2/08/2015

Thoughts On A Sunday

The winter snows have returned to New England, with 10 to 18 inches of snow expected here by the time its all done come Tuesday morning. At least this storm isn't a swift moving one with high winds and snowfall rates of over an inch an hour. Instead, this one is coming out of the west along a front that means it will be snowing all day today and tomorrow. This means it's easier to deal with as both the snow plows and our snowblowers can stay well ahead of it.

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I have been reading Bill O'Reilly's Killing Patton , a fascinating book about Patton from the time after the Normandy Invasion until his death . O'Reilly makes the case that Patton's death wasn't an accident, but most likely an assassination. One party O'Reilly points to is Stalin, who feared Patton. But O'Reilly also makes mention of Wild Bill Donovan, head of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and later the CIA. Patton had a lot of enemies, both in and outside the US. A lot of people wanted him dead.

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It appears the damage done to the Department of Justice by the Obama Administration is far worse than many have thought.

When a federal judge resigns from a panel whose oversight is supposed to ensure the DoJ pre-trial forensic evidence is within the bounds of actual science and meets the same burden of proof as is required by defense forensic experts, citing the DoJ's refusal to recognize the panel's authority and recommendations to ensure the credentials of forensic experts and the methodology used, you know the DoJ isn't interested in justice. It is only interested in winning its cases, and is more than willing to use evidence whose veracity and accuracy is impossible to establish.

As the judge, Jed S. Radkoff, put it, he sees the government “would rather keep its bad forensics and broken discovery procedures because it gives it the advantage when it comes to prosecution.”

Then again the Department of Justice hasn't had anything to do with justice ever since Eric Holder became Attorney General. It has been more about revenge and racial politics than the law.

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To paraphrase Glenn Reynolds, if anyone says they're for controlling climate change but are against nuclear power, then they aren't really serious about controlling climate change.

Nuclear power is the only carbon-free electrical source capable of generating large amounts of power. While the argument will be made that building nuclear plants generates a lot of carbon dioxide, so does every other means of generating power, including wind and solar, so it's a straw man argument. Once online, nuclear plants have an enviable record of up time versus every other form of electricity generation. Newer plants based upon new designs (some of which are actually old designs abandoned because they didn't generate enough plutonium for US weapons production) won't generate the waste seen with existing plants and, in some cases, can make use of the existing waste to generate a lot of power.

Let's face it, we are a technological civilization and such civilizations require a lot of power to make them both clean, healthy, and wealthy.

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David Starr lists a few actions we can take to help keep our home computers and laptops less vulnerable to hacking. No method is fool proof, but at least we can lessen the possibility of being hacked.

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Eric the Viking links to and comments upon the situation in Greece, where the new government thinks they can schmooze the very people they condemned as being greedy and evil to give their country even more money they'll never pay back.

Yeah, that'll work.

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The more we hear of ISIS's atrocities, the more I come to believe there is only one means of stopping it: total war. History has shown us the only way these folks will stop is if we defeat them utterly. If it comes to it, I have no qualms of using nuclear means to wipe them out. They do not deserve the benefit of doubt.

It seems that many who have joined ISIS aren't religious fanatics so much as people who love the idea of religion-backed brigandage, rape, and murder. They don't give a rat's ass about Islam, but love the idea of being able to get away with things that would get them imprisioned or executed in their home countries.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the snow is falling, the annual Ice Fishing Derby has finished, and where the skiing and snowmobiling is excellent.