On the way to the record store, Nora saw a cat sitting beneath a rhinoceros. We think the cat was real.
Re the Alexis de Tocqueville screed, Tim Lambert is on the AdTI case. For you free software types in the audience first making the AdTI's acquaintence, Tim has a helpful history. (Note to self: when engaging in skullduggery, avoid attracting Tim Lambert's attention.)
Also Martin Pool dissects AdTI.
Dolphins, it turns out, apparently understand instinctively and from the beginning what I am only beginning to grasp.
A new paper by Daniel Weihs (free, reg. req.) calculates that baby dolphins swimming in mom's slipstream gain between 30 percent and 60 percent of the force required to keep up. Weihs, of the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, calculated the hydrodynamics, then looked at aerial photos. He found the dolphin calves swimming in exactly the spot his equations predicted would be the most efficient.
Which brings us to the Tuesday Night Crits, and Aaron Wilson's explanation that I needed to learn to listen to the wind. The quiet spot, he explained, is the place you wanna be when you're trying to draft off of another rider.
Bicycle Bill added a Cat 4 race this past Tuesday. Roughly translated, that's "old farts and beginners," both categories in which I seem to fit. There were about 25 people who lined up for the start, and instead of being spit out of the back of the pack immediately, I found myself racing with the clump.
The physics of the draft - the thing the dolphins get so instinctively but has taken me a while to master - is profound. Riding at the back of a pace line at 24 miles per hour, you use 27 percent less energy than the guy at the front. Behind a pack of eight, you use 39 percent less energy. Obviously, there's all kinds of game theory to be understood here, because what's the point of being in the front? For the dolphin, there's an obvious mom-child thing going on, but in a bike race who you love and are therefore willing to sacrifice for is a bit more complex.
Whatever. It just seemed like fun Tuesday, sitting in the middle of the pack going close to 30 miles per hour down the tailwinded back stretch, when I saw Aaron itching off to the side like he was going to attack. He did, I tried to go with him and failed, and found myself on the front of the pack, pushing the chase for a lap to reel him back in.
In game-theoretical terms this was a bad idea. I was spending a whole lot of energy hauling the other guys behind me. But blasting around the fourth corner into the home straight at the head of the pack without touching my brakes (it's a big, wide turn) was about as much fun as I've had on two wheels.
I dropped back into the pack after my lap of glory, but we'd managed to bring the break back and we ended up after 8 miles of racing in a bunch sprint. I can't sprint for shit, but I still was inside the top ten, and our average speed for the race was 24.4 miles per hour, which is the fastest I've ever gone on a bike.
I did a couple of laps' warm down, then lined up for the C race, letting the fast boys go and settling down with a couple of stragglers in a pace line and we still put in a respectable 22 mph for another 20 minutes of racing.
Turns out dolphins also will swim in the stern wave of a small boat for the same reason. Like the cyclists in the peloton, dolphins in the boats' wake had lower heart rates than those that weren't drafting. Ducklings are doing it to when they swim behind their mothers, and various flock-flying birds.
Just took me longer to catch on.
From the right, the middle looks awfully far to the left, and vice versa.
Mike Fancher, executive editor of the Seattle Times, had a column Sunday about readers complaining the newspaper showed a liberal bias. And other readers complaining the newspaper showed a conservative bias.
So this funny little guy came by today claiming the lost sunglasses were his:
I don't know. They didn't seem to fit him. I think he was trying to scam me. I didn't give them to him.
Years ago I read a paper by Hillard Kaplan, a University of New Mexico anthropologist, about the evolutionary economics of brain size. I tried to do a story, but he was off in the jungles of Bolivia working, and we never connected. Cleaning out a file recently on my desk at work, I came across the paper, and called him. Here are the results:
Consider the fundamental difference between us and our nearest living relative, the chimpanzee.The typical adult human brain weighs 3 pounds.
The chimpanzee's brain weighs 1 pound.
The difference, according to Kaplan, a UNM anthropologist, is a matter of economics. Think of that big brain as an investment. It takes a while to build, with mom and dad kicking in most of the up-front costs.
Once built, it takes a long time to take advantage of it— to learn the intricacies of finding one's way along a faint jungle trail, for example.
"Children are net consumers all the way up to age 20," Kaplan said.
