Monday, April 13, 2009

License plate non-drama

It's time to renew our Arkansas license plates.

I tried to do it online the other day, but discovered that I can't because they need proof of our 2007 personal property tax payment, which doesn't exist because we moved here late in '07 and don't owe it.

Sooooo, I get to go to the Revenue Office in Jonesboro (no DMV or BMV in Arkansas) and have them call the county tax collector to confirm that we don't owe any '07 personal property tax, so I can keep our two cars and two motorcycles street legal.

This should be fun. With any luck, I'll be home by dark.

 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

Well, I misjudged that task.

I spent a grand total of 15 minutes in the State Revenue Office, largely because I came prepared with my insurance cards for each vehicle and the odometer readings for each. The total cost of renewing the registration for two cars and two bike: $66.50.

One more thing to like about Arkansas.

ESL

How would you pronounce this child's name:  
"Le-a" ???   
 
Leah??                NO 
Lee - A??            NOPE 
Lay - a??             NO 
Lei??                  Guess Again.  
  
This child attends a school in Detroit. Her mother is irate because everyone is getting her name wrong.  

It's pronounced "Ledasha." When the mother was asked about the pronunciation of the name, she said, "The dash don't be silent."  
 
SO, if you see something come across your desk like this, please remember to pronounce the dash.  
 
If they ask you why, tell them the dash don't be silent.

Happy Birthday, Doreen!

mmc2 Please join me in wishing a Happy Birthday to my friend Doreen Tracey, one of the original Mickey Mouse Club Mouseketeers.

Doreen now works at Warner Bros. and still lives in Burbank, Calif.

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Easter

It's a cool rainy Sunday afternoon and I'm chilling at the bookstore listening to John Coltrane while Maria shops next door at Kroger.
This is the kind of Sunday afternoon that's made for napping, which is what Maria and the dogs did earlier.
We did some token yard work this morning, planting some honeysuckle along the fence and raking and burning a pile of leaves and sticks near the future site of our fire pit.

Capt. Phillips rescued from pirates

seal_us_navy_seals_insignia

Like I said, Navy Seals.

The ignorance and naiveté of the media types in covering the sniper action is stunning.

They’re acting like a 25 meter shot for a trained sniper is a huge deal. As the FOX guy outside the captain’s home just pointed out, these guys can hit an apple at 1,000 yards. Making a shot like this is like a layup, he said, regardless of the pitching and rolling of the USS Bainbridge and the lifeboat.

This is, of course, not meant to diminish the importance of today’s events, just to put things into the proper perspective.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Yeah, how does Radio Shack survive?

And speaking of RadioShack, I'm reminded of this brilliant piece at TheOnion web site back on April 23, 2007:

FORT WORTH, TX—Despite having been on the job for nine months, RadioShack CEO Julian Day said Monday that he still has "no idea" how the home electronics store manages to stay open.

RadioShack CEO

"There must be some sort of business model that enables this company to make money, but I'll be damned if I know what it is," Day said. "You wouldn't think that people still buy enough strobe lights and extension cords to support an entire nationwide chain, but I guess they must, or I wouldn't have this desk to sit behind all day."

The retail outlet boasts more than 6,000 locations in the United States, and is known best for its wall-sized displays of obscure-looking analog electronics components and its notoriously desperate, high-pressure sales staff. Nevertheless, it ranks as a Fortune 500 company, with gross revenues of over $4.5 billion and fiscal quarter earnings averaging tens of millions of dollars.

"Have you even been inside of a RadioShack recently?" Day asked. "Just walking into the place makes you feel vaguely depressed and alienated. Maybe our customers are at the mall anyway and don't feel like driving to Best Buy? I suppose that's possible, but still, it's just...weird."

RadioShack

After taking over as CEO, Day ordered a comprehensive, top-down review of RadioShack's administrative operations, inventory and purchasing, suppliers, demographics, and marketing strategies. He has also diligently pored over weekly budget reports, met with investors, taken numerous conference calls with regional managers about "circulars or flyers or something," and even spent hours playing with the company's "baffling" 200-In-One electronics kit. Yet so far none of these things have helped Day understand the moribund company's apparent allure. 

"Even the name 'RadioShack'—can you imagine two less appealing words placed next to one another?" Day said. "What is that, some kind of World War II terminology? Are ham radio operators still around, even? Aren't we in the digital age?"

"Well, our customers are out there somewhere, and thank God they are," Day added.

One of Day's theories about RadioShack's continued solvency involves wedding DJs, emergency cord replacement, and off-brand wireless telephones. Another theory entails countless RadioShack gift cards that sit unredeemed in their recipients' wallets. Day has even conjectured that the store is "still coasting on" an enormous fortune made from remote-control toy cars in the mid-1970s.

RadioShack Revenues

Day admitted, however, that none of these theories seems particularly plausible.

"I once went into a RadioShack location incognito in order to gauge customer service," Day said. "It was about as inviting as a visit to the DMV. For the life of me, I couldn't see anything I wanted to buy. Finally, I figured I'd pick up some Enercell AA batteries, though truthfully they're not appreciably cheaper than the name brands."

"I know one thing," Day continued. "If Sony and JVC start including gold-tipped cable cords with their products, we're screwed."

In the cover letter to his December 2006 report to investors, "Radio Shack: Still Here In The 21st Century," Day wrote that he had no reason to believe that the coming year would not be every bit as good as years past, provided that people kept on doing things much the same way they always had.

Despite this cheerful boosterism, Day admitted that nothing has changed during his tenure and he doesn't exactly know what he can do to improve the chain.

"I'd like to capitalize on the store's strong points, but I honestly don't know what they are," Day said. "Every location is full of bizarre adapters, random chargers, and old boom boxes, and some sales guy is constantly hovering over you. It's like walking into your grandpa's basement. You always expect to see something cool, but it never delivers."

Added Day: "I may never know the answer. No matter how many times I punch the sales figures into this crappy Tandy desk calculator, it just doesn't add up."

Fun with electricity

BenjaminFranklinDiscoversElectricity

Our electricity failed at 7:10 p.m. yesterday, about the time Maria plugged in the electric skillet.

Given our prior experiences, we supposed that meant the entire neighborhood was blacked out.

So I fired up the grill to cook the Italian sausages Maria had taken out for dinner. But then I decided, "Screw this! We're going out to dinner."

We were halfway out of our little subdivision when we noticed several neighbors' homes had lights burning.

Uh-oh, that meant it was just us.

I rechecked the circuit breaker panel in the garage and confirmed none of the circuit breakers were tripped. I also noted the absence of a master circuit breaker. How odd, I thought.

Then I called the Craighead Electric Co-op outage number and reported our problem.

We phoned in a pizza order to Papa John's Pizza in Paragould and I went to pick it up, with Maria staying behind to deal with the electric utility guy.

The garage carriage lights were burning brightly when I returned about 35 minutes later. Maria said the repair guy identified the problem as a master circuit breaker that we were unaware of - situated on the outside of the house under the electric meter.

She didn't ask if there would be a charge for the service call, so I can only guess what we'll pay for that bit of information about our home's electrical system.

