Global Warming Rant Warning!

Once upon a time I needed surgery. A very difficult surgery. A one slip of the scalpel and hasta la vista, baby!

So, how do I pick a surgeon?

A fact:

• I do not have technical ability to understand good surgery skills from poor surgery skills.

That leaves me dependent on the opinions of those who do have the ability to understand the difference between a good surgeon and a bad surgeon. I find as many doctors and medical professionals as I can and ask them to recommend a good surgeon. I ask them to ask their doctor friends for their recommendations to be forwarded on to me.

In other words, I pull in expert opinion, and attempt to determine the Venn diagram unions of opinion; the surgeons that are thought of highly by many other surgeons.

But, there is another tool I have at my disposal...

• I can search plain old boring data.

How many of these type operations did the surgeons perform and how many turned out well for the patient?

(Admittedly, this data might be hard to find, and the amount of data might not be sufficiently large to be of value. Nonetheless, the point remains that if available it would be of potentially great value.)

Let's change the scenario...

All the oncologists in the world have been raptured to heaven. And, I have cancer! They were kind enough to leave their drugs behind. But, I have to plot my own course of therapy.

How to do?

Well, they left behind their cars and planes and cell phones. That won't help. But, more useful to me, they left behind their statistics!

I am white, 50ish, Norwegian-German and extremely brilliant and good looking in the consensus opinion of the opposite sex. A little Klooney-like. But, I digress.

I find there are three drug protocols used for my condition by oncologists. Which to use? By analysis of the protocols, I determine that when applied to white, middle-aged Norwegian-Germans that protocol #3 is decidedly better. (Interestingly, for those of Mediterranean descent, protocol #3 is a pretty lousy choice.)

Fact:

• Many scientific questions can only be answered by data and statistics.

My surgery was a success, I have been cured of cancer and my fertile mind turns to the issue of global warming. Well, actually there is no question that our planet is in a warming cycle. No one on any side of the debate questions the fact that our Earth is warming up significantly.

More specifically, my mind turns to man-made global warming. In other words, do our air-borne pollutants cause significant warming of our planet?

And, this is where I go nuts listening to many Americans. For...

• We do not have the technical ability to understand climatology.
• We almost totally ignore data.

Let's state a very significant fact...

• Science has moved out of the garage!

Increasingly larger swaths of the scientific world are incomprehensible by the non-specialist. But, yet we Plato-style reason our way to a position where we ridicule the crushing consensus of scientific opinion on man-made global warming!

Increasingly, you cannot answer scientific questions in your garage.

Increasingly, no single scientist, no matter how specialized, informed and competent, can answer many scientific questions.

Did you get that! With our best intelligence, you and I are like children playing with adult toys. And, yes, many children actually believe they are fireman and nurses. But, we are not. And, we are increasingly unable to intelligently and competently discuss scientific issues. We are increasingly unable to even understand the issues!

Don't miss my second point above. Even the individual scientist is increasingly over his head unless he is humble enough to be multi-disciplinary.

My apocalyptic conclusion...

Scientific knowledge is increasing, and increasingly increasing! Just the sheer volume of knowledge being amassed is beyond comprehension. The depth of knowledge and the ramifications of the information we have is stunning.

Us American children need to quit playing childish games. We need to understand that we are bringing the approaches and tools of the 19th century to a 21st century battlefield.

David steps forth to meet Goliath. The Israelite army represented by David. The Philistine army represented by Goliath. The winner also keeps the army of the vanquished.

You remember the story...

In this 21st century scientific battlefield, you don't have many choices left. Pick your champion! Pick the scientific expert or experts to fight your scientific battles for you. Delve into their data, their reputations, their results. Select your scientific Davids carefully. For that is about the only choice left to you.

But, please vacate the field of battle. You are only getting in David's way!

