An olive branch.

I'm 44 years old and I've seen my share of politics. I came of age in the Reagan era and I was an enthusiastic supporter of those policies. I supported GHW Bush even when he was less than inspiring. I went into opposition in the Clinton days and, I'm sorry to say, supported his impeachment (on reflection it's clear that what he did didn't rise to the level of an impeachable offense). I was a lukewarm Bush supporter, and supported the Iraq War (even though I fell into despair around 2006-2007 and declared defeat, which I regret). If I had it to do all over again I would have supported McCain in 2000, but that time is past. I wish Bush had been more competent but I'm glad we didn't have Gore and Kerry, and that was the best thing for the nation.

But all that is like melted snow now. We have a new administration, a new Congress, and a new set of problems and issues, and it's time for me to adapt and change. I won't stop being a Republican but I won't become like the sufferers of Bush Derangement Syndrome either, hating Bush not only for his policies but for his very nature. That is a madness Republicans went through with Bill Clinton and it eventually crippled them.

And so I propose an experiment: For once I'm not going to swim against the tide, like I did in the Clinton years. For once, I'm going to try to see it from the other guy's perspective. For one year -- 365 days -- I'm going to defend Obama and the Democrats in Congress. I'm going to be a Democrat for a year. For one year at this blog there will be no sniping, no knee-jerk reactions, no quoting the party line: just support and an attempt to understand and appreciate the Democrats' positions. I probably won't become a Democrat when it's done, but maybe I'll be a better citizen.

Congratulations to President-Elect Obama.

My politics are no secret; I'm a Republican and, with certain Libertarian exceptions, a conservative. So, obviously, I'm disappointed with McCain's loss and Republican losses in Congress. The crash of the economy and Bush's unpopularity made it a difficult time to get victory, and the Democrats took advantage of those factors and won big. However, the fact remains that the people have spoken, and unambiguously: they want Democratic policies and they want a new direction. What's more, this is a historic opportunity to heal racial division and give liberals a chance to implement their policies and see if they work in the real world. The Democrats have been out of power for too long. Now is the time for them to stop sniping and start doing the hard work of governing. I will look forward to their proposals and to President-Elect Obama's administration. See above for my change of course with respect to the election.

Starting from scratch.

Good lord, look at how long it's been since I made a post. It's time to start rectifying that. Work, life, hanging out in the comments at LGF, and general hoo-ha has kept me from writing and it's just wrong. It's time for me to go into opposition (see the next post above) and it's time for me to re-examine my assumptions and start anew. This blog might help with that; let's hope so. Maybe I'll even post some fiction for the hell of it.

AP: "Chief of Staff: Army Reviewing Complaints over Bullets"

At least the word is percolating to the top. Now if only the brass would get off the dime and order a bunch of 6.8 SPC and some rifles from Barrett, the fighters can have a round they can work with.

The military is reviewing soldiers' complaints that their standard ammunition isn't powerful enough for the type of fighting required in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army's highest-ranking officer said Thursday. But Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the Army chief of staff, said it was too soon to say whether the Pentagon will switch.

Current and former soldiers interviewed by The Associated Press said the military's M855 rifle rounds are not powerful enough for close-in fighting in cities and towns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Speaking with reporters at a conference in Huntsville, Casey said leaders are constantly soliciting feedback from soldiers in the field and were aware of complaints about the M855 ammunition.

"To effectively prepare them we have to adapt as the enemy adapts, and that is some of the feedback we have gotten," Casey said. "We'll evaluate it quickly and then we'll decide how we want to proceed."

But Casey said it would be premature to say if the Pentagon will consider a different type of ammunition.

"I can't tell you exactly what we're going to do," he said.

Rewrite the EE textbooks.

