SEARCH BLOG: FAMILY
Today... celebrating 40 years with this beautiful woman.
Can't get much better.
SEARCH BLOG: IMMIGRATION and MUSLIMS
Martin Kelly, in Scotland, often laments the ills of Muslim immigration.
Now he is really pissed.
Great Britain, which includes Scotland of course, has a history of granting political asylum without a lot of question about those who request it. If a government is after someone, the government must be evil. Well, maybe some of those seeking asylum should have been granted an insane asylum... given the way they treat their hosts.
No, it has to be that Great Britain (and the U.S.?) are evil because they did not convert to extremist Islam before granting asylum to these great believers.
(sigh)
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SEARCH BLOG: FAMILY
This is going to be a marathon.
We've completed the first two weeks with two birthdays and one anniversary. My mother is off to Wisconsin for 11 days while my mother-in-law and niece are here for the next three weeks.
We still have 2 anniversaries and a birthday to go. Then my mother will return for a few more days before heading home.
My wife has promised me all of the golf, beer, and Xanax that I want as long as I keep smiling.
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SEARCH BLOG: FEDERAL RESERVE
Recently, I wrote that stock market concerns about an increase in interest rates by the Federal Reserve were irrational because the Fed would have to be acting irrationally, given current economic conditions, to raise interest rates.
The Fed did not act irrationally... at least for now.
Oh, the Latin? "First, do no harm." That should be the motto of the Fed.
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SEARCH BLOG: GLOBAL WARMING
Luboš Motl has published an analysis of the claims about CO2-based runaway global warming.
As I've stated in the past, some climate analysts may use physics, but it doesn't necessarily make them physicists... or the results of their analyses fact.
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SEARCH BLOG: CHINA
Last October, I posted an exchange between Dr. Russell Nelson and myself at his blog Cafe Hayek.
While I have no problem with trade, I still have a problem with the way China conducts trade with other nations, particularly the U.S.Recently, there have been a couple examples of why trading with an unethical partner is not smart or good business.
Let's see... the importer brings in cheap, shoddy tires from China that puts U.S. workers out of jobs and endangers Americans who buy the tires... then wants the U.S. taxpayers who are already footing the bill for the out-of-work employees to help pay for the recall of the tires that put the Americans out of work and endangered other Americans.I think not!
SEARCH BLOG: FAMILY
Today is one of the several celebration days for the family over the next two weeks.
My wife just celebrated her birthday... can't reveal her age.
Mother is 90 today.
Every year she complains about how difficult the trip here is. This year she didn't complain as much because she got bumped to "business class" by Air Tran. That was a very nice thing for them to do.My brother and sister-in-law are celebrating their 25th anniversary today as well. He is considerably younger than me. It's easy to remember his anniversary, as you can imagine.
Once she is here, she has a great time and then flies off to spend some time with my sister. That's another flight, but it's pretty short so she doesn't doesn't complain as much. Then she flies back here to spend some more time with us before she flies back home.
During the entire trip, she is entertained like a queen and revels in the attention. Then she complains about the flight home, but she tells us that it's good to get in her own bed again.
And having my oldest son in from San Francisco makes it even better. Unfortunately, his wife couldn't make it so we'll have to figure out something else for the annual family picture that goes on the Christmas card. We've been doing that for 30 years and are not quite ready to give up that tradition.In a few more days, we'll celebrate our 40th and one of our sons 1st. Finally, when everyone is pretty much partied out, we have the 4th of July celebration followed by my birthday.
SEARCH BLOG: ECONOMY
I recall when the tech stocks were booming, especially those vaporware and internet stocks. I tried and tried to see the value, but couldn't find it. My wife was convinced that we were missing the proverbial boat, so she took a little of her own investments and plunged into an investment that at least had some possibilities... one of those if-come deals.
Well, the tech stocks tanked and so did her small investment. She eventually got about half of her money back, but it was a lesson that most of us eventually get handed to us. When things are just too good to be true... they aren't.
Now we read that the housing market, fueled by cheap and undersecured mortgages, is going to take a lashing as those flaky sub-prime loans cause the once looking-good-quarterly-earnings lenders to look pretty stupid. Housing prices were going to continue to go up unabated so those risky loans would be covered no matter what... not.
Let's see, what else might be getting a little out of whack? How about a currency held up by foreign creditors? How about an economy based on importing everything? How about a social system where the rules are ignored and anybody can walk in and get the benefits of the society? How about a compensation system that pays a few people a lot for selling off the value of previously sound companies... and putting a lot of people out of work?
