The news came over the TV late this afternoon. He was 95, so it cannot be called an untimely death, but he will be missed. Mandela saved his country from a bloody racial war. I don't understand how he did it, but it happened.
In the 1960s and 70's, a small white minority ran South Africa to suit them selves. Blacks were disadvantaged at law, herded into ugly slums, denied a decent education or a decent job. The whites owned all the property, all the companies, ran the army, the police, the courts, the government, everything. The whites had everything except numbers. The white minority was being as nasty and unpleasant as possible, and the majority blacks had had it up to there. They formed the African National Congress, were getting weapons and organizing for a war of extermination. They had the numbers and it looked like South Africa would explode into civil war that would go on until one side or the other was exterminated.
Working inside this powder keg, Mandela somehow convinced the ruling whites to open the country to free elections and allow themselves to be voted out of power. And, after obtaining power, Mandela was able to prevent the now empowered black majority from wrecking an awful vengeance on the white minority.
I still do not understand how Mandela pulled off this miracle, but he did. It saved his country.
Thursday, December 5, 2013
Broken Glass
Apparently Google has banned face recognition software from their "Glass" wearable computer, the one that looks like a pair of eyeglasses.
I wonder why.
Glass would be really useful if it would prompt you with a name when you meet some one. About a zillion times I meet some one whose face I recognize but I cannot for the life of me, remember their name. If Glass could recognize the same face and look up the name, it would be a killer app.
I wonder why.
Glass would be really useful if it would prompt you with a name when you meet some one. About a zillion times I meet some one whose face I recognize but I cannot for the life of me, remember their name. If Glass could recognize the same face and look up the name, it would be a killer app.
Gas Tax Hike.
On Fox TV news Neil Cavuto was raking a Congresscritter over the coals about a gas tax hike. The Congresscritter (his name escaped me) was bound and determined to get a gas tax hike to preserve the infrastructure. Cavuto was hammering the Congresscritter to explain where all the billions of dollars already authorized for infrastructure had gone. The Congresscritter clearly had no clue, and no clue about how much has been appropriated in the past.
Cavuto has a point. The federal gas tax paid for building the interstate highway system. But that is done, the system is built, has been built for the last forty years. Routine maintenance, mowing, plowing, repaving, bridge repair, cleaning storm drains and culverts, is one hell of a lot cheaper than building the road in the first place. The state highway departments have been taking care of it. In well run states like New Hampshire, the asphalt is smooth and black, the stripes are bright and freshly painted, the bridges get rebuilt every thirty years or so, and the road doesn't wash out in the spring. In poorly run states like New York, the interstates are not as well maintained, and in fact can get pretty shabby. For instance I-95 across the Bronx.
But that is a state problem. If New Hampshire, with no income tax and no sales tax, can keep its interstates in good shape, there is no reason why New York (which has both) cannot do so too.
Either way, we don't need the feds slinging money around for "transportation" or " infrastructure". The real needs are handled be state governments, using state tax money. Which is the way it should be.
The last big federal project was the Big Dig in Boston. Taxpayers all over the country got soaked for years to pay for a massive project that did make Boston prettier, but didn't improve the traffic flow at all. You gotta ask, why should citizens in, say North Dakota, be paying for a project of benefit only to Boston real estate interests.
Cavuto has it right, we don't want to hike taxes during Great Depression 2.0 just to maintain full employment at some state road contractors.
Cavuto has a point. The federal gas tax paid for building the interstate highway system. But that is done, the system is built, has been built for the last forty years. Routine maintenance, mowing, plowing, repaving, bridge repair, cleaning storm drains and culverts, is one hell of a lot cheaper than building the road in the first place. The state highway departments have been taking care of it. In well run states like New Hampshire, the asphalt is smooth and black, the stripes are bright and freshly painted, the bridges get rebuilt every thirty years or so, and the road doesn't wash out in the spring. In poorly run states like New York, the interstates are not as well maintained, and in fact can get pretty shabby. For instance I-95 across the Bronx.
But that is a state problem. If New Hampshire, with no income tax and no sales tax, can keep its interstates in good shape, there is no reason why New York (which has both) cannot do so too.
Either way, we don't need the feds slinging money around for "transportation" or " infrastructure". The real needs are handled be state governments, using state tax money. Which is the way it should be.
