Saturday, November 9, 2013
ObamaCare debacle update...
ObamaCare debacle update...
Another unforced error. Obama's announcement freezes the individual healthcare market. That's my source for insurance!
ObamaCare champion...loses her healthcare policy. Schadenfreude alert!
If only Stalin knew ... code. Obama's revealing “tells” in his “apology”.
ObamaCare encourages divorce. Is there anything ObamaCare can't do?
The ObamaCare IT is a security disaster. Not just the website, though it is definitely a big part of the problem.
ObamaCare is causing a surge in MediCare enrollments. If that keeps up, the already-shaky economic underpinnings for ObamaCare will completely disintegrate. There's a long, complex story there with a simple summary: your taxes are going up. A lot.
The Rise of the ObamaCare Scams. As if ObamaCare weren't bad enough all by itself!
Another unforced error. Obama's announcement freezes the individual healthcare market. That's my source for insurance!
ObamaCare champion...loses her healthcare policy. Schadenfreude alert!
If only Stalin knew ... code. Obama's revealing “tells” in his “apology”.
ObamaCare encourages divorce. Is there anything ObamaCare can't do?
The ObamaCare IT is a security disaster. Not just the website, though it is definitely a big part of the problem.
ObamaCare is causing a surge in MediCare enrollments. If that keeps up, the already-shaky economic underpinnings for ObamaCare will completely disintegrate. There's a long, complex story there with a simple summary: your taxes are going up. A lot.
The Rise of the ObamaCare Scams. As if ObamaCare weren't bad enough all by itself!
European anti-Semitism is on the rise...
European anti-Semitism is on the rise... A survey of European Jews is the source for this assertion.
I saw a little of this on several of my trips to Europe, most especially when I traveled outside the major cities (as is my wont). A couple of times (once in France, once in Italy) store clerks asked me if I was Jewish (I think because of my blond hair and beard, and my extra-large sized Scotch nose probably contributed). In Italy, I queried the business associate I was traveling with – an Italian – about why someone would even ask such a thing. He explained that had I replied in the affirmative, the store clerk would quite likely have asked me to leave the store, as they would be “ashamed” to have a Jew be seen there. If I had refused to leave, most likely the clerk would refuse to serve me. He went on to say that the local Jews (this was in Milan, and there is a local Jewish community there, with a number of synagogues) all knew which shops and restaurants they were unwelcome in – and that there were a lot of them.
Any Jew with even a cursory knowledge of 20th century European history should be very worried about this. There are plenty of places they could go without such problems and their attendant risks...
I saw a little of this on several of my trips to Europe, most especially when I traveled outside the major cities (as is my wont). A couple of times (once in France, once in Italy) store clerks asked me if I was Jewish (I think because of my blond hair and beard, and my extra-large sized Scotch nose probably contributed). In Italy, I queried the business associate I was traveling with – an Italian – about why someone would even ask such a thing. He explained that had I replied in the affirmative, the store clerk would quite likely have asked me to leave the store, as they would be “ashamed” to have a Jew be seen there. If I had refused to leave, most likely the clerk would refuse to serve me. He went on to say that the local Jews (this was in Milan, and there is a local Jewish community there, with a number of synagogues) all knew which shops and restaurants they were unwelcome in – and that there were a lot of them.
Any Jew with even a cursory knowledge of 20th century European history should be very worried about this. There are plenty of places they could go without such problems and their attendant risks...
Syrian activist wants Assad to win...
Syrian activist wants Assad to win... Because the alternative is an Islamic state, as the revolution has been taken over by al Qaeda. The Middle East is such a muddled mess that it's rare for me to know who to root for. The only real clarity I have is with respect to Israel – the rest of the countries there are so screwed up that I'm not optimistic about a “solution” ever being found...
Chinese time-lapse photography compilation...
I've never been to mainland China, and I don't know if I'll ever go – but some of the scenes here tempt me. What I see here is at loggerheads with the China of my mind, which is formed by childhood impressions and an extensive reading of Chinese history through Nixon's visit. The change in China within my own lifetime is stunning; nearly beyond belief. When I was young, millions of Chinese died of starvation and privation, thanks to Mao's personality cult. Now billions of Chinese are prospering, and yearning for more. It's one of the world's most heartening stories, and it's still unfolding...
The Drift Toward Despotism...
The Drift Toward Despotism... Yesterday I linked to an article about a horrible police stop in Deming, New Mexico. Today Mark Steyn used that same incident as the lead to his piece The Drift Toward Despotism:
At a time when over 4 million people have had their health insurance canceled, it’s good to know that some Americans can still access prompt medical treatment, even if they don’t want it. David Eckert was pulled over by police in Deming, N.M., for failing to come to a complete halt at a stop sign in the Walmart parking lot. He was asked to step out of the vehicle, and waited on the sidewalk. Officers decided that they didn’t like the tight clench of his buttocks, a subject on which New Mexico’s constabulary is apparently expert, and determined that it was because he had illegal drugs secreted therein. So they arrested him, and took him to Gila Regional Medical Center in neighboring Hidalgo County, where Mr. Eckert was forced to undergo two abdominal X-rays, two rectal probes, three enemas, and defecate thrice in front of medical staff and representatives of two law-enforcement agencies, before being sedated and subjected to a colonoscopy — all procedures performed against his will and without a valid warrant.Now go read the whole thing...
Alas, Mr. Eckert’s body proved to be a drug-free zone, and so, after twelve hours of detention, he was released. If you’re wondering where his lawyer was during all this, no attorney was present, as police had not charged Mr. Eckert with anything, so they’re apparently free to frolic and gambol up his rectum to their hearts’ content. Deming police chief Brandon Gigante says his officers did everything “by the book.” That’s the problem, in New Mexico and beyond: “the book.”
Getting into the spirit of things, Gila Regional Medical Center subsequently sent Mr. Eckert a bill for $6,000. It appears he had one of what the president calls those “bad apple” plans that doesn’t cover anal rape. Doubtless, under the new regime, Obamacare navigators will be happy to take a trip up your northwest passage free of charge. That’s what it is, by the way: anal rape. The euphemisms with which the state dignifies the process — “cavity search” — are distinctions that exist only in the mind of the perpetrator, not the fellow on the receiving end.
ObamaCare debacle update...
ObamaCare debacle update...
Only 22% of uninsured Americans intend to buy insurance on the healthcare exchanges. What a success!
ObamaCare is running out of bullets. Megan McArdle on the dearth of rabbits left for Obama to pull out of his hat...
