Rusted Sky

What One Word Best Describes How You Feel a Year After President Obama's Election? - NYTimes.com

Screwed.

Unfortunately, it's not on the list.

J.

TaxProf Blog: A 95.2% Income Tax Rate?

The Tax Foundation computes the income tax rates necessary to close the deficit.

J.

YouTube - Hilarious Muppets Bloopers!

Nothing is sacred. Nothing....

J.

If these things get popular.

Commuter Cars - The Tango, ultra-narrow electric car for commuting; 0-60 in 4 seconds

They're kind of.. cute, in a way - but I'm not sure I'd want one.

J.

WGME 13 Top Stories

An Army spokesman says one of the suspects, Major Malik Nadal Hasan, who's in his late 30's, was shot on scene. Two other suspects, both soldiers, were taken into custody, and the Army spokesman says there were eyewitness reports of a fourth shooter.

As for the ones who committed the murders, Lord - well, treat their souls as you see fit.

Amen.

------------------------------

I can think of nothing more eloquent of the trouble we face in the future from Islam than something like this. I've seen indications that the other three (possibly two) shooters are Islamic, but nothing solidly stating it. Right now confusion reigns, and hard facts are scarce.

It's difficult to imagine, however, a group of three soldiers just deciding to shoot their fellow soldiers on a whim. There had to be something pretty potent fueling it, and someone had to spark it off.

Our country isn't much of one for religious discrimination. All religions have been tolerated (some better than others, true) and all are welcome (some more than others, true) - but the one thing that's requested, that's virtually DEMANDED, is that religious tolerance be a two way street.

But you don't seem to get that with Islam. Pardon, with some versions of Islam. I don't want to tar the entire religion, no more than I think the nutcases who bomb abortion clinics in the name of Jesus represent the entire spectrum of Christianity. But it sure seems like Islam has a fairly notable percentage of sects that see explosive martyrdom while destroying the unbeliever as their highest calling, and that's not exactly something that'll win a lot of friends among the unconverted. Neither will random slaughter because you're unhappy at being reassigned.

Time will bring out more details on this. In the meantime, if you're of a mind to, pray for the soldiers, their families and their friends.

J.

Update: The story is changing significantly - now it's only a single shooter (did a hell of a lot of damage w/just two handguns for someone who didn't like guns or violence) and though he's a devout Muslim, he's a peaceful one who abhorred violence. And the spin is starting already, things are disappearing down the memory hole and his background is being labeled as of no consequence.

Well, when was the last time an Episcopalian went off and shot up a Baptist church, killing a dozen or so and wounding more?

I predict a lot of people are going to be doing a lot of handwaving on this to get it to fit the PC narrative.

UPdate x2 - More on his background here... MSNBC' take is that his relatives say he was a peaceful soul being picked on (an Army Major, being picked on?) for being Muslim, but they're also putting up the following.

His name appears on radical Internet postings. A fellow officer says he fought his deployment to Iraq and argued with soldiers who supported U.S. wars. He required counseling as a medical student because of problems with patients.

There are many unknowns about Nidal Malik Hasan, the man authorities say is responsible for the worst mass killing on a U.S. military base. Most of all, his motive. But details of his life and mindset, emerging from official sources and personal acquaintances, are troubling.

It's difficult to understand why things like this happen - it doesn't make it any easier when the media decides to 'hide' certain things because they're not adhering to the politically correct narrative.

J.

Having detailed out the troubles Father was having with wifi at his place, I decided to go whole hog and provide a new router to where they're living. I've installed a WRT54G (V5) with the most appropriate version of DD-WRT, and bumping up the transmitter power from 71 mw to 210mw.

Now he's got two solid bars, and about 1600kbps upload and download speeds. That should do, for the time being.

What really surprised me is that it went smoothly. I got the info off the old router (static IP) and put it on the new, it connected to the internet from the workstation plugged into it, then we rebooted Father's machine - and *bing* - two bars! No mess, no fuss, no bother, no frantic resetting, screaming or nail-biting... what'd I do wrong?

