Calendars

I made two calendars this year. I used Qoop.com. The calendars are located at the following two links.

I made one with photos from my trips to Coyote Gulch this year

The other is a collection of photos from 2008 & 2009

You can buy them at cost if you really want one, no royalites for poor 'ol Kerk.

Merry Christmas 2009

Merry Christmas from our family to you. I am afraid I may not get the cards sent out on time. And some of you may not be on the list for various reasons. (Like I don't have your address).

BTW, this is Chimney Rock near Coyote Gulch in Southern Utah.

Two Videos from Mongolia

Collection of short clips taken with my camera.
The music is from the Tumen Ekh performance highlighted below.

Tumen Ekh, the Mongolian National Song and Dance Ensemble, performs their nightly show at the National Recreation Center. July 18, 2009.

Buddhist Rock Art in Mongolia

The predominant religion in Mongolia up until the communists takeover in the 1920's was Buddhism; more specifically, the Tibetan style of Tantric Buddhism. Since the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990's Buddhism has reemerged as the dominant religion once again.

The Yellow Sect of Tibetan Buddhism began to take hold in Mongolia during the late 1500's under the patronage of Altan Khan and his successors. He is the one who granted the Dailai Lama his title. Prior to Buddhism most Mongolians were followers of native shamanism and there are a great number of shamanistic influences in Mongolian Buddhism and Mongolian culture in general.

The communist government shut down most monasteries and exiled or killed the Buddhist monks during its rule from 1921 through 1992. We visited two of these monasteries during our visit. The first is a small temple in Gorkhi Terelj National Park up the valley from Turtle Rock. The second is the huge temple complex of Manzushir Monastery (which I am fairly certain is named after the Boddhisattva Manjusri) that was completely destroyed during the communist era and which has had only one building rebuilt. The ruins of several of the old building remain.

At both places we saw examples of Buddhist rock art that had survived from earlier eras.

Inscription in the old Mongolian alphabet, in Gorkhi Terelj National Park

Book Review - Persian Fire

Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West, by Tom Holland

This book came very highly recommended and it did not disappoint. It is the story of the Persian Empire's attempt to conquer Greece in the 5th century B.C. Holland is a very good writer and the story unfolds almost like a novel.

He starts off with a history of the fall of the Assyrian Empire to the Medes from the highlands of Iran, and then of their conquest by the Persians further to the east. He explains how Cyrus ruled his new empire and was succeeded ultimately by Darius, who ordered the first invasion of Greece.

He also explains the history of both Sparta and Athens and their different paths toward a government system that would provide stability for their citizens. Only halfway through the book do the Persians and the Greeks meet on the field of battle.

The first invasion in 490 B.C. is foiled by a surprise victory by the Athenians over the Persians at the Battle of Marathon. Holland explains how the Spartans refused to fight because of a conflict with their religious festivals.

Ten years later Darius' son, Xerxes, returns in person with a larger army and fleet to reattempt the invasion. The famous Battle of Thermopylae sees the death of the Greek contingent, lead by King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans, guarding the pass between Thermopylae and Athens. Athens is sacked and Sparta and the Peloponnesian states blockade the Isthmus of Corinth and prepare for a Persian attack. However, in the end, the Athenians, who had in ten years time built up a substantial navy from scratch, lead an naval battle at Salamis, just south of Athens, and cripples the Persian navy forcing Xerxes to withdraw.

Holland points out repeatedly the importance of these Greek victories. Democracy as a legitimate form of government was begun by the Athenians only a few years before the Persian invasions. Had the Persians successfully conquered Greece the history of the world would have been quite different indeed.

He also points out more subtly, the parallels between this bit of history and the modern conflict between the West and the Middle East. Holland implies a great deal of similarity between Darius' professed devotion to Ahura Mazda, the god of Zoroastrian monothesism, and the professed devotion of the rulers of modern Muslim nations to Allah. There is also a parallel in the contrast between the autocratic rule of the Persian Empire versus the relative freedom enjoyed by the citizens of the Greek city-states.

I really enjoyed reading this book and would recommend it to anyone with even a remote interest in history.

Partial Solar Eclipse

My Best Photo

There was a solar eclipse today in India & China. Apparently it was a total eclipse in Mumbai and Shanghai, but it was cloudy and rainy in both places. I heard the weather was perfect in Iwo Jima which also had totality. Here in Seoul, it was a 74% occlusion at the maximum around 10:48 a.m. Class was scheduled to start at 10:50, but I delayed the beginning of class until 11:10, well after the maximum.

I heard about the eclipse when I turned on the TV this morning, which I normally do not do. On the way to work I stopped by an office supply store and bought some blank CDs because they are pretty good light filters for an eclipse. However, the ones I got had some sort of grainy finish and everything looked blurry. I went back and got several sheets of red filter paper that the shop owners was selling for looking at the eclipse and they worked wonderfully. It was almost impossible to get decent photos with my camera because of the high contrast between direct sun and the background of the sky. The filter sheets were too wrinkly to allow for good focus. However, I did get one or two good shots when the clouds partially obscured the sun and you could see the eclipse through them with the naked eye.

Pinhole image of the eclipse from Frank McDonald's equipment

Frank McDonald who is teaching organic chemistry had a pinhole in a piece of cardboard and you could see the eclipse in the image shining through the hole on a piece of white paper. Classes let out at 10:40 and many of the ISC students gathered in front of Woodang Hall where we hold most of the classes. Iit was a rather festive atmosphere. A few minutes before the peak occlusion the clouds went in front of the sun for 10 minutes and we missed the maximum, but it was still very impressive nonetheless.

Students Watching the Eclipse in front of Woodang Hall

My next shot at a full eclipse is August 21, 2017 when the shadow will travel across southern Idaho and Wyoming. I am planning on camping out the night before in a very dry place with little chance of clouds.

Update:

Jen Youngstrom, who teaches psychology here this summer, forwarded some excellent photos from the fellow in the apartment next to her family in the CJ International House.

Trip to Mongolia 2009

Ger just outside Gorkhi-Terelj National Park

I suppose I ought to give a more coherent account of my trip to Mongolia with Tom & Ed, so here goes.

