Let's drive down to the pier to see if the hurricane has flooded it

Let's drive down to the pier to see if the hurricane has damaged or flooded it. What could possibly go wrong? Oh, you want to drive back, like not get your van stuck in the water?

News Observer (NC) with photo of driver running to escape. She didn't earn the Darwin award, but there must be an award for this level of stupidity.

Too many lawyers - pay the burglar

The burglar is shot, so the burglary victims have to pay $300,000. We have too many lawyers in this country.

Colorado Springs Gazette:

An El Paso County jury on Friday awarded nearly $300,000 to the daughter of a burglar who was fatally shot in 2009 while breaking into an auto lot.

Parents of the victim, Robert Johnson Fox, embraced their attorneys after a judge announced the jury’s verdict, capping a two-week-long civil trial in which business owner Jovan Milanovic and two relatives were painted as vigilantes...

Statistician Meier saved millions of lives

Paul Meier was the one who insisted that fully (as much as possible) test on randomized groups of patients in testing drugs. Everyone else thought it unnecessary because the new drugs were obviously better. What an assumption.

Significance Mag

Today it is standard that such drugs and treatments are tested by a randomised clinical trial. Some patients are given the new treatment, some are given the old; and the decision as to who gets which treatment is made randomly. That tells us whether the new treatment is better than the old one or not. It is also the only real way of finding out. The randomisation part of it is key; without that, it can give unreliable results.

Yet in the 1950s the usual technique was to give a new treatment to the patients whom it was thought would most benefit from it. It frequently happened that those were the patients whose chances of recovery were the best in any case, under the existing treatments as well as the new one. The result was all too often that new treatments were thought to be better than old ones but in fact were not.

‘When I said “randomize” in breast cancer trials I was looked at with amazement by my clinical colleagues’ said Meier in an interview in 2004. ‘ “Randomize? We know this treatment is better than that one” they said. I said “Not really…” ’ That drugs are now rigorously tested, and that those tests give good and unbiased evidence for or against their effectiveness, is in very large part due to Meier.

Krugman proposes false space alien invasion threat

Update at bottom. Prof. Paul Krugman has the answer: if only there were a threat of an invasion by space aliens, we could our economy moving by taxing and borrowing to prepare for the invasion. And it doesn't matter if the warning is false: the spending will cause growth even if wasted. Harvard Prof. Kenneth Rogoff is on the same page.

Just a problem or two. It's a waste of money and there are opportunity costs of what else could have been done. How would we us all that "infrastructure"? It would be a waste of the money spent. And that money could have been spent in productive ways, such as not taking it as taxes, but allowing the people who would pay the taxes to decide how they can best use it = on home improvements, on education for themselves or for their kids, on... whatever is best for them!

Krugman is the star of the "I have a great idea: let's just waste money" crowd.

From Ed Morrissey at HotAir



Update:

NASA too! Global warming will demonstrate to extraterrestrials that we are killing ourselves off. And this will embolden them... Oh! We now know how to save ourselves. Al Gore! Guardian UK

Shawn Domagal-Goldman of Nasa's Planetary Science Division and his colleagues compiled a list of plausible outcomes that could unfold in the aftermath of a close encounter, to help humanity "prepare for actual contact".

In their report, Would Contact with Extraterrestrials Benefit or Harm Humanity? A Scenario Analysis, the researchers divide alien contacts into three broad categories: beneficial, neutral or harmful.

Go to the source... Well, I wouldn't waste my time.

Warm Beach has no beach

We just spent four great days at Warm Beach Conference Center just south of Stanwood - for the twevlth-straight year. It's a great location and a great facility. But it has no beach! There is a long, skinny arm of Port Susan, which is salt water. It has some fresh flow, but is dominated by salt water. There is canoeing when there is a high tide at during afternoon hours, but not this year.

I like to walk/hike down the 100-foot bluff then out into the delta. Along a dike past the arm I just described and farm lands. Most years I see bald eagles and geese - snow geese in winter and Canadians year-round.

It's a great feeling. There is open space/sky all around. A few birds singing. Actually I was surprised I didn't see more of them - one bald eagle and one great blue heron (I was too far from salt water for them) in two days.

