Hot Springs, Arkansas in December

We are in Hot Springs, Arkansas with several friends for a (mostly) relaxing weekend. It’s the off-season for tourism, so in some ways it’s nice, although there are some things you can’t do, as the photo demonstrates:

We think they’ve lowered the lake level in order to do various maintenance projects. Our scenic lake view is a mud pit. We are staying in the two-story cabin on the left in the picture; we’ll be leaving this morning to head back home.

The ladies went to a huge craft mall downtown, while the guys went to the Mid-America Museum yesterday. We’re just big kids, mostly. My friends Rick and Paul went through some (artificial) caves that I took a pass on, and they also crawled through the giant earthworm. I stayed out and watched on the videos, party-pooper that I am. We had a good time with all the hands-on experiments there.

We also did a lot of driving around sight-seeing, going to rock shops and so forth. At the rock shops, there are some beautiful amethyst geodes and a great many other similar polished rocks in great variety. Also fossils and similar things. I wish I had the expertise to be sure of the authenticity of some of them.

We went to the Garvan Woodland Gardens last night to see the Christmas decorations, but turned away because it was misty-rainy, and because most of Hot Springs had decided to go. They were parking in the ditches, so we took a pass on it and went up on the mountain drive. There’s a nice overlook up there where we could see over the city, and it was beautiful at night.

We returned to our cabin, and I went to take a shower. When I came out, my wife and friends had prepared a bit of a birthday party to surprise me. So we had a nice celebration, and I’m blessed by having such good friends.

Now it’s pre-dawn, and most of us are still asleep. In a few hours, we’ll be packing up and heading out. It’s been a nice respite, but it will also be nice to get back into routine, having been to New York City a couple of weeks ago, and to Hot Springs now.

ADDENDUM: An hour or so later, we were in downtown Hot Springs having some hot chocolate, watching it snow. It was the sort of snow that wouldn’t stick, but it was still fun to watch for a while.

We did have a safe trip home, and it’s good to be back.

-Popgun

The Problem With Stimulus Packages

The Lady Tam says it so very well -

Any money that the government “pumps into” the economy to “boost” it had to be pumped out of the economy in the form of taxes in the first place. Why is this so hard to understand? You can’t raise the water level in a swimming pool by siphoning its contents from the deep end to the shallow end, nor can you build a wall higher by removing bricks from the bottom and putting them on top. Why is this extremely simple fact so terrifically difficult for otherwise smart people to grasp?

-Popgun

Thanksgiving!

Dear Lord;

Thank you for your amazing love, that not only comes directly from you, but also comes to us from all our family and friends. For I believe you are the source of all love.

Thank you for our salvation through the sacrifice and resurrection of your son Jesus, which is a direct result of your unconditional love.

Thank you for making that salvation available to all, simply for the asking.

Thank you for taking care of us and those we love, in so many ways. Things aren’t perfect here in the world, but somehow we always have sufficient to our needs. We are indeed truly blessed.

Please forgive us when we fail you. Help us to live each day in accordance with your will, to the extent that is possible on this earth.

Thank you for the hope for the future which we, as your children, can claim.

And again, thank you so much for all your blessings; help us to be wise enough to recognize them when we see them.

In Jesus’ name.

Amen.

-Popgun

Short Commentary on Election 2008

Caveat: My comments here are my own perceptions, and not based on any research other than my own personal interpretation of events and news. Your mileage may differ.

The election process for President of the United States, it seems to me, has become a popularity contest instead of a vetting process for a specific job. Obama won the election, fair and square. I think, though, that a large percentage of the voters made their decision based on a number of factors which have no bearing on the job at which Obama must now excel.

Those factors probably included:

1. Obama’s undeniably skillful oratory. He makes it sound great, without really conveying much real information.
2. His relative youth and health (see Kennedy vs Nixon)
3. His skin color. This is NOT a racist statement, but a sincere estimate of what I saw going on in the area where I live. There’s no denying that this played a part. To be fair, it also worked against him to some extent, but I think it helped him a lot more than it hurt him.
4. His campaign promises. For instance, that lady that was filmed at an Obama rally that actually thinks that she won’t have to worry about making her mortgage payment, or putting gas in her car, once Obama got elected.
5. The fact that Obama is not associated with the Bush administration. In other words, rule out McCain simply because he is a Republican.
6. The fact that 90% of the news media heavily favored Obama in their reporting, programming, and presentation.

None of these factors have any bearing on how well Obama is likely to do at his new job. It would have been wiser to concentrate on his personal history, his political connections (to whom does he owe favors), and his actual voting record. There are major causes for concern in all of these areas as to his true intentions, and his practical experience and competence in governing.

So the people have elected Obama to arguably become the most powerful man in the world. Even though he won the election fair and square, I do not think he was vetted properly for the job, by the majority of the people who voted for him.