The ObamaCare dozen. The debacle is starting to get Democrat incumbents worried about their re-electability. Seriously worried. Time to get out the popcorn!
Only 22% of uninsured Americans intend to buy insurance on the healthcare exchanges. What a success!
ObamaCare is running out of bullets. Megan McArdle on the dearth of rabbits left for Obama to pull out of his hat...
The ObamaCare dozen. The debacle is starting to get Democrat incumbents worried about their re-electability. Seriously worried. Time to get out the popcorn!
Mystery symbols, demystified...
This morning I stumbled across a table of mathematical symbols on Wikipedia, which I've now bookmarked as a useful resource...
40 maps that explain the world...
GOCE is falling! GOCE is falling!
N2YO has a nifty real-time tracker. As I write this, GOCE is 108 miles high, and will pass almost directly over my head in about an hour (screenshot at right; the little red dot is where I live)...
Great newspaper corrections...
Great newspaper corrections... The traditional newspaper correction notice is (or at least, used to be) something of an art form – for some reason, most especially in the British press. The Listener, out of New Zealand, has collected some of the best. Here's one example, from the London Sun:
In an article on Saturday headlined ‘Flying saucers over British Scientology HQ’, we stated ‘two flat silver discs’ were seen ‘above the Church of Scientology HQ’. Following a letter from lawyers for the Church, we apologise to any alien lifeforms for linking them to Scientologists.Hah!
Geek: Say what?
Commodore PET ... web server?Now geeks of a certain age (those old enough to have used a computer in 1979 or 1980) will certainly recall the Commodore PET. It's a 6502-based all-in-one computer. The model 4032 (pictured) tempted me back then, as it was relatively inexpensive, decently constructed, and had a lot of software available. But the business I had back then was more or less locked into the Z-80 processor and CP/M “operating system”, so I never did take the plunge.
Back when the PET was made, there was no such thing as the Internet, web sites, TCP/IP (at least, not outside of ARPA), or even networks. So how on earth could there be a web server on a PET?
It turns out there is still a very active PET community, though these days it's more like a group of antique tinkerers. But to my surprise, there are still companies (tiny ones, I suspect) making new hardware for PETs – such as this internet modem. That's a bit like retrofitting a J-5 rocket engine onto a horse-drawn carriage – I'm sure the processor running that modem is many thousands of times more powerful than the PET's puny little 6502. The modem is running all the networking, including the protocol stack all the way up to HTTP. That means the Basic code to implement the “web server” is pretty simple:
10 open2,7,2,"listen:80"
20 open7,7,15
30 print#7,"n-s:2"
40 input#7,a,b$,c,d
60 if d=0 goto 30
70 print#7,"c-i:2"
80 input#7,a,b$,c,d
90 printb$
100 print#2,"<html>"
110 print#2,"<head>"
120 print#2,"welcome to a commodore pet 4032 web server!"
130 print#2,"</head>"
140 print#2,"<b>welcome to the"
150 print#2,"world's first"
160 print#2,"web server running"
170 print#2,"on a commodore pet 4032!"</b></html>Friday, November 8, 2013
Stay calm, dad...
Miniature couches and 5 day old puppies...
I'm not the only one...
I'm not the only one... Dr. Joy Bliss, writing at Maggie's Farm, shares my thinking about what to do with the American healthcare system...
Quote of the day...
Quote of the day... Today it goes to Ann Althouse, writing on her eponymous blog about the ObamaCare debacle:
It's like a medieval torturer complaining to his victim about how difficult it is to use pilliwinks while the thumbscrews are on backorder.Hah!
This doesn't make me feel any better at all...
This doesn't make me feel any better at all... And it certainly doesn't actually, like, do something about the problem:
President Obama said Thursday that he is "sorry" that some Americans are losing their current health insurance plans as a result of the Affordable Care Act, despite his promise that no one would have to give up a health plan they liked.Enough with the apologies, keep-your-plan breath. Fix the damn thing, or lead the charge to get rid of it!
"I am sorry that they are finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me," he told NBC News in an exclusive interview at the White House.
"We've got to work hard to make sure that they know we hear them and we are going to do everything we can to deal with folks who find themselves in a tough position as a consequence of this."
Pink armadillos?
Depression rates around the world...
Pricing signals work!
Pricing signals work! Some years ago now, power companies started variable pricing on their electrical power. They charge more per kilowatt-hour during peak usage periods (like the hot afternoons), and less during off-hours (like early in the morning). This differential can be very large, 3:1 or more depending on where you live. Worse, the differential is increasing – power companies have “discovered” it as a source of price increases that can be sold as discouraging power use, making the greenies happy.
That pricing difference got people thinking about how to get around it. Who wants to buy expensive electricity, if they could get it cheaper? It's not like the expensive electrons are any shinier, or more glamorous – they're precisely the same, just more expensive. The issue is more of a problem for some kinds of businesses (like hotels), where they really have to use the electricity, and they use a lot more than homeowners.
The whole thing boils down to when you buy the electricity. If you could buy it at night when it's cheap, store it, and they use the stored power in the afternoon – why then you'd win, wouldn't you? That's exactly what these folks have done, at a scale that works for a hotel. There's no reason I can think of why something like this wouldn't work at a homeowner's scale, either – so I expect to see it one of these fine days.
Of course, then the power companies will have to come up with a new way to extract money from us. If they were actually unregulated and competitive, this would all sort itself out – but since they are highly regulated in all 50 states, the result will quite predictably be a big hairy mess. What precise flavor of a big hairy mess it will be, I don't know. But I don't think it matters all that much...
That pricing difference got people thinking about how to get around it. Who wants to buy expensive electricity, if they could get it cheaper? It's not like the expensive electrons are any shinier, or more glamorous – they're precisely the same, just more expensive. The issue is more of a problem for some kinds of businesses (like hotels), where they really have to use the electricity, and they use a lot more than homeowners.
The whole thing boils down to when you buy the electricity. If you could buy it at night when it's cheap, store it, and they use the stored power in the afternoon – why then you'd win, wouldn't you? That's exactly what these folks have done, at a scale that works for a hotel. There's no reason I can think of why something like this wouldn't work at a homeowner's scale, either – so I expect to see it one of these fine days.
Of course, then the power companies will have to come up with a new way to extract money from us. If they were actually unregulated and competitive, this would all sort itself out – but since they are highly regulated in all 50 states, the result will quite predictably be a big hairy mess. What precise flavor of a big hairy mess it will be, I don't know. But I don't think it matters all that much...
