The AP Top 10 for 2003 contains what?

It is near the new year as I write this, and one of the stories on the Web is on Fox News, showing the AP top 10 stories of the year. This is good to do to review over the old year before embarking on a new. Here are the top 10 according to the Associated Press:

1. War in Iraq
2. Columbia Disaster
3. California Recall
4. SARS
5. Northeast Blackout
6. Improving Economy
7. California Wildfires
8. Bush Tax Cut
9. Elizabeth Smart
10. Democratic Campaign

One way you can tell if this order is correct is to take two events and see if the higher is really more important than the lower. For example, the California Recall is clearly more important than SARS, since SARS affected at most a million people (counting those that were really concerned about it), while the recall concerned a lot more. Basically this is correct (although I think SARS is somewhat high) with one glaring exception. Elizabeth Smart. This was one single missing person, and so does not qualify as a national story; it is strictly local. So what's it doing on this list? Hurricane Isabel is not on this list, but surely it is more important than Elizabeth Smart. Elizabeth Smart affected only a few people, while Hurricane Isabel affected tens of millions of people. I think the American editors and publishers who contributed to the poll should reconsider their vote. It is really good news that Elizabeth was found alive, but to put this on a list of nationally important events like those that affect the livelihood of millions or those that could determine our next President is sheer hype.

Yuletide 2003

Well, I had my Christmas, or Yuletide, as it is for me, since I do not believe in any special significance in Jesus Christ. However, the idea of a special child did take a part in my Yuletide for 2003. I went to a service of the First Unitarian Church of Richmond, and heard a Christmas story by Cyndi Simpson. Yes, this is the same Cyndi Simpson that wanted to give an invocation to the Chesterfield Board of Supervisors, but was not allowed to by the board because of her Wiccan religion. It was a story I had never heard before, of a woman, La Befana, who lived by herself with her cooking and her broom. Yes, according to the cultural stereotype, she was a witch. A parade came to town and a boy ran out to her house, saying they were going to see the Royal Child of Light and give him gifts. So La Befana cooked up a storm and took a whole bunch of gifts for this child, and got her broom to fly and rode it after the parade. She did not find the Child, nor did she ever, but she kept showering gifts on all the children, thinking that any one of them could be the child.

I had heard this story earlier, of someone who was trying to find someone special to give a gift to, but could not find him, so he gave gifts to everyone thinking that any one could be this person. I could see a person hunting around for the perfect job, and that he wants to perform it well, but never find it, and instead does the best he can at each job he gets anyway, thinking that each of these jobs could be the perfect job. I could think of some man hunting for the perfect mate, an L6 (see "Logarithms keep Dr. Brown in Perspective" for definition of L6) or even better, and in the meantime treating each woman he meets as though she were this perfect woman. In each case the protagonist does a lot of good and achieves his purposes with less than the perfect, while hunting down the perfect and never finding it. So I find it quite inspiring, and I am glad to have heard it. It inspired me so much that I wrote a song symbolizing the journey of La Befana.

Terror Confusion

Once again we are under Orange Alert. It seems that we have picked up some "chatter" indicating a terrorist attack may be immanent. An Orange Condition is High and means that there is a high chance of a terrorist attack (however, "high" is not very well defined). So of course the media is hyping it up for all they can get. In so doing they are really causing some bad confusion. They say that "The national threat level was elevated to the Orange, or High level earlier this week." They mean that it was increased to that level. It is their use of "elevated" that causes the problem. "Elevated" is the next lower state of terror alert, the Yellow level, one below Orange. So the media seem to be saying that the level is both Yellow and Orange and is really causing some confusion. They should avoid using "elevated" to mean raised to a level, because "elevated" is now a specific term meaning a specific level. It's like saying that tomorrow's weather is cool, man, because it is the first day of the year that it has really gotten warm out. If you really like something, you can say it's cool, but not when describing weather. In the same way, you can say that things have been elevated to another level, but not when describing terror conditions.

Religious sayings

I heard an interesting sermon from a UU minister today. He got really emphatic at one point in the sermon, and I got his point. To me it can be summarized thus: There is no Promised Land, except for the entire Earth that is the Promised Land for us all. How true that is. Where else in the solar system can we live? Those who think that a certain segment of Earth belongs to them as their Promised Land will find that it doesn't.

Here are other sayings I have come up with, that combine more than one of humankind's religious principles:

Christianity and Islam: Blessed are the meek, the sick, and the downtrodden, for if you don't give to these, you are not a true believer.

Christianity and Zen Buddhism: If you see Christ the Son of God along the road with his host of angels, crucify him.

Islam and Taoism: There is no God but the unspeakable Allah; the Allah of which we speak is not the Real Allah.

And some of my favorite sayings from the world's religions:

Christianity: Let he who has not sinned throw the first stone. - Jesus

Islam: If you don't give to the poor and sick, you are not a true Muslim.

Taoism: The tao that can be spoken is not the Real Tao.

Unitarian-Universalism: We affirm the principle of the never-ending quest for truth and meaning.

Hinduism: There are many paths to the Ultimate, but they all lead to the same goal.

Yuletide Fantasy Run 2003

Once again I ran at night this season to find out what kind of Yule displays there were. My rules were the same as past years, with the main one being that white floodlights eliminate a house from being my Display of the Year. I found many interesting displays, and also a few dark areas. The house with the star at the top radiating from it to the ground and a lit up ground was still there. One lot had red lights all over a series of bushes, while another one had reindeer that moved their heads. The Display of the Year for me this year was the one with the star at the top. Another house had lights all over the trees in the yard up high in the air, and it looked really impressive when you stand next to it; however, he had a floodlight on the roof blaring down on it incongruously. I have a Star Saver award, as well. To qualify for this, a display must have absolutely no white lights of any kind. I did not see too many like that. My own house does not qualify, but if you turn off the white lights in the front, it does, and is my choice for this year, featuring two colorful trees in the windows and twelve red 3-candle candelabras. The most unusual display featured three flat snowmen kicking their feet in their air. So that's it for this year.

Will Dean Be One of Our Greatest Presidents?

So how does the Presidential race look right now, with Saddam captured? It will give an immediate boost to Bush, but it won't last. Already, attacks are continuing at pretty much the same pace as before. Since Saddam had no cellular phone and absolutely no way of communicating with others on the outside, therefore, the bulk of insurgents in Iraq are anti-US rather than pro-Saddam, and so they will not go away. So there will be basically no change.

Right now it seems that Bush will get elected unless the Iraq situation gets out of hand so bad that it causes keys to topple, and the economy sputters. This is certainly possible. But what it means is that if Dean is elected, then these things will have occurred. This means that Dean will have a hard task ahead of him, trying to run a country whose economy is listless and with the Iraq situation getting even worse than ever. I don't know if I want that kind of job; it would be highly stressful. If Bush gets elected, that means he will have either a good economy or a good situation in Iraq with him, or both, so he will have an easy time of it.

But look - how will the economy topple and Iraq get much worse? By the Fourth Turning starting then, that's how. These conditions will smack Bush in the face and lead to his defeat, leaving Dean with the task of putting it back together. Dean will be a Fourth Turning President, and the previous Fourth Turning Presidents - Washington, Lincoln, and FD Roosevelt, have been the greatest Presidents we have had. This means, unlikely as it seems now, that Dean will become one of our greatest Presidents also. He will be the one that will get us over the Iraq mess, a weak economy or even a depression, and the results of the upcoming oil and other resources shortage.

However, if Bush gets elected, that will because 2005 will enter still in the Third Turning. During Bush's second term, he will get whacked by the Fourth Turning - probably the oil shortage, and he will either resign or lose the next election in a landslide, perhaps to Hillary Clinton. This means that Bush will go down in history as one of our bottom-tier presidents, and Hillary will be one of our Greatest Presidents.

So it is interesting that the answer to the question, "Is being the President of this country going to be an enormous challenge?" will be Yes if Dean gets elected and No if Bush gets re-elected, and this is concluded based on a combination of the Lichtman Keys theory and the Fourth Turning theory. It will be interesting to see what happens.

We Got Him!

Today when I got up and looked at the Web I saw an unlikely but possible event had just happened. US and other forces in Iraq had captured Saddam Hussein! This sounds like a joyous day, especially for Iraq. The dictator has been captured. He was the Ace of Spades. But Iraq reminds me more of chess than of cards. They captured a bishop there, a pawn here, and here a rook gets captured, and then over the summer a couple of queens. Today, however, was checkmate. Supposedly the game is over. But I also thought about Dorothy's arrival in Oz that killed the Wicked Witch of the East. The people all started singing "Oh, Ho, the Wicked Witch, the Wicked Witch is dead!" and I thought of the Lewis Carroll poem "Jabberwocky", and especially the lyrics "Oh frabjous day! Calloo! Callay!" and "Hast Thou Killed the Jabberwock, my Son?"

This Jabberwock is not dead, however. That is good, because he can talk about what's been going on in Iraq for the past 30 years or so. Now with the head of the old regime gone, it seems that things should improve remarkably in Iraq. Indeed, this may happen. Perhaps the people conducting the attacks were so doing in Saddam's name, and with Saddam captured, the appeal of his mystique may vanish.

However, there are some who think other things may happen. An article by Ayaz Amir in the Pakistani web periodical Dawn, says this: "If Saddam were captured or killed, this resistance, far from dying down, would gather more strength." He says this is because the resistance to occupation forces is more broad-based than just Saddam loyalists and is focused more on America.