The last big federal project was the Big Dig in Boston. Taxpayers all over the country got soaked for years to pay for a massive project that did make Boston prettier, but didn't improve the traffic flow at all. You gotta ask, why should citizens in, say North Dakota, be paying for a project of benefit only to Boston real estate interests.
Cavuto has it right, we don't want to hike taxes during Great Depression 2.0 just to maintain full employment at some state road contractors.
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
Hunger Games, Catching Fire
So I went to see it last night. Not bad. Not quite as good as the first one, but that's sequels for you. The Jax Jr wasn't very full, and half the audience were oldsters like me. I assume the teenagers all saw it over the weekend. If you liked the first one, you will want to see this one, just to learn what happens next to Katniss and Peeta. The director had more money to make this one, so the costumes and sets are richer and fancier
The plot is more complicated and harder to follow if you haven't read the book, which I haven't. Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) has a much more complicated romantic life, with two or three guys seriously in love with here. Everyone has grown up a bit since the first one. They are taller and more heavily muscled, clearly adults, where as in the first one everyone looked young enough to be in high school, if they have high school in that world. The costumes show off everyone's figure to advantage.
Poor Peeta has to put up with a lot. Turns out, that Katniss is no longer madly in love with him, and in fact is interested in one or maybe two other guys. He knows about this, in fact he knows the guys, and he doesn't show any jealousy, in fact he is loyal and supportive all thru the story.
Anyhow, I am glad I went to see it. It's one of the very few movies good enough to get me out to Littleton in the dark, rather than just netflixing them later.
The plot is more complicated and harder to follow if you haven't read the book, which I haven't. Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) has a much more complicated romantic life, with two or three guys seriously in love with here. Everyone has grown up a bit since the first one. They are taller and more heavily muscled, clearly adults, where as in the first one everyone looked young enough to be in high school, if they have high school in that world. The costumes show off everyone's figure to advantage.
Poor Peeta has to put up with a lot. Turns out, that Katniss is no longer madly in love with him, and in fact is interested in one or maybe two other guys. He knows about this, in fact he knows the guys, and he doesn't show any jealousy, in fact he is loyal and supportive all thru the story.
Anyhow, I am glad I went to see it. It's one of the very few movies good enough to get me out to Littleton in the dark, rather than just netflixing them later.
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
Perks of being a Wallflower
I don't know just why I netflixed this one. Must have been the cast, Emma Watson, and Logan Lerman. Logan has had some decent roles, The Lightening Thief, Three Musketeers, and this one. And everyone wants to see Emma Watson as anything besides Hermione. (Is there life after Harry Potter?)
Emma steals all the scenes. She is pretty, slender, well dressed, the life of the parties. And there is a lot of partying. She is vivacious, and Logan falls in love with her at first sight. But by the end of the movie, despite having spent a lot of time together, Emma complains that after all that time, Logan never asked her out.
The flick is about surviving high school. Logan, entering as a freshman, has his doubts. For a shy freshman he does OK, manages to get into a clique with pretty girls (Emma) and the class clown. He finds a sympathetic teacher, he gets invited to all the parties. Kids have done worse.
Especially as Logan's character (Charlie) is a zero. He never does anything, at least not on camera. He has no skills, he isn't into sports, either as a player or a fan. He has no hobbies, he doesn't ride, or camp, or hike, or boat, or drive, or hack computers, or play computer games, or fly model airplanes, or anything. Hell, he doesn't even watch TV. And he dislikes high school, keeps counting the days until he can graduate and get out. This despite having a decent social life.
The irritating thing about this flick, is that neither Logan or Emma ever DO anything. Stuff happens to them, but they never take any action to swim up stream. Or down stream, or anything. They just show up, and somebody else does something to them, and they just take it. No guts. Or the director doesn't want to show anything. What should have been the climax, where Logan stands up in the cafeteria and defends the class clown with his fists, the camera just blacks out, we don't see anything. By most people's standards, standing up to the football team to keep them from beating up a friend is heroic. But, we don't see this happening, they tell us about it afterward. And, although it gets Logan and Emma back together after a quarrel, that's about all it does.
There are some anachronisms. The high school students all dress too well. Someone's favorite song turns up on a 45 RPM record as a gift. Hell I haven't seen a working 45 RPM record player for 30 years. Emma gives Logan a manual typewriter as a gift (Logan wants to become a writer). I ditched my manual typewriter shortly after I got my dual floppy disk MS-DOS IBM PC back in the '80s.
