000-07:00

This is related to my earlier post about things you shouldn't try to convince me of.

This time, I'm going to list a few things that I would call "first order assumptions" or what you might refer to as axioms. These are things that I hold to be true, or examples of the way I think, or ideas upon which I base much of my subsequent reasoning. Some of them will have discussion under them.

Increasing government revenue is not a valid fiscal goal in and of itself.

There's still a great deal of discussion about the long term macroeconomic effects of the Reagan era tax cuts and the subsequent increases during Bush I and Clinton's administrations. Supply siders will tell you that you can actually increase government revenue by reducing taxes. There is certainly some marginal tax rate where that is true, but it must be very high. However, that misses the point. The point is that every dollar of government revenue is a dollar out of the hands of someone who earned it. To be sure, there are valid goals which the government is the only realistic means of reaching, such as a strong national defense. However, revenue should be weighed at the same time with government spending. Increased government revenue is, in a vacuum, a macroeconomic brake.

Life does not begin at conception

If you believe life begins at the moment of conception, then you must not only say that all abortion is murder, but also that I.U.D's are murder (they prevent *implantation*, not conception), and the so-called minipill is sometimes murder (it does some of both, making it harder for the sperm to pass the cervix, but also making the uterine environment hostile to implantation). I will not even pay attention to email that disputes the points I just made, as the medical literature is abundantly clear on how I.U.D's and the minipill work. To be sure, what happens at conception is complicated. It is not, however, magic.

Rachel Carson has killed more people than Stalin and Hitler combined

Rachel Carson is the author of Silent Spring, the book which got DDT banned. At a current rate of around 2.5 million malaria deaths per year, and 30 years since the EPA banned it, that's 75 million, but we'll be kind and say that 15 million of those would have got it anyway. So that's only 60 million people.

Of course, she meant well, but that is no excuse. Anyone with any pragmatism at all should be appalled at the magical thinking that has become generally prevalent in the modern environmentalist movement, and this book was the cornerstone upon which that tower was built.

There is no excuse for marijuana being the subject of a multibillion dollar war on drugs when you can buy 141 proof rum.

The war on drugs really ticks me off. We're smack dab in the middle of a fight for our way of life with people who are essentially oathsworn to destroy us if we will not convert, and Ashcroft has his boys out busting head shops in the Bay area. Priorities, people, priorities!

Thinking for yourself is not a right. Thinking for yourself is a responsibility.

I often wonder as I listen to radio commercials on my 75-minute commute (each way) whether anyone believes that stuff. My current favorite commercial to hate talks about how your dog doesn't understand why you can't play with her because of the accident because you didn't put on your seatbelt to drive to the store blah blah blah blah blah.

It's true that more accidents happen near the participants' homes. That's because more driving happens there. I'm pretty sure that per mile traveled, it's safer to drive near your house on any given day. You don't have to worry about missing stoplights or any such thing.

The only thing getting run over by a bulldozer proves is that you are too stupid to dodge a bulldozer.

A Juris Doctor has no excuse for not understanding the NCAA rules on gambling, no matter what cockamamie interpretation the athletic department's compliance coordinator gave him.

OK, that's enough for now, I'm sure I'll think of more in the future.

I've been ParkwayLanched!

2003-08-24T15:55:00.000-07:00

Thanks to James at Parkway Rest Stop. I only just switched to the JavaScript version of sitemeter (wanted to make sure it was working right first) so I don't know how many referrals he's gotten me before this morning, but two of my last four hits are through his site.

Now if he'd just write some more Sgt. Steele (April 24, 2003 in case the permalink is broken, not that that ever happens on blogspot...) posts.

This is just ridiculous.

2003-08-24T14:08:00.000-07:00

This Time, Cell Phones Woes
Failures in outage reveal weaknesses
(via Instapundit)

Now, I can understand, to a certain extent, that this happened. What I can't understand is the industry's response to it:

Cell-phone carriers say the electrical outage was an event they couldn't possibly foresee.

"This was a massive, unprecedented, once-in-a-lifetime failure of the electrical power system," said Mark Siegel, spokesman for AT&T Wireless.

Well, twice in my lifetime, and I'm only 32. If you're more than 38, it's thrice-in-a-lifetime. I wouldn't call that unprecedented, would you?

Industry executives question whether it's worth investing substantial capital into the system to prevent service problems during a major power failure that happens maybe once every 30 years.

This is the really scary part. You know how one of the big selling point for cellphones is that you can use them in a crisis? Apparently they're not serious about that part. You'll need something else. Like a large caliber gun to threaten all the people around you overloading the cellular network so you can use it. And a diesel generator you can plug in to the base of your local cell phone tower.

"It's like blaming the microwave oven manufacturer that the microwave doesn't work when the power goes out," said Roger Entner, an analyst with the Yankee Group, a consulting company in Boston.