News from a pioneer of circuit theory (via EETimes):

PORTLAND, Ore. — The long-sought after memristor--the "missing link" in electronic circuit theory--has been invented by Hewlett Packard Senior Fellow R. Stanley Williams at HP Labs (Palo Alto, Calif.) Memristors--the fourth passive component type after resistors, capacitors and inductors--were postulated in a seminal 1971 paper in the IEEE Transactions on Circuit Theory by professor Leon Chua at the University of California (Berkeley), but their first realization was just announced today by HP. According to Williams and Chua, now virtually every electronics textbook will have to be revised to include the memristor and the new paradigm it represents for electronic circuit theory.

And the payoff could be huge:

"This new circuit element solves many problems with circuitry today--since it improves in performance as you scale it down to smaller and smaller sizes," said Chua. "Memristors will enable very small nanoscale devices to be made without generating all the excess heat that scaling down transistors is causing today."

Glenn Reynolds will be all over this, given his love of nanotech.

Some progress on replacing the M4.

This AP story raises hope that a replacement could be possible (thanks, once again, to Tom Coburn):

HARTFORD, Conn. - No weapon is more important to tens of thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan than the carbine rifle. And for well over a decade, the military has relied on one company, Colt Defense of Hartford, Conn., to make the M4s they trust with their lives.
ADVERTISEMENT

Now, as Congress considers spending millions more on the guns, this exclusive arrangement is being criticized as a bad deal for American forces as well as taxpayers, according to interviews and research conducted by The Associated Press.

"What we have is a fat contractor in Colt who's gotten very rich off our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan," says Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla.

Read the whole thing.

Meditations on depression.

Some wag once said that depression is anger without enthusiasm, and they knew what they were talking about. Depression takes the energy out of me one molecule, one erg, one step at a time. I’m constantly tired, unable to concentrate, stumbling around waiting for the day to end. Then when I do finally get to sleep it’s usually furtive and drug-induced. And so it’s off to bed I go for another try.

A solar system more like ours.

And maybe they're even more common than we thought. Time to adjust my Drake equation inputs.

Astronomers say they have found a miniature version of our own solar system 5,000 light years across the galaxy — the first planetary system that really looks like our own, with outer giant planets and room for smaller inner planets.

Fifteen minutes of infamy.

So I'm trying my hand at podcasting. So enjoy.

M4 update: Army making it up as they go along.

Army Times reports that the Army had a rather strange method of counting up the number of faults in their November 2007 dust test of the M4 and three competitors at the Aberdeen Proving Ground:

Army weapons officials briefed members of Congress and reporters on M4 carbine performance numbers that excluded more than half of the embattled carbine’s failures in a round of reliability tests.

Army testers threw out hundreds of M4 carbine failures from a reliability test this summer, causing the number of Class 1 and Class 2 stoppages, those that soldiers can clear themselves, to drop from 678 to 296, according to an Army briefing document.

It should be noted that this test is the latest of three tests since last year. Army officials defended the M4 before the results of this latest test were released:

The first two tests, one in late 2006 and one in July, involved just M16s and M4s.

Dust test three, which was completed in November, compared the M4’s performance to the Heckler & Koch XM8, the FNH USA’s Special Operations Forces Combat Assault Rifle and the H&K 416.

Army weapons officials praised the M4’s performance before members of Congress and reporters Dec. 17, emphasizing that the weapon experienced only 296 stoppages during dust test two this summer.

DISCREPANCY A CONCERN
By comparison, the results of dust test three show the M4 suffering 863 of the same kind of stoppages and finishing last in the test. Brig. Gen. Mark Brown said Army officials are concerned over this gap of 567 stoppages since the test criteria for both tests were the same.

“You can see that if you look at the performance of the M4 in dust test two, the results would have put it right in the shot group with the other three weapons for Class 1, 2 and 3 stoppages — no mathematically statistical difference,” Brown, the commander of Program Executive Office Soldier, told reporters Dec. 17. “The problem is at this point in time, at this stage of the test analysis, we don’t know what caused the difference on performance between dust test two and dust test three.”

But in a July 23 story, Army Times reported that the M4 suffered 678 of these failures in test two, citing the test briefing document a congressional source said he received from the Army.

