Spinor Info

The airline that never flew

Oct 112013

Hungary once had a proud national airline, MALÉV. I once worked for MALÉV, at least indirectly, when I built software simulators to calculate take-off distances and later, CO2 emissions for MALÉV’s fleet of Tu-154 aircraft. Sadly, MALÉV is no more: in early 2012, after the European Union declared that MALÉV received illegal subsidies from the Hungarian government, the airline went bankrupt and was liquidated.

Earlier this year, we saw some encouraging news: a private group of investors were trying to create a new national airline, designed to compete at the high end of the market. Their initial announcements were received with hope by some, with skepticism by others. The airline hit some bureaucratic hurdles as it was trying to get its newly leased small fleet of used 737s off the ground; their inaugural flights were repeatedly postponed.

But now, we learn that a prospective investor from the Middle East withdraw from the project, and as a result, the airline is unable to pay the salaries of its 70-odd employees for the month of September. In other words, for all practical intents and purposes, it is bankrupt. And this is probably a world first: a national airline that goes bankrupt without ever getting a single scheduled flight off the tarmac.

Command and Control

History, Politics No Responses »

Oct 112013

I just finished reading a fascinating book: Command and Control, by Erich Schlosser.

The subtitle may be somewhat more revealing: “Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Incident, and the Illusion of Safety”.

It is a book about the safety (or lack thereof) of America’s nuclear weapons. And it was an eye-opening read.

Yes, I knew that there were some incidents in the past during which nuclear weapons were lost, damaged, or destroyed. Yes, I knew that there were incidents of false alarm, when early warning systems in the United States or the Soviet Union indicated an attack even though no such attack was under way.

But like many, I assumed that the weapons themselves were designed to be inherently safe. That by design, the weapons were secure against accidental detonation (even during a serious accident such as the crash of a bomber aircraft) or unauthorized use.

What I did not expect to read about were weapons that could be detonated by a stray electrical signal. A military leadership that resisted anything that could stand in the way of successful deployment of a weapon, including the installation of coded devices (“permissive action links”.) Or even when such coded devices were ultimately installed, in effect sabotaging them by using the code “00000000” everywhere. What I did not expect to read about were accidents involving nuclear weapons where only a single switch, prone to failure, stood between the world and an accidental thermonuclear explosion.

The book uses a specific incident, the in-silo explosion of a Titan II missile in 1980, as a framework to tell its story. I was shocked by the events leading up to the accident as well as the chaotic, panicky reaction afterwards (including pathetic attempts to hide systemic errors by trying to blame low-ranking airmen for the accident).

The book is mostly about America’s weapon systems, but it is not meant to imply that foolish attitudes towards the deadliest weapon ever invented by humanity are uniquely American. A famous line in the movie classic, Dr. Strangelove, is when Dr. Strangelove yells at the Soviet ambassador in frustration, “Yes, but the… whole point of the doomsday machine… is lost… if you keep it a secret!” In the 1980s, the Soviet Union finished construction of the Perimeter system, an automated system designed to respond with a massive nuclear strike automatically in case the Soviet leadership was incapacitated and the system detected nuclear explosions on Soviet soil. In other words: a doomsday machine. The system is believed to remain operational to this date.

And they kept it a secret.

Is the US shutdown really Canada’s fault?

Canada, Politics No Responses »

Oct 052013

Here is an interesting theory: that the shutdown of the US government was, at least in part, caused by remarks made by Canada’s Prime Minister, Stephen Harper.

To be sure, Harper and his Foreign Minister, John Baird, said a lot of weird things recently, on Iran and other topics, earning Canada the distinction of being labeled a “right-wing gas bag” by The Huffington Post.

But it was Harper’s “we don’t take no for an answer” comment concerning the proposed Keystone XL pipeline that prompted Tom Steyer, a liberal-leaning San Francisco billionaire, to suggest that it may have played a part in the US government shutdown. The pipeline, after all, was one of the items on the original Tea Party laundry list of conditions for approving a continuing resolution.

Guess someone doesn’t want to be invited back by CNN

Politics, Television No Responses »

Oct 052013

One of my favorite programs on CNN is Reliable Sources, the channel’s press/media backgrounder. It used to be hosted by Washington journalist Howard Kurtz, who recently moved to Fox News, however, to host a similar program (Mediabuzz) there.