Now Father's wondering just what all he can do with it. We'll show him. (Grin.)

J.

I've been trying to process the reactions to the Ft. Hood massacre (as well as having a busy weekend...) and I'm disturbed by a couple of possible trends I'm seeing.

Trends which don't make much sense from a rational perspective... but do if you're trying hard to ignore reality.

First off - from InstaPundit...

Instapundit » Blog Archive » VICTOR DAVIS HANSON on how things are going. And playing what if?

UPDATE: Michael Nehring writes on Facebook: "What says more about America... that we always, ALWAYS manage to refrain from an anti-Muslim backlash, or that progressives are always, ALWAYS, convinced that one is on the way?"

Then there's news coming out that this Major was actually rather vocally anti-American and anti-Army, to the point where he was trying to contact Al Quaeda - to the point where the CIA was called in. . Not exactly the way I'd expect an Army Major to comport himself, to be sure. (And that the CIA wouldn't pass what they found about Hasan to a requesting Senator is rather odd in itself.)

Now, it'd be nice to think that this was just a random act of violence, caused by PTSD, but it's pretty darn unlikely considering he hadn't even been deployed. But apparently this guy was primed pretty well by folks who aren't exactly friendly toward the US. And his actions weren't normal leading up to the event.

Fellow Muslims in the US armed forces have also been quick to denounce Hasan's actions and insist that they were the product of a lone individual rather than of Islamic teachings. Osman Danquah, the co-founder of the Islamic Community of Greater Killeen, said Hasan never expressed anger toward the army or indicated any plans for violence.

But he said that, at their second meeting, Hasan seemed almost incoherent.

"I told him, 'There's something wrong with you'. I didn't get the feeling he was talking for himself, but something just didn't seem right."

He was sufficiently troubled that he recommended the centre reject Hasan's request to become a lay Muslim leader at Fort Hood.

Hasan had, in fact, already come to the attention of the authorities before Thursday's massacre. He was suspected of being the author of internet postings that compared suicide bombers with soldiers who throw themselves on grenades to save others and had also reportedly been warned about proselytising to patients.

At Fort Hood, he told a colleague, Col Terry Lee, that he believed Muslims should rise up against American "aggressors". He made no attempt to hide his desire to end his military service early or his mortification at the prospect of deployment to Afghanistan. "He had people telling him on a daily basis the horrors they saw over there," said his cousin, Nader Hasan.

Yet away from his strident attacks on US foreign policy, he came across as subdued and reclusive – not hostile or threatening. Soldiers he counselled at the Walter Reed hospital in Washington praised him, while at Fort Hood, Kimberly Kesling, the deputy commander of clinical services, remarked: "Up to this point, I would consider him an asset."

He's an Army Major.
Making strident attacks on US foreign policy.
Making postings comparing suicide bombers with those who jump on grenades to save their buddies.
Proselytising to patients.
Believed Muslims should 'rise up' aganst the agressors.
Became more extreme in his viewpoints as time went on.
"He would frequently say he was a Muslim first and an American second. And that came out in just about everything he did at the University."

Now, admittedly things are different in the Air Force - but it would have been pretty much unheard of for any Major of my acquaintance to be expressing such opinions - and stay in the military. What may have saved Hasan's hide as far as the Army was concerned was a neglect of such things by the people who heard it, because they didn't want to get in trouble for being 'Anti-Islam'.

And that brings up the last thing.

At one point, Political Correctness was essentially a joke. But gradually the joke is getting less and less amusing - and with the emphasis on how we must not form any judgements about the motivations of a man who slaughters his fellow soldiers while screaming "Alluh Akbar!" it's passed far beyond the realm of 'joke' and has become 'threat'.

