Bill Gates Wealth Index
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Saturday, March 12, 2005
Friday, March 11, 2005
Anatomy of Credit Card Numbers
Anatomy of Credit Card Numbers
by Michael Gilleland, Merriam Park Software
Introduction
Major Industry Identifier
Issuer Identifier
Account Number
Check Digit
Examples
Java Source Code
Introduction
This is not an essay on credit cards per se. If that's what you're looking for, I recommend Joe Ziegler's excellent series Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Credit Cards. This essay has a narrower focus -- to explore the anatomy of your credit card number, and to provide Java source code which determines if a given credit card number might be valid.
Specifications for credit card numbering have been drawn up by the International Standards Organization (ISO/IEC 7812-1:1993) and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI X4.13). These eminent organizations refuse to make their publications freely available on-line, and so the following information on the format of credit card numbers comes largely from an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) draft by Donald E. Eastlake 3rd, "ISO 7812/7816 Numbers and the Domain Name System (DNS)" (draft-eastlake-card-map-08, expires August 2001), available at the time of this writing at http://www.globecom.net/ietf/draft/draft-eastlake-card-map-08.html. I have not linked to this URL, because individual versions of IETF drafts are notoriously ephemeral.
Digit numbering in this essay is left to right. The "first" digit, therefore, means the leftmost digit.
Major Industry Identifier
The first digit of your credit card number is the Major Industry Identifier (MII), which represents the category of entity which issued your credit card. Different MII digits represent the following issuer categories:
MII Digit Value Issuer Category
0 ISO/TC 68 and other industry assignments
1 Airlines
2 Airlines and other industry assignments
3 Travel and entertainment
4 Banking and financial
5 Banking and financial
6 Merchandizing and banking
7 Petroleum
8 Telecommunications and other industry assignments
9 National assignment
For example, American Express, Diner's Club, and Carte Blanche are in the travel and entertainment category, VISA, MasterCard, and Discover are in the banking and financial category, and SUN Oil and Exxon are in the petroleum category.
Issuer Identifier
The first 6 digits of your credit card number (including the initial MII digit) form the issuer identifier. This means that the total number of possible issuers is a million (10 raised to the sixth power, or 1,000,000).
Some of the better known issuer identifiers are listed in the following table:
Issuer Identifier Card Number Length
Diner's Club/Carte Blanche 300xxx-305xxx,
36xxxx, 38xxxx 14
American Express 34xxxx, 37xxxx 15
VISA 4xxxxx 13, 16
MasterCard 51xxxx-55xxxx 16
Discover 6011xx 16
If the MII digit is 9, then the next three digits of the issuer identifier are the 3-digit country codes defined in ISO 3166, and the remaining final two digits of the issuer identifier can be defined by the national standards body of the specified country in whatever way it wishes.
Account Number
Digits 7 to (n - 1) of your credit card number are your individual account identifier. The maximum length of a credit card number is 19 digits. Since the initial 6 digits of a credit card number are the issuer identifier, and the final digit is the check digit, this means that the maximum length of the account number field is 19 - 7, or 12 digits. Each issuer therefore has a trillion (10 raised to the 12th power, or 1,000,000,000,000) possible account numbers.
If we consider the large number of potential customers and usurious interest rates charged by issuers, there is obviously a lot of money to be made in the credit card industry. In more civilized ages, people believed that usury was a grievous offense contrary to nature or a mortal sin, not an acceptable business practice (Aristotle, Politics 1.10; St. Thomas Aquinas, De Malo 13.4; Dante, Inferno 11.94-111; etc.).
Check Digit
The final digit of your credit card number is a check digit, akin to a checksum. The algorithm used to arrive at the proper check digit is called the Luhn algorithm, after IBM scientist Hans Peter Luhn (1896-1964), who was awarded US Patent 2950048 ("Computer for Verifying Numbers") for the technique in 1960. For details about Luhn's life, see
* Biography on the American Society for Information Science and Technology's Web site, at http://www.asis.org/Features/Pioneers/luhn.htm.
* Notes compiled by Susan K. Soy on "H.P. Luhn and Automatic Indexing" at http://www.gslis.utexas.edu/~ssoy/organizing/l391d2c.htm
Thanks to Aleksandar Janicijevic for directing me to information about H.P. Luhn.
The most succint description of the Luhn algorithm I have found comes from the hacker publication phrack 47-8: "For a card with an even number of digits, double every odd numbered digit and subtract 9 if the product is greater than 9. Add up all the even digits as well as the doubled-odd digits, and the result must be a multiple of 10 or it's not a valid card. If the card has an odd number of digits, perform the same addition doubling the even numbered digits instead."
The bit about even and odd is a little confusing. The main point is that you don't want to double the check digit, and this can easily be done by starting with the check digit, going backwards, and doubling every other digit. See the source code below for details.
Examples
These examples are drawn from junk mail I received from credit card issuers in August 2001. Some of this junk mail contained glossy pictures of credit cards, and the sample numbers come directly from two of these pictures.
4408 0412 3456 7890
The first credit card offer showed a picture of a card with the number 4408 0412 3456 7890.