A deal with Iran?
A deal with Iran? I think how you feel about this possibility comes down to just one thing: whether you trust the Obama administration to lift sanctions against Iran only in exchange for verifiable cessation of Iran's nuclear weapons program. That's easy for me: not only do I not trust them, I fully expect them to do whatever it takes to get something they can publicly call a “deal”.
Israel's Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has a tendency to the histrionic side, but in this case I agree with him completely:
It is to humanity's shame that the only country Iran has threatened to destroy (Israel) doesn't have a seat at this table. The progressives would argue that including Israel would remove the possibility of a negotiated peace – which, to me, just confirms my fear that Iran is insincere...
Israel's Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has a tendency to the histrionic side, but in this case I agree with him completely:
Israel understands that there are proposals on the table in Geneva today that would ease the pressure on Iran for concessions that are not concessions at all. This proposal would allow Iran to retain the capabilities to make nuclear weapons. This proposal will allow Iran to preserve its ability to build a nuclear weapon. Israel is completely opposed to these proposals. I believe that adopting them would be a mistake of historic proportions and they should be completely rejected.The Israelis have been briefed on the status of the negotiations, so that's an informed assessment. The nations actually participating in the negotiations with Iran (the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China) all have a political interest in having a peace “deal” – which means anything that their public will accept as a lessening of the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran. That's not at all the same thing as a deal that actually removes the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, which is what Netanyahu recognizes and is what worries me (and many others).
It is to humanity's shame that the only country Iran has threatened to destroy (Israel) doesn't have a seat at this table. The progressives would argue that including Israel would remove the possibility of a negotiated peace – which, to me, just confirms my fear that Iran is insincere...
Are the scales lifting from their eyes?
Are the scales lifting from their eyes? Pro Publica has an article up detailing the travails of dedicated progressives who are being surprised by having their healthcare policies canceled, with equivalent replacements either not available or much more expensive. If we get enough of that, the progressives will blow up ObamaCare! Wouldn't that be a hoot?
Care to guess who's on the hook?
That scheme is an intentional feature of ObamaCare, a huge transfer of wealth from younger folks to older folks. But it depends – it absolutely depends – on lots of young people signing up for policies. But what if they don't sign up? What if they choose to pay the fine tax instead? Will the insurance companies be stuck with paying for all that medical care for older folks, without receiving the premiums from younger folks? That's worth worrying about, because early indications are that young people are staying away from ObamaCare in droves.
Well, it turns out that the insurance companies are covered for this risk, by the “reinsurance” that's part of Obamacare. The money for this comes from the government – which means us, the less-than-half of Americans who still pay income taxes. We are on the hook. Of course.
When I think of ObamaCare, I think of a giant steamroller with spiked rollers, bearing down on me relentlessly. Continuing the analogy, there's some hope that its engine will break down, or that voters will blow it up – but meanwhile, it's chugging steadily toward me...and it doesn't look like any fun to be crushed beneath those rollers...
I've been to Deming, New Mexico...
I've been to Deming, New Mexico... Stopped there on a cross-country drive for gas and a burger. But I won't be going there again. What happened there earlier this year reads like a horror story about some place like Turkey in the '50s – but it happened right here in America...
Patent and copyright trolls?
Patent and copyright trolls? Usually they're a cause for anger and frustration, but this is funny! Popehat's on it, too, naturally...
Thursday, November 7, 2013
And yet another flying pig moment...
And yet another flying pig moment... Oh, yeah, those aerosols – those danged things really are making our models inaccurate, climate scientists say...
Flying pig moment...
Flying pig moment... “Stop the war on drugs!” says Kofi Annan, former secretary general of the United Nations, and Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former president of Brazil. Now, I'm not an admirer of either of these men. But I find it remarkable that such thoroughly conventional leaders are arguing against the war on drugs. Could this thinking be going mainstream amongst their peers? If so, what a positive change might be wrought!
Geek: Fourier transforms...
I haven't had occasion to use Fourier transforms for years now, but early in my career they were an important part of two engineering projects I undertook. One was a TTY-on-telephone decoder for the deaf, the other a radio-teletype decoder for ham radio. These are both “frequency shift keying” (FSK) systems, and both subject to much noise and distortion (though of different kinds in the two cases). In both the challenge turned out to be primarily one of tricky optimization, trying to compute the Fourier transform well enough to suit the need in near-realtime on the microcomputer hardware of the day. That hardware typically didn't have multiply or divide (it had to be written in software), and that was the big challenge. I recall those projects as being chock full of too-clever tricky hacks, things that would be much frowned on these days – but they worked, thanks to the underlying idea of a Fourier transform...
Geek: shell scripting style guide...
Geek: shell scripting style guide... From Google, the first style guide for shell scripting that I've ever seen, or even heard of...
Continuous learning...
Continuous learning... Dave Jilk has a great essay on how accelerating technological change necessitates continuous learning, and how that impacts folks as they age. The essay is generalizing, and I'm sure Jilk would be the first to agree there are plenty of exceptions to what he's describing. What he calls "continuous learning" is what I'd call "my hobby", and I'm going to declare myself an exception – one of quite a few that I know – to his rule about how older people handle technological change. But in the more general case, what he writes rings very true...
Smaller asteroids are more dangerous...
Great balls of fire!
Great balls of fire! I can't believe I missed this – several sightings of large meteors over Southern California skies last night. My only consolation is that the peak of the Taurids should occur next week, and be even better than last night...
Sketches of soldiers...
In these days of ubiquitous cell phone cameras it may be hard to imagine how precious these sketches must have been to the soldiers' families. My six years in the Navy during the '70s gave me a taste of it – long months at sea made snapshots of loved ones incredibly valuable to their owners. Many a salty sailor possessed a prized collection of pictures of their loved ones – invariably worn and wrinkled from long hours of handling. I'm sure the reverse was true as well.
I've often reflected on how our modern communications capabilities have eased the burden of separation for our soldiers and sailors. Nearly all of our troops have access (even if intermittently) to high speed Internet connections – which means they can regularly use email, texting, Skype, FaceTime, and so on to stay in touch with their families...
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
Quote of the Day...
Quote of the Day... From Alex Tabbarok, writing at Marginal Revolution:
Did Obama spy on Mitt Romney? As recently as a few weeks ago if anyone had asked me that question I would have consigned them to a right (or left) wing loony bin. Today, the only loonies are those who think the question unreasonable.That's a damned fine question, sir!
Remove the warning labels!
