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To Be a Free Man

Jun 29th, 2012
by Jeff Duntemann.
5 comments

I wrote this about a week ago, long before the Waldo Canyon Fire appeared out of nowhere, and kicked it up to the cloud with a scheduled post date of June 29. I’ll modify what I say here to this extent: The really and truly best birthday present of all this year was simply to come home and find my house still standing. I didn’t get to loll in a chair under a tree at Lake McConaughy as planned. Life’s just like that sometimes. We’re not out of the woods quite yet, but at least the woods aren’t burning where I live. More on this as it unfolds.

Sixty today. In answer to the quintessential American question, What do you want for your birthday? I have a fairly simple answer: to be a free man.

That bears some explanation. I’m not looking for freedom from responsibility. I’m a man who keeps promises. Neither am I looking for someplace to swing my arms around irrespective of local noses. That’s an ego thing, made difficult by the fact that most people don’t always know where their noses are.  No, what I want is a higher and much tougher thing: to be sure that the view of the world that I hold is mine, and not handed down from someone else.

That kind of freedom, like keeping in shape, requires regular exercise and attention to detail. Five years ago I described some of the great lessons of middle age, which mostly cook down to Life is messy–and messy is good. Since then, a great deal of my research has been devoted to the problem of freedom of thought, and freedom’s great enemy, tribalism. I’ve watched in dismay as people I’ve known sometimes for decades have sold their souls for a nickel to various tribes, becoming tribal footsoldiers who reflexively hurl hatred and abuse at anyone and anything that dares disagree with their tribal owners.

The thing that really makes me shudder is that it appears to be primal behavior, bubbling up from our deeper and more apelike minds with little conscious intent. Much research suggests that we evolved within a sort of Big Man social model in which a few alpha men at the top (yes, almost always men) and their cronies enjoy power, resources, and sexual opportunity handed up from those beneath them in the hierarchy. At the bottom are the expendable footsoldiers who fling pointless insults at the other tribes while never realizing that the poo-flinging is a distraction designed to hide the fact that the game is played at their expense.

This might be the subject of a couple of very interesting entries, if I could work up the courage to write them. If I did, I’m sure I’d get plenty of abuse myself. Pressure to conform to received opinion is intense, and the social networking revolution appears to have been designed specifically to facilitate the enforcement of tribal dogma. Most of the bumper-sticker entries I see on Facebook are precisely this: Like and share–or you’re not really a loyal party member, eh?

No thanks. I’m a contrarian, which means that I question all wisdom that somebody attempts to shove in my face, and the harder they shove, the harder I question. I do have opinions, which I refine constantly and change when it’s clear that they need changing. I talk about some of them here, when I can make an interesting point. But I am training myself to offer the courtesy of not attempting to convert others to my views, in the hope that the courtesy will be returned. For example, I have a religion. If you want to know more about Old Catholicism (and the insanely optimistic little corner of it that I inhabit) I’ll be happy to tell you. I will not attempt to convert you, and I promise to respect whatever religion (or none) that you hold. As for the rest, I’m digging around just like everyone else. Sometimes I turn up a useful insight. When I do, you’re likely to see it here. Most of the time I’m just digging, because digging is where insights come from. Alas, there’s always more dirt than insight, and this is not a new problem, nor one unique to me. Don’t fling the dirt when you should be offering others the insights.

As for turning 60, well, heh. It’s a good round number, and easy to remember. As I’ve said over and over again, I already have damned near everything a man might want: a spouse who is intelligent, interesting, loyal, and drop-dead gorgeous to boot; a house and a chair and a good bright reading lamp; friends who challenge and surprise; dogs and tools and tube sockets in abundance, and a front-row seat at the greatest show human history has ever put on offer. The challenge now is to keep what I already have, including the discipline of being my own man without minimizing the right of others to be theirs.

I have it. I intend to keep it. This is a happy birthday indeed.

Posted in: Daybook.
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Safe Home…For Now

Jun 28th, 2012
by Jeff Duntemann.
2 comments

Quick update while I’m still conscious: We rolled back into Colorado Springs at about 4 PM. We took the back roads home: I-76 down from I-80 in Nebraska as far as Brush, and then Colorado 71 south to Limon, where we caught US 24 west to the city. I didn’t want to encounter traffic or possible closures coming down from Denver along I-25. It worked well, though we didn’t come at the mountains from the north and thus did not see most of where the fire’s still a very serious problem. Our firefighters have done a heroic job keeping the blaze away from densely populated areas, especially in the ancient and almost entirely wooden town of Manitou Springs.

