The Hacker's strike again.

Last year I got an apologetic letter from Uncle Sam.  The hackers had gotten into the government personnel records and taken them.  I didn't get too upset, all they could have gotten was my old Air Force service records from 50 years ago, and records of the security clearance I held up until about 10 years ago. 

Today a got an apologetic letter from by stock broker, Morgan Stanley,  about a hack at their place.  The story as Morgan Stanley told it in the letter, they retired an aging data center.  The hired a contractor (did not give contractor's name) to erase the disks in the data center servers.  Something went wrong, they were not too clear on what, and the data, names and social security and more, stayed on the hard drives and turned up somewhere, later.  Morgan Stanley has offered to pay for two years of an identity theft monitoring program.  I suppose I ought to take them up on that. 

The A10's are back

I have been getting a nice airshow, right over the house these last two days.  They fly up the Notch, at low level, less than 1000 feet.  I get a good view of the aircraft.  It's a little noisy, but I don't care, watching them fly low is fun.  The A10's used to do this, maybe 5-8 years ago, and then they stopped.  And they used to give is a flyover for the Franconia 4th of July parade.  I assumed the A10 unit had been rotated off somewhere.   Anyhow they are back, it's cool.  Glad to see them.

Everyone honors John Lewis

John Lewis, black civil rights leader, US representative from Georgia, died last night at age 80, from cancer.  It is good to see leaders from both parties and the news media doing him honor.  At least we can come together over something.

John Wick Movie 2014

 

Played by Keanu Reeves, John Wick is the toughest movie hit man ever.  Tougher than James Bond, tougher than Paul Kersey, tougher than any role Chuck Norris ever played, tougher than Arnold.   He is retired from the nameless agency he used to work for, happily married.  Suddenly his wife dies of mysterious causes and a bunch of thugs take a fancy to his 69 Mustang and beat him up, kill his dog and steal his car.  The rest of the movie is straight revanchism that leaves nobody alive.  John Wick shoots straight for the heart and kills them with every shot.  He uses a lot of ammunition before the end of the movie.  It’s a pretty stripped down movie, no love interest, no good one liners.  John Wick does get to drive a couple of cool 60’s Detroit hot rods, the Mustang and an Olds 442.  The bad guys drive SUV’s.  The formula must work since they made two sequels.  I watched it to the end, even stayed awake.  But it wasn’t as good as say Terminator 2.

Watched Biden on TV. Sounded much better.

Last couple of times Biden was on TV, speaking from his basement, he did not sound good at all.  Lost his train of thought, mumbled, and generally looked and sounded like the Alzheimers was getting to him.

Just now on TV, he sounded much better.  Spoke up properly, looked straight ahead at the audience (and the TelePrompter).  Gave a position speech that was coherent, stayed on topic.  Looked and sounded like he was in control and not the Alzheimers.  I wonder how he managed that?  New doctor?  Some new drug or treatment?  Practice and coaching?  Good strong coffee?

Roger Stone got his sentence commuted

They convicted Roger Stone on some mickey mouse charges, lying to Congress and some other lawyer stuff.  This was not perjury, lying under oath.  Interrogate anyone long enough and sooner or later he will forget what he said weeks ago and tell it differently this time.  Gotcha, lying to Congress, or the FBI.  Far as I am concerned, "lying to" should not be a crime in the first place.  It's a law that prosecutors lobbied Congress to pass to make life easier for themselves.  You cops want to convict someone, get off your duffs, hit the bricks, and find some real evidence, or some witnesses that will testify. 

   Anyhow, I think the president did right by commuting the sentence.  The guy is in his sixties, he isn't going to assault anyone, keeping him in jail is cruel and unusual punishment. 

Lies, Damn Lies and statistics. Corona virus statistics

We hear a lot of ‘em on the TV.  For a scare tactic the newsies tell us that Corona virus cases are going up.  Not a good sign.  They finish off by calling to quarantine every body and shut everything down.  Then a few newsies tell us that Corona virus deaths are going down.  They finish off by calling for re opening stores and restaurants, getting back to work and ending stay at   home orders.  “There are lies, damn lies, and statistics” to quote Mark Twain.  

   The increase in the number of cases is probably because we are testing more.  And the test is pretty trigger happy.  A lot of people don’t have the disease, feel fine, and the test calls them sick.  The medics call these cases (and there are a lot of them) “asymptomatic” a nice buzz word that means “no symptoms”.  And they count them as Corona virus cases.  We could just as easily say the test has shown a false positive and not a Corona virus case.  And we don’t know if the asymptomatic cases are infectious or not.  Nor do we know if the asymptomatic cases will actually come down with a real case of Corona virus after a few weeks.  Anyhow, the number of Corona virus cases reported by the TV newies might be off by who knows how much.

   The number of deaths is perhaps a little more solid.  You need a death certificate and a body in order the say a death has occurred.  I have heard from a number of places that the medics are under great pressure to call every death a Corona virus death because the hospitals get a larger reimbursement for Corona virus deaths than for other causes of death. At any rate the number of deaths is going down.  It might be that Corona virus has already killed the most vulnerable among us and those of us that are left alive are more resistant to it.  In that case we could expect the death rate to fall some more. 

  Corona virus is going to be around for ever.  Unless we want to live hunkered down at home for the rest of our lives, we have to get out of the house, go to work, go out to eat, travel,  go to the beach, all that stuff.  Sooner or later we will encounter Corona virus.  Mostly we will survive.  I hear that once you have Corona virus you are immune to it from then on in.  I have not heard any real studies of this, but it is likely and it is the general belief right now.