Lessons On Backing Up From Heinlein And Laumer:  On Friday mornings, I do routine backups.  This morning, while I was waiting for the data to be written to a DVD, I realized that the plots of two science fiction novels I had read recently depended on the failures of very advanced civilizations to make backups.  If you have ever managed even a small computer facility, that makes about as much sense as a starship pilot running out of fuel because he forgot to look at the gas gage.  An advanced civilization would do backups, automatically.

(If you are curious, the two science fiction novels are Robert Heinlein's Glory Road, and A Trace of Memory by Keith Laumer.  Both authors have done better work.  The books were first published in 1963 and 1962, respectively, which may help explain the plots.)

Just As I thought.  The best part of snails dipped in garlic butter is the garlic butter.

As much as my sister and I hated the idea of the poor critters [snails] starving to death on our patio, we did relish dipping nuggets of crusty baguette into the molten, garlicky, green-flecked snail butter, which we vastly preferred to the chewy snail bodies themselves.

Years later, I feel the same, and am convinced that the only reason to order snails à la bourguignonne is to sop up the butter surrounding them, then unload the snails on your tablemates, selling them as delicacies.

(Here's the link to her recipe, if you want to try the snail butter yourself.)

Another View On Obama As President:  On Monday, I concluded:

Briefly, I think that Obama will govern as close to his leftist ideas and values as he can get away with.

Today, Tom Maguire concludes:

I think Obama has about one core belief, which is that he can talk his way past any audience and any problem.  My guess/hope is that he will be a huge disappointment to those hoping for an earnest and committed lefty.

I think the evidence is better for my conclusion, but you should read both posts and make up your own mind.

Three Hundred:  And none of them are Spartans.  But all three hundred belong to Barack Obama's foreign policy bureaucracy.

"It is unwieldy, no question," said Denis McDonough, 38, Mr. Obama's top foreign policy aide, speaking of an infrastructure that has been divided into 20 teams based on regions and issues, and that has recently absorbed, with some tensions, the top foreign policy advisers from Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign.  "But an administration is unwieldy, too.  We also know that it's messier when you don't get as much information as you can."

A little bit of thought will show you that Obama can not possibly spend significant time with all of them, and he isn't.

Out in the netherworld of the 300, advisers often say they are unclear about what happens to all the policy paragraphs they churn out on request.  "It's all mysterious what we send him and what gets to him," said Michael A. McFaul, a Russia scholar at Stanford University who leads the Russia and Eurasia team for the Obama campaign.

Nor does Obama have time, in the middle of a campaign, to get the tutoring on foreign policy he so obviously needs.  (George W. Bush brought in Condoleezza Rice for foreign policy advice — but he did that long before the 2000 campaign began.)

So, what is this bureaucracy for?  Two things, as far as I can tell from the article.  They are, as many of them may realize, another campaign group suppporting Obama, "Foreign Policy Notables for Obama", or something like that.  And, they are there to provide sound bites for the junior senator from Illinois.  (He needs that help, gaffe-prone as he is when isn't using a teleprompter.)

Is Al Gore Trying To Protect Barack Obama From Comedians?  Because his transportation choices for his big speech on using less energy and saving the planet are pretty darn funny.

Of course, we saw plenty of hypocrisy -- especially the fact that Gore didn't ride his bike or take public transportation to the event.  He didn't even take his Prius!  Instead, he brought a fleet of two Lincoln Town Cars and a Chevy Suburban SUV!  Even worse, the driver of the Town Car that eventually whisked away Gore's wife and daughter left the engine idling and the AC cranking for 20 minutes before they finally left!

(They have video, in case you want to check for yourself.)  You don't have to be a professional joke writer to make something out of those choices.  And by doing this, Gore may distract attention from Obama, just when the joke writers are thinking that they have to say something about Barack "Arugula" Obama.

(John Tierney works for the New York Times, so, even though he is a libertarian (and a smart guy), he has to act as if he takes Al Gore's ideas seriously.  He has three questions for Gore, one of which I have raised myself:  "Why is Mr. Gore still afraid of discussing nuclear power?"  The other two questions are good, too.)

If You Like To Play In The Snow:  Now is a good time to visit Mt. Rainier.  (Not the best time — that was earlier in the year — but a good time.)

According to the park's phone message, there are now 60 inches of snow on the ground at the Paradise Visitor Center.  That's a bit misleading because, though there is that much snow at the weather station where they make the official measurements, there are also bare spots, as you can see in that picture.  And some of the bare spots have flowers.  So, in some places you can ski along, as I did yesterday, enjoying the corn snow — and admiring the spirea, the glacier lilies, and many other flowers.

