Squawk Sheet

Very cool.

2009-12-22T18:56:56Z

Reminds me a bit of "Powers of ~~Two~~ Ten."

Rhetorical question

2009-12-20T05:21:06Z

Why is it conservative religious groups always get traction with, "I don't want my tax dollars to pay for abortion," but atheists never get traction with, "I don't want my tax dollars to go to religious organizations"? The health care legislation is getting jerked around because some people don't think it restricts abortion enough, but we still end up subsidizing intolerant religious groups via faith-based initiatives.

Another Cold War milestone.

2009-12-19T23:04:43Z

The Plutonium Finishing Plant at Hanford, Washington, where plutonium was once machined and stored, is now cleared of high security materials and ready for demolition. During the Cold War about two thirds of the plutonium used in the U.S. nuclear weapons program passed through that building. (I'm pretty sure the Google Maps location shown is incorrect; the finishing plant would have actually been inside the Hanford Reservation.)

A side note: The B Reactor at Hanford, where plutonium was produced for the Trinity tests and the "Fat Man" bomb dropped over Nagasaki, is open for public tours during the summer months. This was the world's first industrial-scale nuclear reactor; Enrico Fermi personally supervised its initial start-up. If you ever get the chance to see it I highly recommend going, especially since it could eventually be demolished and the core cocooned (as has been done with the C, D, and F reactors) if funding for its preservation runs out.

orv @ 2009-12-15T09:30:00

2009-12-15T17:30:33Z

I'm not shocked that Joe Lieberman has blocked the last vestige of real reform in the health care bill. Disappointed, but not shocked. After all, Joe is literally in bed with the for-profit insurance industry — his wife is an industry lobbyist. What does surprise me is that Obama didn't seem to anticipate this. Joe has stabbed him in the back at every opportunity, from the 2008 campaign on. You'd think sooner or later he'd catch on.

EDIT: Rude Pundit has a good summary of who else, besides Lieberman, shares the blame for this:

But, if only to take a little power away from Lieberman, let's spread some blame around here for what is now a fairly worthless bill that is absent any control over insurance companies for jacking up prices in the wake of any new regulations. There's, of course, the Republicans, who never once negotiated in good faith (or bad faith, for that matter). There's Harry Reid, who took reconciliation off the table, thus shaking empty the compromise toolbox that had been dumped out when single payer wasn't even discussed. And there's the President, who demonstrated that if you are unwilling to say specifically what you want, then you will get nothing.

orv @ 2009-12-13T18:10:00

2009-12-14T02:10:37Z

Another review of the "climategate" emails, this time by the AP:
http://www.torontosun.com/news/2009/12/12/12133721-ap.html

Carbs

2009-12-14T00:58:33Z

Driving the Saab back from the grocery store today, it occurred to me how much more consistently cars run since the advent of fuel injection, especially in cold weather. The Saab, like many carbureted cars with automatic chokes, is a bit cantankerous in the cold — it idles great when the engine is cold, and great when the engine is fully warmed up, but has an awkward period in between when the choke is still partially on and it idles too rich, making the engine want to load up on gas and stall. As I was sitting at a stoplight, occasionally giving the accelerator a gentle nudge with my toe to keep the engine running, I remembered my dad doing exactly the same thing with his old Chevy Suburban. Fuel injected cars just don't have that problem; they may not always idle as smoothly as you'd like, but they don't generally stall unless something's seriously wrong. They don't have individual tricks that you need to use to get them to start and keep running; they just work.

P.S. - Cold weather has caused me to recognize that some of this car's weird ergonomic features — in particular, those big rocker switches for the fan and headlights — make sense if you assume everything was designed to be operated while wearing heavy winter gloves.

Factcheck.org takes on "climategate."