Quantum Computing Update: Teleportation Milestone

Scientists have come a bit closer to achieving the "Star Trek" feat of teleportation. No one is galaxy-hopping, or even beaming people around, but for the first time, information has been teleported between two separate atoms across a distance of a meter — about a yard.
This is a significant milestone in a field known as quantum information processing, said Christopher Monroe of the Joint Quantum Institute at the University of Maryland, who led the effort.
Teleportation is one of nature's most mysterious forms of transport: Quantum information, such as the spin of a particle or the polarization of a photon, is transferred from one place to another, without traveling through any physical medium. It has previously been achieved between photons (a unit, or quantum, of electromagnetic radiation, such as light) over very large distances, between photons and ensembles of atoms, and between two nearby atoms through the intermediary action of a third.
None of those, however, provides a feasible means of holding and managing quantum information over long distances.
Now the JQI team, along with colleagues at the University of Michigan, has succeeded in teleporting a quantum state directly from one atom to another over a meter. That capability is necessary for workable quantum information systems because they will require memory storage at both the sending and receiving ends of the transmission.
In the Jan. 23 issue of the journal Science, the scientists report that, by using their protocol, atom-to-atom teleported information can be recovered with perfect accuracy about 90 percent of the time — and that figure can be improved.
"Our system has the potential to form the basis for a large-scale 'quantum repeater' that can network quantum memories over vast distances," Monroe said. "Moreover, our methods can be used in conjunction with quantum bit operations to create a key component needed for quantum computation."
A quantum computer could perform certain tasks, such as encryption-related calculations and searches of giant databases, considerably faster than conventional machines. The effort to devise a working model is a matter of intense interest worldwide.
http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/090123-teleportation-atoms.html

Recent Snow Picture From St Louis From A Friend To Which I Take HIGH Exception!

New Look Pooch Doggy Dog

Well, Pooch Doggy Dog fans! After an extensive snoot lift, and tummy tuck and genital augmentation (not visible in picture)... 

The NEW ME!!!

And, the Subway Jared "before" look...

Eat your hearts out, you bitches...

Citigroup Plans For Corporate Jet Outrages Everyone. O Gang Tells Citigroup to "Fix It"

According to a report from ABC News, President Obama is not taking kindly to corporate greed, especially when it's funded by taxpayer money. The high-flying execs at Citigroup caved under pressure from President Obama and decided today to abandon plans for a luxurious new $50 million corporate jet from France...
ABC News has learned that Monday,  officials of the Obama administration called Citigroup about the company's new $50 million corporate jet and told execs to "fix it."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/27/obama-officials-tells-cit_n_161202.html

I can't imagine W facing down a corporation. But, for you who tire of my tirades against our former president, I will have vented my bile in about one week. Then, a self-imposed W mention moratorium.
Pooch Doggy Dog

View the Prairie Pooch Hole blog here...

Y.W.C.A.: 1919

1919. "Young Women's Christian Association. Scenes at YWCA camp." Harris & Ewing Collection glass negative, Library of Congress.
http://www.shorpy.com/node/5428

I'm a Shorpy!  Click on me...

View the Prairie Pooch Hole blog here...

Republican Leadership Wants Limbaugh To Cool It

Some recent developments on the Republican side give me hope they might not be simple reactionaries. Poocher

Rush Limbaugh is taking heat from all sides for his comments about hoping President Obama's administration is a failure. Bill Bennett disagreed with his fellow conservative and said Limbaugh was wrong to say he wishes Obama will fail. Now Politico reports that Republican House member Phil Gingrey has a message for Limbaugh: back off.
"I think that our leadership, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, are taking the right approach," Gingrey said. "I mean, it's easy if you're Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh or even sometimes Newt Gingrich to stand back and throw bricks. You don't have to try to do what's best for your people and your party. You know you're just on these talk shows and you're living well and plus you stir up a bit of controversy and gin the base and that sort of that thing. But when it comes to true leadership, not that these people couldn't be or wouldn't be good leaders, they're not in that position of John Boehner or Mitch McConnell."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/27/gop-house-member-to-rush_n_161484.html

View the Prairie Pooch Hole blog here...

