Cold Fusion Guy

Heavy snow for Christmas?

2009-12-22T16:56:00.000-06:00

2 feet for Christmas? You better watch out

Excerpt:

A large winter storm with the potential to dump a foot or more of snow is grinding its way toward Minnesota, and its arrival is likely to mess up travel plans, complicate last-minute errands and ensure a very white Christmas.

"It's not definite yet, but it has an uncanny resemblance to the East Coast storm last Saturday," meteorologist Paul Douglas posted Monday on his Facebook page. "I want to see one to two more computer runs, but this could be the snowiest Christmas for Minnesota in 30 years."

According to a winter storm warning issued this afternoon for central and southern Minnesota and western Wisconsin, the mess is expected to begin Wednesday afternoon -- and go on and on.

"This is major," said James McQuirter, meteorologist at the Twin Cities office of the National Weather Service. "It might not get out of here until Saturday."

Douglas said in an interview that, depending on the temperature, freezing rain, sleet and/or ice could enter the picture, particularly to the east and south. Either way, "I think travel conditions Christmas Eve and Christmas Day may be pretty bad," he said, encouraging people to leave earlier on Wednesday if they have that option.

Comment: I think this would be super!

He's in the country without a passport

2009-12-19T18:47:00.000-06:00

H1N1 shot available at Atlanta airport

2009-12-16T22:07:00.001-06:00

Seen today at the Atlanta airport. H1N1 shots available (I was in the C terminal) for $ 22.

I was in a rush so I did not get one

This and that

2009-12-12T13:21:00.002-06:00

I'm in the office today tidying up before our Georgia trip tomorrow.

I managed to get locked out of my work area. I came downtown and badged into the building and then into my work area. I snapped my badge on my wool shirt and hung the shirt over a chair. I had to go up to get Kathee's "crackberry" and then bought a pop in the vending area. Went back to my work area and realized that my badge that I needed entry access was inside the secure area! I walked around and found a guard (Jasmine) and she let me in!

I managed to - the first time in months and months! - completely clean out my inbox! Hallelujah

Now leaving ... more errands before we fly out tomorrow for Georgia

Joel Spontak obituary

2009-12-11T22:53:00.002-06:00

Mr. Joel Andrew Spontak, 32

Excerpt:

Joel Andrew Spontak, age 32 of Wild Smith Road, Gainesville, passed away on Thursday, December 10, 2009 at Northeast Georgia Medical Center following a sudden illness.

Funeral services are scheduled for Monday, December 14, 2009 at 1:00 pm at St. Michael Catholic Church with interment to follow in Wauka Mountain Baptist Church Cemetery. Father Thadd Rudd will officiate. The family will receive friends on Saturday, December 12, 2009 from 6 – 8 pm and Sunday, December 13, 2009 from 2 – 4 pm and 6 – 8 pm at the funeral home.

Mr. Spontak was born February 12, 1977 in Cincinnati, Ohio to Gregory Spontak and Carole White Spontak. Joel was employed in the transportation department of Cargill and was of the Catholic Faith.

Mr. Spontak is survived by his wife, Kacey Spontak of Gainesville, sister, Katrina Spontak of Chicago, Illinois, his parents, Gregory & Carole Spontak of Loveland, Ohio, father & mother-in-law, John & Judy Kirby of Murrayville, brother-in-law, Ryan Kirby of Murrayville and extended family.

Memorial Park Funeral Home, 2030 Memorial Park Road, Gainesville, GA 30504 is in charge of arrangements

Comment: We travel to Georgia on Sunday

Federal Revenue and Spending Book of Charts

2009-12-10T16:11:00.002-06:00

2009 Federal Revenue and Spending Book of Charts

Comment: Fascinating .... flip through these charts!

Other news: My dear nephew Joel S died suddenly this morning of a brain aneurysm. He was 32 years of age and leaves a young wife. We last saw him at his wedding three years ago. Please pray for his wife, his parents, and his sister.

Got the Chumby

2009-12-09T10:25:00.003-06:00

Official site: www.chumby.com

The long awaited (I ordered it on 11/15) Chumby arrived yesterday. The set up was easy. The device is enabled and widgets installed via a web interface. I deleted some of the widgets that I didn't deem useful and added a couple of others (like Kare11 weather).