‘GIVING JAMS ... AN ALIBI’
The congressional source said the discrepancy between the 678 failures the Army briefed to members of Congress initially after the test this summer and the 296 included in the Dec. 17 briefing, a difference of 382 stoppages means “the final report is not telling us how many times the weapon jams. It’s giving 50 percent of the M4’s jams an alibi and not reporting them.”

This is some damning stuff. The Army, as Defense Industry Daily predicted, has basically cooked the books. Why?

Testing Mars Edit picture upload interface.

How'd I do?

M4 update: M4 fails, Army doesn't care.

As noted in this previous entry, the Army was forced by Senator Tom Coburn to retest its M4 carbine against 3 other competitors at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, with the report to be filed this month. The test is done, the report is in, and, as the indispensable Defense Industry Daily site notes, the Army couldn't care less:

Dec 18/07: The US Army publishes "M-4 Carbine Has High Soldier Confidence Despite Test." Not exactly a headline to inspire confidence, as the Army acknowledges that the M4 Carbine finished last among the 4 contenders – but amazingly, asserts that the rifle is just fine and shows no interest in buying even the HK416's parts swap-out into the existing M4:

"After being exposed to the heavy dusting, 10 of each weapon fired 6,000 rounds apiece. They were fired in 50 120-round cycles. Each was then wiped and re-lubricated at the 600 round mark. After 1,200 rounds were fired from each weapon, they were fully cleaned and re-lubricated… "While the M-4 finished fourth out of four, 98 percent of all the rounds fired from it went off down range as they were supposed to do," Brig. Gen. [Mark] Brown [commander of Program Executive Office Soldier and the Natick Soldier Systems Center] said. "However, the three other candidates did perform better at about a 99 percent rate or better, which is a mathematically statistically significant difference, but not an operationally statistical difference.".... The Army has put an option on an existing contract for 64,450 M4s, according to the general."

"A mathematically statistically significant difference, but not an operationally statistical difference." Perhaps the US Army could put that on their recruiting posters, next to a picture of a jammed rifle.

DID also notes that

The M4 Carbine is the Army's existing weapon.

882 jams, 1 jam every 68 rounds, again using heavy lubrication. In addition all 10 of the M4 barrels needed to be replaced, and a number of their parts were replaced during the test. None of the cold hammer forged HK416 and XM-8 barrels needed replacement.

The HK416 is a modified M4 carbine, which can be and has been converted from existing rifles. Used by US Special Forces.

233 jams, 1 jam every 257 rounds, 3.77x more reliable than the M4.

FN SCAR is US special Forces' new weapon, designed by SOSOCM. It just went into production in late 2007.

226 jams, 1 jam every 265 rounds, 3.85x more reliable than the M4

XM-8 is a developmental rifle. It's an advanced version of HK's G36, a rifle in wide use by many NATO armies. The US Army cancelled the XM-8 weapons family 2 years ago.

127 jams, I jam every 472 rounds, 6.95x more reliable than the M4.

Let that sink in for a moment: At one point two years ago, the US Army had in hand a weapons system 6.95 times more reliable than the one it now issues to its non-SOF personnel--and it canceled the system. What's wrong with this picture?

Previously unforeseen uses for Venn diagrams.

From Chris's Invincible Super Blog. The comments alone are worth the link; this is why geeks are so much fun.

Update on M4 testing.

As I noted waaay back here, Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) forced the Army to retest the M4 against viable competitors at the dust testing facility at Aberdeen Proving Grounds. According to this article in Army Times (copied on Coburn's official website) testing should be done by now and a report should be done by late December. We'll have to see how fair the tests were -- I have my doubts -- but if they were fair at all maybe we'll see the M4s replaced by far more reliable HK416s. A guy can dream.

e-book readers: No, we're not there yet.