Dorothy Rabinowitz: Dr. Phil and the Fort Hood Killer - WSJ.com

To kill your fellow Americans—as many as possible, unarmed and in the most helpless of circumstances, while shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is great), requires, of course, only murderous hatred—the sort of mindset that regularly eludes the Dr. Phils of our world as the motive for mass murder of this kind.
As the meditations on Maj. Hasan's motives rolled on, "fear of deployment" has served as a major theme—one announced as fact in the headline for the New York Times's front-page story: "Told of War Horror, Gunman Feared Deployment." The authority for this intelligence? The perpetrator's cousin. No story could have better suited that newspaper's ongoing preoccupation with the theme of madness in our fighting men, and the deadly horrors of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, than this story of a victim of war pressures gone berserk. The one fly in the ointment—Maj. Hasan had of course seen no war, and no combat.

Still, with a bit of stretching, adherents of Maj. Hasan-as-war-victim theme found a substitute of sorts—namely the fears allegedly provoked in him by his exposure, as an army psychiatrist, to the stories of men who had been deployed. The thesis then: Maj. Hasan's mental stress, provoked by the suffering of Americans who had been in combat, caused him to go out and butcher as many of these soldiers as he could. Let's try putting that one before a jury.

J.

Enjoy!

J.

Isn't it time for politically correct thinking to take a back seat to dealing with the problem?

Military Doctors Worried Hasan Was 'Psychotic,' Capable of Killing Fellow Soldiers - Local News | News Articles | National News | US News - FOXNews.com

U.S. military doctors overseeing Nidal Malik Hasan's medical training were concerned he was "psychotic" and possibly capable of killing other American soldiers, before the Army major allegedly went on a deadly shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas.

Psychiatrists and medical officials at Walter Reed Army Medical Center held a series of meetings beginning in the Spring of 2008 to discuss serious concerns about his work and behavior, National Public Radio reported.

One of the questions they asked: Was Hasan psychotic?

"Put it this way," one official told NPR. "Everybody felt that if you were deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, you would not want Nidal Hasan in your foxhole."

One official who participated in the discussions reportedly told others he was worried that if Hasan was deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, he might leak covert military information to Islamic extremists, NPR reported.

Another official "wondered aloud" to colleagues whether Hasan might be capable of killing fellow soldiers in the same way a Muslim sergeant in 2003 had set off grenades at a base in Kuwait, killing two and wounding 14, the radio network reported.

When you have psychiatrists worrying about daring to DEAL with something like this in the manner that would be appropriate - whether it be putting him under close observation or just plain throwing him out so he can find his own way to the ME so he can get killed by those he was hating so - then there's even more problems to deal with.

How many people in the military are currently exhibiting the same signs, yet because of the PC mentality nobody dares say anything? When people who's job it was to EVALUATE how serious something like this was wouldn't do it for fear of reprisals - there's a system that needs to be changed, and changed fast.

When the shrinks worry, like a bomb disposal expert running from a bomb he's disarming - there's something about to explode.

J.

DRUDGE REPORT: GOING ROGUE, SARAH PALIN

By the third week in September, a “Free Sarah” campaign was under way and the press at large was growing increasingly critical of the McCain camp’s decision to keep me, my family and friends back home, and my governor’s staff all bottled up. Meanwhile, the question of which news outlet would land the first interview was a big deal, as it always is with a major party candidate.

...

Meanwhile, the media blackout continued. It got so bad that a couple of times I had a friend in Anchorage track down phone numbers for me, and then I snuck in calls to folks like Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and someone I thought was Larry Kudlow but turned out to be Neil Cavuto’s producer. I had a friend call Bill O’Reilly after I was inundated with supporters in Alaska asking why the campaign was “ignoring” his one-air requests for a McCain campaign interview. I had another friend scrambling to find Mark Levin’s number. Aboard the campaign plane I was within twenty-five feet of reporters for hours on end. Headquarters’ strategy was that I should not go to the back of the aircraft and talk to the press. At first this was subtle, but as the campaign wore on, Tracey or Tucker would call headquarters to request permission, and someone in DC would respond, “No! Absolutley not- block her if she tries to go back.”