A short time later, I flipped on the kitchen lights and one of the recessed floodlights blew in a blue flash.

And when I restarted the computers, I discovered that the D-Link wireless router was dead.

I determined the problem was a fried power brick and resigned myself to shopping for a new wireless router today.

This morning, however, I rooted through a box of computer-related cables, wires, power bricks, and remote controls and found one that was a close match. The D-Link power brick had a + core and an output of 5.0 volts and 2.5 amps. The one I found was identical except that its output was 5.0 volts and 2.8 amps. I reasoned that .3 amps shouldn't make a big difference and, even if it fried the router, a new one isn't that expensive and a new router would be sure to give better performance for my money, since the D-Link is more than 5 years old.

So I threw the juice to it and, voila! I was back online.

Oh, and the first replacement floodlight bulb I tried in the kitchen was dead.

I'm curious to see what new electrical surprise awaits me.

My first laptop - the TRS-80 Model 100

trs80-100 This is the Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100, considered the world's first laptop computer.

It was announced in 1983 and I had one in March, 1985, when I launched the Metro North Bureau of The Indianapolis News.

The Model 100 retailed for $599 in 1983. Adjusted for inflation, that would be about $1,280 in today's dollars, so the three of us who received them to run our suburban bureaus handled them with extreme care. I remember the IT guy at The News telling me, Mike Ellis and Jerry Graf to treat them like we would a pet, don't leave them in hot cars or freezing environments.

The basic model came with 8K of RAM, but ours were increased to a whopping 24K, and an 80C85 CPU that ran at 2.4 MHz. It had RS-232 parallel ports for a bar code reader and an internal 300 baud modem. The LCD display was 40x8 characters and it ran for 16 hours on four AA batteries and also came with an external 9 volt DC power supply.

For data storage, it had a connection for an audio cassette recorder.

You could also buy an optional Disk/Video Interface that made it possible to connect a TV for a monitor and save data to a huge 5¼" floppy disk. I couldn't get the paper to spring for the D/V I, so after about a year in the bureau, I bought my own.

I remember how incredibly high-tech I felt whipping out my Model 100 in courtrooms, school board meetings, city council meetings and interviews. The reporters for the smaller local papers were positively awe-struck, equipped as they were, with pens and notebooks.

The keyboard had a nice feel to it, but it was a bit noisy, so our IT guy put little dental rubber bands under each key to muffle the sound.

Even though 24K seems like a pathetically small memory capacity, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I ran out of memory while taking notes. In those cases, I just started deleting files that I had already backed up to tape or disk to free up memory for more notes.

The Model 100 weighed 3.8 pounds.

Compare that with my new Dell Inspiron Mini 9, that has 1GB of RAM and 8GB of solid state memory, weighs in at just 2.28 pounds and cost only $250 (about $125 in 1985 dollars).

Check back in another 24 years and see how pathetic the Mini 9 looks.

Friday, April 10, 2009

Today's fortune cookie message

fortune

My amazing daughter-in-law Ruth Greenberg

ruth02 I just got an email from my son Sean with a link to the Oregon Public Broadcasting site where they have a Fabulous 7 minute 20 second feature on his wife Ruth Greenberg's amazing mosaic work.

ruth03It's very gratifying to see Ruth's work starting to get the attention and praise it deserves. She really is a pioneer in the mosaic medium.

She has pieces in private homes and public places all over the United States - everything from a Manhattan office ruth04building to a Catholic church baptistry to an rural Oregon yurt.

She does a lot of custom commission work and also produces patented decorative tiles that can withstand the heat of a fireplace firebox.

You can view the video here and click here to see her web site.

Barry and the Pirates

This was posted today over at www.americanthinker.com:

By Lance Fairchok

It is the stuff of movies, a high seas drama, where for the first time in 200 years, pirates attack an American vessel, the Maersk Alabama. In the best traditions of America's merchant seamen, its brave crew fights back and regains control of the ship. To ensure the safety of his crew from the pirates, and at great personal risk, the noble Captain offers himself as hostage. The freighter is filled with humanitarian relief for Kenya, not weapons, cars, electronics, or luxuries. Luckily, an American warship, the USS Bainbridge was nearby. It is a moment for leadership and resolve, where America asserts her might and dignity, where she takes the lead against lawless marauders, and our President stands up full of pride and righteous anger and says.... Well, what he said was, exactly, nothing.

Oh, his administration mumbled, made half-hearted condemnations, and pandered a bit. John Kerry called for hearings, Hillary Clinton voiced her "concern" and cackled uproariously about the situation during a press conference with the Moroccan Ambassador, whose country ironically was once a pirate power that seized American ships and enslaved our crews in the late 1700s. Hillary botched the details, but did decisively state: "We think the world must come together to end the scourge of piracy."

There was a measured and nuanced press conference by a State Department spokesperson, Robert Wood, as Secretary of State Clinton was otherwise engaged. "Our militaries - the U.S. military and the militaries of other countries are cooperating, trying to see what we can do to prevent these types of piracy acts from happening. But, this is going to take time. We are all working very closely to try to do what we can." He further stated: "We've been trying to provide support for the transitional government there (in Somalia); we've encouraged others to do so...but this is a question for the entire international community to deal with..."

This is what we have come to. Unilateral action, even if it is as clear cut as defending US interests against pirates, must be avoided. Murderous Jihadist terrorists get civil rights and government lawyers while US taxpayers pick up the bill. Pirates, who board US shipping and threaten American seamen, get treated like simple criminals that do not warrant so much as a mention by the President. One would have thought it was a no-brainer for the Manchurian President, a populist win-win to paint Obama as a decisive leader, a chance to inspire confidence that he was up to the challenge. It was a chance to warn aggressors, pirates or otherwise, away from international shipping. It was also a chance, now squandered, to reassure friend and foe alike that America had not lost her nerve or reneged on her exceptional role as a world leader.

But no, it's all just a distraction from the greater work of wealth redistribution, "social justice," and remaking America into the utopian vision of a narcissistic socialist academic with a nice speaking voice. No pompous speeches and meandering lectures this time, the implications of piracy on trade and sovereignty are beyond Obama.

When asked by a reporter about the Maersk Alabama during a White House event, President Obama responded to the question with: "Guys, we're talking about housing right now," translated as "don't bother me with trivialities." Obama has no clue what is required of a world leader and his advisors less so. A mere three months into its first term, the Obama administration is turning out to be just the embarrassment and bumbling disaster, we feared it would be.

I've already noticed people taking Obama stickers off their cars. They can only pad the polls so long. Pirates are easy, what's going to happen if we are attacked again, or Iran, Pakistan, or North Korea use a nuke?

Thursday, April 09, 2009

Maersk Alabama hostage situation

Two words: Navy Seals

The quest for free Wifi continues

atthemall Well, well, free Wifi at the mall. The Mall at Turtle Creek, to be specific.

I went to the Barnes & Noble Starbucks to ask about the Starbucks card that presumably gets you 2 hours of free Wifi a day at any Starbucks. But they don’t sell the Starbucks card there. Instead, they push a Barnes & Noble card that has no Wifi perks.

However, the friendly barista offered, there is free Wifi in the food court.

