I watched it with maybe just one eye. The hearing was long, very long. Each congresscritter in two committees got 5 minutes to question Mueller or just make speeches. The Democrats would read aloud from the 400 odd page Mueller report and get Mueller to agree with it. This served to get points from the report before the public. Few people have bothered to read the Mueller report. I haven't and I don't plan to. It is too long, written in lawyer's gobble de gook which can mean almost anything depending upon who is reading it.
Republicans seized on inconsistencies in the report and grilled Mueller about them. Mueller did not look good answering. In one case he admitted ignorance of the Steele Dossier, which has been headline news for months.
A lot of talk about "obstruction of justice". Early in the report they state that there is no evidence of "collusion" between the Trump campaign and bad guys. If there is no crime, how can there be obstruction of justice? That was never explained.
Thursday, July 25, 2019
Tuesday, July 23, 2019
Looking for Global Warming.
NASA at the Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) has posted their temperature data base. It goes back to the invention of the thermometer back in the later 1600's. I downloaded the whole thing some years ago. The records were fixed length, 80 bytes long, no separators like comma's. Clearly showing their origin on IBM punch cards. I last used punch cards on a Raytheon job in back 1972.
I wrote a C program to convert the ancient data format into something modern that Excel could read. I plotted number of records vs date. As expected, there are few records from the late 1600's. The number grows over the years to a million or so. Then in the early 1980's, a great weeding out happened, and the number of records per year drops to a third of its peak in 1980. You have to wonder which reporting stations were dropped, with no explanation. Where I live, it is 5 degrees cooler in summer and 5 degrees warmer in winter than it is down at the bottom of three mile hill in the village. If a Franconia Notch reporting station was axed, it would increase global warming. If a Franconia village reporting station, only three miles away, was axed it lower global warming. When they axed two thirds of the reporting stations I wonder which ones got the axe. The warmer stations or the colder stations?
Next I plotted the reported temperature data going back to the beginning in the late 1600's. GISS furnished two data sets, a raw data set and a "corrected" data set. The raw data set plotted out properly, a smooth line, obviously real data. The "corrected" data set had a problem starting around 1860. Data before 1860 was obviously bad, it had vertical jumps, bumps and discontinuities. Just looking at the plot I could tell that something in the "corrected" data was wrong.
So, working with just the raw data, I subtracted the average temperature from each year's temperature, yielding temperature rise or fall going all the way back the the late 1600s. Temperature rise peaked back in 1990 and has been flat ever since.
I believe in things you can measure, far more than I do computer models.
I wrote a C program to convert the ancient data format into something modern that Excel could read. I plotted number of records vs date. As expected, there are few records from the late 1600's. The number grows over the years to a million or so. Then in the early 1980's, a great weeding out happened, and the number of records per year drops to a third of its peak in 1980. You have to wonder which reporting stations were dropped, with no explanation. Where I live, it is 5 degrees cooler in summer and 5 degrees warmer in winter than it is down at the bottom of three mile hill in the village. If a Franconia Notch reporting station was axed, it would increase global warming. If a Franconia village reporting station, only three miles away, was axed it lower global warming. When they axed two thirds of the reporting stations I wonder which ones got the axe. The warmer stations or the colder stations?
Next I plotted the reported temperature data going back to the beginning in the late 1600's. GISS furnished two data sets, a raw data set and a "corrected" data set. The raw data set plotted out properly, a smooth line, obviously real data. The "corrected" data set had a problem starting around 1860. Data before 1860 was obviously bad, it had vertical jumps, bumps and discontinuities. Just looking at the plot I could tell that something in the "corrected" data was wrong.
So, working with just the raw data, I subtracted the average temperature from each year's temperature, yielding temperature rise or fall going all the way back the the late 1600s. Temperature rise peaked back in 1990 and has been flat ever since.
I believe in things you can measure, far more than I do computer models.
