Technical assistance or radicalization?

TV news keeps talking about technical assistance in bomb making for the Boston bombers.  Interesting and all, but to my way of thinking, not all that important.
Important, is how the brothers converted from reasonably successful immigrants into terrorist bombers.  Did someone preach Jihad to them?  Is it possible for just internet websites to turn reasonable people into bombers?  Without a live person to spread the message?  Are the brothers more pliable than anyone I know?
   Anyhow, I'm more interested in motivation, what turned the brothers into bombers, than I am in how they built the bombs.

Idling Firefox is writing to the hard drive

I wonder what.  With Antique Laptop powered up, XP running, Firefox 20.0.1 active, and laptop just sitting there, no one running it, I see continuous I/O writes in Task Manager, and I see the hard disk LED flickering all the time.
    Translation: when it has nothing to do, Firefox is stashing something to the hard drive.  I wonder what it might be.  Cookies?  That many cookies?  That's hard to believe.  A virus?  Has my Firefox been infected by something awful?  Should I wipe it off the hard drive and down load a fresh copy?  I ran Spybot, Malicious Software Removal, and Malware bytes just a few days ago.  No hits. 

Followup.  Problem seems to be an obsolete version of Adode "reader" the Firefox plugin, not to be confused with the Adode PDF reader.  Anyhow, run Firefox.  Click on "tools" on the Firefox menu bar.  Select "Add -ons"  This opens a window with four selections.  You want the one named "Plugins".  "Plugins are bits of computer code written be third parties that load into Firefox and can do nearly anything.  A defective plugin can do all kinds of evil things.  At the top of the list of plugins there is a highlighted text line reading "Check to see if your plugins are up-to-date".   Click on it and after a little thrashing it will tell you what plugins need updating. 
   In my case a plugin named "Adobe Reader", a Firefox plugin, not to be confused with an application of the very same name used to view .pdf files, needed update.  It's slow but it works.  The strange disc accesses went away after update finished.  Update is SLOW, but it does work. 
   The Adobe update is "bundled" with some McAfee anti -virus.  I failed to uncheck the teeny weeny camoflaged box to skip McAfee.  Which made the sluggish download more sluggish.  Just for grins I ran the McAfee antivirus and it locked up.  After waiting half an hour for something to happen, I killed it off with Task Manager and zapped it off disk with Add/Remove programs.

Chemical weapons and red lines in Syria

Why does killing with poison gas rate more Obama rhetoric than killing  with anything else.  Assad in Syria has been killing his opposition in vast numbers and the US does nothing, says little, and doesn't get excited.  Obama declared that killing civilians with poison gas was worse than killing them in ordinary ways.  I don't see that, killing is killing, doesn't matter what weapons the killing is done with.
   Anyhow,  Obama now finds that he has to do something or be branded as a paper tiger. 

The Economist trashes Maggie Thatcher

In the letters section of this week's Economist magazine we have all the letters expressing various hostilities to former and recently deceased Margaret Thatcher.  Not one friendly letter.   All letter writers were willing and able to speak ill of the dead.  Despite a couple of nice Thatcher obituaries last week, seems like the Economist (a very liberal rag) harbors some ill feeling for the Iron Lady. 

Signs of Spring in New Hampshire

Spring might actually happen this year.  It was 60 here, snow is melted out except up on Cannon ski trails, and the yard sale signs were out.  Alder Brook Sportsman's Club had the annual range cleanup.  The dirt access road is dry enough to drive upon.  Some twelve members, and two big $20 K privately owned John Deere tractors  on fancy trailers showed up.  Between the tractors, the pickups, the SUV's and just plain cars there must have been $200K worth of machinery out there.
    By hand the range was raked, getting up piles and piles of broken clay pigeons and shot gun wads and shot cups.  The tractors graded the access road.
   I'm getting old.  I get tired from just swinging a rake, which didn't used to happen. 
   So we are ready for another season of shooting.

Terrorists vs Freedom Fighters

Tennessee parents are objecting to a high school "textbook" that asks "Is bombing an Israeli pizzeria terrorism or a legitimate act of war by Palestinian revolutionaries?" 
    Dunno how that "textbook" answered the question. 
   Far as I am concerned, maiming and murdering innocent strangers with bombs is always terrorism.  Nothing ever justifies terrorism.  Legitimate acts of war are conducted against enemy soldiers, not against innocent strangers. 
  I fully share the Tennessee parents concern about that "textbook".  It sounds like Al Quada propaganda to me. 

Bird lovers versus cat lovers

NPR ran a nice little piece on feral cats, and a volunteer organization that does catch, neuter, and release.  But then the inner bird lover in the reporter surfaced, and she went on about predation of birds by cats.  She claimed that cats kill 2.5 billion birds every year and isn't that horrible.  I had to wonder where she got her numbers from.  Did someone go about interviewing cats?   Then she claimed that the house cat was an invasive species, not native to the western hemisphere and the poor birds had no natural defenses.  She forgot about the native bobcats, a little bigger and faster and meaner than a house cat. Besides, any bird dumb enough to let a cat get so close it can pounce before the bird can get airborne, is probably better off as cat food. 
   On their side, cats totally understand humans, and make themselves so friendly, so cuddly, and so attractive that most humans go ga-ga and feed them, pet them, and shelter them.  Birds don't compete in this league.  So there are gonna be plenty of cat lovers looking out for cats.