We left on Thursday afternoon after our last classes ended at 4:10. Tom had everything planned out in terms of the logistics. We took the bus to Incheon International Airport and then a Korean Airlines flight to Ulaanbaatar, arriving at 11:30 or so local time. It was a three hour flight from Korea. After clearing immigration and customs we hired an official taxi, one of the only ones in the parking lot with a real, true taxi sign on the top, to take us to the Ulaanbaatar Hotel for $10. We had reservations for "superior"rooms, but apparently they were all taken so we were bumped up to "junior suites". The hotel was quite nice. A bit old, but it had free high speed internet which Ed needed for the online class he taught on Friday morning.

Fried Mutton Chest

Dinner last Friday night was interesting, to say the least. We (meaning Tom) were searching for a restaurant that came highly recommended by both the Lonely Planet book on Mongolia and by Phil Nichols, one of the professors here at KU for summer campus. When we couldn't find it because it appeared to have disappeared without even leaving a building behind, we went looking for alternative eats.

We tried a street with lots of restaurants, but were having a hard time deciding which one to patronize. Tom really wanted Mongolian food, and Ed was just hungry and wanted to eat. Finally, Ed picked one that had a reasonable number of customers figuring the food must be at least OK and the wait wouldn't be too long. Ed and I ordered the fried mutton ribs, which were pretty good, if a bit fatty. Tom, however, made the mistake of asking our waitress what she recommended. I think his exact words were "number one." Now, in all fairness, she may have misunderstood and thought he was asking which dish had the most food, not which was best. Or perhaps she saw no distinction between the two. In any case he ended up ordering the "fried mutton chest."

As it turns out this was quite literally, the whole chest of a sheep. Not a lamb, mind you, but a fully grown sheep. When this generous bounty was delivered to the table and the shock wore off enough for Tom to speak, he said simply, "I can't eat this." Both Ed and I initially thought he meant there was too much food and he was offering to share. Looking more carefully at the meal on the plate and his grey face, however, we realized he was being quite literal.

He did pay for the meal, but quickly left without touching his food. Somebody feasted on free mutton chest that night. Tom ended up eating at the Indian restaurant in the hotel. Ironically, he had the lamb curry.

"Fried Mutton Chest" is now a running joke with us. If you see Tom ask him how it was. Be careful, however, as I think he is still experiencing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Riding Mongolian Ponies

photo by Ed Monsour

I took a trip this last weekend to Mongolia with a couple of good friends from Korea University's International Summer Campus, Tom Doherty and Ed Monsour. Tom set everything up as our designated tour leader and Ed and I went along for the ride. On Friday we went to Gorkhi-Terelj National Park, which is just northeast of the capital city of Ulaanbaatar. Our guide, Tselmeg Erdenekhuu, who goes by "Meg" talked me into going horseback riding with Tom and Ed while we were there.

Her regular 4WD was in the shop getting fixed up for a 15-day tour, so she took us out on the dirt roads in the park in her uncle's Toyota Celica. We were planning on visiting a monastery after lunch, but the roads were wet and muddy, and Ed really, really wanted to ride a horse, so I was talked into going with them on horseback, rather than just walking. Being a bit on the portly side I was concerned that I might be too heavy for the poor ponies, but I think our hosts took this as a bit of a challenge and were intent on proving how tough Mongol ponies really are. They got one of the larger ones, a male, and he did just fine. They were a bit worried that he was, perhaps, too spirited for an obvious greenhorn like myself and kept him on a lead most of the time. However, every once in a while Ed's pony would stop still and refuse to move. When our teenage guide went back to jump-start the pony I got to do some riding "off the leash".

An interesting incident occured as we were getting ready to set out. The children in the family that owned the horses had been riding around the area while we were eating lunch and afterward their father called them over to turn over their ponies to Ed and Tom. The girl whose pony Tom got took one look at the three of us and turned to her father and begged him to let Tom (the least heavy of the three of us) be the one to ride HER pony. It was one of those moments where the meaning came through crystal clear even though we couldn't understand the language. No translation necessary!

Photo by Tom Doherty
The young man in the hat was our wrangler

Photo by Tom Doherty

Photo by Ed Monsour

Photo by Ed Monsour

Yeongmi Becomes a US Citizen

Yeongmi was sworn in yesterday as a US citizen at a ceremony in Salt Lake City along with 194 other new citizens.

Here is a video of her taking the oath and talking about how she feels.

Lizard Eats Lizard

Photo by Mike Conrad

Hiking out of Coyote Gulch this past Friday morning, we ran across a pair of lizards right in the middle of the trail in Hurricane Wash. One was a big Long-Nosed Leopard Lizard, about 8 inches from snout to hind legs. She was obviously a female because she had bright orange stripes that only appear on females during the mating season. The one being eaten, or at least attacked, was a Tiger Whiptail and while almost as long from nose to tail, was substantially smaller.

This was one of the most unique things I have ever seen in the outdoors. Both these lizards are normally quite shy, but here they were in the middle of the trail wrestling, one for dear life.

Mike & Braden Conrad got some photos and Scott Preston got photos and some video. In the middle of all the commotion, a third lizard showed up for some unexplained reason. As near as I can figure it was an Orange-Headed Spiny Lizard. We only got video of it, however, and it's hard to tell for sure.

I posted a video of the whole episode on You Tube at the following URL - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1HbgHBrQu0.

A Swell Weekend

The lower of two large rock art panels in Short Canyon

I went on a campout this weekend with the scouts. We had the 12-13 year-old group (the scouts) and the 14-15 year-old group (the varsity scouts) with a total of 16 people.

We drove down Friday night to the Moore cutoff road and stopped at Dry Wash to see the petroglyphs and dinosaur tracks.

From there we drove around the edge of the Molen Reef to the mouth of Short Canyon. We had two 4WD pickups and a minivan. There were a few spots that were a bit iffy for the minivan, but we made it with no damage. The campsite was dry so we relied on the water we brought. After setting up camp four of us, Ryan Allen, Scott Preston, Brian Wheelhouse and I headed up the canyon to a spot where some pictographs had been geotagged on Flickr. By the time we got there it was getting dark and we wandered around looking for signs of rock art. Eventually, Scott and Brian found a small panel with two figures. One had wavy arms, so I am calling it the Wavy Arms panel.

An incredibly handsome guy next to the Wavy Arms panel.

We moved further up canyon along the ledge where we found these figures and then ran into a huge double panel. By the time we got there it was too dark to get good photos even with the flash, so we decided to revisit the site the next morning with the whole group.

