The Kudzu Files

Competitive Transcendalists

From Thoreau's entry of 30 January:

"I doubt if Emerson could trundle a wheelbarrow through the streets, because it would be out of character. One needs to have a comprehensive character."

This just strikes me as hysterical.

Just Stuff

I oftentimes find interesting things when I'm walking. Some things are curious - one shoe, not old, not battered, on the side of the road. A half-eaten hamburger. Various small electronic gadgets. A bra - you gotta wonder what was going on inside that car. But if you get off the beaten path just a little, you find the really interesting stuff:

Did it just become so untuneable? It had to have taken some effort, "especially when you be movin' a piano".

The Weather Channel Meterologist Controversy

Lots of chatter about this. I decided to see what actually was said. Dr. Heidi Cullen was reacting to a blog interview with a DC-area TV meteorologist, Brian van de Graaf, who had this to say about global warming:

"The subject of global warming definitely makes headlines in the media and is a topic of much debate. I try to read up on the subject to have a better understanding, but it is complex. Often, it is so politicized and those on both sides don't always appear to have their facts straight. History has taught us that weather patterns are cyclical and although we have noticed a warming pattern in recent time, I don't know what generalizations came be made from this with the lack of long-term scientific data. That's all I will say about this."

Dr. Cullen then noted a later entry on that same blog (Capitalweather.com) which responded to van de Graaf's statement:

""If that were a question on a climate science exam, van de Graaf better hope for partial credit. Sure, there are cyclical patterns of climate change and weather patterns, but he misses the more important point about trends in long-term data.

The global surface thermometer record only stretches back to the 1800s, but reliable traces of the planet's temperature can be made stretching back thousands of years using ice cores, tree ring records, ocean sediments and other "proxy" methods. Together, these records have showed a stark warming trend during the past century, particularly the last 30 years, that is out of step with previous shifts.

Scientists have identified human emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, as the most likely culprit for the warming. This is the opinion of most climate scientists, and van de Graaf and others should know this and communicate this to the public....

Van de Graaf and his colleagues can look to the American Meteorological Society, which awards them their television "seals of approval" and hence their legitimacy as TV meteorologists, for a nonpartisan scientific view on climate change.

More than three years ago the AMS issued a statement on climate change that said: "There is convincing evidence that since the industrial revolution, human activities, resulting in increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases and other trace constituents in the atmosphere, have become a major agent of climate change."

Perhaps AMS members should be required to read the organization's statements and consider getting on board with the group's new emphasis on becoming station scientists. Either that, or continue to be left out of covering the biggest weather story of all time."

Dr. Cullen referred to that blog post, and went on to say:

""I'd like to take that suggestion a step further. If a meteorologist has an AMS Seal of Approval, which is used to confer legitimacy to TV meteorologists, then meteorologists have a responsibility to truly educate themselves on the science of global warming... Meteorologists are among the few people trained in the sciences who are permitted regular access to our living rooms. And in that sense, they owe it to their audience to distinguish between solid, peer-reviewed science and junk political controversy. If a meteorologist can't speak to the fundamental science of climate change, then maybe the AMS shouldn't give them a Seal of Approval".

So - not quite as extreme a statement as this Alabama broadcast meteorologist would have you believe. Also - Spann makes the statement that "Billions of dollars of grant money is flowing into the pockets of those on the man-made global warming bandwagon". I can't find anything close to that. The Federal government spent a few hundred million dollars on climate research in 2005, the latest year for which I could find figures. Here's the link for that. That amount will buy you a few days of war in Iraq, by the way. I doubt that private sources are covering the remaining billions Spann claims. On the other hand, ExxonMobil is spending millions to convince people that the science behind global warming isn't legitimate. I don't claim to know for sure whether we're causing some of the problem. With all the data that's accumulating indicating we are, I'm inclined to believe that there's some fire under all that smoke, and if we can put some of it out, we should.

Dr. Cullen's original blog post is here, followed by this post.

Spam Block Spam

I tried to send an email to someone tonight, someone I know but wouldn't consider a close friend. I got this back:

I apologize for this automatic reply to your email.

To control spam, I now allow incoming messages only from senders I have approved beforehand.

If you would like to be added to my list of approved senders, please fill out the short request form (see link below). Once I approve you, I will receive your original message in my inbox. You do not need to resend your message. I apologize for this one-time inconvenience.

Click the link below to fill out the request:

Needless to say, I didn't fill out the short request form, and therefore won't be approved. And therefore, he won't receive my email. I don't know many people who use those spam-blockers,fortunately, because I really don't like the implication that somehow I'm not worthy to send emails. What really bothers me is when people on mailing lists turn these things on - as a listowner, when I encounter someone doing this, I block them from the list. I hate spam as much as the next person, but this isn't the way to handle it.

