TwoPennies

backyard entomology

The tree the dominates the middle of my backyard has a problem.  It is being eaten alive by a great many aphids.

You'll have to excuse the poor focus.  The Macro setting of my camera doesn't seem to work very well.  But for all of natures problems, there is a natural solution, which can be seen in all it's stages on the very same tree.  The pictures of the eggs didn't turn out, and even this pictures of the small larva is marginal.

But with lots of available food, the larva get bigger and more photogenic.  They also get really creepy looking with those three rows of spikes down their back.  They remind me of the things that crawled into Checkov's ear.

That one is so big, he MUST be about ready to pupate.  There are many, many pupa on the back of the leaves all over this tree, but with a bit of luck, I caught an adult right next to a pupa..  The pupa is on the left.  Earlier pupa look more like a cocoon and are longer.  This one must be about to emerge.

Hey Ladybug!  Don't just sit there, go eat something.  There are some very large adults crawling around the tree.  I actually watched one hunting for a while, it was fascinating.  There are many leaves covered with little dessicated aphid skeletons that I assume are the remains of Ladybug meals.  And while the volunteer ladybug army seems to have turned the tide on the aphids in the last two days, there will be about 1500 reinforcements arriving tonight as soon as the sun goes down.  I bought a bag of adult ladybugs at the Farmer's Market this afternoon.  The new recruits aren't nearly as large as the veterans, but there is still plenty of food, so I hope they are hungry.

Let it Snow, pt. 2

Snow at down here at 250 feet in the Tualatin Valley of Oregon (just west of Portland) isn't quite as rare as snow in Vegas, but 3+ inches of dry powder is pretty darn unusual.  Add to that a general absence of ice and that it totally caught everyone by surprise and it is very very rare.  It didn't start until early this morning, so a few school districts were caught with students on busses.  The TV is airing hour after hour of Storm Team Coverage, showing people trying to drive their BMW Z4 convertables up slick hills, busses and semis slid sideways across streets, Portland Police riding around on ATV's, and frustrated commuters getting out of standing traffic by driving backwards up the onramps.

For those of us that don't HAVE to go anywhere, the mood is festive .  My cul-de-sac draws kids from all around the neighborhood for sledding and everyone is laughing and having a great time while it lasts.  There may be freezing rain later this afternoon, which will put a damper on everything.

Found at myconfinedspace.com

Posse Comitatus

We have (or had) an important set of checks and balances built into our democracy to make sure that unchecked power doesn't become tyranny.  Some of the key parts of that system have been the principles of Habeas Corpus (people can't be kept in prison without their day in court) and Posse Comitatus (the military is not to be used against the citizens nor as police, except in extreme cases and with all caution.)  In the past the Administration needed the permission of Governors and/or Congress to deploy National Guard or US Military forces to action on US soil.

Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) seems to be one of the few people that noticed that on the same day that the POTUS signed the bill killing Habeaus Corpus, he signed another bill that took a big stab at Posse Comitatus.  Bush no longer needs approval of Congress or Governors to deploy troops against the citizens to stop disorder.

So, theoretically speaking, if the next election were to be blatently stolen and there were large protests, The Administration could deal with it as they saw fit without bothering Congress or the Governors.  You feel safer, don't you?  Checks and balances are for obstructionists.

Thanks and credit also go to:  BoingBoing, Slashdot, and Toward Freedom.   Also,  Here is a 2002 article warning about the importance of posse comitatus.

Michael J. Fox

If you haven't heard, Michael J. Fox has been campaigning for some Democrats who support stem cell research.  Rush Limbaugh was doing his thing and claiming that Michael J. Fox exaggerated his symptoms or didn't take his meds to make the symptoms more acute in order to appear more sympathetic in the TV advertisements for Democrats.  I've read that Rush went so far as to mimic Parkinsons in a mocking fashon.

Below is the response from Micael J. Fox.  I find it hard to sit through without getting a lump in my throat.  But if I can distance myself from it for a moment and  analyze it a bit, I find that it is a fantastic example of (metaphorically speaking) NOT trying to wrestle the pig down in the mud, which just makes you dirty and the pig likes it.  Instead of taking the bait, Mr. Fox uses his opponent's smears as momentum and stays on message.  He's trying to cut through the rhetoric and reach his audience, and I think he does that.