Then to round out the movie, Logan suffers a nervous breakdown right after graduation and spends a month in a funny farm. Although the director had been hinting thruout the movie that there is something wrong with Logan, the hints are ambiguous, and we are looking to see Logan get well as things work out for him in school. But, soon as school is over, and Emma is off to summer school at Penn State, Logan falls apart and gets hospitalized. And then after doing some time, he recovers. We don't see Logan doing anything to make himself well, it just happens. Like everything else, it just happens.
The critics liked this flick even though I didn't. That's movie critics for you.
Anyhow, a low speed movie. Hunger Games is gonna be better.
Emma steals all the scenes. She is pretty, slender, well dressed, the life of the parties. And there is a lot of partying. She is vivacious, and Logan falls in love with her at first sight. But by the end of the movie, despite having spent a lot of time together, Emma complains that after all that time, Logan never asked her out.
The flick is about surviving high school. Logan, entering as a freshman, has his doubts. For a shy freshman he does OK, manages to get into a clique with pretty girls (Emma) and the class clown. He finds a sympathetic teacher, he gets invited to all the parties. Kids have done worse.
Especially as Logan's character (Charlie) is a zero. He never does anything, at least not on camera. He has no skills, he isn't into sports, either as a player or a fan. He has no hobbies, he doesn't ride, or camp, or hike, or boat, or drive, or hack computers, or play computer games, or fly model airplanes, or anything. Hell, he doesn't even watch TV. And he dislikes high school, keeps counting the days until he can graduate and get out. This despite having a decent social life.
The irritating thing about this flick, is that neither Logan or Emma ever DO anything. Stuff happens to them, but they never take any action to swim up stream. Or down stream, or anything. They just show up, and somebody else does something to them, and they just take it. No guts. Or the director doesn't want to show anything. What should have been the climax, where Logan stands up in the cafeteria and defends the class clown with his fists, the camera just blacks out, we don't see anything. By most people's standards, standing up to the football team to keep them from beating up a friend is heroic. But, we don't see this happening, they tell us about it afterward. And, although it gets Logan and Emma back together after a quarrel, that's about all it does.
There are some anachronisms. The high school students all dress too well. Someone's favorite song turns up on a 45 RPM record as a gift. Hell I haven't seen a working 45 RPM record player for 30 years. Emma gives Logan a manual typewriter as a gift (Logan wants to become a writer). I ditched my manual typewriter shortly after I got my dual floppy disk MS-DOS IBM PC back in the '80s.
Then to round out the movie, Logan suffers a nervous breakdown right after graduation and spends a month in a funny farm. Although the director had been hinting thruout the movie that there is something wrong with Logan, the hints are ambiguous, and we are looking to see Logan get well as things work out for him in school. But, soon as school is over, and Emma is off to summer school at Penn State, Logan falls apart and gets hospitalized. And then after doing some time, he recovers. We don't see Logan doing anything to make himself well, it just happens. Like everything else, it just happens.
The critics liked this flick even though I didn't. That's movie critics for you.
Anyhow, a low speed movie. Hunger Games is gonna be better.
Monday, December 2, 2013
Newsies screw up a story
A team of archeologists working in Ethiopia uncovered a really fine projectile point in an old site. The point, pure jet black obsidian, would be a fine addition to anyone's collection of Indian arrowheads. It's inch and a half to two inches long, and finely chipped, very symmetrical, and obviously made by hands. Not one of those border line chipped pebble tools that look like plain pebbles to most people.
Website "I f***ing Love Science" said this point, dated at 280,000 years ago, is older than humans, so it's existence proves humans are older than we think they are. They didn't mention the dating method.
National Geographic talked about analysis of wear patterns on the edges of the point proved that it was a projectile point for a thrown spear, a javelin. Geographic claimed wear patterns showed the point had struck its targets while doing 1900 miles per hour. Whoa Nelly. 1900 miles per hour is Mach two, the speed of a rifle bullet. Somehow I don't think Alley Oop could throw that hard.
Some clicking around the web found the original technical article in "Plos" an archeological webzine. The dating comes from Argon-Argon measurements. The site is underneath a layer of volcanic deposits, the Argon-Argon dating tells when the volcanic deposit cooled down, stopped being molten lava, and hardened into stone. Anything underneath the deposit has got to be older. Which sounds like a better dating than you get from stratigraphy (counting layers in the rock). So the 280,000 year old dating is solid, assuming the lab did their work properly.