I figured that was way too good to be true, but I had to check it out to be sure.

Damned if there aren’t two unsecured mall wireless networks: turtle-creek-1 and turtle-creek-2.

So who needs the Barnes & Noble ambiance at $2 an hour when I can buy my coffee there and walk about 60 yards to the food court to drink it and surf for free?

There is a downside, of course. There always is. I don’t see any electrical outlets, so I’m on battery when I’m in here. Fortunately, the Mini 9 has about 4 hours of battery life.

Blowing smoke or taking me seriously?

I got this response from Books-A-Million this afternoon from my email of this morning suggesting they seize the opportunity to snatch Hastings customers here by offering free Wifi.

It reads like a stock reply, but I remain guardedly optimistic.

Thank you for your email to feedback@booksamillion.com.

I have passed your suggestion to our home office for them to review.

I hope that you will continue to provide such feedback, as it is the only way to know whether we’re succeeding or failing in meeting your expectations. If I can ever be of further assistance, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Our Customer Relations Hotline is (800) 876-4510.

Sincerely,

Ouida Johnson

Customer Relations

Doggy drama

Not our dog, not our cupcakes.

Rain, yardwork, and free Wifi

april9rainThe Weather Channel radar shows the rain has reached Jonesboro and will be here soon, so it looks like my yard work is done for the day.

I chainsawed several tree trunk segments last night and hauled them away with the lawn tractor/wagon in a couple of loads this morning.

Since we got the wagon last weekend, I've been able to make some serious progress in clearing the debris from our yard, but there is still much to do.

I also lodged email and telephone complaints with Hastings's corporate offices about the month-long free Wifi outage at their Jonesboro store.

At the same time, I fired off an email to the corporate offices of Books-A-Million, which has a bookstore and cafe a block south of Hastings, suggesting they have an opportunity to capture those of us set adrift by Hastings if they offer free Wifi. I also suggested they could make a dent in the customer base of the Starbucks at the local Barnes & Noble, since the Wifi there is free only to AT&T cellular customers and users of Starbucks cards.

That said, I don't really expect anything to change at Hastings or Books-A-Million. I've probably used up my luck for influencing businesses with the change I affected in our Weather Channel Local on the 8s listings.

But it never hurts to try.

Wednesday, April 08, 2009

They're still keeping the faith

ringopaul

Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr headlined a concert the other night at Radio City Music Hall to raise money for scholarships so at-risk people can learn Transcendental Meditation.

I know because an old TM friend, with whom I recently reconnected on Facebook, was there and waxed ecstatic about it on her Facebook page.

I know her from my TM days in Indianapolis. I learned TM on the first course ever offered in Indianapolis back in November, 1969. I threw myself into the TM program and our house was the first real TM center in Indianapolis. We hosted weekly meetings and introductory lectures and initiations on a regular basis for a couple of years until the TM movement got big enough to rent half of a duplex two doors down from us. That was the center for a few years until the movement ponied up $100,000-plus for a mansion in the 3400 block of Washington Boulevard. That was big money in those days - the mid-1970s - and it was a pretty deluxe place. There was even a carriage house out back where the sidhas did their flying program. (Go look it up. I don't feel like explaining it here.)

Anyhow, I drifted away from the TM program in the mid- to late-1980s and every now and then I run into someone from those days who is still on the TM bandwagon - like my friend who went to the concert.

I can't decide who's the fool here - me for moving on or them for keeping the faith. All I know is that by all measurements that I can think of, TM failed to live up to the promises Maharishi Mahesh Yogi made for it. He sent packs of sidhas to prop up failing dictatorships in Iran and the Philippines and promised world peace. They failed anyway.

He promised "Cosmic Consciousness" to anyone who meditated regularly for 5-7 years. I know of no one who achieved that goal in 20 years.

Those of us who took the sidhi course were led to believe that we would be able to levitate. As far as I know, nobody has ever gotten past the hopping stage.

That said, TM kept me and millions of other people drug-free, because recreational drugs and meditation are not compatible.

But I gave up the belief that it is destined to solve all of the world's problems a long time ago. The world has too many crazies and hate-filled loons who won't let that happen.

Maharishi was from the Kshatriya (warrior) caste, and he surely knew that.

And as far as raising money for TM "scholarships" goes, Maharishi always said the reason he charged for the technique was to make people value it and feel a commitment to it. If you give it away, people don't take it seriously and don't stick with it. The idea of "scholarships" seems to undercut that principle.

Monday, April 06, 2009

Why the New York Times deserves to die

I can't top this

I've been thinking about blogging something about this situation for several weeks, but Bob nails it with this rant:

More ice storm expense

cart

We stopped at Lowe’s on the way home from the Memphis Airport yesterday and bought one of these 17 cubic foot dump carts.

I spent a couple of hours in the afternoon assembling it and was pleased to find it’s even better at hauling tree debris than I had hoped.

Steve was a huge help on Saturday morning, chainsawing and helping to haul debris to the growing brush pile in front of our house. Now that it’s just Maria and me, the daunting task of clearing our yard of the Jan. 27 ice storm debris seems much more do-able now that we have the cart to pull behind the lawn tractor.

Maybe I’ll paint it John Deere green after it accumulates some scrapes and scratches.

Grandparenting

johnlisakitchen Steve and Lisa have gone home to Las Vegas and we miss them already.

This was their first trip to Arkansas, so now it’s time for us to return the favor and visit them in their new home in the West.

Considering that Lisa is only 4 years and 10 months old, she has an astonishing amount of emotional maturity and poise. She has that rare ability to step outside of herself in emotional situations and recover her equilibrium. I’ve been blessed with it, so has Steve and, happily, so has Maria.

The top photo was shot Saturday morning as I worked on the laptop in the kitchen and Lisa came in to greet me.

The bottom photo was shot Friday afternoon at the big public park on the south side of Jonesboro where we exchanged high-fives after Lisa scaled the big climbing rock in the lakeside playground.

I think I like this grandparent thing.hi5

Saturday, April 04, 2009

At O'Charley's

Coloring on the kids' menu. She rode here in the del Sol with the top off, so her hair is a little disheveled.

Friday, April 03, 2009

Lisa goes Arkansas

 lisacamo Lisa tried on a camo flotation vest at the Crowley's Ridge Nature Center yesterday.

She had a great time at the nature center.puppet

trail

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Hey, they fixed it!

weatherchannel

I sent an email to the Weather Channel back on March 17, pointing out that the regional observations list in my Local on the 8s included Blytheville and Eaker AFB.

I noted that Eaker AFB ceased to be a U.S. Air Force installation in December, 1992. It's now a civilian airport. Most of the time, it was listed as having "no report." It's also at Blytheville, which makes its data mostly irrelevant.

I got an email reply within 24 hours and a couple of days later I noticed that Eaker AFB was gone and there was a new listing for "Arkansas Intl"  for its current incarnation as Arkansas International Airport.

Thanks, Weather Channel!

Lisa arrives today!

DSC00454 My granddaughter Lisa and son Steve are coming for a four-day visit this evening.

They're arriving at the Memphis Airport, a place I've not yet been, so I have the route laid into my GPS and have studied maps of the airport parking and terminal areas, so I'm good to go.