As a certified gadget freak I couldn't help but notice Amazon's splashy introduction of their Kindle e-book reader. I have been thinking on and off about e-books ever since I got my first Handspring Deluxe and thought I'd be able to forgo lugging around a ton of books everywhere (I read MUCH more then than I do now). Unfortunately, the screen was too small and the resolution was too low, and the combination probably contributed to the current parlous state of my vision. Laptops aren't a solution because they require lugging too, and the screen is backlit (usually) and thus just as hard on the eyes as my old Handspring. That's why I was so excited about the introduction of Sony's first e-book reader, the PRS-500. Then I got a load of the price -- over $300 -- and wasn't quite so excited anymore. What's more, as a first-out-of-the-gate product, it had all the usual missteps (resolution is not good, handling of PDFs is clunky, appearance is unimpressive). Sony's new reader, the PRS-505, apparently is some improvement in appearance and resolution but is still expensive at around $300.

Hence my curiosity about Amazon's Kindle, and my disappointment in it. First, the price: e-book reader makers need to get it into their heads that when they price these things any higher than $200 they are cutting their own throats. Second, the Kindle looks like a Fisher-Price toy. The PRS-505 is far more handsome, and you wouldn't mind being seen with it, while the Kindle looks like something your mom saddled you with because you were too poor to afford anything better. Thirdly and most importantly, if you can't find a way to read PDF files usefully on the damn thing then it is not going to sell. Let me emphasize this: READING E-BOOKS IS GREAT BUT READING PDFs IS WHAT MOST PEOPLE WANT THIS THING FOR. PDF conversion on the Kindle is experimental, and while you can e-mail PDF files to the device, if the file is complex it may not display correctly. Sorry, you lose. If Amazon solves the PDF problem and drops $100 from the price (and maybe makes it look a little less plastic) then I might just get one, but as it stands they aren't there yet. But I'll be watching, and waiting.

At the Heritage Foundation, an insider's take on modern left-liberalism.

This video has been making the rounds of the center-right blogosphere for a while now and I just never got around to putting it up. It's a video of writer Evan Sayet giving a small gathering of Heritage Foundation interns his take on modern liberalism in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. It's cogent and insightful, and I wish I had remembered to put it up before now. Enjoy:

I've been bad.

Ugh. No postings since September 11. It's not like anybody reads this (sniff) but I could acknowledge its existence every now and then, I guess. To make up for my negligence, here are some pictures for those of you out there who don't get a proper autumn (Florida, I'm looking at you).

Six years later.

Never forgive. Never forget.

MSM malpractice examined.

Over at Protein Wisdom, commenter and guest blogger Karl posts a comprehensive, link-heavy, well-written critique of the mainstream media's coverage of events in Iraq. The entry hangs together well as a whole, comprehensive argument, so excerpting it is difficult; however, this is a critical passage, in my opinion:

The risks of remote journalism are amplified by the danger of groupthink. At its worst, accesss to the same small set of primary (and perhaps dubious) sources can result in the lead story of The New York Times being cobbled together “out of wire reports and late-night recollections from exhausted correspondents.” Moreover, as Oppenheim observed, “(m)ost journalists did not support this war to begin with, and feel vindicated whenever the effort stumbles.” Bartle Bull, who has written about Iraq for the New York Times and lived with a family in Sadr City, went so far as to suggest that the errors of hotel journalism were not those of laziness as much as a “weirdly personal” obsession with the notion that Iraq must fail. I am generally loathe to attribute to malice that which may be explained by incompetence, but it is possibile that both influence the coverage of Iraq.

The entry is generously sourced, and Karl has obviously polished this piece. Go partake of it, for it is good.

New M4 tests (with timeline and link roundup)

Defense Industry Daily does yoeman's duty with a huge article about the new testing of carbines forced on the Army by Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK). This is what forced the new testing:

An aide to Sen. Tom Coburn [R-OK] agreed, and added that the substantial price reduction created by the mere threat of an open competition in 2006 was evidence that Colt had been using its sole-source status to overcharge the government. The Senator has sent a formal letter to the Secretary of the Army requesting an open competition in order to ensure both the best deal, and the best off-the shelf rifle that incorporates modern improvements.