Beach? The village of Warm Beach has a tiny street-end beach. You can tell you are getting close to it when you see the "no parking" signs. It is just the street-end wide - like 80 feet - and has clearly marked private property on both sides.


Photo: Apparent new flood control structure and vegetation in delta of Stillaguamish River.

La Route des Phares - lighthouses in Quebec

Quebec has major maritime geography and culture along the St. Lawrence River and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, which is the salt water body protected by Newfoundland island and the north part of Nova Scotia. And there are a lot of lighthouses.

Sue Frause made a 1,000-mile trip along the coasts and islands to see the many phares, that is, lighthouses. She had photos at her blog Closet Canuck blog. And a newspaper article: Dedham, Mass., Daily News Transcript

Quebec's light house site which is in French. Welcome! Canada is bilingual except in the French areas. Maritime Quebec in English.

And for Madeline: The very remote Iles de la Madeleine.

Photo by Sue Frause. Click to enlarge.

Tax cheat Geithner should sell organic vegetables

Sec. of Treasury Timothy Geithner will do less damage in another - any other - line of work. Arnold Ahlert at Canada Free Press reports on an expose of organic food.

Comedians Penn and Teller have a show call “Bulls**t!” which runs every so often on the Showtime cable network. The purpose of the show is to expose fraudulent ideas or thinking in an amusing way. The one I watched was about organic vegetables and whether or not they were any better than non-organic ones. The show, using both anecdotes and scientific evidence demonstrated pretty convincingly that they’re not. But the anecdotes revealed something profound about the way people think—or more accurately how some people allow feelings to completely over-ride reason.

... But all of the science paled in entertainment value to the taste test segments of the show. That’s the part where the dedicated “save the earth” crowd was asked to choose between two plates of vegetables or fruit and tell the presenter which one was organic. Time after time, people convinced organic foods were better, chose non-organic foods as their preferred choice in terms of looks and more importantly taste, by an 80-90 percent margin. Yet when asked by the presenter if this new information would cause them to re-consider their buying habits, virtually every one them said they would continue to buy organic products.

But it gets even better. In one hilarious segment, the presenter cut a banana in half, told people one half was organic and asked people which half tasted better.

One woman who claimed her entire diet consisted of raw fruit and vegetables, was especially effusive regarding how much better the organic half of the banana tasted. When the truth was revealed, the tester asked the woman if she still thought organic food was superior. She answered yes—and somewhat belatedly admitted such feelings might be “psychological.” In other words, facts be damned, I just like feeling good about what I believe in.

See BullSh** on Showtime

Japan street camouflage

Can you camouflage yourself on the street? See two examples. You might need it, so get ready now.

Just Cool Pics site

His crossword puzzles published in NY Times at age 14

Whoa! This kid is just 14 and a crossword puzzle he created was published in the NY Times June 16, 2011.

NWCN

EDMONDS, Wash. -- An Edmonds teen became so good at crossword puzzles, he decided to build them himself. It landed him in the New York Times at just 14-years-old.

On the outside, David Steinberg looks like any teen, but inside, there are many words to describe him.

"I've always loved words," says Steinberg. "I use to play Scrabble a lot."

His parents, both English majors, no longer play with him.

"We never win, never win anymore," says his mother, Karen Steinberg. "It's just sad!"

David started doing crosswords at the age of 12.

"I guess I was getting bored of all the same puzzles all the time," he says.

Soon he started making his own crosswords.

"Then I was hooked," he says.

Just as he was finishing 8th grade at Lakeside School, David got to see the fruits of his labor in black and white. Not just any newspaper, but the New York Times, June 16, 2011 edition.

"The New York Times is not only the most well-known, kind of the cream of the crop, but the themes are the most unusual and creative," David says.

Obama proposed cutting Social Security, not Republicans

Tell the truth: It was President Obama who proposed cutting Social Security in the budget/debt deal, not the Republicans. So says prominent Democrat Representative John Conyers.