Since the airport has free Wifi, I'll leave a little early and take my Dell Inspiron Mini 9 for entertainment.

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Why I cringe whenever I hear some moron jabbering about "man-made global warming" as if It were an established fact

Here is a lengthy, but thorough explanation, of why the notion of Anthropogenic (man-made) Global Warming (AGW) is bullshit junk science, being pushed by those who have something to gain from this imagined crisis. It's from www.americanthinker.com:

 

By Gregory Young

Mathematical Modeling is used throughout our world to help forecast the future in many arenas of life, including economics, biology, medicine, and yes, climate change.  Like all modeling, one attempts to study the past through scientific observation, accurately and unbiasedly collect the data, and then fit the data to a dynamic computer model that is meant to predict, to some degree of accuracy, some measure of tomorrow.  In this way scientists hope to discover trends that not only document the past, but could forecast the future. 

Virtually all climate models are basically mathematical models, built upon a series of mathematical equations.  Change just one equation, or the number of variables in an equation, or how they relate to one another, and the results of the model can change dramatically.  Unfortunately, unlike many other forms of modeling, climate models have yet to prove their wanted accuracy. 

For the most part, the reasons for their ongoing failure have everything to do with climate complexity.  The climate is such an extraordinarily difficult dynamic system to be approximated by mathematical equations.  There are literally thousands of components, all interacting in ways that we don't fully understand. Added to the cacophony of being terrifically circuitous, and involving reciprocating feedback loops with a multitude of leveraged factors nested within interdependent systems of energy exchange, some of these energy systems are not just confined to earth.  Therefore, in changing the profile or weightiness of just one variable, the model's ability to forecast results can shift critically, and indeed, can mistakenly and regularly portend catastrophes.

As Professor Ian Clark, Department of Sciences, University of Ottawa tells it: "If you haven't understood the climate system, if you haven't understood all the components -- the cosmic rays, the solar, the CO2, the water vapor, the clouds, and put it all together -- if you haven't got all that, then your model isn't worth anything."  As in most computer models, the adage of "junk in -- junk out" remains true for climate models.

Compounding the Problems of Climate Modeling:

In addition to the difficulties mentioned above, is the late arriving Anthropogenic (man-made) Global Warming (AGW) prejudice that has set the evolution of climate modeling back a few decades.  Previously known and accepted climate components have been summarily stripped from the equation --  such as the dominant factors involving the Sun and the importance of water vapor in the atmosphere as the dominant greenhouse gas.  This is because in the cause to acquire lucrative AGW-biased government grants, many scientists have opted to blatantly skew their climate models to amplify AGW-favoring evidence and amplify anthropogenic CO2 importance.  In this manner, they then qualify to receive funding and ensure publication. 

Describing the compounded inaccuracies of these Johnny-come-lately modelers who would rather be funded than scientifically astute, Dr. Tim Ball, a former climate scientist at the University of Winnipeg sardonically clarifies: "The analogy that I use is that my car is not running that well, so I'm going to ignore the engine (which is the sun) and I'm going to ignore the transmission (which is the water vapor) and I'm going to look at one nut on the right rear wheel (which is the Human produced CO2) ... the science is that bad!"

Dr. Balls analogy has never proved clearer than when examining the climate models used by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).  As just noted, the inaccuracy of those models cherry-picked by the IPCC revealed that the largest and most robust variables of climate change and their antecedents were intentionally dismissed and dropped from inclusion in their investigations, including the variables of solar activity, water vapor and cloud formation in the atmosphere, major ocean currents, as well as other vital components. 

If you're thinking that without due consideration of the known and most weighty variables in the climate system, the forecastable conclusions should prove to be fallacious and wrong, you would be right.  Yet, that hasn't stopped the UN's IPCC from driving the propaganda of AGW, emphasizing the wrong deductions while deliberately disregarding the bigger picture altogether.

Ironically, model worthiness and accuracy can be quickly assessed by simply plugging in yesterday's numbers and seeing if the model actually yields results that are aligned with the known history.  Yet to date, climate models have failed miserably.  Though there is hope for further improvement, there is no current climate model that can, when applied to the  documented past, accurately re-forecast the known historical record, much less portend what could be happening to the weather next week, least wise the next century.  Climate modeling has yet to rise to a level of sophistication that allows us to accurately predict the future.

Knowing the primitive state of climate modeling, it is at least irresponsible, even not maleficent, to use such flawed methods to intentionally affect global public policy-making.  It is morally reprehensible, if not criminal, to promote the panicking of dire climate consequences and extinction scenarios authored by climate models known to be verifiably defective.  This tyranny of appearance has yet to be toppled.

Further Undermining Model Accuracies:

Aside from climate models not working, how they are "applied" and "used" in order to affect public opinion offers us insight into yet another scientific infraction.  For instance, AGW studies notoriously measure "short-term trends," from which they then attempt to derive long-term forecasts.  This is tantamount to predicting whether a building should be built upon a piece of ground by analyzing the topsoil alone, while ignoring the absence of any underlying bedrock.  Real risky!

When it comes to climate change, which has been ongoing for at least 4.5 Billion years, measuring short-term trends alone, such as 10-50 years at a time, is absolutely worthless.  It's worthless because short-term trends are typically just that, "short-term."  They are quick to change.  Only in the long-term does the variation of many contiguous short-term trends gradually give way to the more important real climate changes noted in the historical records.  From the short-term view point alone, nothing is really revealed except aberrant blips reflecting common statistical variation of the data pool. 

Also, depending on what side of the short-term trend we choose to initially measure, the respective forecasts can be 180 degrees out.  For example, the last ice-age persisted until 11,400 years ago when the temperatures rose dramatically some 10 degrees Centigrade in just 2-3 years. An accurate forecast depends on what side of the apex of the trend you happen to measure (for a variation on this theme, see René Tomes: Catastrophe Theory), just as one would when trading a stock on Wall Street.

Mind you, all of the climate change that ended the last ice-age happened without man's influence, and it was still a few degrees warmer then, than it is today.  Further, no such exemplary temperature-rate-differentials are in evidence currently.  Most agree that we are on track to add approximately 1.0 degree Centigrade of warming over the next century.  Then again, recent short-term trends of cooling are now documented.  The lesson:  short-term analysis is generally unreliable to produce meaningful long-term forecasts.

Awkward for warming alarmists, long-term modeling does not reflect AGW.  Thus, most of the predictions that account for AGW are derived solely from the short-sightedness of short-term models.  Though such narrow and myopic targeting of the timeline gives little to no accurate indication as to what the long-term climate trends will be, it does allow alarmists to spin data to their own favorable conclusive ends through the finding of false-positives.  Indeed, depending on where AGWers want to start and stop measuring, the results can be so contrived to be anything they want them to be.  But the prejudice of a favored outcome, or an apparent coin-toss, should not be at the helm of climate modeling.  This is not the kind of modeling that good science makes.

