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Thanks, Gene Wilder and Roald Dahl
Rick & Morty co-creator shows off free Accounting VR game
Fun studies
Our kids just started their fall school semester, but before that we had a special homeschool study together. We watched The Search for General Tso together and ate General Tso chicken (and some other not as spicy dishes since some of the kids like spice more than others). The main reason we did this was to talk about the history of job restrictions and other ill-treatment faced by Chinese who immigrated to America in the past. It prompted some discussions we really enjoyed, and this is at the heart of the kind of value lessons we want to pass on to our children.
At some point we're going to have a similarly themed special study and watch George Takei's Why I Love a Country That Once Betrayed Me, probably when the kids get to WWII in history this year. There's just a hint more patriotism and pro-military in that speech than I would like, but I think my children can handle it, and I think since they are all Trekkies they are going to love to get to see Takei.
On a similar note, my company just moved into a new building last week, and I was able to take my oldest son to work with me a couple days so he could help run network cables. The boss's wife spoke to him and said she bet that he was enjoying that a lot more than being in school. I told her that was the great thing about homeschooling - this is school!
NPR Reports on the Kratom Scheduling Outrage
Kratom Advocates Speak Out Against Proposed Government Ban
The White House petition has surpassed the 100k needed for a response, and is now at 119,024 signatures.
The Case Against James Comey
An interesting article about the man we love to hate, although this article focuses on his decision to hold a press conference about the Hillary Clinton email investigation.
We are probably stuck with Comey for another 6-7 years. Encrypt and patch.
Hillary's fallen: will she get up?
So, 9/11 day was too much for Hillary, even with her excellent health.
Will this be the straw that breaks her Camel toe, errr, back?
Man, if only Jill Stein was the third runner......
Question: if Hillary is elected and dies quickly (totally by natural causes, though, nudge nudge), does Pence finish her term or does it spark another election run?
A good day at Yellowstone
Geysers are notoriously finicky and some at Yellowstone take years or decades to erupt. Fan and Mortar Geysers are typical of the breed. They have a dormant and active phase and tend to stay in a phase for at most a few years before transitioning. Currently, they're in the midst of their active phase, trending to more frequent eruptions. The current frequency this year has averaged around 5-6 days with periods between major eruptions of between 4 to 9 days. This phase may continue to next year, but who knows?
Anyway, I had heard from one of my coworkers that the geysers had last erupted around 2pm on August 28. The beginning of September 3 was day 5 since the last eruption. I had the day off, so I thought I'd give it a try, assuming that they hadn't already gone off yet. I slowly worked my way over, first checking the times on some of the more predictable geysers of the area (there are around 50 active geysers in this particular area, the "Upper Geyser Basin" including Old Faithful, the most famous geyser in the world and a uniquely consistent performer for a large geyser). It was a bit overcast and cool, a bit too warm for the thin parka I wore, but not quite warm enough for T shirts.
I arrived at Fan and Mortar around 7:30am (MDT). There were already three people watching who informed me that the geysers hadn't gone off yet (it leaves puddles when it does go off). Two had radios going. The area has an avid fan community, the "geyser gazers" that keeps track of the geyser eruptions via radio. The US National Park Service also monitors the channel and records significant geyser eruptions. It's quite active. During the 3+ hours that I stood watching the geyser build up, there were three other eruptions reported, including one of the nearby Riverside geyser, another predictable geyser that goes off just shy of two times a day.
I soon started speaking with the neighbors and getting myself acquainted with this peculiar system. There are a number of things that make Fan and Mortar very unusual. First, they have a complex dynamics between the two geysers even over the course of a few seconds as energy is transferred between geysers. I could see this in how the various vents (there are around a dozen between the two) would come to life (either steaming or sometimes spurting scalding water a foot or two). The two most important vents of the group were the Upper Mortar Vent and the Main Fan Vent. Heavy splashing in either of those two is a usual indicator of an incipient eruption of the pair. The geysers are closely connected and you won't get a major eruption from one without something from the other.
About halfway down this page is a labeled photograph of the two geysers. The river behind them is the Firehole River which runs through the most extensive and vigorous geyser fields in the world. Upper Geyser Basin is further upstream than the other major geyser basins and close to one of the three known magma bulges of the Yellowstone hotspot. There is also this discussion of the dynamics of the two geysers:
Let me walk you through the basics of Frustration and Mortification, ehem, I mean Fan and Mortar Geysers. These two erupt together and when active, the intervals typically fall every 3-7 days. Here's a labeled photo for reference.
Normally, Fan goes through cycles in which its vents turn on in a certain order. After a quiet period (during which Mortar may splash lightly from Bottom or Lower), River Vent turns on. River actually erupts horizontally, away from your perspective in the photo above - so figuring out when River is on either involves using heavy steam as a proxy or walking 100 meters up the path to the bridge where you can get a clear view of it. High and Gold begin to splash and are considered on when the splashing becomes nearly constant. Finally, Angle turns on with a swishing sound. The cycle ends when River turns off again - a single cycle can be anywhere from 20 to 70 minutes, typically.
Every once and a while, an event cycle occurs, simply meaning something different happens. Here's where things get complicated. Main Vent is not a friend to Fan's other vents, and splashing in Main Vent often leads to pauses in activity from the other event. Here's a timeline for what we might consider an "ideal" event cycle:
Main Vent splashing.....River Vent on.....River Vent pause.....River Vent on.....River Vent pause.....River Vent on.....no more Main Vent splashing.....High/Gold Vents on.....Angle Vent on
The final component needed for an eruption is called lock. In lock, High Vent erupts steadily to a height of 1.5-2 meters (5-6 feet), and Gold/Angle Vents splash continuously. An eruption may be initiated from East or Main Vent, or in Upper Mortar. Soon all the vents take off. Upper Mortar reaches 23 meters (80 feet), Main Vent hits over 30 meters (100 feet), and East Vent shows off an impressive horizontal throw that will absolutely get you wet. The following photos are from a particularly strong eruption on August 12th, 2014. Note the drenched people and the beautiful jets from Upper Mortar.
Anyway, back to my story. I came as an event cycle petered out and say on a bench. About 9am after watching nearby Riverside go off, we noticed a pause with almost all activity, particularly that of the River Vent on Fan Geyser, going quiet. One of my cowatchers stated that the pause was rather long, meaning it might just lead to an eruption later that day. He advised I stick around. Despite getting hungry, I decided to heed his advice. Just before 10am, one of the observers saw a bit of water splash in the Main Vent. I was thinking, dude, it was just a little splash. About 15 minutes later it did it again.
Now, you might ask yourself, what's the draw in watching a pile of rock emit steam and water for three hours? Even when the geysers aren't doing the real thing, there's a lot of interplay and activity. It's always doing something. Fan is the main performer here with six major vents running in a line across its mound. River Vent faces the Firehole River, of course, and provides the main indicator of the "event cycle" described above. The three vents across the top, Top, Gold, and Angle Vent all spurt steaming water and often rob power from one another. Then opposite the river are Main and finally East Vent which are the main soakers of the audience when a major eruption happens.
Meanwhile Mortar Geyser groans and hisses ominously. You could always tell when the Upper Mortar Vent was steaming because of the deep growl it emitted while nearby Bottom Mortar Vent would near continuously hiss even during the quiet periods.
So there was always something going on. After 10am, the Fan Geyser vents on the top (Top, Gold, and Angle) resumed activity and soon, we spotted the second singular splash in Fan's Main. That was faithfully radioed in at 10:15am. By this time, I noticed that we were building up a small crowd. Soon after, Top started erupting continually indicating considerable activity. But the other two by it, Gold and Angle would only erupt fitfully with Angle having very little activity. As noted above, we were now looking for "lock" all three vents going simultaneously and continually. The crowd kept building up to I'd guess around 100 people.