In taking Colorado 71 south we drove through the range of the now-but-just-barely extinguished Last Chance Fire, and were boggled by blackened grassland that stretched out as far as the eye could see, 45,000 acres in all. We had thought to stop at the legendary ice cream shop at the crossroads (as we had hoped to our last time through Last Chance) but as best we can tell it perished, along with ten other structures nearby.

We got Jimi Henton back to her own house now that the danger appears to have passed in her area and turned (mostly) north. We can see some smoke from here but no flames. Again, we’re now fourteen miles or so from the front lines, and for the time being in no danger. The weather broke shortly before we got here: Temps fell to the more seasonal mid-80s, it clouded up, and in some places even rained a little. Please, Sir, can we have some more?

Anyway. To bed, glad the fire isn’t breathing down out necks but still fretting for others and hoping this sore throat isn’t a harbinger of worse tomorrow. I may be coming down with an eye infection, too. Sorrows come not as single spies, but in battalions, yup. Or, to put a more modern spin on it, when was the last time you heard the singular form of  “droves”?

Posted in: Daybook.
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Something’s Burning…

Jun 27th, 2012
by Jeff Duntemann.
4 comments

Like, Colorado Springs.

Ok. First of all, Carol and I are fine. We’re fine in part because we’re not yet back in Colorado Springs. We’ve been in Chicago for three weeks and might have stayed a little longer, but then friends started to call and email asking, “Are you near the fire?”

Egad. I don’t talk much about being away until we’re back, so apart from locals few people knew we were not in Colorado. Once it became clear that the fire was no quick or small matter, we got things in order as best we could and started the long trip west. We’ll be home some time tomorrow.

Our house is about 11 miles SSE of the Waldo Canyon fire and does not appear to be in immediate danger. Jimi Henton is there with Aero and Jack, and we’re in regular touch with her. Over the last two days, the fire’s perimeters have moved mostly north and east. 30,000 people have been evacuated already (including several of our friends and even Michelle Malkin) and things are a stupendous mess.

More than this I can’t tell you until we get there. Stand by.

Posted in: Daybook.
Tagged: ·

Odd Lots

Jun 20th, 2012
by Jeff Duntemann.
5 comments
  • The mysterious X-37B has returned to Earth after 468 days in space, evidently without a scratch. One of the comenters on the many space hobby sites I read suggested something interesting: The spacecraft might be considered a “retrievable satellite” that can stay in orbit for years at a time, then shimmy down the gravity well for a refurb when necessary before being launched to orbit again. (Thanks to Frank Glover for the link.)
  • The secret to an successful programming language may be a good…beard.
  • Here’s a nice, short, practical piece on password security. In case you haven’t heard yet, a long password of concatenated plain English words (“correct horse battery staple“) is better than a shorter password of unmemorizable gibberish.
  • Why 419 scam emails claim to be from Nigeria and are written idiotically, as they’ve been for years’n’years: It’s a stupidity filter. Only the spectacularly gullible would now reply to one, which maximizes the chances that the respondents will actually fall for the scam. Damned clever, these Nigerians.
  • Here’s yet another assault on wine snobbery.
  • I’m closing in on 60, and in my life have known a fair number of redheads. Not one of them would I describe as “fiery.” Not one. The cliche has become widespread enough that we recently discussed it as such in our writing group. (Most of my heroines have black hair, which seems more exotic to me.) Now that Pixar has anointed the cliche in a new film (rough language alert) might we hope that redheads will now be given some slack? (At least it’s a film in which the folks with Scots accents are actually Scottish.)
  • Speaking of redheads…there is some science now suggesting that the Neanderthals may have been gingers.
  • Speaking of Neanderthals…in my note-taking for a possible novel called The Gathering Ice, I suggested that Neanderthals (who hide in plain sight, and have done so for 50,000 years) refer to themselves as “the Uglies” and to the rest of us as “the Saps.” Now I learn that Graham Hancock uses “the Uglies” to describe the Neanderthals in his 2010 novel, Entangled. Bummer.
  • Double bummer: There is a YA teen series called The Uglies. Not about Neanderthals, though. Still, having twice been outgunned on the term, I’m considering renaming my Neanderthals “the Plugs.” Could work.
  • The anomalous cold snap called the Younger Dryas 12,000 years ago figures into the backstory of my Neanderthal yarn. It’s still unexplained, as this article maintains, but it sure looks like a phase-transition stutter to me, as Earth’s climate was changing from its cold state to its warm state. I’ve often wondered if we are now in the thick of a phase transition from the climate’s warm state to its cold state. (Such a stutter is the main gimmick in The Gathering Ice.)
  • This was utterly news to me: Parts of New York City have a vacuum-driven garbage-collection system that literally sucks trash through pipes under the streets to a central disposal location–and has had it for 35 years.
  • The email subject read “Your parcel is expecting of receiving.” Its parcel was expecting of delivering trojan. My delete was delivering of action. Alreet!