Corrections to Recent Climate Modeling Undermines the AGW Cause:

Next, let's consider the ongoing corrections made to various climate models due to error in data accumulation, data fabrication and exaggeration and the discovery of outright forgery delightfully explained in this video of Professor Bob Carter of James Cook University in Australia, who demonstrated that on the basis of published studies, the IPCC modeling notions of AGW is not only undermined, but fatally torpedoed.

From Evidence of Modeling Bias to Spinning Propaganda:

Compounding the problems of inaccuracy in climate models is their subsequent and de facto publication, virtually assured if the study is favorable to AGW. Reporting in the journal Energy and Environment, Volume 19, Number 2, March 2008, Evidence for "publication Bias" Concerning Global Warming in Science and Nature by Patrick J. Michaels has found significant evidence for the AGW penchant in his survey of the two premier magazines, namely Science and Nature.  Astoundingly, he found that it's more than 99.999% probable that Climate studies' extant forecasts are biased in these two publications.  In contrast the AGW party-line believes that there is an equal probability that published findings will raise or lower extant forecasts. 

This is akin to believing the MSM is fair, objective and balanced.  Michaels rightly warns that such bias "...has considerable implications for the popular perception of global warming science, for the nature of ‘compendia' of climate change research, such as the reports of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change, and for the political process that uses those compendia as the basis for policy." 

And such bias did, does, and will continue to influence world politics.  This predicament has been vigorously exposed by Lord Monckton, who previously revealed through consummate analysis that a whole bevy of proven modeling errors yet to be have been corrected, willfully resisted, and pugnaciously ignored by the IPPC continues to this day to prejudice world opinion in favor of AGW.

Monckton specifically found that errors "via 30 equations that computer models used by the UN's climate panel (IPCC) -- [models] which were purposely pre-programmed with such overstated or falsified values for the three variables whose product is ‘climate sensitivity' (temperature increase in response to greenhouse-gas increase)  -- resulted in a 500-2000% overstatement of CO2's effect on temperature in the IPCC's latest climate assessment report, published in 2007."  

Accordingly, and in total agreement with other published opinions,  Lord Monckton stated most recently that there is an "overwhelming weight of evidence that the UN's climate panel, the IPCC, prodigiously exaggerates both the supposed causes and the imagined consequences of anthropogenic ‘global warming;' that too many of the exaggerations can be demonstrated to have been deliberate; and that the IPCC and other official sources have continued to rely even upon those exaggerations that have been definitively demonstrated in the literature to have been deliberate."

Thus, because of (1) complicit distortion and overstatement of climate related data-values, (2) repetitive denial of published corrections of exaggerated IPCC data-modeling, (3) deliberate direct and indirect fabrications of data input through falsified methods of interpolation and extrapolation, (4) willfully and overtly creating data forgeries and conclusions, and (5) other man-made errors introduced into climate warming models, from (6) faulty data collection methods from U.S. National Weather Service pedigree measuring stations to (7) the basic corruption of data analysis itself, all climate modeling to date has been woefully inaccurate, the manipulation of which has become the basis of a deliberate IPPC self-fulfilling prophecy concerning AGW. 

Nevertheless, IPCC members remain unrepentant.  They openly and truculently refuse to appropriately inculcate the corrected published data into their own conclusions because this would change their conclusions and dispel warming alarmism.  It is "priestcraft" in its darkest form.  Warming alarmists are acting as skilled magicians that can make a rabbit come out of any hat ... as long as we let them supply the hat!

The Tide is Turning:

But there is a silver lining in the clouds of despair sown by the warming alarmists.  Elsewhere, in a painstaking review of the literature accessing the scientific consensus about climate change involving 539 papers published between 2004 and 2007, Schulte and Klaus-Martin in the journal Energy and Environment, published in March 2008, found no actual evidence in any of these papers  regarding specific "catastrophic" climate change due to man.  Nada.  None.  Zero.

Additionally, from this most recent study we learn that less than 50% of the papers endorsed any notion of AGW, and only 7% did so explicitly.  This means that over half of these studies did not endorse AGW.  This is in contrast to just a few years ago when 75% of reviewed published papers between 1995-2003 suggested that the warming of the 50 years previous was likely to have been anthropogenic, or man-made.  This reversal is big news.

This study indicates that the tide is changing and the dissent from AGW markedly growing.  As AGW climate models are being continually scrutinized and vetted, there appears to be diminishing evidence witnessed en masse in the learned journals to justify the current climate-change alarm. 

Though we shall fight on, now the trick is to begin the even harder task of changing the politicians' minds ... politicians who are already salivating for, and grown used to the idea of, a lucrative carbon-tax, and the additional power they will likely inherit with it.  Science alone will not likely defeat the rapaciousness of Washington.  Any suggestions?

Dr. Gregory Young is a neuroscientist and physicist, a doctoral graduate of the University of Oxford, Oxford, England, whilst previously completing postgraduate work at King's College, University of Aberdeen, Scotland, and having taught graduate-level Statistical Analysis and Mathematical Modeling.  He currently chairs a privately funded think-tank engaged in experimental biophysics.

At the bank

marleigh I had to go to the bank this morning to order more checks.

Ordinarily, I'd just do it online, but the online site wouldn't let me make the address and phone number changes I wanted on the new batch.

The teller looked kind of familiar and then I read her nametag and realized I had photographed her for the Sun.

She was a member of Arkansas State University's A-Team, a dance squad that performs at athletic events and I got a shot of her working with some girls in a peewee dance clinic for girls in K-6th grade back on Jan. 19, 2008.

She placed the check order for me and said she remembered the photo.

His name is Jim, but we called him Bo

moa6 This is Jim Bradshaw with his BMW R??RS at the 2000 BMW MOA National Rally in Midland, Mich.

My recollection is that it's a project bike that may or may not have started out as an R100.

Jim lives in Atlanta, Ga., but he grew up a block away from me in Delphi, Ind. and graduated from Delphi High School a year after I did.

We run into each other at BMW rallies every few years - Bike Week in 1993, Midland in 2000, the BMW RA rally in Birmingham, Ala., in 2003.

I rather expect to see him at the BMW MOA National Rally this year in Johnson City, Tenn.

Happy Colorado dogs

colodogs

Don't you love seeing dogs riding in cars and trucks?

Sunday, March 29, 2009

The ShamWow Guy and the Hooker

 From thesmokinggun.com:shlomi

MARCH 27--Meet Vince Shlomi. He's probably better known to you as the ShamWow Guy, the ubiquitous television pitchman who has been phenomenally successful peddling absorbent towels and food choppers. Shlomi, 44, was arrested last month on a felony battery charge following a violent confrontation with a prostitute in his South Beach hotel room. According to an arrest affidavit, Shlomi met Sasha Harris, 26, at a Miami Beach nightclub on February 7 and subsequently retired with her to his $750 room at the lavish Setai hotel. Shlomi told cops he paid Harris about $1000 in cash after she "propositioned him for straight sex." Shlomi said that when he kissed Harris, she suddenly "bit his tongue and would not let go." Shlomi then punched Harris several times until she released his tongue. The affidavit, a copy of which you'll find here, notes that during the 4 AM fight Harris sustained facial fractures and lacerations all over her face (she is pictured here in mug shots hookersnapped following busts in 2008 and 2005). After freeing his tongue, a bleeding Shlomi ran to the Setai lobby, where security summoned cops. Harris refused to cooperate with officers, who recovered $930 from her purse. "Both parties had a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage emitting from their persons," police reported. In a brief telephone interview, Harris declined to answer TSG questions about her run-in with Shlomi, though she did say she is considering a lawsuit against the pitchman. Asked if she worked as a hooker, Harris declined comment. As seen in the below mug shot, Shlomi was also injured during the fracas and, court records show, was treated at Mount Sinai Medical Center. While Shlomi and Harris were both arrested for felony aggravated battery, prosecutors this month declined to file formal charges against the combatants. Police records list Shlomi's occupation as "Marketing," but make no mention of his affiliation with the ShamWow or the Slap Chop, both of which sell for $19.95 (plus shipping and handling)

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Road trip

paducah008

Maria, as I have mentioned often, is a quilter.