The Major Industry Identifier (MII) is 4 (banking and financial), the issuer identifier is 440804 (a VISA partner), the account number is 123456789, and the check digit is 0.
Let's apply the Luhn check to 4408 0412 3456 7890. In the following table,
* The top row is the original number.
* In the second row, we multiply alternate digits by 2. Don't multiply the check digit by 2.
* In the third row, we force all digits to be less than 10, by subtracting 9 where necessary.
* The bottom row contains the digits to be added together.
4 4 0 8 0 4 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0
4 x 2 = 8 4 0 x 2 = 0 8 0 x 2 = 0 4 1 x 2 = 2 2 3 x 2 = 6 4 5 x 2 = 10 6 7 x 2 = 14 8 9 x 2 = 18 0
8 4 0 8 0 4 2 2 6 4 10 - 9 = 1 6 14 - 9 = 5 8 18 - 9 = 9 0
8 4 0 8 0 4 2 2 6 4 1 6 5 8 9 0
If we add all of the digits in the bottom row together, we get 67, which is not a multiple of 10, and therefore we conclude that the number 4408 0412 3456 7890 is an invalid credit card number.
By changing the check digit from 0 to 3, we arrive at the number 4408 0412 3456 7893, which does pass the Luhn check, since the sum of the digits in the bottom row would be 70, which is divisible by 10. 4408 0412 3456 7893 is, on the face of it, a valid credit card number.
4417 1234 5678 9112
The second credit card offer showed a picture of a card with the number 4417 1234 5678 9112.
The Major Industry Identifier (MII) is 4 (banking and financial), the issuer identifier is 441712 (a VISA partner), the account number is 345678911, and the check digit is 2.
Let's apply the Luhn check to 4417 1234 5678 9112, as we did in the previous example.
4 4 1 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 1 2
4 x 2 = 8 4 1 x 2 = 2 7 1 x 2 = 2 2 3 x 2 = 6 4 5 x 2 = 10 6 7 x 2 = 14 8 9 x 2 = 18 1 1 x 2 = 2 2
8 4 2 7 2 2 6 4 10 - 9 = 1 6 14 - 9 = 5 8 18 - 9 = 9 1 2 2
8 4 2 7 2 2 6 4 1 6 5 8 9 1 2 2
If we add all of the digits in the bottom row together, we get 69, which is not a multiple of 10, and therefore we conclude that the number 4417 1234 5678 9112 is an invalid credit card number.
By changing the check digit from 2 to 3, we arrive at the number 4417 1234 5678 9113, which does pass the Luhn check, since the sum of the digits in the bottom row would be 70, which is divisible by 10. 4417 1234 5678 9113 is, on the face of it, a valid credit card number.
Warning
These two credit card offers contained pictures with numbers which the Luhn check proved to be invalid. A change to their check digits made them ostensibly valid. But if I were you, I wouldn't try to charge anything with them.
Java Source Code
The following simple Java class is free for you to use as you wish, without any restrictions or guarantees.
//---------------------------------------------------------
// Checks for valid credit card number using Luhn algorithm
//---------------------------------------------------------
public abstract class LuhnCheck {
//--------------------------------
// Filter out non-digit characters
//--------------------------------
private static String getDigitsOnly (String s) {
StringBuffer digitsOnly = new StringBuffer ();
char c;
for (int i = 0; i < s.length (); i++) {
c = s.charAt (i);
if (Character.isDigit (c)) {
digitsOnly.append (c);
}
}
return digitsOnly.toString ();
}
//-------------------
// Perform Luhn check
//-------------------
public static boolean isValid (String cardNumber) {
String digitsOnly = getDigitsOnly (cardNumber);
int sum = 0;
int digit = 0;
int addend = 0;
boolean timesTwo = false;
for (int i = digitsOnly.length () - 1; i >= 0; i--) {
digit = Integer.parseInt (digitsOnly.substring (i, i + 1));
if (timesTwo) {
addend = digit * 2;
if (addend > 9) {
addend -= 9;
}
}
else {
addend = digit;
}
sum += addend;
timesTwo = !timesTwo;
}
int modulus = sum % 10;
return modulus == 0;
}
//-----
// Test
//-----
public static void main (String[] args) {
String cardNumber = "4408 0412 3456 7890";
boolean valid = LuhnCheck.isValid (cardNumber);
System.out.println (cardNumber + ": " + valid);
cardNumber = "4408 0412 3456 7893";
valid = LuhnCheck.isValid (cardNumber);
System.out.println (cardNumber + ": " + valid);
cardNumber = "4417 1234 5678 9112";
valid = LuhnCheck.isValid (cardNumber);
System.out.println (cardNumber + ": " + valid);
cardNumber = "4417 1234 5678 9113";
valid = LuhnCheck.isValid (cardNumber);
System.out.println (cardNumber + ": " + valid);
}
}
by Michael Gilleland, Merriam Park Software
Introduction
Major Industry Identifier
Issuer Identifier
Account Number
Check Digit
Examples
Java Source Code
Introduction
This is not an essay on credit cards per se. If that's what you're looking for, I recommend Joe Ziegler's excellent series Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Credit Cards. This essay has a narrower focus -- to explore the anatomy of your credit card number, and to provide Java source code which determines if a given credit card number might be valid.