Since then, CNN has been using invited guest hosts to host the program. One of those guest hosts, Brian Stelter, appeared for the second time this past Sunday.

Near the end of his program, he delivered a scathing (well-deserved, but scathing) criticism of CNN itself, about the way the channel bent disclosure rules to accommodate hosts and guests on the new program Crossfire.

I wonder if they will invite him back. (Or maybe he doesn’t want to be invited back?)

Cruz and McCarthy

Politics No Responses »

Sep 292013

Last week, U.S. Republican senator Ted Cruz was featured on television screens numerous times, on account of his rather pointless marathon 21-hour filibuster trying to derail Obamacare.

Whenever I saw his face on screen, I was taken aback by one thing: Just how eerily similar he looks to another senator from the inglorious past, senator Joseph McCarthy.

Apparently, the similarity is more than skin deep. I just happened upon a February article published in Forbes Magazine, which compares the actions of senator Cruz to the dirty politics of his infamous predecessor.

Stagnating temperatures?

Mathematics, Physics, Weather and Climate 1 Response »

Sep 272013

It is now formally official: global surface temperatures did not increase significantly in the past 15 years or so.

But if skeptics conclude that this is it, the smoking gun that proves that all climate science is hogwash, they better think again. When we look closely, the plots reveal something a lot more interesting.

For starters… this is not the first time global temperatures stagnated or even decreased somewhat since the start of recordkeeping. There is a roughly 20-year period centered around 1950 or so, and another, even longer period centered roughly around 1890. This looks in fact like evidence that there may be something to the idea of a 60-year climate cycle. However, the alarming bit is this: every time the cycle peaks, temperatures are higher than in the previous cycle.

The just released IPCC Summary for Policymakers makes no mention of this cycle but it does offer an explanation for the observed stagnating temperatures. These are probably a result of volcanic activity, they tell us, the solar cycle, and perhaps mismodeling the effects of greenhouse gases and aerosols, but they are not exactly sure.

And certainty is characterized with words like “high confidence,” “medium confidence” and such, with no definitions given. These will be supplied, supposedly, in the technical report that will be released on Monday. Nonetheless, the statement that “Probabilistic estimates […] are based on statistical analysis of observations or model results, or both, and expert judgment” [emphasis mine] does not fill me with confidence, if you will pardon the pun.

In fact, I feel compelled to compare this to the various reports and releases issued by the LHC in recent years about the Higgs boson. There was no “expert judgment”. There were objective statistical analysis methods and procedures that were thoroughly documented (even though they were often difficult to comprehend, due to their sheer complexity.) There were objective standards for claiming a discovery.

Given the extreme political sensitivity of the topic, I think the IPCC should adopt similar or even more stringent standards of analysis as the LHC. Do away with “expert judgment” and use instead proper statistical tools to establish the likelihood of specific climate models in the light of the gathered data. And if the models do not work, e.g., if they failed to predict stagnating temperatures, the right thing to do is say that this is so; there is no need for “expert judgment”. Just state the facts.

Gee-whiz IPCC plots

Mathematics, Physics, Weather and Climate No Responses »

Sep 272013

I’ve been hesitant to write about this, as skeptics will already have plenty to gripe about, I don’t need to pile on. And I swear I am not looking for excuses to bash the IPCC, not to mention that I have little sympathy or patience for skeptics who believe that an entire body of science is just one huge scam to make Al Gore and his buddies rich.

But… I was very disappointed to see plots in the latest IPCC “Summary for Policymakers” report that appear unnecessarily manipulative.

Wikipedia describes these as truncated or “gee-whiz” graphs: graphs in which the vertical axis does not start at zero. This can dramatically change the appearance of a plot, making small variations appear much larger than they really are.

To be clear, the use of truncated plots is often legitimate. Perhaps the plot compares two quantities that are of a similar magnitude. Perhaps the plot shows a quantity the absolute magnitude of which is irrelevant. Perhaps the quantity is such that “0” has no special meaning or it is not a natural start of the range (e.g., pH, temperature in Centigrade).

But in other cases, this practice can be viewed as misleading, intellectually dishonest (for instance, it is common for financial companies to manipulate plots this way to make their market performance appear more impressive than it really is) or outright fraudulent.