Except that I can eat a sandwich if the microwave doesn't work. It's not part of my emergency relative notification system, and I don't use it to call 911. I can't believe this guy is getting paid to say things like this. I'm in the wrong line of work. I talk out my ass all the time anyway, I'd love to get paid for it.

Experts say it's more difficult for cellular phone companies to predict capacity than it is for landline phones. After all, the local phone company knows the maximum number of calls it might handle because there's a hard-wired connection to each home and business with phone service. With cellular phones, people can travel anywhere.

Oh, bull. They just don't want to make the conservative predictions that every other critical infrastructure industry has to make. If you think that the power grid in the Northeast is bad, remember that it's been 26 years between big failures. The cellphone network sags every time there's a disaster. If you want an example of this, just try to call someone for a ride leaving a major sporting event. My experience is that if you make (or try to make) a cellular phone call within 5 minutes of the final gun, or out, or whatever, the over/under for connection attempts to get through is three. Now consider what happens in any major city's downtown area during a large disaster. Every building empties, and all the people start using their cellphones. It's between ten and a hundred times the cell phone traffic as in the scenario I just described. But, of course, the connection problem is not linear. If you double the stress on the network, it doesn't just double the number of dropped calls. It drops every call above its capacity, plus about two per cent of the calls that should connect by the numbers.

The message here is clear. The cellphone companies simply do not believe their own marketing, and do not see themselves as part of the disaster response network. Carry a backup. And remember this the next time you think a telephone booth is an ugly eyesore.

Praising with faint damnation?

2003-08-23T21:48:00.000-07:00

Hamas Calls Bush 'Islam's Biggest Enemy' (via Drudge)

I'm sure that W is just as unhappy that Hamas thinks he is an enemy of their religion as he is that France thinks he is a cowboy. I suppose if their object was to let him know that he's getting under their skin, then they're doing a good job, but somehow, I find that a little unlikely. I think they're just massively stupid. (Oops, some ad hominem slipped through. Bad bad me.)

This pretty much is consistent with the strategy that Osama, Saddam, Arafat, etc. have used from the beginning--try to make it a conflict between the West and a mythical pan-Arab Islamist movement. It's not, and it never was.

It's an ideological division between the right (and the responsibility) to think and act for yourself, and the obligation to submit to some ancient, poorly transmitted, misinterpreted teachings about how to live your life without ever having an original thought or opinion. Guess which side of the line people like, say, Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson fall on? I think they're just jealous because the Wahabis are stealing all their thunder.

To quote Rush (the band, not the talk show host)
I will choose a path that's clear. I will choose free will.

Some style points...

2003-08-23T21:34:00.000-07:00

Many of the people in my blogroll resort to some pretty extreme invective. Anyone who knows me personally knows that I'm easily that outspoken and vitriolic in person. However, I don't feel like it advances discussion to call people names, however much it may feel good. Anyway, I don't need to blog to blow off steam. I prefer to do that in face to face conversation.

But that's just me. If I thought it was a Really Bad Thing, I wouldn't read all those people's weblogs, now, would I?

Another Blogroll addition

2003-08-23T21:30:00.000-07:00

Added Oliver Willis. His politics are somewhat left of mine (though not that much), and his insights are first rate.

I feel bad about not blogging now that I have sitemeter running.

2003-08-22T02:59:00.000-07:00

I'm disappointing my 3 readers a day. Talk about pressure.

Ok, back to the real world.

If the Mariners are losing and there's nothing interesting in the news, it's hard for me to get excited this time of the year, though. My fave Aussie rules football team (Carlton, if you care) is having an historically bad season, Fox Sports World shows cricket about once a year (and I refuse to pay 100 bucks to watch some Sri Lanka vs. Zimbabwe test series on pay per view. Get real.) Football here hasn't started, there's no MLS soccer team out this way, and it's pretty much been dull except for the blackout back east. Sure, there was a bombing in Iraq, but what kind of point of view thing can you do on a bombing in a semi-anarchic nation?

Surely their security needs to be tighter
That's not an opinion, fool, that's just being master of the obvious.

So I don't find that a particularly inspirational subject. It's about as clever and original as saying that 9/11/01 pointed up some flaws in domestic airline security.

But, I found a few things today that are worth a mention, at least.

First, we have Ballistics Tests Link 3 Sniper Slayings. No doubt this will bring all the Ballistic Fingerprinting advocates back out of the woodwork. I have no interest in wasting my time debunking them, the stuff's all still out there on the internet from when it happened before. But I bet they'll be out there.

The second one is from Reuters. (Gee, why are you drawing in your breath in anticipation? Surely Reuters wouldn't be biased or anything would they?)

2003 Ozone Hole May Be Record Size, Australia Says.

Now this needs a little fisking, so hang on.

SYDNEY (Reuters) - The ozone hole over the Antarctic is growing at a rate that suggests it could be headed for a record size this year, Australian scientists said on Friday.

A study by Australian Antarctic bases attributed the development to colder temperatures in the stratosphere where the ozone hole forms.

