Do I believe in "self radicalization"?

On TV, Obama described the Boston bombers as "self radicalized".  I suppose Obama means that the Tsarnaev brothers converted from reasonable people into terrorists merely by visiting websites.  Somehow I don't believe that.  I think some person established a relationship with the brothers and sold them the Islamist terrorist ideology.  We ought to be looking for that person. 
  If there are Islamist web sites so compelling as to "self radicalize" individuals we need to study their technique.  It could be dynamite for selling cars, or nearly anything else.

$2,788,578 to fix each and every 787

Ouch.  The whole airplane only costs $200 million.  The retrofit kit takes 5 days to install.  This includes two 1/8th inch thick stainless steel fireproof battery boxes, two brand new batteries, two jazzier microprocessor controlled battery chargers that monitor the batteries while charging and light up warning lights in the cockpit when they detect a problem. 
   The new batteries have more insulation between cells to prevent/retard one runaway cell from setting off the other 7 cells in the battery.  These are 32 volt batteries made up from eight 4 volt lithium cells all packed into a single battery enclosure.  They believe (they don't know for sure) that something goes wrong in a single cell, shorting it out.  They don't know what "something" is.  All the stored chemical energy of the shorted cell runs thru the short and heats the cell up. The heat warms up the other cells and they fail too.  The new batteries have a little more airspace inside them and more insulation around each cell.  The idea is to prevent the chain reaction where all the cells melt down, and if it does, the stainless steel battery box will contain the fire and prevent it from setting the entire aircraft ablaze. 
  Let's hope it works. 

Senator Kelly Ayotte gives a Town Meeting

This meeting was at Tilton, NH, a little bit north on Concord on I93.  Word had been circulated by email that Moveon.org was sending demonstrators to protest Senator Ayotte's vote against Obama's gun control bill in the Senate.  In fact, I spread some emails urging people to come to express support for Kelly.  I  arrived an hour early, and we all ready had people gathering with signs.  The Kelly Ayotte supporters stood on one side of the driveway, the Moveon.org    people on the other.  I counted about 12 on each side.
    Once the meeting got started inside it was fairly clear that the ordinary Republicans vastly out numbered the moveon people.  The place had some 300 seats and every one was full.  They had a bullpen for the video cameras.  There was an NBC TV satellite truck parked out side. 
   Kelly drew repeated rounds of applause from the floor.  Tax reform, and spending reduction got big hands.  Someone asked about "Common Core" (curriculum) and Kelly drew more applause when she came out in favor of local control of education.  A few of the moveon people tried to get the floor by shouting from the audience but it didn't work for them.  It was a good event for Kelly, and I don't think she is going to have much trouble getting re elected four years from now.  The crowd was clearly on her side.
  I was gonna post a few pic, but the picture uploader in blogspot is broken, again. 

Time Warner Cable going west

Something has gone wrong with the cable up north of the Notch.  First the TV just went black.  After it came back it was all fuzzy,  sound was OK but the picture is nearly unwatchable.
Cable modem internet service died too.  It took longer to come back.  I think it's working now, but it's SLOW.  TV was blacked out for 15 minutes, Internet for a couple of hours. 
Let's see if this posts.

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.