Interview With Dick Van Dyke About 'Mary Poppins' And More

Dick Van Dyke thought Walt Disney wanted to see him about "Mary Poppins" because of his singing and dancing skills. But the legendary studio founder had something else in mind.
"He had heard me in an interview talking about what was happening to family entertainment," says Van Dyke in a phone interview, still amused by the memory. "I was decrying the fact that it seemed like no holds were barred anymore in entertainment. ... That's why he called me in, because I said something he agreed with."
Disney, after years of cajoling "Poppins" author P.L. Travers, was finally mounting a production of the books about a magical nanny. With Van Dyke, he knew he was also getting a star as well as a like-minded performer. The actor's TV sitcom, "The Dick Van Dyke Show," was a steady hit at the time, and he had won a Tony for his work in the stage version of "Bye Bye Birdie."
With Van Dyke as the Cockney chimney sweep Bert, fellow Tony winner Julie Andrews (in her movie debut) as Poppins and several old pros in tow, Disney went ahead with production on the 1964 film, which was to become one of the biggest hits his studio ever produced.
The movie earned five Oscars -- including a best actress win for Andrews -- and its Richard and Robert Sherman songs, such as "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious," "Feed the Birds" and the Oscar-winning "Chim Chim Cher-ee," have become standards.
Forty-five years later, "Poppins" is also a hit stage show, with excerpts of the Broadway production featured on a new 45th-anniversary DVD. Van Dyke, 83, took a few minutes to talk about the film, his much-maligned Cockney accent and Michelle Obama's fondness for his old TV show.

Read the interview with Van Dyke here...
http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Movies/01/27/van.dyke.poppins/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

View the Prairie Pooch Hole blog here...

Autopsies of Six Football Players Show Stunning Brain Damage

For years after his NFL career ended, Ted Johnson could barely muster the energy to leave his house.
"I'd [leave to] go see my kids for maybe 15 minutes," said Johnson. "Then I would go back home and close the curtains, turn the lights off and I'd stay in bed. That was my routine for two years.
"Those were bad days."
These days, the former linebacker is less likely to recount the hundreds of tackles, scores of quarterback sacks or the three Super Bowl rings he earned as a linebacker for the New England Patriots. He is more likely to talk about suffering more than 100 concussions.
"I can definitely point to 2002 when I got back-to-back concussions. That's where the problems started," said Johnson, who retired after those two concussions. "The depression, the sleep disorders and the mental fatigue."
Until recently, the best medical definition for concussion was a jarring blow to the head that temporarily stunned the senses, occasionally leading to unconsciousness. It has been considered an invisible injury, impossible to test -- no MRI, no CT scan can detect it.
But today, using tissue from retired NFL athletes culled posthumously, the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy (CSTE), at the Boston University School of Medicine, is shedding light on what concussions look like in the brain. The findings are stunning. Far from innocuous, invisible injuries, concussions confer tremendous brain damage. That damage has a name: chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).
CTE has thus far been found in the brains of five out of five former NFL players. On Tuesday afternoon, researchers at the CSTE will release study results from the sixth NFL player exhibiting the same kind of damage.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/01/26/athlete.brains/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

View the Prairie Pooch Hole blog here...

Spiderman Weapon In The Works

Say you're in charge of security at an air base. Suddenly, you look up, and there are dozens of would-assailants are coming down, on parachutes and hang-gliders. What do you do?
Well, if you're one of the imaginative members of the Headquarters Air Force Security Forces Center, you whip out your non-lethal net-launcher -- and bag the baddies like Spiderman.
At least, that's what seems to be the vision behind the awfully-acronymed, "Counter Ultra Light Aircraft/Paratrooper System," or CULAPS. According to a military request for proposals discovered by Stephen Trimble, the gizmo is "envisaged as a lightweight net aimed and fired from the ground that envelopes the target and thereby removes the target's lift bringing it to the ground."
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2009/01/air-force-seeks.html

View the Prairie Pooch Hole blog here...