Tuesday, July 16, 2019
Trashing Donald Trump
TV has been full of unhappy talk about the president's tweets concerning "the squad", four lefty democrat congresswomen. They have been calling the president racist (the all purpose democrat epithet) and I forget what else, but they are clearly unhappy with the president's tweets.
With so much smoke, there ought be some fire down there somewhere. I logged into my Twitter account and read the last week of Trump tweets. He came down pretty hard on the squad, but I didn't see anything racist or out of line. Trump was trashing his political opposition for their political ideology, which is a perfectly legitimate thing for a sitting president to do, IMHO.
From the loudness of the squeals I think he hit a sore spot.
With so much smoke, there ought be some fire down there somewhere. I logged into my Twitter account and read the last week of Trump tweets. He came down pretty hard on the squad, but I didn't see anything racist or out of line. Trump was trashing his political opposition for their political ideology, which is a perfectly legitimate thing for a sitting president to do, IMHO.
From the loudness of the squeals I think he hit a sore spot.
Saturday, July 13, 2019
Riding High. What could bring down America's economy?
Cover story of the Economist this week. Clever front page cartoon based on that old 1930's photo of ironworkers taking their lunch sitting on a steel girder way way up in the air. They only mention Democrats, the most severe threat to the American economy, once in the very last paragraph of the article.
Anyone know how to clean up Win 10 Explorer???
Used to be, back with Win XP, explorer would display one and only one icon for each file and folder on the drive. Which is the way it ought to be.
Win 10, thru a bug or a ding-a-ling design choice, shows multiple icons for the same file. Some of this is "libraries", an unexplained concept, for which I never found a use (or an explanation). I turned off the " library" icons in explorer. Click on View, click on "Navigation Pane". Click on the arrow of Navigation pane to expand the sub menu, and uncheck libraries. That cleans up a decent amount of clutter.
Some of the clutter is a bunch of busted shortcuts invented by Win 10. When clicked upon they yield error messages rather than taking you any where useful. I delete them when I find them.
There are still too darn many cases of multiple icons which point to the same file. I don't dare delete the icon, fearing that it might delete the file instead. Dunno what to do about trimming back that clutter.
I would welcome any advice.
Win 10, thru a bug or a ding-a-ling design choice, shows multiple icons for the same file. Some of this is "libraries", an unexplained concept, for which I never found a use (or an explanation). I turned off the " library" icons in explorer. Click on View, click on "Navigation Pane". Click on the arrow of Navigation pane to expand the sub menu, and uncheck libraries. That cleans up a decent amount of clutter.
Some of the clutter is a bunch of busted shortcuts invented by Win 10. When clicked upon they yield error messages rather than taking you any where useful. I delete them when I find them.
There are still too darn many cases of multiple icons which point to the same file. I don't dare delete the icon, fearing that it might delete the file instead. Dunno what to do about trimming back that clutter.
I would welcome any advice.
Wednesday, July 10, 2019
Constitution does NOT require "Separation of Church and State"
First Amendment reads "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;" That is the first sentence of the first amendment, so we can believe that the issue was important to the founders.
In the eighteenth century, when the Constitution was created, establishment of religions was a fairly common practice in the world. In England the Church of England was established. You had to be a member of the Church of England to receive important government jobs like judgeships, commissions in the army or navy. The royal family was required to be Church of England members. In France you had to be catholic to hold just about any job, public or private. In short the established church received benefits at law and favored treatment.
America had a lot of different churches in the eighteenth century, Congregational, Quaker, Episcopal, Catholic, and others that I don't remember. All of which would have been proud to become established.
First amendment says that no church gets the bennies of establishment, all churches get treated the same in the eyes of the law. Which surely ended a lot of jockeying for position and fear that some other church would gain the bennies of establishment. In short it was a good political compromise. Second clause about the free exercise thereof means that churches are free to put up church buildings, conduct services, pass a collection plate, marry people, operate schools, send out missionaries, bury parishioners in the church yard, and do all the other churchly things. Including putting up a cross as a memorial to WWI dead.