I slept in the bed of my truck on Friday night. It was less lumpy than the ground and there was a bit of a canyon wind, so it was better than sleeping on a tarp as I had planned. I got up early enough to see the sunrise and enjoy it. After that we roused everyone up and headed back up the canyon.

I got some good photos of the double panel and we also found another small panel further upstream with a pair of figure, which I am calling the Bug-Eye panel because the larger of the two has big bug-eyes.

Scott shows monumental disrespect for the figures at the Bug-Eye panel

We explored further downstream along the same ledge and found some very faint petroglyphs that we would never have seen from the bottom of the canyon.

Scott also pointed out several other figures on the walls futher downstream that we had missed while hiking in. I got some telephoto shots of those, but there is not much detail.

I've posted all the photos from Short Canyon at the following URL - http://kerk.pomosa.com/myphotos/Rock%20Art/shortcanyon.htm

After Short Canyon we drove over to the entrance to Eagle Canyon just west of Forgotten Canyon. Our intent was to hike down into the canyon from here and then up Forgotten Canyon. However, a certain scout leader who shall remain unnamed, marked an incorrect waypoint and we ended up trying to enter through the wrong side canyon. In all fairness to the aforementioned scout leader, the descriptions of the entry were rather vague and there are at least three side canyons in the area. We tried the middle one first, right on the waypoint as marked and discovered that there was a cliff and pouroff that made it impossible to pass. We tried climbing out of the gully to the left and found a larger side canyon with somewhat manageable slopes in the upper reaches, but it has several cliffs and pouroffs further down that made it impassable too. The correct entry was to the right of our first obstacle, not the left, but I did not discover this until after we got back and I went over the terrain carefully using Google Earth. I'm still not sure how gradual the descent is. The first route looks easier, but you can't see vertical dropoffs very easily from satellite photos.

The second wrong way into Eagle Canyon

We decided to head home at this point because we were running out of time even if we had found the right entrance. We stopped at the Rocheseter Creek petroglyphs on the way back and made it home by 5:00 p.m.

Head of Sinbad Pictograph Panel

One of the other sites we hit on Saturday was a Barrier Canyon Style panel near the Head of Sinbad right in the middle of the Swell. The interstate passes within a mile or so of the panel, but historically this part of the Swell has not had a lot of traffic. It differs in this regard from the panels in Buckhorn Draw and Black Dragon Canyon which are both located along rather obvious travel routes. As a result, unlike these panels, the small one at the Head of Sinbad is in close to pristine condition. You can even see the brushstrokcs on some of the figures.

The panel was all in shadow while we were there which made for pretty good photos. Again you can see them at my rock art page. The ones below are some of my favorites.

Detail of a spirit figure? Or a shaman?

Birds or Antelope?

I am convinced beyond all doubt that this figure is supposed to be ET.

Black Dragon Canyon Pictographs

The Black Dragon?

I took a tour with my two youngest children this past Saturday. The Prehistory Museum at the College of Eastern Utah in Price does a regular series of expeditions through the San Rafael Swell, which they call "Saturday on the Swell". This last Saturday's was headed by Dr. Renee Barlow and focused on Native American rock art in the Swell. We visited 4 sites with the group and one of the most fascinating was the one in Black Dragon Canyon.

Black Dragon Canyon is, in fact, named for the pictographs there. There are two panels: one is a Barrier Canyon Style (BCS) panel like those found in Horseshoe Canyon. The other is roughly contemporaneous, meaning it is also three to five thousand years old. It is a completely different style, however. Being in a better overhang these pictographs are in better condition than the BCS panel which is more exposed to the elements and has faded a bit. Dr. Barlow informed us that the closest match to these pictographs comes from Southern Mexico.

Black Dragon Wash is easy enough to access. You need to exit the westbound lane of I-70 about 3/4 a mile after it crosses the San Rafael River. There is gate in the fence. Follow the dirt road north for just over a mile and you will come to a sign pointing up the wash to your left. If you don't have a four-wheel drive, park here and walk up the wash. You can drive (slowly) up the wash if you have four-wheel drive. From the sign to the panel is .65 miles. The canyon narrows and turns to the right and the panels are on the northeast side of the canyon as it loops back to the left again. The BCS panel is located on the cliffs above the rubble pile. The second panel is located to the left of this, lower down, under a slight overhang.

I have posted all the photos I took here, as ususal, on my rock art page. These are reduced resolution shots. Anyone interested can email me and I'll send you the full-resolution originals. The light was not ideal for the BCS panel, but shots of the second panel, which was in shade, turned out quite well.

One interesting thing I noticed after I got back is that someo of the figures in both panels have been outlined in what looks like white chalk. This seems to indicate that the outlining was done sometime after both sets of figures were drawn. How long, I can't begin to guess. Black Canyon Wash was a well-used route through the San Rafael Swell for many, many years. The chalk outlines could be modern or very old.

8-12 foot figures in the Barrier Canyon Style

Example of non-BCS figures

Coyote Gulch Pictograph Panel

The Central Figures

The pictograph panel in lower Coyote Gulch is located about half a mile downstream from Coyote Natural Bridge. It is located on the north wall of the canyon at the top of a sandy hill. There is a very clear path running up the hill to the panel.

I have posted all the photos I took here on my rock art webpage.

Most of the images are pictographs painted on the rock, but there is a faint hourglass shapped figure scratched into the rock. Also something that looks like a pair of horns that have been pecked into the rock deeper than the scratching.

The art shows a Fremont influence. At least the light grey-yellow painted figures which are similar to the horned figures found in Fremont rock art. The other figures are more difficult to place, especially for an amatuer like myself. In some cases, like the object we labelled the tennis racquet, the red pigment looks older than the grey. But in the case of what Dave called, "The Chief", the red looks just as recent as the grey.

When we looked around we noticed that someone had piled up some of the stones in the area to look like a low wall. I am skeptical that this is authentic, but the stones may have well been builiding block of earlier structures. We also found two circles that had numerous bits of corn cob, squash rind, bone, and hard flints. One was inside the low wall. The other was in what looked like a fire ring, but some of the rocks in the ring were actually adobe, not stone. Again, I suspect these have not been lying here like this for hundreds of years. Most likely they are objects that hikers have run across and deposited here since they saw earlier hikers had done so. Dave raised an interesting question though, why hasn't somebody just walked off with all this stuff? Perhaps they have, just not all of it. Or do Coyote Gulch hikers have enough civic virtue to only look and not steal? At least two do.