Miniaturized Laser Weapons Take Another Step Forward

Last month, a small robotic plane flew into the skies over New Mexico's White Sands Missile Range. Tracking the drone was an experimental Humvee, equipped with a laser. The real-life ray gun then took aim at the drone, and began blasting. Soon, the drone had a hole burnt through it -- and was crashing down to the desert.
For decades, the Army and the Air Force have used laser prototypes to zap unmanned planes. But what makes this test, held last month, a little different is that the laser was small, and low-powered. Which makes the ray gun, at least in theory, fairly easy to fit into an existing combat vehicle. In the summer of 2007, this modified Humvee -- a Boeing "Laser Avenger" -- blasted five targets on the ground, including some unexploded ordnance.
Those initial trials raised some eyebrows, because the Laser Avenger used only one kilowatt laser; 100 kilowatts is generally considered the minimum for weapons-grade. Since then, the power has been "doubled," Boeing executive Lee Gutheinz says in a statement. And Boeing swears the weapon performs just fine, despite its relative weakness.
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2009/01/laser-1-drone-0.html

View the Prairie Pooch Hole blog here...

Antelopes Used By Israelis As Shock Troops To Charge Enemy Lines! (Well, at least they are used to graze grass screening view)

Israel already uses spy drones, automated sentry towers, and slew of sophisticated sensors, to keep watch over its borders. The latest addition to the arsenal: a group of eight African antelope, each weighing nearly 1100 pounds.
The antelope have been stationed on Israel's border with Lebanon, to eat up the "problematic foliage that distorts views of the Lebanese side and within which Hezbollah guerrillas could hide," Ha'Aretz reports.
The beasts, known as "elands," were introduced to Israel from east Africa in the 1970s, to fill zoos. But when these animals "impressive chewing abilities were discovered," the animals were recruited by the military.
"The elands eat tremendous quantities and do a wonderful job clearing the weeds at enormous or secret military installations, and in places were there are ammunition storerooms, where the fear of fires is greater," says Yossi Ben tells Ha'Aretz. "In these places the elands save on manpower and obviate the need for spraying chemical herbicides."
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2009/01/israel-unleash.html

View the Prairie Pooch Hole blog here...

New Smart Tank Round Being Developed

Last week, the Army conducted a full test of the Mid-Range Munition, a "smart" 120-mm cannon round. It's part of a push to give tank gunners the same kind of precision that artillery crews have with munitions like the Excalibur, an extended-range, precision guided 155-mm artillery round that has seen service in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Here's the concept: The Mid-Range Munition pops out small "wings" in flight; the round can then be guided to a target with a laser designator, or it can be fired in the general direction of the target and the infrared seeker will guide it home. In theory, this would for the first time give tank gunners an "indirect fire" capability, meaning that they could hit a target, say, on the other side of a hill with the aid of a spotter.
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2009/01/the-little-tank.html

View the Prairie Pooch Hole blog here...

Browser Wars Heat Up... Microsoft IE 8 Is SUCKY!

(In picture... Sunspider, short bars good; Google, tall bars good.)

A release candidate of Microsoft's next-generation Internet Explorer browser made available this week has twice finished last in a five-browser benchmark competition.
Microsoft's overnight posting of the final Internet Explorer 8 pre-release build prompted ZDNet Australia to run it through some benchmark tests against its counterparts.
On the Sunspider JavaScript performance test, despite all the performance improvements Microsoft says it's making, IE8 finished last by roughly 3,000ms. It was narrowly bested by Opera 10 alpha, while bunched at the top of the performance ranks and separated by slight margins were Google Chrome 2.0.158.0, WebKit r40220, and Firefox 3.1 beta 1. WebKit serves as the foundation of Apple's Safari browser.
ZDNet was not surprised to find that Google's browser came in first on Google's own V8 JavaScript Benchmark, while WebKit finished a close second. Opera and Firefox trailed well behind in third and fourth, while Internet Explorer was a distant last.
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/01/27/ie8s_javascript_performance_lags_well_behind_safari_chrome.html

View the Prairie Pooch Hole blog here...