Changing the subject, I think the President is giving a pretty good speech tonight. A much different tone than his previous speeches. I'd give him a B+. Not that I agree with everything he said, but it was a good speech nonetheless.

Interesting - on the way out, the President walked right past Senator Lott. Shook hands before and after him, but not Trent's.

Over The Rainbow

Just because I like the song, and these versions...

It's What All The Cool Ostriches Are Doing

"there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know."

Donald Rumsfeld said lots of things during his time before an open mic, but this has always been one of my favorites. It's also one of the things he said that actually made perfect sense to me. But in the global warming debate, it probably should be re-written:

"there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- and we don't have to worry about those."

I'm not going to say that human activities are definitely causing an abnormal change in natural warming and cooling cycles. There is plenty of evidence that something is happening - carbon dioxide levels seem to be higher than at any point in the past hundred thousand years, and the rate of increase seems to be increasing abnormally; permafrost that has been frozen for over ten thousand years is melting (which could release methane, a more destructive greenhoue gas than carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere); the Greenland ice sheet appears to be melting faster than natural cycling would predict. You can find more examples - but none provide absolute evidence of global warming caused by human activity, and apparently it will require absolute evidence before some people will decide we should try to do something. I overheard a conversation the other day, some people talking about Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth". One of the people replied "I'm a Republican, I don't listen to Al Gore". That makes as much sense as someone who says "I don't like that doctor, so I'm not getting my child vaccinated". Their child might not get sick anyway, so why worry? But we do worry, and even though nothing may happen, we do something about it. We do something because we can. The history of vaccine development shows it was expensive, it was often controversial, and during the process many very smart people got some things wrong. But we were smart enough to understand that something was going on that we could affect. Looking back over the past century, it seems like a pretty damn good idea. If we're driving and we see something that causes us to be uncertain of the road conditions ahead, we slow down until we're sure. We don't just go speeding on. Unless, of course, we're idiots. We recognize that we need more data, and until we get more data we should proceed with a little caution.

So what's the deal with the global warming debate? Maybe we don't have everything right. Maybe we don't understand all the data. But we have the technology to do some things. We could clean things up a bit while we're trying to understand better what's happening. But it's so much easier to just sit there and do nothing, and point to every pseudo-scientific or near-scientific study claiming to refute the studies that show something we don't want to believe. It's easier to say "we're not sure, let's not do anything right now", and find the one or two guys in the room saying things we agree with.

As a friend said this weekend, it's what all the cool ostriches are doing this year.

Sliced And Diced By Occam's Razor

I got an email from one of our users yesterday - unable to connect to their test database. I have a small universe of test databases. There's the near-clone of the current production database, the near-clone of the previous version of the production database which was upgraded to the current version as a final test of the upgrade procedures; there's the database being used to test the new module supporting the National Emissions Inventory, and a clone of that database being used for performance testing. There's the database being used to test the next version of the application, and the database being used for Oracle10g verification and SQL/XML development. I finally managed to kill off two databases that were being used by two different groups doing separate draft permit development. And those are just the test databases for our primary application. Then there's the primary production database itself, and three databases supporting other applications, and two test databases for those. It's not like we're not that big a place! I need a database of passwords for all the different databases.

So, I received an email from one of the users of one of these test databases. They're in an office in another part of town, and they couldn't connect to the particular test database they wanted to hit. I had them try a couple of things, with no success, so after lunch today I went to that office. Start the application, "cannot resolve service name". Check the database ID, its OK. Ping the server, OK fine. Tnsping the database, it's OK. Try the app again, make sure I saw the error correctly, yes, I did. Change the database ID to a different database on the same server. OK fine. Change back, nada. Telnet to the server, stop the listener, restart the listener. Try the app again. Annnkkkk! Check the tnsnames file. It's good. Fire up SQL*Plus, try to connect to the target database. Nothing. Try to connect to another database on that server. OK fine. Fire up the Oracle net config utility. Test the connection. Can't test it, I'm using a redirect in the tnsnames file. Rats! Fire up the app again, because I can't think of what the problem might be, stall for time while I think. Still won't connect. Not surprised. Check the connection info again, compare the port numbers. OK fine. At this point I'm pretty baffled. I telnet to the server again, decide to connect to the database directly.

The database was down. The database was down. I'd shut it down a week or so ago when I was setting up another database on that server, and hadn't brought it back online. I spent an hour trying all sorts of remedies to various connectivity hypotheses, and the problem was the thing I should have checked first, the most obvious and therefore the simplest solution. The database was down. Occam's Razor. Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate. You should never focus on the solutions to a problem before you've focused on the problem itself. Forests and trees.

Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate. Indeed.