So now we need to know which is the case. That may determine whether Bush gets reelected. If the Iraq situation remarkably improves, he may become unbeatable, as Lichtman himself said today. If the Iraq situation gets worse, Bush may squeak by if the economy stays good, but if it deteriorates, then Bush is in trouble. The next two or three weeks may tell the story.

Here it comes, the Inconceivable Prime Number

I learned today that the largest prime number ever discovered was discovered recently. A prime number is an integer that is not -1, 0, or 1, and has no factors other than itself and 1. Examples are 2, 3, 5, 7, and 97. The newly discovered prime number is 2^20,996,011 - 1. This means multiply 2 by itself 20,996,001 times and subtract 1. The result has 6,320,430 digits. This is getting to be really huge.

When I was a child, I learned about prime numbers such as 2¹²⁷ - 1, which can fit on a single line of print, as being the biggest. This is a scientific number. If you click on that link, you get my classification of numbers into six categories: counting, statistical, scientific, literary, inconceivable, and indescribable. In addition, I subdivide literary numbers into poem numbers, novel numbers, and encyclopedia numbers. As I grew older, the largest prime number became a poem number, and once computers got into the act, the largest prime quickly became a novel number. The prime that was discovered today is on the verge of becoming an encyclopedia number, which means, printed out, it could fit a small encyclopedia.

The number was discovered by 200,000 or so computers acting in parallel. Many people have connected their computers to a site that computes these numbers, using the people's own computer to do the computations. The technique has been used before to discover what would be much more earth-shaking, namely extraterrestrial Life, by analyzing the data from Aricebo.

As computers get better and faster, and more and more people are willing to get involved, the day may come when the largest prime number will be inconceivable. When that happens, they can't print it out or count it out; there is not enough time in a lifetime to do it. This happens when it exceeds 20 billion digits. So here it comes! The Inconceivable Prime Number.

Hyperflu Emergency

I had blogged yesterday that the hypermedia is hyping up the flu epidemic too much. This has resulted in some interesting results today. First of all, the authorities now say the flu season will not be much different than in past years, even though it has been reported in all 50 states (well, so has the common cold). Secondly, in the Richmond area, it has caused an "external emergency". Specifically, so many people have arrived in hospitals sick with flu that it has filled every bed in the Richmond area! They are canceling all but emergency surgeries, and using a system by which a hospital is selected for a person based on whether that hospital has room. To me this is serious. What if Isabel wood should hit a tree chopper and cause him to have serious injuries? Where does he go? Does he just lay there and die? And guess what is also happening now? The hypermedia is now hyping the other way! They are urging those only moderately sick and under 65 (not 50) now to go to the hospital.

I think a "lessons learned" review of this crisis could contain a recommendation to forbid the media from reporting on any illness except those which have been approved by a hospital board. The media need to act more responsibly.

Nader won't do as well this time

I see that Nader is again running for President. The last time he did that, in 2000, he could be said to have thrown the election from Gore to Bush. Nader took only 2% in Florida, but that was much greater than the margin of difference between Gore and Bush. Nader threw Florida from Gore to Bush, and threw the whole Presidency that way as well.

So now he endangers the Democrats' 2004 challenger to Bush, probably Howard Dean. Or does he? What happens if he were to make a major run for the President and get at least 5% of the vote? According to the Lichtman key theory, it would hurt Bush, as it would cost Bush the third party key (3DP). But it would also help Bush, as Nader would take almost all of his votes away from the Democratic candidate. That's a contradiction. This contradiction shows that my "what happens" above can't happen, and so therefore Nader will have little effect on the upcoming election. In my view, he may be lucky to get 1%. There is more of an imperative to stop Bush now than there was in 1999 and 2000, and so I expect that many in the Nader camp in 2000 will vote for the Democrat this time.

Pledge of Allegiance, Wal-Mart Style

I pledge allegiance to the stores
Of the United States of Awalmartia
And to the conglomeration for which they stand:
One Nation, Under Wal-Mart, indivisible
With low prices and low choices for all.

Abercrombie and Fitch Advertising

I had heard that Abercrombie and Fitch, an old prestigious catalog apparel company, was advertising its products with "sex". They would show pictures of young men and women with no shirt or no clothes on lying next to each other, and one case they show a group nude scene, with the title "group sex". The idea that they had is that would help sell their products to young people. Many people object to that way of involving sex in their catalog. That's really up to the viewer. Sex is a part of nature, of our nature. The problem I have with Abercrombie and Fitch's using sex in their advertising is that sex has nothing to do with the clothes they sell. They are bringing up something irrelevant.

Actually, they are bringing up something that defeats their purpose. They sell clothes, so why do they show people without clothes on? That makes as much sense as a laundromat in a nudist colony. If you want to sell a shirt, you need to show someone wearing a shirt, not a shirtless hunk. So they should show people wearing clothes, and not just any clothes. They should show them wearing Abercrombie and Fitch clothes. That's how they sell their product.

Flu Hype

It's flu season and some flu bugs are going around that are different from usual. So what does the media do? They hype it up. But this is a case where the hypermedia could be doing harm.

Some flu bugs are around early this fall. This is a potential danger, so perhaps people should be given the option of taking flu shots. The media hypes it up, however, and says that everyone should get one as soon as possible, even though the most dangerous strain is so recent that the vaccine does not protect against it. So what happens? A huge herd of people stream into doctors' offices and clinics and request the flu shots. So what happens? Naturally. It runs out. Now the people who may need it now won't get it. And there is another danger with this hyping it up. Many people are getting flu shots that probably don't need it. They don't get the flu often or they will have only mild or moderate symptoms if they do get it. I remember back in the 1970s that the hypermedia hyped up the Swine Flu to the level of a Major Scare. Everyone went out and got the swine flu shots, including myself. Turns out the epidemic was a bust. Only two or three people got the swine flu, and many more than that got a really dangerous side effect: Guillian-Barre syndrome, an inflammation of the nerves that can cause paralysis.

So I am both skeptical and apprehensive about this hypering of the flu this season. I hope we don't have any Guillain-Barre syndromes this time around.

Bloggerrhea

I am using a benefit of Blogger right now, namely the mailback feature. When I submit an entry on this blog, Blogger will send me an email containing the text of my blog. I thought that would be helpful. But Blogger is doing it too much. I submitted only three blogs tonight, but Blogger responded with seven emails! Why do I need so many emails after I blog something. I send something, I get an email; OK, that confirms that I blogged successfully. I get another email, alright already, Blogger. I get the message.

Earthquake in Virginia

Today I felt the strongest earthquake I have ever experienced. It happened at 2003 December 9 1559. I was at my office, and was preparing an email to send to the other members of my branch. I got the email ready, and hit "Send". Instantly the entire place started shaking back and forth. It did so for about five or six back and forth movements, and wondered what was shaking the building. My office is above the loading dock, so I wondered if something heavy was unloaded from a truck on the dock. But it seemed too heavy for that.

Others in my office noticed it, too, and I wondered if htose in the far side of my office had felt it. I went outside and saw nothing unusual. I had thought several; possibilities: earthquake, terrorist attack, ordnance exploding (I work near where military weapons are discharged occasionally), or a major accident below on the loading dock. The trip outside showed that it wasn't something at the dock, and the sky was clear except for normal clouds, eliminating the ordnance, which would have to be as strong as a MOAB to cause what I felt. I called my wife and found out that she had not felt anything; she had just arrived home from the grocery store. I wanted to call someone to see if this was local or widespread.

I went inside and saw a TV screen on a local Richmond station. They were reporting a mysterious shaking. If it were a terrorist attack, the national stations would be playing. To be felt here with nothing unusual looking here, it would have to have been a nuke, and the TV would be reporting national news. I therefore concluded that it was an earthquake. I looked earthquakes up on the Internet and found that what I experienced was IV-V on the Mercalli scale, and hence R4.5 on the Richter scale. Sure enough, later news reports said that it was indeed an R4.5 quake, and it was centered near Provost, Virginia, near the Powhatan wildlife refuge.

This was by far the most powerful earthquake I have ever experienced. I had experienced only one other earthquake, on 1968 November 9 in Evanston, Illinois, when I was a graduate student at Northwestern University. I was lying on my bed then and felt a floating sensation, and thought that was caused by my being somewhat drowsy. I found out several hours later that it was an R5.3 earthquake with an epicenter in southern Illinois, and that it had caused numerous reports of damage in Missouri and southern Illinois. I also was in an R4.0 earthquake in the Los Angeles area on 1991 July 9 or so, but did not feel it because I was in a car at the time.

But this one was the strongest I have ever felt. This year has really been one for natural disasters: Hurricane Isabel, a tornado five days later, and now an earthquake, plus huge quantities of rain. I suppose next will be a huge snowstorm.

We know what we don't know what we don't know what we know

I heard recently that the most abstruse language used by a politician award was given to US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, for this comment: "Reports that say something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; 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." I have a feeling that there is a lot that Mr. Rumsfeld does not know that he does not know about. Or maybe I don't know what I am talking about, or that I know that there is something I don't know about what Mr. Rumsfeld says, but maybe I really don't know that and maybe I know something that he does not know about what I don't know about how much people in Mr. Rumsfeld's department really know or don't know about each other. But I know this for certain: Mr. Rumsfeld's comment certainly had some people going about dizzy with knowing circles running above their heads.

