Baird Family Pix

Roasted Poblano Salsa

We BBQed again recently. I made a plethora BBQed chicken so that we would have lunches for a while. I also made a roasted poblano salsa. This was MUCH better than the anaheim variety.

1 Poblano Chile
2 Roma Tomatoes
2 Steak Tomato
1 Yellow Onion
1 Lime

Cilantro, minced, to taste
Garlic, fresh, mashed, minced
Ginger, powdered
Sage, powdered

Roast poblano until skin is blackened. Also roast three of the tomatoes (2 oma and one steak) and onion. Peel the 80% poblano. slice up the tomatoes and the onion. Drop all in the blender with spices. All of the other spices are to taste. Squeeze in lime juice. BLEND. Dice and add last tomato. Blend again, but for nota s long.

Comes out smoky and VERY yummy. It's not a habanero salsa, but its damned good stuff.

Small Avrora Update

Oops! I forgot to do this last week!

She's 33 inches tall and 29 1/2 pounds at 17 1/2 months.

Definitely destined to be taller than Mommy. The supposed half way point - that is a child is half the height that they are going to be as an adult - is 20 months for a girl and 24 months for a boy. We still have a few months to go.

heh.

Grow my lil girl! Grow!

Some Potential Consequences of Global Warming

With average global temperature increases of more than 5.5°F (3°C), there will be a high probability of droughts along Europe's Mediterranean coastline, the scientists report.

The eastern U.S. would also become prone to severe dry spells.

But with an increase of less than 3.5°F (2°C), Scholze said, "we don't see this. There might actually be floods."

In addition, the study found a high likelihood that global warming beyond 3.5 to 5.5°F (2 to 3°C) would cause a high likelihood of floods at latitudes above 50 degrees north.

The temperature rise would also cause prairies to expand northward all the way to Canada's Baffin Bay, replacing present-day forests.

Farther north, Canada's forests would push into regions now covered by brush and tundra.

[...]

Substantial warming could also have dire consequences for the Amazon rain forest.

If global warming is modest, the models are "not quite sure" what will happen in that part of South America, Scholze said. "Some say it would get drier and some say it would get wetter."

But with warming of more than 5.5°F (3°C), he says, there is a high probability that the region would get drier and face a risk of forest fires.

Steven Running, a climate researcher from the University of Montana in Missoula who was not part of Scholze's team, calls this a "double whammy." The Amazon would first endure forest-killing droughts and then see massive wildfires that turn it from rain forest to grassland.

I wonder what will happen in the Western US?

Funny Post from Slashdot

Slashdot is a news aggregator for computer info. It used to be bleeding edge and have stories about things prior to anyone else. Well, it doesn't so much anymore. The commentary tends to be innane and less than informed. Think of usenet standards and lower them. There was one funny post though about us here at work:

I work in the industry. 'Course it's easy for an AC to say that, isn't it?

$52M is rather large nowadays. At least, for a 'commodity' part cluster it is. For a 'vector' supercomputer, it may be only medium sized.

You can easily break the top 50 for less than $10M. A couple thousand nodes, each with two dual-core Opteron/Xenons, InfiniBand or Myrinet (maybe 10GigE), and a compiler that optimizes better than gcc... no problem.

That being said, NERSC is a pathologically tough customer. Cray will have to work very hard to earn each and every penny they get. It may very well be a 'live or die' deal for Cray.

ooooh. I LIKE being pathological.

>:)

Not the Day Care you're looking for

We had selected a daycare that was recommended to us from some friends. The owners seemed nice. They're fluent in Spanish (and teach it) which is something we wanted for Avrora. Our friends' daughter seems happy there and my wife's first visit seemed to go pretty well. There ended up being four problems and she won't be going there.

The first was that it was my daughter didn't like it. Our friends' daughter didn't want to play with ours. There were older kids and Avrora wasn't happy with that. The second problem was that Avrora was going to end up with little kids - toddlers and infants - and she wants to play with the older kids. The older kids weren't really that interested. The third problem was that we were hoping that Avrora would end up in a daycare that had russian lessons, since that's ahrd to maintain as they get older and the more they get exposed young, the better. Finally, the last two visits, it was dirty. Very dirty according to Lyuda. I understand that kids get into a mess, but that wouldn't do.

We lucked outa nd found another PDQ after that last visit. Our daughter didn't want to leave and rather liked the owner. It's a Russian speaking daycare, but after age three they teach english too. The services are much better too and the price, which wasn't a big deal before, is half of the previous one. We're hopeful that this will work out.

Avrora starts tomorrow. The same day Lyuda's classes will. We're both going to drop her off.

The Donetsk Team

I really ought to just add The Eurasian Daily Monitor to my side bar and be done with it.

The Donetsk interest group is clearly the hegemonic factor in Ukraine’s newly installed coalition government under Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych. It seems quite possible that Washington and Brussels can “do business” politically and perhaps to some extent even strategically with this group. Certainly, the government’s installation marks an advance from chaos to relative stability and predictability, as well as a shift from pro-Western but ineffectual Orange power to a “two-vector” (East-West balance) stable and somewhat more competent power.

In testing the Donetsk group’s capacity for strategic partnership with the West, four assumptions now being proposed could prove irrelevant at best and counterproductive at worst. These assumptions hold that the new government marks a departure from regionally divisive politics; that the “Party of Regions has been democratized”; that the coalition is based on a common economic policy; and that it has adopted a unified foreign policy.

However, the governing coalition’s composition in parliament and government shows that the political forces that speak for the western and central regions (Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc and the national-democratic wing of the Our Ukraine bloc) opposed the formation of this government. By the same token, the Donetsk team’s economic and political power in the government is wholly disproportionate to its actual influence in the country and may be misused to expand that influence and cement that team’s power. Rather than departing from regionally divisive politics, the new Donetsk hegemony can exacerbate such politics by triggering reactions from regionally based forces that feel unrepresented or short-changed.

The “democratization” of the Party of Regions may seem to be an almost obligatory case to make, but it is difficult to sustain. The present leaders’ Kuchma-era record is a non- and anti-democratic one, which helped trigger the democratic Orange Revolution. The party is strongest in electoral terms in those areas where the Soviet/Russian mentality of paternalism, collectivism, and subservience to authority is strongest; and its oligarchic leaders control the populous industrial centers in the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts in company-town fashion, though on a far larger scale than the classical model. Furthermore, the party’s oligarchs have brought the unreconstructed Communist Party into the government.

KEYS!

Yesterday my daughter figured out how to use keys. This is a wonderful and terrifying development.

Oh, to be sure, it's not the keys that you put in the door. They were the large plastic keys for opening up where some of her toys were stored. It was part of the play setup. Her toys, small anaimals, were locked in some cages as part of a play set for pretending to be a vet. She got them out. We were delighted. She's been trying to work door nobs for a while, but now that we have seen her use the keys, we quietly without fuss moved all of ours out of reach.

We're very proud of her. And a little nervous. She has no fear. Even after hurting herself a few times falling off the bed, she kept at it to figure out how to get down. She's done likewise with other things she think she can do whether or not they might hurt her. If she thinks she can figure out a way that she can do it without hurting her she'll keep trying until it doesn't. Stairs, frex, are one. Picking up prickly or hot things too. She doesn't do it blindly or stupidly, but she does keep at it.

