Tom Gryn's musings

10:29pm: Malvern Hill Battlefield & the Museum of the Confederacy, Richmond VA

Donna and I took a road trip down to Richmond VA today. I've uploaded 11 images of the trip to my Flickr account, including many of the Malvern Hill battlefield and of the Museum of the Confederacy (we also took an excellent tour of the White House of the Confederacy, but no photos were allowed). Interestingly, the MoC was pretty well attended, while Malvern Hill - a major Union victory on Confederate soil - was deserted. Even the lady at the visitor's center down the road seemed surprised to see us. Anyway, hope you enjoy the photos. I think the ones I took of Malvern Hill give some idea of the magnitude of the task the Confederates faced that day; it was just as foolhardy an idea as Pickett's Charge, if not nearly as romanticized over time. I've been wanting to visit Malvern Hill since reading up on it, and finding that it was so close to Richmond was an unexpected bonus to the trip.

10:10am: from Living the Country Life magazine:

Guard llamas are an option for protecting sheep herds from predators. Apparently they're instinctively hostile towards canines (dogs, foxes, coyotes) and will chase them away. There's an interesting alternative to raking or leaf blowers for dealing with autumn leaves: something called a lawn sweeper. Basically, it's a large brush on wheels which sweeps up leaves, sticks, etc. from the lawn as it rolls across it, whether pushed manually or pulled behind a rider mower. The Amazon.com reviews of one here indicate it actually works as described, but isn't nearly as effective later in the season when the leaves are wet and matted. Keeping up with the leaves was a big chore for me last year, and I'll likely be trying a sweeper to try and help out with this come fall.

8:00am: Latest from JibJab - campaign '08

4:56pm: CC '08 - the campaign continues!

more here

9:53pm: Another sign of summer
I heard the first Tibicen chloromera cicada calls this week. I remember the first time Donna heard them last summer, and she didn't know what was making that noise, guessing it was some kind of electric short. It wasn't until then that I realized that California doesn't have them, and growing up in Pennsylvania I just took them for granted as one of the background noises of summer.

9:01pm: Cedar apple rust: the adventure continues

...or as a chapter in the book "The $64 Tomato" puts it, "There's No Such Thing As Organic Apples" (referring to the fact that in the Northeast, there's just too many pests and diseases to raise apples without some help). As I mentioned in my garden tour post, our apple trees have a nasty case of cedar apple rust, a consequence of the wet spring we had (compare it to the picture of the same tree last year after a relatively dry spring). And, I'd mentioned that I'd sprayed some Ortho Home Orchard Spray that the previous owners had left in their gardening supplies in an attempt to treat it. Well, it turns out that OHOS "is a mixture of a fungicide (captan) and two insecticides (malathion and methoxychlor)". Unfortunately, this report from Virginia Tech's extension program notes that "Captan does not control powdery mildew or apple rust disease." Great. The same study recommends a fungicide named Spectracide Immunox, giving it a rating of "Excellent" for controlling rust diseases, and I was able to find some at our local Lowes. I really don't like using chemicals, but at this point I'm afraid we're getting to the point that we could lose the tree without help. There's nasty spore pods developing on the underside of the leaves already; yeah, it's bad. So, I've already sprayed once, but it rained shortly afterwards, so I'll be out tomorrow doing it again. sigh. We're definitely not getting any fruit off the trees this year, I'm fighting for even having a chance next year at this point. My mom put the best spin on it: "It is a great hobby, something to do all the time." Yes, indeed. But someday, I would like to actually eat a apple off the trees. Next year'll be year 3 of our having them.

9:01am: couple notes on gas conservation
* The 55 MPH speed limit is getting traction again thanks to the current high fuel prices. As it happens, while 55 MPH is the optimal speed point for fuel economy, this graph shows that there isn't much of a difference between 40 MPH and 60 MPH. However, once you go past 60, the fuel economy really starts to suffer (and it also depends on the vintage of your car, presumably because of better aerodynamics of more modern cars).

