Internet privacy?

The Obama administration, after the defeat of SOPA and PIPA, is now pushing for internet privacy laws. They want to enforce "do not track" requests by law.
That's not what we consumers need. We need browsers that defeat trackers. A good browser, backed up by a secure operating system (anything other than Windows), would deny trackers any information, starting by refusing to accept cookies. The WSJ recently reported that both Internet Exploder and Firefox, would accept cookies, and even worse, give websites access to cookies, AFTER the users had told the browser[s] to refuse all cookies.
There ought to be a market here. I would pay reasonable money for a less treacherous browser. Say $50, for a browser that would never accept a cookie. Right now browsers are free, so the browser programmers write browsers to make money by selling you out to marketers. The programmers get paid to do that. Surely there are enough customers to pay for a secure browser?
At any rate, I feel more secure WITHOUT Obama writing internet privacy laws.
What's a cookie you ask? Why should you care?
Cookies are data files ON YOUR HARD DRIVE, that are written by a website. They can be read back later by that same website, and probably every over website on the net. Once a website decides that you are interested in X, or Y, or Z, it writes that into the cookie file. Next time you visit that site, it shows you ads for X or Y or Z. The cookie is memory for the website, This is how the website remembers what kind of ads to plague you with. Get rid of the cookies, and the website has no way of knowing what you did last time you surfed their site.
In the mean time, you can remove all the cookies from your hard drive. Firefox at least will delete all the cookies on your hard drive. Click on tools->options. Select the Privacy tab. Select "remove individual cookies". Once into the cookie buster, you will find as selection to crush ALL cookies. In Firefox, this really works, the cookies do go away.
They come back of course, but the new cookies can be zapped again.

More Snow

We got 4.5 inches last night. A decent little snowfall. And all without Winter Storm Watches, predictions of 4 to 14 inches, nothing. The radio just mentioned 30% chance of flurries. We got an inch more than we got last week after all sorts of dire warning. You ought to know that when the weather forecasters talk about odds, it means they don't have a clue.

Ira Flato is a global warmist

NPR's Science Friday, host Ira Flato, did an interview with Michael Mann. Mann is a big warmist and the creator of the "hockey stick" graph of world temperature, the one that goes flat from the beginning of time until the 1900's and then soars up to the ceiling. The one that got him a freedom of information lawsuit when he refused to release the data from which he built the graph.
In the course of a lengthy half an hour interview, Mann refused to discuss the science of global warming, you know instrument readings, ice cores, historical records, real data. He had a lot to say about the habits and ancestry of his critics, but nothing to say about the science. He still thinks tree ring width indicates temperature, where as real people know that tree rings are influenced by rainfall not temperature. In short, Mann is a crusader for warming, he knows little about the science.
And it looks like Ira Flato is a supporter.

Train Show

In Essex Junction VT. It's only 80 miles as the crow flies, but it's cross country east-west, on two lane roads. The mountains all run north-south, so there is a lot of climbing up and down and it takes two hours. It snowed over night, so the roads were slippery enough to keep me doing no more than the speed limit (50 mph). I go faster when it's dry.
It was a big show, held in a county fairgrounds site. Lots of people. Aisles were jammed. They had a fine big G scale layout running, and some equally fine HO and Lionel layouts. I picked up a bright jade green NYC box car, and four head end cars (baggage and mail). Also, a beautiful Ford woody station wagon. And some tank car decals. After I got home, I discovered that two of the head end cars actually had the prized and long-out-of-production Central Valley trucks.
My feet gave out after three hours, and I had done all the vendors tables twice. So I drove into next door Burlington VT just for sight seeing. Oh boy. Talk about a college town. It gives Harvard Sq a run for it's money in terms of groovy taverns, trendy clothing stores, co-op food stores, and head shops.
Then I drove back, the southern way. The northern way is US route 2. The southern way is US 302. The southern way is a sportier drive, if you are into wrapping the car around curves, take the southern route. Both ways take 2 hours.

Well, we got two inches

Of snow that is. After a build up worthy of the blizzard of '78, it did actually snow, a little. Between this couple of inches and last week's 3.5 inches, that's more snow than we have had since October last year.
Skiing should be great.
New England skiing is best in March. (Old ski country marketing slogan).

We must be doing something right.

This NH Journal article got picked up and posted on Glenn Reynold's Instapundit blog. I surely do remember all the NH democrats wailing about heartless budget cuts, widows and orphans pitched out in the snow, and similar malarkey. And now we have a balanced budget, spending down 11% from its; democratic peak, and the wailing has died down. I haven't seen a widow or an orphan standing on the curb yet.

The Monkee's

I remember them. Used to watch them on Saturday morning TV back in the day. The airwaves are full of the obit for Davy Jones, an old Monkee. It brings back memories of a really great line from the show.
They are doing a Wild West skit. A Monkee is getting ready for the classic gun fight, you know, walk down the center of a dirt main street, draw the big .45 Colt, and blow the bad guy away. The Monkees are getting their man ready.
"Give me my lucky holster." says the designated shooter Monkee.
"Which one is that?" asks the number two Monkee.
"The one with the gun in it." replies the designated shooter.