What is contained in a bottle of ink?

A friend of mine from here in Oregon is studying calligraphy in the last offering of a one-year program at  Roehampton College in London.  The story of a young American in London learning an underappreciated art with students young and old from around the world is a pretty interesting story and she tells it well.  She is touring Scotland this weekend so I expect some nice pictures within a couple days.  You can also find a link to her in the sidebar too.

Intellectual Property

There is a trend in our society towards establishing intellectual property rights, and a creeping extension of them.  I think user licenses should only be legally binding if they are established as a contract at the time of purchase.  I don't think it is right to sell me something and then slap a license agreement on it after the fact that I wasn't able to read before the purchase.  I bought it, it is mine, why should I need a license to use it any otherwise legal way I want to.

So of course I avoid buying products that rely on the goodwill of a company to continue to work.  I tell my friends they are foolish to convert all their CD music to proprietary formats from Apple or Sony or Microsoft, or buy their music from a service with a user agreement that can be revised at any time.  Some friends reply that the agreements aren't that restrictive and Digital Rights Management isn't that big of a deal.  To which I reply, "Sure, today.  What will the agreement say tomorrow?  What if the next mandatory update turns off features you paid for?"

To which they roll their eyes.  And today I have a concrete example.  As usual, I hate being right.  I feel a bit like Laocoon sometimes.  Not the sea serpents part, just the unheeded warnings part.

Heck of a word-picture.

Sunday's US News and World Report has a short article  that wanders across a few different topics related to Iraq.  And they seem to have found someone inside The Pentagon that speaks rather, ahem, directly.  Near the end of the article is this little gem from a senior defense official:

"Rumsfeld is thinking Hitler, fascists, the guy on top. It's so old school it's almost like the Cold War: The center of gravity is not hearts and minds but the dictator. What's missing is the people. It's like we go to the baseball game and we tackle the pitcher.  Suddenly on the scoreboard we're losing 55-0. Well, you morons were busy tackling the pitcher."

Net Neutrality

I'm not addicted to YouTube.  I can quit anytime.

Seriously though, this is a pretty important issue.  The Internet was started from a Defense Department network, and built out by public Universities.  It is built on government-granted right-of-ways.  It has thrived, and changed the world, largely because it is open and equal.  Now the companies who control the "last mile" want to put up tollbooths.  They want Yahoo and Google and everyone else to bid on priority access to you.  And any website that doesn't pay extra will have its traffic run considerabley slower than those who pay for top tier.  And it won't be unified, if you have a website and you want top tier speed guaranteed then you'll have to make a deal with Comcast and Charter and Verizon and Qwest and SBC, etc. etc.

And they claim that all they want is a free market, but what they want is to be free of regulation, there is no market.  You've got two data lines to your house, phone and cable, and nobody else can run a line, it is a government-granted duopoly.  They want to privatize public property.

Whatever you think about Ted Kennedy, he's on the right side of this issue and it is good to know he is taking a stand.

Please stand up.

A little classic comedy remix.

Ethanol now?

I don't remember where I first came across a link to this presentation about ethanol, but the video dates from late March '06 and I first saw it about a month ago.  I've been thinking about finally letting go of my 26 year old Saab (can't find some replacement parts) and one possible replacement would be a dirt-cheap Taurus of which many also are flex-fuel vehicles.  So that led me to watching this video again today and the second viewing conviced me that it is something everyone should see.

I'll warn you right up front that the video is 68 minutes long, but the best parts are in the first half.  If you only watch the first quarter you will probably have learned more than you can digest in one sitting.  I didn't know who Vinod Khosla was the first time I watched the video, but I gather he is a pretty big deal.  It doesn't matter, the material is impressive regardless of the reputation I was ignorant of.

I have to say that it gives me some hope, which has been sorely lacking for about 6 years now.

Is PC gaming dead?

One of the guys I work with can't stop talking about a new video game "Chrome Hounds" for his X-Box 360.  It sounds like something I might like but I don't have a 360, so I went by a Target store today to see if that game was available on the PC.  It isn't, so I looked around to see if anything else interested me.

