Is there a plumber in the house?

Lately, when I first turn on the faucet in the downstairs bathtub, a horde (or a hill? a crawl? Just what the heck is the correct affinitive term for them anyway?) of ants comes rushing out ahead of the water. While this is disconcerting, it’s not a big problem in itself–I simply flush them down the drain, like a scene from an insect version of The Ten Commandments, while I’m waiting for the hot water to arrive from the heater.

But I’m worried about the implications of it. Where are they coming from? There’s no trail of ants leading into it, which leads me to conclude that they’re getting into the pipe from somewhere else. That would in turn imply a leak in the system somewhere, but I’ve seen no other symptoms of it. Anyone have any bright (or otherwise) ideas?

I had a power failure for about an hour this afternoon. The good news is that I have a UPS. The bad news is that DOH!, I forgot to plug the monitor into it. My three machines slowly ran out of juice, with the UPS beeping plaintively, before I had the presence of mind to climb under the snakelike pile of cables behind the desk, find the appropriate cord, and plug it in. They all died in a less than graceful manner. Fortunately, I think that everything that I’d been working on had been saved.

Not knowing how long the power would be out, I went out for a walk.

When I got back, power was back up. I nursed my Debian firewall back to life, then my Redhat network server/work station, and finally my Windoze work station. All seems to be well with the world again, but I’ve moved the monitor cable over to the right socket for next time.

Boy, when Gary Condit can’t get a sleazeball like Tony Coelho to support him, he’s in deep trouble.

Boy, when Gary Condit can’t get a sleazeball like Tony Coelho to support him, he’s in deep trouble.

Boy, when Gary Condit can’t get a sleazeball like Tony Coelho to support him, he’s in deep trouble.

Robert Nozick died this morning. There is an obit at the Harvard website (thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the heads up and link). It’s a well-done piece–this was obviously not an unanticipated event.

Nozik’s Anarchy, State and Utopia was a major influence on my own political thinking (and that, I suspect, of many others).

We’ve lost a truly great mind today. And the contrast between this “University Professor” and his colleague, Cornel West, is, to me, staggering.

According to Reuters, an Emerald Islander has come up with the solution to the energy “crisis.” But never fear, it doesn’t violate any of those pesky laws of thermodynamics.

But he is keen to head off the notion that he has tapped into the age-old myth of perpetual motion. “Perpetual motion is impossible. This is a self-sustaining unit which at the same time provides surplus electrical energy,” he said.

Well. Glad he cleared that up.

Newt Gingrich has an Op Ed in today’s USA Today on the use of prizes to encourage technological progress.

This is not a new idea to members of the space policy community, and we already have organizations attempting to do this privately, such as the X-Prize Foundation, though they’ve had difficulty raising the money. It’s really a great idea, with very little downside, if our national goal is to make rapid progress in space technology. The political difficulty of it, of course, is that this is not our goal in space. Our goal in space remains to maintain a jobs program and use it as a foreign policy tool.

Also, I should point out, since many are probably unaware of this, that Newt has been a long-time supporter of a more vigorous and useful space program. He has long been aware of the potential of things like space solar power, and has served on the board of advisors of the old L-5 Society and (I believe) on the National Space Society. He had to subsume that interest when he became House Speaker, because it wasn’t perceived to be a pressing national issue, and he would have looked even worse and flakier than the press was ever eager to make him out to be had he pursued it.

Not sure what brought it on, but Lileks has a nice bleat about the estate tax.

Both he and McArdle are tilting at windmills here, but someone’s gotta do it. My hat would be off, if I wore one.