My mom sent me a collection of these things; I've saved the rest for use on slow days...
Statistics Done Wrong...
Statistics Done Wrong – the woefully complete guide. With a title and subhead like that, how could I not like this web site? I'm no statistics expert, not by a long shot – but I need to understand some statistics when I'm evaluating articles or papers on things like climate science, evolution, or medicine. So my review is from the perspective of a consumer, not a practitioner. I dove into four topics; I haven't yet read the whole thing. Two of those topics were on facets I understand reasonably well, and I thought they were covered very well (and with light humor, too). The other two of them were on facets new to me, and I learned some valuable things. So I've bookmarked this as a resource...
The site is written by Alex Rienhart, a Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon in statistics. From his web site:
The site is written by Alex Rienhart, a Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon in statistics. From his web site:
If you’re a practicing scientist, you probably use statistics to analyze your data. From basic t tests and standard error calculations to Cox proportional hazards models and geospatial kriging systems, we rely on statistics to give answers to scientific problems.
This is unfortunate, because most of us don’t know how to do statistics.
Statistics Done Wrong is a guide to the most popular statistical errors and slip-ups committed by scientists every day, in the lab and in peer-reviewed journals. Many of the errors are prevalent in vast swathes of the published literature, casting doubt on the findings of thousands of papers. Statistics Done Wrong assumes no prior knowledge of statistics, so you can read it before your first statistics course or after thirty years of scientific practice.
ObamaCare is a disaster for Democrats...
ObamaCare is a disaster for Democrats... Lots of people are thinking that, including myself and Peggy Noonan. From her latest blog post:
And so it may be. But I'm still shaken that an awful, slimy candidate like McAuliffe can actually win an election, and I'm afraid it portends more such awful outcomes. Also, there's my other little problem: the opposition candidates are (for the most part – Tea Partiers and libertarian-leaners excepted) very hard to distinguish from their progressive Democrat opponents...
Back to a sense of where we are. You know where we are? It’s as if it’s 1964 and the administration has just passed landmark civil rights legislation and the bill goes into effect, and everyone looks—only immediately it is apparent that it makes everyone’s life worse! It doesn’t help minority groups – it makes their lives harder and less free! And it does real, present and intimate damage to the majority.Contra my earlier post today, this is the hopeful element in McAuliffe's election yesterday. He was expected to win by a much larger margin; instead, Cuccinelli came very close to beating him. The politicos are reading this as a giant, flashing warning signs for Democrats in the 2014 election cycle.
It’s as if it’s 1937 and they launched Social Security, only rich coupon-clippers on Park Avenue immediately started getting small monthly checks, and 67-year-old dust bowlers in tarpaper shacks started getting monthly bills.
It’s the biggest governmental enterprise that hasn’t worked since the earliest beginnings of the U.S. rocket program, when they kept trying to send rockets into space and they kept falling, defeated and groaning, into the ground. Only the rockets were still unmanned, so those failures never hurt anybody!
ObamaCare is a practical, policy and political disaster, a parlay of poisonous P’s.
And it is unbelievable – simply unbelievable – that the administration is so proud, so childish, so ideological, so ignorant and so uncaring about the bill’s victims that they refuse to stop, delay, go back, redraw and ease the trauma.
And so it may be. But I'm still shaken that an awful, slimy candidate like McAuliffe can actually win an election, and I'm afraid it portends more such awful outcomes. Also, there's my other little problem: the opposition candidates are (for the most part – Tea Partiers and libertarian-leaners excepted) very hard to distinguish from their progressive Democrat opponents...
“Fuck these guys!”
“Fuck these guys!” So says Brandon Downey, a member of the Google security team, on seeing the evidence that the NSA had been listening to Google's replication traffic. Now his colleague Mike Hearn joins him in the sentiment:
I now join him in issuing a giant Fuck You to the people who made these slides. I am not American, I am a Brit, but it's no different - GCHQ turns out to be even worse than the NSA.Yes, thank you Edward Snowden. And...thank you Google security team...
We designed this system to keep criminals out . There's no ambiguity here. The warrant system with skeptical judges, paths for appeal, and rules of evidence was built from centuries of hard won experience. When it works, it represents as good a balance as we've got between the need to restrain the state and the need to keep crime in check. Bypassing that system is illegal for a good reason .
Unfortunately we live in a world where all too often, laws are for the little people. Nobody at GCHQ or the NSA will ever stand before a judge and answer for this industrial-scale subversion of the judicial process. In the absence of working law enforcement, we therefore do what internet engineers have always done - build more secure software. The traffic shown in the slides below is now all encrypted and the work the NSA/GCHQ staff did on understanding it, ruined.
Thank you Edward Snowden. For me personally, this is the most interesting revelation all summer.
McAuliffe wins, we all lose...
McAuliffe wins, we all lose... By that, I mean that the simple fact that such an overtly unsavory and suspicious character could be elected – no matter who his opponents were – means that we're all at a higher risk of having an oppressive and tyrannical government shoved down our throats. His election is as incomprehensible to me as Pelosi's serial wins with high margins. I ask myself “How could such a thing be?”, but I have no answers. Do you?
Tuesday, November 5, 2013
Can you figure out how he did it?
I'm the President? No way!
Obama, the man who claims to not know a thing about the terrorist threats in Benghazi before the U.S. consulate attack, nothing about the IRS’s harassment of conservative-leaning political groups, nothing about his signature healthcare overhaul leading to millions of people losing their jobs and current insurance plans, who knew nothing about Healthcare.gov being a completely dysfunctional embarrassment, who didn’t know about the Affordable Care Act causing Americans premiums to explode, who knew nothing about the National Security Agency’s ramped domestic spying, who knows nothing about the nearly 1,000 civilians who have been killed in his targeted drone strikes, who knew nothing of the NSA’s spying on close U.S. allies now has admitted to why he knows so little about the mammoth country he oversees —he didn’t know he was overseeing it!Oh, if only! Read the whole thing...
Maybe the young folks aren't quite as gullible as Obama assumed...
Maybe the young folks aren't quite as gullible as Obama assumed... First we hear that ObamaCare premiums are significantly higher than our old healthcare premiums. Now we hear this:
But on the other hand, if the young folks aren't being taken in by the pile of bullshit that The One and his progressive acolytes are handing out ... well, that's actually kind of a good thing...
Insurers say the early buyers of health coverage on the nation's troubled new websites are older than expected so far, raising early concerns about the economics of the insurance marketplaces.On the one hand, I hate to hear about my premiums going up even more than I already thought they would.