Looking around the shelf where these two circles were (located under a slight overhang to the west of the panel) we noticed little bits of black charcoal mixed in with the sand. Even a casual observer can see that this site was occupied in some form in the past.

In order to find out more about the site I checked out two published articles. One is a paper by Phil R. Geib, entitled "New Evidence for the Antiquity of Fremont Occupation in Glen Canyon, South-central Utah." The other is an anthropological paper from the University Of Utah written in 1959 by James H. Gunnerson, entitled "1957 Excavations, Glen Canyon Area."

Gunnerson reports on excavations at three sites in Coyote Gulch, but the sites are all several miles upstream from the pictograph panel. Geib reports on radiocarbon dating from the richest site there, called the Alvey site, and from four other sites in the Escalante drainage. I have not been able to find any published information on this particular site, so it may not have ever been excavated. Nonetheless, information about the other sites sheds light on who was living in the area and when.

Gieb finds evidence from his radiocarbone dating that the Fremont were well-entrenched in the area, raising corn & squash and using pottery during the period from 200 AD to 900 AD. This date is a bit earlier than previous researchers had hypothesised. The Alvey site consisted of three layers the middle of which corresponds to this time period. The top layer had objects of both Fremont and Anasazi origin mixed together. This indicates that the Anasazi appeared here after the Fremont. The most common dates I have come across for the Anasazi are in the range of 1000 to 1250 AD.

According to Don Montoya, Museum Curator at the Anasazi State Park Museum in Boulder, UT, there is rock art scattered through this general area dating back as far as 5500 BC. So, the figures that are not obviously Fremont could be archaic or Anasazi. Or perhaps of some other orgin altogether.

Bottom line is that the side trip up the sandy hill is well worth the effort. The pictographs are in excellent condition and you can get up fairly close to them to see what they look like.

Dave Spencer at the Panel

I am informed by Dave who was informed by other knowledgable sources named Elliot, that there is another well-known pictograph panel in the Gulch. When we were hiking in I saw a well-worn trail high up the side of the canyon on another sand hill that I suspected might lead to pictographs or a cliff dwelling. Perhaps this is where they are.

I found a photo of a different panel on Flickr. Perhaps this is the other site

Update

I enhanced the contrast on one of the photos and reproduce it below:

It looks to me like there are two more faintly scratched figures here. The "tennis racquet" is painted over the top of one. On closer examination, it may be that it was scratched over the top of the racquet. If fact, it may have been painted, but if so the paint has mostly worn off. The other is just to the right of the central white horned figure. You can make out the horns to the right of its head.
Actually, all the easily visible figures look like they are painted on top of or around older, fainter ones.
Another Update
Here are two photos that show the main figures in the panel. One show where I think there are faint horned hourglass figures. Maybe I'm just seeing things, though.


And I have an opinion from an expert as well. Dr. Renee Barlow from the CEU Prehistory Museum in Price says in an email:

"It is quite beautiful, and does appear to be somewhat impressionistic with elements resembling Fremont figures. I think though, that overall the panel does not look like typical Fremont rock art in this region, so it may be difficult to assign a definitive cultural affiliation. If the rock art were dated, that would help of course."

Report on Hiking Coyote Gulch

Jacob Hamblin Arch from Downstream

The backpacking trip to Coyote Gulch went off without a hitch this week. OK, it went off with only minor hitches.

After much debate, we opted to go in via the trailhead near Chimney Rock, rather than the climb down the slickrock near Jacob Hamblin Arch. This added a couple of miles to the hike in, but the descent was relatively gradual and the scenery was great. It required route finding over the sand and slickrock for about a mile or so from the trailhead into Hurricane Wash, but the entry was easy to spot after cresting a ridge after a half mile. The descent over the slickrock into the wash was a bit round about to avoid potholes and such, but not difficult.

The young men from my church group are planning on doing an overnighter here in June. Dave's son is also thinking about taking his scouts here sometime in the future. So with this in mind I wrote up some thoughts on how one might approach this hike with young men and only one night in the gulch.

We hiked in a little past Jacob Hamblin Arch near the base of the slickrock exit there. The park service has installed a two-seat composting toilet there because it is such a popular site. Many people like to camp there before climbing out along the ridge the next morning. We counted 4-5 different groups in the general area.

Dave brought bratwurst for dinner which he had frozen before the trip and they were nicely thawed by dinner time.

The next day we hiked downstream further with daypacks and the going was much easier. We made it about four miles downstream at a very leisurely pace. The highlights included several beautiful cascades and waterfalls, a natural bridge, a cliffside arch, and a stunning set of pictographs. I will devote a whole post to the pictographs later, but in the meantime you can view all the photos at my website.

The trail was very easy to follow. The only semi-tough spots were a boulder field just upstream of Cliff Arch, and a pair of waterfalls just downstream of Cliff Arch. You need to bypass the later two, but the trail was easy to miss and we ended up above the lower falls with a 15 foot drop or scramble down and no obvious way back up. A group of French hikers came up from below while we were eating lunch there and we just sort of shrugged at each other. We couldn't find a way down and they couldn't find a way up.

We turned around at this point because I was getting tired and Dave was starting to feel blisters on his feet. This turned out to be a good idea because the blisters were more serious than he thought initially.

We hiked out the next morning the way we had come in. The climb out of Hurricane Wash was a beast. We knew the general direction was almost directly due east, but the trailhead is not visible from the wash and you have to take a twisting route up through the slickrock to avoid the really steep spots and the potholes. We did not take a waypoint reading at the trailhead and this turned out to be a big mistake. Instead, we read off the coordinates from the map. These are 37º 24' 59" N and 111º 05' 54" W. However we made a typing error and put in 25' rather than 24'. That turns out to be 1.15 miles north of the trailhead. So after climbing out of the wash we took a heading on the GPS and headed off to the NW rather than due west. This took us to much higher terrain and over some steep sandy ground. I was pretty pooped out by the time we crested the ridge. Dave got there first and said, "Well, if there was a truck out there I would see it for sure and I don't see one." The truck was about a half mile to our SW, however, and about 90 degress off the heading we had been taking. The rest of the way was pretty easy, but we were both exhausted by the time we got back to the truck.

To top everything off, the truck would not start. Everything was totally dead. Its a quirk of the vehicle (since repaired) that the battery connector occasionally comes loose, so you have to pop the hood and jiggle it around to get a good connection. I knew this and wan't too worried, but I think Dave was for at least a little bit.

