Words of the Weasel Part 8

Budget Cut. After jacking up the federal budget by trillions, Obama claimed a 100 million budget cut. To be realized by buying office supplies in bulk. Right.

Calling the law offices of James T. Sokolov....

You think the GIECO Gecko gets a lot of TV air time? Take a look at the lawyers, out fishing for plaintiffs so they can do yet another personal injury case. Lately the lawyers have been advertising for drug company plaintiffs, Avandia and Vioxx and others.
Every time one of these ads run, the cost of health care goes up. The lawyers are looking for plaintiffs claiming injury from FDA approved drugs. The drug companies jump thru a thousand FDA hoops to get the drug approved for sale. Drugs on the market survive a process so rigorous, years of testing, reports, committee meetings, memoes, retests, yada-yada-yada, that any doctor,nurse, or reasonable person will believe they are safe and effective.
And yet, with a sympathetic plaintiff and a wily lawyer, the drug companies still get sued. They obey all the rules, file all the paperwork do everything a responsible corporation ought to do. Does no good, they still get sued. And loose, big.
Vioxx, passed all the FDA tests, got to market. After a few reports of adverse side effects (heart attacks?) surfaced, FDA withdrew the approval of Vioxx. The lawyers closed in and squeezed $4.6 billion in hush money of of the maker. Not sure what happened with Avandia, but the lawyers run ads for Avandia plaintiffs every hour on Fox News.
Congress could fix this. There ought to be a law saying "Manufacture, sale, and presciption of FDA approved drugs and medical devices is never cause for a lawsuit. Manufacturers, drug stores and doctors shall not be punished for making, selling or prescribing FDA approved drugs and devices or complying with FDA regulations such as drug labeling. "
There are a lot of other scams in the malpractice lawsuit racket, but one act of Congress could rule out a big bunch of them.

Battery life of Kodak Z1485

About 51 pictures. From a Kodak Lithium NON rechargeable battery. The camera lacks a low battery indicator. When its little microprocessor thinks the battery is low, it just shuts down. Lens retracts, power LED goes out. Acts just like the camera is broken, except it will come back to life when you replace the dead battery with a charged one.
Staples wants $30 for a Kodak rechargeable lithium battery and $40 for the Kodak charger. I'm going to try the net, see if I can get something cheaper, even if it isn't Kodak.
So, battery options are
1. Kodak NON rechargeable CVR3 Lithium two cell pack $?? (ten maybe?)
2. Rechargeable Lithium plus charger $35 off the net?
3. Plain Alkaline AA cells. Just tried a pair. The camera does power up. I'd expect life to be half that of Lithium, so it will cost about 10 cents a picture.

Nothing on line is secure

First came the Wall St Journal story about enemy hackers planting "take-over-this-computer" code in critical machines running the electric power grid. If it works, the enemy will be able to turn out the lights in America come war time. Then comes a second Journal story, about vast amounts of data on the F22 fighter plane stolen by somebody.
The F22 story has a few loose ends. The Journal didn't say whether the data was classified or not. Loss of classified data is much more serious, because classifed data is never kept on a machine connected to the public internet. Loss of classified means either someone violated security procedures, or the enemy has learned how to invade secure networks.
The take away from these two stories, is simple. Data on corporate networks is easily taken by anyone. Think about acquiring your competitor's designs, drawings, test procedures, customer lists, payroll, build costs, in short every bit of intellectual property he has. Think about your competitor doing the same thing to you. How long can you compete in the market if all your plans are public knowledge?
The fix is simple. Don't put important stuff on the corporate network. Your corporate computers all run Windows, the most vulnerable operating system known to man. The network linking them together is all run by Windows. Windows can be cracked by highschool kids.
Corporate networks tied to the public internet closely enough for email to work, are vulnerable and despite corporate IT's best efforts, the hackers can get in. The only solution is to keep important data OFF the network.
Let the hackers wade thru zillions of chitchat emails. That will keep 'em busy. Don't feed them red meat.

Paper or Plastic?

One good thing about paper, it burns. Paper and cardboard packaging goes into the fireplace and that's the end of it. If its plastic, it goes into a $1.50 Pay-as-you-throw bag.

Smith & Wesson 460XVR Super Magnum revolver

Last month we had the .45 cal pocket pistol, this month we have a wild and crazy hand cannon. Smith claims a muzzle velocity of 2200 foot per second from this humungous 4 1/2 pound 15 inch long, .45 caliber revolver. The muzzle velocity is rifle grade, resulting a pistol that hits as hard as a rifle. It weighs nearly as much as an M16. It's a revolver, presumably 'cause only a revolver is strong enough to contain the 56000 pounds per square inch chamber pressure.
This Smith has twice the muzzle velocity and hence four times the hitting power of Dirty Harry's celebrated .44 Magnum. Since that movie was made the "most powerful handgun in the world" has become four X more powerful.
The article in American Rifleman mentions a muzzle blast so loud as to demand wearing ear defenders OVER ear plugs and avoiding indoor ranges completely. Recoil is described as "stout".
MSRP $1446.
I'm thinking this is show off gun, too heavy, too loud, and too hard to shoot for use in the field. But it's cool.

Is the Sun getting brighter? or Dimmer?

Probably not. But the measurements are not accurate enough to be sure. Only satellite observations really count. Changes in levels of air pollution over the past 30 years throw ground based measurements off. As might be expected, the measurements from different satellites are different by a small mount. For instance Nimbus 7 , launched in 1978 and out of service by 1993, gives Total Solar Irradiation as 1373 watts per square meter. The ACRIM 1 satellite, active from 1980 to 1990, gives a lower number of 1368 watts per square meter. Other satellites give other numbers. The spread from high to low from 1978 to today is about 0.6 percent.
The raw data suggests that the sun has cooled off by 0.6% since 1978. But it's more convincing to say that modern satellites read just a little bit lower than the first satellite launched 30 years ago. It is possible to correct the satellite data to make them read the same. If this is done, some conclude that the Sun has cooled by 0.047% but others say the corrections should be done differently.
All of the satellites are/were sensitive enough to see the 11 year sunspot cycle. From sunspot max to sunspot min is about 0.1%. Personally I think the change in solar output over the sunspot cycle is too small to effect weather or climate. No one has shown an 11 year cycle in any sort of earth weather data. The long term change in solar output, after corrections, is smaller than the sunspot variation.
Bottom line, the long term change in solar output is too small to see reliably with current satellites, the change (if any) is too small to detect.
This data makes it hard for me to believe that solar variation has anything to do with global warming since 1978.