On Aging

I am gradually reaching the conclusion that often it is not disease that kills our senior citizens, but the cumulative debilitating effects of aging, such as cataracts, joint pain, hearing loss, etc. They lose the will to live.

The benefits of modern medicine for the elderly is that many of these effects of aging can be treated, making the patients feel better, and giving them more optimistism and energy, which in turn helps them to live longer.

Heat Waves

When there is a heat wave on the East Coast, we hear news reports of scores of elderly people dying of the heat. Seattle is different. During our heat waves, we always hear news reports of rafters and swimmers drowning in our lakes and rivers. They are never wearing life vests. Very sad.

Monday might have been the hottest day of the year at my house, 96 F, with a low of 57 F. That is almost a 40 F spread, which is common in the sunny southwest but rare in the Seattle area. On many cloudy winter days, we see a temperature spread less than 10 F.

They are repairing our building air conditioning today. Why does it seem like it only breaks down on the hottest days of the year?

My air conditioning in my old pickup truck seemed to work better this morning than last night. ;)

Ever wondered why the guys working at Starbucks and Tully’s coffee have the word “barista” on their name tag and not “baristo?” Well, the term barista is the Italian word for “bartender” and is masculine or feminine; the plural is baristi (masculine) or bariste (feminine). In case you wanted to know...

Here is a Strange

Paul Harvey used to introduce an unusual story with the opening line, “Here is a Strange.” As noted in this link, http://www.washington.edu/alumni/columns/dec96/body_double6.html,
Denice Denton was Dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Washington (my college at my alma mater) from Dec. 1996 through late 2004.

Now here is the strange part. This intelligent and successful woman committed suicide last Saturday. From James Taranto’s Best of the Web Today (June 26) at http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/:

Ivory Tower Suicide

A tragic follow-up to a January 2005 item ... [about] Denice Dee Denton, chancellor of the University of California at Santa Cruz, who was embroiled in a scandal involving her creation of a $192,000-a-year job for her lesbian partner, Gretchen Kalonji. The San Jose Mercury News reports that Denton "apparently jumped to her death Saturday morning from the 44th floor of a San Francisco building where she shared an apartment with her partner."

Very strange.

Water vapor and global warming

Did you know that ~98% of the global warming effect comes from water vapor? It is true. The concentration of water vapor in the atmosphere is ~10,000 ppm and the concentration of CO2 is only ~400 ppm, so there is 25 times more water vapor than CO2, more or less (less at the poles, more in the tropics). Also, radiative heat transfer books tell us that each water vapor molecule is about twice as effective at absorbing the heat radiated upwards from the surface (at ~10,000 nm wavelength), and equally transparent to heat radiated from the sun (~500 nm wavelength). So, water vapor is 50 times more important than CO2, and therefore provides 98% of the effect. This is why relatively large changes in the CO2 concentration (like doubling) have only a minor effect on global temperatures (like a few degrees). With 67% of the earth’s surface being water, the dominant dynamic is the condensation and evaporation of water from lakes and oceans, and cloud formation. But those factors are much, much harder to predict than the CO2 concentration, which varies slowly and consistently. Since the global warming models must include the effect of atmospheric water vapor and clouds, the global warming models are tenuous, at best.

Yet, pollsters tell us tha that 59% of American are "convinced [that] global warming [is] under way," only 33% "think it will affect [their] own life" and 38% "favor immediate government action." I saw those numbers on Jun21 at http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/ (by James Taranto). Sinc e it cannot be proven that global warming is happening, why do they believe? Hmm, sounds like religion to me. Say, isn’t that what Ann Coulter says in her new book, “Godless: The Church of Liberalism”? :)

Carbon Glacier

Mt. Rainier has Carbon Glacier in the northwest corner of the park that is easily accessible by a pleasant 7-mile hike (with 1,000 feet elevation gain). I led a boy scout day outing to see the glacier on Saturday. It was a small group (3 scouts, 3 leaders). It is a popular trail, and we saw about 100 other hikers, including another scout troop with about 20 scouts.