It kind of makes me wonder if they thought Sarah Palin was too far out of the Washington circle to trust to act 'properly', and keeping the 'good old boy' network intact was more important than making sure McCain won. Obama knew the right people, he was a Senator, he was okay. Palin didn't - so she wasn't and had to be cut out before she could get traction.

If Palin runs for President in 2012, I'll do what I do every election. I'll look at all the candidates, and choose the one I think would be best for the country as a whole, not for Democrats or Republicans. I'll be ordering this book, I think - I want to know more about just what happened in 2008.

J.

Well, when you've got a spare router, apparently you don't.

Routers, after all, are simply rather single-minded computers with a transceiver attached. The transceiver handles packets of data, the computer shoves the data back and forth and switches it to whatever port it thinks appropriate. And most routers have sufficient capacity that it's possible to reprogram them to add additional functions - especially adding more power.

I picked up a couple of routers to flash with DD-WRT. I was wanting the ability to push up the transmitter power to burn through the kitchen area where Father lives - and since I'd already turned an old router into a wireless adapter for the XBox, I didn't see any reason to hesitate.

(Why two routers? One for a spare, of course... or perhaps to use as a relay if need be. Apparently it's possible to 'brick' a router, rendering it a rather mediocre paperweight with interesting innards...)

So, as has been detailed before, Father's on-line with the help of a souped-up router, a high gain antenna and an 11" parabolic reflector. The next step....

I've been having interesting times with wifi adapters. I buy one, it lasts roughly a year - and then 'poof', it no workee no more. (I ought to throw the dead ones out, but I've a heck of a time throwing old hardware away.) Lately I've been using USB wifi adapters - since they're easier to swap out... So when the latest one went intermittent lately, I decided to convert the spare router to a 'client bridge'. I suppose I could give you some sort of song and dance how I ended up having to unbrick a dead router, ending up using a pair of tiny tweezers on a string to unjam the input-output packet queue in it, but I'd be lying.

The software install itself actually went reasonably smoothly, and provided me with a throughput that seems quite adequate. I can stream a clip from ATOM films with movies streaming through Hulu.Com and Netflix.Com at the same time while running the Speakeasy speed test and getting high numbers on that. That's some decent bandwidth - and will probably do until 3-D streaming comes out.

Now - installing DD-WRT on a router is pretty easy - but it DOES require fanatical attention to detail. If you should decide to do it, start here, click on Installation, check your router type to see if it's supported. Note: CLOSE is not good enough - if your EXACT router model doesn't have a package, get something supported off EBay. Unless you need a paperweight, that is...

Be prepared to spend a fair bit of time reading the instructions through. Print out the instructions, and follow them step by step. If you can ping, do command-line checks, and know what your SSID, MAC and whether your wireless network is G, B, or N, you shouldn't have any trouble. If you don't know any of the above - get two routers, one for a spare - and be ready to learn something new and exciting! Because it's a pretty sweet feeling to see your freshly flashed router turn into something that would cost you quite a bit if you were to buy something with the equivalent capacity new.

J.

POV - Utopia, Part 3 | PBS

Is nothing American sacred anymore? The largest mall in the world turns out not to be the famous Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn. It’s the South China Mall outside of Guangzhou, China. Outdoing the techniques of American consumerism, South China Mall is Disneyland, Las Vegas and Mall of America rolled into one. There are carnival rides, mini-parks, canals and lakes amid classic Western-style buildings with space for hundreds of shops.

And there's 12.

Seems like the business model and site analysis didn't quite take into account a few things, doesn't it?

J.

Why Nerds are Unpopular

Enjoy!

J.

Sen. Landrieu flaunts purchased vote: "It's not $100 million; it's $300 million!"

And she's proud of that.

I'm really thinking that beyond a certain level money simply isn't real to the folks in DC. $1 million - that's a lot of money. $100 million - it's beyond comprehension so there's no essential difference between $100 million and $100 billion. There's no connection - so it's a lot easier to throw vast amounts around.