Dueling Jokes... Pooch Dog Won!

Pooch Dog received very poor quality joke from daughter this morning. His majesty chastised daughter, showing her better form with a few jokes and comments. Said Pooch Gal responded, doing a little better with her followup jokes. Despite her efforts, the International Committee on Jokes Between Family Members ruled me the champion.
Pooch Dog

From:    Pooch Dog Daughter
to:            Pooch Dog
date:        Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 11:05 AM
subject:    Redneck Sensitivity

Three Rednecks were working up on a cell phone tower: Cooter, Ronnie and Donnie. As they start their descent, Cooter slips, falls off the tower and is DRT (Dead Right There).
As the ambulance takes the body away, Ronnie says, 'Well, damn, someone should go and tell his wife.' Donnie says, 'OK, I'm pretty good at that sensitive stuff, I'll do it.'
Two hours later, he comes back carrying a case of Budweiser. Ronnie says, 'Where did you get that beer, Donnie?' 'Cooter's wife gave it to me,' Ronnie replies. 'That's unbelievable, you told the lady her husband was dead and she gave you beer?'
Well, not exactly', Donnie says, 'When she answered the door, I said to her, "you must be Cooter's widow".'She said, 'You must be mistaken, I'm not a widow.' Then I said 'I'll bet you a case of Budweiser you are.'

Rednecks Are Good AT That Sensitive Stuff!

Reply from: Pooch Dog to Pooch Dog Daughter

You and your brother have been telling some VERY bad jokes lately! Adding him should he want to apologize also...

Now, here are two that are worth their salt..

A woman rushed to see her doctor, looking very much worried and all strung out. She rattles off: "Doctor, take a look at me. When I woke up this morning, I looked at myself in the mirror and saw my hair all wiry and frazzled up, my skin was all wrinkled and pasty, my eyes were bloodshot and bugging out, and I had this corpse-like look on my face! What's WRONG with me, Doctor!?" The doctor looks her over for a couple of minutes, then calmly says: "Well, I can tell you that there ain't nothing wrong with your eyesight."

And...

A woman gets on a bus with her baby. The bus driver says: "That's the ugliest b

aby that I've ever seen. Ugh!" The woman goes to the rear of the bus and sits down, fuming. She says to a man next to her: "The driver just insulted me!" The man says: "You go right up there and tell him off – go ahead, I'll hold your monkey for you."

Or...

"How do you make a Nazi Cross? Tread on his corns".

(OK, that last one wasn't!)

Many don't know about the undercover joke warfare in WW II. It is documented here...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Funniest_Joke_in_the_World

Seems someone on the British side came up with a joke so funny that it killed whoever read it. They finally translated it into German, each translator responsible for only one word. (One translator accidentally saw two words, and was hospitalized.) It killed thousand

s of Germans before the war was over. In retaliation, the Germans soon formulate a counter-joke, which is translated into English and played over the radio to London, but with no success. The joke is:

"There were zwei [two] peanuts walking down der Strasse [street]. Und one was assaulted (a salted)... peanut!")

It went no where!

Now! Do better than that...
A disappointed father in Texas

From Pooch Dog Daughter to Pooch Dog

I am sorry I can’t counter with any “bad” jokes but I do have some very GOOD ones for you…even some good ol’ classy, non-fiction insults…

A member of Parliament to Disraeli: "Sir, you will either die on the gallows or of some unspeakable disease." "That depends, Sir," said Disraeli, "whether I embrace your policies or your mistress."

"Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time reading it." - Moses Hadas
“George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill "I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend.... if you have one." --Winston Churchill, in response - "Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second... if there is one."

"In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily." - Charles, Count Talleyrand

"His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork." - Mae West

"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts... for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang (1844-1912)

"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it." - Groucho Marx

Spanish for the day – Words used in sentences

Texas: My fren always Texas me when I'm not home wondering where I'm at!