Long before we moved to Arkansas, she wanted to visit the Museum of the American Quilter's Society in Paducah, Ky.

Our present home is much closer to Paducah than we were in Indiana, but after 19 months in Arkansas, we still hadn't taken the trip.

We remedied that today.

He headed out about 9:20 a.m., stopping at Boomland for gas, lunch and fireworks.

Maria also wanted to visit Hancock's of Paducah, a king-hell fabric store, so we made that our first stop since Hancock's closes at 3 p.m. on Saturdays and the quilt museum is open until 5 p.m.

I can't remember when I've seen her so happy, giddy actually. A good fabric store does that to her.

Even I was impressed by several exhibits at the quilt museum.

We stopped at the KFC in Hayti, Mo. for dinner on the way home and wish we hadn't. The place was filthy and the food on the buffet looked like it had been there for hours. A truly nasty dining experience.

So we compensated with a stop at Mr. T's liquor store on the Missouri-Arkansas state line where we bought seven bottles of Chilean and Australian wine for $5 a pop.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Getting the Forester back in shape

subaru Our long-neglected Subaru Forester is being restored to its former glory.

Last week, it got a long-overdue head gasket replacement and while they were at it, the folks at Jim Keras Subaru in Memphis fixed a problem with the carpet in the back seat and replaced a burned-out taillight bulb.

Today, using parts I got at wholesale prices from subarupartsforyou.com, I replaced the dead clock and the broken dashboard double-cup holder.

A little Armorall on the dashboard and interior vinyl and it'll feel like a new car.

Making sense of media bias

As a career journalist, I've blogged frequently about my concerns over the way the mainstream media abandoned its last shreds of objectivity during last year's election. Here is the most cogent explanation of what has happened to the media in America from americanthinker.com:

By David G. Muller

Conservative exasperation with media bias is a tired refrain, a waste of energy. Complaints of bias start from the premise that press coverage ought to be fair and objective. But is this the premise on which today's mainstream media is based?

It's not. The premise that now guides the mainstream media is something we haven't seen before in this country - thus the never-ending consternation of conservatives at the blatant bias of the media and the nonchalance of its practitioners when caught in the act. We have seen press behavior like this before, though - not here, but in China and the Soviet Union during their classical Leninist eras.

When studying Chinese and Soviet politics back in the 1960s and 70s, I lived on a constant diet of the People's Daily, Pravda, and their companion publications. It was clear from the first day that the press in Communist China and the Soviet Union was fundamentally different from ours. It had a different purpose, a different relationship not only to the political power structure, but to the truth itself. Railing at Chinese or Soviet media bias the way that today's conservatives whine about ABC or the New York Times would have been foolish. Instead, it was necessary to understand the assumptions and objectives that underlay media that was under Leninist control. How did they see their role in society? What did they see as proper and improper practice?

There are rules about how a Leninist press works - its operational code. When reading People's Daily and Pravda with these rules in mind, the controlled press made perfect sense. What's the point here? Troublingly, these same rules fit today's American mainstream media - and the media's relationship to the Democratic Party - nearly to a T.

But you be the judge. Here are the rules, as I discerned and formulated them. "Party" here refers to the governing Communist parties of China and the USSR, in their 20th century heydays.

  • The press is part of the Party establishment, not an independent or adversarial entity. The press does not think of itself as a prisoner of the Party, resentfully forced to abandon objectivity in favor of propaganda. Rather, it sees itself as fulfilling a critically important role in supporting and expanding Party rule. Writers are not journalists in the classic Western sense, but are political activists or functionaries.
  • The Party decides what is news, what is not, what will be reported, and what will not. The press is used to convey Party positions, and politically correct thinking, to the population. Grass-roots activists read, heed, and promote everything carried in the press. The general populace barely reads it, but has no other source of information or worldview, so tends to passively accept the press's messages.
  • Articles must carry the interpretation of events that the Party wishes to convey, without regard to objective accuracy. The press evinces utter certainty of the wisdom and correctness of the Party's motivations, worldview, and policies; no differentiation - much less opposition - is allowed.
  • From time to time, the Party uses the press to agitate the populace in a motivational campaign, aimed either at accomplishing a major goal (such as the Great Leap Forward), or criticizing a domestic Party opponent or a foreign country.
  • The Party's leading individuals always receive deference, reverence, approval, even adulation. No criticism or adverse reflections on Party leaders are allowed. Senior Party figures have unrestricted access to press coverage. Investigative journalism is rare, and unthinkable if directed against Party organizations, leaders, programs, or policies.
  • Individuals opposed to Party rule are selected as targets of disapproval, usually to the point of demonization. Criticism usually extends to allegations of personal corruption, wickedness, or barbarism. Terms used to vilify Party opponents are formulaic, seeming to draw from a lexicon developed for the purpose; there is little if any verbal creativity in criticism of Party-designated targets. Critics or independent thinkers who are not demonized become non-persons, ignored in all articles related to their areas of expertise or attention.
  • Fabrication of events, quotations - even people - is permitted in furtherance of Party objectives. Historical facts, or previous Party positions, may be omitted or reshaped to fit current political requirements. The press will report no past error by the Party or its leaders, except when a leader or faction has fallen afoul of the current ruling Party group - then reporting takes the form of demonization.
  • National security topics are viewed exclusively through the prism of Party interest. Threats will be ignored if the Party is not worried about them, or if in some way they reflect badly on the Party's performance in foreign affairs. Conversely, bogus threats will be touted if doing so is in the Party's interest.
  • Independent media outlets are either forbidden, or permitted only if they address topics of no political impact.

When we look through this Leninist prism, the behavior of today's American mainstream media becomes quite comprehensible. Where conservatives see dishonesty, double standards, and deception, media practitioners see themselves as fulfilling their role in consolidating Party power in pursuit of a socialist utopia. They have fundamentally different ideas of the media's role in society.

How did this happen? Unlike the China or Soviet Union of the 1950s, there is no explicitly Leninist curriculum in the journalism schools, nor have the Democrats formally appointed political commissars on television and newspaper editorial staffs. Yet the effect is clearly apparent. There seems to be a natural, organic affinity between a political party with dictatorial ambitions and the press, and this makes formal indoctrination or routine enforcement unnecessary.

