Blackcap Blog

Published at 12:37 on 10 June 2013

Seeing the movie Two Lives brought that home. We now know a lot about what evil things various Soviet Bloc secret police agencies did, for the simple reason that the regimes they served vanished, and the replacement regimes have not been interested in preserving the secrets of their predecessors.

So far as the misdeeds of various Western secret police agencies (and, be honest now, that’s what they are: secret police don’t stop being secret police just because they serve ideologically convenient regimes), we don’t know vastly more than we did at the height of the Cold War. Sure, there’s been a leak or two here and there, but no vast revelations on the scale of the Stasi archives falling into the hands of its opponents.

Any attempts to document said misdeeds will therefore be biased towards making the Soviet side look bad (not that that’s particularly hard to do). Circumstances dictate it: there’s just not much factual material to work with when it comes to the Western side. It cannot really be otherwise until, say, the MI6 archives suffer a fate corresponding to the one the Stasi archives suffered.

All we can do is guess, based on the observed overt behavior of both sides’ governments. In brief that guess is “the Western intelligence agencies were less evil than their Soviet Bloc counterparts, but they were still plenty evil.” The USA, after all, backed some thoroughly vile Third World regimes, even though its record in Europe is indeed much better than the Soviet Union’s. In other words, better overall, but still plenty evil.

Published at 13:17 on 24 May 2013

A major bridge collapsed not far to the north, and already some sources are trumpeting how the trucking company responsible for the damage was given a permit by the State.

Said permit is mostly irrelevant. The load being carried was oversize, and it is the responsibility of the carrier of an oversize load to ensure it can clear all obstacles along the route.

The clearance on the damaged bridge was not posted, because it doesn’t have to be posted. The minimum clearance was 14’6″ on the right side of the right lane. By law, clearances only need to be posted if they’re under 14′. The load was thus oversize at least in part because it was over 14 feet in height and signage alone could not be relied upon to ensure the load cleared. Interestingly, the span is high enough in the center that the load could have cleared, had the truck taken the left lane and used it while crossing the bridge.

Pilot vehicles come equipped with poles which are extended to the maximum height of the overheight load they are escorting. At least one witness says he saw the pilot vehicle’s poles hit the right side of the bridge girder before the load made impact. Alas, the load was apparently following the pilot too closely to be able to stop or change lanes in response to the pole hitting the bridge.

In short, it seems pretty damn obvious who’s at fault for this, and it’s not the state DOT for issuing a permit.

Published at 09:48 on 10 May 2013

Really, now, if I’d want to make a gun myself why would I spend over $1000 on a 3D printer and spend a week fighting with software configuration to print a flimsy plastic gun that self-destructs after a single shot, when for far less money I could build a good old-fashioned zip gun which is both safer and more effective?

Maybe that subject should really read “Liberals Wetting Pants over a Non-Threat after Libertarians Hype a Non-Development”, since it’s as silly to hyperventilate about this gun being a threat as it is to hyperventilate about it being a radical expansion of the right to keep and bear arms.

The Register nails it on this one.

Published at 09:54 on 8 May 2013

I think I had my “I think I’m staying” moment on Friday of last week. It was another day of working indoors at the home office as usual, and I neither wanted to waste a sunny evening indoors nor make a big production of things, so I got on my bike to the Hawley Cove trailhead and took this route along the beach to Wing Point.

It was low tide and I saw colonies of sand dollars (living ones, covered in dark fuzz, not bleached skeletons) exposed near the water line. There were also a few tide pools teeming with baby hermit crabs.

I could have had such a walk along the beach in Seattle had I gone to Golden Gardens Park, but that’s a good 30 to 40 minute drive along congested arterials from where I lived. Forget mass transit; the buses get stuck in even worse traffic because of the routing they take, and there is no established, comprehensive rapid transit system in Seattle. Forget riding a bike, that would take even longer; not worth it for a quick hike. And I haven’t added in the time I’d have to spend circulating looking for parking (because everyone else would have had the same idea on a warm, sunny Friday evening) yet. I would have known all that ahead of time, of course. So I wouldn’t have bothered going; the time and frustration cost wouldn’t have been worth it.

