A post for my dad, thanks for all you’ve done.
Today is one of those days I will race to get the leaves up before the next batch of cold and rain arrives tonight. It’s really a Sisyphean task, but if I get too many layers of wet leaves it makes a sodden mass that kills the grass beneath in short order. I’m putting a pot of chili together to cook slow in the crock pot for later when I get done.
As soon as I get these up the rain will bring down more.
“In God We Trust” became the national motto back in the fifties during the red scare days, but the nimrods in the GOP decided it was more important to re affirm this motto (that’s really an unconstitutional smack in the face of all US Buddhists, atheists, and Polytheists,) than to do anything to aid the economy, or to help education, or to help technology sectors, or to help taxpayers, or to help homeowners, or to help their constituents.
The Hill estimates that with three bills worked yesterday the actual cost for the session time during this panderfest put on for the self-selected busybodies for God was >200 thousand dollars. Remember that next time you hear one of these wingnuts lying about 16 dollar muffins.
via LGF Pages – House panderfest reaffirms ‘In God We Trust’ as US motto.
This comes from President Obama, via Think Progress. It once more demonstrates that Ronald Reagan wouldn’t get past the primaries in today’s zealot and wingnut led GOP.
Now, when I point this out, some of the Republicans in Congress say, ‘oh you’re engaging in class warfare.’ Let me tell you something. Years ago, one great American had a different view. I’m going to get the quote, just so you know I’m not making this up. A great American said that he thought it was ‘crazy’ that certain tax loopholes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying ten percent of his salary.
Alright. You know who this guy was? It wasn’t a Democrat. It wasn’t some crazy socialist. It was Ronald Reagan. It was Ronald Reagan. Last time I checked, Republicans all thought Reagan made some sense. So next time you hear one of those Republicans in Congress accusing you of class warfare, you just tell them I’m with Ronald Reagan. I agree with Ronald Reagan that it’s crazy that a bus driver pays a higher tax rate than some millionaire because of a loophole in the tax code. And by the way, I don’t mind being called a warrior for the working class. You guys need someone working for you.
To me it’s fall when our redbud tree starts changing to yellow leaves, and when the morning sun hits them they show some great translucent shades. 
This was taken this morning with the Canon T21, and reduced somewhat for the web.
Dave Winer wrote a timely piece this morning about how Facebook is scaring him since the new API allows applications to post status items to your Facebook timeline without a users intervention. It is an extension of Facebook Instant and they call it frictionless sharing. The privacy concern here is that because you no longer have to explicitly opt-in to share an item, you may accidentally share a page or an event that you did not intend others to see.
The advice is to log out of Facebook. But logging out of Facebook only de-authorizes your browser from the web application, a number of cookies (including your account number) are still sent along to all requests to facebook.com. Even if you are logged out, Facebook still knows and can track every page you visit. The only solution is to delete every Facebook cookie in your browser, or to use a separate browser for Facebook interactions.
via Nik Cubrilovic Blog – Logging out of Facebook is not enough.
Potholer54 on the latest GOP dunderheaded attack on science.
I know the blogs will tell you that that a correlation between cosmic rays and temperature has been shown, and once you believe this it may be hard to convince you of the science. However let’s have a go….
There are two supposed correlations:
Svensmark and Friis Kristensen wrote a paper on a correlation between sunspots and temperature during the 20th century, which they attributed to the varying intensity of cosmic rays with solar activity. However, this turned out to be the result of a mathematical error. Cosmic rays have been measured over the last 50 years and they vary with the 11-year solar cycle. There has been no increase at all, whereas average global temperatures have been increasing.
Dr. Julia Pongratz, postdoctoral research scientist at the Carnegie Institution Dept. of Global Ecology, discussing
J. Pongratz, K. Caldeira, C.H. Reick, and M. Claussen (2011) , Coupled climate-carbon simulations indicate minor global effects of wars and epidemics on atmospheric CO2 between AD 800 and 1850. The Holocene,
via Effects of wars and epidemics on historical atmospheric CO2 content: Dr. Julia Pongratz – YouTube.