Now perhaps Target isn't the best place to do a survey, but video games stores don't carry very many PC games, and I didn't feel like driving to BestBuy or CompUSA.  And the selection at Target is pretty extensive.  There is an entire row, 6 shelves 30 feel long, plus an end-cap.  Some of that is dedicated to kiddie games and educational titles.  Another section has those little "Jewel Quest" type games for $5-10.  About 12 feet is what I would call traditional titles.  I counted 20 titles per row, so approximately 120 titles.

Out of those 120 games I counted 5 that were original titles, all the rest were sequels, or affiliated with a movie or TV show, or both.  I didn't have anything to write with, but from memory, I counted 7 The Sims titles, 4 Star Wars games, 3 Sim City boxes, 3 CSI games and a Law & Order.  Half-Life 2, Quake 4, Doom 3, Diablo 2 (they're still selling Diablo 2 ?!!?)  Warcraft 3, Day of Defeat Source (an update of a mod to a game 8 years old), and a remake of Sid Meier's Pirates were all on hand.

Of the 5 original games, old Halo was one of them.

Now I know I shouldn't complain too much about PC gamers getting neglected, because most of the games I have played recently were primarily console games that also made their way over to the PC where I think they were superior.  But it is hard to look at a selection like that and not be jealous of those console gamers who have dozens of new titles just this year.

*** UPDATE ***

Okay, so a survey of one is a bit distorted.  So today on the way home from work I went by BestBuy.  They have quite a bit more games.  I counted two rows and they both had 25 titles in them, there were 8 rows.  The bottom rows seemed to have slightly fewer titles, so I'd estimate they have 180-200 titles, almost twice as many as Target has.  Like Target, Bestbuy has a separate section with those Bejeweled type games and card games and such that sell for 5-10 bucks, but Bestbuy actually had fewer of those.

As you would expect when you have more titles, there is more room for games that aren't blockbusters.  I counted 18 titles that were not sequels nor affiliated with a movie or TV show, or about twice the percentage that Target had.  But at about 10%, I'd say it is still pretty miserable.  Of those 18, there were 7 first person shooters, 1 WWII flying game, two driving games, and a clone of SimCity.  So I'd say the truley original titles number about 7, but I couldn't figure out what some of them were about so I can't really say how original they were.

Anyways, yes indeed, the big budgets of many of these titles means that the people footing the bill for development and marketing are, just like the movies, afraid of taking chances so they stick to sequels and hit properties, and copies of hits.   I think part of the solution may be in cutting out the middle-men, the publishers, so that the developers get a bigger piece of the revenue and the break-even point becomes a lot lower.

Flag Burning

This recent revival of the "Flag Burning" constitutional amendment is just a Red Herring to distract us from more important things, but I'm pig-headed enough to take the bait.  So let me try to briefly explain why I think it is a Bad Idea.

If congress eventually passes a law it is going to be against desecrating a flag, or the image or likeness of a flag.  What would be the point of outlawing flag burning if a protestor can just burn a photograph of a flag or burn a hand-made banner with 14 stripes and 51 stars that isn't technically a US Flag, but is clearly intended to look like one?  And what would be the point if a protestor can't legally burn a flag, but can throw it on the ground and step on it, and spit on it, or smear it with feces?  And yet you wouldn't want to make it illegal to dispose of anything that looks like a flag or has the image of a flag on it in a garbage incinerator.  What would happen to all the little plastic flags after the 4th of July? No, the intent is what is really important here, the intent to desecrate that which some people hold sacred. It is the thought that counts.  And so this law is about outlawing an idea, or at least the expression of it.  And outlawing ideas is double-plus ungood. While my Lizard Brain sometimes advocates forcibley silencing those whose ideas I find abhorrent, the reasoning part of me knows that outlawing an idea isn't the right way to do things.  The Republic is stronger when controversy is allowed and when Bad Ideas are voiced and then refuted.

And that brings me to my second point: The Flag is just a symbol.  The principles it symbolizes are uneffected by protest.  The Republic is not injured when a flag is burned.  The Flag cannot be offended and it does not need any protection from those who would seek to profane it.  It is only individuals who are offended.  And while I feel sorry for anyone who is outraged and has their feelings hurt when the symbol of our democracy is disrespected, to outlaw this kind of protest is to make those hurt feelings more important than The Constitution.  A right isn't a right if you only have it as long as it is convenient for the majority and doesn't offend most people.