DID is notably cynical about the prospect of a fair test by the Army, which seems to be almost pathological in its dedication to the jam-prone M4:

Within its chosen regimen, there are 3 key ways the Army may choose to bias the test. One is the size of the particulate in the dust chamber – which can be made large in relative terms to lower the number of problems with fouling and jams. The biggest problems in theater are with the very fine particulates. This is especially relevant given the October 2004 report prepared by the Desert Research Institute for the US military. "Geochemical and Physical Characteristics of Iraqi Dust and Soil Samples" [PDF format, 2.9 MB] stated that:

"....current chamber test methodology misrepresents real-world conditions. The character of the soils and dust collected from areas of military activity in Iraq is greatly different from the material used in current weapons testing procedures. Current procedures employ laboratory generated dust that is 99.7% silicon dioxide (i.e. quartz), contains no salt or reactive chemicals, and contains coarser particle sizes than most of the Iraq samples. Use of this material cannot simulate conditions in Iraq that have contributed to the weapons failures."

The next item to watch is whether the rifles used are randomly chosen, or cherry picked and then pre-maintained to perform at an unusual reliability level vs. a field weapon. A third way of gaming the testing system involves the level of lubrication used. One source noted that the first dust test new M4s had 9,836 jams in 60,000 rounds – almost one jam every 6 rounds. The Army kept working on the test until they figured out a "generous lubrication" approach that used far more than the manufacturer recommended, but lowered jams to 1 in 88 rounds. A fair test must match the manufacturer's manual for each weapon, or use the same lubrication for each weapon based on the minimum recommended among all test weapons.

DID also notes the weapons against which the M4 is to be tested, including the FN SCAR, the H&K XM8, and the H&K M416 -- all of which would make excellent replacements for the M4.

(For reference, also take a look at the article's timeline about the entire procurement mess.)

Have I mentioned how much I loathe summer?

I mean really, fat people were meant to live in cold places, and I’m definitely gravitationally challenged. Portly. Stout. Well-proportioned. Hefty. Husky. You get the picture. And speaking of pictures, here’s what I’m longing for:



(Shamelessly stolen from here.)

Come, let's run to the empty sea.

Come, let’s run to the empty sea
And build a boat of silent dreams
And peaceful escape.

Come, let’s climb a snowy peak
And find the naked trees
And cleansing snowfall.

Come, let’s flee from the world
And watch the clouds unfurl
Their swallowing gray.

Let’s find a place to run away.

Reuters: "Scientists Find Signs of Water Beyond Solar System"

Water, water, everywhere, even in the atmosphere of extrasolar gas giants:

LONDON (Reuters) - Astronomers said on Wednesday they had discovered the best evidence yet of water outside our own solar system -- in the atmosphere of a giant planet 60 light years from Earth.

Writing in the scientific journal Nature, researchers said the planet itself, HD 189733b, was unlikely to harbor life but evidence supported the search for life in other solar systems.

"We're thrilled to have identified clear signs of water on a planet that is trillions of miles away," Giovanna Tinetti, a European Space Agency fellow at the Institute d'Astrophysique de Paris in France who led the study, was quoted as saying in an accompanying news release.

...

"Although HD 189733b is far from being habitable, and actually provides a rather hostile environment, our discovery shows that water might be more common out there than previously thought, and our method can be used in the future to study more 'life-friendly' environments," Tinetti said.

Investigations showed the planet, which orbits a star in the constellation of Vulpecula (the Fox), appeared larger at wavelength bands that corresponded to water, suggesting the substance was present in the atmosphere.

"We find that absorption by water vapor is the most likely cause of the wavelength-dependent variations in the effective radius of the planet at the infrared wavelengths," the researchers said.

HD 189733 b is known as a "hot Jupiter" planet -- like the solar system's gas planet Jupiter but far hotter.

We're getting closer and closer to discovering an extrasolar terrestrial world with water on it. Soon, I hope...

Red, White, and Blue Sky.

Even the sky is celebrating! ;-) Happy 231st birthday, America!



(Via Astronomy Picture of the Day.)

New York tourist picture, part 1 x 10^32

I'm pretty sure this shot has been taken rather frequently. It's still pretty cool, though: