I'd LIKE to believe this, but is it real?

Article in "Nature Climate Change" (who ever they may be, I never heard of 'em before) claims that tree ring width measurements from present day back to Roman times show a persistent global cooling has been going on for the last two thousand years.  I'd like to believe this.
   Trouble is, tree ring width is determined by rainfall.  Trees love moisture and on wet years they lay down thicker layers of new wood. Temperature doesn't effect ring growth much. 
  The authors attempt to meet this criticism by comparing tree ring widths to measured temperatures in modern (post-thermometer-invention) times.  They claim a correlation of 0.77 which is better than random, but far short of the standards used in the real sciences.  For instance the Higgs Boson discoverers demanded a correlation of 0.999 or better before they made their claim.  So I am not sold on tree ring width as a proxy measurement of temperature. 
   The title of the article suggests that the temperature changes are a result of  changes in Earth's orbit.  It has been known for hundreds of years that earth's orbit is not a perfect circle, is it a plump elipse, close to a circle but there is a perihelion (closest to the sun point) and aphelion (farthest from the sun point).  The differences are not great, a percent or so.  Plus the earth's axial tilt (which causes seasons) drifts around some, which means some times Northern Hemisphere summer happens at perihelion, giving warmer summers.  Some times Northern summer happens at aphelion giving cooler summers.  The whole effect cycles around with a period of 25,000 years.  The cycle is called the Drayson cycle, it has been known for centuries, and numerous attempts have been made to connect Draysonianism with the coming and going of the ice ages.  None of these attempts have convinced the bulk of the scientific community to believe them.
    The title suggests another attempt at selling Draysonianism as a cause for global cooling is under way.  Trouble is, they don't have the data to make the case.  Their tree-ring/temperature data only covers 2000 years, a Drayson cycle is 25000 years. To show that we have a 25000 year global cooling cycle driven by the 25000 year Drayson cycle, you need 25000 years worth of temperature data, which they don't have.
   So , a nice article, which I want to believe, but  their case is shaky, at best.

Tax Hikes. Political Death Wish?

We got Obama and NPR (the Diane Whines show) plumping federal income tax hikes "on the millionaires and billionaires only."  Do they really think this is a winning strategy in this election year?  I mean who likes tax hikes?  Independents?  
   They are talking about how we just have to have the extra revenue to balance the budget.  Me, and a lot of voters say, "Cut the spending first, just to prove that you can do it.  AFTER some real spending cuts, and we get the economy working again, then MAYBE we can talk tax hikes.  But if we do a tax hike first we won't ever get any spending cuts."

Clever new junk mail

Most junk mail goes into the fireplace unopened.  But then every so often some so attention begging turns up.  This was a plain white business sized envelope with an tony script return address printed on it.  And a bulge.  Something of substance, or at least thickness.  So I opened it.  The bulge was a plastic keychain sort of gizmo stuck to the pitch letter with stickum.  "Pull tab to win a new 2012 Suzuki".  So I pulled the tab and the magic number lit up and glowed in purple. Cool.  And it matched the winning number !!  Wow. 
  So I pitched everything except the glowing number goodie.  That's still glowing on my desk.  I want to see how much battery it has.  Will it glow all day?  Over night? Who knows?

Is there a liberal tone of voice?

Hmm. When the clock radio comes on in the AM,  I can tell the political slant of the NPR pieces by the tone of the announcers voice before I wake up enough to actually comprehend what is being said. 

LIBOR for fun and profit

Barclay's Bank is in hot water over attempts to manipulate the "London Interbank Offered Rate" (LIBOR) to their advantage.  US and Brit regulators got the goods on Barclay's strong enough to make them cough up nearly $500 million in fines, and have their three top officers resign.  Apparently the published LIBOR is put together by averaging reports from all the big banks on how much interest they had to pay to borrow money from other banks.  LIBOR is used to set interest rates on all sort of loans.
  L:IBOR is a new comer.  Back in the day we used the "prime rate", which was alleged to be the interest rate big banks charged their best customers.  Back then General Motors was considered a best customer, so we are talking about a long time ago.  Somehow the financial world stopped using (and reporting on the news) the prime rate in favor of LIBOR.  I have no idea how  that transition happened. 
  Of course you have to wonder about LIBOR.  It's an interest rate one bank charges another bank on a loan between two banks.
  Banks are supposed to raise money and make loans to finance business and construction.  That makes economies grow.  Making loans to other banks just swaps the money around but doesn't  do a thing for economic development.  At least the "prime rate" was a measure of how well banks were doing at their primary job.

Old Home Day / 4th of July

Franconia put on the usual parade.  Old Home Day is always on Saturday, the Saturday closest to the 4th of July.  Every body comes to the event.

Here we have Ray Burton, North Country politician extraordinaire arriving in his trade mark Olds Delta 88. Ray is executive councilor and country commissioner.  It's said that where ever three people get together in Grafton County one of them will be Ray Burton.

Then we have all sorts of classic cars.  Like this baby.  They don't make 'em like this anymore.

The Tea Party is still boiling mad up here.

 Marching down Main St.  That's Mt Lafayette in the background.  The weather held up, we didn't get rained upon.  When the whole thing was over, the political people all  went to a big GOP phone banking event at the Littleton GOP headquarters. 

Who cares if it's a tax?

It's money out of my pocket, I don't care if you call it a tax or a penalty, it's still money taken away from me.  I don't like that no matter what you call it.
  Newsies and other twitterati get all excited about "precedent", claiming that a "precedent" might win a future court case.  Yeah right, but we lost this one now and we lost it big.  No amount of "precedent" can make up for that.  Plus the courts rule any old way they want to.  They don't pay attention to "precedent" in real life, although they claim they do.
  So let's drop the "is it a tax or is it a penalty" talk.  Every time I hear the TV start in on it again, I reach for the remote control.