Instead, I was at the Hawley Cove trailhead inside of ten minutes on my bicycle. No fighting traffic, no competing for scarce parking, just decide to go on the spur of the moment and get there with no fuss.

I think I’m staying.

Published at 08:35 on 30 April 2013

Most people who just met me assume I must have a smart phone, probably (a) because most people do, (b) I have plenty of technical know-how, and (c) I can easily afford one. They are mistaken in their assumption.

I really cannot see how having a smart phone would represent a net improvement in my life.

First, smart phones almost universally use touch screens, and I hate touch screens. They have abysmal tactile feedback (essentially none at all, in fact), and they force you to mess up the screen with fingerprints. Blecch and double blecch.

Second, I’ve never really “gotten” text messaging. If I want to send somebody a textual message, I’ll send them an e-mail. It will have no length restrictions, and I won’t be asked to pay a patently ridiculous per-character rate to transmit it. Moreover, my cheap flip-phone can receive (and, in a pinch, send) text messages on those rare occasions where I desire such functionality (generally related to interacting with someone who’s big on texting).

Third, I have little interest in a phone that also sends and receives e-mail. E-mail is for less-critical messages that can (and in my case, probably will) end up waiting for a response. If it’s really urgent or demanding of real-time interaction, make a phone call instead. I don’t want to be continually disturbed by incoming e-mail alerts wherever and whenever I am. I’ll get to it when time allows me to check my inbox, thank you very much.

Fourth, I have no interest in a clock or GPS which also sends and receives e-mail and phone calls. Most often, I don’t want to be pestered by either when I’m out in nature or even out and about in town, even though I often want a clock with me (and I’m about to start doing volunteer botanical survey work for which a GPS will be useful).

Those last two objections can be answered of course by configuring the smart phone to disable e-mail notification and to not ring for incoming calls. The problem is, those configurations are hidden away in a menu, and I tend to forget such things. So I’ll either forget to disable them and have unwanted disruptions from my watch or GPS, or forget to re-enable them and miss an important contact I was expecting.

It’s far simpler to just keep such devices separate, and to have one device serve one function. If I want to be in phone contact, I take my cell phone with me. If I want to know the exact time of day, I take a watch. If I want to know my geographic coordinates, I’ll buy and take a GPS. The technological functionality is mirrored by what I choose to carry. Simplicity itself.

Published at 07:23 on 24 April 2013

I often wonder if the attractiveness of Seattle, particularly to young adults, is not based in part on those attracted being unaware of what large urban areas typically offer.

I guess that’s because in my case, it’s true. I first moved here from the Southwest. I hadn’t lived there all my life, but I had never lived in an inner city. So I could be wowed by the city things that Seattle does have, and not notice things like the sub-par mass transit or parks systems.

Such awareness came only later, and only got truly driven home when my first and only romantic relationship turned out to be a long-distance one which sparked many trips to another metropolitan area.

Naïveté doesn’t explain it all, of course. Seattle is in an unusually spectacular natural area for a big city. That’s a big part of the reason why I came back. But the region is more than the city, and if the city is dysfunctional and a poor match for my priorities, why not live elsewhere in that region if my job situation allows?

To that can be added, how, as I have gotten older, I appreciate more and more how much more important being in nature is to me than big-city cultural things.

Published at 18:50 on 22 April 2013

I took a quick ride down to one of my favorite spots in the Seattle park system this evening, to the Arboretum where Foster Island ends and Union Bay begins.

Alas, it won’t stay as nice as it currently is for much longer. Seattle has acquiesced to the tripling of the width of the freeway they made the mistake of allowing to be built through that park in the first place. Naturally, the neighborhood of upscale homes immediately adjacent will have an expensive tunnel built to conduct the freeway under it. (Why preserve public amenities when there is private wealth to pander to?)

That is the sort of thing I am very glad to be bidding farewell to.

Published at 07:59 on 20 April 2013

The Obama Administration is denying the Boston bombing suspect his civil rights.

As Glenn Greenwald points out, this is not a surprise. Obama’s poor record on human rights is the main reason I voted for a third party candidate in the past presidential election.