Just asking.
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SEARCH BLOG: AUTOMOBILES
This is the start of something interesting: the Federal Government wants to mandate 35 mpg cars and 30 mpg trucks.
Some questions:
SEARCH BLOG: GLOBAL WARMING
The Climate Science blog has an interesting discussion about the process the UN's IPCC used to select information that was used to develop it's global warming report.
There are a lot of comments about the validity and redundancy of papers either used or not used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)... a United Nations creation.
While the discussion is focused on the scientific merits of the IPCC process in choosing or refusing source documents, my comment was:
The question at hand is why the UN, a political organization of Byzantine nature, should be trusted to have a political process that should be trusted regarding scientific investigation?
Dr. Pielke asks a rational, scientist’s question as to why peer-reviewed studies that contradict the UN’s IPCC positions are ignored.
Is that kind of like asking the Pope why he ignores positions that contradict church orthodoxy?
Perhaps because they highlight an inconvenient truth? (sorry)
SEARCH BLOG: FAMILY
The next week or so will be pretty hectic around her with 3 anniversaries, 3 birthdays, 2 grandmothers, and visitors who require feeding and entertainment.
So the posts will be a little sparser. Tomorrow: the first birthday.
Happy summer solstice.
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SEARCH BLOG: MIDDLE EAST
Last century, the comedy team of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello performed this routine'
It reminds me an awful lot about the Middle East with the Shia and Sunni and Hamas and Fatah and Hezbolla....
While well intentioned, the idea of a melting pot democracy like the U.S. existing in the Middle East just does not seem possible. Last year when Robert Reich suggest that Iraq be partitioned like Yugoslavia, I wasn't much of a supporter of the idea. But what is going on in the Middle East is 3,000 year old tribalism that is not ready for the 21st century.
Perhaps the time has come. All of you al-so-and-sos go find your own sandbox and play in it and don't come out. Maybe then we'll know who's on first.
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SEARCH BLOG: POLITICS
The U.S. presidential candidates are beginning to take up more of the news.
My take: right now there is a lot of party posturing, but little that appeals to me personally.
Why? Because there is too much focus on "fluff" and "bluff" and not enough about what this nation needs to address. What are the issues?
Middle East - ostensibly about fighting terrorists, but more about ensuring the world's flow of oil is not disrupted. If we let Iraq fall into chaos or under the thumb of Iran, then it is an easy next step for Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to follow. The U.S. could adapt.
My sense is that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans would let the Middle East fall under the thumb of an unfriendly Iran.
Total Imports of Petroleum (Top 15 Countries)
(Thousand Barrels per Day)Country Apr-07 Mar-07 YTD 2007 Apr-06 Jan - Apr 2006 CANADA 2,475 2,305 2,424 2,238 2,266 MEXICO 1,572 1,749 1,601 1,750 1,805 SAUDI ARABIA 1,485 1,244 1,378 1,595 1,443 VENEZUELA 1,412 1,285 1,311 1,393 1,485 NIGERIA 948 1,346 1,135 1,098 1,211 ALGERIA 798 727 718 543 528 IRAQ 562 523 488 531 498 RUSSIA 547 455 400 218 239 ANGOLA 526 708 571 419 463 UNITED KINGDOM 386 292 285 315 252 VIRGIN ISLANDS 322 349 353 239 283 BRAZIL 246 234 222 169 167 NORWAY 198 164 150 206 205 KOREA, SOUTH 184 164 136 106 65 ECUADOR 159 191 202 319 295
It would be tough with 20% of our imports from Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Kuwait, but the U.S. would work out the problems. It certainly would cause a deep recession for awhile, but we would recover.
It seems these days that more money is made from manipulation than manufacturing. [hedge funds?]I'm interested to hear more.
SEARCH BLOG: IRAQ
Just in case you didn't see this... you should.
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SEARCH BLOG: ISLAM
All religions have one central element: belief. No matter what the faith, the essence it that there must be belief in the tenets.
When one looks critically at religion... all religion... one is forced to conclude that most faiths require suspension of disbelief. That is to say that your senses and your experiences tell you one thing and your faith requires you to believe another.
Perhaps that is why the Western world... where people have largely compartmentalized their world views into the scientific/rational and the religious/belief to avoid obvious conflicts... has such great difficulty dealing with the Islamists belief-based approach to life.
In the West, we accept uncertainty even though religion preaches certainty. The Islamist who believes killing and suicide (martyrdom) is an essential part of his religion lives with certainty only.