In the long run, the payoff is huge. The knowledge gained in the lengthy period of tutelage makes grown humans remarkable economic engines, whether in the jungles of Paraguay or a modern technological society.
So if you're in Albuquerque, you've gotta go have coffee and a sandwich, or desert, at Cafe Riviera. It's on Constitution, just west of Carlisle. I swear, we were sitting there this evening having dessert, and they had a guy on the patio playing a trombone.
Right off the bat, any place that has a guy playing the trombone is obviously great. But I've had this fantasy for years that someone opens a little coffee place in our neighborhood, so Lissa and I could wander over on warm summer evenings for desert and to watch the people come and go - and they'd be smart and interesting people, probably wearing sandals. And the place would sell the New York Times. I mean, you can get the Times out of a machine in front of the supermarket, but that's not the same as picking it up off of a pile next to the coffee pump pots.
OK, Cafe Riviera doesn't seem to have the Times. Yet. But they've got pump pots, and the people looked interesting. So go there and spend your money, please. This is my fantasy. We can't let them go out of business.
I"m not sure yet whether I have a dog in the Mono fight, but a couple of comments today from Nat and Havoc have me confused, so perhaps one or the other or both or some other smart person could elaborate:
Nat:
Should we not use XML because much of the standard was developed by Microsoft; because, in fact, Microsoft claims to have IP on it?
Havoc:
Yes XML had Microsoft involved, among many others. I'd say the difference between XML and .NET is pretty clear so I won't belabor the point.
In fact it's not terribly clear to me, but maybe someone smarter and more knowledgeable than I could do the "compare and contrast" thing between .NET and XML to help me understand the ways in which the situation may be the same (or at least similar, the Nat argument), and the ways in which it is not (Havoc's apparent position).
Found, on the back dash of my car:
If you're missing a pair, let me know.
Check the T-shirt below carefully:
That's a GEGL-shirted DCM doing what he apparently does naturally, broken Coracoid Process or not.
It's for sure always weird meeting someone in person after knowing them for a long time on line, but Dave and Cate didn't disappoint. Dave's so, umm, serious on line, and then he and Cate drive up in this utterly extravagant convertible Mustang rental - red - and he has this impish little understated smirk when he's cracking wise that one simply can't see on line.
We dragged the two of them halfway across the state in the course of a couple of days, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I s'pose it's our turn now to go to North Carolina and eat some of that utterly strange-sounding barbecue.
Since not everyone clicks through, I thought (at the risk of reviving the John Malkovich debate) I'd pull Stephen's thoughtful comments out here:
John,Do you know that your blog is posted on planet.gnome.org?
The reason I say that is because for the past few months I've been reading it and I've yet to see you mention anything -even remotely- related to gnome. If your not going to blog about gnome fine, but don't make the rest of us read it.
Stephen
Just FYI, Stephen, this has been a point of some contention in the past. I don't run Planet GNOME, so I'm not really in a position to do something about your problem one way or the other, except perhaps to point out that there is a separate RSS feed for my free software-related posts.
I have always thoroughly enjoyed the tradition of clinking glasses. But I am apparently out of date, according to Thelma Domenici:
Clinking glasses after a toast is a very old custom, and many people thoroughly enjoy it, but in today's etiquette world, instructors teach that you should just raise your glass. They say clinking is not necessary and is hard on glassware.
Good to know.
If you live in the eastern U.S., you probably don't need me to tell you that the cicadas are emerging in huge numbers this year, a surge known as "Brood X." Cameron Barr documents their arrival in this morning's Washington Post. The Post's David Brown wrote a terrific piece last week explaining their evolutionary biology. (Thanks to Carl Zimmer for that second lnk.)
A scientist grasping the distinction between fiction (the new "Day After Tomorrow" climate porn film) and realty, and respecting the public's intelligence to do the same:
"My first reaction was, 'Oh, my God, this is a disaster because it is such a distortion of the science. It will certainly create a backlash,' " said Dan Schrag, a Harvard University paleoclimatologist. "I have sobered up somewhat because the public is probably smart enough to distinguish between Hollywood and the real world."
Le'ts hope Schrag hasn't underestimated the public's intelligence. I think he hasn't.