So far, so good. Sounds like a reasonable, science based article.

Klekociuk said scientists at Australia's Davis Antarctic base saw the first signs of cooling of the lower stratosphere, 15 to 25 km (nine to 15 miles) up, about six weeks earlier than usual.

In a visual sign the ozone hole would grow rapidly this year, scientists at Australia's Mawson base have reported the early appearance of stratospheric clouds, which create a spectacular lightshow by defracting sunlight around sunset.

Chemical reactions in these clouds convert normally inert man-made chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) into ozone destroyers. CFCs are commonly used as propellants in spray cans.

Mostly ok, but I'm pretty sure there aren't very many new spray cans out there with CFC's for propellant.

The 1997 Kyoto treaty set in place a global process to reduce greenhouse gases which deplete the ozone layer, but the world's biggest polluter the United States has yet to sign.

Oops, now you've done it.

Let's make two lists: First, major greenhouse gases. (By current scientific estimates of percent effect)

95%: Dihydrogen Monoxide. (virtually all naturally occurring.) About 3%, CO2. (Somewhere between a quarter and a third of this may be anthropogenic by now.) Everything else: less than 1%. (Methane, CFC's, etc.)

Now then. Major ozone depleters?

CFC's, CFC's, CFC's. So, to be fair, it's only a totally misleading statement, but it isn't actually false. Except that it implies that the specific purpose of Kyoto is reduction of CFC's, which it isn't even remotely.

And here's the real kicker. The U.S. banned aerosol use of CFC's in the 1970's. The article cites that as the common use of CFC's. So what's with piling on America here, anyway?

Ah well, if they were scientists, instead of journalists, they'd be doing something more productive than slagging the U.S. for something that, by and large, is not our fault. We don't even use CFC's for refrigerants anymore. At least, we use them far less than many countries. Explain to me how signing Kyoto will change this?

Responsibility

2003-08-20T13:49:00.000-07:00

(Bill Whittle's new essay is up.)

If, for some unknown reason, you're reading this, and you haven't read that, then go.

Now.

And now, to piss off my readers (both of them.)

2003-08-20T08:15:00.000-07:00

Things not to try and convince me: (I consider these all to be demonstrably or obviously false.)

There is an infinitely powerful, just, and loving god.

W. stole the election. Alternately, the Supreme Court stole the election.

There is a vast, dark conspiracy of energy company magnates revolving around Darth Cheney.

W. is both an idiot and a terribly clever, evil man. (especially not in the same breath.)

We would have been better off if Gore was president on 9/11.

Carter, Bush I, and Bush II deserve blame for economic slowdowns.

Reagan and Clinton deserve credit for economic recoveries.

Roe v. Wade is a logical, well written decision. (Note that this has nothing to do with whether I'm pro-choice)

Suicide bombing is an appropriate response to anything.

There's a vast silent majority of Palestinians that do not support the intifada.

There aren't any Palestinians that oppose the intifada.

You're from Africa and you want to give me 30% of Twenty Five Million Dollars.

The Second Amendment to the US Constitution only grants a collective right. (Yes, I know that's what the 6th Circuit said. They're wrong.)

(This is not an inclusive list. There's plenty more where this came from.)

Something really useful

2003-08-20T00:13:00.000-07:00

I know what you're thinking:

When are they going to start talking about magic numbers in the baseball pennant races?

Or you're thinking:

What's a magic number anyway? And why should I care?

Magic numbers are easy. The magic number is the number of wins by the team in question coupled with losses by the rival with whom they are being compared that result in the team in question having an unbeatable advantage.

Um, gee, thanks. That really cleared it up.

Try this: (We'll use baseball, because that's what's going on now.) If the Mariners have 100 wins, and the A's have 63 losses, it doesn't matter what the other numbers are, because there are only 162 games in a baseball season, so the A's can't catch up. So, an unbeatable advantage just means that one team's wins plus the other team's losses add up to more games than there are in the regular season. All you do is take one plus the number of games in the season (to paraphrase Tom Lehrer, everyone get 163? Not bad for the first day), then subtract the wins from the team whose magic number it is, and then subtract the number of losses from the rival team. Using standings as of this evening, we have: 162 + 1 - 76 (Seattle wins) - 53 (Oakland losses) = 34 is Seattle's magic number. The Yankees is 32, the Royals 37, the Braves 27, Houston 37, and the Giants 30. And every time they win or their nearest rival loses, the number gets smaller.

So now you know.

And now, economics.

2003-08-19T12:29:00.000-07:00

Apparently some people think gold is a good investment.

Maybe over the short term, as a hedge against unusual market conditions. However, gold is trading in the mid 300's right now. In the '70s, when I was a kid, gold was trading...in the mid 300's. That means gold is as good a long term investment as, say, putting money in a mason jar and burying it in your backyard. Except that old currency is sometimes valuable because it's rare. I've heard the argument that it's a hedge against total collapse of our currency, but, really, wouldn't you say that being able to hunt and having a gun would be a better hedge than a shiny metal?

