Calm in the Storm...

I've done my share of risky things, and then some.  But I would never have done what the guy in the video below did – and if I got in that position somehow by accident, I certainly would not have been as eerily unaffected as he was.  Pay attention to the phone conversation, and think about how the person on the other end of the call must have been feeling...

Doctors Don't Like ObamaCare...

Now a report says that 83% of all doctors have considered leaving their practice because of ObamaCare.  This jibes with what I've heard from doctors I know, every one of whom is wondering what their future holds under ObamaCare, and whether that future will be in U.S. medicine.  Some are considering leaving the country, to practice where they can make more money.  Others are considering changing careers.  None – not one – believes that they have a viable career as a doctor being paid under ObamaCare.

This flight of doctors to higher-paying careers is actually not new – it began years ago with Medicare and Medicaid, two government programs that pay fixed (and very low) fees to doctors.  That flight, though, was to private medicine: an increasing number of doctors, over the years, refuse to take Medicare/Medicaid patients for the simple reason that they don't pay enough.  Under ObamaCare, however, that choice is removed – and now to make more money, they have to make a more drastic career change.

I would like to live out my years in a country where I at least have the choice to obtain the services of a great doctor, even if I have to pay for that choice myself.  If our great doctors tend to switch to another career, or move to another country, that's going to get a lot harder.  It's going to make options like traveling to India, Estonia, or Brazil for medical care look a lot better.  Some countries are already thinking about encouraging “medical tourism” like this as a major policy effort, most especially Israel, China, and India.  To them, ObamaCare is an enormous opportunity.  Good for them! But not so good for us...

Sounds of the Aurora Borealis...

For years scientists believed that reports of sounds accompanying the aurora borealis were mistaken, or possibly the result of too much alcohol (this was actually posited as a cause!).  But then some scientists heard them, when not drunk.  Oops.  So then they had to figure out where the sound actually came from, because the lights of the aurora borealis are clearly too far away to hear.  Now they have: the sounds come from just 70 meters (about 220 feet) above the ground...

Unions Spend a Lot on Politics...

Well, that's not really a surprise, is it?  But today's Wall Street Journal is reporting that unions actually spend about four times more than what was generally believed...

Dancing Matt...

Matt Harding travels all around the world, and dances with folks he meets.  He takes video of these “events”, then edits them into short videos like the one below.  This one has some places I'm familiar with: Tallinn (Estonia), St. Petersburg (Russia), and the Sibelius monument in Helsinki (Finland).  Watch it – it will put a smile on your face:

Kinda Says It All...

Via my lovely bride, who's taken a new interest in politics now that she understands how it's going to hit us directly in the wallet:

Riddle Me This...

Via my lovely bride:

Queen's Riddle

Barack Obama met with the Queen of England. He asked her, "Your Majesty, how do you run such an efficient government? Are there any tips you can give me?"

"Well," said the Queen, "the most important thing is to surround yourself with intelligent people."

Obama frowned, and then asked, "But how do I know the people around me are really intelligent?"

The Queen took a sip of tea. "Oh, that's easy; you just ask them to answer an intelligent riddle."

The Queen pushed a button on her intercom. "Please send David Cameron in here, would you?"

Mr. Cameron walked into the room and said, "Yes, Your Majesty?"

The Queen smiled and said, "Answer me this please, Mr Prime Minister, your mother and father have a child. It is not your brother and it is not your sister. Who is it?"

Without pausing for a moment, the Prime Minister answered, "That would be me."

"Yes! Very good," said the Queen.

Obama went back home to ask Joe Biden the same question. "Joe, answer this for me. Your mother and your father have a child. It's not your brother and it's not your sister. Who is it?"

"I'm not sure," said Biden. "Let me get back to you on that one."

He went to his advisors and asked everyone, but none could give him an answer.

Finally, Biden ran in to John Boehner out eating one night. Biden asked, "Mr Speaker, can you answer this for me? Your mother and father have a child and it's not your brother or your sister. Who is it?"

Representative Boehner answered right back, "That's easy, it's me!"

Biden smiled, and said, "Thanks!"

Biden then, went back to speak with Obama. "Say, I did some research and I have the answer to that riddle. It's John Boehner!"

Obama got up, stomped over to Biden, and angrily yelled into his face, "No! You idiot! It's David Cameron!"

The World Isn't Ending...

Reading the lamestream media news reports about the recent East Coast heat wave, you'd think that the world was coming to an end.  Headlines trumpet things like “3,000+ Records Broken!”, and the text of the articles implies that nothing like this has ever been seen before.

Hogwash.

The graph below is courtesy of the indispensable Watts Up With That?.  It shows the number of heat records broken for each year since 1892.  This year isn't even going to be close to the top.  The early part of the last century (before all those carbon-emitting SUVs!) is clearly far “hotter” (at least in this limited sense) than the most recent decade.

Get a grip, folks...

The Trouble With Models...

Computer models of real-world phenomena all have the same weakness: the value of their output depends completely on the validity of the data and assumptions incorporated in the model.  Business folks are very familiar with this weakness, as it plagues the world of financial forecasting.  Climate models, I (and others) have long argued have the same problem – they're dependent on data and assumptions that have not been verified.

Today comes news of yet another such assumption: how heat is transported from inside the Sun to the outside (where it is radiated to the Earth).  This matters intensely to climate models, as their primary energy input is solar radiation – and if the models use the wrong assumptions, in particular, about variability of solar radiation, then...they'll just be wrong...