This article explains why the 55-MPH phenomena happens:

Why does driving more slowly save gas? It’s a matter of drag. Your wind resistance increases as a square of your speed. So at 80 miles per hour, the wind resistance is more than twice what it would be at 55 miles per hour, because 80 squared (6,400) is more than twice 55 squared (3,025). But at 80, you’re only traveling 45 percent faster than you are at 55.

* I always thought that driving with the air conditioner on was a way to waste gas, but actually driving with the windows down is more wasteful than having the AC on with the windows up once you get past 45 MPH, again because of extra wind drag. The recommendation is to open the windows when you first get into the car to clear out the superheated air that's collected inside (due to solar heating), then after a couple of minutes when the temperature has equalized inside and out, roll up the windows and turn on the AC. And don't forget to turn the air circulation to recirculate, so you aren't constantly blowing in hot air from the outside.

2:36pm: Politics link dump (no election stuff)

Mike Yon reports on a clandestine foray into Burma to deliver cyclone aid. Warning: graphic photos halfway in.

My answer to the whole same-sex marriage controversy has been just to get the government completely out of the business of recognition of marriage. As it turns out, quite a lot would have to change to do that, more than most folks (including me) realized. Here and here goes into the many ways the government recognizes marriage. Just some are: income tax rates; taxation on health insurance; Social Security, Medicare, and disability benefits for spouses; taxation on estates; immigration and citizenship rights if one spouse is a citizen; ability to make medical decisions for an incapacitated spouse; and those are just a few of them. Getting government out of marriage would be a thorny, if not well impossible task.

I finally found an article I'd been looking for for a while, its a David Halberstam piece which appeared in Esquire magazine in 2001 titled "Clinton and the Generals". It goes into detail of how the uneasy relationship between the Clinton administration and the military led to two mishandled interventions in Somalia and Bosnia. The article also pretty much soured me on Wes Clark getting anywhere near the instruments of power; while not as one-sidedly negative on WC as I remembered, there's still a lot of troubling myopic aspects to how Clark handled Bosnia which come through. This article was later expanded into Halberstam's 2002 book War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton, and the Generals. I would love to have seen Halberstam extend his analysis into Bush II-Iraq.

Tim Noah at Slate makes the case that Congress doesn't utilize its powers to stop wars, because its doesn't want the responsibility that would come along with doing so. Hence, why the War Powers Act is never invoked.

Ross Perot continues to sound the alarm on out-of-control federal spending, this time with a website that has updated versions of his famous budget charts from the 1992 election.

10:01pm: Photo tour of our garden, July 2008

* Added 10 pictures to my flickr account. This walks you through my garden, showing what's in each part and what it looks like right now. Oh yes, and one muskrat sighting photo (not in our garden).

9:06am: WTC7 report to be released
The final report from the NIST about the collapse of World Trade Center Tower 7 is due to be released soon. Shocker! It wasn't a conspiracy involving demolition charges, but raging fires throughout the structure, that brought it down.

(the NIST report) says Tower Seven had an unusual design, built over an electricity substation and a subway; there were many fires that burnt for hours; and crucially, fire fighters could not fight the fires in Tower 7, because they didn't have enough water and focused on saving lives.

Investigators have focused on the east side where the long floor spans were under most stress. They think fires burnt long enough to weaken and break many of the connections that held the steel structure together. Most susceptible were the thinner floor beams which required less fireproofing, and the connections between the beams and the columns. As they heated up the connections failed and the beams sagged and failed, investigators say...Until now most of the photographs have been of the three sides of the building that did not show much obvious physical damage. Now new photos of the south side of the building, which crucially faced the North Tower, show that whole side damaged and engulfed in smoke.

10:15am: RIP Dan Briggs (1964-1998)
Today's the 10th anniversary of Dan Briggs' death in a skydiving accident. I only knew Dan very peripherally through alt.callahans, and not very well at that; Velvetine and Liralen knew him much better. However, he struck me as a good guy who went before his time, and I felt the anniversary of his passing deserved a mention by somebody. I wish I had had a chance to meet him.