All in all it was a wonderful trip. The scenery was stunning and the hiking was fun despite the challenges. The pictographs were a very pleasant surprize, much better than expected. More on that later.

Stuart Varney: Obama Wants to Control the Banks

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123879833094588163.html

I worried that this would happen. I hoped it wouldn't. I should have known better.

Why are we letting this happen? Is this what we, collectively, really want? If not, then why do we seem to care so little?

Highlights:

Fast forward to today, and that same bank is begging to give the money back. The chairman offers to write a check, now, with interest. He's been sitting on the cash for months and has felt the dead hand of government threatening to run his business and dictate pay scales. He sees the writing on the wall and he wants out. But the Obama team says no, since unlike the smaller banks that gave their TARP money back, this bank is far more prominent. The bank has also been threatened with "adverse" consequences if its chairman persists. That's politics talking, not economics.

Think about it: If Rick Wagoner can be fired and compact cars can be mandated, why can't a bank with a vault full of TARP money be told where to lend? And since politics drives this administration, why can't special loans and terms be offered to favored constituents, favored industries, or even favored regions? Our prosperity has never been based on the political allocation of credit -- until now.

Which brings me to the Pay for Performance Act, just passed by the House. This is an outstanding example of class warfare. I'm an Englishman. We invented class warfare, and I know it when I see it. This legislation allows the administration to dictate pay for anyone working in any company that takes a dime of TARP money. This is a whip with which to thrash the unpopular bankers, a tool to advance the Obama administration's goal of controlling the financial system.

Robot Achieves Scientific First

This is really astounding if you stop to think about it. The robot formulated a hypothesis and carried out a series of experiments designed to test that hypothesis resulting in new scientific knowledge. All without any input from his human designers. This is amazing! It's not just manual workers who stand to lose jobs to machines, but we Ph.D.'s may need to start worrying. Fortunately, I do have tenure.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f2b97d9a-1f96-11de-a7a5-00144feabdc0.html

Ethics in Government

Today's Shoe Comic

Idiots We?

Not this week. Well not as much as we could be anyway.

This was my truck this morning as I left for work.


The forecasts for Escalante, UT (the closest town to Coyote Gulch) are mixed, but apparently it is snowing there this morning and the temps are in the teens. The rest of the week looks dry, but it seems likely that the overnight temps in the gulch will be well below freezing. And there is wind in the forecast. None of these are unsurmountable obstacles, of course, but the whole point of going is to enjoy the trip, not to build character by overcoming adversity. (This will not stop me from claiming I overcame a great deal of adversity, but I don't actually want to experience any.) So after a lengthy conversation of less than 5 minutes this morning, we both decided to postpone the trip until later in the month when the weather MAY be better.

Here's the National Weather Service forecast as of 9:00 a.m.:

• Tuesday: Sunny, with a high near 56. West northwest wind between 3 and 11 mph.
• Tuesday Night: A 30 percent chance of rain, mainly after midnight. Partly cloudy, with a low around 30. West northwest wind between 10 and 13 mph.
• Wednesday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 51. Breezy, with a west northwest wind 10 to 13 mph increasing to between 19 and 22 mph.
• Wednesday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 26.
• Thursday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 61.
• Thursday Night: A slight chance of rain. Partly cloudy, with a low around 33.
• Friday: A chance of rain. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 60.

These lows are for the town of Escalante, the canyon at Coyote Gulch gets less sun, so it will be a bit colder.

Gary Becker Interview in the Wall Street Journal

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123759849467801485.html

A very interesting interview. It is well worth reading the whole thing. One particular part that caught my eye was Becker's comments on policy during the current economic crisis.

Yet the professor is no laissez-faire ideologue. He says we have to think about what the government can do to "moderate the hit to the real economy," and he says it should start with "the first law of medicine: Do no harm." Instead it has done harmful things, and chief among them has been the "inconsistent policies with the large institutions . . . We let some big banks fail, like Lehman Brothers. We let less-good banks, big [ones] like Bear Stearns, sort of get bailed out and now we bailed out AIG, an insurance company."

Mr. Becker says that he opposed the "implicit protection" that the government gave to Bear Stearns bondholders to the tune of "$30 billion or so." So I wonder if letting Lehman Brothers go belly up was a good idea. "I'm not sure it was a bad idea, aside from the inconsistency." He points out that "the good assets were bought by Nomura and a number of other banks," and he refers to a paper by Stanford economics professor John Taylor showing that the market initially digested the Lehman failure with calm. It was only days later, Mr. Taylor maintains, that the market panicked when it saw more uncertainty from the Treasury. Mr. Becker says Mr. Taylor's work is "not 100% persuasive but it sort of suggest[s] that maybe the Lehman collapse wasn't the cause of the eventual collapse" of the credit markets.

He returns to the perniciousness of Treasury's inconsistency. "I do believe that in a risky environment which is what we are in now, with the market pricing risk very high, to add additional risk is a big problem, and I think this is what we are doing when we don't have consistent policies. We add to the risk."

I am becoming increasingly convinced that the big lesson from this crisis once the dust has settled will be that government policy needs transparency. The take-away from the Asian financial crisis in the 1990's was that banks and finance needed transparency. This crisis is showing that governments need to convey information on the fundamental rules or principles which drive policy and when people get mixed signals or the signals are not easily interpretable, the result is an big uptick in uncertainty. So called pragmatic policy-making that evaluates each mini-crisis independently and lets one firm fail while another seemingly similar firm is bailed out is counterproductive.

The geniuses at Econosseur (disclosure: one of them has the office across the hall from mine) have posted a nice clip from a recent South Park episode that illustrates this rather nicely.

Art of the Ming Dynasty

A 12-photo slide show of an exhibit currently showing in St. Louis. Also a link to an article on the exhibit. This is some pretty cool stuff!

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123802055331341637.html#project%3DSLIDESHOW08%26s%3DSB123801614813541293%26articleTabs%3Dslideshow

Mossberg: Some Favorite Apps That Make iPhone Worth the Price

From WSJ - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123801598971341281.html

Highlights:

Despite all the economic misery, the past nine months have been a little like the heady days of the early 1980s when the personal computer was just getting rolling and new software programs were popping up like weeds.

That's because we have a new computing platform, the modern hand-held computer, which is also attracting new software and new functions in droves.