(A similar technique is used in Vegas - think folks would so easily plop down money at the cards and wheels if they had to put down $5-10-20-100 bills? But the chips? Hey, they're not REAL money...)

But Landrieu's pretty much proven herself to be a lady of negotiable affection - though her payday is much more than even the most expert in Las Vegas ever get...

J.

I'm not a skeptic on the entire AGW controversy - I do believe that mankind has caused significant global warming, but that warming started at the dawn of agriculture, and without it polar bears would be chasing penguins around Panama if we went by the climate indications in ice cores for the last 100k years. I vastly prefer the warmth of present day conditions, thank you kindly, though I imagine a sentient polar bear would disagree.

So the disasters ladled out by the gloom&doomers regarding potentially catastrophic global warming didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. First we were supposed to worry about the polar bears - no ice makes for a skinny seal season - but they're apex predators and they're MOBILE - they'll find something to eat whether it's on land or sea. Second, we were supposed to worry about massive melting of the icecaps, and the resultant rise in sea level.

Well, humans are adaptable critters - we'll either move to higher ground or find a way to cope with higher water levels... IF the water levels actually rise in a catastrophic manner. If they take several hundred years we'll likely just shrug and go on. It's not like it hasn't happened before - there's Roman ports that are underwater at this point after all - and civilization is (pretty much) still around.

But why let the potential for a good crisis go to waste?

Now we've got the hacked (possibly whistleblown) CRU emails. This is damning stuff as far as I'm concerned, for the following reasons.

1. Science is something which (I was always taught) should be open and reproduceable. You put out your data, you put out your methods, you put out your conclusions. If someone else can look at your data, your methods, and come to the same conclusions independently, and someone else can VERIFY it, then you're doing good science.

2. If you put out conclusions, you need to put out your data and your methods to validate what you're concluding. ALL your data, and ALL your methodology. THAT is doing good science. Hiding stuff is not acceptable.

3. If you don't put out your data or methods, you're writing fiction, not doing good science.

And THAT'S been the big problem as far as I'm concerned with the AGW nuts. The data sets haven't been released, the software hasn't been released - it's been a case of "We're not letting stuff out because people will poke holes in it, besides the SCIENCE IS SETTLED!!!1!"

If it's settled, then it's hole-proof and unpokable - but with the release of the hacked CRU emails, things got a whole lot more interesting. It really looks like there were three things going on.

1. They were adjusting the actual data to suit their theories - which is a REAL no-no.

2. They were working hard to discredit anyone who could peer-review their data who didn't have the proper 'attitude' towards the whole AGW thing.

3. They wouldn't release their data and their modeling software, in fact they fought tooth and nail to keep from letting any of it out - refusing to respond to FOIA requests and apparently deleting emails that were requested by unbelievers.

That doesn't really make you think the science is settled and hole-resistant, does it?

CRU Emails "may" be open to interpretation, but commented code by the programmer tells the real story - Watts Up With That?

Let's face it - programs to interpret data are full of all sorts of opportuniities to 'tweak' the code to get the results you want. This was eloquently demonstrated to me in the early '80s when I was helping to test the vehicle born PADS and IPS-2 system for the Air Force's Geodetic Survey Squadron.

You'd make a test run between two benchmark points, stopping along the route to make measurements at other surveyed points - then the technicians and programmers would take your results and tweak the software measuring the accelerometer and gyro outputs. Then do another test run. Lather, rinse, repeat until your calculated positions and elevations match your surveyed positions and elevations. Then change off a north-south run and do an east-west run. Tweak. Rerun. Tweak. Rerun. Get things right, do a north-south run. Tweak. Repeat as needed... Each iteration got things closer...

But the point was to get accuracy reflecting real-world conditions - or as close to real world as extensive surveying expertise and extension of control off first-order high-precision benchmarks could get - not change the recorded positions of the benchmarks to match what the machinery was saying. (And then GPS really started up, which made it all academic - but hey, that's science for ya!)

