A Postmodern Desi

Nikon and Canon have announced their new prosumer DSLRs.

The 50D looks nice (more here) ... but I'm still working to get the max out of my 40D (geez, it still feels like a new camera!)

Various pics from this year's burn! Make sure to check out the photographs of Keth's playa-covered butt as she rolled around in the sand during her initiation.

Here's the set:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/densaer/sets/72157607106134845/

All arrived safely (but quite dusty) this evening. Tons of stories, photos to share with you all in the coming days. Just wanted to say that we're back.

(oh, and I'm really thankful that Gustav seemed to be not as bad as feared...I really dreaded my afterburn of 2005 where I went from Burning Man to New Orleans after Katrina struck during that same period of time...)

So everyone on TV is speculating who Obama will announce as his VP running-mate tomorrow. The press are falling over themselves to guesstimate. It's all okay - the press has been wrong before, and they will be again...



oh, and this billboard has gone up in advance of the RNC convention two weeks from now in Minneapolis...

Headed out to Burning Man tomorrow morning with the RV... back on Labor day (or thereabouts).

Once more into the breach dear friends!

Oh dear....

http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/007517.html

You'll feel like killing yourself (Ballmer's Windows 1.0 ad? Geeeeeez...)

Cisco posted a video and print interview of yours truly. The site is targeted towards undergrads and others who are learning networking and what they can do with those skills in the workforce.

http://www.cisco.com/go/learnnetspace

(bottom of the page)

Is that hippie caravan going to see Obama, or Burning Man? A handy traveler's guide.

http://wweek.com/extra/3441/headouttravelgame.pdf

Economist, 8/14/08

Some enterprising soul has gone through various caches of information to dig up officially expunged documents that show that the Chinese womens gymnastics team isn't actually made up of 16-year-olds.

Details here:

http://strydehax.blogspot.com/

So this overzealous TSA employee is running around some parked commuter airliners at O'Hare, apparently trying to determine whether they could be broken into. He wants to climb on the aircraft fuselage (!), so he uses some of those little probe-thingies he sees sticking out near the cockpit windows as an improvised ladder.

So this is how nine aircraft were damaged - their Total Air Temperature (TAT) probes were rendered useless and it's fortunate that all of these aircraft were caught and grounded. Forty flights were affected by the grounding.

Pilots are pissed:

"The brilliant employees used an instrument located just below the cockpit window that is critical to the operation of the onboard computers," one pilot wrote on an American Eagle internet forum. "They decided this instrument, the TAT probe, would be adequate to use as a ladder."

Officials with American Eagle confirmed to ANN the problem was discovered by maintenance personnel, who inspected the planes Tuesday morning... and questioned why the TAT probes all gave similar error indications.

One Eagle pilot says had the pilots not been so attentive, the damaged probes could have caused problems inflight. TSA agents "are now doing things to our aircraft that may put our lives, and the lives of our passengers at risk," the pilot wrote on the forum.

more details here

This incident highlights the fact that the TSA staff are not trained to actually be around aircraft. They shouldn't be let near them.

Pacific Gas & Electric, the utility for most of us here in Northern California, has inked a deal to buy a combined 800 MW of solar power from two utilities, OptiSolar and SunPower, both of which plan to use photovolatics, rather than solar-thermal. This is huge: the largest existing plant in Germany is 40 MW, and the largest US Solar plant is at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, and it generates 14 MW.

There's a mandate that says PG&E must get 20% of its electricity from renewables by 2010. These new plants won't be up till 2012 or so, so it looks like PG&E will still have to get some sort of waiver from the state, but a huge PV purchase can't help but be good for the industry.

more info here (with solar plant pic goodness)

Southern California Edison, which is the other "big" utility in the state, is purchasing 909 MW of wind energy in order to meet the same 2010 mandate.

How's your utility doing? Here're the top solar power purchasers:


(source)


(For comparison's sake, Reactor #2 at Diablo Canyon which was shut due to a fire on Monday produces 1,118 MW)

"The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A Death! What's that, a bonus?

I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you're too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating...and you finish off as an orgasm."

I'm sure all you lovely people reading this from Florida are already aware...

Russian lawmaker Konstantin Kosachev on pulling out from Georgia: "If I would ask you in response to the same question how fast the American forces can leave Iraq, for example, the answer would be as soon as we have guarantees for peace and security there. The same answer would be toward this situation."

linky

Pervez Musharraf quits as Pakistan's President, rather than face impeachment proceedings.

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/08/18/musharraf.address/index.html

Musharraf overplayed his hand in the last year or so. He was increasingly seen as too cozy with the United States, and a person who increasingly put his own political survival ahead of the development of Pakistan's political institutions. As I posted about a year ago, the crisis with Pakistan's judiciary wound up being a key turning point leading to the events of this morning (the assault on the Red Mosque may have been another). He lost the elites, and the support of the Army (THE key institution in the country), and now his job. I suspect that people will mention Pakistan's nuclear capability about a billion times today - insinuating that Pakistan's instability combined with their nuclear arsenal means big trouble.

There are three primary questions in the back of my mind this morning:

1. Who becomes the new ruler of Pakistan?

2. Does that person have the ability to reverse the horrible economic situation in the country?

3. Does that person have the willpower to confront the jihadis and build a secular state?


EDIT: Consider this - in Pakistan, they impeach the President for violating the Constitution. And we're critical of their political institutions?

EDIT2: According to the Pakistani Constitution, in the case of the resignation or impeachment of the President, the Chairman of the Senate becomes President. That's Mian Soomro, appointed by Musharraf to office and apportioned with awesome facial hair (like a Bollywood movie elder - like Amitabh Bachchan). The Constitution says they need to find a permanent President within the next 30 days.

EDIT3: The Beeb has a good article on his legacy. No more Daily Show appearances, I guess! Jon can save his tea for the next guy.

It must be the speedos.

Event: Spitz in 1972/Phelps in 2008
100m freestyle: 51.22 / DNR (47.05 WR)
200m freestyle: 1:52.78 / 1:42.96
100m butterfly: 54.27 / 50.58
200m butterfly: 2:00.70 / 1:54.23
200m IM: DNR (2:07.17 WR) / 1:54.23
400m IM: DNR (4:30.81 WR) / 4:03.84
4x100 free relay: 3:26.42 / 3:08.42
4x200 free relay: 7:35.78 / 6:58.56
4x100 medley relay: 3:48.16 / TK

Ironically, the day after running into the wall with my mortgage, the NY Times ran this article about the whole Home Equity (second mortgage) situation. Banks changed the language: it wasn't a 'second mortgage', but now it was a 'home equity loan'. They changed the culture, too.

It's really interesting (and relevant) reading for me. Alas, too many people "mortgaged the house to buy a blouse."

It turns out that people aren't as rational in their purchase power as Adam Smith would have you believe...


(For whatever it's worth, I'm closing my HELOC since I don't really have any good options, and going forward with the 30-yr fixed refi. The kitchen will just have to wait.)

Why is it that smart, intelligent engineers ignore fire alarms until the big guys with SCBAs are right in front of them? "Oh, I didn't know it was real..."

The Captain was *not* happy. I was the Incident Commander.

Guess who heard about it?

It's been one of those days.