If the trend continues, an older, more expensive set of customers could drive up prices for everyone, the insurers say, by forcing them to spread their costs around. "We need a broad range of people to make this work, and we're not seeing that right now," said Heather Thiltgen of Medical Mutual of Ohio, the state's largest insurer by individual customers. "We're seeing the population skewing older."
But on the other hand, if the young folks aren't being taken in by the pile of bullshit that The One and his progressive acolytes are handing out ... well, that's actually kind of a good thing...
UTA Flight 772...
A “flock” of hope?
A “flock” of hope? My mom lives in a small community outside Charlottesville, Virginia. This morning she voted at her local polling place, which happens to be in a church. She wrote me about the experience:
I just want to share a self administered grin I had this morning... The local papers and TV news have been touting the fact that today's vote in Virginia is a referendum on ObamaCare. Well there was a very large (and I do mean large) flock of vultures over the church where I vote this morning, and I am thinking it is a sign that "it" is about to be killed or is killed and just now beginning to stink??? Anyhow, I smiled going in to vote...I love my mom. Don't you? :)
love and hugs, mom
India launches a rocket to Mars...
My own indelible impressions of India were formed way back in the '70s, when I made a brief visit to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and New Delhi. Those impressions were of abject poverty, overwhelming infrastructure problems, and a people struggling for survival – the very opposite of the kind of nation that could do something as grand and advanced as launching a robotic exploration mission to Mars.
But they've done it – in just 40 years, they've gone from the hopeless-looking mess that I saw to a member of the top tier of nations. Like all nations, they have plenty of problems – but the magnitude of their improvement in that time is simply stunning...
Aluminum wire sculptures...
The artist is Seung Mo Park. Story, pictures, artist's web site.
White House smears cancer survivor who lost her policy...
White House smears cancer survivor who lost her policy... And the web fights back.
Despicable behavior, politically motivated. Don't any of these jerks care about their country and its citizens?
Despicable behavior, politically motivated. Don't any of these jerks care about their country and its citizens?
Adobe encrypted passwords instead of hashing them...
Adobe encrypted passwords instead of hashing them... That's bad, as in incompetent amateur level bad.
If you're not technical, here's the reason it's bad: with encrypted passwords, it's possible that a hacker could discover the encryption keys and recover all the passwords “in the clear” (as someone would type them). With hashed passwords, that's not possible – nothing the hacker could do would ever recover all the passwords – the best he could do would be to break into a few accounts.
For shame, Adobe, for shame.
I wonder how many other major companies doing something this stupid?
If you're not technical, here's the reason it's bad: with encrypted passwords, it's possible that a hacker could discover the encryption keys and recover all the passwords “in the clear” (as someone would type them). With hashed passwords, that's not possible – nothing the hacker could do would ever recover all the passwords – the best he could do would be to break into a few accounts.
For shame, Adobe, for shame.
I wonder how many other major companies doing something this stupid?
Sending humanitarian aid to North Korea is a mistake...
Let's hope they listen to her.
A 70-inch amateur telescope...
Story, slide show. Awesome, dude!
A professional analyzes the ObamaCare web site...
A professional analyzes the ObamaCare web site... Over at Ace of Spades HQ, a guest blogger who is a professional IT project fire-fighter (he comes in to analyze and fix IT projects that went horribly wrong, and has done this dozens of times) takes a crack at what went wrong with the ObamaCare web site. The piece is excellent...
6TB in a 3.5 inch form factor...
6TB in a 3.5 inch form factor... HGST (part of Western Digital) announced a line of new hard drives packing 6TB on 7 platters into a 3.5 inch form factor. The advance was enabled by their perfection of helium-filling the platter enclosure (given the small size of those molecules, that's quite a trick). The low density of the helium reduces aerodynamic drag on the rotating platters and moving heads, making the whole thing more efficient. They're also hermetically sealed, so they can even be liquid-cooled. The announcement says they're in general availability, though I was unable to find them for sale anywhere.
Every time I think we're about to write the epitaph for moving magnetic media, one of the vendors comes up with some new trick to extend hard drive capabilities even further. This drive holds just over 1 billion times as much data as my first hard drive – and that one was the size of a washing machine...
Every time I think we're about to write the epitaph for moving magnetic media, one of the vendors comes up with some new trick to extend hard drive capabilities even further. This drive holds just over 1 billion times as much data as my first hard drive – and that one was the size of a washing machine...
Quote of the day...
Quote of the day... I lost part of my morning tea through my nose when I read the sentence below, near the end of another excellent piece by Megan McArdle on the unfolding disaster that is ObamaCare:
Because of the Universal Law of Turkey Accretion, the quality and effectiveness of a government agency’s personnel are likely to peak very shortly after that agency is established.The lady has both wit and a way with words. I should have known better than to have slurped tea while reading one of her pieces, but somehow I didn't expect humor in a piece talking about why the ObamaCare web site is so awful. In fact, as I was reading her description of why large government IT projects almost always fail, I was nodding my head in agreement – I think she's got it exactly right, and as usual she's explained it in a way that non-technical people can readily understand...
Thoughts on aging...
Thoughts on aging... Sent to me by a friend who wishes to remain anonymous:
Q: Where can single men over the age of 60 find younger women who are interested in them?That last one has happened to me all too often, especially with respect to electronics and computer software. Having started designing electronics with vacuum tubes, and having first written software on machines with sub-megahertz clocks makes me prone to this :)
A: Try a bookstore, under Fiction.
Q: What can a man do while his wife is going through menopause?
A: Keep busy. If handy with tools, you can finish the basement. When done, you have a place to live.
Q: Someone has told me that menopause is mentioned in the Bible. Is that true? Where is it?
A: Yes. Matthew 14:92: "And Mary rode Joseph's ass all the way to Egypt ..."
Q: How can I increase the heart rate of my over-60 year-old mate?
A: Tell him you're pregnant.
Q: How can I avoid that terrible curse of unsightly wrinkles?
A: Take off your glasses.
Q: Seriously! What can I do for these crow's feet and all those wrinkles on my face?
A: Go braless. It will usually pull them out..
Q: Why should 60+ people use valet parking?
A: Valets don't forget where they park your car.
Q: Is it common for 60+ year olds to have problems with short term memory storage?
A: Storing memory is not a problem, retrieving it is the problem.
Q: As people age, do they sleep more soundly?
A: Yes, but usually in the afternoon.
Q: Where should 60+ year olds look for eye glasses?
A: On their foreheads.