Herpes: Me and my fren ordered pizza. I got my piece and she got herpes.

Rectum: I had 2 cars but my wife rectum!

Harassment: My wife caught me in bed with another women and I told her, honey, harassment nothing to me.
Bishop: My wife fell down the stairs, so I had to pick the bishop.

Why boys need parents...  (See picture.)



Things you’ll find out having sons…

• If you spray hair spray on dust bunnies and run over them with roller blades, they can ignite.
• If you hook a dog leash over a ceiling fan, the motor is not strong enough to rotate a 42 pound Boy wearing Batman underwear and a Superman cape. It is strong enough, however, if tied to a paint can, to spread paint on all four walls of a 20x20 ft. room.
• When you hear the toilet flush and the words 'uh oh', it's already too late.
• A six-year old Boy can start a fire with a flint rock even though a 36- year old Man says they can only do it in the movies.
• The spin cycle on the washing machine does not make earthworms dizzy.

New Drones Enlisted as Bomb-Fighters

The U.S. military has tried everything to stop roadside bombs, from radio frequency jammers to hulking trucks to blimps to lightning guns. Now, the Pentagon is getting set to deploy out a new crew of bomb-fighters: robotic aircraft with specialized sensors, designed to spot the deadly weapons and the militants who are planting them.
The agency has invested in robo-planes before. But these latest efforts seem to be concentrated on smaller, lower-flying drones that can closely track the action on the ground.
The "Sentinel Hawk" is a modified Silver Fox drone, equipped with infrared sensors and "built to keep tabs on a specific road or path," Defense News explains. A single operator will be able to command teams of the eight-foot long aircraft, as they patrol the roadways for bombs.
The "Yellow Jacket" robo-copter gives warzone convoys an unmanned eye-in-the-sky. For up to eight hours, the drone will follow around -- and keep watch on -- a vehicle, beaming what it sees down to the ground.
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2009/01/anti-ied-drones.html

View the Prairie Pooch Hole blog here...

Thrift store MP3 player contains secret military files

A man walks into a thrift store...  

It sounds like the opening line to a bad joke. And this case was a bad joke -- for the Pentagon.
Chris Ogle of New Zealand was in Oklahoma about a year ago when he bought a used MP3 player from a thrift store for $9. A few weeks ago, he plugged it into his computer to download a song, and he instead discovered confidential U.S. military files.
"The more I look at it, the more I see, and the less I think I should be," Ogle said with a nervous laugh in an interview with TVNZ.
The files included the home addresses, Social Security numbers and cell phone numbers of U.S. soldiers. The player also included what appeared to be mission briefings and lists of equipment deployed to hot spots in Afghanistan and Iraq. Most of the information appears to date to 2005.
The New Zealand journalist who first reported the story was able to contact at least one of the soldiers by dialing a phone number found in the files. He hung up once she explained why she was calling. Pentagon officials told CNN that they are aware of the MP3 player, but can't talk about it until investigators confirm that the information came from the U.S. Department of Defense.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/01/27/confidential.mp3.player/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

View the Prairie Pooch Hole blog here...

Pooch & Google Reader

Are you using software to find and read blogs? A news/blog aggregator. Then, you are simply a simpleton! A lowlands maggot. I use Google Reader, and am adding a screen capture so you can get an idea of what it offers. Other worthy software exists. Check out the links below, you newbies, for ramp up help.
Pooch Doggy Dog

http://www.youtube.com/GoogleReaderHelp
http://google.com/support/reader/bin/answer.py?answer=113517

A Close Relative of Poochy

One of my relatives, here... 

Pooch Doggy

Wired: 1920

"Interior Department, Bureau of Mines." Another circa 1920 view of research activities at the bureau's Washington offices. Harris & Ewing.
http://www.shorpy.com/node/5419

I'm a Shorpy!  Click on me...

View the Prairie Pooch Hole blog here...