The members of Thespian Troupe 1775 of Albuquerque High School gathered Saturday evening for their annual banquet and new member initiation, and it was a long and proud affair. It is as much about the general feeling of shared accomplishment as it is about the particulars of theater. These kids put on show after show all year long and work their tails off and at the end realize they have accomplished something very special. Tears for the departing seniors, laughs, amazing poise and some whacked-out kid in the light booth who couldn't resist throwing up a lightning bolt zig-zagging across the curtain at one point in the evening's festivities.
Who was that in the light booth?
Good to know the UN is stepping up to its responsibilities by monitoring the situation in Sudan. They're gonna have to work real hard, 'cause there's going to be a lot of dead bodies to monitor. Maybe they could make their job easier by actually doing something to stop the killing - then there would be fewer bodies to count, less of those messy mass graves to dig up later, etc.
Re Michael Moore's difficulties with Disney: we've been had
Some friends at work are putting together a group to ride the Tour de Cure next month, a fundraiser for diabetes research and treatment. If you'd like to contribute, they make it easy.
Years ago, we were visiting my friend David in Oxnard and we headed downtown for Mexican food. Oxnard is one of those Southern California towns where Latin American immigrations has created its own dominant culture, and Mexican food in downtown Oxnard back then was really Mexican food, a string of restaurants in a neighborhood dominated by immigrants.
Before we went, David offered this warning: there will be Mariachi musicians, but they only warm up. They never play.
As we sat down to eat, a Mariachi walked in to the restaurant with his guitar, sliding into a booth by the door. He was resplendent, green with white piping down the side of his pants and that magnificent hat. He plucked a bit at his guitar and chatted with the waitresses. Then another, with a trumpet, blowing quiet and low. It was like this during the whole meal, with the players drifting in and out, picking out a few bars, chatting. When we left, they were standing out by a car on the street.
They only warmed up. They never played.
The first Tuesday Night Crit was this evening. Bill the Bike Man blocks off the streets in a business park up near my work, a half mile circuit with wide turns and good pavement.
It's a fast course, flat with three real turns and one long gentle bend. I raced the C race, which is the only spot they've got for beginners, and pretty much got dropped on the first lap. But I still hammered pretty well, and turned in a respectable 22.8 mph for 20 laps, which is a personal best, almost a mile an hour faster than the last crit I rode.
Lissa's verdict is that I'm getting sucked in. Guess she's right, but whatever. It sure is fun riding a bike fast.
Hank Stuever pricks the pomposity of the White House Correspondents' Association dinner:
Drew Barrymore rushed in past the line with her escorts just before midnight, staying just long enough to enchant a few more people with talk of a documentary she's making about getting young people to vote. (A documentary! Genius. That should solve it.)
All slathered up with sunscreen this morning, I launched a bike ride back through the seasons - from a warm morning that felt like summer but was really just spring, up east through town to the mountains, circling 'round the back to the road that winds up to the ski lifts. From green trees leafed out in the valley, to the first signs of spring in the low parts of the high country, to deciduous trees up high waiting for their turn.
The ski lifts are long shut down, but there still was snow in the shadows on the north facing slopes - gritty, filthy snow, barely deserving the name, but snow nevertheless. I was overdressed when I left - long tights and two shirts - but was glad when I made the turn and began riding back down, hands hard on the brakes and chilled in the wind of the descent.
It's my birthday this week, and it is becoming my custom to celebrate by riding my age. Forty five miles right now didn't seem like much of a challenge, so I added a mountain and some extra distance to this year's effort to make it feel like a deserving birthday ride. It was worthy.
I love the smell of sunscreen in the morning. It smells like ... summer.
So here's part of what I've been so busy with:
World War II was raging when, shrouded in secrecy, the U.S. government built a pair of chemical plants on a barren plain along a bend in the Columbia River in Washington state."B-Plant" and "T-Plant" were identical copies, spaced far enough apart that a Japanese bomber could not destroy both plants on a single bombing run.
Their job - to process the plutonium for America's first atom bombs.
Sixty years later, the witches' brew of radioactive waste from those plants is at the center of a bitter dispute between the Department of Energy and the state of New Mexico. The question is whether some of it can be disposed of in New Mexico.
Read the full story and the sidebar.
I had a dream last night. I do not remember anything, except that there was some sort of horrible dishwashing accident, and our small frying pan was ruined.