I have reason to believe this, based on his associations with radicals, based on his voting record, based on his lack of executive experience, and based on many of his stated views. I can’t help but think that no rational person who actually spent significant time studying the realities of these issues would have still voted for him. You, of course, may disagree.

I would truly fear to go under the knife of a surgeon who was selected for the job by this process.

In any case, he’s got the job. I most certainly hope that I am wrong in my estimations. It’s for sure that we will find out in the long run how well a job we the people did in our selection.

In the meantime, to prepare for the next major election, we should really push the schools (and parents) to teach critical thinking – i.e. don’t believe everything you see on TV. This is an area of education that is woefully inadequate in the United States. Note that I am NOT proposing any sort of political indoctrination (something Obama HAS been involved in); just critical thinking. How to think for yourself: possibly the most important skill in the world.

-Popgun

Definition of a Sky/Ground Incident

Once, when helping to haul hay, I was standing on the tailgate of the truck, holding on to the bails of hay, for the ride back to the barn. Due to the involvement of a red wasp about two inches in front of my nose, I found it necessary to jump off of the truck.

As it turns out, the truck was moving just a LITTLE faster than I could run. This is called a “sky/ground” incident, because that’s what you see – sky, ground, sky, ground…

-Popgun

My First Computer

I was cleaning out some old files and came across the specifications of my very first computer. That computer was the Kaypro 2.

Photo from Wikipedia.

The Kaypro ran the 8-bit Z80 CPU, at 2.5 MHz, and had 64k of ram.

It was racy! It had two single-sided double density floppy disk drives in the (then) new 5 1/4″ format, each of which held 191k of data. If I recall correctly, CP/M resided on the boot floppy and consumed about 4.5k of space. There was no hard drive. My Mac, on the other hand, has no floppy drive – but it has a 160 GB hard drive, that holds about 439,194 times as much information as the Kaypro’s floppies.

The monitor was a green phosphor 9″ screen that could only handle text – no vector graphics. There was no WYSIWYG.

Let’s see, my Mac is a MacBook Pro with a Core 2 Duo Intel processor running at 2.33 GHz. It’s a 64 bit computer, with two cores. So the data path is eight times wider, and it’s running an astounding 932 times faster, in terms of clock rate alone. If you take into account the 8X wider data path, it’s about 7,456 times faster; and added to that is the fact that the newer processors can handle more instructions per cycle. Plus, two CPU cores. So figure a conservative number of at least 15,000 times faster. I suspect this is simplistic and the difference is more than that. Especially since the Kaypro spent quite a lot of time sitting around waiting on the floppy drives.

The Kaypro had 64k of ram. My Mac has 3 Gigabytes of ram. So my Mac has about 49,152 times as much memory as the Kaypro.

The Kaypro was a graceful 8 1/2″ x 18 3/4″ x 16 3/8″ and weighed 26 pounds. I think my Mac weighs about 5 pounds.

The Kaypro had the best keyboard I have ever used. It had a very light, precise, clicky feel to the typing.

I taught myself programming, first M-Basic, and later Turbo Pascal, on that machine. I also learned Wordstar, and DBase II. It was a lot of fun.

I don’t remember the dates, but the Kaypro was circa 1982 or 1983. Not that long ago, really. There are airplanes and cars built then that are still in service. I’ve bought a new computer every couple of years since then. I’ve lost count.

I loved that Kaypro. And I would be SO frustrated with it if I had to use it today.

Wow.

-Popgun

We’re All Sick

Sorry, haven’t written anything in the last day or so. We’ve been recovering from our trip to New York, and also the bad cold I caught the last night in NY. It’s bad enough that I caught a cold, but then I gave it to my wife.

So this week it’s been pretty hard to get motivated.

More interesting news, soon, I hope.

-Popgun

Upper Management Doesn’t Get The Picture

I just heard on the news that these three auto industry executives went to beg for money in Washington; all three of them flew there on corporate jets, costing their companies each around $20,000 for the one flight (according to the news). Disclaimer: I have no idea if this is a realistic number.

Combine that with the Wall Street companies that spent around $250,000 on executive retreats the week after getting the $700 billion bailout passed.

Either these people have completely lost touch with reality, or they are arrogant beyond belief. In either case, they don’t need to be managing any company – these are perfect examples of at least part of the problem.

I can’t see why we need to help these people. Shucks, send ME money – it’s obvious that I need it a lot worse than they do.

-Popgun

Politically Correct – Help?

Hi, friends;

The last two entries got me to thinking. I want to compile a list of pairs of statements – politically correct vs reality. When I get a few together, I’ll post them here.

You are invited to put any that you may have on tap in the comments, and I’ll include them when the time comes.

Thanks!

-Popgun

Redistribution of Wealth

While we’re at it, “redistribution of wealth” is stealing.

Let’s cut the crap – renaming bad things to make them more palatable is pure self-delusion. Watch out for all such attempts to white-wash evil.

Calling something what it really is helps clarify matters immensely.

-Popgun