2009-12-11T01:12:46Z

Because I know some of the people who read my LJ will be interested, I thought I'd note that Factcheck.org now has an analysis of the "Climategate" email issue posted on their site. There's probably not much point in discussing it — the people pushing this as a scandal are doing so from an ideological/religious standpoint, and are about as likely to be convinced as Orly Taitz is to admit that Obama's "Kenyan Birth Certificate" isn't real. However, it answered some questions I had (like, "what's this all about, anyway?") and I figured it might do the same for some of you.

orv @ 2009-12-10T11:10:00

2009-12-10T19:10:15Z

House Republicans: This health care bill is too long!
Senate Republicans: This health care bill isn't long enough!

Nixie clock part 4

2009-12-06T04:37:14Z

Those of you who have been following my LJ for a while might recall, nearly two years ago, a few posts about a Nixie clock project I was working on. (Part 1 described the project and where I got the parts, Part 2 described the time base, and Part 3 described how I interfaced the display.) I didn't forget about it; it just sat around for a while, partly because I was busy with other projects, but largely because I was dithering about what kind of enclosure to put it in. My carpentry skills are beyond lousy, which ruled out doing any sort of nice wooden case. Ultimately I decided to re-use the original rack-mount case of the equipment I got the Nixie display board and power supply from, after cleaning it up a bit and repainting the front panel. Pictures of that when it's done, but first I wanted to give details on a couple of auxiliary circuits that I haven't shared yet.

The first is an hourly chime. I thought it'd be cool to have one, but the sound had to be in keeping with the retro nature of the project — a simple beep just wouldn't do. With that in mind, I extracted the bell assembly of an old telephone. These are proper brass bells, which by themselves outweigh any modern phone. They're intended to ring on a nominal 75 volts AC at 20 Hz, but a little experimentation showed that I could create single chimes by putting the two bell coils in parallel and briefly applying DC, as long as it was at least 15 volts. I used a spare 25 volt output on the power supply, originally used to power an analog filter board, for this purpose, switching it with one of the PIC outputs using an optoisolator:

The diode suppresses any inductive kickback from the coils, which might otherwise damage the optoisolator's phototransistor. Getting the pulse length correct in the software turned out to be important — it has to reliably get the heavy bell striker swinging, and then hold it against the stop long enough that it doesn't swing back and hit the other bell, creating a double chime. After experimenting for a while, I eventually settled on a 300 ms pulse length. (The long pulse doesn't deaden the chime because the striker is mechanically designed to snap back slightly after hitting the bell.)

Of course, once there's a chime, there has to be a way to turn it off. Otherwise someone is sure to unplug the thing when it wakes them up in the middle of the night! I decided this was a good opportunity to experiment with the PIC's analog inputs, and put together this circuit:

The CdS cell (a light-sensitive variable resistor) faces outward through the window in the front of the clock case. Together with the 4.7k resistor, it forms a voltage divider, the output of which the PIC reads to determine how light it is in the room. Below a certain threshold, the firmware skips sounding the chime. A center-off toggle switch allows manually forcing the chime off or on, if desired.

As an interesting side note, I finally thought to look up the NSN number still attached to the second, still unaltered device. It came up with a description of "INDICATOR, DIGITAL DISPLAY." The supplier was listed as the National Security Agency, via the Air Force Cryptologic Support Center. The list price was $880. This is not surprising considering the components in it, some of which were pretty cutting edge in 1974, and the fact that it appears to have been hand-assembled. The original main logic board, which I removed from the one I turned into a clock, is done entirely with wire-wrap and bears some 31 digital logic ICs.

I forget what I paid for these, back in the late '90s when I bought them. Around $30 or $40 each, I think.

Copyright/copywrong

2009-11-18T22:41:12Z

Consumerist has an article today blasting Wal-Mart for not allowing someone to make copies of some old school photos. Now, I'm not a big fan of Wal-Mart, but this isn't Wal-Mart's fault, and it disappoints me that someone working for a prominent blog like Consumerist can't be bothered to do even basic research about copyright law.