Comet Lunacy

There's a comet about
and the crazies come out

My first clue was when I noticed my site had a search hit for "comet mcnaught prophecy". I tried to ignore it, but curiousity got the best of me. No, I won't post any links, you can google them for yourself. There was some Nostradamus, of course, including some of his quatrains. There was a Mormon end-times blog that called it the Great Red Comet. There was another blog that speculated it was the Hopi Indian Blue star comet. Those two need to get together and decide what color it really is. Or just combine and call it the Purple Comet. I didn't see anyone talking about a Great Green Comet, or if anything is trying to hide behind the tail.

Anyway, here's a message for anyone who reaches this site by searching for "comet mcnaught prophecy":

It's a ball of ice and dust. It doesn't mean anything. It's just there, doing it's cometary thing. Don't go buying any Nikes.

Sauntering

"I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of taking walks daily, —not [to] exercise the legs or body merely, nor barely to recruit the spirits, but positively to exercise both body and spirit, and to succeed to the highest and worthiest ends by the abandonment of all specific ends,—who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering" - Henry David Thoreau

I like to think I'm pretty good at sauntering. Maybe not so much as Thoreau would have liked (but then, he isn't here to inform), and maybe not always as leisurely as would befit the classical definition, but I can do some rambling.

Saturday In The Garden

Planted the last 108 tulip bulbs this morning - I didn't realize how many I had left to plant! In Mississippi, since it doesn't really get cold enough for tulips to complete their cycle naturally, you have to refrigerate them, and these have been in the refrigerator since early October. So planting them late shouldn't be a problem. To be honest, I can't remember how many (or where) I had planted earlier, so I guess spring will be a bit of a surprise. But it was a fine day, mid-60s, light breeze, slightly overcast. The kind of day I love in late February or early March, but not mid-January. I want some winter!

Layers Of Night Descending

This was the sunset I watched Wednesday while I was waiting to see Comet McNaught. Being alone on that hilltop, watching this, was a very peaceful time.

Symbolism, Homeland Security Style (Updated!)

One of the benefits of the War On Terror! is the proliferation of new government-created symbols. These go far beyond the much-adored color scheme for telling us how much terrorists hate us on a particular day. Here are some of the new symbols, what people think they mean, and what they're supposed to mean. No, really, they do have meanings!

The Symbol	What People Think It Means	What It Really Means
	If you spot terrorism, blow your anti-terrorism whistle. If you are bald, yell really loud.	Use a whistle if one is available. Shout only as a last resort – shouting can cause a person to inhale dangerous amounts of dust.
	Use your flashlight to lift the walls right off of you!	Tap on pipe or on wall so that rescuers can hear you.
	The proper way to eliminate smallpox is to wash with soap, water and at least one armless hand.	Wash with soap and water, but do not scrub the chemical into the skin.
	After exposure to radiation it is important to consider that you may have mutated to gigantic dimensions: watch your head.	It would be better to go inside a building and follow your plan to “shelter-in-place.”
	Hurricanes, animal corpses and the biohazard symbol have a lot in common. Think about it.	If you see signs of a chemical attack, try to define the impact area or where the chemical is coming from.
	If you are trapped under falling debris, conserve oxygen by not farting.	Avoid unnecessary movement so that you don’t kick up dust.
	If you spot a terrorist arrow, pin it against the wall with your shoulder.	If the door is not hot, brace yourself against the door and slowly open it.

More to come (maybe)

And remember - serious people paid even more serious money to come up with these! ("I'm from the government and I'm here to confuse you")

OK, here's more:

The Symbol	What People Think It Means	What It Really Means
	If a door is closed, karate chop it open.	Use the back of your hand to feel the lower, middle, and upper parts of closed doors.
	Michael Jackson is a terrorist. If you spot this smooth criminal with dead, dead eyes, run the fuck away.	Use a wet cloth to cover nose and mouth.
	If you have set yourself on fire, do not run.	If you catch fire do not run. (I guess they accidentally made sense with this one)
	Try to absorb as much of the radiation as possible with your groin region. After 5 minutes and 12 seconds, however, you may become sterile.	Time: Minimizing time spent exposed will also reduce your risk.
	A one-inch thick piece of plywood should be sufficient protection against radiation. Always carry one!	Shielding: If you have a thick shield between yourself and radioactive materials, more of the radiation will be absorbed by the thick shield, and you will be exposed to less.

Sometimes I Worry About Me

You are the Hanged Man

Self-sacrifice, Sacrifice, Devotion, Bound.

With the Hanged man there is often a sense of fatalism, waiting for something to happen. Or a fear of loss from a situation, rather than gain.

The Hanged Man is perhaps the most fascinating card in the deck. It reflects the story of Odin who offered himself as a sacrifice in order to gain knowledge. Hanging from the world tree, wounded by a spear, given no bread or mead, he hung for nine days. On the last day, he saw on the ground runes that had fallen from the tree, understood their meaning, and, coming down, scooped them up for his own. All knowledge is to be found in these runes.