The leader in this phenomenon has been Apple's iPhone, though I expect that this year a few competitors will also begin to attract loads of apps, or widgets. These are small software programs, easily downloaded and purchased, that often connect to the Internet to perform a specific function.

We've seen this before, on a smaller scale, with third-party software for the original Palm platform, for Windows Mobile, and, to a limited extent, for the BlackBerry. But these new apps can be far more sophisticated, and they are appearing at a much faster rate.

Mossberg's list:

• Tweetie ($2.99)
• Facebook (free)
• Kindle (free)
• ICE (99 cents)
• Easy Wi-Fi ($2.99)
• ReaddleDocs ($9.99)
• Quordy ($2.99)
• Google Mobile (free)
  

Further Plans for Coyote Gulch

Having decided the the Jacob Hamblin Arch entrance to lower Coyote Gulch is perhaps "Kerkable", I have been turning my attention to other sites in the area.

Right now the plan is to hike in on Tuesday afternoon and camp somewhere close to the entrance under an overhanging cliff, if possible. On Wednesday (the day that looks most likely to be wet according to the forecasts today) we will hike downstream to the Escalante and Stevens Arch and back. On Thursday we will sightsee upstream in the morning and then hike out around noon or so. We'll drive back north and stop to see four scenic gulches in upper Coyote Gulch. We will either camp near the truck, or perhaps near one of the gulches. We'll walk through them on Thursay afternoon and Friday morning before heading back home

Here are descriptions of each of them:

Dry Fork of Coyote Gulch
Peekaboo Gulch
Spooky Gulch
Brimstone Gulch

Getting Ready for Coyote Gulch

I am off backpacking with a colleague from work next week at Coyote Gulch in the Escalante drainage north of Lake Powell in Southern Utah. This is a pretty popular destination and so there are lots of decriptions of the hike. One of the most popular routes is to drive to the trailhead along Forty Mile Ridge and walk about 2 miles to the rim of the Escalante Canyon. Here there is a crack in the wall that will take you down 15-20 feet or so to the top of a large sand dune. You can see this very clearly on Google Maps below.


View Larger Map

The exit that seems to be most often used is a ridge of sandstone just east of Jacob Hamblin Arch, at the center of the map below:


View Larger Map

My colleague talked with his son, who has done the hike before, and he said that going in and out this route is, "doable". Now, I know that doable for him is not the same as doable for me, but he also realizes that this is true for his dad, my colleague. So he and his brother invented the term, "dadable", meaning my colleague could do it. He says the route is "dadable". My question is whether or not the route is "Kerkable", which I define as "can be done in a wheelchair."

I have been looking around for some indication via text or photos of what this way in and out looks like. I found the following today:

• Here's a group the came in from the north along the spine of Jacob Hamblin Arch and out the south along the path we would take. It's hard to tell how difficult they thought it was since it was a bit anticlimactic compared to climbing the arch. http://www.tumtum.com/climbing/trips/Escalante98_part2.shtml
  
• Here's a discription of the typical route: in through the crack in the wall and out via the slickrock climb. This one has some good photos of the way out. http://braydenslife.blogspot.com/2007/10/coyote-gulch-4-day-hike.html
  
• Another account of this route from someone who is a bit more skeptical about the ease of this route out. http://bristleconepine.blogspot.com/2007/05/coyote-gulch-in-may.html

UPDATE 3/25

• Here is a video from YouTube showing a couple of people climbing out of Coyote Gulch via the sandstone fin. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OjD2AIRpB0
• This the first group above on another trip a few years later that went in and out this route. They call it "the slabs". They also came down the spine of Jacob Hamblin Arch on their way out. http://www.tumtum.com/climbing/trips/Escalante01_part1.shtml

Bloomberg: Congress ‘Hypocrisy’ on Company Trips Irks U.S. Hotel Industry

Hypocricy is exactly the right word.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aRQWnoXi_6Zk&refer=worldwide

About a dozen Democrats, including Dodd, 64, gathered at the Marriott-operated Ritz-Carlton resort in Naples, Florida. Donors who gave at least $15,000 were invited and offered a “coastal view” room at the group rate of $469, according to the Democrats’ invitation.

At least 11 Republican senators held a similar retreat at The Breakers resort in Palm Beach. Rooms could be had for $475 a night. For another $292, participants could play in a golf tournament. The invitation urged guests to make reservations for the resort’s spa “indulgences.”

Economics Is the 'Just Right' Liberal-Arts Major

Thanks to Mark Showalter for pointing out this essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education by David Colander.

http://www.viet-studies.info/kinhte/Economic_Major_CHE.pdf

Highlights:

To that end, I asked my students why they considered the other social sciences
easy. The answer was twofold. First, far fewer courses in those fields are taught quantitatively than is the case in economics, even though much of the relevant research work is highly quantitative. Other social-science curricula could challenge students more by adding some applied-statistics, math, or computer-science courses as standard requirements. The second reason my students considered the other majors too easy was that they believed the grading standards were undemanding. If they are right, those standards could be raised. For example, social-science courses could require students to write substantial papers that are subject to rigorous standards of logic and exposition.

When I asked my students how the natural sciences could become "just right" majors, they suggested that those departments focus less on training future scientists and more on educating future citizens about the exciting developments in science today. That way, science majors would be able to wait to become scientists in graduate school; they could learn about science during their undergraduate years. One way to accomplish this might be reducing both the number of required courses and the number that require labs. My students also suggested that natural-science introductory classes could be changed from "hurdles" — classes designed to scare away students who are not fully dedicated — to "gateways" that allow students to experience the wonder of science while welcoming them into the field.

Today's Fortune Cookie

From Chen's Noodle House where the Econ Department went for lunch:

This seems applicable in my life on so many dimensions.

Dilbert from March 10th

I don't think I am this bad. Yet.

Today's "In The Bleachers"

Yet another reason why skiing is dangerous.

Kimberly A. Strassel: 'Greed' Is Not Good

From today's WSJ:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123751023925990683.html

Bankers are not the only ones who succumb to greed.

Highlights:

Once upon a time, Washington told the nation a story. It was a dark tale of economic distress brought on by villainous, greedy Wall Street bankers.

The storytellers loved this yarn. The public wanted some one to blame for their unemployment, their foreclosures, their falling 401ks, and Wall Street made an easy target. It was also so much simpler than the real story of societal credit mania, in which the Federal Reserve, Congress, regulators, credit-rating agencies, Fannie and Freddie, Wall Street -- and yes, many homeowners and consumers -- were all complicit.