In the U.S., the copyright on photos taken by a photographer stays with the photographer, unless there's an explicit agreement signing it over. It doesn't go to someone else just because money changed hands, or because their likeness appears in it. For unpublished works this copyright is good for the life of the author plus 70 years. The fines for violating this are quite steep and in many cases can be directly charged to the wage slave behind the photo desk, who therefore has an obvious motive to err on the side of caution.

There's a lot wrong with U.S. copyright law, but the proper place to complain about that is at your Congressional representative's office. It's not Wal-Mart's fault; they're just following the law.

Today in "Missing The Point Theater"...

2009-11-12T18:23:20Z

...researchers discover that the Wii Fit versions of sports burn fewer calories than the actual sports they're imitating.

I'd guess that most people who use Wii Fit are not exactly using it as an alternative to real sports. I may be over-generalizing here, but I just don't think they're the type of people who would go to a gym and go boxing. They're probably people who would otherwise be doing something sedentary.

Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 2009

2009-11-07T00:32:39Z

Note to those of you living in Washington state: The Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 2009 (S.1584) is currently being considered by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. Sen. Patty Murray sits on this committee, so this would be a good time to contact her and express your support for the bill. ENDA would prohibit employers (with a few exceptions) from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. The bill has 42 cosponsors and looks to have a decent chance this time. President Obama has said he'll sign it into law if it passes.

orv @ 2009-11-06T09:59:00

2009-11-06T18:01:23Z

If you haven't voted in Amazon's Comic Strip Superstar contest, today's your last chance! Naturally I think you ought to vote for bluerain's submission, Girl, but you can see all the submissions there and make up your own mind. :)

Voting ends at midnight EST.

orv @ 2009-11-05T15:27:00

2009-11-05T23:28:22Z

orv @ 2009-11-04T09:57:00

2009-11-04T18:24:20Z

R-71 is, as was generally anticipated, looking pretty close. It's currently leading, but because this is a vote-by-mail election we won't know the final numbers for another day or two. The margin has shrunk slightly since last night, but King County, which is currently passing it 65%-35%, has a batch of 115,000 ballots to process that won't be incorporated into the statewide results until the next results drop at 4:30 pm. This is likely to widen the current 51.03%-48.97% margin. The biggest county turning it down is Pierce, but the margin there is relatively close so those votes won't affect the statewide totals by much. The election map shows basically the usual west-east, urban-rural split we're used to seeing in Washington.

The Washington Poll is projecting a 51.11%-48.87% win. This is based on two assumptions: That voting patterns will remain the same per county as new votes are tallied (likely, but not a given); and that turnout will be 50% (probably optimistic, although some counties are approaching it as ballots continue to come in.)

I-1033, which is Tim Eyman's take on a TABOR measure, is going down by a fairly wide margin, with even many rural, conservative counties going against it. Eyman sounded cheerful and upbeat on the radio this morning, which makes sense; he's an initiative mercenary who gets his paycheck whether it passes or not. In a way not passing it makes his job easier for him, since he can rejigger the language slightly and try the same thing again next year.

UPDATE: King County's results dump at 4:30 did indeed widen the margin, by nearly 1.5 percentage points. Interestingly enough, they also actually fell behind, with the number of pending ballots rising to 129,000. Probably a lot of people mailed their ballots at the last minute.

2010 Congressional District Survey

2009-11-04T03:08:11Z

Somehow — I can't for the life of me imagine how — I've ended up on the RNC's mailing list. Today they sent me a pretty amusing fund raising form disguised as a poll. Some choice bits below:

INSTRUCTIONS: Please complete your RNC Congressional District Survey in its entirety and then return it to me at Party Headquarters using the enclosed reply envelope within the next 14 days. Your answers will represent ALL Republican constituants living within your Congressional District...

If only that were true! Imagine the fun I could have.

2. Should Republicans continue fighting congressional Democrats' efforts to grant full unconditional amnesty to illegal immigrants?

