Donkey-tail Spurge

Donkey-tail Spurge
Originally uploaded by Chitch.

The backyard is full of dead grass (why water it, we live in a desert!), bindweed... and funky-looking volunteer plants like this spurge.

Posting photos

I gotta read the Help more often. It would have told me that it's now possible to upload photos directly to blogger.com.
Let's see if it actually works.

Interaction is a little clumsy compared to iWeb, because it requires filesystem interactions. But, unlike iWeb, blogger.com posts consistently appear as actual, copy-able HTML text :)

View from the Smuggler's Pub

View from the Smuggler's Pub
Originally uploaded by Chitch.

Last week we made another trip to Ouray for ice climbing -- and snowshoeing, and hiking, and (for some) snowboarding and cross-country skiing.

The snow was thinner than in previous years, and we had a couple of injuries (bones broken while snowboarding).

Still, it was a good trip; and the scenery was fantastic as usual. Photos are at Flickr and my .Mac site.

Iran to halt spot atomic checks if reported to UN - Yahoo! News

Iran to halt spot atomic checks if reported to UN - Yahoo! News

"If these countries use all their means ... to put pressure on Iran, Iran will use its capacity in the region," the semi-official ISNA news agency quoted Larijani as saying.

It was not clear what regional capacities he meant. Analysts and diplomats say Iran, with its links to Islamist parties and militants, has the means to create trouble for the West in
Iraq, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories and elsewhere.

Iran was responding to an agreement ... among the Security Council's big five, plus Germany and the
European Union, ... that the U.N. nuclear watchdog should report to the council this week on what Tehran must do to cooperate with the agency.

"We consider any referral or report of Iran to the Security Council as the end of diplomacy," Larijani, who is secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, told state television.

Iran's Oil Minister Kazem Vaziri eased concerns that the world's fourth biggest crude oil producer could curb oil exports in reprisal, as Tehran has previously hinted it may do.

"We are not mixing oil with politics," he told reporters at the start of an
OPEC meeting in Vienna.

Posting to iWeb from NetNewsWire

http://web.mac.com/mitch.chapman/iWeb/Dot-Mitch/Blogum/3226B4C3-15F7-4570-8ABB-8CA2E58438C4.html



I've been fiddling around with iLife '06 this week. Since NetNewsWire is my favorite RSS reader I wondered how hard it would be to make it use iWeb as its Weblog Editor.

I'm an AppleScript newbie, so for me the answer was "pretty hard". But the solution was straightforward once I found it.

New Scientist Breaking News - Banknote tracking helps model spread of disease

New Scientist Breaking News - Banknote tracking helps model spread of disease

Modeling with massively parallel analog computers...

Algae - like a breath mint for smokestacks | csmonitor.com

Algae - like a breath mint for smokestacks | csmonitor.com

It's kind of like rabbits eating their own poop. You know, for that little extra energy kick.

PBS | I, Cringely . January 19, 2006 - Hitler on Line One

PBS | I, Cringely . January 19, 2006 - Hitler on Line One

Fascinating stuff in this article, and – the current administration's behaviors aside – a sign that sometimes government shores up, rather than erodes, our civil rights.

For example, throughout WWII, all international communications originating in the U.S. (phone, cable, mail) were intercepted and monitored. Only in later years did the courts decide this was a violation of the 4th amendment.

Anyway, the question Cringely is trying to answer, is whether the Bush administration violated the law, and how serious any violations were.

I didn't know whether to be outraged or bored, and I feared that most Americans were in similar positions.

Dogs as good as screening for cancer detection

New Scientist Breaking News -
Dogs as good as screening for cancer detection

At least, for lung and breast cancer. Still unknown is whether they're sniffing out the signatures of cancer, specifically, or if they're detecting general disease indicators.

The dogs correctly detected 99% of the lung cancer samples, and made a mistake with only 1% of the healthy controls. With breast cancer, they correctly detected 88% of the positive samples, and made a mistake on only 2% of the controls.

DICEE

Let the Good Times Roll by Guy Kawasaki: Guy's Golden Touch

Describes the traits Guy associates with a great product:

• Deep. ...As your demands get more sophisticated, you discover that you don’t need a different product.


• Indulgent. ...not the least common denominator, cheapest solution in sight.


• Complete. Documentation counts. Customer service counts. Tech support counts...a great total user experience...


• Elegant. Things work the way you’d think they would.


• Emotive. ...so deep, indulgent, complete, and elegant that it compels you to tell other people about it.

Hm. So I've never worked on a great product, but some have been pretty good.

Red Skies at Morning

Red Skies at Morning - 1
Originally uploaded by Chitch.

Daybreak today was a little more colorful than usual.

Orion

Orion
Originally uploaded by Chitch.

Bobi got me a Canon A620 for Christmas. Tonight I got to play with shutter priority mode. 15 seconds at ISO 100, and a 2 second shutter delay to make up for my shivering trigger finger.

National Geographic's Genographic Project

How to Participate - The Genographic Project

Remember Spencer Wells and The Journey of Man? This is his follow-on project, funded by Nat Geo.