...

This spectacle has left the financial community with one impression: Stay away. What healthy bank, what hedge fund, what private equity firm wants to take part in an Obama plan to sell off toxic assets, or to revive consumer lending, with the knowledge that they might be Washington's newest bonfire? Executives are already working to get out of TARP, fearful of political punishment. This despite a recession, falling house prices and growing bank losses.

As it happens, the administration has suggested the banks might need yet more public capital, not less. But just who in Congress is today prepared to vote to provide more funding, with greedy AIG on the public mind? It's too busy passing laws to levy 90% taxes on bank employees everywhere.

Even More on the AIG Bonuses

Well, the House of Representatives has voted to impose a retroactive 90% tax on bonuses that it explicitly voted to allow only a month ago. Our congressmen could argue that they didn't know this provision was in the legislation when they passed it. And that is almost certainly the truth. However, parking cop might say, "Ignorance of the law is no defense." If congress didn't know what was in the bill, perhaps they should not have voted on it until they knew what they were voting on. I can feel no sympathy for a group of people that behaves this way.

Perhaps a better phrasing more in line with today's events would be, "The law is no defense."

Earlier, I compared our political system to that in Iraq under Saddam Hussein. However, I think an even better comparison. Hugo Chavez's Venezuela. The US is on track to become the new Venezuela.

Perhaps it is time to stop blogging before the thugs come to visit me at my home.

On a more practical note. I assume these taxes must also pass the Senate and perhaps the world's greatest deliberative body will actually stop to deliberate and think about the matter. But, assuming the taxes do become law, is there grounds for the bonus recipients to sue on constitutional grounds? I don't know the answer, but the whole idea of retroactively taxing a selected minority seems opposed to the principles behind the constitution if it is not actually unconstitutional.

The precendent is also a very, very bad one. If bankers become politically popular someday and unions are not, what is to stop a pro-union congress from retroactively taxing unions on supposed moral grounds? Could a liberal leaning state legislature (perhaps like that in California) vote to impose taxes on the LDS church in retaliation for the money spent by its members on the Proposition 8 vote? To me the principle seems the same.

President Obama's Teleprompter has Its Own Blog

And it's pretty funny.

http://baracksteleprompter.blogspot.com/

More on the AIG Bonuses

According to this AP report, the House of Representatives is set to vote today on a bill to tax away 90% of the bonuses awarded by AIG.

It was also reported yesterday, that the language of the stimulus bill that explicitly allowed these bonuses was inserted by Senator Chris Dodd. Dodd claimed, however, that the language was inserted at the insistence of officials in the Obama administration. The Obama camp, of course, denies this is the case.

So hit rewind for just a minute and think back to a month ago when the stimulus package passed. Recall that even the leadership of congress that was pushing this bill so heavily had not had a chance to read the whole thing before the vote. Is it any wonder that we end up with all sorts of unintentional consequences given how little vetting to which the package was submitted? I suspect that the AIG bonuses are only a small fraction of the problems that have been, are, and will be generated by that poorly thought-out piece of legislation.

I love this quote from the Bloomberg report:

Other Democrats who voted for the stimulus bill have ramped up criticism of AIG’s bonuses, including Massachusetts Representative Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, who told reporters, “I think the time has come to exercise our ownership rights.”

Why bother with the fiction of owernship rights? The congress can confiscate what it wants from whoever it wants by simply passing a well-targeted piece of legislation. The only difference between doing it this way and the way that Saddam Hussein would've done something similar is the political theater associated with a formal vote in an elected assembly.

I bothers me a great deal that whenever politicans are caught doing something immoral one of the pat defenses they roll out is that their actions were not illegal. Here we have a case where it is politically convenient to ignore the law and act in defense of higher morals. But, isn't such selective morality also immoral?

WSJ Editorial: Obama's AIG Panic

The editorial board raises some very good points.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123742023932678335.html

Highlights:

Senator Chris Dodd, down in the 2010 election polls after his sweetheart Countrywide mortgages, is busy rewriting the TARP compensation limits he only recently stuck in the stimulus bill. His last-minute measure explicitly exempted from compensation limits bonuses agreed to prior to the passage of the stimulus bill: "The prohibition required under clause (i) shall not be construed to prohibit any bonus payment required to be paid pursuant to a written employment contract executed on or before February 11, 2009 . . ." So Senator Hedge Fund is suddenly morphing into Huey Long to save his career.

This is all too much even for Rep. Charlie Rangel, the House's chief tax writer, who says the tax code shouldn't be deployed as a "political weapon." He's right. AIG's managers may be this week's political target of choice, but the message to every banker in America, indeed every business in America, is that you could be next. At least we haven't yet seen the resolution that was proposed in the English parliament, in 1720 in the aftermath of the South Sea bubble, that bankers be tied in sacks filled with snakes and tipped into the Thames. But it's still early days.

...

The Beltway's banker baiting seems to increase in direct proportion to the government's incompetence in nurturing a financial recovery. Anger rises when Americans learn after three bailout revisions that they haven't been told the truth that the AIG nationalization was a conduit to save counterparties, and even hedge funds, that gambled on housing. Only two weeks ago, Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Donald Kohn told Congress he couldn't disclose who AIG's counterparties were. Americans also wonder why taxpayer guarantees should be provided to Citigroup, a three-time loser, but with little accountability for the board and managers who brought the company low.

Reviving a financial system is a long process that requires a combination of capital support, workout ability and discipline for mistakes. The public has to believe the end result will be a better, sturdier system in return for taxpayer support, while at the same time being assured that gamblers aren't saved from their own mistakes.

If this balance is beyond the ability of Mr. Obama's current economic team, he needs a better team. The worst mistake he can make is to deflect attention away from government's mistakes by joining the attack on the very bankers he needs to lead an economic recovery. That's how a deep recession becomes a Depression.

Do We Believe in the Rule of Law in the US?

The pat answer is "yes, of course." Perhaps followed by, "What a stupid question."

Read the following AP article and then see if you still think it is a stupid question.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090317/ap_on_go_co/aig_outrage

Here are a couple of telling quotes:

"Recipients of these bonuses will not be able to keep all of their money," declared Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in an unusually strong threat delivered on the Senate floor.

"If you don't return it on your own, we will do it for you," said Chuck Schumer of New York.

I am not saying the AIG bonuses were proper. But they were clearly legal and if AIG had not paid them they would've been sued by the people that "earned" them under the terms of their contracts with the company.

