Mucking Up the Data...

Here's a wonderfully detailed and documented example of how NASA takes perfectly good data (which doesn't happen to support AGW) and “adjusts” it until it does. In a nutshell, here's what it says: NASA took data from a source that is provably very reliable and consistent, but which didn't show any global warming trends. Then NASA applied a series of adjustments to that data, and used the adjusted data as part of their global warming model. After all the adjustments, the data magically supports their global warming hypothesis.

It's as though you weighed yourself on the same scale every day of your life and kept meticulous records of that – but then your doctor didn't believe the results, and applied his own arbitrary set of adjustments to your data.

Your tax dollars, hard at work. But not for your benefit...

Solar Wind at a Minimum...

NASA held a news conference earlier this week, and this was the main topic:

The intensity of the sun's million-mile-per-hour solar wind has dropped to its lowest levels since accurate records began half a century ago...

The data they're talking about comes from the Ulysses spacecraft, which has long been in orbit around the sun.

There's much more to the story than just this carefully crafted statement from NASA, however. The solar wind they're referring to is “blown” outward from the sun by the pressure of the sun's radiation. The only reason why the solar wind would have diminished is because the sun's radiation output has diminished – which we already know from other measurments. So in that sense this new piece of data is completely unsurprising, but still useful as confirmation.

NASA gets a significant part of its funding as science grants, independently from the space program funding. The science grant gravy train has never been as magnificent as it has during these days of anthropomorphic global warming (AGW) fears. So NASA, for years now, has been very careful to craft its public presentations in such a way as to support AGW fears – they've got a lot of money riding on that. This week's press conference was a real problem for the message crafters, though, because you don't have to be particularly bright to figure out that if there's good evidence that the sun's radiation output is declining, then hey, that might just have something to do with the fact that the planet has been cooling for several years.

And if the planet is now cooling because the sun's radiation is lower, then perhaps the planet might have been warming earlier because the sun's radiation was increasing back then.

And maybe all this AGW talk is just a bunch of hooey.

But NASA doesn't like that answer very much, because then there's much less reason to fund all their AGW-related programs so lavishly.

Oops.

Morning, and Mo'i...

Mo'i is still doing fantastically well. It's just one week since his surgery, but he's rarin' to go – we have to actively control him in order to keep him as quiet as the doctor ordered. Basically these days he lives in his little crate or on a leash, poor guy. He's going to be one very happy fellow in a week or so, when we can first let him run free.

His surgical incision is healing very quickly. It already looks like a relatively minor, albeit big, cut. His hair is growing back on the shaved spot, and it's easy to see that within a few weeks he'll be looking practically normal. For Mo'i, that is...

It was a beautiful morning here again – crisp and clear, with a nice waning moon low in the northeastern sky, just down from Castor and Pollux. Ursa Major has wheeled just a bit higher in the sky; in a couple of weeks it will all be visible again at 4 am...

Quotes of the Day...

Megan McArdle is on a roll today – two delicious zingers in a row.

First, her reaction to the news that the FBI is investigating several major Wall Street firms:

For what, I have no idea. Is stupidity a federal offense? And if so, when do they investigate congress?

The lady has a way with words!

The second Megan quote needs a little background, in the form of a quote of Joe (“The Mouth”) Biden speaking yesterday:

"Part of what being a leader does is to instill confidence is to demonstrate what he or she knows what they are talking about and to communicating to people ... this is how we can fix this," Biden said. "When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the princes of greed. He said, 'look, here's what happened.'"

Now there are a couple of things wrong with that statement by The Mouth. First there's the minor little detail that FDR wasn't yet President at the time of the 1929 crash. Then there's the other pesky detail that commercial television was still about 10 years in the future!

Says Megan:

I certainly feel better knowing that come next November, I might have a savvy politician like Joe Biden explaining complex financial matters to me. And also, how the governor of New York managed to get his own financial show ten years before the first regularly scheduled television broadcast.

Ouch! Zing!

Morning, and Mo'i...

Mo'i continues to do spectacularly well – for the past day or so, his behavior has been completely normal, as though he never had the surgery at all.