You can ski, you can snowshoe, you can hike, and you can have snowball fights.  (If you plan to hike, you should know that, as of yesterday, the trails leading up from Paradise were almost entirely covered with snow.  It is warm enough so that, if you are young and agile, you might not mind changing into an old pair of sneakers for a short hike.  But if you have a little gray in your hair, or are going very far on the trails, I would recommend bringing hiking boots.)

What you can't do — officially — is go sliding.  The park does provide a sliding area in winter; in fact, they bring in a contractor to construct it, as considerable expense.  But they close it each winter as quickly as they can.  In fact, it was closed in March this year, when the mountain was accessible, and the snow pack was at its peak.  It is reasonable for it to be closed now, since there is not enough snow to protect the vegetation, but it was not reasonable for it to be closed in March.  The park has excuses for these early closings; I was told there was not enough money in the budget to hire a contractor to maintain the sliding area, but I have my doubts about those excuses.  I fear that Superintendent Uberuaga is, in this case, protecting the park from visitors, rather than for visitors.

As someone who was building sliding areas when he was six years old, I can tell you that it is not a job that requires exceptional knowledge or equipment.  And it certainly doesn't take either to maintain an area once it is constructed.

(Few will be surprised by what happens when the park ends sliding early.  Some visitors accept the order and put their inner tubes and sleds back in their cars.  Other visitors find places out of sight of the visitor's center to slide.  Almost always these are more dangerous places for sliding.)

But there are still many other things you can do there now, whether you like playing in the snow, or admiring flowers, or both, like me.

Cross posted at Sound Politics.

(There is this much snow on the ground because Paradise received 947 inches between July 1, 2007 and June 30, 2008.  That's not a record, but it is well above average.  And because we have had a cool spring.

Here's what the snow looked like this March, when it was close to its maximum depth this winter.  Here's a more typical July picture, taken in the same general area as the picture above.

Some advice if you plan to visit Rainier in the summer:  (My apologies if some of this seems simplistic, but I see people on almost every visit who don't know some of these things.)  Go early in the day, especially on weekends.  You'll have better light for photographs, you'll be able to hike when it is cooler, and you'll avoid most of the crowds.  (How early?  They start the shuttle bus at 10 in the morning, which will give you an idea.)  Bring sun protection; it is brighter up there because you are above some of the atmosphere, and because you get reflections off the snow.  Bring bottled water, if you plan to hike.  (Note to the mayor of Seattle: I bring mine in a reusable bottle.)  Even after the snow clears away later this summer, consider bringing hiking boots if you plan to go more than a mile or so from the parking lots.  There will be patches of snow on the trails near Paradise until quite late in the summer, most years.  Many times I have had to help people who were wearing running shoes over those patches.

Paradise has the prettiest flowers and most of the facilities; Sunrise has the most dramatic views.

There are four places where you can buy a meal on the mountain.  You'll find the best food, in my experience, at the National Park Inn, in Longmire.   (Though the restaurant in the restored Paradise Inn is certainly worth a look.  In the two years it was closed, they restored it so it looked just like old, just as it did fifty or more years ago.)

Democrats Are Helping The Homeless:  Helping them get out of the way of the Democratic convention.

A highly unusual effort is planned in Denver, site of Barack Obama's nomination next month, to sweep the city's homeless out of view of convention-goers - by giving them free tickets to the movies, museums and the zoo!

A group that helps the city deal with homelessness says it intends to distribute as many as 500 movie tickets and passes to the Denver Zoo, Museum of Nature and Science and other city venues away from the convention center, with transportation provided, according to the Rocky Mountain News.

(I am assuming this group is made up of Democrats, but that seems a reasonable assumption, in the circumstances.)

Cynics (and Republicans) will suspect that this operation will not do much for the long term problems of the homeless.

Climate Change Data Gathering:  One of the predictions made by global warming alarmists is that the snow pack in the Cascades will decrease markedly.  I will spend much of today gathering data on that question at this well-known site.  Naturally, I will be taking pictures to document any changes I find.

(I'll be taking my cross country skis along, just in case.)

A Sample From Bjorn Lomborg:  The featured speaker at yesterday's conference was Bjorn Lomborg.   You can get some idea of Lomborg's approach to the problem of global warming from this piece.

Given all the warnings, here is a slightly inconvenient truth: Over the past two years, the global sea level hasn't increased.  It has slightly decreased.  Since 1992, satellites orbiting the planet have measured the global sea level every 10 days with an amazing degree of accuracy — 3-4 mm. For two years, sea levels have declined.  (All of the data is available at sealevel.colorado.edu.)

This doesn't mean that global warming is not true.  As we emit more CO2, over time the temperature will moderately increase, causing the sea to warm and expand somewhat.  Thus, the sea-level rise is expected to pick up again.  This is what the United Nations climate panel is telling us; the best models indicate a sea-level rise over this century of 18 to 59 cm, with the typical estimate at 30 cm.  This is not terrifying or even particularly scary — 30 cm is how much the sea rose over the last 150 years.

