Survived another day of class. We have a new member, Catherine, in our learning team. It looks at this point like an excellent fit and it will be nice to have a balance for all the testosterone in the group. She doesn't seem the least bit phased being in a group with three guys. That was one of our initial concerns, but it proved to be unfounded. Catherine plans on being with our cohort until we are done in October and I am more than happy to have her on board.

Other than that, not much going on. Wednesday, I picked up a new battery pack at the local generator supply place. They have twice the capacity per cell in a package about two-thirds the size for one-third the price of the L-16's I bought five years ago. It seems Moore's Law doesn't just apply to computers. I picked up the rest of the pieces I needed to connect them all together today on the way to work. Guess what I will be doing tonight and tomorrow with a break for the Annual Trout Festival Parade.

Speaking of small town parades: last night in class, our teacher was talking about the town he grew up in. I forget the name, but it has around 500 residents. They have a Christmas parade every year that involves the same people on the same floats in the same order every year. Except one year, someone got out of order. Twenty years later, the town is still in an uproar over how Christmas was ruined because one guy in the parade was out of order. I told the class if anyone wanted to see sort of the same thing in action, come on up to Kalkaska for the Trout Festival Parade. My family has joked for years that it's a good thing we write the year on the back of the trout festival pictures, because there isn't much else you can look at to see which year is which. Other than the cloths the people along the parade route are wearing: that ranges from shorts, t-shirts, and sunglasses to heavy winter coats, mittens, and fur hats. This year looks to be a light jacket year with the temperature supposedly getting up above 50 degrees F. But I'm dressing in layers starting with full winter gear on the outside and beachwear on the inside. That way, I can just undress to my comfort level. This is, after all, northern Michigan.

Debbie is heading off for warmer areas tomorrow. She will be driving down to her mom's tonight, then flying out to Vegas for a week. It's some sort of perk related to her being a travel agent. Seeing as she is going with her mom, I expect Tom Jones will be getting a visit from the Boris women. Watch out, Tom!!!

Not much on tap for me tonight other than hauling several thousand pounds of batteries up the hill to the power shed and hauling several thousand pounds of batteries down from the power shed, then figuring out how to configure the whole mess into something I can run our house off from. If you don't hear from me, it's because I'm a burnt cinder in the bottom of a smoking hole. I also need to prep for my lesson on Sunday and get ready for special music with the trio I'm in. I'm trying to sing the tenor part because the bass and alto part are identical. We are lowering the song several half-steps which puts the tenor part in my natural range. That should mean that this is easy, except I haven't sang tenor since high school. It's very hard for me to "hear" the tenor part in the accompaniment after so many years. It's just a matter of finding a half-hour or so to hammer it out over and over until I can hear it, but finding a half-hour is a bit of a trick.

This is from Bob Thompson:

10:38 - Taking the dogs out has become fraught with peril, as it does every spring. This morning, I connected Duncan and Malcolm to their 15-foot roller leashes, opened the front door, and walked out onto the front porch. At that instant, Duncan spotted a lawn rat in the yard across the street, and Malcolm simultaneously spotted a tree rat in the yard next door. Both dogs accelerated, one straight ahead and one at 90 [degrees] to my left, from 0 to 30 MPH in about 0.5 seconds. Meanwhile, there I stood with both leash handles in one hand, trying to drop them, but with one leash wrapped around the other's handle.

Let me tell you, when you're on one end of the leashes, it's no joke to have a cumulative 140 pounds of dogs moving at high speed until they simultaneously run out of roller leash. In this case, my 240 pounds stood me in good stead. If it had been Barbara, she'd probably have gone airborne.

Sometimes even my mass isn't enough to prevent embarrassing moments. One winter morning, there was snow and ice on the ground. Unfortunately, a dog in 4-paw drive has much more traction than I do. As we went out the front door, Duncan spotted a rodent and instantly accelerated at full military power. Barbara wouldn't believe me later, but I'd have sworn there were afterburner flames coming out of Duncan's rear end. I couldn't drop the leash in time because it was wound around my wrist. I went flying off the porch and ended up on my ass, literally being dragged across the snow-covered front yard at a high rate of speed. Fortunately, I got the leash loose before he dragged me over the curb. That would have hurt.