He did it again

Update on the phone-spamming Delegate. I got a call from a woman in his office explaining to me that he was trying to find out from the electorate how they felt about taxes. Then, incredibly, at 1933 this evening, he did it again. I got a computer call from the same 703 area code. If he wants input from me on taxes, he needs to do it by US Postal mail or by a call from a human on the telephone, not a computer call on the telephone. If I get the call again, I will block the 703 number using Call Block if I can. In the meantime I will consider this incident the next time an election comes around in deciding who I will vote for.

Computer Call from State Congressman

This evening, at 2003 December 8 7:28 pm, I received a call from a computer saying that he was my State Delegate taking a survey of the people in my district. He has thereby used the same tactics that spammers and telemarketers use. To me, when a political candidate resorts to computer calls for any purpose, he degrades his candidacy, and when an elected official does the same, he earns my disrespect for him. If he or his staff wants to talk to me, then he should call me in person, not by computer. Contacting by computer shows he does not care about me. This is even more so since the telephone number he called from was from the 703 area code; his district is in the 757 and 804 area codes

It is possible the call did not come from his office. If that's the case, then there is someone out there stealing his identity and impersonating him, and that someone needs to be stopped.

I have emailed him about this matter, and have emailed his Democratic opponents as well. I hope that he discontinues the practice of trying to phone me by computer without talking to me by person.

Blogger Trouble

This morning I composed the blog "Religion in Computers", and I tried to blog it but couldn't. Instead, I got "this page cannot be displayed" when I tried to go to the Blogger site. So I waited until I got home from church, but still "this page cannot be displayed". I tested all combinations of ISP and computer and found that there was most likely something wrong with Blogger. Later on in the day, it came back up, but it would not let me blog anything. Finally now I can blog. There have been problems with Blogger before. I hope Google can do something about it - Google is reliable. If they can't and the difficulties increase, I may find another place to blog.

Religion in Computers

Today I found on the Internet an article about this device, a "3dfx Voodoo 1 4mb PCI w/o Cable 3D Accelerator" It is a graphics accelerator card. But note that the brand name has the name of a religion in it. Why did they do that? We don't have Christian hard drives, Islamic monitors, Buddhist RAM or Wiccan mice. So why do we have Voodoo Accelerators? Voodoo is the name of a valid religion, one of the original religions in western Africa. There is a lot of hype in our culture about Voodoo, and maybe that is what got this card manufacturer to call its accelerators Voodoo. But if they would not call a hard drive Episcopalian or a CD-ROM drive Unitarian, then they should not call a graphics accelerator Voodoo. 3dfx should find another name.

OO Programming Language Developers need to learn English

One of the principles of English is that proper nouns and adjectives are capitalized. For example, "car" is not capitalized for it is a common noun. It describes a car in general. However, "Toyota #137245" is capitalized because this is a specific instance of a car. It is a proper noun. The word "person" is not capitalized because it is a general word for any person. The words "George Walker Bush" are capitalized because they describe a specific person.

Object Oriented programming language developers have come up with a similar concept, namely that of a class. A class is a type of structure that is defined and generic, representing any old thing in the class. An instance of a class is a specific example of the class. An example of a class would be "cat". It would have attributes such as weight, breed, and the pitch of its meow. A specific instance of this class might be Boots. His attributes would then be 15 lb, tuxedo kitty, and high-pitched. I suppose you recognize this as exactly the same concept as that of common noun and proper noun in English.

Well if so, then why do OO programmers do it the other way around? In English we would say:

My cat is named Boots.

But in an OO language such as C# or Java, we would say:

Cat boots = new Cat;

That's just the reverse of how English does it! All of the books I have seen capitalize classes and lowercase instances. Why? Why can't we be consistent and why can't we notice OO programming in our everyday language when it exists? When I program, I am going to write

cat Boots = new cat;

and that will be that.

Oil Shortage Jokes

Today I hit upon an interesting picture on the Oil Crisis site. It shows the next two models of SUVs. The first is one that comes with its own portable drilling rig. The other is the DonCar. You need to click on that to see what a DonCar is. I also like the couple coming into a back to ask for a loan to fill the SUV's gas tank. What other Oil Shortage jokes can we come up with?

The Oil Shortage Traffic Light. A policeman at the center of an intersection yelling "Red!!", "Green!!", "Yellow!!".

The Oil Shortage Traffic Cop Uniform Fashion. A suit that is one-third bright phosphorescent red, one-third phosphorescent yellow, and one-third phosphorescent green. Four such police officers form a square and turn at appropriate times to show the appropriate color to the bicycles, pedestrians, and buggies that want to cross.

The Oil Shortage One-Person Airliner. A long-necked swan. You just hop on him, tell him "fly", and you're on your way!

The Oil Shortage Gasoline Price Sign. Each day the price goes up by zero. That's right, zero. They just add a zero onto the end of the price. Today's it's $3, tomorrow it's $30, the next day, $300 and so forth.

I suppose you can come up with other possibilities. We all like to laugh at ourselves at times, and we need some levity while considering the impact of the future shortage of petroleum which we know will come sooner or later, maybe around 2011 or so.

Abstract Wars

I read that the official national military strategy of the US includes the principle, "The enemy is terrorism." Whaaa??? How can our enemy be an abstract concept? There are no guns, no grenades, no rocket launchers, no artillery shells, and certainly no weapons of mass destruction that are effective against an abstract concept, for such does not exist as material objects in our world. It's like holding a non-abelian group up at gunpoint. Or holding the number 666 up at gunpoint.

Let's stop warring against terrorism and see if we can control these violent acts by (3) defending ourselves against terrorist acts, (2) getting rid of terrorists, and especially (1) ensuring by our behavior and cooperation with other nations and people that there are no terrorists in the world to begin with.

A song a day

I came up with a new idea for journaling today. Call it songaling. This is that of composing a song each day. It is only about 16-32 measures long or so. The idea is that I would meditate briefly to get the songs that keep playing in my mind all the time and would influence what I would play out of my mind. Then I would play whatever comes up. Some interesting things have come up. After eight days, I have three rather pensive pieces, a Latin dance, a majestic composition sounding like a graduation song or a national anthem, a really weird piece, a blues number, and a 5/4 jig. The Latin number was inspired by my seeing a news segment on people who visit Cuba. Perhaps I could call it "What's so bad about Cuba?" or "¿Cuál es tan malo sobre Cuba?" I have put the anthem-like song on line because it is so inspiring; it is my Song of 2003 November 26. Click on the name to play it.

I don't know how long I can keep this up, but it provides a wide repertoire of my own music, some of which can serve as preludes at my church for instance, and if I continue it over a year, I will have written 366 compositions.

My Choice after the Debates

Well, it looks like the Democrats are at it again. They debated each other in Iowa over the weekend, with Lieberman absent, and Kerry and Edwards in Washington, ready to vote anytime on the Medicare bill. I watched the replay of the debates to determine which I like best. There were some good moments.

Ramsey Clark named incident after incident where George Dubya Bush turned off people both in this country and out and concluded that "He has not learned how to get along with others."

Dennis Kucinich emphasized that if it was illegal to go in there in the first place then it is illegal to stay there, and he pulled up a Washington Times (a Republican-leaning newspaper!) and showed four whole pages of pictures of servicemen that have lost their lives in Iraq.

Howard Dean said it was time to slow the tempo of the debates after Kerry kept hammering him on the Medicare theme and how Dean pushed through cuts in the Vermont legislature when he was governor.

Carol Moseley Brown said it was time to take the "Men Only" sign off the White House Door.

So which ones do I like now? Keep in mind that I would prefer even last place on this list to Bush and that if it came to a last-place to Bush contest for the Presidency, I would vote for last place easily. With that in mind, here is my preference:

1. Dick Gephardt. He is one of the older candidates, and it shows. He shows the best experience of any of the candidates. He has been through it all and apparently knows how to use that knowledge to help improve the lot of us all.

2. Tom Kucinich. He looks like one of these scrappy young candidates, but I like what he has to say. He voted against the war in Iraq, even while other Democrats were voting for it, and he expresses a world view rather than a parochial American view.

3. Howard Dean. I have seen some flaws in him, but he may be the best chance to defeat Bush next November. He was my choice earlier, and clearly expresses a choice separate from the President.

4. Joe Lieberman. He, like Gephardt, shows a lot of experience with the government. However, his being Jewish may be a liability. He will need to be careful not to show any favoritism for Israel and to show to Arabs that he is on their side as well as the side of Israel - a hard act to pull off. From what I have seen, he will be able to do this.

5. Al Sharpton. This candidate gets points for being more expressive with his beliefs, more so than with the other candidates. He expresses the same points as the others, which I mostly agree with, but he does it more forcefully. I think if he gets elected he will get things done but may have to tone down some of his passion.

6. Ramsey Clark. He expressed a belief in God in these talks, making me think he may not support such issues as taking "under God" out of the Pledge of Allegiance before allowing it in the schools. His initial waffling on the Iraq war concerns me a little. His background is that of a military general, which may not go well as the chief executive of a civilian government. He may have some charisma but not enough to topple the challenger-charisma Lichtman key.

7. Tom Edwards. He does not seem to offer anything unique that the other candidates don't have, and so as President he may be more cautious than some and let his Cabinet and Congress have more of a say than they would with a stronger President. He is said to have charisma, but in my opinion not enough to topple the challenger-charisma key.

8. John Kerry. I didn't care for his pressing Dean on the Medicare issues, and his initial support for attacking Iraq concerns me.

9. Carol Moseley Braun. She alone of the candidates would keep the soldiers in Iraq simply because we have them there. Al Sharpton offered a contrasting viewpoint.