Comment: Wiki Chumby

Weather update: I estimate that we received 3-4" of snow out in Plymouth. When I opened the garage door it looked to be about 3" at the door opening. Because of the wind, it had drifted quite a bit. I estimate that we have a 7" drift across the driveway.

Our drive in was uneventful. I used the remote start to have the car warmed up a bit before we left. We left at 7:30 and arrived at work at about 8:15. Our drive home last night was about 45 minutes (15 min longer than normal).

When I get home tonight I need to plow my driveway and the neighbor's

North Korea's "money grab"

2009-12-08T16:34:00.002-06:00

North Koreans Protest Currency Issue

Excerpts:

New reports emerged Tuesday of protests and violence in North Korea as the country's authoritarian regime over the past week seized most of its citizens' money and savings via a new-currency issue.

...

One South Korea-based news report said police in a suburb of the capital city of Pyongyang on Friday shot and killed two market traders who tried to skirt the limits on the amount of old North Korean currency that could be exchanged for new currency. Another said women who work in goods and produce markets were protesting the action in defiance of authorities.

The reports suggest that North Korean officials may be experiencing more difficulty than expected in using the currency issuance to collar the expansion of private wealth in the country.

"They've tried to wind back the system, but they're potentially teaching the people that markets can't be controlled," says Shaun Cochran, head of Korea research at CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets, who published a report on North Korea's move.

Pyongyang announced Nov. 30 its decision to issue new currency and limit the amount of old currency that could be exchanged to about $40, based on unofficial exchange rates, a step that essentially scrapped all other private money.

Mr. Cochran said that the regime's money grab "could be the single most important event in defining North Korea over the next decade."

Earlier post: North Korea: "shock therapy" on currency

GMU will be to the Arabs what the &euro is to Europe

2009-12-08T16:21:00.002-06:00

Kuwait Backs Talks on Creating Gulf Monetary Union

Excerpt:

The Kuwaiti Parliament unanimously approved Tuesday a measure to join efforts to create a Gulf monetary union, but a top government official said adoption of a single currency could take as much as a decade

Kuwait is the latest member of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council to approve the project. Issuing a Gulf currency would “take a long time and could reach up to 10 years,” Sheik Mohammad al-Salem al-Sabah, the Kuwaiti foreign minister, told Parliament.

Kuwaiti lawmakers delayed the vote last month, saying they needed more time to assess the economic implications of a union.

On Tuesday, lawmakers called for another vote to take place before any possible introduction of a single currency.

Among other members of the council, Saudi Arabia has approved the plan and Bahrain is on track to ratify the project before a meeting of Gulf rulers in Kuwait next week.

Abdulrahman al-Attiyah, the council’s secretary general, has said that a third council member, Qatar, had already ratified the union plan although Qatari officials have declined to comment. Two other members of the council, the United Arab Emirates and Oman, have chosen not to join the monetary union plan.

Discussions on creating a single Gulf currency have gained momentum as the value of the dollar has declined.

Comment: &euro = Euro

George Will: "planet Earth's last chance, until the next one"

2009-12-08T11:14:00.003-06:00

George Will: The climate-change travesty

Excerpt:

Barack Obama, understanding the histrionics required in climate-change debates, promises that U.S. emissions in 2050 will be 83 percent below 2005 levels. If so, 2050 emissions will equal those in 1910, when there were 92 million Americans. But there will be 420 million Americans in 2050, so Obama's promise means that per capita emissions then will be about what they were in 1875. That. Will. Not. Happen.

...

Copenhagen is the culmination of the post-Kyoto maneuvering by people determined to fix the world's climate by breaking the world's — especially America's — population to the saddle of ever-more-minute supervision by governments. But Copenhagen also is prologue for the 2010 climate change summit in Mexico City, which will be planet Earth's last chance, until the next one.

Comment: Gotto love this (below)

Copenhagen climate conference opens to dire warnings

Excerpts:

Opening ceremonies began with a short film featuring children of the future facing an apocalypse of tempests and desert landscapes if world leaders failed to act today.