This morning, as on nearly every morning out here in the chaparral, the skies were clear and bright with stars and the moon. The constellations wheel clockwise around Polaris (the north star) with the seasons, and this time of year brings Orion up high in the morning's eastern sky. Orion was the first constellation I learned to recognize, and it's usually how I start orienting myself with the sky. Now bright, bright Sirius is also well above the eastern horizon in the early morning. The moon this morning was near Castor and Pollux, up by Orion's right arm. The Pleiadies (the Seven Sisters) were nearly directly overhead. And Ursa Major (the Big Dipper) is peeking up over the northern horizon, below and to the right of Polaris. A very nice morning for a little stargazing...

Mo'i Update...

This morning as I opened the door to his crate, Mo'i practically smothered me with his patented “hugs” (which consist mainly of him pressing into you like a bulldozer) and ear nibbles. He was feeling very frisky, and seemed completely normal in his behavior – an observation that was only reinforced by his morning walk. His gait is normal, his energy level and “pull” is normal, the incision looks better every hour that goes by, and our biggest problem is keeping the big old lunk quiet and calm. And this is only on day 3 of a 14 day prescription for quiet!

It is so good to see Mo'i looking so well...

Yikes!

This weekend, like most weekends, The Smoking Gun has a carnival of mug shots. The one at right is from this week's collection.

All I can think to say is: YIKES!

But remember... Even this fellow has a mother...

Quote of the Day...

From Jeff Goldstein, at Protein Wisdom:

For those who shout loudest about a necessary “wall” between church and state (which is not in keeping with the plain meaning of the Establishment Clause), there never seems to be any recognition that the actual problem (as opposed to hyperventilating concerns over “Christianists”) is that the new church of politicized science is actively intermingled with the business of the state, elevating political faith to the kind of religion that is infecting public policy to an unhealthy degree.

...and the anthropomorphic global warming phenomenon is perhaps the very best current example, and Al Gore is the high priest. Do read the whole thing, and the WSJ article he's commenting on; both pieces are great Sunday ponder-producers...

Lovely Lawson Valley Weather...

We are having unusually beautiful weather for this season. Normally September is one of our hottest, driest months. We've had some hot days this month, to be sure, but the average temperatures have been well below normal.

Yesterday, last night, and today our weather has been more typical of what we get in November – cool, dry days with very clear air and gorgeous blue skies, and then very cool (cold for us!) and humid nights. As you can see by the chart at right, last night we had several hours at 100% relative humidity – most definitely not normal for September. And the temperature dropped all the way to 47°F (8°C) – certainly not unheard of for us, even on a summer evening, but very welcome nonetheless. We haven't run our air conditioner for several days now – I can't remember that ever happening in September before!

If this is what global warming is, I'd like more of it!

Health Care Choices...

Dr. Paul Hsieh, the wizard behind the curtains at GeekPress, has an excellent opinion piece in the Rocky Mountain News. In it, he takes a stand against Colorado's Amendment 56, a proposed law that Coloradans will vote on in November. This law would require all but the tiniest businesses to provide company-paid health insurance for all of their workers. An excerpt:

Two motivations behind this proposed law are (1) the mistaken notion that health care should be a guaranteed “right," and (2) the desire to force businesses (rather than government) to pay for this supposed obligation. But health care is a need, not a right. A right is a freedom of action in a social context, such as the freedom of speech.

It is not an automatic claim on a good or service that must be produced by someone else. There is no such thing as a “right” to a car or an appendectomy. Any attempt by the government to guarantee a false “right” to health care can only be done by violating the actual rights of someone — in this case, business owners.

Dr. Hsieh is not in the majority amongst doctors, if I believe what I read on the matter. Most doctors would like to see all patients have health insurance, and they really don't care very much how that's done – they'll support just about any proposal to provide universal health care insurance.

I'd like to see a few simple, basic reforms to our current health care system:

• The removal of the special tax status that health insurance expenses now have for businesses, coupled with making health insurance costs tax-deductible for individuals. This would remove the artificial incentive for employers to provide health insurance, which is the only reason that employers are expected to provide health insurance today. At the same time, it would create an incentive for individuals to purchase health insurance, in exactly the same way that the mortgage deduction provides an incentive for people to purchase a home.
  
  
• The removal of all the current regulatory barriers to providing and purchasing intrastate health insurance. These regulations today primarily benefit the insurance companies, by limiting the competitive environment to individual states, and discouraging low-cost nationwide entrants. Many people aren't even aware of these regulations, because it is primarily the employers who must deal with them. Today a resident of (say) New York is not allowed to purchase a less-expensive health insurance policy from a company in (say) South Dakota. There's no good reason for this from the consumer's perspective, though it's wonderful from the insurance company's perspective (and the state legislators who benefit from the insurance companies' largesse).