The hike starts at Ipsut Creek Campground (2,300 feet). Much of the hike is alongside the Carbon River, which drains from the glacier. The river bed is an awesome destruction zone, several hundred yards wide in places. In other places, we could see where it has flooded through the forest, ripping out huge douglas firs and hemlocks. The river regularly attacks the trail in many places as well as the road to the trailhead. In addition to the glacier, the hike includes a nice suspension bridge.

Summer Heat Wave

ARRGH, the Seattle forecast for the weekend is unbearably hot weather.

We're all going to fry!

It is going to be over 80 F!

(With about 30% relative humidity.)

In Other Border News Today

I got this via email, but it doesn't say who it's by. Enjoy!

The flood of American liberals sneaking across the border into Canada has intensified in the past week, sparking calls for increased patrols to stop the illegal immigration. The unflinching arrogance of the Bush Administration is prompting the exodus among liberal citizens who fear they'll soon be required to hunt, pray, and agree with Bill O'Reilly. Canadian border farmers say it's not uncommon to see dozens of sociology professors, animal-rights activists, and Unitarians crossing their fields at night.

"I went out to milk the cows the other day, and there was a Hollywood producer huddled in the barn," said Manitoba farmer Red Greenfield, whose acreage borders North Dakota. The producer was cold, exhausted and hungry. "He asked me if I could spare a latte and some free-range chicken. When I said I didn't have any, he left. Didn't even get a chance to show him my screenplay."

In an effort to stop the illegal aliens, Greenfield erected higher fences, but the liberals scaled them. So, he tried installing speakers that blare Rush Limbaugh across the fields.

"Not real effective," he said. "The liberals still got through, and Rush annoyed the cows so much they wouldn't give milk."

Officials are particularly concerned about smugglers who meet liberals near the Canadian border, pack them into Volvo station wagons, drive them across the border and leave them to fend for themselves.

"A lot of these people are not prepared for rugged conditions," an Ontario border patrolman said. "I found one carload without a drop of drinking water. They did have a pleasant little Napa Valley cabernet, though."

When liberals are caught, they're sent back across the border, often wailing loudly that they fear retribution from conservatives. Rumors have been circulating about the Bush administration establishing re-education camps in which liberals will be forced to drink domestic beer and watch NASCAR. Liberals have turned to sometimes-ingenious ways of crossing the border. Some have taken to posing as senior citizens on bus trips to buy cheap Canadian prescription drugs. After catching a half-dozen young vegans disguised in powdered wigs, Canadian immigration authorities began stopping buses and quizzing the supposed senior-citizen passengers.

"If they can't identify the accordion player on The Lawrence Welk Show, we get suspicious about their age," an official said.

Canadian citizens have complained that the illegal immigrants are creating an organic-broccoli shortage and renting all the good Susan Sarandon movies.

"I feel sorry for American liberals, but the Canadian economy just can't support them," an Ottawa resident said. "How many art-history majors does one country need?"

In an effort to ease tensions between the United States and Canada, Vice President Dick Cheney met with the Canadian ambassador and pledged that the administration would take steps to reassure liberals, a source close to Cheney said.

"We're going to have some Peter, Paul & Mary concerts. And, we might put some endangered species on postage stamps. The president is determined to reach out."

Author unknown

Free Kirby

Interesting national article about my morning commute radio-talk-show host---

Free Kirby Wilbur
By The Editors on Campaign-Finance Reform on National Review Online

Free speech is under assault in the state of Washington. In the name of campaign-finance reform, government officials in the state have claimed the authority to clamp down on their citizens’ right to speak out on public issues. This case is a chilling illustration of the dangers posed by our ever-multiplying campaign regulations. Last year, two Seattle radio hosts named Kirby Wilbur and John Carlson began arguing on the air against a gas-tax increase of 9.5 cents per gallon. They encouraged their listeners to collect signatures and donate money in behalf of Initiative 912, a ballot referendum seeking to repeal the new tax. Before long, gas-tax proponents — a consortium of revenue-hungry municipalities throughout the state of Washington — filed a lawsuit demanding that the No New Gas Tax campaign disclose the value of the hosts’ radio advocacy as an in-kind campaign contribution. A lower court agreed, asserting that Wilbur and Carlson’s close ties to the anti-tax campaign made their advocacy cross the line between free speech and political advertising. And political advertising is, according to state law, subject to disclosure requirements. Wilbur and Carlson were unhappy with the ruling, and they planned to appeal. In the meantime, however, they came up with a monetary value to assign to their radio advocacy, and began disclosing it to state authorities as a campaign contribution.