I challenge anyone to show me a 20 year period where every other type of investment didn't outperform precious metals. That is, I don't think that gold has ever outperformed anything over a 20 year period. Not even money market accounts. Hell, probably not even plain old savings accounts. Certainly not any major market index, and definitely not bonds.

Useless project for my copious spare time...

2003-08-17T10:07:00.000-07:00

I think there ought to be a blogring for industrial/power plant bloggers. There's one for everything else, after all.

I used to think this too...

2003-08-17T09:54:00.000-07:00

Via Robert Prather, a link to this article with a quote I found entertaining.

Such abrupt stoppages can be risky, nuclear experts say, as the procedure can strain the plant's equipment. Water-cooled nuclear reactors operate at extremely high temperatures and pressures, on the order of 550 degrees Fahrenheit and 1,800 pounds per cubic inch, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, and rapid changes can damage machinery.

Yeah, I thought those were big numbers too, when I was in the nuclear navy. Here are some typical coal plant numbers:

Superheat steam outlet temperature: 1000F +/- 20F
Reheat steam outlet temperature: (after you use some steam energy, it goes back into the boiler and gets reheated) 1000F +/- 20F
Drum pressure: 2800psi
Turbine generator throttle block pressure: 2400 psi

And these are for a "subcritical" steam coal plant. There are "supercritical" steam plants which heat water above the critical point, where it doesn't have a defined liquid/vapor phase break point (latent heat of vaporization is zero, for you physics geeks). That's above about 3300 psi.

So forgive me if 1800psi/550F doesn't strike me as big scary numbers anymore. Especially since nuke plants are a little more overengineered than coal plants, given the political issues associated with leaks.

Actually, the big idea here is to stay below a certain temperature so that all the steam plant piping can be carbon steel. Too hot and it all has to be stainless steel, which is a good deal pricier. Also, a reactor can only get so hot before it melts the fuel matrix, while it's relatively simple to make a 3000F fireball by burning coal dust. It's still a pretty funny quote, though.

Getting the power back

2003-08-16T08:51:00.000-07:00

Or, what's with these rolling blackouts they're announcing?

Well, there are two ways to shut a circuit breaker. One way is what you're used to doing at home; one side of the line has power, and the other is dead. This is a "dead-bus transfer", and it's as simple as making sure the unpowered side of the line is safe. (That's why you should unplug everything on a circuit where the breaker tripped, then plug things back in one at a time after you get the power back. Also to prevent a bunch of start-up loads from overloading your circuit again.)

The other way is called a "parallel", and it's a little more difficult. Basically you have to figure out which side has more current on it, first. When a generation station comes on line under normal circumstances, this is always the grid side of the generator output breaker, so there's no problem. Now you use a tool called a synchroscope, which spins based on the frequency difference between the two sides of the breaker. Modern generation equipment has automatic synchronization, for the most part, but you can do the next part by hand, too. You want the unit coming on line to pick up load, to ensure it doesn't become a motor. This is done by having its frequency slightly higher than the grid. Looking at the synchroscope, it will be labeled "slow", with an arrow in the counterclockwise direction, and "fast" with an arrow in the clockwise direction. You've got everything right if the synchroscope is turning "slow in the fast direction". Now you wait until the needle is at 12:00, which means the two sides of the breaker are in phase. (That's very important. An error here means huge current across the breaker, which might trip it, but might be so much it fuses the breaker contacts before the breaker can trip.) You actually send the close signal to the breaker when the needle is at about 1:00, but that's just part of getting everything to come out right when the breaker closes.

Sounds simple enough, right? But if the grid is fragmented, with little areas having power and most of it unpowered, as you restore power, you extend out from all the working power stations until they meet up, bringing other stations on line as possible. (Most power stations can't start up unless there's voltage on the grid at their output breaker.) Unfortunately, this means you eventually have to parallel across tie breakers in the middle of the grid. One problem is, I doubt that they all have synchroscopes. The other problem is figuring out which side should lead and which side should lag. Saying that the side with more current should lag, like I said earlier, isn't quite right. It's actually the side closer to its capacity that needs to lag, because you want some of the load to be transferred to the side with excess generation.

But there's a much easier way. Drop that part of the grid from the other side, and now you get to do a dead-bus transfer. Unfortunately for anyone on that part of the grid, from their perspective it's a blackout. But you don't have to synchronize, and you know what you're getting that way.

OK, what's the deal in the Northeast?

2003-08-15T08:20:00.000-07:00

Well, since I work in power generation, I'll do my best to explain it, based on what I've heard.

Various things can send power plants into a fluctuating state. If the operators can't control the fluctuation, the unit will either trip off the line, or the operators will take it off the line. This is what they (currently) think started the problem. It sounds like either the unit tripped off the line, or something farther down the line tripped. (I'm suspicious that that's what happened, for reasons which follow.)