Are we going to anull any or all contracts that outrage the public or the political class? If so, then in the words of one of my colleagues over lunch, "In what meaningful way does our political system differ from that of any tin-horn dictatorship?"

Rather than spending political capital exacting revenge, perhaps our exhalted leaders could concentrate more on passing appropriate policies so these types of things don't happen in the future. Had the federal government not bailed out AIG in the first place, no one would no be complaining about $170 million dollars in bonuses being paid out of taxpayer money.

Lefrak and Shilling: Immigrants Can Help Fix the Housing Bubble

Now here is an interesting mix of policies. Allow immigrants who buy houses to become legal permanent residents of the US.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123725421857750565.html

Highlights

Excess inventory is the mortal enemy of house prices, which have already fallen 27% since the peak in early 2006. We predict another 14% drop through the end of 2010 if nothing is done to eliminate the surplus.

...

A better idea is to offer permanent residence status to the many foreigners who are clamoring to get into the U.S. -- if they buy houses of minimal values (not shacks). They wouldn't need to live in those houses, but in order to remove the unit from the total housing market, they couldn't rent them. Their temporary resident status granted upon purchase would become permanent after, perhaps, five years, if they still owned the houses and maintained clean records. The mere announcement of this program might well stop the ongoing collapse in house prices, especially in cities such as Las Vegas, Miami, Phoenix and San Francisco, where prices are down 40% -- but where many foreigners like to live.

WSJ Editorial: The Real AIG Outrage

The Wall Street Journal's take on the AIG mess from today's edition:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123725551430050865.html

Highlights:

Given that the government has never defined "systemic risk," we're also starting to wonder exactly which system American taxpayers are paying to protect. It's not capitalism, in which risk-takers suffer the consequences of bad decisions. And in some cases it's not even American. The U.S. government is now in the business of distributing foreign aid to offshore financiers, laundered through a once-great American company.
...

The Washington crowd wants to focus on bonuses because it aims public anger on private actors, not the political class. But our politicians and regulators should direct some of their anger back on themselves -- for kicking off AIG's demise by ousting Mr. Greenberg, for failing to supervise its bets, and then for blowing a mountain of taxpayer cash on their AIG nationalization.

Whether or not these funds ever come back to the Treasury, regulators should now focus on getting AIG back into private hands as soon as possible. And if Treasury and the Fed want to continue bailing out foreign banks, let them make that case, honestly and directly, to American taxpayers.

The focus of our political class on the excesses of the private sector really is astounding in its hypocracy. Not that the private sector is entirely guiltless, but the amount of money wasted on AIG salary bonuses is chump change compared to the waste the government itself generates.

Today's In The Bleachers

North Korea Economy Watch: Kaesong Zone battered and bruised

http://www.nkeconwatch.com/2009/03/14/kaesong-zone-bruised-and-battered/

North Korea is a mess, of course. This blog entry illustrates why it is such a mess.

Breaking Apple's Grip on the iPhone

An interesting read from the Wall Street Journal

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123629876097346481.html

How open should software be for the iPhone? It lacks a lot of obvious features it could easily have, as illustrated by the number (1.7 million?) of jailbroken iPhones out there. I am tempted to install the Cydia software on mine from time to time, but frankly, the idea that this voids the warranty or that the software might be illegal does bother me enough that I have not done it yet.

MotionX-GPS for the iPhone

I took my first hike today in a long while. My son, Alan, went with me and I tried out the GPS feature built into the iPhone for the first time in any serious way. I bought MotionX-GPS at the iTunes app store and tried it out on the hike. It is a pretty neat feature and works very well with the iPhone.

One disadvantage is the battery use. It was a short hike and I started with the battery at about 75%. By the time we were at the turn-back point 1:15 later the battery was at 25%. I probably could've done much better by turning off the 3G and some other features, but this was still a significant drain on the battery. Undoubtedly much of the drain is due to the app being in contact with either cell phone towers or GPS satellites almost constantly. This produces really cool tracks, but they may not be worth it for longer hikes. If I am going to use this for longer hikes or backpacking, I will have to turn off the phone between stops and only take waypoints.

You can either take just waypoint data, or you can also take a snapshot of the spot using the iPhone's camera. This automatically sets a waypoint at the same time. Once you are done you can email yourself the waypoints and/or the track data. These come in .gpx and .kmz formats, the latter of which imports easily into Google Earth.

A sample kmz file with both the track and the waypoints from today's hike can be found at this link . The file is 1121K in size and includes photos taken with most of the waypoints.

All-in-all the app worked great. As long as I am willing to strictly manage the battery drain I think this is a suitable substitute for a stand-alone handheld GPS. At least for the type and amount of hiking I plan on doing.

Pepper … and Salt

From today's Wall Street Journal

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123683152555005003.html?mod=article-outset-box

Megan McArdle: Obama too sunny?

This blog entry was included in James Taranto's Best of the Web Today and is worth a read.

http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/03/obama_too_sunny.php

Highlights:

Having defended Obama's candidacy largely on his economic team, I'm having serious buyer's remorse. Geithner, who is rapidly starting to look like the weakest link, is rattling around by himself in Treasury. Meanwhile, the administration is clearly prioritized a stimulus package that will not work without fixing the banks over, um, fixing the banking system. Unlike most fiscal conservatives, I'm not mad at him for trying to increase the size of the government; that's, after all, what he got elected promising to do. But he also promised to be non-partisan and accountable, and the size and composition stimulus package looks like just one more attempt to ram through his ideological without much scrutiny, with the heaviest focus on programs that will be especially hard to cut.

Mary Tompkins Lewis: The Tale of the Temeraire

A fascinating article on J.M.W. Turner's painting of the H.M.S. Temeraire, a veteran of the Battle of Trafalgar, being towed to the shipbreaker's yard.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123637988614357383.html

William McGurn: When Congress Spends, Worse Is Better

Why does congress pass huge bills that are so obviously laden with pork?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123664192950777585.html

Highlights:

What the public does not understand is that the more earmarks there are in a bill, the harder it will be to vote against it. The reason is simple: With every earmark, a congressman or senator gains a personal stake in the passage of a bill he or she might otherwise oppose.

...

"Washington is like 'the Godfather,'" says Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense. "The earmarks are favors from the Don. And once you've asked for his help, you're in it together -- whether you want to be or not."