But they still faced an uglier prospect. Under Washington state law, initiative campaigns are not allowed to accept donations greater than $5,000 in the final 21 days leading up to an election. This posed a problem for Wilbur and Carlson, because their daily radio advocacy was listed as being worth more than $5,000 over a three-week period. If they continued to broadcast their arguments against the gas tax, they risked breaking the law. Outrageous as it seemed, the government would be able to prosecute them for publicly expressing themselves about a matter of public policy.

With the help of the Institute for Justice, Wilbur and Carlson have appealed to the state supreme court, which heard arguments in the case last Thursday. At issue are the state constitution’s guarantees of free speech, as well as the contours of the state’s campaign-finance law. Washington’s campaign-finance regulations do make an exception for commentary published in outlets that are not controlled by a candidate or campaign committee. But the lawsuit against Wilbur and Carlson claims that the two of them became so closely connected to the anti-tax movement that they should be considered “principals” in the campaign. According to an attorney who filed the suit against the radio hosts, their efforts to collect money and signatures for Initiative 912 suggested “a level of control and involvement that would make them officers and/or agents of the campaign.” Thus, we are supposed to conclude, they ought to be muzzled.

It is depressing to see campaign-finance regulation descend to such disgrace. But it is also instructive. The persecution of Wilbur and Carlson is a case study in how campaign-finance laws, far from strengthening the democratic process, can undermine the rights of free speech and association on which any democracy worth the name depends.

National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MDNjN2Y4NzhhZDQ1NjI1OTkyMmEyZTE1ZGY5ZmI4YWQ=

Gold Creek

I led a small Boy Scout backpack trip (3 scouts, 2 leaders) over the weekend. We hiked a bit over 5 miles up Gold Creek on Saturday, camped, and returned on Sunday. The trail had lots of exciting stream crossings, since the water flow was high from snow melt. At five miles, we came to a nice campspot, we hit almost constant snow on the trail, and we came to a impassable ford across Gold Creek, so we made camp (at 3000 ft elevation).

The scouts entertained themselves playing in a small sidestream, building rock dams, throwing rocks at a baseball floating along. It got cold, 35 F over night. The scouts ate an interesting menu, including spam, ham, bacon, hot dogs, casserole, scrambled eggs, soup, and mashed potatoes.

At the trailhead on Saturday, the ranger warned us of nightly car prowlers and strongly urged us to clean out our vehicles. Both our vehicles were pretty cleaned out, so we decided to take an extra tent with us instead of leaving it in the trunk, we took the vehicle registration from each vehicle, and we left them unlocked. It must have worked, because everything was right where we left it upon return.

Amazing

My 86-year-old dad just invited me to return to this location this August. He wants to collect rare flowers! This photo shows him there four years ago, at age 82. He thinks he can do it again! This location is about 1,000 feet elevation gain above Circle Lake, and Circle Lake is about 3 hours drive from Seattle, plus 6 hours of vigorous hiking (about 5 miles hiking on a trail, plus about 2 miles hiking cross country, with about 3,000 feet elevation gain altogether).

I have decided that men over 40 think they can hike farther and higher than they can, and boy scouts can hike farther and higher than they think they can.

Ray and Michelle

Ray Robison at Fox News is starting a fascinating series of reports on information gleened from translations of thousands of Saddam's documents. What were Saddam's dealings to the terrorists? Where are the WMD? Was Bush wrong to order the invasion of Iraq in 2003? Here is the link to the first article:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,199052,00.html

Also today, Michelle Malkin has posted a great web-video about Hadji Girl, the controversial song written and sung by a U.S. Marine who is now in deep trouble. What do the words really say? Do you think he should be punished?

http://hotair.com/archives/vent/2006/06/15/hadji-girl/

Just asking.