These are the moments that both scare and delight a parent.

Rise in CO2 over time

Bad things happened the last time CO2 ran amuck.

Anoxia in the Pacific NW

Scientists say the oxygen-starved "dead zone" along the Pacific Coast that is causing massive crab and fish die-offs is worse than initially thought.

Scientists say weather, not pollution, appears to be the culprit, and no relief is in sight. However, some say there is no immediate sign yet of long-term damage to the crab fishery.

Oregon State University scientists looking for weather changes that could reverse the situation aren't finding them, and they say levels of dissolved oxygen critical to marine life are the lowest since the first dead zone was identified in 2002. It has returned every year.

Strong upwelling winds pushed a low-oxygen pool of deep water toward shore, suffocating marine life, said Jane Lubchenco, a professor of marine biology at OSU.

Y'know, I wonder if Hallam and Wignall have considered that anoxia might be part of the symptoms of what killed everything at the end of the Permian (and others) rather than the driving cause. Yes, Anoxia would kill lots, but it seems, at least in the above case, that its a symptom rather than cause. If anoxic conditions in the Permian Extinction and elsewhere TL wise were a symptom of uber temperatures...

Forgotten Pain

I've been helping my wife get registered for classes. These will be her first credit classes in her drive for her good, but mildly insane major she wants from UC Berkeley (Molecular Celluar Biology and Business Adminstration). Getting A +B + C right was something I did back at NMSU for my class schedules. It's even more painful now.

*sighs*

Wedging in Math, two English courses, a biology and a business course is ... uh...not fun.

Russian Imperialism Alive and Well

Sponsored jointly by Russian big business and security services, a network of Greater Russia political and “civic” organizations is sprouting up in Transnistria, advocating the accession to the Russian Federation of this part of Moldova. Recent days have witnessed a wave of founding conferences of these organizations.

In the immediate term, this burst of activity is linked to preparations for the referendum that is scheduled to be held on September 17 by the Russia-installed authorities. A leading question on the ballot is asking voters whether they favor Transnistria’s entry into the Russian Federation. The “referendum” will be followed by a “presidential” election that is expected to return Igor Smirnov for a fourth term in that post. In the short-to-medium term, however, Moscow will use these organizations to provide a semblance of “democratic legitimacy” for Russian control over distant Transnistria in the form of a second Kaliningrad.

Russian looks to bite off a chunk of a smaller country. Border moving is definitely in vogue there in Moscow. How long until the break away regions of Georgia "vote" to be included in Russia? It will be interesting to see if Russia pulls this off. It will be equally interesting to see how the world, especially the EU, reacts to this.

New Toy at Work

Cray returns.

cool.

Let's hope that they're as responsive and good as they used to be.

There will be teething problems, of course.

Ixnay on NG's Skyguard laser

While Northrop Grumman is hoping the recent Hezbollah missile attacks on Israel will create interest in its Skyguard chemically powered high-energy laser weapon system either abroad or for American homeland security, it's clear that the U.S. Army wants to wait for a more tactical and mobile system.

While more mobile and cheaper than earlier planned high-energy laser (HEL) proposals, Skyguard lacks the mobility of solid-state high energy systems the Army would rather have, according to Northrop and Army officials.

A demonstrator for such a system probably won't be ready until the mid part of the coming decade.

Army officials have made their need for a very mobile system known this year in congressional testimony. More telling, the service has no current funding plans for anything like a Skyguard system.

Israel and the United States were working on a mobile tactical high energy laser (MTHEL) until last year, but the joint program fell apart partly because Israel was ready to move forward while the Army wanted a more tactical system.

"The U.S. Army wanted something that was more mobile," said Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute.

...and probably something that its not so easy to be killed by if something goes wrong. Flourine and deutrium are none too friendly when they get a chance encounter with the battlefield bully called 'shrapnel'.

Reading Update

I just finished reading After the Ice Age: The Return of Life to Glaciated North America last night. I've been taking my time in reading it because after running down to SD, Avrora starting daycare next week, and Lyuda starting classes, we're a little tapped out this month. That means I won't get to go purchase new reading material for a bit.

I have to say that Pielou did a reasonable job of writing this one. The prose is very readable. There are a lot of illustrations to demonstrate points or show the critter being discussed or such. There were a few spots a diagram wasn't placed that could have been nice rather than an illustration of some animal, but the choices weren't horrible. The number of illustrations make the pages seem a bit padded and that youa re really seeing a book of 240 pages long instead of the 314+ of readable material.

The content itself is not anything amazing, but it did point out a number of things that I definitely didn't realize. Frex, the ice free corridor between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets was most likely a waste land that didn't even qualify as tundra making it a very difficult for anyone, man or beast, to travel down without starving. There are a number of other ones that I will be pointing out as quotes. Some of them are quite juicy.

It should be clear that the physical environment of nothern North America has changed dramatically in the past 20,000 years. This environment was (and still is) a complicated and intricate system, powered by the sun and having land, ice, freshwater, salt water and atmosphere at its compnonents. Even if it were lifeless, it would still be duynamic; the compononents would continue to interact with one another. One of the most interesting aspects of this never ending change from the ecological point of view is that, over the time interval we are considering (and probably for the whole of the earth's history), physical conditions on this continent (and everywhere else) have never repeated themselves.

At no time has there been a return to "things as they were."

pg 29.

Emphasis added. Message for the future? There will never be a return to the 'before' if Global Warming truly happens as predicted.

There is a wealth of evidence, however, shwoing that climatic change is never ending. Even if major climatic "steps" are compartively quick, it is almost certain that the climate in the intervals between steps undergoes continual lesser changes. In the light of present knowledge, therefore, Davis' view, that disequilibrium in ecological communities is much commoner than equilibirum, is more acceptable.

It should lead, in time, to a much needed change in popular thought. The notion espoused by so many nonprofessional ecologists - that the living world is "marvelously" and "delicately" attuned to its environment - is not so much a scientifically reasonable theory as a mystically satisifying dogma. Its abandonment might lead to a useful fresh start in environmental politics."

pg 101. Speaks for itself. emphasis added.

I'll add some more quotes later. I'm a little busy right now.