CNS News

"Now, whether they still made it wisely or they still stick to it remains to be seen but I say we’ve got to educate the American people at the same time that we educate the president of the United States because the Republicans, the Speaker Boehner or Majority Leader Cantor did not call for Social Security cuts in the budget deal – the president of the United States called for that and my response to him is to mass thousands of people in front of the White House to protest this."

ObamaCare taxes are causing loss of American jobs

ObamaCare includes many taxes - many. Today one of those is costing American jobs.

Boston Scientific, the maker of medical stents for clogged arteries, is cutting 1200 jobs - Boston.com

When ObamaCare passed people expected the tax on medical devices to impede production and jobs. Wall Street Journal - Today we see evidence.

Adults work on solution while children play games

While the adults are working on a solution....

I don't like how the current plan by Speaker John Boehner puts all the spending cuts in the future, but it's the best plan that has a chance. Thomas Sowell agrees in IBD...

The children mess around:
What did the people of Minnesota expect when they allowed Al Franken into the US Senate? They expected nastiness and dumb antics. What else? So we all suffer. Distinguished Senator Franken held up a sign "Welcome Terrorists" in the US Senate yesterday, July 27, as covered by CSPAN-2 - Pajamas Media

Senator Patty has also been doing empty gestures - name calling in her case.

Kelsey Excelsior Mercury Printer

Kelsey Co. Excelsior Mercury 3x5 hand-powered printer

Information about and parts for Kelsey printers

The networks hide their polls that oppose increased debt

The networks continuously talk about their poll results. But this week they are very selective: they are not telling that their own polls show favor for the Republican positions:

• A CBS poll showed that 49% of the public opposes raising the debt ceiling. [Link corrected]
• CNN polling (pdf) finds 66% of Americans support the House GOP's 'Cut, Cap and Balance' plan and that 74% support a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. (Questions 23 and 25 on the poll.)

They are tilting the discussion in favor of Obama by hiding what the public is telling them. An accident? Not likely.

A well-known radio host calls CBS and CNN and their kind the "government-controlled media." They are serving their master Obama.

Media Research Council has been exposing this shameful behavior.

Social Security is not at risk despite what Obama says

President Obama warned us that he might not pay Social Security benefits if the debt ceiling is not raised. Huffington Post

“I cannot guarantee that those [Social Security] checks go out on August 3rd if we haven’t resolved this issue. Because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it.”

But that is not true. Social Security has a trust fund that guarantees payment.

Prof. McConnell at Advancing a Free Society blog explains:

As recently explained in much more detail by legal scholars Mark Scarberry and Nancy Altman, and by the aptly-named Thomas Saving, a former public trustee of the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds, in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, reaching the debt ceiling will not affect the ability of the Social Security Administration to pay its obligations.

The Social Security trust fund holds about $2.4 trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds, which its trustees are legally entitled to redeem whenever Social Security is running a current account deficit. Thus, if we reach the debt ceiling (which I continue to think is a remote prospect, even if less remote than it seemed a week ago), this is what will happen. The Social Security trust fund will go to Treasury and cash in some of its securities, using the proceeds to send checks to recipients. Each dollar of debt that is redeemed will lower the outstanding public debt by a dollar. That enables the Treasury to borrow another dollar, without violating the debt ceiling. The debt ceiling is not a prohibition on borrowing new money; it is a prohibition on increasing the total level of public indebtedness. If Social Security cashes in some of its bonds, the Treasury can borrow that same amount of money from someone else.

Why did Obama make an untrue statement on Tuesday, July 12, and again Friday, July 22, 2011? He is trying to scare seniors. Cheap trick.

ObamaCare killed job creation

ObamaCare killed job creation when it passed. "But he didn't intend to." Maybe, but he did. The rate of job creation took a dive the very month after ObamaCare passed.
Hot Air
... From the recession’s low point in January 2009 until April 2010, when Obamacare went into effect, the private sector created about 67,600 jobs a month. After the president signed PPACA into law, that number slowed to a meager 6,400 jobs a month — a more than 90 percent decrease or less than one-tenth the previous rate.
Original source: Heritage Foundation

AT&T ohhh

Unbelievably bad data service on Key Peninsula - South Puget Sound, Washington - today. Mostly none at all. Occasionally I can get some email or load a web page after 2 or 3 attempts.