8:44am: Gardening update
Generally good progress, with a couple caveats. I did some weeding in the garden over the weekend and had a chance to look it over throughly. To my surprise I found a large cucumber growing on one of the plants, and I never noticed it because it was hidden in the vine leaves. On the pickling cucumber there's two small cucumbers also coming along. The green peppers are starting to produce very well, there's three peppers almost ready for harvesting and many smaller veggies on the way. My only concern is that there's a black coloring developing at the stems of all of the peppers, but my mom looked at it and said its probably just the way the plants come in.

I'm starting to get small green tomatoes coming in. Hurrah! The crop has started. I honestly can't recall which of the plants are cherry tomatoes and which ones are normal-sized, so I guess I'll know when the small ones start turning red while the larger ones are still green. I sprayed both apple trees (and the pepper plants) with Ortho Home Orchard Spray to try and knock down some of the cedar rust that the trees are infested with. I also put in feeding stakes for both apple trees. What's puzzling is that the harvest was very heavy for the apples last year, when they were basically neglected, but this year I expect there'll be hardly any fruit at all. Hm.

Unfortunately, the pea plant I was cultivating burned up from the summer sun. That was educational, since I thought the spot I had them in next to the kitchen was protected, but I now know that I probably can't put anything in there that can't take full sun. Also, the Japanese beetles have arrived, and seem to absolutely love my comfrey plant. Interesting, in that I'd thought they've made a beeline for the roses out front, but no, its comfrey all the way for them so far. Also, the mache does not like the heat and sun much, so I'll have to reconsider where to plant lettuce next year to get it more shade.

I'm still waiting for the two black-eyed susans I planted out front to start blooming. They look to be very close, but still nothing. The cosmos I planted along the side of the house are blooming in twos and threes.

8:19am: Charity at supermarkets - will you please give a dollar?
If you've been to a supermarket, Target, KMart, etc. in the past few years, you've probably been asked "Do you want to donate a dollar today to fight breast cancer/raise awareness of diabetes/save a Panda from Bill Gates?" Blogger DC Universe has an interesting post on that titled "The War On Charity". An point I hadn't considered is that corporations get to take tax writeoffs for the charitable contributions they collect, and also get to claim the $$$ collected for PR purposes as donations made by the corporation (instead of having to actually use their own money). So, it isn't nearly as altruistic as it seems on the face of it.

8:37pm: China as an Island

Another interesting idea from Stratfor, this one about how China is like an island in terms of its geopolitical position. Short analysis here, longer one here

8:32pm: weekend notes
Friday morning I took Donna's car in for an oil change, and walked over to Lowes in the same shopping center while waiting for it to be done. Picked up a marigold and a tray of red-and-pink celosias at half-price, as well as some seeds on closeout for next year. I also purchased some fungicide for the apple trees, as they have developed a terrible case of apple rust and most of the fruit is falling off prematurely this year. sigh.

My major project for the day involved going up on the roof and sealing up the cracks in the flashing around the roof vents. This was something that the home inspector said we needed to have done when we had the house looked over before buying it last year, since the cracked seals around the vents could let in rain and moisture. When I got up there I could see what he meant: around two of the air vents, the rubber seals were heavily cracked and there was little "seal" left around the pipes. I applied a liberal amount of roofing cement around the broken seals, which will hopefully keep out the rain for another couple of years, at which point I'll either have to go up and reapply the cement again, or hire a professional to replace all the seals. I took some before-and-after pictures, but they're not very interesting visually so I won't be uploading them, will just hold on to them for reference. I also cleaned out some of the gutters - we have gutter guards which keep out the leaves, but in a couple of spots they'd curved upward and let in debris. I also threw some small branches off the roof that had accumulated up there. Getting up and down wasn't fun for me, since the roof is high enough that my fear of heights starts to kick in, but I managed to make it to the lowest point of the roof and clamber up and around from there. I'm just glad I don't have to do that everyday.

In the evening we went to see a nice production of Gilbert and Sullivan's "H.M.S. Pintafore" at Wolf Trap. The rest of the weekend was pretty quiet; on Saturday we slept in late after being up past midnight for the play, and I planted the marigolds and celosias in our garden out front after getting back from jogging in the morning.