Wednesday Picts

Greater US of North America Population by State

State Name:   Population:  Origin[0]:
California    36,132,147  A
Texas    22,859,968  A
Mexico[1]   22,728,411    M
New York   19,254,630  A
Florida    17,789,864  A
Illinios   12,763,371  A
Ontario    12,541,400  C
Pennsylvania   12,429,616  A
Ohio    11,464,042  A
Michigan   10,120,860  A
Georgia     9,072,576  A
New Jersey    8,717,925  A
North Carolina    8,683,242  A
Quebec     7,598,100  C
Virginia    7,567,465     A
Veracruz    7,110,214  M
Jalisco     6,752,113  M
Massachusetts    6,398,743  A
Washington    6,287,759  A
Indiana     6,271,973  A
Tennessee    5,962,959  A
Arizona     5,939,292  A
Missouri    5,800,310  A
Maryland    5,600,388  A
Wisconsin    5,536,201  A
Puebla     5,383,133  M
Minnesota    5,132,799  A
Colorado    4,665,177  A
Alabama     4,557,808  A
Lousiana    4,523,628  A
Chiapas     4,293,459  M
South Carolina    4,255,083  A
British Columbia   4,254,500  C
Nuevo Leon     4,199,292  M
Kentucky     4,173,405  A
Michoacan     3,966,073  M
Puerto Rico    3,916,632  A
Oregon     3,641,056  A
Oklahoma    3,547,884  A
Connecticut    3,510,297  A
Oaxaca      3,506,821  M
Baja California[2]   3,356,639  M
Alberta     3,256,800  C
Chihuahua     3,241,444  M
Guerrero    3,115,202  M
Tamaulipas    3,024,238  M
Iowa     2,966,334  A
Mississippi    2,921,088  A
Arkansas    2,779,154  A
Kansas     2,744,687  A
Sinaloa     2,608,442  M
Utah     2,469,585  A
Nevada     2,414,807  A
San Luis Potosi­    2,410,414  M
Hidalgo     2,345,514  M
Tabasco     1,989,969  M
New Mexico    1,928,384  A
Yucatan     1,818,948  M
West Virginia    1,816,856  A
Nebraska    1,758,787  A
Morelos     1,612,899  M
Querétaro     1,598,139  M
Durango     1,509,117  M
Idaho     1,429,096  A
Zacatecas     1,367,692  M
Maine     1,321,505  A
New Hampshire    1,309,940  A
Hawaii     1,275,194  A
Manitoba    1,177,600  C
Quintana Roo     1,135,309  M
Rhode Island    1,076,189  A
Tlaxcala     1,068,207  M
Aguascalientes     1,065,416  M
Saskatchewan      994,100  C
Nayarit       949,684  M
Nova Scotia      937,900  C
Montana       935,670  A
Delaware      843,524  A
South Dakota      775,933  A
Campeche      754,730  M
New Brunswick      752,000  C
Alaska       663,661  A
North Dakota      636,677  A
Vermont       623,050  A
Colima       567,996  M
Newfoundland and Labrador    516,000  C
Wyoming       509,294  A
Prince Edward Island     138,100  C
Northwest Territories      43,000  C
Yukon        31,000  C
Nunavut        30,000  C

0.  A = American, C = Canadian, M = Mexican.
1.  Combined Mexico and Federal District
2.  Combined Baja California and Baja California Sur

A combined Martimes would have a population of 2,344,000
and put it in the puncing weight of Utah politically.

A combined Yucatan Pennisula (Compeche, Quintana Roo, and
Yucatan ) would have the population of 3,708,987 and a
punching weight equivalent of  Oregon or the state of
Puerto Rico.

Some notes:

Running for President in this uber USA gets interesting. You have three rather different big states to appease: liberal California, conservative Texas, and spanish Mexico. I suspect that you won't appease all three at the same time. You better be bilingual too. Maybe trilingual, but spanish and english so out compete French in numbers...

The voting blocks for different states are probably too complicated for me to think about. I'd need to if I ever want to write a book with this in it though. lol.

I combined Mexico with the Federal District and the two Baja Californias just because. Well, sorta, I think it increases those nuevo states punching power a lot. I would think that the Maritime combination and Yucatan one would be a good idea too, but I suspect that there'd be even MORE resistance to their combination than the prior. Esp wrt to the Canadians.

I have a feeling there'd be a huge population shift around if the borders were moved like this. The next Census after the expansion would shift around a lot of house seats. The Yukon et al territories are states through treaty reasons only. Ontario hits like Illinois. An important state, but not a biggie like the top three.

Oh, yes, I did make Puerto Rico a state here. if Mexico becomes a series of them, then PR is going to join too.

This was just for fun. Don't take it too seriously.

A Independant Canadian Space Program?

Sumitra Rajagopalan argues that Canada ought to have its own space program completely independent of the American one. She harks to more rheatorical reasons than solid ones. I'd like to encourage Canadians to do so, honestly, but I am unsure how much of a program Canada can support with its small if relatively rich population with the state of the Canadian military and Canada's unwillingness to care and feed that.

From my Darth Expanionist POV, it must be ruthlessly crushed though. ;)

Ah, suckage

My cluster map seems to have been broken for a while. Just based on comments here, there ought to have been more hits on my blog that this. grrr.

The Devonian Mass Extinctions

I have been doing a lot of reading about the mass extinctions that have bedeviled or blessed our ecosystems through time. Part of the reason for this was the discussions that Carlos and I had. Part of this would be because once upon a time, I thought I would be a paleontologist, but alas, that didn't happen. The interest never faded so much as I put it on the back burner. Since those discussions I have been upping that priority. I un-niced it for those computer geeks out there. Finally, its necessary research for a novel setting I am cobbling together. That 'Great Vision' novel that I mentioned before needs a bit of research and this is part of it.

Everyone has heard of the KT Event when the dinosaurs, ave our feathered friends, got wiped. This is probably the singular most popular extinction to study and discuss. The results were pretty profound. The reasons are pretty obvious these days. The studies that have been done are pretty extensive. A few less have heard of the Permian Extinction where a lot more species died out, but it has been popularized a lot in the last decade so that more people have heard of it. There are a few other mass extinctions that people haven't heard so much about. The Ordovician was older and pretty important if largely kept to the sea.

There are two that are a bit more controversial. They may not have even happened: The Cambrian extinction so popularized by the late Stephen J Gould and the End Triassic may not have even been extinctions at all, or so its starting to appear, but rather are just statistical blips (so say recent sources) that are from sampling biases. That stance though is pretty controversial, especially with respect to the Triassic-Jurassic Boundary. The Cambrian Extinction seems to be largely consigned to history, but that may not remain so.

Of course, there's the one going on right now. This is supposed to be the worst extinction since the KT Event. It's ongoing and very political since we - humanity - are the primary, and possibly sole cause. It's a bit depressing, but ought to be considered in the Drake Equation that intelligent species might bring about their own demise ecologically. I have faith in humanity to make it through, but I mourn the passing of so many species.

However, there is another extinction event that hasn't been touched on as much. That is the Late Devonian Mass Extinction:

The Late Devonian Event is particuarly controversial at present. Indeed, one evolutionary biologist has bemoaned, "The Late Devonian extinction is one where not even the major facts are ageed on yet" (Van Valen 1984).

Or so sayeth George McGhee in his work on the subject, The Late Devonian Mass Extinction. Hallam and Wignall called it "one damn thing after another" in their book Mass Extinctions and their Aftermath. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like anything is really agreed by anyone about anything here with respect to this extinction except that a a helluvalota species died.

One of the best things to start with is the fact that there is a lot of disagreement about exactly when the timing of events happened in the Devonian. The Mesozoic, the Tertiary, and even the Permian (end Paleozoic) are very well documented in terms of their geochronology compared to the Devonian. Truthfully, the Permian work has been all done in the last decade, but the Devonian seems to be nothing short of a dog's breakfast right now. The different zones are simply not well documented and the work there is very young at best (IMO) based on reading McGhee and Hallam's work. Until this is done with a lot of cross checking and the timeline generally accepted, the debate will rage for a long, long time.

Another point that has a lot of contention here is the reconstruction of the continents during the Devonian. There seems to be a lot of argument over what the positions of the continents were. The arguments go back and forth it seems over geomagnetic data and the fossils found. They are often in disagreement. The fossils for certain aquatic biomes end up in the wrong places if they are put where they ought to be for the geomagnetic fossils and vice versa for the marine zoological fossils.

