Posts from — July 2009

From the ABC a bit of news from Germany: Man fixing airbed blows up apartment.

This is why they have “Use in a well ventilated area” on the can – the fumes can blow-up your house.

In the US we blow-up houses and apartments by using insect foggers in Galveston and Sacramento. Actually it is more common than you might think.

More foggers does not equal a better job, it equals a higher concentration of the propane gas that is the propellant in insect foggers. They aren’t kidding when they tell you to extinguish pilot lights and unplug the refrigerator and air conditioner. Propane is heavier than air and requires more effort to ventilate an area than the previous propellants used.

“That’s the way it is” – he said it and most of the United States believed it.

The story from the CBS Evening News (obviously):

Walter Cronkite, who personified television journalism for more than a generation as anchor and managing editor of the “CBS Evening News,” has died Friday night in his New York home following a long illness, surrounded by family. He was 92.

Known for his steady and straightforward delivery, his trim moustache, and his iconic sign-off line -“That’s the way it is” – Cronkite dominated the television news industry during one of the most volatile periods of American history. He broke the news of the Kennedy assassination, reported extensively on Vietnam and Civil Rights and Watergate, and seemed to be the very embodiment of TV journalism.
…

Walter Leland Cronkite was born in St. Joseph, Missouri on November 4, 1916, the only child of a dentist father and homemaker mother. When he was still young, his family moved to Texas. One day, he read an article in “Boys Life” magazine about the adventures of reporters working around the world – and young Cronkite was hooked. He began working on his high school newspaper and yearbook and, in 1933, he entered the University of Texas at Austin to study political science, economic and journalism. He never graduated. He took a part time job at the Houston Post, left college to do what he loved: report.

He told the truth as he saw it, and became the most trusted man in the United States. The other networks had news shows, but CBS had the news. The network news has been going downhill since he left.

Heinrich Haussler of Germany took the stage and the red numbers with some impressive hustle on a day filled with changes and rain.

Update: Levi Leipheimer of the US didn’t start the stage; he had been running in fourth place overall. [I’ve learned that he broke his wrist in a minor crash at the end of stage 12.]

Franco Pellizotti took back the polka dot jersey from Egoi Martinez, and Thor Hushovd retrieved the green from Mark Cavendish.

1. Rinaldo Nocentini (I/AG2R) 53:30:30 [yellow jersey]
2. Alberto Contador (E/Astana) +:06
3. Lance Armstrong (US/Astana) +:08
4. Bradley Wiggins (GB/Garmin) +:46
5. Andréas Klöden (D/Astana) +:54
6. Tony Martin (D/Team Columbia) +01:00 [white jersey]
7. Christian Vande Velde (US/Garmin) +01:24
8. Andy Schleck (LUX/Saxo Bank) +01:49
9. Vincenzo Nibali (I/Liquigas) +01:54
10. Luis-Leon Sanchez (E/Caisse) +02:16

Selected Others:

[Read more →]

Trouble and Randy

Bandit, Nicky, and Cujo

Grandpuppy Pippin

[Editor: Staff to tuxedo cats and wrangler of chihuahuas. Randy has been waiting at the bridge since December of 2007.]

Friday Ark

And tasty if you enjoy the discomfort of your enemies.

The Pensacola News Journal reported that WEAR-TV’s owner warns of possible Ch. 11 filing

The Owner of WEAR-TV in Pensacola, Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc., has warned it may be forced to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as it struggles with continued declines in advertising spending and a hefty debt load.

Channel 3 is the oldest television station on the tip of the Panhandle and should never have been sold to media company in Maryland. They were a charter member of the emergency communications system set up to keep people informed during hurricanes, and that really requires local control.

Sinclair’s problem is the same as Clear Channel and every other media outlet – everything was mortgaged, everything was reduced to a minimum to maximize the money available to make the loan payments and still have a profit. Any downturn was a death sentence because they didn’t have any cash reserves and there was nothing left to cut except media outlets. The problem with selling individual outlets is that they need them all to cover their loan payments and the outlets are probably “underwater” on their individual loans. Without all of the debt, the outlets are probably profitable, especially if they aren’t making payments to Sinclair for dubious “programming”.

A bankruptcy judge may decide that they filed under the wrong Chapter.

The BBC has a nice little article, Weaving the way to the Moon, about building the Apollo Guidance Computer, the special purpose computer that is the ancestor of today’s fly-by-wire computer systems.

The “weaving” is concerned with the building of the magnetic core memory used in the AGC. The “cores” are actually small circular beads that have three [or more] wires passed through their center hole. You need to expand the pictures in the Wikipedia “core” article to see the lacing pattern.