Q: What is the most common remark made by 60+ year olds when they enter antique stores?
A: "Gosh, I remember these."
Strangers, but couples...
Monday, November 4, 2013
Progressives causing the problems they lament...
Progressives causing the problems they lament... Warren Meyer of CoyoteBlog has an interesting idea – that the public school (near-)monopoly is the reason why we have fewer middle-class neighborhoods these days. When he lays out his theory, though, it seems that there are at least two drivers:
1. The difficulty in educating kids by any means other than public schools (because either it's very expensive for a private school, or it's tremendously time-consuming to home-school).
2. The property tax funding mechanism for public schools in most states, that drives people with children to move to neighborhoods with good schools (generally ritzier and more expensive).
The combination provides a powerful set of incentives for people with kids to move to upscale neighborhoods, which then get even more upscale. I've seen this at work amongst people I know in San Diego; the quality of the schools is most definitely a major factor in their selection of a home location, and many of them struggle mightily to afford living there.
It's an argument for two things: getting rid of the public school monopoly (which would mean much more than just charter schools or vouchers, though both are a start), and democratizing the public school funding mechanism, so that good schools don't only occur in wealthier neighborhoods.
On the other hand, I suspect it would be even more effective to outlaw teacher's unions, reduce the public school bureaucracy by 80% or so, and pay teachers according to their performance instead of their time on the job.
I can dream, can't I?
1. The difficulty in educating kids by any means other than public schools (because either it's very expensive for a private school, or it's tremendously time-consuming to home-school).
2. The property tax funding mechanism for public schools in most states, that drives people with children to move to neighborhoods with good schools (generally ritzier and more expensive).
The combination provides a powerful set of incentives for people with kids to move to upscale neighborhoods, which then get even more upscale. I've seen this at work amongst people I know in San Diego; the quality of the schools is most definitely a major factor in their selection of a home location, and many of them struggle mightily to afford living there.
It's an argument for two things: getting rid of the public school monopoly (which would mean much more than just charter schools or vouchers, though both are a start), and democratizing the public school funding mechanism, so that good schools don't only occur in wealthier neighborhoods.
On the other hand, I suspect it would be even more effective to outlaw teacher's unions, reduce the public school bureaucracy by 80% or so, and pay teachers according to their performance instead of their time on the job.
I can dream, can't I?
I want to be like him when I grow up!
Dude!
The magic number is 17 years...
1. The trend is almost perfectly flat, the data sources are replicated, verified, calibrated, and unimpeachable, and the tabulation is cross-checked. It's observational data, not models.
2. AGW proponents, starting in 2011, have been saying that 17 years was the minimum set of data needed to unambiguously observe anthropogenic global warming. This is their assertion, their standard.
The warmies are going to be in need of funding soon, I think. I predict they will suddenly discover the imminent danger of global cooling, and will agitate for funds to study that...
Things non-Americans find weird about the U.S...
Things non-Americans find weird about the U.S. These are curated from a Reddit post, and they are both interesting for their perspective, and entertaining to read through. An example of the latter:
Choice. Buying a sandwich was utterly bewildering the first few times.Of course, a similar list might be made of things that Americans find weird when they visit overseas. At the top of my list would be this one:
For example, in the UK a typical exchange between me and sandwich guy might go like this over the period of 30 seconds:
Me: “Can I have a ham sandwich please”
SG: “White or brown?”
Me: “Brown”
SG: “Any salad or sauces?”
Me: “Lettuce and mayo please”
SG: “Here you go. That’ll be £15 million, and your car and your house.”
Similar exchange in the US, over ten minutes:
Me: “Can I have a ham sandwich please”
SG: (over-enthusistically) “Sure thing, Sir! Which of these two thousand varieties of bread would you like today?” (None of which qualify as bread, but that’s another subject…)
Me: “Oh, er, not sure really. That one please”
SG: “Sure! That’s a multi-grained-crap-tasting-full-o-sugar-shit-fest-foot-long-sub-roll. Do you want enough ham to sink a battleship, or would you prefer just enough to make you shit like a bear for an entire week?”
Me: “Erm, I’ll go for merely enough to induce meat-sweats for 8 hours, thanks”
SG: “What kind of cheese are you after?”
Me: “What have you got?”
SG: “Montery Jack, Jack-o-Lantern, Jack of all Trades, Tastes of Jack Shit, Chilli-Jack, Rubbery-Jack and Jackie Chan.”
Me: “No Cheddar then. I’ll go for Monterey Jack”
SG: “Gherkins Pickles?”
Me: (confused and overwhelmed by all the choice) “Can I just have the sandwich now?”
SG: “Sure! I just need to know what else you want on it. Jalapenos?”
Me: (exasperated): “No, thanks but re…”
SG: “…Olives? Cucumber? Lettuce? Relish?”
Me: (eyes glazed over): “No, thank you, it’s fine as it is”
SG: “Toasted, roasted, basted? Mayo, coleslaw, salt or pepper?”
Me: “No, thank you, really, the sandwich is fine as it is, please can I have it now before I starve to death?”
SG: (confused) “Sure thing! Here you go. That’ll be $0.000000001 please”
No matter what country I visit, the inhabitants, from infants to the elderly, can all tell with just a glance that I am an American. I don't have to speak, gesture, or wave a flag – somehow they just know, even when I'm hundreds of feet away from them.
De Bruijn sequences...
De Bruijn sequences... Nick Berry at DataGenetics has another of his great posts up, this time on De Bruijn sequences. He's got a talent for explicating interesting ideas in an accessible, entertaining fashion...
Well, that didn't take long...
Well, that didn't take long... ObamaCare has been rolled out (sort of) for just over a month, and already the progressives have started bleating for more government control. Kathleen Murphy, a Virginia Democrat, is calling for the government to force doctors to accept Medicare and Medicaid patients.
The Founding Fathers have been spinning in their graves for quite a while now, but the RPMs are climbing...
The Founding Fathers have been spinning in their graves for quite a while now, but the RPMs are climbing...
Sunday, November 3, 2013
Confession of a Marine wife...
I sat, as did millions of other Americans, and watched as the government underwent a peaceful transition of power a few short years ago.
At first, I felt a swell of pride and patriotism while Barack Obama took his Oath of Office.
However, all that pride quickly vanished as I later watched 21 Marines, in full dress uniform with rifles, fire a 21-gun salute to the President.
It was then that I realized how far America’s military had deteriorated.
Every one of them missed the bastard.
Awww...