The Devonian Extinctions were actually three different events that fit within the Devonian. The first was the Taghanic. None of the sources that I read discuss this one almost at all. This was during the Givetian stage and lasted into the Frasnian. The next was the one that McGhee concentrated on and Hallam and Wignall discussed quite a bit. This one is termed either the Kellwasser Event or the F-F Boundary Event. This extinction happened on the boundary between the stages of the Frasnian and Famennian geological stages.

Next it might be best to explain what happened in terms of species and fossils. While McGhee has the book developed to the whole crisis, it is actually Hallam and Wignall's work that gives a more detailed discussion of what died and lived. The one failing of H&W's work is that it glazes over the land animals to a degree that is disappointing. This isn't just true of the Devonian, but also of the other extinction events that they cover (all of them). It's to be understood since they're marine paleontologists, but...still disappointing. They do have some excellent visual aids on pages 74 and 75 on the pain that was inflicted on diversity changes. The most profound changes that they note there are the fall from grace of the agnathans (jawless fish) and the placoderms (armored fish) during the Devonian events. This had huge implications for the fish of the world because our familar actinpterygians (ray finned fish) took over after the Placs were knocked on their collective ass-fins into extinction. At any rate, the total amount of families and species that died may actually be greater through the Devonian that at the KT Event. That too is a controversial stance, but one supported by Sepkoski's great database.

The question then is, "what killed them all?" The answer is not quite so clear.

McGhee is a strong supporter of the impact theory as to at least one, if not all three peaks of the Devonian Extinctions. The so-called F-F Crisis appears to have a string of craters that impacted in a relatively linear fashion going slightly from the southwest to the northeast in the reconstruction that he favours for the continental positions. He notes that one should not take that as anything other than artifact, but after watching the impacts of Shoemaker-Levy on Jupiter, I have to wonder. The problem is with the impact theory is that, frankly, there's little supporting evidence. There are no global indicators about these impacts. If they were as devastating as the KT impact then there ought to be evidence scattered everywhere. yet. it's not. Indeed, to have three major sets of impacts at tens of millions of years apart hsn't been explained either.

Hallam and Wignall favor that it was oceanic anoxia that did in the Devonian species. Once they seem to favour a global turnover of the ocean, but mostly they seem to lean very strongly towards a model where regression of the ocean shorelines takes place. Then anoxia develops in the oceans. Finally there's a transgression across the continents of the oceans agian that brings the anoxic waters up into former habitats wipes out the local species. In support of this there are tons of so-called black shales where organics were laid down, unoxydized nor munched on by bottom dwellers. On the other hand, this doesn't explain why it seems that the extinction effected the land and fresh water dwellings critters too. Anoxia of the oceans wouldn't swack them as much as it appears to have.

Hallam also wrote a more recent work that indicates that there might be some link to global cooling as well, but that link was rather tenuous.

Despite this being a very important chapter in the extinction book, so to speak, this one is largely unwritten. It had huge implications for life later in the world's history, but we really don't understand it. What ways this influenced our tetrapod ancestors and their fish and arthopod nemeses are quite important and also very poorly studied. Much more needs to be done before we can look at the Devonian Extinctions as settled as the work done for the KT Event or even the Permian Event(s).

That said, next up is the Permian Events. This one is something that almost cooked my goose, irl wrt to my job. I won't belabor that point, but the event has tempered my interest in the PT Event considerably. That said, the reading for that post is done. I actually need to go back and reread some of my notes before that post goes up. It will almost certainly happen before the end of the month though.

Reading a bit about our neighbors...

Can anyone of my Canadian readers make comment as to the accuracy of this article?

Just curious.

Back

We're BACK!

We went down to San Diego for our Second Anniversary!

We stated at the Torrey Pines Hilton. It was rather nice, but perhaps not up to the reputation. We hit the San Diego Zoo on Saturday and had a wonderful time. My daughter has been pointing out this that and everything which has a picture of an animal. She looks a little blue since we got back, but we'll go off to our local zoos soon so she can cheer up.

We spent the next day at the beach and my wife went sky diving. Avrora and I hung out at the pool and then we went to dinner at an Italian place that underwhelmed. :(

I can say that if you ever get the itching for Brazillian food do not ever EVEN THINK! about going to the Samba Grill. It's the first time in my life that I have ever chosen not to leave a tip. That food was NASTY. If you want Brazillian, the best place I have ever seen is Ipanema in Seattle. That's DAMNED good.

We have some photos from the Zoo before our camera's battery died.

What Fae Am I?

What type of Fae are you?

Hmm. I have to wonder about this. I went back and fiddled with a few answers that could have gone a few different ways and didn't get any changes to the outcome.

hmm.

What D&D Charatcer am I?

I Am A: Chaotic Good Half-Elf Ranger Druid


Alignment:
Chaotic Good characters are independent types with a strong belief in the value of goodness. They have little use for governments and other forces of order, and will generally do their own things, without heed to such groups.


Race:
Half-Elves are a cross between a human and an elf. They are smaller, like their elven ancestors, but have a much shorter lifespan. They are sometimes looked down upon as half-breeds, but this is rare. They have both the curious drive of humans and the patience of elves.


Primary Class:
Rangers are the defenders of nature and the elements. They are in tune with the Earth, and work to keep it safe and healthy.


Secondary Class:
Druids are a special variety of Cleric who serves the Earth, and can call upon the power in the earth to accomplish their goals. They tend to be somewhat fanatical about defending natural settings.


Deity:
Solonor Thelandria is the Chaotic Good elven god of archery and the hunt. He is also known as the Keen Eye, the Great Archer, and the Forest Hunter. His followers respect nature, and only hunt when needed, but are quick to defend the forest from intruders. Their favorite weapon is the bow, and they tend to be extremely talented with it. Solonor Thelandria's symbol is an arrow with green fletchings.


Find out What D&D Character Are You?, courtesy ofNeppyMan (e-mail)

Kliper Melts Down

Late in June, speaking at the Farnborough aerospace show, the Roskosmos leadership suddenly announced that they were suspending the tender [for the Kliper] and would instead adopt a multi-stage program of creating a space transport vehicle.

So, in other words, the Russians were blowing smoke over their intents with the Kliper. Someone once told me that we had asked to Russians "bring it" wrt the Kliper vs Orion and that "they did and showed us up". Kinda funny actually now that the Russians are shelving their project and the Orion is going forward albeit in its bloated way.

Kite Festival Picts

Waterworld and Baby Picts

In Motion

The plans for this weekend are all but set in stone. It will hurt a lot if we cancel now. lol. I hope that Lyuda enjoys this trip. :)

Family and baby pix tonight.

Which is the Russian Fish?

(with full apologies to the EPA...)

Noel Maurer and I had a discussion some time back about the Ukrainian Gas war as an example of Russian 21st Century Imperialism. Noel felt that it was incompetent imperialism. Badly handled and an extreme example of stupidity in motion. Most people were aware of the Gas War. It was in the news and on everyone's mind. The drama was rather extreme. Little new democracy facing down the big, bad Russians in the depths of winter and made the Russians look stupid. A deal was struck with the support of the EU and US. The world's attention turned elsewhere. The Russians, however, merely waited for that to happen. This is a pretty common pattern for the Russians as of this moment. Right now, unbeknownst to most people, the Russians are out trying to eat the smaller fish of the xUSSR republics.

