Protons to the rescue

Something new in the never ending struggle to raise medical costs.   Someone decided that using a beam of high speed protons instead of  Xrays would improve radiation therapy.  They sold this idea around.  Trouble is, the machine to make the proton beam costs better than $100 million and is big enough to fill a gymnasium.  Whereas you can get all the Xrays  you want from a glass tube about the size of a cantaloupe.  Needless to say proton beam therapy  cost  $50,000 as opposed to half that for conventional radiation therapy.
   Now comes a study indicating that the results of the pricey proton beam therapy are no different from conventional therapy.  I could have told them that.   Radiation therapy works by using a beam of radiation to kill cancer cells.  It doesn't really matter if the cell dies from being hit with a proton or being hit with an Xray, dead is dead. 
   Perhaps we can  save some money and not put in any more proton machines. 

Blood Dancing for Gun Control

That's what David Gregory did for an hour on "Meet the Press" this morning.  He had Diane Feinstein, senator from CA promising to ban "assault weapons".   Lotta welfare for lawyers there since there is no objective difference between a deer rifle and an assault rifle.  He had  Michael Blomberg, NYC mayor, pushing Obama for "more leadership on gun control".  Blomberg didn't actually come out and say just what he wanted to outlaw, which makes me think he fears the political damage he might incur if he made a substantive proposal.  Blomberg spent a lot of words trashing the NRA.  He doesn't seem to understand that the NRA is a democratic organization of gun owners who merely want to prevent people like Blomberg from confiscating their guns.  They have a large membership, which gives them power at the voting booth.  

Ultimate Tearjerker, worse than Love Story

What Dreams May Come with Robin Williams, 1998.  I netflixed it by mistake.  The movie opens with a romantic meeting between Robin Williams and a beautiful loving young woman.  They court, they marry and things go well for years.  Then bad things happen, their two adorable teen age children die in a car crash.  Robin Williams is killed in traffic attempting to rescue a victim trapped in a wrecked car.
  The movie is a total downer from then on in.  It so depressing I turned it off before the end.   At least in Love Story they had good times together before Ali McGraw dies of cancer in the last reel.

The word you want is "horrible"

Bret Bauer said "Amazing" in conclusion of some of the Sandy Hook school massacre coverage this evening.  No Bret, it's not amazing, it's horrible.
   My sincerest sympathies go out the the parents and families of the slain.  It's totally inadequate, but it's the best I can do.  
   If the homicidal maniac who committed this atrocious crime had been under restraint in an insane asylum it would not have happened.

Porkulus funding to bug transit buses.

According to this, CONCORD NH, is spending $1.2 million of "stimulus funds" to place eavesdropping microphones on transit buses.  To fritter good money away on hi tech gadgetry is bad enough.  To violate privacy is even worse.  Apparently the system is accessible from the public internet, like a web cam.
   Un mentioned in this article is how the system separates voice conversations from the roar of the engine, but presumably an extension of the "hands-free car kit" technology can do it. 

Landlines

I've got one, I think.  I was pretty sure I had one until last night when I lifted the phone and no dial tone.  So I walked up to the Mittersill Inn to see if their phone still worked, and if so, to call in my number as broken.  Fairpoint, our local phone co had three or four trucks working the phone line up three mile hill to my place.  The trucks were gone yesterday but they had left a couple of those little tents hanging off the phone wires.  I was pretty sure they must have broken something up there.
  The girl on the desk at  the Inn was unsure as to whether their phone worked.  She didn't understand the difference between an outside line and calling a room inside the building.  I  finally knocked on the door of a nearby chalet that was showing lights and begged the use of their phone to call Fairpoint.    The Fairpoint service desk took my name and address and promised a crew would be out tomorrow, anytime between 6 AM and 6 PM.
  And, wonder of wonders, they did show up around 1 PM.  A big Fairpoint truck with a cherry picker pulls up in front of the house, and the phone rings.   It's the guy in the truck checking to see if he had fixed things.  As I had thought, the workers on three mile hill had broken something.  The other interesting item, the work on the hill is putting in a DSL booster to bring DSL up to Mittersill.  Right now all we have is cable modems.
  Anyhow, I'm thinking about getting a cell phone, if only to call Fairpoint when the landline conks out.

Obama wants a tax hike, Republicans want cuts

And, the Republicans keep asking Obama to "make some cuts".   Nice work if you can get it.  US government doesn't work that way.  Congress appropriates money by law to run the government.  The president signs the appropriation bill.  In principle he could veto a truly objecionable one, but somehow that never happens.  Appropriation bills are law,  the sequester is just a wish of Congress.  Appropriate, or better don't appropriate, is the name of the game. 
  In short, if the Republicans want spending cuts,  they have to pass them thru the House (which they control) and then dare the Democratic Senate to trashcan them.   The Senate doesn't want to be accused of driving the economy over the fiscal cliff.  For any reasonable bill, there will be a lot of pressure on the Senate to pass it rather than be left holding the blame. 
   Given a bill passed House and Senate, Obama will have to sign it, or take a lot of blame for all the things that are going to go wrong. 
  But it has to start with the House passing something.  Asking Obama to make spending cuts is a waste of airtime. The House has to do it.