Awww... My mom sent me a collection of photos like this. I'm saving the rest for a day when I'm feeling grumpier than usual...
What happens when you die?
And from the comments:
...and then you find yourself 35 cents short.
Canyon of fire...
A magnetic filament of solar material erupted on the sun in late September, breaking the quiet conditions in a spectacular fashion. The 200,000 mile long filament ripped through the sun's atmosphere, the corona, leaving behind what looks like a canyon of fire. The glowing canyon traces the channel where magnetic fields held the filament aloft before the explosion. Visualizers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. combined two days of satellite data to create a short movie of this gigantic event on the sun.
In reality, the sun is not made of fire, but of something called plasma: particles so hot that their electrons have boiled off, creating a charged gas that is interwoven with magnetic fields.
These images were captured on Sept. 29-30, 2013, by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, which constantly observes the sun in a variety of wavelengths.
Different wavelengths help capture different aspect of events in the corona. The red images shown in the movie help highlight plasma at temperatures of 90,000° F and are good for observing filaments as they form and erupt. The yellow images, showing temperatures at 1,000,000° F, are useful for observing material coursing along the sun's magnetic field lines, seen in the movie as an arcade of loops across the area of the eruption. The browner images at the beginning of the movie show material at temperatures of 1,800,000° F, and it is here where the canyon of fire imagery is most obvious.
By comparing this with the other colors, one sees that the two swirling ribbons moving farther away from each other are, in fact, the footprints of the giant magnetic field loops, which are growing and expanding as the filament pulls them upward.
You can almost hear the AGW papers disintegrating...
You can almost hear the AGW papers disintegrating... Steve McIntyre, with his impertinent insistence on using real data and sound analysis, must be really irritating to the AGW crowd of the Mann and Hansen species. Their dependency on dodgy models and even dodgier, cherry-picked data to build those models on makes them highly vulnerable to Steve's ability to wield common sense, logic, and math. And Steve is at it again...
It's the stupid, stupid!
It's the stupid, stupid! The new progressive meme about Obama's big lie (if you like your policy, you can keep it): he had to lie, 'cause we're too stupid to understand the truth.
Government is Magic...
Our technocracy is detached from competence. It's not the technocracy of engineers, but of "thinkers" who read Malcolm Gladwell and Thomas Friedman and watch TED talks and savor the flavor of competence, without ever imbibing its substance.Speaking as an engineer with at least a modicum of competency, this rings very true to me. They (the administration) seem to think that every problem is easy – all they have to do is sprinkle a little magic techno-dust on it, and it's solved...
These are the people who love Freakonomics, who enjoy all sorts of mental puzzles, who like to see an idea turned on its head, but who couldn't fix a toaster.
The ObamaCare website is the natural spawn of that technocracy who love the idea of using modernity to make things faster and easier, but have no idea what anything costs or how it works.
Lois Lerner's cushy deal...
Lois Lerner's cushy deal... Wizbang has the scoop, and it ain't purty...
The One's administration is infuriating in their arrogance and disregard for the law. There needs to be a comeuppance, but there isn't one anywhere in sight...
The One's administration is infuriating in their arrogance and disregard for the law. There needs to be a comeuppance, but there isn't one anywhere in sight...
Holding on to the Memories...
Holding on to the Memories... Dave Carter, writing at Ricochet, has a piece that moved me to tears this morning – mainly because of its resonance with respect to my own father. Dave's father is far away and failing, like mine – and also like me, Dave has a collection of memories that he will cherish forever. But he writes (much) more movingly than I can...
The music of ancient Greece, recreated...
Geek: To HTML, “chucknorris” is a color...
Geek: To HTML, “chucknorris” is a color... When I first saw this headline, I thought it was a joke. But the joke's on me: for some reason the HTML standards body thought it was a good idea to allow anything in the color specification field. I can't imagine why they thought this was a good idea, and if you read the linked thread you'll see how much confusion reigns over this.
Of course, it's easy to avoid the confusion (and likely compatibility issues): just don't use this “feature”. That's certainly what I will do :)
BTW, the link goes to StackOverflow, one of the geekly treasures of the web. If you think of yourself as a geek, and you're intimately familiar with StackOverflow ... then you should seriously consider a career change...
Of course, it's easy to avoid the confusion (and likely compatibility issues): just don't use this “feature”. That's certainly what I will do :)
BTW, the link goes to StackOverflow, one of the geekly treasures of the web. If you think of yourself as a geek, and you're intimately familiar with StackOverflow ... then you should seriously consider a career change...
Is there anyone he hasn't pissed off?
Is there anyone he hasn't pissed off? The One is doing a remarkably complete job of alienating all our friends and allies around the world. This morning I read about how he's managed to get on the wrong side of both sides in Egypt – something I wouldn't have guessed was even possible. Also, the situation in Venezuela has deteriorated to the point where their government is seizing U.S.-owned oil platforms, and we're doing nothing about it. In just the past couple of months, The One and his administration have managed to wreck or make worse the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Venezuela, France, Germany, and Russia. He seems to be working hard to do the same thing in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a couple things I read last week were early warnings about trouble brewing in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.
Which got me to my morning ponder: is there, in fact, any country that has a better relationship with the U.S. today than they did when Obama was elected. I cannot for the life of me think of one. Not even one...
Which got me to my morning ponder: is there, in fact, any country that has a better relationship with the U.S. today than they did when Obama was elected. I cannot for the life of me think of one. Not even one...
A new snail species...
Hardware Geek: Programmable capacitor...
I never thought of making a “programmable” capacitor, but now that I see it, the idea seems obvious. This Kickstarter project is just 32 capacitors that can be individually switched in or out of a parallel combination. The sum of the “on” capacitors is the value of the programmable capacitor. The board has values down to 0.1pf, which I suspect is swamped by the parasitic capacitance on the board (and wiring), but never mind that – for the higher values, I can think of many times when this would have been a very handy beast to have around! I've made my $29 pledge...
Geek: Leslie Lamport has placed all his papers online...
Saturday, November 2, 2013
A friend sent this to me...
So I'll ask my readers! Does anyone out there have even the slightest clue why anyone would make this video, and what they thought they were accomplishing?
People are noticing...
People are noticing... The climate models that have been driving the AGW scare mongering are starting to look like their wheels are coming off – and the much-mocked, much-simpler solar models are looking better every day. I'm seeing more and more articles like this, some of them from mainstream scientists.
Even better, several friends and colleagues – former AGW faithful – are starting to sound like outright skeptics. Now, that is fun!