Specifications for credit card numbering have been drawn up by the International Standards Organization (ISO/IEC 7812-1:1993) and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI X4.13). These eminent organizations refuse to make their publications freely available on-line, and so the following information on the format of credit card numbers comes largely from an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) draft by Donald E. Eastlake 3rd, "ISO 7812/7816 Numbers and the Domain Name System (DNS)" (draft-eastlake-card-map-08, expires August 2001), available at the time of this writing at http://www.globecom.net/ietf/draft/draft-eastlake-card-map-08.html. I have not linked to this URL, because individual versions of IETF drafts are notoriously ephemeral.
Digit numbering in this essay is left to right. The "first" digit, therefore, means the leftmost digit.
Major Industry Identifier
The first digit of your credit card number is the Major Industry Identifier (MII), which represents the category of entity which issued your credit card. Different MII digits represent the following issuer categories:
MII Digit Value Issuer Category
0 ISO/TC 68 and other industry assignments
1 Airlines
2 Airlines and other industry assignments
3 Travel and entertainment
4 Banking and financial
5 Banking and financial
6 Merchandizing and banking
7 Petroleum
8 Telecommunications and other industry assignments
9 National assignment
For example, American Express, Diner's Club, and Carte Blanche are in the travel and entertainment category, VISA, MasterCard, and Discover are in the banking and financial category, and SUN Oil and Exxon are in the petroleum category.
Issuer Identifier
The first 6 digits of your credit card number (including the initial MII digit) form the issuer identifier. This means that the total number of possible issuers is a million (10 raised to the sixth power, or 1,000,000).
Some of the better known issuer identifiers are listed in the following table:
Issuer Identifier Card Number Length
Diner's Club/Carte Blanche 300xxx-305xxx,
36xxxx, 38xxxx 14
American Express 34xxxx, 37xxxx 15
VISA 4xxxxx 13, 16
MasterCard 51xxxx-55xxxx 16
Discover 6011xx 16
If the MII digit is 9, then the next three digits of the issuer identifier are the 3-digit country codes defined in ISO 3166, and the remaining final two digits of the issuer identifier can be defined by the national standards body of the specified country in whatever way it wishes.
Account Number
Digits 7 to (n - 1) of your credit card number are your individual account identifier. The maximum length of a credit card number is 19 digits. Since the initial 6 digits of a credit card number are the issuer identifier, and the final digit is the check digit, this means that the maximum length of the account number field is 19 - 7, or 12 digits. Each issuer therefore has a trillion (10 raised to the 12th power, or 1,000,000,000,000) possible account numbers.
If we consider the large number of potential customers and usurious interest rates charged by issuers, there is obviously a lot of money to be made in the credit card industry. In more civilized ages, people believed that usury was a grievous offense contrary to nature or a mortal sin, not an acceptable business practice (Aristotle, Politics 1.10; St. Thomas Aquinas, De Malo 13.4; Dante, Inferno 11.94-111; etc.).
Check Digit
The final digit of your credit card number is a check digit, akin to a checksum. The algorithm used to arrive at the proper check digit is called the Luhn algorithm, after IBM scientist Hans Peter Luhn (1896-1964), who was awarded US Patent 2950048 ("Computer for Verifying Numbers") for the technique in 1960. For details about Luhn's life, see
* Biography on the American Society for Information Science and Technology's Web site, at http://www.asis.org/Features/Pioneers/luhn.htm.
* Notes compiled by Susan K. Soy on "H.P. Luhn and Automatic Indexing" at http://www.gslis.utexas.edu/~ssoy/organizing/l391d2c.htm
Thanks to Aleksandar Janicijevic for directing me to information about H.P. Luhn.
The most succint description of the Luhn algorithm I have found comes from the hacker publication phrack 47-8: "For a card with an even number of digits, double every odd numbered digit and subtract 9 if the product is greater than 9. Add up all the even digits as well as the doubled-odd digits, and the result must be a multiple of 10 or it's not a valid card. If the card has an odd number of digits, perform the same addition doubling the even numbered digits instead."
The bit about even and odd is a little confusing. The main point is that you don't want to double the check digit, and this can easily be done by starting with the check digit, going backwards, and doubling every other digit. See the source code below for details.
Examples
These examples are drawn from junk mail I received from credit card issuers in August 2001. Some of this junk mail contained glossy pictures of credit cards, and the sample numbers come directly from two of these pictures.
4408 0412 3456 7890
The first credit card offer showed a picture of a card with the number 4408 0412 3456 7890.
The Major Industry Identifier (MII) is 4 (banking and financial), the issuer identifier is 440804 (a VISA partner), the account number is 123456789, and the check digit is 0.
Let's apply the Luhn check to 4408 0412 3456 7890. In the following table,
* The top row is the original number.
* In the second row, we multiply alternate digits by 2. Don't multiply the check digit by 2.
* In the third row, we force all digits to be less than 10, by subtracting 9 where necessary.
* The bottom row contains the digits to be added together.