11:32am: Battlestar Galactica - season finale speculations
( mild spoilers behind the cut )

9:23pm: Where the Hell is Matt? (2008)
Via Stacy Horn's blog, a touching video of a fellow dancing in various places around the world. There's a lot to like in this one, I'll let Stacy point out the highlights via the link. Should also be popular with The Amazing Race fans for the sheer variety of places he visited and video'ed during the project. Neat! If you find it worthwhile, click on the video to bring up the source YouTube page and select "watch in high quality" for a much sharper image, which brings out a lot of the background details that get lost in the lower-res version.

4:40pm: DailyKos showing again why its known as a hyper-partisan site
In discussing whether Gates should stay on as Secretary of Defense in an Obama administration, Kos writes that "whether Gates has been a good Sec of Defense is irrelevant" and it needs to filled by a Democrat for party reasons, end of story. Somehow, politics-before-effectiveness when it comes to national security doesn't do much for me; the current Administration has taken a lot of heat for often putting political considerations ahead of practical ones, yet I guess its OK as long as its the "right" party doing it.

Kos was apparently feeling his oats a little today, since he also issued a warning to moderate Democrats that he's hoping to purge them from the party now that they're no longer needed to ensure a majority. I'm of the opinion that a reduced/abashed GOP minority working with the "blue dog" Democrats can be positive in terms of reforming D.C. while preventing the bigger abuses that usually come with having one party in charge of both the executive and legislative branches. What I consider abuses, of course, Kos would consider not going far enough (hence the "hyperpartisan" label). But then, Kos' track record of supporting candidates hasn't been particular stellar historically, so this may not be something serious politicians will sweat about...

8:32pm: I agree with Jerry Pournelle's comment on Intelligent Design and global warming here, although I see the two as more related by both being symptomatic of worrisome macro trends in education, rather than by cause & effect. He's right about how global warming has become a kind of pseudo-religion for some folks, with no debate being allowable or possible since the stakes are viewed by them as just being too high to permit continued skepticism and examination of data.

8:19am: good answer on globalization/diversity/religion
via http://ncrcafe.org/node/1841

Your meeting in Jordan will focus on two values, religious freedom and the traditional identity of a given people. The tension between those two values seems steadily more acute in today's world. In your view, what are the basic principles for striking the right balance?

This is a problem typical of our globalized society. We're seeing an unprecedented encounter of people, cultures and religions, which is what I have in mind when I use the phrase meticciato di civiltà - a "hybridization of civiliations." It's a historical process currently underway, and its results are by no means certain. There are blendings that work, and blendings that don't.

The critical point is this: What happens to our identity as a people if a significant bloc begins to call it into question, either because they belong to another religion or because they convert? In some majority Muslim nations, a certain degree of diversity can be tolerated for those who are born into another religion, but the feeling is that the identity of the country would be threatened if those who are born Muslims had the possibility of converting. It's interesting to note the choice frequently presented to these converts: if you want to leave Islam, you also have to leave the country. The assumption seems to be that the personal dimension of faith interests us up to a point, but we want to avoid the 'scandal' of a public gesture.

On the other hand, the modern liberal state is equally unprepared for this question, because it regards only the individual as an interlocutor, and thus thinks solely in terms of individual rights. It's far more difficult to consider the social implications of individual choices. In the end, this leaves many people unprepared for change and disconcerted by it. We see this clearly on the issue of immigration, where it's as if many people today are saying: 'What's happening? You told us that it was all a question of the individual ideas of immigrants, and everyone is free to think whatever they believe. All of a sudden, however, these individuals have become a foreign body, and we don't recognize them anymore.'

If we want to overcome this impasse, the solution, it seems to me, must be sought in the recognition of a good that's also at the basis of every difference, which is the good of relationship. We have to emphasize our common humanity, and to do that, we need to expand the scope of both reason and freedom.

9:18am: Airlines Fee Chart
via ungradetravelbetter.com, Rick Seaney's comparison list of all airline fees. Airlines have been sneaking a lot of small fees in recently, so its useful to see what the current state of things is. Some highlights:

• USAir now charges $2 for all beverages, including water
  
• Continental is the only airline left offering free inflight meals (on flights of 2+ hours only)
  
• Charging for every checked bag is now policy at American, USAir, United, and Spirit. This also makes it tougher for those of us who don't normally check bags, since it means folks who would have checked their bags before will instead be carrying them onboard, and competing for already-scarce overhead space.
  