"There will be hundreds of millions of refugees," Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN's panel of climate scientists, said in the film.

"Please help save the world," said a little girl, plaintively.

Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen told opening ceremonies that the world is looking to the conference to safeguard humanity.

1975: The coming ice age!

2009-12-08T11:06:00.002-06:00

The Fiction Of Climate Science

Excerpts:

Many of you are too young to remember, but in 1975 our government pushed "the coming ice age."

Random House dutifully printed "THE WEATHER CONSPIRACY … coming of the New Ice Age." This may be the only book ever written by 18 authors. All 18 lived just a short sled ride from Washington, D.C. Newsweek fell in line and did a cover issue warning us of global cooling on April 28, 1975. And The New York Times, Aug. 14, 1976, reported "many signs that Earth may be headed for another ice age."

...

In 1974, the National Science Board announced: "During the last 20 to 30 years, world temperature has fallen, irregularly at first but more sharply over the last decade. Judging from the record of the past interglacial ages, the present time of high temperatures should be drawing to an end…leading into the next ice age."

...

In 2002 I stood in a room of the Smithsonian. One entire wall charted the cooling of our globe over the last 60 million years. This was no straight line. The curve had two steep dips followed by leveling. There were no significant warming periods. Smithsonian scientists inscribed it across some 20 feet of plaster, with timelines. Last year, I went back. That fresco is painted over.

Tree rings show a mini ice age in Europe about the time Stradivarius crafted his violins. Chilled Alpine Spruce gave him tighter wood so the instruments sang with a new purity. But England had to give up the wines that the Romans cultivated while our globe cooled, switching from grapes to colder weather grains and learning to take comfort with beer, whisky and ales.

Yet many centuries earlier, during a global warming, Greenland was green. And so it stayed and was settled by Vikings for generations until global cooling came along. Leif Ericsson even made it to Newfoundland. His shallow draft boats, perfect for sailing and rowing up rivers to conquer villages, wouldn't have stood a chance against a baby iceberg.

Those sustained temperature swings, all before the evil economic benefits of oil consumption, suggest there are factors at work besides humans.

Today, as I peck out these words, the weather channel is broadcasting views of a freakish and early snow falling on Dallas. The Iowa state extension service reports that the record corn crop expected this year will have unusually large kernels, thanks to "relatively cool August and September temperatures." And on Jan. 16, 2007, NPR went politically incorrect, briefly, by reporting that "An unusually harsh winter frost, the worst in 20 years, killed much of the California citrus, avocados and flower crops."

To be fair, those reports are short-term swings. But the longer term changes are no more compelling, unless you include the ice ages, and then, perhaps, the panic attempts of the 1970s were right. Is it possible that if we put more CO2 in the air, we'd forestall the next ice age?

Comment: From the Puritan Board

from the Cap and Trade lecture/debate at Texas Tech University last night.

If you pretend that the state of Texas is the whole atmosphere.
Then the greenhouse gases portion of that would barely cover Lubbock County.
The MAN MADE portion of greenhouse gases would be the size of the Texas Tech campus.

And by the way in this cap and trade plan,
the term "greenhouse gases" INCLUDES all water vapor.

How much snow today?

2009-12-08T09:32:00.003-06:00

wcco

When all is said and done, Augustyniak thinks the Twin Cities will see between 7 and 10 inches of snow.

kstp

By tonight there may be 1 to 2 inches of new snow. The big show is tonight with snow and blowing snow with another 2 to 3 inches overnight and 1 to 2 inches tomorrow leaving us with 4 to 7 inches of total accumulation.

kare11

One-two inches of snow is expected in the Twin Cities by late Tuesday afternoon. The Twin Cities could see 5-8 inches of snow by dawn Wednesday.

StarTribune

The first course, snow flirting with eventual double digits in depth, will start falling just in time for the Twin Cities' Tuesday evening commute, said National Weather Service forecaster Tony Zaleski.

In fact, areas south of the metro, such as New Ulm, are already reporting snowfall, the Weather Service said.

The next plate of wintry conditions: high winds, creating blizzard-like conditions when daybreak comes Wednesday, Zaleski said. And metro residents should expect to see about a half-foot of snow Wednesday morning on top of the 1 to 2 inches that had fallen Tuesday evening.