I believe that if just those reforms were enacted, our health care system would be transformed by the forces of competition in the marketplace. For example, consumers would suddenly become aware that if they were willing to cover the minor, routine health care costs themselves, they could purchase very low cost major medical insurance to cover the truly catastrophic illnesses or injuries. This is a choice most people simply don't have today – but I'd be willing to bet you many people would make that choice if they could. Similarly, doctors and hospitals would suddenly have an incentive to provide high quality health care at a lower cost. The incentives today that encourage doctors to order extra (but unnecessary) tests would be flipped upside down – suddenly those extra tests will make them less competitive. These are the exact same market forces that give us the modern miracles of production, like personal computers and the fantastically high quality automobiles we drive today...

I know I'm dreaming, but...I'm allowed to dream, aren't I?

Your Morning Mo'i (and Other Dogly Adventures)...

We're seeing progress almost by the hour with Mo'i. Last night when I took him out on a walk, he did something he does when he's happy – he grabbed the leash in his mouth and “took himself for a walk.” It was very nice to see that behavior, because we know he only does it when he's feeling good. This morning Debbie inspected the incision, and she was happy to see that the swelling is down (exactly as the vet predicted), and there still is no sign of infection. All good!

We had a dog adventure of a totally different kind last night, by coincidence (or at least we think so!). Mo'i, for obvious reasons, couldn't sleep on our bed as he normally does. We had him in a crate in our bedroom. Around 2:30 am, he started whining – something he has done before when we've had him crated. The whining could mean he needs a walk, or (more likely) it just means he wants to get up on the bed.

Debbie got up and took him for a walk just in case, but when she crawled back into bed we noticed there was a wet spot on the bed. A big wet spot, as though someone had dumped a glass of water there. Of course our first thought was that one of our dogs had peed on the bed – something none of our dogs has done for years. But no, this wet spot had no odor, and seemed clean, like plain water. The only thing I've been able to imagine is dog saliva, as though one of the dogs slept with its mouth open and drooling.

Whatever it was, it wasn't something we cared to splash about in as we slept. So (at 2:30 am!) we got up, stripped the bed, threw the bed clothes in the washer, and “camped” in the living room. We made a bed on the floor by using cushions from several chairs and sofas and throwing some blankets over them. Not a very satisfactory bed, for sure – Debbie and I are a little stiff this morning...

Mo'i Update...

Mo'i is doing great! I just got back from taking him for a short walk, and it was a joy to see him behaving completely normally. As usual, he investigated every gopher and ground squirrel hole (even the ones that haven't been used for years!). If you're Mo'i, it's important to smell them all carefully – you just never know when a critter might come by...

When we got back in the house, I took the opportunity to take a few photos. At right you see him looking almost normal. Only the shaved spot on his right front leg (where the catheter was) shows any evidence of his recent surgery. In the photos below, the surgery is a bit more evident.

The surgical wound is looking great. There is no evidence of infection, and only minor swelling. We're keeping an eye out for anything looking abnormal here, at the direction of the vet. Mo'i doesn't go back in for a checkup for two weeks.

As always, click on any of the photos to get a larger view...

Mo'i Is Home!

Yesterday Mo'i had surgery to repair a slipped disc. This morning, an astonished-sounding vet called Debbie and said (with many more words) that Mo'i was recovering so well and so fast that he thought we should take him home this evening.

So of course we did! Debbie and I drove down together, paid our bill (don't ask!), and waited for the technician to bring Mo'i down to us. He rounded the corner in the hallway well ahead of the technician, who was leaning backwards to counter-balance Mo'i's bulldozer-like pulling. That was one happy dog! Lots of happy grunting and whimpering, hugs, and a 200 mile-per-hour wagging tail. We lifted him carefully into the truck and took off for home.

And now Mo'i is resting very comfortably in his familiar crate. He is one very happy dog tonight. Adding to his pleasure is the fact that he has no dietary restrictions, so he's getting (and will be getting) a few more than the usual dog treats – and there's nothing that Mo'i likes more than dog treats!