And so there it is. I hope that Dean or Gephardt gets it, and that whoever it is will defeat Bush next November.

The Greatest Decision

I heard documentaries and other stories about President John F. Kennedy's life and his assassination. What struck me about it was the Cuban Missile Crisis. Looking back at what Kennedy did, I conclude that he made one of the best decisions ever made by a US President. Further, in so doing, he turned back demands on him that could have likely meant my early death at age 17 - and maybe yours, through a nuclear holocaust.

The problem started when Nikita Khrushchev wanted to counteract the presence of missiles in Turkey and Europe that were pointed at his country, the Soviet Union. He made the impetuous decision to put missiles in Cuba with the intent of rectifying that balance, knowing full well that the US would react strongly to such an incursion. It turned out to be his biggest blunder. But he went ahead with it, and started building missiles in Cuba.

This was soon discovered by US spy planes - satellites were up but not the type that could take aerial photographs of Cuba. The Joint Chiefs of Staff reported this to Kennedy and said that there was only one way to handle this - invade Cuba and overthrow Castro. Kennedy did not want to do this. He felt that this could cause the Soviet Union to retaliate with nuclear missiles. In fact, there already were missiles in Cuba that could have hit US targets. He did not want to do something which might cause the world to explode in thermonuclear holocaust.

But he did not want to back down. To allow Soviet missiles in Cuba would have seriously damaged our security. So he wanted to stand up to the Soviets but not cause a nuclear showdown. An invasion was not the way. Neither was doing nothing. He found a way of standing up to the Soviets that had the best chance of dealing with the situation. He ordered a blockade of Cuba. This did two things: it told the Soviets to stop building missiles in Cuba or else; and because it took time for Soviet ships with equipment to get to Cuba, and this is what made the decision so great, it gave Khrushchev plenty of time to think about what he was doing. Just as the ships got to the brink of the blockade, sure enough, Khrushchev backed down, allowing a treaty to be formulated and signed. I feel it was one of the most brilliant decisions ever made by our Chief Executive. Another fine point of this decision is that Kennedy rejected the advice of his military. In his previous endeavor with the military, the Bay of Pigs invasion, the brand new President listened to the Joint Chiefs and created a big fiasco.

The decision also humiliated Khrushchev and exposed to the world his mistake. He paid for it a year later when the Kremlin threw him out as Party Boss. The decision by Kennedy was a courageous one to make. There still could have been a nuclear holocaust. But by doing what he did, he took the best chance of preserving the existence of our civilization, and it still exists in part because of him. Hope that we have more leaders and decisions like his in the future.

Combating Spam is an International Problem

I heard recently that the house had passed an anti-spam bill. In particular, CNN said on its web page that "The House voted overwhelmingly Saturday for a bill to outlaw most Internet spam and create a "do not spam" registry for those who do not wish to receive unsolicited junk e-mail." This may seem like a good idea. Spam resembles telemarketing calls in that both come uninvited, frequently involve scams and fraud, and usually try to sell us something. A while ago a Do Not Call list was established. This is a listing of people who said that they do not want to be called by telemarketers. There are now 50 million or so people on this list. This means that if a telemarketer calls someone from the list he can be penalized for it. To me this seems like a good idea. If you sign up and someone calls you, just report it to the authorities.

So why not a Do Not Spam list? The intention is the same. A spammer must avoid email addresses in such a list when they send out their multimillion-recipient emails. But there are problems with this. There are many ways in which a spammer can avoid detection, more so than with telemarketers. He can misspell words, use gibberish in his message, use false return addresses, and hop from one email address and IP address to another to avoid detection. The telemarketer has a few such methods available, chiefly the "unavailable" appearing on a caller ID, but not as many as the spammer. The telemarketer is forced to speak personally over the phone to his targets, but the spammer does not need to contact anyone at all. In 5 seconds, if he is lucky, a telemarketer can call one person. In the same length of time, a spammer can spam tens of millions of people, simply by clicking a mouse. So a do not spam list is not as effective.

Further, the US Congress is the wrong place to start fighting spam. No US law, no presidential order or edict, absolutely no court subpoena, summons or warrants can do anything about foreigners spamming from overseas. Many spams I get are from domains .fr, .it, .tw, .pc, and so forth, meaning France, Italy, Taiwan, China, and so forth. No US law can do anything about people from these places for the US has no jurisdiction there. For spam to be truly controlled, it needs to be treated as an international problem. It needs to be brought up before the United Nations, and the UN should take steps to help its member countries fight spam worldwide, so that a spammer in Taiwan can be caught and tried for spamming the United States. Unless this problem is internationalized, it will never be solved.

The Kennedy Assassination

Today is the 40th anniversary of the death of President John F. Kennedy on 1963 November 22. Where was I when the shooting happened? I was a 17 year old high school senior. It was Friday and I went through my usual sequence of classes including Advanced Placement Calculus at a school in upstate New York. At the end of that Friday, classes were rearranged to accommodate an assembly to honor and cheer the school's athletic heroes. One by one they came with cheers for everybody: the track and field team, the basketball team, and the football team. At about 14:10 EST, suddenly we were all called to either give the Pledge of Allegiance or sing "America, Tis of Thee". After that the assembly ended and we went to our homerooms. I thought it was rather strange. It was too early. Otherwise it was normal. The homeroom teacher went through some administrative things, and then dismissed us. We all went out to the bus, walking on the pavement outside. Then I heard what had happened. Students were talking to each other about what had happened to President Kennedy. I got onto my bus and sat near the front. The bus driver said that there was a bullet in his brain. I did not know what that meant, except that it seemed serious. She was listening on the radio. The people in the back were talking about Senator Goldwater; apparently about his chances for getting elected after this.

The bus drove by a nearby Catholic school and I saw the flag there at half mast. I wanted to know if it was true. It stopped on my street and I walked out with a neighbor girl. She said that was an awful thing to do to him. I got into the house, which was empty. My parents were both working. I turned on the TV and saw it. There was a picture of President Kennedy on the screen, and below it, it read "1917-1963". So it was true. I wanted to know how my parents would react. My brother kept making my life miserable with music from a rock station, but now the station was playing church organ music, saying that after this event it would not want to play its usual popular music. When she got home, she said ti was awful what happened to him but it was what one would expect from appealing to the crowds like that. There was a Senior Night dance scheduled for that night. I could not get a date but was intending to go single. I called someone and found out it was cancelled.

Most of the time I was home that weekend and Monday, watching the TV for new developments. I turned on the radio on Sunday and got the announcement that Oswald had been shot. The headline the next day read "Pro-Castro Gunman Held in Assassination of Kennedy", and two days later, "Millions watch: Revenge Bullet Kills Oswald".

It did not seem to affect my life that much, but it did help set up the Johnson-Goldwater presidential election of 1964. In that election, Johnson won every state except a strip of five states in the Deep South and Arizona. But suppose Kennedy had lived? From what I have heard, some of the sexual experiences of him may have come to light, along with his association with the Mafia. This may have led to his impeachment and possible removal from office or resignation. If it did not lead to that, there is a possibility that another Democrat, maybe Johnson, would have challenged him for the nomination. If this challenge had been successful, the Democrats would have lost three Lichtman keys: challenge to nomination, incumbency, and scandal. They had already lost four. The loss of seven keys would have meant a Goldwater victory, and the history of our nation would have been substantially different.

The Kennedy Assassination, along with the Moon Landing, Planeattack, the start of the two Iraq wars, and the Cuban Missile Crisis were events that I, and most other people, will always remember.

Gay Marriage and Massachusetts

I heard on the news this week that the banning of marriage between individuals of the same sex in Massachusetts has been declared unconstitutional. People opposed to gay marriage say that a marriage is between a man and a woman. Maybe it is. Biologically, it works best with a man and a woman, since they can produce the children to constitute a family, and the purpose of marriage in my opinion, is not companionship; it is not financial, and it is not even sex. The purpose of a marriage is to raise a family. This implies that the partners need not keep sexually exclusive to their spouses, provided the couple agrees to a policy of this kind. That's right, I think a sexually free marriage can work. It would be the ideal marriage for gay people. A gay man can marry a lesbian and agree that their sex life would be separate from their marriage except for a few times necessary to create the family. A lesbian marriage would have to have sex with others (or use expensive in vitro fertilization) to create a family, and there is always the possibility that their male partners would want at least partial custody of the children. A gay male couple can't even create a child on their own but have to seek adoption.

However, the court is right in saying that banning gay marriage denies the benefits of marriage to a gay person solely because of his or her sexual preference. Some sort of union needs to be recognized such that the couple does have the benefits of marriage. Further, I would not like an amendment added to the Constitution stating that a marriage is between a man and a woman. To me that is the government entering into something that should be personal among the partners in a relationship.

Close Encounters on the Highway

Lately I have been noticing more and more strange arrangements of lights on cars on the highway. For most of my life, cars had two headlights on their front, plus maybe orange parking lights, and two taillights. In the 1970's, I watched the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, in which extraterrestrials make a roundabout arrival to our planet. In one scene in the movie, someone driving on the road gets a tailgater, a car following too closely. There is nothing much you can do about this. You can keep your distance from the car following but you can't make the other guy behind you keep his distance. So the guy stops at a stop sign and motions for him to go around. The lights behind the vehicle then move to the right as the car goes around our hero's car. The same thing happens again; he gets another tailgater. Once again he stops at a stop sign and motions for him to go around. Instead, the lights go up! This is no ordinary car. It's an extraterrestrial visitor. Other car-like vehicles also appear, and some of these look weird with unusual patterns of lights.