So the release of the data and emails from the CRU folks... well, it's not good for the AGW cause.

From the comments:

If the science is settled, then it should be easy to show. That it isn’t, is a humongous red flag. If it is science, given the same data and methods, then others can replicate the experiment and see if it works. Or they can take issue with the methods applied to the data or challenge assumptions. The resistance to letting the full cycle of scientific processes take their course indicates that it is not science that is occurring. If a scientist is confident of his results, he should be happy to share. In fact, he should be really happy. When you put out data and methods for critique, you get tons of free review which would otherwise be expensive.

Resistance, to me, means that they are not so confident. They may even know that the result they are trying to prove is false. The underhanded way in which they’ve tried to stifle opposition seems to support that. They imagine that someone will find something wrong with it. Why would they imagine that? Do they know something we don’t? Instead, I think they should put it out hoping that somebody will find something wrong with it. Particularly if they think the evidence really points to what they really believe to be a serious situation. If a large asteroid is found that appears to be heading for collision with the earth, one hopes that their finding is wrong and that someone, anyone, will be able to show that it isn’t. Each time I’ve seen a report of a possibility of an asteroid there is first the initial worry that it will hit earth, then later findings have usually been that the reported objects will miss and the first person to have found it will be very, very happy he was wrong. Why aren’t the AGW people trying to prove it isn’t happening? Wouldn’t they be glad to find out they are wrong?

So - until you show me good hard science, backed up with open releases of the data and software used to get your conclusions, AND the people pushing this meme start acting like there really IS a crisis going on, I'm not going to be convinced.

J.

YouTube - Dog Attack renders child unconscious

Oh, the horrors! And the dog looks pleased!

:)

J.

| Sleep We Have Lost: Pre-industrial Slumber in the British Isles | The American Historical Review, . | The History Cooperative

There's apparently a good number of people who sleep for a few hours, wake for an hour, then sleep for another few hours. This is known as 'segmented sleep' - and certainly isn't the 8 hours unbroken that we're trying to get now.

Personally, I can get by on about 5 to 6 hours straight during the week. But my job is pretty sedentary, (unfortunately so for my waistline) and there's little to tire me out physically. On the weerkend, however, my sleep pattern changes. I'll snooze for about three hours on the couch downstairs - wake up completely and get up for a while - then go back to sleep for another six hours or so.

But it's an interesting concept - what IS a 'normal' sleep pattern? A lot of folks have made a lot of studies over the years - and the 'segmented sleep' was pretty much the norm until artificial lighting became common.

So what's your pattern?

J.

Watts Up With That? is an excellet place to start - and their "Understanding Climategate: Who's Who" is a VERY interesting look at the whole mess. And mess it is, without a doubt.

I believe that it's starting to dawn on a lot of people that the AGW "Cap and Trade" "Gotta do it right now or we're all gonna DIE!" hysteria is garbage designed to impress the gullible. We've thrown billions at the research already, with little to actually show for it.

Perhaps the biggest indication this was a scam from the start was the proposed solution - cut CO2 emissions via high taxes and heavy restrictions on carbon-based fuels in the developed countries. No such restrictions would be placed on developing countries, instead they'd be looking for voluntary compliance. There was a big push towards 'carbon-free' energy like solar and wind - yet solar and wind projects are being stalled by environmentalists... which would make you wonder just how serious they are about maintaining a technological civilization at all.

The complete and total rejection of nuclear power was also an indication they're not serious about ending a problem with global warming - they're interested in control of the narrative and control of the people's lives. The folks pushing AGW restrictions aren't interested in good science, they're looking at being the ones dictating what is and isn't permissible when it comes to how people live.

Nice that they're so concerned, isn't it?

J.

Climate change data dumped - Times Online

SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.

The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.

J.

STS-129 Ascent Video Highlights on Vimeo

A bit arty - but still...

J.