He's got a rectangular shaved area on his back, with a roughly 8 inch long incision running right down his backbone. There are no sutures visible; the technician told us they were entirely under the skin. Mo'i acts almost completely normal, and his strength seems to be unreduced – certainly not what I was expecting after such a major surgery. Twice since we've had him home, he's yelped in pain; it seems to be associated with rotating motions on his back (as when he's shaking himself). Otherwise, we can't even sense any discomfort in him. We're going to keep him completely quiet for 2 weeks, and then after that we gradually ramp up the level of exercise. The vet tells us that he should back to normal in about 6 weeks.

Amazing!

Tomorrow I'll post some pictures of Mo'i. Tonight we're just happy to have our dog back, and healthy...

Lots More Patriots...

Excellent:

We're Still Waiting, Harry...

The Washington Examiner has a great piece this morning about how Harry Reid and his band of bandits is not draining the swamp, as he promised to do. No, he's doing quite the opposite. The piece is very short, so I'm taking the liberty of republishing the whole thing:

As the stock market plunged nearly 1,000 points in two days this week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada was preoccupied with protecting billions of dollars worth of earmarks contained in a separate, unpublished committee report that got a one-sentence reference in a giant $612 billion defense bill. Reid engineered the 61-to-32 vote to limit debate on the bill, thus barring consideration of an amendment offered by Sen. Jim DeMint. The South Carolina Republican’s amendment would have deleted the reference to the committee report so that it would have to be considered separately. By leaving the language in the bill, the lawmakers were able to carry out one of their favorite maneuvers: Incorporating committee reports into omnibus bills so they can give billions of tax dollars to their cronies without recorded votes on specific spending measures. This is the same Harry Reid who with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised to “drain the swamp” of Republican corruption if voters would return the Democrats to the majority.

But Reid’s move was not just a slap at DeMint. Under pressure from a bipartisan coalition of fiscal watchdog groups, including Porkbusters, Club for Growth, Citizens Against Government Waste, National Taxpayers Union and Taxpayers for Common Sense, President George W. Bush signed an executive order last January that directed federal agencies to ignore earmarks that only appear in committee reports. If DeMint’s proposal had passed, the earmarks in the defense bill’s committee report would have been merely suggestions – not legally binding spending instructions. No wonder Reid made sure the South Carolinian’s amendment never made it to the Senate floor.

A task force created by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., recommends that all earmarks and their congressional sponsors be included explicitly in spending bills, so they can be honestly debated and voted upon by the House and Senate, as the Constitution requires. This would give members of Congress sufficient leeway to direct public funds to worthy projects in their home districts, while making the lawmakers accountable to taxpayers. It is significant that Armed Services Committee chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., who opposed the DeMint amendment, admitted that it would have created “a huge shift in the power of the purse.” He’s right about that. But a shift from shady legislative maneuvers like Reid’s to full public disclosure and accountability is exactly the kind of change most needed on Capitol Hill. Voters are still waiting for that swamp to be drained.

We Are Terrorists!!!

You just can't make this stuff up. This is a quote from the North Korean Foreign Ministry:

“The DPRK (North Korea) neither wishes to be delisted as a 'state sponsor of terrorism' nor expects such a thing to happen.”

The left claims to believe that any disagreements we might have with people like this can be negotiated away. Me, I think the only “negotiating” one can do with people like this is the kind of negotiating that involves aiming weapons of terrorist destruction (i.e., U.S. Marines, JDAMs, cruise missiles, etc.) directly at their heads.

The One's Email Inbox...

Courtesy of The Onion (it's a spoof, of course – but hysterical!) Click to enlarge and enjoy!

The State of the States...

The Pacific Research Institute (PRI) is out with its annual ranking of the 50 U.S. states (yes, 50, Barack, not 57!) by an economic freedom index that the PRI invented. It always makes interesting reading, and even if you don't fully agree with their criteria the comparisons between states are always interesting. Click on the picture at right to get a larger view; go here to read the whole report and the associated press release.

California is right down in the mud along with other bastions of socialism like New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York. This is no surprise to those of us who live here. I, like many others I know, constantly ask myself the question: “Is it still worth it? Is the price of living in California too high? Should I leave now?” We're still here, but we're still asking the question. Each year, more people (both numerically and percentage-wise) vote with their feet and leave – California's emigration rate has been monotonically increasing for years.