4 4 0 8 0 4 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0
4 x 2 = 8 4 0 x 2 = 0 8 0 x 2 = 0 4 1 x 2 = 2 2 3 x 2 = 6 4 5 x 2 = 10 6 7 x 2 = 14 8 9 x 2 = 18 0
8 4 0 8 0 4 2 2 6 4 10 - 9 = 1 6 14 - 9 = 5 8 18 - 9 = 9 0
8 4 0 8 0 4 2 2 6 4 1 6 5 8 9 0
If we add all of the digits in the bottom row together, we get 67, which is not a multiple of 10, and therefore we conclude that the number 4408 0412 3456 7890 is an invalid credit card number.
By changing the check digit from 0 to 3, we arrive at the number 4408 0412 3456 7893, which does pass the Luhn check, since the sum of the digits in the bottom row would be 70, which is divisible by 10. 4408 0412 3456 7893 is, on the face of it, a valid credit card number.
4417 1234 5678 9112
The second credit card offer showed a picture of a card with the number 4417 1234 5678 9112.
The Major Industry Identifier (MII) is 4 (banking and financial), the issuer identifier is 441712 (a VISA partner), the account number is 345678911, and the check digit is 2.
Let's apply the Luhn check to 4417 1234 5678 9112, as we did in the previous example.
4 4 1 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 1 2
4 x 2 = 8 4 1 x 2 = 2 7 1 x 2 = 2 2 3 x 2 = 6 4 5 x 2 = 10 6 7 x 2 = 14 8 9 x 2 = 18 1 1 x 2 = 2 2
8 4 2 7 2 2 6 4 10 - 9 = 1 6 14 - 9 = 5 8 18 - 9 = 9 1 2 2
8 4 2 7 2 2 6 4 1 6 5 8 9 1 2 2
If we add all of the digits in the bottom row together, we get 69, which is not a multiple of 10, and therefore we conclude that the number 4417 1234 5678 9112 is an invalid credit card number.
By changing the check digit from 2 to 3, we arrive at the number 4417 1234 5678 9113, which does pass the Luhn check, since the sum of the digits in the bottom row would be 70, which is divisible by 10. 4417 1234 5678 9113 is, on the face of it, a valid credit card number.
Warning
These two credit card offers contained pictures with numbers which the Luhn check proved to be invalid. A change to their check digits made them ostensibly valid. But if I were you, I wouldn't try to charge anything with them.
Java Source Code
The following simple Java class is free for you to use as you wish, without any restrictions or guarantees.
//---------------------------------------------------------
// Checks for valid credit card number using Luhn algorithm
//---------------------------------------------------------
public abstract class LuhnCheck {
//--------------------------------
// Filter out non-digit characters
//--------------------------------
private static String getDigitsOnly (String s) {
StringBuffer digitsOnly = new StringBuffer ();
char c;
for (int i = 0; i < s.length (); i++) {
c = s.charAt (i);
if (Character.isDigit (c)) {
digitsOnly.append (c);
}
}
return digitsOnly.toString ();
}
//-------------------
// Perform Luhn check
//-------------------
public static boolean isValid (String cardNumber) {
String digitsOnly = getDigitsOnly (cardNumber);
int sum = 0;
int digit = 0;
int addend = 0;
boolean timesTwo = false;
for (int i = digitsOnly.length () - 1; i >= 0; i--) {
digit = Integer.parseInt (digitsOnly.substring (i, i + 1));
if (timesTwo) {
addend = digit * 2;
if (addend > 9) {
addend -= 9;
}
}
else {
addend = digit;
}
sum += addend;
timesTwo = !timesTwo;
}
int modulus = sum % 10;
return modulus == 0;
}
//-----
// Test
//-----
public static void main (String[] args) {
String cardNumber = "4408 0412 3456 7890";
boolean valid = LuhnCheck.isValid (cardNumber);
System.out.println (cardNumber + ": " + valid);
cardNumber = "4408 0412 3456 7893";
valid = LuhnCheck.isValid (cardNumber);
System.out.println (cardNumber + ": " + valid);
cardNumber = "4417 1234 5678 9112";
valid = LuhnCheck.isValid (cardNumber);
System.out.println (cardNumber + ": " + valid);
cardNumber = "4417 1234 5678 9113";
valid = LuhnCheck.isValid (cardNumber);
System.out.println (cardNumber + ": " + valid);
}
}
Wednesday, March 09, 2005
From Proverbial Wife
Fresh from the Mind of God
When I look at her and touch her and smell her, I breathe His presence, so sweet and subtle. She began as His thought, conceived in perfect love and painstakingly let go into a fallen world. In her purity, I find traces of Eden, of humanity as God intended, but her fragility reminds me of how easily we were, are, broken.
Yet the Creator goes on creating, knowing some will seek Him out to find wholeness, while most will be in eternal bondage to the original sin of pride, bandaging themselves and hobbling along until their days are finally, mercifully, ended. They will have exchanged the intangible truth for the material lie, transcendance for mere existence, and a relationship with the One who thought them into being for the meaningless companionship of self.