Even better, several friends and colleagues – former AGW faithful – are starting to sound like outright skeptics. Now, that is fun!
I identify with this mouse...
Obama: The Myth of the Master Strategist.
Obama: The Myth of the Master Strategist. By Jonah Goldberg, writing at National Review Online. His lede:
Often in error but never in doubt, Barack Obama could walk into the Rose Garden and step on a half-dozen rakes like Foghorn Leghorn in an old Looney Tunes cartoon, and the official line would be, “He meant to do that.”It gets even better.
And the amazing thing is that so many people believe it. “Mr. Obama is like a championship chess player, always several moves ahead of friend and foe alike. He’s smart, deft, elegant and subtle,” proclaimed then–New York Times columnist Bob Herbert in 2009. It’s an image of the president that his biggest fans, in and out of the press, have been terribly reluctant to relinquish — because it confirms the faith they invested in him. Nobody ever likes to admit they were suckered.
Look at that sour puss!
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal has confirmed that Obama and his aides knew all along that millions of people would have their policies canceled, and that “If you like your policy, you can keep it.” was known (by them) to be a lie. Well of course it was – I never thought they were stupid enough to believe that bullshit! They just thought you and I were...
Neo-Neocon was inspired to pen new lyrics for an old Bob Dylan song. Her's is called “Stuck Inside of DC with the Obamacare Blues Again”.
And then, along the lines of dogshaming.com, we now have MyCancellation.com. When your healthcare policy gets canceled because of ObamaCare, you can share your anger there...
A phalanx of lies...
A phalanx of lies... The inimitable Mark Steyn weighs in. His lede:
CNN has been pondering what they call “a particularly tough few days at the White House.” “Four out of five Americans have little or no trust in their government to do anything right,” says chief political analyst Gloria Borger. “And now Obama probably feels the same way.” Our hearts go out to him, poor wee disillusioned thing. We are assured by the headline writers that the president was “unaware” of ObamaCare’s website defects, and the NSA spying, and the IRS targeting of his political enemies, and the Justice Department bugging the Associated Press, and pretty much anything else you ask him about. But, as he put it, “nobody’s madder than me” at this shadowy rogue entity called the “Government of the United States” that’s running around pulling all this stuff. And, once he finds out who’s running this Government of the United States rogue entity, he’s gonna come down as hard on him as he did on that video maker in California; he’s gonna send round the National Park Service SWAT team to teach that punk a lesson he won’t forget.My favorite line:
For the media, just a spoonful of bovine manure makes the Obamacare medicine go down.Well said!
Short-form philosophy...
Short-form philosophy... Via my mom:
As I hurtled through space, one thought kept crossing my mind - every part of this rocket was supplied by the lowest bidder.
~ John Glenn
When the white missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.
~ Desmond Tutu
America is the only country where a significant proportion of the population believes that professional wrestling is real but the moon landing was faked.
~ David Letterman
After the game, the King and the pawn go into the same box.
~ Italian proverb
Men are like linoleum floors. Lay 'em right and you can walk all over them for thirty years.
~ Betsy Salkind
The only reason they say 'Women and children first' is to test the strength of the lifeboats.
~ Jean Kerr
I've been married to a communist and a fascist, and neither would take out the garbage.
~ Zsa Zsa Gabor
You know you're a redneck if your home has wheels and your car doesn't.
~ Jeff Foxworthy
When a man opens a car door for his wife, it's either a new car or a new wife.
~ Prince Philip
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kickboxing.
~ Emo Philips.
Wood burns faster when you have to cut and chop it yourself.
~ Harrison Ford
The best cure for sea sickness is to sit under a tree.
~ Spike Milligan
Lawyers believe a man is innocent until proven broke.
~ Robin Hall
Kill one man and you're a murderer, kill a million and you're a conqueror.
~ Jean Rostand.
Having more money doesn't make you happier. I have 50 million dollars but I'm just as happy as when I had 48 million.
~ Arnold Schwarzenegger.
We are here on earth to do good unto others. What the others are here for, I have no idea.
~ WH Auden
In hotel rooms I worry. I can't be the only guy who sits on the furniture naked.
~ Jonathan Katz
If life were fair Elvis would still be alive today and all the impersonators would be dead.
~ Johnny Carson
I don't believe in astrology. I am a Sagittarius and we're very skeptical.
~ Arthur C Clarke
Hollywood must be the only place on earth where you can be fired by a man wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a baseball cap.
~ Steve Martin
Home cooking. Where many a man thinks his wife is.
~ Jimmy Durante
America is so advanced that even the chairs are electric.
~ Doug Hamwell
The first piece of luggage on the carousel never belongs to anyone.
~ George Roberts
If God had intended us to fly he would have made it easier to get to the airport
~ Jonathan Winters
I have kleptomania, but when it gets bad, I take something for it.
~ Robert Benchley
What made someone think that “skiing” and “naked” went together?
What made someone think that “skiing” and “naked” went together?
Lies, lies, and more damned lies!
Lies, lies, and more damned lies! It seems like every day The One and his administration just dig themselves deeper and deeper into the ObamaCare pit of things progressives desperately want to believe.
Here's my ponder: come the 2014 and 2016 election cycles, will enough voting Americans realize (and remember) just how badly ObamaCare worked out? If I were a betting man (other than on the stock market), I'd place a bet on “no”. But them, I'm not generally thought of as an optimist :)
Here's my ponder: come the 2014 and 2016 election cycles, will enough voting Americans realize (and remember) just how badly ObamaCare worked out? If I were a betting man (other than on the stock market), I'd place a bet on “no”. But them, I'm not generally thought of as an optimist :)
California leads the way...
California leads the way... to the bottom of the list of states with friendly concealed-carry laws...
SR-72?
The key to the speed of this beast is a hybrid turbine/ramjet power plant that would have both engines running in parallel during the transition to hypersonic speed. There's a presentation on the power plant here. Despite having dual engines, there's only a single intake and exhaust nozzle, thanks to some clever plumbing.
Way back in the early '70s, toward the end of the Vietnam War, I spent some time on a U.S. Navy ship on the South China Sea, off the coast of Vietnam. The ship I was on (USS Long Beach CGN-9) had PIRAZ duty, and as part of that we tracked air targets over and near Vietnam. Several times we tracked an air target crossing North Vietnam at an impossible speed – and we were told to say nothing at all about it. Back then, the SR-71 was still a classified program. They've long since been declassified and retired, and now can be found in quite a few aerospace museums. That's a bit of an odd feeling for me :)
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