And spare me the rhetoric about how evil those two brothers were as an excuse. Sure they were evil. So were Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, and any number of other violent criminals that come to mind. All of whom were successfully prosecuted without having to ignore the Constitution.

Published at 20:29 on 17 April 2013

Well, missing parts of Seattle, that is, particularly the wealth of historic buildings, which I’ve always appreciated. If only the City of Seattle didn’t have so many other aspects (already hashed to death in precious posts, so I won’t rehash them here) which I just can’t stand.

And that’s the rub: I’ve never really found a city that I can truly love wholeheartedly. I thought I had, back in my twenties, when I moved to Seattle. Eventually a long-distance romantic relationship opened my eyes to all the ways in which Seattle is just plain dysfunctional, things that had been grating on me but which I had accepted.

By then, I was in my thirties, and thought I had found another place I could love, Portland. I even bought a home there. Then discovered just how hellish a place it is in May and June when the grass pollen levels go through the roof, and just how difficult a place it is to find a good job.

All in all, I’m glad to be out of Portland and have absolutely no intention of ever moving back there; it suits me even less well than Seattle does.

Bellingham would be ideal, if I could find a good stable job there. But that’s an awfully big if, and past experience has taught me that a good job can degrade into an intolerable one quite easily as people come and go. Jobs are so scarce there that that would leave me with the dilemma of either moving yet again (possibly taking a bath in the real estate market) or sticking it out with a bad work situation.

Which pretty much gets me to where I am today, deciding that better access to nature matters more than most of the urban amenities of Seattle. Which, in general, it does — but an evening walk through the Madrona neighborhood reminds me that there still will be things I’m giving up that, all in all, I’d rather not.

Published at 12:50 on 14 April 2013

Hardly any apartment on Bainbridge Island has a gas stove, so I’ve purchased a portable induction cooktop so that I won’t have to fight with a conventional electric stove on a daily basis. Of course, I wanted to test it out as soon as it arrived to make sure it wasn’t defective.

Executive summary: induction works much better than a conventional electric stove, but it’s not going to unseat gas as the best cooking method.

First, the good news. It’s true: induction is at least as responsive as gas. When a pot reaches the desired temperature, just turn it down and it will go down. Instantly. Gone is the feeling of driving a car where you have to turn the steering a quarter-mile before the next turn you wish to make.

Now, the quirky stuff. There’s actually less temperature memory then even gas, to the point where you can’t just turn the stove off when you’re done, unless you want the food to get cool right away. An induction stove doesn’t get hot, so if you turn the burner completely off, the cool stove top will quickly suck much of the heat out of the pot via conduction.

Now, the negatives. First, the one everyone already knows: you can’t use any old pot on an induction stove; only magnetic ones will do. Moreover, you can’t use round-bottomed things like woks; only a flat-bottomed cooking vessel has enough metal close enough to the induction coil.

Not so well known is that induction stoves are noisy. Because they contain lots of heat-sensitive electronics, and there’s a hot pot bottom in contact with them, they need cooling fans to stop that conducted heat from building up inside and shortening the lifetime of that electronics. Cook with induction and you will have the sound of a fan going in your kitchen whenever the stove is on. What I find most annoying about this is that I’m used to using sound cues to know when I need to turn the heat down (or up), and the fan noise makes it much harder to hear the boiling or simmering noises.

Take those disadvantages, and to them add that induction stoves are by far the most costly kind (costing at least twice what conventional electric stoves do), and it becomes clear that they will never have more than a niche market.

Just look at electric stoves: there’s enough of a penchant for sacrificing quality in the name of lower price that the extremely modest savings (compared to the total cost of a home) of not running a gas pipe to the kitchen and installing a range that maybe costs 10% more means that there’s a huge number of homes with natural gas service yet which have electric stoves. In a market dominated by that sort of mentality, why would one expect builders to install a stove that costs at least 100% more?

Induction’s niche will be customers like yours truly: people who appreciate just how poorly conventional electric stoves perform, want nothing to do with them, yet for whatever reason do not have gas available in the kitchen as a cooking fuel.