Posted in: Odd Lots.
Tagged: · · · ·

Juggling Three Trillion Eggs

Jun 18th, 2012
by Jeff Duntemann.
12 comments

June is likely to be a pretty thin month on Contra here for a number of reasons, most of them cooking down to the degree that my time and energy are committed to other things. I appreciate your emails, though. The boy is alright, if winded and maybe a little grouchy.

I knew that Obamacare was in trouble when its supporters stopped calling it “Obamacare.”

One of the law’s politer fans among my readership sent me a note earlier today, certain that the Supreme Court was going to hand down its ruling on the Affordable Care Act this afternoon. She knows I’m interested in the topic and that I have skin in the game. (I’m a freelancer and thus have to buy a policy on the individual market. It’s the largest single expense that Carol and I have.) We’ve discussed it before. She and I always used to call it “Obamacare,” without any suggestion that the term was some sort of epithet. No more. Well, there won’t be a decision today, but whatever you want to call the law itself, the issue’s been much on my mind.

I’m a skeptic of the ACA, mostly because of the risk of an adverse selection death spiral in the private insurance business. The bill enacts penalties that are trivial compared to the cost of either buying or providing coverage, which means that some people and small businesses are likely to pay the fines rather than comply, particularly since the bill forbids any kind of criminal sanctions for noncompliance. (Most of my earlier points may be found in this post.) The nature of the Supreme Court’s decision is critical. If the Court throws out the individual mandate while leaving the rest of it in force, the death spiral is almost inevitable. If the court throws out the entire bill, we’re back where we started. If the bill continues as passed, nobody knows what state the health insurance business will be come 2015.

“Affordable care”, alas, is a false promise, even if the entire bill survives intact. Revealingly, the bill’s key architect now says that the ACA will raise insurance premiums, especially for young people. My own premiums will likely rise by 19%. Given that Carol and I are square in the demographic that the insurance industry loves to hate, I guess I should be glad that we have coverage at all.

Even that isn’t a sure thing. I’m going to make a point here that I haven’t seen anyone else make in the years-long discussion: No matter what you intend to do, reforming a sector of the economy as large as health care guarantees that there will be a certain amount of blood in the streets. Health care expenditures now consume about 17% of GDP–three trillion dollars–a number that makes most American industries look like rounding errors. Any change that embraces that much turf and that much money will be disruptive down here in the waiting rooms. Any change. Insurance companies will reduce their presence in some areas. People will game the system. Prices of drugs and medical equipment will rise, triggering layoffs and outsourcing and trimming of insurance benefits. Doctors who are approaching retirement age may leave the field early rather than endure the paperwork and the fee limitations, leaving us with an even greater shortage of skilled practitioners. There will be mistakes and confusion on a truly epic scale, and a substantial number of people will slip through the cracks. Tumors will grow, conditions will fail to be diagnosed, and many will suffer.

This, furthermore, is best-case. If something goes wrong, well, the consequences are impossible to predict, beyond their being bad.