And so do some of the cars I see on the highway today. The most common weird pattern seems to be four white headlights on front. That is not the usual pattern. There should be only two headlights. I suppose the extra two headlights, near the ground, are to cut through the fog, but they also make the vehicle look like something out of the movie. So I call them "close encounters". I have included this word on my nonword page. I also find them annoying, as close encounters are almost always too bright for my eyes. So I flick my brights at them to signal to them to turn off their close encounters lights. They may think their brights are on, but that is the only way I can signal them. So if you see someone flicking their brights at you, check to see if you have your brights on, but also check to see if you have close encounters lights on, and turn them off, for I don't want to think that you are from some galaxy far, far away.

An extended system of units

Scientists have for a long time dealt with large numbers, in the millions, billions and so forth. It was unwieldy to say 3.6 billion electron volts or a trillionth of a meter, so scientists long ago invented the International System of Units. By this system, one could express higher numbers. For example, a hertz is a cycle per second, used to measure electromagnetic frequencies. So then a thousand hertz is a kilohertz, or KHz for short. A million is a megahertz, and a billion is a gigahertz, where "giga-" means gigantic. A trillion is "tera-" from terato- meaning monster. Similarly, a nanosecond is a billionth of a second, and a picometer is a trillionth of a meter. This proved to be inadequate, so two more units, femto- (a quadrillionth) and atto- (a quintillionth-) were added (I am using the American interpretation of "billion" and so forth). Shortly after that came their reciprocals, peta- meaning a quadrillion, and exa-, meaning a quintillion. Even this became inadequate, as some scientists started to use the units milliattovolts. This is not legitimate as one is not supposed to use more than one of these suffixes at a time. So more units were added: zetta- for a sextillion, and yotta- for a septillion, or 10^24. Similarly came zepto- meaning sextillionth, and yocto- meaning septillionth.

Even this is inadequate. For example the Sun puts out 380 yottawatts, so that Sirius, being 23 times brighter than the Sun, puts out 8,740 yottawatts. This is not legitimate, as it uses numbers above a thousand. When such a number is encountered you need to divide by a thousand and use the next higher unit. But there isn't any in this case. That is why I devised a system of units to go well beyond these, in fact, all the way to a vigintillion, 10^63. After yotta- comes xona-, so that Sirius puts out 8.74 xonawatts. Then weka-, vunda-, and so forth. I followed the pattern of backward sequence of letters of the alphabet followed by a rendition of the Latin for the number. Similarly I came up with xonto-, meaning an octillionth, and so forth.

I posted them on my unit system site and said that these were my suggestions for units. It was not official, of course, and I hear no attempt to make them official. A committee of scientists, not just one eager blogger, needs to extend the system. If they took my units as a model, undoubtedly there would be some changes. For example, my vunda-, meaning 10^33 and connoting eleven, means 38 in Bantu or Swahili, so this could be confusing. Robert Munafo quotes my system, but says that he thinks the unit beyond yotta- is more likely to be novetta- instead of xona- as novett or something like that is Italian for nine. So remember if you use these extended prefixes that they are not official.

Nevertheless, I am glad to see that these names are starting to take hold. I did a Google™ search for "xona weka" and got 78 references! The main one seems to be Plexos, and apparently people are picking it up from either my site or Plexos'. Maybe they will form part of an official system soon so we can measure the Earth in grams (6 xonagrams). So go ahead and use them, but be sure to acknowledge that I developed these names first.

Board Can't Have Sectarian Prayers

Today was a big day today! Two important decisions that will improve the worth of livin gin this country happened. The more important of them was the decision by US District Court judge Dennis Dohnal that the refusal of the Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors to allow Wiccan Cyndi Simpson to give an invocation to the Board earlier this year violated the principle of separation of church and state and was discriminatory as well. Specifically, he said that "prohibition against utilizing prayer to proselytize or advance any particular religion by sanctioning a preference for a particular set of beliefs. She was presumptively excluded because of a stated governmental preference for a different set of religious beliefs and viewpoint, albeit the beliefs of a large segment--if not the majority--of the population".

This means either the Board must eliminate prayer or invocations altogether, or it must allow anyone to give the prayer or invocation. This was the correct decision, in my opinion. The Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors is a public institution. It is answerable to the people. It is not a private club (despite what one newly elected Board member says) for the supervisors by themselves. Therefore, invocations to this Board are public acts, and therefore the Constitution prevails.

I now only hope that the Board adheres to this decision and not try to challenge it in the courts.

Heart of Virginia Council Changes Names

The other good decision of today was the decision of the Robert E. Lee Council of the Boy Scouts of America, which serves central Virginia, to change its name to the Heart of Virginia Council. The council has had the name of Robert E. Lee for over fifty years. Many think of him as a valiant soldier. But first things first. He did choose to abandon allegiance to the nation that forged the path to democracy and freedom for its citizens in favor of one that enslaved a huge percentage of them. He was a brilliant general, so his siding with the Confederates ensured a bloody, violent war and guaranteed that he would be responsible for more American deaths than any other person in our nation's history, even Hitler and Tojo. Further, he is a symbol of racism to a good part of our population. Therefore, his removal from the name of the council was a good decision. General Lee's name belongs in history books and in museums, and certainly not in the name of a widespread organization for boys.

I therefore commend the Council on its decision. Now they need to go further. They need to defy the national Boy Scouts of America organization and declare a policy of non-discrimination against gays, atheists, and agnostics, as the Girl Scouts have.

Girl Scouts not all that good?

Unfortunately, the Girl Scouts do have their problems. A troop of them in Fairbanks learned how to kill and skin beavers and to prepare their meat for cooking. This is a practice that should have gone out long ago. We no longer need to kill animals to make a living. Beavers have as much right to life as we do. Animal killing and skinning is something we should abandon in favor of farming and other vocations. This may be the only life that people in Fairbanks know, but times are changing there as anywhere else. Fortunately, the national organization does not support this troop's activities.

Grocery Stores

One of the first things I had experience with when I was young was grocery stores. My mother would take me to the local Wegmans in Rochester, New York when she went shopping. I was most interested in the cereal. Later on, the big company in town, Kodak, bought the land the Wegmans was on, but it opened elsewhere, including one store that looked really futuristic for its time in 1960, with conveyers that took your groceries to the outside. Since then Wegmans has continued to expand, now offering stores where you can do all your grocery and department store shopping in the same place, somewhat suggesting Wal-Mart but much better.

I eventually moved to Richmond, Virginia. In Richmond, the top store is Ukrop's. Since I have been here, Ukrop's has meant short lines becausae there was always enough help available, good quality but expensive food, and large stores with a restaurant facility. The one thing I find objectionable about Ukrop's is their closing on Sunday. The large Ukrop's stores remind me of Wegmans. I hear that both stores rate highly among grocery stores throughout the nation. They have a lot in common: large stores offering more than groceries, a CEO whose name is the same as the store (Joseph Ukrop at Ukrop's and Robert Wegman at Wegmans), so is a family business, and a regional extent.

As of late Wegmans has been expanding southward, into Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Now for the first time they will open a store in Virginia, early next year near Dulles Airport. Do they plan to expand into the rest of Virginia? I notice that Wegmans is about five times as big as Ukrop's and offers the same excellent environment. It would seem to me that if they want to expand into the rest of Virginia, a good first step would be for Wegmans to buy out Ukrop's. That would put Wegmans stores all over the place near Richmond, and from there they can expand to western Virginia and the Tidewater area. They would not have to construct a lot of new stores. Further, it would mean I can get the good deli and bakery items, the restaurant, and the good service I get now with Ukrop's from Wegmans, and further, it would be open on Sunday. I say go for it, Wegmans.

Lunar Eclipse

Yesterday I observed one of nature's more interesting phenomena - a lunar eclipse. I was attending a meeting in Baltimore on 2003 November 9, and left a little early to be back to Richmond by 1800 (6 o'clock) to set up my equipment for the eclipse. I got back at 1740 and ate dinner at a nearby McDonald's. Then I went over to the Science Museum, where a public skywatch was taking place. I got out my eight-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and aligned it with the stars. I then pointed it at the moon. What followed was an interesting night.

The Moon first entered the Earth's shadow at 1833.Gradually the moon lost more and more of its lit surface, and an eerie red took its place. An eclipsed moon shows up red, because it is reflecting all of Earth's lovely red sunsets, sunrises, and suntouches around the world. If you were on the Moon, you would see a total eclipse of the Sun by the Earth. The dark or night side of the Earth would show, and it would be surrounded by a red circle or ring where the sunrises and sunsets are. It would look like a ring of fire in the sky, and that ring would be shining its red on the Moon, making the lunar landscape red. We see this redness from the Earth when we look at a total lunar eclipse.

I took several pictures of the Moon by placing a digital camera right up to the eyepiece until the image shows on the digital display of what the camera sees. I then snap the shutter and this results in a picture. It is a fairly easy technique, and it produces good pictures. One visitor even wanted me to take pictures with her digital camera. I took it and she had a pictorial souvenir of the eclipse.