Yes, and while they're at it, they should continue fighting the Democrats' efforts to drill a hole in the bottom of the ocean and let all the water drain out.

7. Do you support the Democrats' efforts to create a massive new federal government bureaucracy that would be run by unionized government employees and would have complete control of your health care costs and choices?

Wow, pushing all the hot buttons here. Not just a government bureaucracy, a unionized government bureaucracy. I nearly finished my Republican Buzzword Bingo card on that question.

12. Do you believe that American business and industry will be able to compete in the world economy if the Obama Administration bends to pressure from radical environmentalists and implements draconian regulations on emissions, energy consumption and transportation beyond what is required in other industrialized countries?

BINGO! ("Radical environmentalists" was the one I needed, up there in the corner.)

16. Do you feel that total Democrat[sic] control of both chambers of Congress and the Presidency will make our nation more prosperous, safe and free?

Well, actually...

Finally, we come to the kicker:

17. Are you ready to actively support Republican candidates in your area and across the country who are fighting to stop the liberal Obama agenda and reinstitute conservative Republican policies and principles such as personal responsibility, lower taxes, cutting government waste, and keeping our defense strong?

[ ] Yes! I want to join the RNC's effort to win control of the U.S. House and U.S. Senate in the fast-approaching 2010 mid-term elections, safeguard our values and principles, and get America moving towards a strong, prosperous, and secure futre. I am enclosing my most generous contribution of $_____.

[ ] I cannot pledge my support for this year, but I would like to include a contribution of $11 to help the RNC fund this survey and its tabulation.

I love how the last question in the "survey" is a choice between "yes, I'll give $xxx" and "no, I'll give $11."

WA residents: Have you voted yet?

2009-11-02T17:51:28Z

If you live in Washington and haven't voted yet, you'd better hurry. Your ballot has to be postmarked by tomorrow for your vote to count. Turnout in King County so far is only 20% so your vote is more important than ever.

Naturally, I also hope you'll support domestic partnership benefits for same-sex and senior couples by voting yes on R-71*.

EDITED to clarify the turnout number, and to remove the note about the R-71 site being down.

orv @ 2009-10-28T21:23:00

2009-10-29T04:29:28Z

One of SLOG's contributers thinks he's found the killer application for Google Wave: Role-playing games.

New Washington Poll today.

2009-10-27T23:45:04Z

New Washington Poll results were released today. This is a vote-by-mail election, so for some races they've broken out figures for how many people have already voted.

King County Executive: 45% Dow Constantine, 32% Suzanne Hutchison, 22% Undecided.

R-71 (Domestic partnership rights referendum): 56% Yes, 39% No, 5% Undecided. Of the people who said they had already voted, 55% Yes, 45% No. There are some interesting crosstabs by region but I won't recount those here; you can check them out in the full results.

I-1033 (Tim Eyman's latest anti-tax initiative): 41% Yes, 46% No, 13% Undecided. Among those who have already voted: 44% Yes, 56% No.

Colbert weighs in on R-71: "The hate that dare not speak its name."

2009-10-27T21:50:58Z

Further rant ('cause I'm in a ranting mood, for some reason.)

2009-10-27T02:14:35Z

Back when this country actually manufactured stuff, the people on the high end of the income scale had to give some thought toward not letting things get too out of hand. They needed to employ lots of people to make that stuff, people that might get organized and/or rowdy if they didn't think they were getting a fair shake. So income disparities were large, but never reached banana republic levels.

It's different now. The wealthiest people in today's economy make money largely by moving other wealthy people's money around. This does not require a lot of employees. In fact it doesn't require most of the population to do anything in particular, although it's helpful if we occasionally buy into one of their heads-I-win-tails-you-lose schemes*. Ultimately, to the people at the top it no longer matters what happens to the rest of us. Therein lies much of the problem.