So here we are, the 2013 IPCC report’s summary for policymakers has been released in draft form, and what do I see in it? Several key plots that have been presented in truncated “gee-whiz” form, despite the fact that the quantities they represent are such that their absolute magnitudes are relevant, that their variability must be measured against their absolute magnitudes, and where zero is a natural start of the range.

I am presenting the original plots on the left and my crudely “untruncated” versions on the right:

This is not kosher, especially in a document that is intended for consumption by a lay audience who may not have the scientific education to spot such subtleties.

The document is still labeled a draft, with copy editing in particular yet to take place. Here’s to hoping that these plots (and any similar plots that may appear in the main report) are corrected before publication, to avoid the impression of trying to exaggerate the case for climate change. Scientists should be presenting the science objectively and leave the manipulation, even inadvertent manipulation, to politicians.

Interstellar Voyager

Space No Responses »

Sep 202013

Last week, it was all over the news: Voyager 1 has left the solar system.

Except that it really didn’t. Voyager 1’s trajectory is, and will continue to be, dominated by the Sun’s gravity for thousands of years. Voyager 1 is significantly closer to the Sun than Sedna (one of the icy dwarfs in the outer solar system) at aphelion. And then there is the hypothesized Oort cloud, a spherical cloud of planetesimals roughly a light year from the Sun. Voyager 1 will take thousands of years to travel that distance.

Of course, Voyager 1 is way outside the orbit of the outermost planet, Neptune. But that happened decades ago, back in the 1980s. By 1990, Voyager 1 was far enough from the Sun to be able to take its famous “family portrait”, a mosaic that covered six of the eight planets (Mars was too faint, while Mercury was too close to the Sun.)

So what exactly happened this month? Well, Voyager 1 crossed the heliopause, the boundary where the solar wind collides with the interstellar medium. It is also the location where magnetic fields are no longer dominated by the Sun.

So in this sense, Voyager 1 has indeed crossed into the interstellar medium. The particles its instruments sample are the particles found in interstellar space, not particles emitted by the Sun.

So it is a significant milestone, but it is somewhat misleading to suggest that “Voyager 1 has left the solar system”, which we heard so many times in the past several days.

The world’s first parabolic radio telescope

Astronomy, History No Responses »

Sep 202013

The world’s first parabolic radio telescope was, astonishingly, built in someone’s back yard.

I am reading about the radio telescope of American amateur radio enthusiast and amateur astronomer Grote Reber.

In 1937, Reber built a 9-meter parabolic reflector in his family’s back yard.

Reber was the first to make a systematic survey of the radio sky, not only confirming Jansky’s earlier, pioneering discovery of radio waves from the Milky Way but also discovering radio sources such as Cygnus X-1 and Cassiopeia A.

For nearly a decade, Reber was the only person in the world doing radio astronomy.

Reber had a long life. He spent his final years in Tasmania, one of the few places on Earth where occasionally, very low frequency radio waves penetrate the ionosphere and are detectable by a ground-based antenna.

Global warming – temporarily on hold?

Weather and Climate No Responses »

Sep 172013

It has been known for some time: In the past decade, perhaps decade and a half, there was no significant global warming.

There are many explanations proposed for this slowdown/pause, and the actual cause is likely a combination of these: ocean surface cooling, natural climate oscillations, an unusual solar minimum, water vapor, aerosols, you name it.

Here is one problem with these explanations: These are the same ideas that were proposed, as alternatives to anthropogenic CO2, as causes behind the observed warming, by climate change “skeptics”, only to be summarily dismissed by many in the climate change community as denialist crackpottery.

Sadly, this may very well mean that climate skeptics will claim victory, and those inclined to listen to them will conclude that all this global warming hogwash was just some scam dreamed up by Al Gore and his cronies. Meanwhile, we tend to forget about other things that elevated atmospheric CO2 levels do, such as ocean acidification; not to mention other, equally threatening global environmental concerns, for instance species extinction occurring on a scale not seen since the day of the dinosaurs.

Phonebloks – a great idea that will never work

Communication, Technology No Responses »

Sep 172013

This has been making the rounds on the Internets in the past few days: a modular mobile phone concept, with swappable parts.

Except that (with apologies to its inventor and supporters) I don’t think it will ever work. And no, not because conspiring corporations will torpedo it. (For what it’s worth, I am a free agent: I am not on the payroll of any conspiring corporations.)