On the other side, there's a geographical cluster in the top six positions. We own some property in one of those states (Idaho), and that beckons to us as a likely refuge from California. One could have an entertaining debate about why those states rank so much higher, but for me the most interesting part is the magnitude of the difference between those high-ranked states and the low-ranked states: nearly 2-to-1 on the index. There are days – such as any day I have to listen to a California Assemblyman or Senator – when that difference is mighty appealing...

Mo'i Update...

We just heard from the vet that Mo'i is out of surgery and doing just fine. Whew!

Best of all: the surgery confirmed that the problem was exactly what the vet thought it was – fragments of disc that were pinching a nerve the runs to his right rear leg. That means it was not a tumor or any other life-threatening issue.

The vet thought she saw a single fragment on the MRI yesterday, but it turns out that the actual situation was a bit messier. If I am correctly understanding her description, it appears that for whatever reason, this particular disc in Mo'i's back calcified, hardened, and then broke apart into multiple pieces. One of those pieces was pinching that nerve.

During the surgery she cleaned out all the little fragments, then put Mo'i back together. His back is currently being iced to reduce swelling, and he's on good pain medication. They don't want us to visit tonight, because they want him quiet and still. Dang. We'd sure like to see him right about now...

But the important stuff is that he's ok, and we're done with this problem. Even better, the vet says there's no reason to believe that his agility work contributed to this injury in any way, and he's perfectly ok to go back into competition.

We can hardly wait for Saturday morning, when we get to bring him home. And tomorrow afternoon, when we can visit with him.

A big thanks to all of you who sent kind words and thoughts – 'tis much appreciated by these worried “dog parents.”

Everything Is All Right...

...but for the last 24 hours we've been really worried.

Mo'i is our agility champion field spaniel – just over 8 years old and in his prime. A few days ago Debbie noticed that he seemed to be reluctant to jump up on us (something he loves to do when he greets us), and he wouldn't do the “dog food dance” when she fed him. She figured he'd pulled a muscle or something, and was watching him closely.

Last night she noticed the symptoms suddenly got worse. Now he was favoring his right rear foot, and showing some evidence of pain. Debbie got on the phone with our wonderful vet (Dr. Christine Wilson), and then ran him right down for an exam. Shortly after that I got a call: Dr. Wilson suspected a slipped disc, or something like that, and wanted us to get Mo'i to a specialist immediately.

So I met Debbie at Dr. Wilson's place, and we headed to the Veterinary Specialty Hospital in Sorrento Valley (almost an hour from home). They examined him, and recommended an MRI to determine what was wrong. We left poor Mo'i there, in pain, and went home very worried.

This morning we got a call from the neurology vet, with some very hopeful news: after an evening on pain meds and muscle relaxants, Mo'i was looking much better. The vet even talked with us about the possibility of the injury being relatively minor, and of treating it with (basically) bed rest and quiet. But after some careful discussion with her, we decided to go ahead with the MRI to see what it would find. We want to know what's going on, and that we're giving him the best treatment – not just guess at it.

This afternoon they did the MRI, and the vet called us with the results. She's about 99% sure that there is a fragment of a disc that's pinching a nerve and causing the symptoms. She recommended surgery – but it's relatively straightforward surgery, going in through the top of the spine (bone, not muscle). Success isn't guaranteed, but it's very likely. Recovery should be fairly fast, about 5 to 7 weeks to a full recovery. And the surgery will remove all ambiguity about the cause of his problem – if it is a tumor, bony growth, or whatever, when they're done with the surgery, they'll know for sure.

This evening we went down to visit with Mo'i. Lordy, he was happy to see us! We spent some quality time with him, then remanded him to the care of the techs at the hospital. Tomorrow around midday he goes under the knife. We'll visit him again tomorrow night, and then on Friday, barring any complications, we can take him home.

We're thinking that all of this is good news. We're pretty sure now that we know what the problem is, and it's completely treatable with low-risk surgery. We went home feeling much better.

And then tonight there was one final happy event. On one of the agility newgroups (on Yahoo!), a woman that Debbie knows through agility wrote of her surprise when she discovered that Mo'i was checked into the hosptital where she works. What a coincidence! She wrote on the newsgroup of how she checked up on Mo'i several times during the day today, and will continue to do so. It is no small comfort to us to know that a friend of the family is there keeping an eye on Mo'i. And it put a smile on our face to read her reports of Mo'i's cheerful demeanor and constantly wagging tail...

We'll be a little distracted for the next few days, folks...