Our court system has also largely decided that campaign spending limits are illegal, and if the makeup of the Supreme Court stays more or less the same I expect campaign contribution limits to eventually follow; this makes money essentially equal to speech, and since the wealthiest 5% of the population now control over 50% of the wealth, they can easily drown out the rest of us and get policies that favor them.

* These exist at all levels in finance. On a small scale, there's the stock broker, who makes commissions whether his client makes money or loses money. On a bigger scale, there's the CEOs of large financial institutions, who have contracts that guarantee they'll draw a large pension for life even if they screw up unimaginably badly and get fired. The mortage bubble was this writ large. Mortage brokers and the businesses they worked for got their percentage no matter how the loan performed. When the investments eventually went bad, the banks that had invested in them simply held the economy hostage until the rest of us made good on their losses.

Double standard

2009-10-26T21:29:07Z

If you're a blue-collar auto worker and your company is in trouble:

Your company is forced into bankruptcy.
Conservatives will demand that the company break your contract as a condition of getting a bailout.

If you're an investment bank CEO and your bank is in trouble:

Your company gets billions in bailouts with few strings attached.
Conservatives will argue that you should still get your bonuses, because it would be wrong to break your contract.

Of course, the liberals in Congress went along with what the conservatives wanted, because we've created a culture where only conservative views of economics are accepted.

Is it any wonder that Wall Street is now doing great, while unemployment is still increasing? This is the real "decoupling" — the top 1%, most of them in the financial sector, have decoupled from the rest of us, and our half of the train is rolling backwards down the hill.

Jolicloud first impressions

2009-10-23T22:25:05Z

Random thoughts about Jolicloud, which I just installed on my EeePC:

For an alpha-test product this is pretty robust stuff. Nothing has crashed or caught fire yet. I suspect this is because they're mostly amalgamating software that is, itself, already production quality. The only software I had problems with was the USB key creator, and that was easy to work around.
The experience of using sites like GMail through Prism is excellent. On a desktop I never really understood the point, but on a netbook the lack of browser "screen furniture" makes for a much more efficient use of limited space.
All my hardware worked right out of the box -- probably a benefit of targeting a specific subset of machines. Even the volume control keys worked, and I never figured out how to get them to do anything under Debian. They need to add a pop-up reminding you to configure your network when you first boot, though. If I hadn't already been familiar with Ubuntu I would have probably overlooked the little "WiFi" icon in the taskbar.
The Twitter-like feed showing what your friends have been installing is kind of clever, in a "they liked this, you might too" sort of way.
There's a disappointing absence of developer information. I really like the concept of Jolicloud and I'd love to take a crack at porting some apps to it, but there's absolutely no information on the website about how to do that. Granted, I could run any Linux app I wanted, but that doesn't get it integrated with the Jolicloud UI. This gives me a slightly uncomfortable suspicion they might be trying for an iPhone-like closed platform.
There's a dearth of options in general for communicating with the developers or other users -- very odd for an OS that's supposed to be somehow crowd-sourced. What's the point of alpha-testing an open-source product if you don't give people a way to hack on it or even file bug reports?

Overall, I think this is a good idea and will probably keep it on my netbook, but I feel like there's more potential than actual innovation here. The only really revolutionary thing (compared to other netbook remixes of Linux) is the app installer, and that's somewhat hamstrung by a lack of integration (you have to go back to the home screen to actually run what you've just installed) and the perplexing absence of any way to contribute new apps.

Of course, this is all alpha-test, so it's possible the potential will be rolled over into actual at some point. ;)

P.S. - If anyone else wants to give it a try, I have some invites I can pass out.

How to choose a religion - a flowchart.

2009-10-23T18:49:01Z

Forwarded to me by a coworker. Warning: Not subtitled for the humor-impaired.

Giant seagull - film at 11.

2009-10-22T20:00:44Z

http://video.ap.org/?f=None&pid=Tgfuh04yWqL3pW76zfILap1i_8MzDqHS