Specifically, according to Zaleski, "the bulk of the heaviest snow" should be in northern Washington and Hennepin counties and bending down to Waconia in the extreme southwest metro.

And for dessert? Who can resist temperatures dipped in sub-zero readings.

A "big dam of cold air" will be moving in from northeast Montana in time to send temperatures late Wednesday and early Thursday into the 5- to 10-below range, Zaleski said. "All of that is coming our way."

Thursday's high will be no more than 5-above, he said, with windchills busting through 20-below and then some.

Comment: I think I am ready. We expect a long commute home tonight (if we leave at 5:15 should be home by 6:15). I have the snow plow on my tractor and it is all gassed up. I am a little worried about the tractor battery as it is 10 years old. I probably won't plow tonight if it is just 2" ... just wait until tomorrow.

Crime and the Carpet Cleaner

2009-12-06T08:13:00.001-06:00

Comment: Funny!

Vaccine production: a billion chicken eggs

2009-12-05T18:31:00.001-06:00

How the H1N1 vaccine is made

Excerpt:

The most striking feature of the H1N1 flu vaccine manufacturing process is the 1,200,000,000 chicken eggs required to make the 3 billion doses of vaccine that may be required worldwide. There are entire chicken farms in the US and around the world dedicated to producing eggs for the purpose of incubating influenza viruses for use in vaccines. No wonder it takes six months from start to finish. But we'll get to that in a minute.

The most commonly used process for manufacturing an influenza vaccine was developed in the 1940s -- one of its co-inventors was Jonas Salk, who would go on to develop the polio vaccine -- and has remained basically unchanged since then. The process is coordinated by the World Health Organization and begins with the detection of a new virus (or rather one that differs significantly from those already going around); in this instance, the Pandemic H1N1/09 virus. Once the pandemic strain has been identified and isolated, it is mixed with a standard laboratory virus through a technique called genetic reassortment, the purpose of which is to create a hybrid virus (also called the "reference virus strain") with the pandemic strain's surface antigens and the lab strain's core components (which allows the virus to grow really well in chicken eggs). Then the hybrid is tested to make sure that it grows well, is safe, and produces the proper antigen response. This takes about six to nine weeks.

Comment: Still awaiting the opportunity to have the shot!

In the "man cave"

2009-12-05T14:45:00.003-06:00

I was watching the Cincy / Pitt game on TV in the LR and my wife banished me downstairs so she could vacuum.

I continued to follow the game on the Internet but fell asleep with Cincy behind 44-38

My cell phone rang and an HR rep interviewed me for a job I applied for this week.

Then my brother called to tell me Cincy won (Roger and I are Cincy grads)!

Cincinnati 45, Pitt 44

WSJ on Climategate

2009-12-05T13:09:00.000-06:00

Tiger and Elin Christmas card photo

2009-12-03T15:16:00.001-06:00

Comment: This is the last one!

Did you hear Tiger changed his name?

2009-12-03T12:25:00.002-06:00

To "Cheetah"

Comment: A little harsh!

Tom Petters: 30 years to life?

2009-12-02T22:04:00.001-06:00

Tom Petters Verdict, Count By Count

Excerpt:

A verdict has been reached in the trial of Tom Petters, the Minnesota businessman accused of running a $3 billion Ponzi scheme. Here's a look at the jury's decision on each of the superseding indictment's 20 criminal counts.

Comment: My brother in law knows him.

Obama still blaming Bush ... and lying!

2009-12-02T16:37:00.002-06:00

Rumsfeld Cries Foul on Obama Claim Troop Requests for Afghanistan Were Denied

Obama:

"Commanders in Afghanistan repeatedly asked for support to deal with the reemergence of the Taliban, but these reinforcements did not arrive."

Rumsfeld:

"Such a bald misstatement, at least as it pertains to the period I served as secretary of defense, deserves a response," ... "I am not aware of a single request of that nature between 2001 and 2006."

If socialized medicine is so great ....

2009-12-02T16:34:00.001-06:00

Then explain this:

U.K. Cancer Death Rate Is 38% Higher Than In U.S.

