Rob left today

Rob has been here for a week and we've really enjoyed his being around.  It's been a quiet visit, as Rob arrived with a cold and needed some recuperation time (but he's a really nice guy and didn't leave it with us).  We've been out to choose our Christmas tree, we've played board games, and we had a lovely time as Deanne joined us for a few days.  He left this afternoon (the really unfair photo at the right shows him at the checkin kiosk in Cedar Rapids) and we hope he's having a good flight home as I write.  His freelancing seems to be going well and he's valued by the group he works with.  He is taking home some homemade butter cookies from a family recipe and with instructions to share them with Trista when he gets home.  He leaves a few traces like this toothpase tube that shows he inherited some of his father's cheapness!

First snow of the season

Last night Judy got an extra birthday gift -- the first snow of the season.  It's not a really heavy snow, but it came down slowly without a lot of wind so it sits lightly on every branch in the woods.  It's also a nice gift for our son Rob, who has always visited early in the year when we had lots of snow and he was able to go sledding.  Maybe we'll get in a run or two before he goes home!While the westher is beautiful, and while we really enjoyed seeing our daughter Deanne over the holiday weekend, we're glad she went home early yesterday and we're looking forward to seeing her again soon for Christmas.

Black Friday

Shopping -- is there a more dreaded word in the English language? Especially -- ESPECIALLY -- as in "Holiday Shopping"?  But sometimes one must bite the bullet and take one for the economy, so we went out shopping at 5:15 this morning to get something that had a limited number of items at the store. Even at a technology store the line was long, but we did manage to get what we were looking for.

But sometimes when you go to the store you see something that catches you by surprise. In a store that passes for a "department store" these days, I saw a display of something whose function is not entirely clear. The wag in me would call these "Christmas bedpans" -- after all, what else do they look like? -- but somehow it doesn't feel like that's their intended function. Who knows?

Family Thanksgiving

We have so many things to be thankful for that one day just isn't enough time; every day Judy and I tell each other how fortunate we are.  But for Thanksgiving day, we had even more reasons to be thankful.  Deanne was with us from Chicago, Rob was with us from Sacramento, and Rick was with us ... from across town.  We weren't sure just how many people we'd have for dinner, though, so we had a 22 pound turkey for five people.  But it was a lovely day, from seeing an eagle flying over the house to cooking (Judy), carving (Steve), eating (the Young People), to pie and a movie.  We hope your day was wonderful too.

Changing of the guard

A few weeks ago I wrote about the robins in our trees, but we've had a changing of the guard here.  Yesterday I noticed that I hadn't seen a single robin for a week or so, and today I saw a bald eagle in a tree by the Iowa River where they congregate in the winter.  In fact, we've seen eagles around for a couple of weeks, but they're getting more and more common as they come in for the winter.  Such wonderful birds...

The 2012 elections

I just saw this remarkably jarring image in a post that talked about the "Election Horror Picture Show" -- so (of course) I had to share it with the three of you who read my blog.  Doin' the time warp again...

Writing in Iowa City

We found out today that Iowa City has been named by UNESCO as a "City of Literature," joining Edinburgh and Melbourne as the only cities with this designation.  This is a significant distinction and goes along with Rick's decision to move here to be in a writing-rich environment.  With this designation, Iowa City joins the Creative Cities Network, a group of cities with rich creative environments.  We're delighted with this designation, and we're glad to be able to participate in our own small way.  (My co-author and I recently completed the review of the copyedits for our forthcoming Shaders book, and today I saw the book listed in the AK Peters online catalog.  Not exactly literature, but I claim that it's still creative!)

Sadie Hawkins Day

Today, friends, is Sadie Hawkins Day.  The actual date is taken from the first day when the notion occurred in the Li'l Abner comic strip, though some celebrate a date a few days later.  I expect that most of you are too young to know about this venerated tradition of the hills, but I come from the Ozarks where single young men stay indoors on that day.  So if you're single, this is a good day to watch your back...

Final results are in

WARNING -- election geek stuff ahead!

We've just heard the final results for the Presidential vote in Johnson County, Iowa, where both Iowa City and Coralville are.  Before the election we heard that our precinct, Coralville 6 (CV06) had never gone Democratic, and the first returns showed that the precinct had gone Republican again this year.  But for the first time, absentee and early ballots were counted in their precinct this year instead of simply being counted generally, and it made a difference -- CV06 went Democratic.  It probably had done so before, but we did have the lowest precinct percentage for Obama in either Iowa City or Coralville, with only 60% for Obama.  (A few rural or small-town precincts were lower, and two, with a total of 809 votes, actually went for McCain.)  So I'm feeling better about where we live now...

Birds & berries

There is a tree in our front yard that turns dark red and produces berries each fall. I don't know what kind it is, but there are a few others in the neighborhood; it seems to be a popular sort. When the berries get "just right" the trees are swarmed by robins and cedar waxwings (see the photo at right); it would be easy to conjecture that the berries have fermented and the trees have become a local bar. But the birds don't seem to fly drunkenly (I've seen that and it's a strange sight indeed!) so probably they're just feeding and getting ready to fly south.  The robins should have gone already, because we've had snow flurries and it's gotten well below freezing.  But winter is close and we'll lose them all too soon now.

Pride

When I hear someone say "I'm proud to be an American" I cringe inside. I can be proud of something I've done, and I can be proud of something someone I love has done. Pride is a satisfaction by which one measures one's stature or self-worth. But I cannot see a reason to be proud of something I had no control over. So I can be, and am, proud of my/our kids for their accomplishments.  My father could be proud to be an American -- he made the choice to immigrate to the US. But I cannot be similarly proud because I made no such choice. What I can be, and what I genuinely am, is grateful and happy to be an American. Most of the time.

But I am proud, button-popping proud, of America this evening. To elect someone who promises a new way to think of America, to reject the politics of fear and division, to make a choice to turn the country towards a more positive relation with the rest of the world, is more welcome than I can say.

And I apologize to all my friends from the Americas who will rightly cringe when I mis-use "America" and "American" as I have done. Please recognize that at this emotional moment I can't really think of a better way to express myself without this clumsy shorthand!

Final early voting statistics in our precinct

Since we're poll watching on election day, I've been watching the early voting statistics in our precinct (Coralville precinct 6, or CV6). Iowa's had a lot of emphasis on early voting, and it shows -- in our precinct, 57.8% of registered voters have already voted, almost 70% of Democrats, over 50% of Republicans, and almost 50% of independents. We're guessing that we'll have a pretty easy time as poll watchers tomorrow; we hope so!

Fall chores

I got a lot done of fall chores done over the last few days. Rick and I took out a couple of large limbs from our big backyard tree to create a bit better balance and open up the ground to more sunlight, and we put up the deer fence around the junipers by the driveway. I did most of the work (and none of the creative culinary work) for a big batch of butternut squash soup (with 12 pounds of squash). Yum! I've put up the winter bird feeder and added a second hanger so I can get both sunflower and thistle seed on the same pipe. The birds also say Yum! I've also cleaned gutters, done a little weeding, and grilled what's probably the last set of burgers outdoors this season. Yum again! So let it snow, let it snow, let it snow (it's forecast for later this week...)

Books we made

This fall we're in a bookbinding class, part of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UI. Technically it's called "Adventures in Book Conservation" but "adventure" may not be quite accurate ;^} . The class instructors are from the Iowa Book Works, and the lead instructor is a conservator with the University library.Last night our class made books, using an ancient Ethiopian sewn-book technique. It was quite interesting and not too difficult, but the class members who knit, crochet, or sew seemed to find it easier than the others. The photo shows the books we made -- Judy's is upright and mine is reclining. If you can download and zoom into the photo you may see the pattern of the lock stitches on the spine; they can be quite nice.

Drive and drop

Today we went out on a "Drive and Drop" for the Obama/Biden campaign. I mentioned this in a post yesterday, but let me explain what that is.

The Democratic party has developed a list of everyone in Iowa who is a registered Democrat or has registered his or her intention to vote for the Obama/Biden ticket. Each day the county auditor in each county makes available the names of all the registered voters whose votes have been received (by mail ballot or at an early voting place). These names are marked off the master list, and the next morning the precinct captain will get a list of those voters in our precinct with an Obama/Biden interest who have not yet voted. We will take some of these names and will drive around a neighborhood, putting out door hangers reminding them to vote. Simple. Our job will be simplified considerably by the fact that well over 50% of the registered Democrats in our precinct have already voted.

On election day we will be poll watchers, another get-out-the-vote volunteer job. We will note and report those people on the list who have voted (not HOW they have voted, of couse; we won't know that) so that as the day goes along, the precinct captain will know who has not yet voted so they can be contacted with more reminders. Some of these contacts will be by phone and some by door knockers.

World Series 08

It's a little hard for a Cardinals fan to root for the Phillies in the World Series. I grew up in the 1950s when the Cards and Phillies always seemed to be racing for fourth place in the National League (there were only eight teams in each league then), so the Phillies were hardly the Good Guys, but at least they're National League instead of the Designated Hitter League. The Phillies seemed to win in spite of themselves; it was terribly frustrating seeing all the runners stranded in scoring position, game after game. But it's over and we have to settle for sports with time limits for a few months until baseball comes around again...

Interesting few days ahead

We've been looking for ways to be involved in the elections this year, but some of the traditional election volunteer activities, such as door-to-door canvassing or phone bank staffing, just don't fit our personalities. We've found two that do work, though. We'll be putting out door hangers in our precinct for registered Democrats who have not yet voted, and we'll be working as poll watchers on election day. Each of these is a two-hour commitment and there is training for poll watching, so we'll be a bit busier than usual through Tuesday, but it feels good to be doing more for the election than just voting.

First hard freeze

We had our first hard freeze last night -- not just a frost, but a real freeze. Not a big deal here, but I can just hear some California teeth knocking at the thought! It's supposed to be pretty nice by Hallowe'en, and I imagine that I'll have the usual bunch of terrible visitors. Lots of kids in the neighborhood, which is a lot of fun.

Gas mileage

We've all (well, those of us who watch TV) seen lots and lots of ads about how fuel-efficient the new cars are. I'm not particularly impressed -- I have a 14-year-old Nissan Maxima that was the top of the line in its day: six cylinder, good power, lots of accessories (for its time). And when I filled up yesterday, I had gotten 21 mpg in town (that's actual, not estimated) and often get 30 mpg on the road, and that's with E10 ethanol content that should actually reduce mileage a bit. That's comparable with many new compact cars and better than any of the new six-cylinder midsize cars.

I sometimes rent cars and like to get the smallest car I can, and some of these just-like-a-car-but-smaller vehicles are OK, but I'm not sure I'd like them every day. The only car I've driven that impressed me more with its economy and driveability was a Volkswagen turbodiesel we drove in Scotland in 2006. I didn't figure the fuel "mileage" but even with the very high European fuel costs, the per-mile fuel cost was just about the same as our cost here. In the US, the Jetta and Jetta Sportwagen diesel (30/41 manual, 29/40 auto) are impressive, but I think the European version gets even better mileage.

Last Saturday farmers' market for the season

Fall is lovely in Iowa, with oaks turning rust-colored, maples bursting into flames, and sumacs becoming scarlet ranks along the roads. The weather breaks and long-sleeved shirts come up from the basement closet, but it's not yet cold enough to deal with icy roads. It's time for the year to come to closure, but the closure is tinged with sadness because it's the end of the farmers' markets. The stuff for sale is different now, with hard winter squash and late fruit predominating, but there are still fresh tomatos and even a few raspberries. We'll miss all the fresh food but it will be back in six months -- Iowa's own version of Orpheus and Euridice.

Oregon beach

As part of our Oregon trip, we spent a couple of days in Gold Beach -- an interesting little town that was starting to shut down after the tourist season when we were there. Several restaurants were closed (including, alas, the little Paul Bunyan Burger shack) but there was a really nice little cafe down at the harbor. Our place was beachfront, though it was maybe 40 meters from the actual beach. The weather was cool, but nice enough to sit out on the deck and read (when suitably bundled up, of course!)Of course, we also drove along the southern Oregon coast, a lovely part of the country; that's Arch Rock above, only one of many great views.

Adventure boot camp?

We stopped at several viewpoints as we were driving around Crater Lake last week. At one of them we found this vehicle from an "Adventure Boot Camp for Women." I'm sure the participants were out hiking around the rim, but apparently they left the driver behind to take care of the van...

Visiting Crater Lake

We were in Oregon for a week earlier this month because some friends from the Northwest were giving some computer graphics content at the CCSC-NW conference in Ashland. As long as we were there, we visited Crater Lake and the coast for a couple of days each.
We were at Crater Lake Lodge just a couple of days before it closed for the winter. It was pretty nippy, as you can tell from this picture of Judy taken as we walked over to the Rim Village store to see if any Christmas stocking stuffers jumped out at us. (Did they? We'll never tell!)
Our first day there was beautiful and sunny, as you can see by this photo from the window of our lodge room. We drove around the crater rim and enjoyed the day quite a bit. We also enjoyed a really good dinner at the lodge; National Park lodges seem to have really good menus--probably to give guests the energy to get out and enjoy the parks.
The next day started out pretty, but by the middle of the day it was spitting snow and by the end of the day it was snowing pretty solidly. We went out for a walk in the morning and found these frost flowers "growing" by the side of the road, but later on the lounge chairs outside the dining room were less inviting. By the next morning it was largely clear and the lake was beautiful with snow on the island and caldera walls.

From John McCain's campaign...

A member of John McCain's campaign staff has been quoted as saying "John McCain needs foreign-policy advisers like Tiger Woods needs a golf coach." (New Yorker, October 13, 2008, p. 116) Interesting concept, since Woods HAS a golf coach (see TheAge.com or USA Today, among others). On the other hand, Obama has an extensive and very experienced foreign-policy team. So which is best -- "experience" that needs no assistance, or "experience" that knows enough to know that policy needs to be developed with careful thought and input? I seem to remember a President who insisted that he didn't need any help; wasn't his middle initial 'W' or something? Saints deliver us from another President who is his own vision of perfection...

Sign seen recently

We're just back from a week in Oregon, including the CCSC-NW conference at Southern Oregon University in Ashland. I'll write more about that later, but a quick note here to share a sign just outside an elevator door at the SOU library. I hope people don't take it too literally...

Just turned off the "debate"

I tried to watch the debate tonight, but watching McCain try to get the last word in on every point and watching him spread the same distortions that his negative attack ads have been putting out, I simply got too nauseated to continue. Good bye, John. Good bye, Sarah. "Mothra" is on another channel, and I intend to raise the level of my television viewing.

Alaska postcard

Got this postcard in the mail today. Interesting, and it means something. Not negative, not smearing anyone's character directly or by implication, simply saying what the sender believes. And I agree with him. Hope you do too!

Cartoons this morning

This non sequitur cartoon was in this morning's paper, and I found it funny and very, very germane. Enjoy!

And in the next New Yorker there will be the following cartoon that's perhaps a bit more subtle.

The Seacrest barn

Today was a celebration of the Seacrest barn's 125th year. This is an octagonal barn about 15 miles east of Iowa City. We have enjoyed visiting old barns, and this celebration also included a demonstration of Belgian work horses loading hay in the barn. So we went out and enjoyed the afternoon quite a bit.

The barn is quite complex, with a lower level having stables and milking stations, a "main floor" (where the ramp shown in the first picture leads) with workshops and various equipment, and an upper level that would have stored hay for the winter. The upper level was gorgeous, with an amazing domed ceiling that almost looked church-like.

The Belgian horses are beautiful, massive animals that are clearly capable of an amazing amount of work, but they are also very well mannered and take directions readily from their owner. It was beautiful to see how they worked, and it was amazing to see just how difficult it was to move hay from the main floor of the barn to the upper level. It seemed to take at least two different pulls on different ropes to get the hay lifted up and then moved over to the right storage area.

Perhaps the most surprising event of this aftenoon was seeing a graduate school friend at the barn. Kent Fuller worked for the same advisor I did, Frank Anderson, and I knew that he was in the Iowa City area, but we hadn't looked him up after I moved here. He and Gretchen were at the barn, though, and it was nice to say hello. I'm sure we'll get in touch with them when we can have time to catch up. A very nice treat for the day!

Washington and Facebook

I'm just back from some NSF panels in Washington. They were read-on-site panels, so we had to read, write reviews, meet our panels, and do panel summaries in just over two days. Hard work, but I always enjoy meeting other panelists and learning about what's happening around the country. And sometimes I even get some time on my own -- I was able to get to DCA pretty early so I could go to the Smithsonian American Art Museum to catch a marvelous joint exhibition of Georgia O'Keefe and Ansel Adams. The exhibition was built around the concept that they had natural affinities, and I think it made the case pretty well. And, of course, their works are incredibly gorgeous.

While I was there I got an email from Rob inviting me to join Facebook and be his friend. I'm too old for that, I thought, but what the heck -- it's Rob, so how bad could it be? And it's not bad at all, though I think I'll stick with my blog and not be QUITE so cool as he is. But it is a chance to be a little closer to him and Trista, and that's great.

The Oxford Project

This evening Judy, Rick, and I went to the Englert Theater in downtown Iowa City for a reading from The Oxford Project, a new book from Peter Feldstein and Stephen Bloom. Peter is a friend of ours, and has been a friend of Judy's for years. The book gives an intimate and honest portrait of the small town of Oxford, Iowa, through photographs of people taken 21 years apart and through candid interviews with them. The reading tonight was in a theatrical style, with individuals reading the things that townspeople have said. Very effective, quite touching, and a wonderful look at small-town America. As Bloom said this evening, when you want to understand the real history of America, you won't get it from Sarah Palin or Barack Obama -- you'll get it from understanding the lives of people like these. A remarkable project about a very real town and the very real people in it.

My spam filter must work

I keep reading about email "whispering" campaigns that spread rumors about the Presidential (and Vice-Presidential) candidates by anonymous or pseudonymous email. Either the spam filters on my Mac or the filters that Stanislaus uses must be doing a good job, because I'm just not seeing them. In any case, I would never believe anything that did not come with full and verifiable citations, because I have never taken anyone else's word for anything like that. Perhaps this is part of my training as a mathematician; perhaps it is a trust in my own ability to discern; perhaps it is too much early exposure to preachers who told me that I must believe only what they told me.

It really doesn't matter anyway, because I got my mail-in ballot in the mail today. There are some local candidates I need to look at, but I expect to return the ballot by Monday. November 4 comes in September this year -- which would probably be a better title for this entry anyway!

Nobody asked me, but...

Interesting watching and listening to the political developments in the last few days. I had a strange thought about the Republican VP situation today. I suggest:

* Johh McCain knows that Palin is not really capabile of being a worthwhile Veep. He'd have to be as dumb as W to believe that, and he isn't.

* When JM is dealing with a real issue, Pailin isn't with JM -- Lieberman is.

So I'll put up the following two-part conjecture:

* Palin was chosen as eye candy and as a frisky distraction, and if JM is elected she'll carry out the public duties of the Veep. But the real contributions that a Veep would make won't come from Palin -- they'll come from Lieberman.

* if JM should become seriously ill, Palin will resign JM will name Lieberman as VP so he can take over.

As I said, nobody asked me, but this just might be plausible. YMMV...

First touches of fall

Fall is here -- it sneaked in while I was being vetted for the jury on Monday -- but it really doesn't feel like it yet. The temperatures are still in the upper 70s and lower 80s, with lows only in the 60s. Not at all fall temperatures in the upper Midwest. But this is good, because corn and soybeans are delayed from the late spring and floods, and this will let farmers get in those crops.

There are ways we can tell that fall is getting here, though. Our bush that turns bright scarlet is starting to get some red highlights, and the first newspaper story about a vehicle hitting a deer appeared the day before yesterday. Time to start slowing down on the roads in our neighborhood that go through the woods; I don't want a repeat of my deer collision a couple of years ago!

Jury duty

I've had jury duty the last couple of days. I was selected yesterday for a criminal jury, and today we heard the prosecution testimony before a recess; after the recess we heard that the defendent had reached a plea agreement and we were released. The details aren't important, but I am comfortable that justice was done for both society and the defendent.

Johnson County has an interesting jury system. The shorthand name is "one day or one trial" -- you come in on Monday and are either selected for a jury that day or released. In either case, this is your jury exposure for four years (or longer). Because of the modest requirements, there are very few exclusions; everyone serves. This is a better system than the one-week exposure in Stanislaus County, California, but even that was better than many other counties. So I'm pleased to have been able to serve, and pleased at the treatment that jurors and potential jurors received. And it doesn't hurt that the jury payment was actually reasonable, given the amount of time I had to give -- much better than the minimal wage.

Our snake

Yesterday Rick and I saw a snake by the retaining wall in front of our house. It was a very small snake, probably just hatched this year, but I didn't recognize it (not that I have such a broad herpetological experience or anything). I took a photo (below) and looked it up online, and it seems to be a brown snake; Rick verified it with a better online reference. As we were looking at it, it crawled into the wall in a very small space between blocks. So now I guess we have a Resident Snake to help protect us from small insects.

Amana artisans studio tour today

There was a tour of artisans' studios in the Amana Colonies this weekend, and Rick went with us today to look around. It was a lovely warm not-quite-fall day, and a great excuse to be out. There were a number of places on the tour, but -- this being the Amanas -- some of them weren't open on Sundays. We ended up visiting a glass studio (mostly layered glass), a tinsmith who was both making new objects and re-creating antique pieces, a broom and basket shop that had some wonderful art baskets, and a coppersmith who mostly made oversized insects and frogs-with-martini-glasses. I really didn't get it on that last one...

At the broom and basket shop we found this hard-working fellow connected to a windmill that kept him going. There was a large woodpile out behind the basket show, so he must have put in a very productive summer. Wind power for the worker, firewood for winter -- sounds like a localized solution to energy problems to me!

Travel and the economy

Over the last couple of weeks I've been exchanging emails with Guido Rößling, my co-chair for a program at a computer science education conference to be held in Paris next summer. Of course, this means that I'm committed to a trip to Paris in early July, and perhaps one in March as well to organize our program. (For any of my non-US friends who cannot read this, that translates to "organise our programme" in the Queen's English.) So we're committed to some travel and to the costs that will go with it. Of course, this week's economic debacle will probably make the USD even more worthless than it already is, so the cartoon below seems appropriate.But it is Paris, after all, and perhaps we'll stay at our tiny hotel just around the corner from the Café Flore and down the street from St. Germain de Prés. Life could be worse, and we'll see a number of good friends at the conference (which is really why we do these things!)

Monarch butterflies

Iowa is on the fall migration route of the Monarch butterfly. There have been butterfly-tagging events here, and we routinely see them flying around. It's a lovely treat.This photo, from Drake University (wish I'd taken it myself!) shows a Monarch on some local wildflowers.

Jet trails

Today was mostly clear with a few clouds, but there must have been some unstable air at flight altitudes because the sky was filled with jet contrails, probably from flights from Chicago to the west coast. The effect was very interesting and I thought I'd share it with you all, though this composite of two photos is pretty crude. Enjoy!

Class reunion

Last weekend we went down to Ft. Madison, Iowa, for Judy's high school reunion. I won't say how many, but if you look closely at the second photo you can figure it out...Ft. Madison is a very nice small river town on the Mississippi, almost on the Missouri border. It has had a consistent set of employers, and the town is in very good shape. The old part of town is particularly nice, with many lovely old homes. One of them has been converted into a B&B, the Victorian Bed and Breakfast, and its photo is above. We had a suite, not just a room, and the biggest and best breakfasts we've ever had at a B&B, and that's going some!Of course, the real function of a class reunion is to catch up with your high-school friends, and Judy saw many friends she hadn't seen in many years. Some of them had gotten old, but some (including us, of course!) hadn't. She had a great time and I was very glad to meet people who had been important to her growing up. (That's Judy in the front row, just about in the center of the photo.)

Teacher's Day

China has an annual Teacher's Day, when people celebrate the teachers who are or were important in their education. It's a wonderful idea, and says a lot about how China has gotten where they are in the world. This year it was September 10, and a friend of ours, Yang Ke, sent us a photo of his teacher, Shi Jiaoying, with himself and some of Prof. Shi's other students. This is doubly wonderful because Jiaoying is one of our best friends and was part of my birthday celebrations this summer. Here's the photo, taken on the new campus of Zhejiang University; it's clear who is being celebrated, and Ke is the young man on the right, who has just finished his PhD and is about to start working with Microsoft Research Shanghai.

I was wrong...

I couple of weeks ago I thought I could distance myself from politics, and I said so in this space. I was wrong. There's no way I can ignore the lies and misrepresentations that are flying around so freely. So, figuring that Seattle is the gateway to Alaska and so a Seattle paper would have some idea of what is really going on in Alaska, I want to share a few cartoons from Horsey, the editorial cartoonist on the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Enjoy!

Green jobs

Interesting piece in today's Cedar Rapids Gazette. A new company in Newton has opened a wind turbine blade factory that will employ 500 people. This is the fifth wind energy company in Iowa (two in Newton, one in Cedar Rapids, one in West Branch, and one in Ft. Madison) and is an indication that once we can wean ourselves off oil and the resource-extraction "Drill, baby, drill" mentality, there is an enormous economic potential in new energy sources and other green jobs. If we look at the models of the computing and communications industries, once this starts it's going to grow really quickly, so if I were looking to invest in the future, I'd look at things like algae-based fuels and flexible thin-film solar panels.

The joys of home ownership

As Rick was visiting us last March in preparation to move to Iowa City, we had heavy rains and a heavy melting snowpack -- and we had so much water around that we had water leaking in one corner of the guest bedroom. Pooh. So we had the fill and landscape wall under the back porch reworked, and at the end of the job we had our contractor look at the corner where the leak had happened. It turned out that the leak was anything but new, and there was significant water damage in the corner and under the edges of the window.
The picture shows the damage from the inside; you can see daylight at the corner of the window where the sheathing had rotted from poor window installation, and you might be able to see the damage in the lower left corner. The view from the outside shows the repair of the lower part of the wall, but further damage was found below the upper window and we had to replace sheathing below that window and around the dryer vent. Quite a job, but it feels good to do it right. Next year -- we're going to look at the other windows in the back, because some of them probably have the same problem. Oh, the joys of home ownership...

Anniversary

Today is our third anniversary -- and the first one that we've celebrated at home. Eurographics used to give us a reason to be in Europe, and our first two anniversaries were in Budapest and Prague. But home is good, very good.
The picture, taken this morning, is a very special anniversary plant that blooms each year around our anniversary time. Our friends Sousan Karimi and Mahesh Dodani sent us this lovely orchid as a wedding present. We keep it in the kitchen window, and each fall it sends out several flower stalks.

Fall flowers

We've started to get just a little bit of nip in the air here in Iowa, and some leaves are starting to act as though they really don't see much use in hanging around any longer. I guess fall is in the air. It's time for fall flowers. At the Farmers' Market last Saturday there were some wonderful pots of chrysanthemums for sale, and anyone with allergies will know about goldenrod.

There are also a number of very pretty fall-blooming wildflowers. Here are two photos of flowers out along the path behind the house. I don't know their names -- we have never been properly introduced -- but I enjoy greeting them as I walk by and enjoy their beauty.

Gustav missed us -- almost

Hurricanes do most of their damage on the coast before they go over land and start to weaken. But they linger on for several days as strong storms, and they can be nasty, even several hundred miles from the coast. Yesterday we were in just the edge of the remains of Gustav; just south and east of us they got several inches of rain, and we had a blustery day but we got less than an inch. Today is dawning mostly clear and we're looking forward to a nice day -- there are signs that fall is near, but we're in no hurry...

Training the remote

Over the last eight years we have very carefully trained our TV remote to change channels -- or turn off the TV -- when certain faces appeared on the screen. After last night's round of character assassination at the RNC, we're instituting another round of training so that any Republican face or commercial triggers the same response. It's not that hard -- it's all the same stuff anyway.

Sheesh. Classical politics -- if you don't have anything to say, say something nasty about your opponent. If you don't have anything positive to offer, wrap yourself in the flag. If you don't have any policies to benefit citizens, say that you're for the nation (I suppose that most voters have never read about Mussolini's fascist state and its policies.)

Enough, already. To mis-quote Flower the Skunk in Bambi, "if you can't say anything nice, I'm not going to listen to you at all." And I suppose that means that this blog will become a politics-free zone.

Obama, Biden, and a Rove-free country.

Years of experience?

As we hear politicians talking about years of experience, let's think about the Geiko gecko. You ask whether a humble (or not...) lizard can have years of experience? It's known that the gecko has a long and ancient lineage, but scientists from Oregon State University and the Natural History Museum of London have just found a 100-million-year old gecko, almost doubling the known history of the species. But nobody knows if a gecko were ever the mayor of a small town...

Say what?

Does it strike anyone else as odd that the Republican National Convention starts on Labor Day this year? The irony is so deep...

Interestinger and interestinger

Well, John McCain pulled a surprise in selecting Sarah Palin as his vice presidential candidate. She's pretty, she's red-headed, and she's feisty, but what else is she? Her choice blows out the Republican claim that Obama's not sufficiently experienced -- she was the mayor of a town of about 6500 and was governor for two years, and has never faced any real national issues. Of course, she was really nominated in an attempt to get the nobody-but-Hillary voters, and that may succeed, but I'll be very interested in what Hillary has to say about her. It would have been very interesting to know how many others were contacted about the position and declined because they didn't want to be tainted by being the VP candidate on a losing ticket...

Oh, wait! I forgot another key advantage that Palin has -- she does not seem to have ever been photographed with George Bush.

Being studied

In the EdBiz (as Tom Lehrer once put it) we get used to studies as something we do or something we assign others to do. But now that we're retired persons in a city with a major university and medical school, we find that there are opportunities to be the object of study. Sounds grim, I guess, but not really.

Judy and I are now in a study of ageing and memory that looks at memory processes and, at the same time, will give us a longitudinal look at our own memories. We certainly experience enough "what IS that word?" moments to make us wonder sometimes, and this is a simple study that just requires us to take a few memory tests.

I'm also in a study of vascular function and cognition, looking at relations between how the functioning of our vascular system and our cognitive systems are related. This is a more complex study and will involve some blood and MRI studies as well as cognitive testing.

There are three reasons we like to do this sort of thing. One is that we believe it contributes to knowledge and science. A second is that we always learn something from them. And a third is that there is generally a modest stipend for contributing (though not always; a study I did a year ago paid almost exactly enough for parking and gasoline).

And, of course, it gives me something to write about in the blog when the days are slow...

Al Gore and the internet

A recent conversation in which somebody said "Yeah, and Al Gore invented the internet" in a depricating manner -- to which I had no real answer -- left me wondering just what was said. So I looked for sources, and found that he really said, in part,

"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system."

Judy managed the University of Iowa's networking system in the late 1980s and she says that indeed, Gore's initiatives were critical in moving from the older networking environments to the real internet, and that it wouldn't have happened without him. This is confirmed by Vin Cerf and Bob Kahn. How did the distortion leak out? Through the efforts of that real Friend O' Truth, George W. Bush and his trusty sidekick Karl Rove, whose efforts continue as consultant to the John McCain candidacy.

Who's your buddy?

There was an interesting photo in the most recent Smithsonian, and I realized that it reminded me a great deal of another photo I saw a few months ago. In both cases, a politician was being associated with another politician who is widely accepted as having done great damage to others. One of them is embarassingly like a child with his father. Some even believe (and I agree) that the other politician is fundamentally evil. The analogy is far from exact and I'll admit it can be picked apart, but the resonance is certainly there. Judge for yourself.

Catching up

Once again, I've let the blog slip. Perhaps that's telling me something, but I'll choose to believe that I'll still be able to keep it up.

So -- what's happened over the last couple of weeks? We were in LA for a week at the annual SIGGRAPH conference, where we enjoyed the awards dinner where our very good friend Stephen Spencer received the 2008 Outstanding Service Award -- very much deserved. We also enjoyed seeing a number of friends. I also organizes a BOF (Birds of a Feather) session on teaching computer graphics in context in computer science that generated a very active and productive discussion, and was part of a short course on proposal writing. And after the conference we had a wonderful visit with Randy (our son on Judy's side) and Cynthia that included an informal organ concert at the home of Randy's boss. Some of the music was familiar and lovely, and some (by Olivier Messaien) was pretty challenging, though interesting.

Since coming home, I've been focused on working on the Computer Graphics Shaders textbook and on a paper that was accepted for SIGGRAPH Asia in Singapore in December. I guess that focus is my excuse for not doing a blog sooner. But with the political conventions coming up, it should be a lot easier to find things to write about!

Please close the windows

We're deep into August, but the request "Please close the windows" doesn't mean what it usually does at this time of year. We've been having really nice weather with the low temperatures down in the lower 60s or even mid-50s, and Judy's been asking me to close the windows because it's uncomfortably cool for her. The long stretch of wet weather is also continuing, and I've not yet had to water any of our plants. (This has actually been going on over a year; I didn't need to water last summer either.) An unusual, but not unpleasant, stretch of weather -- though there are probably many places in the world where the weather is as bad as ours is good. Global warming brings all kinds of climate change.

Iowa wildlife

In yesterday's Cedar Rapids Gazette there was a small news report about an unusual traffic accident on I-380. While a semi carrying bananas was passing a car, the truck hit a buffalo while the car sideswiped a second one on the shoulder of the road. Not the usual kind of wildlife we would find in our back yard!

How time flies...

It's been almost a month since my last posting -- a very busy month, but that's probably not a good excuse. In that month we've come home from China and gotten back on North American time, been to some NSF panels in Washington, Steve's been to an advisory board meeting in Edmonton, and we've been out to visit family in Sacramento. This is the first weekend we've been home in about six weeks. It's about time!

A few things to share from the month, though. First, you may have an image of a suburban home in China, but unless you've visited there you probably don't think of this:These are very interesting homes with plenty of room, but they don't look much like a North American or European home.

Second, we've talked about our extended Chinese "family" of friends who Judy knew through her lab at Iowa. While we were at the NSF panels we went to visit our friends Jie and Yu and their brand-new baby Alex. Such wonderful people!


Edmonton was a very quick trip with no sightseeing time, but I did take one photo to share. Remember that I'm a mathematician at heart, so I was glad to see an example of a hypoteneuse (with a nod to Tim for the bad pun):

This morning was one of those rare August mornings when the temperature and humidity both fell, and after we went out to the Saturday farmer's market (see the earlier posting on that) I went for a long walk. The woods undergrowth is high and had some interesting flowering plants, and there were some butterflies out along with lots of birds and a few baby rabbits. A really nice day. I hope your day was lovely too!