The difference between the concept of 'knowing' and the concept of 'being certain' isn't of any great importance at all, except where "I know" is meant to mean: I can't be wrong.Of course, that doesn't mean the leaders of organizations like al Qaeda and Hamas actually believe in committing suicide for their cause. They are satisfied using dumb schmucks who do.Ludwig Wittgenstein[source]
SEARCH BLOG: GLOBAL WARMING
The other day, I wrote about the strange difference between the reported temperatures for this locality and the temperatures I recorded.
Today... absolutely no difference.
No difference.... Could be because it is a fairly cloudy (despite what the little picture shows) and windy eliminating whatever factors caused the monitoring station to be higher the other day.
Of course, another report shows this...
That's bound to be a record... you think?
UPDATE
At slightly after 6 p.m., the variance between my thermometer and two reporting stations is 5 degrees (89 on my porch versus 94). This from a monitoring site at another subdivision reported by Wunderground....
Now, if two sites that are residential are 5 degrees less than two other nearby sites, one can only guess that the reason is factors surrounding the two higher temperature sites ... like asphalt and metals surfaces and traffic.
This continues to raise questions about the quality control at weather monitoring stations.
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SEARCH BLOG: HEALTH CARE
My mother arrived from Florida yesterday. She is here to celebrate here 90th birthday along with several other birthdays and anniversaries in our family that fall within a 2-week span.
Had she been born a mere 90 years earlier, she likely would have not survived beyond 50.
She caught a mild case of tuberculosis working in a factory during WWII (the common variety of 70 years ago when TB patients were housed in "sanitariums" and forced to stay in bed before the 1st generation antibiotics was available...before the advent of HIV/AIDS whose sufferers can't be "stigmatized" with forced care so they can't spread the disease). She spent a year in bed recovering. The year after she recovered, antibiotics were developed to quickly treat that less virulent version.She is a walking, driving, jet-setting example of the effectiveness of our health care system.
Since then she has survived, cancer, cataracts, and artery-clogging cholesterol. She also has arthritis, but that is also under control.
Unfortunately, there are many from all economic strata that will spend a few hundred dollars on an iPod or fashionable clothes before they invest in their health. Sure there are some who simply cannot afford to get an annual physical... even a cursory one. But that's a very small percentage of the total population.
For the vast majority of Americans, if we feel healthy, then we don't think about the possibility that some problem could be lurking within. It's only when the problem becomes obvious or serious that we take action. That's human nature. But it is also the reason that so many people die before they reach 90 years.
We invest in stocks, bonds, real estate, education, cars, jewelry, music and comic book collections, and everything else imaginable.Somehow, too many of us fail to invest in our health and the time above ground that it confers.
I'm fortunate to be spending this day with two of my three sons. My oldest son lives in California and can't be here today, but will be here next week.
Of all my experiences and accomplishments, the best are and always will be raising these three fine young men who make this world a better place. They are the finest gifts for which I could have hoped.
Were it so that all men could say the same.
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SEARCH BLOG: GLOBAL WARMING
Recently, I posted information regarding a grass-roots effort started by Anthony Watts who started examining the locations of the weather monitoring stations that record official temperatures. This effort first came to my attention when Dr. Roger Pielke, Sr. at Climate Science posted it to his site.
Since then, the attention to the condition of these monitoring stations has grown. I happened to be working on my porch the other evening when I noticed a significant discrepancy between the reported temperature and that being measured by the thermometer on my porch. After sunset the variance became much smaller. I speculated that there may be conditions around the local reporting sites that overstated the temperatures... possibly the Urban Heat Island effect. If the reporting sites are situated where the surroundings can absorb or reflect heat, the stations are likely to exaggerate the actual heat in the air.
For example, right now (10:30 am) the reported temperature is 73 degrees and my porch thermometer reads 72 degrees. I'll concede that it may be the inaccuracy of my thermometer. As the day proceeds, however, the variance increases.
Note this chart from Climate Audit:
The horizontal axis is in minutes from midnight (took me a few minutes to figure that out). This plots the difference in temperature readings just varying the coatings on the weather station. It does not demonstrate the effect of locating the station above asphalt or next to buildings or parked vehicles.
I can't really explain why air temperatures (black line) are higher in the pre-dawn and post-sunset hours than the stations. Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit may be able to shed light on that. You may want to go to the link above the chart to read the many comments regarding this issue.My own observations parallel Steve's in that pre-dawn and post-sunset hour readings on the porch are higher than the reporting station. That may be due to some heat trapped by the house radiated out to the porch.