Excerpt:

As the Congress prepared to vote to let us enter the world of waits for doctors, waits for specialists, waits for testing and waits for surgery, radiation and chemo, we should pause to consider the relative records of the private medical care system in the United States with the socialized system in the U.K.

In 2008, Britain had a cancer death rate 0.25% while the United States had a rate of only 0.18%. The UK cancer death rate was 38% higher than in the United States.

The Guardian, the UK’s left wing daily, estimated that “up to 10,000 people” are dying each year of cancer “because their condition is diagnosed too late, according to research by the government’s director of cancer services.” While many people die because of late detection due to their own negligence, there is no reason to believe this self-neglect is more common in the UK than in the US.

In Canada, the cancer death rate is 16% higher than in the United States.

France: the "Big Loan" and chronic deficit

2009-12-02T15:18:00.002-06:00

The Trouble With Sarkonomics

Excerpts:

The first sign of trouble: the Big Loan, a multibillion-euro super-bond to finance long-term investment, to be adopted in December, that Sarkozy says will help prepare the economy for the future in a country where a chronic deficit (run since 1974) leaves little room for forward-thinking investment. Critics say the loan will just dig France a deeper hole with no clear payoff.

...

But in economics, such whimsical indifference to long-term consequences is dangerous. Sarkozy's first problem is a lack of follow-through. He has managed to launch reforms at a pace never before seen in France. The Brussels-based Thomas More Institute has charted progress on Sarkozy's 490 campaign promises and the 732 measures he has announced since his election. It has found that on an impressive 80 percent of these, action has at least been initiated. But it has also found that many of these initiatives were hastily prepared and haven't been vigorously pursued, "as if the surface given to reform frustrated its depth." Sarkozy's big pre-crisis effort to trim public-sector waste, for example, yielded a miserly €7 billion in savings. And most of his so-called Marshall Plan for France's notoriously troubled housing projects never got off the ground. "The president likes surprises," the institute reports, "generally when he finds himself in difficult situations." But those surprises have lasting costs for taxpayers.

Comment: France's Big Loan is like Obama's stimulus package!

The fatal arithmetic of imperial decline

2009-12-02T10:36:00.003-06:00

An Empire at Risk

Excerpts:

... if the United States succumbs to a fiscal crisis, as an increasing number of economic experts fear it may, then the entire balance of global economic power could shift. Military experts talk as if the president's decision about whether to send an additional 40,000 troops to Afghanistan is a make-or-break moment. In reality, his indecision about the deficit could matter much more for the country's long-term national security. Call the United States what you like—superpower, hegemon, or empire—but its ability to manage its finances is closely tied to its ability to remain the predominant global military power.

...

... there is no end in sight to the borrowing binge. Unless entitlements are cut or taxes are raised, there will never be another balanced budget. Let's assume I live another 30 years and follow my grandfathers to the grave at about 75. By 2039, when I shuffle off this mortal coil, the federal debt held by the public will have reached 91 percent of GDP, according to the CBO's extended baseline projections.

...

[Paul Krugman] "My prediction is that politicians will eventually be tempted to resolve the [fiscal] crisis the way irresponsible governments usually do: by printing money, both to pay current bills and to inflate away debt. And as that temptation becomes obvious, interest rates will soar."

...

... the federal government's interest payments are forecast by the CBO to rise from 8 percent of revenues in 2009 to 17 percent by 2019, even if rates stay low and growth resumes. If rates rise even slightly and the economy flatlines, we'll get to 20 percent much sooner. And history suggests that once you are spending as much as a fifth of your revenues on debt service, you have a problem. It's all too easy to find yourself in a vicious circle of diminishing credibility. The investors don't believe you can afford your debts, so they charge higher interest, which makes your position even worse.

This matters more for a superpower than for a small Atlantic island for one very simple reason. As interest payments eat into the budget, something has to give—and that something is nearly always defense expenditure. According to the CBO, a significant decline in the relative share of national security in the federal budget is already baked into the cake. On the Pentagon's present plan, defense spending is set to fall from above 4 percent now to 3.2 percent of GDP in 2015 and to 2.6 percent of GDP by 2028.

...