Do I have any better ideas? No. There are too many pathological conditions in play here: Nobody knows what their current health insurance costs. Everybody wants somebody else to pay for it. Human variability among individuals is broader than we’re willing to admit. We know far less about the workings of the human body than we claim to. Health care costs are hugely concentrated among relatively few individuals (I’ve heard 90/10 most often, but have not seen good numbers) so even policies with spectacularly high deductables will cost a great deal. Healthy people are too willing to ascribe their health to moral superiority, and bad health to bad behavior. (This is a phenomenon I’ve dubbed “Higgsism,” from the hero of Butler’s Erewhon.) Almost everyone is still repeating Ancel Keys’ scientific fraud, that carbs are good and fats are bad. The “death panels” meme cannot be un-coined.

Etc. The end result is that I consider universal health care an unsolvable problem, as most people understand the term “solvable.” (My definition of “solvable” does not include “imposing a solution by force on the public that the public does not want.”)

Whatever happens next week when the Supreme Court hands down its decision, we are in for a wild ride. You can’t juggle three trillion eggs without breaking some. Before you say that’s ok, imagine that one of those splats on the national carpet is you.

Pause before clicking that comments link, and recall that my tolerance for tribal hatred is close to zero. Note well that I did not use the words “liberal,” “conservative,” “Democrat,” or “Republican” in this post, nor any of various possible synonyms. If you intend to comment, I dare you to do the same.

Posted in: Ideas & Analysis.
Tagged: ·

Sic Transit Gloria Veneris…

Jun 6th, 2012
by Jeff Duntemann.
3 comments

Sun With Venus 1.jpg

…for another 105 years. By 2117, I’ll be heavily involved in other pursuits and may not be able to watch–but man, did we get a show this time!

Catching any short-lived astronomical phenomenon always involves a strong measure of luck. In 1972, seven friends and I drove 1200 miles to Cap Chat, Quebec, to see a total solar eclipse. We brought out the big guns–my 10″ telescope looks superficially like a big gun, and took a little explaining at customs both coming and going–but alas, two hours before totality the clouds rolled in. We had the novel experience of watching the umbra hurtling toward us by the darkening of the undersides of the high clouds, but of totality we saw nothing.

Luck, yeah. While planning for the event I noticed that my sister Gretchen’s back yard has a near-optimum line-of-sight to the place on the NW horizon where the Sun would set on June 5, 2012. Her lot fronts on a large open space running roughly E-W, with high-tension lines and their towers the only significant obstruction. Given that my western horizon is a 9,800 foot mountain and I see granite up to about 35 degrees, Gretchen’s back yard seemed flukily ideal.

Transit Setup-500 Wide.jpg

So there we chose our ground. (Without hawks but with hounds–sort of–and elves be damned.) The instrument was my Bausch & Lomb Criterion 4000 suitcase scope, which has gone on a number of expeditions with us, including two total solar eclipses and Halley’s Comet in 1986. The technique was what I generally do for solar observing: project an image on a piece of foamcore supported by a separate tripod. The image at the top of this entry was a shot of the foamcore, taken with an ordinary and slightly ancient Kodak V530 pocket camera.

I logged first contact at 5:05 PM. Second contact (when the trailing edge of the disk of Venus enters the disk of the Sun) came at 5:22 PM. After that it was the long slow crawl of Venus downward (on the foamcore) as the Sun slowly set in the northwest. Gretchen’s girls thought it was interesting, and before the transit I showed them how the telescope brings in a magnified but inverted image of things far away, like a 55-gallon trashcan across the open space. I’m sure they didn’t completely understand what was going on, but as with all Uncle Jeff tricks they did consider it a lot of fun.

The weather was nothing short of astonishing: high 60s F, light breeze, crystal blue skies down to the horizon. So it had been the whole day, and so it stayed every minute until the Sun vanished behind some trees at 8:03 PM. I got a lot of good photos, considering that the photos were of an image projected on cardboard. Toward the end of visibility, the scope was directed square across the approach to O’Hare Field, and five, count ’em, five jet aircraft crossed the disk of the Sun while we watched. The exhaust from the engines, though invisible directly, distorted the solar image in an interesting way.

Fifteen minutes before the Sun vanished, it passed behind one of the high-tension towers across the open space, allowing me to fiddle the focus a little and get some remarkable shots, like the one below:

Sun Behind Tower.jpg

Gretchen made one of her trademark pot roast feasts, with Yukon Gold mashed potatoes almost the color of the solar disk. (A dollop of real butter yellowed ’em up gorgeously.) Dash and QBit ran around in circles, chased balls, and slept like rocks last night. As did we all.