Lomborg is not a global warming "denier", or even a skeptic, though he is often accused of both.  He accepts the predictions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as reasonably accurate.  Read the rest of the piece to learn the names of some of those who do not accept the IPCC estimates.

Jury Duty Again:  Maybe.  Speaking of coincidences, I have been called again for jury duty.  And this is beginning to get a little odd.  In March 2006, I was called for jury duty by King County.  In the previous four decades, I had never been called for jury duty, though I have always registered to vote and have almost always had a driver's license.  Since March 2006, I have been called for jury duty four more times, once more by King County, and three more times by the Kirkland Municipal Court.  Almost certainly, my recent streak is a coincidence, but it is getting a little odd.

I said maybe, because Kirkland has an odd system for jurors.  It is not unusual for a case to be settled just before it goes to trial, and the court's work load is small enough so that they can't just call jurors in and assume that about half of them will be needed.  (That, as far as I can tell, is King County's procedure; they only need about half of the jurors who show up.)

This part of the instructions in the summons explains how the Kirkland system works:

You are required to respond to this summons by calling the juror hotline or checking the website after 5:00 PM on the evening PRIOR to the report date listed on the front of this summons.

Since my duty starts August 18th, I have to call or check the website on the evening of August 17th, and, probably, the evenings of August 18th, 19th, 22nd, and 23rd, to find out if I actually have to show up.

At the end of the summons, the Kirkland court appeals to my patriotism and sense of duty with this gentle message:

YOUR APPEARANCE IS MANDATORY.  IF YOU FAIL TO APPEAR, CONTEMPT PROCEEDINGS MAY BE BROUGHT AGAINST YOU.  IT IS A CRIME FOR ANY PERSON SUMMONED FOR JURY SERVICE TO INTENTIONALLY FAIL TO APPEAR AS DIRECTED (RCW 2.36.170).

They don't mention the pay, perhaps because it is so meager.  (Ten dollars a day, plus three dollars a day for travel expenses.)

That nasty part of the summons is mostly a bluff.  Nationally, about half of the jurors who are summoned actually show up, and nothing happens to almost all of those who don't.  (Though I suppose writing about your summons on a blog might make you more of a target.)

On the whole, I am looking forward to this experience, though those who run our courts may not like my reason:  Before I was called for jury duty, I suspected that our courts were badly run and that the judges and administrators who run them often abuse the jurors.  Now, I have direct evidence for those suspicions, and expect to collect more evidence this time, if I have to go in.

I should add, just to make it absolutely clear, that serving on a jury is no hardship for me.  But it is for others, such as the cleaning woman I saw who earns a little more than the minimum wage at her job, and had to give even that little up when she was called for jury duty.  Or the woman I met the first time I was called for jury duty who owned a small business, and was taking care of an elderly relative who needed constant care.  While waiting to be called, she was trying, frantically, to manage her business and to make arrangements for her relative, using her laptop and cellphone.

Though serving on a jury is no hardship for me, I dislike the restrictions on jurors that make it harder to decide a case fairly.  If I am to be a juror, I want to be the best one that I can be — and our current laws and court procedures do not allow that.

Cross posted at Sound Politics.

Coincidence?   Maybe.

In a dramatic move yesterday President Bush removed the executive-branch moratorium on offshore drilling.  Today, at a news conference, Bush repeated his new position, and slammed the Democratic Congress for not removing the congressional moratorium on the Outer Continental Shelf and elsewhere.   Crude-oil futures for August delivery plunged $9.26, or 6.3 percent, almost immediately as Bush was speaking, bringing the barrel price down to $136.

And maybe not.

It Could Be Worse:  I spent this morning, and the first part of the afternoon, at the Washington Policy Center's annual Environmental Policy Luncheon and Conference.  I'll have more to say about the presentations over the next few weeks.  For today, I just want to pass on this point, made by John Charles, president of the Cascade Policy Institute in Oregon: States with bad policies tend to lose people to states with better policies.

The example he used will amuse many Washingtonians.  According to Charles, Oregon has uniquely bad land use regulations, and, as a result, the state is losing people to Washington and Idaho.  (Those not familiar with Washington state may need to know that this state has its own draconian land use regulations.  But, apparently, it could be worse.)

Cross posted at Sound Politics.

What Would A President Obama Do?  Good question.  And a great many people, many of them experts on American politics, confess to not knowing the answer.  For example, David Broder.

John McCain is the candidate who actually had experience as a wartime flier, but Barack Obama is the one who has most successfully adapted a favorite tactic of those intrepid aviators.  When the pilots were over a target heavily defended by antiaircraft guns, they would release a cloud of fine metal scraps, hoping to confuse the aim of the shells or missiles being fired in their direction.