This is how empires decline. It begins with a debt explosion. It ends with an inexorable reduction in the resources available for the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Which is why voters are right to worry about America's debt crisis. According to a recent Rasmussen report, 42 percent of Americans now say that cutting the deficit in half by the end of the president's first term should be the administration's most important task—significantly more than the 24 percent who see health-care reform as the No. 1 priority. But cutting the deficit in half is simply not enough. If the United States doesn't come up soon with a credible plan to restore the federal budget to balance over the next five to 10 years, the danger is very real that a debt crisis could lead to a major weakening of American power.

Comment: Newsweek cover article this week.

ObamaCare: If it "saves money" why does it cost more?

2009-12-02T09:31:00.003-06:00

ObamaCare: A bill that raises prices but lowers costs

Excerpts:

We have now reached the stage of the health-care debate when all that matters is getting a bill passed, so all news is good news, more subsidies mean lower deficits, and more expensive insurance is really cheaper insurance. The nonpolitical mind reels.

Consider how Washington received the Congressional Budget Office's study Monday of how Harry Reid's Senate bill will affect insurance costs, which by any rational measure ought to have been a disaster for the bill. CBO found that premiums in the individual market will rise by 10% to 13% more than if Congress did nothing. Family policies under the status quo are projected to cost $13,100 on average, but under ObamaCare will jump to $15,200.

...

Finance Chairman Max Baucus chimed in from the Senate floor that "Health-care reform is fundamentally about lowering health-care costs. Lowering costs is what health-care reform is designed to do, lowering costs; and it will achieve this objective."

Except it won't. CBO says it expects employer-sponsored insurance costs to remain roughly in line with the status quo, yet even this is a failure by Mr. Baucus's and the White House's own standards. Meanwhile, fixing the individual market—which is expensive and unstable largely because it does not enjoy the favorable tax treatment given to job-based coverage—was supposed to be the whole purpose of "reform."

Instead, CBO is confirming that new coverage mandates will drive premiums higher. But Democrats are declaring victory, claiming that these higher insurance prices don't count because they will be offset by new government subsidies

...

The political tragedy is that there are plenty of reform alternatives that really would reduce the cost of insurance. According to CBO, the relatively modest House GOP bill would actually reduce premiums by 5% to 8% in the individual market in 2016, and by 7% to 10% for small businesses. The GOP reforms would also do so without imposing huge new taxes.

But Democrats don't care because their bill isn't really about "lowering costs." It's about putting Washington in charge of health insurance, at any cost.

Comment: The midterm elections (November 2010) are critical!

'Cap and Trade Is Dead'?

2009-12-02T09:28:00.001-06:00

'Cap and Trade Is Dead'

Excerpts:

The more than 3,000 emails and documents from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) that have found their way to the Internet have blown the lid off the "science" of manmade global warming. CRU is a nerve center for many of those researchers who have authored the United Nations' global warming reports and fueled the political movement to regulate carbon.

Their correspondence show a claque of scientists massaging data to make it fit their theories, squelching scientists who disagreed, punishing academic journals that didn't toe the apocalyptic line, and hiding their work from public view. "It's no use pretending that this isn't a major blow," glumly wrote George Monbiot, a U.K. writer who has been among the fiercest warming alarmists. The documents "could scarcely be more damaging." And that's from a believer.

This scandal has real implications. Mr. Inhofe notes that international and U.S. efforts to regulate carbon were already on the ropes. The growing fear of Democrats and environmentalists is that the CRU uproar will prove a tipping point, and mark a permanent end to those ambitions.

Internationally, world leaders finally acknowledged that the recession has sapped them of their political power to impose devastating new carbon-restrictions. China and India are clear they won't join the West in an economic suicide pact. Next month's summit in Copenhagen is a bust. Instead of producing legally binding agreements, it will be dogged by queries about the legitimacy of the scientists who wrote the reports that form its basis.

....

Polls show a public already losing belief in the theory of man-made global warming, and skeptics are now on the offense. The Competitive Enterprise Institute's Myron Ebell argues this scandal gives added cover to Blue Dogs and other Democrats who were already reluctant to buck the public's will and vote for climate legislation.

Comment: RIP ... err ... not the "peace"!