The joys of living with border collies. The more I read from people who have them, the more intriguing they seem. Of course Debbie wants huskies. Reading Jerry Pournelle's descriptions of "living with a wolf," they sound like interesting house companions as well (more here both at the beginning and end of the day's post).

Medicine:
I've ranted before about the quackery we call psychiatry, so I'll spare everyone a repeat. It's one of those things that I have strong opinions on (I know, everyone is shocked by that admission...), but I've always had somewhere, buried under all the cynicism, the idea that for the most part, the drug companies and doctors at least had some level of integrity. This article puts that notion to rest. It seems any study that showed no positive benefit or harm from giving anti-depressants to children has been routinely suppressed. One of the more damning paragraphs from the article:

"In a global medical culture where evidence-based practice is seen as the gold standard for care, these failings are a disaster," wrote Lancet editors in an editorial accompanying the data analysis.

Whatever shred of respect I had for the medical industry and its regulators has just flown out the window.

Politics:
Something any cop could tell you:

Almost all the violence and crime in the world is committed by people, mostly male, aged 15 to 29 years. You can draw a pretty accurate map of the world's trouble spots by plotting the places where there are large concentrations of young people and insufficient economic resources to give them something to do with themselves.

The recent drop in violent crimes in the U.S. has little or nothing to do with gun laws, lack of gun laws, "three strikes" laws, or any other political measure taken in the last 20 years. It's due almost entirely to demographics; demographics that are due to reverse themselves very shortly when in five years there are more teenagers in this country than in any time in history. Expect blood to literally flow in the streets in our inner-cities. Poor, rural areas could be in for a rough ride as well. Both suffer from a complete lack of anything useful for young males. Maybe the U.S. will have a draft by then so we can send large numbers of them off to be killed in places like Iraq. If you think I'm the grip of some feverish delirium, read the history of the Crusades.

Speaking of crusades to eliminate surplus males in the population, here is another letter from Iraq dated April 14, 2004:

The last two days have been very eventful. We have been going on patrols with the unit [1st Armored Division] that we are replacing and the patrols have been very productive. We have seen action almost every time that we leave our compound and a mission the first night netted two known terrorists plus a cache of weapons. We have been very busy and the operations tempo doesn't look to let up anytime soon.

The patrols also bring us in contact with the Iraqi people. Most of the area we patrol is very friendly towards us, but there are some rough spots. The city transitions from urban slum to suburban middle class to junkyard with shanties to palace like houses very quickly. Our patrols take us through huge gardens, open air markets, tenement housing, landfills and industrial centers. It is very strange. The children run to the sounds of our vehicles and anytime we stop and dismount we are surrounded by cautious but very inquisitive crowds. They understand that we mean business, but they also are not too afraid to have fun at our expense. One boy stuck his hand out to my squad leader in a gesture of friendship only to pull it back and run it through his hair when SSG [staff sergant--name withheld] reached to shake it. The crowd and the soldiers all laughed together at that one. The adults range from happiness to indifferent to contempt. The women usually the first two.

The young men, like I mentioned before are the ones we watch out for. The city is in pretty bad repair throughout, but many people appear to be overweight which leads me to believe that living conditions cannot be too bad for everyone.

The call to prayer is rarely heard in Baghdad though it seems nonstop in the outskirts where we live. As for what you can send me: I need a nice brush like a paint brush or shaving brush to clean my weapons with. The sand gets everywhere. Any kind of beverage powder or something to flavor water with would be great. Baby wipes are always nice and magazines to read. Other than those things, I am not wanting for much. I'm sure a list will develop after I really see what we have around here.

And so we muddle on.

Science:
There is global warming on Jupiter that is endangering the Great Red Spot!! Call your congressman at once and demand that SUV's be legislated off the roads before our over-consumption destroys one of the most recognizable features of the solar system!!

Research continues to push the date of the earliest replicators further and further into the past. The vast, global conspiracy to convince everyone that the earth is really 4.6 billion years old continues on.

And I really need to get to work. I have a fairly difficult piece of code to write today, so I've been doing this while I sort out what approach I'm going to take. I think I have it now, so I have to go type like mad before I lose it.

And Blogger is trying to drive me mad. The spell check is replacing the wrong characters; instead of fixing things, it is making a hash of my post. Ah well, I'm sure it will be fixed soon.