Hit and run

Just recently, here in the Seattle area, a 3-year-old boy was killed by a hit and run driver.

http://www.komotv.com/stories/43940.htm

Very sad, but also very strange. It happened on a dark and rainy road at 10 o'clock at night. I can understand why the driver might not see a little 3-year-old running out in front of his car. If he had stopped, I am reasonably sure he would not have gotten even a traffic ticket. But he did not stop, and now he will get jail time. Dumb move.

At first I was aghast that a 3 year old was outside in the rain at 10 o'clock at night. Very strange. But the story says he was autistic and so clever with locks that they called him "Houdini." He simply escaped. Very sad.

Actually, the story reminds me of another 3-year-old, a little girl discovered trotting down the road, leaving home, but it was about 1950. Fewer cars, daytime, rural area, she survived. She's now pushing 60!

Cell phones in schools

New York City schools have banned cell phones in the schools. Can't walk into the building with them. Parents are in an uproar. I think it would be much easier to jam them than to ban them.

When we get on airplanes, they ask us to shut off our cell phones. How many of you have accidentally left them on for the whole flight? Did they come ask you to turn it off? Do they have a radio detection device that can locate a cell phone that is turned on? Could we get such a device to put in the schools to detect kids who left their cell phones on?

Just asking.

Road buttons

You know those little yellow or white circular buttons glued to the centerline of a road? They wander. I don't know how, but there is one stretch of road on my commute where they are scattered around, up to a foot away from the centerline. How did they restick after they were knocked loose?

The QBO

An advertisement for Al Gore’s bipartisan education campaign to train 1,000 people to give a version of his slide show on global warming contains the following quote: “Most scientists believe carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases trap the sun's heat in the atmosphere leading to stronger storms and rising sea levels that could swamp low-lying islands by 2100.”

Now, Michael Crichton makes the excellent point that science is not a democratic process. That is, even if Gore's claim that “Most scientists believe carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases trap the sun’s heat in the atmosphere leading to stronger storms and rising sea levels that could swamp low-lying islands by 2100” were to be true, that does not make it true.

However, I doubt that claim. I assert that only a minority of scientists believe the claim above. I think the advertisement writer has incorrectly quoted Gore. A probably correct claim that Gore might have made is that “Most scientists believe carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases trap the sun’s heat in the atmosphere.”

But I have to ask, “Why should scientists who are not climatologists even get a vote in this climate debate?” Scientists studying a multitude of topics (e.g., medicine, engineering, astronomy, physics, even biology) really don’t have any more specific knowledge of climate change than you or I do. It is really a small group of atmospheric scientists who have specialized in climatology who actually have enough knowledge to make educated guesses about storm intensity and sea level. In fact, atmospheric scientists who have specialized in other topics, such as meteorology, weather forecasting, El Nino, the quasi-biennial oscillation (the QBO), katabatic winds, etc. also don’t have much more detailed knowledge of climate change than you or I do.

Gore should be quoting only the climatologists who are actively trying to solve this puzzle of climate change. He also should be asking them, "Can mankind do anything to stop global warming if it is happening?" I have read that even following the Kyoto Protocol can only slow global warming by a few years in 2100. So I cannot prove it, but I suspect that the answer to my last question is, "Not much."

Little Victories

We conservatives must celebrate the little victories as they fly by (because the mainstream media sure won’t do it for us). Just this week:

Karl Rove will not be charged in the Plame leak fiasco.

Iraq has finally formed its government resulting from the December 2005 elections.

Our military has finally brought Al-Zarqawi “to justice.” (Bush spied; Terrorists died!)

Georgia has passed a law saying businesses can no longer consider wages paid to an illegal alien as a legal business expense for tax purposes.

The mere presence of the National Guard (guarding our nation, what a novel concept!) on the Mexican border has reduced border crossings by 20%. And they aren’t even carrying weapons. What if they were armed?

Three Cheers! Hip, hip, hurray!

How can President Bush raise his public approval ratings?