The first reason is mechanical. For the phone to be robust, the backboard would have to be really strong and bulky. The connectors would have to be rock solid. Yes, it can be done, but only by using expensive materials, and the backboard itself will be half as thick already as a modern phone like a Samsung Galaxy.

The second reason is power and signaling. The placement of components on a modern phone mainboard is not accidental. Signal paths matter when things run off a multigigahertz clock. Power matters when some components can momentarily draw significant current. The placement of antennas matters, to maximize efficiency and minimize interference from the phone’s own components.

Third, the design will inevitably prove too constraining. Take modern PCs as an analogy. Yes, they are modular (it is much easier, of course, to make a desktop PC modular.) But only to a point. Try shoving an old ISA extension card into a modern PC. Even if it were perfectly functional (e.g., an old modem, serial/parallel or low-speed communication card that never needed more than ISA speeds) you can’t use it anymore, as no modern motherboard supports ISA slots. Many modern motherboards don’t even support PCI slots. Processor sockets change. Memory module standards change. Even power supply standards changed a surprising number of times. (You’d think there are only so many ways to supply 12VDC, 5VDC, and maybe 3.3VDC, but you’d be wrong.)

Still, Phonebloks is a neat idea. In fact, it’s one of those ideas that may never work as intended, but may still inspire other useful inventions.

Bombardier C-series

Aviation, Canada No Responses »

Sep 172013

Lest we forget, this is a really big deal not just for Bombardier but also for Canada: the successful first test flight of Bombardier’s new C-series jet.

This new jet puts Bombardier in direct competition with the two giants, Boeing and Airbus.

Not bad from a country of less than 34 million people.

Costa Concordia upright

Transportation No Responses »

Sep 172013

I decided to check on the live Reuters video feed of the parbuckling effort, and lo and behold: For the first time since its accident so many months ago, the cruise ship Costa Concordia is upright.

Too bad this once proud and beautiful ship will only have one last voyage, a trip to the scrapyard.

A beautiful routing table entry

Internet, Personal No Responses »

Sep 122013

Here is a sight I have not seen since July 30:

Route results for 199.166.252.0/24 from Vienna, Austria

BGP routing table entry for 199.166.252.0/24
Paths: (4 available, best #1)
  1239 577
  AS-path translation: { AS1239 BELL-AS }
    edge3.Frankfurt1 (metric 13114)
      Origin IGP, metric 100000, localpref 86, valid, internal, best
      Community: Europe  Lclprf_86 Germany Level3_Peer Frankfurt
      Originator: edge3.Frankfurt1
  1239 577
  AS-path translation: { AS1239 BELL-AS }
    edge3.Frankfurt1 (metric 13114)
      Origin IGP, metric 100000, localpref 86, valid, internal
      Community: Europe  Lclprf_86 Germany Level3_Peer Frankfurt
      Originator: edge3.Frankfurt1
  1239 577
  AS-path translation: { AS1239 BELL-AS }
    edge3.Frankfurt1 (metric 13114)
      Origin IGP, metric 100000, localpref 86, valid, internal
      Community: Europe  Lclprf_86 Germany Level3_Peer Frankfurt
      Originator: edge3.Frankfurt1
  1239 577
  AS-path translation: { AS1239 BELL-AS }
    edge3.Frankfurt1 (metric 13114)
      Origin IGP, metric 100000, localpref 86, valid, internal
      Community: Europe  Lclprf_86 Germany Level3_Peer Frankfurt
      Originator: edge3.Frankfurt1

This is a valid routing table entry for my class C address space at a randomly picked backbone router somewhere on the Internet.

On July 30, Verizon Canada disconnected me. Or rather, they decommissioned the point-of-presence equipment that was utilized by my Internet connection, without moving all their customers first to another POP.

When Verizon proved unable to restore my connection after 10 (!) days, I canceled my contract with them. Meanwhile, my sites’ continuing existence on the Internet was maintained using a backup cable modem connection.

But, as of today, I once again have a functioning DSL connection, courtesy of Bell Canada. Better yet, they were actually able to set up everything properly, including my special request for routing for my portable class C address space. Needless to say, I am very pleased.

And their service costs a lot less than Verizon Canada’s.

Religious neutrality

Canada, Politics No Responses »

Sep 102013

So Pauline Marois now tabled her proposal for religious neutrality. A new, secular charter for Quebec.

I am an atheist. I have no use for religion, especially dogmatic religion that prescribes even the clothes one wears. So I have some sympathy for those who support this proposed charter.