For one, the Gas War isn't over. The Russians have been putting the full court press on the Ukrainians when everyone else was looking at Iran, Isreal and elsewhere. The Russians bought up the rights to the Turkmen gas that the Ukrainians thought they could mix with the Russian gas to make sure it didn't destroy their economy through price shocks. The Russians then turned around and started talking about jacking up the price of gas even past the amount they asked for during the lowest points of the Gas War. Then they demanded that the Ukrainians hand over their transit pipes that Naftogas owns. They did during the Gas War and now they're doing it again. This time, with the chaos in Ukraine's political sphere, it is looking likely that the Russians will win out. First it will be the pipes. There will be temporary breaks in the gas prices as 'concessions' and then the Russians are likely to jack the price to whatever they feel like to demand whatever they want. Putin has set a precedent.

The Russians haven't just been picking on the Ukrainians about this. The Russians are even trying to muscle the Armenians, Moldovans, and Belarusians as well. The Moldovans are getting beaten up with respect to gas over the Transdniestr region where Russian troops are acting as 'peace keepers'. Lukashenka might be as crazy as a bed bug, but he has long sought a Soviet style union with the Russians. That makes you wonder why the Russians would want to make threats to him, right? After all, he is in their pocket, right? Well, the Russians want ownership of the pipeline through Belarus as well and are making the same threats as they are to the Ukrainians: fork it over and face massive price hikes. AKA Do as we say or we destroy your economy.

Gas isn't the only place the Russians are beating up old Soviet Republics. Georgia and Moldova are getting their economics kidney kicked because Russian has implemented a ban on all of their wines. Georgia and Moldova's vineyards are one of their very important pillars of their respective economies. Then Russia, under the auspices of quality control, has banned their very important products. Given a lot of the problems with Georgian wines that would have been plausible and even understandable. However, Putin has been coming out to say that he would lift the bans if Russian companies were allowed to take over those industries. hrm. Sounds familiar.

It's obvious that the xUSSR republics, especially the European ones, are the small fish in the picture, about to be eaten. The amusing thing is that while the Russians are acting the shark with respect to the smaller countries, they are in fact, the fish in the middle. The Chinese are working on eating Russia.

First on the list of examples is the forestry deal that I posted about just yesterday. The Chinese are looking to get to exploit the forestry resources of Siberia almost exclusively. First it will be a pilot project and then, probably, on a huge scale. The second point was the energy deal being worked out between Russia and China. Russia might think that it could do an OPEC on China, but the relative strengths are astounding and only going to get worse. The reason? Demographics.

The third, very crucial point is the difference in demographics: the Russians are in a population decline. Russians have a TFR of 1.28, where in a healthy first world country it takes a little better than 2.1 or 2.2 to just keep a stable population. Additionally, they also have a rapidly shrinking population through death .37% annually, and that figure is getting worse. While the Chinese are 1.3 billion people with an annual growth rate of .59% and a TFR that is below replacement, but not as vastly so as the Russians: 1.73. The Chinese are actually emigrating out of China and depress that growth a nontrivial amount. Some of them are going to Russia.

Here and here have some interesting, if a little dated stats on Chinese immigration into Siberia. As the Russian needs for workers increases, their alienation of the xUSSR republics and the EU gets worse, and their own population declines, they are going to have to get workers from somewhere. The Chinese seem very likely as the source. Since the Russians are not at all friendly to absorbing other nonSlavs into being Russian culturally, the Chinese that do come will remain culturally self identifying as such.

The Chinese have a almost cultural concept that the PRC - or whatever form of government that governs 'China' - has the right to rule wherever there are Chinese people. Singapore has long promoted that it is a part of the people, but separate politically. Now, China doesn't actively promote the idea of annexation of these areas, but it does try to influence these areas as much as possible.

Now, if the Russians should get a leader that suddenly goes through a intense nationalist phase, there will be problems. The Russians really don't like the Chinese on the personal or culture level. If China starts to 'own' too many parts of Russia or there are too many Chinese people in Russia - a la like how many perceive the Mexicans in the US - you might see a rather bad backlash. The first would be in the form of nationalizations of Chinese assets. Second would be in the form of considering expulsions of Chinese from Siberia and the rest of Russia. This would be a mistake.

The Chinese government barring some calamity would intervene. Russia would be in a world of hurt. Consider the predictions of an 85 million-person population come true circa 2050 for Russia, and the massively bigger population for China (18x? 20x?). Then consider the massively growing wealth of China vs. Russia. If these trends continue, we are going to see a massive stomp at best. It would turn painful for China, but not as badly as it would be for Russia. Russia, as we have known it, would pass. It would all depend on the distribution of population in Russia and if anyone comes to their rescue. Somehow, I doubt many nations would leap to its aid given the trend in alienation that it is going down.

Unfortunately, I can all too well see a xenophobic Russian leader lashing out at the Chinese sometime after 2020. I can all too well see the end result too. Too bad that Russia is all too bent on trying to push around or eat the smaller fish instead of considering its future it seems to have selected. Too bad that they seem to have turned away from the once promising prospects of joining the West, NATO, and European Union. Too bad their cultural arrogance, one that rivals or perhaps even surpassing that of my own American culture, is preventing them from joining with their other cousins in the bright future of the EU. Too bad that their own self image is so such contradictory opposition to the reality.

Too bad that the Russians didn't embrace that European future. Instead, they have embraced a Eurasian one. For that reason, I weep for Mother Russia. I weep for the Great Russians.

Putin! Oh Putin! What have you done?

A Far Better Source

I haven't posted anything about Ukraine's politics in a while. Reason being as soona s I say something, the wind shifts and it's completely wrong. The Ukrainians have got some serious frack ups going on in their parliament right now.

The above blog belongs to an expat that lives in Kiev and he has front row seats. Read and hold on to your hat!

This last weekend

Friday night we went to family night at the YMCA. Lyuda's a member for the aerobics classes. We also talked about the house after getting the kiddo in bed. Plans, details, etc.

Saturday, we had a good time. It wasn't as crazy as I was worried it would be. We went to Six Flags Waterworld in Concord on Saturday. We were there practically all day. I got a little cooked on my face. My wife didn't get cooked much at all. My daughter only a tad on her face, but that was because I kept being worried about getting the sunscreen in her eyes. I mostly played with Avrora and my wife got to have some relaxation by running off to slide all the attractions. I was very happy with that because it left me time with Avrora and I have been gone so much as of late. We had a very good time, actually. we BBQ'ed that night and I made a lot of BBQed chicken for the rest of the week.

On Sunday, we went to the Berkeley Kite Festival. That was fun, but we only stayed for a relatively short time. We then ran around like mad chickens to do the shopping (Costco (bulk goods), Berkeley Bowl (produce), and Trader Joe's (dairy and some yummy stuff). Lyuda made her very good akroshka (potato, cucumber, ham, and some other stuff mixed with buttermilk, that other Ukrainian food group (mayo), and sparkling water(!)). It's very good stuff!