Oh, little one, so fresh from the mind of God, the most untainted of His creation, yet already flawed by your very nature, you are a precious glimpse into the divine. To have carried you inside my body, to nourish you now from my flesh--such is the design of the nurturing Father who made you--I am blessed beyond my own understanding. May you always see Him as clearly as I see Him in you.
When I look at her and touch her and smell her, I breathe His presence, so sweet and subtle. She began as His thought, conceived in perfect love and painstakingly let go into a fallen world. In her purity, I find traces of Eden, of humanity as God intended, but her fragility reminds me of how easily we were, are, broken.
Yet the Creator goes on creating, knowing some will seek Him out to find wholeness, while most will be in eternal bondage to the original sin of pride, bandaging themselves and hobbling along until their days are finally, mercifully, ended. They will have exchanged the intangible truth for the material lie, transcendance for mere existence, and a relationship with the One who thought them into being for the meaningless companionship of self.
Oh, little one, so fresh from the mind of God, the most untainted of His creation, yet already flawed by your very nature, you are a precious glimpse into the divine. To have carried you inside my body, to nourish you now from my flesh--such is the design of the nurturing Father who made you--I am blessed beyond my own understanding. May you always see Him as clearly as I see Him in you.
From Proverbial Wife
Fresh from the Mind of God
When I look at her and touch her and smell her, I breathe His presence, so sweet and subtle. She began as His thought, conceived in perfect love and painstakingly let go into a fallen world. In her purity, I find traces of Eden, of humanity as God intended, but her fragility reminds me of how easily we were, are, broken.
Yet the Creator goes on creating, knowing some will seek Him out to find wholeness, while most will be in eternal bondage to the original sin of pride, bandaging themselves and hobbling along until their days are finally, mercifully, ended. They will have exchanged the intangible truth for the material lie, transcendance for mere existence, and a relationship with the One who thought them into being for the meaningless companionship of self.
Oh, little one, so fresh from the mind of God, the most untainted of His creation, yet already flawed by your very nature, you are a precious glimpse into the divine. To have carried you inside my body, to nourish you now from my flesh--such is the design of the nurturing Father who made you--I am blessed beyond my own understanding. May you always see Him as clearly as I see Him in you.
When I look at her and touch her and smell her, I breathe His presence, so sweet and subtle. She began as His thought, conceived in perfect love and painstakingly let go into a fallen world. In her purity, I find traces of Eden, of humanity as God intended, but her fragility reminds me of how easily we were, are, broken.
Yet the Creator goes on creating, knowing some will seek Him out to find wholeness, while most will be in eternal bondage to the original sin of pride, bandaging themselves and hobbling along until their days are finally, mercifully, ended. They will have exchanged the intangible truth for the material lie, transcendance for mere existence, and a relationship with the One who thought them into being for the meaningless companionship of self.
Oh, little one, so fresh from the mind of God, the most untainted of His creation, yet already flawed by your very nature, you are a precious glimpse into the divine. To have carried you inside my body, to nourish you now from my flesh--such is the design of the nurturing Father who made you--I am blessed beyond my own understanding. May you always see Him as clearly as I see Him in you.
Monday, March 07, 2005
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
Everything I Know Is Wrong: Solar Flare Blamed for Arctic Ozone Loss
Everything I Know Is Wrong: Solar Flare Blamed for Arctic Ozone Loss: "March 01, 2005
Solar Flare Blamed for Arctic Ozone Loss
'Scientists,' as the press almost universally labels anonymous theoreticians, have discovered that the 60% reduction in Arctic ozone was mostly due to the largest solar flares ever recorded.
Sun's Temper Blamed for Arctic Ozone Loss
Charged particles from the storms triggered chemical reactions that increased the formation of extra nitrogen in the upper stratosphere, some 20 miles up. Nitrogen levels climbed to their highest in at least two decades.
A massive low-pressure system that confines air over the Arctic then conspired to deplete ozone.
Upper-atmosphere winds associated with the system, called the polar stratospheric vortex, sped up in February and March of 2004 to the fastest speeds ever recorded, the new study found. The spinning vortex allowed nitrogen gas to sink from the high stratosphere, some 20 miles up, to lower altitudes.
The nitrogen gas is known to destroy ozone.
'This decline was completely unexpected,' said Cora Randall, a physicist at the University of Colorado, Boulder who led the study. 'The findings point out a critical need to better understand the processes occurring in the ozone layer.'
Aaaugh! Even though they admit to complete surprise over the results of these completely natural phenomena in the Northern Hemisphere, they purport to know the exact cause of a similar thinning of the ozone layer in the Southern Hemisphere.
The upper-level ozone layer has thinned dramatically in the Southern Hemisphere in recent decades, creating a dangerous hole through which UV rays stream. The decline is due largely to man-made chlorofluorocarbons released into the atmosphere.
If the reader is not confused enough by one flip in logic, fear not--they flop right back again.
The new study suggests a better understanding is needed of how the Sun itself alters the ozone layer.
'No one predicted the dramatic loss of ozone in the upper stratosphere of the Northern Hemisphere in the spring of 2004,' Randall said. 'That we can still be surprised illustrates the difficulties in separating atmospheric effects due to natural and human-induced causes.'