I still support President Bush. I think that his drop in approval ratings is not from Democrats, but from Republicans and moderates. I don’t think he has been sufficiently conservative to please them. You know, I still want him to do some of the things that Newt Gingrich promised us in 1994, like close down the Department of Education, cut the Department of Health and Human Services in half, and veto those pork-filled spending bills coming out of Congress. He also needs to cut income taxes some more, rescind the McCain Feingold campaign finance bill if he can, stop the in-flow of illegal aliens and terrorists across the Mexican border using national guard and military (Why else would they be called the Department of Defense?), push for enforcement of current laws regarding illegal alien immigrants (Are they really voting?), push for more nuclear power plants and oil refineries, push for more drilling offshore of California and in ANWR, push energy efficiency and conservation and cogeneration (CHP), and write a bunch of executive orders to cancel all of the new regulations installed by Clinton by his executive orders.

Excel question

What do you call the process of adding dollar signs to an equation in Excel to fix the row and column as appropriate before copying an equation? Does anyone besides me use the term “dollarize?”

Women

I spent yesterday hanging out with my three sisters, and enjoyed their company. There are all mature, educated women (at least 5 college degrees among them), thoughtful, pushing 60, nice people, good conversationalists, all leading interesting lives. I am proud to be their brother.

I like women. I was raised with three sisters and no brothers. I think it goes the other way, too. I have met women who were raised with lotsa brothers and no sisters. Such women are comfortable around groups of men, and like men. I am no psychologist, but there seems to be a connection there. What do you think?

Pedicularis photos

Three of six Cascade Mountain species of Pedicularis: Rainier lousewort (yellow), Sickletop (Parrotbeak) lousewort (white), and Elephanthead lousewort (pink). See the elephant ears and trunk? The other three, not shown, are Bracted, Contorted, and Birdsbeak louseworts. The scientific name for Birdsbeak lousewort is the fun-to-say Pedicularis ornithorhyncha. For a great website of Washington State flowers, shrubs, ferns, and trees, see:
http://biology.burke.washington.edu/herbarium/imagecollection.php

Backpacking in the Cascades

Lila Lake, 1990. I have fond memories of this trip, no mosquitoes, no flies, camped on snow. The snow melted 4 inches around the tent that night, the result of a light breeze and a temperature of 60 F. Lila Lake is behind the tents, still covered with ice on July 15, bits of water showing through.



Annette Lake, 1982. Soto on his first overnight backpack trip at age 6. Three miles into camp, with 1000 feet gain.

My favorite photo

Getting a bucket of water from Circle Lake (6000 feet in the Cascades) at sunrise.

Arctic Sea Ice Experiments

Pedicularis sitting about 300 miles north of Barrow, Alaska, April 1994. We were living in a canvas hut sitting on the Arctic sea ice, running experiments measuring sea ice stress. We got electric power for our lights and computers from a diesel generator, and heat from an oil stove.

Polite driving

Three times while driving to work this morning, I was in a long line of pokey traffic filtering through a stop light or stop sign far ahead, and I saw an on-coming car with its left turn signal on, with a long line of cars behind it. Now, I am as much in a hurry to complete my drive as anyone else, but I saw absolutely no reason not to stop, flash my headlights, and let the fellow make his left turn, thereby unclogging the oncoming traffic. So I did (twice, I missed the third opportunity). But oddly enough, no one ahead of me did. Why not?

Terrorists and the News Media

I am coming to understand that there is a powerful dynamic between the news media and the Muslim terrorists. The news media are being played, being used, allowing the terrorists to spread their message completely around the world. The images of destruction generate fear around the world, and in that sense, the terrorists are succeeding beyond their wildest dreams. Prohibiting the distribution of those images and stories is one solution to frustrate the terrorists, but I oppose that, since I support the free flow of ideas, news, and information around the world as a method of protecting liberty around the world. As during the cold war, the net result are whole populations suffering from the news about the terrorist situation as well as their own personal problems. Life was truly simpler on the family farm, with a local newspaper and one little radio to the outside world that played Paul Harvey and the local news.