But I don’t, for several reasons.

First, it is trying to solve a problem where none exists. Yes, Canada is multicultural. Yes, this means that we encounter people wearing crosses, niqabs, hijabs, kippahs, and the Devil knows what other forms of ridiculous clothing. (On a side note: I respect other people’s right to their religion, and I am willing to fight for it. I have one condition: I claim the right to call every stupid superstition exactly what it is.) But since when is this a problem? I have met people ranging from medical professionals to supermarket checkout clerks wearing such things, and they were just as courteous, polite, and competent as those who wore no religious items.

Second, it is divisive. Far from solving problems, it creates one. It is designed not to embrace but to exclude people.

Third… we have to recognize this attempt for exactly what it is. A cynically divisive attempt by a mediocre politician to gather support for her failing party, and to turn her province against the rest of Canada. The language debate is long over. Canada is a fully bilingual country where folks like me, who do not speak fluent French, feel stupid and embarrassed. They can no longer drum up support by claiming to fight for the future of the French language in an English-speaking sea in North America. So they need something new.

I hope they miscalculated. I hope that Quebec voters will realize that they are being played. Support for this proposed secular charter may be high now, but I hope this will change as we learn more about the politics behind this backward, pitiful political game.

Simply put, I hope most of Quebec has firmly embraced the 21st century, even if some of the province’s leaders haven’t yet.

Bittersweet Shrek

Local Ottawa, Personal No Responses »

Sep 082013

Bittersweet, or solanum dulcamara, is a species of vine. According to my wife the gardener, it was a vine of this species that climbed up a light pole just outside our house a few years ago.

Bittersweet is actually considered an invasive weed in North America, and for a good reason. Just look at the picture below… the vines climbed all the way to the top, completely engulfing the concrete light pole.

We decided to call this thing Shrek. The name was inspired not so much by the animated character but by a New Zealand sheep named after it, which avoided being caught and shorn for six years.

Alas, our Shrek has also been caught and shorn. The City of Ottawa had enough of it (and with good reason, considering the damage it likely did to the concrete light pole, not to mention the increased surface area which may very well cause the light pole to topple in a windstorm.) A few weeks ago, a city crew appeared and cut Shrek at the roots. This is what Shrek looked like as a result last week:

Of course, we hope that Shrek will grow back eventually. That light pole just wouldn’t look the same without it.

Meanwhile, though, it’d be nice if the city opted to finish the job and remove the now dead remains of the plant from its light pole. Or maybe they hope that winter weather will do the trick?

Was Bush smarter than Obama after all?

Politics No Responses »

Sep 082013

Yes, I am beginning to wonder if Bush (or Cheney or Rumsfeld) was indeed smarter than Obama after all.

But first… I actually believe that the Obama administration is telling the truth. I actually believe that the Sarin attack was the doing of the Syrian government. I spent some time this the weekend reading, in particular reading about the history and properties of [(CH₃)₂CHO]CH₃P(O)F (the chemical formula for Sarin). I came to realize that producing Sarin is not easy, storing Sarin (which is unstable) is not easy, and deploying Sarin is not easy. Yes, it can be done (as demonstrated by two separate Sarin attacks in Tokyo by an extremist sect in the 1990s) but it is very hard to do it effectively (as demonstrated during an attack on American troops in Iraq in 2004, in which a roadside bomb based on a Sarin artillery shell was used, but the components did not mix properly and very little Sarin was produced.) In light of what I read, and in light of the evidence offered in the meantime by the White House, I think there is very little doubt that the attack was the regime’s doing. (In other words, Putin is full of the proverbial “it”.)

So why is the free world not lining up behind its brave leader, Barack H. Obama? Well… here is where Bush’s smarts come in. While those opposed to him (myself included) liked to ridicule his statements (which basically all boiled down to, “Saddam evil, bomb Iraq”) by the time he brought his case to Congress, well, he had a case. We may have laughed at his “coalition of the willing”, but at least he had a coalition! And, ridiculous as his so-called evidence for WMDs in Iraq was (all of which turned out to be a boldfaced lie), he managed to sell it to all those who mattered: the US Congress, the Senate, his allies. When he started his war, sure he had significant opposition but he also had broad support. Even as he said that if necessary, he would “go it alone”, he didn’t. He was backed by many.