Advice to scientists: When you don't know say, 'I don't know.'"
Solar Flare Blamed for Arctic Ozone Loss
'Scientists,' as the press almost universally labels anonymous theoreticians, have discovered that the 60% reduction in Arctic ozone was mostly due to the largest solar flares ever recorded.
Sun's Temper Blamed for Arctic Ozone Loss
Charged particles from the storms triggered chemical reactions that increased the formation of extra nitrogen in the upper stratosphere, some 20 miles up. Nitrogen levels climbed to their highest in at least two decades.
A massive low-pressure system that confines air over the Arctic then conspired to deplete ozone.
Upper-atmosphere winds associated with the system, called the polar stratospheric vortex, sped up in February and March of 2004 to the fastest speeds ever recorded, the new study found. The spinning vortex allowed nitrogen gas to sink from the high stratosphere, some 20 miles up, to lower altitudes.
The nitrogen gas is known to destroy ozone.
'This decline was completely unexpected,' said Cora Randall, a physicist at the University of Colorado, Boulder who led the study. 'The findings point out a critical need to better understand the processes occurring in the ozone layer.'
Aaaugh! Even though they admit to complete surprise over the results of these completely natural phenomena in the Northern Hemisphere, they purport to know the exact cause of a similar thinning of the ozone layer in the Southern Hemisphere.
The upper-level ozone layer has thinned dramatically in the Southern Hemisphere in recent decades, creating a dangerous hole through which UV rays stream. The decline is due largely to man-made chlorofluorocarbons released into the atmosphere.
If the reader is not confused enough by one flip in logic, fear not--they flop right back again.
The new study suggests a better understanding is needed of how the Sun itself alters the ozone layer.
'No one predicted the dramatic loss of ozone in the upper stratosphere of the Northern Hemisphere in the spring of 2004,' Randall said. 'That we can still be surprised illustrates the difficulties in separating atmospheric effects due to natural and human-induced causes.'
Advice to scientists: When you don't know say, 'I don't know.'"
Saturday, February 26, 2005
Airborne Combat Engineer: The Freshour Pauza Semi-Auto .50 BMG
Airborne Combat Engineer: The Freshour Pauza Semi-Auto .50 BMG: "Saturday, 26 February 2005
The Freshour Pauza Semi-Auto .50 BMG
This 'P-50' semi-auto .50 BMG was designed by Robert Pauza and is sold (with rifle or carbine length barrel) by Freshour Manufacturing (Ron Freshour, CEO) in Texas City, Texas.
You'll find a couple of short video clips of it being fired from the prone position and off the hip at the Freshour site."
The Freshour Pauza Semi-Auto .50 BMG
This 'P-50' semi-auto .50 BMG was designed by Robert Pauza and is sold (with rifle or carbine length barrel) by Freshour Manufacturing (Ron Freshour, CEO) in Texas City, Texas.
You'll find a couple of short video clips of it being fired from the prone position and off the hip at the Freshour site."
Belmont Club More on W Churchill
Belmont ClubThe Cancer Ward
Hat tip to Michelle Malkin for linking to an Inside Denver article on Ward Churchill which catalogues the lengthy history of his denunciation by bona-fide Indians before Colorado University. His accusers include his ex-inlaws. Some excerpts:
David Bradley, a Santa Fe-area American Indian artist whose feud with Churchill has endured more than a decade, says he told CU a long time ago that Churchill should be fired. ...
Vernon Bellecourt, an American Indian Movement activist, says he first approached the university with questions about the veracity of Churchill's claim to American Indian heritage in 1986. "We went out there with a stack of documents to tell them about him," Bellecourt said. "I made a special trip to Colorado and went to the university.
"We told the university he wasn't Indian and was disruptive in the community," said Carole Standing Elk, a California Indian activist. "We said, 'He doesn't represent us, and how did you put him in the ethnic studies department?' "
"I sent a letter to the university in 1992 saying he's not a native person," said Suzan Shown Harjo, president of the Morning Star Institute. She says she received a response from a university official saying Churchill had not been hired because he was an American Indian.
Bradley, a Chippewa, said there are several reasons he and Churchill clashed. ... In 1994, Bradley contacted CU, lodging his complaint with Evelyn Hu-De-Hart, then director for CU's Center for Studies of Ethnicity and Race in America. ...
Rhonda Kelly, 41, of Winnipeg, the older sister of Churchill's deceased third wife, Leah Renae Kelly, also contacted CU. ... Churchill later published a book of Kelly's writings, In My Own Voice. In a lengthy preface, he contended that the American Indian woman's alcoholism and other personal troubles could be traced ... Rhonda Kelly, a second-year law student, has produced a 15-point brief of inaccuracies she said she has found in Churchill's preface. She has asked the book's publisher to remove it from circulation, and to ask a man writing a screenplay based on the book to desist. ... He said his wife was a victim of acute alcoholism and that he "fought a long and lonely battle to save her." ... Churchill, in the wake of Leah Kelly's death, established a fund at CU for Rhonda Kelly's two children and contributed $200. ... "My sister Leah Renae Kelly had so much promise, but ... she instead turned to alcohol to escape the torment and humiliation in her marital home."
