New York Times makes up new science

The Times ran an article about Shaun Marcott and his team at Oregon State University.   Marcott claims to have "read" earth's temperature going back 11 thousand years.  Naturally (for the NYT) Marcott's temperature "reading" shows temperature's were colder than today, for the last 11 thousand years.  Global warming rides again.
  Naturally the Times didn't both to explain just how Marcott was able to measure the temperate 10,000 years ago.  That's actually quite a trick.  Many global warmers have made mistakes, like claiming tree ring wide indicates temperate.  (It indicates rainfall).
  The Times also quotes the notorious Dr. Michael Mann of Penn State.  Mann was exposed in the great Hadley Climate Research Unit document leak as an very partisan warmist not above fudging his results to get the answers that he wants. 
  Finally, the Times declares a solution to the age old question of "what caused the ice ages".  This has been a topic of discussion for the last century or more.  There are dozens of theories kicking around, none of them convincing enough to become generally accepted.  But this doesn't stop our NYT warmists.  The Times boldy declares that variation in the heat of the Sun causes ice ages.  Sun gets colder and we have an ice age.
Trouble with this theory is that instrument readings don't support it.  We have solar output readings going back to the beginnings of artificial satellites.  The instruments are sensitive enough to show the 11 year sun spot cycle.  But they don't show any long term variation at all.  Solar output today is exactly the same as it was 40 years ago (date of earliest satellite observations).   Which suggests that the Sun burns at the same level all the time.   
  Glad to hear that the Times is so scientifically hep, throwing out new theories as if they were generally accepted.  I always believe what I read in the Times. 

Renaming the Washington Redskins.

The PC police are suing the Washington Redskins football team.  They claim "Redskin" is racist and derogatory and yadda yadda. The case is at the Supreme Court right now.
  If the court rules that "Redskins" is unacceptable, I think the team ought rename themselves as the Washington Rednecks.  

Bring back top 40 radio

Was watching Channel 6 (Vermont Public TV).  They had an hour long show (Hullabaloo) with just  good '60s groups playing good '60s hits.  It was great to hear.  Back in the day you could get music that good off the AM car radio.  Now a days, all the car radio (FM no less) has is elevator music. 
  And, despite 60 year old recordings, you could hear every single word of the lyrics.  Unlike many current movies. 

Change of Blog Template.

Youngest son thought the default page color was boring and made my blog look moldy.  So I just changed it. 

Cyberwarfare

Op Ed in today's Wall St Journal calling for new federal laws to harden up cybersecurity.  Author is a Texas Republican congressman on the Homeland Security Committee.  He talks about the risks, which are real.  Then he wants new laws.  Just what he wants to make law is less clear.  He mentions "necessary liability protections" and "streamlining processes" which don't mean much to me.  I am suspicious of "necessary liability protection".  Fear of tort lawyers suing the company down to its socks is a good motivator to tighten up security. 
   In the real world what cyber security means is the computer administrators all across the private and public sectors tightening up on passwords, disallowing login from the public internet, and paying real bucks to buy private lines to remote sites rather than passing everything over the wide open public internet.
  It means Microsoft has to close the gaping holes in Windows security.  Right now you can plug a CD or a flashdrive into a Windows computer and Windows will automatically and secretly load and execute what ever malware is on that media.  This is how the hard hitting Stuxnet worm was loaded onto Iranian computers.  Flash drives with Stuxnet in them were scattered about the parking lot and sharp eyed employees walking from their cars picked them up and took them into work.  There are dozens of other holes in Windows, it's like Swiss cheese.  Any high school kid can break into Windows  without working up a sweat. 

Innumeracy on the Factor

I'm watching Bill O'Reilly on the Factor last night.  He has some blonde Hollywood woman on who is selling "Alternate Energy".  O'Reilly allows that he has a house on Long Island that needs to be heated.  The Alternate Energy Blonde then launched into a long spiel about how to heat with alcohol.  She is sincere, makes you want to run out and pour a fifth of Old Crow into the furnace. 
  But,  O'Reilly never asks her how much alcohol costs.  Furnace oil costs me $4 a gallon.  Whiskey costs  me $20 a gallon at the State Store.  Granted industrial alcohol for fuel is probably less, but is it cheaper than furnace oil? 
  Alternate energy is like alternate medicine.  Quackery.

Hide the menus. Fixing My Deskjet

So one fine day, I click on "print" to get hardcopy of a spread sheet.  The D4260 whirs and thrashes and out comes a nearly blank sheet of page.  One a single number prints, everything else is blank.  I futz around with Excel's format menu, thinking the maybe the text color had been changed to white-on-white or something. Finally I change the text color to blue, and lo and behold, it prints. 
  Ah, the black ink cartridge must have run out.  So, next trip to Wally Mart, I buy an new one.  Only the new one doesn't match the number on the old one exactly.  It's close and I think it ought to work, so I pay $19 for it. 
  Once back home I am happy to find the new cartridge clips right into the printer, so far so good.  I haven't totally wasted $19 on a cartridge that won't fit.  Then I think I might print a test page, just to make sure the new black ink cartridge works. 
  Used to be, you clicked on Start, Settings, Printer and Faxes, and obtained a list of all the printers and pseudo printers on your machine.  And, there was a check box to print a test page for each device. 
  Not any longer.  You have to right click on the printer, select "Printer Preferences" and then "Features" and then "Printer Services" and then "Device Services" to get to a menu offering to print a test page.  It takes a while to find my way this deep into the bowels of HP's user friendliness.  I hit "Test Page".  The printer whirres and thrashes and I get a test page that is all in color.  No black. 
   This has gotta mean that the new black cartridge ain't working.  Does it not?  I remove the cartridge to make sure I have removed the factory shipping seal over the ink holes.  No joy, the seal has been removed and there is even a little wet ink to blacken my finger.
  I decide not to trust the HP test page and open up Word for Windows and print a short document.  That works.  Hurrah. 
  Sometimes I get nostalgic for the good old Centronics 101 dot matrix printers.