Success just don’t get any more successful than that.

Posted in: Daybook.
Tagged: ·

Review: The Thermaltake V9 SATA Toaster Case

May 30th, 2012
by Jeff Duntemann.
7 comments

V9 Case Top Dock.jpg

After I fried my 2009-era Antec quad core tower machine, I had my favorite local box shop put me together a new quad core, this time in an interesting case: the Thermaltake V9 BlacX. Like virtually all cases you buy on the parts market these days, it’s a gamer case, complete with lots of fans and the obligatory plexi window on the side so (I presume) your friends can admire your junk. The fans are there to cool ranks of screaming graphics cards. If you’re using integrated graphics, as I am, you can probably turn most of them off. With just the front panel fan going, the inside of the case here runs at 75-77 degrees F (I measured it with a Radio Shack probe digital thermometer) which is hardly molten death.

I bought the V9 for a very particular reason: It has a double SATA toaster dock built right into the top panel. I’ve been using an Ineo USB toaster dock for some time, and like it a great deal. As with any gadget of its class, it needs its own wall wart, and there’s the inevitable data cable. The notion of having a toaster dock like that right on the machine means that I can lose a wall wart and a data cable from the ratsnest. The V9 case provides two.

The Gigabyte mobo I’m using has six SATA ports. Four of them are SATA 2.0 ports, capable of data transfer rates up to 3 Gbps, and two are SATA 3.0 ports, which can go as fast as 6 Gbps. (The choke point is most likely the drives you’re using, not the ports themselves.) The two 6 Gbs ports go to the internal drives. Two of the 3 Gbps ports go to the twin toaster docks on the top panel. Another 3 Gbps port goes to the optical drive. That still leaves me with a spare SATA 2.0 port, and the V9 even leaves me an empty bay in the front panel if I ever want to put a second sled slot in it.

Each of the two docks are almost identical to the Ineo dock, in that they can accept either 2.5″ SATA laptop drives or standard 3.5″ SATA drives. The dock ports do not use USB connectivity, as I initially suspected. There is no electrical or logical difference between drives plugged into the top dock ports and drives mounted internally and connected to SATA ports of similar speed.

SATA drives are hot-swappable, which means that yanking them out of a SATA connector with power on will not physically damage them. However, the OS needs to manage removability, and I haven’t poked at that aspect yet. From what I’ve read, there is a TreatAsInternalPort registry key governing whether a given SATA channel is removable or not. I believe that making a SATA port removable cuts down its throughput some. (Further research may be needed.) For the moment I’m happy to plug drives into the dock while powered down. When XP boots up, it sees them as though they were internal drives, which (electrically) they are. I’ll play around with the removability bit as time allows.

The case is too new to judge, really. I have a quiet Antec power supply in it, and the front fan makes barely a whisper. It has all the external ports I need. Key here isn’t functionality so much as survival in daily use. The Antec 900’s USB ports started to die after only a year or so in service. Check with me again after the V9 has lived for three or four years in my new downstairs office with the Wimhurst carpeting. USB ports may be the least of my worries.

So far: highly recommended.

Posted in: Reviews.
Tagged:

Odd Lots

May 22nd, 2012
by Jeff Duntemann.
8 comments

Posted in: Odd Lots.
Tagged: · · · · · ·

Eclipse Wrapup

May 21st, 2012
by Jeff Duntemann.
4 comments

By four PM yesterday I knew we were in trouble: The western sky was overcast, and weather radar showed various precipitation clouds squirming around in our line of sight to the western horizon. However, the scope and the folding chairs were already packed in the back of the 4Runner, so on the outside chance a miracle might happen, we put QBit and Dash in the back seat (Aero and Jack don’t like crowds of admirers as much) and steamed six miles east to St. Raphael’s Episcopal Church.

We had announced the event at both morning services, and several of our fellow parishioners were waiting eagerly for us as we got there about 5:30. I chose a spot in the parking lot to maximize western coverage, then stood around talking to our friends with one eye on the sky. Well, call it miracles or just call it a side benefit of chaos (in the rigorous sense, as the math that governs complex systems like weather and climate) but a little before six the sky in the northwest started to clear.