Let's see how long it takes to upload these few sentences. Time now is 9:00.

[It posted at 9:07 - 7 minutes.]

Emails without graphics are small, so email worked pretty well. But nothing else. I spent 45 minutes on the phone with AT&T technical support. They tried, but it didn't help. The service was occasionally mediocre - pages loading slowly - but usually near-dead - couldn't load a web page.

Jay Inslee wrong on green predictions

Todd Myers at Red County http://www.redcounty.com/content/jay-inslees-failure-learn-his-faulty-biofuel-predictions

As part of Congressman Jay Inslee's gubernatorial announcement [recenctly], he stopped at biofuel manufacturers, citing biofuel production as part of what he hopes will be, as he put it in his book Apollo's Fire, "no less a challenge than reorienting the entire U.S. economy."

Inslee has long been an advocate of government regulations and subsidies that favor biofuels. As part of his announcement, when asked about potential future tax increases, Inslee would only say “We don’t know what the future brings.” By way of comparison, Inslee has been quite bold about his predictions regarding the future of biofuel technology. In 2008, when his book was published, he and his co-author confidently wrote:

It would be comforting to avoid the prospect of being proven wrong by the passage of time. But your authors are built of sterner stock. We refuse to take refuge in the privilege of punditry to cloak our comments in vague surmises. ... About 2011, plug-in hybrids will start to hit the roads just at the same time that meaningful amounts of cellulosic ethanol are becoming available at service stations across the country.

Here in 2011, cellulosic ethanol has not emerged as a significant alternative. ,,,

Tracy Arm bears

While the Sapphire Princess sat miles from the two Sawyer glaciers we entered the St. Nicolas, a smaller boat built and operated by Allen Marine, for the close-up view in Tracy Arm. Wow. We got 400 yards from Sawyer Glacier (to the north) and one mile from South Sawyer. Lots of harbor seals. Three black bears on the shore. One young woman guide spent the entire cruise looking through binoculars for wildlife. When she saw the first bear she jumped up and down. The other two were mother and cub. The mother was ginger color. All the crew live in Juneau - most grew up there - and some of them had never seen a ginger-color black bear. The bears were on the sloping intertidal land feeding on seaweed and/or mussels. And they stayed around, so everyone got a good view - through binoculars; we stayed two hundred yards off shore.

We saw Humpback whales out where the huge ship also went. Great show.

In Juneau I took the budget bus-only tour to Mendenhall Glacier and hiked to Nugget Falls which has massive flow. 

On our previous Alaska cruise we had a local guide in Juneau, but our friend Joanne retired and moved to Washington where her grandchildren are. The Alaska State Museum didn't stay open for our late arrival.

Photos: Sapphire Princess. "Small" St. Nicholas photographed from deck 14 of Sapphire Princess, off for a closer view. My wife in white and I in green are the closest people on the right railing on the top deck. Bears coming. Click to enlarge.

Rain and Sun in Ketchikan

We are in Ketchikan, Alaska on a cruise. Sunny leaving Seattle Sunday. Rainy along Vancouver Island Monday. Rain and a touch of sun in the "Salmon Capital." Also the rain capital - 160 inches per year.

[My Iphone posts are short. The software works OK, but typing is difficult.]

Additional: We did an unusual shore excursion. We went snorkeling. The insulation for cold water is cumbersome - wet suit with hood, booties and gloves. And to be able to dive at all you need a weight belt to overcome the flotation of all that insulation. The viewing was not very good because we had only a few minuts of sun. But the water was clear and there was plenty of interesting sea life. Several starfish - small five pointers and large 20 pointers. Two or three varieties of sea urchins. Kelp crabs. I forgot to ask - a pink body the size of an apricot on a one-inch stalk with small white spines. And the guides dove and brought up a sea cucumber. The small fish were too fleeting and dull in color to make note of. I think their business is Snorkel Alaska. Not cheap, but I recommend any swimmer to go snorkeling in Alaska.