Barack Obama: the smart, highly educated, peace-loving, consensus-builder Barack Obama has no support. Even his closest allies are abandoning him both in Congress and abroad. CNN boldly states that Obama has a “challenge” convincing Congress, but it looks more like a slam dunk to me: what was it, I think 24 in favor, well over 100 against, and the rest who are undecided are not exactly leaning towards authorizing war either.

For what it’s worth, I still like Obama. I still believe that he is a better president than his predecessor, all things considered. But I am really puzzled by this Syria thing. If I were a lawmaker in the US Congress, I would also vote against it, not to spite Obama, but because I just don’t see what a limited military strike is intended to accomplish and how. Nor do I see an honest attempt to account for all possible consequences of such a strike.

Meanwhile I also cannot help but scowl at the hypocrisy of anti-war protesters who chant for “peace”. Assad’s war is not “peace”. It is a very nasty civil war, in which Assad’s government is committing wholesale murder. The world should consider intervention. But such an intervention should be based on a decisive military commitment (i.e., boots must be on the ground) and a well-defined outcome (a civilian government free of jihadist elements firmly in control of Syria.) You can’t do this on the cheap by lobbing a few missiles into the country and hope for the best. That’s just irresponsible and stupid.

Feline confrontation

Cats, Personal No Responses »

Sep 072013

We used to have a cat named Tarka. (It’s a Hungarian word for mottled, spotted, etc.) She showed up at our doorstep in 1999. Winter was just around the corner, the cat was obviously not doing well outside, and no-one was looking for her… so one day, we let her in.

Tarka was “not a very polite cat,” as a neighbor described her one day. Her characteristic sounds were hissing and howling, especially at other cats.

One such other cat was Bill, another stray that showed up in the neighborhood. Eventually, Bill was adopted by some people across the street, but in the winter of 1999/2000, Bill was still an outdoor cat who occasionally showed up on the small deck just outside our kitchen glass sliding door.

One morning, Tarka noticed Bill outside and she began howling. My video camera (yes, it was that long ago) was handy, so I started taping. The concert went on for several minutes until Bill got bored and left. But not before our other cat, Marzipan, showed up on the scene, no doubt wondering what this racket was all about.

Sadly, none of these cats are around anymore. The first one to leave us was Marzipan; ten months after this video was made, lymphoma killed him. Tarka stayed with us for another 11 years, until her ailing kidneys took her away. She mellowed as she aged, but she never really became what I would call a “polite” cat. And Bill spent 13 years with the family that adopted him before he, too, died earlier this year.

We have several other cats, who will hopefully stay with us for a long time. But I doubt we’ll ever have another cat as unique as Tarka was.

London pigeons

Environment, Personal No Responses »

Sep 072013

After spending a week in Hungary earlier this year, on my way back I stopped in London for three days. London is one of my favorite cities, and I haven’t spent any time there in years. My plan to enjoy myself was simple: get an Oyster card, take the Underground to random places, walk.

A few days before, still in Budapest, I badly twisted an ankle. Still, even this did not deter me, although it did slow me down; occasionally, I felt the need to sit down and rest my aching and swelling foot a little.

That’s precisely what happened one early evening in central London, where I found a tiny little park tucked in between two large office buildings near the Thames. Despite the fact that I was in the center of a world metropolis, it was eerily quiet in this spot, except for the loud singing of birds.

As soon as I sat down, I spotted a bunch of pigeons eating some crumbs from the pavement and occasionally fighting each other off. It was fascinating. My phone was with me, so I started capturing the scene on video.

Don’t expect anything spectacular. Just a bunch of pigeons living their lives in a big city. I don’t even like pigeons; many believe that they are flying rats, and I think they have a point. Still… these guys were funny. And the surrealist quiet of the spot I found right in the heart of a big city created an atmosphere that I will forever remember.

A visiting woodpecker

Environment, Local Ottawa, Personal No Responses »

Sep 062013

Two days ago, a woodpecker appeared on our linden tree. By the time I managed to grab my phone, it was gone.

Today, the bird reappeared and kindly stayed long enough for me to shoot a few minutes of video.

Nothing exciting here. Just a woodpecker doing what woodpeckers do, on a dead branch of our tree. I just found the bird fascinating, and I found it especially fascinating that a somewhat uncommon bird like this one would appear on a tree in a busy city.

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