The Hanged Man, in similar fashion, is a card about suspension, not life or death. It signifies selflessness, sacrifice and prophecy. You make yourself vulnerable and in doing so, gain illumination. You see the world differently, with almost mystical insights.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

Comet McNaught Again

After going out Monday and Tuesday evening and failing to see the comet, I went back out yesterday armed with some information a friend had sent me. I realized that I was going out too late for my latitude - farther north, in the 40-latitudes, it's higher in the sky, although it's never been very high, lower than Venus. So I realized I had been going out too late, arriving at my chosen spot - a hilltop northwest of town with a great view of the western horizon - around 5:45, when the sky was getting decently dark. Last night, I got there an hour earlier, watched the sun go down (which was a great experience in itself, I need do that more often), and around 5:15 began looking for the comet. At 5:35, I found it, using my 10x50 binoculars. Very low - maybe 7 degrees above the horizon, in a fading pink sky. But the comet was so bright that I could see it naked eye, once I knew where to look. I got a better view using my 80mm f/5 refractor - a bright central head, with two fairly short but wide and bright tails. I tried taking a few pictures, which I'll post later if they come out (I was using my old Pentax SLR, not digital). It's a nice comet, worth being late for dinner with a few friends. "Yes", I told them, "you are less important than a comet". Friends come to town every year or two, comets less often. This one was worth seeing.

Searching The Kudzu

Not that many people come to the Kudzu Files. I appreciate those who do, wish they would drop a comment every now and then. But why they come is sometimes a mystery to me; some curious things come out of the stats. So far this month, according to my host's stats:

15% of the search hits come for "Christopher Lloyd". They find this post from two years ago.

14% come from that phone number.

7% come from "the Pussycat Dolls". That's this post from our New York trip last summer. I had no idea so many people cared.

"It's the meers" accounts for a solid 3% of the search hits. Thanks, TI. "Bottle tree" comes up on 2%. Here's my bottle tree - and here it is all decorated for Christmas.

The oddest thing, to me, is that my search stats consistently have a small number of hits for "how not to be a loser". Somehow, that depresses me. I thought I hid it better.

Comet McNaught

For those in the mid-northern latitudes, if you have a clear view of the western horizon, look just after sunset today. In the southwest you'll see Venus, very bright. If you look to the north of Venus, you should be able to see Comet McNaught, which might be much brighter even than Venus (comets tend to be a bit unpredictable). It's only going to be there for the next few days before it heads south.

Addendum: I drove out tonight to a hilltop with an excellent view of the western horizon. Venus was shining brightly in a clear sky fading from purple to black. But no comet. I think I was looking too far north and too high in the sky. So I'l try again tomorrow night,or maybe in the morning on my walk.

Rules Of Life

There are only three rules of life:

-you can't win
-you can't break even
-you can't quit the game

Oh wait, maybe there's only two:

-some days you eat the bear
-some days the bear eats you

Come to think of it, maybe there's only one:

-they can kill you, but they can't eat you

Except in some parts of New Guinea, I guess. Maybe there aren't any rules.

Stupidity In Action Is Always Scary

But this evening I saw a truly frightening example. As I was leaving work, I saw what looked like flames out near the street. As I got closer, I realized there was a car burning furiously. It was in the parking lot of the garden center next to my office, and since I know the owner and manager, and saw the manager outside, I pulled over to watch. It turned out the driver had realized his car was on fire, and pulled off the road - but he pulled up right beside - by which I mean less than a foot from - a gasoline pump. The pumps haven't been used in several years, but the driver didn't know that - and even so, there is still some gas in the tanks, so this could have been a pretty bad situation. So here's a key point - if your car is on fire, don't pull up next to a gasoline pump! It turned out OK, the fire department showed up and put out the fire, but there were a few dicey moments in between.

Random Notes And Opinions

Most made-for-TV movies on the SciFi Channel are pretty bad. "The Lost Room" was a pleasant surprise. "Post Impact" is not, but I'm wasting a couple of hours on it tonight anyway, because something mindless seemed right for a rainy Thursday night. Still, it's bad. Really bad. Rex Grossman bad.

People will sit in a parking lot waiting for a car to pull out of a spot rather than park 2 spots further out. I don't understand this.

They'll also wait to turn in traffic for several minutes to take a "short cut" that saves them maybe a minute. People - if you have to wait, it isn't saving any time!

Think the big sports debate this week is whether Boise State should be playing Ohio State, or whether Alabama has gone completely insane? Think again.

Chris is posting junk to try to move a certain post off the main page. The internet never forgets, Badger Boy!

Summer offers her homage to 2006 at Jaded Thea. (By the way, Summer, thanks for changing the picture, that was kinda creepy).

And, I won the only fantasy football league I was in that mattered. The leagues I didn't win, didn't matter.

(Also - that phone number is accounting for most of my blog hits lately).