There's always extra capacity on line, so that losing the biggest source isn't enough to cause blackouts. (That's slightly oversimplified, but it's accurate enough.) Also, line voltage is set by the largest generating source. (If I'm putting out 750MW, and you put out 100MW, and I raise my voltage, you'd better follow, or I'll take you out, because you'll become a big motor. If I lower mine, you'll have to lower yours, or I'll become a load on your tiny generator, and you'll trip because you're overgenerating.) However, source line voltage is generally held constant, and handled automatically, so I doubt that's what the problem was.

So since source voltage is constant, if something happens like I get bad fuel, or gas pressure fluctuations (depending on what utility had the problem), the torque on my generator prime mover (a steam turbine, or a combustion turbine, or a water turbine, usually) starts to fluctuate, which means my output MW starts to fluctuate, which means my output amps start to fluctuate. (Power is current times voltage, and voltage is constant, but power is changing.)

Now all of the consumers don't know this is going on. They keep pulling the same number of amps off the grid. So, the other utilities have to make up the swings. The electrical grid is topologically pretty much a big starfish. There are some places where power can follow two routes to one place, but it has to go through a transformer on the way, because there are synchronization issues otherwise. So, anyway, the effect on the utilities closer to the unit that's cycling will be greater.

(Now I'm into wild speculation.) If the fluctuations caused another unit to become unstable somewhere else on the grid, and it went off-line, after which the bad unit also went off-line, it's possible that the reserve capacity was used up. Typically, if the grid is undergenerating, you get brownouts first, as you start to see drops in line voltage at the point of consumption. But, if the undercapacity happens too quickly, various breakers can start tripping, because you'll start to see currents climbing all over trying to make up the shortfall.

It's kind of like if everyone in a neighborhood turns on their sprinkler and takes a shower and flushes their toilet at once. The total flow number is very high, even though you see reduced flow because everyone else is fighting you for the water.

Once you get into this situation, you're pretty much done. Now it's a question of how robust the electrical grid is. And, in the northeast, the answer is, not very. It's an aging grid, and because the area is so densely populated, utilities tend to be grouped together. This means that there's large areas that aren't near generation stations, so when the system gets overloaded and things start to trip, those areas end up isolated from any source.

And, poof there's your blackout. There are undoubtedly some places out there that never even lost power, because they were right near a small generation station, and the trips isolated them from the grid without driving the generator off line, because it left the right amount of demand on that tiny piece of the grid. However, I doubt that's much comfort to the people who were fifty floors in the air in manhattan when this happened.

You can thank the "power plants are ugly and dirty" folks for the total failure to modernize the grid in the northeast. So the next time you see an eco-(cough)-warrior, give them a nice big hug. Remember, they just want you to have a nicer place to live. (I love blogs. I could never say something like that with a straight face in real life.)

How (not) to get out of paying your taxes.

2003-08-13T23:07:00.000-07:00

So I see where some woman won a criminal case against the government, on the charge that she willfully disobeyed the laws by not paying her taxes. Of course, the IRS refused to answer a number of questions she asked about taxes, so she had a pretty good defense.

But (and this is a big but) this has nothing to do with whether she owes the money. Only with whether she was guilty of criminal misconduct.

The IRS will send her a bill here soon, and they'll win that civil court fight. Bank on it.

Oh, and to anyone who thinks they don't have an obligation to pay taxes, stuff it. If you're reading this, then you're a huge beneficiary of the Pentagon budget in the 70's and 80's (go look up DARPA and ARPAnet in a good search engine.) There's no such thing as a free lunch. If you think your tax burden is too high, or you disagree with our semi-progressive tax system (where the highest tax bracket is in the 60-100K range because above there our retirement ponzi scheme cuts out), then tell your congresscritter. I have my opinions about our tax system, but I won't be posting them tonight. I'll get around to it one of these days.

My ISP needs deworming medicine.

2003-08-13T22:54:00.000-07:00

It seems like every other time I click I get a dns error page. I really hate assholes with nothing better to do who decide to try to grind the net to a halt just for fun. How cute.

Ah well, this, too, shall pass.

Apparently the gremlins are spreading.

2003-08-12T21:39:00.000-07:00

Stephen den Beste is having issues with his internet connection. I was having some as well, but I solved them. Apparently a cheap power strip is worse than none at all. When I plugged my cable modem directly into the wall, the problem went away.

Now that's the Jeff Nelson the M's have come to know and love.

2003-08-10T16:33:00.000-07:00

M's 8, Yankees 6

The first mistake, though, was Joe Torre's, using Jesse Orosco to face Ichiro. Yes, Orosco's hell on lefthanders, but Ichiro hits lefties at a .385 clip vs .312 against righties. So Torre can take part of the blame. But I see Nelson got credit for the blown save. So that's pretty much the guy we traded. I really don't think Nelson will ever be the same pitcher he was a few years ago.

About my (tiny) blogroll...