Summer of Recovery: NOT!

This pretty much says it all, doesn't it?  If you're not familiar with EMRATIO, it's sometimes called the “participation rate” – the percentage of the civilian population who are working at any given time. This is (to my mind, at least) a far more useful indicator than the “unemployment rate” trumpeted in the media – that number is “adjusted” for all sorts of things, and doesn't really tell us very much.  EMRATIO, on the other hand, is the raw data.

So what does this chart tell us?  Let's look at January 2005, when the EMRATIO was 62.3%.  Now let's look at January 2012, when it was 58.5%.  That's a drop of 3.8% in that 7 year period.  Doesn't sound like much?  Consider this: the U.S. population in January 2012 was about 310 million people.  If the EMRATIO were the same in January 2012 as it was in January 2007, then 3.8% x 310 million more people would be working.  That's almost 12 million more people who would be working.

Obama and his fellow Democrats have cost us 12 million jobs....

Jupiter and Venus and the Moon, Oh My!

We slept in until 4 am this morning, so I didn't get the dogs outside until the sky was starting to lighten in the east.  As we walked down the driveway, the moon was high and to the right behind us, and to the right and in front of us was Jupiter (up high) and Venus (a bit below and to the right of it). Between the impending dawn and the bright moon, the rest of the stars were pretty much washed out.

The dogs didn't care about any of this, of course.  They were intent on reading their “pee-mail”, which apparently contained some exciting news...

Harmonic Motion...

Watch this:


Then go read a bit about it...

Quantum Rhetoric...

Iowahawk is back with another satirical take on Washington.  The lead:

WASHINGTON DC - Jubilant scientists at the DNC's High Speed Word Collider (HSWC) announced today they have conclusively disproven the existence of Roberts' Taxon, the theoretical radioactive Facton particle that some had worried would lead to the implosion of the entire Universal Health Care System.

"I think it's time to pop the champagne corks," said HSWC Director David Plouffe. "Then blaze some choom."

The landmark experiment in Quantum Rhetoric began early this week after legal particle cosmologist John Roberts published a paper in the Quarterly Journal of Tortured Logic that solved the long-debated Pelosi's Paradox in Universal Health Care Theory.

But do go read the whole thing...

Musical Flash Mob...

Free USGS Topo Maps...

You can now download free electronic versions of the standard USGS topographical maps, the ones that are familiar to any serious hiker, four-wheeler, hunter, etc.  In many ways these electronic versions are superior to the paper version: you can magnify them to any level (they're vector-based, not rasterized), and they have layers that can be switched on and off.  Furthermore, the few that I've tried include photographic coverage (also in a switchable layer) – not satellite photos, but aerial photos of quite high resolution.  Nice!

What Happened?

Via my mom:

Defense Attorney: Will you please state your age?

Old Lady: I am 94 years old.

Defense Attorney: Will you tell us, in your own words, what happened the night of April 1st?

Old Lady: There I was, sitting there in my swing on my front porch on a warm spring evening, when a young man comes creeping up on the porch and sat down beside me.

Defense Attorney: Did you know him?

Old Lady: No, but he sure was friendly.

Defense Attorney: What happened after he sat down?

Old Lady: He started to rub my thigh.

Defense Attorney: Did you stop him?

Old Lady: No, I didn't stop him.

Defense Attorney: Why not?

Little Old Lady: It felt good. Nobody had done that since my Albert died some 30 years ago.

Defense Attorney: What happened next?

Old Lady: He began to rub all over of my body.

Defense Attorney: Did you stop him then?

Old Lady: No, I did not stop him.

Defense Attorney: Why not?

Old Lady: His rubbing made me feel all alive and excited.  I haven't felt that good in years!

Defense Attorney: What happened next?

Old Lady: Well, by then, I was feeling so "spicy" that I just laid down and told him 'Take me, young man. Take me now! '

Defense Attorney: Did he take you?

Old Lady: Hell, no! He just yelled, "April Fool!"  And that's when I shot him, the little bastard.

How Do You...

Via my lovely bride:

Q: How do you tell a Romney voter from an Obama voter?

A: Romney supporters sign their checks on the front; Obama supporters sign 'em on the back.

I'm afraid there's more than a little truth in this...

Destination Descanso...

Larry Himmel (a local TV reporter) just filed this brief report that mentions one of our favorite places: the Descanso Junction Restaurant.  Two people we know well (Tammy and Joanne) are seen in the video.  Fun!

Opportunity's Latest Panorama...

The Opportunity rover, still working hard on Mars, took 817 photos between December 2011 and May 2012 (the latest Martian winter).  These were stitched together to form a panorama that stretches nearly 360°, showing incredible detail around the site where Opportunity spent the winter.  Awesome!  Be sure to click to see it full size (original image here).

The Greeley Panorama...

The Gate Rule...

Peggy Noonan's lead this week:

There's something Haley Barbour reminded me of called the Gate Rule. The former Mississippi governor said it's the first thing you should think of when you think about immigration. People are either lined up at the gate trying to get out of a country, or lined up trying to get in.

It says something about the health of a nation when they're lined up to get in, as they are, still, with America. It says, of course, that compared with a lot of the rest of the world, America's economy isn't in such bad shape. But it says more than that. People don't want to come to a place when they know they'll be treated badly. They don't want to call your home their home unless they know you'll make room for them in more than economic ways.

It's a rather upbeat and hopeful piece – read the whole thing...