Later in the evening, the moon came out of the shadow of the eclipse. It was not a long eclipse. The Moon just barely came entirely inside one side of the Earth's umbra, or what might be termed the Great Shadow of Night (we were in it, too). There was one bright side to the disk of the moon, making it look as though it were not fully eclipsed. After the Moon started coming out of the eclipse, people wanted to see other things. It was a beautiful night, with only Richmond light pollution holding us back from seeing all the wonders of the heavens. I pointed the telescope at Mars. It was still a good object to observe, but it is not as easy to pick out markings on the planet now. Someone wanted to see Saturn. This is always a prizewinner at public skywatches, because of its unique appearance. So I told the telescope to point to Saturn. It went completely level, then rotated and pointed at some lights in a walkway near the Museum. It was too low to see. A little later, I saw it but when I tried to point the telescope at it, a light pole was in the way. It moved away from the light pole, and then I got the telescope on Saturn. Then I showed people Saturn with its rings through the telescope. They expressed great wonder at the planet, and some even said it didn't look real. But it was real. It was Saturn in the telescope, with its rings.

Given a clear dark sky, any skywatch held when Saturn and the Moon are both up will be a success.

The Election

I came into the voting booth about 2003 November 4 0620 in the morning. The big race that was talked about all over the place was the Bermuda District Supervisor race. So that was the one I was concerned about. I thought there would be other races, but no one ever talked about any of them. No TV show, no newspaper, no signs littering the landscape said anything about any other race. So when I walked into the booth I was surprised to be confronted with about 10 different elections! There were unopposed races for state assemblyman and senator. I was opposed to both unopposed candidates so I took the action that was suggested by someone at the Toastmasters convention I want to last weekend. The winner of the Humorous contest spoke with a title of "Vote for Me", where he said what he would do if he were running for Governor of Virginia. That someone suggested the idea of writing him in. The election PTB (powers that be) will be befuddled by this one person getting votes in several counties and cities. So I did it. I wrote him in on my ballot.

But there were other races. There was county treasurer, school board, county sheriff, and a couple of others. I did not know anything about these people, and some of these were contested. I just skipped them. I had wanted to know about these before the election. The hypermedia centered in this one race in Bermuda and perhaps a few others and completely ignored the others. I think they did the people of Chesterfield County, Virginia a disservice. It used to be that the local newspaper (Richmond Times-Dispatch) would list all these ballots, but I saw absolutely no sign of this in the past Sunday paper. Now maybe they squirreled it away under some ads, but I could not find it. I think from now on the hypermedia should quit harping about contested races and tell us about all the candidates who are running. The first duty of a citizen is to be in the know about who is running the government or who is running for running the government, and the media made it hard for the citizen to fulfill this duty.

Longhorn: What I would like to see

The history of computers over the past decade or so has been a history of version after version of Microsoft Windows coming out. There was Chicago (Windows 95), and then Memphis (Windows 98?) and Cairo (Windows 2000) and Windows ME. Then Whistler (Windows XP). Each one came with its own set of conniptions. Some things became better. Others became worse. Many items have shifted from place to place, from the Control Panel to Explorer to the Desktop Menu in a dizzying circle. People can't find things because they have been shifted around so much.

In particular for Windows XP, I find that the Find utility has been dumbed down and is no longer as valuable. I had to download Effective File Search to get an adequate search replacement for Windows Find, which I find sometimes does not find when it should. Windows insists on throwing up these dumb huge icons in its Explorer windows, which means I can't see the items on the list but must shift through visually through a forest of symbols. You have to explicitly set for each Explorer window whether to bigicon the files or to list them in a detailed list. In one version I have seen, deleting a tray icon deleted a desktop icon and vice versa. That I don't like. It means I either have to give up my desktop's usefulness, or I have to give up the taskbar.

So what would I like to see in a new version of Windows? I want to see DOS maintained and all DOS programs runnable. I want a Find and an Explorer similar to previous versions, not to XP. I want the Classic interface to return as the default. Luna means you can't find what you are looking for. I want the default for Explorer to be to include the file extension. That is an important part of the file name. MyData.txt is different from MyData.doc is different from MyData.csv is different from MyData.xls. I don't want all four of them to appear in a list entitled "Mydata". That is mass confusion. Most of all I want it to support all types of programs including standard Java. I don't want .NET and only .NET, which is where Microsoft seems to be headed.

But I don't know if I will get these items. Most likely I will get an operating system that will discombobulate much of what I have, and will cost me more frustration and time than having to put up with the signs of aging of an older interface would.

Chesterfield County elections

An important election is that of Bermuda District, Chesterfield County, Virginia, USA, supervisor. This supervisor is one of a board of five supervisors, one for each of the districts in Chesterfield County. There are three candidates: an incumbent independent Jack McHale, a Democrat Ree Hart, and a Republican Dickie King. So which of these am I going to vote for?

National affiliation. That an Independent is the incumbent is a wonder to behold. That is in Jack McHale's favor. He's been at the job for 12 years! I tend to favor Democrats over Republicans but I take each case separately. Nevertheless this would have me favoring Ree Hart over Dickie King.

Developers. This is a serious issue. The developers come in here, plow down our trees, removing our landscape's beauty and destroying the habitat for a number of species, build houses and sell them via realtors to people who clog the highways with children who crowd the schools. The politicians talk about school problems. They talk about highway needs. No. That's not the main point. Both of these problems will be resolved if the developers are kept in check. Which candidate is best for doing that? Well, since I have seen all sorts of development here, that disfavors McHale, the incumbent.

Schools. Jack McHale has voted to decrease property taxes, and this supposedly hurts the schools. Only if the politicians let it. They can decrease property taxes and increase them somewhere else or cut back on other budget items. Further, the main problem is not taxes or schools but developers.

Roads. There are several needs for roads in the county, and traffic jams are on the increase. Limiting development is the best way to deal with road problems.

But the biggest issue for me is the refusal by the board to allow Cyndi Simpson, a Wiccan, to give invocations to the Board of Directors, while allowing Christian and Muslim religious leaders to give invocations. I want to vote for a candidate that will allow her to give invocations. Apparently Jack McHale has not been with the rest of the board on this. When I asked Ree Hart about it, she was wishy-washy about it and said she was Christian. So I am not certain about her. Dickie King appanretly thinks the Board is a private club for whom the invocations serve only it, not the rest of the community. Mr. King, the Board is a public institution. There is no privacy on the board. If you let a Christian give an invocation, you must let Ms. Simpson give one too. As far as I am concerned, Dickie King is out.

That leaves Jack McHale and Ree Hart. I feel that Dickie King's stand on the invocation issue is so extreme that the first priority is to defeat him. That means choosing which of Ree and Jack is most likely to win. From what I hear, Ree is. So I may vote for her. But in truth, this is a difficult decision to make between these two. I am sure either is capable of serving us well.

Rock Paper Scissors

Yesterday (2003 Oct 21) in Aaron Brown's Morning Papers, Aaron presented the Detroit Free Press with a story about the game Stone Paper Scissors. This I remembver well from childhood. Some other boy taught it to me. You put out your hand in the form of a stone, paper, or scissors, and the rule is that stone smashes scissors cuts paper covers stone. I played it a few times but did not think much of it.

Later on, when I was a teenager reading about game theory, I encountered the game in the classic book The Compleat Strategyst, by JD Williams. In the book JD shows how the "three active strategies" method leads to the optimal strategy of selecting each turn completely at random, with 1/3 odds on each of scissors, paper, and stone.

JD also showed some other games that are from the scissors-paper-stone family. These games are characterized by each of two players selecting an object from a set S (with replacement), at the same time without knowledge of what the other player is doing. If they select the same element, the game is a draw. If they select different elements, there is a relation > such that for each pair of elements from S, s and t, either s > t or t > s; one of them "beats" the other. JD describes another form of scissors-paper-stone by adding glass and water to S, and they describe a 7-element example in the form of two medieval damsels who each choose a knight from a set of knights and have these two knights joust with each other.

What is unusual about the article is that it describes the Rock-Paper-Scissors society, which had a recent meeting in the Detroit area. Another article appeared in a Fort Worth newspaper. (this link may go dead in a few days). I can't see how so many people can form an organization about a game whose solution was solved decades ago. How many ways are there of choosing at random an element out of a 3-element set? What I would want to do is to form a theory about all such games. I did some research on some of these, such as variations of the Stratego game (1 beats 2 beats… beats 9 beats spy beats 1, a part of a board game Stratego that was popular a number of years ago) and simple extensions of Rock-paper-scissors, for example, add a hammer and say that scissors cuts a hammer's head off, paper covers a hammer but a hammer smashes a stone to bits. If you solve the game, you get exactly the same strategy as with scissors-paper-stone: pick one of these three randomly and ignore the hammer.

Despite the devotion of some of these people to a game that has been settled years ago, at least in a game-theoretic sense, it was good to be reminded of an old childhood friend.

Similarities between 2001 and 2003

Here is one of these conglomerations of coincidences that the laws of probability say must happen on occasion. The years 2001 and 2003 resemble each other a lot. Take for example:

Something catastrophic happened to the World Trade Center in September.
Something catastrophic happened to a pentagon-shaped building in September.
In 2001 the catastrophes involved 3 buildings; in 2003 the catastrophes involved 1 building.
The buildings in both years were near wide rivers, and all but one was near a harbor.
In both years there was a hurricane in the vicinity of the Northeastern US.

As with the coincidences between 1991 and 2003, especially regarding the reelection chances of President Bush, there are some notable differences as well:

The World Trade Center in 2001 was in New York; the one in 2003 was in Baltimore.
The pentagon-shaped building was the Pentagon in 2001, but was the World Trade Center in Baltimore in 2003, the world's tallest pentagon-shaped building.
The hurricane in 2001 was well off shore, while the one in 2003 hit Baltimore and in fact caused the catastrophe.
And the important one: The catastrophe (Planeattack) was caused by humans in 2001, and was caused by Nature (Hurricane Isabel) in 2003.