2003-08-10T10:20:00.000-07:00

Jeff, at Alphecca, has a legitimate complaint about segregated blogrolls. Since it's the same post he linked me in, and I have segregated my blogroll, I'll explain myself.

Obviously, nobody on my daily reads list needs a link from me. I imagine that either Spoons, because he took a hiatus not too long ago, or Robert Prather, because he's a bit newer than the rest, have the lowest readership, but clearly all of them get far more readership than I do. They're there because I read them every day. They are all first-rate blogs with a high volume, and they're the ones I started reading last year when I got interested in blogs, so I naturally go to them first, most of the time.

The next list are either ones I discovered later, or ones that don't post every day.

The occasionally list is ones that I either don't read as often as I probably should (like susanna), or ones whose point of view or style has a tendency to set my teeth on edge.

And I'm human, and human beings like to categorize things. It's easier to find a link in three lists of ten than one list of thirty, after all, and I thought it would be pretty lame to call them "List 1," "List 2," and "List 3."

So really, what that list does is give you more information about me than it does about those blogs. In that sense, it's not really any lamer than my proto-FAQ in my first couple posts. Now if I were The Blogfather, I probably wouldn't split my blogroll, or I'd split it by type of blog or something objective. There's no chance of that, even if I'm wildly successful, because he's a linker, which I don't want to be. Linkers are always going to win, because even if you don't agree with their point of view, they make great clearinghouses to get to the interesting news stories. If you're not an obsessive reader (I happen to be one), you have to be in the right frame of mind to read thinkers, or they'll just tick you off.

Why nobody believes what they read in mass media anymore

2003-08-10T09:31:00.000-07:00

This is just a random article from Reuters with "Key facts about Liberia."

I found it in Yahoo's business section, of all places. Would any businessman use information of this incredible quality? (Don't confuse "incredible" with "good", here. You'll be disappointed.)

Below are key facts about Liberia:
* 1847 - Freed American slaves proclaim independent republic on land bought for them by U.S. groups.

True. It does fail to point out that the reason the slaves could afford to return to Africa is that a group of wealthy American businessmen with a truly charming agenda bankrolled them so there wouldn't be a bunch of freed slaves hanging around the white people.

* Capital Monrovia named after U.S. President James Monroe.
* Population: 3.3 million (2003 U.N. figure).
* Languages: English, 29 African languages.
* Religions: Christianity, Islam, indigenous beliefs.

What exactly are the indigenous beliefs of a bunch of freed slaves, many of whom were probably in America for 3 generations or more?

* Liberia is Africa's oldest independent republic, and its people feel a close historical bond with the United States.
* Liberia has a lucrative business offering world shipping owners flags of convenience.

Clearly we managed to provide them with a good lesson about capitalism. Maybe not such a good one about responsibility on a national scale...

* It once boasted the world's largest rubber plantation -- owned by Firestone -- which resumed production on a smaller scale after the war.
* Liberia has reserves of iron ore, gold and diamonds.
* Descendants of slaves dominated political power for most of Liberia's existence.
* Civil war erupts in 1989 after Charles Taylor invaded from neighbouring Ivory Coast to oust dictator Samuel Doe. War leaves 200,000 dead. Taylor elected president at end of war in 1997.

"Liberia is Africa's oldest independent republic. Its current leader was elected after invading in a war that killed 200,000. The former leader was a dictator." I have nothing to add here. Reuters is in full self-parody mode.

* Taylor's former foes launch uprising in 2000 from bases in northern Liberia, near border with Guinea.
* In 2001, U.N. imposes arms embargo on Taylor's administration for trading arms for diamonds with rebels in Sierra Leone.
* In 2003, new rebel group known as Model emerges in southeast of Liberia. Rebels hold three-quarters of the country.
* In June 2003, Taylor is indicted for war crimes by a U.N.-backed court in Sierra Leone, where his former rebel allies carried out atrocities during a decade-long civil war.

In case you were wondering what life is like in an "independent republic." Apparently, Iraq was an independent republic, too, by these standards. I mean, Saddam even held elections, after all.

The problem here isn't that this is a particularly fiskable article. The problem is it's completely typical. I happened to pick a Reuters article, but it could have been any major news service. Their facts don't even fit with what they write. In this one, they start by sinning by omission, and then describe a country whose dictator was overthrown as "Africa's oldest independent republic." Some republic.

To quote Fezzik, from The Princess Bride, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

This calls for a trite saying!

2003-08-10T08:48:00.000-07:00

I've got lots of them. Nothing like a little bumper sticker philosophy to get the blood flowing.

This one would be: "Always plan for success. The world will give you a chance to catch up when you fail, but nobody waits for you when you succeed."

Iraqis Riot in Basra; One Protester Dead.
If this weren't becoming tragic, it would be comical. It's looking more and more like the administration expected peace and harmony to break out automatically as soon as we chased out Saddam. Sounds like something a pro-war hippy would believe. The Iraqis don't care if it's saboteurs or just bungling that's keeping the lights (and the air conditioning) off, they just want it fixed.

