Posts from — February 2015

Apparently for Tony Abbott who may be ‘un-Donne’ at a party meeting this coming Tuesday, according to the ABC.

The conservative coalition is very unhappy with the way Abbott is running things. As always, the conservative agenda is fine, but the leadership hasn’t presented it properly or people wouldn’t object. It doesn’t occur to the conservatives that after avoiding the worst of the global meltdown, Australia is now seeing major layoffs and a worsening economic future. In politics it is always ‘the economy, stupid!’

From the BBC: Net neutrality set to be defended by US regulator

The chairman of the US’s communications watchdog is proposing “strong” protections to ensure the principles of net neutrality are upheld.

In an article in Wired, Tom Wheeler said he intended to place new restrictions on how fixed line and mobile broadband providers handle data.

He plans to prevent the service providers from being able to create fast lanes for those willing to pay.

Verizon has indicated that it might begin legal action as a consequence.

He is talking about regulating the ‘Net as a ‘utility’, both the wired and wireless versions, which will please everyone except the telecoms and cable corporations who want to milk their networks rather than improving them.

Verizon will file law suits, because that is what they always do. They probably have more lawyers that system engineers on the payroll. They don’t want to compete, they want to maximize their profits.

While I’m not a fan of Hillary Clinton, her statement, reported on the BBC, is a breath of reality: ‘The Earth is round, the sky is blue and vaccines work’.

It’s a shame that no asked Kaci Hickox about Chris Christie’s commitment to personal liberty when it comes to medical issues.

I had the measles as a child, and it wasn’t anything I want to do again. If there had been a vaccination and my parents had withheld it, I wouldn’t have been a happy camper. You can die from the measles as well as many childhood diseases for which there are now vaccinations.

Reality is setting in for Australian conservatives as they are losing at the polls and attacking their leadership, rather than their policies.

The most widely reported story is the publication of Harper Lee’s first novel which is being called a sequel to To Kill A Mockingbird. The manuscript was only recently discovered, having been thought to be lost for half a century.

ISIS followed up on their beheading of two Japanese journalists by burning to death a captured Jordanian pilot. These are classic terror techniques introduced by the Mongol Horde in the 13^th century.

The BBC reports on the new model: Raspberry Pi 2 unveiled with faster processor and more memory.

The pricing remains the same, about $35 for the board, but it is a more powerful computer with a Cortex A7 quad-core processor operating at 800MHz vice a single-core at 700MHz, and 1 gigabyte of RAM. Instead of standard SD cards the 2 uses microSD storage. Everything else is identical to the model B+ and fits in a model B+ case.

On the software front, Microsoft is supposedly readying a version of Windows 10 for the model 2.

It’s Groundhog Day and some of the militant marmots object to being disturbed.

The CBC has a background piece on the practice of annoying small mammals on February 2^nd to check on the weather.

If they were looking for bad weather advice, instead of annoying hibernating rodents, they should just ask the current Congressional leadership. </snark>

Update: The majority of the groundhog community told the media to buzz off and invest in warm clothes because they were going back to sleep for another month or so. It was also suggested that they look at a weather map, because ‘it ain’t over, until it’s over’.

Meanwhile the latest Winter Storm Warning is in effect for the Northeast and a following system is a third of the way across the country.

February 1, 2003

Commander:
Rick Douglas Husband, Colonel, USAF

Pilot:
William C. McCool, Commander, USN

Payload Commander:
Michael P. Anderson, Lieutenant Colonel, USAF

Mission Specialist:
Kalpana Chawla, PhD
David M. Brown, MD, Captain, USN
Laurel Blair Salton Clark, MD, Captain, USN

Payload Specialist:
Ilan Ramon, Colonel, Israel Air Force

Brought to you by the Hubble, Spitzer, and Chandra instruments courtesy of NASA and JPL. Click on the picture to learn how the data from the three made this image possible. This is a supernova, Cassiopeia A, that exploded about 4 centuries ago. The resulting neutron star is the pale blue dot in the center of the image.

You may remember my mentioning a two-year-old killing his mother with the gun she had in her purse. Well, at three years a child is ready for trick shots.

From the BBC: US boy, three, shoots both parents in New Mexico

A three-year-old American boy has shot his mother and father with the same bullet after pulling a gun from her handbag, police say.

The incident took place in a motel room on Saturday afternoon in Albuquerque in the state of New Mexico.

The toddler was apparently reaching for an iPod.

The single shot hit dad in the butt and then struck mom in the arm. Again, a small caliber auto loader that was cocked and ready to fire with the safety off and dumped in a purse – that is not a sane way of carrying a firearm. This wasn’t an accident, it was a foreseeable, even probable result of reckless behavior.