The World Trade Center in Baltimore was flooded up to 16 feet and forced to close for over a month; it just reopened today. The hurricane in 2001 was Hurricane Erin.

Borderline Plays

The post-season baseball play is starting to become interesting. The Chicago Cubs have not won a World Series since 1945, and the Boston Red Sox have not won any since 1922. Further, I was near Chicago, studying for my doctorate in mathematics, in 1969 when the Cubs led most of the way, only to falter to the Mets near the end of the season. So I started looking at the games. To me the most interesting plays are the borderline plays.

These are plays that are close to the borderline to being other plays. An example of what I mean is a batted ball that bounces just along the left foul line and stays fair. This could be a single. Just a little bit, an epsilon (mathematicians use this Greek letter to denote a small quantity) to the left and it's a foul ball. A single and a foul ball have vastly different effects on the game. So this is a borderline play. In this case the border is physical: the foul line. On the other hand, a long fly to center is caught by the center fielder. If it veers in any direction about a foot way from this, the center fielder would still catch it. So this play is "in the middle", and is not a borderline play.

There have been several borderline plays in the pennant playoffs. One Yankee hit a long fly ball that was caught at the fence by one of the outfielders for an out. A little epsilon higher, and this Yankee would have had a home run. In another case, with bases loaded and one out, a grounder was hit to the shortstop, who threw to second baseman, who threw to first. The throw to second resulted in an out, but the throw to first was just a microsecond too late. A run scored, nearly tying the game.

The biggest one happened though on the night of 2003 October 14. The first batter flied out, and the second (Pierre) doubled. Castillo hit a foul ball right on the boundary of the stands. Into the stands, and it's a foul ball, a strike. Within the ballpark, if fielder Alou could catch it, it's an out. Alou just barely made the catch, only to have a fan strike the ball and deflect it away. The result was an eight-run Marlin outburst. Here is the play by play:

Flyout 000 (0) 1
Double Juan Pierre 010 (0) 1
controversial foul ball deflected by fan
Castillo walk 110 (0) 1
Wild pitch advances Pierre 101 (0) 1
Rodriguez singled in run 110 (1) 1
Cabrera grounder errored by Gonzalez 111 (1) 1
Derrek Lee double scores two 011 (3) 1
Lowell walk intentional 111(3) 1
Conine sacrifice fly 011 (4) 2
Hollinsworth intentional walk 111 (4) 2
Double Mordecai scores all the runners 010 (7) 2
Pierre single scores Mordecai 100 (8) 2
Castillo popped out 100 (8)

My notation 010 (1) 2, for example, means no runner on first, a runner on second, no runner on third, one run scored in the inning, and two out. Now what would have happened had Alou caught Castillo's ball?

Flyout 000 (0) 1
Double Juan Pierre 010 (0) 1
Castillo fouls out to Alou 010(0)2
Wild pitch advances Pierre 001 (0) 2
Rodriguez singled in run 100 (1) 2
Cabrera grounder errored by Gonzalez 110 (1) 2
Derrek Lee double scores one 110 (2) 2
Lowell walk intentional 111(2) 2
Conine flyout ends inning 111 (2) 3

Now the Marlins score only two runs, and quite likely the Cubs would have won the game. But is that so? How do we know the Marlins would then be scoreless in the ninth and the Cubs in the eighth? Here the butterfly effect occurs. If there are a lot of borderlines, the system becomes unstable and unpredictable. The stepping on a butterfly in Brazil can cause a tornado in Texas. For that matter, would Lowell have been walked if the fan had not interfered? With runners on first and second, two out, there is a play at any plate. What advantage is there in getting one at home, too? If Lowell had been pitched to, then maybe he would have hit and scored runners, and the Marlins would have won anyway.

So if you tiptoe over the borderline, the whole universe goes awry and may not seem what you think. In particular, it is not necessarily true that the fan's interference with the ball lost the Series for the Cubs.

The Nine Dwarfs

I recently heard a debate among the nine Democratic challengers to George Bush for the Presidency in 2004. My opinion is that any of these candidates would make a good replacement for Bush for 2005-2008 and therefore my vote will go for any of these if they are nominated. I wanted to see which ones I liked best, though. I prefer a candidate who will get us out of Iraq and who opposed the war in the first place. However, all of these candidates opposed the invasion. That makes it hard to choose. After some deliberation, here is what I came up with, based on this debate only:

Carol Moseley-Brown: Good candidate, who seems to have some caring and personable characteristics, as well as having a solid platform. I give her a B.

Al Sharpton: Like his name. A sharp candidate, asking if Judy Woodruff is costing him time. Needs to have some ability to manange and lead a governmental body. C+.

Gen. Wesley Clark. Opposed the war in Iraq and has stands similar to the other Democrats. I would have liked to have seen him run as a Republican and challenge Bush for the nomination. This could have toppled Lichtman Key 2, improving chances of a Democrat winning the presidency. He may have charisma; if so, his nomination would topple Key 13. However, I felt his performance this night was somewhat lackluster. B

John Kerry. Generally good performance, agreeing with the others. B

Howard Dean. Somewhat disappointing. He definitely does not have charisma; his more liberal views attracted people to his meetups earlier. He got into an argument with Kucinich in which he said that we need to hold our troops in Iraq until they can handle themselves. Not what I would like to hear, but it's sad to say that we may have to do just that. B

Dennis Kucinich. Looks like a scrappy youngster, with two bright ideas. One is to pull all the troops home now from Iraq. OK if the US really needs them here, but we don't want an Islamic republic to be set up there. His other idea is really interesting: a Department of Peace. That would give the US a more congenial view to the world and help dispel some of the hatred that people have for Americans. However, absolutely no military can come into such a department, lest it becomes a 1984ian Ministry of Peace in a future Orwellian administration. A

Dick Gephardt. Performed much better than I expected. At one time he was able to rattle off a complete program for his presidency. He had good answers to most of the questions and to many of the statements of the other candidates. He is older than the other candidates, and I think the extra experience may be having an effect. A

John Edwards. I can see where he gets his charisma. But he seems to have a scrappy boy face, something that I did not like about either Don Beyer or George Allen in Virginia - but I voted against both of these for other reasons. His program is much like the others, and he had a few good answers once in a while. But he does not distinguish from the other candidates. B

Joe Lieberman. Another surprise. Much better than I expected. He reminds me of a history professor in both his appearance and manner. I liked his statement that any of the other 8 would make a good candidate against George Bush. He is somewhat more conservative than the other candidates, and I fear he may go in a Bush-like direction if elected, but in general I regard him highly. B+

In reviewing my reviews, I find that I am attracted to the older candidates - Gephardt and Lieberman. This may reflect my preference for the compromising Silent Generation (1925-1942) over the more strident Boomer generation (1943-1960). My feeling is that there is a crisis in the near future, that these two candidates would better handle it than any of the others.

Which one has the best chance against Bush? Probably Wesley Clark, but only if he is charismatic. The Lichtman Key model tells me that this is the only characteristic that matters in a challenging candidate. So my favorite candidates right now are Clark, Dean, Kucinich, and Gephardt, in about that order.

Pledge of Allegiance to be Heard

Today the Supreme Court of the United States decided to hear the case of the California doctor who did not want her child to hear the Pledge of Allegiance at her school because it contained the words under God. This case came to light around 2002 June, when the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in California ruled that the doctor was correct: the Pledge in school is unconstitutional because it says under God.

It is official policy in this country, codified in the First Amendment, that church and state are to be kept separate. One of the reasons is that religious beliefs are not provable and thus are subject to utterance as decrees by the government in which ever way the government feels. For this reason, Islamic states don't work very well. Our country does not have a religion, contrary to what many on the Religious Right think. Besides, espousing a religion constitutes a form of discrimination against those with other religious beliefs. Assuming the existence of God in a public place makes atheists and agnostics into second-class citizens, as though they somehow don't belong. This is not the American way, as was demonstrated when Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back of a bus.

So this is one ruling that should be supported by the Court. I did not have hope that the Court will support the 9th Circuit Court, but a piece of good news did come out today. Justice Antonin Scalia took himself out of the decision citing a conflict of interest. This makes a tie possible, and a tie upholds the 9th's decision. So to defeat the 9th requires 5 justices out of 8 - only 4 are needed to support it. So there is some hope that 4 justices will see the light and choose to support the ruling.

As far as the pledge itself? It does very well without "under God"; that was the original pledge. Or consider this version, which corresponds more with my personal philosophy of "Just add one.":

I pledge allegiance to the flag
Of the United States of America
And to the republic for which it stands:
One nation, beyond God, indivisible,
With liberty and justice for all.

Even better is this one by the singing group Relative Viewpoint:

I pledge allegiance to the people of this country
And of all the world
And to the republic which lends a hand.
One planet under peace,
With liberty and Justice for all.

Enforcing a contradiction

I am fortunate to have a workplace near a small national park. Therefore, I run at lunch hour into the park, something I have been doing since the late 1970s. I notice that recently they have been closing trails due to water damage, ice storms, and the like and I notice that when they do that they often do it inconsistently. That is, they will put up a sign saying that it is prohibited to enter that trail, but it will still be possible to get to the other side of that sign by other ways that have not been signed. My feeling is that I should not cross such a sign or tape from the outside to the inside, but there is nothing wrong with going the other way, from inside the "forbidden" area to outside. Indeed, if I can do this, there is something wrong with the signs. They are not consistent. If they are going to bar certain trails to the public, then they should do so everywhere and consistently, so that the only way to cross a sign from behind is to have crossed a sign from in front, defying its wording.