Next weekend is a surprise. It's our second anniversary. It should be fun. :) I can't say too much before it happens though lest Lydua read here and find out the surpise. ;)

Russia's Orientation to China

Russia and China discussed a long-term lease of one million hectares of Siberian forests as "a pilot project on joint use of forest resources," the Russian Natural Resources Ministry press service said in a statement on July 26. The project was considered at a meeting in Moscow between Boris Bolshakov, deputy head of the Russian Federal Forestry Agency (Rosleskhoz), and Li Yuchai, deputy head of China's State Forestry Administration.

First read the above link (China's getting to - possibly exclusively - exploit Siberia).

Then blend with my first 'War for the Eurasia Soul Footnote'.

Finally ponder the original conversation causing post.

Now consider the Russian demographics. Again.

Then consider how much of a dog's breakfast they've made of the CIS, it seems very unlikely, even with Ukraine's fracked up parlimanetary screw ups, that they will get the necessary population boost to make up for the their insanely shrinking population. That means that most likely the people doing the work in the Siberian forests will be Chinese. Makes sense, right?

Except if this is a pilot project, how many people will this employ? How many people will be employed by the full scale project? Will there be other projects like this? Like say, mining? Or the energy projects? Just how many Chinese are going to cross into Siberia?

It seems that some of the Russians are a little concerned too:

Nezavisimaya gazeta commented that the worst fears of Russia's left radicals over Chinese expansion in Russia appear to have come true. This "pilot project" could well be followed by other similar ventures, the daily wrote. The paper quoted Vasily Sadliy, head of the forestry department of Irkutsk region, as saying that Irkutsk authorities were negotiating forestry joint ventures with China (Nezavisimaya gazeta, July 28).

The project is set to become a no-win situation for Russia, as there is hardly any point in swapping our pristine taiga for paper dollars or yuans, Komsomolskaya pravda commented. The would-be joint venture is almost certain to employ Chinese nationals, who are very unlikely to leave Siberia voluntarily, even after the expiration of the forest lease, the daily wrote (Komsomolskaya pravda, July 28).

However, since Putin's been backtracking on Russia's democratic progress, does it matter if people in Russia are unhappy with the Chinese in Siberia? Do the Russians voices really matter?

Just some thoughts. Something more profound in the future.

New Cretaceous Sauropod Found

It's interesting to note that the impression of the different periods for the Mesozoic is based on the dinosaurs that lived there. The Triassic has Coelophysis. The Jurassic is often painted as the era of the sauropods. The Cretaceous is often painted as the era of the duckbills and T Rex. Interestingly, that's not really accurate. it seems in the southern hemisphere that the Sauropods lived on as the main source of herbivores long after whatever did them in for the northern hemisphere.

Aussie Nessies

Caucasus considered as base for US missile sensor

The US Missile Defence Agency (MDA) has identified the Caucasus region as one possible location for placing mobile sensors for its ballistic missile defence system.

Rick Lehner, an MDA spokesman, told Jane's the region would be a "good location for a small X-band radar to provide tracking and discrimination of missiles launched from Iran.

"Our job is to put forth optimum locations for radars so that we can make missile defence as effective as possible," Lehner said. "That does not mean radars or other equipment will be placed in those locations; it's just that, in our opinion, it's the best location. MDA doesn't make the decision on locations, especially those outside the US."

From Jane's.

Makes the whole tug-a-war for Georgia a little more interesting, no?

Home again, home again, jiddgety jidge.

I'm back and at work. I'll try to see if I can get some more original content posts up, but I am going to be pressed for a while to try to get caught up. I left a few things undone that I shouldn't have and started others than equally I shouldn't before I left. The conference itself was successful, at least my participation.

I have a list of people that want to come pick our brains and find out what makes NERSC tick. This ought to be interesting. Hopefully it will go better than the WSMR visit a few years ago that I set up.

Anyways....I'm BAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!

Another Lockheed Polecat Image

The Primates of Wyoming

The journey of Teilhardina is one we would do well to consider. We are now injecting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at about the same rate at which it was released 55 million years ago. The Paleocene-Eocene boundary may offer some clues to how the world's ecosystem may respond. Some species may become extinct--particularly marine species that won't be able to cope with the acidity of the oceans. Others will spread. Teilhardina covered 20,000 kilometers in less than 25,000 years. That's hardly supersonic. In fact, it matches the rate of dispersal scientists observe in mammals today--about a kilometer a year. But Teilhardina spread at this rate year in and year out, and before too long (geologically speaking) it had circled the globe. If we ever do figure out a way to cut off our carbon emissions, the carbon we've already put in the atmosphere may last for a long time. In the Eocene, the planet took 70,000 years to recover. But the ecological changes were far more durable. Primates managed to stick around in North America for about 20 million years, until the climate had cooled too far to support the forests they depended on. The Earth's planet has continued to cool and carbon dioxide levels have continued to drop. That means that the current climate change will not be a perfect replay of the crisis 55 million years ago. But it does serve as an example of how a pulse of global warming can do some remarkable things, such as putting primates in Wyoming for 20 million years.

Carl brings up some very important points. It dovetails very nicely with a presentation that I sat in at our all hands meeting shortly after I came to NERSC. The presenter pointed out that the findings of the climate scientists were going to piss off both conservatives and greens alike. First the fact was the Global Warming was happening and being caused by humans - the conservative pisser - and that it would take human intervention on the part of removing the CO2 to fix the problem: merely to stop putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere does not fix magically the problem - the pisser for the Greens.

Do we end up with an Eocene earth? Or an Oligocene? If its the latter, we're in trouble here in the States. Something to consider.

NMSUers are EVERYWHERE

Ok. So I can't sleep. I miss my family terribly and its messing with my sleep habits. A little silly, but I really miss hearing my daughter say, 'Papa' and my wife call to me 'husband!' :S

However, today, I gave my presentation. It went over pretty well and I had several people come and ask me a lot of questions after the talk. My emphasis had been on wide area file systems and the NERSC Global Filesystem. Cary, a friend and coworker, had spoke just before me and led into my talk by touching on NGF. So! That's where I picked up.

One guy (Robin) was a Canuckistani came to talk to me about my last slide. We discussed it and he was as intrigued about the whole thing as much as I was. I had spotted him at lunch and dropped in to his table. I asked if the seat was free and when I was told it was ok sat down. The guy next to me who I was talking to was Robin's boss - amusingly I had picked that table because I had only recognized one face and seemed like it was a good place to meet new people.

Robin's boss and I talked about the fact that they are going to be making an HPC purchase rather soon. It's for a very high end system ($30 million) and it would be the first for their site. We chitchatted and discussed what I did and he did. I looked at his name tag so I could try to remember him later after I had already suggested that he come back to NERSC where I work to discuss how we do procurements of HPC systems.

I, then, had a What-the-fuck moment.

His name was Chris Loken.

I knew a Chris Loken. He was a postdoc at NMSU in the astronomy department when I got there in 1992. He looked vaguely like the Chris I knew...and lo, behold, he was. He didn't remember me, but I was a freshman and he was a researcher that worked for Jack Burns, the astronom department head. We chatted about NMSU and were amazed. He laughed over the whole comment I had made as I sat down that I didn't know anyone! It was great and he asked when it was best to come visit the Bay Area: October was my response. Early October. He seems very interested in the visit.