That being said, the media continues to emphasize the negative, when there's a great deal of positive in Iraq. It just doesn't make good copy. But complaining about that would be like expecting a cat to not chase birds, so I'll try to save my breath on that one.

On another note, I would like to point something out about this whole thing to the second amendment purists (which I am pretty close to being one of) who say that "we shouldn't have disarmend the Iraqi population, they have the right to bear arms also." The two reasons for an armed population are self-defense, and to overthrow the government if need be. Well, right now, we're the government there, and we've told them we're not leaving until we're done. Hopefully, when we're done, there will be some reasonable rights with respect to arming the population. Right now, it's counter to our goals. Nobody gets anything accomplished when ideologues try to do politics and war. When you're doing those, you're a lot better off channelling the spirit of Otto von Bismark than, say, Nietszche.

Eek! I've been linked!

2003-08-10T08:36:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Jeff from Alphecca, and welcome to anyone who follows the link from there to here. I'm working on a post about the other kind of unions (the civil kind), but it's going to take a while.

Ugh.

2003-08-09T18:23:00.000-07:00

So I finally latched on to a pickup Ultimate Frisbee game, after not playing for about 5 years.

My dad always had a quote about this sort of thing: "I may be old, but I'm sure slow."

That's how I feel right now. If you're over 30, and you exercise regularly, don't quit. Starting again is a stone bitch.

Labor unions

2003-08-08T17:48:00.000-07:00

Yes, I'm in a union. (The power plant I work at is a closed shop. Most are.) To be fair, there are some serious merits to collective bargaining when the job is inherently hazardous. In particular, individuals tend to be pretty poor at evaluating the health risks they face, but in a bargaining unit, you know it's going to affect some of you, so it tends to encourage people to pay a little more attention to their benefits.

It's really kind of entertaining when the union propaganda goes up on the reader board, though, since almost all the people I work with directly are ex-Navy. When they put up the "Stop the attack on overtime" flyer last month about the bill going through Congress, someone (another operator, and member of the union) defaced it to read "Stop the attack on our intelligence!" So it's not like we're big union flag-wavers or anything.

I got the Local newspaper in the mail today (not to be confused with a local newspaper. If you don't know what a Local is go ask your parents.) and there's a big splash front page article about how the new trade bills are bad. If you thought the NY Times was biased, you ought to read a union rag sometime. For instance, any job that goes overseas is "destroyed", even though my union is the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Never mind that for a company to move a job overseas it has to be saving enough money to risk the potential drop in quality (this is one of the big dangers of overseas movement. A number of companies have moved jobs back because of quality problems) and to cover costs associated with setting up or expanding an overseas operation. Beyond that, the person they hire is likely to be making more than they have ever made in their life. You would think that enriching the third world, so that maybe then we could export something once in a while, instead of lending them money and then writing it off, would be a Good Thing. Apparently only if we can do it while continuing to pay workers more than they're really worth here.

I feel like Alice in a particular Dilbert cartoon where she's trying to reconcile her boss's demand that she use all her vacation and meet her project deadline: "Hello! These are mutually incompatible goals! Hello??"

More gambling lawsuits...

2003-08-08T14:12:00.000-07:00

Lawsuits mount against Freddie Mac

So let me get this straight. These people invested enough money in Freddie Mac to lose $35 million, and it's clearly Freddie Mac's fault? Never mind that during that same period the market has been flat or down in most segments.

There are two ways to reliably make money in the stock market. One is to buy and hold a broad cross section of stocks (such as by buying an index fund). The other is to only buy (or short) stocks that you know more about than most people in the market. It sounds to me like these pension funds were doing neither of the above. (Word to the wise...a hot stock tip from a broker is not more knowledge than most people in the market have.)

I'm not defending what Freddie Mac was doing. Then again, nobody was calling for Jack Welch's head when GE managed to post growth for about 40 straight quarters, and I don't think there's any way that they did that without moving some transactions from one quarter to another to flatten out the curve.

Columbia disaster review board channels Claude Rains

2003-08-07T20:32:00.000-07:00

NASA Watchdog Calls Columbia Decisions 'Shocking'

I am a great admirer of Richard Feynman. He must be spinning in his grave right now. If this doesn't clue people in to why space exploration needs to be a private venture, nothing will. NASA's upper management is obviously driven by short-term PR gains, and doesn't seem to have changed one bit since 1986.

They got requests from engineers for high-altitude imaging to determine the extent of damage to the shuttle, and they turned them down. At least this time the engineers know that they did the right thing, except demanding an immediate abort of the launch before the abort to orbit point.

I am as in favor of space exploration as just about anybody. When I was in college, I gave serious thought to astronomy as a career. Nevertheless, it seems obvious to me that NASA is a near criminal waste of taxpayer money at this point. Take 10% of the NASA budget, and use it to establish prizes for clearly defined space exploration goals, and let the private sector decide how to meet them. Take the other 90% and do just about anything with it except creating more bureaucracy. The NASA engineers and astronauts have unique training and experience, and will be quickly snapped up by people seeking these prizes. The NASA managers can hopefully spend their days panhandling. They are, for the second time in less than 20 years, just as guilty of murder as someone who unplugs a deep-sea diver's air compressor.

So what about this recall election thing, anyway?

2003-08-06T20:21:00.000-07:00

Well, confounding all the intelligentsia in California, Schwarzenegger has tossed his hat into the ring. I'm really not sure how I feel about this. I don't see what the Republicans think they can gain here, unless they can pull a budget miracle out somehow. As it stands, the end result of a successful recall is that three years from now the Democrats can run as a breath of fresh air, especially if they can run someone who didn't get along with Davis anyway (Dianne Feinstein, anyone?), while the GOP inherits a disaster. Furthermore, I agree with George Will that this threatens to make campaigning a full-time job even for politicians in office, which is A Bad Thing, any way you look at it.

If I lived in California, I'd be nervous about Arnie because I think he's a statist rather than a libertarian, although I think he's a centrist on the right-left scale. Since I don't live there, I can look on with the same fascination I had for Jesse Ventura's successful run in Minnesota.

I guess maybe the best result is if this saps the Republican party's anti-Davis momentum early, and both parties are forced to run on the (cough) merits when the regular election cycle comes around. Otherwise the GOP might be able to trip and fall into the Governor's mansion without really having to show a coherent plan to the voters.

Bye, Jeff, we hardly knew ye

2003-08-06T20:06:00.000-07:00

So the Mariners have traded Jeff Nelson for Armando Benitez now. This means Nelson will have changed teams 3 times in his career--M's to Yankees, Yankees to M's, and now back to New York again. Interesting. Honestly, I don't think Nelson's been the same since they had to cut into his elbow last year to yank out some bone chips. He doesn't seem to have the same consistent amount of break on his slider, so he isn't throwing it as far inside to right handed batters. That takes the element of fear away from them, so they can stand in and hack at the pitch. Hopefully he'll do well in New York, except when he's facing the M's.

Benitez by the numbers looks pretty decent this year, but he's had some big blowups. Not that much different from what Sasaki has given Seattle, really, so I think Benitez will fit in well. Plus, Safeco field is a much more pitcher-friendly park than Yankee Stadium, and he gets to pitch in front of a defense that is on pace to break the single-season record for fewest errors. That can't hurt.

I suppose you're wondering why I've called you all here...

2003-08-05T22:40:00.000-07:00

Or, so enough about you, Steve, what are you going to write about?

I'm glad you asked.

The short answer is, whatever I feel like. (obviously)

Politics, law and economy, in large part, because they seem to be popular lately, and you all deserve the benefit of my immense wisdom.

For filler material, sports, music, and possibly interesting anecdotes from my past. Sports are likely to include baseball, anything played with a flying disc, and football, in American, English, and also Australian varieties. (Aussie rules will be discussed as best as an American native who learned it from watching ESPN in the early '80s coupled with my 2 hours a week on Fox Sports World can do.)

Oh, and before I forget, "Born that way" is a phrase from a quote of mine:

Expecting the children of poor people to achieve economic success because you give their parents money is like expecting that because Jewish men are circumcized, their sons will be born that way.

How unique, another blog.

2003-08-05T21:10:00.000-07:00

Before this foolishness goes any farther, here's some answers to questions that people might ask (if anyone reads this...)

Who's writing this drivel?
My name is Steve. I'm 32 years old, I've been married since June 21, 1996, and we have a 2 year old son, Benjamin. I work in a coal-fired power plant, which I've been doing since May of 2002. Before that, I was a nuclear propulsion plant operator in the US Navy for more than 8 years (counting boot camp and school.)

Politically, I'm generally fairly libertarian, but not completely.

Why should I read this?
Presumably because you have too much free time. Surely there's something you could do more productive than reading weblogs in general, or mine in particular.

How do I email you so I can show you how much smarter I am than you?
My email address is s_sandvik (at) comcast (dot) net. And if you're so much smarter than me, you'll already know that any email you send me may be posted or quoted here or somewhere else, because once you send it, it's mine, not yours. If you don't want that to happen, you will of course let me know in the letter, and I will respect your wishes, or if I feel compelled to post part of it anyway, I will do it in such a way that you cannot be identified from it. For that matter, I will usually not identify sources by more than a first name, unless asked to do otherwise. If I ever get email because of this blog, that is.

Why are you blogging, anyway?
Well, I'm not going to tell you the whole story, but partially it's because I work 12-hour rotating shifts, which means that when I'm time-travelling to nightshift, I'm at home, awake, while everyone else is asleep. Also because this gives me a better way to post long, drawn-out replies to other bloggers' material, rather than using their comment boxes, which tend to be a pain in the neck.

I think that probably covers more answers than I'll get readers, let alone questions, so that ought to be enough for now.