Isabel uprooted hundreds of trees in the park, so they closed most of the trails. But I notice that there is one way to enter the park without encountering a sign or tape, in such a way that the signs are inconsistent. But I found out that not only did they put the signs up inconsistently this time, but they are also enforcing it by having a ranger at some of the places. Yesterday, I ran into the park through a trail that had no signs on it. Someone in a truck stopped me and said it is open, but look out for the workmen fixing things up. I turned left towards the main road of the park, which was open. Today I ran to the same spot but turned right, towards the part that was taped off. There the officer was, asking me if I parked there, and telling me that I should be heeding the yellow tape. I told him that I saw no such signs or tape when I entered the park. I don't know if he got the message.

For inconsistent signs make me feel uneasy. The reason is that the sign that prohibits tell me that -T, where T is the statement that I may enter the park at that point, and that nothing at all tells me I can enter, which is T. This means they are enforcing T and -T, which is a contradiction. A contradiction implies any statement, so this implies that they can enforce any law or rule, even one that they dream up on the spot. That is Gestapo or 1984 law - a law of men rather than of words. They should put up signs that prohibit entering the area at all possible places, or they should tear them all down. But don't enforce a contradiction.

Globalization is a bad name

I hear that "globalization" of the world economy, and the enforcement of a free market, hurts poor people and countries, because all the goods go to the rich. There are protestors whenever globalization meetings meet, in Seattle, in Europe and other places. For a while I did not understand this. These people are apparently against freedom. Why should we oppose a free market? Then I read that globalization is not globalization after all. When "globalization" is used without adjectives, it means ALL globalization, or global globalization. However, the anti-globalization literature make it clear that they oppose it because the corporations benefit. If so, then it should be called "corporate globalization". If it is expressed in this manner, then yes I am opposed to it because I believe in freedom for all, not just corporations and their leaders. So don't say "globalization". Say "corporate globalization".

Transgender Hurricane

I have been looking at the hurricane map to see if any more storms threaten our neck of the woods. Juan formed but then went north to hit Nova Scotia. Kate formed; she headed north, then northeast, then back to the southwest, and now west. She is heading first for Bermuda and then for the Carolinas. But the weather forecasters say this big beautiful too cold for this time of the year air mass over us is going to block Kate and make her go north, about now. So we don't have to worry about her.

Then there's Larry. He formed deep in the Gulf of Mexico near Honduras, and has been sitting there the past few days. Then they said he was going to cross to the south and get out into the Pacific, where it will climb up the coast as a Pacific hurricane. This means supposedly that he gets a new name, since the Pacific has their own system of hurricane names. Hurricanes have changed names before. Fifi changed her name to Orlene after causing thousands of deaths in Honduras. That was back when they named all hurricanes after women. Himmicanes did not come into existence until 1979. But when they did, that brought up the possibility that a hurricane will undergo a sex change. The latest attempt at this was Himmicane Cesar in 1996, which was going to become Chantal or something like that when he crossed Central America. But some other storm became Chantal instead, and so Cesar merely changed his name to Douglas. But now Larry wants to get into the Pacific. If so, the latest tropical storm in the Pacific is Olaf, near Cabo San Lucas. The next name is Patricia. So will Larry become Patricia? Will a tropical storm change gender? Is Larry transgender?

Then I read in the 12 noon hurricane report that if Larry retains tropical storm strength as he crosses Central America, he will retain the name of Larry in the Pacific, but if he dissipates (I suppose become depression or lower), then regains strength as a tropical storm in the Pacific, then it becomes Patricia, provided another storm hasn't appeared first in the Pacific. Besides, the latest predictions call for Larry to dissipate and stay dissipated. That's that with transgender hurricanes; apparently it won't happen.

C4ISR

I note that the Department of Defense has a lot of acronyms, such as DOD, TRADOC, METT-TC to name a few. I feel one of the more interesting ones is C4ISR. This acronym is actually growing over the years as if it were a tree! Maybe some of the reason for its growth is that it refers to the most abstruse area of the military: electronics and technology. Initially it was a simple, humble C2. That stood for Command and Control. But then people saw that intelligence was part of this. So now it was C2I. Then computers came along and became an essential part of Army technology. So then it became C3I. And then it was C4I and now C4ISR, which stands for command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. I hunted for acronyms that begin with C4I and found a whole bunch including Ts for Targeting or Technology, EW for Electronic Warfare, and I for Information. So I combined these together to form the acronym C3I3T2SCREW, which stands for command, control, communications, information, intelligence, Internet, technology, targeting, surveillance, computers, reconnaissance, and electronic warfare. I can just imagine a military unit having a C3I3T2SCREW officer. A what kind of officer?

Another possible acronym is CITRICC CITIES, which omits the W in warfare. That suggests where centers of CITRICC CITIES for the military should be - in places like Naranja, Florida (naranja is Spanish for orange, a citrus fruit). In any case I expect the acronym to continue to grow. It may grow to C6I6T4G3BRAVONEWSTATUS by 2100, at which point they may decide the acronym right there and go back to the old command and control (C2).

2003: The weird year

This has got to be one of the weirdest years of my life. It's even weirder than 2000 was (see the link). Aren't the weirdness and trust, both public and private, related? You expect something to happen, and instead something else happens. If "it" were a person instead, then you would expect the person to do something, and instead he does something else or doesn't do it. That leads to mistrust. You can't mistrust natural things such as hurricanes, so I am not sure of the term here. In any case it makes you feel more insecure. But it also gives an excuse to do weird things, doesn't it? After all, if the rest of the world is weird, why not be weird yourself. In any case, these are among the events that make this year weird for me:

1. The US makes charges that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and attacks that country and overthrows it, only to discover (so far) no weapons of mass destruction there after all.

2. I was assigned to duty at an installation operations center for a month, where I did almost nothing.

3. Hurricane Isabel came roaring through here at a weird angle.

4. The election in California. This is the intersection of the Weird State with the Weird Year, and so is doubly weird.

5. Rain and snow and cold snaps in every month in the spring, following a year of extreme drought.

6. Four famous people die recently including this year at age 100: Count Basie, George Burns, Bob Hope, and Strom Thurmond.

7. The weirdest of all. A tree leaning against another tree in our yard because of Isabel mysteriously gets chopped down. Nobody has to pay the bill, apparently.

Hurricane Damage: Our Fault?

Last week Hurricane Isabel breezed in to North Carolina, Virginia, and other states and caused massive power outages that may take two weeks to fix in some cases. At least this is not like Planeattack where we can say that some group of people caused it. It was a perfectly natural event; a windstorm with 40-60 mph winds that caused a lot of damage to this area. Or was it completely natural?

60 mph winds should not cause that much damage! Just how did Isabel wreak such destruction with only gale-force winds? Firstly, note that just about all damage due to Isabel was due to trees falling down on things: power lines, homes, cars, trailers. Almost none of it in central Virginia was due to direct effects of the winds. Only on the Outer Banks and surrounding areas did that occur. Second, take a look around the neighborhood. Go through the streets and go into the woods. What do you find? Trees that are all by themselves are the ones that fell. Trees that are with other trees are less likely to have fallen. If you go into the forest you find that almost all trees are intact. If there is a wide path through the woods, the path is probably impassable with fallen trees, but the forest is just as before. It is just like it was before the hurricane. It is easy to see why that is the case. Trees around other trees are not subject to the same winds as trees all by themselves, because they protect each other Trees on the edge are more likely to get knocked down by the winds, and isolated trees are even more likely.

Which brings up a human cause for the damage: the developers. The developers, it seems, don't care anything about who lives in the houses afterwards. They just want to throw up houses quick, chop down trees quick, collect their bucks, and leave isolated trees to fall during hurricanes. When building houses, developers need to either leave no trees in the yard or a continuous area of them. If they leave isolated trees, they leave bombs which later on damage the homes they build. So it is not all nature's fault. The developers had a hand in it, too.

Isabel and Dark Skies

Isabel caused a lot of power outages, damage to homes caused by trees, and other destruction. But when it left, it left behind a jewel. I went outside yesterday (2003 September 19) to see the stars, and I saw the darkest, most brilliantly star-studded sky that I have ever seen from my house. About 80-90% of the surrounding area did not have power. Therefore, the sky glow from light pollution was a lot less. I could easily see all the stars of the Little Dipper, and the Milky Way was visible from horizon to horizon. I went out with my telescope to try to see Mars, but I had trouble aligning my telescope, and I think part of it was that it was running on batteries. I did see it eventually and saw a dark stripe across the middle of the Red Planet. It was a real treat seeing a sky so dark from my house and I realize that this is something that occurs only about once every 50 years, when a hurricane as powerful as Isabel comes through here. I know that a teen-age woman named Jennifer Barlow has been trying to get people to turn off their outside lights in order to provide for a dark sky; in particular, declaring a Lights Out day. That was not too successful. It seems that Jennifer couldn't get people to turn off their lights. But Isabel could, and did. What is this society we belong to coming to anyway, when we need a hurricane to be able to see the night sky? I say make every day a Hurricane Isabel day. If you could not turn on an outside light during Isabel, then don't turn it on at all. I know some lights are needed for safety, but these may be far fewer than most people think. If everyone would do this, dark skies and knowledge about astronomy, especially among young people, would return.