The damned funny thing is that our IBM advocate for NERSC is...an NMSU graduate.

While I never graduated...Aggies seem to be damned near everywhere. Even Canuckistan. Amazing.

I go home tomorrow. I look forward to it. Maybe now that I've shared that, I'll be able to get to sleep. Nite.

In Baltimore

I'm here. Blog updates are going to be very rare.

Frackin Sux

IBM Sux.

I'm up tending their broken little monster of a machine AGAIN right now.

More Family Photos

A trailer for Season 3 of Battlestar Galactica

Thar be spoilers.

Wow. That's a pretty rough spoiler too.

A moment of relative quiet

It's relatively quiet. There are some things to be done, but they're not pressing. I'm on rotation at work. That means that I am responsible for the machines. These are enormous and expensive brutes that seem to have all the delicacies of a China doll. If the smallest perturbation takes palce, catastrophic resutls seem to follow. As I said, I am responsible for all of the machines. This torture lasts for a week and its for 24 hours/day during that span. Last night I recieved 3 pages that I remember and woke me. There was another while I was already awake.

It's been raining compute nodes and some file system servers. It's been a wild ride. It normally is wild, but not this wild. I need to go back and document all the work I've done so far. Honestly, I've lost track.

However, with the moment of relative silence, I thought I would post another reading update.

I actually got more reading done. My wife was putting Avrora to bed and ended up passing out too. My daughter is a bundle of hyperkinetic energy and you get exhausted trying to keep up with her or just keep her out of trouble. She has an intense curiousity, obvious intelligence, and massive go-Go-GO energy can wear out anyone. My wife was the victim that time. She crashed.

That allowed me to finish Insulating Concrete Forms for Residential Design and Construction. it had a lot of good stuff packed in there. Equations, equations, equations. THAT is where the juicy stuff is. It allows you to do the structural design, and iirc in my sleep deprived state, thermodynamic (energy efficiency?) design yourself if you want. Yum! The only thing I fear about this is that the information is dated (1996 pub date) and some of it irrelevant.

I just finished Gorgon. As a travelogue, this is actually a very good book. If you like to read about the adventures of going down to the Karoo in South Africa to hunt fossils and the author's experiences in hunting mammal-like reptile fossils and doing work related to the PT Extinction, by all means pick this up. If you are looking for anything about the actual results and discussion of the PT Event...forget it. You get at best the last 1/6th of the book for that. And its not very deep. I enjoyed the read, but...it wasn't worth the time for a book to give info on the PT Extinction for a post here.

The next book will probably be about the return of life to NorAm after the glaciers retreated. We'll see. I might pick up a construction related book instead. I really ought to.

Cluster Map Test

So-so Polecat Photo

Thanx to Gordon's blog. A decade ago - omg that long?! - I maintained a website on stealth aircraft. It was even ego tickling that the FAS linked to it as a resource. Unfortunately, I no longer have the time to pursue the topic like I did. I have other avenues to explore!

Schwarzenegger Announces More Stupidity

I really don't understand this one. It strikes me as some of the biggest stupidity I have seen. I don't normally get super spun up on California politics because, frankly, I'm so out of step with most people here that a few comments here and there from me are not going to sway much. However, this just eats me.I really don't have the energy to comment in depth right now. Let's just pull apart a few things.

First, this is pandering to the Central Valley completely and utterly. They're the growers and they're the ones that are seeking new markets. Shwartzy is merely guarranteeing a market and getting their votes at a time of low popularity.

Second there's a faction in the Greens that is very happy to switch from Oil derived energy to agriculturally derived energy. If you grow it, it must be good? Right? gah. It's still combustion. It's still pumping out CO2. That means that its not helping much at all with the whole Global Warming issue. That's one that California really ought to be concerned about...since, y'know, we're a coastal state. This is again vote pandering by Schwartzy.

*sighs*

Oh well. I'll just make sure the home is at least 9 m above sea level and any future ones higher than that.

China's Space Plans

It would seem that the race is definitely there if the Chinese are serious. The pressure from them even doing little things will push the US into keeping with its plans whether they're overly expensive or not. We'll see. I have some faith in the new NASA Admin. He's already recognized that the current model of contractor-NASA relations is flawed if no other reason than the costs.

He sure pisses off Keith Cowing at NASA Watch something fierce though!

Lockheed Unveils Secret Polecat UAV Design

Lockheed Martin's twin-engine, 90-ft. wingspan UAV has performed two flights below 15,000 ft. However, the tail-less "Horton" flying wing design -- similar to that of the B-2. Flight testing of the so-called Polecat is expected to reach increasingly higher altitudes this summer.

The company designed the single prototype for about $27 million and officials say it has not led to a production vehicle.

[...]

The UAV can carry 1,000 lbs. of weapons or sensors in a bay on the underbelly of the aircraft. Gross takeoff weight is 9,000 lbs.

I have been searching online for a pict, but havn't found one yet. Jane's has an article but their link is screwed up and points to an article on the rising demand for sat's by the US military.

Another Architect Meeting

I have another one shortly. Shortly would be in an hour and half in Berkeley. We'll see how this one goes.

Baird Family Photo

It's early, but what the heck...why not? I really liked this photo!

Quickly here: El Mirador

I am looking for a book on El Mirador espeically recent ones with maps of the city...or at least what we have found of it.

Any knowledgeable people out there?

Yet Another Reading Update

Reading is a very important element in m life. Without it, I feel reather incomplete and without having learned as much as I could. My interests, for those of you that have followed this blog for a while, are pretty specific and general at the same time. I am a big fan of paleontology and its related fields. I love reading about Rome and the Byzantine Empire. I enjoy scifi, some fantasy, and alternate history. I read some politics and economics. Space science and rocketry attacts my attention too. Biotech has some interest for me (heh), but honestly I only read CS related stuff for work or possible projects, not for fun. I also like architecture books, but I am crash coursing my way through what people pay lots of money to get educated in as well for construction and architecture for the obvious reasons.

I have continued to read despite having my wonderful family back. It's at a slower pace, bceause now I have my daughter to play with and my wife to charm and flirt with as well. However my reading still continues.

I recently finished Insulating Concrete Forms Construction: Demand, Evaluation, & Technical Practice. It read more as an advertisement than anything technical, but it was worth it to get an introduction. The book I am reading now Insulating Concrete Forms for Residential Design and Construction is an earlier work by one of the same authors of the previous read, but it has a lot more technical detail in it even if it is a decade old and somewhat dated. The order of reading was perfect.

I also read The Big Cats and Their Fossil Relatives. A couple of the reviewers nailed this book. One stated that it was somewhere between a coffee table book - with regards to all the illustrations - and a technical report. THe other said this was obviously a labor of love. All I can say is amen. It was lighter on some of the evolutionary trends and pontifications, but heavier on snapshots of particular groups. I recommend reading this as an introduction to anything about fossil felines.

The next book is likely to be Gorgon: The Monsters That Ruled the Planet Before Dinosaurs and How They Died in the Greatest Catastrophe in Earth's History to wrap up my reading on the Permian Mass Extinction...at least for now. Then I'll see about another construction or architecture book.