The AGC used memory modules with 1024 beads, which is very time consuming to build, and the reason for hiring weavers to do the work.

From McClatchy’s new Health section¹ Health legislation might bar some from public insurance

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama and leading Democrats have stressed that people who like their employer-sponsored insurance would be able to keep it under a health care overhaul. They haven’t emphasized the flip side, however: that people who don’t like their coverage might have to keep it.

Under the main Democratic health bills that are being debated in Congress, many people with job-based insurance could find it difficult to impossible to switch to health plans on a new insurance exchange, even if those plans were cheaper or offered better coverage. The restrictions would extend to any government-run plan.

This is more of the protection scheme for the insurance mafia, to ensure they don’t have to compete, as that would lower their obscene profits.

From NPR Maryland County Health Program Highlights Challenges [There’s an audio link to hear the story.]

Howard County, Md., Health Commissioner Dr. Peter Beilenson says more people have enrolled in Healthy Howard, the county’s program for the uninsured. But, he says, as many as 10 percent of those enrolled are in danger of being dropped because they cannot afford the program.

The program is for the middle class who make too much money for Medicaid, but can’t afford private insurance. About 10% of those who signed up are having problems coming up with the $50 to $85 per person per month for this program. The rates in the House bill are even higher.

1. A collaboration with Kaiser Health News funded by the Kaiser Family Foundation. It is not associated with Kaiser Permanente.

Nicki Sorensen of Denmark had a very busy day: he won the stage, took the red numbers, and moved his team, Saxo Bank, to a 34 second lead in the team standings.

1. Rinaldo Nocentini (I/AG2R) 48:27:21 [yellow jersey]
2. Alberto Contador (E/Astana) +:06
3. Lance Armstrong (US/Astana) +:08
4. Levi Leipheimer (US/Astana) +:39
5. Bradley Wiggins (GB/Garmin) +:46
6. Andréas Klöden (D/Astana) +:54
7. Tony Martin (D/Team Columbia) +01:00 [white jersey]
8. Christian Vande Velde (US/Garmin) +01:24
9. Andy Schleck (LUX/Saxo Bank) +01:49
10. Vincenzo Nibali (I/Liquigas) +01:54

Selected Others:

18. Cadel Evans (AUS/Silence) +03:07
26. Nicki Sorensen (DEN/Saxo) +04:38 [red numbers]
40. Egoi Martinez (E/Euskatel) +10:20 [polka dot jersey] 88 points
51. Nicolas Roche (IRE/AG2R) +16:45
65. David Millar (GB/Garmin) +28:18
117. Thor Hushovd (NOR/Cervelo) +1:04:32
132. Mark Cavendish (GB/Team Columbia) +1:13:54 [green jersey] 200 points
166. Kenny Robert Van Hummel (NED/Skil) +1:59:32 [red lantern]

From the BBC Cycling results and the official results sites.

Apollo 11

Commander:

Neil A. Armstrong

Pilot: Columbia Command Module

Michael Collins, Lieutenant Colonel, USAF

Pilot: Eagle Lunar Module

Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin, Jr., Colonel, USAF

Launched: 16 July 1969 UT 13:32:00 (08:32:00 CDT)

Landed on Moon: 20 July 1969 UT 20:17:40 (15:17:40 CDT)

Landing Site: Mare Tranquillitatis – Sea of Tranquility (0.67 N, 23.47 E)

Returned to Earth: 24 July 1969 UT 16:50:35 (11:50:35 CDT)

Over at Corrente Hipparchia takes a look at what the House hath wrought: HR 3200: the House Health Care Deform bill.

No matter how bad you thought this bill might be, trust me, it’s worse. This is an asystematic collection of the worst ideas associated with the concept of “health care reform”. There is nothing in this bill that will offer any real improvements for patients or doctors. There is nothing in this bill that offers any cost containment.

The process of legislation has too often been compared to the making of sausage, which is insulting to sausage makers. CMOT Dibbler has never offered for purchase anything as bad as this in his entire career.

That the House leadership announced this with great fanfare shows how totally incompetent and out of touch they are.

People can’t compete with the insurance mafia on campaign contributions even in the best of times, which this isn’t, but perhaps if the politicians see large scale changes from Democrat to independent they’ll realize that they screwed up.

Mark Cavendish takes his fourth stage win and retakes the green jersey from Thor Hushovd. Johan Van Summeren of Belgium was awarded the red numbers for the stage. The center of the top 10 did some re-ordering, but there was no break-away to shake things up. AG2R is maintaining its 3 second lead over Astana for the teams.

