Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Does Obama have an Energy Policy?

T. Boone Pickens says "No".
Sorry Mr. Pickens, Obama does have an energy policy. I even know what it is. No drilling, no pipelines, no coal burners, electric cars, high priced gasoline.
In the same article Mr. Pickens admits that he lost his ass in wind power.

Buffeted by the Buffet Rule

Obama is talking up "the Buffet Rule" as his tax policy. Other than it hikes taxes for someone, little is known about it. NPR this morning made it sound like a hike in capitol gains tax. But no specifics. Democrats are talking it up as a "soak the rich" tax, but since there are no details, it is likely to wind up soaking everybody. "Pass it in order to see what's in it."
Far as I am concerned, we need to do some budget cuts BEFORE we do tax hikes.

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Survival of the Furriest. Feline Darwinism

Somehow each house cat has its very own human to feed it, pet it, supply a warm dry home, let it in, and let it out. In return the cat occasionally deigns to purr. This is a better schtick than other domesticated animals get, the others have to work for a living or get served at table as food. Cats don't have to put up with any of that.
The other weird thing about cats. Flash photography of humans often leads to "red eye", where the camera sees the eye as bright red. In cats we get "green eye" instead. My digital camera has a red eye correction feature built in, but nothing for green eye.
The first thing (close association with humans) clearly has survival value. The second, green-eye, is not so obvious.

It's all Bush's fault

Obama's General Services Administration (GSA) blew $800K on a junket to Vegas. It's making the TV news and citizens are steamed over it. Obama is trying to say it's all Bush's fault.
That's a hard sell with me. GSA is part of the administration, takes its orders from the White House. There are a few layers of bureaucrats in between the White House and GSA, but the principle is the same. Anything GSA does is either on White House orders, or with White House sufferance. The buck stops at the same place it has since Harry Truman's time. Obama has been in office for better than three years now, plenty of time to remove chuckleheads over at GSA. Since he didn't, he owns it now.

Monday, April 9, 2012

Guilt Trip to the max

TV news is talking up a new study claiming that obese mothers give birth to autistic children. Wow. How to make a woman feel guilty with out even trying. Sometimes it pays to be a guy. Or at least until they do another study showing that obese fathers cause autism. I have no idea as to how valid this new study is, but it's getting plenty of news coverage.
There has been a lot of talk about the growth of autism. One cause the newsies don't cover is soft hearted doctors. Many a child needs some speech therapy or extra reading tuition or any number of special and costly treatments to overcome some weakness. If the doctor diagnoses the child with autism, insurance will pay for the needed treatment. Otherwise parent's have to pay for it. They been talking about an autism rate of 1:83. I don't know if I can believe that one child in 83 is autistic, but I can believe that 1 child in 83 would benefit from some kind of special therapy or training or something.

Sunday, April 8, 2012

Facebook broke the photo uploader, again

This is about the third time that the software weenie's at Facebook managed to break the photo uploader. The new and broken one first demands you upload an new version of Flash player. When I refused to do that, I was able to upload with great difficulty selecting photo's one by one. You can no longer highlight all the photo's and have them upload.
And, you gotta watch Facebook. I find my Facebook portrait is now showing up on all sorts of websites all over the internet. It took 5 minutes of clicking to navigate to Facebook's account page and then the privacy settings. Privacy settings has grown, there are now about 100 different setting that you have to make one by one. A whole herd of "apps", nosy little craplets, none of which I had ever heard of before, had some sort of privileges on my account . I zapped them all.
And Facebook now has "timelines" what ever those might be, and Facebook is gonna make 'em public on Income Tax Day, which is coming right up.
If you have anything embarrassing on Facebook, now is a good time to zap it.

It snowed for Easter

Not much, way less than an inch, but it turned the ground white.