JamulBlog: May 19, 2014

Monday, May 19, 2014

Enough of this...

Enough of this ... and I might turn hopeful again! A Facebook post from a young man in his early 20s:

My career as a liberal Democrat has come to an abrupt end. I now have to pay taxes and not get anything back… I actually have to pay for all that crap I voted for… I’ve made a huge mistake.

I just felt the tiniest little twinge of hope, before the doom returned and crushed it to death. I think I need about 5 million things like the above before the doom will recede...

Chernobyl has been a boon for wildlife...

Chernobyl has been a boon for wildlife ... including lynx...

Rodents on turntables...

Rodents on turntables... As Kate from Small Dead Animals would say:

Honey, the Internet is finished!

Out-Manned...

Out-Manned... Nic Lewis looks at Michael (“hockey stick”) Mann's newly-accepted paper, on Climate Audit (Steve McIntyre's site). In his conclusion:

I have shown that the evidence Mann claims disproves the detrended-AMO, and supports his differenced-AMO, is illusory. I have also shown that his code produces different results from those shown in his accepted paper. I have pointed out that graph lines produced by his code that would have made it much easier to spot the flaws in Mann’s evidence, although appearing in the figures in his Supplementary Information, were omitted from the figures in his main paper.

Ouch.

It's a short piece, and worth plowing through if you're interested in understanding more about the anthropogenic global warming controversy...

Democrats against free speech!

Democrats against free speech! Senator Tom Udall (D, Colorado) introduced a proposed Constitutional amendment that would limit the free speech of citizens and organizations (but not the press) as related to Federal and State elections. The proposal is full of weasel-words and opens the doors wide for Congress or state legislatures to limit the ability of (especially) organizations like the NRA or wealthy individuals to advertise about issues they care about.

It's the most un-American serious proposal I've seen from Congress in a long, long time.

I don't think this thing has a snowball's chance in hell of actually being ratified, but it's scary enough that they actually think it's a good idea to propose it!

More beautiful photos...

More beautiful photos ... from this year's Arizona Highways contest...

These guys really like old Volkswagens!

These guys really like old Volkswagens! The video shows the “rescue” of an ancient, half-buried single-cab Volkswagen pickup. My dad had one of these for our family's nursery business, complete with the “Conestoga wagon” canvas top. We drove to work on his customers' yards all over New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut in that thing. I have many fond memories that revolve around my dad and that pickup. I've no idea what happened to ours...

Good washer!

Good washer! Yesterday I discovered an unexpected little piece of intelligence on our new washer. I tossed in a load to wash and started it up, then returned an hour later to move it over to the dryer. Usually the washer is completely “off” when it completes a wash – no lights, no sound. This time there were lights on, and every 15 seconds or so an unhappy little tune played. The clothes were soaking wet, and obviously had not been rinsed or spun. Waahh! says I. My new washer is busted already?

But then I looked at the control panel more closely. A message was scrolling by on the three-character display (three characters, GE? Seriously?). It said:

H2O SUPPLY

Well, even I could figure that out. Something was wrong with the water supply. That's when it dawned on me that the washer was probably clogged with resin beads from our old malfunctioning water softener, like virtually every other plumbing fixture in the house. So I turned the supply valve off, disassembled it, and sure enough: a cubic centimeter or so of resin was plastered against the washer's inlet screen. Five minutes later, I had it cleaned and reassembled – and the washer did three loads for me without any problems.

Now I eventually would have figured out what the problem was. I think. I might even have figured it out without having the appliance repair guy out. But that little message sure saved a lot of heartache!

How did the washer know the water supply had a problem? I can think of several ways. It might have turned on only the cold water (the hot wasn't clogged), and noticed that the water level and/or weight didn't change. It might also have turned on both the hot and cold water, and noticed that the temperature was too high. Maybe it did all these things. But notice it did, and rather than continue with just hot water, it stopped the wash and told me there was a problem.

Good washer! Good washer! Have a biscuit!!

A Grace Hopper story...

A Grace Hopper story... I hadn't heard this one before. I met her in the early '70s, while I was going to Navy technical school at the Mare Island Navy base near Vallejo, California. At the time, I had no idea who she was – I just knew her as a friendly soul, passionate about computers, and very encouraging of my attempts to teach myself how to program. It was many years later that I learned she was famous...

Buckyballs: 1, outrageous government bureaucracy: 0...

Buckyballs: 1, outrageous government bureaucracy: 0... Congratulations, Mr. Zucker! Now, can we have some more Buckyballs, please?

Electric prosecutor acid test...

Electric prosecutor acid test... That's the Wall Street Journal's clever title for an excellent op-ed piece about a positive scary governmental development: selective prosecutions of corporations for behavior that was legal (and sometimes even mandated) when taken, but which is illegal now. FERC, the government agency involved, is behaving like some of the more perverse government behavior in 1984 – and is being lauded and rewarded for it. Here's an excerpt:

The larger context is the political appetite for medieval justice in U.S. finance, never mind the merits. Mr. Bay has extracted settlements in 18 of his 23 public market-manipulation cases so far and the agreements tend to invoke the ghost of Enron. But in only one case did the target admit wrongdoing.

That caught the notice of Massachusetts Democrats Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, and their exchange gives a flavor of the Bay method. In a July 2013 letter the Senators told Mr. Wellinghoff that, "We commend you for ... the largest civil penalty and settlement in FERC's history"—the $410 million Mr. Bay squeezed out of J.P. Morgan—but mused that the punishment wasn't harsh enough.

Warren and Markey are progressive heroes who seem to derive great pleasure from destroying profit-making corporations. This stance is entirely consistent with other actions they've taken – and that's the part that scares me the most...