The speed of projectile issue speaks to the question of whether the point is a projectile point or just the point of a hand held spear. We consider a culture with projectile weapons to be more advanced than one that has to close up and go hand-to-hand. Certainly their chances of taking wary prey like deer is better with a projectile than with a club. The 1900 miles per hour is the speed of micro crack propagation inside the obsidian point. As the point cleaves into it's target, microcracks start at the edge and zip into the body of the point. This has some relationship with the speed with which the point strikes its target. The relationship was unclear.
As to the "point is older than humans" bit. The point is older than modern man, homo sapiens, but it isn't older than earlier human species, Home Habilis, Homo Afarenis, Lucy, etc. Early man goes back 2-3 million years at least.
The remarkable thing about this point, is that it is exceptionally fine, as nice a bit of work as anyone ever did, and it's pretty old. It shows that early man, Homo something-or-other, 280,000 years ago was as good at point making (and presumable spear throwing) as anyone who came after him.
Website "I f***ing Love Science" said this point, dated at 280,000 years ago, is older than humans, so it's existence proves humans are older than we think they are. They didn't mention the dating method.
National Geographic talked about analysis of wear patterns on the edges of the point proved that it was a projectile point for a thrown spear, a javelin. Geographic claimed wear patterns showed the point had struck its targets while doing 1900 miles per hour. Whoa Nelly. 1900 miles per hour is Mach two, the speed of a rifle bullet. Somehow I don't think Alley Oop could throw that hard.
Some clicking around the web found the original technical article in "Plos" an archeological webzine. The dating comes from Argon-Argon measurements. The site is underneath a layer of volcanic deposits, the Argon-Argon dating tells when the volcanic deposit cooled down, stopped being molten lava, and hardened into stone. Anything underneath the deposit has got to be older. Which sounds like a better dating than you get from stratigraphy (counting layers in the rock). So the 280,000 year old dating is solid, assuming the lab did their work properly.
The speed of projectile issue speaks to the question of whether the point is a projectile point or just the point of a hand held spear. We consider a culture with projectile weapons to be more advanced than one that has to close up and go hand-to-hand. Certainly their chances of taking wary prey like deer is better with a projectile than with a club. The 1900 miles per hour is the speed of micro crack propagation inside the obsidian point. As the point cleaves into it's target, microcracks start at the edge and zip into the body of the point. This has some relationship with the speed with which the point strikes its target. The relationship was unclear.
As to the "point is older than humans" bit. The point is older than modern man, homo sapiens, but it isn't older than earlier human species, Home Habilis, Homo Afarenis, Lucy, etc. Early man goes back 2-3 million years at least.
The remarkable thing about this point, is that it is exceptionally fine, as nice a bit of work as anyone ever did, and it's pretty old. It shows that early man, Homo something-or-other, 280,000 years ago was as good at point making (and presumable spear throwing) as anyone who came after him.
Sunday, December 1, 2013
Dissing our friends and sucking up to our enemies
Obama's people decided to close our embassy to the Vatican. Smooth move. Although the Vatican wisely refrained from complaining, I'm sure this act of disrespect disheartened them. Too bad. The Catholic Church has been a powerful force for good, since Christ was a corporal. The United States is a powerful force for good. That makes us natural allies, and dissing each other is counter productive.
On the suck up side, Obama's people promised to lift economic sanctions against Iran in return for little or nothing. Iran has been a force for evil ever since the mullahs took it over in Jimmy Carter's time. The economic sanctions have finally begun to bite hard enough to bring the Iranians to the bargaining table. The proper action is tighten them up some more, bite them harder, until they give up their nuclear program, turn all their fissionables and centrifuges over to us, dismantle their reactors, and allow no knock inspections every where in the country. Iranian goodwill isn't going to get us the time of day, we need to squeeze them til they crack.
On the suck up side, Obama's people promised to lift economic sanctions against Iran in return for little or nothing. Iran has been a force for evil ever since the mullahs took it over in Jimmy Carter's time. The economic sanctions have finally begun to bite hard enough to bring the Iranians to the bargaining table. The proper action is tighten them up some more, bite them harder, until they give up their nuclear program, turn all their fissionables and centrifuges over to us, dismantle their reactors, and allow no knock inspections every where in the country. Iranian goodwill isn't going to get us the time of day, we need to squeeze them til they crack.
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