1. Rinaldo Nocentini (I/AG2R) 43:28:59 [yellow jersey]
2. Alberto Contador (E/Astana) +:06
3. Lance Armstrong (US/Astana) +:08
4. Levi Leipheimer (US/Astana) +:39
5. Bradley Wiggins (GB/Garmin) +:46
6. Andréas Klöden (D/Astana) +:54
7. Tony Martin (D/Team Columbia) +01:00 [white jersey]
8. Christian Vande Velde (US/Garmin) +01:24
9. Andy Schleck (LUX/Saxo Bank) +01:49
10. Vincenzo Nibali (I/Liquigas) +01:54

Selected Others:

18. Cadel Evans (AUS/Silence) +03:07
47. Egoi Martinez (E/Euskatel) +15:30 [polka dot jersey]
50. Nicolas Roche (IRE/AG2R) +16:45
65. David Millar (GB/Garmin) +28:18
109. Johan Van Summeren (BEL/Lotto) +57:49 [red numbers]
120. Thor Hushovd (NOR/Cervelo) +1:04:32
134. Mark Cavendish (GB/Team Columbia) +1:13:54 [green jersey]
170. Kenny Robert Van Hummel (NED/Skil) +1:59:32 [red lantern]

From the BBC Cycling results and the official results sites.

I saw Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) on the ‘tube lying about Sonia Sotomayor. To call what he said “shading the truth” or “spin” would require sitting on the blades of a blender, that was on a turntable, inside a tornado, enveloped by a hurricane, at the bottom of a black hole. Real, whole numbers have concrete, immutable meanings and you can’t make 5 to 4 into 9 to 0 without simply lying. When only 10 of over 1200 cases involving Constitutional rights are reviewed and 8 are reversed, Sotomayer is batting .993, not .200.

Hatch is also totally clueless about Second Amendment cases. There have only been a half dozen since the nation was founded, and before the recent Heller decision, nothing since 1936. The Supreme Court specifically limited the Heller decision to Federal areas, and did not address application to the states. Of course she delved into history, because history is all there is, and the 1936 case [US v Miller], the only case in the twentieth century, dealt with Federal law, not state law.

Look, Sotomayor would not have been my choice for Supreme Court, but she has more “time in grade and time in service” and anyone currently sitting on the Court when they were appointed. Unless she discovers her “inner liberal” after appointment, I expect dull, middle-of-the-road decisions from her, which makes her the perfect replacement for Justice Souter.

IMHO, the program that Dick “DicK” Cheney ordered the CIA not to talk about had nothing to do with CIA hit squads going after al Qaeda. It had to be something that was clearly illegal under US law, because Cheney doesn’t even consider treaties and international law as applying to him. It was probably something that he wanted to do in the US, which the CIA is clearly forbidden to do under US law. Congress wouldn’t have opposed hit squads in the aftermath of 9/11 and everyone assumes that we have always done it, just like the rest of the world does.

The National Security Act of 1947 is back in the news because of this explosion. In addition to the CIA and the Air Force as a separate branch, the law combined the Department of War and the Department of the Navy into the “National Military Establishment”, which was changed to the Department of Defense in 1949. The reason for the change was “abbreviation”.

While Thierry Hupond of France was aggressive enough to wear the red numbers, it was Mark Cavendish of Great Britain who came in first at the end of stage 10. There was minor reshuffling in the top ten, but no one new, and none of the jerseys have changed hands.

1. Rinaldo Nocentini (I/AG2R) 39:11:04 [yellow jersey]
2. Alberto Contador (E/Astana) +:06
3. Lance Armstrong (US/Astana) +:08
4. Andréas Klöden (D/Astana) +:54
5. Levi Leipheimer (US/Astana) +:54
6. Tony Martin (D/Team Columbia) +01:00 [white jersey]
7. Bradley Wiggins (GB/Garmin) +01:01
8. Christian Vande Velde (US/Garmin) +01:24
9. Andy Schleck (LUX/Saxo Bank) +01:49
10. Vincenzo Nibali (I/Liquigas) +01:54

Selected Others:

17. Cadel Evans (AUS/Silence) +03:07
48. Egoi Martinez (E/Euskatel) +15:30 [polka dot jersey]
50. Nicolas Roche (IRE/AG2R) +16:45
62. David Millar (GB/Garmin) +27:33
105. Thierry Hupond (F/Skil) +53:00 [red numbers]
121. Thor Hushovd (NOR/Cervelo) +1:04:32 [green jersey]
135. Mark Cavendish (GB/Team Columbia) +1:13:54
171. Kenny Robert Van Hummel (NED/Skil) +1:59:32 [red lantern]

From the BBC Cycling results and the official results sites.