Some point after 10:30am, we got a key escalation with water splashing out of the Upper Mortar cone. Shortly after that, lock happened. That's about when the build up of the video above started. You can see Mortar Geyser on the left side with sporadic splashing and the mound of Fan Geyser behind and to the right with steam shooting into the river from the River Vent and the three vents on top steadily erupting to a few feet (the "lock" of course). Then there are larger spurts from the Upper Mortar Vent which shortly cascade into a full-blown eruption from every vent in the video (at 10:48). I was between the spot of the video and the main brunt of the East Fan Vent so I got wet, but didn't get a face full of water. People cleared out of that space quickly.
In addition to my parka, I also wore a hat. That turned out to be a great idea since I would have gotten completely soaked otherwise. The eruptions are hard to video because they generate a huge cloud of steam (and silica rich spray too, hard on lens!) quickly, hiding the details. But moving around, I could see the vents and where the water eventually fell.
Just as with the build up, there was some weird dynamics with power shifting between the two geysers. One geyser would surge with its vents and the other fade a little, back and forth.
I think the build up and eruptive dynamics make this one of the most spectacular geysers in the world though you have to be very lucky to see it erupt, if you don't have the time to sit around to wait on it. The local Old Faithful Visitors Center would have information on recent Fan and Mortar activity and they would be good to consult, if you're just traveling through.
After about ten minutes, the eruption stopped and the geysers entered a heavy steam phase. At that point, I headed off to bed.
Related: check out this awesome video.
My Other Journals
I was most active at Kuro5hin but its server's entire data center was decommissioned. Lawrence Calvin Foster III promised to put up a read-only archive of the site but it's been long enough that we are all convinced that he had no off-site backups.
https://dontsuemebro.com/section/Diary
dontsuemebro is intended to replace kuro5hin but so far it's just a few of us diehards.
http://advogato.org/person/MichaelCrawford/
I journal only rarely at Advogato these days but I was quite active during the zeroes.
http://www.warplife.com/mdc/books/vancouver-diaries/
I was intending to publish a dead-tree book of these when Bonita finished school and moved out West to join me. What I actually got was informed that she was divorcing me on my second visit home.
That refers to the Canadian Vancouver but it includes some of my time in Sunnyvale and San Jose, California.
Jill Stein Expected to Face Trespassing/Vandalism Charges
My Rejected Submission
So about a month ago, I put in a submission regarding the documentary 'A Very Heavy Agenda'. The submission didn't make the cut, and the reason was no one picked it up in the month it was in the queue.
I chose to make this submission to highlight the pundits and think-tanks that have been shaping foreign policy and the military interventions in recent years. These people are going to remain in positions of influence and will continue to be talking heads shaping the debate regarding the role of the US in the world, regardless of who wins the pending presidential election.
An excerpt from a WaPo article on the same subject:
Frederick and Kimberly Kagan, a husband-and-wife team of hawkish military analysts, put their jobs at influential Washington think tanks on hold for almost a year to work for Gen. David H. Petraeus when he was the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan. Provided desks, e-mail accounts and top-level security clearances in Kabul, they pored through classified intelligence reports, participated in senior-level strategy sessions and probed the assessments of field officers in order to advise Petraeus about how to fight the war differently.
[...] When they returned in September 2010, the Kagans’ writ no longer resembled the traditional think-tank visit or an assessment mission intended to inform an incoming commander.
They were given desks in the office of the Strategic Initiatives Group, the commander’s in-house think tank, which typically is staffed with military officers and civilian government employees. The general’s staff helped upgrade their security clearances from “Secret” to “Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information,” the highest-level of U.S. government classification.
The new clearances allowed the Kagans to visit “the pit,” the high-security lower level of the Combined Joint Intelligence Operations Center on the headquarters. There, they could read transcripts of Taliban phone and radio conversations monitored by the National Security Agency.
