Posts Made By: James McSheehy

An insider's take on that weird place called "DC"

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/28/books/review/this-town-by-mark-leibovich.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

From the F0rward! annals, we move a step closer to life imitating (and surpassing) art.

"‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’ And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple."
-- George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty Four


From the Financial Times, July 2013:
"US economic history will be rewritten this week, as the most far-reaching methodological changes in years will add the equivalent of a country the size of Belgium to output in the world’s largest economy.

The most important change by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, to be announced on Wednesday, will be to start counting spending on research, development and copyrights as investment, and reflect pension deficits for the first time.

Combined they are expected to add 3 per cent to gross domestic product.

“We are carrying these major changes all the way back in time – which for us means to 1929 – so we are essentially rewriting economic history,” Brent Moulton, who manages the national accounts at the Bureau of Economic Analysis."

...

Our financial genius-in-chief is proposing new income tax rates for corporations, 28% (only 25% for manufacturers like GE, Boeing, GM), but leaves the top rate for small businesses at 40%. That's an interesting way to "grow" the middle class, no? Why don't they simply outlaw businesses with less than 1000 employees and be done with it?

F0rward!

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/31/us/politics/obama-offers-to-cut-corporate-tax-rate-as-part-of-jobs-deal.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Richard Keppler said:

what a &*(&*%^#$% mess. Can't get on to the ap-ug or ap-gto groups, nor the tec group or fli or a few others I hang around. Maybe have to try to get everyone on here!?!

Yes it appears the "Neo" rollout has broken access for iOS 6 (Safari) devices and Yahoo is getting thousands of complaints. I'm hoping this is just a holiday weekend snafu. If this represents a permanent shift, then Yahoo Goups are dead to me.

Unbelievable hypocrisy in the Senate today. Committee chairman Menendez, a scummy pedophile, feigns outrage over the plight of children in Syria, while staunch anti-war icon JF Kerry makes the case for a military gesture/adventure that everyone agrees is largely useless and symbolic.

Will this episode of The Twilight Zone ever end?

Had an odd occurrence with the network gear in my observatory. A tiny thunderstorm (little more than an isolated black cloud) passed by last week an we had one bolt of lightning that struck nearby. I didn't see exactly where the bolt hit, but the flash and boom were almost simultaneous, so it was probably within a few hundred feet. There was no obvious damage to anything in the house and later in the evening I checked the observatory. everything powered up and seemed to be OK. All the gear is behind a UPS and I assumed it had done its job to limit any surges. The cables to the observatory building are underground and the network line is standard cat-5 in PVC conduit.

A few days later I started an observing session. The network switch box looked like it was working OK, but there was no connection to the router. When I opened it up here is what it looked like inside. Lightning (EMP?) had put enough power into a cable that it literally blew a hole in one of the chips on the PC board. The main router and other equipment on the network are not damaged. Weird stuff. 8O

Well the word is out on the Neo overhaul, and Yahoo formally announced the changes are permanent. This means the old format for Groups is gone. Apparently they decided that hipsters and FB users represent the future for web communities, and old dinosaur listserv users like me are simply not part of their plans for the future.

Time to "get with it" I suppose. Maybe I'll do my first selfie, a pic of my buttocks, and send it to Marissa Myer. 8)

http://www.theonion.com/articles/poll-majority-of-americans-approve-of-sending-cong,33752/

8)

Happy Friday!

How will the fawning media deal with this latest example of Mr. Obama's buffoonery? Here is a suggestion from the UK Telegraph:

"'The Obama Caper'

How Barack Obama outfoxed Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad. bringing them to their knees without firing a single shot.

In what most agree was the most brilliant political move in decades, Barack H. Obama not only convinced his arch nemesis Putin that he (Obama) was a bumbling incompetent fool but he also had most of his loyal media and members of his own party believing that as well.

Only a handful of his closest advisers were aware of the plot including his secretary of state, John Kerry. Together Kerry and Obama sacrificed their reputations in an effort to come across as two bumbling. trigger happy and incompetent leaders.

Their ploy worked and in a carefully scripted "gaffe" Kerry played the fool seeming to accidentally offer up a compromise to Syria's president Assad. Both Assad and his powerful sponsor Putin took the bait and agreed to Obama/Kerry's terms."

Obama needs to hire this guy to write his memoirs! 8)

As usual, visual combat artist William Banzai sums it up perfectly:

Scientists from Sweden and South Africa have determined that dung beetles use starlight to navigate a straight path while rolling balls of manure. The insects are sophisticated enough to use moonlight when it's available, and then switch to much dimmer sources like the Milky Way on moonless nights. All this groundbreaking research was enough to warrant the award of a dual igNobel Prize in Biology and Astronomy.

These abilities seem to be more advanced than many vertebrates (e.g. amateur astronomers). 8)

http://www.cell.com/current-biology/retrieve/pii/S0960982212015072

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/sep/13/ig-nobel-prize-dung-beetles-navigate-stars