Controversy, or perhaps more accurately, acrimony, has been on Churchill like a cheap suit from the git-go. At least some of the accusations leveled against him received official cognizance from the University, which used the equal opportunity argument as a justification for retaining him, whatever he was and whatever he claimed to be.
"However, given the fact that equal opportunity is the law of the land and that positions in the public sector are to be awarded to all persons regardless of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, and based only on their ability to do the job, the university does not believe that any attempt to remove Mr. Churchill because of his ethnicity or race would be appropriate. Even if Mr. Churchill is not an American Indian, as he claims, Title VII protects Caucasians as well as persons of color. Further, it has always been university policy that a person's race or ethnicity is self-proving. ... observation and self-identification are the most reliable indicators of one's racial grouping."
But allowing a person to adopt any race that he chooses makes a nonsense of racial preferences. There is an inner and inescapable logical contradiction between adopting a policy based on racial diversity and then making race, in turn, a dependent on some other variable. By transitivity, the policy based on 'racial diversity' would really be driven by this hidden variable, which is a function of 'consciousness'. In other words, 'racial diversity' becomes a dummy for ideological quotas. In plain English: "all your base are belong to us".
posted by wretchard at 2:03 AM
Hat tip to Michelle Malkin for linking to an Inside Denver article on Ward Churchill which catalogues the lengthy history of his denunciation by bona-fide Indians before Colorado University. His accusers include his ex-inlaws. Some excerpts:
David Bradley, a Santa Fe-area American Indian artist whose feud with Churchill has endured more than a decade, says he told CU a long time ago that Churchill should be fired. ...
Vernon Bellecourt, an American Indian Movement activist, says he first approached the university with questions about the veracity of Churchill's claim to American Indian heritage in 1986. "We went out there with a stack of documents to tell them about him," Bellecourt said. "I made a special trip to Colorado and went to the university.
"We told the university he wasn't Indian and was disruptive in the community," said Carole Standing Elk, a California Indian activist. "We said, 'He doesn't represent us, and how did you put him in the ethnic studies department?' "
"I sent a letter to the university in 1992 saying he's not a native person," said Suzan Shown Harjo, president of the Morning Star Institute. She says she received a response from a university official saying Churchill had not been hired because he was an American Indian.
Bradley, a Chippewa, said there are several reasons he and Churchill clashed. ... In 1994, Bradley contacted CU, lodging his complaint with Evelyn Hu-De-Hart, then director for CU's Center for Studies of Ethnicity and Race in America. ...
Rhonda Kelly, 41, of Winnipeg, the older sister of Churchill's deceased third wife, Leah Renae Kelly, also contacted CU. ... Churchill later published a book of Kelly's writings, In My Own Voice. In a lengthy preface, he contended that the American Indian woman's alcoholism and other personal troubles could be traced ... Rhonda Kelly, a second-year law student, has produced a 15-point brief of inaccuracies she said she has found in Churchill's preface. She has asked the book's publisher to remove it from circulation, and to ask a man writing a screenplay based on the book to desist. ... He said his wife was a victim of acute alcoholism and that he "fought a long and lonely battle to save her." ... Churchill, in the wake of Leah Kelly's death, established a fund at CU for Rhonda Kelly's two children and contributed $200. ... "My sister Leah Renae Kelly had so much promise, but ... she instead turned to alcohol to escape the torment and humiliation in her marital home."
Controversy, or perhaps more accurately, acrimony, has been on Churchill like a cheap suit from the git-go. At least some of the accusations leveled against him received official cognizance from the University, which used the equal opportunity argument as a justification for retaining him, whatever he was and whatever he claimed to be.
"However, given the fact that equal opportunity is the law of the land and that positions in the public sector are to be awarded to all persons regardless of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, and based only on their ability to do the job, the university does not believe that any attempt to remove Mr. Churchill because of his ethnicity or race would be appropriate. Even if Mr. Churchill is not an American Indian, as he claims, Title VII protects Caucasians as well as persons of color. Further, it has always been university policy that a person's race or ethnicity is self-proving. ... observation and self-identification are the most reliable indicators of one's racial grouping."
But allowing a person to adopt any race that he chooses makes a nonsense of racial preferences. There is an inner and inescapable logical contradiction between adopting a policy based on racial diversity and then making race, in turn, a dependent on some other variable. By transitivity, the policy based on 'racial diversity' would really be driven by this hidden variable, which is a function of 'consciousness'. In other words, 'racial diversity' becomes a dummy for ideological quotas. In plain English: "all your base are belong to us".
posted by wretchard at 2:03 AM
Friday, February 25, 2005
HOW-TO: Get videos and DVDs
HOW-TO: Get videos and DVDs onto your Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP) for free - Engadget - www.engadget.com: "HOW-TO: Get videos and DVDs onto your Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP) for free"
DeepBurner - Powerful CD and DVD burning package// Freeware
DeepBurner - Powerful CD and DVD burning package: "DeepBurner - Powerful CD and DVD Burning Packageorganizer
DeepBurner is an advanced and powerful CD and DVD burning package that utilizes power and efficiency. It takes away the hassle of making CDs, DVDs, autoruns, creating and printing labels and booklets. The program supports a very wide range of internal and external (USB 2.0 and FireWire) CD and DVD writers. Burn any data, copy discs, make backups, burn astonishing photo cd albums, make ISO CDs and Video DVDs with just one easy to handle software- DeepBurner."
