Heads down in writing the story of Nygaard and Dahl's creation of SIMULA. Man what a story. Full of politics and intrigue and even some corporate espionage. Whew!

This is a good bit of history.

Who would have thought that 80 years after the Holocaust there would be violent anti-semetic mobs roaming streets, attacking airports, and ruining the American University system?

I Love this guy's videos. They're all very cool.

This doesn’t suck.

This morning, in cooperation with Lifeline Pilots, I flew a patient from KUGN in Northern Illinois to I50 in Northern Indiana. (Those are airport codes.) The weather was marginal VFR with low clouds, but I thought a VFR flight would be more entertaining for my patient, and would save me a few minutes over an IFR flight. The clouds were at 1500' and so I flew about a 1000' above the North Shore of Lake Michigan. We passed by Chicago -- it's always a spectacular sight. Then we passed over Gary Indiana and headed towards the I50 airport. The overhead layer started to come down pushing me uncomfortably close to the ground. But it was a thin layer so I went above it. There was another layer of clouds above that but I had over 1000' of headroom so I flew between the layers. As we approached I50 I started searching for a hole in the thin clouds. We had passed a few 10 miles back but I hadn't seen any for awhile. Up ahead there was a ridge of clouds and I thought sure there's be a hole on the other side (there often is). But no, not this time. Over the ridge it was still solid cloud above and below me. So I turned around, flew 10 miles north and found one of the holes I had passed. I spiraled through that hole and headed back to I50 flying 600' above the ground in a maneuver called: Scud Running. There were antennae and wind farms all reaching up to my level, and I had to dodge around them. I was never in any real danger, but flying this close to the ground certainly focusses the mind. We got to the airport and landed without incident. My passenger's friend was there to pick her up, and we said our goodbys. And then I filed an IFR flight plan and flew home above the clouds in the bright sunshine. That's what I should have done from the very start.

I'm sure you've met the kind of person who is smart, articulate, a bit manipulative, and has no direction for their life other than to break as many rules as they can get away with while engaging in dissipative behaviors. That was John Backus, the inventor of Fortran ... until he saw his first computer in the Spring of 1949. At that point the direction of his life was set with a passion that had evaded his first two and a half decades. That computer was an electromechanical beast named the SSEC (Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator) at IBM headquarters. It executed sequences of instructions on paper tape. It had no ability to branch or jump around within the program. Loops were constructed by taping the ends of the paper tape together into an actual loop. At one point the operators looped a tape but inadvertently put a half twist in, turning it into a Möbius strip. It took them a very long time to figure out why the program behaved so oddly.

Iran did this because they want the war. That means that this is only one step in their plan. What the next step might be is anybody’s guess; but the worst guess is that there is no next step. It might be wise to consider the US southern border.