More interesting, what does this Leninist model predict for the mainstream media and its fealty to the Democratic Party? Today's media adhere closely to all the above rules except the last one: exclusivity. NBC or the New York Times may enforce ideological uniformity within their organizations, but what about independent, conservative voices like Rush Limbaugh or National Review?

Democrats have been explicit about plans to revive the Fairness Doctrine, whose implicit goal is to drive conservatives off the talk-radio airwaves. There is no reason to think that a new Fairness Doctrine would not also be festooned with prohibitions against public "hate speech," defined as anything critical of the Left's political program or personalities. Hate speech prohibitions could also be extended to the Internet, targeting conservative opinion sites and blogs. A compliant Supreme Court is only an appointment or two away.

Nor is direct government ownership of media outlets out of the question. We already have the Public Broadcasting System, and this model could be applied more broadly. In this era of government bailouts, how hard is it to imagine a national icon such as the New York Times, crippled by shrinking advertising revenues, seeking government support "in the public interest"?

David G. Muller, Jr. is a writer in Northern Virginia.

Free wifi

librarycar Hastings’s Wifi is still down, so I’m blogging from my car in the parking lot of the public library on their free Wifi.

Over and over

 apocalypse-now-wallpaper-1-1024 image image image image

I have a Facebook account that I check on every now and then.

Facebook has features that let you list your favorite or least-favorite movies, songs, places, whatever. I did the "Five Movies That You Will Watch Over and Over" and chose the ones shown above.

I picked Apocalypse Now! over the Redux version because I don't like the way the longer Redux trivializes Robert Duvall's character, the crazy air cavalry colonel. I know director Francis Ford Coppola prefers the Redux version, but I think whoever edited the original made better decisions about what to leave in and what to throw out.

Easy Rider is a cheesy, clunky period piece, but I like it anyway.

Animal House is on my list because it's not that different from my own Alpha Tau Omega Fraternity experience in the '60s.

Gettysburg is there because it's just so damned well made. Martin Sheen is not particularly believable as Robert E. Lee, but Jeff Daniels is brilliant as Joshua Chamberlain, and Sam Elliott is spectacular as John Buford. Here's a deleted scene with Elliott:

 

My first impulse was to list Saving Private Ryan as #5, but that would make the list a little heavy with war movies, so I went with one of my favorite comedies, Best in Show.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

More exploitation of a crisis

The government bailout of the floundering left-wing print media begins. Yesterday Senator Benjamin Cardin (D-MD) introduced the Newspaper Revitalization Act, which will allow obsolete newspapers to evade taxes by restructuring as "nonprofits."

This will cause the overwhelmingly left-leaning newspaper business to magically become nonpartisan:

Under this arrangement, newspapers would still be free to report on all issues, including political campaigns. But they would be prohibited from making political endorsements.

If nonprofit newspapers fail to be objective — as liberal bureaucrats define the term — they will lose their tax-exempt status and promptly collapse. Alternatively, the government can arbitrarily nationalize them, as it is aggressively proposing to do with banks and insurance companies. The infinitely deep pockets of a government that prints money with no regard for the future ought to help "level the playing field" with nonobjective — i.e., not statist — sources of information that compete on the free market by meeting public needs.

Next will come the silencing of conservative radio and political regulation of the Internet. I hope you like NPR and PBS; soon it will be the only point of view available.

But, wait, isn’t there something about the press in the Constitution?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

One week to go

It just occurred to me that my son Steve and granddaughter Lisa will arrive a week from this afternoon for a visit.

To say that I’m psyched would be a serious understatement. I haven’t seen them for nearly two years, which is an unconscionably long time.

A motorcycle trip to their place in Las Vegas is on my agenda for this year, but I’m pleased and flattered that they’re coming to us first.

Things that go clank in the night

coon

I must have been sleeping lightly about 4:15 a.m. today because I was awakened by the sound of one of our dogs’ metal food bowls being rattled around on the back porch.

I lay there in the dark thinking about it for a few minutes. It was probably just a raccoon helping himself to some leftover IAMS chunks, in which case I didn’t need to do anything.

But there was an outside chance it was a human intruder who blundered into the bowl in the dark.

Naturally, neither of the dogs in our bedroom took any notice of the sound. Pete slumbered on in his kennel and Ruthie remained an inert lump on the carpet at the foot of the bed.

So I picked up my tactical flashlight and .45, clicking the lasergrip master switch to “on,” and crept to the back door to investigate. I switched on the porch light and there, blinking in the glare, was a raccoon, a piece of dog food clutched in his hands.

By this time, Ruthie had noticed something was afoot and was sniffing excitedly at the door. She started barking excitedly and the raccoon took that as his cue and loped out the open screen door and away to safety.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Predators have Al Qaeda on the ropes

From Sunday's Los Angeles Times:

By Greg Miller
March 22, 2009
Reporting from Washington — An intense, six-month campaign of  Predator strikes in Pakistan has taken such a toll on Al Qaeda that militants have begun turning violently on one another out of confusion and distrust, U.S. intelligence and counter-terrorism officials say.predatorB
The pace of the Predator attacks has accelerated dramatically since August, when the Bush administration made a previously undisclosed decision to abandon the practice of obtaining permission from the Pakistani government before launching missiles from the unmanned aircraft.
Since Aug. 31, the CIA has carried out at least 38 Predator strikes in northwest Pakistan, compared with 10 reported attacks in 2006 and 2007 combined, in what has become the CIA's most expansive targeted killing program since the Vietnam War.
Because of its success, the Obama administration is set to continue the accelerated campaign despite civilian casualties that have fueled anti-U.S. sentiment and prompted protests from the Pakistani government.
"This last year has been a very hard year for them," a senior U.S. counter-terrorism official said of Al Qaeda militants, whose operations he tracks in northwest Pakistan. "They're losing a bunch of their better leaders. But more importantly, at this point they're wondering who's next."
U.S. intelligence officials said they see clear signs that the Predator strikes are sowing distrust within Al Qaeda. "They have started hunting down people who they think are responsible" for security breaches, the senior U.S. counter-terrorism official said, discussing intelligence assessments on condition of anonymity. "People are showing up dead or disappearing."
The counter-terrorism official and others, who also spoke anonymously, said the U.S. assessments were based in part on reports from the region provided by the Pakistani intelligence service.
The stepped-up Predator campaign has killed at least nine senior Al Qaeda leaders and dozens of lower-ranking operatives, in what U.S. officials described as the most serious disruption of the terrorist network since 2001.
Among those killed since August are Rashid Rauf, the suspected mastermind of an alleged 2006 transatlantic airliner plot; Abu Khabab Masri, who was described as the leader of Al Qaeda's chemical and biological weapons efforts; Khalid Habib, an operations chief allegedly involved in plots against the West; and Usama al-Kini, who allegedly helped orchestrate the September bombing of the Marriott Hotel in the capital, Islamabad.
Al Qaeda's founders remain elusive. U.S. spy agencies have not had reliable intelligence on the location of Osama bin Laden since he slipped across the Pakistan border seven years ago, officials said. His deputy, Ayman Zawahiri, remains at large after escaping a missile strike in 2006.
But the Predator campaign has depleted the organization's operational tier. Many of the dead are longtime loyalists who had worked alongside Bin Laden and were part of the network's hasty migration into Pakistan in 2001 after U.S.-led forces invaded neighboring Afghanistan. They are being replaced by less experienced recruits who have had little, if any, history with Bin Laden and Zawahiri.
The offensive has been aided by technological advances and an expansion of the CIA's Predator fleet. The drones take off and land at military airstrips in Pakistan, but are operated by CIA pilots in the United States. Some of the pilots -- who also pull the triggers on missiles -- are contractors hired by the agency, former officials said.
Predators were originally designed as video surveillance aircraft that could hover over a target from high altitudes. But new models are outfitted with additional intelligence gear that has enabled the CIA to confirm the identities of targets even when they are inside buildings and can't be seen through the Predator's lens.
The agency is also working more closely with U.S. special operations teams and military intelligence aircraft that hug the Pakistan border, collecting pictures and intercepting radio or cellphone signals.
Even so, officials said that the surge in strikes has less to do with expanded capabilities than with the decision to skip Pakistani approval. "We had the data all along," said a former CIA official who oversaw Predator operations in Pakistan. "Finally we took off the gloves."
The Bush administration's decision to expand the Predator program was driven by growing alarm over Al Qaeda's resurgence in Pakistan's tribal belt.
A 2006 peace agreement between Islamabad and border tribes had allowed the network to shore up its finances, resume training operatives and reestablish connections with satellite groups.
The Bush administration had been constrained by its close ties with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who argued against aggressive U.S. action. But by last summer, after a series of disrupted terrorist plots in Europe had been traced to Pakistan, there were calls for a new approach.
"At a certain point there was common recognition of the untenable nature of what was happening in the FATA," said a former senior U.S. counter-terrorism official, referring to Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas where Al Qaeda is based.
The breaking point came when Musharraf was forced to resign mid-August, officials said. Within days, President Bush had approved the new rules: Rather than requiring Pakistan's permission to order a Predator strike, the agency was allowed to shoot first.
The effect was immediate.
There were two Predator strikes on Aug. 31, and three more by the end of the week. CIA officials had suspected that their targets were being tipped by Pakistani intelligence to pending U.S. strikes; bypassing the government ended that concern.
It also eliminated delays. Former CIA officials said getting permission from Pakistani authorities could take a day or more, sometimes causing the agency to lose track of the target. The missed opportunities were costly because it often took months to assemble the intelligence necessary for a strike.
In 2006, for example, the CIA got word from Pakistani intelligence that Habib was staying at a compound in Miram Shah. A CIA officer involved said he spent weeks at a Pakistani military outpost near the compound, monitoring images from a Predator on a flat-screen device.
"We had a Predator up there for hours at a stretch, just watching, watching," the official said. The agency studied the layout of the compound, trying to determine who slept where, and scanning the surrounding roads for the arrival of Habib's truck.
"They took a shot at the compound a week after I left," the official said. "We got some bodyguards, but he was not there." It took more than two years for the agency to catch up to Habib again. He was killed in a Predator strike in South Waziristan in October.
Pakistan has repeatedly criticized the Predator campaign; the attacks are reported to have caused dozens of civilian casualties. "Drone attacks are counterproductive," said Nadeem Kiani, press attache at the Pakistan Embassy in Washington. Rather than firing missiles, Kiani said, the United States should provide intelligence to Pakistan "and we will take immediate action."
U.S. officials say that despite such complaints, the Pakistani government's opposition has been muted because the CIA has expanded its targeting to include militant groups that threaten the government in Islamabad.
The success of the Predator campaign has prompted some counter-terrorism officials to speak of a post-Al Qaeda era in which its regional affiliates -- in North Africa and elsewhere -- are all that remain after the center collapses.
"You can imagine a horizon in which Al Qaeda proper no longer exists," said Juan Zarate, former counter-terrorism advisor to Bush. "If you were to continue on this pace, and get No. 1 and No. 2, Al Qaeda is dead. You can't resuscitate that organization as we know it without its senior leadership."
How to achieve that without undermining the government in Pakistan is a key issue the Obama administration faces as it searches for a new strategy in the region. In a tour of the region, CIA Director Leon E. Panetta arrived in Islamabad Saturday for talks with Pakistani intelligence officials.
"There's a risk of driving [Al Qaeda and its allies] farther and farther into Pakistan, into cities," said Daniel Byman, a former CIA analyst and terrorism expert at Georgetown University. "There's a danger of weakening the government we want to bolster. It's already to some degree a house of cards."
In fact, the stepped-up strikes have coincided with a deterioration in security in Pakistan. Over the last six months, Taliban elements tied to Al Qaeda have carried out increasingly bold attacks, including in Islamabad, and a recent truce between the government and militants in the Swat Valley was seen by some observers as a capitulation to Islamic hard-liners.
But proponents of the strikes argue that the opportunity to cripple Al Qaeda, perhaps permanently, outweighs concerns over the strains being placed on Pakistan.
"Is this really helping when you have radical militants controlling more territory than ever before?" Zarate said. "That is a good question, but that is a different question from whether this is effective against Al Qaeda."
So far, that appears to be the prevailing view within the Obama administration. A strike in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province last Sunday was the second in four days, and the ninth this year.
Panetta, asked about the Predator attacks in a meeting with reporters last month, refused to discuss the program directly, but said, "Nothing has changed our efforts to go after terrorists, and nothing will change those efforts."

Monday, March 23, 2009

Hastings, WTF?

I drove by Hastings this afternoon to see if their Wifi is back in operation.

It isn’t.

That means it’s been down for more than two weeks. Presumably, they are still waiting for the “part” the employee mentioned to me two weeks ago today.

Wifi is hardly brain surgery. About all they would have to do is drive a few blocks to Office Depot or Office Max and buy a wireless router, bring it back and hook it up.

It appears, then, that offering Wifi to their customers is not a priority. It would appear, also, that they haven’t noticed that business in their cafe has dropped off sharply and may not ever come back to its former levels once former Hastings Wifi users get in the habit of going elsewhere for their Internet and coffee fix – somewhere like Barnes & Noble, for instance.

I would have been in their cafe at least six times in the past two weeks, buying coffee, probably renting DVDs and maybe buying a book or a CD, if the Wifi was working. As it is, I haven’t set foot in the place and don’t plan to unless and until the Wifi is back.

Gun control

laser

My definition of gun control is being able to hit your target.

And my gun control in low-light situations improved dramatically today when the UPS delivery guy dropped off my new set of Crimson Trace Lasergrips for my Colt Combat Commander .45.

I’d never removed the original Colt rubber grips and got a surprise when I found the two screws on the right side were secured to the soon-to-be jettisoned grip with a couple of bushings because the screw holes on the right side are larger than the two on the left.

This sent me scurrying into town for a set of replacement screws and bushings, which I finally found at Al’s Lock & Key for about $10.

Once I had those, everything fell into place and the process of changing grips went back to being as easy and as simple as I had originally expected.

A little tweaking with the tiny Allen wrenches for windage and elevation and the little red dot is exactly where the iron sights say the bullets will arrive.