I guess they figured out a way to get different ethnic groups to participate. And they even found a way to get us to foot the bill. $100 is steep, but it's still kind of cool.

With a simple and painless cheek swab you can sample your own DNA.

To insure total anonymity you will be identified at all times only by your kit number.

If you'd like to contribute your own results to the project's global database you'll be asked to answer a dozen "phenotyping" questions that will help place your DNA in cultural context.

Samples will be analyzed for genetic "markers" found in mitochondrial DNA and on the Y chromosome. We will be performing ONE OF two tests for each public participant:

Males: Y-DNA test. This test allows you to identify your deep ancestral geographic origins on your direct paternal line.

Females: Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). This tests the mtDNA of females to identify the ancestral migratory origins of your direct maternal line.

Sciam: Fast neutron reactors and nuclear waste

A New Breed of Nuclear Reactors?: BLOG: SciAm Observations

Synopsis: Many are coming to believe that nuclear energy may be the most environmentally friendly way to generate electricity. Fast-neutron reactors could be fueled by what would otherwise be nuclear waste. But power utilities in the U.S. are not interested, in part because of the costs of developing a new generation of reactors.

"...the electrorefining method associated with fueling these reactors could also be used to process some of the existing mountains of radioactive fission waste."

"When the Energy Department decided to get rid of some surplus weapons-type plutonium by turning it into nuclear fuel, no utilities would take it, even at no charge."

Were the utilities concerned about accounting for the materials? The new reactor design would address such concerns, at least in part: "The actinides are kept mixed with the plutonium so it cannot be used directly in weapons."

China, the USA, competition for resources

China eyes increased energy cooperation with US - Yahoo! News

It's interesting to watch as China's per-capita energy demands begin to approach those of the US. Latest development: China's top economic planning body recommends increased cooperation with the US on energy issues.

I should go read the details before posting this :) but it's encouraging that the Chinese govt are trying to plan ahead rather than wait until we are in direct conflict.

China has a chance to play leapfrog in technology for energy production and conservation, and in transportation. That's where the real opportunity lies for the US: in sharing the costs, and results, of improving energy efficiency. Worst of all worlds would be for us to be stuck with our current energy infrastructure while other nations move ahead.

Bush's Snoopgate - Newsweek National News - MSNBC.com

I agree.

If we could just trust this president, or any president, then we wouldn't need the Congress and the courts.

Our executive branch has long kept secrets from its citizens -- classified documents, "black" military programs. The risk to the country in permitting the government to operate in secret, without accounting for its actions, is much greater than the risks which those actions are supposed to mitigate. The risk is that, once the habit of government secrecy is established, the ability of the country to detect and act against dangerous concentrations of governmental power will be lost.

Honda plans to mass-produce solar cells

According to the article production will start in 2007. Once it reaches full capacity Honda will be producing enough solar panels each year to power 8000 homes.

"Honda said its solar cells would be composed of non-silicon compound materials, consuming half as much energy and generating 50 percent less carbon dioxide during production when compared with conventional solar cells made from silicon."

How will their efficiency compare to those of other types of solar panels? Dunno.

They're targeting the Japanese domestic market first.

Javascript Animation: Tutorial, Part 2 - Schillmania.com

Look here for some clues on how to do animation, in JavaScript, without expensive page reflows.

The tutorial also describes ways to animate more efficiently, using a single timer. This evokes the realtime "executives" I used to see when I worked with flight sims in the aerospace industry.

The Straight Dope: Did John Wayne die of cancer caused by a radioactive movie set?

"Thirty years later, however, half the residents of St. George had contracted cancer, and veterans of the production began to realize they were in trouble. Actor Pedro Armendariz developed cancer of the kidney only four years after the movie was completed, and later shot himself when he learned his condition was terminal."

Mom has wondered from time to time whether or not Grandpa's leukemia had anything to do with his filming venues. She has mentioned a filming location, fallout, and the names of a few actors who died of cancer after working there. But I could never remember the place names. This link which my girlfriend provided seems to point to the right places.

Treehugger: Vulgarity and Nature: Chapter from Robert Grudin's Upcoming Book - American Vulgar

One of the things that drove me out of Ohio was the local attitude toward "growth" – it was considered good, progress, an improvement. All Icould see was the suburbs of Cincinnati and Dayton growing together along the I-75 corridor.

One of my friends and co-workers had this view of development. He was proud to live in one of the development communities that was spreading out over what had been farm land. (The community, whose name I have since forgotten, was featured a couple of years later in a National Geographic article about urban sprawl.)

Couldn't help thinking of my friend and his McMansion while reading this excerpt from Robert Grudin's "American Vulgar":

Growth is not just a cultural obsession. Growth has become a theoretical model for economists, executives and even civil servants. The idea is that economic entities[...] cannot remain robust unless they keep growing, and that this growth imperative has no chronological limit[...]The most colossal and preposterous of all vulgarities would be a civilization that, in the course of its busy, growing ways, paved over its environment and destroyed its only source of sustenance.