DeepBurner is an advanced and powerful CD and DVD burning package that utilizes power and efficiency. It takes away the hassle of making CDs, DVDs, autoruns, creating and printing labels and booklets. The program supports a very wide range of internal and external (USB 2.0 and FireWire) CD and DVD writers. Burn any data, copy discs, make backups, burn astonishing photo cd albums, make ISO CDs and Video DVDs with just one easy to handle software- DeepBurner."
Monday, February 21, 2005
Wednesday, February 16, 2005
Bad Example
Bad Example: "ON THE USS CARTER (AGAIN)
Good points from BadExample!
"So, the USS Carter (a fast attack submarine) is being commissioned, and folks are having a field day with it, since Carter was a crappy president.
All well and good.
But after you get done making your killer rabbit jokes, please keep in mind that American Sailors will be serving on board that boat. Show them some respect.
I blogged about this last June when they first announced that the sub would be called the Carter, and I think the bulk of that bears re-posting. I'd also suggest reading the comments to the original post, as one of my readers was kind enough to provide more details on Carter's career.
Anyway, here's what I had to say then:
As I pointed out in my tribute to Reagan, Carter was an incompetent bungler of a President who did little-to-nothing right, and mostly-to-everything wrong, both in domestic and foreign policy. His record stands on its own and I won't re-hash it here.
However, before he was President, he was an officer in the US Navy, and a damn fine one. He graduated from the Naval Academy, and he was one of the few officers chosen by Admiral Hyman G. Rickover to help develop the Navy's Nuclear Propulsion Program. You've probably never heard of Rickover, but suffice it to say that he was to the Nuke Program what Patton was to the European Theater during WWII. He was a fanatic about the virtues of nuclear power as a means of powering Naval vessels, and with his eccentric personality and his insatiable drive for perfection, he made the dream a reality. He was EXTRAORDINARILY particular about whom he chose to work on this project. In his eyes, Carter measured up. Mere words cannot express the honor so bestowed.
During his time as a Nuke, Carter was attached to one of the first nuclear submarines, the USS Seawolf - the first of a class of ships, the last of which is now being christened with his name some 50 years later. Considering that he was there at the beginning, it's fitting that his name should be attached to the ending.
And considering that Carter is the ONLY President who ever qualified to command a submarine, it is doubly fitting.
So even though I have no love for Carter the politician, and even less for Carter the post-Presidential diplomat, I have nothing but the highest respect for Carter the Naval Officer. He served his country to a degree that few men can claim the equal of, and I believe with all my heart that any Sailor attached to the USS Jimmy Carter can serve aboard her with the greatest of pride and honor."
Good points from BadExample!
"So, the USS Carter (a fast attack submarine) is being commissioned, and folks are having a field day with it, since Carter was a crappy president.
All well and good.
But after you get done making your killer rabbit jokes, please keep in mind that American Sailors will be serving on board that boat. Show them some respect.
I blogged about this last June when they first announced that the sub would be called the Carter, and I think the bulk of that bears re-posting. I'd also suggest reading the comments to the original post, as one of my readers was kind enough to provide more details on Carter's career.
Anyway, here's what I had to say then:
As I pointed out in my tribute to Reagan, Carter was an incompetent bungler of a President who did little-to-nothing right, and mostly-to-everything wrong, both in domestic and foreign policy. His record stands on its own and I won't re-hash it here.
However, before he was President, he was an officer in the US Navy, and a damn fine one. He graduated from the Naval Academy, and he was one of the few officers chosen by Admiral Hyman G. Rickover to help develop the Navy's Nuclear Propulsion Program. You've probably never heard of Rickover, but suffice it to say that he was to the Nuke Program what Patton was to the European Theater during WWII. He was a fanatic about the virtues of nuclear power as a means of powering Naval vessels, and with his eccentric personality and his insatiable drive for perfection, he made the dream a reality. He was EXTRAORDINARILY particular about whom he chose to work on this project. In his eyes, Carter measured up. Mere words cannot express the honor so bestowed.
During his time as a Nuke, Carter was attached to one of the first nuclear submarines, the USS Seawolf - the first of a class of ships, the last of which is now being christened with his name some 50 years later. Considering that he was there at the beginning, it's fitting that his name should be attached to the ending.
And considering that Carter is the ONLY President who ever qualified to command a submarine, it is doubly fitting.
So even though I have no love for Carter the politician, and even less for Carter the post-Presidential diplomat, I have nothing but the highest respect for Carter the Naval Officer. He served his country to a degree that few men can claim the equal of, and I believe with all my heart that any Sailor attached to the USS Jimmy Carter can serve aboard her with the greatest of pride and honor."
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