The thermometer is located just to the left of this picture's edge and at the top of the screen. Therefore, the readings are always in the shade and essentially open-air. This, it seems to me, represents a "true" temperature reading for the location.The point of all of this is that with weather data recording and real estate, the important factor seems to be... location, location, location.
If, as Anthony Watts' effort shows, weather monitoring stations are poorly located and giving exaggerated heat readings due to Urban Heat Island effects, then the whole contention of recent global warming (corresponding to expansion of Urban Heat Islands around weather stations) is brought into serious question... especially when recent data is compared to data many decades ago that were captured under conditions closer to that of my porch...
SEARCH BLOG: INJUSTICE
It looks as if Scooter Libby will go to jail awaiting his appeal effort.
This is a man who worked night and day after 9/11 to be sure that everyone was focused and doing their jobs to protect our country.
Memory is short in Washington, D.C. President Bush is obviously too busy trying to get illegal aliens pardoned to fix this travesty of "justice." Obviously, the Scooter Libby situation is not one that falls under the "law of convenience."
Just one more reason for the next Republican candidate for president to distance himself from this administration. Apparently, this is not lost on Fred Thompson.Read what The New Republic says.
The Federal Reserve sees no need to cut interest rates in the light of adverse recent economic data, Ben Bernanke said on Wednesday.
The Fed chairman said ”to date, the incoming data have supported the view that the current stance of policy is likely to foster sustainable economic growth and a gradual ebbing in core inflation”.July 21, 2007 My guess is that if there is an interest rate change, a cut is more likely than an increase. The key variables to be watching at this point are real estate prices and the inventory of unsold homes.
"Should the elevated turbulence persist, it would increase the possibility of further tightening in financial conditions for households and businesses," he said.December 11, 2007 Somehow the Fed misses the obvious."Uncertainties about the economic outlook are unusually high right now," he said. "These uncertainties require flexible and pragmatic policymaking -- nimble is the adjective I used a few weeks ago."
http://www.reuters.com/
December 13, 2007 [from The Christian Science Monitor]
[Image from: CNNMoney.com]
"The odds of a recession are now above 50 percent," says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com. "We are right on the edge of a recession in part because of the Fed's reluctance to reduce interest rates more aggressively." [see my comments of September 11]January 7, 2008 The real problem now is that consumers can't rescue the economy and manufacturing, which is already weakening, will continue to weaken. We've gutted the forces that could avoid a downturn. The question is not whether there will be a recession, but can it be dampened sufficiently so that it is very short.
“The question is not whether we will have a recession, but how deep and prolonged it will be,” said David Rosenberg, the chief North American economist at Merrill Lynch. “Even if the Fed’s moves are going to work, it will not show up until the later part of 2008 or 2009.”January 17, 2008 A few days ago, Anna Schwartz, nonagenarian economist, implicated the Federal Reserve as the cause of the present lending crisis [from the Telegraph - UK]:
The high priestess of US monetarism - a revered figure at the Fed - says the central bank is itself the chief cause of the credit bubble, and now seems stunned as the consequences of its own actions engulf the financial system. "The new group at the Fed is not equal to the problem that faces it," she says, daring to utter a thought that fellow critics mostly utter sotto voce.January 22, 2008 The cut has become infected and a limb is in danger. Ben Bernanke is panicking and the Fed has its emergency triage team cutting rates... this time by 3/4%. ...
Individuals and businesses need stability in their financial cost structures so that they can plan effectively and keep their ships afloat. Wildly fluctuating rates... regardless of what the absolute levels are... create problems. Either too much spending or too much fear. It's just not that difficult to comprehend. Why has it been so difficult for the Fed?
Current Activity
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| | "There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty." - John Adams"An enlightened citizenry is indispensable for the proper functioning of a republic. Self-government is not possible unless the citizens are educated sufficiently to enable them to exercise oversight." - Thomas Jefferson
As of Sept. 15, the current solar minimum ranks third all-time in the amount of spotless days with 717 since 2004. There have been 206 spotless days in 2009, which is 14th all-time. But there are still more than 100 days left in the year, and Perry expects that number to climb. Perry, who studies sunspots and solar activity in his spare time, received an undergraduate degree in physics at Kansas State University and a Ph.D in physics and astronomy at The University of Kansas. He also has spent time as a meteorologist.
From Icecap