• Free curbside check-in is gradually going away, as well.

As UTB notes here things are only going to get worse. American is charging $5 for making a reservation online - ouch. And if you have some miles stored up in a frequent-flyer program, now might be a good time to use them, whether on flights, magazine subscriptions, donating them to charity, or what not. Odds are they're due to expire sometime in the next couple of years, anyway; that's another trend that's been making the rounds in the airline industry

8:59pm: Heat! Snow!
We've been under heat warnings since Friday, with heat indexes well into the 100s all weekend. Its a nasty mix of heat and humidity; Donna's thoughts about this development are here. Fortunately there's a cold front coming through tonight which should break its hold on the DC/SoMD/Baltimore area, so it'll "only" be in the high 80s tomorrow. That's supposed to made a world of difference in how it feels outside, though. I'll just be happy if we can leave the windows open at night, instead of having to keep the house closed up.

On the flip side...the Bitterroot mountains on the Montana/Idaho border are scheduled to experience some serious snowfall, with nearly a foot projected for the area. Here's the Missoula forecast:

...A VERY STRONG WINTER-LIKE STORM WILL BRING HEAVY WET SNOW TO
THE AREA TONIGHT AND WEDNESDAY..
THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN MISSOULA HAS ISSUED A HEAVY SNOW
WARNING ABOVE 4000 FEET...WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM 9 PM MDT /8 PM
PDT/ THIS EVENING TO 12 PM MDT /11 AM PDT/ WEDNESDAY. THE SNOW
ADVISORY HAS BEEN CANCELED.

TOTAL SNOW ACCUMULATIONS OF 6 TO 10 INCHES ARE EXPECTED BY LATE
MORNING WEDNESDAY ABOVE 4000 FEET. THE HEAVIEST SNOWFALL
ACCUMULATIONS ARE EXPECTED IN AREAS NORTH OF AND ALONG HIGHWAY
12. ..INCLUDING LOLO PASS. AMOUNTS OF 3 TO 6 INCHES CAN BE EXPECTED
ELSEWHERE ABOVE 3500 FEET.

Webcam for Lolo Pass
Webcams for Lookout Pass
Idaho mountain pass cameras

And for an amusing "404" message, click on camera 2 here for the Snoqualmie Pass in WA.

9:41pm:

* Added four more gardening pictures to my flickr account. We have gardenia flowers! Also one of the daylilies which have come up in the past week, and another of our first pepper.

9:07am: Um...what can I say?
Obama = cult of personality? From columnist Mark Morford at sfgate.com:

Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul.

Ahhhhhh! I guess we're getting a taste of how JFK was regarded by his admirers during the Camelot period...

10:10pm: Early POTUS campaign analysis
Good article on the myriad problems that Obama poses for McCain in the upcoming POTUS campaign. The same author offers his plan of attack to deal with these problems. I think his plan tends towards the negative, but here's the ugly truth about negative campaigning: for all that voters say they hate it, its actually very effective. Note the negative bounce in Obama's numbers at the apex of the Wright controversy, and that's without Clinton's campaign really going after him hard on it.

I think Obama justifiably viewed the favorite right now, simply because he has such a large lead in campaign $$$ available, and the money edge has decided most contemporary POTUS elections. On the other hand, I don't think this will be an easy victory for him, either; McCain's campaign was left for dead last summer, but he rallied and beat all the other GOP contenders handily for the nomination. He has a history of campaigning well from the underdog position, and frankly, he's probably the only GOP candidate who would have had a shot at beating a Democratic candidate given the generally ugly mood in the USA right now towards Bush and residual dissatisfaction from when the Republicans were in charge of Congress as well. To be running at more or less a dead heat with Obama right now is impressive, all things considered. Whether those numbers hold up will depend on how Hillary's supporters break; if McCain can appeal to some of her more moderate/DLC supporters, this will be a closer race than most folks seem to be assuming.