In the weeks since he effectively clinched the Democratic presidential nomination, the Illinois senator has done a similar trick, throwing out verbal hints of altered positions on any number of issues.  This is creating quandaries for the Republicans who can't figure out where to aim.

In their effort to embarrass him, Republicans ask: Who is the real Barack Obama?  Is he, as he claims, a fresh face, heralding a new era of post-partisan politics, or a cynical old-style pol making poll-driven adjustments with scant regard for principles?  A protectionist or a free-trader?  A corporate-basher or an ally of interest-group contributors?  Is he a doctrinaire liberal, disguising himself as a late-blooming centrist?

Broder confesses that he has no answer to my question, that he doesn't know what a President Obama would do, and ends with this:

Obama is making it hard for the Republicans to figure out how to attack him.  The risk for him is if he also frustrates the voters who need to understand what makes him tick.  They don't elect enigmas to the Oval Office.

Broder may or may not be right about the tactical question; it is possible that the confusion over what Obama would do will hurt him at the ballot box.  Or the chaff he is throwing out may confuse enough voters, in a Democratic year, to let him slip through to victory this November.

But that's not the question that interests me here.  Unlike Broder, I think that we can make a reasonable guess about what Obama would do, if he were elected president.

Briefly, I think that Obama will govern as close to his leftist ideas and values as he can get away with.  Note that I am not saying that Obama will govern as far to the left as he can.  In his Chicago neighborhood, Hyde Park, Obama is a moderate, and it would be easy to find people there who would govern much farther to the left than he would.  But, relative to the country as a whole, Obama is on the left and, on some issues, on the far left.

Several lines of evidence have led me to this conclusion.  To begin with, all of the people close to the young Obama (with the possible exception of his Indonesian stepfather) were on the left, his mother, his father, his maternal grandparents, his communist friend, Frank Davis, and so on.  According to his own accounts, he chose to associate with leftists when he went to Occidental and then to Columbia.  If he were actually a moderate, he would have been the only one in his family and the only one in his groups of friends in the colleges he attended.  (His actual past explains why he talks so much about Kansas values; he wants to disguise his real values.)

And he chose, as we all know, to belong to the Trinity United Church of Christ for two decades.   The anti-American, hateful, and possibly racist views of his pastor at Trinity, Jeremiah Wright, are well-known, but they shouldn't make us miss how far left that denomination, and, in particular, that church is.  It is not a place one would go to associate with moderates.

There is nothing in his record that suggests that he disagrees with his family, or that he chose those leftist friends and associates, or his church, because he liked vigorous debates.

His record, in the Illinois senate and the United States senate, is thin, but supports my conclusion.  Though he may not spout doctrinaire leftist positions as often as some of his colleagues, he consistently voted on the left in both senates.  And you can comb through his entire elected career, as brief as it is, without finding any significant deviations from leftist orthodoxy.

In other words, the people he grew up with, and has associated with since, and his record, all lead to the conclusion that his "verbal hints of altered positions" are mostly what I called "pivots" and "fakes".  They are attempts by this skillful basketball player to make us think he has moved, when he hasn't.  Pivots and fakes are fine in basketball, but they are dishonest in politics.

I qualified "as close to his leftist ideas" with "as he can get away with".  Let me explain what I meant by that, using the example of abortion.  Obama's record on abortion has been truly extreme; read this column if you want a description of that record.  (Or just look at the cartoon that begins this piece.)  His position is so extreme that he has been trying to disguise it in recent weeks with "verbal hints".  (And even, with, at this Obama site a claim that he is not as extreme as he is.)

But we should know that he doesn't mean anything by those "verbal hints", because the Supreme Court now controls this issue and Obama has told us that intends to appoint justices who will vote like the pro-abortion extremists on the court.  He calculates, I believe, that he can pretend to be a little more moderate than he is — and achieve his policy goals by appointing justices who are on the far left on social issues.

In the near future, I'll have my best guesses on how his leftist views would determine his actions on economic issues, and in foreign policy choices.

Correction On Refine:  In this post, I said that the meaning of "refine" was to purify, especially a metal.  I should have said that was the original meaning of refine, or that purify was the principal meaning of refine.  My American Heritage dictionary adds this definition, which fits what Obama was trying to say: "To use precise distinctions and subtlety in thought or speech."

I still would not use the word as he did, because of the connotations from the main meaning — though his usage is not uncommon in academia — but I should not have implied that his usage was wrong.

Thanks to an astute emailer for catching my mistake.

(I'm not quite sure what Obama should have said instead, since he wants to say both that he is adjusting his position and that he is not adjusting his position.  Perhaps the most honest answer would have been for him to say that his goals for Iraq were fixed, but that he would be willing to look at different ways to achieve those goals, if there were changes on the ground.)