With a little help from fourteen-year-old Fred Jones (below left) I got my vintage 8″ vent-pipe junkbox scope (details and better photos here) set up in record time. We put it in the wind-shadow of the 4Runner, and while I adjusted the optics Fred went and got some additional folding chairs from the parish hall. By then a few more people had arrived, and by 6:15 we had a small crowd of chairs in a half-circle around the scope and its foamcore screen.

Eclipse Group 500 Wide.jpg

The skies were not great. We had runs of clear air and runs of dense cloud. While it was clear I pointed out the several sunspots, and at 6:24 Fred announced that there was a flat edge to the Sun’s image at the bottom of the screen. We had a chance to see that flat edge grow to a small scallop before the clouds closed in again.

At about 6:45 it cleared up, and for over half an hour we actually had a decent line on the Sun as the Moon took a greater and greater bite out of it. The coolest event of the evening happened so quickly that only a few of us caught it: A jetliner clipped across one of the horns of the sun’s roughly 50% eclipsed disk. Remarkably, Dianna Jones was taking a video of the foamcore screen when it occurred, and she’s going to try and fish out the frame or two of the plane’s passing when she goes through the video on her PC.

Eclipse 350 Wide.jpgWe had a decent view up to about 65% or so coverage, when the clouds closed in what turned out to be for good. In the meantime, there was a profound weirdness: A southeast wind blew light rain out of clouds that had already passed over us, and even though it was (mostly) clear from well east of the zenith to the Sun, we watched the best part of the eclipse in the rain. As God may well have been telling us: “Here’s your miracle. Just don’t get cocky.” And to seal the deal He gave us an intense double rainbow. What does it mean? It means we didn’t mind getting a little wet, we laughed, and we all had a wonderful time. (I threw my jacket over the most vulnerable portions of my scope.)

My emphasis was not to take great photos but to make the eclipse accessible to people who would otherwise have to be content with a few shots on TV. Our friends were able to walk right up to one side of the foamcore and see the umbrae and penumbrae of sunspots on the image. Most snapped their own pictures of the Sun’s disk, and we talked about things like heat distortion at the edges of the image (because the Sun was very low in the sky) how reflector telescopes differed from refractors, and much else.

I had hoped to catch the crescent Venus after sunset, but by then the western sky was solid clouds. We packed up and went home. I still call it a great success. After all, in 1972, a group of my friends and I drove 1400 miles from Chicago to the mouth of the St. Lawrence River for a total solar eclipse, only to be clouded out a bare hour before totality. Carol and I have seen two unobstructed total solar eclipses since then, including the “big one” in Baja in 1991. Two out of three ain’t bad.

Next stop: Grand Island, Nebraska on August 21, 2017.

Posted in: Daybook.
Tagged:

Ready for the Eclipse

May 20th, 2012
by Jeff Duntemann.
2 comments

Solar Projection Setup 500 Wide.jpg

I put the 8″ scope together on the driveway to make sure nothing was amiss (and to be sure I could find all the parts) before packing the whole thing off to the parking lot of St. Raphael’s Episcopal Church. Observing the eclipse where I live is impossible, because I’m on the eastern slopes of Cheyenne Mountain, which rises almost 30 degrees above the western horizon. Today’s eclipse will occur while the Sun is setting here in Colorado Springs. In fact, even with a perfect western horizon, the Sun will set before the eclipse is fully past.

The church is almost seven miles east of us, and while there will still be mountains on the horizon, they will obstruct nowhere near as much of the sky as they do from my driveway. It also becomes an opportunity to have parishioners who may be interested come out and see what of the eclipse can be seen from here. The full annular eclipse will be visible from Albuquerque, about 250 miles south of us. We’d considered heading down for it, but there’s just too going on in our lives right now to spare the time.

The projection screen is simple Hobby Lobby foamcore attached to a length of aluminum angle stock with a 1/4-20 threaded hole at its center. I had to crank up my tripod almost to its vertical limit to get it to catch the image of the noonday Sun. The eclipse here doesn’t begin until 6:27 PM, when the Sun will be a great deal lower in the sky. Maximum coverage is about 7:30. The Sun sets here at 8:09.

Of course, all of this assumes that it will be clear later this afternoon. There are a lot of big puffy cumulus clouds up there now, and we had a thuderstorm here yesterday evening. So far so good. I’ll let you know how it goes tomorrow.

Posted in: Daybook.
Tagged: ·

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