A very good weekend

We had an extraordinary weekend. We went hiking in Marin near the Point Reyes Seashore. We had a barbeque of wonderful flavours: salmon, oysters, and corn. We had a great time in general.

A note. When BBQing salmon, be ready for the oil from the fat to catch fire. When it does, the flames quite high. However, the salmon came out amazing. It had been marinated in teriyaki for a couple hours with ginger, garlic, black pepper, and basil. The oysters weren't spiced at all, but live up until being dumped on the fire. mmm. My wife also made a seafood stew to go with. It was really good. We even had a little sushi, but not, alas, homemade. We almost rolled out the door afterwards, but we decided we wanted to do this just for us because we are ALWAYS preparing great dinner parties for friends, but never really get to enjoy it as much as we did this time. It was EXPENSIVE, but worth it.

We also worked it all off on Sunday when we hiked to Ridge Top Trail from Highway One. With a 17 month old and no backpack, we did excellent! It only took us about 3 hours up and an half and a half down. It was about 83 outside, iirc, and a wee bit humid, but Avrora and Lyuda held up well. Avrora got carried a bunch on the way up and slept a lot of it down. We saw an owl less than 10 feet from us (not a small one either), lots of horseback riders, and Avrora had a butterfly that wanted to play with her. It was really a good day. We hiked back and Avrora fell to sleep. I carried her the whole way while she was as limp as an overcooked brocolli.

We really had a great weekend.

The blog will be returning to normal. An incedenary commentary about Eurasia will pop up sometime this week. I'd like to comment on the Devonian Mass Extinctions as well, but I might not have time. I am going on rotation and then have a conference in Baltimore to attend where I am speaking on wide area filesystems. I also have another architect interview on Wednesday.

We shall see what I get to post.

I will get at least one per day though and not just news.

Mango Salsa

At Carlos' prompting, I started messing around with mangoes and habenaroes. Wow. I like. Here's one recipe that I came up with. It's actually pretty simple.

1 large mango, diced
1 tomatio, diced
1/4 habenaro, finely minced
1/4 large yellow onion
ginger, garlic, oregano to taste.

First dice the mango. If it's as ripe as it should be it will be messy and juicy. This is a feature, not a bug here. Don't lose the juice! Place in a large bowl. Dice the tomatio and onion. Mix with the mango. Add spices. Very finely mince the habenaro last and add. Place over a very low heat for about 10 minutes. Stir regularly. Let sit for another ten minutes and serve.

I really loved this one, but it had too much kick for my wife. My daughter would probably try it, get pissed off, red faced, and then want more. I'd rather not risk it though. This one has some kick with the sweet and spicy.

Trees in Antarctica

Dunbar said climate experts were predicting a doubling of the levels of carbon dioxide by 2100, "but it actually looks like it's going to come sooner unfortunately."

Can you say...LAND RUSH!

BUY YOUR ANTARCTIC TIME SHARES NOW!

Even a 10 C rise in temperatures are going to make Ant a very cold place still.

Pix from Lyuda's BDay

A little out of order due to no desire to make war upon blogger anymore. Too tired. The only one that wasn't is the last one and you guys don't get to see what happened after that. This is at least pretending to be a relatively family friendly blog after all!

ahem.

Baby Pix

Aftermath of Talking to Architects

"So I was talking to two guys. They were very slickly dressed and obviously sharp. One was a little older - I would guess late middle age, maybe late 50s - and the other was younger. I would palce him around his mid forties. They gave me their resumes."

I handed the the two resumes to Lyuda. She started studying them intensely and curiously. She hasn't seen that many American resumes. In some palces she really doesn't understand them. Her reaction to some of it is interesting. One of the things that made it interesting was that she completely missed. There was one in particular on the older gentleman's resume that I drew her attention to.

"See the two years in the 1960s that [the older guy] has that says he was in the US Navy? It says 'Underwater Demolition Team' was his specialty."

An "Okaaaay..." accompanied by an uncomprehending look.

"I think that means he was a SEAL or something like it."

Still a blank look. I thought fast. How to make her comprehend? There's a cultural and knowledge difference here. Ah, I know...

"Spetznaz. He was Spetznaz."

Her eyes went wide.

No, that's not a quote from some book. It's a rememberance of the discussion last night with my wife about the discussion with the architects. Or at least a part of it. The amusing part at least. The discussion in general was pretty straight forward. The pricing was a little higher than expected with the architects, but I at least really liked them. We'll see. I have more interviews to do.

Then some serious decisions to make.

Birthday Success

Lyuda had a wonderful BDay. We went for a helicopter tour of the SF Bay Area. Well, it was mostly the North Bay around Marin county and San Francisco. She was asked to sit in the cockpit and got an amazing view. We even flew under the Golden Gate Bridge. My wife squeeled when we did that one: 150 mph under the bridge and at an altitude of 50 ft.

We then went to dinner at Trader Vic's in Emeryville. We had another very good dinner there, evne if it was trying to be a wallet buster!

blah

Nothing more to say right now.

Stealth Readers

Hey!

Carlos, Tikva, my Ukrainian readers, and a couple others of you. Add yourselves to the map, damnit.

Thanx.

Reading Update

I finished Terrestrial Ecosystems Through Time: Evolutionary Paleoecology of Terrestrial Plants and Animals. This is an excellent book. My kudos to Carlos Yu for pointing it out to me. It's a tad dated in a few areas since it was published about 15 years ago, but its still a must read for anyone wanting to either study past ecosystems or design ones for strange planets. I've marked some pages up and I might do a Mike Ralls style note dump here.

I also finished reading Building with Structural Insulated Panels in less than a day. It was a light read and pointed out some strengths and weaknesses with SIPs. It was meant for the contractor than the end homeowner.

I followed this through with The Late Devonian Mass Extinction. It was interesting. McGhee is definitely of a different camp than of Hallam. The latter supports impacts for extinctions and the former oceanic anoxia with marine regression/transgressions as the kill mechanism for most mass extinctions. They're both marine guys, so reading this has been interesting.

I am now 25% done with reading Insulating Concrete Forms Construction. It's a quick read too and in the same vein as the SIPs book. I should be done in the next few days. I'd be done today if not for a joyous event.

After this I think I will tackle a book on fossil big cats, then another on ICFs, and then either one on the Permian Extinction or how ecosystems spread into areas after the glaciers retreated in NorAm. I have a couple more books to read after that, but I suspect that I am going to need to pick up some more construction/architecture books before the month is out. I have meetings with architects on the 10th and the 19th. One step forward. ;)

They're home

They're in bed where I will be joining them relatively shortly. My wife looks gorgeous. My daughter has grown so much. She has changed so much. She is even more of a cute charmer (be warned Tom!).

I BBQed for them but they passed out before I was done. Feeding my wife when she was half asleep was fun and amusing, but a little worrisome because she'd doze off when chewing. Yikes! Yet she would vocally protest when I'd get up to let her sleep demanding more shashlik (actually t-bone steaks that were damned good. One marinated in teriyaki sauce with garlic, ginger, and pepper; the other just rubbed with pepper and salt). She ate half a steak in a half asleep steate before collapsing.

I am the happiest clam in the world.

My family's home.

Countdown

In twelve hours I leave here to go get my beautiful wife and wonderful daughter.

I really miss them.

I cannot wait to see them.

:D