The Supremes just ruled that cross legitimate. They mentioned a number of good reasons, such as it had stood for close to a century, but they did not come right out and say that putting up a cross is free exercise of religion, which they should have done.
The phrase "separation of church and state" I believe comes from Thomas Jefferson, not the Constitution. Granted, Jefferson was a heavy duty founder, for whom we have a lot of respect, but he didn't get separation of church and state into the Constitution.
In the eighteenth century, when the Constitution was created, establishment of religions was a fairly common practice in the world. In England the Church of England was established. You had to be a member of the Church of England to receive important government jobs like judgeships, commissions in the army or navy. The royal family was required to be Church of England members. In France you had to be catholic to hold just about any job, public or private. In short the established church received benefits at law and favored treatment.
America had a lot of different churches in the eighteenth century, Congregational, Quaker, Episcopal, Catholic, and others that I don't remember. All of which would have been proud to become established.
First amendment says that no church gets the bennies of establishment, all churches get treated the same in the eyes of the law. Which surely ended a lot of jockeying for position and fear that some other church would gain the bennies of establishment. In short it was a good political compromise. Second clause about the free exercise thereof means that churches are free to put up church buildings, conduct services, pass a collection plate, marry people, operate schools, send out missionaries, bury parishioners in the church yard, and do all the other churchly things. Including putting up a cross as a memorial to WWI dead.
The Supremes just ruled that cross legitimate. They mentioned a number of good reasons, such as it had stood for close to a century, but they did not come right out and say that putting up a cross is free exercise of religion, which they should have done.
The phrase "separation of church and state" I believe comes from Thomas Jefferson, not the Constitution. Granted, Jefferson was a heavy duty founder, for whom we have a lot of respect, but he didn't get separation of church and state into the Constitution.
Sunday, July 7, 2019
Comprehensive Immigration Reform on Beat the Press
Lot of unhappy talk, lamenting the lack of comprehensive immigration reform by the talking heads this morning. No description of just what comprehensive might be. But you got the impression that a whole bunch of stuff would be changed. I don't think our current Congress can actually pass controversial laws any more, and changing everything in immigration is surely controversial.. Congresscritters just sit around trash talking Trump. That's amusing and all, but it doesn't get the public's business done.
I think instead of comprehensive, we might be able to pass some simple changes that everyone agrees are good. For instance, a large majority is in favor of doing something for the dreamers, illegals brought into the country as children. Might be some discussion as to how much we ought to do, but I think some compromise could be reached. This looks doable with today's low speed Congress, whereas comprehensive probably ain't doable.
For another measure, we should declare anyone who serves in the US armed forces and obtains an honorable discharge is eligible to become a US citizen. That worked for the Romans, it will work for us. Or anyone who assists US forces overseas doing things like interpreting should be granted citizenship.
We need immigrants. Immigrants and the children of immigrants make up our most loyal citizens. The US is a super power for many reasons, one of them being our large, loyal, and well educated population. With the fertility of the US falling below replacement level, we need immigrants to keep our population up.
I think instead of comprehensive, we might be able to pass some simple changes that everyone agrees are good. For instance, a large majority is in favor of doing something for the dreamers, illegals brought into the country as children. Might be some discussion as to how much we ought to do, but I think some compromise could be reached. This looks doable with today's low speed Congress, whereas comprehensive probably ain't doable.
For another measure, we should declare anyone who serves in the US armed forces and obtains an honorable discharge is eligible to become a US citizen. That worked for the Romans, it will work for us. Or anyone who assists US forces overseas doing things like interpreting should be granted citizenship.
We need immigrants. Immigrants and the children of immigrants make up our most loyal citizens. The US is a super power for many reasons, one of them being our large, loyal, and well educated population. With the fertility of the US falling below replacement level, we need immigrants to keep our population up.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)